Όσο δεν μπορούμε να φεύγουμε με το σώμα, φεύγουμε με το μυαλό. Στη χτεσινή Καθημερινή ο Ηλίας Μαγκλίνης θυμήθηκε μια καλοκαιρινή ιστορία από τη βιογραφία του Πάτρικ Λι Φέρμορ. Επειδή η πρωτότυπη ιστορία βρίσκεται στο βιβλίο Μάνη του Φέρμορ, αντιγράφω τη σκηνή από εκεί επειδή δεν αποκλείεται να ενδιαφέρει τις φυγές σας:
Ο Αμερικανός φιλόλογος Michael Gorra κλείνει την εισαγωγή του βιβλίου με την παρακάτω παράγραφο:
Μήπως ήρθε η ώρα να φτιάξουν αυτοί που φτιάχνουν τα διαφημιστικά βιντεάκια και ένα βασισμένο σ’ αυτή τη σκηνή από τη Μάνη (εντάξει, με άλλο τραγούδι); Ή το έχουν φτιάξει και δεν το έχω δει;
Αλήθεια, μήπως αναγνωρίζει κανείς το τραγούδι από τη μετάφραση των στίχων;
Thinking of our grilling fish, our minds strayed back to Kalamata (now hidden at the gleaming gulf’s end), several years before.
It was midsummer in that glaring white town, and the heat was explosive. Some public holiday was in progress—could it have been the feast of St. John the Baptist which marks the summer solstice?—and the waterfront was crowded with celebrating citizens in liquefaction. The excitement of a holiday and the madness of a heat wave hung in the air. The stone flags of the water’s edge, where Joan and Xan Fielding and I sat down to dinner, flung back the heat like a casserole with the lid off. On a sudden, silent, decision we stepped down fully dressed into the sea carrying the iron table a few yards out and then our three chairs, on which, up to our waists in cool water, we sat round the neatly laid table-top, which now seemed by magic to be levitated three inches above the water. The waiter, arriving a moment later, gazed with surprise at the empty space on the quay; then, observing us with a quickly-masked flicker of pleasure, he stepped unhesitatingly into the sea, advanced waist deep with a butler’s gravity, and, saying nothing more than “Dinner-time,” placed our meal before us—three beautifully grilled kephali, piping hot, and with their golden brown scales sparkling. To enjoy their marine flavour to the utmost, we dipped each by its tail for a second into the sea at our elbow... Diverted by this spectacle, the diners on the quay sent us can upon can of retsina till the table was crowded. A dozen boats soon gathered there, the craft radiating from the table’s circumference like the petals of a marguerite. Leaning from their gently rocking boats, the fishermen helped us out with this sudden flux of wine, and by the time the moon and the Dog-Star rose over this odd symposium, a mandoline had appeared and manga songs in praise of hashish rose into the swooning night:
“When the hookah glows and bubbles,”
wailed the fishermen,
“Brothers, not a word! Take heed!
“Behold the mangas all around us
“Puffing at the eastern weed...”
It was midsummer in that glaring white town, and the heat was explosive. Some public holiday was in progress—could it have been the feast of St. John the Baptist which marks the summer solstice?—and the waterfront was crowded with celebrating citizens in liquefaction. The excitement of a holiday and the madness of a heat wave hung in the air. The stone flags of the water’s edge, where Joan and Xan Fielding and I sat down to dinner, flung back the heat like a casserole with the lid off. On a sudden, silent, decision we stepped down fully dressed into the sea carrying the iron table a few yards out and then our three chairs, on which, up to our waists in cool water, we sat round the neatly laid table-top, which now seemed by magic to be levitated three inches above the water. The waiter, arriving a moment later, gazed with surprise at the empty space on the quay; then, observing us with a quickly-masked flicker of pleasure, he stepped unhesitatingly into the sea, advanced waist deep with a butler’s gravity, and, saying nothing more than “Dinner-time,” placed our meal before us—three beautifully grilled kephali, piping hot, and with their golden brown scales sparkling. To enjoy their marine flavour to the utmost, we dipped each by its tail for a second into the sea at our elbow... Diverted by this spectacle, the diners on the quay sent us can upon can of retsina till the table was crowded. A dozen boats soon gathered there, the craft radiating from the table’s circumference like the petals of a marguerite. Leaning from their gently rocking boats, the fishermen helped us out with this sudden flux of wine, and by the time the moon and the Dog-Star rose over this odd symposium, a mandoline had appeared and manga songs in praise of hashish rose into the swooning night:
“When the hookah glows and bubbles,”
wailed the fishermen,
“Brothers, not a word! Take heed!
“Behold the mangas all around us
“Puffing at the eastern weed...”
Ο Αμερικανός φιλόλογος Michael Gorra κλείνει την εισαγωγή του βιβλίου με την παρακάτω παράγραφο:
Leigh Fermor is serious, and he winks. No other travel writer takes so infectious a pleasure in the world around him. Early in Mani he describes a midsummer dinner in the city of Kalamata when the “stone flags of the water’s edge...flung back the heat like a casserole with the lid off,” until on a “sudden, silent decision we stepped down fully dressed” into the water, taking the restaurant’s table and chairs with them. The waiter arrives with a platter of grilled fish, looks “at the empty space on the quay,” and then, “with a quickly-masked flicker of pleasure,...stepped unhesitatingly into the sea.” Boats gather around the table, the retsina flows, the night begins to swoon with music, and yet what interests Leigh Fermor isn’t his own behavior but the waiter’s aplomb in following him. No one forgets this scene, and in reading Mani I feel on every page ready to walk into that water myself.
Μήπως ήρθε η ώρα να φτιάξουν αυτοί που φτιάχνουν τα διαφημιστικά βιντεάκια και ένα βασισμένο σ’ αυτή τη σκηνή από τη Μάνη (εντάξει, με άλλο τραγούδι); Ή το έχουν φτιάξει και δεν το έχω δει;
Αλήθεια, μήπως αναγνωρίζει κανείς το τραγούδι από τη μετάφραση των στίχων;
