The reasons for this have puzzled sociologists and psychologists who, if this phenomenon had risen during the time of the Junta, might have considered gambling an outlet for more general frustration. It would appear, however, that the increase in gambling began with the restoration of democracy. Others argue it has merely come out in the open. Certainly upstanding middle class ladies may now, without fear of their tea party being raided by the police, gamble away their housekeeping money on their favourite game, Koum-kan, which had been outlawed by the Junta. More significant, however, is that the number of permits granted for gaming clubs tripled in 1976. Many of these have mushroomed around Kolonaki Square in equal proportion to haute-couture boutiques.
Gambling on New Year’s Day has always been a time-honoured custom of course. As soon as midnight has chimed, people who never gamble the rest of the year sit down to a game of cards played for modest or not-so-modest stakes. Christmas Eve is another favoured occasion for gambling and last December on Holy Night hundreds of Magi guided by the star on Mount Parnis journeyed up to the Casino to praise Mammon at more adventurous stakes. For the most part, it is an innocent enough enterprise, but when a person loses four or five million drachmas an evening it is rather more than superstitious and a good deal less than innocent. Well before the holiday splurge, however, rumours began spreading that huge sums of money were being lost, along with villas and yachts, not only by the middle-aged rich but by their sons. (Money-lenders who keep watch ori losing players and charge ten percent a day on their loans are the scourge of state-operated casinos.) A late December raid by the police was not very fruitful, aimed less at the more elaborate clubs than at the small coffee houses. (Although modest looking places, they have been known to finance apartment buildings out of the percentages gained from gambling on their premises; conversely, a well-known Kolonaki Square sweet shop was lost a few years ago on a throw of the dice.) Legitimate gaming clubs are of course governed by laws which limit the stakes and types of games played, but whether they are supervised is another matter. Police fear that some may be meeting places from whence gamblers go on to private houses where the arm of the law is limited and stakes are unlimited. Cheating, of course, is the handmaiden of gambling and there is growing evidence of the existence of marked cards and false-bottomed chemin de for cardboxes brought in from abroad.
The director of the Mont Parnes Casino is as perplexed by the sudden increase in gambling as the sociologists and psychologists. Greediness, he believes, is the reason for gambling and quick-temperedness may account for one reason gamblers lose. We cannot believe, however, that our countrymen are greedier than other people. Temperament is a better explanation. Greek gamblers like Greek drivers don’t know when to stop and they double their stakes when they should be going home. At least that’s our bet.
What Price Honour?
FAR BE IT for us to take issue with the Athens Court of Appeals which in December firmly rapped the knuckles of a Don Juan travelling in the guise of a would-be husband, thus forcing him to reach into his pocket and go in search of another cover for his predatory ways. We cannot ignore, however, the unegalitarian fashion in which the Court assesses honour and moral damage.
The case in question, extensively covered in the local press, involved a ‘non-commissioned officer’ (the defendant) who after four years of patient courting, came into ‘carnal contact’ with a twenty-eight-year-old worker (the plaintiff). The young lady acquiesced only after the defendant promised to marry her. Having broken through the line of demarkation by fair means or foul, the non-commissioned officer — who might well have expected a citation after those long years of marking time at the barricades — immediately discovered that the young lady was not a virgin and promptly announced, on the spot, that he did not wish to ‘contract permanent ties’. Thus having performed his duty by ‘clearly and categorically’ declaring that he had no further commitments, he chivalrously continued the relationship ‘in order to satisfy her aphrodisiac appetites’.
The plaintiff had a somewhat different perspective on the situation. According to her attorney, she had worn an engagement ring and, furthermore, the defendant had rented an apartment in anticipation of his forthcoming marriage. Matters did not come to a head until the young lady, after what her lawyer termed ‘natural carnal contact’, became pregnant and miscarried. At that point the defendant abandoned his post.
After examining various unspecified documents and several witnesses, the Court concluded that indeed ‘carnal contact’ had taken place following a fraudulent promise of marriage. Thus, the plaintiff’s honour had been tarnished and she had been demeaned in the eyes of others because doubts were raised as to her moral and upright character. As a consequence, she would require a greater dowry in order to be settled in a marriage with a suitable partner, one of the same status that she would have expected before her reputation was damaged. The Court granted her the sum of 105,000 drachmas indemnity, the five thousand for ‘moral damage’ and the one-hundred thousand allocated to her ‘honour’, a figure, they noted, commensurate with her social position and her earnings which amount to one hundred and fifty drachmas a day.
At this point, we must confess, our curiosity was aroused. Although we are not about to quibble over the piddling sum attached to the moral damage she suffered, we would be interested to know how the Court arrived at the round sum of one-hundred thousand for her honour. It would appear that virginity and virtue carry a value in direct relationship to social and economic status. (The defendant for his part suggested it was worth a mere 40,000 drachmas but he may have had other things in mind.) Whatever the answer, we are not concerned about the future of the young lady. There are bound to be enough farsighted men around who will wisely pass over ‘honour’ and dowry and focus on those ‘aphrodisiac appetites’.
The Brazilian
THE greats, near greats and ordinary people on the street have imbibed there, standing for a few minutes or a few hours (there are no seats) observing pedestrians scurrying past the windows that frame the famous Athenian institution — the Brazilian Coffee House. Few passersby have not been enticed by the pungent aroma of freshly ground coffees emerging from its premises at 1 Voukourestiou Street between Stadiou and Panepistimiou.
The Brazilian opened its doors in 1933. Athens was a smaller, less sophisticated city when Evangelos Saravanos, a Greek living in Brazil but operating two successful coffee shops in Cairo and Alexandria, ventured into our town where the only brew available was Turkish coffee. He was looked upon as a rather strange man serving an even stranger product, something called espresso coffee.
Today the Brazilian is an Athenian landmark where the founder’s charming widow, Kyria Artemis, presides (Mr. Saravanos died last year) over her staff whom she refers to as her ‘loyal and excellent people’. They in turn speak of her and her late husband’s consideration and kindness, a measure of their devotion the length of time they have worked there. Kyria Katy, who has been there since the shop opened forty years ago, vividly recalls the early reaction of Athenians. They would saunter in casually, she says, but upon tasting the ‘bitter foreign’ coffee, would grimace. Gradually, after observing foreigners from the nearby Hotel Grande Bretagne heartily sipping this moderno kafe, some Athenians decided they should acquire a taste for it. ‘After a time, they even started enjoying it,’ she laughs. Kyria Katy, who grew up in the United States and speaks perfect English, is a stately lady who approaches her work behind the counter with the freshness of a new employee. She recalls that in 1933 the royal stables were located next door on the spot where Zonar’s now stands.
She and Kyria Tassia, a relative newcomer who has worked at the cash register since 1938, rattle off the names of famous customers: Frank Sinatra, Omar Sharif, Bing Crosby, Anthony Quinn, Werner Von Braun and Greek-American superstar Telly Savalas, who autographed a paper for Kyria Katy. She proudly reads the inscription: ‘Baby, who is your love?’ Greeks who frequent the Brazilian sound like a local Who’s Who — actors, journalists, and government heads, President Tsatsos and Messrs. Averoff and Rallis, to name a few. They are drawn by the high quality of its offerings. In fact, the Brazilian Embassy in 1966 awarded Mr. Saravanos a medal of excellence for his shop.
The original coffee grinders from Denmark still sift the various imports from Brazil, Europe and the United States to make Capuccino, Espresso, French and American coffees. Then, of course, there are the famous American-type sugar doughnuts, more delicious, many argue, than the average doughnut in America. When we visited there one morning recently the shop was bustling with a crush of people as Athenians greeted each other, exchanged a bit of news, and then hurried to their next destination. In the old days people were not in a constant rush. They took time to share pleasantries. Now many run in, demand a sweet or sandwich and one of the various brews, gulp them down and exit. Ί don’t know where people are rushing to,’ says Kyria Katy.
The Zenith of the Fibre-glass Age
ARCHAEOLOGISTS are applauding the removal of sculptures from the Acropolis to save them from pollution. They will be replaced by fibre-glass replicas. At the same time the British have graciously agreed to allow casts to be made of the Parthenon frieze, a Caryatid and other Acropolis marbles carried to England by Lord Elgin in 1806. This array of marble originals and fibre-glass replicas may prove very confusing to archaeologists several millennia hence when they dig up Athens. In the absence of foolproof methods for determining the chronology of fibre-glass, their archaeological reports may read like a happy medley of facts and, not for the first time in the history of archaeology, misdating, such as the following:
‘It seems conclusive that a vigorous Fibre-glass Age came to an abrupt end in Greece during the late twentieth century, the result, according to available evidence, of an explosion in a nuclear power plant on the island of Santorini. The fibre-glass temples were totally destroyed, but the buildings’ sculptures were preserved in an underground museum where they were presumably placed for safekeeping. A Marble Age of moderate accomplishments followed; the art of fibre-glass having been lost, the originals were replaced by marble replicas. The fortuitous discovery of marble copies of these same statues dug up recently in England, a clearly later culture, offers conclusive proof of the great antiquity of these fibre-glass masterpieces on the Acropolis.’
