5 The Mermaid
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f God had a name it would be Bob Marley.” That’s what Jimmy Kosonis told his soldier buddies in the Greek unit of the Kosovo Force. His unit had been posted to Kosovo along with another twelve hundred soldiers after the NATO bombing against the Serbs that had spread terror throughout the villages of Kosovo. His unit had been deployed to the church of St. Uros to guard it against attacks by fanatical Albanian extremists. He wasn’t quite sure who the enemy even was in this situation. He had been taught that the Serbs had always been Greece’s allies and he knew that under Venizelo’s leadership, Serbian troops had helped free Thessaloniki. On the other hand their operation in Kosovo was under the auspices of NATO assistance, an organization that had attacked the Serbs, who in turn had decimated the ethnic Albanian population. Now they found themselves in the position of protecting the church from Muslim Albanian rebels! “Come on man, what in God’s name were they thinking? What the hell are we doing here Jimmy?” Mikis “the anchovy” 4 asked. They had nicknamed him this because of the football team that he supported back home. “My friend, God is none other than the great Bob Marley. I’m going to sing you a little reggae number to help you relax,” Jimmy said. “Man oh man is our friend Jimmy ever obsessed with reggae! The world’s going to the dogs before our very eyes and he’s standing up, knees bent, dressed up in his fatigues, bopping up and down to the reggae beat even when he’s on lookout! It’s like he can’t turn off the music in his head.” Nobody else in his unit listened to any kind of music in particular. Certainly no one else pursed their lips to imitate the sound of a trumpet, 4
“The anchovy” is a nickname for supporters of the Greek football team Olympiacos.
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humming their favorite songs under their breath all day long. Now that the conversation had turned to war and politics he found an opening to bring up Bob Marley again. He told them that he had been an activist and supporter of African rights. “It takes a revolution to make a solution,” was Jimmy’s answer, borrowing a line from one of Marley’s political songs. No sooner had the words left his mouth than they heard voices coming from outside of the church. Around ten people had gathered outside, yelling in Serbian for a doctor. A man was holding an unconscious twelve year old girl in his arms; she was soaking wet. Children and village women were trailing behind him, forming a little procession. The unit’s doctor came running; they brought the child into the makeshift medical station that had been set up. The doctor ordered everyone out of the room. He stayed inside for five minutes talking to his nurse before asking to speak to the child’s father. The father had been wringing his hands in despair as he waited for news. The doctor told him what he already knew. Little Aisha was dead. Jimmy didn’t understand enough of the language to know what was going on. He couldn’t follow the story which the mourning relatives were telling in Serbian. All he could do was watch as they left with the dead body of the little girl. As they passed by him on their way out he caught a glimpse of Aisha’s wet, bruised face. Her damp hair hung in tufts and was swaying to the rhythm of the footsteps of those carrying her away in their arms. He buried his head in his hands, turning his head so he wouldn’t have to see. It seemed that a vision had flashed before him, an image dominated his mind. With closed eyes, he tried to escape its force by turning his head to the right and left. He rubbed his eyes in disgust, trying to blot out the imprint of sick association his mind had revealed. “The little mermaid, damn it!” 195
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He was the little girl’s age, maybe even younger, when his mother had told him the story of the little mermaid for the first time. His father was a sailor who told him stories of mermaids as if he believed in them, even though he was a grown man. The face of the little mermaid in his imagination was identical to that of the little girl. He couldn’t escape the vision; he could see her as clearly as if she had just stepped out of her underwater kingdom, the signs of death still upon her. “What happened to the girl?” he asked the others. “She drowned in the river” someone said nonchalantly. “She didn’t drown all by herself, someone else was involved. She was taking a shortcut to school with her brothers over the river. The Serbs from Zupce saw them and chased after them, setting their dogs loose on them. The frightened children dove into the river to escape. The girl’s big brother held on to her but the river was flowing too fast and she slipped out of his hands. They found her later, washed up on the banks of the Ibar. Jimmy hit his forehead in frustration. What kind of insanity was this? As if it wasn’t bad enough that they were killing each other over nothing, now they were killing children on the way to school? He just couldn’t understand. “What’s going on here Mikis?” he asked his friend. “What the hell are we pacifists doing in a place like this? Is this a war or just a slaughter of the innocents? I’m really on the edge here Mikis, with everything my eyes have seen goddammit. They set their dogs loose and killed a little girl. Do you get it? The killed the little mermaid for fuck’s sake.” Things went from bad to worse the next day. There were angry uprisings by Albanians from Cabra and Mitrovica, looking for revenge. Kosovo went up in flames. People poured out onto the streets, they reached the church, barricaded the entrance, and began hurling stones at the Greek soldiers. A thousand angry protesters surrounded the church and began 196
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throwing grenades and Molotov cocktails at them, along with the rocks. The Greek soldiers huddled together against the church walls, unable to react. Their force was forbidden to retaliate with any kind of weaponry. Jimmy and Mikis had put on their helmets and crouched behind the armored jeeps that they had lined up in front of the entrance for protection. If the protesters stormed inside, the army jeeps would provide a barrier that would hopefully hold them off long enough for backup to arrive. Rocks and homemade petrol bombs fell like a heavy rain around them. The church’s fortified courtyard was blanketed in smoke; one of the cars had caught fire, making the situation almost unbearable. “Can you believe this Mikis? We got orders from the commander of Rigas Feraios headquarters to use force if necessary. What happens if we go to war for real and I end up killing Aisha’s father who’s protesting outside because they drowned his daughter? Didn’t he just come to us for help? Now he’s our enemy? I’m going nuts here Mikis, I swear I’m going to end up blowing my own fucking peace loving brains out.” The second that Jimmy finished his sentence, a Molotov bomb ricocheted off of Mikis’s helmet and exploded. The flames leapt onto them with a consuming rage. Mikis was screaming and jumping as the fire burned his face and clothes. The others threw themselves on top of him, terrified, smothering the fire under blankets and their jackets They took Mikis away on a stretcher when backup arrived. The Americans with their tanks and helicopters doused the protesters with teargas. The group of protesters broke apart and the uprising ended as suddenly as it had begun.
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During his shifts, Jimmy’s thoughts turned to the insanity of war and his friend Mikis, who had been sent to Athens on medical leave. After the Mitrovica incidents they had transferred him to the “Tobacco Factory” base camp. He also thought about little Boukou a lot. Boukou was seven year old girl from a very poor Roma family who lived in the area. Jimmy had met her father when he came by the base one day, asking for some food to feed his family. She had told Jimmy that her name was Boukouria but Jimmy called her Boukou. There were seven children in the family but only four were still with them. He had lost the three eldest boys during the bombings after a group of Albanians took them hostage. They kept the boys locked up for a while before sending them to some place in Albania; they hadn’t been told anything further. Boukou would come by to see Jimmy every day and he would sing and dance to reggae songs for her. She was very beautiful; her dark unruly hair, combined with the soulful innocence of her youth, made her an angelic figure. One day, the girl’s father showed up at the base very upset, dragging along Boukou by the hand. The man kept pushing his daughter towards Jimmy as he tried to explain something about his other children. The poor father had finally learned what had happened to his three boys who had disappeared. They told him that the boys had been taken to a military clinic in the middle of Albania where they had been murdered. They had removed their organs in order to sell them on the black market for transplants in Europe. Boukou’s father wept as he begged Jimmy to take his youngest daughter so that she wouldn’t suffer the same fate as his other children. Jimmy alternated between stroking the little girl’s head, holding his own head in his hands and trying to 198
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calm the bereaved father. How could he save the child? To begin with, it was against the force rules. He was a soldier. He would be leaving soon for Athens because his tour was coming to an end. He asked about the KFOR forces and told Boukou’s father to speak to the American troops about how they could help his family. The man didn’t give up; he wouldn’t stop pushing the child towards him. Before he left, disappointed, Jimmy forced all the cash he had on him into his hand.
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Kosovo changed Jimmy. The smell of gun powder and fire were still with him when he got back to Athens. Aisha and Boukou visited his dreams, turning them into nightmares. He didn’t know how to channel what he was feeling into thoughts and meaningful reflections on the human condition. He would sit at a little café near the sea in Alimo trying to make sense of what he had experienced. He wanted to start fresh. Vivi, who had been waiting for him to come home for so long, found him changed. He was contemplative and had withdrawn from his old friends. The only thing he wanted to do with Vivi was go to the movies because there he didn’t have to talk. They had been together for a long time but they didn’t live together because they didn’t have a place yet. Jimmy didn’t have his own place either. He had been living with his aunt, his mother’s sister, ever since having lost both of his parents within just six months of each other. He had met Vivi almost immediately afterwards. She was a Greek-Canadian who had returned to Greece with her immigrant parents. She worked in a burger joint but she’d had turned her job into a science. Jimmy had studied tourism but the only work he found in Athens was as a waiter. After a friend hooked him up, he began working on yachts where the money was better. More important than the money was getting 199
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away from Vivi, with the added bonus that whenever the yacht docked he got the chance to hang out and listen to reggae. Time passed and Jimmy still hadn’t made any decisions about his life. The only change was the trips he went on with the yacht crew. He found himself on the sea, the little islands and the deserted shores they stopped at. He would remember the fairytale of the little mermaid’s unrequited love that his Amorgian mother used to tell him. “But be careful,” she had warned him, giving him a turquoise bead as protection because on the island of Amorgos they say that mermaids have the evil eye. He had kept the bead all these years. As he got older, when his father would return from his seafaring journeys, he would take him swimming in Salamina, where they rented a summer house when he was on leave. Jimmy would dive deep into the sea with his father to find the huge, strange, triangular shell on the sea floor, called a pinnidae. “They’re mermaid food,” he told him. “Eat them and you’ll become a sailor too.” “Do you think that’s why I like yachts?” he would ask Vivi all the time. When he looked at her she often resembled a mermaid herself. She dyed her hair red and wore it in round, bouncy curls that made her head look twice as big as it was, that’s why he sometimes called her “Medusa.” Since Vivi was the only flirty, tender mermaid around, he also used to say that she behaved like one too. “Jimmy you’re a grown man and you still believe in mermaids and fairies. Aren’t you at all embarrassed?” Vivi would ask when he said things like that. The mermaid fairytale didn’t end there. His father had told him the whole story about Alexander the Great’s sister. He and other sailors had sworn to have seen her as far away as the shores of Gibraltar. If the sea was rough you could even hear her song. His father had told him that she sang about 200
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her beloved and her sorrow that no one could ever love her enough to make her a real woman so that she could leave the sea behind. A German man he’d met on the yacht told him that mermaids also live in the Rhine. They sit on the rocks in the middle of the river, singing and brushing their hair. The locals called them “Undines” and the legend was that if they fell in love with a mortal man and had his child, they would sacrifice their immortality. All these stories had such an effect on him that he went out and bought books on the subject to learn more. He looked at the pictures that had been drawn of the beautiful creatures. In his imagination they were even more lovely and strange than in the pictures. He had found an interest other than reggae. One day Vivi brought him a newspaper that had a story about the tsunami which had hit the Fiji islands; along with all the weird fish that the huge wave had washed up on shore they had found a mermaid! “Vivi, I can’t believe it! They even took a picture,” he said showing her the paper. “Jimmy that’s not a mermaid, that’s the devil himself in that picture. Why don’t you go see for yourself so we can put an end to all this nonsense,” his girlfriend said calmly. The truth was that whereas the thing in the photograph may have had the body of both a fish and a woman, the rest was something truly disgusting and disturbing. He wasn’t discouraged. His conclusion was that if it was in the newspaper it had to be true: mermaids did exist. The time had finally come for him to make some decisions. His elderly aunt had recently passed away, leaving him alone in the world. The good news was that his kind aunt had left him her house and a small nest egg to get him started. Between the horrible things he had witnessed in Kosovo, his mermaid fantasies, his sea blood, and his yacht experience, 201
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he came to a decision and announced it to Vivi: “I’m going to buy a boat and get into the tourism industry,” he said. “Where Jimmy? Here in Alimo?” “Nope. I’m going to the islands and I’ll end up wherever the sea breeze blows me.” “And what about me Jimmy?” Vivi asked him, gum in her mouth, mobile phone in hand as she compulsively checked to see if she had any missed calls. “You’re going to be my Bouboulina,” he told her, pinching her cheek. His idea had put him in a good mood. The reason he had chosen Vivi to be his girlfriend was that she was a great reggae dancer. It was as if she was Jamaican. So that night he took her back to his place to listen to Locomondo, an awesome, new Greek band that sang reggae, in Greek. They danced like mad to the rhythm of the music to celebrate the plan, even though she wasn’t crazy about it herself. She did like Jimmy though; she liked the way he bent his knees and swayed to the reggae music and what she really liked was his transformation since leaving the army. His hair had grown out and he had had twisted it into thick dreadlocks, which hung all around his head and face. The look paid homage to his reggae philosophy as he wanted to look like Bob Marley, plus it was in style. Maybe it was all of that combined, or maybe it was because Vivi liked it when he looked hip and different. She hated stiffs and yuppies. So together they took a ferry boat one day and went to Spetses, to go look at a wooden schooner that some Brit was selling. It didn’t take him long to decide. He paid up and it was his. The truth is that it was a beautiful design; it had been first launched as a yacht in England and when it started to deteriorate, a sailor who liked to travel had bought it and sailed it to Greece. In keeping with his budget, Jimmy hired a local boat carpenter to make a few changes and give it a fresh coat of paint. He sent the sails off for repairs and his 202
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little boat was hoisted up to the shipyard for its overhaul. He wanted to add wooden benches that would run along the sides of the main deck next to the railing, for people to sit on during the trips he was planning, and for fishermen to fish from. He wanted to add a platform to the stern so that deep sea divers would be able to dive off the boat. Ideally he wanted to create more deck space so that he could add a few reclining chairs for women to sunbathe on. Jimmy had a plan and a vision. He had thought of everything. He’d even thought about where they were going to dance to reggae and had left just enough space to create a tiny dance floor. Despite all his detailed plans, when everything was completed, as they were leaving on the last day, the shipyard painter yelled out, “Jimmy, what’s her name going to be so I can paint the prow?” “What else?” Jimmy said, smiling. “VIVI!” Vivi shouted back without hesitation. Jimmy looked at her angrily, gave her a little shove, and shouted back at the painter loudly so he’d be sure to hear: “No. Her name’s MERMAID. You hear me? MERMAID.”
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Jimmy drifted back to Athens on a sea of happiness, filled with mermaids, to go pack his things. In just three or four months at the most, he would begin his new life. He was far away from the heavy memories that had been holding him back; his life was going to be neither dull nor conventional. He was escaping the “new order of things,” as the Americans were labeling the future; he was avoiding the lies and dishonor of his own country’s politics. It wouldn’t take much more for him to have had enough and start protesting and fighting with the police in the streets. “I’ll start throwing Molotov cocktails 203
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and become an anarchist the way I’m going,” he would say to Vivi. Of course who knows if she heard him through her headphones, which were always jammed into her ears. When she wasn’t talking on her mobile phone, she was listening to music on it. The only reason Jimmy never actually took to the streets was that reggae had turned him into a “Rastafarian”—a member of the movement that Bob Marley promoted. It wasn’t just about the hair, he had immersed himself in the deeper political and religious meanings of the movement; not to say that he still wouldn’t rather have someone chop of his hands than his dreadlocks. The movement had begun in Jamaica and it spread the word that change was going to come in the new millennium, for better or worse. He believed that a higher power was going to destroy his generation’s leaders who were corrupt, unjust and wily, full of evil thoughts and plans. Because of his Rastafarian beliefs Jimmy didn’t eat anything other than natural foods and he used only products that were pure and organic with no chemical additives. He didn’t smoke or drink alcohol but he wasn’t as strict when it came to dope. He ascribed therapeutic properties to the marijuana plant and thought that using it made him wiser and better able to understand other people. He had introduced it into his diet and routine. Cannabis didn’t just lift his mood and make him feel better, it was the thrill of doing something “forbidden” that made him feel so good. The feeling of rebellion and freedom that comes from going against the grain of society’s rules gave him a heady rush. Two months had gone by since he had made the decision and began to pack his things to move to the boat. He didn’t have many personal belongings other than a few clothes. He filled his boxes with reggae CDs and all the other household supplies he would need on the boat.
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One day the doorbell rang. What he saw when he opened the door was something he never could have imagined even in his wildest dreams. Boukou was standing in the doorway! She was wearing a little red dress, embroidered with colorful flowers. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a few unruly wisps escaping, making her look a bit unkempt. Her dark gypsy beauty looked exotic and strange when she was so far from home. Her alert, black eyes and her stubborn pout completed the vision of the angelic waif. She was holding a small backpack in one hand and a cheap, slightly dirty, stuffed rabbit in the other. A tall middle-aged woman was standing behind her. As soon as Boukou saw Jimmy she looked slightly alarmed at his long hair but as soon as she was sure that it was really him, she flew into his arms without letting go of the rabbit. Jimmy held her tight, letting out a constant “ooo” which no doubt was related to her name, Boukou. A few minutes later they were sitting in the middle of his living room amongst the half-packed boxes. Ms. Yelena, who was accompanying Boukou, told him the story of how they came to be there. “I’m a Serbian Orthodox woman, but I live here in Athens. I help my countrymen as much as I can through the church. Boukouria’s father helped her escape the country by sending her to Montenegro then Bari, Italy, and from there she came to Greece to find you, Jimmy. Her father used the money that you had given him in Kosovo to send his daughter to you. He was afraid for her life, another rumor was circulating about kidnapped children and he couldn’t let it happen again. Girls are sold into prostitution rings where they are horribly abused and treated like slaves from a very young age. Her father knew that the only way to save her was to send her to you. He implores you to keep her with you; you seemed to have taken a liking to her and he knew that you would take care of her. She can do all 205
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your housework for you in exchange for food and board. Her father asks that you enroll her in school so that she can learn how to read and write. Her family may be Roma, but they are Orthodox. Jimmy sat looking at her, his mouth gaping open the whole time she was talking. Now that she had finished saying what she had to say, he had lost his ability to speak. He had no idea where to begin and what to say. He patted Boukou’s little head, taking her backpack out of her clenched hands and shoved it behind the sofa. After having thought for a moment, he gestured to the scattered remnants of his half-packed life and said: “You see I’m leaving and . . .” “Where are you going?” Ms. Yelena asked. “I’ve decided to change my line of work and am going to live and work on a sailboat, on some island . . .” “You should take her with you. There are schools on the islands,” she said before he even had the chance to finish his sentence. “But . . . I don’t know whether little girls can live on boats . . .” Jimmy stammered before Ms. Yelena cut him off once again. “Of course they can. Listen Jimmy,” she said decisively. “If Boukouria is sent back, she will grow up to be a whore and nothing more. Her chances at a decent life are virtually nonexistent; especially when it gets out that she was secretly taken out of the country. The worst possible future you can imagine for her here is still better than if she had stayed in Kosovo. Are you married? Do you have a wife or other children? “I don’t have any children. I have a wife but . . .” he didn’t even bother to complete this sentence, He just waved his hand as if to say, “well, what is there to say now?” “Well, God has seen fit to give you a child and he is asking for you to help it live and grow.” 206
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Jimmy was utterly confused. He looked at the little girl’s sad face. Her eyes were glued on him, even though she couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying. She knew that the conversation was about her and she was watching his every move, trying to guess what was happening. He kept patting her on the head. He had never had to decide on another person’s fate so quickly. He was being asked to make a decision about a human being the same way one decides whether or not to take home an abandoned puppy one finds on the street. He knew what he thought about the state of society and even the situation of the human race, but he had no solution for a situation like this. He honestly didn’t know what the right thing to do would be. A voice inside his head said, “listen up man, either she stays here or she winds up a child prostitute . . . black or white!” He got over his initial shock and realized that the choice was pretty clear. There was no doubt that for her to wind up a prostitute was horrible, but the other option was even slightly more difficult. It was a positive move for her to come here, but was it an equally positive move for him to solely take on the responsibility of a child who had no relation to him? He knew that he couldn’t refuse to help save a child. Therefore, the second option was the right one. Since the first option was wrong and the second option was right, he had to do what was right. Right? “Right,” the little voice inside of his head confirmed. “Well, Ms. Yelena, why doesn’t Boukou stay here with me for a few months and we’ll see whether she’s happy and go from there,” Jimmy said to the woman. He looked over at the little girl who was anxiously waiting for a sign. He got up and started dancing reggae just like he had done when he first met her on the military base. Boukou smiled and, blushing from her embarrassment, got up to give him a kiss on the cheek through his dreads, which tickled her nose.
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Ms. Yelena seemed pleased with herself for having come up with at least a temporary solution to the problem of her little ward. She got up to leave saying: “Very well Jimmy, don’t worry. I’ll take care of her papers so that you don’t run into any problems. I’m sure that she loves you very much. I wouldn’t have brought her all this way if she hadn’t assured me of it. She will enjoy living with you. You’re young and have enough energy to care for a child. She’s a good girl and don’t forget to come by our church every so often; we are the reason she’s alive today after all. Here is my phone number and the church number if you need anything. Her clothes and everything else she needs is in her bag. Goodbye Jimmy.”
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The “Mermaid” set sail for the old port of the island of Spetses a few months later. She was all spruced up and had a fresh coat of dark blue paint with a bright white stripe at the waterline, a red hull and varnished wooden railings. She sported two masts; the taller mainmast and the slightly shorter foremast. She was decked out with two topsails, a mainsail, the foresail, and three smaller sails that where attached to the bowsprit, the fore staysail, the jib and the flying jib. The crew consisted of Jimmy the captain, Philippe, the Filipino sailor, Vivi in the galley, and Boukou as the skipper. Summer had already arrived and the fine vessel set sail on its maiden voyage. As soon as they left the harbor, a southwestern breeze inflated the sails, angling the craft slightly to the left, showing off her beauty and seafaring grace. “Where we goin’ captain?” Vivi yelled. “That way!” Jimmy answered. He didn’t care about the destination; all he wanted was the journey. He found an air pocket and set her on course to anywhere. 208
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Boukou found her place on the very first voyage. She sat at the tip of the bow, her legs straddling the bowsprit, her sharp eyes piercing the foaming waters. She loved it; her eyes shone brightly, as if someone had just given her all the world’s treasures. Jimmy watched her sitting up ahead and was reminded of the carved mermaids that sailors would attach to the bow of their vessels. He told her that she had become “his little mermaid.” He pinned the turquoise bead onto her dress, the one that his mother had given him, as protection against the evil eye of the Amorgos sea maiden. Boukou stayed in her special spot for as long as the boat was sailing. At night he put her to bed as if she had always been his child. He pulled the sheet up under her chin to tuck her in. He bought her books to read with the Greek alphabet, and most importantly, a picture book with the story of the little mermaid. He would read her the story for hours before she finally fell asleep even though she didn’t even speak a word of Greek yet. He showed her the pictures and she nodded her little head wisely to let him know that she understood the story. If she didn’t understand it the first night she would eventually because the fairytale was always the same. It was the only story he knew. Vivi hadn’t decided whether her relationship with Jimmy was for the long haul, but she knew that she wanted to spend the summer on a boat. She didn’t lose any sleep over Boukou’s sudden appearance and seemed almost indifferent to the matter. When Jimmy tried to talk to her about things that he wanted them to decide on together, she rarely even took her earphones out to listen. Vivi seemed to get along with Boukou in any case. Vivi shared her gum, cooked her soy burgers and sat down with her to teach her the Greek alphabet and her first Greek words, so that they could begin to communicate. Jimmy consciously made space for Vivi to interact with Boukou during the time that he was saying his Rastafarian 209
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prayers along with listening to reggae and using marijuana. It wasn’t just a habit he had, but part of a daily ritual that he argued was alluded to in the Bible. He didn’t smoke the cannabis. Instead he incorporated it into his food, baking cookies and cakes with it and sometimes drinking it as a kind of tea, which he steeped from the plant’s leaves. He believed that his habit brought him greater spiritual clarity and allowed him to comprehend things that he had never noticed before. In order to arrive at that place of heightened consciousness, he would pass through a phase of lethargy and apathy. During that time, he experienced everything as dark and depressing. Images of dead Aisha would haunt him; he would picture Boukou’s dead brothers, cut up into a million pieces, or Mikis’s face, burned from the Molotov cocktail. He was tormented by memories of the absurd war he had witnessed. He perceived human beings as savage animals, full of malice and hostility, consequently losing his will to live amongst them. He would be in this terrible state until taking the second dose. After consuming the second dose he would suddenly feel spiritually elevated, he would dance to the rhythms of reggae and smile. When he felt this good he could come up with solutions for the day’s problems and the future looked bright. Jimmy ingested the cannabis to experience the high that was otherwise unreachable. Then it was over and the whole cycle began again. His highs and lows alienated him from the world; he rarely met people whom he could relate to. His taste in music and philosophy made it hard for him to conform to the mainstream. At night he would often have hallucinations and visions of people that existed only in his mind. Mermaids arising out of his own psychedelic imagination would appear before him. Some were charming and seductive, naked with round, firm breasts and shining eyes; some had hair braided like Vivi’s, others let it loose, the damp tresses cascading over their shoulders. They would swim in the pink and blue waves, the 210
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reflections from the water causing their fish-shaped silhouettes to glimmer. Other times they would take the shape of Medusa, with tentacles instead of hair. Wrathful, angry sea monsters with wicked eyes, their bottom half covered with thick scales. They would roil the waters, ready to make his boat sink as easily as if it were a mere walnut shell. When he was in a good mood Jimmy would light up at the sight of Boukou’s face. He would twist her hair into mini dreads, like his, when she asked him to. He had bought her new clothes and shoes. A pair of shorts and all kinds of tops; she looked like any other little girl instead of the gypsy waif who had arrived on his doorstep. She asked him for a mobile phone and he got her one of those too. She wanted to be able to send her number to her family so that they could call her whenever they could. She knew that they would only be able to speak once in a while and with great caution, as her father had spread the rumor that she had disappeared. She was a quiet child and she seemed happy with her new life. She adored Jimmy above all else. From the very first day, she would perch on his lap as he steered the “Mermaid,” looking for attention as if she were his own daughter. The weather and the wind were pushing them on a westerly course towards the Myrtoo Sea. They passed in between the islands of Sifnos and Kimolos, skirted Ios and Irakleia and docked at Amorgos. Jimmy had selected the island as his first port. His mother had been born there and he still had a few distant relatives on the island, and in any case he would probably find a way to get started. At dusk, on their third day of the trip, they entered Katapola and docked the boat. They set up a wooden sign on the promenade that advertised their services; it wasn’t a short list either. On Mondays and Fridays they had scheduled deep-sea fishing excursions, and during the rest of the week they offered morning sails to 211
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the island’s most remote and otherwise inaccessible beaches. The afternoons were reserved for diving expeditions. They also advertised special offers for nighttime parties and sunset birthday cruises complete with a complimentary cake, ice-cream, and champagne. They were in business. Jimmy used the first cash he made to go out and hire a Greek teacher for Boukou, so that she could start school in the fall. She had her lessons in the early morning so that they could then leave for their daily tours. They found a beautiful little wooden boat on the island, which they bought and spruced up. They named her the “Little Mermaid.” They used her in shallow waters and to run all sorts of other errands. From the moment they got her, Boukou claimed her for her own. She settled in whenever the big boat was sailing; they tied the little boat to the big boat and towed her along. Boukou would put on a hat, hop into the little boat because its size suited her better, and sit there by herself, proud as a captain. This was just one of her new hobbies. Jimmy had some scuba diving gear. He suited her up in a mask and oxygen tank and would take her down with him to look at the fish. He started her out in shallow water but she quickly got the hang of it and they ventured deeper. They collected shells and coral, using some of it to make necklaces for Boukou at first, but they later started to sell them. Jimmy shared his love of the underwater world with the little girl. They spent hours on the beach skipping smooth stones onto the calm sea. They kept track of the skips and the person who managed the most was declared the winner. At night they would turn up the reggae and dance slowly and rhythmically, moving their hands and feet, until they were overcome with giggles. The little girl was bold and fearless. She was happy and carefree, far away from the dangers of her past. She soaked up everything about
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the world around her and learned from her new father. She had even started calling Jimmy “Daddy.” There lives went on like this for another two or three years. Over the winter, Boukou went to school on the island and Vivi went back to Athens. The “Mermaid” was both their home and lifeblood. On cold nights when the wind would whip the ropes against the masts and whistle through the rigging, Jimmy would read Boukou new stories about mermaids from books they had bought. Since she spoke Greek now, he could finally tell her the story of Alexander the Great’s sister, who spilled his water of immortality and in her grief threw herself into the sea and became half woman, half fish. As the old women on Amorgos will tell you, she has been known to latch onto the bows of ships and ask the sailors, “is King Alexander still alive?” If they don’t know any better and answer, “no, he’s dead” she whips the waves into a fury and drowns the vessel as well as those aboard. If the sailors know what she’s after and answer, “yes, he’s alive and well,” her face becomes serene as does the sea and then she begins to sing and play her lyre, accompanying the sailors on their journey. Of all the local seamen that had spoken of this, all said the same thing and swore that the story was true. Not only this, to every island they travelled to, such as Paros and Naxos, they heard the same story. Vivi sent them three books from Athens with stories of German, Dutch and English mermaids. One day Jimmy saw a girl sitting on a rock singing as she collected limpets. His mind was foggy from the marijuana and it took him a while to realize that the girl was Boukou and she was singing a song she had learned in school. At first glance he had mistaken her for a fairytale mermaid. Once he recognized her he wondered if perhaps she was the mermaid his mother had predicted would come into his life. She swam like a fish, as if she had been born in the sea, she
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bedecked herself with seashells like a gyspy queen and was often found in the sea even during the winter. Next summer business was booming. Jimmy booked a deal on Mykonos. They would pick up groups of tourists and take them on daily swimming trips and excursions. The money was good so he decided to move to Mykonos for a few months. When Vivi arrived from Athens, they set out on a northerly course. It was a quiet day and the sea was tranquil, not a ripple in the water. Philippe the sailor had raised the jib to harness a little extra breeze and then went off to bed because he had a fever. The “Mermaid” was moving on her engine power, not fast, but steadily along. Boukou, as was her habit, had hopped into her little sailboat and trailed behind for the entire journey. When they had gotten past Naxos, Jimmy’s eyelids became heavy with fatigue and he began nodding off. The heat and the effects of the weed were overpowering him. He called out to Vivi who sauntered over, earphones in place, a magazine in her hands. He pointed out Mykonos in the distance and showed her how to keep them on course. It wasn’t the first time Vivi had been at the rudder, she was used to taking over while the crew hoisted the sails or dropped anchor. She had a steady hand and was a good navigator. Jimmy waved to Boukou who was trailing behind in her own little boat before falling into his bunk for a nap. An hour or so had gone by when Jimmy came up on deck, rested and refreshed. Vivi was at the wheel, her cell phone blasting music into her ears. When Jimmy’s eyes cleared from the fog of sleep, he looked behind them, to the starboard and port sides and started to yell: “Where’s Boukou? Vivi, where is the child? The little boat’s missing Vivi. What happened?” Vivi, who didn’t realize what had happened, turned back and didn’t see the little boat bobbing in the wake. Jimmy cried 214
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out in panic. The boat was brought to a halt and he frantically searched for the little girl, thinking that she may have come aboard but to no avail. Vivi assured him that she had seen Boukou sitting in her boat not long before and had turned and waved at her. After that she wasn’t able to say what had happened. She hadn’t heard anything because she had had her earphones in with loud music blaring. Jimmy examined the stern and the cleat that the rope had been attached to. The rope was trailing in the water, but no little boat was attached to the other end. The end of the rope was still twisted, showing where the knot had been that had held the “Little Mermaid.” How had the knot come undone? Had Boukou untied it or was it an accident, leaving the little boat behind? He could not say. He channeled his anger at Vivi. No matter how much he yelled and threw blame at her she couldn’t come up with a convincing answer for what had happened. They grabbed the binoculars and surveyed the horizon, but there was nothing there. They yelled her name out over the sea. “Boukou, Boukou . . .” There was no answer to their cries. “We’re turning around.” Jimmy grabbed the helm and turned the craft around on the spot. They woke Philippe up and handed the helm over to him so that they could take position at the bow and survey the waters, searching for any sign of her. They looked for a long time, longer than the time he had napped. Boukou and the “Little Mermaid,” had vanished. Vivi suddenly remembered her cell phone. Did she have it with her or had she left it on the boat? They called her number, the phone rang but there was no answer. “So she has it with her,” Jimmy said. “But why hasn’t she called?” 215
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“Let it ring. I’m going down below to see if she left it in her bunk,” Vivi said. In a few moments she returned with Boukou’s mobile phone in her hand. Despair washed over Jimmy. In his mind the phone had been his last chance of finding her. If she had it with her, she would be able to call him, to let him know where she was so he could come get her. What terrible luck. They notified the coast guard over their wireless emergency radio. The authorities told them to stay in position and that they would send a search boat immediately. They sent out word to all the boats in the area as well. They searched until nightfall but Boukou was nowhere to be found. A helicopter arrived on the scene the next morning. They searched the entire area and calculated where the current may have carried her, but Boukou wasn’t to be found. They examined every possibility. She may have abandoned her little boat and tried to swim ashore or she could still be adrift. There was no sign of either her or the little boat. The results of the search reached Jimmy’s emergency radio, there was no news. Jimmy had continued to search for her himself, but to no avail. He was overcome with despair. At the end of the third day the authorities called off the search, but Jimmy persisted. He laid out a plan on a nautical map and zigzagged the sea horizontally and vertically, like a crossword puzzle, combing over an area of fifty nautical miles in the “Mermaid.” Yet he still found nothing, not even the little boat. He sailed along the whole northern side of Naxos and the south shore of Mykonos. Not a trace. They docked on both islands and went ashore. They asked questions, turning over every rock on every beach. “The sea parted and swallowed up my little mermaid,” Jimmy said in tears. He abandoned his job and cancelled everything he had planned. He headed back to Amorgos after nearly a month of 216
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searching. He wanted to throw himself into the sea and drown. He cried like a child for his lost daughter and his own sorry state. Deep inside of him, he heard the voice that had helped make up his mind about keeping Boukou, when she had first come back into his life. Now the voice taunted him saying, “you incompetent fool. You did her more harm than good.” He arrived in Katapola and docked the “Mermaid” in the port. He began the next phase of his search. He posted notices online, and contacted organizations that look for missing children. He sent her picture everywhere, to every coast guard and port authority on every nearby island. He fell into a deep depression. He sank into the endless depths of his own mind, as dark as the deep blue sea he imagined Boukou drowning in. He pictured her face on the body Aisha, the girl in Kosovo, whose hair was still damp when they found her body. The memory was so horrific that he shook his head to dislodge it from his mind. His only wish was that she had become an immortal mermaid swimming in the sea for all eternity. Maybe that way he would see her again someday. A Rastafarian friend of his had once told him that “if you want something badly enough, the universe conspires with you.” If only she had become a real mermaid, it would be better than if she was lost and had abruptly vanished from his life. An experienced sailor had told him something different in a café on Amorgos one day. “The destiny of a lost life is to be lost,” he said. Boukou’s teacher told him to dedicate a shrine to the little girl and light a candle as tall as she was, in the church of The Virgin of Katapola. He did that too. If someone had told him to jump into the sea and drown himself, he gladly would have. He would tremble and sob, from fear and misery both. His only comfort was Boukou’s little red mobile phone. He carried it with him, wherever he went and checked it often for a message from 217
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her. If she was ever able to call him she would try to reach him at this number. Her number. As the days went by without any word, he pushed Vivi and Philippe away. He sat alone, leaning against the foremast, looking out to sea. He felt that his soul had left his body when Boukou disappeared. His body and limbs felt heavy and his legs couldn’t support him well enough so that he could dance again in sorrow as he felt moved to do. He lost his appetite for work and he took down the colorful little flags that adorned the “Mermaid.” He put away the sign with the tour schedule and closed himself off from the world and retreated into the dark corners of his mind. One day, all of a sudden, he unfurled his sails and set out for where he had begun, the island of Spetses.
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He sought out redemption in everything that could give it to him. He wanted to sell the “Mermaid” and go to Kosovo to find the child’s real father; he wanted to go back to Athens. Instead, he did nothing at all. His thoughts of leaving arose out of desperation and despair, but as the days went they started to dissipate. Some of the local men from the shipyard who had helped him fix up his boat took pity on him and stood by him. They gave him odd jobs and had him take tourists on beach trips to Zoheria and Agious Anargyrous. The work and obligations brought him back to reality but he was alone now and he had a hard time without a crew, especially on longer excursions. Still, he didn’t want anyone around him. He never wanted to see Vivi again because he held her responsible for what had happened. He thought she might have even let it happen on purpose, out of jealousy. He thought she was as stupid and mean as Medusa, whom she resembled. She was what he hated most in the world now, and he never wanted to lay eyes on her again. 218
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He didn’t even dance reggae anymore. The only thing that calmed him was when he dove into the sea and descended into the deep. It was the only place he felt at peace. He didn’t disturb the fish, the seaweed or the shells. The slow decent of his body into the sea matched the feeling in his soul. He explored underwater caves, searched the crevices of rocks and stroked the shy octopuses. He fed the vicious moray eel and raced the needle fish. He made friends with the black tip and gold blotch groupers and the lobsters kept him company. It was a different world, a silent community, which soothed his chaotic thoughts. He had no business above the waves anymore. He was much better off here. Monemvasia was one of the destinations on his itinerary of tours. He had been entranced with the place ever since his first visit to the rock. The cobblestone narrow alleyways of the castle settlement that lay at its base, the houses and the forty churches nestled into the nooks and crannies of the town transported him back in time. On his second visit he had gone diving on the south side of the rock where he had discovered an old shipwreck with a cemetery of stone coffins. The cargo of another vessel lay nearby. It was a more recent shipwreck, carrying heavy cannons and ammunition. No traces of the boats’ hulls remained. He found the remains of a third, even newer ship, a little deeper. The iron hull lay heavily on the sea floor tipped to its side. It looked like a small tug that had probably sunk after the war. “There’s life here,” he said, exhaling bubbles from his diving mask. That night he was anchored, waiting for the tourists to return from dry land. He suddenly heard a woman singing, a sound that seemed to be coming from the rocks. He had been sitting in Boukou’s spot, straddling the bowsprit when he heard the woman’s voice. He tried to listen harder but the song was being carried by the breeze and it would fade in and out of his 219
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range. “It could be the cannabis,” the thought. Without realizing what he was doing he found himself in the water, fully dressed. As he swam quietly over to the rocks, the song became clearer. The chill of the water brought him to his senses and he knew that he wasn’t hallucinating. He stopped splashing the water, ducking quickly underneath the mellow waves. Only his nose and eyes were above the surface, just enough so that he could breathe and see. That’s when he saw her clearly, from the moonlit reflection on the tranquil sea. A mermaid was sitting on a rock, untangling her long hair. The slow melodious song escaping her lips was drifting into the night air. He didn’t move a muscle or make a sound but she suddenly disappeared into the water as if she had sensed his presence. He swam over to a rock and hauled himself up to get a good look over the dark water. The only thing he could see was the reflection of the moon on the sea. He clambered over to the high rock she had been sitting on and saw that it was wet. It was too far away from the waves to have been wet by the sea and all the surrounding rocks were dry. And yet, this one was wet. When he got back to the boat the tourists were yelling at him to come pick them up from the shore, interrupting his train of thought. He was very flustered by what he had seen and they picked up on his anxiety. When he told them what he had seen and heard, they took it as a joke and teased him by saying that it must have been a while since he got laid if he had started seeing naked mermaids on rocks at night! “Say what you will,” he said and went below to his bunk. He grabbed his books on mermaids and myths and began reading in earnest. The following day after having docked and gotten rid of the tourists, he told the others that he was leaving to go back to Monemvasia.
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He untied the ropes and headed back to find his mermaid. He anchored in the same place and sat watching the rock where he had spotted the mermaid. Nothing was moving. He assumed that she must live down amongst the shipwrecks. He strapped on his oxygen tank and his mask and dove into the water. The sight was breathtaking. Two intricately carved coffins and various urns and shards of pottery met his eyes. The cannons and cannonballs from the Venetian ship lay nearby next to what was left of the rigging’s pulleys and tie weights. In the deep he could make out the looming metal hull of the tug boat. He explored the wrecks for as long as his oxygen lasted. “This is where I will build the mermaids’ home,” he thought as he rose to the surface. He immediately put his plan into action. First, he took four long posts and secured them in plastic buckets using cement. He threw them overboard and stood them upright on a level stretch of sand at the bottom of the sea, between the cannons and the coffins. He then attached horizontal beams to connect the posts, creating the perimeter of a room. He nailed boards onto the frame to make the walls. He used pieces of burlap and oilcloth, which he secured to the posts, so that the edges were free to flow in the sea’s current. Now he needed furniture. He found a metal bed in the village, a nightstand, chairs and a charming little wrought iron living room set. He threw his loot overboard and arranged the room. He put the bed against one wall and the glass-topped table in the middle of the room with the chairs around it. He then took a picture of Boukou and had a photographer print the image onto a porcelain surface. He hung the picture above the bed. Then he began to decorate. He threw everything that wouldn’t float overboard; Plates, bottles, glass lamps, even silverware. When he was finished a few days later, he had created a little home. He added something new every day. One day a huge yacht anchored next to him. That 221
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night they threw a party and invited him aboard. The drunken tourist started breaking plates. When Jimmy saw the pretty nautical designs on the dishware he jumped in to stop them. “No,” he told them, “when at sea, the custom is to throw the plates overboard for the mermaids, instead of breaking them.” They loved the idea and started throwing whatever they had in hand into the water with a series of splashes. They even threw an armchair overboard! The next day, after they left, Jimmy dove underwater and gathered everything up to add to the mermaid’s home. The days went on and the mermaid had yet to appear. He had read that if he managed to make the mermaid fall in love with him, and if she spent a whole night with him, not returning to her kingdom until sunrise, then she would lose her immortality and become an ordinary woman. “Sounds good to me,” he thought. But where was she? He began searching for her in the eyes of every woman he met. He looked among the women who sunbathed on the rocks, who walked through the narrow lanes of the castle town, and even among the female tourists he took to the beach on his boat. Out of all the women, only one made any impression on him. He met her one night at a birthday party on the boat. Everyone else was drinking too much and smearing cake on each other, only she had dived into the water and showed no signs of wanting to get out. Later she went and sat on the same rock as the mermaid had sat on. When Jimmy saw her toss her hair in a spray of water droplets, he got it into his head that she was his mermaid. He jumped into the water and swam towards her. The drops of sea water on her naked body shone like diamonds in the moonlight. She didn’t seem to mind his company; in fact, she reached out a hand to help him climb onto the rock. She introduced herself as Juliette; she was French 222
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of Algerian descent. She was rather petite with mulatto traits and straight, dark brown hair. Her eyes were slanted but he could not discern their color, they almost looked transparent in the moonlight. She told him that she enjoyed the freedom of complete nudity because her family had always pressured her to be modest when she was a girl, and had even wanted her to cover up with a headscarf. Jimmy began telling her about mermaids, and how much she looked and acted like a fairy. She listened to him talk about his sea goddesses for quite a while. She liked the picture he was painting for her, especially because up until that point in her life any man who approached her tried to flatter her by saying how much she resembled Scheherazade, the mythical queen in One Thousand and One Nights. “To Algerian women, love means pain,” she said, “usually because they are going to bed with a man that they did not choose.” When they got back to the “Mermaid,” the party was over and everybody had left. Juliette suggested that she stay for a while and offered to bring him something to drink. At times like these Jimmy drank non-alcoholic beer. She opted for something a little stronger. She grabbed a bottle of champagne that was left over from the party and started drinking straight from the bottle. Jimmy went to get the cannabis goodies, which he always had on hand. “I want to stay here with you all night long and leave at dawn,” she told him passionately, biting into her first cannabis cookie, as she rubbed up against him like a cat. “Did she really say that she would leave at dawn?” Jimmy wondered. This was the mermaid disguised as a woman! His anticipation was building. He told her all about the mermaid’s home he had created at the bottom of the sea, underneath his boat. “If she sees it she’ll want to stay. Then she’ll reveal her fishy tail,” he thought as the cannabis cookies started to take effect. 223
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“Can you take me there?” Juliette asked him. He didn’t waste a moment. He turned on the lights he had on the bottom of his boat, put her in a mask and flippers, and slipped a tank onto her back. He put on his own equipment and grabbed a battery-operated underwater flashlight and in they dove. He watched her swim like a fish underwater. In his mind she had already transformed into one. He was unable to speak; in the depths of the sea, all he could do was move. She was everything he had dreamt of and believed in. Her body movements and her silhouette seemed blue due to the rays of the spotlights, her naked breasts pulsed with the sea current and her dark hair swayed like seaweed. Words were not needed to convince Jimmy that she was his sea goddess. Juliette seemed impressed by the sight that met her eyes. She sat in the sunken armchair and examined the objects which decorated the room. The stone sculptures, the urns, the dishes and glassware, the curtains that moved with the underwater currents, which made the room even more otherworldly. It was really quite extraordinary, a manifestation of Jimmy’s imagination. Juliette pulled Jimmy onto her. She pressed her naked body against his and started beckoning him to make love to her underwater. They thrashed together like orgasmic fish. They embraced like fighting eels. Victims of their passion and the sea, they tried to hold onto anything as they sank deeper into their pleasure, surrendering to their passion. They ended up sitting on the metal bed. Jimmy suddenly pulled out a chain that was attached to the iron headboard at one end. He slipped the other end around Juliette’s wrist and locked it in place. She didn’t resist, thinking that it was a part of their lustful tryst. But when Jimmy wrenched off her mask and took away her oxygen tank, her survival instinct took over; she began to fight back to free herself. She really did resemble a dying fish, flailing around wildly. Her 224
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every movement released air from her lungs, allowing the sea water to enter her. In a few seconds she stopped moving. Her two final spasms freed the last bubbles of air from her mouth as her soul left her body. She stayed like that, almost lying down, illuminated by the boat’s spotlights. Her hair floated in the dark depths of the sea, both her body and soul hovered. Jimmy approached her; he undid the chain and took her lifeless body in his arms. He slowly floated her towards the coffins. With some effort, he managed to push aside the heavy stone top of one of the coffins. He placed Juliette gently inside before pushing the lid back in place. He only left a small opening so that he could see her. He turned off the flashlight and rose to the surface. The sun had begun to rise. He turned off all the lights on the boat and sat at the stern, staring into the deep. He chewed on a few bites of his magic cookies. “No, I won’t let her leave before dawn,” he told himself. “If she’s a mermaid, and I know she is, she is about to reveal her tail. Then she’ll be mine for evermore.” He took a bite out of the second cookie and kept gazing into the sea, trying to discern any movement in its depths.
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Over the next few days, no matter how many times he dived down to check the coffin, he never found a mermaid. .
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