Hot Milk

Other Things

On my second day in Athens I offered to walk through the park with my father because that was the route he took to get to work. It was the first time we had been alone together without his wife and new daughter, the human shields he used to defend himself from his sullen, sleepless creditor.

We both know that his absence from my life is not the sort of debt that can be paid back but it is exciting to pretend to negotiate a deal. In this sense, I agreed with the graffiti on a wall near the metro that said ‘WHAT NEXT?’

I was staggering through the park in black suede platform sandals, and my father was staggering through the park with the burden of the small portion of guilt that his god had not entirely absolved. We were staggering in silence.

It was a relief when he met a colleague from his shipping business, also on his way to the office. They talked about the proposed increased taxes on shipping and then about the large sum of euro in cash they had both hidden for emergencies.

My father was obliged to introduce me as his earlier daughter, an artefact from the past he had left behind in Britain. As well as the platform sandals, I was wearing shorts and a gold-sequinned crop top. My belly was on display and my hair was piled on top of my head with the three flamenco flower clips. It must have been a shock for my father to discover that his full-breasted adult daughter from London was of sexual interest to his colleague.

‘I am Sofia.’ I shook his hand.

‘I am George.’ He held on to my hand.

‘I am just here for a few days.’ I let him continue to hold my hand.

‘I suppose you have to get back to work?’ He let go of my hand.

‘Sofia is a waitress, for the time being,’ my father said in Greek.

I am other things, too.

I have a first-class degree and a master’s.

I am pulsating with shifting sexualities.

I am sex on tanned legs in suede platform sandals.

I am urban and educated and currently godless.

I do not resemble an acceptable femininity from my father’s point of view. I’m not sure, but I think he thinks that I am not honouring the family. I don’t know the details. Papa hasn’t been in touch for a while to explain my duties and obligations.

‘Sofia wears flamenco flowers from Spain in her hair.’ My father looked depressed. ‘But she was born in Britain and doesn’t speak Greek.’

‘I last saw my father when I was fourteen,’ I explained to George.

‘Her mother is a hypochondriac,’ my father said in a brotherly tone to George.

‘I’ve been looking after her since I was five,’ I said in a sisterly tone to George.

My father started to speak over me. Although I did not understand much of what he said, it was clear that he did not see me as a credit to him. He told me not to bother coming into the office and said goodbye outside the revolving glass doors.

I spent all day in the anthropology museum, and then I walked to the Acropolis and slept in the shadow of the temple.

I think I might have dreamed about the ancient river that is now buried beneath the asphalt streets and modern buildings, the river Eridanos, which flowed through ancient Athens, coursing north of the Acropolis. I could hear the pull of its current as it flowed to the water fountains where slave women were waiting to fill the jars they balanced on their heads.

That night, the baby on her breast again, Alexandra sat on the soft, blue sofa reading a Jane Austen novel out loud to my father. She was practising her English, which was perfect anyway, and he was correcting her pronunciation. Alexandra was reading from Mansfield Park: ‘If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory.’

My father nodded.

‘Mem-orr-ray,’ he said in an exaggerated English accent.

‘Memory,’ Alexandra repeated.

He shoved an orange jelly and then a yellow jelly into his mouth, and he glanced at me. Listen to how clever she is. She’s cleverer than I am, except for choosing to marry me, of course, but I am not complaining.

I had forgotten to tell him that memory is the subject of my abandoned doctorate.

They were a stable family making new memories.

Or perhaps an unstable family anchored by their god. They went to church every Sunday. ‘God is the Lord and he has revealed himself to me,’ my father told me, more than once. I could see that the experience of his god was overwhelming. Various members of their congregation kissed Evangeline when we walked out on the streets together. Their priest wore black robes and sunglasses. His hands were kind when he grasped my hands. This was Papa’s last shot at another life, even if his wife did complain about the age difference between them on the sly. When he walked away from his old life, he knew he had to forget it had ever happened. I was the only obstacle in his way.