“The Greek economy has glass feet,” Plasterboard was saying now. “If someone should ask to cash the state’s reserves into dollars or gold, we would go bankrupt again.”
“The specter of bankruptcy has haunted us since the small Greek state was first established,” explained Aristotle, who was a progressive and did not like the industrialist, Plasterboard. “If the Greeks brought their Swiss bank accounts back to this country, we’d have one hell of an economy.”
“But it is the specter of insecurity that makes them take their money abroad. If they knew the drachma was stable, they would all bring their money back,”
Aristotle returned.
“But if you don’t bring your money back, and the next person doesn’t and the next, how will the drachma become strong? What you describe will never happen unless somebody goes first. If, for example, you….”
“Don’t start getting personal,” Elias cut in. “A yacht is an enclosed space, short-circuited by the sea.
If we start quarreling, there aren’t enough cabins to separate us.”
“But they’re not quarreling,” said the doctor, who had just come up on deck. “They’re having a discussion.”
“Precisely,” said Plasterboard. “Besides, I don’t have my money abroad. I have it here. But I know of others who….”
Next to him, his wife, bored beyond belief, was discussing with Irini the best way for a woman to lose those extra pounds painlessly and pleasantly.
“The problem is that as a people….”
“Why do you read only English?” interrupted Arion.
How could Nikos, an importer of cold cuts, tell him that he did not believe in anything Greek? That it was in fact Greek things that seemed foreign to him?
Ever since he was a child he had been taught to trust foreign products. Greek writers held no interest for him whatsoever. The western European languages inspired a certain confidence he did not find in modern Greek.
And now here is the captain, this cowardly, fresh-water captain, who is transformed into a ghost, into an evil spirit, every time he thinks, because he is a captain of the mind; he’s been through a lot, he too has changed employers, those ship owners who sink their old ships just to collect the insurance, not caring whether men go down with them, men with families who would be left to mourn. The ship owner has his own family to worry about: his kids, his dogs, his investments in the city of London. It’s only when the Turk appears that the ship owner becomes Greek again and worries that his homeland is in danger. But as long as the Turk does not show himself, he feels like a stranger in his own country, because he can no longer find cheap labor like he used to; it has become expensive, and so he prefers to hire Philippino and Pakistani and Ethiopian hands for his ships. So here is this captain, who is of Albanian origin, with Black blood on this father’s side, Asia Minor blood on his mother’s side, Slav blood on his great-grandfather’s side, and Scythian blood. He is a descendant of the Empress Theophano, he is a suffering captain, he has been burned, a small prime minister of the mind who wants to explain Greece, from its beginnings in the epics of Homer, to the epic of Dighenis Akritas, before it sank into the catacombs of the Turkish occupation (after having placed the dome of Saint Sophia on a square base), from which emerged the song of Rigas Ferraios: “Better one hour of freedom than forty years of slavery.” He, Constantine, son of Constantine Paleologue, descendant of the Paleologues, Captain Constantine son of captains, expert in massage and bonesetting, with an ivory skeleton, he knows how to defeat Mehmet, son of Bayazid.
“So then, Grandfather?”
“So then, my boy, this first loan did not end there.
There was a second part to it, on the other side of the Atlantic. At that time, there was a progressive, democratic, ‘by the people for the people’ country, which did not want a king in Greece by any means, since it had been built itself by people who, persecuted by the kings of Europe, had found refuge in this country across the ocean and had formed a huge commonwealth: the United States.
“We had ordered eight frigates to be built in America. The decision had been made in 1824 by the representatives of the ‘government-in-exile’ in London. But the four mafiosi got in the way, in order to act as intermediaries; they were providing the money, so they felt they (Ricardo, Hobhouse, and company) should have a say in the proceedings. They sent their representative, a French cavalry officer called L’Allemand. In French, L’Allemand means the German. As unrelated, therefore, as his name was to France, so was this man, a cavalry officer, unrelated to ships. Nevertheless he was in on the scam, so they sent him. The American company Leroy, Bayard & Co. built the first two frigates and then waited for the money before it started work on the rest. Like any contractor, they would not continue building until they were paid. And the foursome in London was not sending any money because they’d already spent it among themselves. As a result, the Americans weren’t sending us the ships. An impasse. Concerned, the Greek representative persuaded A. Kontostavlos to travel to America to find out what was going on.
“Of course, at that time one did not travel to America as one does nowadays. It was an expedition.
An ordeal. Kontostavlos, a fervent and a wealthy patriot, finally decided to go. He found L’Allemand, who was furious with him, furious with the Greeks who were not sending the money, and a defendant of the contractors who were demanding the money so they could complete the order. Like all mafiosi, L’Allemand was serving the interests of his godfathers, Burdett and Ricardo, and the last thing he wanted was to see those ships delivered. The lenders’ plan had been clear from the start: to spend the money without delivering the goods and then to have Greece indebted to them, so that the politicians could hide behind them and play their games at the country’s expense.
“Isn’t that always the way imperialism works?
(Don’t forget that, at the time, England was a very powerful empire.) By hiding behind employers, lenders, and loan sharks, it bleeds dry an entire people or a single worker. It’s all the same, since every people struggling to break the chains of slavery is made up of many workers. Until they bring them to their knees, at which point the politicians arrive to play their dirty game. Isn’t it always a von Krupp who prepares the ground for a Hitler? Isn’t it the multinationals of today (ITT, IBM, and so on) that claim, proclaim, and disclaim leaders, chosen by the people, in order to allow rampant capitalism to play its shameless game?
“History provides us with very little information of Kontostavlos’s actions in America. The rest is left to our imagination. But imagination is not enough. We do not have sufficient knowledge of the period to know what he would do. All we know is that he is a patriot and he is concerned for his homeland, which is in a state of revolt, and which is waiting for these ships to arrive at last so that the struggle may begin.
“First he goes to the American builders, who tell him that if they don’t get any more money they will auction off the two frigates they’ve already built. They are unyielding, but L’Allemand has given them the right to be so by ganging up with them.
“Kontostavlos is alone in New York. Emigration has not yet begun because there is no Greek state.
Emigration will start a few decades later, when this state, for which Kontostavlos is now fighting, will become independent under such conditions that it will force its inhabitants to seek a better future elsewhere, especially in America.