by Sara Alexi
‘The day-to-day reality was sucking out all my joy of life, reducing me to believing I could do no better, that I deserved nothing more than I got.
‘It’s a trap. I got stuck in it, but I eventually figured it out and left. But do you know what?’ Juliet waits for a reply.
‘What?’ Stella’s voice is small.
‘I didn’t even have one bruise to tell me who he was.’
Stella sits wide-eyed, waiting for more. But Juliet closes her mouth and Stella is left to think over Juliet’s last sentence.
Chapter 10
‘What shall I do?’ Stella asks. She strokes the cat curled in her lap.
‘I have learnt that everything we do in life, even the little things, depends on what we want. Our actions decide how we live,’ Juliet says. ‘The difference between me now and me when I was married to Mick is that when we were together I would do whatever felt good or was easiest in the moment to make my life nice and then kept wondering why the result was always the same.’ She sniffs, a brief controlled sound. ‘But I think I wanted that same result, it fitted what I thought I deserved.’ She squirms and settles herself with one leg tucked under her. ‘During the divorce and after the divorce and, most importantly, coming here, I have experienced so much in Greece.’ She looks out past the wall of her garden to the hills, ‘I have watched myself and changed my view of myself. Now - and this is the big difference - I think what I want the outcome to be first and take the action second to make sure it happens. Even if the action needed is hard. The result is I get what I think I deserve.’ Juliet encourages the second cat onto her knee. It jumps up and immediately curls in a ball to sleep.
‘Then I must to become magician. I want him to disappear. Then I go on, only he is not there,’ Stella retorts.
‘If you want to carry on as if nothing has happened, see if you can.’
‘What do you mean?’ Stella asks.
‘Well, is the shop in his name or both your names, or your name?’
‘The shop is rented, so is the house.’
‘I thought you had a family house here?’
‘Yes, but when Mama she died we sold the house and the land to pay off Stavros’ debts.’
‘Ouch! So whose name is the shop rented in?’
‘No one, we just rent it from Mavros. The same with the house, but this is rented from someone else.’
‘So if he left then you could just carry on?’
‘Why would he leave?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I am just seeing how the land lies.’
‘What is “the land lies”?’
‘It means seeing how things are.’
‘So if someone else had told you how things are and you forgot who it was you could say “A little bird told me how the land lies”?’ Stella is smiling.
‘Yes.’ Juliet laughs, lifts off the cat from her knee and gets up to go indoors, returning with a bottle of water. ‘Do you want to go inside and I’ll put the air-conditioning on? It’s so hot.’
Stella gets up and the two settle in Juliet’s white front room. Stella sits on the slightly shabby white sofa and Juliet pulls up a very comfortable-looking chair. She has a remote in her hand, and with a single press of a button the room begins to fill with new air. At first it is not noticeable, just the noise, then the moving air only accentuates the heat, but after a few minutes it begins to cool them both. It’s delicious.
The room looks very western to Stella, but she likes it, everything white, except a huge deep red eastern-looking rug over the tiled floor. There is a small wooden table on which is Juliet’s laptop, its colourful screen in contrast with its surroundings.
‘Why does your computer have your name in big letters?’ Juliet has often used her computer as a tool for teaching. Stella now knows about Google and YouTube.
‘Oh, I have not shown you that. That’s my web page for my translation business.’ She gets up and takes the laptop from the table and gives it to Stella. ‘Good, isn’t it? A friend of mine wrote it. He is in Pakistan now but he might go to England. He’s got a job offer there. Actually, did you meet him? Aaman, he helped me with my garden.’ Juliet touches the screen; she seems far away.
Stella says nothing.
Juliet comes back to the moment.
‘But we are not getting much English done. Do you want to do a lesson today?’ she asks.
‘I have learnt about birds and land.’ Stella smiles, but it does not reach her eyes.
‘Yes, but it is not a proper lesson. I will not be charging you a chicken dinner,’ Juliet says with a smile, but her voice has a caress in its tone as if she is aware of how raw Stella must feel. They sit companionably for a few minutes.
‘You know I did not go to school much, but I learnt to read and write and I have the business. But do you know of what I always dream?’ Stella does not wait for a reply. ‘I dream of doing an international business.’ She sits back at the grandeur of the words she has just spoken. But then suddenly sits upright. ‘Do you get your work from England?’
‘England and here. I am registered as a translator with the British Council here, and now with my website I get translation jobs from all over the place. Last year I translated a whole book.’ Juliet sounds so confident.
Stella’s eyes are shining. ‘So you have international business!’
Juliet laughs, ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ The cat is scratching at the door and Juliet slides off her chair to let it in.
‘I want international business.’ Stella twists her tongue around each word to try to say it without an accent.
‘I think your chips would get very cold if you posted them abroad.’ Juliet laughs. Her laughter trails into silence. The cat is purring.
‘I think he could make trouble with the girl.’ Stella’s voice is flat.
‘How do you mean “trouble”? You mean like hit on her?’
‘Like he hit me!’ Stella’s jaw drops open and she stands as if to leave, looking through the glass in the door as if she would have a view all the way to the ouzeri.
‘No, no,’ Juliet puts her hand on Stella’s wrist and gently pulls her back to sitting.
‘To “hit on” someone means to flirt with them.’
Stella exhales and visibly relaxes.
‘Yes, I think this will be next.’
Stella walks back slowly, soaking in the illusion of freedom the conversation with Juliet has created. She wants to live Juliet’s life, be brave enough to be a single woman, with her own house, no fear.
Next door to Juliet’s is an abandoned barn and next door to that a low small dwelling with a large yard. Georgia, who lives here, loves her flowers, each tended in a pot of its own, thriving as only she knows how to make flowers thrive. The space is an oasis of colour and textures, quivering petals and spiky succulents, the display of a nature lover. Stella would like to stop for a chat but in the jungle of Georgia’s passion there is no sign of her. Stella walks on.
She kicks a stone in the lane. It skims before her and gently rolls to a stop. The dusty lane is a mix of compacted soil, embedded shiny-topped stones and determined weeds. Whitewashed backs of single-storey houses provide a wall on her left, the handmade ceramic tiles of their roofs flaking with age and algae.
The concept, the possibility of being alone, is both thrilling and scary. She has never been truly alone in her life. She shivers in the heat and twists her wedding ring, slipping it along her finger and pushing it back on as she walks, until she dares to pull the ring right to the end of her finger. She stops it coming right off with the tip of her opposite index finger, wiggling both to make the ring spin awkwardly.
It almost feels as if she has a choice. For now, she pushes her ring back on. Her spine straightens; the top of her head skims the blue sky as she continues down to the end of Juliet’s track and onto the lane.
A man with a rounded stomach drives by on a slow motorbike, looking left and right, with nothing to do. He spots Stella and slows his motorbike down almost to a
stall. He looks the length of her and smiles. Stella has no interest in looking back and he throttles forward.
What if Stavros uses his charm on Abby? A momentary jealousy squeezes her heart until the Stavros of yesteryear fades and reality is resumed. She does not wish this on Abby, but more than that she does not want to lose Abby’s friendship. She is fun; the hours spin by running the ouzeri with two girls. This is only the second day Abby has been with them, and yet if she left now the space she would leave would gape painfully.
It seems strange to Stella that even though she wishes Stavros gone she admits to herself it would hurt, to some degree, if he were to want Abby and not her – ‘twisting the knife’, another of Juliet’s sayings. But she is not sure if the hurt would come from losing him or losing Abby.
She turns the corner towards the square.
‘A little bird told me the lay of the land and I am thinking you are twisting the knife.’ Stella chuckles. English is full of nonsense. But then so is Greek. She often says ‘listen so you can see’ when she wants someone to listen to her to see her point of view. She also says ‘slow the oil’ when someone is exaggerating.
No, the twist of the knife, the wound, would be from the loss of Abby’s friendship, not Stavros.
The square is bathed in the heat. It is reflecting off all the hard surfaces. With the sun directly overhead, the area of shade the central palm is casting is very small.
The lifting of the charcoal sacks and the potato bags when they are full. That is when she would notice Stavros gone. Sometimes when she is really tired and leaves him to close up, but that is not often. Stella runs through the daily chores but there is nothing she can think of that she does not or could not do herself. The clients would probably not even notice he wasn’t there any more. But nevertheless it would feel scary, it would feel lonely, but mostly it would feel as if there was little point in it all.
As she passes the kiosk Vasso looks up from some knitting and says ‘Hello’ in English, acknowledging where Stella has just been. Stella smiles and replies, ‘I’ll be back.’ She knows this phrase makes Vasso giggle. As she reaches the ouzeri she can hear Vasso saying to herself over again ‘L’ beeback’ and giggling.
Stavros has been her pivotal point for so many years. She wakes first and leaves the house without disturbing him, taking delight in her ability to give him the extra sleep. He turns up at the ouzeri later and she can see all the work she has achieved freshly through his eyes. The place fills with hungry farmers, she knows he can hear her taking the orders, suggesting an extra portion, another ouzo, making them happy, filling the till. She often cleans the place whilst he sleeps in the afternoon and takes pride in her achievement on his return.
He is her witness and without him her days will make less sense, in fact there is a strange void over both home and work when she imagines him absent.
The evening shift passes unremarkably. She chats to Abby, who is asking her about who lives in the village and what most of them do. She is entertaining company as she seems to know something about everything and she gets very excited if Stella can add to her knowledge of the world. The only indication of her youth is her relentless energy until she is quite spent, and then she is suddenly exhausted. Stavros keeps a low profile, he does not mention what has happened, he keeps all conversation to practical matters. Stella wants to say everything to him and nothing, the time has passed for talk. That time was probably years ago but neither of them noticed. The day seems false, suspended.
Stella lets Abby go a couple of hours before her and an hour before Stavros, who leaves saying he is tired and is going home to bed. Abby has earned a reasonable wage in tips and Stella has added enough to it that she will not lose any of her tips in paying for her bed. Vasso has been very modest with her price.
Stella potters around, serves the final giros when the bus from town drops off the last few returning villagers. She piles the remaining plates in the sink, checks the chip fryer is off, rakes the coals over and decides she has had enough. She too will go early.
She will persuade Vasso to do the same so they can have a nightcap together. That will cheer her up. Vasso loves a drink but gets tipsy after just a glass, and then, unintentionally, becomes a comedian either in everything she says or everything she does, sometimes both. Stella smiles at the thought as she approaches the kiosk.
‘Long day for you today, Vasso?’ Stella comments.
‘Ach, I have this book that is meant to help me with my accounts and I have been trying to work it out. When we didn’t have to give receipts nothing had to add up, you just told the tax man how much you earned, he doubled it because he thought everyone was lying and then he taxed us accordingly. It was a lot simpler.’
‘Yes, but everyone did lie about how much they made. Come on, let’s go and have a night cap,’ Stella says.
‘That’s because they knew the tax man would double it!’ Vasso chuckles and locks up.
They walk along together, past the church, chatting about nothing in particular. A screech owl sounds and sets a dog barking. The single dog turns into many. Someone shouts for his dog to ‘shut up’, another voice tells the man to stop his noise; genial, light-hearted. The dog’s owner laughs and wishes the other person goodnight, and a shutter bangs closed.
As they reach Vasso’s house Stella says, ‘Er, shall we go to mine for the nightcap?’
‘Oh.’ Vasso hesitates and looks towards her own home and yawns, her hand on her gate. ‘OK then.’ She takes her hand away and continues the leisurely walk on. The warm night air is a delicious relief from the day’s heat. The stars are bright, no neon to dim their glow.
Stella feels relieved that they are going to her house. She cannot face Stavros alone. Vasso is a valuable friend, but Vasso has had her own set of worries. The decision not to tell her about Stavros is made from kindness. At the least she would worry, at the worst she would get involved. Besides, much as she is an irreplaceable friend, Stella knows Vasso does not understand why some things should not be broadcast.
The light is on outside Stella’s house but the inside light is off. Vasso and Stella are quiet as they enter the house, to avoid waking Stavros. The house has three rooms: a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. The bedroom door is on one side of the fridge, the bathroom on the other.
Stella unearths a bottle of gin from under the sink and takes the ouzo from the fridge and holds them up to Vasso, who points to the ouzo. Stella pokes about in the time-darkened wooden cupboards in the kitchen as Vasso perches on one of the dark wooden chairs. Ever the good hostess, Stella brings a plastic bowl of crisps and a metal takeaway tray of peanuts along with the ouzo.
‘Do you want something more than that to eat? I have brought some sausages and I have some kefalotyri,’ Stella asks, but Vasso dismisses the question with a shake of her head, a handful of peanuts crammed in her mouth.
‘I’m fine with these. I couldn’t eat cheese at this time of night.’ Her half-gaze lands on the green-and-white 1970s kitchen tiles above the stained and pitted marble counter top. Stella pours them drinks. She takes her glass to the window, the aniseed nectar gently burning the back of her throat as she swallows it in one. She returns to the bottle and tries to unscrew the top noiselessly so as not to draw Vasso’s attention to the speed with which she swallowed the first draught.
‘Fill me up again,’ Vasso laughs. She has begun on the crisps and the crumbs make their way onto the shelf of her ample bosom as she talks. She is stretched out as much as the hard wooden chair will allow, her legs crossed at her slim ankles, a long arm over the ladder back.
‘Such a nice girl.’ Vasso accepts her top-up.
‘Who?’ Stella says.
‘Abby, a lovely girl. Helped me fold my washing. We had the funniest conversation using mime. She likes reading, computers, and maths, can you believe?’
‘Doesn’t surprise me. We had a conversation about business, and I was amazed at what she knew for one so young.’ Stella briefly thinks how her
own child, if she had had one, would have been so much older. She wonders what he or she would have been like, but then feels glad she has no such child. The situation would be worse now if there were offspring to consider; she wouldn’t have only herself to think about.
‘With only having boys, it was interesting to spend some time with a girl. I kind of wished I had had a girl too. It’s a different world.’ Vasso sighs and takes another drink. ‘Nice girl,’ she repeats. ‘The house gets a bit empty sometimes with Thanasis gone to Athens. You get into a routine of washing and ironing and cooking for someone else. Stifado. I made stifado before I left for the kiosk this morning so Abby would have something to eat when she got home. Did you cook?’
Stella stares at her and grins.
‘Oh, sorry, yes, a hundred chickens and a million sausages.’ Their chuckles settle and are followed by a comfortable silence.
‘I like her being around, but I can’t help but think, well, maybe …’ Stella stammers and looks towards the bedroom door.
‘Ha! You mean Stavros.’ Aware of how loudly she has spoken, Vasso hushes herself to a whisper. ‘I’m not blind, Stella. I see how he treats you and you pretend everything is fine. I cannot imagine what it is like for you. I was married to a saint, God rest his soul. No wonder the Lord took him.’ She crosses herself three times. She takes another drink of ouzo and drains the glass. ‘Fill me up, Stella, I’m going for a pee.’ With this she crosses the room, fumbles and bungles the opening of the door to the bathroom, shoulders the door frame, laughs in response, tells the silent Stella to hush, enters and shuts herself in.
Stella drains her own glass and refills it to the top. She could just ask him to leave, just demand he go back to his own village. But he has no reason to go, there is no-one left for him there. If he refuses then her demands would become a declaration of separation and she could well imagine that she, the ‘dirty gypsy’, would be the one forced to leave. No, she cannot ask him to leave.