Green Neon

1 Stop singing

"Stop it!"

The hissed words indistinctly penetrated Tom's daydream.

"Stop it!"

Furtively he eyed the travelers in his compartment. An old woman with a black headscarf intently rummaged in her huge leather bag. Two boys, apparently her grandchildren, were squabbling over a well-worn comic book. The man sitting across from him was staring out the window as if there were something important to see in the subway tunnel. No one paid any attention to the German boy, no one but himself seemed to have heard the words. Had he dreamed it?

Lulled by the regular clacking and rocking of the wooden wagon, he let himself fall back into his half-asleep state. For the first time since he had landed in Athens two days earlier, he was alone. Had it really been two days?

"Stop singing!"

This time he realized where the words had come from. The man was still staring into the void of the tunnel, but now he casually put his index finger to his lips. Stop singing? He realized then that he had been humming snatches of a song to himself. He had heard it the night before and it had lodged in his ear. Not that he understood a whit of the lyrics, but the words, sung by a dark female voice, sounded beautiful. The music, played with instruments whose sound was both alien and familiar, had touched him.

He was a Beatles fan, nothing unusual for a fifteen-year-old in 1969. Like all his friends, he despised German music. The Kinks, Who, Stones, Small Faces, Motown, that was his world. The music he had experienced that evening was different. It made old men cry.

The train rattled into Monastiraki Station and the old woman departed with her two brawlers.

"May I invite you for a coffee?"

This time the man made eye contact and grinned sheepishly. He was perhaps about forty and wore the current uniform for Greek men: black trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. A Greek, definitely. A Greek who spoke German.

"Don't worry - I only want to tell you something."

All the warnings that Tom had received along the way sprang to mind. "Don't go anywhere alone. Don't let strangers approach you."

"How far are you going?"

"Omonoia," Tom answered automatically, realizing that he hadn't reacted at all to the man before, he had been preoccupied with the battle between instilled caution and innate curiosity. Of course, curiosity won.

"Then let's have coffee. My name is Yannis."

"I'm Tom."

Together they got off at Omonoia Square. It grew hotter with each step up the crowded stairs, until they reached ground level, back into the furnace that Athens becomes in July. The deafening street noise and the stench of exhaust made the short subway ride seem like a respite.

Yannis took his hand, which Tom found a little strange at first, yet he was grateful at the same time, because otherwise he would have lost sight of his new acquaintance in th bustle of the morning crowd.

The Greek ushered him into an alley narrow enough to block out the traffic noise and even some of the heat. The white walls of the buildings and the marble pavement added to the impression of coolness. There was a whiff of chlorine in the air.

Only a few meters and they dived through the obligatory plastic strip curtain. They found themselves in a spacious, not exactly cozy kafenion. Men of all ages sat at about twenty simple tables, playing tavli, chatting, or just staring into space. Every now and then someone would sip their coffee, sip water, or eat an olive. It smelled of the strong, black cigarettes made of dark Greek tobacco. Music blared out of a portable radio, which sounded similar to what Tom had heard that evening in Christina's flat, but which was immediately recognizable as light pop music.