Free Bus Shuffle
Ivars Balkits
A flutter of crosses rises from the seats of the bus like a cloud of sparrows springing from a tree or a wire. Casually but energetically, puffed peasant hands fling pinched-together thumbs and fingers up, down, right – right first in the Orthodox tradition – and left. Once, thrice, quickly a fifth time, pat the heart to end it, as the free bus passes each basilica, ekklisies, and naos on the morning's ride into Hersónissos.
Mountain villagers of Crete, elderly men and women in their 80s and 90s, make their way on the free bus every weekday to the clinic and to the social center next door to the clinic. Traveling from sub-montane Pediádos to the north beaches of the island they pass: Panageía Kerá Moni, Agia Kardiotíssa, Christos Sofer, Agias Kyriakí, Metamorfossi Sotiros, Agios Antónios, Agios Konstantínos, Agios loannis Theólogos... on their way to breakfast and coffee and a look at that leg, a change of bandage, or a refill on the meds.
Cretan “country music” on the overhead speakers. Dump trucks from the dam project whipping past inches from the windows. Up, down, in the middle of a yawn, right, left, conversing or arguing, tossing those crosses, bending their heads sharply in the upswing, or just zig-zagging the whole over the heart. Cemeteries get the sign also, or when the bus nearly collides with a pick-up. Striving to catch up with the others, realizing they have been distracted, several syncopated rhythms, or suddenly, unexpectedly, in unison like a rowing team.
Or in the middle of yelling for the driver to stop: Stasi!
Stasi pharmakeío, Niko! Nikos lets the woman from Agrianá off to grab a package from the pharmacy in Análipsi, waits for her. We wait for her. Another man another day just needs to go... behind a bush. We wait for him. It’s because of the medicine, he tells us. On another day, at Potamiés, a man has boarded, wants off – Nikos resisting – to scold the backhoe operator cutting into a roadside olive grove!
The man reboards banging his cane furiously in the aisle. All commiserate. Katse kato, yianni! He must sit down before the bus can move again. Another man, with tremor and packages, is shoved back into his seat by the lurch of the bus. Ella, piso, here to the rear! It’s everyone’s concern. The elderly yiayiá. Niko! it would be a krima (shame, but lit. "crime") if she fell...
Basic black the widows’ scarves, skirts, jackets, shoes, and stockings. White hairs on most passengers’ heads.
--
Porta kleiste, Niko! is the shout from the rear today from Nikos’ age-peer, the tall man with the tan t-shirt and matching pants with the elastic waistband – the storekeper Mihalis' middle-aged son, twice the height of his father. He sits next to the dome-headed man from Kerá with the large work-swollen hands and tobacco-stained mustache. Tall man wants the back door closed! Nikos grandiloquently waves his free hand and asks:
Yiati?
Because the wind is bothering him...
More overstated gesturing from Nikos, and then smiling (they may have been classmates together):
So move forward in the bus!
But soon the driver must comply. The dust from the dam project is coming in through the open back door. The front-loaders are beginning to eat into the gravel piles at last.
Niko! Porta kleiste!
Wind, clean or dusty, is an ill aéra, especially to the Cretan elders. They believe it brings sickness. As soon as the grandchildren emerge from the surf at the paraleía they are smothered in towels and blankets – no matter how sweltering the weather. Windows too are kept kleiste on the hottest days.
--
The route changes often in the off-tourist season. No one returning to Análipsi or Agrianá today? Okay. We skip the loop down to the beaches. All seats taken and still there are yiayiás and pappoús standing? Den pirázi! No problem! Nikos maneuvers the bus onto the old coastal highway that goes directly into Kato Hersónissos, picks up the bypassed others in Ano Hersónissos afterward.
Today we're already full at Potamiés. So straight to the clinic. Análipsi drop-offs next, then back to the villages of Piskopianó and Ano Hersónissos. Along the way a quick stop to drop a package at the kiosk in Ano Hersónissos from a man in Advou, then a stop to deliver the groceries for a friend who got off earlier in Agrianá.
Another day Nikos backs up the leoforio several double-parked blocks and skips Análipsi entirely – A mistake... The schoolgirls have to get out on the old coastal highway to walk back dio kilometers to Análipsi. Stasi, pharamakeío? Nikos misses the pharmacy this time by only a city block. Maria's hassling him about the speed. Mistakes, what mistakes? Niko smokes when he makes mistakes. The driver smokes.
The man from Gonies with the swollen tongue takes that as a sign that now he can smoke. I move away a seat: "Den kapneís, parakalo! Ime allyérikos," but I don't say it. (Plus I’m not really allergic.) Yiannis is a very thoughtful man usually. Gets upset when the school kids – who also get to ride for free – won't give up their seats for the elders. Once my beloved Agapi told him: "My Greek is bad." He heard "The Greek is bad..." Pios? Which Greek? He was ready to defend my Agapi against the bad Greek!
Is known to be a bit slow. Yiannis lost his mind after his wife left him. That's the word on the odos. Some days in a great mood, he greets everyone, laughs like a drunk, slurs his speech – because of the tongue – not swollen really, just sort of sticking out there. Other days, Yiannis is gloomy, and dead-pan, pale-eyed, unaware of surroundings. He sits in the back seats, tongue hanging out, chin resting on his pot belly.
--
Today, my main man with the toothless grin, the hip Euro-T, the shaved head, the one who spoke to us in front of the clinic the other day, boards at Ano Hersónissos. We talk. He has two daughters maybe sisters in America, one in San Francisco, the other in California too, but in the Air Force, a Major. He himself makes ceramics, but has a degree in Greek History and has studied World History. History teaches us, he says, that all is always the same as now – except maybe the technology – maybe even the technology...
Do I know the author, Erich Van Deke, Deutsch? He wrote a book in which he shows that Minoans practiced cloning, that King Minos himself was a clone created by extra-terrestrial visitors to Crete. My free-bus companion asks have I heard of the inter-planetary ship that came down in the waters off the US of America? Forty-four war-planes were sent to destroy it. The spaceship's occupant destroyed 35 war-planes, then destroyed the air base from which they had been sent.
What was that author's name?
Erich Van Deke. [von Däniken]
I regret later I don't take up the man's invitation to go upstairs into the building next to the clinic. "They have free coffee up there for people over 60," he tells me. But, sorry, I have email to send before we return to Avdou. I need to sit outside on this cement bench and hook into the "hot spot" provided by the public_lib WiFi connection. Maybe later, I tell him. Doesn't happen.
He doesn't ask me again. He avoids me from then on. But...
Hunter talks to me while I’m on the bench in front of the clinic. He apparently is recalling passing us yesterday on our walk in the olive groves. Boom-boom! recalling he was on his way to hunt hare on his motorcycle. Shows me his hunting license. Passes his komboloi beads to sniff. Pine scent. Mentions kalitéchnis (artist). Mentions syngráfeas (writer). I’m understanding most of what he pantomimes, and a goodly number of words and context.
But I need to finish the message before the return bus gets here. I excuse myself to go into the hallway. The smallest, most elderly yiayiá of all, cute as a button, finds me in the hallway, plugged in, computer in my lap, legs straight out in front of me. Vaguely I'm aware of: Bags. Cane. Bowed legs. Widow's frock. She doesn’t respond when I absent-mindedly greet her: Yeia sas. I look up again. She’s back down the stairs, handing me 50 eurocent. Oh, no, no! I can't. I can't say Oshi fast enough. Signómi, she apologizes.
--
I measure my ears and his, catty corner. Can it be those will be the size of my flaps? How does one shave around a swelling like that? The old rude-boy in beret is chewing what? the cud of age. Wipes mustaches. Drool? Is the Gonies kyría’s black hair dyed using walnut hulls? White roots are reclaiming the head of that other woman there. Same over here, but for a floating layer of light brown-red. Is there a widow's store? The clothes look cut from the same bolt.
I watch and contemplate the heads in the seats in front of me. Round, oblong, bumpy at the corners, flat in back. Bristly, braidy, soft, wavy, bald, curly, smooth. I think of the activity in those craniums. Thoughts, tones of thoughts, anxieties, blank spots, daydreams. Thoughts of being thought not well of. Thoughts of being thought no longer strong. Of being discovered and exposed. Of not being acknowledged. Of being acknowledged!
Stones, coconuts, pumpkins, grapefruit.
--
Thunderstorms today.
Nikos lets his sunglasses hang in front of his ears and under his chin. A pick-up passes as the leoforio turns into Agrianá. The driver hits the brakes. We get a break. Not everyone thinks Nikos acted well. Maria, for instance – Of course the crosses flutter up. Pious and unpremeditated. Sometimes in conversation and ending with a gesture like eh! or even a fist!
Here’s a load. Ola kalá! The kidding doesn’t stop. Not even for the crosses. Certainly not for the occasional scrapes with Charon.
A young papa in vestments with spent censer, fresh basil, ornate wood crucifix approaches in the narrow streets of Piskopianó. Papa, mesa! Nikos invites him inside. Everyone's on their feet, roused, inviting the papa inside, shifting forward to be blessed. He enters, fat and friendly, to bless the leoforio, waving the bundle of basil, while the people bend to kiss the crucifix. Such excitement, happiness, and good cheer.
Not a half-hour later, an impassioned debate rages in front between the kyría from Potamiés and the gentleman from Gonies. Rhetoric, oration, interrupting, real anger, and an occasional back
ing off on a point. Ola join in. The driver is the judge. Click those komboloi beads decisively. Push the voice out from the chest. Startle with the volume and quick hard syllables.
Ella, piso. Porta klieste. Stasi etho!
Shouts rather than whispers. Smacks for caresses. A different sense of space – pass close, stand closer, almost on top of my American shoes. Each a part of this group (parea) since nearly forever. Siblings of place. Comrades of shared experience.
--
Raining on the way home, drowsy, quiet, hypnogogic trance. We pass by Agia Mama. The crosses rise, nearly unconsciously.
Big man from Kerá with the domed head sits behind the driver. He takes his hat off while signing but continues chewing the crackers he bought at Halkiadákis. From the rear I watch his cheeks bulge out sideways with each chew.
Truly," wrote Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis in his Report to El Greco, "what business did Buddha have in Crete, what could he hope for... in Crete?"
Plenty of seats today. Even for young Alexis coming home from guitar school in Hani Kokkíni.
--
She sits in the middle saving the seat. He puts his arm across to the aisle armrest. She's not as stern as she looks. He's not as dignified. Shuffle, shuffle.
It's the Free Bus Shuffle:
Now there's a place for a woman next to a woman. The villagers change seats at each stop it seems. As soon as possible, they move away from the sun, move away from that woman or that man, move away from that rattling window, or the ill wind, closer to the exit, closer to the front, onto the bump next to the driver, hold the seat for a friend, put down a package in the aisle...
Duck, duck, goose.
Shuffling, jarring, straight-backed, a peek at the years ahead for me. This is a great place to grow old... especially for those who have grown up here. I envy them, noses, ears, eyes, wrinkles – canes, forked, resin, mulberry wood; bags, bustle, stiffness; rolled down stockings, misunderstandings.
O-o-o-old. The word with a shiver in it.
But these souls are not for the nursing homes. They tend gardens, visit neighbors, cook, fix, make wine, make raki from the grapeskins, sit in the sun in their home villages. Stroke, some evidence of stroke, but these are taken care of. Swaddled in mythic mountains and lapping sea, rocking endlessly in this cradle of civilization.
