Trison - a story

It is cold tonight!  Here is a story that highlights the similarities between the Irish and Greek. Many have asked about the Trison, is it a real term.  No, it is made up but the story is frighteningly close to the truth.

The Trison

The headmaster of our private school in Greece was a small man with quick darting eyes and loud laughs.  I liked his laugh, it reminded me of a relative’s laugh whose eyebrows danced a merry tune in accompaniment to the loud bellows.  Strange the things that draw us to some and make us avoid and shun others.

The school was designed to prepare students for universities in the UK and was the first of its kind on the island.  There is fierce competition for places in Greek universities so there was a need for alternative venues of study.  Our first year’s intake was good and as their parents were paying quite considerably our headmaster was delighted with the success of this new venture.  I should have been warned by his in-laws who visited from England and were shown around the school proudly.  There was something about Yannis’ father-in-law’s expression.  A sort of “have been here before” look   with a kind of “and he thinks he’s going to make a success of this?” shrug as he inspected each classroom.  Yannis’ over eager enthusiasm should have warned me too.  In one of our final Physics exams at university, one of my fellow students came out of a difficult paper rubbing his hands in glee The majority of the rest of us were sunk in despondency.  He was elated.  “That went really well”.  His hand rubbing contrasted vividly with the hand wringing the rest of us exhibited.  So it was with a shock I eventually discovered not only had he failed that particular paper but the whole year.  Talking with one professor who had witnessed it all shed some light on the affair.  He said that when a student wrote everything he knew about an exam question of course he felt confident.  Poor students usually had time to put to paper everything they could possibly remember.  Moderate students found it harder, struggling to marshal their thoughts and pick, from all the information, clear and blurred, that was available in their mental stores, those elements of relevance to the question.  The good student is often in the worst condition as they have such an array of possible items to include that they have the tortuous task of not using all their repertoire and sticking remorselessly to that elicited by the question only and this is compounded by the fact that they know that there is so much more to any question that meets the eye.  The professor then ended by shaking his head and pointing out that emptying a completely full thimble of knowledge always felt better than only a third of a bucket full.  Yannis was a full thimble if only I’d been able to see that.

I was just relieved not to be teaching English anymore.  At last I was back teaching my subjects: Math’s and Physics.  The classes were small and the students nice enough .  Old enough to laugh with, yet just eager enough to work hard.  Just the right mix.  Yannis talked me into teaching computer studies too and that was both a challenge and a joy.  Then things began to go wrong.  Shady characters kept coming up to Yannis’ office and there were loud shouting matches.  Yannis’ demeanor changed towards the students.  He was angry with them all the time.  He would come into the classroom and have a screaming match with a student in my class and then leave slamming the door.  It changed the atmosphere in the school. 

One of the shady characters had an all out fight with Yannis.  It was incredible to behold two grown men punching, pulling hair and ripping clothes.  Difficult to teach consistently with the screams and shouts coming from the office next to the class.  Money was of course the problem.  Here in Greece people don’t like to pay. I suppose it is the same in most countries but somehow the Greeks manage to make non-paying an art form.  We have a friend from one of the villages who was owed millions of drachmas and just could not get the guy to pay.  He tried phoning, writing and visiting.  Nothing happened for a whole year and then he phoned his debtor and told him that the next day he would be calling to see him with a straw and a razor blade.  He told him that if the money was not there in the morning he would cut his vein and suck his blood in payment.  Not surprisingly his money was ready in neat piles the next day.  So if you were trying to get money from the same guy you can imagine how far down the list you’d be with your phone calls and polite requests.  People weren’t paying Yannis and he wasn’t paying others, so things became fraught.  They cut off the water because he hadn’t paid and so he had not only to pay that bill but the re-connection as well.  They cut off the electricity, fairly vital in a computer class, and again he had to pay the extra fee plus the bill.  Things came to a head when his wife left for England and ominous faxes arrived from credit loan firms in the UK.  Surely he hadn’t borrowed from one of those high interest loan companies so visible in every tabloid newspaper?  Screaming headlines proclaim ‘borrow from us and clear all your debts’.  I tried not to think about it and concentrated on teaching and the students.  You can block out most things. 

Then my salary stopped and it’s hard to keep working when they don’t pay you.  It sort of kills the incentive somewhat.  When I had not been paid for three weeks after the end of the month, I queried the lack of my monthly salary and his rage was instant and immediate and ended with him jabbing his forefinger in my direction and the cry, “I put the food in your children’s mouths!  Don’t forget that.”  That phrase hurt; it really did.  I mean I suppose technically because he employed me there was an element of truth, but only enough to enrage.  I lost my temper and had a prolonged shouting match with Yannis.  Well into a vitriolic, but I felt very logical, offensive I saw that this approach was not going to work.  It was like the story of brer fox and brer rabbit- where brer rabbit cleverly persuaded brer fox to throw him into the briar patch as a terrible place to die.  Then once the deed was done brer rabbit had shouted triumphantly from the bramble patch as he hopped away, “born and bred in the bramble patch brer fox!”  Yannis lived and breathed in this world of shouting and confrontation.  It was his bread and butter and he was infinitely more comfortable in it than I. 

A different strategy was needed.  When you discover a different culture there are times that you come across a seam of ore that is surprisingly familiar.  In the Greek culture they are highly superstitious, like the Irish, who would rather plough around the fairy tree than dare the fates and dig it up.  The superstition of the evil eye in Greece was common, with strange rituals held to avert the influence of such evil intent.  One headmistress had an icon in her cupboard and swore that it would knock to warn her of someone putting the evil eye on her.  Removal of the evil eye involved calling in someone to do a ceremony with oil and water to ward off the evil eye.  But not everyone had the fortune to have a knocking icon and so others were available to tell you whether the evil eye had been put on you, and could also if, God forbid the oil sank, by means of prayers and rituals protect and remove its affects.  Coming from Ireland all this was strangely familiar.  Born and bred on a farm full of fairy trees who would want to get on the wrong side of the ‘little people’?  So mid shout I changed tack. 

In Ireland I told Yannis we have a form of the evil eye but only some people have the gift.  Coming mid roar this sounded a lot more ominous than it does on paper.  There, I told him only the third son of second son of a first son, a “Trison”, had the power of the evil eye.  These chosen ones could administer the evil eye at will and such was its intensity that people went out of their way to keep on the good side of such rare individuals.  Yannis was interested despite himself.  Yannis commented that in a way it was better than in Greece where anyone could do it.  Yes, I responded, but the potency of these individuals was such that families often went to great lengths to avoid having such a child.  Yannis nodded wisely; yes it somehow stood to reason if the evil eye was restricted to a few then it would be more potent.  Like a mighty river forced into one or two rapid streams instead of being dissipated in lots of shallow runs.  His analogy was rather good and I quickly congratulated him on this.  Both of us stood in a strange calm, contemplating Fate as a huge dam of badness waiting to fall on us through all these dastardly channels.  It’s quite rare I reassured him to find the third son of a second son of a first son, though years ago when people had bigger families it was more common.  Yes, Yannis agreed, here on the island if you had a baby girl you had to immediately start building a house for them as ‘Preka” (dowry).  So girls were dreaded and fate, in its infinite wisdom, dealt out girls with ample abundance.  Yannis had two girls himself and a lifetime of house building lay ahead.  Ah yes, I said, it was lucky that we now lived in Greece because with three boys I had no such worries.  “Strange isn’t it,” I pointed out, In Ireland my third son would be regarded with fear being the third son of a second son of a first son but that here on the island I was merely congratulated on having the fortune to have only boys.  Yannis’s eye’s blinked and darted faster than normal.  “Daniel is a Trison?”  He asked as if a snake had been discovered under his very feet.  Yes, I answered, and immediately changed the subject completely, but saw that his left eye had developed a nervous twitch. 

I knew he was thinking about all that had gone wrong in his life and wondering could the Trison be responsible.  Was that the reason people had not paid him and business had gone bad despite his every effort.  It was so unfair things; went wrong but what could one expect with all that evil eye out there just waiting to muck up your life.  “Why didn’t you mention you had a Trison,” he queried with a real edge to his voice.  I could see how things were developing in his reptilian brain.  He would never have hired me had he known beforehand about Trisons.  Never have risked the fates. And I had been less than honest not coming out into the open about it earlier. But I hadn’t finished yet - merely prepared for the closing blade stroke.  “But sure, Yannis don’t you put the food in my children’s mouths? Even a Trison wouldn’t strike the hand that feeds it, now would it?” Nothing more was said, nothing more was needed and I got paid before the shady character got his.   Who needs the seventh son of a seventh son when a Trison will do just as well?