Manolis remembers his first moped, red below the seat. One day it will be resurrected.

He bought it after his years in the army. He’d never saved up for anything before, never had any money to save. He grew up during the lean years. Watched his week’s wages change hands for a beer and a cigarette.

He’d actually meant to buy a donkey. Had vacillated between a donkey and a moped. A donkey lives longer, provides fertilizer, keeps you company. A moped can break down any time, costs fuel and isn’t very satisfying to lean your head on. So why did he end up with a moped? Was it the enticement of the red paint?

He’s worn blue all his life. Blue’s his color. That’s just the way it is. Beside which you can’t come riding on a donkey to the bouzouki place.

But somewhere there’s a different Manolis, the one who skipped the moped and chose the donkey. He’d saved up a bit, his parents threw in a little, the last thing they did before they disappeared, and thus, with his trowel, was able to make his way to the remotest houses in the village.

Sometimes he thinks about that other Manolis. Imagines seeing him at a distance, high up in the hills. He’s on his third donkey now, one of the last ones on the island. It stands tied to a tree in the shade because it’s better to tie your donkey than to have to walk around looking for it. On the other side of the tree is a little house. It’s tied down too, since it’s not very big. A few cats, a few tomato plants, a few olive trees. The old donkeys, one day they will be resurrected.

* * *

Manolis is on his fifth moped now. He’s glad that he chose a moped. It has a seat all right: you don’t have to put a saddle on or polish it, that’s one thing less to bother with. If you neglect it, it won’t starve to death. When it needs feeding, there’s no variety to the diet. Small black puffs of smoke are all that it emits, when he drives against the wind. His helmet slides round, it’s too big; the vibrations from the seat and the handlebars keep his body in shape.

Five mopeds in all. If he had gone for donkeys, he would be on his third by now. Donkeys are troublesome animals, too clever for human beings. Some people say they are nasty, others say they’re stupid. It takes time to break them in to wearing a saddle on their backs; they lie down and roll over to get rid of them. If a donkey doesn’t want something, that’s that.

Mopeds can be stubborn, too. Like a donkey, when a moped gets sulky, neither striking nor kicking helps, they won’t budge, fore-legs and hind-legs tight together – head lowered, like a statue standing there, as if fused with earth. The choke, the choke – doesn’t help. So, you don’t want Manolis to work today, is that it?

A man speaking to his moped. Pleading doesn’t help: it’s no use threatening, trying for discussion is senseless. He gesticulates, throws the spanner to the ground, curses. The moped doesn’t move a muscle. A moped is a moped, and Manolis is Manolis. The best thing is when, by some unexpected coincidence, they want the same thing. The moped wants to run, and Manolis wants a ride. But sometimes they want different things, and then nothing on earth can put them back on the same course; make the moped to want the same thing as Manolis, in other words to give him a lift, because what would be point of Manolis starting to behave like a donkey, refusing to budge? Nevertheless, that happens, too. Manolis drops his rag and refuses to go on trying to start the moped. Then it suits the moped just fine to go on refusing to start. The day turns out to be a different day. The sun is setting, and just as the evening wind passes by, the spare-parts in the trees begin their shadow play on the white-chalked oven wall.

* * *

They see Manolis when he leaves in the morning – up and up and off with his helmet pulled way down over his forehead and the strap like a halter crossing his chin. They see Manolis return – down and down and further on, off on his way back home. There are old ladies waving, old men lifting their canes, craftsmen shouting. Manolis’ repeated name flutters like birds in the wake of the moped. He smiles softly, raises a hand from the handlebars, almost kind of absentmindedly, paying no attention to who gets the smile and who gets the wave; he’s just Manolis, that’s enough for him, if anybody wants anything they know where to find him, or if not they just have to ask their way – sooner or later they’ll find someone who knows him and where he’s sitting. Whether he’s willing to comply with their needs is another story, and as for a telephone, he doesn’t have one.

And in between is what no one sees: along the graveled road, along little asphalted bits and an old paved donkey track, there are dogs chasing the moped, snapping at hind-legs; there are cats running out of the way, flowers opening their perianths in the sunset waiting for dew; the folded parasols of the cypresses. If he has the wind with him the exhaust fumes mix with the spicy fragrance of yellowed grass; if it’s calm, if the heat quivers, if gravel dust is floating, if butterflies droop their wings – if Manolis is Manolis then the spicy fragrance takes him all the way to the top, right to his place; but if the wind whips him in his face, tears flow down his cheeks.

* * *

Manolis stands razor in hand looking down into the washbasin where the shaving brush lies. The hairs have begun to loosen, some yellow, some grey. They rise from the shaving foam like bristly straw on a whitewashed wall. He raises his head and looks into the mirror, as rounded as his cheeks. The lather has begun to feel hot against his skin; it may contain something corrosive. He thinks his face looks as if has gone moldy. Has he ever looked at himself this way? It’s as if he saw his face for the first time, but too late – it has already changed. He stands there, razor in hand. He usually starts with his cheeks. If he doesn’t do too well on the first one, he will certainly improve on the second. Similarly, he considers his throat as consisting of a left side and a right side, with his Adam’s apple in the middle. If he doesn’t do too well on the right side of his throat, he will certainly improve on the left side; so if he got off to a bad start on his left cheek there’s a kind of symmetry to it, makes it fair. He does his best. Holds the razor under the streaming hot water, as if he were stropping it. Then he stops. How long has he been standing there? How much hot water is he going to let run through the pipes?

Manolis sees another Manolis, somewhat thinner. One who has just shaved for the first time. Since then he has shaved every day for fifty years, but today he’s not going to shave. It was a mistake to even consider it. He has worked up the lather for nothing. Water trickles through it now. He’ll have to wash it off. And not tomorrow.

* * *

Manolis has three places to be on his way to. The highest is the kalivi, a small house surrounded by an even smaller olive orchard. He built it himself. In the old days there was nothing there but olive trees. Now there’s not only a little house but also tomatoes, eggplants, beans and potatoes. There are even some grapevines. He’s got everything.

The kalivi is situated way up the mountain. Further down the slope is the village, and there’s Yannis’ place. Yannis has a small taverna without a name. Some people say they’re going to see Yannis, others claim they’re going to Yannis on the slope. Most people don’t say anything because no one asks them where they’re going. It might be because no one’s very interested, or because they know they’re always going there. So there’s no need to ask.

Manolis considers the kalivi his first home and Yannis’ place his second. But the kalivi is the kalivi and Yannis’ is Yannis’. The only place he calls his “home” is where his wife lives. It’s ten, maybe fifteen meters from Yannis’ taverna. It’s his third home.

And this is how it works: he walks from home to Yannis’ place and he walks from Yannis’ back home as well, but only when he has to. His moped drives him up to his real home, the kalivi, and down again. When life is best his moped takes him faithfully back and forth between the kalivi and Yannis’ place, back and forth, in regular traffic from one terminal to the other.

On a regular day he wakes up at home, mutters that he has work to do and walks out to his moped, having first left a few kilos of tomatoes and eggplants, bribes for his wife. Then he hangs the buckets over the handlebars, one empty of tomatoes and one empty of eggplants, the important thing is to hang them correctly, to maintain the balance, whether it’s donkey baskets or moped buckets, what’s the big difference? He puts on his helmet and kick-starts his moped, soon he’s driving through the steep, narrow lanes, big enough for two loaded donkeys to meet without sticking their muzzles into each others’ baskets to taste the contents. It’s funny but this double width of a donkey somehow corresponds to the single width of a car, or to two mopeds. There has never been an accident in the village proper, people crash outside the village limits.

When Manolis has put the village behind, he continues up the paved donkey track. Up and up and off. The donkey track follows the old riverbed, where a donkey was able to stop and quench his thirst any time. The closeness to water kept the animal calm. Seeing and hearing water all the time was a comfort. The riverbed has been dry for many years now. The municipality took the water and conducted it under the ground.

A regular day really begins when he has left home for the kalivi. When he arrives he ties his moped to a tree so he won’t have to walk around looking for it later, and enters the kalivi, lights a match, turns on the gas, puts the water on. He measures coffee and sugar carefully. On a regular day he waits patiently for the coffee foam to appear. On a bad day he gets distracted and the coffee boils over, extinguishing the flame, so the smell of gas spreads all over the room. On a regular day he removes the coffee from the flame at just the right moment and pours it into his cup. He sets it on the outdoor table, in the shade of the vines. There are two chairs, so he can choose. When he sips his coffee, a regular day has begun.

* * *

His whiskers are too sparse. Why are they growing so slowly? Why don’t they stick out all over his body? Then people could say: “Hey, look at Manolis, he’s sure shaved, every morning of his life, and look what’s become of him now – a wandering thorn bush.” They won’t say a word to him directly. The beard will put them off. The beard tells them he wants to be alone.

He walks a different way now, to avoid seeing the obituaries on the telephone poles. In the shadiest corner he sits down; actually he always sits there. If he chose another seat, his wife would be able to see him when she leaves the house. If she wants to see him now, she’ll have to walk about ten meters in the wrong direction first and then walk back again. Evidently she doesn’t want to see him.

On a good day, he wakes up at the kalivi and makes his coffee – the first thing he does. After that he hoses the tomatoes, the eggplant, the beans and the vines, takes his seat at the outside table, pours some wine from the plastic bottle and turns on the transistor radio. Could life be better? He’s satisfied. When he doesn’t want to sit there any longer, he just drives down the slope to Yannis’ place. Sits at the back table by the wall, puts his cigarettes on the table and orders a half-liter bottle of beer and a glass. The cats have to abandon one chair after another as the clients arrive. The Russian, the Albanian, the village idiot, the Italian, the widow, the pimp and the whore – as if there were only room for one of each.

On a good day, the key finds its way into the ignition, so he doesn’t have to walk home. His moped is a loyal donkey. He takes him up to the kalivi in the dark, whatever shape he’s in; finds his way up the hill, along the asphalted bits and the graveled road, until with a snort he sets his hooves steadily to the ground outside Manolis’ little house.

* * *

In the kalivi there are two pictures he can look at. One is a postcard from Vienna, with a giant, multicolored Ferris wheel. He remembers her as if it was yesterday. They sat under the pergola drinking wine. All of a sudden she stood up, asking about the toilet. He pointed at the spade in the corner, and then at the olive trees. Behind what tree to crouch down she’ll have to decide for herself. The spade has a long handle; it’s still there in the same corner.

It took her some time to grasp what he meant. Hesitantly, she walked over to the spade. Maybe she’d held it in far too long. She couldn’t escape now. She reached for the spade and led her stiff partner onto the dance floor. Together they bent over the hole and looked down.

The other picture is a photo. The photo is of himself and his son. He hasn’t got any photos of his wife up here. Not of himself, either. That guy, he’s a different Manolis. Manolis the mason. Best worker in town.

In the photo, he’s watching his son stir a cauldron with a big spoon. A proud father who sees his son handle a tool longer than himself. The cauldron contains lettuce or potatoes. Or nothing. The photo is too flat for anybody to have a look. But he taught his son how to stir with that spoon. He’s tried to teach him a lot of other things, too. He’s tried to teach him masonry. Look here – you need a plummet, a leveler to make it even, and then you lay the bricks like this and fill up with mortar and soon you’ll have a house – don’t forget the windows.

Coffee spoon, soup spoon, trowel and cauldron spoon.

As far as he knows, his son has never stirred a cauldron or laid bricks. He hasn’t hit his thumb with a hammer. He doesn’t know how it feels to get an electric shock, from drilling through a cable. No, all he wanted was to get right into the car.

* * *

At home the photos stand in rows. Now and then someone stops in front of one of them, head lowered. At the back of the room, a wedding photo crowns the old television set with its teak shutters. Surrounding the photographs, thin frames of silver shine. Reproductions of last century’s ancestors are buried under new generations, like wallpaper under wallpaper. A kind of genetic palimpsest. Protective cardboard. On the tables, runners and flowers, lit candles.

* * *

The wedding photo portrays a different Manolis. This one is not heavyset, his hair is black and shiny, his moustache inoffensive. Beside him stands his wife. He is concentrating on the photographer, she is concentrating on him. She looks lovingly at her Manolis, and he tries to stand still in order not to jeopardize the focus of the photo. One might also say that he is looking lovingly at the photographer while she is holding him so he won’t lose his balance. Or that he is looking lovingly into the blue while she is looking lovingly at his cheek. They must have been looking lovingly at each other until he turned his head to the photographer to ask a question just as the flash popped. Which explains why he looks a bit bewildered, although the photograph is still in perfect focus. Alternately the photographer was unable to make them look more closely at each other than that . . .

The other photographs portray his son.

* * *

He doesn’t use the word “wait”, because he’s not waiting for anything. If he were waiting for something, it might be himself; but he has already come, Manolis is his name. He’s not waiting; he’s just passing the time. The ones who haven’t arrived yet – let them wait. Let the pension wait for the pensioner, the tomato plants for the tomatoes. Let death wait for death to come. Meanwhile Manolis is just passing the time.

The mornings – the nightmares. It takes some time before he knows for sure that he’s he. Something needs to be clarified first. Something needs to disperse. Dream faces. He walks out to the pit. Once an Austrian woman visited him. How did he manage to get her up here anyway? She was sweet, she was dashing. But then she said “Toilet?” and he pointed at the spade and then somewhat vaguely at the olive trees. Then she said “Toilet?” once more and he had to get up and give her the spade. When you stand up there’s almost a clear view of the pit. He pointed at it. She sent him a postcard later on; the Italian down at Yannis’ place translated it for him. Not a word about the spade on it.

By the time he’s wiped himself and shoveled the earth, he has also had time to think. The weather is changeable. It’s going to get windy on the south side, with a risk of high temperatures. He’ll have to water the plants. In which case he’s he. He’s Manolis who is watering his tomatoes and putting the coffee-pot on the burner. And today he’d better put in an appearance at Yannis’ place again. It doesn’t look as if he has forgotten to shave anymore. His whiskers are so long he can pinch them with his fingertips and pull at them.

The moped spits and hisses. Manolis brandishes a stick toward the mountain, hoping to open up a vein of water. The old riverbed runs like a scar under the fig trees; a sensual curve close to the mulberry tree speaks a different language, could anyone doubt that this tree is grieving for the gentle rush of flowing, ice-cold water? Not to mention the donkey, the last one in the world, if he happens past one day.

Yannis tactfully puts a beer on the table and lets him nurse it in peace. On the same chair as the old Manolis used to sit on. He smokes a cigarette and looks at the slope. A cat runs uphill. An empty soft drink can turns over and starts rolling down the slope. The people are as usual. He doesn’t know what time it is; time is tricky, one life is not enough to get to know it. What he does know is that time is slow-footed. If it were not so, why then should he have to try to pass it?

With people, it’s different. If he sees somebody, he immediately knows who will be next. Their replies, clothes, gazes, the weather. Such things shift from one day to the next. Apart from them, it’s the same old film.

When the film is over and Manolis is ready to leave, Yannis doesn’t charge him anything. All the beers he’s had today are on the house.

* * *

Whether it’s because he’s old or has a beard, he doesn’t know, but they have lit a fire under the four five hundred liter cauldrons, and he hasn’t been asked to help. He, who has stirred the mush with the big wooden spoon since time immemorial. At every church feast he has stood making sure the chickpeas don’t burn, stirring and stirring with aching arms and the sweat running over his temples.

Now he’s obviously done for. But of course no one refuses to let him sit down. By each cauldron a beer corner has appeared, with a few chairs and a table. Not directly an ecclesiastical setting, but it’s a decades old tradition, prior to which they all drank retsina, waiting for the old ladies to gather outside the church early in the morning with barrels and buckets to fill with their share from the cauldrons. Or more precisely, waiting for the changing of the guard – the shift who slept at night would come at daybreak to give the final stirs; the pious ones, signaling with disapproval at the empty bottles and the full ashtrays. Who’s deceiving who he doesn’t know; the old ladies usually passed by for a chat in the evening anyway, and they knew what was going on in every home in the village. No teetotalers live here anymore – if they ever did.

In the old days the entire village was steeped in retsina. It reeked of retsina, down the lanes and from out of the cafés and tavernas. In every house, there were one or two 300 liter wine barrels filled with retsina. They were supposed to last all year but they didn’t – because when the first villager had emptied his barrel, he went to his neighbor; and the more villagers who had emptied their barrels, the more went to their neighbors; and in the end the entire village was full of people reeling down the lanes and knocking on doors – so that one after another, in order to make life easier for their friends, they put up notices on their doors saying that their barrels, sadly enough, were already empty, and that they were also out looking for more. Over the years people learnt where a visit could be profitable. Then the co-operative started, and the wine production increased; but it had become a vicious circle – the wine still didn’t last the year.

Today, though, it’s almost impossible to find anybody on the island who makes real retsina. The stuff in the shops is undrinkable. What he makes out of his grapes is fortified wine. Every autumn the demijohn bubbles away, and when it’s done he siphons off the thick, brown liquid into plastic bottles and puts them in the cupboard. Although it comes to fewer bottles with every passing year, he doesn’t drink as much anymore, can’t take as much, so it doesn’t really matter, when it runs out it runs out, when it’s too hot out, when the time has come, when Yannis abandons his culinary ambitions and just walks back and forth slamming bottles of ice-cold Dutch beer on the table. As long as you can find your way to the toilet you’ll be served. It’s hard to find that toilet – even Yannis’ most die-hard customers think so. It’s not reliable. It has a tendency to move around, unless it’s the kitchen that moves around, or the door, or all the boxes and baskets and plastic beer crates full of vegetables, empties, tablecloths, potato sacks and tomatoes that get in the way of a person who needs to spend a penny. The toilet’s a hole in the floor. You don’t need to dig.

Although he can still see traces of his wife everywhere, he sometimes has a feeling she’s moved out. She’s not there when he calls; and when she calls – if she does – he’s not there. So they don’t quarrel. They say a word or two when they see each other; it’s good for the health, not to let silence cling to the walls. To tell the truth, his wife has remarried – the TV. But what is he then; who paid for it, antenna and all? Her entire life she wanted a car, and what did he do? He saved the money all right, to give her something nice to sit in; and then all of a sudden she changed her mind – asked him to give the car to their son.

Finally the wife discovers him. “Is that supposed to be a beard? Are you going to have it for the next year? Well, you’ll look like a fool to the village!”

Personally, she has started wearing black. It suits her, especially in the dark. She has started to put photos of their son in frames. Where do they come from, all these photos? The frames bulge. Now three generations are pressed under the glass. They’re correctly arranged in chronological order, but nevertheless it feels wrong. He’s alive! So why must his son stare at him from every direction?

It took him ten years to put aside enough money to buy a car. He came home more and more rarely. His son also came home more and more rarely. His wife was at home more and more. Begging and begging for the car she didn’t want. What a surprise; he could have told her that from the very beginning. He never thought she needed one. She wasn’t so keen on excursions. Things were all right as they were. He was satisfied. He couldn’t have asked for more. He had his life just as he wanted it. He didn’t need a wife. He didn’t need anyone to cook for him. He did his own cooking. He still does. He gets along all right. And what he really needs her for she hasn’t been interested in for twenty-five years. That was when she started getting fat. He lost his first teeth and she put on weight, one kilo after the next; as if she was sitting there at the table, ladle in hand, trying to build a wall around herself to close him out.

If she had had a choice, she would probably have thrown him out; but she can’t do that, just as he hasn’t got the right to throw her out. So they take care of each other instead. She takes care of his belongings that she finds all over the house, and puts them in his room. The clothes – she washes them and folds them nicely and leaves them on his bed. Things he has left here and there in the house he finds meticulously arranged on the table. In return, he takes care of the tomatoes and the eggplants and the beans, which he picks and leaves in the kitchen for her. She has nothing against vegetables.

And so they’re both satisfied. The wife lives in the kitchen, the TV-room and the bedroom, and he lives in their son’s room. In that room, she doesn’t live. She opens up the door and puts his things on the bed or on the table. She washes the floor and dusts and puts photos of their son in frames. But she doesn’t live there.

* * *

He doesn’t share anything with her. Their son belonged to both of them. They had him in common. Now they’re mourning two different sons. Which son she’s mourning, he doesn’t know. She has her black dress on; he’s wearing his grizzly beard. There’s nothing they can share. His wife doesn’t ask him about his memories; he doesn’t bother her with such questions either.

Still, he’s happy she mentioned the beard. She could have asked if she was allowed to touch it, too. Or just touched it, as if she was entitled to. But maybe that would have been asking too much.

Still, he feels a kind of relief that she mentioned it. No one else has commented on it. No one has stared at him and exclaimed, “Hey, look at you Manolis, are you growing a beard now, old man?” He could have taken that. No one has used the beard to await themselves of an opportunity to comfort him with a word or two. No one says anything. It’s as if he’s had a beard this long all his adult life. As if he’s always had a beard exactly the size it is the very moment he wakes up every morning. So everything’s okay then. He doesn’t need any more beard comments. The beard signifies: Leave me alone.

* * *

One of Manolis’ mopeds has a special position in his heart. It’s not the one he’s using now, and it’s not the one whose wheels have sunk deepest into the soil after decades of rainy winters. It stands there behind the kalivi, and what has it done? It has given its life for him.

But can he really rank his mopeds? How? Should he then take into account which kept going the longest, which broke down fastest? Or consider which he had to lead all the way up to the house, like you lead someone condemned to the gallows – it’s all over now, no use repairing you any longer, you won’t last long enough; you’re beyond repair, old boy, you’ve done enough, your wheeling is over, there will be no more vroom-vrooming for you, no more soup in the tank – why give the poor old fellow any false hope that he, Manolis, will clear it up one day, pull it out of its hide, its hole, half sunk down into the earth, covered with rust; wave playfully with the so ardently coveted spare parts, arrange the necessary tools, suspend the moped on a steel wire between two olive trees, take it apart, nut by nut.

But he’ll take care of it. One day he’ll do it, though it might take time, so don’t be sad; don’t feel jealous when, from your dump, your terminal, your final position behind the corner, you hear the well-greased sound of the warm engine of my new machine. Because one day that one will also collapse, and all of a sudden discover it’s no longer number one but number two; it will have to stand and rust behind you, the last one in the row with no chance to advance, and that’s worse – not only to have to listen to the well-greased sound every evening from my new whatever it will be, but also to have another skeleton in front of you blocking the view. So don’t complain. What will be, will be. You will have to cope with your fate until the day of resurrection, when the Great Repairer arrives.

But one of his five mopeds gave all it had to drive him all the way up here – that was really brave. In the morning it was dead. That didn’t change position in the row. In his heart, it’s still number one. And when the day comes when he makes up his mind and starts repairing his old vintage mopeds, it might well be that one he starts with.