Yiorgos screwed his face up in exaggerated pain, placing his hands on his lower back. I smiled at him in sympathy from the fountain across the road, watching him trail a heavy sack along the street to his pick-up truck.
We could have stopped in any of the villages that had somehow found purchase on the steep-sided mountains of Elis, defying gravity. But it was at Lambia where we came to rest. We’d spent the morning curving the sides of mountains, twisting and turning, rising up to the crest of a pass just to tumble down the other side again. Lambia, nestled in the crook of the Patras to Tripoli road, was another village of stone dwellings hung onto the side of the hillside as if nailed into position.
Yiorgos shouted across at me in a machine gun volley of Greek, his mouth poised somewhere between grimace and grin. The only recognisable word in the tangle of Greek was the German ‘kaput’, but even without it I would have understood him from his pantomime performance. He rubbed his back, grinned, grimaced again, and let out a comedy moan. I made an expression of exaggerated sympathy. Yiorgos laughed. I laughed.
It was hunger that had driven us to stop at Lambia. Climbing out of the car, I’d headed straight for the cool of the trees and the running water of the fountain, while Tom crossed the road to the tiny grocery store to order lunch in halting Greek: psomi, domates, feta and elies Kalamaton. The grocer handed over a crusty loaf, still warm from the oven; a bag of large fleshy tomatoes; a slab of pungent goat’s cheese and a tub of fat, juicy Kalamata olives. This was the food of the gods… the Greeks… and us.
As we ate our alfresco lunch beside the fountain, Yiorgos passed by again, this time staggering along the street with the bag in his arms. He lifted it up, his face contorted in mock agony, and heaved it onto the back of the pick-up. “Back breaking,” I shouted across to him. Yiorgos nodded and laughed even though he didn’t speak English.
Earlier that morning as we’d driven through the mountainous hinterland of the Peloponnese, I’d marvelled at the precipitous settlements. It isn’t easy to build a village on a scooped out ledge in the hillside. Lambia was no different. On one side of the road, the stone-hewn tavernas and stores were backed into the wall of mountain. Between the businesses on the ground floor and the living quarters above, wooden and iron-wrought balconies ran the length of the buildings. On the other side of this narrow shelf of road, taverna terraces hung on the rock face, the land dropping away to the valley hundreds of feet below.
Picnic lunch now finished, we moved to one of the overhanging terraces for a gliko, a sweetened Greek coffee - thick, syrupy, heady. As we sipped our drinks, we watched village life play out on the street in front of us: scarved and booted women wearing floral black and white blouses and black skirts, making their way back from church; housewives gossiping across the balconies before disappearing through darkened doorways, and waiters tapping into mobiles, or pulling on a Marlboro at tables outside taverna entrances. The rhythms of life were slow here.
Yiorgos had finished his delivery now and was running across to us with a bottle of orange juice. He clanked his glass bottle against our coffee cups, grabbed a chair and pulled up beside us.
“Do you want to play cards with us?” I asked, pointing to my men folk engrossed in a game. Yiorgos tilted his head upwards in an almost perceptible no.
“Ochi.” He pointed to his head and said something in Greek. Tom translated. “A brain injury - from ten years ago.” Yiorgos smiled and shrugged his shoulders, his happy disposition undisturbed.
“Do you live in Lambia?” I asked him.
“Nai.” He said something more in Greek, drawing his hand in a quick movement across his throat. I looked at Tom in alarm.
“He’s a butcher,” Tom said. “He works at the slaughter house.” Yiorgos handed me his business card, and I tucked it carefully into my purse even though I would never need it.
Then as quickly as he had come to us, he was off again, flying across to the other side of the taverna and a fellow Greek – to someone he could have a proper conversation with.
But as we paid the waiter, Yiorgos was with us again, slapping a bag of sweets onto the table. He held the bag out to me, indicating I should take some. I reached in and took a handful. “Ochi,” he said, taking the sweets out of my hand again and putting them back in the bag. I was confused. He tipped the bag upside down, the sweets tumbling onto the table. Then, taking a small handful for himself, he pushed the rest back into the bag and handed it to me.
“Efharisto,” I said. Then stretching my Greek to its limits, “Efharisto para poli.”
Yiorgos took my hand, leaned over and planted a great slobbery kiss on it. “Bye bye,” he said, dredging up some English of his own and he was gone. This time for good.
That day we continued on our journey across the mountains and on to Ancient Olympia. But it was Yiorgos, the butcher from Lambia that stayed with me afterwards, not the great site of antiquity. As always, on the road, it was the people who made the biggest impression.
