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AN ANGEL CALLED RENÉ, A MAN CALLED
"H-O-R-S-E"?
The sweetest guy that I ever met was called René. He
was an angel; well, sort of. Two minutes before he showed up I was on a
terrible bad mood; two minutes later I was feeling, just me. He didn’t fall
from Heaven, but for that matter, he was Heaven’ sent. I was so mad at the
world when he came around that when he asked me to let him play my guitar, I
could had easily said : Kiss my ass. But the way he said it, he made me laugh.
He said it with that look of the guy coming up to your girlfriend, who, by the
way, she is known to be absolutely pretty, and you know the effect she causes
in the guys, they come up talking to you but actually looking at her, it just
happens you being there. Some give you the shit, some make you laugh. That’s
the look René had in her eyes. He was talking to me but he couldn’t get her
eyes away from my guitar.
René had a look of an object absolutely fragile.
Staring at his eyes the first thought that occurred to me was Monalisa’s smile. But he was a male, and a male on two
legs. René, the most fragile thing carrying the most powerful weapon, Monalisa’ smile in his eyes.
Even so I gave it a second thought. I let my guitar to
no one. You are basking out there and people come and go, “can I play a song”,
“yes, man”, then the guy breaks one string, “sorry”, and the fellows go, “hey
what happen with my string?”. Sometimes you have another to replace it,
sometimes you don’t. How you avoid the misunderstanding?, saying “kiss my ass”.
In this particular moment my guitar depended
exclusively on me. As a matter of fact I did the round of the town looking for
a guitar shop. Greeks play a thing called Bouzouki; or the Spanish guitar,
nylon strings. And I had a long way back to Paris. From Thessalonica, around a
couple of thousand miles, or so. There were mountains and cities in between; I
had to be very careful with my strings, it was my working tool to earn my
everyday meal, pay me a bed in the youth hostel, sometime.
“Please”, said René while I was evaluating the risk.
If I wanted him on his knees asking me to let him touch my guitar I just had to
push the scene two minutes forth. And actually that is what he did. With the
same devoting look in the eyes of a man asking his beloved to marry him, René
kneeled before my guitar and begged me to let her in his arms for a minute. I
broke laughing. He got me. In a matter of nanoseconds he was making love to my
guitar, caressing her, kissing her with his hands. “I am a very jealous guy,
watch out, man”.
That was, my bad mood was gone. Of course he felt
something was wrong. I was supposed to be a soldier of the army of the of
kingdom of peace and love.
“What is bothering you?”, still holding my guitar in
his arms, said René.
“Well, I went all the way down to the Syrian border,
and they kicked my ass back because I have no money. Can you believe that, they
kicked my ass because I have no money. Hey man, in which century do those
people live? We’re never gonna make it keeping these
differences between the nations? My trip to India, gone, finish, over! I can’t
stop a plane and ask for a ride. No one can. What’s wrong with this world? I
made the Saint Paul’s route down south Turkey to cool my frustration, and
straight to Athens to cheer myself up. God people, little weird, they speak but
Greek. Anyway, I hit the road straight to the Yugoslavian border and they kick
me back too because I had the Visado out of order.
Can you believe this shit?”.
René ordered a Coca-Cola.
“Can I buy you one?”, he said.
“Don’t worry about it, my baby is not a hooker”.
“Don’t get me wrong, please. Coca-Cola, the spark of
the life, it will help you to come back”.
“Well, am back, and I don’t like it. By now I should
be in Jerusalem”.
“You will be one day”.
“I will, but I wanted to be today, not tomorrow”.
“What is time, my friend? Time is the Door to the
Archives of our Personal Memories, nothing else”.
“It may be so, but the only way to have memories it is
filling the archives. How will I, if they deny me the access to that path?”
“You are too young to reach your dream come through.
Wild horses need to be tamed by Time. The horizon is there, it is only a
question of finding a way around. Life is a mystery, my friend”.
“I don’t like secrets. Why the people is not just
people? why they want to be something more that their neighbors? What’s wrong
with my picture? Have I come to be born in a time far back my time? You know
what I mean?”
“Don’t worry too much. We don’t have the power to move
the Universe. We have to live in it, as it is”
“I don’t like as it is. I think is a lot of bullshit
all that pocket wisdom. The universe can be moved, the world can be pushed
ahead. I would better say we are the mystery and life is our secret. That
sounds better”
“Are you hungry?”, said René.
“I don’t picture you very much like a son of the race
of Hitler. How is that?”
“My mother is French”.
“That is. All the bullshit of the pureness of the
race. And yeah, I am hungry”.
He was the most sweet German man I had ever met. The
intellectual dryness of the German Soul had been washed out by the most
sweetest type among the European Women, the French Girl. He had the entire
sweetness of the French Woman in his eyes. I went straight into the question.
“I guess you have problem to be accepted in your
country as you are. They don’t like people like you. The German, even when
beaten, he holds supremacy. It is beaten, not dead! Your French look got to be
a handicap to you, back in your country, isn’t?”
“Don’t worry about me”; said he. “I am worried about
you. You are like a wild lion in a jungle where the rat is king; you don’t like
it. You got to accept the world as it is”.
“I accept my ass as it is. The world got to accept me
as I am. Am I wild? God is wild! The civilized man, as how I see it, it is a
tamed horse led by the bridle to the fields of wars, time after time. Peace and
love? Yes, but the peace and the love of the civilized man, as it is, fuck it.
Justice is a whore, Power is her master, Money the Devil’ speech. And I am gonna let myself be tamed? It is you, my friend, who is
accepting your world as it is. You are perfect because you are innocent”.
We ate something. Greek food is a variance of the
Mediterranean diet, an exquisite plate to refill the body with. Chauvinist as
it may sounds, in Europe only the Mediterranean Nations know what food it is.
The Germans eat shit. They are fed by the Turks with the fruits and the
vegetables the Spanish and the Greeks throw to the pigs. And they pay gold for
pig-food. There is nothing like a Mediterranean home meal. Compared with the
rest of the world, even the poor in France eat like a king. I still have the
flavor of the Mousaka in the tip on my tongue. And my
mother’s Lentejas and Gazpachuelo hanging on the walls of my stomach like icons in a church begin to the good God
to have one more Paella.
“You know, what”, said René while I was massacring the Mousaka, “you are coming with me”
“Sure, but where to?”
“To pick olives”
“Excuse me, sir, did you say … working for free?”
He got the irony.
“It happens that I am having holydays in the farm of
one friend of mine”
“You are in holydays and you are working. There is the
dark side of your blood, the German’s”
“Stop your psychoanalyzing me”
“You got to recognize that it is funny, holydays
picking olives, for free!”
“My friend, I live with the family, I sleep in the
house, I am like a son to them. They will be happy to take you in, as long as
you want it. There is no kicking in the ass, or ‘grigora grigora’. It is in the Mountains. Wonderful sunsets.
Come. What are you going to do here all the weekend anyway? You don’t like it,
next Monday I will bring you back. There’s my car, at your service”.
I knew he meant it. A weekend dealing with my anger,
or a weekend with an angel. There was no choice to be made.
That was the first time I picked olives in my entire
life. In North Greece, and in Crete too, they pick the olives with a comb, this
is called “to milk the tree”.
It is like combing the tree. If you look at it the
tree is a big head on one leg; the branches are its hair. You get the comb and
your comb the tree’s long hair. It is absolutely harmless, no painful at all
and you keep talking with Socrates from morning to sunset.
Of course, that first time was taking place in the
middle of the ‘seventies. Greece was free and happy. Brussels’s motherfuckers
had not set a foot yet in Athens to ruin the Nation. Neither the invasion of
the old communists republics had taken place. The “tourists”, as they called
us, we were coming from England, Germany, and France, mostly in the winter
time, to pick the oranges, the olives. We were very well-paid, and we were few.
We were treated as diamonds in a golden ring.
The case of René was another. He came from Stuttgart.
He had a friend, his best friend actually, who was a son of an emigrant Greek.
He was the third time René came for the olive season with his friend, for free,
and as such free picker he was treated like a son, in all senses. That Greek
family, I could see, loved him so much that only his mother could beat the
sweetness they pay him every single hour of the day. His friend, the
Greek-German, was a strong young fellow who watched over his German friend like
a archangel the tree of life; he knew his friend was fragile because his
sweetness, he knew that the Germans despite that sweetness and innocence in one
of their kind, and I knew that that Greek Fellow would allow no one to hurt his
friend, he could be Achilles for that matter. He set that look on me from the
start; I got it. It understood I meant no harm; I appreciate a lot that love of
a friend for his friend. It was all right. After all the Greek and the Spanish
we have the same look; we are the same kind. We have the same accent when we
talk, and we shout as much loud when we speak. There was a difference between
the Greek and me; I could eat an entire cow. I would not drink; this was a
surprise to them. Neither smoke. Just eat, eat a lot. And speak, all day long
speaking and laughing. That was for them very helpful. You know, family at work
can’t help being quiet. And there they had a guy who could not stop talking and
laughing.
I meant to be with them that weekend. They would not
let me go, and it felt good being there after one month out there, sometimes in
the cold, sometimes in the rain, alone, eating what I could, sleeping in the
open, no friend to laugh with.
All right, one week, all right, two weeks. “But man, I
got keep on moving”, said I, time after time to René. “Mañana”
said he, laughing.
I don’t know how it happened. The truth is that Greece
shouldn't had never joined the Club of Brussels. Neither Spain for that matter.
Brussels’s Club is a gang of second class politician selling Europe for the
Euro. They sapped the Economy of Greece for the sake of Turkey; and the Economy
of Spain for the sake of Morocco. Corruption is the nature of Brussels. As
Brussels had got the power to deal with the foreign nations in the name of the
EU members, what you have to do to fuck a EU’s member is buy Brussels’s staff.
Brussels’s senators and commissaries sell their mother for the Euro. Why should
they not sell Greece and Spain? To top this disgrace both countries fell in the
hands of their Socialists Parties, two gangs of thieves who robbed the Public
Treasure to buy supremacy in the political arena of their nations. The team was
perfect. Brussels selling Greece to satisfy Germany’s Alliance with Turkey, and
the PASOK ruining from inside the Treasure. The Miracle was here : Greece,
Turkey’s enemy, had to fall.
The days before Brussels’s sold out Greece, Greece was
an amazing peasant country where to pass the winter picking olives and oranges.
Greeks were homely people, hard-working, no greedy, very humble and amiable.
The country was few populated and produced more than their hands could take.
The “tourists” were welcome. To lead to hell this paradise, already in the
greedy eyes of fucking Brussels, the Fall of the Iron Curtain came to happen.
From all the countries of the surrounding an invasion of workers displaced the
“tourists”, in the first place; and later on, the Greek population itself. They
did this by putting down the salary, which came to be at the end of the century
equal to the salary of a dog. And Greeks would not work for the salary of a
dog. The PASOK would not intervene to stop this displacement of the Greek
population. The employer did not pay any tax; there was no seasonal working
contract at all. Corruption in the Government had gone to bed with slavery in
the fields of work, and both, Greece and Greeks, sold out to Germany by
Brussels, whose lover, Turkey, displaced the Economy of Greece, one EU Member,
this way committing Brussels an act of High Treason against the Spirit of the
Union. Same scheme was perpetrated against the Economy of Spain to favor the
Darling of France, Morocco. Who wonders that these both countries are in these
days in bankruptcy? The Brussels’s Pilatus has his hands washed. Italy has its
own people to feed. The only joy of a Greek man and a friend of the Greece
Nation is that Germany is fed like a pig by her lover, Turkey.
And the third week came about. “I got to go, René; you
got to tell them that I am leaving”
“Wait a little bit more. They love you”
“Yeah, no wonder”.
“Not so, Raúl. They love
your non-stop chatting, and I love your guitar. Is there someone waiting for
you in Paris?”
“I have a friend, Lazare. He
told me that this would happen. I would break my head against the Syrian
border. They would never let me get in the country”
“He’s going to have a laughter. Stay for a while. I
can drive you back to France”
“I’m leaving next week”
It was decided. By that time there was a mid-week
Sunday. I don’t know, some kind of byzantine Saint I never heard of him before.
René woke me up early in the morning and took me for a walk over the hills.
There was an ancient road coming straight from the Macedonian Balkans. It was
sunny and the dawn was still hanging over the horizon. A very beautiful place.
For the first time in the past weeks we were walking in silence. I could feel
Alexander the Great’s breath in the air. Far in the distance a noise broke out.
“Hear that?”, said René.
“Yes, a car is coming. So what?”.
The car kept coming. René kept his eyes fixed in the
car. It was a green machine, a Renault 4L. Suddenly René got crazy, began
waving his arms, and as the driver did not stop he threw himself in the middle
of the road with his legs and arms moving like a maniac. The R4L pulled off. A
guy of my age and my constitution, looking like a Germanized Bob Dylan came out.
“Are you fucking out of your mind?” said straight to
René.
René got up and, hugged the driver intensively and
nearly kissed him in the mouth. Such was his joy. The driver was from Stuttgart
too.
“Raúl, this is Horst”, said
René in a full pride mood.
“Horse, a man called Horse?”.
“H-O-R-S-T”, replied Horst emphatically. “And who is
this hippy anyway?”
We looked at each other with the sound of spears in
the air. René felt the smokes of a battle rising and showered his angelical
smile upon us.
“Don’t worry, he is the most crazy hippy you had never
met, and you will love him after a while”.
“I’m not hippy, all right?”
“So, you are not feet naked, you wearing invisibles
shoes; and that’s not a hippy hair but a broom’s tail, right?”
“Keep on driving, we need no Aristotle here”
“What?”
“You heard”
“Stop”, shouted René. “Raúl,
I have invited Horst to come with us. Stop playing the fiery beast”.
Then we were two crazy big mouths in the fields. We
found our way pretty soon. Horst looked like fucking Dylan, man; he wore even
the hat Bob wears in the Hurricane’s LP. I could not stop seeing Dylan every
time I looked at Horst. Dylan was my hero. I could not hate the guy.
Well, Horst could speak better English than me, that
was another point in his favor; but he had no mind of a philosopher, but of a
banker, very practical, no helpful at the time to deal with life’s poetry. He
had a guitar and could play it, I could do better. After few days we were all
day talking in the fields and all night playing guitar; some hours to sleep and
others to live and grow.
Horst was going to Australia. He had a plan, to buy a
boat and sail people from here to there in the ocean and through the islands,
to live like a modern buccaneer. Why not? He had the money, he had the age, he
was intelligent, valiant. Great! Be happy!
I? Once upon a time I was going to India and now going
back to Paris. Everything was OK. Probably I would fly from Paris to New York
with Lazare. He was crazy about New York. Well, all
the people from ex-communist countries were crazy with America. I didn’t see
the point, but why not? The flight was cheap, you could bask anywhere around
the USA. But Lazare wanted to be a star. He was a
star, but an underground star. He wanted to be a real rock&roll star. New York was the hit. It was not my deal, but I could hit the New World’s
Lands for a change. At least they would not kick my ass.
And so time ran off. The last night came. In the
morning everyone would follow his way. We sat around the fire; I, eating; they,
drinking and smoking. One hour follows another, just as the stars give way in
to another stars, and the Moon to the Sun. At the edge of the Dawn, Horst said
to me in plain words what he had in mind.
“Listen Raúl, I can give you
a ride to Goa, once there I go my way and you go your way. It’s up to you. From
Goa I will keep going South. In Goa you will stay on your own. Whatever happens
to you after that it will be none of my business. Make your mind. Time is
running. I will take care of the Visados from here to
India. No problem. It’s a long road. I rather be with a companion than alone
through it. There are mountains and deserts to cross, I’m being practical. We
have sleeping bags, food is cheap, it will be for me not a load at all to give
you a ride. The problem is yours, once we get there, you are alone, you have no
money and you are far away from home. What say you?”
“What say I? We are wasting our time”.
And so the Big Journey began. My life, I myself, was
never going to be the same after it.
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