Thessaloniki was always in our minds: it was our city, our home. The comings and goings to Cold Trough, Mother’s workplace, from a contemporary perspective and the means available to modern society was a hassle, especially arduous for the body and soul of a five-year-old child and his young working mother. In a word, a struggle -for a monthly salary of no more than a thousand drachmas ($300), for a six days long week; and that would be so for a few more year to come. The only consolation being that life circumstances would hopefully improve at the end of school year and the expiration of her appointment there.
Besides the half-term holidays of a couple of
weeks duration around Christmas and Easter, in the few weekends the allure of
home and family would draws us back to our city, we had to walk the straight, mile
long road with a row of tall poplar trees on either side into the sunset, towards
the nearest coach stop. We started our walk early in the Saturday afternoon, just
after the school was closed, with the rays of the low winter sun glowing onto
our faces, with the longing for the home we were missing in our hearts and minds,
and a small bag of clothes, to head towards the sad café of the junction at the
end of the road, behind a commanding plane tree in its front yard. It had a wide
fridge that café, with soft drinks, beers and some dodgy mortadella and cheese sandwiches
wrapped in cellophane on display, which we avoided despite feeling peckish, and
sold coffee and comfort items, like sweets and chocolate and chewing gum. The few
coffee tables for passengers waiting for the coach at that corner of Greece or the
random local passer-by, were usually empty and the café deserter on early Saturday
afternoons. The green-gray coach operated by the so-called ‘Joint Venture of
Coach Owners’ made a brief stop, always on time, after countless and mostly unnecessary
stops at several villages along the way, to pick us up and deliver us to the
end of our route behind the old Byzantine Church of Panagia Chalkeon in
Thessaloniki. It must have been an unprofitable coach route surely subsidised
by the government, as a measure to arrest the decline of the countryside.
At dawn on Monday, we
followed the reverse route. The first coach was too early in the day to attract
many passengers and, always Mother and I found seats in the privileged front
row just behind the driver. One such early morning, in the absence of the
driver who was enjoying his coffee and a fag at the station café, the child's
curiosity began to fiddle with the gear lever. I was intrigued by that strange long
stick the coach driver with such dexterity and spontaneity was shifting in during
our journeys. A slight pull caused the lever to be displaced to what I later understood
was its ‘neutral’ position and I felt the bus rolling backwards downhill the Panagia
Chalkeon street. The heart bounced, and started beating fast in panic, as it
happens in unexpected and unwanted situations with an unknown and possibly disastrous
outcome. Or, after potentially harmful mischiefs from children, who furtively
try something forbidden to satisfy their curiosity, and the impending
punishment expected by them to be severe: at best, a savage rebuke in public
view, at worst the bogeyman from the police that would box the ear and drag
them to the reformatory. The coach, after rolling a meter or so, came to a relatively
smooth halt, apparently without having caused damage to people or cars. Relief
prevailed and my heartbeat eased.
The driver, after his morning coffee and fag, climbed up swiftly to his sear to take over the reins of the coach, without having noticed a potentially calamitous event -thankfully. ‘But did he really secure the coach with the hand-break, as a professional should?’ I was wondering when I remembered the incident years later. In the small but ever-expanding world of a child, a realm of inquisitive naivety and innocent ignorance, of the spontaneous, adventurous and reckless explorations into the unknown, such trivial and insignificant incidents are perceived and magnified in pristine and sensitive soul. For the rest of the journey, having already overcome that momentary attack of panic, which shook the sleepy child in that Monday morning, I became an avid observer of every gear shift by the driver, of his hands steering dexterously the wheel, of his feet pressing and releasing the accelerator, the brake and the clutch, and an alert listener to the modulation of the engine sound, when slowing down, breaking or striving to accelerate. The driving was performed by the driver effortlessly, with admirable technique, with his thinking focused less on driving than chatting with the ticket inspector, who jumped in the coach later and sat next to him. Managing a huge vehicle was something fascinating, close to miraculous; a feat inexplicable by a child's mind
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