The Son, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza

Kosta Alexopoulos is a Greek, born in Smyrna, in Asia Minor, he lives in Camden, England, with his wife Anna and their son Adoni.

They are all expatriated, the family had to abandon their country, and, after thirty-five years, Kosta remembers the facts that obliged them to move out from Greece and reflects about their life, and he mostly concentrates in his relationship with Adoni.

When Kosta was a baby, his parents had to go with him to a French refugee ship: the Turks were burning Smyrna, killing as many persons as they could.

Later on, there was another war in Athens, the Germans killed Kosta’s mother, and he decided to chop off his mother fingers in order to exchange the big rings she had on her hand. Not the moment for feelings, there was hunger time.

The Germans also killed Kosta’s father.

With the country destroyed and no nice future to come, Greek men looked for wives and set out to New York or England, hoping they would open a restaurant, make money and eventually go back to Greece.

Therefore, after many years working, Kosta opened his own restaurant in Caledonian Road, a place totally different from the sunny and noisy places he loved, where he would never go back: he thinks “you are made for one soil, but life send you to another, and then you can’t budge”.

The three members of the family work at the restaurant: Anna, Kosta and Adoni.

Adoni doesn’t meet at all the connotation of his name. As a matter of fact, Adoni was born in Athens, in 1944, in Melianos' family, neighbours of Anna’s family. The real boy’s father died in Poland; the mother died giving him birth.

The baby was taken in by Anna’s family, and she proposed Kosta adopting him when they married. Kosta accepted, imagining that later the true son he desired would arrive, but he didn’t know Anna was not fertile.

The years passed by, and the couple never find the moment to explain Adoni his origins. There was always an excuse to postpone that essential explanation. They even began to cheat themselves that the boy was their real son.  

Kosta considers that Adoni didn’t grow in a satisfactory way, because he wasn’t good at school, reserved, he didn’t look for girls, didn’t go out at night, didn’t have his own wishes or opinions.

When Adoni was eighteen, he started working at the restaurant. He was efficient in that job, he worked hard, although he moved like a great bear between the tables and didn’t show any charm. When Kosta introduced Adoni to the customers, they look surprised at that absurd name.

Kosta always plays the role of a proud Greek restaurant owner; always pretends he was Zorba the Greek. 

They have a life of routine and permanent work, they live on top of the restaurant, no entertainments, holidays or comfort, their only dedication was their business, each one their duties.

Anna wasn’t a beautiful woman either, she put on weight and seemed a huge milk pastry when lying on bed. But she does properly all what’s needed for the work, a “great work horse” in Kosta’s opinion.

Kosta expected one day Adoni will be like the son he would have liked, and he moved between deception and acceptance, between hope and guilt. Sometimes he wept.

Moreover, Kosta started to be paranoid, imagining Adoni could discover by himself he had no real parents.

Surprisingly, when Adoni was already thirty-three, he started to go out at night, awakening happy expectations on his father that he would finally meet girls! But what he really did was going to the library and visiting a group of old expatriate Greeks, facts that make grow the fear of his father that he was playing the detective.

When summer arrived, Adoni asked, for the first time in his life, to go on holidays. He was thirty-five….

And he had decided to visit Greece, a very terrifying idea for Kosta, who had to accept to let him go and find out where he came from. Anna felt less worried, considering they would go through it all, that life and routine would continue as always.

The fortnight finished, Kosta went to the airport, and when he met Adoni, tried to find out every evidence that he already knew, he waited his son to say it, to let it out. Instead, Adoni commented about Athens, full of tourists and no decent meal to be found in the city centre.

Arrived at the restaurant, the family work the whole day as every day until the night, when the frightening moment arrived. Adoni explained, his face hardened to stone, that he found an old man, Elias, who knew the past of the families. That man revealed Adoni his true surname was Melianos, not Alexopoulos, his real father died in the war and his real mother died when Adoni was born.

Elias told another unexpected news: Kosta’s parents were killed by the Turks, and their neighbours, the Alexopoulos, were the ones that took Kosta to the refugee ship.

As Kosta had once said: We are born in confusion, and that’s how we live.

I think this story is an example of some damages of wars, not always considered.
We always think about the destruction, the dead people, the hunger, and other terrible sufferings. But we don’t frequently think about the orphan little babies, or children, deprived of their parents, who grow with other families or in public institutions. Besides, wars produce expats who must abandon their countries, to live abroad feeling the loss of their homeland.

QUESTIONS

-What do you think of anthropophagy? Would you do /accept it in case of extreme necessity? Do you know cases about it?

-Who was Adonis in the Greek Mythology?

-After a war between two countries, according to your opinion, when or how can them stop their mutual rancour?

-When, or why, would emigrants go back to their native country? Do you know people who have gone back?

-What do you know about the Greco-Turkish war (1919-1922)? And about the great fire of Smyrna?

-For adopted children, what is the best moment to tell them they are adopted?

-If you were an adopted child, would you like to know who were your biological parents and why you were given to adoption?

-Why do you think the narrator has made Adoni bashful, silent, secretive and “chaste and sober as a monk”?

-“We Greek are like that”: do you have an adjective to define different nations?

-From your point of view, is it a good idea to encourage your children to look for a partner? What is the best way to encourage them?

-What kind of club do you imagine “Neo Elleniko” can be?

-What is the reference to “King Oedipus asking fool questions”?

-Have you read Zorba the Greek or seen the film?

-Hasn’t Kosta to be happy because he didn’t chop off his mother’s fingers? Why do you imagine he’s angry?

 

VOCABULARY

barter, snap-shots, pile, beads, budge, lopping off, (was) none the wiser, kid, stunted, swop, podgy, snigger, drooping, blancmange, winds, dolt, skewering, qualms, gave her notice, mousy, worked it out, forestalled, nightingale, fogies, lollop, Customs, spit it out, nudging at his lips, cue, tilting 

England, by Graham Swift

SUMMARY

England is the last story of the collection and it gives the title to the book, so we have to suppose that it is its flagship. But the “spirit” of “England” is in all the stories, because they tell us about ordinary people in their country: their lives, their history, their feelings, their successes and failures. Perhaps, because of the title, someone would think that the author is a bit of a chauvinist, but his stories prove that it is the other way round: he doesn’t boast of his country, but neither scoffs at it.

 

Our story is situated in a remote place in England, in that extreme England border, the ocean, in the geographical sense as in the human sense.

Ken Black, a coastguard in the Bristol Channel, goes to his post very early in the morning, and sees a car stopped on the side of the road with one of its (“her”) wheels in a ditch. He stops to help and finds that the driver is a black man who works as a travelling comedian. For Ken it’s a so extraordinary event (a black man, a comedian, very early in the morning, in this remote part of the country) that he isn’t going to tell anybody about it. The comedian, Johnny Dewhurst, explains that a young deer standing in the middle of the road has caused his little accident. Together they put the car back on the road; then the stranger invites Ken to a coffee from a thermos and explains a bit of his job, that he comes from the north and visits a lot of places doing his show, a kind of entertaining or comical monologue. Even he invites Ken and his wife to go and see him. In the end, the coastguard goes on to his work, not believing what has happened to him and deciding he isn’t going to see his show. The comedian gets into his old car to go on his itinerary.

 

Where is England in the story? Perhaps the comedian (a black man that maybe has ancestors from Jamaica) knows more about England than Ken (a really typical Englishman), because he travels around it. Perhaps he knows more about people because he tries to make them laugh, so he has to know the famous English humour (if that thing does exist), or he knows that one really understands people when one understands their sense of humour. Perhaps the story is a kind of apology for the English people: they do help strangers, they do try to be kind to them, they can accept a cup of coffee from them, but they cannot pay a visit to their performances (that is, as it was their home) … All in all, they are perplexed and shy in front of the alien. Is the English character like this, or is it a topic?

QUESTIONS

Let’s talk about driving. Do you think people drive better or worse than before? Does driving define your personality? Do you think people become aggressive when they sit behind a wheel?

Would you stop to help someone on the road, if you can see they are in trouble?

Did you do hitch-hike when you were young? And now, do you stop your car to take hitch-hikers?

Do you think four-by-four cars should be banned from cities?

According to the narrator, the comedian has “a thick bizarre bonnet of frizzy hair”. Do you know the song Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley? What does “Buffalo Soldier” stand for? Talking about Bob Marley; what do you know about Rastafari movement?

The narrator thinks the black man could be Caribbean. Why? Where do black people in Great Britain come from?

He says he has a “joke voice”: do you know more examples of “joke voices”?

What can you tell us from Ilfracombe?

“He pronounced the word at full-picth and with declamatory slowness.” Do you know any anecdote relative to the way we people talk to foreigners?

“He felt like a policeman”. When do you try to be civilized, do you feel sometimes like being a policeman? Do you think it’s right to act as a policeman?

What literary symbol could be the deer in the road?

When sailors talk about ships, they mention them as feminine: the nautical “lift her”. Do you think that some things are masculine and others feminine?

They say “close contact breeds affection” (el roce hace el cariño in Spanish). In this story, working together creates a kind of link between them. Can you tell us any similar experience?

“The only cloud was retirement.” Was or would be a cloud for you? Why?

How do you imagine being a travelling comedian?

What type of cities did the comedian visit in his tour?

Where is the joke here: “Johnny Dewhurst, it no joker’s name, it a butcher’s name”?

What can you tell about Dewsbury?

Do you usually give money to street artists? Why?

How does anybody decide what to be in the future?

Is the narrator going to tell the story to his mates and to his family? Why?

What is the meaning of that: “would that risk having his roadside encounter hurled outrageously back at him”?

What do you think it’s the relation between the title and the story?

 

VOCABULARY

brow, pulled up, gullies, tarmac, seldom, starkly, scoops, overcast, dashboard, plush, four-by-four, dinky, cowering, dip, dodgy, Fookin' 'ell, I is, screechy, hissy, I no, weirdly, de, joost, beguiling, lee-tal, dapples, reversing, manic, swerved, strutting, her, spin, skipper, looped stripe, arse, bumber, wrestler, We don't wahnt you messin' de natty tailorin', dents, fleetingly, skip, log, boot, elated, wizardly, skittering, yanking on, clock on, Tain't, yielding chuckle, glued, huddle, dishes, decommissioned, cackled, personas, topiary, gig, inured, shuddered, hee-hawed, bubbled out, corn exchanges, billing, stranded, dregs, forlorn, yen, buckled, head-in-the-sand, whisked away, SUVs

Do you remember how Jim speaks in Huckleberry Finn?:

You can't learn a nigger to argue 

I never see such a nigger. If he got a notion in his head once, there warn't no getting it out again. He was the most down on Solomon of any nigger I ever see. So I went to talking about other kings, and let Solomon slide. I told about Louis XVI that got his head cut off in France long time ago; and about his little boy the dolphin, that would ’a’ been a king, but they took and shut him up in jail, and some say he died there.

“Po’ little chap.”

“But some says he got out and got away, and come to America.”

“Dat’s good! But he'll be pooty lonesome—dey ain’ no kings here, is dey, Huck?”

“No.”

“Den he cain’t git no situation. What he gwyne to do?”

“Well, I don’t know. Some of them gets on the police, and some of them learns people how to talk French.”

“Why, Huck, doan’ de French people talk de same way we does?”

“No, Jim; you couldn’t understand a word they said—not a single word.”

“Well, now, I be ding-busted! How do dat come?”

“I don’t know; but it’s so. I got some of their jabber out of a book. S’pose a man was to come to you and say Polly-voo-franzy—what would you think?”

“I wouldn’ think nuffn; I’d take en bust him over de head—dat is, if he warn’t white. I wouldn’t ‘low no nigger to call me dat.”

“Shucks, it ain’t calling you anything. It’s only saying, do you know how to talk French?”

“Well, den, why couldn’t he say it?”

“Why, he is a-saying it. That’s a Frenchman’s way of saying it.”

“Well, it’s a blame ridicklous way, en I doan’ want to hear no mo’ ‘bout it. Dey ain’ no sense in it.”

“Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?”

“No, a cat don’t.”

“Well, does a cow?”

“No, a cow don’t, nuther.”

“Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?”

“No, dey don’t.”

“It’s natural and right for ‘em to talk different from each other, ain’t it?”

“Course.”

“And ain’t it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?”

“Why, mos’ sholy it is.”

“Well, then, why ain’t it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that.”

“Is a cat a man, Huck?”

“No.”

“Well, den, dey ain’t no sense in a cat talkin’ like a man. Is a cow a man?—er is a cow a cat?”

“No, she ain’t either of them.”

“Well, den, she ain’t got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of ‘em. Is a Frenchman a man?”

“Yes.”

“Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan’ he talk like a man? You answer me dat!”

I see it warn’t no use wasting words—you can’t learn a nigger to argue. So I quit.

 

A bit of dialogue between Jim and Huck (from Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain)

People Are Life, by Graham Swift

Crisis in Six Scenes, by Woody Allen

PEOPLE ARE LIFE, by Aurora Ledesma

 Vangeli, a Greek Cypriot barber, is cutting the hair of an elderly customer. It’s the last customer of the day for him, and he is quite tired when the working day is over.  The customer confesses that is mother has just died. He had lived with his parents all his life and feels a bit abandoned now.

The barber senses that the man’s reflection in the mirror reveals more than his speech. Vangeli tries to sympathise but wants to know what is the full message. He asks himself, What is he telling me? That he is all alone in the world?

The barber offers the consolation that is apparently expected of him with phrases like:

“Well it had to happen”, “Sooner or later”, “Eighty – Three’s not a bad age”, “But you have friends”, “If you have people to see and talk to, then you have friends”, “If you have people, you have life”.

The talkative barber narrator dispenses bits of wisdom like the story title to the customers who want a little philosophy with their hair-cut.

The protagonist is just as lonely and friendless as his customer. His mother and father died years ago in Cyprus. His English wife Irene died too, just three years ago. They’d been split up for years. He has two grown-up boys also who are both in computers and are embarrassed by their father who’s just been a barber all his life. Despite his loneliness and his problems, he says nothing to his customers. He knows how to listen to the sorrows of the others but he has no one to tell his own. At the end of the day, what he likes most is to get home and have a beer.

When he finishes serving his customers, he pats them on the shoulder and tells them.

-“ Thank you for the tip, and now go and live your life”.

  

Some reflections

The story makes us reflect on the true childhood friends with whom we shared everything, our homes, games, worries, sorrows and joys, friends with whom we spent all our time together and later in adulthood we wonder, where are the real friends now? Maybe, like the barbershop customer, we only have people with whom to share anecdotes in a café. Even the protagonist Vangeli, who, after a lifetime in England, doesn’t know the names of his customers and is surprised by some English reactions, doesn’t have real friends.

QUESTIONS

Can you make a summary of the narrator’s life?

“People are life” versus misanthropy / loneliness. What are the benefits and the shortcomings of one kind of attitude versus another?

“The last costumer is different”. Do you think people treat costumers differently according to the time of the day? For the barber, why the last one is different?

Different kinds of friendship: people to whom you say hello, people who you meet, mates at work, friends… How can you define true friendship? Is a real friend “someone you can talk to”?

Is a barber a kind of psychologist, philosopher, confessor (he didn’t know his costumers’ names)? And the hairdresser?

What do you think of this type of communication?: The barber looks at the man who is talking to through the mirror. Is it similar to the communications through mobiles or computers?

Do you think there is a relation between the way you wear your hair and your personality? And what about your hair’s shape, colour…?

“We are in each other’s lives: that’s having friends”: do you think is it a good definition? Why?

What do you know about Cyprus? History, politics…

Did the costumer really need a haircut? How do you know? Do you go to the hairdresser if you have to go to a funeral?

Are you embarrassed by your parents’ jobs? Are there “low” jobs or only “low paid jobs”? Who usually does the “low paid jobs” nowadays?

“It’s how the English are.” What are English people like? Is it all clichés?

Do you think is it easy to become a barber?

What differences can you find between a barber and a women’s hairdresser?

 

VOCABULARY

snipped, hefty, tough, crinkly, clippers, split up, gabble away, regular, flick