Tessera cafe bar, Sami. Keffalonia. It is the port town’s Saint’s Day and the bells from the Church have been ringing since 6am. No one is up on the boat but me. I am restless to get ashore: coffee calls. The strip of bars that follow the road up past the ferry dock where the lorries park up and the freight is loaded were humming and alive with trade last night. The warm air mingled with the loud music, the fairy light trees and the tables to the side of the road on the sea lapped shore. Glasses of beer chased with whisky made for a good night and a good night’s sleep. I am refreshed, in search of quiet stimulation, a cigarette and a place to write. The world is awake for the hard working townsfolk who sleep in the wintertime. Deliveries. Cash books. Restocking. Sweeping out and setting up for tonight’s parade of the icon and the celebrations to come. Blue shirted, grey flannel trousered men with sun mottled, turtle-leather skin and cataracts eye the shifting flesh under the clinging dress of the proprietress as she sweeps. There is life going on here as the tourists slumber in their berths.
The two old Greek men sit with their back to the wall, in the shady corner. The oldest is singing in a high pitched lilt – some sort of island song. It sounds like he is in pain, but it is recognisably a song. The woman cleaning is sassy – I like her. I ask about the old man singing in the corner. “He is 86. He was in the war. In the partisans. He killed two fascists. He has photographs. He might show you his gun”, she says, with a gesture towards a bandolero hanging from the beam over his head. It seems I am supping with killers.
We slide into conversation but her broom rarely rests. Sofia is her name. She has three sons. All born in the month of February. One was born prematurely at only 5 and a half months. I tell her about my niece’s baby, born prematurely too. “Boy or girl?” she asks. “Girls are stronger.”
“Always”, I respond.
Sofia’s eldest son runs a beach restaurant at Antisammos, out of the harbour and round to the right. Sofia is divorced. And she says she is known for speaking her mind, which, she says, doesn’t go down well around here. I say she sounds like a handful. I bet she is but I love talking to this woman. Every sentence is a story; she has been up all night to see her brother to the airport. He lives in Montreal and renovates houses.
I met Sofia last night when we walked into town for a few drinks after dinner. We walked away from the town and this strip was humming. When I asked a waitress for directions to the loo, Sofia interrupted: “She doesn’t speak English”, she said. We flirted some. Next morning I wanted to come back – I hoped she would be there.
“The life of the bar – too much routine”‘ she laments. I tell her that I clean, too, in the winter. “I clean every day!” she retorts, emphatically. She has the spark of life, this one.
The two old gents have been joined by a third. The cigarettes are on, even though it is only coming up to 9am.
The town’s priest sing-chants his morning prayers and they echo around the whole bay, carried to everyone by microphone. It is that Orthodox mix of the Imam in his minaret and the medieval Christian plainsong.
The other accompanying sound in the background is the continual phut phut phut of the fishing boat engine, idling in harbour about a half a click away. The town is waking.
A woman on her way to work parks up on the far side of the road, leaves her engine running and driver door open, to come in and get a coffee. A few cars drive by. A moped. Then another one. It is quietly getting hotter and the sun is beginning to burn into my back. I would keep talking with Sofia but don’t want a third coffee as the caffeine is really kicking in. It is time to get back to the boat. No one will be up but they might be stirring. Probably disturbed by the priest’s prayers on loudspeaker and complaining of the incessant calling to a diety they don’t believe in and who seems intent on ruining their Sunday. Bloody God.
The watermelon man is here. He whistles to Sofia, exchange a few words in Greek and he moves on. I pay my five euros sixty cents plus two extra for the entertainment. A half hour that will stick around in my memory as a charming highlight of that voyage around the Ionian. But which I will not share with my crew because they would not understand and only misconstrue. I peel myself away and bid her “antio sas”.
Maybe the Universe will bring me a woman like Sofia, if I meet it half way.