ROC

There are many floors in Thessaloniki. I live at the third one, and have a long balcony where, at night, I smoke sun-dried tobacco and, by day, I drink moonlight-pale spritzer. Another balcony hangs right before my eyes. There, lights hide at night and girls come out during the day. The balcony I face is filled by an empty chair, facing the quiet glory of a hot street. Right in front of it, the Roman Forum is rising in over two thousand thin stories. Beneath the statue of a half-woman, a sane cat is lying. She’s lurking calmly like an empress. The part of the woman that is no more is facing the sea. She’s gazing, ahead, through buildings of at least three stories. From the cat to the sea there are, at least, three embassies of countries that, together, are not even two thousand years old. They occupy the ground floor of white buildings with more than three stories, with balconies above that do not have empty chairs, and no one smokes or drinks spritzer in the heat. The flags, played on fingers by the breeze, are either pulsating to the sea, or to the Roman half-woman. The shore has no railing. It faces a large ship, which is facing a small island across the water. There, a shiny-grey mountain is watching the lighthouse on the other shore. For a couple of ages, the enlightening tower has been facing the generous square originating in the bricked up shore. It thins out into a straight road that runs near an open window, where scents of sardines and rosemary smell from ages. At the worned tables, one sits facing the road that, out of habit, leads straight into the Roman Forum, from the middle of which, about where the cat lies still, one can see the chair on the third-floor balcony, wherefrom one can see out onto the balcony where I smoke at night, and drink spritzer by day. There’s no one on my balcony, a sign that I’m still in town. Girls hang their shirts out to dry and notice nothing different in the balcony across the street. They light cigarettes rolled on between their fingers and sit one by one on the chair facing along the street. The cat in the Forum knows she is being watched. So, she’s taking a nap of boredom of historic proportions. She lives as déjà vu all her other nine good lives: sometimes empress, other times tour guide.