excerpt

…most were ordinary-looking housewives of the gossip circle,
and of course, a few were the ones usually found in the aristocratic
bars and lounges, ladies with housemaids and black chauffeurs, with
small bedroom dogs and a gigolo on the side. Hermes always looked
down on the so-called upper class; a degrading and pathetic life, he
thought they were like snakes. Those people had all the money they
needed, with their luxurious cars and drug addictions or similar
kinds of crap, and they blindly followed whatever is “modern,” a certain
mania to do as the foreigners did, just to be part of the trend.
According to Hermes, this way of living did nothing to
improve a person’s life. He didn’t belong to the idealists and skeptics,
either, who ignored reality and lived in the clouds of their isolation
with the hope that the world would change on its own volition on
some fine morning and everything would just be splendid. What he
wanted was a major change in society, a change that would make the
commoners’ lives better and the upper class more decent and more
confident people.
What else he wanted to help achieve was to unhook the populace
from the iron fist of the church that had grasped the people’s
lives and orchestrated their comings and goings according to the
dogma of an eastern religion that forbids them from letting go and
adopting a freer mindset, Hermes believed was the inherited treasure
of the Hellenes.
That was the psycho-spiritual hold the church had over the lives
of people, which exerted such power that no one ever had stood opposite
to, from the days of their liberation from the Turks, beginning
of the 19th century. However, how that could be possible and which
method could be applied to get the desired outcome was unknown to
Hermes. Yet he hoped that that would appear to him at some time in
the future. A smile came to his face as if he had already been affected
by such a change.
He walked as he disembarked the ship. His uncle, Demetre,
was among the others on the dock, lordly as always, waving his hand.
Hermes beamed a big smile and walked to him.

https://draft2digital.com/book/4172538#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763858