The Art of Becoming Homeless

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Adonis’ aunt, Kyria Zoe,’ he states, not even slightly out of breath with the climb. ‘She has a place that she used to run as a pension.’

  He leads the way along the coastal path, away from town.

  His arm slips around her waist for the final step, but once they are on the flat he lets go.

  Not far along the path they cut up past a house overlooking the sea and climb long, low steps that take them inland. The path flattens and houses appear either side, replacing the barren rocks. Soon they reach a meeting of ways, a small square at the bottom of a very long, steep flight of steps, with cats sprawling in the shade of a majestic eucalyptus tree half way up. In this heat, the steps look insurmountable. Michelle stops walking just at the thought of the exertion that will be necessary.

  ‘Here we are.’ Dino takes her hand again to gently direct her to a gate near the bottom of the steps. A grand house stands behind a walled courtyard. Tall metal gates offer entrance.

  The courtyard has hardly changed at all, although it does not seem as tidy as he recalls. Some of the brightly coloured floor tiles are cracked. Potted plants line the perimeter and play sentinel on every step up to the grand double doors. Jasmine covers the walls, flowers explode with colour everywhere.

  On the ground floor, the several doors into the building look as though they are no longer used. Ornately carved, with the paint now peeling, the hinges rusty. Wooden boxes lean against one, a fishing net is hung over the handle of another, which clearly functions as a storage area now. The main house is centred around the double doors at the top of the steps, the veranda leading away from this in either direction to less ornate doors that have been painted fairly recently.

  Dino bounces up the steps and knocks heartily on the grand double door, turning to smile at Michelle.

  ‘Yes?’ A voice calls from inside.

  ‘Kyria Zoe? Have you a room for me?’ Dino can hardly keep himself from laughing. Kyria Zoe would give him biscuits, olives, oranges every time he and Adonis used to call on her. She would praise him whilst shooting disapproving stares at Adonis.

  ‘Who is it?’ The voice asks. A creaky old voice, but then how long has it been? At one time she would have hundreds of guests every year supplementing her pension, helping to support her family.

  ‘It’s Dino.’

  The door opens a crack, releasing a faint odour of antiseptic.

  ‘Who is it? I am feeding my mother.’ Kyria Zoe’s hair is a white halo, like candyfloss, but lighter, like clouds.

  ‘And how is your mother?’

  The door opens fully and reveals her familiar smile, her kind eyes, a soft face no less beautiful for the loss of colour in her hair. She takes a minute and then her face lights up and she grabs him in an embrace that is strong for a lady of her age. She kisses him on both cheeks, then stands back so she can look at him, hands still clutching his shoulders. Her questions tumble out in a continuous stream, with no pause for an answer. Where has he been? Is he too clever to talk to her now? Is his English perfect? Does Adonis know he is here?

  Finally she looks at Michelle and holds out a hand to shake. ‘Girlfriend?’ she asks with a sly fleeting look.

  ‘This is Michelle, my friend.’ Dino can feel colour rising to his cheeks, and he is glad, for some reason, that Michelle does not understand Greek.

  ‘Ha! I know what you boys are like.’

  She gives first Michelle and then Dino a long hard stare.

  Dino explains that the strike has kept them on the island and that Michelle needs a room for a few days. He will stay too, but he doesn’t know for how long.

  ‘In separate rooms.’ She does not ask, she states. She returns indoors without inviting them in. There is a sound of wood scraping on wood and the tinkle of metal on metal. Dino can hear voices inside, a girl’s voice, high and shrill, and someone who is grunting. Zoe is addressing her mother and Uncle Bobby, who is really her deceased husband’s brother. A typical large Greek family. Dino sighs, and not for the first time wishes for his own family, but there is only his Baba. Zoe returns with several keys on different bunches.

  ‘Uncle Bobby has not been well,’ she mutters. She addresses Michelle, ‘You can be here.’ She says it emphatically, but with a smile, as she opens the blue door nearest to her own.

  ‘This one is for you,’ Dino translates.

  ‘And you …’ she marches Dino to the end of the balcony to a yellow door. ‘Can be here.’ She glances at him before opening the door. He looks past her into the cell of a room, takes in the narrow bed with a sheet pulled tightly across it and an icon above the headboard. A jug sits on a three-legged table, and apart from that it is bare. Zoe steps across the room and pushes open the shutters and sun floods the space, the dust motes dancing in her wake.

  ‘It’s lovely, thank you, Kyria Zoe.’ He feels he should bow or nod his head or something—she is one of those people who commands respect—but he refrains. She ambles back to her door, deadheading the geraniums in their pots along the way, pocketing the petals in her apron. After Zoe has returned to her own rooms, Michelle’s head pops out from around her door.

  ‘Is the coast clear?’ She is giggling.

  ‘She is, how you say, “old school”.’ Dino feels some rough skin on the edge of his thumb and chews at it.

  ‘I gathered by her looks what she was thinking!’

  Dino watches her mouth as she speaks, the way her tongue moves behind her teeth. Maybe he is just like Adonis.

  ‘What is your room like, or are all the rooms the same?’ Michelle asks, breaking his stare.

  ‘I think you have to take vows to enter mine. Yours?’

  ‘It’s charming.’ She steps back to let him in. She has opened the shutters in this room, too, and French windows lead onto a small balcony with two chairs.

  From the balcony the view is of the island’s interior, across to the convent where a solitary nun resides. It might be possible to see the larger, neighbouring monastery up on the ridge. He stares up to the skyline and can just make out the orange-tiled roof through the trees. He had thought of becoming a monk at one point to try and find his salvation, gain some peace, after his mother died.

  At the time he really thought it was what he wanted. It’s amazing how at one point in your life something can seem so right, exactly what you want, and then just a short time later it is the last thing in the world you desire.

  ‘There’s a guidebook here. It says the monastery was founded in 1704.’ Michelle peers out beyond the trees. ‘1704. That was the year they tried to pass the Act of Security in England.’ Looking back to the guidebook she muses. ‘Unbelievably hard on Queen Anne.’ Dino has no idea what she is talking about, but her knowledge impresses him. ‘The Scottish and English parliaments were quarrelling about who should be the royal successor. But Queen Anne! At least seventeen pregnancies, they think. Gave birth at least twelve times, but only five survived the birth. Can you imagine?

  ‘Poor lady. Four of them died before they were two, which left Prince William. And he, bless his cotton socks, died at the age of eleven. I’m sure Queen Anne couldn’t have cared less who succeeded her after that. She must have been beside herself.’

  Like a bolt of lightning the thought strikes him. She is here alone. Her friend Juliet is single, but that does not mean Michelle does not have a husband back in England. And children, perhaps. He feels slightly sick.

  ‘You all right? You’ve suddenly gone pale.’ Michelle asks him.

  ‘Are you married?’

  ‘No. I was, not now.’

  The warmth returns to his cheeks.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Too tacky for words. His secretary. Just walked out with one bag. No fight. I even got the crumbling old house.’ She laughs briefly, but it seems to be unrelated to her words.

  He must have been crazy.

  ‘Mind you, she was Lady Philippa Someone-or-Other, with her own crumbling house, so I guess he didn’t need ours.’ The same laugh. />
  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘I’m not. You know, it wasn’t until he left that I realised how much he set it up so we were permanently competing. I mean, we had no reason to. I was employed in chambers, he was independent, but every conversation, every case I took, it was all compared, demeaned, in relation to his work.’ She pauses, a far-away look. ‘Anyway, he is gone. Let’s forget about him.’

  ‘Was she as clever as you?’

  ‘Who, Lady Home-Wrecker? No, not very bright. I’ve met some secretaries who are astoundingly bright, but she wasn’t one of them.’ Michelle looks back up to the monastery.

  ‘Maybe that is what he preferred.’

  ‘What? Someone who wasn’t bright?’

  ‘No, someone not capable of giving him competition.’

  ‘Huh! I had never thought of it like that.’ Up on a high path, a figure leads a donkey, the pace steady, no rush.

  Does she have children? What age will they be? His age?

  ‘Children?’

  ‘No.’ She returns her attention to the guidebook, the conversation closed.

  During his days at university, he had studied and crammed to pass the exams, learnt by rote even when he hadn’t understood, all of which he has now forgotten. He pulls at one of the chairs on the balcony and sits down.

  ‘Ah. It says here that the monastery that stands now was built at a later date. A Giorgios Felos built it for his daughter, who chose to become a nun.’

  She might be single, but what about her family? Who are they? Are her parents still alive? Does she have siblings? Does it make any difference? If they were Greek it would, but in England everything is different. People are separate from their families. She is too independent to be considered in any way other than in her own right.

  ‘… Don’t you think?’ Michelle concludes.

  ‘What? Sorry, I missed what you said.’ Dino breaks free of his thoughts.

  ‘I said if we walk up to look at the monastery it would be best to go early morning before it is too hot.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, definitely.’

  Looking up, following Dino’s line of sight, she spots the figure leading the donkey, climbing higher and higher up a path that hairpins back and forth and into the trees near the ridge. Michelle is struck by a thought.

  ‘I met a man today who was a waiter, only he wasn’t. He’s been to Princeton and now he owns hotels.’

  ‘Costa Voulgaris.’

  ‘You know him? Yes, I suppose you would. Well, what hit me was this island is full of huge stone houses and rich tourists, and yet the locals look as poor as church mice, like Costas Voulgaris.’

  ‘It does not mean the same here.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Money doesn’t have the same status here. You can be standing by a goat-herder in his rags, and an Athenian. The goat-herder might be financially wealthy, the Athenian paying a heavy mortgage for his summer house here.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s it. Their wealth has come from selling off property. A bit silly to leave yourself homeless just to make some money, though.’

  He laughs. ‘When they built these big houses there was water here, wells everywhere.

  The water dried up, the people left. Those who remained inherited the worthless land, the property with no value.’

  ‘So what brought it back to life?’

  ‘Some artists came in the sixties, bought some of the houses. Their friends followed.’

  ‘I have heard a few celebrity names being linked with this island.’

  ‘They like it that no one knows them here.’

  ‘It also sounds like their wealth is not held in awe.’

  ‘Money is not wealth.’

  ‘Sometimes you seem ridiculously old for your age.’

  ‘How old do you feel?’ He grins at her.

  The sun is still hot. Dino leans his head back against the wall. The heat overcomes him, and after a few minutes she hears the gentle rhythm of his breathing. The sun has sapped her energy too. She tries the bed, which is a bit on the hard side, but that is better than being too soft. She drifts off, watching a fly trying to find its way out of the room.

  He is not there when she wakes. The door is open. His voice mingles with Zoe’s in the courtyard; they sound like they are arguing, but then all Greek sounds like it is an argument.

  She swills her face in the washbasin, and it is almost dry before she picks up the towel. The heat has not decreased. She closes the door behind her and then feels for the key. Her stomach grumbles.

  ‘No need to lock it,’ Dino calls up to her. Zoe is nowhere to be seen, the flowers dead-headed, the courtyard swept.

  ‘I can’t anyway, there’s no key.’ She skips down the stairs. He steps towards her. She can feel her grin stretch her skin just at the sight of him. Her hand reaches up to touch him, almost forgetting herself. She turns the movement into a smoothing of her hair.

  The air is still warm, but the light is soft now, bathing the whitewashed walls and houses in a pink glow. Dino takes the lead, down narrow alleys, some with steps, some on the level, branching off at odd angles at the intersections. Each new corner reveals a subtly different part of town, with a tiny church tucked in a corner, or a colony of cats feasting on scraps, or perhaps a little grocery shop set into one of the walls, with produce spilling out into the street, all making up the fabric of the island.

  They turn a corner, and the whole town, along with the view down to the port, is displayed before them.

  ‘You see that land up there, between the house with no roof and the one with green shutters?’ Dino stands behind her, his chest against her back, his arm over her shoulder so she can see down its length and along his finger. His breath is in her ear.

  ‘Yes.’ She breathes in, his skin a mixture of warmth and a trace of salt.

  ‘That’s Adonis’ land. He is clearing it so he can build. He is not rich.’

  ‘Oh, where does he live now?’ Hopefully he does not hear the tremble in her voice. Is she doing wrong just being here so close? Would leaving be the right thing to do?

  ‘With his mother, but they have only one room.’

  ‘Crikey. It’s one extreme to the other. So when am I going to meet this infamous Adonis?’ He has moved to one side. Normality returns.

  ‘You haven’t met? Oh no, of course. He had work.’ He picks a sprig of bougainvillea from a vine that is spanning the alley, giving brief shade as they pass underneath, and hands it to her. It is a casual move, but he makes eye contact.

  Now that is definitely not something one Greek would do for another as passing acquaintances. Perhaps she needs to let him know she recognises his gestures. Maybe she can ask him to put it behind her ear … No, that would be too tacky.

  ‘Here we are.’

  At a corner a sign above a stone arch announces the ‘Taverna tou Kapetaniou’. ‘The Captain’s Tavern’, Dino translates.

  The courtyard is a cool haven, with vines growing up three walls and across a wooden frame, providing a ceiling of leaves that flutters with the evening breeze. Crude paintings hang on the walls, and in the corner is a boy picking out a tune on his bouzouki. Dino chooses a table up by the door of the building, from which wonderful smells drift.

  The waiter takes his time, and he eventually ambles over to their table. He wishes them a good evening in English and says something to Dino in Greek, which makes him blush. Then he lists from memory all the food that is ready or can be prepared quickly, first in English and then again in Greek till Dino assures him there is no need.

  After a brief discussion, Dino orders for them both. Greek salad of cucumber, tomatoes, feta and olives; stuffed vine leaves and saganaki, whatever that is. Michelle wonders if everything the taverna prepares gets eaten every day; the list seemed unbelievably long.

  A jug of chilled red wine is the first thing to arrive. When the vine leaves come, Dino squeezes lemon over them, adding to the light lemon sauce into which he dips her bread and hands it to her. After this h
e feeds her saganaki, the melted cheese running in strings, some of which trail from her chin.

  Being with Dino is as comfortable as being with herself, but not as lonely. Actually, it is nothing like being with herself. With him she feels interesting. He encourages her to talk, listens to all her boring details about life and work in London. There is some admiration even.

  The bouzouki boy, who was making progress with his piece, is called inside, and returns with a pile of books, which he spreads out on one of the tables and pores over, the end of his pencil in his mouth. The resulting silence makes the conversation between Michelle and Dino falter and they laugh because of it. He pats her hand that is resting on the table, sending a little shiver down her spine. The wine jug is empty, and Dino calls for a refill. Michelle, already rather light-headed, wonders if it is wise to drink more. It would be a shame to ruin such a lovely friendship with a drunken action, even though his kohl-rimmed eyes seem to be looking right into her soul.

  Taking a toothpick from the holder, Dino pushes his chair away from the table and leans back. No sooner has he done this than a black and white cat jumps on his knee, reaching up with its nose to smooth its fur under his chin. Smiling, he strokes the cat and feeds it leftovers. Together they sit back and start on the second jug of wine, the candle on the table and the moon now the only source of light.

  It is going to be very tricky saying goodnight tonight.

  Chapter 10

  Kyria Zoe is sitting on the balcony at the top of the steps watching the sky.

  She wishes them both goodnight and watches as they go to their rooms. Michelle feels like a naughty teenager, a mixture of indignation and thrill. She decides to enjoy the feeling, and it becomes all thrill.

  Once in her room she reasons that things might have become a little clearer if Zoe had not been there, that their goodnight might have been more than just the briefest touch on her shoulder as he walked past to his room.

  The very fact that Kyria Zoe is sitting there makes Michelle want to sneak past to Dino’s room, just to be naughty. The idea makes her giggle. Dino would find it funny. She puts her hand on the doorknob, imagining herself and Dino peeping around the door to watch Zoe snoring, his hand slipping around her waist, him whispering close to her head, his lips touching her ear.