A Self Effacing Man

by Sara Alexi

He stops. He cannot believe he wrote that. Part of him is delighted at his own eloquence, but most of him has drained of blood. He feels decidedly dizzy.

  ‘You have not finished,’ Maria says, and she points to the words at the bottom.

  ‘I cannot read those,’ Cosmo replies, but her steely look forces him to squeak out the last four words, very, very quietly.

  ‘Marry me, love Cosmo.’ Tears prick at his eyes. Maria has frozen; her hands do not twitch, she does not blink. Eventually, she takes the letter from his fingers and turns it over and stares at the writing on the back. Thanasis’s writing: the same as the writing on the love letters she has been receiving for the past thirty years.

  ‘You’d better go.’ She says the words so quietly he is not sure he has heard them, or, maybe, hopefully, he imagined them. He is not sure whether to move or not. But she is just staring at him, not blinking.

  He stands, tries to think of something to say, but nothing comes to mind. His bottom lip is quivering, and he’d better leave before he loses all control.

  Chapter 22

  The white paint is runnier than Cosmo expected, and no matter how careful he is it keeps dripping down his brush, over his fingers and onto the floor. He had no idea what he was buying, and the man in the shop in Saros asked him if he wanted oil-based or water-based paint. Thinking the water-based paint would just wash off if it got splashed, he chose oil, not realising until the till rang, and the hardware man told him, that he would need something to get it off the brush and his fingers when he was finished. The smell of the white spirit is not nice, nor for that matter does he like the smell of the paint. But he is breathing in deeply, punishing himself for making such a complete mess of his life.

  Another drip, and this one hits his shoe. One of his cuffs is already daubed with paint and wet from a quick soak in white spirit. He would have put an old shirt on if he had known it would be so messy. He tips a little of the white spirit onto the corner of one of his mama’s tea towels and dabs at his shoe.

  Three days now. Three days since he poured a whole bottle of ouzo down his neck and made the most gigantic mistake of his life. What was he thinking? He is not good at decision-making when he is sober, so why would he have thought he was any better at it drunk?

  ‘Gamoto!’ He swears at himself and his behaviour. After carefully resting the paintbrush across the top of the tin, he checks his hands for paint. They are not too bad. He pulls the cooker away from the wall. Spiders run for cover, dusty webs billow in the slight breeze he has created. He will have to clean first. Right now he wishes he had never started the job.

  First he runs the broom over the wall, then the drying cloth.

  ‘Good enough,’ he comments, and he takes up his paintbrush again.

  At least he went to work yesterday and this morning. He thought when he got home on the day Maria told him to leave that he would never go out again, ever. He went to bed and stayed there with his blankets over his head, crying, cursing and sleeping until a cockerel called to him – ‘Go-and-get-the-mails’.

  He went because he did not want to mess up the only other thing in his life. He went today, too, because he could no longer sleep. He did not loiter on his rounds, or stay to read anyone’s mail, and he did not stay to answer anybody’s letters for them. Old Lefteris asked what was wrong, seeming concerned, but he could not answer him and hurried off silently, speaking to no one.

  After work he bought bread and yoghurt without a word, but he broke his silence at the hardware shop, where he bought paint for the kitchen. He is determined, having bungled things so badly with Maria, to do something positive, to achieve something, even if it is as trivial as getting rid of that sickly pale green.

  A particularly thick blob of paint runs down the wall. If it continues its journey it will bury a spider that is motionless in the corner where the wall meets the floor. The brush is balanced across the tin again, and he grabs for the cloth, but too late: the spider is caught. After looking around desperately, he grabs a knife from table and lifts the spider clear of the viscous pool. It struggles to free itself but the paint is too thick. The white covers its legs and body, and it can hardly move. He puts it down on the washing-up sponge and nudges it with the point of the knife. It is alive, at least! He dips the knife end in the white spirit and then hovers the blade over the spider, letting a single drop fall, to wash away the tiniest amount of paint. He repeats the process and the spider lifts one of its legs free.

  ‘Come on, my friend, I would rather have spiders in the house than mosquitoes.’

  He lets another drop fall, washing away more of the white goo, which soaks into the sponge. He needs something more delicate than the bread knife. He looks about and spots the jar of toothpicks. These allow the drops to fall directly onto the individual legs of the spider, and the little creepy-crawly begins to respond, lifting one leg, then the other. The tiny creature is almost free of the paint now.

  ‘Do you wash, my friend? How do you clean yourself? This white spirit will do you no good.’ Cosmo uses the corner of the drying cloth to drip water, to wash off the white spirit.

  Studying the animal this closely, he can make out the hairs on its legs, so small it is a miracle. But they are all clean, every last hair, and there is nothing more he can do. He waits, but the tiny creature does not move.

  ‘Are you beaten, my friend? I know how you feel. Exhausted with life? Join the club. What to do? What can we do? Life is how life is.’

  He sighs heavily, his breath on the spider, and then, without warning, his new-found friend runs as fast as it can, along the top of the counter and down the side.

  ‘Ha!’ Cosmo erupts in triumph, and with new life he takes up his paintbrush and continues his work until a tap on the door echoes around his otherwise silent kitchen.

  He doesn’t want to answer. He doesn’t want to see anyone.

  A face appears at the window, a hand shielding the light, stopping reflections.

  ‘Hey, Cosmo,’ Thanasis calls, peering through the glass. ‘Is the door open?’ A minute later the door latch rattles.

  Thanasis is probably the last person on earth he wants to see right now.

  ‘Hey, hey, look at you, Mr Industrious.’ Thanasis admires the half-painted room.

  Cosmo cannot find any words that he would trust himself to say so he remains silent.

  Thanasis sits at the kitchen table like he has a thousand times before, and grins. ‘Haven’t seen you for a couple of days. I was wondering if everything was all right.’

  Cosmo grunts: a relatively positive noise to shut Thanasis up.

  ‘Then I remembered that the last time we spoke I challenged you to a game of tavli, so then, of course, I realised why I hadn’t seen you. You were just plain scared of the beating I was going to give you.’

  He laughs at his own joke and the noise sounds too loud in the small kitchen.

  ‘You got a hangover?’ he asks, the silence too much for him.

  ‘No,’ Cosmo replies automatically. He will never ever touch the stuff again.

  ‘Ah,’ Thanasis says. He is ill at ease. ‘So what’s your mood all about then? Has something happened …? Ha! Talking of something happening …’

  He speaks quickly, not giving Cosmo an opportunity to answer. He needs to say what he needs to say, and quickly, before he falters.

  ‘You will never in a million and one years guess what happened to me the day before yesterday!’ Yes, that is as good a way of introducing this topic as any. ‘Oh my God, you will never guess! Go on, try.’

  Thanasis raises and lowers the pitch of his voice, to make it sound like it was a good thing, something positive.

  ‘Think of the wildest possible thing and you won’t even be close … You want water?’

  He stands, hearing the tremor in his voice, and as he takes a glass and runs the tap he can see his hands trembling. Cosmo shakes his head but he does not turn around; he seems reluctant to look his friend in the eye right now.

&nb
sp; Sitting again, Thanasis drinks his fill and smacks his lips in satisfaction. ‘Let me tell you.’ Here goes …

  Cosmo is painting the narrow strip of wall between the corner of the room and the cupboard door. He sighs.

  ‘No! Given up already?’ Thanasis continues trying to sound jolly. ‘Well, I will tell you who came to visit. Actually came to my home! Are you sure you don’t want to guess who? You will never guess, so I will tell you.’

  He watches Cosmo dip his brush in the paint and takes a deep breath.

  ‘Maria!’

  With a plop the brush slips from Cosmo’s hand into the paint bucket and his jaw hangs open.

  ‘Now that’s surprised you! It certainly surprised me.’ Thanasis feels that if he can keep talking, everything will be all right. Just keep talking.

  ‘Maria?’ Cosmo barely whispers his query, picking the brush carefully out of the paint; all the bristles and half the handle are now shiny, wet and white. Cosmo holds the brush between finger and thumb and lets it hang for a moment to allow the bulk of the paint to slide off.

  In the short pause Thanasis has allowed, he hears his friend repeat himself.

  ‘Maria?’ This time Cosmo sounds more casual. Thanasis’s ears have started to ring.

  ‘Yes, Maria from opposite the church!’ Right now he needs to explain … ‘Well, okay, let me back up a bit, explain something to you. You see, you probably won’t remember her from when she was young but she used to be quite a looker and I developed a bit of a crush on her. You know, from afar.’

  He watches Cosmo’s free hand ball into a fist as his other hand slaps the paint hard onto the wall. This is going to be tough. Keep talking.

  ‘Well, over the years my feelings have waxed and waned, but I have let her know, not too directly, that she was admired. I have written her letters. Ha ha! You have probably delivered them.’

  He pretends that he finds this very funny and laughs heartily. It feels like a relief to laugh, but he knows he is just putting off what needs to be said. When he wrote the letters he didn’t know Maria could not read. He had no idea, and the horror of this discovery, along with the knowledge of the fact that Cosmo has had to read his love letters to her over the years, is no joke! It is totally embarrassing. Right now he must not think of himself but of Cosmo – and Maria.

  Cosmo is showing nothing outwardly, he just paints – slap, slap. Keep talking, Thanasis tells himself. If he stops now his own cowardice may stop him forever.

  ‘Well, in all the years I sent them, she never answered my letters, which is not surprising as I never signed them. You see, I was never really sure.’

  It seemed all right at the time, but now, saying it out loud, it’s clear it was a selfish game to have played. ‘I mean, I did have feelings for her and I kind of liked the idea of a bit of a romance in my life, but the reality? So I kept it, you know, sort of dreamy. She could dream of who this mysterious lover was and I could have a little dream too. No harm.’

  He stands, his chair scraping harshly across the floor. Cosmo still hasn’t turned around. Thanasis’s glass catches the light and sparkles as he takes it to the sink, turning on the tap and listening to the familiar groan of the pipes, before the water rushes out.

  Cosmo is concentrating on getting a straight edge with the white paint next to the cupboard, but his hand is shaking and he cannot control the brush.

  ‘Anyway,’ Thanasis continues. He thinks he catches Cosmo looking down and under his own raised arm, at him. He looks away to his own calloused hands as he toys with his glass, making the bottom rock around on the table, the water trying to find its level up the side of the glass.

  ‘I don’t know how, but she found out it was me.’ He feels like he has lost momentum and the words no longer sound jolly, but forced and dry instead. ‘Now, I have always thought of Maria as having grown to be a bit of a bitter woman, perhaps, over the years, but still mild and meek. I never reckoned on her being feisty.’ His voice sounds positively sad.

  Cosmo’s tension is filling the room; Thanasis could cut it with a knife. He would like to open the window or the door, let some new air in – even better, go outside himself. He does neither of these things but instead continues determinedly.

  ‘So I am out the back of the house, and I hear someone shifting the gate and naturally I assume it is you, so I call out, “Ela Cosmo”, but you don’t reply. So I stop fixing the trough, or whatever I was doing, and wait to see who appears. You could have knocked me down with a feather. It was Maria! What’s more, I immediately know it is not a normal sort of house call’ – Cosmo stops painting, his brush paused – ‘because she still has her apron on!’ The paint in the corner where Cosmo is working is drying and dragging, he has been over it so many times now.

  ‘“Explain yourself,” she demands, just like that, as if I have done something wrong,’ Thanasis continues, trying to inject some humour into his voice.

  Cosmo turns the corner to the last, small section of wall, his brush moving so slowly. Thanasis can tell that he does not want to finish because then he will be forced to turn and face his friend. He pushes on, trying to make the situation easier for both of them.

  ‘“Explain what?” I ask, all innocent, like. Well, how was I to know what she meant? But in my heart I sort of knew it must be something to do with the letters. After all, we have no other connection.’

  ‘Now, I want to try and explain this to you so you get a full picture of this woman, Cosmo. I feel I owe you that.’

  What he has done has been so selfish. Why did he not see it this way all these years? His cheeks are hot and his eyes mist over. But he must warn his friend too – Maria is not all sweetness and light, it is important that he knows that too.

  Cosmo stops painting, but he remains with his back to his friend.

  Thanasis is transported by his own words back to the events of that day.

  She stood there with her hands on her hips, her face stern and those beautiful eyes of hers looking so hurt. The fig tree behind her, dark within its branches, made her stand out in her sunlit patch.

  ‘You have no idea what you have done,’ she said. He was about to protest when she took the bundle of envelopes from the pocket of her apron. In that second, blood rushed to his ears, setting them ringing; his cheeks were on fire and one leg began to tremble. Adrenaline shot through his chest, and in his panic his throat seemed to tighten. Stupidly, or so he thought afterwards, his first response was concern, in case she wanted to take him up on his offer of love, make something of it. And in that moment he asked himself if he would really want that – if he was ready?

  He can remember the smell of the donkeys behind him at that point and, as if for the first time, seeing his own yard as others might see it – bare of any sense of civilisation, with compacted earth and crates for seats, not even a chair. Bags of rubbish waiting to be taken to the bins, and bags of manure stacked in one corner. He tried to search his heart and, sure enough, there was a big open cavity of loneliness and just a little fear of growing any older alone. So he smiled and, foolishly, put out his hands to implore her.

  ‘Maria, you have seen how long I have had a candle burning for you,’ he said.

  At first she did not respond and he wondered if he should retract it or say it again, but then she took a step closer and he did not know if she was going to kiss him or slap him. He noticed he felt scared of either possibility.

  ‘You never had the courage or the human decency to even sign your name,’ she said, and her words cut him, because he knew it was the truth. She didn’t exactly growl these words, but even if she had she could not have sounded more threatening. But in his fear and – he could admit to himself afterwards – his arrogance, he did wonder at the time if this was her way of courtship, establishing who was boss, so to speak.

  ‘A little intrigue,’ he answered gaily, covering his uncertainty, his shame, and, to be honest, his fear. There was menace in the woman. But there was no stopping her – it was as if t
he spring rains had come and she was making up for all her years of silence.

  ‘Well, your little “intrigue” has had consequences and now you will put it right,’ she said. It was not a question and he did not feel like he could argue. She looked around, and when she saw that there was no chair or bench, she pointed at an orange crate and said ‘Sit,’ as if he were a dog. She had a commanding manner, and he did as he was bid. She remained standing.

  ‘You will go to Cosmo,’ she began – and that was when he became very confused and opened his mouth to speak, but she hissed at him to be quiet. He had no idea what Cosmo had to do with this. Surely it was just him writing letters to her, and she was – what? Cross, insulted? Adding Cosmo to the mix was just plain confusing.

  ‘You will go to Cosmo,’ she said, ‘and you will explain what you have done, and you will apologise to him for your selfish, self-serving little game.’

  He heard her words and they served to mystify him but also, at that point, it was as if she had pushed just a little too hard, and anger stirred within him. He had not been spoken to like that since his yiayia died, crazy in her old age and no longer aware of who he was. So he stood; it was a reflex. But she locked her eyes on him and gave him such a withering look that his knees gave way and he sat again, meekly. In all the years he had written to her, he had no idea that this was the type of woman she really was. But he was about to get to know her even better because when Maria spoke again it was like an explosion.

  ‘What did you think I would think of your anonymous love letters?’ She spat the words out, but she was not expecting any sort of answer because she continued without pausing to let him speak.

  ‘At first I was confused,’ she said. ‘I thought it was someone being unkind, making a joke out of the fact I had been left high and dry.’ And it was only then that he vaguely recalled she had been jilted, and he cringed at his own insensitivity. But there was no space for apologies.

  ‘It hurt,’ she continued. ‘It hurt deeply and I was too embarrassed to go out of my own front door because I didn’t know who was playing this cruel joke. Was it just one person or the whole village? I became afraid to go out because I thought the world was laughing at me, and you did that, Thanasi. You!’