#7 Just a Little Bit Further (Λίγο Ακόμα)
Or, The Night We Carried a Play Up the Fortress
Λίγο ακόμα!, I shouted at the darkness over my shoulder, then, without turning, I quietly kept my slow march upwards. Just a little bit further!
The view all around me would have been astounding: Corfu at night. The Old Town viewed from above, from a level higher than the old Venetian buildings, with just church steeples peeking over. With their reds, they stuck out against the night like brushes on an old canvas. A maze of green windows and soft yellow lights, all of it surrounded by dark waters, whispering softly to it all as it had for thousands of years. And at the edge of it all, of course, the Old Fortress. The reason you can sleep a bit better when you’re in Corfu. Knowing you have two pairs of watchful eyes on you. The Old Fortress’ four cannon turrets keeping the peace, letting passing ships know: don’t try it. The Ottomans did, and they didn’t learn their lesson.
Beyond the Old Fortress: black beyond black again, just the sea holding everything to account. Trawlers, ships, everything passing by at a safe distance, silently, discreetly, enviously. If they were lucky maybe they’d be allowed to come closer—if not, they’d have to settle for the mainland, somewhere below the mountain ranges across.
But I wasn’t looking at any of that. I was taking in deep breaths, and was instead sticking to my rule of keeping my eyes to the ground until I was at the very top. The payoff would be worth it, I kept telling myself. Just a little bit further. Just a little bit. Λίγο ακόμα, I offered once more—this time, not for the group trailing behind me, no. That time was just for me.
Behind me, out of the darkness, whispers kept bouncing off the old fortifications, and on towards the town. I could hear Stavros’ low voice: bass, calm, measured. I could also hear Theo’s distinctive laugh: joking with the girls here, being the comforting voice of a guide there. He was telling them what that town in the distance is, or where our usual hangout spots were hidden in the maze below. Around girls, Theo had trained his voice to have the authority of someone who’d built this place from the ground up. I looked back: he had his attention solely on his captive audience, the virtues of our town below invisible to him in that moment.
Most of the new members of our group followed close, pausing at places to take in all the sights, or to be serenaded by Theo’s voice. Some nudged him playfully back, not paying attention to the slippery stones we were walking on. I could see how, for them, it was an exciting adventure. For most of the girls in our theatre group, students at the local university, it was a mystical night out: rehearsing in an exotic part of town, out-of-bounds, late into the night. I know Theo loved the play and what we were doing, but for him, the whole endeavour was also a chance to hone his skills, to have some fun.
A few steps behind me, between the rest of the group and me, were Sotiris, our director, and Petros, one of the leading actors. Their steps were heavy—this was a steep incline—but also assured. They kept an eye on everyone, making sure we all moved as a group and nobody was left behind or lost; but I could sense they were also eager to strike up conversation with me until we got there. Petros was asking me about the role Corfu had played when writing my play, or what I was going to write next. There was an earnest form of respect in his questions. I was conversing with a friend: he was conversing with this idea of the writer, the loner, the person to whom the muse visits late at night. Sotiris was more withdrawn, and I could tell his mind was racing with possibilities: which scenes to rehearse, how, for how long, how to bring that play to life. His approach was passionate, but also pragmatic: how do we pluck that thing out of the page and bring it on to the stage?
As for me, I was focusing on getting there as soon as possible. Not just because of the view, but because I couldn’t wait to hear my words being spoken out loud in the rehearsal room again.
At the very end of our little group, the person who let us all in, was Vangelis. Vangelis the artist, the tortured soul. At the time I may have thought of him as just another member of the group, but looking back now, I realise I never actually found out much about him.
He must have been in his 50s at the time. Or he may have been younger. I just remember being aware of the age gap between us when we were around, and thinking of old age as something that happens to others. Vangelis was living a solitary life, as far as I could tell, a true Boheme, living in his studio in Old Town. We’d come across him numerous times with my friends during nights out. Not early. Vangelis would only be seen very late at night, early hours of the morning. I can still see him hunched over a drink in the half-light, or about to chat up a young girl in the bar. He’d wear his loose-fitting linen, usually in white, matching his hair, and stroll around Old Town like he owned the place. As though no matter what problem you thought you had, he’d dealt with it too, and had already come out the other side: still alive, yes, but having traded out a part of him to keep going.
There was something flawed about him, yes—but there was also a deep love of art and appreciation of fellow artists. I have this image of him chatting up a girl at a bar and then getting into the topic of art theory, then becoming so engrossed in the topic that he would have no mind for anything else. I truly think he would do this, not because he would have a crisis of conscience and suddenly see his behaviour as potentially problematic, but because, in that moment, talking about art, the thing he’d dedicated his life to, was an act of hedonism.
Maybe that was what led him to suggest to us that we rehearse at the top of the New Fortress.
I don’t remember how it happened, but one night he suggested it, just like that, and somehow it happened. We would come across him at Πολύτεχνο, a small performance arts centre which doubled as a bar, which happened to be right across from the New Fortress. It had been brand new back then, in the early 2010s, and the guys who owned it were generous enough to let us rehearse in their space for free. Understandably, that wasn’t always the case, because coordinating with the group to be able to use the space when it was free was a challenge. One night, Sotiris and Theo and I walked in Πολύτεχνο with a couple of girls from our group, and asked the guys there if we’d be able to have the space rehearse there that week. When it turned out they wouldn’t be able to accommodate us, Vangelis spoke from the edge of the bar.
Why don’t you rehearse at the bar on top of the New Fortress?, he said.
Sotiris and I looked at each other in disbelief. Really? We could do that?
Sure, why not? Vangelis said, making eye contact solely with his glass of whiskey now. It was as though the real conversation had already taken place a few moments ago in his head, and all this was now superfluous.
Vangelis had links to the small bar on top of the New Fortress and somehow had access to the space after hours. The surprises kept coming, because Theo was so quick to take him up on the offer it left Sotiris and me whiplashed. It all seemed a bit too good to be true. I kept waiting for the moment Vangelis would admit this was all a joke, but no; Vangelis and Theo almost arranged everything between them: Vangelis would meet us later that week at the entrance to the New Fortress, and come with us to rehearsal.
When at some point I glanced back again, careful to keep my field of vision from revealing the magic of the town below, Vangelis’ white hair was dancing against the dark background. It wasn’t a particularly windy night, and his steps were slow and assured, so I took a moment to wonder what it was that made his hair so animated. He kept to himself for the most part, not chatting to Theo, or the girls. Maybe it was the ideas that were swirling around his head that made the tufts of his hair dance around. For a moment, I found myself transfixed by this strange figure, this person who was affording us this opportunity, and who was now carefully, slowly placing one step in front of the other with much deliberation. I glanced at him. Like me, he wasn’t looking down at the town, he was ignoring Theo and his flirty shenanigans, he was just focused on his own path. It’s not just that the New Fortress itself may as well have been empty, but that the entire world may have been uninhabited. What was in it for him? Had it been a spur-of-the-moment offer, one he now regretted? Was it a chance to spend some time alongside the young girls of our theatre group? Or was it a chance to help fellow artists, to give back to the community?
Curiosity got the better of me. I took a deep breath in, and allowed myself to be swept up in the magic of the moment. Sea salt and cool, clear air flowed down all the way to my lungs. The slow climb along the side of this slumbering guardian the Venetians had awakened. My childhood friends walking beside me. The sound of the sea forever whispering secrets from faraway lands. All those mysteries I imagined took place beyond the mountain ranges across the narrow sea. And as if that weren’t enough, it was all a result of me digging deep inside me and writing my first play at age 23. If it was all surreal and dreamlike, it had been because I had broken through some internal mental barrier, breached the sea wall around my psyche and let all my ideas flow outwards. And a few short months later? I was in this mystical place, making it all happen. Life had become mystical. So why wouldn’t I want to learn more about this strange figure who was climbing alongside us?
I was about to hold, to wait in place for Vangelis, for us to get a chance to walk side by side, maybe get down to some answers—when I heard Sotiris’ stressy voice coming out of the darkness ahead of me. We have only an hour and a half of rehearsal time before Despina needs to get back home to her child, he said. For a moment I thought he was addressing me, specifically, because he’d sensed that I was getting distracted. I resumed my climb right behind him.
After a second, however, Sotiris continued: And that exercise you told me about takes at least 15 minutes, he was now saying to Petros.
Yeah, but it’s a good warm-up, Petros responded. Sotiris did not reply, but I could feel the space around him dim, absorb what little light there was in this corner of the New Fortress. I could sense our director’s thoughts through the dark, heavy with the detachment of a human calculator: 10-15 minutes to set up the space, 10 minutes warm-up, 15 minutes for this exercise, 10-15 for the other one, then did that leave us a full hour to work on the text before Despina needed to go home and for the rest of us to pack up and leave? And then, we also had to make time to read through Act III as well, so that everyone understood the little details that impact what we do in Act I, so then we’d have to make sure the actors are in place for—
It was only because he and I had spoken about the play so much that I could follow the crumbs to trail his thoughts with such ease, even now. I could go over the rehearsal schedule in my head again. Offer some reassurances that yes, we’d get enough done, don’t worry. This would be an important step toward staging the play. Yes, we would be able to get a sense of how X or Y actor deals with this role. They’ll be great. And if not, we can shift things around. Yes, it would be worth us scaling the New Fortress to rehearse, despite the extra time it took. Yes, Sotiri, you are doing a great job. We are in good, capable hands. We all feel it. Keep going. Just a little bit further. Λίγο ακόμα.
Instead, I kept to myself. I didn’t even say that last part. I kept going, transfixed in anticipation. Anticipation to get to the top, anticipation to hear my words, my play, spoken out loud. I’d only had the chance to do so a few times before, at previous rehearsals, and it was slowly becoming a form of obsession. I remember how torturous, how exposed I felt the very first time I heard actors speak my words out loud. Like I was standing in a roomful of mirrors, every single one of them pointed in my direction. I remember curling my toes, I was so tense. I’d be cross with them if they lost the cadence, the rhythm of the speech, never thinking to attribute any of that awkwardness to my own clunky work.
Every now and again, though, the way the actor spoke, and the pace of the text would magically sync up, like acrobats holding each other mid-air, and it would be magic. I remember having the spontaneous urge to hum music in my seat, even though I didn’t know what the melody itself would be yet. Better yet, sometimes, the actor would unlock something in the text, something I hadn’t even imagined, something I could never have suspected could even be there in the first place, and an incredible sense of fulfilment would befall me. Like a giant wave, washing all over me—leaving me intact, but filling my lungs to the brim with contentment and purpose. Never in my life had I felt so complete.
It was the ultimate drug, but one I believed others were taking on my behalf: speaking my words so I wouldn’t have to.
I thought: if I, this family’s youngest boy by about ten years, too small to have ever seen the shoulders of giants, let alone stood on them; if I could be smart enough to write words that others thought deemed important enough to take and put on their own lips, then—why then, surely I would be worthy of attention one day.
If others won’t hear what I have to say coming out of my own mouth, maybe they will hear it coming out of the mouths of strangers. Then I would be heard, then I would be wanted. Then I would be what everyone else around me appeared to me: complete.
That completion lay at the top of the New Fortress, and we were now here. Moreover, I would soon be able to enjoy something which would be purely mine: a view of Corfu town from the top of the New Fortress. Preparing to look, I took a deep breath in, as though clear air from the top of the fortress could be my first glance of the town below.
We’d reached the bit directly below the two salients at the very top, aptly called the salients of the Seven Winds. We’d taken the path above the Punta Perpetua, which led to a wide open space between the salients, in front of the dark, imposing, three-storey stone building the British left behind at the very top. It was a maze of arcades and tunnels and doors blocked by giant bars. Even now I have trouble separating true history from the stories my dad used to tell me when visiting the fortress as a child. Part of the building served as a prison; others as ammunition storage. Yet other arcades led not to parts of the fortress but underneath Corfu town itself, escape hatches the Venetians or the British or the French built in for moments of cowardice. At the front of the building, more carved into stone than built out of it, was the entrance to a cafe/bar, where the rehearsal space was. We would be rehearsing on the dancefloor of the bar. Now everyone was waiting for Vangelis, the distance between us having grown longer the higher we climbed, to open the space for us.
There wasn’t any magnificent balcony or vista from which to look at the town directly. In order to do that you’d have to scale the fortifications. That’s where I was headed myself, having patiently waited to only take in the view from the very top. Sotiris, though, was growing impatient. He called my name, and from his tone of voice I could tell he was chastising me. We were meant to be leading by example, not leading actors astray. I would have to wait a little while longer to enjoy the view.
I came close, stewing. Vangelis was still fumbling with the keys in the dark in front of everyone when Daphne, one of the girls Theo had been talking to, suddenly laid a hand on my shoulder.
All good?, she said.
Yes, of course, I said.
Good! Daphne said, brimming with joy. The town looked incredible on the way up!, she added.
I looked at her. In the half-light, her dreadlocks were a splash of youthful energy, ready to bounce around on their own volition. And why wouldn’t she be excited? There was good banter, fun, beautiful vistas. Unlike me, she had taken in the view on the way up. Not savouring, not depriving, just fully present for the journey. She turned to Maria, the other actor next to her. Isn’t this amazing? Daphne asked her.
Oh, the best! Maria said. I can’t remember the last time I was this fully present.
Same here!, Daphne said, as a crack was heard in front of us. Vangelis finally got the big door to open. We were all immersed in air that was even cooler than the one at the top: cool, stale, and full of secrets.
Can’t wait to get this rehearsal started!, they said, almost in unison.
If this article resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. And if you think others might connect with it too, feel free to press the like button, to leave a comment, or to share in whatever way feels right.
DISCLAIMER: This piece is based on real events as I remember them. While drawn from personal experience, it reflects my own perspective and recollections. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.
I finally sat down and did some deep dives. MY GOODNESS. Incredibly soulful writing. Amazing and inspirational.
🫶🏻