Black Greek Coffee , livre ebook

Troubador Publishing Ltd - Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou

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95 pages

English

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Want to see the darker side of Greek life? Black Greek Coffee is a collection of twenty-three short stories, most of them set in rural 20th century Greece. Laced with harrowing truths, these stories deal with the darker side of life in Greece - the domestic violence, male domination, superstition and ignorance, the strong influence of religion and suffocating traditions. Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou paints a vivid picture of everyday life in a Greek village. Culture, landscape and traditions are a backdrop to the divisions, gaps and barriers that lie between people and their relationships. There is a prejudice and unjustified animosity that hangs in the air around them, dividing and troubling them... This series of short stories touches on themes of self-righteousness, religion, migration, chauvinism, illness, loss, death, war, superstition, honour and gender issues. Stories of the domestic, and occasionally reaching into the supernatural, they surprise, educate and challenge the reader's intellect. Written from the author's own experiences, whether she has witnessed events or met people who have faced the misunderstandings that take place in the book, Black Greek Coffee is an exciting read for any fans of powerful fiction with a sting in its tail.

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Short story

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 novembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781784627058
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Black Greek Coffee
Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou

Copyright © 2014 Konstantina Sozou-Kyrkou
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in
any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the
publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with
the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries
concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
Matador ®
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Kibworth Beauchamp
Leicestershire LE8 0RX, UK
Tel: (+44) 116 279 2299
Fax: (+44) 116 279 2277
Email: books@troubador.co.uk
Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador
ISBN 978 1784627 058
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Matador ® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Converted to eBook by EasyEPUB

For my pappous Demetrios and my yiayia Konstantina,
who knew how to share their love.
Contents

Cover

A Poem…

My Patent Leather Shoes

One of Ours

The River in Between

The Hairpins

The Rats

Frozen Nails

I’ll Bring her Back

The Well Monster

Spoiled

The Air Gun

Incarcerated

Forty Days

The Scorpion Fish

It’s a Girl

Freedom and Democracy

The Hyenas

Black Greek Coffee

A Second Chance

The Nail Varnish

The Stubborn Breaker

The Seagull

The Elixir of Life

My Pappous and his G43

Notes
A Poem…

Humility is only doubt
And does the sun and moon blot out
Rooting over with thorns and stems
The buried soul and all its gems
This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.
The Everlasting Gospel (c.1818)
William Blake
My Patent Leather Shoes
‘Because the Lord loves fair judgment. He will never abandon those devoted to Him but He will protect them. Thus, under the divine protection they will always be safe…’ My godfather reads psalms to me. His voice is loud and clear, coming from deep down in his throat. ‘They will be the heirs of the Land of Promise and they will permanently settle there throughout the centuries…’
I don’t always understand what he says though he reads everything very slowly. It’s some words I don’t get. Heirs and Land of Promise are some but I don’t want to interrupt him and pester him with questions. The few times I did he used even more difficult words to make it clear and I just nodded, pretending I understood. Once I dared ask him to explain a second time. He looked at me and his eyes became round. I decided never to do it again.
Godfather reminds me of Papa Nikolas when he chants at Sunday liturgy. He opens his mouth in a capital O, his black teeth at the back showing. My godfather’s teeth are yellow at the back. Mama says they’re gold. ‘That’s a precious mouth,’ I told her. And then I saw all Mama’s white teeth as she laughed, ‘It is … it is …’ She caught me staring at that dreamy look on her face. ‘So knowledgeable!’ she said. ‘He knows the Holy Grail by heart, can you believe it?’
Godfather takes off his fat-rimmed glasses and asks: ‘Do you know what we have to do to enter the Land of Promise, boy?’ I move my head left to right, right to left. ‘Well, we have to be patient, follow God’s orders, go to church, pray. That’s what’s going to give us access to the Land of Promise and all its wealth.’ He drags the ‘all’ a bit and makes a big circle in the air with both arms. ‘Now, go to bed and remember to say your prayers. Repent and you’ll be saved.’ That’s another riddle: repent . I don’t ask. Go brush my teeth and tuck myself under my blanket. When I remember I forgot to say my prayers it’s too late. Too cosy to get up.
I hear giggles and murmurs from the living room where Mama and Godfather are. Since my pateras left us, my godfather visits almost every evening, after closing his corner shop. He wants me to be raised in a healthy way, he says, like all other kids with a pateras . He said he would be – another tricky word – a surrogate father. A kind of substitute for the one I lost, he explained when I asked him what that meant. Mama says my real pateras never loved us. He went to live in Athens with another woman. I barely remember his face.
‘Is Barba Elias your real pateras ?’ Fotis, my best friend from school asks me one day. We’re sitting on a wooden bench in the school yard. He’s shading his eyes with his right hand, watching two boys kick a ball.
‘Who?’
‘ Barba Elias, your godfather,’ he says, his eyes following the ball.
‘Are you crazy? Don’t you know who my pateras is? My godfather is a surrogate father . ’
‘A what?’ he squints at me.
‘A… oh, you’ll never understand.’
‘No, tell me! What?’
‘A substitute for my pateras ,’ I say and Fotis goggles at me. ‘A second pateras , not the real thing.’
‘That’s not what I heard.’
‘What did you hear?’ I say watching the ball roll and wedge between the legs of the bench.
‘Mama said Barba Elias is your real pateras. ’ He kneels and pulls the ball from under the bench.
‘Then your mama is stupid,’ I stand up, kick the ball from between his hands and dash to the stairs that lead to our classroom. I don’t talk to him for the rest of the day.
First off, my godfather is bald and has a huge belly. He’s got black eyes and mine are green, he’s got a snub nose and mine is small and thin, he’s got three daughters and I’m a boy. Grandma said he’s a thelycopateras , a father of girls only. No boys. Isn’t that enough proof that he’s not my real pateras ?
When I tell Mama what Fotis has told me she gets red in the face. ‘They’re just jealous of you. They envy your good luck. Having a godfather like him! He brings you anything you desire. They’ve got none of the things you have. Fotis’s godfather gave him an orange for his name day. An orange only, nothing else! See what I mean?’ She rubs the frying pan hard with a wire. ‘Elias is better than any of your schoolmates’ fathers. Which of these lazybones reads their kids books at night, eh? Nobody!’ she spits the word, her yellow rubber-gloved right hand slashing the air. ‘You shouldn’t pay attention to malevolent gossip.’ There’s another one, malevolent . She must be catching it from him.
When I go to bed I try to picture my pateras’s face. Remember what he looked like. I can’t. Mama has shredded all his pictures into small square pieces and thrown them into the blazing fire. What I know is that he was good for nothing, as Mama always says and that all he did was eat and sleep. I like doing both so he must be my real pateras .
I feel my stomach bubble all day today. It’s my birthday and Godfather will be here in a minute or so. He’s promised to bring me a pair of new leather shoes. ‘Perfect for Sunday church,’ he said. Mama has been tidying the house. She’s even hung new, lilac curtains and dusted every little corner, including the spaces above and beneath the fridge. The bathroom tiles shine and smell of soap and the kitchen sink of lemon. She’s wearing a yellow sleeveless dress with a big green belt around her waist and a red tulip just above her right breast. Her hair is long and shiny brown. She looks so beautiful. And she sings a Greek folk song, ‘Dress up, tart up, lissome girl; dress up, tart up, girl; so that you will appear to the groom like a garden and an orchard.’
When Godfather crosses the main door of our house, we both know, Mama and I, that something’s wrong. He forces a tiny smile, not his usual, toothy one, and stretches his cold hand for a handshake, wishing me chronia polla . He’s got a big brown paper bag pinched under his armpit and holds a bottle of wine with his left hand. Hands them both to Mama and goes straight to the couch. Godfather looks serious for the rest of the evening, his eyes often sleepy like Grandma’s were just after the stroke. Mama offers him all kinds of things, chocolate cake, glyko tou koutalio with syrupy bitter orange , vanilia in a glass of cold water, coffee, homemade lemonade, homemade sour-cherry juice, but he wants nothing. Only a glass of wine.
‘I just came to wish the boy happy birthday. I can’t stay long,’ he mutters.
‘You can’t leave Christophoros without a psalm today. Not on his birthday.’
‘Oh, all right, all right,’ he pats my head. We get up and head for my room and I glance at the box with my shoes left unopened on the dining room table. He hasn’t even told me to open my present. I’ll do it as soon as he leaves. Mama says it’s rude to open presents while guests are still in the house.
‘See Lord the humiliation and my toil and forgive my sins. See Lord my enemies, because they grow more and they hate me. Save my soul and don’t allow my being shamed by them because I have hopes in you. Save me Lord from sorrows and dangers,’ my godfather reads but I can’t see his gold teeth tonight. He looks tired and hardly opens his mouth. When he finishes reading, he tucks me in bed and soon after I hear him talk to Mama in the living room, their voices growing louder and louder, like the rumble of thunder. A bit later I hear the main door bang shut. I wonder what humiliation and toil mean.
In the morning Mama tells me to go to Godfather’s corner shop and buy some stuff. A kilo of dry beans, four cans of Nestle milk and two packets of MISKO spaghetti, No. 10, the thin ones. She’s got them all written down on a piece of paper in case I forget. Doesn’t give me any money. She never does. ‘I’ll pay him myself’ she says when I ask. ‘You’ll lose the money.’
The shop smells of detergent and ground coffee. I like the smell. I take a deep breath and give Godfather the list. He puts on his glasses