He came to mind the other day when I received a phone call from his son, a young man who must have been in his early thirties and whom I had not seen since his father’s funeral.
“You must forgive me for calling you like this, out of the blue so to speak, but I must seek your help in a matter of the utmost urgency,” he said, in a strangely muffled voice.
“I’m afraid I can’t hear you very well, can you speak a little more clearly?” I asked.
“No,” he said, ”I’m wearing a gas mask over my surgical mask and this is the best I can do . The air pollution count was up two units today, you know.”
Lord, I thought to myself, this guy’s even worse than his father. “What can I do for you?”
“Can you come up to my house in Kastri? I know it’s an imposition because you hardly know me. But I assure you I am in a desperate situation. Will you do this for me for the sake of your friendship with my late father?”
I hesitated for a moment. He sounded like a nut case, but he was probably harmless. Still, I was curious to know why he was appealing to me and not to anyone else. “What exactly is it you want from me?” I asked, “and why me?”
There was a pause at the other end of the line. “I can’t explain on the phone,” the muffled voice said, “but my father told me you had dinner with him once and sat at the table without first washing your hands.”
“Oh, really? That was unforgivable of me,” I said with a hint of sarcasm.
“Well, it’s your business if you want to expose yourself to all kinds of infection, but that’s why I believe you can help me and I will explain fully when you come. When can I expect you?”
By now I was thoroughly mystified and intrigued. “I will come this afternoon at six. Are you at your father’s old house?”
“Yes, right behind the Papandreou residence. Thank you so much. I am deeply grateful.”
At six that evening I parked outside the two-storey house in Kastri and walked up a whitewashed garden path to the front door. The windows on both floors were closed tight and fitted with fine mesh screens and there was a strange mechanical contraption on the roof.
The person who opened the front door to me was wearing a complete surgeon’s outfit, looking ready to carry out a lung and heart transplant and smelling strongly of carbolic soap.
There was a closed door behind him and after he had greeted me, he closed the front door, sprayed the space between the two doors with a powerful disinfectant, and then opened the second door into the hallway.
“What happened to the gas mask?” I asked.
“There was a breeze early this afternoon and the pollution count went down to normal levels. The surgical mask is adequate to cope with anything that may get through the filters.”
“The filters?” I queried.
“Yes, the house’s air intake is on the roof, you may have seen it outside. The air is ionized and then filtered through three layers of charcoal and two layers of silicon crystals while special sensors are constantly monitoring pollution levels. When they get too high an alarm goes off and I wear my gas mask, as I did this morning. You will forgive me for not shaking hands with you, but just before you came I cut my right rubber glove while unscrewing the cap of a bottle of sterilized distilled water and I wouldn’t want to risk it, your coming right from outside and all that. You know what I mean”.
I nodded. “Think nothing of it,” I said.
“Better get a new glove before the bacteria get wind of that cut and have you for dinner.”
He laughed wryly. “You may make fun of me,” he said, “but I take all the threats to my health very seriously. If I can help it at all, I shall not succumb to a lung infection caused by air pollution, to any kind of cancer caused by radioactive fallout, or typhoid or paratyphoid from unwashed vegetables or raw sewage in the sea, from food poisoning of any kind, from skin cancer from over-exposure to the sun, from ultra-violet radiation from that hole in the ozone layer of the upper stratosphere or from AIDS from any source.
You are the first human contact I have had in two years and that only through necessity. This house is my stronghold and I have made it virtually vermin and germproof- at least, I thought I had until this morning.”
“What happened this morning?” I asked.
He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Come with me,” he said, climbing the staircase to the second floor.
He took me to the bathroom and pointed to the bottom of the bathtub.
I looked and saw a large, brown cockroach lying on its back, marring the brilliant whiteness of the spotless enamel and looking quite dead.
“That’s a cockroach,” I said.
He closed his eyes and shuddered again. “How did that get into your Fort Knox?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely, “both mine and the Papandreou house were recently connected to the main sewer line and I suspect this cockroach somehow made its way over from the Villa Galini through the sewers and came up in my bathtub.”
“Well, it’s dead now, so what are you worried about?”
“That’s precisely what I am worried about. What did it die of?”
“It probably heard Mr. Papandreou saying the Greek economy was well on the road to recovery and died laughing,” I suggested.
“Please don’t be facetious. This is a very serious situation. This creature may even in death be a prime source of deadly infection right in my bathtub.
That’s why I need your help. I can’t bear to touch it. If I give you a pair of disposable tweezers, will you pick it up for me and take it away? Will you do me that great favor?”
I laughed. “Of course. Nothing to it. But tell me, what makes you think it came from the Papandreou residence?”
He thought a little and then said: “Well, for one thing, nothing good ever comes out of there and for another, if you look at it closely, it is rather green around the gills.”
