High life
Redressing the balance
Taki
My fate was worse. The egregious Papa would send me to the stockade on the slightest pretext. To this day neither Zog nor I have ever understood why that superior officer hated us so. Perhaps it was because Zographos had more money than the entire Greek navy, or the fact that my father used to anchor his yacht off Poros, where we were based, and have Zographos and me on board for a clandestine but civilised lunch. Or maybe it was because Zographos and I always had an Athenian hooker or two come down to Poros for the weekend, when they would let us out for two hours in the afternoon. The hookers would pose as our sweethearts, and while the rest of the suckers tried to flirt with the local girls, we would retire to the Hotel Splendide, and work off our aggression towards Papaioannou.
Serving along with us — under us, rather — was a naive peasant boy from the mountainous region of Epirus, called Pet- rounakos. He was extremely stupid, and almost as randy as he was dumb. He was also the toughest man on the island. Needless to say, Zographos and I be- friended him, and made contingency plans to use him against our tormentor. The opportunity came sooner than we ex- pected. On the Greek national holiday, 25 March, we were all sent to Athens to prepare for the parade. It seemed that Papaioannou lived with his mother in the middle-class section of Athens, and that his mother was the only person in the world he was not beastly to.
Zographos had invited the ape-like Pet- rounakos to join us while in the capital. He told him that there was a super-secret maison de passe, where only the very rich and famous were accepted, and where the girls were all Hollywood movie stars mak- ing tax-free drachmas on the side. The ape-like Epirote growled on hearing that, and rubbed his loins. The catch, according to Zog, was to convince the madam of the house that one was indeed a client looking for some fun, and not an undercover police agent. 'No matter how much she protests and threatens to call the fuzz, just keep insisting that you want to get laid,' were the last instructions we gave him. Then we sent him off to the house of Commander Papaioannou.
I imagine everyone can guess the rest. Petrounako's ardour had reached boiling point by the time he arrived at Mrs Papaioannou's very proper Athenian apartment, and perhaps he overdid it a bit. We know he ripped out . the telephone when she dialled for the police, and a curtain or two when his search for the Hollywood girls proved fruitless. He left minutes before our tormentor arrived home for some supper with Mum.
For the next quarter of a century Papaioannou led a Javert-like search to find the culprit who had desecrated his home, but to no avail. The last I heard of him was that he had married a rich older woman and had become a socialist. Even more surprising, his mother survived the Petrounakos visit and lived to a ripe old age. The reason I hash all this up, how- ever, has nothing to do with Greece, the navy, or even the fact that next week is our national holiday. It is that upon landing in New York two days ago, I heard about the scandal that has rocked Brown University, the trendiest place of learning this side of Pentonville. Two beautiful Brown co-eds have been accused of charging $250 for sex, after runing ads in the university newspaper saying, 'Indulge yourself, ex- perience unparalleled pleasure in the form of two Ivy League blondes.' Judging by their picture, 250 devalued dollars is a bargain. Now if only I could find Petrouna- kos, somewhere in the mountains of Epir- us, or on the high seas, I would make it up to him.
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