by Nadia Marks
She had always been sensual; physical attraction and carnal desire had been the primary component in all her liaisons. But her feelings for Michalis were different: although she found him alluring it was other qualities in him that attracted her most. He didn’t make her heart race with sexual tension as Paolo had done earlier that summer, but he made her feel secure; he made her feel that if she curled up in his arms he would shield her from any kind of danger, and that if she had a baby with him no harm could ever come to that child, it would always be safe. A sense of familiarity washed over her and a murmur carried by the wind drifted in her ears: ‘Don’t be afraid, Calli, I’m holding you. I won’t let go . . .’
She lay there on the hot sand next to him reflecting on this, and not for the first time – regardless of her protests and rebuffs to her mother that nothing very serious was actually going on between her and Michalis, such ideas had often passed through her head.
At some point Michalis reached across without saying a word, took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze as if he had picked up her thoughts, as if he too had heard the murmur in the wind, as if in affirmation to her sentiments; he held on to her until he finally got up to leave, promising to call later. Calli stayed on the beach for a few minutes longer after he had gone, musing over their relationship. Did Michalis feel the same towards her, too, or was she projecting what she wanted onto him? She had always been so independent – why this desire for protection, this need to be rescued? Her flow of thoughts swirled with many others, making her head ache, until finally she got up and started to swim back to the house. She knew that seeing her mother and aunt again would soothe her confusion and bring some clarity to her thinking. Besides, she was getting hungry for her breakfast and perhaps food and coffee would help banish her fuzzy head.
The scene that greeted her as she walked through the garden gate took her right back to her childhood. Froso and Eleni were sitting at the wooden table chatting animatedly, coffee cups overturned on their saucers in preparation for the grounds to be read, along with a jug of cold water and a half-empty plate of home-made biscuits.
‘I see you two have already had your breakfast,’ Calli said cheerfully, as she approached her mother and aunt.
‘Come and join us,’ Eleni replied with delight at the sight of her daughter. ‘There are plenty of biscuits left.’
‘I’m famished, I need something more than just biscuits, thank you!’ Calli laughed and went straight to the chicken coop to see if there were any eggs waiting for her.
She was in the middle of cooking them when Chrysanthi with both of her children arrived through the kitchen door, carrying the usual culinary offerings.
‘I know how much you like the Cretan honey, and my father-in-law’s bees are the best in the area,’ she said as the children lined up several jars of homegrown orange blossom honey on the table. ‘Also, I’ve come to invite you all to a party on Friday night at our house,’ she announced with her usual beaming smile. ‘A gathering to welcome Aunt Eleni – not that we need any excuse for a party, you understand,’ she laughed.
‘If it’s anything like the last one, I can’t wait,’ Calli replied, sitting down at the table, ready to devour her breakfast. She looked around the room at everyone. ‘Am I going to be the only one eating here?’ Looking at the children, she picked up the tray of cookies her aunt had just baked and put it in front of them.
She woke with a thumping head. She was lying in bed, eyes tightly shut to shield them from the light creeping through the closed shutters, her right palm pressed to her throbbing forehead, wondering what had happened to her. It was no one else’s fault but her own: she knew perfectly well what indulging in too many shots of raki would do to her, yet the previous night she had ignored all the warning signs and her own experience. She knew better than to do this to herself: she had lived for long enough with a reasonably stable and sound mind; now all of a sudden she feared that she was losing it. The hangover would eventually pass, as it always did, but that wasn’t the cause of the turmoil in her head and her heart, leaving her both wretched and elated. Downstairs she could hear her mother and aunt talking in hushed tones, trying not to disturb her, but she was already disturbed – not by them, but by the images that filled her mind as she recapped the previous night’s events.
Chrysanthi’s party was as delightful as ever. Eleni was in her element, enjoying being the focus of attention as the guest of honour, and the evening was passing all too quickly until Michalis arrived. He came through the garden gate, pausing to greet Thia Froso with a kiss on the forehead before calling out to Calli who was standing chatting with a group of people. She ran to welcome him but stopped in her tracks when she saw another man following close behind him.
‘Kalispera, Calli,’ Michalis greeted her, smiling broadly, and reached for her hands with both of his to pull her towards him. ‘Come, I want you to meet my brother.’ He turned to face him. ‘This is Nicos, he’s just arrived from Athens.’
The two brothers stood looking at her, their identical smiles flashing even white teeth.
‘Raphael!’ Calli heard herself say softly as she held out her hand to shake his.
‘How did you know about that?’ Nicos asked with obvious amusement and turned to look at Michalis.
At first glance the two brothers could have been mistaken for twins, but once Calli began to talk to Nicos and had observed him for a while, she established that the only identical aspect in their appearance was their smile. There was no doubt that their likeness was strong: they shared the same intense olive-black eyes and similar solid earthy stature. Yet something in Nicos’s manner, something in his look when his eyes were upon her, set them apart – or at least she thought so; no one else seemed to share this view.
‘The brothers are so alike and not just in appearance,’ her aunt said in the kitchen later that evening, ‘and they are both such good boys.’
‘They are like clones of each other,’ Chrysanthi added, seizing another bottle of cold raki from the fridge to take outside. ‘Don’t you think?’ She looked at Calli.
‘Well . . . I’m not so sure, yes and no,’ she replied, wondering what she meant by yes and no.
Now, as she lay in bed with an aching head, her mind kept returning to those words; the answer came to her when she recalled her first physical contact with Nicos. That, she realized, was where the difference between Michalis and Nicos lay.
It was a mere handshake – which admittedly did linger a little longer than she was accustomed to, as so often in Crete. That was all there was to it, yet the effect on her was profound. She had once read that communication between the brain and the skin is like the dialogue between the brain and the gut in conveying emotions. This made perfect sense to her, since she had experienced a version of this, usually when she heard a piece of music. If it moved her to tears or to joy, she would automatically feel goosebumps on the back of her neck, sometimes down her arm or even legs. This, the theory went, was triggered directly by the brain, so the emotional stimulus was transmitted into a physical manifestation on the skin; the same applied to touch. That night in Chrysanthi’s garden, when Nicos took her hand Calli experienced the thrill of this sensation spreading from the back of her neck down to her spine. The touch of his skin electrified her like no other skin-to-skin contact had ever done before, and during the course of the evening, whenever he touched her the sensation returned.
Throughout the party, Nicos and Calli seemed to gravitate towards each other to the exclusion of everyone else. She was reminded of the scene from West Side Story, when Maria meets Tony and the rest of the world fades away. She kept pushing the image away, berating herself that she was being ridiculous, but she couldn’t help it. She tried to stay by Michalis’s side. She made a point of returning to him each time she found herself spending too long with his brother, but each time it didn’t last. Somehow soon they would find themselves together again, as if a magnet was pulling them towards each other. At some point Nicos
guided her towards two chairs under a tree away from the hubbub and they sat together, apart from the crowd. He made her laugh, perhaps too much and too loud, but by then she didn’t care. They talked and danced and sang and talked some more, as if they were two old friends.
When she first met Michalis, he had made her feel comfortable and calm and curious to get to know him. Nicos made her feel animated and excited and as though they already knew everything about each other.
11
So there she lay that morning, holding her head in confusion and trying to make sense of the night before. Michalis had been her constant companion for weeks; they were good together – had he not said so? Or at least he had implied it, and she agreed. Hadn’t she even allowed herself to fantasize about a life and a child shared with Michalis and his olive farm in Crete? Naturally such fancies were hers alone – not to be shared with him or anyone – though she was almost certain Michalis felt the same way.
Yet why was she now suddenly tormented by these perverse pangs of attraction towards another man, when she should be content with her new friendship with Michalis? She needed no more fleeting adventures, she told herself sternly: Paolo had already helped her to regain what James had knocked out of her. What was needed now was stability. Her feelings for Michalis went deep: she could see a future with him, or so she had thought until now . . .
The cheerful voices of Eleni and Froso, who had evidently now moved to the garden, floated through the open window, interrupting her anxious self-questioning and prompting her to go downstairs to join them. As she swung her legs out of bed, she hesitated for a moment, apprehensive that her mother and aunt would almost certainly want to discuss last night’s party and her behaviour might well be the subject they would dwell on.
She was halfway down the stairs when her mobile rang. ‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ Michalis said. ‘Nicos and I were just talking about you. We are going up to the olive estate soon and we wondered if you’d like to come with us?’
She felt a churning in her insides, between a guilt-induced queasiness and excitement. ‘When?’ was all she managed to ask before going out into the garden.
‘Kalimera, Calliope mou!’ Froso was the first to greet her, as she walked barefoot towards them in her night shorts and T-shirt. The two sisters were drinking their coffee and interrupted their flow of talk. ‘You look flustered,’ her aunt said with concern as the young woman pulled up a chair next to hers. ‘Is your room too hot? Did you sleep all right?’
‘No . . . I mean yes, Thia, I’m fine, no problem with my room,’ Calli blurted, aware that her face must look flushed after the phone call.
‘It was unusually hot last night,’ her aunt continued. ‘I was worried about you. Maybe today the heat will subside a little.’
‘Enough about the weather!’ Eleni burst out, interrupting her sister. She gave Calli a long lingering look. ‘So . . . last night was an interesting evening?’ she said, right on cue, and raised an eyebrow.
‘Er . . . well . . . yes,’ Calli mumbled. She turned to her aunt, ignoring her mother. ‘Unless you have anything else planned for me this morning,’ she announced, addressing them both, ‘I’ve been invited by Michalis and his brother to go out for a drive.’
‘Let’s take Calli for a coffee and a bite before we head to the estate,’ Nicos suggested when they picked her up soon after their phone call, giving her just enough time to dress and get ready.
‘They are both such good boys,’ Froso had said to her sister as they left. ‘I am glad Calli is having a good time.’
The kafenio they chose that morning was nothing more than a shack on the beach owned by an old man and his wife.
‘It doesn’t look like much,’ Michalis said, ‘but I promise we will eat like kings here.’
They feasted on a breakfast of freshly picked grapes and figs, crusty village bread, olives, cheese, hard-boiled eggs and honey from local hives. No sooner had they finished eating one dish than another was set before them. Calli, battling with her nervous digestion, did her best; each course tasted as good as the last.
‘This is what I miss, away from home,’ Nicos sighed. ‘Finding a simple place like this on the beach.’ He picked up a green fig. ‘I never understood why anyone would want to peel a fig,’ he said and popped it whole into his mouth as he reached for another; this time he took care to choose the finest one, large and deep purple. ‘Try this,’ he said, offering it delicately to Calli: ‘for me it’s the skin that has most of the flavour.’
‘The darker they are, the better the flavour.’ Michalis nodded in agreement.
Calli leaned back on her chair and bit into the honey-scented fruit. She savoured both texture and taste, pungent and sweetened by the sun, relishing each mouthful. How marvellous it was to be sitting on a sandy beach a few metres from the water’s edge, her bare feet plunged into the warm sand, discussing the best way to eat figs. Nothing could have been more perfect at that moment. She closed her eyes and wished it could last for ever.
The two brothers were equally attentive towards her, but the irresistible pull she had felt towards Nicos had not diminished. She had wondered if, in the clear light of day and with Michalis present, the visceral attraction that had drawn her to Nicos the previous night might feel less powerful. But the pull was still there and just as strong. She felt it on her skin and in her pulse and in the pit of her stomach.
She tried to maintain her distance from him, unwilling to cause offence to Michalis. If she stood too close she felt an overwhelming desire to touch Nicos, to feel the current from his skin as she did the night before. Nicos, on the other hand, took every opportunity to take her hand or slip an arm around her waist and guide her towards something or other he wanted to show her.
‘Did you know that the first cultivation of olive oil was in Greece and more specifically in Crete?’ he told her, pointing at an incredibly gnarled old olive tree. ‘We’ve been producing olive oil here since the Minoan civilization, so no wonder our olive oil is the best in the world.’ He beamed with pride.
‘As a matter of fact, yes, I did know,’ Calli replied, smiling. ‘Your brother has already told me something about that.’ Nicos’s enthusiasm was no less than Michalis’s.
‘They might say that Kalamata olives are the best in the world, but have you tried Cretan olives? Did my brother tell you that they are even better?’ he chuckled as he continued his eulogizing.
Calli spent the entire morning in a perpetual state of euphoric confusion and anxiety. She would steal furtive glances at Michalis as they visited the processing plant, trying to gauge his reaction and mood, but she sensed no change to his usual mild and good-natured humour.
‘You see how knowledgeable my brother is about olive oil?’ he told her, interrupting Nicos’s explanation. He gave him a playful slap on the back. ‘Come back, Brother, we can get reps to sell our oil for us in Athens.’
By noon the sun was blazing and too hot for them to be wandering among the trees; besides, the men were complaining of feeling hungry again.
‘Let’s head to the little taverna up the hill for lunch,’ Michalis said, adding to Calli, ‘Remember the place? The one with the perfect briam?’
She remembered it well; he had taken her there for lunch the first time they went for a drive together. Tucked away from the road in an orchard, shaded by the cluster of trees that surrounded it, the taverna provided them with a welcome release from the midday heat. As they entered the cool dining room, Calli was amused to find that the same group of high-spirited local farmers who had been lunching there that first time had gathered again for their midday meal. On seeing the three friends they all raised their glasses and greeted them noisily.
‘I love this place,’ Nicos said, leaning back on his chair. The proprietor was already approaching their table carrying a bottle of ice-cold raki and three glasses. They ordered the restaurant’s speciality, knowing that it was Calli’s favourite, and whatever else was on offer that day.
‘My wife has been cooking since five o’clock this morning,’ the proprietor told them. ‘You are in luck because she has made dolmathakia with succulent vine leaves picked by yours truly.’ He gave a hearty laugh and filled their glasses.
‘No one makes briam like us Cretans,’ Nicos said, spooning a generous helping onto Calli’s plate as soon as the dish arrived steaming from the kitchen.
‘I’ll drink to that! Stin yiamas! To our health,’ Michalis said, raising his glass, then turning to look at his brother: ‘It’s one thing selling oil, and another making it.’
‘It’s true, I miss walking among the trees,’ Nicos replied.
‘Then perhaps you should come back,’ Calli added. ‘Perhaps that’s what I should do,’ she laughed and lifted her glass to her lips.
They delivered Calli back to the house in good time for the customary siesta, which she felt she needed more than ever before. Alcohol during the day really didn’t suit her, she would tell people; even a glass of wine could put her out of sorts. She had managed to shake off her previous night’s heavy head, but on this day she knew the only remedy that would keep her calm and steady her nerves was a drink. The glasses of raki the men encouraged her to share with them did the trick, but it also had a soporific effect, so by the time they dropped her off at her aunt’s house she was more than ready for an afternoon sleep. Her mother and Thia Froso were both well into their own siestas and their gentle snoring could be heard as she tiptoed upstairs to her bedroom, where she promptly fell into a deep sleep.
She woke with a start as the light outside was beginning to fade. Opening her eyes, she realized she had woken herself up singing. She had dreamed that she was flying. She was lying on the span of an angel’s wings as if on a magic carpet, singing her heart out and soaring above the blue waters of the Aegean, the warm wind blowing through her hair and ruffling the angel’s snow-white feathers against her skin. The angel had Nicos’s face. She closed her eyes again, summoning up her dream, when she realized that the song on her lips was one and the same as the song playing on the radio downstairs, an old island folk melody that she had known all her life.