A huge crowd had gathered in the streets and parks below to hear Prime Minister Karamanlis’s address which was to mark the beginning of the political campaign. We were able to discern this immediately because of the manner in which Mr. Karamanlis delivered his speech which included a kind of Charles de Gaulle chopping-right-arm-action.
The Prime Minister, we decided, looked very well after the first hectic weeks in office. We listened intently, determined to pick up any clues as to the direction the campaign would take. At one point, however, our attention was diverted to some strange things going on up there on that balcony in Salonika, which began to look like a haunted house with a poltergeist on the loose. The glass door immediately behind the Prime Minister kept opening and closing. No one was visible and no one went in or out. At regular intervals a portion of an unidentifiable object would emerge just above the ledge of the balcony.
The Prime Minister seemed oblivious to these goings-on but we, for our part, abandoned any attempt to follow his address and focused our full attention on the action. Suddenly a wind blew up and with Mr. Karamanlis’s hands visible and accounted for, a third hand appeared from nowhere, made its way over to the microphone and came down on the stand holding the Prime Minister’s speech. For a split second part of a head and shoulders, presumably attached to the hand, appeared only to submerge again.
A technician arranging the television and microphone wires? A shy aide reluctant to share the limelight with the Prime Minister? We shall probably never know. We do know that whoever was lurking behind that balcony was a very thoughtful man and we are grateful to him for the quick action that prevented the wind from carrying away the Prime Minister’s speech!
As the address came to an end and the huge crowd burst into cheers, the glass door slid back once more. This time, however, Mr. Mavros emerged. We are not expert lip readers but it looked very much to us as though Mr. Karamanlis said to Mr. Mavros, Tos peeghe?’ and that the Foreign Minister replied, ‘Mia hara.’
The Fourth Estate
WE made our way into the lobby of the stately Grande Bretagne to hear George Mavros address the Foreign Press Association over lunch. Our eyes wandered over the crowd in search of cameras slung over the trench-coated shoulders of correspondents whose attention would be focused on the nearest telephone booth (to which they would all dash in the middle of Mr. Mavros’s address) as they plied each other with shrewd questions. No trench coats were in evidence and so we said hello to George Andreadis of the Commercial Bank of Greece, to several commercial attaches from various Embassies, and to Dr. Nick Manuelidis, the well-known gynecologist who is head of the Fertility Department at Elena Hospital.
We took our place at a table and were relieved to see Mr. Charles Wainwright of British Press and Information, David Tonge of the BBC, George Anastasopoulos of the Athens Press Association, and Leslie Finer the the first correspondent expelled from Greece by the junta. We were in the right place after all.
The last time we had seen Mr. Mavros he was walking along Akademias Street and there he was now addressing the correspondents and fencing with questions from the floor. In reply to a Turkish correspondent, he emphasized that the government is againsiEnosis and forthe sovereignty of the island of Cyprus. No, there is no issue with the American people or the American press who in its entirety has supported the Greek stand and attitude. Our eyes wandered to Messrs. Walter Kohl and Costa Savalas of the USIS but they remained inscrutable.
La Farsa del destino or The Man of the Gladiolas
ANOTHER road block in Kifissia back in May. What did it mean? More tanks coming down from Dekelia? Two policemen approached the stopped cars to ask questions.
‘Have you seen a suspicious-looking man? A suspicious-looking woman? A pregnant woman with maybe a wig on? Perhaps a priest walking rather too fast?’ The drivers and passengers realized at last what it was about and the women passengers grew excited. ‘Have you seen him? Is he nearby?’ The policemen backed away sheepishly and waved the cars on.
They were, of course, looking for Theodoros Venardos who was probably the last anti-hero of the late regime. His notorious thefts around Athens had been distorted by the public mind into becoming heroic acts against the government: one gangster against many, a latter day Robin Hood who kept the spoils for himself. Venardos was ‘sighted’ everywhere and the sightings were reported to the police who had to install extra lines to receive the calls. Girls used to pray before they went to bed that Venardos might remain at large another day. The matter got so out of hand that the press was forbidden to write any more about him.
Venardos had a long history of petty thefts before he held up a branch of the National Bank of Greece in Pangrati and escaped with over a million drachmas. It was not so much the amount that he took as the chic with which he took it that captured the public’s imagination. It was broad daylight, the bank was full and he made his escape by slipping into a Jaguar with foreign plates. It was done, said everyone admiringly, ‘Chicago-style’.
He escaped abroad where he lived la dolce vita for a time until he was finally undone — as so many are — at the gambling tables in Monte Carlo.
Meanwhile the sub-plot continued to unfold in Athens. His beautiful sister, Annita, loved her brother dearly and was accused of receiving stolen goods. She was paroled, however, and with her newly-won notoriety launched herself to fame as an interpreter of the bouzoukia, thus turning the plot into a musical. The musical in turn rose to the heights of opera as the newspapers enthusiastically dubbed her, ‘The Queen of the Night’.
Venardos returned and was arrested on a minor charge. At this point Mozartian grace gave way to the richer tones of a Verdi melodrama. Incarcerated in Korydallos Prison from which no one had ever escaped, Vernardos, on the 24th of April, managed to get away. He was playing football in the prison courtyard and while a guard laid down his gun to retrieve the ball which had gone over a wall, Venardos cleared the walls of the prison and was gone. The automatic guns of the other sentries, the sirens, and the panic buttons all jammed.
The grand climax, however, was yet to come. By May he was still at-large, with a price of half a million drachmas on his head, and with the police having orders to shoot to kill. At that moment, Venardos stepped forward to deliver his great ‘Gladiola Aria’. He appeared at a bank in Sepolia, and holding a gun inside a bouquet of gladiolas, took off with the till. This brought down the house.
Venardos managed to escape on a boat to America where he was caught as a stowaway in New York and flown back to Athens on an Olympic jet. Arriving at Ellinikon he was recognized and carted off by the authorities.
Venardos has delayed his trial by eating nails, broken glass, wire, and a spoon. Now as the trial is just opening, the fifth act curtain is up and how the score will end is anyone’s guess.
The Hindsight Saga
PREDICTING the future is big business in Greece. There are more than ten thousand modern oracles — magisses — usefully employed in this manner. They are variously referred to as psycho-searchers, astrologers or simply as readers-of-coffee-grounds, cards, crystal balls, horoscopes, and palms. Even the most urbane Kolonaki family will still vehemently argue the prognosis of dreams over their cafe cappuccino and croissants.
The local press has been critical of these ‘magicians who delude people’, but we can’t help but wonder if they are not being a bit hasty. North Americans, by contrast, are singularly free of ancient superstitions. Certain reports emanating from Ottawa this summer suggest, however, that statesmen over there should employ whatever means are available and reconsider the values of the divining arts.
ON June 18 and 19 ministers of the 15-nation North Atlantic alliance met in Ottawa to approve a new Declaration of Atlantic Relations. It has since been called the Ottawa Declaration’ and no doubt several other things undreamt of at the time. Prime Minister Trudeau addressed the gathering:
‘Twenty-five years following its birth the Atlantic alliance has proved beyond question its value and its organic strength. Its members declare that its treaty signed to protect their freedom and independence, has confirmed their common destiny. In the spirit of the friendship, equality, and solidarity which characterize their relationships, these nations firmly resolve to keep each other fully informed and to strengthen the practice of frank and timely consultations by all means which may be appropriate on matters relating to their common interests…. Since these principles, by their very nature, forbid any recourse to methods incompatible with the promotion of world peace, they reaffirm that the efforts which they make exclude all forms of aggression against anyone and are not directed against any other country and are designed to bring about the general improvement of international relations.’
Mitchell Sharp, the Secretary of State, then entered the ring when members of the alliance gathered about a huge twenty-fifth anniversary birthday cake:
Ά major problem,’ said Mr. Sharp, ‘arose when we considered how this magnificent cake should be cut. Should it be with a sword, or a ploughshare? Which element of NATO’s character should we stress? The problem was solved in what I like to think is a typically practical Canadian way. We would use a large kitchen knife: a utilitarian object which will certainly do the job.’
That was just a little over a month before the NATO ‘celebrations’ of July and while respecting Mr. Sharp’s
practicality and admiring Mr. Trudeau’s optimism, we can’t help but wonder if they should not have exercised caution and resorted to a little old-fashioned superstition before recklessly challenging the Fates in such a fashion.
One solution would be to consult an oracle. We can understand, however, that Mr. Trudeau might well balk at the publicity that would be given to a Canadian ambassador presenting his credentials to the Pythia at Delfi. There is a simple alternative however. We have it on good authority that several of our magisses have in recent years transferred their activities to the other side of the Atlantic. It should be an easy matter for the Canadian cabinet to invite one over occasionally for a cup of metrio and a little reading-of-the-coffee-grounds. One can never tell and nobody need be the worse for the knowledge.
Ich bin…
AMATEUR statisticians are hard put to account for the sudden influx to Greece of 20,000 Canadians. This development coincided with a sudden plunge in the number of Americans residing here.
AWARE as we are of the inconvenience of being refused admittance into taxis and wishing to provide a public service to our foreign guests, we sought the advice of one of the sages who spends his days planning our foreign policy around the conference tables at Zonar’s. There we presented the problem to our friend, Kyrio Stelio. Even though he was physically spent after the morning’s negotiations during which he and his cronies had arranged for the return of all of Cyprus to Greece but left open the delicate matter of the restablishment of the Greek-Turkish boundaries to those of circa 1400, he sprang into action. Consulting with the other members of his council, he came up with the following suggestion:
If a taxi driver asks you before you enter his cab if you are an American, and even if you are, say in a cheerful and confident voice, ‘No, I am a Turk’. As the driver slumps over sideways in a dead faint, slip into his seat and drive yourself to your destination. In the interests of international goodwill, however, be sure to put down the flag as you start off and to leave the car at a nearby taxi stand with full fare and a ten drachma tip. Kyrios Stelios, having delivered his advice, excused himself and turned his attention to more serious matters.
