8. UP ON THE ACROPOLIS
The taxi drivers pestered him continuously in the horrendous crowd, no, no, leave me alone, he said at first, then he didn’t answer and, rebuffing them, tried to avoid them, in the meantime signifying with his glance no, no, only it was impossible either to avoid them or to get them to stop pushing up against him, they practically encircled you and droned this into your ear: Syntagma, and Acropolis, and Monastrikai, and Pireus, Agora, Plaka, and of course, hotel, hotel, and hotel, verri cheep and verri cheep, they shrieked and smiled, and that smile was the most horrendous of all, and they came from the back, then you changed directions with your suitcase, but then — zap! — you were already ploughing into them in front, because within a single split second they either shot out behind you or in front of you, the entire situation in the Aerodromia Eleftherios Venizelos was as if it were not a question of your arrival but a mistake, which the arriving person realized only when it was already too late, since he has arrived already, and has stepped into the horrendous crowd of the colossal waiting room, from everywhere groups or individuals were struggling to move in some direction or other, all in completely different directions, children screamed for their parents, and the parents screamed for the children not to go too far ahead or not remain too far behind, elderly couples with their lost gazes shuffled along always moving ahead, the leaders of school groups yelled at frightened pupils to stick together, and Japanese tour guides with their little flags and megaphones yelled at the frightened Japanese tourists to stay together, and sweat poured off of everyone, as the heat in the hangar was insufferable, it was summer, an infernal pandemonium, a madhouse unannounced in advance, as you attempted, with your suitcase, to fight toward the direction where the exit was expected to be, but even there outside it didn’t really come to an end: on the one hand because only then did you feel the meaning of heat in Athens in the summertime; on the other hand, as the taxi drivers, at least three or four of them, were still following right behind him and they just spoke and spoke and smiled and smiled and reached after his suitcase, by the time he was able to break free of this insanity he was a corpse; he sat down in a waiting taxi and said to the gum-chewing, bored-looking driver, who was reading a tabloid newspaper,