Green Neon

33 The Charioteer of Delphi

Georgios was waiting for Sophia and Tom in the café where they had parted a few hours earlier. He bought a large carafe of ice-cold lemonade. Together they thought about when and where they could meet again.

Sophia's father would leave for northern Greece in the next few days to help his parents with the harvest for a few weeks. As soon as he was no longer in Piraeus, they wanted to go to Agios Andreas together to spend the day with Nikos. Tom was supposed to persuade him to find a boat they could use to water ski. Georgios couldn't wait to try this exciting sport.

Half an hour after the siblings boarded the subway, Tom also made his way home. When he got to the flat, he phoned Nikos and made an appointment with him for the next day.

This time they did actually go to Delphi. They met at 8 a.m. at the bus station, which was very busy. While Nikos queued at the ticket counter, Tom tossed a few coins into the tin pot a beggar had set out in front of him and bought five Navy Cuts from the amputee vendor on the skateboard. The man smiled at him: "Efcharisto, Jermanikos."

Nikos came out of the building and grabbed Tom's arm:

"Come on, quick, the bus to Delphi is about to leave!"

On the bus, which they just sprinted to, Tom told him what had happened over the past two days.

"You're one lucky bastard, Gangster," commented Nikos. Tom could only agree with him. Of course, Sophia's parents' visit had been one of the hardest moments of his life, but the trip to the Acropolis had more than compensated for his anguish.

"You are engaged to the most beautiful girl in Piraeus," Nikos summarized Tom's agreement with his girlfriend for the next year. He had also noticed that Sophia's father, with his strict ruling, had achieved exactly what he had originally asked for, but he didn't know anything about it: Tom and Sophia had made a promise.

When they reached Delphi, Tom was disappointed at first. Nothing indicated that this place had been a center of ancient Greece. A few taverns and shops, a few small hotels and rather simple residential buildings lined up on both sides of the street, that was all the modern town had to offer. The landscape was more impressive - a long, narrow valley that cut a V into the barren mountains, and at the end of which the sea shimmered in the distance.

The boys sat on a roadside wall and ate tomatoes and baguettes. Besides them, there were hardly any tourists at this hour, so they decided to go to the museum first to see the original statuette they had given Aunt Kyra.

When they entered the room, in the middle of which the figure was placed, they stopped breathing. Although more than 2000 years old, the young man looked at them with sparkling, lively eyes. Made of heavy metal, bronze, his cloak still looked so light, as if it would billow in a gust of wind. The reins in his right hand looked like he was standing on his antique chariot. The left arm consisted of only a stump, but that didn't make the figure appear any less graceful.

Neither of them had expected it to be that tall - taller than Tom and about the same height as Nikos. In contrast to the many naked marble statues with muscles of steel, the charioteer appeared very chaste, and at the same time strong. All alone with the ancient work of art, Nikos whispered:

"This is beautiful man."

Tom nodded in agreement. How clumsy and ugly looked a stone statue, partly overgrown with moss, which adorned his hometown as the only monument, a crude statue of the first - and at the same time third to last - German emperor with spiked helmet, stone beard and dead eyes.

In the meantime the first tourist buses from Athens had arrived. Neatly sorted by language, groups of English, Americans, French and Germans buzzed around, so that the wonderful place lost its magic.

The boys left the museum and climbed up through the ruins on the hillside to the ancient theater nestled on the side of the mountain. Sweating, they climbed the tiered rows of seats to sit on the highest one. The other tourists, often with sandals on their feet, found this ascent too arduous, and so Tom and Nikos were alone despite the many people here.

A gentle wind blew up the valley from the sea, making the midday heat bearable. They looked at each other in silence, and Tom once again had to concede to his friend that he was right when he praised his ancestors' preference in choosing the sites for their places of worship. Even without the remains of the ancient temples, this landscape would have been magnificent.

Nikos dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

"Do you actually know how the Pythia got their oracles?"

In Latin class, Tom had heard about gases that rose from the rocks and stimulated the priestesses' senses. Nikos had a theory all his own, and he set out to test it experimentally.

He fiddled with an obviously hand-rolled cigarette out of the box. Tom had seen something like this with the older students at his high school and knew that in this cigarette there was not only tobacco but also parts of another plant. There was a corner in the Hohenberg outdoor pool where mostly long-haired boys squatted together and smoked these cigarettes, the smoke from which smelled somehow sweet. Despite his curiosity, he had stayed away from it until now.

He pointed out his concerns to Nikos, who reassured him that this herb, called marijuana, was not addictive but was meant to enhance the senses. He'd gotten some from a cousin who grew some of these plants in the back garden of his parents' house.

"Okay, then let's test whether we're getting visions."

Tom tried to cover up his nervousness with deliberately casual behavior, but the slight tremor in his voice didn't go unnoticed by his friend. Nikos lit the joint and took a deep drag. He held the smoke in his lungs for a long time. He exhaled with a short, somewhat choked cough, and Tom was fogged by the strange smoke.

"You gotta hold the smoke in until it hurts," Nikos advised his fellow oracle and took another deep hit. Then he handed the joint to Tom who drew very carefully and immediately had to cough when he tried to inhale. His throat scratched.

Nikos seemed to be a real expert:

"Try again. Just hold your breath."

The second puff made its way into Tom's lungs, and as recommended, he held the smoke until a cough forced him to exhale. He handed the cigarette back to his friend.

Tom listened to himself, he looked around, he listened, but nothing, absolutely nothing happened. Nikos stretched out on the stone step and took two more puffs. He then handed the joint to Tom, who also took two more hits, promptly burning his fingers at the end and flicking the stub away.

The sky was still above, the theater at his feet. Everything was as it always was. He followed his friend's example and lay down on the stones, head to head with Nikos.

"You like it, Gangster?" Nikos asked while looking at the blue sky. Tom had to think about what to say. He didn't feel anything, but should he admit it? His entire field of vision was taken up by the blue of the sky, tinted by the dark sunglasses, with only a few heaps of white clouds floating across it. The chirping of the crickets was the only sound. Everything was as always. He made up his mind to tell Nikos the truth.

"It doesn't work for me. I don't notice anything."