Short story: Uwe in Kaloudia

About the story

This is an original translation of the Greek story Ο Ούβε στα Καλούδια by Nikos Houliaras, published in the collection "Μια μέρα πριν, δυο μέρες μετά" (One day before, two days after) (Athens: Nefeli, 1998)

Uwe in Kaloudia

He arrived late. He passed by Punta on the island and rented a room in Kaloudia.

I saw him in the morning. I actually heard him first. In the midst of the serenity of the dawn, there was a scream: I heard a prolonged "Ahh!" coming from the balcony and then came Uwe, carrying himself down the stairs, went down the street towards the sea.

 

With his hands raised to the sky and a face shining ecstatically, he passed in front of me. He looked at me for a moment in astonishment and then immediately began to cry out again: he let out this inarticulate cry and ran down to the beach. There, at the edge of the riverbank he paused and, like a man struck by lightning, he knelt down beside some children. There was a gentle breeze blowing and the canopy of the sky bore no cloud in it. The water - coloured like a bluestone - was still and spotted by the dozens of boats of all kinds that wished to reach up to the bay. And across the way, the low hills of Punta stunned - like children woken up early for school - with unkempt golden bushes before the blur of the day that was just beginning. On the other side stood Uwe: in the centre of this extraordinary and incomprehensible ether, looking at the miracle; running while shouting along the coastline, he reaches beyond, far away, from where -as if from a picture found in the first-grade reading book- one can see the holy church of St. Spyridon amidst the great sea-forest looking bleached under the sunlight. And Uwe, the blond boy from Oslo, stood nearby. He let a big "Aah!" as if in wonder, looking to the sky, not knowing exactly what's going on inside him.

Half an hour later, he returned to the kafeneio. He sat down, next to me, and stared enchantedly out to sea without saying a word. I spoke first: "What's the matter?" I asked. "It's not possible!" he says, turned in my direction, but looking somewhere far away and behind me. "I don't understand what's happening to me! I'm here. It feels like I've been here forever!"

From that day on I met with him regularly: At noon at the saltworks, at night in the plateia. He left the island after a fortnight. It was afternoon. The sunlight was twinkling, highlighting in red the water and Uwe on the pier was crying, as if he were a young child.

 

I saw him the other summer too. I saw him almost every day. Walking, as if he was enchanted, along the seashore. Sitting for hours under the sea-trees and gazing pensively at the shallow waters. One night, in the plateia, I asked him when he would leave for Oslo and he replied, "In a week." "Why?" I asked, "When does your leave end?" "Two weeks from now," he answered. "How come?" I replied, "Why are you leaving so early this year? You don't like it here anymore?" "On the contrary!" he responded bitterly. "Last summer, I arrived in Oslo on a Sunday and on Monday I went straight to work! I'm not doing it again. It was like a whole truck ran over me! I spent three months in the hospital… with depression! I'm not doing it again! This year, I think I'll go a week early. I need at least a week to get used to it. To get used, little by little, to the other Uwe who lives there and to endure the life he's leading!"