evening parade

a detailed account of people watching on a greek island as the evening ferry docks

AUTHORS COMMENTS

This is one of several short stories I am writing of experiences in Greece.




EVENING PARADE

Lovers drift by hidden, hands meeting involuntarily, as if they had not shaken off the afternoon’s love-making and couldn’t bear to be separated.

Turning to one another, closing like two leaves of a door upon the past, shutting out everything with their happy spontaneous kisses, as the dusk begins to compose around them with successive washes of colour, as they become players in “The evening parade” at Skala Port of Patmos in the Dodecanes islands, Western Greece.

     One has to secure a ringside seat early in the  evening when the sun is still in the sky exuding the remnants of the day’s heat ,before  the creeping mauve and lemon half light of dusk subsumes the  Day Star in the interlude  prior to darkness and the time of the Night People.

The Beach Stragglers having spent most of the day baking semi-nude on a quite beach are returning to their rooms by the way of small brightly painted fishing boats. Skippered by 70 years young fishermen, their faces walnut brown, knurled by a life time of spray and sun. Hands knotted and horny from spending days mending fishing nets; now enjoying a softer lifestyle, earning more money ferrying tourists from the port to the beaches around the island,earning many euros a day which they would only have earned by months of work in their previous daily lives on the sea and land.

     They also enjoy the company of the more mature women who see them as Warriors, resting on their laurels.  Warriors  desiring adulation as if their due.
     “What wonderful men “, the women would say, marvelling at the tales told them with such fervour .
     They would exchange embraces, all given with mutual love and fellowship, giving them both warm remembrances to hold in their hearts through the Winter months.
    She ,when back at her monotonous work, looking out of the office window at grey windswept rainy skies; H e on his island, also windswept, but bathed in warm winter sunshine with a promise of another Summer season with Northern European women.


     You will have showered earlier to beat the Italians to the bathroom at the hotel; They could quite happily spend their lives in a bathroom, so time-consuming their toil to reach beauteous perfection. Then ,a languishing laze for an hour or so; or  love games with your partner, before crossing over to evening time,
    The seat which you have secured   is outside the Astoria café adjacent to the harbour where huge ocean-going yachts and tourist carrying boats vie for space.
    Another advantage of a seat outside of the Astoria is that one has a direct view of the comings and goings to and from the big anchored yachts.
    Some have  crews dressed in startling whites and gold braided capellos(hats).

A table has been set at a stern of one of the yachts, underneath an awning for the rich to dine beneath the stars. A lace tablecloth to grace the mahogany table with French leaded crystal glasses brought to accommodate the equally French champagne to be quaffed with fish, caught only hours before the first guests arrive.

Culinary aromas of charcoal-grilled Red Mullet and Barboni blend with a bouquet of freshly picked Rosemary, Thyme  and Majoram, all drifting from these floating abodes of hospitality, competing with the sea-smells of the harbour and restaurant foods.
     T he Invitees arrive, elegantly, yet sumptuously dressed in Dior, Armani and Channel and the like; occasionally necklines plunging to the navel. Welcomed with the obligatory Levantine kiss on both cheeks, a third kiss hinting at a deeper relationship between host and guest.

     All the café seats face outwards to the harbour and the narrow  main road  carries all the vehicles of the island, such as they are, also the Evening Promenaders of all classes and styles of beautiful people.
     It is uncertain who has right of way on the narrow street, but taxis, coaches, motor cycles and lorries all slow down to walking pace and mix with the passing crowd, within inches of the café chairs. The crowd tends to ignore  the traffic, spreading out across the full width of the street, effectively blocking it for a while, bringing the vehicles to a standstill, promoting conversations  and exchanged pleasantries between pedestrian and driver.

    The Astoria has large comfortable cushioned chairs which allow three or more hours of watching the  passing Parade, before stretching one’s legs becomes a necessity. Comfortably seated with an  opalesque Samos Ouzo, its oily smooth peppermint flavour hitting the head within minutes of its warming the stomach and spreading its friendly glow to one’s psyche, washing down a plate of Mezedes.
    Fat, black Kalamata olives, sealed in a jar and marinated for a year in virgin olive oil with a mixture of lemon juice and herbs picked as the Sun’s  Eastern rays strike the southern slopes of the mountains in the Peloponnese, where they are grown.
     Fried squid,(Kalamares) tenderised by barbaric beating against a stone jetty that afternoon, strung out in a patterned line surrealistically against the hot afternoon sky, all dignity lost; there is also cod roe paste(taramasalata) having the consistency of  ice cream, pink as a September rose, finally, small pieces of fried cheese(Saganaki). A meal fit for Ulysses.

     The  Parade passes with exotic clothes in bright or muted colours; clothes which flatter the figure and exhume the true personality of the wearer. On these occasions, contrary to the rule of nature, the women surpass the  male of the species; Styles are gracious without being flamboyant.
     Wafts of Coco-Chanel, Armani and Byzance compete with the scents of the  evening repasts now being served to other tourists,(Greeks, like most Mediterranean’s tend to eat after 10pm at waterfront taverns).
    People are now bathed shaved, oiled and perfumed, sometimes garlanded with pollen-yellow Greek gold(just as Berber women do as a sign of their wealth), wearing bangles around the wrist and ankle and Byzantine-style necklaces., stepping out and strutting their stuff.
     Now is the time to be seen. But whom is watching who? The rules seem to be, that  those seated at the cafes are the spectators of The Paraders walking past; but are not  the Paraders observers of the café customers?

     The Paraders all seem inevitably to be sun-kissed beacons with blushing tans glowing in the approaching purple haze of dusk and café lights. Couples are seen linking arms; He, with a subtle-tinted short sleeve shirt, cream slacks and Gauchi slip-on shoes. She, carefully coiffured; make up, discreet, sometimes stunning, wearing the briefest of mini-skirts, a diaphanous blouse, often with a Greek gold gift around her neck. The first of the Young Set, the Poseurs who will still be enjoying the ambience at 4am in some music bar.

     Greek women’s clothes very according to their age and extent of their liberalisation.
     The Younger Set, with Medusa ringlets of coal-black shining hair, shoulder length, minimum, with matching laser ink-jet searing eyes topped by Margaux Hemingway thick natural black eye brows. These sirens usually wear the in-vogue uniform. Tight leggings, extravagant colours, surmounted with a black top embroided with silver and gold or sometimes a simple but no less stunning ethnic  cotton blouse. Here the Voluptuaries find their true selves, inhibitions abandoned, exuding light and happiness; a different person, all together than the Athenian office worker-drone  she normally is for the rest of the year.

The older Athenian women tend to wear light tailored clothes, ski pants with a fashion house jacket, rather conservative, effective, but instantly recognisable as an Athenian city dweller.

These women tend to have a classical bearing with a pride in their maturity, a lingering beauty. At a stage  in their lives when the children have left home and married. She emerges from her chrysalis as a beauty in waiting, before the encroaching years will eventually bend her into  the black clothes of early widowhood that is the Greek tragedy.

     Darkness was falling like an unwanted spectre and the port was drifting like a bed of seaweed towards the lighted cafes as the evening progressed into another stage of  spectators and the watched at this harbour theatre.