Black Market Memory

Once, just once, I broke the law...well besides speeding and the odd DUI - well twice with that...alright and maybe a few puffs of dope...but besides that straight as an arrow...pretty much. So, when I arrived in Greece via car at the start of a European summer in 1989 with my best friend Wendy, I didn’t for one minute think I’d be performing something illegal on purpose, two months later.

We’d bought an Opel Rekord in a small town named Siegburg in Germany six months earlier and travelled parts of Europe we hadn’t yet seen after three months of train travel. A car would let us get into the nitty gritty. The real France, the real Yugoslavia, or what used to be, the real Italy.

The plan was that we’d drive through the southern parts of Europe ending the trip in Greece and spending our summer on the Islands and other parts of the mainland. Then we would sell the car and fly to Egypt before meeting my parents back in London and travelling on with them through Scotland. Life seemed so simple.

We spoke with a Greek fella named Hieronymus, at an auto yard in a northern suburb of Athens called Kifissia and decided to park ourselves in a cheap hotel called Ilion for a couple of nights until we sold it. The guy let us put the car on his lot and said to call back shortly. He told us it would sell fast.

Later that day we phoned the guy just as he’d asked via a public call box. Mobiles just were not around like they are now back then or else they were the size of a large brick or attached to an expensive sports car.

Days later he informed us that there had been a lot of interest in our car and that he’d been offered as much as 500,000 drachma or $4,200 Aussie dollars, for it. That was double what we had paid for it. We couldn’t believe our luck.

‘Leave it with me’, he said ‘we’ll get many more offers.’

So, we left the car there and went out for souvalaki and Amstel beer. Our staple diet in Greece. By the next afternoon we hadn’t heard from the guy, so we dropped by.

‘Good news,’ he said, ‘lots more offers on your car, good money, plenty of drachma.’

‘Great. Well, we’d be happy with anything, really,’ we told him. And that was true. We’d had our money’s worth and more importantly amazing experiences and freedom to go anywhere. Anything else was just a bonus.

‘Ok. I’ll get a good price tomorrow. Best price.’

Cocksure and confident we ambled off to the travel agent and booked tickets to Cairo and then from there to London for a week’s time. There was no doubt that we would sell the car the next day, catch a bus to Piraeus port and get a boat to another Island for the last few days.

The next day came and went and no sale. Same thing happened the next day and then again over the next few days. Turns out Hieronymus didn’t know that just that month earlier a new sales tax came in on imported cars with licence plates from other countries. The car could be purchased by any person living in Greece, no problem, but to change plates cost thousands of dollars...or drachma. It wasn’t worth their while.

We spent the next couple of days hanging around hotel Ilion, waiting on a buyer to call us on the lobby phone and we took it to other car yards in the area and tried to come up with other ideas, such as for sale signs and word of mouth.

It wasn’t the ‘be all and end all’ to sell, but after six months of driving through Europe we had a bit of a soft spot for the car. We drove it through England, scored awesome parks in London itself, Berlin, slept in it once in a vineyard in the middle of France and fell asleep watching fireflies. It took us safely to Gallipoli and along the French and Italian Riviera’s. It ferried us successfully over thousands of kilometres and personally, I loved it. There was no way I could just dump it, which was one suggestion from a dude named Adonis, who owned a car yard called ‘Hermes cars’. What are you fucking kidding me? Adonis? I asked when he offered his name with a soft handshake. Self titled?

We suddenly had one day before we were leaving for Cairo. We had already missed Mykonos because of the damn car, there was no way I was missing the Sphinx. Not only that, we had to get back to London. We had a window of a few hours to meet my Mum and Dad and travel north with them. At the time I would have fallen apart if I had missed them, being a real Mummy and Daddy’s girl, and we had no way of contacting them, at all since they had just moved on from their last location and we had already given them our flight details.

Quietly depressed and sick of killing mossies in our hotel room while waiting for a call about a potential sale, we were just starting to talk about donating the car to someone who needed one. This wasn’t an awful idea but we were sort of counting on the extra dough to help us out when we got to America. We were jotting down ideas when there was a knock at the door. A man stood there and mumbled at me. He motioned me to follow him and then did some driving hand gestures.

‘Oh, the car?’

He handed me a car yard card from a lot up the road.

‘You go. Might be better luck,’ Wendy said.

It was like a meeting with the Godfather. There was a cigar burning away in the ashtray, the room was dim and a big bloke with a bald head and beefy jowls who reminded me of Jabba the Hut sat behind a huge mahogany desk surrounded by white smoke and yellowy, brown lamp light. Slurry discussion in broken English startled me as I became increasingly wary of the man starting to stand. He approached me and shook my hand. We had heard rumours about the black market and other dodgy practises and were warned to beware. Suddenly I found myself in an unfamiliar situation and I was certainly out of my comfort zone. Bloody superstition from both Wendy and myself saw me standing there, alone except for a posse of men I had no real business with.

‘I want to do business with you, yes?’ he asked.

‘I hope so.’ I answered trying hard not to sound uneasy. I mean I was a seasoned traveller, but I was 21 years old. Was this the Greek mob? I glanced at the band of Greek blokes all chain smoking, wearing sweaty pitted silk shirts of varying colour...black. It was hot as hades in the office. Athens in summer was stifling. I could hear a clock ticking on the wall loudly while the big man did the sums. Sums I knew were going to be announced like they were paying me a motza but was in reality a paltry sum I was supposed to be happy with. I didn’t care at that point I wanted to get the hell out. He scribbled a figure on a piece of paper and slid it across the table.

‘Okay?’ he questioned.

He had written it in drachma and seeing I was pissing my pants and struggling with the monetary conversion even after two months of hanging out in Greece, I nodded, because at the end of the day I didn’t give a fuck if our beloved car was worth five cents. I wanted to get out of there. I studied it attempting to look blandly at it and nodded.

‘Good. Half now. Half later. You come back with the car tomorrow at 2pm. Just you come and bring your passport.’

He barked some order at a young fellow leaning against a mottled window and threw a cigar stub at him. He jumped to attention and dashed into a small back room. He returned a minute later and gave Jabba the money. It was counted in front of me, rolled up and put it in a yellow envelope.

‘I am Damario,’ he said offering his hand.

‘Kirstie,’ I said feeling a little more at ease reaching across the table to shake his hand.

‘We’ll meet tomorrow. You will stay at Ilion tonight?’

Was this an order? Was he worried we were going to take the money and run.

‘Yes. We have a flight leaving for Cairo tomorrow night at 8. We don’t want to move hotels again.’

I stepped out of the small office and into the heat of Athens and breathed deeply. Cigar smoke lingered over me and the sweaty smell of the people in the room stayed in my nose for ages. I ran back to the hotel.

‘There is no way you’re going back alone,’ Wendy told me when I explained what had happened.

‘I don’t think there’s a choice.’ I said.

‘Bullshit, we’ll leave the car and go.’

‘He knows where we’re going. I have his money.’

‘Half his money and he’ll have the car. It’s a better deal for him.’

‘They need my passport’.

‘Shit, it’s black market’.

‘I know’, I whispered.

‘Fuck’.

‘I know’.

The next day at 2.00pm I grabbed my passport, left the money with Wendy and headed across Kiffissias Avenue to the Godfathers office in the car. There were two of his posse smoking ciggies on the footpath outside. They nodded and pointed at the door. I went in waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark.

‘Hello Kirstie, we’ll go.’

He stood clumsily and beckoned for me to follow him. We walked through the back room and into a carport.

‘You follow me in your car. Have you got your passport?’

‘I do.’

I wandered through the garage noting all the fancy cars. All black, all newish, all polished and went out the roller to my car. I waited for Damario to pull out ahead of me all the while wondering what the fuck I was doing. The trip didn’t take long, it was only about 20 kilometres away to the harbour. I followed Damario through various gates around the busy seaport. He was stopped frequently where he was spoken to by various port staff and after some brief discussion and gesturing my way we were encouraged on. We hit a dirt track and travelled a further five minutes or so around some wharfs, finally coming to a stop right opposite an immense freight ship with Grimaldi-lines stencilled across the side.

‘What the fuck,’ I mumbled.

Damario climbed out of his car and came my way. I also got out but he waved me back impatiently. I jumped back in but rolled my window down. He bent down and whispered some instructions to me gruffly. I was suddenly even more worried.

‘It’s taking the car to Cyprus. Drive onto the boat. Show passport. Come back out and I will give you your money and drive you home. Don’t wait too long on the boat she’s ready to sail.’

‘What am I gonna do have a pina colada’, I thought in my head.

I pulled ahead and drove onto the boat. There was no one around. I parked behind a well-travelled faded red combi van, locked up the car with a last wistful look inside and went to a booth where there was a lone crew member shuffling papers. He asked for my passport and keys and then went and looked at the car. A few minutes later he came back shaking his head.

‘Registration is running out in a few days,’ he told me in broken English.

‘Yes, but it hasn’t run out yet,’ I said, ‘it’s still legal.’

He made a call and motioned me to sit on a bench outside of the booth then he disappeared. Sometime later Damario wandered down the boat ramp with another official looking man. He was speaking quickly and bad-temperedly and shaking his hands about. He got to me and put his hand out, ‘passport?’ he asked curtly.

‘The other man has it, and the car keys.’

I just know that what came out of his mouth next were filthy Greek swear words. I’m glad I couldn’t understand them.

‘Wait, sit,’ he commanded. I did... for two frigging hours. It was ¼ to 5 when I finally saw Damario heading back towards me from an upper deck, walking his old man walk. I had to be at the international airport in two hours. I had been shaking in my boots. No car, no passport, no money, no fucking idea what I was doing on a boat that was cranking up its steamers bound for Cyprus. I stood up knowing that whatever happened, if they returned my passport I would be bolting out of there with or without the car, the money or Damario, ‘the God father pig Jabba the Hut mobster’ that had scared me witless.

I stood and he beckoned for me to follow him. ‘Have you got my passport?’ I asked dejectedly. I couldn’t read him and didn’t try to. All I kept thinking was that in the nine months of travelling I had protected my passport meticulously. It was all I cared about. He kept walking his old man walk although he was a quick old bugger and I was half side stepping like a crab in an attempt to keep up with him to make him look at me. We got to the top of the ramp and he stopped. I looked up at the afternoon light already feeling better as he pulled my passport from his pocket and then counted out the rest of our money. He placed both in my hand and I felt so relieved I wanted to cry.

-Who would have thought at the end, he would drive me to Piraeus port, park and discuss its beauty with me. The sun was lowering over the water. It was the end of summer. Tourists were fewer and I have to say it was the most dramatic and beautiful sunset I had ever seen. It was a busy, congested port normally but right then it was majestic. Damario pointed out boats he knew, boats of friends, boats of splendour swaying on the Mediterranean. I wasn’t scared anymore.

He looked at me with a toothy grin. ‘Life is beautiful, no’

‘It is, Damario,’ I said. ‘It is. It is. But I have a plane to catch’.