Translated by Mia-Alexandra Sky
He rolled up the shutters covering the shopfront and looked at his watch. The hands were stopped at four-thirty in the afternoon, heralding another day.
“C.C.” was etched onto the metal sign in large, distinct calligraphic letters. Written clumsily underneath, as though by an anxious hand, was “Café Camus.”
He brought out the blackboard to the entrance and started writing the coffee of the day. Every day they paid tribute to a country and offered its coffee at a reduced price. Today, Yemen was being honoured. And underneath, like a marionette whose hand was controlled by someone else, he wrote, “Pay It Forward Coffee.”
The new trend in Athens: “a coffee awaits you.” Customers could pay for an extra coffee so someone without money could have it. Like, the guy who doesn’t have money needs a coffee. But he soon realized that coffee wasn’t the point. Those who sought it had a need to seek, and those who offered it had a need to offer. Even the coffee, you could say, was fulfilling its mission, and the waiter alike, who would become the vehicle of charity. In fact, sometimes, he’d convince the indecisive and feel some level of satisfaction. It would usually come to an average of one or two coffees a day. One would be offered almost daily by a sunburnt photographer with a look that bordered on erratic, who used to come past each morning before hitting the streets with his cameras. He had around his neck—always—two cameras, in case one malfunctioned or got stolen; lest he miss a moment, he would say. His coffee was ritually received by Aras, who would wait on the corner and, the moment he’d see him drop by, come in to supposedly visit the toilet.
Everyone was waiting for someone. And while the waiter anticipated the arrival of a customer, on days with good weather such as today, he would sit by the door, on that chair that was just as alone as him. And since he had nothing in front of him—not a table, not a newspaper, not even a cup or anything to hold—he felt naked and would stare at the ground. His gaze was as empty as the square in the early morning hours. By the time the ground got covered by shoes, he would observe the steps of their owners—if one can call them such. Footsteps that were hurried, moody, bored, forgotten, decisive or determined, light, dancing, wearisome, bemoaning, sour, uncoordinated, unscented, wonky, mystical.
“Coffee today?” In front of him appeared the familiar scuffed blue gumboots belonging to Aras. He shook his head without lifting it. “I come back.”
Besides footsteps, he would classify people according to whether they’d stop talking to their friends when he carefully placed the coffees on the table wedged between them, or whether they’d continue their conversation, raising their voices bombastically.
About an hour later, Aras returned. The photographer hadn’t come by today, and there was no other coffee. “Zilch, Aras. You know what zilch means? Like the coffers of Greece.” He opened his wallet and gave him twenty cents. A condom had slipped in among the change. Aras closed one eye at him slyly, and he discerned the shine of jealousy in the other, open eye. As soon as the last customer had left, he opened his wallet again with the air of someone opening an envelope suspected of containing explosives. He removed the condom and looked at it under the light of the register. Folded and faded like a crisp packet on a beach. The expiry date was eleven months ago. How can an absence, something that is minus, zero, null, be so heavy?
“And what should we call it? I want something arty-farty. Like the books on the walls,” the owner of the café and good friend had asked him before opening the cafeteria.
“Camus.”
“As in, Albert?”
“As in, ‘Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?’ by the same.”
And just like that, for the last 27 years, he has been making coffees. And he throws into the rubbish four of the five condoms that he buys. The fifth, sometimes, he uses on his own when the expiry date approaches.
It was close to knock-off time, and like every Saturday around this time, first the white cane, then Stamatis crossed the doorway. He’d lost his vision in a protest march six years ago. Extreme right against antiauthoritarians. That was the same time he got “inked” with the peace sign on all but one knuckle. One night, he got drunk and walked into the first tattoo parlour that crossed his path. The owner was a right-winger who recognized him and, after working out that he couldn’t see, inked a swastika on the last little finger. No one told Stamatis. Those were the mottled fingers that he ran through his salt and pepper hair every five minutes, making out like he was reflected in the entrance window, asking any woman who passed by him if she found him attractive.
Stamatis’ visit would mark the closure for the weekend since they were closed on Sundays, despite his marked efforts to convince the owner otherwise.
Like every day before locking up, he looked at the handwritten note on the side of the fridge.
“Before leaving:
– Wash the glasses
– Sweep
– Put out the rubbish
– Drop the switch for internal lights (warning: not the switch for the fridges!)
– Wind the clock
– Bring in the blackboard”
He brought in the blackboard, erased the first word from “coffee awaits you,” and wrote “life.”
He pulled down the window shutters and looked at his watch. The hands were stopped at four-thirty in the afternoon, heralding another day, expired.
* This story is first published in a collection of short stories, with title “Wabi Sabi”, 2017, Iolkos Publishing House, Athens, Greece
