excerpt
…the flies circling around them, like the gusts of the wind that sometimes
turn even more violent and abrupt. Sudden and abrupt like the
attacks of one team against the other until the end of the match is
whistled and Spitha, the local team, has beaten the team from Argyroupolis
two to one.
In that summer of 1958, when they move from Peristeri to Hagios
Fanourios, another Athens suburb, their father one day brings
home a heavy book called Erotokritos. He hands it to Eteocles, who
is now eleven years old and suggests that he read that big book. Eteocles
knows Erotokritos as a song people sing at christenings and weddings
and some other celebrations, but he has never known that it is
also this long, long poem.
After opening and reading a page, Eteocles knows that he will
enjoy it very much and also that he would like to have a copy of that
book for himself, though he doubts he ever will since they are so
poor, and getting the money to buy a copy, if not impossible, will certainly
be very difficult.
Then a thought comes into his eleven year old mind: why not
copy the book page by page and line by line, all 378 pages of it? He
doesn’t say anything to anyone, but he goes to the peripteron, the local
kiosk, and buys a red and a blue Bic pen and begins transcribing the
book that he imagines one day will be his own.
He uses the red pen to write the first letter of the first word of
every line and regular blue for the rest of each line. He even designs
headers for each chapter, exactly like the printed book, though the
designs of course are those of an eleven year old boy, a boy who has
never taken art lessons in any school, a boy who lets only his imagination
guide his pens, both the blue and the red.
When Nicolas finds out what Eteocles is doing, he only smiles
and says “good.” Nicolas has now finished all six grades of elementary
school and has started his apprenticeship at a small, family-run furniture
factory. Since he no longer has much time for playing their
usual football games, he doesn’t mind his brother getting involved in
such a time-consuming project and he leaves his little brother to transcribe
the Erotokritos and just rests when he comes back from work
every day. He is usually very tired anyway.
Mayanaam
vequinox
Manolis 