...And Dreams Are Dreams

who is offered to the groom with a dowry. ‘More than anything else, we are in need of a Greece,’ said Lord Canning (who, years later, was to be remembered by the square in Athens that bears his name). The master and mistress then ask for the dowry back (the dowry they never gave in the first place, because of course the groom is in on this too) just so she will always be indebted to them, will always be a slave.

“Yes, they wanted Greece to be a slave; ever since then she has been one, my boy: but not a Turkish slave, a Christian one. If she were a Turkish slave, they would have had to settle the eastern question with the sultan, and they had bigger fish to fry where he was concerned. They wanted Greece, as well as her Balkan sisters, to be independent so as to attain, through them, easier access to the Seraglio.

“But watch out, servant girl!” the foreign masters said. “Don’t you ever dare raise your head. You still owe us the loan for your dowry. We’ve got you right where we want you.” Their only problem (and they simply could not agree on this point) was whether she would be a maid to the English, the Russians or the French. Either way, whatever they decided, she would definitely be a slave.”

On board, the discussion continued among the patricians, the privileged, concerning the devaluation of the drachma that would supposedly facilitate the government’s new loan. “Even though he is a remarkable economist,” somebody was saying, “the prime minister did not correctly foresee the repercussions of this new devaluation, which has resulted in an increase in the prices of practically all products, since 80 percent of those are imported.”

“And that’s how trouble starts,” thought the captain to himself, “since in the end, the Greek people are just: they have good sense, good instincts, and political maturity. They might not know exactly what their origin is, but what does it matter? They survive, under difficult conditions, and they always give a fight.

They never give in, even though others have tried at times to decapitate them, even castrate them. They have a powerful instinct for self-preservation. The proof being that, the way this poor nation started off on the wrong footing completely, it should have sunk a thousand times by now, it should have buckled under all those blows. And yet it kept going. It still keeps going. It exists. It survives.”

“The Greek economy has glass feet,” Plasterboard was saying now. “If someone should ask to cash the state’s reserves into dollars or gold, we would go bankrupt again.”

“The specter of bankruptcy has haunted us since the small Greek state was first established,” explained Aristotle, who was a progressive and did not like the industrialist, Plasterboard. “If the Greeks brought their Swiss bank accounts back to this country, we’d have one hell of an economy.”

“But it is the specter of insecurity that makes them take their money abroad. If they knew the drachma was stable, they would all bring their money back,”

Aristotle returned.

“But if you don’t bring your money back, and the next person doesn’t and the next, how will the drachma become strong? What you describe will never happen unless somebody goes first. If, for example, you….”

“Don’t start getting personal,” Elias cut in. “A yacht is an enclosed space, short-circuited by the sea.

If we start quarreling, there aren’t enough cabins to separate us.”

“But they’re not quarreling,” said the doctor, who had just come up on deck. “They’re having a discussion.”

“Precisely,” said Plasterboard. “Besides, I don’t have my money abroad. I have it here. But I know of others who….”

Next to him, his wife, bored beyond belief, was discussing with Irini the best way for a woman to lose those extra pounds painlessly and pleasantly.

“The problem is that as a people….”

“Why do you read only English?” interrupted Arion.

How could Nikos, an importer of cold cuts, tell him that he did not believe in anything Greek? That it was in fact Greek things that seemed foreign to him?

Ever since he was a child he had been taught to trust foreign products. Greek writers held no interest for him whatsoever. The western European languages inspired a certain confidence he did not find in modern Greek.