by Sara Alexi
‘But before Harris, or any of us for that matter, could take a breath you were off again.’ He laughed as he said this, looking proud.
It was true. Vasillis sent word that the carpet-makers were offering jobs to able youngsters with good pay. Rallou was sent but Harris had to stay behind to cook and keep house for her father and their three brothers. Rallou suggested at the time that perhaps she shouldn’t go because of Harris, but Baba was firm. To be a wage earner at nine years old was a blessing. Harris was twelve, and she had her own role in their lives. As for more education, that was not advisable, he said, as it would only render Rallou unmarriageable.
Rallou lazily throws the cold dregs of her coffee over the edge of the porch and watches the ground suck the moisture into a dark streak that quickly fades. An ant comes to investigate.
‘Do you want fresh coffee?’ Baba leans his weight forward but she shakes her head; he settles back to talk again.
‘But you know, Rallou, even before you went to school, her life was very different from yours.’ Baba is trying to help, she knows he is, but it is not clear what point he is trying to make. Rallou reminds herself that he is over seventy now. Talking about Harris is the last thing she feels inclined to do right now; she would rather discuss Christos, figure out what is going on between him and her. She thinks she knows what her baba is about to say.
‘In one hour, Rallou’ – he is looking at her quite sternly – ‘Harris suddenly had not one but two younger sisters. And in the same hour you all lost your own dear mama. Which I know was hard on you too – how could it not have been, you were so small? But for Harris, her world changed even more. She was no longer just the younger sister to her brothers. She had to be the woman of the house, with five men to feed, if you include me, and two little sisters to take care of, and one only a baby. It was very hard on her. And I still feel bad,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘that I did not help her more, but I felt adrift at the time, Rallou. Losing your mama shattered my world.’
‘Baba, I know, I know. Harris was an amazing mama to me and Evgenia.’ She crosses herself in her little sister’s memory. ‘She has always been more than just a sister to me.’ She scans his face. He has a new liver spot by his left temple, which will fade into his tan as summer comes. He shifts in his seat, as if he is uncomfortable.
‘But maybe she has become too much to you, my koukla?’ he says.
‘How can she be too much to me? She has been by my side, supported me, advised me.’ She would like to add, ‘I wouldn’t know half of what was going on with Christos if it was not for her,’ but decides not to.
‘Do you think it is possible that, because she acted as a mama to you, maybe, just maybe, you are blind to her faults?’
Her lips part, her mouth dropping open just a fraction, but more noticeable than that is a sudden weight in her chest. Troubles with Christos are uncomfortable and hurtful, but questioning Harris seems to shake the very foundation of her world.
The beauty of the view across the sea, the sun sparkling on the now blue water, is too sharp a contrast to how she feels, so she shuts her eyes.
Chapter 4
The gecko is back on the balcony, and a second appears and they chase each other, along the tiles and back over the edge again. Once out of sight they call to each other with their noisy clicks.
‘So, the Americans, are they here yet?’ He asks brightly, blinking, watching her, as he changes the subject. ‘No, I’m too early, aren’t I? They don’t normally come until the end of June, do they?’ He plays idly with his empty cup, but the movements are slightly too fast to appear totally casual. ‘It is so easy to get confused with the days up here! Sometimes I lose weeks, or gain them.’ He laughs now, inviting Rallou to join him.
‘It is not only up here, Baba.’ She accepts his invitation. ‘I have lost months, or gained them. I just never seem to know where we are. The seasons, however, I manage to keep up with.’ Now they both chuckle.
‘But in answer to your question, their son is here.’ Rallou knits her fingers in her lap and stares at them and then fiddles with a bit of skin by her thumbnail. It hurts as she pulls at it so she chews it off.
‘Which one? Don’t they have more than one?’ He is talking now as if the subject of Harris has been forgotten but his words are too clipped. He knows there are three sons.
‘The oldest one. Greg. He says he is getting divorced.’ The word divorce lingers in her mind. Could that really be where she and Christos are heading? When you have been with someone for twenty-nine years, how do you know if divorce is the thing to do? How does she know if she would be happier? And what would she have left if he were to leave? It is a little bit beyond even her imagination, but it is still a terrifying thought. Then again, how much of a couple are they, as things are? Stephanos gives the impression that nothing is too much effort if it makes Harris happy. He even thinks of things independently, to improve or at the very least maintain their home. Christos, on the other hand, seems so absorbed in his own world, and so completely defeated whenever she suggests that he might do things differently, that he might sort out the house or get a job in town, or, worse still, that he himself might have to change.
‘I am sorry to hear that.’ Her baba puts his palms flat on the table, spreading out his fingers. The little finger of his right hand is crooked with age and the joint near his nail is a bulbous knot; he no longer has movement there. Rallou takes a moment to recall what she had said to him to prompt this answer. Oh yes, it was in answer to the mention of Greg getting divorced.
There is a yellow flower by the bottom step of the balcony. Its stem has pushed its way through the compacted soil and it has bloomed in the shade of the step.
‘Lori and Ted offered me a ticket to America, to visit them there, after the summer.’
‘Really?’ His voice is animated.
He doesn’t add, ‘Isn’t that exciting,’ and nor does he ask if she intends to go. She wonders if it is because that would open up a discussion about whether Christos would go too. He is not one to interfere in other people’s relationships.
Having mentioned it, Rallou is not sure she wants to talk about it anyway, as it seems that someone in the town has implied that the offer was made, not by Lori and Ted, but by their middle-aged, married, soon-to-be-divorced son Greg. At church last Sunday someone asked if the offer of the ticket was true, which in itself surprised her as she had told only a couple of people. But she had nothing to hide, and said that, yes, it was true – and she felt not altogether unjustified in harbouring a little smugness. After all, how many housekeepers were so valued by their employers? But the response that came back was some reference to Greg and was accompanied by what might have been interpreted by a less generous person as a sneer, and Rallou would have had no idea what this exchange was really about if Harris had not explained it later.
‘Yes, really. But they have offered me the ticket not as their housekeeper – just as their friend.’ Lori and Ted are so appreciative, but she does no more for their house than she does for her own. When was the last time Christos appreciated her?
Her baba retracts his hands from the tabletop. He too seems to be staring at the little yellow flower.
‘Lori and Ted really seem to need me. I think they are the only ones that do, now that my children are gone.’ She laughs to make light of her admission, but her stomach tightens.
‘I need you.’ He says it so simply it brings a lump to her throat.
‘You?’ She chuckles a little, the embarrassment cutting it short. ‘You, who have lived here by yourself for years and years? You need no one! You are the only person I know who is truly content with his own company.’ For some reason she wishes she could cry like she used to as a child but these days the tears are reluctant to come. It would feel like a relief if they did, if she could just sob her heart out again and again.
‘Am I?’
Any other day she would accept this invitation to talk about him, reassure herself that he
is all right up here all alone, but not today. Today she needs to think about herself.
They continue to sit side by side in silence. The cockerel down in the coop crows, its warbling call trilling on the last note, which extends to become a creaking rasp before, out of breath, the bird falls silent. Another boat appears from the direction of Orino harbour, cutting the water, raising a twist of white foam that ribbons out behind it. The red bodywork and its speed tell Rallou it is a water taxi boat. It could be Costas or Yorgos. She has not seen either of them for a few weeks. It is amazing how, in such a small town, she seems to see people either every day or not at all. The boys, or rather men, with grown-up children of their own now, live behind the hill that separates Orino harbour from the smaller hamlet with its little harbour to the west. She can remember when there were just a few houses there, but over the years more have been built until they form a cluster all the way up the hill to connect with the houses that spill over from the main town. She and Christos live on the eastern edge of the town, where the houses start to thin out and the ground rises steeply. The route that leads up out of town, to the ridge where Yanni lives, passes behind her house, and she often hears his donkeys clopping slowly, softly, back up in the evening, or trotting down at dawn, their hooves sliding on the polished marble steps that give way to a rough track further up the hill. Harris lives just across from Rallou, and from her balcony she can survey Rallou’s house and all of the road down to the port, as well as part of the Americans’ garden. She also overlooks one of the larger squares, in front of the church, where the bright colours of the geraniums and the shade of a spreading pine tree encourage people to gather and talk. Her house is a perfect vantage point, whether up on the balcony, or by her front door.
Back when Rallou first moved with Christos to live in Orino town, it had seemed like such an achievement. Sophisticated, modern. There was electricity and running water in the houses. The shops were only five minutes away and they delivered for free! It felt so decadent! But now, if she was given the choice she would rather live up here, nearer nature, near her baba, with views that are the best in all of Greece. But the reality is that there is no electricity and no running water. Light is by paraffin, which has to be brought up; bathing occurs in the sea in the summer, or there is the option of cold washes from one of the wells, which may or may not have water at the tail end of summer. In the winter, washing is a long, tedious job involving heating pans of water. It may look idyllic here but it is not very practical.
The second drawback is that without a donkey it takes so long and is so tiring to get to town, so, even if Christos’s family house were habitable, he could not get jobs in town, and she certainly could not continue to be housekeeper for Lori and Ted, being so remote.
‘Do you see much of the boys?’ her baba asks, referring to Costas and Yorgos.
‘No. I still visit Eleftheria most weeks.’ Eleftheria is Vasillis’s wife. ‘But even that is becoming less regular now their eldest is married and gone. I saw Grigoris on my way here. He was herding the goats down on the low pastures. I waved to him.’
Perhaps it is best just to accept what she has, stop wishing for more. Harris may be right about the house and all that Christos never seems to get done, but life is short. Maybe it is best spent up on the hills rather than cementing steps. But if that is the case perhaps it is even better to spend it seeing the world?
She looks past the chicken enclosure down to the area of pasture that leads to the beehives. Her gaze flicks up over the pines and then down across the sea to the mainland.
How many school trips were the children taken on, to one place or another over on the mainland? Delphi, Epidavros, Myceanae, Corinth, the Acropolis in Athens. Each time she volunteered to go, to help the teachers, packing her bag alongside the children’s.
‘You are going with them again?’ Christos would ask, almost like an accusation, almost every time.
‘I have made domates gemistes and imambaildi, two tapsia in the fridge. If you want them hot put them in the oven,’ she would reply. She always made sure he did not suffer for these trips, but how she used to delight in them, in a chance to get off the island.
‘One day we must make our own trip, yes?’ he would ask, but it didn’t seem like a real question.
‘But you have never been off the island. You have no interest in travelling,’ she would reply. The first few times he disputed this. But she said that if he wanted to leave the island he would have done it already, and after a while he made no comment at all.
She misses those excursions. The church organises outings to the Meteora and other monasteries on occasion, and she will sometimes go with all the other women of the town, but it is not as much fun as the school excursions were.
‘Come on.’ Her baba stands and waits for her to lead. He is walking more slowly than when she last saw him at New Year. His feet shuffle a little as if he is afraid of lifting them too far from the ground.
‘Are your shoes all right?’ Rallou asks. She forgot to put her shoes on after brushing her hair. Feeling the ground beneath her seems to impress upon her the reality of life, reminding her that her relationship with nature is far more important than any other she has had or will have in her life. She forgets this when she lives in town and all the earth is paved in stone and her feet are permanently bound in leather. The dust between her toes feels very comforting.
‘Yes. Why?’
‘Nothing.’
The top of the island is all rock and shrubs. Down either side of the hill, but more thickly on the north face, the pine trees grow, and lower still they dwindle to nothing where they meet the coastal path to town. On the south side, further along, they give way to olives, but straight down they continue nearly to the water’s edge around secluded beaches.
As they walk on, her baba’s stride begins to lengthen, a lazy swing of his legs, no hurry.
Neither of them speaks as they walk, and the events of yesterday return to Rallou’s mind. Christos had heard the rumours about her and Greg too. But why hadn’t he just dismissed them? Instead, the way he dealt with it came as such a shock.
She had just washed and was ironing Ted’s and Lori’s sheets and pillowcases again. After eight months folded in a chest they needed to be freshened up. She had also changed Greg’s sheets as he had already been there about a week. Lori and Ted would come in June. The two other sons, Scott and Bryce, would not be coming out until August this year.
The ironing board was set up in the kitchen and she could see the pomegranate tree out of the back door, still heavy with fruit that had ripened and then split late last summer, as no one had picked it, the branches reaching out to catch her every time she passed. Every spring she watches the pomegranates swell and blush, and resolves to collect them. When the children were young she would pluck them, get the children to peel them. Then they would borrow a press and squash the juice out, mixing it with large amounts of sugar to make a cordial.
The back door was open so she could keep watch for Christos on his way back down the track from his day’s hunting, with Arapitsa trailing behind, sniffing at the ground, the fur around her paws grey and impregnated with dust. She would watch him, just a dot high up, getting bigger and bigger. He would look down from the hairpin turn and wave if he saw her. At least he still did that. But he had not appeared yet.
Taking a glass from beside the sink, she filled it with cold bottled water from the fridge. She drank her fill and pulled a face. She had grown up spoilt, with a childhood of fresh mountaintop well water. Then she filled the glass again, this time for the iron. Hissing and steaming, it took most of the glass.
‘Rallou?’ Christos called as the front door slammed, and his feet clipped against the floor tiles as he marched the short distance to the kitchen.
‘Hello, are you hungry?’ she asked. He must have come down the other way, the way he went when he wanted to drop in on the hardware shop. Maybe he needed more wire for his snares.
‘To h
ell with your food!’ he barked.
She put the iron down and turned to face him, eyes wide.
‘What …?’
‘Have you any idea how it makes me look?’ he snapped, his hunting bag dumped on the ironing board, on top of her clean white pillowcases.
‘Er, Christo.’ She lifted it off, and noted it was empty, which was not unusual of late. He snatched the bag from her hand and threw it on the floor, but it wasn’t enough, and he grabbed the edge of the neatly ironed cases and pulled them, slapping them against the floor and releasing them into a pile on the tiles, then kicking at them with his boot.
Rallou did nothing but stand and stare. It was out of character and she had no idea what his temper was about. It flashed through her mind that it might be to do with the rumours, but he knew her better than to believe any of that.
The sunlight slicing in at the back door lit up the sheets and highlighted the contrast between the clean cotton and his dirty boot marks. It was nothing a scrub and water and sunlight would not bleach … But to make all that work for her – it was not his way.
‘Christo, has something happened? Are you all right?’
‘Yes, just fine if I like the whole island looking at me like I am a fool.’
It must be the rumour, there was no other explanation.
‘Is this about the rumour–?’ she started.
‘The rumour that is all over the town, and you stand there without a word of apology.’
‘Apology? Me apologise? What exactly am I supposed to apologise for, I have done nothing – and you know it! I am not responsible for what people spend their lazy time talking about, any more than you are.’
‘You are responsible for what you do!’
‘I have done nothing for which I need to apologise.’
‘This is a small island, Rallou – it is all about what people think you do! Whether you have flung yourself at your fancy American man’s son or not is not the point.’ There was ever such a slight pause, as if to suggest he was waiting for a denial, but it wasn’t long enough for her to offer one – if, indeed, she thought one was deserved or would help. ‘If people think you are having an affair how does that make me look, eh?’