by Sara Alexi
But look now – who is in Corfu and who is dithering?
‘Please, lady …’ Natasa and her young man are back. ‘Please, take my ticket.’ She offers the yellow slip, puts it in Rallou’s hand. But she does not look at Rallou; she has eyes only for her Spiros.
Chapter 22
‘Ah, you see!’ the ticket man says. ‘When life offers you something like this it is because it has set a path for you.’ He is all smiles. Rallou looks at the ticket.
Corfu, one berth, shared cabin.
‘Kyria, if you cannot see a gift when it is looking at you, what more do you need? A fanfare of trumpets? Dancing girls? A police escort?’ He is teasing her now, his grin even wider. He winks as he catches her eye. ‘Go, have fun, and when you get bored come back!’
Prompted by this speech, she takes the ticket and walks, hesitantly, towards the boat. A man waiting at the side of the wide ribbed-steel gangplank takes her ticket and tears off part of it.
‘Go to the end, up the stairs, first left, down the stairs, right past the money exchange – and here, look, the ticket says room number one hundred and forty seven.’ He looks away from her to the next person.
‘Up the stairs, left, down the stairs, past the money … Up, left, down, money,’ Rallou repeats to herself, and she heads inside, glad that she has specific directions to follow rather than decisions to make. ‘Up, left, down, money.’
There is a jam of people on the stairs.
‘Up, left, down, money.’ It is a big ship, and she could easily get lost.
Halfway up the steps is a landing and an opening marked Personnel, from which emanates a stench of grease and oil, and the heat hits her as it billows up. It must be quite unbearable down there. A clang of metal upon metal tells her people are in the depths, working.
‘How do they stand it?’ she asks herself. A door opens further up and a little old lady comes towards her, with a very slow step, and her head wobbles just ever so slightly side to side. She is wearing black from head to foot: a dark blouse, a straight skirt to just below the knee, thick, flesh-coloured tights, black sensible shoes and the customary scarf on her head tied in a knot under her chin.
‘Up, left, down, exchange,’ the lady chants. Her fingers tremble on the handrail.
‘Up, left, down, money,’ Rallou says.
‘Up, left, down, exchange.’ The woman smiles in recognition, repeating her own mantra.
Rallou opens the door on her left, which is between them.
‘Up, left, down, money,’ she says, laughing now.
‘Up, left, down, exchange,’ the lady giggles. She is short, only up to Rallou’s shoulder, and slung across her back is a large yellow bag out of which knitting needles are poking.
They go through the door and are faced with a flight of stairs, and they repeat together, ‘Up.’ Now they laugh openly.
At the top they exchange another word. ‘Left,’ And halfway down the corridor Rallou says, ‘Money.’
‘Exchange,’ the old lady replies, and there in front of them is a sign that says Money Exchange, and they both turn down this corridor.
‘What number are you?’ the old lady asks. Her eyes are bright even though her skin is weathered with age.
‘One hundred and forty-seven,’ Rallou says.
‘Oh, can you read the number on my ticket?’ says the old lady.’I have forgotten already,’ and she passes over her own yellow slip.
‘Oh, one hundred and forty-seven. We are bunkmates!’ Rallou feels a sudden relief at the thought of having some company.
‘You are travelling alone. How brave. It took me until I was seventy to travel alone, and now I do it all the time!’ She smiles. ‘I am Toula, by the way.’
‘Hello, Kyria Toula. I am Rallou.’
‘Yeia sou, Rallou, we will be good bunkmates for the night. Here we are.’ She opens the door into a very small room that has a neatly made bed against each wall and a small table at the end, between them. There are blinds and curtains at the window, in a caramel brown, matching the bed covers. The sheets and pillowcases are a crisp white. The walls have been painted a colour that is combination of the two, a halfway hue. Toula pauses and looks around. There is a narrow door just inside the cabin and she opens this to reveal the toilet in the same colour scheme. ‘Ah, good. Not sure I could manage a whole night without,’ she says, with no embarrassment, and then she fully enters the room and sits on one of the beds. The way she unslings her bag and takes out her knitting makes it look like she has done this many times before. Rallou really only wanted to find her cabin before exploring the ship but feels it would be rude just to walk away so she squeezes in and sits down too.
‘I have not been knitting long. My daughter has a four-year-old, Katerina, and little Apostolis is nearly two, and she has another on the way now. I never knitted for the first two, so for this one I am knitting.’ Toula has an easy manner. She pauses in her knitting to take a scent bottle from her bag, then liberally squirts herself. It is a sweet floral smell, sweeter than ripe fruit.
‘Ah. My daughter is pregnant with her first. She lives in Bari. She is a doctor.’ The usual flush of pride sweeps over Rallou and her chest fills and her head lifts.
‘You will go over when it is born?’ Toula asks.
Rallou has harboured a desire to do this since she first knew Natasa was pregnant, but she has always felt Christos would make it either difficult or impossible. But why would he? Sometimes it seems she thinks things with no real basis – just imagines the worst and then looks for it. If she looks for negatives in life perhaps it is inevitable that she will find them. What was that painted sign that Costas Voulgaris had hanging on his cafe wall? Oh yes – ‘Life may give you nothing but cactuses, but that does not mean you have to sit on them.’ It makes her smile. If she wants to go to see the baby when it is born she can, and she will. It is a little opening of freedom that has always been there, but for some reason she has denied it to herself.
‘Yes. I will go,’ she says, and it feels good to have made this decision. Trying to make a calculation, she realises she has lost track of the days. She has no idea what the date is, or even what month it is. It is not the first time that she has lost weeks just by living. But the baby will come before Lori and Ted go to America. Maybe she can do both. She must not forget to send Lori a card.
‘Well, I would be glad to hear them,’ Toula says.
‘Hear what?’ Rallou asks.
‘Those thoughts that are tracing a thousand emotions across your face.’
Rallou puts her hand to her mouth as if feeling the contours of her lips will give her a better understanding of what is showing.
‘Ah, you don’t have to tell me.’ Toula has come to the end of the row, and she takes out the needle from under her arm and changes the needles over, rewrapping the pale yellow wool around her fingers. ‘Let me change the subject,’ she suggests. ‘Where have you come from, and where are you going?’ Her needles click and clack.
With someone listening – a sounding board – and the chance of some feedback, everything Rallou has been thinking and feeling becomes more real, more enormous and far more painful. ‘Orino.’ It is all she dares to allow herself to say as the memory of her house sits heavily in her chest and her breathing becomes difficult.
‘Oh, my God in heaven and all the saints around him!’ Toula’s needles freeze mid-purl. ‘It was on the news. Are you all right, my dear? And your loved ones! I heard at least there were no fatalities. Or was there one? Yes, one, an old lady. I hope this was no relation?’ She puts her knitting down now and reaches out to pat Rallou’s hands. This is enough to bring the weight from her lungs rushing back up her throat, causing her cheeks to burn hot and tears to spring to the surface. Toula pats with one hand. Her other is in her bag, feeling for a fistful of tissues, which she offers.
‘No relation. I didn’t even really know her.’ Pressing the tissues into the corners of her eyes seems to stop her crying.
‘And your
house?’
‘Gone.’
With that one word the whole story comes out, in a confusing order, from the earthquake and the collapse of her house, to her setting out for Corfu, and back through her sleepless night at Vasillis’s house in town, to being up in Korifi, and then on to Christos’s comments about Greg. She explains the possibility that he might have gone to Corfu after an old love or maybe just to find a new one. When she gets to a point where she has no more to say she looks out of the window. If the ship has not yet cast off she will go home to her baba. The only thing she has left is her pride, and if she goes running after Christos she will lose that too.
‘Ah, so you are going after him?’ Toula asks.
‘You know what, I think I have made a mistake.’ Rallou stands.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Off this ship, back to the island.’
‘Oh, are you a strong swimmer then?’
Rallou looks out of the porthole again to see the harbour wall slipping past, and realises that they have indeed begun their journey.
‘It seems, what with free tickets and quietly departing ships, that life has plans for you,’ Toula says, and her needles begin to clack again.
‘Someone else already said that today.’
Toula shrugs and knits on in silence.
‘You know, when my husband was alive he was a bully,’ she says after a pause. ‘A bully.’ She repeats the words as if she needs to keep reminding herself. ‘It took me ever such a long time to realise it, but now he is dead, do you know what?’
Rallou does not want to say ‘What?’ because she is sure Toula is going to say she misses him.
‘What?’ She gives in anyway.
‘I do not miss him at all. What I do regret is not leaving him earlier. Waste of my life!’
‘Oh! So you think I should not go after Christos?’
‘Did I say that? I know that if my Apostolis had left home without giving me a clue as to where he was going, what day he would be expected back and what he would like cooked and ready on the table on his return I would have rejoiced. The fact that you are still thinking about your Christos, thinking about whether or not you should go after him, says it all. Or maybe I am wrong. But as the boat is now sailing, you are going to Corfu anyway, so let’s enjoy it!’
‘Are you going on holiday then?’ Rallou cannot quite get to the essence of who this Toula is. She seems far too self-possessed for someone who was bullied, and now she has spilt her whole life story Rallou would like to know something of this lady.
‘Sort of. I have a small apartment in Corfu. When Apostolis died I sold the lower part of the big house and gave the upstairs to my housekeeper.’
‘Sorry, did I hear you right? You gave your house to your housekeeper?’ Her thoughts flick to Lori and Ted.
‘Oh, what a blessing she was! When I could not stand him any more I would live for the days Nikki would come. I enjoyed making her breakfast and lunch, you see – she was so appreciative, whereas Apostolis thought it was his right. So yes, I gave her the house. After all, she was the one who polished and loved it. I moved back to my family’s house in the village near Saros.’
‘Wait, is that the village where a man called Theo has a kafenio?’
‘Ha, you know it! It is a small world, isn’t it? Is he a friend of yours?’
‘He is Christos’s second cousin, but I have never actually met him.’
‘Oh my, my, such a small world. Well, Theo is a lovely man, so if your husband is related he cannot be all bad. Small world, such a small world.’ And her needles click.
Rallou waits for all this to sink in.
‘So, you divide your time between Corfu and the village outside Saros town?’ she asks.
‘And London. My daughter lives there, the grandchildren are there. Didn’t go until Apostolis was dead though. That’s how much he controlled me.’ Her mouth becomes a tight, hard line.
‘My daughter is in Bari. Christos has not let me go.’ But as she says this it feels like a lie, so she tries to explain. ‘Well, it is not that he does not let me, it’s just – oh, I don’t know … It just feels like he doesn’t approve. And I’m not sure he would come with me. He doesn’t travel. He has never left the island.’
‘Yet he is in Corfu.’ Toula’s forehead wrinkles and she raises her eyebrows. Click clack, click clack. Then she sighs, a big deep sigh with a slight rattle to it. ‘But although I don’t miss him …’ – she is talking about herself again now – ‘and I would not take him back, I do miss someone, you know, just being with someone, a like-minded soul. But who knows, maybe it is never too late?’
Chapter 23
‘Do you really think that’s true? That it’s never too late?’ Rallou asks after a pause, but she is thinking of Christos, not Toula. Her eyes are still moist and she dabs them intermittently.
‘Absolutely. We are social animals.’ Toula takes more tissues from her bag and passes them to Rallou, and then resumes her knitting. ‘We may get a little more set in our ways as we get older, a little less inclined to change and accommodate, but isolation is the thing we all abhor the most. That’s why they have solitary confinement in prisons, is it not? But you know what,’ she continues, ‘I think men are less tolerant of that sort of thing than women. They hate the possibility of being left alone. They really are pack animals. That, or they need to be the head of their herds. Something like that, anyway. I’m sure I read somewhere that more women leave their husbands than the other way around. Not just a few more, but quite a substantial percentage.’ Her wool runs out.
‘Bother.’ She fishes in her bag, takes out another, smaller bag, which she puts on the bed along with a change purse, a magazine, a small towel, and then, much to Rallou’s surprise, a large pair of black headphones, the sort with a solid strap that goes across the top of the head. ‘For the radio,’ Toula informs Rallou, and then out comes the radio, a small portable transistor. ‘I get the loneliest when I try to go to sleep. That’s why I always get a cabin for two. But even so, I listen to the radio. Now, where is that wool? Ah, here it is.’ She pulls the paper belt off the new ball and joins it by knitting the two strands together for a few clicks and clacks.
‘So. What is your plan once you reach Corfu? How will you begin to search for him? Have you any idea where he might stay, any other relations he might have up here, or anywhere he has ever mentioned?’ She takes a breath but not for long enough for Rallou to answer before she continues. ‘Across the road from my house there are two boys who rent bikes. Ilias and Bobby. Now, they know everything that goes on on the island, and if they don’t know they would know who to ask to find out.’ Her knitting pace increases as if the possibility of the hunt excites her.
Shrinking a little where she sits, Rallou chews at her inner lip. It is one thing, in a moment of weakness, to tell this Toula woman her story, but it is quite another to be having her telling it to the rent-a-bike boys and having them in turn spread it around the island so that everyone will know her business.
‘Actually Toula, that is very kind of you but–’
‘Why do you say “but”? “But” you are going to go all the way to Corfu and not find him? “But” you are going to go back to your baba having been on the same island as Christos, cousin of Theo, “but” not talked to him? Now why would you do that?’ She stops knitting again to look at Rallou with black, piercing eyes. Everything that was in her bag appears to be spread across the bed, but she breaks her stare and fishes once again in the capacious holdall. ‘Can you get the two glasses from the sink in there?’ She points to the toilet door. What on earth is the woman up to now, Rallou wonders, but she does as she is told. In a single pace and a long reach, the glasses are hers. But when she turns around to sit down again, she sees that on the little table separating the beds at the pillow end are feta and bread and olives and two slices of spinach pie, all laid out along with a small plastic water bottle that looks like it is filled with red wine.
�
�Come, we will eat,’ Toula commands, and Rallou’s stomach agrees with her, very loudly.
After the food and wine Toula hiccups twice and then with blushing cheeks invites Rallou to a game of cards, during which they become rather riotous, until someone in the next cabin bangs on the walls, which sets them off giggling like teenagers. Toula’s bag seems to have no bottom because after the cards a second small water bottle of wine is found, and by the time they have drunk that they are yawning. Toula declares that Rallou is the best cabin partner she has had to date and that she wouldn’t believe just how boring some of the people Toula has shared with have been. Before she puts the playing cards away she does a clever trick with them that involves fanning them out and making the queens rise to the top. Rallou is impressed. Toula puts them back in their box, which goes into an old tobacco tin, and that in turn is put back in her bag.
‘So, we sleep,’ Toula announces, filling their glasses with what is left in the bottle. ‘And tomorrow you come to my little flat and we get Ilias and Bobby to find your Christos and you will have a big romantic reunion and then you can go home to Orino Island and you can invite me to stay and I can meet your baba. There – now that sounds like a very good plan.’ She starts to unbutton her blouse to reveal an all-covering bodice with integral bra. It is not an unusual item of clothing for someone her age – but in scarlet, with black lace edging! Rallou is not sure she wants such a woman to meet her baba.
She goes into the toilet cabin and climbs out of her skirt, glad that she has one of her better slips on underneath. ‘Your only slip, now,’ Rallou tells herself in the mirror, and for the first time she realises that the only clothes she has in the world are those she stands up in, and her whole situation takes on a surreal quality. She shakes her head at her reflection and opens her eyes wide before making a mental calculation of how much she can afford to spend if she needs to replace – well, everything. The answer is that she should not be spending any of what she has saved, but then again she will get paid at the end of the month. But how will she wash and dry her clothes if she has nothing else to put on in the meantime?