London by Sofia Yannatou

I’m walking in Hyde Park, two blocks’ distance from home – home, my house, my hostel, a place where I’ve been a guest for a few days, a few years, a few centuries, in this elderly immobile city which melts down everyday in its rain to turn into a river, a crowd, noisy, colourful, flowing, pouring out into the central artery of Oxford Street.

Trafalgar. Picadilly.

A fest of colours. Arabs, long robes, rolling, as if on invisible wheels, tourists, immigrants, Indians, Pakistanis, Indians again. Among them, there spring out ladies holding umbrellas.

I keep on holding my umbrella constantly, I can’t see the sky, yet I know it is always there, in a polite distance, neutral and grey. I can see only the back of two youngsters walking in front, black leather jackets, their hair standing up like rails. The imagination of pank fashion strides aggressively down the stairs leading to Underground tunnels. Central line.

I’m following blindfold the current in the meanders and smoke-black galleries of this antique station reminding me of a pit.

An Englishman in a check-patterned, worn out suit, glances at his watch. It shows exactly the same time with the platform time, or his wife’s watch waiting for him at home. Or with Big Ben, striking in London’s heart counting its pulse. The train will arrive “exactly”.

I’m lulled by the carriage’s cradling movement and by the check-patterned suit sitting across me. It looks like chess. I enter it, step on the chessboard – here is the queen. Queen Elizabeth, everlasting, unshakable, like an oak tree in the forest of Druids. In forests of the protector of the poor, Robin Hood. And of the Kings – Arthur, Richard, Henry. Behind the trees, there hide fairies and spirits of Shakespeare.

I got off at Baker street. They have renovated the platforms. Sherlock Holmes’ ghost which had been foggily haunting the station for years, has now become a part of reality. It has solidified on decorative wall tiles, imprinted as a classical figure with pipe-and-hat on repeated small shiny surfaces. Classic literature in the disposition of a nation respecting its tradition. And its tourism.

A traditional bus, two floors high, red coloured, stops at a pedestrians’ crossing, waiting respectfully for the lady with the doggy to walk across. Black taxis with polite drivers more in the opposite current of traffic, having still their steering wheel on the right, in this unorthodox city persisting doggedly in its backward glory.

An ex-officer, hero of Kipling and owner of an obsolete dignity, passes by throwing a waxen glance at me. I am apparently from Mediterranean. I work in India’s crop fields while he’s having tea, playing bridge in the club with the comfortable leather armchairs.

In Madame Tussaud’s, his effigy is waiting. Among effigies of Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Of Queen Victoria. Of Karl Marx and Charles Dickens. Of Louis Carol. I am Alice in Wonderland. I’m living a revived past going down to the underground cells of the Tower of London. The hangman freezes my blood. He’s ready to cut off my head.

I start running as if followed by Jack the Ripper. In my home I peep into the neighborhood pub – it’s full up. Beer is frothing, in standing glasses, freaks, they’re standing and laughing, exchanging cockney jokes. A passer by is staggering drunk – a red face, coming out from an Irish balled. The working class goes to paradise, waiting in the queue for the unemployment benefit.

A torn up poster advertises last week’s concert that became a leader title in the Times. Hooligans smashed everything down.

Before turning my key in the door, I stop to caress the blue-blooded dog of my lonely neighbor. Eleanor Rigby – “all these lonely people…”

I switch on the telly. BBC news, discussions by Knights of the Round Table. Democracy has won. The top-hat gentlemen and evil oppressors of Oliver Twist, coexist peacefully in the fog of Thames, with the smog-faced miners, the syndicalists of industrial revolution, the dark-skinned minorities and the rock music bands. All of them, under the quiet, calm glance of King Lear.

This text was written for the Greek Radio C series: “Voices from the invisible cities”, 1990

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London by Sofia Yannatou