Green Neon

32 A really useful Goddess

When Tom woke up the apartment was completely silent. His first thought was of Sophia, the first image his girlfriend's tear-stained eyes. He lay in bed unable to move. His thoughts lazily sought a new order.

Was it he who, a few hours ago, had been determined to marry his girlfriend? Was it he who, within a few days after arriving in Greece, found himself involved in a political process that he had known nothing about beforehand? Was it he who had a deep friendship with a boy he hadn't even known three weeks ago? Was the Athenian Tom the same as the Tom from Hohenberg? How would Hohenberg receive the Athenian Tom?

He saw himself standing on a twenty-meter cliff, unsure whether to take the plunge. If you don't dive properly, the water surface will be as hard as concrete. But if you do dive in properly, soft, warm water full of colorful fish will be awaiting you, and it will be salty enough to carry you.

"Jump," the water called out to him.

"Don't jump, it's far too dangerous," shouted something that he knew well but had drifted away from him. Tom jumped. The feeling of weightlessness was liberating, and he dived into the wonderfully soft, warm water that had awaited him for a long time.

Tom heard activity in the apartment so he got up and had breakfast with his hosts on the balcony. No one mentioned what had happened the night before. Instead, Stephanos reminded him again to beware of the secret police.

Before Tom left the house, he phoned Yannis and left a message for Nikos, who wasn't as his uncle's at this early hour, that he would call him that evening. Tom needed to meet his friend urgently. There was some news to give him.

The lingering images of his dreams evaporated as soon as he stepped onto the street. In a bakery he bought a bag of warm sesame cookies. The saleswoman engaged him in conversation. "How can you talk to people," thought Tom as he stepped out the door, "whose language you don't understand?" This is what he had learned in just a few weeks: you just talk and you understand each other if you want to.

Next to the bakery squatted an old man in a brown suit that had obviously been expensive when it was tailored decades ago. Chunky wooden crutches leaned against the wall of the house, and a few open cigarette packs lay on a cloth spread in front of him. Tom bought three unfiltered Navy Cuts, which tasted much spicier than the Pallas with the white filter.

He rounded up the price and the old man asked, smiling:

"Yermanikos?"

Tom nodded, and the man told him that guessing where his customers came from was his hobby. Apparently he was almost always right. Tom took his word for it.

In the crowded subway, he listened to the tangle of Greek words pouring in on him from all sides. Some phrases sounded aggressive, but Tom had learnt in the meantime that an animated conversation in Greek sounded like that to German ears. For him the Greek language was like music. The rhythm of the language, but also the sounds, which often sounded like rhymes, resulted in a wonderful tapestry of sound.

In Monastiraki he found a table outside a café, ordered a Nescafé and asked the innkeeper if he could eat his sesame cookies with it. The response sounded like rejection, so he bought a small bag of round biscuits with a blob of red jam in the middle.

He sat down at the table, dunked a biscuit in coffee and watched the arcades of the subway station, next to which stood an old building that reminded him of a mosque. The coffee biscuit slush was delicious. Life was beautiful. Then the people pouring out of the station formed an alley, through the middle of which a girl and a boy were walking. Sophia and Georgios spotted him immediately.