HOT AEGEAN NIGHTS:
The Erotic Diaries of Edward Anderson
Mike Gerrard
Copyright © 2011 by Mike Gerrard
Published by Blue Sky Books at Smashwords
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1 September 1920
I have been thinking about something I wrote yesterday.
“…and knowing that Lina had not been satisfied, I asked her to lie on her back against me again, curled together, and this time I reached my hand around her waist and placed my fingers inside her, finding her moist pearl, which I touched and caressed until she reached her own climax, and grabbed my wrist to stop me fingering her at the same time as she yelled and bit into the pillow....
So we stayed. And we were so close it was as if we slept each other's sleep.
And now, with Lina naked and asleep on the wooden bed behind me, I will read again from the beginning. Six months is not a long time in the life of a man, but it seems I have travelled further than I knew in that short time.
18 March, 1920
The other Englishman, Henry something-something, was complaining again at breakfast about the bed-bugs. I do sympathise, but complaints of that nature are not what I want to hear when trying to eat — at least, not going on for five minutes and more. I teased him a little, which was perhaps not the wisest way to react, and said I saw a tiny creature hop onto his hot bread, whereupon he proceeded to dismantle the loaf and scatter coarse crumbs across the table, much to the puzzlement of Ianni, our waiter.
Ianni has been a hotel waiter for many years, and must by now be used to the peculiarities of foreign behavior, especially that of the English, but to see a respectable guest rip apart a piece of fresh bread so as to cover the wooden table-top in crumbs which in their turn were picked up and peered at, must have been a new experience. I thought I detected a quizzical lift in his eyebrow, which in itself counts, no doubt, almost as hysteria in Ianni's phlegmatic expression.
As yet my experience of the Greeks is naturally limited, but they are in general undoubtedly a lively and demonstrative race. Not Ianni. His visage has the immobility of a rock. He looks as much a part of this old hotel as that incongruous grandfather clock in the lobby. I wonder what is the Greek for 'Grandfather clock'? Do they even have that same expression? I could have asked Henry his opinion, but that would only have lead inexorably to another tirade against the local attitude to time-keeping, which I had already suffered yesterday.
Unfortunately for Henry, who has been travelling around this complex country for some weeks, the only time when any form of public transport has left punctually has been on those very occasions when he himself was a few minutes late. (I shall name this Henry's Law.)
Henry asked me today if I wished to accompany him to the Acropolis, and such a visit had indeed been my plan, having now passed my first few days in exploring the geography of the incredible city.
I have been saving the Acropolis and the Parthenon, and I think I shall save it further. Henry is a hurried walker, and though I no longer need a stick my slight limp is a little too troublesome for his pace. I feel slightly guilty and unfriendly as I tell him that I have appointments to keep, but I do not wish my first sight of the Acropolis to be forever associated in my mind with Henry whining about the heat, the cold, the climb, the other people, or his flea-bites. I do not doubt that much of the magic of such a moment would be lost, and having seen precious little of life's magic in the past few years, perhaps a little selfishness might be forgiven.
It seemed not to occur to Henry to wonder what appointments I might have here, a young Englishman just arrived on his first visit to Athens knowing absolutely no-one in the strange country, but he accepted my explanation without comment. I feel sure I could have invented appointments if necessary. There are endless forms to complete, bank drafts to arrange and officials to visit.
I am writing this entry while indulging in my first appointment of the day, one which I can see is going to become a regular mid-day event: an appointment with a bottle of local wine and some food. The cost of everything is so remarkably reasonable here that it seems my remittance from England could last a lifetime. I passed the morning walking the crowded back streets, still thrilled at the sight of this bustling and busy city.
Those French towns were also delightful, and yet always how strange and unreal it used to be to enjoy food and good wine while knowing that the Germans or the Austrians were but a few miles away and that I would soon be returning to face the trenches. Sometimes memory returns, conjured up by a sight, a smell, a sound, and a shiver passes over me as a cloud's shadow does in the sunshine.
The restaurant is situated on what I believe from my map to be Constitution Square, although the understanding of maps was never one of my strongest subjects. I have started to try to master again the Greek alphabet, which should at least enable me to read street signs, and perhaps then I can start to learn something more of the language itself, which I shall certainly require once I move outside the city. Thankfully English is quite surprisingly widespread here.
It pleases me that I can sit and read, or watch the world walking by, with no hint from the waiters that I ought to be ordering something more to eat or drink, which would surely be the case in England. Before ordering my grilled fish I had been sitting here with nothing but a glass of water and a cup of the thick local coffee, a concoction so cheap that they might as well simply give it away (although judging by the expression of visitors when they first encounter this strong bitter taste, even to give it away might not be so simple). I am, however, determined to persist with Greek food and drink, for how can one understand a country without experiencing what the people experience, eating what they eat and drinking what they drink?
The coffee, it seems, is generally served without sugar, and I am sure that the waiters derive some satisfaction from seeing visitors take their first sip — faces as if they had both bitten into a lemon and simultaneously smelled something vile. Only today I heard an English woman say to her husband, 'It's such an interesting taste, isn't it, Neville?'
Fortunately I have learned how to ask for a cup with a small amount of sugar included, rendering it slightly more palatable.
Equally 'interesting' is the taste of the famous resinated Greek wine, which I shall certainly be investigating. In my first few days here I have sampled several varieties, some hardly resinated at all and so almost passable as a pleasant and light white wine; while others, taken straight from the barrel in the small back street taverns, are so strong as to be comparable to a piece of alcoholic pine bark, if such a thing can be imagined.
I have heard several English and American voices in the course of the past few days, but as yet I have done nothing about attempting to converse with anybody. I feel solitude is a state to be savoured at the moment, but only acceptable, perhaps, because of the knowledge that it can be broken at any time. I could pass my days with Henry, and put up with the weight of his conversation for the sake of company or the occasional useful nuggets of information with which he provides me. A strange chap — upright, English, punctilious and punctual, yet still wishing to spend weeks travelling in a country where the political situation is chaotic and disorder is prevalent; but we all have our own reasons and our own lives to lead.
At the other side of this restaurant, in the next restaurant along, sit a laughing group of three young women, all blonde, with healthy outdoor faces; all talking to each other, animatedly and confidently, in what sounds to me to be a Scandinavian tongue. Only the occasional word reaches me amidst the noise of the Greek diners and passers-by.
No solitude for those three. They have the look of people who are at home here, or who have at least been here for some weeks or months. I cannot explain why I should assume this, except for a certain casual familiarity in the way that, despite black glances and shouts from the other tables, the waiter remains and talks to them at some length. They must speak Greek to some extent, although it is hard to hear in the noise. Something else I have discovered about Greece is that while a meal here can sometimes be almost an assault on one's taste, it is always an assault on the eardrums! From the amount that the people here eat, and the way that they voraciously attack the food, it might seem inevitable that much of the meal should be taken in silence, the mouths of all fully occupied with their food. Yet every table is surrounded by a babble of talk and argument. How I enjoy it, thinking back to somber silent meals spent around the dining table at home, as if food were to be endured rather than enjoyed.
The three women have paid up and left, and walk purposefully along the square and around a corner, much too briskly to be merely taking in the sights. I shall pay too and find a piece of grassy shade somewhere to read Dante. It is pleasingly warm for March, although I expect it is still snowing in England.
19 March
I went down to breakfast a couple of hours earlier today, hoping to escape Henry, but he joined me shortly afterwards, in an attempt to escape the bed bugs. I would have taken his word for it without him needing to prove it by baring his chest at me over the yoghurt and honey. Ianni looked on, as impassively as ever.
Yesterday Henry complained to the manager of the hotel about the bugs but, it seems, the manager refused to acknowledge their existence, despite all visual evidence to the contrary. I do find it hard to believe that anything - animate or inanimate - could get past him and into the hotel without being handed a bill. Henry has my sympathy, and it seems he also has my bugs, for I have certainly never been troubled by them here. As I write this now, by the lamplight in my room, I can see and hear no evidence of unwelcome intruders. God knows, I saw enough vermin at the front. The hotel is cheap even by Athenian standards, but so far I have found it clean. I am expecting to sleep in many worse places before my escapade is over.
To escape from the subject of bugs, about which I am sure Henry would have talked for the rest of the morning if permitted, reliving every bite, I asked him about his visit to the great Acropolis. It seems remarkable that on this topic he has considerably less to say for himself.
I realise Henry is about to get into his stride when he reaches the subject of surrounding squalor and the noisy disorderly crowds, but as by this time I have finished my breakfast I tell him quickly that I must leave to reach the ruins before too many others are about. He asks how my meetings went, and I tell him it was a case of waiting at the bank for several hours for confirmation of the arrival of some money. He nods sympathetically, and I leave him confirmed in his certainty that all Englishmen were born to suffer at the hands of others.