Read Online The House on Paradise Street by Sofka Zinovieff - Free Book Online Page A

looking in through the kitchen window. Alexandra did not quite gasp, but her features became rigid as Chryssa unlocked the back door and welcomed him. I guessed he was in his early 40s, thick-set, though not fat, with a solidity that looked as though it came through will-power rather than exercise. He moved with an incongruous lightness that made me imagine he had just crept into the courtyard like a cat or a burglar. His almost blue-black hair was broken with grey at the front and dark brows ran in straight lines, giving him a somewhat piratical aspect. I saw him focus on me as he hugged Chryssa and she rubbed his back as though soothing a nervous horse.
    “Aunt. How are you?” he asked without feeling. “I just came to collect some things from the store room.” Alexandra walked over and kissed the man on both cheeks, while he submitted to the greeting like a sullen boy. I was intrigued.
    “Mond, this is my nephew Nikitas,” said Alexandra, without enthusiasm. “He has the apartment upstairs, but he doesn’t live there. He rents it out.” I shook Nikitas’ hand, finding the physical contact disturbing in a way I didn’t immediately recognise. I felt young and awkward and to disguise the fact, started to give a slightly formal account of why I had come to Greece. Nikitas looked amused.
    “So, you’ve come to study us. Well, don’t believe anything they tell you and only half of what you see.” He laughed and I blushed. “Whatever you think you understand, the opposite will also be true. We Greeks won’t fit tidily into anybody’s scheme. It’s our nature. We’re a mess.” I wasn’t sure if he was mocking me.
    “I was just leaving,” I said, wanting to get away from my confusion. He was close enough for me to smell him – something like cedar and green leaves.
    “If you can give me five minutes, I’ll give you a lift. I have the car outside.”
    “We could always call you a taxi if you prefer,” said Alexandra, a little too eagerly. Chryssa, too, was looking at me as though I was making a decision that would have repercussions.
    Nikitas bounded up the fire escape, which twanged and rattled, returning a few minutes later with some books from the store room.
    “Are you ready?” He smiled at me as though he had won when I said goodbye and thanked Alexandra and Chryssa, and left from the back door with him. We passed under the lemon tree and through the yard, emerging into the alleyway, where two cats were locked in urgent thrusting. They paused, looked at us briefly and then continued, pulled by a far more powerful force of nature than fear. The male was pressing down the female’s head with one paw and emitting a strange throaty sound. I avoided Nikitas’ eye and he got out a packet of cigarettes and lit up. He was just unlocking his car – a beaten up Lada jeep – when he stopped.
    “How about a walk first? Let me show you around the area.” We left my gifts from Chryssa and Alexandra in the car and continued on foot.
    Nikitas took on the role of guide explaining Greek history to the ignorant foreigner. He told me why the area was known as Mets.
    “It’s all down to nineteenth-century Germans and their beer.”
    I wondered if he was teasing me.
    “As soon as the Greeks were free from four hundred years of Turkish rule, the Great Powers wanted to find a king. So they located a teenager in Bavaria, who happened to be a prince, and they put young Otto on the throne.” Athens was a two-horse town, “with shepherds herding their flocks on the Acropolis and not much else,” when Otto’s entourage of Bavarian advisers and architects decided to transform the new capital into their own fantasy of ancient Greece. According to Nikitas, they were also beer-drinkers and preferred it to Greek wine. Their solution was to build themselves a beer factory, and for some reason they named the area Mets, after Metz, the beer-making town in Alsace. Failing to find me sharing his outrage, Nikitas continued