The Akrivides’ couple had a son, Billy, of the same age as me, but taller and with a stouter body, and a plump daughter, Maria, a few years younger. In the first steps that I remember of a rather imposed from above friendship with Billy and in his company, early in our primary school education, the Akrivides’ family lived in an apartment on the third floor of a modern building, in a relatively affluent area at the borders of the city’s commercial center, on the then fashionable Queen Olga Avenue. Their home was located a short walk from the promenade, the historic building of the 1st Public Secondary Public School for Boys I later attended, a few steps from the traditional "Averoff" patisserie and the small scouts' house beyond, adjacent to an apartment block the basement of which housed the ‘Laura’ cinema with weekend matinees for children, now a supermarket -all unforgettable childhood landmarks. I slept over in their spacious apartment several times on Billy’s demand. In the casual living-room in its corner with a large mahogany dining table against one of the walls, a piano in the corner, and windows around overlooking the broad avenue below, separated by a glass-door from their impressive salon. Falling asleep in that room always proved a struggle and I often stayed awake into the wee hours of morning, because of the incessant noise of cars and motorbikes in the busy avenue below, the adrenaline from our evening games with Billy, and many a time with a feeling of sadness that naturally affects a child when he is away from his home and family and neighborhood mates -not to mention the tranquillity of our street.
Living in a small
alley with old houses surrounding our monstrous block of flats, even a child
could not fail to notice a social class gap. It was more than just the upper
status of the Akrivides’ neighborhood and the interior of their apartment. Billy
attended a private school rather than the state school in their area. He was
taught French by a French lady tutor and from an early age he was capable to
express himself in the then language of the Greek upper classes with
self-confidence and mettle, demonstrating a fluency beyond his years in front
of audiences of proud parents and friends, with their smiles and nods of
appraisal. With the same ease he later became fluent in English, after
intensive private courses; it would be the third language he learned to speak comfortably.
Foreign languages sessions were followed by music lessons from a piano teacher,
and Billy learned as quickly to play the piano, as well as the guitar, the
latter with commendable dexterity usually at the centre of attention of his adolescent
friends – and enchanted girls amongst them.
On the contrary, the
author, for his part, went to the 9th Primary School in an old building
in Delphi Street, with his close friend Kostakis and children from our humble area.
He struggled to learn English in the inexpensive tutoring school in which I was
enrolled by Father in an old single-storey house on Fleming Street, along with
Kostakis and Levi, the ginger-haired Jewish boy with the freckled face, and few
other children from parents who in the 1970’s recognized the importance of
learning a foreign language, but could not afford a private tutor. Our English tutoring
school, which I started attending in the 4th year my elementary schooling,
was one of the city's small and independent foreign language (primarily,
English and French) schools. It was originally owned and managed by a sullen
and stern, bald and stout old man, Mr. Kokkinos, who, thankfully, after a year in
our course he transferred his small business to a young, beautiful Jewish
woman, Miss Varsano, whom Father missed no opportunity to visit to supposedly
discuss my progress and pay the low-rate tuition.
I also failed to learn
to play any kind of musical instrument or, at least, obtain an elementary
musical education and knowledge. That was partly due to the dearth of musical and
generally artistic sensibilities and any interest whatsoever on behalf of my parents,
a practical and square-minded Father, and a Mother, who was brought up in the
undistinguished village of below average educational attainment levels and low
cultural standards; partly, to the absence of in-house musical stimuli, which,
for instance, a record player and a decent collection of records and tapes might
have offered; partly, perhaps, due to a lack of a detectable music talent in me.
The latter, however, as things evolved could neither be verified nor refuted. With
the cheap guitar of steel strings that Mother once brought me (cheap when
compared to the one that Billy was presented well before me along with the
piano), I tried to self-learn to play with the help of a beginner’s guide book.
I tried hard in isolation, away from others listening: to read and play notes
and elementary compositions in the pentagrams from the beginners’ guide. I even
strung together a sequence of notes, which sounded like a melody and
composition to a primitive musical sense. All this in vain. When one of the
guitar strings snapped, I abandoned any further attempts of self-learning, having
realised that I had reached the limits of any potential progress without a methodical
and professional guidance. The class divide between me and Billy and our
respective families, was widening. An inferiority complex was developing in me.
And there were
instances of mortification! Among Billy’s toys there was an air-gun. In one of
our evenings there, in his permanently messy room, using plasticine for a
bullet, shot with it my bare thigh. It was an ‘experiment’, he said. It caused
a sharp pain, and, naturally for a child, brought tears and rage, and my
temporary withdrawal from a reluctant and inherited ‘friendship’ – until a
stern rebuke from his parents and a humble apology in front of a group of grown-ups.
In his room -I did not fail to notice- there were also a pair of expensive professional
rackets for tennis. I had to convince my parents to buy me one, albeit much
cheaper, for the games of tennis that we planned and would attempt to play
against each other in the holiday park of Skotina, where our families spent joint
holidays. It was a small consolation, somehow reassuring and confidence
building, that I beat him in tennis and, in fact, in every game, team or
individual that involved a ball of any size -Billy was markedly clumsy and
untalented in sports!
There were other
disparities in individual and family settings and status perceived by a child’s
mind. Billy showed off and rode an elegant and expensive Motobécane bicycle of
French technology, which stood out from the heavy and cheap bike of mine from a
second-tier Eastern European manufacturer, in our ridings with his multitude of
friends around the holiday park. He felt at ease when he was driven around, in
Europe and poor areas of the city or his paternal village, in the family upmarket
Renault and Citroen estate, and more relaxed than me in the rare occurrences he
joined me in the back seat of the much smaller and of lower specifications,
certainly cheaper, FIAT 1300 and 124 of Father. If there was something that I
felt superior than Billy, and by a significant margin for that, was in sports,
either elitist, like tennis, that we played against each other a few times on
our holidays, or the more popular team games, like basketball and football. But
he rarely joined those, less because of lack of motivation than coordination
and skills. Such popular team sports seemed rather incongruous with the Akrivides’
lifestyle at that time, although Nikos, as a rising star in politics, portrayed
himself as an avid fan of the most popular in the city football club. It
apparently paid off in elections.
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