by Sara Alexi
Demosthenes took the beast and held it out to Stella. Stella remembers the shock she felt at Demosthenes’ gentleness, his eyes locked on her eyes. She took the goat in a dream.
The animal stayed passive for a minute or two and no one said anything, Stella looking at the goat. When she raised her eyes she found all the boys looking at her. The animal gave a twist and Stella’s grip could not hold him.
‘He wants his mother,’ Demosthenes announced, although the animal seemed happy enough just not to be restrained, finding its balance on wobbly legs. ‘He wants his mother because he needs his milk.’ The boys were looking at Demosthenes. The Pied Piper was calling and they knew it.
‘He wants his mother to suckle milk - from her breasts.’ Two of the boys sniggered, one wide-eyed at the situation. Stella remembers her uncertainty. He had been friendly until now but that sentence marked the edge of a precipice.
Demosthenes snipped his shears together.
‘He needs to drink from his mother’s’ - there was a pause - ‘breast.’ All three boys sniggered this time. ‘Or he will die.’
He snipped the shears again. Stella glanced to her side, gauging the distance to the entrance. She turned from him to leave the pen, wondering if she would make it worse by running. One of the boys stepped in her way; they had surrounded her.
‘Animals die without breasts.’ The giggles held menace. Stella looked about her for the best option to get out. One of the goats nudged one of the boys from behind and he stepped forward into a pile of goat droppings mixed into a green cream with urine. It made a squelching sound and one of the others looked down and laughed. With their attention drawn elsewhere, Stella turned and lurched for the gate. Demosthenes blocked her way. She stood motionless, the ambiguity of the situation now clear. The baby goat hobbled up behind Stella and began licking her hand. She had been skinning cooked beetroot before she came out and her hands were pink and no doubt tasted divine to the small beast.
Demosthenes raised the shears. The boys stood mesmerised. Stella’s body was filled with adrenaline, her arms shaking, her legs unsteady. He took the shears and pointed one of the ends at her, between the eyes, inches from her skin. One boy gasped. The end of the shears trailed an invisible line through the air, down to her breast and then up to her shoulder. Fear held everyone still, their feet glued in the dirt.
The point of the shears moved closer. Stella looked frantically around her, her dangling hand feeling the goat. She stroked the kid’s wiry fur, the act designed to reassure herself resulting in a small bleat.
The tip of the coarse metal shears rested on her shoulder and very gently traced over her collar bone and into the hollow at the base of her throat. Stella looked from one boy to another, pleading with her eyes. They did not see her; they were mesmerised by the tip of the shears on her skin.
The shears came to rest by the strap of her t-shirt. Demosthenes teased the sharp end under the strap. The boys all held their breath. Stella’s eyes widened.
Snip.
Stella’s hand shot up to stop her top falling. With the sudden movement, the baby goat by her side bleated in alarm.
Its mother made a dash to protect it, her belly pushing past the back of Demosthenes’ knees. But Stella did not stop to see him overbalance. She wasn’t sure her catch had been quick enough to preserve her modesty. In the commotion of goat and teetering balance her legs seemed to respond before her thoughts and she found herself outside, arms across her chest, running, the boys’ laughter and Demosthenes’ swearing fading with each step.
She felt dirty after that. When any of the boys were within sight the humiliation returned. In class, Demosthenes looked at her in a way that made her feel unclean. For a long time she showered before and after school and before bed as well. When her Baba asked her why, she disguised her obsession with hygiene as constipation, the toilet being in the same room as the shower.
Her ‘constipation’ had lasted for a long time.
The thunder cracks. Stella becomes aware of her situation. She peeks out from her hiding place. The room is relatively light, a layer of dust on the floor. She pulls the covers over her again. She is not ready.
The tiled floor is hard so she shifts, trying to make no sound. She wants neither sound, nor light, nor vision.
She can see no point in life.
Her existence seems to have no purpose.
Without purpose there is no point.
The dark almost engulfs her as she lies there unmoving.
But there is light, just a pinprick, coming from within.
Slowly she becomes conscious of herself.
Not the person people had told her she is. Not the dirty gypsy. Not the available slut. Not Stavros’ wife. Not tiny Stella with frizzy shoulder-length hair. Not Stella when she closes her eyes and becomes Stella behind the eyelids with a beating heart. This is Stella with billions of capillaries and conscious thought, a miracle of life.
Her breathing deepens as her thoughts transcend.
She pushes the counterpane off her head and crawls slowly out from under the bed. The pains over her body are an offence to the value of her life. She stands in stages and switches on the lights. The mirror on the wall reflects someone she does not recognise, small, vulnerable, cowering. She raises her chin and stands tall. There is a large black bruise on her arm. Using the mirror, she checks over her body; there are bruises everywhere. She can see her ribs are black from shoulder to hip on her right-hand side, and there are marks on her arms, and many on her legs. Her ankle, although it hurts, shows no sign of bruising. But it is her face that surprises her the most.
There is not one bruise, not a trace of the skirmish anywhere above the shoulders.
Stella is at first delighted, but then shocked. What if Stavros avoided her face on purpose, to hide his act. If that is the case, this was not an act of passion: this was a considered assault.
Stella, wrapped in her awareness of the miracle of existence, feels great pity for him. He too is a being struggling for life, for happiness. His way of trying to attain it has merely shown how small and scared he really is. It is sad, but for him, not for her.
She opens her wardrobe and takes out her only dress with long sleeves. She will not share these events with the whole village. There are lots more sad people out there who have also displayed how scared and small they are – not least Demosthenes, who regularly comes into the ouzeri, and these days leaves embarrassingly large tips.
What has happened is private, an uncomfortable crossroads to a new path in life. Stella knows she can cower with fear of the unknown future or rejoice with the start of something new. She has already chosen.
She must have lost more weight; the dress is baggy on her. She cannot remember if she has eaten today.
The rain is still drumming on the roof but has clearly eased. The thunder is loud; the storm is not over. The heat is still thick.
Stella unlocks the bedroom door and looks around the sitting room. Home. Just as it was when they moved in. Nothing changed. No personal touches. Not a single piece of furniture theirs. Nothing to fight over.
One of them needs to find somewhere else to sleep.
She doesn’t care which one of them it is.
The kitchen reverberates with a loud cracking splitting sound but there is no pyrotechnic display to accompany it. The creaking splitting sound grows. Stella forgets her world and focuses outside, seeking the source of the disconcerting noise. She unlocks the front door and opens it. The rain, close by, is lit into silver chains by the porch light. The creaking sound continues. It is an unnatural sound, somewhere in the direction of the village.
An alarming crash follows and a dog begins barking frantically, somewhere near the square. Then nothing.
There is a silence between rolls of thunder, in which Stella can hear voices.
She steps outside and sees a figure hurrying along the bottom of her lane. Thoughts of her own life evaporate. She steps into the deluge. Her ankle hurts. Grabbin
g a stick as an aid, she hurries towards the square.
Abby throws her teddy key ring on the bed and runs to the front door. She grabs the umbrella on the porch table and is out into the dark. No street lights to show life, no cottages with orange eyes. All is dark. She marches towards the square: the sound came from there. In the distance she can hear voices. She breaks into a trot. She can see silhouettes of people and something large across the road, twisted, contorted, multi-limbs reaching the dark sky. She slows as she approaches the shape. She can smell the wet earth.
The tree’s roots stretch up, unseen limbs bent, stringy toes hanging with earth. It lies immovable.
Movement draws Abby’s attention beyond the mighty fallen tree. People are rushing, raised voices calling the alarm. She snaps out of her wonder at the hidden underside of the eucalyptus and skirts around and into the square. Still there are no lights but there is a lot of shouting. Many people stand in the rain or under umbrellas, looking into a darkened space.
With a cough and splutter the lights at the kafenio come back on. Abby blinks.
‘Panayia! Marina!’ Vasso stands beside her.
‘What is it?’ Abby follows her line of sight to a dark corner of the square where the people are gathered and the fallen tree has splayed its branches. The man from the kafenio, Theo, is running about in the dark space, pulling branches out of the way, calling something.
‘Oh my goodness, the shop!’ Abby exclaims. She looks to see if she can recognise any of the remains, and then, ‘Oh my God! The people! Marina!’ She steps forward but has no idea what to do and she stops. She looks at the other villagers also standing staring, shock on their faces, unmoving.
Theo shouts louder and then turns to the waiting group of people to call something. Some of the villagers go running in various directions, others head towards the remains of the shop. Discarded umbrellas flutter across the square in the breeze. Abby has no idea what is going on and she turns to Vasso to try to make some sense, but Vasso is gone, running to her kiosk. Only Abby remains stationary.
She is fixed, not stepping in any direction until she hears her name. Vasso is calling. The kiosk has many torches in stock. Abby quickly catches on and pulls a packet of batteries from the plastic display strip, three for the price of two. She loads them into the torches, clicking each one on and off to ensure that it works, a Morse code of semi-panic. Vasso stuffs them all into a plastic bag.
Abby finds a rhythm, batteries, click, batteries, click, but Vasso pulls her by the sleeve and they run to the darkened catastrophe and pull torches from the bag, flicking them on and handing them to everyone there.
‘Natos!’ someone shouts. Abby recognises the word from when she had made her fruitless phone call and got some old woman. ‘There.’
There is a tangible change in the air. The people are animated, but the thunder rumbles its disagreement. The lightning briefly provides a view of the immense task before them. The branches and leaves of the tree cover the area, the thicker branches spiking the earth and denying access to the shop.
Those who had run off return with axes and saws, and in the torchlight a furious determination of work begins. Abby can do nothing but watch. She wraps her arms around herself, even though the air and the rain are warm. Vasso is back in the kiosk on the phone. The villagers work in unison. The thunder cracks with such a noise that Abby puts her hands to her ears. The clouds crash together to signal their disapproval.
The villagers chop and saw, and large branches shift their weight as they become detached. Abby at last can see a part she can play, and leaving her umbrella to spin in the square she grabs the nearest felled tentacle and pulls, heels slipping on the wet road, her weight arched backwards, across the road, to the still fountain. Other villagers are doing the same and the tree is quickly thinned to its trunk. The rain is lessening, and as it does so the voices of the men, inside what is left of the shop, became more audible.
Abby again finds herself without a role, her hair plastered to her face and neck, her clothes soaked.
The grumble of thunder – no, not thunder, the sound is too gentle, too earthly. A tractor rolls into the square with its lights full on. It drives straight for the shop’s remains. Its headlights make the enormity of the event plain. The shop is crushed beneath the trunk of the eucalyptus, its tortured, de-limbed core straddling the spine of the shop’s roof. Theo is shouting and gesticulating to the tractor driver. The driver manoeuvres his vehicle slightly. The sound of another diesel engine can be heard and a JCB appears out of the swirling rain.
Vasso is by her side again. She nudges Abby and points to the JCB driver, and then to herself. ‘Cousin,’ she says in English.
Chapter 13
Stella hobbles as quickly as her ankle will allow.
She stops abruptly in the road.
The black shape of the upturned tree strikes her as ungodly. She crosses herself and sidesteps its roots.
‘Ti egine?’ she calls to the people hurrying in front of her as she reaches the church. The wind and the rain whip the words into the sky unheard. She hurries on to find out what has happened. The possible enormity grows the more people she sees in front of her, rushing.
A tractor sits in the square, its lights blazing, lighting up the world in orange relief. A JCB grumbles into view.
She hears Vasso’s voice say the word ‘cousin’ close by. She shuffles towards her and sees Abby is also there. Relief mixes in with her chaos around her. She wastes no time and wraps both her arms around her and hugs, losing herself in the balm of Abby’s proximity.
Through Abby’s hair she asks Vasso ‘What happened?’ but there is no need for an explanation of the tree to which Vasso points. Stella releases Abby enough to turn her head and looks the length of the trunk. ‘Panayia!’ she exclaims, ‘Marina!’ as she realises where the trunk has fallen. Her own emotions over Abby are forgotten in the greater calamity.
Vasso mutters in Greek, which does nothing to calm Stella’s wide-eyed shock.
‘Is anybody in there with her?’ She turns to Abby as she asks, her arms still around her. Abby shrugs. Stella repeats the question in Greek. Vasso shrugs. Abby and Stella turn fully to face the shop, letting go of each other, but standing close enough that their shoulders touch.
The men put a chain under the eucalyptus and it is attached to the teeth of the JCB’s bucket. The digger’s wipers are on full speed. As the bucket is lifted there are many shouts of ‘Siga’ from the workers and watchers, and the tree is lifted very ‘slowly’ from the collapsed little shop. No sooner is the strain taken by the chain than Theo rushes under the trunk and within a couple of minutes he reverses back out again, pulling a man.
Abby gasps. Stella takes hold of her arm, using her for a support. Abby has never witnessed an accident like this before. She wills the man to move but he lies motionless.
‘Mitsos,’ she hears Stella gasp, and she feels the juddering of Stella’s sobs through the arm that is bearing her weight.
Abby turns to her. Stella’s eyes do not move from the prone man. She takes a step towards him but Vasso is by her side and puts a restraining arm on her.
‘Ohi Stella,’ Abby hears Vasso say gently. Abby puts an arm around Stella, who is crying openly now.
The village men converge around Mitsos, and he is lifted as if made of eggshells and carried right past Abby, Stella and Vasso. Stella reaches out an arm as if to touch him but Vasso gently pulls it back to her side. They take him up the road behind the shop and into a house. Theo is not with the carriers. He has gone back under the hovering trunk, emerging to point and shout instructions. The tractor judders forward and pushes the trunk to one side while the JCB still holds it clear of the shop’s main roof beam.
Theo disappears again, accompanied by another man, under the trunk, and this time they come out carrying a woman.
‘Marina,’ Vasso shouts, and runs towards her. Stella stays in Abby’s arms, crying. The village women converge and, holding hands beneath Marin
a, carry her in the same direction as Mitsos. As she passes Abby and Stella, she smiles. Vasso’s face is grave as she bears her weight.
‘Ela,’ someone shouts back in the collapsed shop.
The skies are brightening by the minute and the lights of the tractor and JCB illuminate someone gathering armfuls of goods from amongst the debris of the shop.
‘Ela,’ he calls again, ‘Come on,’ and other people hurry into the mess and pick out goods, unconcerned about the contents, gathering like hungry ants. Abby is appalled at the looting. She remembers hearing on the news about looting in England where a millionaire’s daughter had taken a pair of trainers. The idea disgusts her. She steps forward, unsure how to make her stance clear, enraged and ready to do battle. As she nears someone they hand her tins of dog food. Abby searches for a way to express herself but the man passes two more tins and pushes her by the elbow and points to Theo’s kafenio. She at once realises her mistake.
Abby can feel her face growing hot, the heat prickling around her neck. She is glad of the still-dim light. The tables in the kafenio have growing piles of goods upon them. The villagers are hurriedly saving them from the rain for Marina.
Abby springs into action, gathering as much as she can, stretching her T-shirt in front of her to act as a pouch. She runs back and forth with flour, biscuits, bottles of bleach and plastic dolls.
Stella is doing the same but she is moving slowly. Abby wonders what is wrong, she seems to be limping a little. The tension in her throat has gone since she hugged her but she wonders how long before her next turn of emotions.
Stella ignores the burning in her legs and the pain in her ankle. The bag of sugar she is carrying splits in her hand. She drops it and wipes sticky fingers down her dress before picking up a plastic-wrapped mop head. She takes the couple of steps up the kafenio steps carefully. Her ankle feels weak.
‘Are you OK?’ Abby asks as she drops dozens of packets of tights from her T-shirt pouch. ‘You’re limping.’