Tom Stone

The Summer of My Greek TavernaNY: Simon and Schuster, 2002.

Bio

• Knows Greece well• Has written several Greek-language books• Went to Patmos to have the solitude to write

a novel• Left Greece 22 years, one wife, and two

children later

Narrative Techniques• Tells a story: clear beginning, middle, end• Labels the sections Appetizers, The Main

Course, Just Desserts, Extra Helpings (recipes)• Goes back and forth between time periods:

being single, married; earlier time on Patmos and when he comes back to run the taverna

• Includes lots of info about Greek thinking• Bittersweet: good and bad things happen• Love of Greece/Patmos is clear• Makes use of Cavafy and other poets

Reservations

• Occasionally tells more gossip than we might need (Theo cheating on his wife, for ex.)

• Too much info about the intimate relationship with his wife (we can imagine)

• Some details are not so interesting; he’s accurate in terms of his experience, but might have edited to avoid so many names

• NB: His difficult year on Patmos mirrors mine on Rhodes!

Appetizers (Hook)• “The phone rang just as I was about to leave

home and trudge through the raw Cretan winter to my tutoring job.

• Our pupils were mostly listless civil servants looking to move up the pay scale and high school students hoping for careers as guides, bank clerks, and tourist police.

• The pay was minimal, and the blackboards sprayed with so many layers of pale green paint that writing on them was often like trying to use chalk on the side of a cargo ship.” (5)

Enlists Empathy• His wife has given up on her dream of being a

famous artist and reproduces Byzantine icons for the tourist trade

• “American that I was, I was still struggling, even at forty-two, to believe that downsizing my dreams and taking on a steady job again was a good thing.” (6)

• His “friend” Theo asks if Tom wants to rent his taverna on Patmos for the summer, based on an idle comment Tom had made some years before.

Dangerous Combination

• Beautiful memories of what happened before at “The Beautiful Helen”

• Dislikes current job• Wants to leave Crete and return to Patmos• Has plenty of illusions about what it would be

like to run a taverna

Back Story• “One of the first things people want to know

is how you do it—how you can just pull up stakes on your career and go off and live on a Greek island.” (cf Phil Doran) (10)

• Common story: “Practically all the foreigners I know who have ended up living in Greece for any extended period of time say the same thing: I just went for a few weeks, but then…

• Went to be alone and work on his writing (cf Iyer in Japan)

Patmos• Chooses the island randomly• Island’s famous history: in A.D. 95, John is sent

into exile from Ephesus by emperor Domitian• After Domitian dies, John prepares to go back,

but first he’s asked to write down his teachings

• Wrote his gospel and had the visions recorded in the Book of Revelations

• Monastery of St. John= island’s most famous attraction

Connection to Livadi• “There are places that seem to be waiting for

you out there somewhere, like unmet lovers, and when, and if, you come upon them, you know, instantly and unquestioningly, that they are the ones.” (20)

• “Like Odysseus, I felt as if I were coming home to Ithaca after a long voyage through the troubled waters of foreign lands whose languages I never really understood.”

• Once on the island, he falls in love:• “She was French and full of mystery, and her

desire to be left alone had mesmerized all of the men on the island.” (22)

• She comes to the island to work on her art, although she eventually gives up and produces commercial art instead

• They eventually marry and have two kids but move to Crete to have better jobs

Detour

Too Much Temptation

• They want to get back to Patmos, but Danielle warns him: his friend’s nickname is O Lados, the oily (slick) one

• Meanwhile he has visions of making lots of money during the tourist season, cooking rather than teaching

• His friend Melya’ warns him it’s a bad idea and that Theo is not to be trusted (in fact, Theo won’t let her rent the taverna with Stone)

Greek Logic• Love to bargain• Distrust one another (35)• When Stone is buying a farmhouse, Theo

warns him “not to be so trusting, particularly around Greeks, who would cheat you as soon as look at you.” ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘But what about you? You’re a Greek.’

• ‘Me, you can trust. But nobody else.’”

Reality Hits• Agrees to rent the taverna for the summer• Stone will cook and do most of the work

himself• Once a sum is agreed on, Stone becomes

aware “of a subtle but seismic shift in the ground of our relationship. In [Theo]’s eyes, I was now a different person. I had crossed the line between the tourists and the Greeks. I was no longer a giver; I was a taker.” (49)

More Trouble• Other Patmians react in the same way.• “As soon as my new status became known, my

relationships with both my Greek and my foreign friends would undergo a similar, and initially almost imperceptible, transformation.”

• He compares it to daylight suddenly evaporating into night. (49)

• Melya’ is so mad she won’t even talk to him.

And More Trouble• Danielle figures out: don’t you need a permit?• He pretends it’s not a problem.• “I’d brushed it aside, figuring that if it wasn’t

mentioned, it somehow wouldn’t exist. But now the cat was out of the bag.”

• “When you live in a foreign country as long as I had, particularly in a place as tiny as Patmos, you start to feel you belong there, and that you have the same rights as its citizens. But of course this isn’t true. Ever.” (54)

The Main Course

• He and Danielle are happy to get back to Patmos with Sara and Matthew, but things are not how they remember them

• The Beautiful Helen was no longer cozy; instead if was crowded with cheap plastic crates and cracked, whitewashed walls

• He soon has second thoughts about everything.. But his sleeping wife can’t help him (73)

Vivid Description• At 3am, wide awake, he goes out to the

terrace• “The valley and sea were a ghostly silver

under the moonlight, and there was a silence behind the silence that was immense, holy, sovereign, like the voice of God saying, Forget it, there are no answers to the questions you’re asking, and no place to hide either.”

• “Living in Greece gives rise to this kind of philosophizing…” (73)

Culture Clashes

• He wants to tell all his friends about his taverna project, but Theo hasn’t even mentioned it to them

• One reason why might be fear of “toh kako’ mahti,” the evil eye, which is propelled by envy.

• “Therefore, you must try to hide your good fortune and certainly never crow over it.” (85)

Worse Yet

• He assumes his friends will be happy for him in his new venture; instead all they do is warn him about O Lados.

• When a former friend dines at the taverna and finds a dead fly in the tzatziki, “Thoma” understands “I was no loner a friend or an equal, or even a tourist. I was a servant… This wasn’t a dinner party, no matter how much I wanted it to be.” (107)

More Changes• He’s used to the magical time of day when the

afternoon starts sinking into the evening • “Then the surface of the sea would seem to

float above itself on nearly imperceptible swells, iridescent with contrasting layers and swirls of turquoise, violet, and pink. That there could be such beauty—and such stillness– was almost incomprehensible.” (111)

• But in the restaurant biz, it’s the calm before the storm. (His relationship to the island has changed.)

New Schedule

• At this time of day they have to frantically clear away the rest of lunch while trying to prepare for dinner

• At 7am, they open the restaurant for fishermen returning from night fishing and a few stray tourists and start cooking main dishes

• Lunch: from 11-3 or 4

More Realities• Dinner: starts at 7, goes into full swing at 8,

lasts until midnight… or until 3 or 4• He can’t kick people out or say no to

latecomers.• By the time July hits, he’s working at such a

frenetic pace that he can hardly even remember it.

• Money’s pouring in… but also out.. To the several workers, and for more supplies

Checks and Balances

• Gets a good review from a critic for the English-language newspaper

• But the police come to look for him the last week of July

• He doesn’t have a permit• A quick consultation of the other restaurant

workers leads him to the only possible solution: a consultation with a woman in Hora who can save him from “the evil eye”

• Somebody has complained that he’s been working illegally

• While at the police station, he’s hit with a perfect solution: he’ll apply for a permit

• The policeman pauses and shrugs. “You can apply, but they won’t give you one.” (141)

• “But would it be legal for me to work while I’m waiting for an answer?”

• He paused for a much longer time. “Yes.”• “And how long will it take for an answer?”• “From Athens? 3 or 4 months…..”

• This will take him past the end of tourist season.

• “[The policeman] leaned forward and pressed a button on his intercom. ‘Kosta! Bring me an application for a work permit!’”

• “He looked up at me and allowed himself the slightest of smiles. As for me, it was all I could do not to throw myself over the desk and smother him in an embrace…”

• Feels he’s conquered a fatal disease…

Starts to Feel the Pain• Has no time for his family• “Horrendous snoring” because he’s so tired

(149)• Varicose veins in his leg start to bother him• He’s invited to a night party on a northern

beach given by a Swedish woman dating one of his helpers

• He’s not even sure he can take the time, but he’s lured by the prospect of “ghosts”

Developments

• Once at sea, “all the exhaustion I had felt instantly washed away.” (154)

• “There is something about being on the sea that always spells adventure, especially at night, when the darkness surrounding you seems dense with the unknown.” (His whole summer has been full of darkness caused by the unknown!)

Island History

• Nazis had inhabited the island. The Greek resistance found an informer and took him to this particular beach, where they shot the informer and some of the Nazis too

• Legend has it that the ghosts wandered the beach at night, esp. on the anniversary of the event, hunting for the bodies

• Clincher: the shooter is rumored to be Theo

Paneyiri• The profit of the whole summer has hinged on

preparations for the big feast on August 6th, the major party of the year for Livadi.

• It’s in honor of the Transfiguration of Christ, “ee Metamorfosi.”

• They work like dogs all day and night: at the end of the evening Theo says their profit has been 40,000 drachmae.

• Stone knows this isn’t true, since a nearby café has made 3x as much profit selling coffee.

• Thoma tries to give him another chance. Theo recounts and says, yeah, right, it was 49,000.

• “I was speechless. His brazen ability to lie like that in front of his sons and to me, a man who had been his friend for 9 years and was perhaps the only person on the island who trusted him, took my breath away.” (169)

• “I sat there unable to touch my food, immobilized by this sudden revelation of how trusting I had been, how laughably naïve.”

• “And all my grand and shattered illusions began to sink in a swamp of humiliation.”

Just Desserts

• He’s so mad he confronts Theo, prepared to ask for his money back, but loses his cool.

• “What do you want, Theo? To kill me?! Like you did that Nazi?!” (176)

• When the blood drains from Theo’s face, Thoma knows that his info is right.

• When he threatens to go to the police with the info, Theo agrees to pay him back

• Thoma works one more day, then quits, and leaves, taking a job in Northern Greece.

• Takes him quite a while to ever go back to Patmos.

• By then the sons have taken over the restaurant.

• “Beyond that, I could see Theo seated in the shadows. He was staring out at the sea, slipping the worry beads over and over. Otherwise, he was as motionless as if he had been carved in stone.” (199)