A Self Effacing Man

by Sara Alexi

  Chapter 3

  The next morning, leaving his coffee half drunk on the kitchen table, Cosmo repacks his satchel, gathering up the letters from where they are still scattered across the floor. He will do his rounds; delivering the mail is an important responsibility and must be done, despite his heaviness of limb and heart and the throbbing in his head. Did his mama not go to talk to the orange buyers the day after his baba’s funeral? Did she not go herself and water the trees on the very evening of the day he died?

  He lifts the bag over his head and slings it across his back.

  The new day is full of the freshness of spring, and it helps to soothe the thickness in his head. The light breeze is warm but not hot, and there are one or two light, fluffy white clouds in the sky that the sun might hide behind so, before closing the door, Cosmo reaches and grabs his grey, shapeless cotton jacket, the one with the hole in the left pocket from the hook where his coats hang with his mama’s. Even on a warm day, the breeze from the bike can be cooling.

  ‘Good morning, Cosmo. Surely you are not going to deliver the post today?’ Poppy is sitting in the doorway of her emporium opposite, sipping coffee from a tiny cup. The window display looks different. The brightly coloured beach balls that were there yesterday have been moved and the mannequin that usually displays a multicoloured crocheted tank top over a vivid shirt is wearing a black jacket over the top, and a poorly painted icon is resting against her pale plastic leg. Poppy was fond of his mama, and they drank coffee together every day in the kitchen, with his mama slicing vegetables for whatever she was going to cook that day and Poppy pricing new items for the shop – or repricing old ones that still bore their price in drachmas. Often a plate of food would go over to Poppy’s, and more than once Cosmo has rescued one of his mama’s plates from being displayed for sale in Poppy’s window. Often, too, Poppy would come over to the house to eat, staying to keep Mama company when he wandered up to the square for a coffee at Theo’s.

  ‘It is too soon for you to go back to work, Cosmo,’ Poppy tells him. ‘Come, let’s have a coffee together.’ She takes hold of the arms of her white plastic chair and leans forward, readying herself to stand.

  ‘The mail must be delivered.’ Cosmo is emphatic.

  ‘But surely not today?’ Poppy relaxes her grip on the chair, her weight sinking into her ballooning black skirts. There is disappointment in her voice and her eyebrows are raised.

  ‘I have already missed two days,’ Cosmo mumbles as he climbs onto his little bike. He might have to take something for his headache. A decorative glass evil eye hangs from the keys in the bike’s ignition. After losing them once, years ago, he now leaves them permanently in the ignition and he has never lost them since. With a twist, the motor starts and he pulls away without another word.

  As Cosmo leaves the village, heading for Saros where he will pick up the mail, he does not see Thanasis sauntering into the kafenio.

  Yesterday’s cigarette smoke still lingers in the air but the smell of freshly brewed coffee dominates the masculine domain. From across the square, with the breeze in this direction, the aroma of freshly made bread mixes with them both in the early-morning air. Thanasis yawns and for a moment all scents are lost to him. He did not sleep well last night. Someone left a donkey tied to his gate last night, abandoned. It is not the first time. Nor is he a fool. He knows people do not give away animals for nothing, but he hoped at first it was just a case of someone not needing her, rather than not being able to afford to keep her. But now he suspects laminitis. A ridge of fat where her mane springs from is a symptom that this diagnosis could fit.

  He yawns again; he is not in the best of moods. Just the prospect of caring for an animal with laminitis is exhausting. The poor creature’s food will have to be carefully monitored – Thanasis will have to limit her foraging. At this time of year this means keeping her in the stable, alone; she will not be able to go out with the others. The poor animal will bray out her loneliness. Thanasis blinks hard; he will be around to give her company. If he creates an enclosure near the pump, at least he can make sure she has plenty to drink.

  ‘There he goes,’ Grigoris remarks. ‘Off for his first coffee in Saros.’ This is followed by a snigger and a slurp of his own coffee. Thanasis follows Grigoris’s gaze to see who he is talking about. Cosmo is driving slowly out of the square.

  ‘He’s going for the mail,’ Thanasis responds, and he sits at a table by the nicotine-yellow wall, alone. He rubs at his eyes. Maybe he will just have to put the animal down; it depends how bad it is, how well she responds. The corners of his mouth turn down.

  ‘Ach, you are too kind to him, but his nature is well known,’ replies Vasillis, who is sitting with Grigoris. It pulls Thanasis back from his grim thoughts. He does not look at the others, his eyes remain downcast. The floor is still wet in places where Theo has mopped it, and a cloth and a bottle of glass cleaner are by the metal-rimmed glass door set in the floor-to-ceiling windows at the front.

  ‘The man has never done a full day’s work in his life,’ Grigoris continues, in defence of his remark. ‘He will get a shock now his mama is gone and there is no one to cook and wait on him.’

  He picks up the soft packet of cigarettes on the table and taps one out with a flick; it flips over in the air and he catches it in his mouth as if he has done this a thousand times before, which he has. He leans his head sideways as he sparks his lighter.

  ‘A bit of respect, boys.’ Theo comes to Thanasis’s table to take his order, but Thanasis is not sure he wants to stay. He might go back and take another look at the animal’s hoofs now it is light and he is more awake.

  He looks out across the square after his friend. He must make time for Cosmo now too. No matter how the man got on with his mama, her dying so suddenly like that is a massive shock and will prompt huge changes. Poor Cosmo’s world is going to be a little unsettled for a while. A bit of kindness is what he will need, not this unfriendly slander. He picks up his keys.

  ‘Actually, Theo–’ he begins.

  ‘Pay them no mind,’ Theo says quietly, a hand on his shoulder keeping him seated. ‘Frappe?’ he asks, and Thanasis resettles himself with a nod.

  Spiros lumbers in. His shirt is too short for his long body, his boots clattering on the steps as if he has trouble controlling his feet. ‘Kalimera,’ he says to everyone.

  ‘Another man who never works?’ Grigoris says, but this time with a smile. Spiros looks around and behind him to see which company he is in and spots the distant figure of Cosmo leaving the village.

  ‘I suggest you keep your comments to yourself,’ Thanasis barks.

  ‘What?’ Grigoris sounds as if he has been caught off guard.

  ‘You heard me.’ Thanasis growls.

  ‘Come on, man, it’s not like it’s a secret!’ He smirks now, encouraging Spiros and Vasillis to join in. ‘He wanders into town at his leisure, picks up the mail in his own good time, goes home, sorts the mail on his kitchen table with a coffee to hand – we have all seen him.’

  He looks at Vasillis and Spiros, who are now both sitting at his table, and they both half-heartedly agree, with sideways nods and raised eyebrows.

  ‘Then he meanders about on that little bike of his, his head in the air, looking over gates and walls, so he does not miss a thing that is happening in the village, and he calls this his delivery service. I tell you, he spends more time talking than posting. Some mail comes days late. You know this and I know this,’ Grigoris counters.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut,’ Thanasis growls.

  ‘Or what?’ Grigoris puts his cigarette in the ashtray. Vasillis rests a hand on his neighbour’s arm and makes a tutting noise.

  ‘You swill your bad thoughts around in public as if you have a right! You don’t know Cosmo’s life – you see what you see and you make the rest up. If we did that with your life, you would fare no better. So shut up and stay quiet.’ He can feel the calluses on his palms as he balls his fingers into a fist.

&
nbsp; He hadn’t meant to speak out like that, and he is not sure whether to stand and make trouble or grab his keys and leave.

  Theo walks between his table and Grigoris’s, creating a wall with his own body in a pretence of serving Thanasis his frappe.

  ‘I might have put too much sugar in that. Take a sip while I’m here. If it is too sweet I’ll make another.’ And Theo remains standing so that Thanasis cannot see Grigoris, nor Grigoris Thanasis.

  Thanasis is too angry to sip the drink; he cannot even uncurl his fingers.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he barks, the permanent lines between his brows deeply indented.

  ‘Well, just to be sure, I will let you check,’ Theo says calmly, making it clear that he is not moving before Thanasis tastes the coffee.

  It is half in his mind to leave, but his respect for Theo keeps him in his chair, and after a few seconds he tries his coffee and says it is fine, before Theo returns to his counter.

  Cosmo is of course nowhere in sight now. Halfway to Saros and unaware of the bad feeling in the air of the kafenio. How many times has Thanasis heard Cosmo’s mama call her son lazy, accuse him of incompetence? Didn’t he himself absorb this as if it was the truth until, time and time again, he found Cosmo offering to help him with things – with the building of the small stable, and then the wall that got kicked down – and didn’t he just grab a shovel and start digging a channel when the road flooded and it all ran into Thanasis’s orchard? So many different favours over the years, and all offered willingly. Over time, this caused Thanasis to revise his view of Cosmo. The man is far from lazy. Hampered, perhaps, by his overbearing mama – Thanasis crosses himself three times – but not lazy, and he objects to the likes of Grigoris perpetuating these rumours.

  The frappe is good and strong, and the adrenaline that was coursing through his limbs from his stand-off with Grigoris is now replaced with caffeine and he begins to think about his day. He has some corrugated sheeting down at the far end of his small orange grove; he will use that, up against the trunk of the fig tree in the corner of the present enclosure, to create a place for his new donkey. Then she can see the others outside without grazing herself. He need only keep her in for the next month or so; then the greenery will have all dried out and she can roam with no danger of overeating.

  Cosmo appreciates the normality of the gentle, slow puttering on his bike. Should he deliver the letters he has in his satchel now and then go for the new mail in the sorting office in Saros town, or collect the new mail first and deliver them all at the same time? He drives towards the road that leads out of the village, passing whitewashed cottages with terracotta roof tiles, and doorsteps that are guarded on either side by painted olive oil tins or unglazed ceramic pots bursting with bright geraniums. The houses that are set back from the road’s edge have arches of flowers over the gates. He remembers when it became a fashion, years ago, back when he was a teenager, and the women planted bougainvillea and wild roses to create their displays, and these have continued to grow and blossom ever since. They are all in flower right now, and it somehow feels wrong that life is blossoming so defiantly when his mama lies in an as-yet-unmarked grave.

  He turns his thoughts back to his work. It would be a heavy bag if he were to collect any new mail from Saros. Also, if he goes to the depot he will see the postmaster, and the others in the sorting room, and then there will be the women who work on the counters as well. They will all want to extend their sympathies, fuss over his loss, make him remember, think of it, of her waxen face, all over again.

  From the moment he was told of her death he wanted to remember nothing. But it is from that moment that his life has seemed to be a loop being replayed over and over again in his head.

  Chapter 4

  It was a normal fishing excursion, just like any other. He’d eaten the bread and feta, and drunk his wine too, and the boat had rocked gently to the rhythm of the waves, like any other day. He had not caught a single fish, as usual. On his return, it was a little odd to see not just Petros, who liked to hang about the harbour, but also Petros’s mama Niki waiting for him as he shipped the oars and let the boat slip silently up to the jetty.

  ‘Cosmo, they say you must go to the hospital,’ Niki said nervously, her gaze forced: the fake calm of panic. Cosmo waited to hear no more. Something in her tone made him leap on his bike; the wheels spun as he revved away, Niki shouting something behind him, waving her hands – but he couldn’t stop. He had never driven that fast before, and he did not slow down at the roundabout or pause at the junctions. He left his bike blocking the hospital entrance, engine still racing, as he ran inside, demanding the woman behind the glass window tell him where his mama was.

  ‘Name?’ she asked, bored, in no hurry, then tapped at the computer, scanning a list as Cosmo shifted from foot to foot.

  ‘When did she come in?’ the woman asked, trailing the end of her pen down the rows of admissions.

  ‘Today,’ he snapped, and she looked up at him, over her glasses.

  ‘No, no one of that name admitted today.’ And at those words, his panic subsided and he wondered if he had jumped to the wrong conclusion when Niki said he must go to the hospital. But why else would she have said such a thing?

  Turning from the woman, he came face to face with Doctor Petsokoftis, a man who had attended to his mama when she had spent a week in the hospital some years back with a virus and could not keep her food down.

  ‘Silipitiria,’ the doctor said kindly – my condolences, and Cosmo’s blood ran cold.

  The shock must have shown on Cosmo’s face because it brought the doctor up short. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You have not been told.’

  ‘Yes, they told me to come to the hospital …’ But his blood was no warmer and the hairs on the back of his neck rose up.

  ‘Ah, Cosmo,’ the doctor breathed wearily, and the tall man’s shoulders drooped and Cosmo knew for sure.

  ‘She had a good long life, and best to go quickly, don’t you think?’ The doctor spoke quietly, a hand gently holding Cosmo’s shoulder.

  The room where they had laid her out was cold, and there she was, lying on a stainless steel table in the middle. She still looked like his mama then, her posture relaxed, her mouth slightly open, but with a milky sheen to her eyes, which stared at the ceiling unseeing. He touched her hair, stroked it in a way he would never have done when she was alive. The hospital porter retreated silently and Cosmo bent over her and laid his head on her chest and held her hand. There were no tears at that stage.

  He shakes his head. He does not want the sympathies of his work colleagues, not yet, so he pulls up by the school.

  The multicoloured railings that surround the school mark the start of the village, if you are approaching from Saros town, and they promised such excitement as a boy: a whole day with other children, and break times in the yard with no parents to remind him of chores that he had not done, or the messes he had made. There are children inside now and the windows are open. Their laughter carries across the hopscotch-painted playground. Complementing their light soprano trills is the deeper voice of the teacher, who is trying, and failing, to contain their energy. To Cosmo it seems just moments since he was in there himself. How Maria had laughed back then, the sun in her hair and her teeth so even and white.

  He turns his bike around and takes out the first bunch of letters. Three are for Sakis the musician. There are always quite a few for him. Cosmo is never sure whether Sakis said for him to stack them up when he is away giving concerts, or to keep posting them through his door, and he is embarrassed to ask again. In the village it does not take long for the mice to make themselves at home when people are away: letters make a good a meal and can be shredded for bedding. But Sakis is here now – he was at the funeral – so, either way, these he can post.

  The sound of an acoustic guitar filters through the orchard at the back of Sakis’s house. It is a sad tune and Cosmo does not want to hear it. He posts the letters and lets the letterbox clang shut.
The sound rings through the house, echoing off the ceiling, and the song stops abruptly, replaced by footsteps.

  Cosmo picks more letters from his satchel. There is one for old Anna who lives opposite Sakis. It bears a Canadian stamp and will be from her daughter, or perhaps her granddaughter, judging by the childish writing. Cosmo knows what joy it will bring Anna, and he smiles.

  She is not fast on her feet any more, and he waits for her to answer his knock. Not that she was ever quick, but she has definitely slowed down in the last year or two. If he was a betting man, which he isn’t, he would have laid odds that she would pass before his mama. His bottom lip trembles, and it annoys him, and makes him think of the letter, the one he should deliver but instead has left at home on the kitchen table.

  ‘Ah, Cosmo, I did not expect you today. Come in, do come in. I will make some mountain tea, or would you prefer coffee?’

  ‘Neither, thank you, Kyria Anna.’ He accepted once and she kept him there until his stomach had rumbled, and then she insisted on making him food and that had made him sleepy. So then she made up the daybed, which he had no intention of using, but somehow he fell asleep on it half sitting up, and the day disappeared and the day’s letters were not delivered. He holds out the envelope.

  ‘Oh, you are a kind boy.’

  It amuses him every time she calls him that. She takes the letter, tears it open bit by bit with a crooked finger and pulls out a single sheet, passing it to Cosmo.

  ‘Would you, dear?’ she says, and sits at the kitchen table, inviting him to do the same.

  ‘My dearest Grandma Anna,’ he begins.

  The letter describes how Anna’s granddaughter took a dried pomegranate in to show-and-tell. The fruit had come from Anna’s tree, last summer when the family visited the village. When he reaches the end, as usual Anna asks him to read it through once more, with moisture glistening in the corners of her eyes.