He was here again last week and although I enjoy his company immensely, I always dread the moment when he suddenly becomes serious, looks at me intently and says: ‘Now tell me, what’s really happening in this country? How are things going?’
The moment came the other day as we were sitting at Floca’s watching the hippies go by and had just finished an argument about a couple that had sauntered past. Gus said it was a girl and a boy. I said I thought it was two boys and we finally agreed it was two girls after all but that one of them must have undergone a sex-change operation in Copenhagen.
‘How are things here?’ I said repeating his question.
‘Fine, just fine. Hey, look at this other couple coming along. Seems to me …’
But Gus wasn’t interested in the passersby any more. He was looking at me intently and waiting for a more explicit answer to his question.
‘Well, can’t you see for yourself?’ I said.
‘Streets full of traffic; shops full of goodies; restaurants, nightclubs and tavernas full of people; hotels jam-packed with tourists. Doesn’t all that convince you that we’re doing all right?’
Ί understand there was rioting in the streets about a month ago,’ Gus said gravely.
‘What was that all about?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. The government says it was the communists and the communists say it was the “juntics”. Who knows?’
‘What are the “juntics”?’
Ά “juntic” is a former supporter of the Papadopoulos regime.’
‘You mean one of those thousands of people we used to see in the newsreels, cheering Papadopoulos when he toured the country?’
Ί suppose so. But you won’t see any today. They all disappeared in July 1974.’
‘Then how can they be responsible for the rioting?’
Ί don’t know, ‘ I said, ‘the theory is that there are some hard-core “juntics” who provoke riots so the law-abiding people will be reminded of the peace and quiet we had under Papadopoulos.’
‘But the most serious riots of all, the Polytechnic riots, happened when Papadopoulos was in charge, didn’t they?’ Gus said.
‘You’ve got a point there,’ I admitted.
Ί hear there are many strikes, too,’ Gus said.
‘Yes, we’re a democracy now and we have strikes.’
‘What do the strikers want?’
‘More money, basically, and the right to strike for even more money, I suppose.’
Ί thought you said everything was fine. Lots of cars, shops full of goodies, all the restaurants and tavernas jam-packed—why does anybody need more money?’
‘Because prices are going up and people can’t afford to keep up their fancy cars, or buy all the goodies in the shops or go out to dinner every night.’
‘So there is an economic problem in Greece,’ Gus said with what I suspected to be a note of triumph in his voice.
‘Oh, sure.’ I admitted. ‘Why should only Britain, or France, or Italy have an economic problem. We’re doing all right, Jack, we’ve got a beauty of an economic problem too and we’re just as incapable of solving it as they are. That’s what democracy is all about,’ I said, wagging my finger at him.
‘I’m afraid I don’t get you,’ Gus replied with a frown.
‘What is the basic cause of Greece’s economic problem?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we just can’t make ends meet. We import far more than we export and we try to make up the difference with our earnings from tourism and shipping, remittances from Greek emigrants and workers in Germany, capital investments from abroad and, more recently, our construction companies’ earnings from doing jobs in the Middle East and Africa. But with oil prices the way they are now, we can almost never hope to close the gap.’
‘Didn’t I hear something about an oil discovery in Thasos?’
‘You probably did. We all did. First they drilled a hole and found oil with a high sulphur content but couldn’t say how much there was. Then they drilled another hole and said we’d have enough to fill about a quarter of our annual requirements. Then they drilled a third hole and found a different kind of oil with a low sulphur content. That means there isn’t as much of the high-sulphur oil as they thought and they won’t know how much of the other kind there is until they drill a fourth hole. So now they’re drilling a fourth hole. But I know of at least one oil company in Greece that isn’t banking on Thasos oil.’
‘Oh,’ Gus said, pricking up his ears, ‘Which one is that?’
‘BP,’ I said, ‘they’re marketing an apparatus for heating water with solar energy, if you please.’
Gus smiled. Then he said: ‘So I take it that the solution to Greece’s economic problem lies in boosting exports, increasing revenues from tourism and shipping, attracting more capital investments and encouraging Greek construction companies to undertake more projects in the Middle East and Africa. Am I right?’
‘You hit the nail on the head,’ I said.
‘And is the government doing anything in that direction?’ Gus asked.
‘Oh, sure,’ I said. ‘But it’s doing it in a rather roundabout way. You see, the government reckons that our exporters, our tourist industry, our shipping industry and our construction people are all competing with some extremely sharp operators on the world scene. They must therefore have their wits about them and become even sharper and more enterprising than any competitor they may encounter. Therefore, the government subtly places all sorts of obstacles in their way, mostly of a bureaucratic and fiscal nature. It’s not enough to stifle them completely but enough to stimulate their ingenuity to such a degree that when they come face to face with foreign competition, they can walk all over it.’
Ά very interesting ploy,’ Gus mused.
‘And is it working?’ Ί hope to God it is,’ I said, Otherwise somebody with snow on his boots is going to be walking all over us very soon.’
