By Kimon de Greef
It was quite late in the night and we had been drinking. An empty bottle of wine sat on the table between us. We had stopped using glasses and a fair bit had spilled down the side and dried in a brown patch on the label.
“Where's Somalia?” I asked, only half interested.
“The horn of Africa. The bit that sticks out in the north-east. Here, look.”
He pointed at the bottle. I saw the light from the bulb in the ceiling reflected like a knife on the curved glass but couldn't see any continents.
“No, I don't understand. But look there, the light is shaped like a knife.”
I showed him but Chad put the bottle down and lit a cigarette. I could see he wasn't interested so I gave up explaining and leaned back in my chair.
“I'm worried about you,” he said. “You're always seeing knives everywhere. It's starting to freak me out.”
Of course I didn't know what he was talking about but he often did things like that when he was drunk, say preposterous things I mean, so I didn't take it to heart.
“That's because they are everywhere,” I said. “Even Somalia.”
“You haven't been there!” he shouted. “You can't prove that!”
I looked him straight in the eye and said: “Stop it now, Chad, you're getting sloppy and I won't tolerate this in my father's house.”
He howled like a baboon and threw the cork at me.
“I mean it, Chad. Just calm down now and we can carry on enjoying this wonderful evening.”
I needed the toilet so I stood up and walked out the room.
I got back and Chad was standing in front of a painting on the wall.
“Who did this?” he asked without turning around.
“My grandfather. He used to live in Obs and that's the view of the mountain from his bedroom window.”
My eyes took in the yellow-brown slopes above Mowbray, the dark green smudges of vegetation and the cliffs higher up that alternated between black and grey. The sky was pale blue with thin clouds stretched across it.
“I grew up looking at this painting,” I said. “It's my favourite.”
Chad – who was still drunk, but less excitably so – stood for another minute gazing at the picture. Every few seconds he would rock back on his heels and then fall forwards again, but he did it in a very controlled manner, and it made him appear thoughtful. He had found another bottle of wine in my father's bar and was holding it tightly at his side.
“Here – give me that.” I scolded. “You'll probably drop it and then we'll cut our feet on the glass and need surgery.”
“Or we could put our shoes back on,” he answered, but it was a warm night with a pleasant breeze coming through the windows, so we decided not to.
“I haven't met your grandfather,” Chad said after passing me the bottle. “Tell me about him.”
“My grandfather died a long time ago. I'll tell you his story if you like but you must promise to keep quiet and not distract me with meaningless comments.”
Chad mimed zipping his lips up and raised his thick eyebrows at me. He had a very comical face, with freckles, close-set eyes and a humungous nose, and I felt a surge of affection towards him despite myself. You loveable twit, I thought. You innocent, unwitting clown.
“Here, let's sit,” I suggested, gesturing towards the floor. We sat facing the picture with our backs against a small cupboard and the bottle of wine between us. Chad lit another cigarette.
“It was 1941 in Greece and the Germans were everywhere,” I began. “Athens was being bombed on a daily basis. My grandfather, who lived in a small village further north, decided to enlist in the army and go and fight, but because he was only sixteen the officials sent him away.
“Instead of returning home he hitch-hiked to the capital. He got a job unloading supply ships in the docks and spent his nights hanging around the quayside tavernas and drinking retsina.”
“What's retsina?” Chad interrupted.
“It is revolting Greek wine flavoured with resin to hide the taste. I thought I told you to keep quiet.”
“You did, but if I don't understand something I'm going to ask you, otherwise there's no point in telling me the story.”
“Shut up,” I said. “It isn't important. I'm just setting the scene.”
“My grandfather spent two months in the city and ended up attracting the attention of his landlord's wife. The affair lasted a week before word got out, and he got chased from the building at knife point. He hadn't had time to pack properly and only had a small suitcase, the clothes on his back (but no shoes) and a journal. And the last drachmas he hadn't spent yet, which didn't amount to much.
“If I was my grandfather I would have bought some new shoes or a blanket, because the Greek winter was approaching and it gets extremely cold there. But he was young and impulsive and bought himself a hat. It was a fine hat with a red feather tucked in the brim and he wore it everywhere until it blew away in a storm off the Mozambican coast. But that came later, long after he boarded the ship.”
“What ship?” asked Chad. “You haven't mentioned any ship.”
“I'm getting there. I'm remembering the story as I go. My grandfather had a friend who worked on a ship that was bound for the Suez Canal and they arranged for him to stow away in the hold. They emptied a wooden crate of its contents under the cover of darkness and my grandfather climbed inside with a large box of oranges and some wine. He must have had more than that with him because he stayed there for seven days. But I heard this all long ago, when I was a child, and I didn't question him.
“He disembarked in Port Said and walked around the harbour. The very next day he got offered a position as mess-boy on a munitions ship bound for East Africa, and by nightfall he was sailing across the Red Sea. He used to tell me how clear the water was, and how he would get up early to watch the sun rising above the Arabian shore.
“They tried to bomb the ship once but missed. My grandfather said he watched the aeroplanes fly over and saw the pilots looking down from their cockpits wearing black goggles, and because he was so certain he was going to die he didn't feel afraid at all.”
“What about in Athens?” Chad asked. “You said the Germans were bombing Athens but never mentioned it again.”
“I don't know,” I replied. “All my grandfather ever spoke about were the tavernas and the old men playing bazoukis in the firelight and the landlord's wife who had jet black hair and a large freckle beside her lip. He never said a thing about the bombing.”
“Maybe it's not as good a memory,” said Chad, with his cigarette hanging from his lips.
“My grandfather got in trouble because of a woman again in Dar es Salaam. He was staying with an engineer he'd met on board and waiting for another job to take him further south. One evening they went out for supper together with the engineer's girlfriend, who was the daughter of an important cotton farmer, and ended up getting quite drunk on gin and tonic. When they got home he bade them goodnight and went to his room. Ten minutes later there was a knock at the door and the girl was standing there in her nightclothes. She told him she liked his hat, and he invited her in.”
Chad hummed happily. “If only you were more like your grandfather. And I bet he got chased out the house.”
“He didn't,” I corrected him, ignoring the dig. “He'd learned his lesson. The next morning he packed his bags of his own accord and left. He shook hands with his friend and never saw him again.
“My grandfather reached South Africa a year later after selling vegetables for a time at the market in Maputo. He caught the train from Durban to Kimberly and then hitch-hiked down to Cape Town. He met my gran a short while later whilst camping near Pringle Bay – I don't know what he was doing there – and then they got married, had children, and all the rest. And he started painting in his old age, only, although he had sketched in journals since he was a young boy. That picture on the wall is the last he ever did.”
Chad looked at me sideways. “Is that it? Bit anti-climatic.”
“I'm afraid so. But hey, fuck you – you haven't had close to as many adventures. So what if it ended normally.”
He passed me the bottle and I took a long swallow. The taste left goosebumps on my arms.
“I've had enough. Stop giving that to me. I'm drunker than you now.”
Chad turned away and lay down on his back.
“Your grandfather sounds like a cool man. That was a good story.”
I didn't say anything, just stared at the painting.
“Hey, who's that photo of?” Chad was pointing to the shelf next to the fireplace.
“That's my mom's oldest sister. She's ancient, she was born during the war. But she's from the other side of the family. Why?”
“I was just wondering,” he said. “You said something about freckles earlier and she's also got one next to her mouth.”
And I must admit I had never thought of it that way before.
