The Colossus of Maroussi () by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1941-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

The next morning I paid a visit to the museum where to my astonishment I encountered Mr. Tsoutsou in the company of the Nibelungen racketeers. He seemed highly embarrassed to be discovered in their presence but, as he explained to me later, Greece was still a neutral country and they had come armed with letters of introduction from men whom he once considered friends. I pretended to be absorbed in the examination of a Minoan chessboard. He pressed me to meet him in the café later in the day. As I was leaving the museum I got the jitterbugs so bad that I made caca in my pants. I thought of my French friend immediately. Fortunately I had in my little notebook a remedy against such ailments; it had been given me by an English traveler whom I met in a bar one night in Nice. I went back to the hotel, changed my clothes, wrapped the old ones in a bundle with the idea of throwing them in a ravine and, armed with the prescription of the English globetrotter, I made for the drug store.

I had to walk a considerable time before I could drop the bundle unobserved. By that time the jitterbugs had come on again. I made for the bottom of the moat near a dead horse swarming with bottle-flies.

The druggist spoke nothing but Greek. Diarrhoea is one of those words you never think to include in a rough and ready vocabulary—and good prescriptions are in Latin which every druggist should know but which Greek druggists are sometimes ignorant of. Fortunately a man came in who knew a little French. He asked me immediately if I were English and when I said yes he dashed out and in a few minutes returned with a jovial-looking Greek who turned out to be the proprietor of a café nearby. I explained the situation rapidly and, after a brief colloquy with the druggist, he informed me that the prescription couldn’t be filled but that the druggist had a better remedy to suggest. It was to abstain from food and drink and go on a diet of soggy rice with a little lemon juice in it. The druggist was of the opinion that it was nothing—it would pass in a few days—everybody gets it at first.

I went back to the café with the big fellow—Jim he called himself—and listened to a long story about his life in Montreal where he had amassed a fortune, as a restaurateur, and then lost it all in the stock market. He was delighted to speak English again. “Don’t touch the water here,” he said. “My water comes from a spring twenty miles away. That’s why I have such a big clientele.”

We sat there talking about the wonderful winters in Montreal. Jim had a special drink prepared for me which he said would do me good. I was wondering where to get a good bowl of thick soupy rice. Beside me was a man puffing away at a nargileh; he seemed to be in a stony trance.

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