Cadaver Driver

“You never met him,” George said, squinting out the windshield of his Mercedes at the inky Friday night on the way to Larnaka airport. “Old man Iannakis died about thirty years ago. But every morning I would see him reading the newspaper outside Markiello’s taxi office, a small bottle of zivania in front of him, and a cheesepie. He would be reading the obituaries, and saying ‘We ate this one. We ate that one. That one we left behind.’”

“In those days, see, we didn’t have ambulances, or hearses. So whenever someone needed to move a corpse for burial, they would call our taxi office, and we would call Iannakis. “I’m arriving,” the old man would shout happily, and there he’d be, ready for work.

“Iannakis drove corpses all over the island. He’d pick them up from the hospital morgue, all dressed up in their Sunday finest, slide them into the front passenger seat, and off he’d go.

“This one day, he was told to drive a corpse to Pafos from Lefkosia, clean across the island. It was a good 4 hour drive back then, what with the bad roads. He put the corpse in the front seat, fastened its seat belt, slid an unlit cigarette between its lips, just for effect, and set off. It was a £ 30 fare: serious money back then.

“A little way outside Lefkosia, on the highway, he runs into a little old man, a gerontakos, at the side of the road, standing there with his hand out. ‘Can you take be to Geroskipou?’ asks the little old man? ‘Sure,’ answers Iannakis, ‘but you have to sit in the back seat. My passenger’s sleeping.’

‘He’s sleeping?’ asked the old man. ‘But why does he have a cigarette in his mouth?’ ‘He told me he’s trying to quit.’ answered Iannakis. ‘What do I know?’

“And so they passed the four hours drive to Pafos, listening to a bit of radio, talking politics, sport, women. It was really a long way back then, before the new highway. You went through Lemessos, through the fruit orchards, and along the coast.

“When they finally got to Geroskipou, just outside Pafos, Iannakis dropped the little gerontakos at that old bakery that used to make loukoumia. ‘Thanks’, says the gerontakos to Iannakis, paying his £ 8 fare. ‘We made it.’

‘We made it, echoed Iannakis. ‘Goodbye,’ said the gerontakos. ‘I hope your passenger wakes up.’ ‘How can he wake up?’ exclaimed Iannakis, who had been waiting for this moment the whole drive. ‘He’s dead!’

“The gerontakos was so shocked he fell down in the middle of the street. He just spent four hours in the back of a taxi with a corpse in the front seat!” George cackled, dissolving both of us into paroxysms of laughter.

The rest of the short ride to the airport passed quickly, another hard week over, and home and the weekend in sight. On the way, we passed one ambulance and one taxi, but the passenger was really smoking.