Antigoni went inside and, almost in darkness, rapidly sketched the woman’s face. She could do the rest at home. Her hands were damp and the pencil slipped through her fingers once or twice. In the shadows, the woman looked sinister but beautiful.
For the next few weeks she worked for hours every day on the portrait, absorbed and happy with what she was achieving.
Before she put the final touches to the painting, she had found another model.
On the feast of the Evangelismos, Antigoni went to the big church on the hill. She soon realised that she would be the only member of the congregation. Nobody else came to hear Father Minas preach because he had a reputation for subversive ideas. ‘Just avoid him,’ Christos had said. ‘He is unsafe. He’s another Kairis.’
Antigoni had seen a statue of the man to whom Christos referred in one of the town’s squares. Theophilos Kairis, a son of Andros, had been a priest and intellectual who had advocated the separation of the Church and the state back in the nineteenth century. There were local people who still believed he had deserved excommunication and exile for such an outrageous idea, and some believed that this current priest had similar ideas to Kairis. Most kept away from him unless he was needed for a rite of passage: baptism, marriage or funeral.
Antigoni listened to what he had to say, but her mind was on the extraordinary face, the huge oval eyes, the flowing hair and beard that reached his chest, and his gesticulating hands, their fingers as fine as lace bobbins and longer than any she had ever seen. He was full of passion and his rich voice suited the liturgical chants.
Antigoni went several times after that to hear him, but took her sketchbook, too. While he was preaching she drew him clandestinely, trying to capture the expressiveness of his hands as well as his face.
She worked for weeks on his portrait. She could have painted him a thousand times and never tired of his expression. In the final version on canvas, Antigoni caught a moment when his palms were coming together, either in prayer or applause. It was ambiguous.
Her next subject was the schoolmaster. Theodoros Sotiriou had been at the secondary school for so many years that he had even taught Christos. ‘It doesn’t matter if he has the sayings of Plato on his wall or not. The man doesn’t have an ounce of wisdom in his own mind. And besides that, he is no example for the children.’
Antigoni’s husband had never explained what he meant and, in the rushed weeks before his departure, they had not revisited the subject.
The school was in the same street as her house, so she went by it every day and could see through the hallway into the yard, beyond which dozens of children played, their laughter reverberating off the walls around them. It did not look like a place where children were unhappy. She often saw the schoolmaster, and he waved to her cheerfully. He was handsome, with a clipped moustache and neat grey hair that suggested a regular visit to the barber. He always wore a three-piece suit and had a book in his hand, even when he was cycling home.
One day, she was passing the main door to the school as he emerged.
‘Good afternoon, Kyria Vandis,’ he said. ‘When are you expecting your husband back?’
‘Some time in the autumn,’ she said. ‘Still a way off.’
‘If you need anything to read, Eirini and I have a good library, and you are welcome to borrow anything. Books are the essence of life. And there is nothing like a good story to pass the time.’
‘You’re so kind … I would love to do that.’
She had calculated that he must be well into his sixties, but he was still sprightly, and effortlessly mounted his bike before pedalling off.
A few days later, Antigoni sent a maid round with a note to the schoolmaster’s house, asking if she could take him up on his offer to borrow some books. The days were dragging now that she had finished the priest’s portrait. A time was set, and the following week she went to his home. The door was opened by Eirini.
They sat together on a settee, with Antigoni opposite them, to drink coffee. Eirini was a very beguiling woman in her early forties, delicate, with laughing eyes. She looked young for her years.
After an hour or so of conversation, and when she had selected some books, Antigoni plucked up the courage to ask if they would sit for a portrait together. They made a handsome couple, despite their obvious discrepancy in age. They were delighted and accepted immediately. Antigoni would return the following day at the same time to make a sketch.
When she returned home, the maid who had dropped in the note found an opportunity to tell her that there had been a scandal with the schoolmaster two decades earlier. One of his former pupils had moved in with him. She was eighteen at the time, and he was already in his forties. They had never married. Many people wanted to get rid of him, but there was no one to replace him as teacher. The whole business was overlooked, though not forgotten.
It was pure pleasure for Antigoni to portray the pair’s cheerful disposition and the love they had for each other. There was no judgement to be made as far as she was concerned, and the finished painting was her favourite so far.
One day in late April, it had rained all morning but the sky was bright, and the moon and the sun shone together. She walked along the sea to the harbour, noticing that the wooden door to the cave was firmly shut. No schoolboys were loitering that day.
Water always collected in pockets in the cobbles, and her leather soles absorbed the dampness in the road. Antigoni made her way towards a row of five or six fishing boats that were moored side by side. They all looked freshly washed, their yellow nets and blue-and-white hulls looked as good as new. She walked along, reading the names of the boats, though some of the plaques were worn and hard to decipher. Maria, Sofia, Mihali, Ismini … She thought fondly of her sister, who was now engaged to the son of a wealthy tobacco merchant. Antigoni was looking forward to her visit to Piraeus for the wedding in eight months’ time.
The quayside was deserted. The bells of the dozen or so churches in the town began to chime six. The sun would soon be below the horizon. She had a strong desire to capture this moment – the strong shadows, the sharp colours, the geometric shapes: the moment before the sun went down when everything seemed to acquire a strength, a final flourish. Lining the edge of the water was a row of low metal bollards to which the boats were tethered. Using one as a stool, she sat down and took out a piece of fresh paper. It was a fine evening and she began quickly to sketch one of the boats, determined to use her colours while she sat there. She even drew the snake coil of chains that lay in a pile close by. It was a work of art in itself.
She was captivated by the detail of this small vessel. None of it was for decoration or vanity: it was a working craft, a useful thing, the opposite of her idle, empty house.
Suddenly, from inside the boat, she heard a cough.
A man emerged through the door. Behind him, she could see a narrow bed, with a grey woollen blanket twisted across it. She always noticed detail and she spotted that it had a hole.
‘Are you looking for someone?’
Even the tone of voice was not the kind that she was used to hearing. It was rough and not remotely deferential.
‘I was just doing a painting of your boat,’ she said sheepishly.
The fisherman walked across the deck and began methodically to slice fish and bait his line. He continued, not looking up even for a moment. Knife, hook, knife, hook. It was hard to imagine how he avoided cutting or piercing his fingers. She watched, spellbound.
‘I won’t charge you for that,’ he said, smiling.
His was a craggy, lined face. Constant exposure to the sun and wind had turned it the colour of ripe chestnuts. It was impossible to say whether he was closer to forty or seventy, but in any case he was handsome.
‘You like painting then?’ he asked, his eyes twinkling.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
She turned her sketchpad round to show him her watercolour.
‘You can have this if you like.’
He
laughed.
‘And where would I put that then?’ he asked, looking up at her. ‘Not much space on my walls for art.’
She had not realised that the boat was also his home, and felt embarrassed.
‘No, I suppose not.’
His friendliness emboldened her.
‘Could I do a drawing of you as well? Maybe if I make it quite small you might find a space?’
‘Why not? As long as I can carry on with my work. I have to take the boat out at sunset, and all the baiting needs to be finished.’
‘I’ll be done before then,’ said Antigoni quickly.
The pair of them sat quietly for an hour or so. By the end of that time, she had done five drawings, one of which she gave to the fisherman.
Temperatures began to rise during June, so she was happy to work in the cool of the dining room (which she had turned into her studio). She was grateful for the high ceilings, the slats of the wooden shutters, which kept out the glare of the sunshine, and the tiled floor that cooled her feet. From time to time, one of the maids would bring her some fresh lemonade. They were silent, and never commented on the pictures.
She worked long hours to put the finishing touches to each portrait. They had become an obsession for her as she strove to capture the essence of her subjects. The four oil paintings leaned against the wall, each of them over a metre in width (the one of the couple measured even more). They looked incomplete. The local carpenter was summoned, and he happily created some heavy, moulded frames in a dark wood. The stiff ancestral portraits were replaced with her own work and the faces of those who had alleviated her loneliness in these past months now looked down from the walls.
More than a year after Christos had left, a cable arrived saying that his boat would be back in a week’s time. Antigoni was happy at the prospect of seeing her husband, though she wondered how much of a stranger he would seem. The scent on his clothes had long ago dissipated. She stood under the portrait of him in the hallway and tried to reacquaint herself with this man. It was many months since she had looked at the painting.
The evening of her husband’s return was the first time that the dining room reverted to its original use. Antigoni had tidied away her easels, brushes and paints, and one of the maids had managed to remove some splashes from the floor.
She was at the door to welcome him, but there was a formality between them, just as she had expected. They had hardly known each other before Christos had left, and they needed to become acquainted all over again.
They walked together into the dining room, which was laid out ready for a formal dinner. Christos walked round the table and simply stood and stared.
At first he said nothing. He just looked, staring at the image of the ‘wet witch’ (whom Antigoni had painted semi-naked with strands of hair scarcely concealing her nipples, and a mermaid’s tail), the maverick priest with his expressive hands, the couple (who looked even more like father and daughter than in real life) and the overtly sensual image of the rugged fisherman. Their eyes met his, and they all stared back at him with defiance. They were masterpieces, vivid, almost breathing. But Christos did not recognise the brilliance of her accomplishment. Not in the least.
Finally, he spoke. Almost inaudibly, he said:
‘Where are the family portraits? What have you done with them?’
He was not looking at her, and his voice rose to a deafening roar.
‘Get these down – now! NOW!’
As he stormed out of the room, she saw that his face had gone almost purple with rage.
Shaking with shock and fear, Antigoni went to the kitchen, where she knew the housekeeper was preparing dinner. She and the two maids had heard Kyrios Vandis shouting and had not been surprised. They were smirking when she opened the kitchen door.
‘Can you put the paintings back as they were,’ she asked, with a tremor in her voice, ‘and leave the others in the hallway?’
That night, the old, dusty portraits of three almost identical bearded men and one picture of a ship were replaced and the faded areas of wall paint were once again perfectly hidden.
On the following morning, at the breakfast table, Christos confronted his wife.
‘Is that how you spent your time while I was away at sea? Is that what I expect from a wife? To go round the streets painting the prostitutes and the perverts? Who else did you paint?’
Antigoni struggled to reply, so he continued.
‘How could you put them on the walls of this house? And replace my ancestors? What else did you get up to?’
‘Some landscapes, too …’ was all she managed to say.
‘I gathered that,’ he said. ‘I found a portfolio under the bed. Come with me.’
She followed him out to the paved yard at the back of the house and saw her four portraits piled together on some kindling. On the very top was her leather portfolio. Antigoni realised that fire was already licking from below.
‘You can’t …!’
Christos grabbed her arm to stop her reaching out to save the paintings.
‘Do what you’re told,’ he said. ‘And show some respect.’
The man could not see past his rage, which wrapped around him, hotter than any flame.
As the portfolio began to melt and individual pictures curled upwards and floated out of the conflagration, she saw the one of Ismini. At the sight of her sister’s burning image, she pulled away from her husband and ran through the house and out of the front door.
There was a ferry early the following day. She would gladly face every consequence of her actions. Soon she was knocking on the schoolmaster’s door, and he willingly gave her money for the bus and for the ferry.
A few months afterwards, she sent him a painting as a thank-you. It was rich repayment indeed. A decade later, Antigoni had become a celebrated painter and the schoolmaster was able to sell the still life she had given him and finally retire.
Christos Vandis continued to spend long periods at sea, returning for short breaks to his dusty home. Antigoni never left Piraeus again. The Vandis mansion is now a guesthouse.
Like Antigoni, but without a paintbrush, I walked for hours every day using the old stone footpaths that criss-cross the island, but I was not alone. Angeliki took some days off from the museum to join me. It was a gentle landscape, not as challenging as Meteora, but perfect rambling country. These warm days were turning my skin dark brown and I was beginning to look like a gypsy. I felt as free as one. I am not sure that you would recognise me now, even if we met in the street.
I spent my last night in Andros with Angeliki. It was a casual thing for us both and we made no rash promises to meet again. It seemed time to leave and I had it in my mind to visit Ikaria. It was a short journey via the more touristic Mykonos (where I didn’t want to stop off) to the port at Evdilos.
So much of what I had been told about Ikaria was negative. I heard that it was a windy island where little grows, with stormy seas, rocky terrain, numerous ravines and bare mountains. In the past, it was constantly attacked by pirates, a place from where men went to sea for years on end, leaving the women to survive without their protection. In the twentieth century, it became an ‘open prison’, where political exiles were sent. One person told me that now it was ‘just old people there’, a backwater which the young have left to find a better life. For years, it was out of sight and out of mind, as far as the Greek government was concerned. The list of deterrents was endless. One man in Tripoli said that it wasn’t worth going there except for two things: to see the supposed birthplace of Dionysus and to drink the strong red Pramnios wine. The same person told me that the island was ‘very Leftie’, but I noticed he was reading the newspaper of the far-right party, Golden Dawn (and, incidentally, drinking ouzo with his morning coffee). I wasn’t likely to take his advice on anything. Certainly not on where to travel.
By the end of my first afternoon exploring this remote and rugged island, I knew I was right to have followed my instincts in going there and
had a feeling that I wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave. I hardly saw another car, and the dramatic, rocky landscape was astonishing. I got out at one point and sat for several hours on a wide stretch of smooth, white rock that sloped down to the sea. The sun was on my back and I felt an extraordinary sense of peace. I can only attribute it to the light that seemed to saturate everything around me. Both sea and sky seemed luminously blue that day. Several times on my journey these joyous moments stole up on me and, that day especially, I had the feeling that time had stood still here for a thousand years.
I had not come to Ikaria just for nature and solitude. I was interested in the people, too. Behind the comment about the island being full of old people was something much more intriguing. Life expectancy on this out-of-the-way island is much, much higher than the average for anywhere else in Europe. Along with all the scientists who have come here to study this phenomenon, I wondered what the secret was.
Each day I was there I met energetic octogenarians and nonagenarians who were shopkeeping, running cafés and small hotels, fishing or mending boats. They have full heads of silver-white hair and the skin and physique of people half their age. Some say that their longevity is a result of a stress-free lifestyle. They get up late, open their shops at a leisurely time, do what they feel like when they feel like it and definitely don’t go out of their way to encourage tourists. Or perhaps it has something to do with the radium-rich hot springs that emerge on the island and flow into the sea. Nobody quite knows the answer, but they say that one in three people lives into his or her nineties.
The most extraordinary person I met was a woman who called herself Ariadne. I gathered that opinions about her in the town of Agios Kirykos where she lived were mixed. Many said that she was a fantasist; others were less kind and told me she was mad. One thing that nobody could disprove was her claim to be the oldest person on the island, simply because there was no one who could prove themselves to be older. Her hair was as strong and silver as embroidery thread and her childlike skin was pale and smooth, like the inside of an eggshell. She could have been any age at all.
Cartes Postales From Greece Page 21