Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Thanatos
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
The half-slumbering, picturesque island of Corfu makes the perfect travel poster. Beach coves cuddle sunbathers. Swimmers dive into crystal clear waters. Venetian colonnades and medieval castles reminisce about the Ionian Sea battles that decided the fate of empires.
The ghosts of Greek warriors long since dead walk the ancient roadways and haunt the ruins. Faded shutters on faded buildings hide hospice workers. In Greece, the aging and aged die every four minutes.
On a dusty, dirt road fronting a Greek taverna, gnarled vines escape from walled gardens. A donkey brays in protest over a bulky load. A fruit seller tosses out rotted oranges.
In the mid-day heat, I am nursing a second glass of ouzo, nibbling at a plate laden with kalamata olives and feta cheese. The milky-white ouzo blankets me in a sleepy embrace.
Two elderly Greek men in tattered coal-black coats huddle their rust-mottled faces over a chess set. The game is slow enough that the two players could be dozing—or slowly dying.
The taverna’s only waiter as still as a Greek statue is gazing at nothing, working to make himself invisible, ignoring my table. From my angle, he looks like a mannequin or maybe a cadaver stacked upright.
A fourth Greek approaches my table. He snails his way across the taverna patio balancing on a cane. With invading rudeness, he sits without acknowledging me.
As if to explain his presence, the old guy mutters his name, “Thanatos.” He has the scarred, grainy hands of a machinist or carpenter, maybe a fisherman.
Grizzled and unkempt, he’s as weedy as an abandoned archaeological ruin. Vanity has left him—one more shuffled step on the road away from this world.
As if attending his own funeral, his mildewed breath confides, “Listen, I’m telling you. I’ve had a good life. I’ve done things. I don’t want anyone crying over my coffin.”
As if proclaiming a Delphic prophecy, he pauses for theatrical emphasis. I picture him on stage at the Greek amphitheater at Lissos. He seems ancient enough.
I want to ask him, when do the dead become ghosts? He is close to finding out. His thin and crinkled skin looks as if he was disinterred last week.
When his cremation robes burn, is there anyone he wants to escape? Is my tablemate ready to leave his bad friends and good enemies among the living? I wince, thinking about the people I look forward to seeing in a coffin.
His watery eyes stare through me. He doesn’t answer any of my unspoken questions. His mouth is as closed as a sealed grave. Maybe I don’t know what to listen for.
The graveyard silence is neither awkward nor unfamiliar. A conversation dying.
The dead air entombs me. Another sip of ouzo proves I am still among the living.
