Siga, agape mou!
- Linda
- Jul 31, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 13
We're not sure the ferry will make it.
The sea, wild and black, throws salt in our faces. We're supposed to be strapped in our seats like our white MGB, lashed below deck with ropes. As waves crash over the bow, the crew prays we'll all survive this crossing from Bari, Italy to Corfu, Greece. We grip each other, stressed and sleepless, as the ferry pitches toward Kerkyra through a black, howling sea.
Corfu, the northernmost of the Ionian Islands, once home to brothers Lawrence and Gerald Durrel, and later to Ted’s grandfather. None of them are there to greet us in the wee morning hour of our tardy arrival.
Instead, a swarthy, small-shouldered but sizable man approaches. Extending a hand from bulging pockets, he offers us several walnuts still in their shells.
"I ahm Antonio. I know this island. Where you going? Kalimera, have some.
"To find our Papou."
Antonio does help us find Ted’s Papou, who quickly lands us a one-room apartment in a typical Greek-island white-stucco duplex not far from the postcard-famous Kanoni and the gleaming white chapel on Mouse Island.
The tiny kitchen has a two-burner propane stove, and a two-gallon hot water tank that hangs from the ceiling. Nearby, mounted to the stucco wall, a showerhead leans out over large drain in the tiled floor. There's a dial on the tank, so when showering in the kitchen, you can gauge how much hot water is left and wash accordingly—rapido!
It's a rainy and cold February, and tired of youth hostels, we appreciate this indulgence. The apartment, perched on a tongue of the island, of costs fifty US dollars a month.
We learn days later that Antonio owns the only tire shop on Corfu and is, in fact, a relatively wealthy and important man to know. This revelation surfaces when we blow out a tire on our white windstorm.
Antonio likes us—finds us listeners—and caws about his tire business and his home, where a tall bureau holds drawers full of unshelled walnuts. Sworn socialist, he confides in us about owning a tire store on the island.
“I don’t understand biziness!
The bank lend me money. I buy tires. I do nothing. Put tire on cars. I make profit—good money. Is in America? Is trick? Ah, who cares! My son, he say—is easy work!”
After several encounters, it's at Chrysí Kardiá—the Golden Heart taverna—where he insists, “You MUST come to MY house.”
We raise glasses of barrel wine in a toast, and, eventually, on a sweltering day, escorted by big, brown, affable Antonio on his own white windstorm of a scooter, we visit.
With his wife away, he ups his chin motioning to the dining table. White lace curtains are drawn to sheild us from the brutal sun. One flutters with an occasional breeze.
Antonio yanks the top drawer of the tall bureau, clattering through piles of unshelled walnuts until he surfaces with a hand-rolled cigarette filled with cheap Egyptian tobacco.
Twitching his lips from side to side, he strikes a large wooden match, lifts his chin for a light, and draws a deep breath. Then, with a flash of realization, he dashes to slam the open window shut, sputtering belly laughs through his tight smile, exhaling clouds of smoke onto the clean curtains.
He wants his precious smoke to stay close.
We also befriend Cindy, a tall, lanky American trust-fund brat from New England who has decided—overnight—to marry Spiros, a local Corfiot. Cindy loves to give sexual advice to newlyweds like me, while Spiros, a devoted homosexual with an eye for ladies, is tanned golden brown and loves to ride horses.
Cindy and Spiros laugh and sing wherever they are. She fulfills her sixties obligation to give away money and live outside the norm. Spiro fulfills his by being a loveable stud.
“I’m going to buy Spiro a horse,” says Cindy nodding one day as we three stand chatting near Yanni's fence.
Yanni, an eighty-year-old who tends a tiny kumquat grove, lives next door to them. According to Cindy, he makes a magic marmalade from a recipe told to him by a gypsy named Rube—an orange potion that promises those who savor it an astonishing passion unlike any Corfiot has ever felt.
After a jam-canning lesson with Yanni and several bottles of Retsina, Cindy and Spiros propose to marry the next morning.
Yanni cautions them—not about lost love, but about the marmalade. He knows too well what comes of its consumption.
Thanks to our Belgian friend, Stefan, who lives with his wife and child in a Volkswagen camper bus, we have a supply of good grass to dreamily spend our days smoking, loving, reading, or simply watching flowers open, marveling as a butterfly lands on the page of an open book.
One day in early January, there's a loud banging on the door of our little home. Ted cautiously cracks it open, only to have it flung wide by a wizard: a tall man in a soaring, black cone-cap with a long white beard.
He chants slowly in Greek as he moves through our tight quarters, swinging a large metal incense burner on a long chain, clanking with each thrust. He throws water at us and we duck. More incense. More water—sprinkled from a clear bottle capped in silver.
After an eternity, the door slams closed. He is gone. We're left smiling, speechless, in a heavenly, odiferous cloud with dew in our hair.
We look at each other, silently asking, “What the hell was that?”
Later, we learn the date was January 6—the Epiphany and the great blessing of the waters. Papou, encouraged by his wife, Effie, had paid the local Archbishop to bless our home.
Effie, Papou's third wife, is mother of his youngest son and Papou's "agape-mou" chantress.
The whole island knows of Papou’s driving—and Effie’s double-entendre pleading for him from the pasenger seat:
“Agape mou! Siga!
Siga, siga, agape mou!”
It takes us a while to understand that this is why people wink with a sideways nod of their head as Papou and Effie buzz past in their tiny powder-blue Fiat Cinquecento.
His face beams in wire-rimmed glasses and she with a small silk scarf tied tightly around her neck, eyes wide in bugged alert, purses her red lips.
Even today, whenever I caution Ted, he insists I repeat, in Effie’s high fractured voice,
“Siga, siga, agape mou! Siga!”
Soon after arriving on Corfu, we venture to mountains on the far side of the island. Before returning home, Ted fills the white windstorm with gas.
It’s a day like many other to come: a romantic sea watch, a swim if it's warm, a stop at Chrysí Kardiá.
Eventually, Antonio introduces us to the taverna's owners—a young, older-than-us couple who half-jokingly repeat that we’ll one day buy the place. Their dream: they’ll cook and clean, and Ted and I will charm and lure tourists.
But the first time we visit, we know no one but Antonio. He brings us to the place with the painted wooden sign and the large golden heart. There we savor thin slivers of lamb roasting on an outdoor spit, set above red-hot coals and smoking embers, and suffer the delicious dilemma of choosing between the showcased moussaka, stifado, or the giro of lamb.
Afterward, we try once again to like the muck-thick local coffee.
We’ve been exploring the island for only a few days. One night, returning late, we find our way home in the dark using a map and flashlight, pre-mobile phone era. The next morning, Ted finds the windstorm’s gas cap on our doorstep.
"What the hell? How did the gas station owner know where we live?"
A veil of uneasiness slid over us.
"They know where to find us,” Ted says.
On an island run by Fascists of military junta fame, this surveillance unsettles us. Are we being watched along with our hippie friends or are we being protected because of Papou and one of his esteemed connections?
"We'll soon find out," Ted says.
©TLCmoon, LLC
MUSIC TO COOK BY
RECIPE
Yanni's Aphrodisiac Orange-Almond Marmalade
1.5 lb. oranges, unwaxed and organic if possible
.5 lb. kumquats or splash of kumquat or orange liqueur*
1-1.5 c. honey
1 c. raw almonds, slivered, peeled
Dash of salt or juice of lemon or lime
Optional spicing of your choice, e.g. fresh ginger or cardamon
Scrub the orange rinds and using a vegetable peeler, cut off the rind in strips without removing too much of the white pith. Place rinds in a pot.
Peel off most of the white pith from the oranges and place on a piece of cheesecloth. Chop the remaining fruit, remove seeds and add to the piths.
Scrub the kumquats and slice into thin rounds. Add any seeds to the pile on your cheesecloth. *If using liqueur instead of fresh kumquats, increase the amount of oranges by a half pound.
Tie the cheesecloth into a bundle with string, as in a classic bouquet garni.
Drizzle honey over the citrus and stir until well coated. Add the cheesecloth bundle with seeds and piths. Cover all with water and soak overnight.
Add slivered almonds. (To make your own: blanch whole almonds by boiling them in hot water for several minutes—until the brown skin will slip off. Drain the water, and when cooled remove almond skins and discard. Cut almonds into slivers.)
Add a dash of salt or juice of a small lemon or lime.
Boil all until the mixture thickens and the rinds are soft and tender. Test consistency and sweetness by cooling spoonfuls. If adding more honey bring to a boil. The jelling temperature is best at 221 degrees Fahrenheit if you use a sugar thermometer.
When the mixture is ready for spreading remove the cheesecloth and store marmalade in various ways from short term to long term: refrigerate, freeze, or preserve by the boiling waterbath method in jars.
Consume in small quantities.
©TLCmoon, LLC
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