Green Neon

19 Our beautiful Europe

With weak knees and sagging shoulders, Tom stumbled home. The few hundred meters became a marathon. "How could you be so stupid," he scolded himself. He imagined what his girlfriend would have to suffer now. Sophia had told him that her father – unlike many other Greek fathers – never hit her, not even when her meetings with her first boyfriend were exposed. But he could well imagine that she wouldn't be allowed to leave home for the rest of the summer.

Without paying attention to any parked cars, he entered the house and sluggishly climbed the stairs to delay encountering Christina a little longer. His biggest concern was that Sophia's father may have already called, which wasn't the case.

He joined Christina, who was at work in the kitchen, and examined the contents of the pots. In one of them, chunks of meat were stewing in a reddish sauce, in the other, spinach was simmering.

There wasn't much Tom didn't eat, but spinach was a dish he hated. The usual variety, comparable in color and texture to a newborn cowpatty trodden with bare feet (another experience that village youths had over their city peers), was one of the few things he did not eat without being forced. Christina's leaf spinach with garlic and lemon allowed him to make his peace with cow dung for the rest of his life.

"What did you do with your friend?" she asked him. 'Use as few lies as possible', thought Tom, and replied:

"Oh, we just hung out a little bit at the theater and in the park."

"Then at least you weren't alone, your friend and you."

Christina couldn't help but laugh as she stirred the pots. Tom's guilty conscience was all too obvious.

At dinner, it was time for him to confess. Tom didn't want to lie to Christina any more and admitted to dating Sophia. However, he didn't mention his fleeting encounter with her father – too much honesty wasn't always the best option.

For her part, Christina admitted that Stephanos had the idea of visiting Mykonos primarily to ban Tom from the big city for some time. He just wanted to avoid further problems. Since his conversation with Nikos at the fortress Tom had a question brewing in his mind:

"I've only met people who reject the dictatorship, despite the propaganda and the power of the secret police. How long do you think the junta can last?"

"How long has Franco ruled Spain? How long have the fascists been in power in Portugal? And do you think the Russians will ever give up Eastern Europe? If the Warsaw Pact countries became democratic, the Russians would be out of the game. They will never allow that. You know what happened in Prague last year. And Yugoslavia. Is that freedom? Tito jails his opponents just like our colonels. Turkey is practically a military dictatorship. Now count it. How many dictatorships are there in Europe, and how many democracies?"

Tom counted country by country. Disbelieving, he repeated his count, but the result remained: almost half of all major European countries had dictatorial regimes.

"Pretty civilized, our beautiful Europe." Christina's tone was bitter. "And please don't think the democratic countries will do anything about it. Did the Americans support the Czechs? They promised them, "Start a revolution, we'll help you," and when the Russian tanks came, the Czechs were alone."

Tom's image of his home continent cracked. He had taken democracy, free political discussion, and the reliability of the rule of law in Germany for granted, although of course he knew that this had only been the case there for 20 years, and only in the western half.

The recent student demonstrations had brought about reforms in West German society towards further democratization in an astonishingly short time, and at no time did he have the feeling that a dictatorship of any kind was possible in his homeland.

"The USA, France, England and Germany don't think it's that bad that Spain, Portugal and now Greece are governed by right-wing dictatorships. After all, they are all allies against the Eastern Bloc."

"That's true. But if the Americans had helped the Czechs, World War III would have broken out and then nothing would have been left of Europe. The USA just shouldn't have encouraged them to rush to their doom. In the end they used the people of Czechoslovakia just to cause some problems for the Russians. But as far as right-wing dictatorships are concerned, maybe something will change after all. I read that Willy Brandt and the SPD support Greek opposition politicians, pay their lawyers and stuff like that. Even if our experience in the German embassy says exactly the opposite, and the head of the Foreign Office is the same Willy Brandt. In any case, one thing is clear: if the Greeks don't manage to defeat the dictatorship themselves, I'm pessimistic."

"I think we'll make it one day," Christina replied. "And there are three reasons for that. First, we don't think so highly of the state. The state was mostly an occupying power, with resistance being a patriotic duty. When we became independent from the Turks in 1827, we even had to import a German king and his administration. There were no structures at all in Greece. It's not much better today. After the World War and the Civil War, we were a democracy for only 16 years. The army took advantage of the fact that the system wasn't working well. It didn't have time to stabilize. Politicians stuffed their own and their friends' pockets. But I don't think the junta will be able to persuade the Greeks to support their kind of state in the long run.

Second: This government is made up of fools in large part. The putsch was not initiated by the army leadership, but by peasants who were promoted to colonels and who are puppets of the Americans. They aren't smart enough to control the state administration. The army, the secret service, the police, yes, they may control them. The peasants are on their side, because they have given them a lot of money or land. But the economy, the whole administration of the country, these are things they can't handle. If they didn't get so much money from outside, especially from the US, Greece would have been bankrupt long ago.

There's one more reason. Many Greeks live abroad. They send money and when they come home once a year they speak of freedom, democracy and wealth in the countries where they work. More and more foreigners are visiting Greece, too. We see they have money, they are free, they can travel. We want that too. This regime is not what we deserve."

Tom hoped she was right. However, he didn't think it would be quick or easy. Spain and Portugal were the best examples. And the longer the regime held out, the more effective the security apparatus would become.

As he lay in bed, he reviewed the activities of the day. There had been very mixed results. His passport was back, so there was no need to flee, prison was no longer an imminent threat, and now he had the prospect of a boat trip. Actually, things couldn't have turned out better - if it hadn't been for his encounter with Sophia's father. Which, in the worst-case scenario, would end his first love before it had really started. Would he ever see her again?