Hooded with two blankets, with the air heater in full and with the rain bombarding the paved yard, found himself on Christmas Eve; rural doctor in the small town of the island. In their need, everyone was looking for him. As darkness fell, he was forgotten in the icy bachelor room he was renting. Even some bad-married women who were looking for something different, something exotic, even if they didn’t knew exactly what they were asking for and had become a tick, today they had left him to his fate and were celebrating safe in their houses.
He pressed the play button on the cassette player. Pete Townshend's harsh notes briefly covered the thunderbolt, without being able to warm him. Meanwhile Roger Daltrey hurled the age-old question into the air:
“Who are you? Who, who, who, who?”
“Who am I, really?” he wondered and got up to take a sip of cognac from the bottle he had leaned on the floor. He took a little red rooster and started sucking it voluptuously. The sweet little rooster lollipop matched perfectly with the Metaxa brandy in his tongue taste. He took another sip. He felt the burning go down nicely to his stomach, then gently diffuse into his bowels, spreading and warming his whole body. He tossed the blankets and angrily started playing drums in the air, accompanied by the late Keith Moon who had already started torturing the percussions on the cassette player. Daltrey insisted on bombarding him with the unanswered question.
“Well, who are you? I really want to know, who are you? Who, who, who, who?”
The streams continued to drain water from the tubes.
"Who am I, really and where am I going?" Dionysis Savopoulos, the Greek songwriter, somehow jumped out of a closet of his mind, as soon as ‘The Who’ stopped screaming on the tape. He lay down relaxed. The rain seems to have stopped a bit.
“What am I looking for in this hell place?” he murmured and fell asleep. But he didn’t relaxed; he had a tortured sleep. On the one hand the church bell that rang, on the other hand the loudspeakers of the Municipality with the “Jingle Bells” and the other Christmas songs, found him in the afternoon in a blackened mood, over a cup of coffee.
The taps of the sky did not stop. Lightning struck the walls. The rain had “rushed” into the room and the noise from the streams was piercing his brain. It was getting dark outside but also inside his soul. The bottle of brandy on the floor was waiting for him for the sequel. He ate an apple and grabbed the bottle, ready to grab the thread from where he had left it the day before. He took a sip and pressed the play button. ‘The Who’ was there, but they had changed song. Now they reminded him that he had lost something:
“And Tommy doesn't know what day it is. He doesn't know who Jesus was or what praying is”.
Damn it! All he needed now was to sing rock songs for Christmas! He pressed the stop button and picked up the bottle. There was not a single sip left. He threw it angrily and lay down. The song went on in his mind.
“Tommy can you hear me?”
He turned nervously to the cassette player. It was closed. But the song did not stop:
“See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!”
What the hell is going on here? he screamed and closed his ears with his palms.
“Tommy can you hear me?”
He got all nervous. Someone was knocking on the door. He opened it furiously, ready for a fight.
“Doctor, help! My mother is giving birth”, two bright eyes, blurred by agony, begged.
He took his bag, put on his raincoat and followed the boy. Soon they left the town and took the path to the mountain. Their galoshes were sinking in the mud. The rain continued but calmer now. He realized that they were approaching a sheep-fold. He could not see it, the darkness was already too deep, but the woman’s voices from the pangs of childbirth were cracking the around rocks. The mom was already there but the childbirth was difficult. Kehagias*, the shepherd, was smoking on the terrace, trembling with fear and cold.
“The mother, Doctor, save the mother first” he begged.
For three hours the Doctor struggled with the ladle to bring the fetus into place, to unroll it from the cord. It was dawn, when he freed the woman from the baby.
“It’s a boy!” he shouted at Kehagias.
He went out to get some air. The rain had stopped and the wet soil smelled of life.
“And the lady is fine” he reassured him.
A little girl brought cool cheese-paste with sweet must and raki. Kehagias was shining. He did not know how to thank him. He forcibly put two dry cheeses in his bag. “I will bring you some feta in brine, too”, he promised.
The Doctor drank a raki for good, wished and left. As he descended, he turned to the sheep-fold. It was a cave built in front. The sky was already clear and the moon, full moon, was shining like day. Two or three animals in the yard bathed in its light. It looked like the manger itself with the Bethlehem star on the sky. He made his cross, in tears.
“I'll baptize the baby!” shouted at Kehagias.
“I shall name him Thomas” he added, “but I’m going to call him Tommy” he whispered and continued downhill whistling happily the Roger Daltrey’s song.
Theodore Belitsos, December 2020
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*Kehagias is the shepherd in Lemnos island, Greece.
*Photo: Maria Kateina "Ag. Nikolaos, Naxos" (2019)
*Auf Griechisch hier und hier.
*In Greek here and here.
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