LUCKY IN CYPRUS: THE MAGICAL BICYCLE SHOP

*****

Famagusta Gate: Nicosea

LATE TO LUCKY'S PARTY?

***

Just getting to school each day proved to be a treat. Icarus may have had his wings, but Lucky had Yorgo and his powerful motorbike to thunder along the road to the medieval gates that led into the ancient city of Nicosia.

Jim’s shop in Nicosia was just beyond the Famagusta Gate – a distance of a little over four miles from Lucky’s home in the village of Pallouriotissa.

In the early days, Lucky made the round trip on the back of Yorgo’s motorbike, except when it rained, in which case they’d share a taxi. But even during what they called the rainy season – from November to March – precipitation was rare. Cypriots boasted that the island averaged 340 sunny days a year and from what Lucky could tell, it was no exaggeration.

He soon realized that if he rid himself of the schoolboy habit of dawdling in the mornings, he could get to Yorgo’s house in time to see Athena before she left for school. In Yorgo’s big, cheery kitchen, he’d drink the thick syrupy Cypriot coffee - brewed fresh on hot sand that covered a brick shelf set into the fireplace – and munch on warm black bread straight out of the backyard oven and dripping with honey, or cactus pear preserves. He and Athena would cast eyes at each other while her sisters and brothers giggled. Then Yorgo would kick-start his heavy motorbike and Lucky would climb up behind him and they’d be off – wobbling through the canopy of gourd vines that sheltered the front gate, then bumping across gravel to the pitted tarmac of the main highway.

On the way to Nicosia, almost all traffic headed to the city. There were very few motorized vehicles on the road – a few trucks, an assortment of 1920’s and 30’s era cars and one or two motorbikes like Yorgo’s. Several ancient buses, literally crammed to the rooftop with both human and animal passengers, also made the daily trip. When they passed Lucky could hear the chickens cackling, the roosters crowing and the bleating of lamb and kid off to end their days at the meat market. Water wagons groaned along the side of the road, wobbling back and forth - with the oxen bawling under the terrible weight - spewing water from the leaks in their tanks and leaving a trail of mud in the hot dust of the roadside.

Shopkeepers and their clerks favored bicycles, with their trousers tied at the ankles to keep them from being soiled, or caught in the chain. Shop girls traveled by bike as well – but usually in groups of five or six. It was always a delightful sight, the girls’ hair protected by colorful scarves - their skirts blowing in the wind, chattering away, while pretending to ignore all the lusty young men who called out to them.

Most of the farm people went by wagon, some horse or mule drawn, some pulled by oxen. The carts had huge wheels, many as tall as a man, with long hand-carved spokes. The wheels were rimmed, not with rubber, but with strips of flint-coated iron. Some of the wagons were enormous things – two stories high and full to the groaning with produce and baskets and crates of caged animals off to the slaughter.

Of course, there were always a few camels swaying along on lazy legs that were so long that they moved swiftly through the traffic with elegant ease, their heads moving this way and that on necks so lengthy that the animals seemed half snake. Lucky noticed that people tended to make way for the camels – the creatures had a nasty habit of indiscriminately spitting and biting when annoyed. Or, sometime just for the hell of it.

Out in the fields – which sprawled on either side of the road – people were at work, tilling or weeding or changing the course of an irrigation ditch. In the orchards, boys were plucking enormous oranges and lemons from the trees, or twisting off cactus pears with a special tool that kept the stickers from getting into their fingers.

Herders were already changing grazing grounds, moving their flocks of sheep or goats across the highway, blocking traffic and making everyone curse for being kept from their tasks. But the herders only grinned and made rude gestures and if anyone got too threatening, a big ram or yapping sheep dog would attack and drive them away.

Lucky once saw an ill-tempered bus driver forced back into his vehicle by a barrage of stones flung by a young herder with a deadly sling. The huge, over-loaded bus and the skinny, raggedy boy whirling his sling overhead was a modern-day David and Goliath if there ever was one.

Small, barelegged boys and girls with switches drove honking geese and quacking ducks to market, while through all this colorful and noisy procession, the gypsy kids would dart in and out of the crowd, looking for targets of opportunity. When people saw them they struck out with cudgels and fists. They alternately crossed themselves and blasphemed the gypsies – clutching their valuables and calling down the wrath of saints and devils alike on these interlopers.

Yorgo disliked the gypsies as well, but he was more philosophical than most. "Gypsies have to live," he told Lucky, "like the cock-a-roach and flies your mother hates. If we killed the gypsies, like the poor pests in your mother’s kitchen, why, we’d be like Mr. Hitler with his moustache killing the Gypsies as well as the Jews." He made a cautionary gesture. "Not that I am comparing Gypsies and Jews," he added. "Jews have been in Cyprus for thousands of years. I might even be a little Jewish myself, who knows." He shrugged. "And maybe Gypsy as well. Who can say where the seed of our fathers flowed."

Setting out from his house in the morning, Nicosia was nothing more than an indistinct gray-brown hump on the horizon. Set astride the Pedieos River, which flowed from the distant Troodos Mountains, the city sat virtually in the center of the island. It rose out of the fertile Mesario Plain, which on this fine early Spring day was lush with budding new life.

When Lucky had lived in the hotel he’d explored the city streets only a little. He’d driven past Nicosia daily on his way to the boarding school, visited the cinema and a few other places. Other than that, his main interests had been the village and its surroundings.

But on this - his first day at a new school that wasn’t really a school, but something exotically different - Lucky took special note of the city as they approached on Yorgo’s motor bike. At first all he saw when they grew closer was an imposing gray stone wall, bulking up like a ragged mountain. The area around the walls was naked of trees and buildings, making the ancient fortress even more foreboding.

Lucky eventually learned that ancient ordinances banned all structures within range of a missile from a catapult, or, later, a cannon shot. The city’s origins went all the way back in time to a Neolithic trading village, then a fortress for early kings, then a supreme fortress for the Crusaders in the 12th Century or so. Peering past Yorgo’s bulk, Lucky could see the walls gradually growing to their full grandeur. It was nearly impossible to talk over the roar of the engine, but even if he could be heard, Lucky would have been silent, the view was so impressive. He imagined how cowed attacking armies must have felt marching on such a magnificent defensive structure.

As the traffic thickened, Yorgo slowed his approach to the gated entrance, putting his legs out to balance the bike. Immediately all the sounds and scents crowded in. Lucky could smell raw petrol and oil – the mixture used on less than modern engines, like the bike Yorgo was riding and half the vehicles around them. He heard horns blaring – not the sound of horns you heard in America, but the eerie hoot-hoot-hoot of European horns.

Lucky saw a taxi, desperately signaling a right-hand turn into a narrow place in the single lane that entered the city through the gate. Besides his frantically waving hand, the signal he made included a bar of illuminated yellow plastic that shot out from the side of the car. From experience Lucky knew there was a similar bar on the left. A camel loped into the taxi’s path, turned its head and spit a terrible yellow and green glob of camel spittle on the windshield. The driver leaned out and cursed, shaking his fist. The camel driver –a Turk in baggy black pants - gave the man a look of great sorrow and shrugged - What can you do with a camel? Immediately, the cab driver veered the other way, flipping up another long bar of illuminated direction to point out his path and laying on his horn to clear the way.

Then Lucky saw why the cabbie had been fighting for position: they were about to enter Famagusta Gate and with all the traffic – mechanical, animal and human - even maneuvering on a motorbike would be tricky.

He looked up and caught sight of a long, deadly row of spikes hoisted over the gate. It was as if they were entering a mouth with fanged jaws above and only blunt gums below. Yorgo indicated the spikes. "Closing gates…" he said. Then his hand swept down – his palm a knife – "… crushes your enemy." Now Lucky realized what he was looking at. In ancient times, as the enemy approached, the city leaders would trigger a release and an enormous, fanged gate would crash to the ground, barring entrance.

Yorgo was still talking over the roar of the engine. "But wait and see, Lucky, there is a very clever trick. Wait and I will show you." Then he cried, "Elbows in, Lucky," and he shot for a gap in the traffic blocking the entrance.

Lucky gasped, he couldn’t see how Yorgo could do it. But his friend soon proved himself a past master of such difficulties. He leaned sharply to the right, his foot going down and sliding across the pavement. Lucky had a sudden view of a wagon draped with crates of chickens, all squawking at once as Yorgo headed straight for the wagon. Then, he leaned in the other direction – heading for an ox cart. Lucky spotted a narrow pathway between the lead oxen’s horned head and a streaming water truck.

From Lucky’s viewpoint it was too narrow for their passage. But Yorgo slowed slightly and reached out with his big left hand and gave the ox a mighty blow on its flank. The creature bawled with more indignity than pain and jerked its head to the side. Immediately, Yorgo straightened the bike, gave it some juice and – wheels at first spinning in the spilled water from the water truck – he shot through the entrance and they were inside the Famagusta Gate.

Calmly, as if nothing unusual had occurred, Yorgo pointed overhead. "Look at the second gate, Lucky. That is the trick."

Lucky looked up and saw that indeed there was a second set of fanged gates hoisted into the vaulted ceiling – easily three stories high – and set many yards past the entrance.

Yorgo paused, caught a moment behind a towering camel. He thumbed back to the first gate, the one that guarded the opening. "You allow some of the enemy to enter. Let them think you are stupid and didn’t see them. Then…" He indicated the second set of gates… "You let the first gate go… wait until they enter… then the second. And they are trapped in between."

Lucky nodded, he could see it clearly. The enemy troops tormented by taunting Cypriots, charging the entrance to the city. Shouting in glee when the gate didn’t close – stupid Cypriots were too slow, too busy bragging about the thick walls of their city. Then, once a goodly number were inside – rushing toward that distant point of light that Lucky could see at the far end of the tunnel - Cypriot commanders would give the word and the second set of gates would slam down. Fanged points catching anyone who dodged too slowly. Then, when they tried to retreat, the first set of gates – the ones meant to bar the entrance – would crash down, imprisoning the bravest of the enemy attackers.

Lucky leaned close, so Yorgo could hear. "What happened then?"

But at that moment, as the camel advanced and the motorbike slid forward, the answer became apparent. A flood of sunlight beamed down from above. Yorgo’s thumb shot up, indicating the wide, iron-grated hole set in the ceiling. "Boiling oil," he shouted, tipping his hand, to indicate upturned pots. "That’s the real trick… Hot lead as well… They poured it on the soldiers." He chortled. "They got a good, Cypriot roasting." His laughter was hearty and a little unsettling. "Like the oven at my house. A grand thing to cook all your enemies in."

Lucky’s mind was suddenly filled with visions of men screaming in agony as molten lead and boiling oil poured over their heads and shoulders. Before the picture could take too firm a grip on his imagination, the camel decided to lift its tail and do its business. Yorgo cursed in Greek and swerved to the side. They barely escaped the huge load of camel shit and piss that came pouring out.

"That damned Turk," Yorgo grumbled. "Camels must empty their bowels before they enter the gate. That’s the law. A good and sensible law, even though it is British."

In the following days, Lucky watched more law-abiding camel drivers push their beasts to the fields on either side of the gates. Commands were given, switches were switched and the camels bawled with irritation. Eventually, they gave up their loads of stinking feces and urine. Then, complaining as if they’d been relieved of a treasure instead of bodily waste, they growled and moaned as their masters goaded them through the gates. Clean of bowel and bladder, but certainly not of temper.

Yorgo laughed and made a rude-fisted gesture as he goosed his bike out of harm’s way and blended into the tunnel’s traffic. It was a long tunnel – the exit was a mere shimmer of light in the distance. Lucky would later learn that in many places the city walls were as wide as a soccer field. At the narrowest, the ancient masters who had once ruled the island had decreed that the roadway running on top of the wall must be wide enough for at least two heavy chariots to pass. But the tunnel through the walls was built to handle traffic from a Medieval – and therefore much smaller – population. So on this day, which was not even a regular market day, it was packed front to back and side to side with people, animals and vehicles of all descriptions – both ancient and merely antique.

Pinching in the flow even more were lines of stalls that ran along both sides. Stall keepers cried out their wares in several languages. "Black market," Yorgo said as he gunned past a stall stocked with British army bayonets, field rations and medic packs.. "Don’t come here." He spit to the side. "Very bad people."

Immediately, Lucky determined to return as soon a he could. A moment later the tunnel spilled out onto a broad thoroughfare, jammed with every conceivable vehicle, traffic creeping slowly along as people railed at one another for causing the delay. Narrow sidewalks on either side were packed with foot traffic perusing the wares of small shops of every variety – from boot makers to tobacconists. Spotted here and there were little cafes, and tavernas, with tables and chairs outside, all occupied by men smoking big water pipes and sipping tiny cups of coffee. Waiters scurried from these cafes, heading for the shops with breakfast coffee and sweets for the owners. They carried their orders on three-tiered trays, dangling one beneath the other on chains and never spilling a drop as they wove through the hurrying passersby.

Yorgo made an easy left (traffic in Cyprus kept to the left, in British fashion) at the second street from the gate. It was a cobbled street, rather than tarmac and much narrower than the main avenue. The road climbed a hill that curved past businesses that seemed more industrial than those on the main street. Lucky could hear the steady grind of hand saws, the shriek of drill bits and the rhythmic sounds of foot-driven sewing machines and hand-driven looms. The smells were a mixture of machine oil, glue pots cooking over dung fires, fresh cut wood shavings and good things frying in olive oil from a little restaurant at the top of the street.

Lucky craned to see the street sign when they swept past, then sighed in frustration. He hadn’t learned how to read Greek as yet and the Cyrillic letters on the sign were impenetrable. In most of the countries he’d visited, they used Roman letters and even though he didn’t know the languages, he could make out the names of the streets and even locate them on a map, or follow directions from a hotel concierge. The Cyrillic letters made him feel illiterate and he hoped Jim planned to teach him how to read and write Greek.

Yorgo downshifted to a lower gear to help the bike up the hill – the tires bumping across the cobbles – and gestured with his chin. They had nearly reached their goal. "There is our good friend, Jim."

Jim’s shop was easy to spot. It was about a third of the way up the hill on the right. Gleaming bicycles were lined up in a rack outside a fairly large, glass-fronted store front. Above the door – jutting out from the wall was a large truck tire, painted jet black. A sign dangling beneath it read in English: "Davis Tires." Beneath that, a smaller sign, hanging from two slender chains off the first, said: "Raleigh Bicycles." Both signs were professionally done and a bit out of place on this street. Not because they were in English, but because the styles were so modern.

Jim was standing in the doorway. He was every inch the proud, young proprietor. He had his suit jacket over his shoulder, his shirt was blazing white, the tie stylishly wide and his shoes were shined to a high gloss.

As they rumbled up, he was helping an old Turk sweep the front sidewalk, while a raggedy Cypriot kid polished the bicycles. A waiter was trotting down the hill with newspaper-wrapped bundles under his arm that turned out to be breakfast for Jim’s two workers.

When Jim heard the motorbike he looked up and grinned that crooked smile of his. "Lucky!" he cried, in a delighted voice that made the boy feel entirely welcome. Then he looked ostentatiously at his watch and said to Yorgo "I see that our new scholar has arrived early for his first day of school."

The way he said it, implied that Lucky had been personally responsible for his early arrival, instead of merely abiding by Yorgo’s schedule. "Seven o’clock at my house, Lucky," he’d said. "I must be at my mill by thirty minutes after seven o’clock. I cannot wait, you understand. If you aren’t here, you will have to take a taxi."

Mr. Blaines had coached Lucky to be early to all appointments – the reasons having more to do with inspecting the lay of the land rather than satisfying the grace of punctuality. However, in this case, Lucky had the added inducement of a sloe-eyed beauty named Athena.

He was not about to mention any of this, but he still didn’t want to claim credit that wasn’t rightfully his, so he said shyly, "I was just coming with Yorgo."

The admission immediately endeared him to both men. Beaming, Yorgo clapped the boy’s shoulder and said, "Find me when you and Jim are done, Lucky my friend, and we’ll ride home together." To Jim he said, firmly, but in Greek, "The boy has a good heart, Demetrios. He reminds me of you, when you were being schooled at the monastery."

Lucky understood some of this, but pretended he didn’t, looking over the bikes in their racks with exaggerated interest. Lucky was pleased – and a little startled - to hear Jim reply, but in English, "Of course our Lucky has a good heart. I saw it the moment we met."

Then he said to the boy, "Come and see the books I purchased for us. I think you will be pleased."

As Yorgo drove off, Lucky and Jim entered the tire/bicycle shop that was to be the boy’s schoolroom for many months to come.

It was a rather drab room, its dimensions unencumbered by any furniture other than a large desk in the back, which had two wooden chairs resting in front of it and two more set against the wall – rather like a cantina. The room was large – Lucky learned later that it was two shops knocked into one – and much deeper than it was wide. The walls were white plaster over ancient stone. As one entered the shop the immediate walls were bare, except for a few poster advertisements – in English – touting the qualities of Davis Tires, or Raleigh Bicycles.

After a moment, Lucky noted that Davis Tires posters were confined to one wall, Raleigh the other. Under the Raleigh wall, was a display of a dozen or more bikes, plus empty floor-slots presumably for the ones outside. Against the Davis Tire wall, there were eight different tires of various sizes and quality, resting in slots that held them upright. Above them was a shelf, displaying tire cross-sections to show their inner strengths.

Electrical lines were exposed, rather than hidden. The bricks behind the lathe and plaster façade were nearly as ancient as the city and no electrical line had ever penetrated them. White-painted metal tubes containing the electrical lines ran along the ceiling – where two bare bulbs hung down, one near the front, the other near the back; another line ran along the bicycle wall where a receptacle fed power to a complicated antique lamp that had been converted from gas to electricity. The shades were hand-painted with faded images of Raleigh bicycles going back to the company’s Victorian origins of giant front-wheeled bikes.

On the desk, Lucky noted a double-tier of wire baskets on one side – presumably in and out baskets – there were Greek labels top and bottom identifying each. Nearby was a large basket, very new-looking, with a hand-lettered label in English that said: "Lucky." Nestling in its wire sides were several books, documents enclosed in official-looking covers and a neat pile of unbound papers. The basket was set at the far left corner of the desk, between the wall and a large black telephone with an enormous dial that gave off sparks when you turned the wheel. When a phone call came in – depending on the weather - sparks would shoot out from the bottom where the bell was mounted.

As they approached the desk the phone demonstrated its quirky behavior: it rang and sparks shot out, but Jim picked up the receiver without a flicker and started speaking in Greek. He slipped behind the desk, settling into an imposing leather executive chair. As he talked, he pulled a tablet from the top drawer of the desk, then a pencil, and he started writing swiftly.

Lucky stayed quite still as Jim talked – this was obviously his business – watching for a moment as Jim penciled in Cyrillic letters and Arabic numerals. From his own limited experience at the local market, the rise and fall of Jim’s voice and the scratched out numbers on the pad, Lucky got the idea that Jim was in the process of closing a large order. He spoke so quickly, however, and in a businessman’s idiom Lucky was unfamiliar with – that he missed the gist of the deal and soon grew bored.

He looked at the basket marked "Lucky," craning his head to see the titles of the books. Without pausing his conversation, Jim pushed the basket toward the boy, smiling and nodding for him to go ahead.

The first book wasn’t so interesting – arithmetic – the same text he’d used at the British school. The second was a little more intriguing – a slender volume with a paperboard cover: "Euclidean Geometry." The third book gave him a bit of a start. It was labeled, "Common Mistakes In English." He glanced inside and saw that it was book meant for foreign students of the English language.

Beneath it, was a regular English grammar; then a French textbook. That was interesting… was he going to learn French? A geography full of maps followed; then a single volume world history; A book on Greek mythology by Edith Hamilton was next. He smiled when he lifted that aside and saw a collection of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories and poetry. Finally, he came to a small book with a drawing of an old bug-eyed Greek wearing the robes of the ancients and reclining on a stone bench.

The title was, "The Last Days Of Socrates."

NEXT: THE DAY LUCKY MET SOCRATES

*****

LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!

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MY HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES

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