at least this Acropolis, Adonis winked at him; the Acropolis, Yorgos looked at him as well, sourly, well you know after all, they said to him, after all you’re here for the first time, why not, although I think it’s really idiotic, said Yorgos, I think so too, said Adonis, but well, fine, go if you want to go so much, but wait, what about — a girl from the group, whose name was Ela, now advised him — this thing, and she pointed to his suitcase, you don’t have to take that the whole way, you can put it somewhere, if you don’t find us here, just wait, but where, and she looked around — at Maniopulos’s, Yorgos recommended; okay it’s nearby, and so it was, Maniopulos was a merchant or something like that, in a completely dilapidated little shop in the dilapidated street behind the restaurant, maybe it sold computer parts, it was not easy to determine, but it sold something like that, in any event the youth in the shop immediately said yes, and put the suitcase behind a kind of curtain, and gestured to him that everything was fine, he could come back for the suitcase anytime, when he was done, and with that they were already outside on the terrace, they were explaining the route to him, advising him that although it was hot, he should go on foot, because there wouldn’t be so many tourists, and then, he could see something of the Plaka, the old city, just keep on going that way, Yorgos pointed in one direction, and he started off toward the crossing, just keep going that way, although it would have been better, they immediately noted among themselves, if he had waited a few hours, that is to say until evening, as the sun up there will be scorching, dreadfully so, but he was already on the other side, and he began to make his way into the narrow alleyways of the Plaka, he was still waving to them, they waved back amiably, and even though he had felt so good in their midst — or exactly because he had felt so good in their midst — he now breathed a sigh of relief, at last now he was on the way, on the way to the Acropolis, because at least the Acropolis, he said to himself, and he thought of those very first murky pictures which he had preserved in his memory since childhood, and he felt joy that they had not been able to seduce him, although there was some murkiness in everything, even in this seduction, as even that was also murky if he thought about it, how those ancient pictures of the Acropolis never really had any contours, how they never even had any clarity, especially in regard to the proportions, that is he could never picture to himself how large the Acropolis actually was and how big its buildings were — how big, for instance, was the Propylaea, and how big was the Parthenon — one could not, that is, on the basis of descriptions or drawings or photographs, be sure of the dimensions, if one tried to judge the size of this temenos, as the Athenians called the district of their sacred buildings; it was impossible, and this was somehow a great problem, that one could not be sure of the proportions, it made the construction of the entire Acropolis in one’s mind nearly impossible; somehow everything depended upon the proportions, he always felt this, and he thought so now as well, as he went along the street; he bought a sandwich for an exorbitant sum, he drank a can of more or less chilled cola for an even more shameless price, but it didn’t matter, as the only thing that mattered was that he was getting ever closer to the Acropolis in the scorching heat, and that he was going to see the Temple of Nike, and he was going to see the Erechtheion, and of course, crowning it all, the unsurpassable Parthenon — and most of all he would be up on the summit of the Acropolis, for he had always wished for this, he wished for it now as well, as a farewell, he wanted to see it very much, as the Greeks had seen it, let’s say, 2439 years ago.