I was almost happy there, visiting the archaeological and military museums, sitting in cafés, exploring the town, even strolling through the quirky train museum, which is like a retirement home for disused railway carriages. Who can say why one likes one place above another, but the people here were even friendlier than in other parts of Greece, and I have fond memories of their smiles and a sense that they were aware of their good fortune.
I went to buy some tobacco (yes, I have given in) at a kiosk and noticed a busker setting down his bouzouki case opposite.
‘Panagia mou! In the name of the Virgin!’ said the man behind the counter in the periptero, slamming my change down on the plastic counter in front of him. ‘Not him again …’
‘Not much good?’ I enquired.
‘After Antoni, nobody is any good,’ he said regretfully.
‘Antoni?’
By now, the musician was belting out a song. People walked by as though he did not even exist, and nobody threw even ten cents into his open case.
Although it was hard to hear above the noise, the kiosk owner leaned towards me and, through the small window that separated us, began to tell me about a man called Antoni.
‘He was the greatest musician who ever visited this town,’ he said. ‘It’s a few years back now, but some of us still talk about him.’
I was immediately spellbound.
‘Mia fora kai enan kairo …’ he began. ‘Once upon a time …’ and it was hard to know how much he was exaggerating. Whether or not every element was true, there was definitely a musician who once came to Kalamata and left a lasting impression.
When he got to the end of the story, the busker was still singing.
‘Nowadays I just want to block my ears,’ he said.
‘AIR ON A G STRING’
One autumn day the stationmaster, who noted the arrival and departure of every stranger, saw a man get off the train from Corinth with a battered violin case. He was very distinctive, with a radiant smile and sparkling eyes.
On feast days in Kalamata, there were always groups of itinerant bouzouki and klarino players, but this musician was not like them. He was dressed much more smartly, and when he began to play the streets of the town were filled with a new kind of music.
Even the children stopped their games and gathered to listen. They were bolder than the adults, lacking in inhibition about approaching him. When he stopped his playing, one of the children reached up to touch the violin.
It was not a clumsy gesture. He wanted to see it, to feel whether it was hot or cold, rough or smooth. The violinist understood.
He bent down to show the child, who plucked at one of the strings and ran his fingers over an elaborate carving on the tailpiece. It was a face.
‘It looks like you!’ the child exclaimed. ‘Is it you?’
The child looked at the violin and then at the man and then back again at the violin.
‘Yes, it’s you! Look!’ he shrieked, summoning his friends. ‘It’s him! It’s him!’
The boy’s friends crowded round.
It was true that the little figure did resemble him.
The child was fascinated by the violin, instinctively appreciating its beauty.
‘Like a tiger,’ he said, admiring the violin’s back, made out of a single piece of striped maple.
His friends had all disappeared and were now chasing a ball around the square. Meanwhile, the little boy was becoming more and more engrossed in the detail of the violin, examining its ornate pegs with tiny pearls on their ends, the fineness of the bridge, the purfling that ran around its curves. Perhaps only a child’s sharp eyes could appreciate such minutiae.
All the time, the violinist kept a light hold on the instrument but allowed the child to twist it this way and that as he studied every part of its surface. A beam of light shone into the instrument and illuminated the writing inside, just visible through the curved, f-shaped hole cut into the wood.
‘An-to-ni …’
He was a bright kid and had already learned the Roman alphabet, so was able to make out the letters inside.
‘Antoni! Antoni!’ he cried out with delight. ‘My name is Antoni, too! We have the same name!’
He assumed that someone had inscribed the man’s name inside.
The child wanted another look.
‘Antoni S-t-r-a …’
He gave up on the rest. It was a long word and hard to read in the shadows of the violin’s interior.
The violinist smiled and put his instrument up on his shoulder once again, and then continued playing. The tone of his music was as sweet as honey, as mellow as old wine. There was never a discordant twang, a note out of place or out of time.
With children near, he chose bright, easy melodies. The boys abandoned their ball, drawn back towards him.
They started to chase each other round and round the musician until they were giddy, hopping up and down to the rhythm of his tunes. Girls linked hands and skipped around in circles. The music was full of joy and movement and the children could not stand still to listen.
‘Antoni, Antoni!’ they shouted, until the whole town knew his name.
Aris, the owner of the nearest taverna, had heard the exchange.
‘Hey, Antoni, come and eat.’
His place was unusually busy today and, with all the competition around, he surmised that something new was bringing customers to his tables. There could be only one reason. He wanted to stay friendly with this man.
‘Antoni’ had been delivering his concert for more than three hours, and yet his fingers had not tired. Now he scooped the coins that had been dropped into his open case in his pocket and released the tension on the bow with a few twists of its silver screw. Then he carefully repacked the instrument, propped the case against a chair, sat down and waited for his lunch. The square seemed silent without his music.
Aris reappeared with several dishes on a tray and put them down in front of the violinist.
‘Stifado, horta, fasolakia,’ he listed. ‘Stew, greens and beans.’ He had already brought a half-kilo of red wine in a copper jug and, within moments, it was gulped down.
The musician was soon shovelling the food direct from dish to mouth. There was no question of making conversation, so Aris left him to it.
When all the dishes were empty and every last drop of sauce wiped up with hunks of soft, doughy bread, the violinist picked up his violin and walked away towards the other side of the square. He disappeared in the direction of the sea, where there would be more cafés and a new audience.
‘Come back later,’ called the taverna owner, knowing that, even with his ‘gift’ of a meal, he was still way up on his normal day’s takings.
Magda was one of the very few unmarried women of her age in the town. Her parents had both died and she lived alone above the family shop, which sold knitting wool, ribbon and thread. She had once been engaged, but the wedding had not taken place after it became clear that she could not have children. Now she was known as the yerontokori, the spinster. The great irony was that she was, without competition, the most beautiful woman in Kalamata and, with her abundance of glossy hair, extravagant lips and ample breasts, by far the most desired.
That evening, as she often did, Magda took a walk from the shop, which was in the old part of town, via the main square to the sea. She was greeted by wolf whistles and catcalls. They were not hostile. The majority of the men who sat in the cafés here were known to her, and the sounds they made were appreciative.
She was resigned to their attention, aware that her breasts were difficult to conceal, always pushing against the front of her blouse, giving her buttons an impossible task.
‘Magda! How are things?’
They all knew her name.
‘Nice day?!’
‘Having a good evening?’
Their greetings were cheerful, jovial. These were the salutations of old friends and acquaintances. Most had been in her class at the gymnasio, and a few had had the
ir first stolen kiss with her twenty years before.
She smiled and waved in response.
The air was warm for the time of year and the neradzia, the bitter-orange trees, that lined the street, were heavy with bright fruit.
Magda approached the port from the road that ran along by the sea, where there was a row of lively cafés.
She always went to the one owned by her cousin Andreas and she sat outside and lit a cigarette. The water was still and the concrete expanse of the port was deserted, except for a handful of people loitering in the distance, waiting to bring in and reload a boat. The warehouses were full of crates of dried fruit, ready to be shipped, and huge drums of olive oil.
Against a sky that was slowly turning pink, a man on a bicycle pedalled by.
Suddenly, something broke the silence. Its source was not far away. It was a single, sustained note, and Magda turned her head in its direction.
She saw a handsome, middle-aged man with a violin. He drew his bow steadily across the strings, then played a second note. He was looking at her, perhaps drawing inspiration, perhaps not even seeing her, but she felt the music was being played for her.
He stood alone. She, as usual, sat by herself. Married women regarded her with suspicion and few ever invited her to join them.
What were these notes? She was familiar with the sounds of the bouzouki and baglama and could dance the steps of the Kalamatianos better than anyone. Music usually went with movement, but this melody stilled her. The exquisite sounds that she heard from the violin captivated her.
She was immediately under the spell of the music and closed her eyes, listening to each note and even appreciating the spaces between them.
First, the hairs on her arms rose like a cat’s in a fight. Then she felt an unfamiliar pricking sensation at the back of her eyes, a tightening of the muscles in her throat, a flush around her neck and the unmistakable sensation of tears rolling down her cheeks. She reached across the table to take a paper napkin from the holder and dabbed at her face, but still the tears fell.
Like most other people of the town, she had never heard such music before. She watched as both men and women tossed coins into the violin case before walking away. A few cents here, a euro there, and soon they added up to the price of a meal. They were not just paying for his music but for the effect it had on them. Before the violinist had arrived, the only sound had been the hum of chatter. Now the stillness of the sea seemed to magnify the music and, even when the violin ‘whispered’, its voice could be heard across the space. When it rose to a crescendo, the notes burst through conversation like an explosion.
Magda was unsure if she liked the involuntary response she was experiencing, but there was nothing she could do. The tears continued and soon a small mountain of screwed-up napkins lay abandoned on the table. She noticed that she was not the only one to have been affected by the violinist’s music.
He played on and on but, towards the end of one piece, his bright eyes danced around, reacting to, looking for, feeling his way towards something that would tell him what to play next.
The Venetian mansions near the sea and the crisp November evening had made him think of Vivaldi, and of ‘Autumn’ from the Four Seasons, and his bow glided into it without a pause.
More people were coming out, now that the sun had set. There were a few couples strolling hand in hand, some elderly men who had eaten dinner and were emerging for companionship, and some younger men looking for love. In late autumn and winter, both men and women here worked hard to harvest the huge olive groves outside town, and in the evening hundreds of them congregated for a well-earned drink in one of the cafés.
The music Antoni played was slower now.
Another boat came in, but the sound of an anchor being dropped did not stop the music. Magda’s eyes did not leave the musician.
Once the boat was fastened, a few sailors and dock-workers drifted in her direction, but they could not catch her eye. She kept her gaze on the violinist.
His eyes were firmly closed as he played, aware of his surroundings and feeling the mood of his audience, selecting and then selecting again the appropriate piece from the enormous repertoire that filled his head, as if it were a Rolodex. Bach, Mozart, Telemann, Corelli, plenty of Vivaldi (he had felt the surge of pleasure in the crowd’s response). He played compulsively, as if he could not stop.
‘Where’s he from?’ Magda asked her cousin.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘But someone heard one of the children calling him Antoni.’
By now it was past ten. All the cafés were full. More people were coming, and nobody was leaving. There was not an empty seat. In a town where nothing was free, a recital like this had never happened before. Sometimes, the violin emitted such volume and purity that it sounded as if various passages of music were chorded – or as if another ‘ghost’ violin were being played somewhere close.
At around eleven thirty, the last note died away. There was rapturous applause and the musician laid the violin in its case and loosened the tension in his bow. The only spare chair on the seafront was at Magda’s table. Even after he sat down opposite her the clapping continued, and he smiled warmly to acknowledge the appreciation.
‘They loved you,’ said Magda. In truth, she was referring to herself.
‘They love this,’ he replied, tapping the outside of his case. ‘This is what they have been listening to.’
He spoke with an accent that suggested he was from another part of Greece, near the mountains in the north.
‘But you were playing it,’ said Magda.
‘It was the voice of Antoni that you were listening to,’ he said.
Andreas approached to see if there was something he could offer the violinist. Like the taverna owner earlier that day, he felt he owed this man for that evening’s record-breaking takings.
‘Mr Antoni,’ he said. ‘What can I offer you?’
‘I could do with a cognac,’ the violinist replied.
‘Something for you, too, Magda?’
Andreas was feeling generous that night.
‘The same,’ she said.
They sat for a while in a comfortable silence. Both of them were used to being alone. Nobody was waiting for them at home.
‘How did you learn to play like that?’ asked Magda.
‘I think the violin taught me,’ he replied, smiling. ‘With such an instrument the music is there already. It’s as if it is waiting for someone to release the sound inside.’
Magda tilted her head to one side, her thick hair tumbling over her shoulders.
‘So if I picked it up, I would be able to play like you?’
‘It might take a while, but let’s see …’
He bent down to open the case, lifted the violin from its red velvet bed and then drew the bow across the strings, adjusting the pegs fractionally to tune it. Magda fixed her eyes on the carving on the scroll.
He gently moved her hair to one side and propped the instrument under her chin, held her left hand in position to support it, then took the fingers of her right hand and showed her how to spread them along the end of the bow to balance it as she played.
Then he placed the bow on the bottom string and gently pulled down on her elbow so that she could feel it glide lightly across the steel. People around them were watching.
The note rang out.
It was an open G, the lowest note on the violin, rich and deep.
Then he carefully placed her forefinger on the E string and F sharp rang out. It was the same note with which he had begun tonight, when he played Bach’s ‘Air on a G String’. The sound was pure and penetrated the lively chatter that had now resumed along the street, continuing to ring in the air for a few moments after.
When the note finally died away, Magda took the violin from her shoulder and placed it in her lap. She looked down at it as if it were a baby, a precious creature she did not quite know what to do with. Then she allowed her fingers to trace the shape of
the small wooden body. Like the child earlier that day, she was intrigued to see that through the f-shaped hole she could glimpse some writing.
‘What does it say?’ she asked.
‘Antonius Stradivarius,’ he said.
‘So that’s your name?’
‘No,’ he laughed. ‘It’s the name of the man who made this. The name of the man you hear when this is played.’
‘And he put his name inside every violin he made?’
‘Every single one,’ confirmed the violinist. ‘And each one is unique, but each of them has Antonius’s voice. When people read the label and think that Antoni is my name, I don’t disagree. In some ways they are right: the violin and I are one and the same. I am speaking with his voice.’
Magda gazed at the musician as he talked.
‘It’s the most precious thing I own. It is the only thing I own, apart from the clothes I am wearing. Without it, I don’t eat.’
Magda handed the precious instrument back to its owner, catching a glimpse of its rounded back.
‘How many years …?’
‘It seems like my whole life.’
People up and down the row of cafés were talking about the violinist now.
Normally, people did not talk to buskers here, and it was equally unusual to see Magda talking with a stranger. Her voluptuous looks sometimes attracted unwelcome attention from visitors to the town, so she tended to be a little aloof.
‘Sometimes I feel possessed by this violin, as if it is playing me. And even when I am not playing, I have to protect it because of its value. It’s on my mind twenty-four hours a day.’
Andreas approached them with another tray of drinks.
‘From the table over there.’ He indicated with his head. ‘And there are plenty more who want to send something over.’
Magda smiled.