Black Butterflies

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Just take it steady, Marina. There is no hurry. One step at a time. Next time better bring some drinking water. You have walked a long way already. Just take it steady, old girl.’ Marina chuckles to herself. ‘Not so much of the old. Forty-nine is no longer considered old, just a little worn, perhaps! Three, four, five, rest. Take a breath. A little rest. OK, ready? One, two, three, rest again. No need to race. Oh my …’ She turns to see her progress and finds she has not come very far.

  ‘OK, here we go again, one, breathe, two, breathe, three, four, five, rest.’ Marina sets a rhythm and makes some steady progress.

  She continues until she catches up with the cats. She bends to stroke them and considers how wise they are to rest halfway up the climb. Marina turns to sit on a step for a moment or two. She puts her hand out behind her and lowers herself steadily down. But the step is further than she thinks. Her hand reaches, but only meets air. She topples backward. Her head hits the rounded edge of the step and she sinks.

  ‘Hello? Are you OK?’

  Who is speaking? The voice sounds kind.

  ‘No, don’t try to move, just stay still a while. Are you OK? I think you must have fallen.’

  Surely that is Eleni’s voice? Could she be here? Marina feels a hand on her arm, soft, gentle. She strokes it. Little Eleni, such tiny fingers. No, that was then, when she was small. But her hands are still delicate. Eleni, she longs to be close to her again, like they were when Eleni was just a girl.

  ‘Stay still a minute. No hurry. Slowly.’

  It sounds like Eleni. How did she know she was here? She hopes she is not cross with her for being here. Hopes she will not shout and stomp around and call her interfering. Precious Eleni.

  ‘I think you have banged your head. Steady! OK? Lean against me.’ Marina feels a body sit next to her and move close to give support, an arm across her shoulders.

  She slowly opens her eyes and blinks to focus. A small face looks back. She starts. ‘Oh! Who are you?’

  ‘It’s OK, you’ve had a fall. How do you feel?’

  Marina looks around for Eleni. ‘Are you alone? Where’s El …’

  ‘Yes, just me. Do you want me to get someone, a doctor?’

  ‘No! No doctor. There was no one else here?’

  ‘Were you with someone?’

  Marina puts her hand up to stroke the back of her head, which is throbbing, and it comes away streaked with blood.

  ‘Oh, you are bleeding! I will get a doctor.’ The girl makes a move to jump up, but Marina puts the bloodied hand on her arm.

  ‘I don’t need a doctor, but thank you.’ Marina focuses her eyes and looks around her. The cats are still sprawled in the shade. The sun feels hot. She needs a drink and she needs to lie down. She wonders where she will stay.

  ‘Look, I live just there.’ The girl points to a whitewashed wall with a blue door at the bottom of the steps. A tiled roof can just be seen over the top of the wall. ‘If you think you can make it, you can sit a while and I’ll get you some water.’

  Marina looks about her, judging how best to stand. The girl takes her by the arm but then changes her mind and lets go. She stands in front of Marina, puts her toes on Marina’s toes and offers both her hands.

  ‘One, two, three.’ The girl leans back and Marina leans forward, and she rises gracefully.

  ‘Well, that was easy.’ Marina finds a smile.

  ‘Practised on my gran.’ The girl crosses herself and picks up Marina’s bag.

  With support, Marina makes it to the house. Through the blue door there is a shady garden full of orange and lemon trees, and a flower border against the walls on all sides. The girl guides Marina to a table and chairs under a pomegranate tree which is growing from the centre of a little paved courtyard.

  ‘Sit here and I’ll get some water.’ She bounces up a couple of steps and into the house. Marina can see her head moving past the windows in succession, each room leading off the next. She stops by the last window and Marina hears glasses clinking.

  ‘Do you live here with your mother?’ Marina calls through the open window.

  ‘No.’ The girl crosses herself three times. ‘Mum and Dad are dead.’ Marina can hear in her accent that she is from the north, Thessaloniki perhaps. ‘We’ve got the house and the boat to ourselves for a year, my fiancé and me. His friend has gone to America, and then, well, it depends if there’s work. If there’s not, then God only knows where we will go.’

  ‘Is he from the island, your fiancé?’

  ‘Yup, born and bred.’

  The girl returns with a tray. Iced water, cake and a damp cloth.

  ‘Oh, thank you.’ Marina feels quite overcome by the girl’s kindness, and the thought of food and water brings clarity.

  ‘My name’s Irini.’ She hands Marina the wet cloth for her head.

  ‘Marina. Pleased to meet you.’ Marina is reviving with the water and the cool, damp cloth.

  Irini is small, a little waif, Marina decides, like her Eleni in many ways, except Eleni’s hair is long. Both slim, long-limbed and agile, impish, but now Eleni’s impishness has turned into anger. She wishes she knew why. So closed and secretive, it was almost a relief when she took herself, so young, off to Piraeus to join the port police.

  With a drink of water and a piece of cake inside her Marina begins to gather her thoughts and reminds herself why she is on the island. Irini’s boyfriend is from the island. She can rule him out as he is engaged, but maybe he’s the right age? She decides to be more subtle than she was at the port with the donkey man. Irini is clearly a modern girl, and her fiancé will be the same age as her, or thereabouts. Hers is obviously not an arranged marriage – thank goodness those days are over. Marina sighs.

  ‘How old are you, Irini?’ she asks.

  ‘Twenty-five.’ Marina rules him out. She is only interested in men aged thirty-five.

  Her own girls are twenty-three and twenty-eight. To Marina it makes no sense that the younger one has been married twice and Eleni not yet once. But, she reflects, there is hope now, God willing. It was such a happy moment when Eleni told her that she had asked to be stationed on the island because she had met someone who was important to her.

  Irini smiles at her. She is feeding pieces of cake to a stray cat that has followed them into the garden. She has a smile like Eleni’s.

  For Eleni, this was a rare opening up, and Marina had responded carefully. All she had said to Eleni was, ‘How wonderful, darling, I am so happy for you. I hope you will be very happy. How old is he?’ And she had stepped towards Eleni and dared to stroke her hair. ‘Thirty-five,’ Eleni had snapped and batted her hand away. So she tried even harder, saying, ‘Oh darling, I am so pleased for you, especially as you are still not too old to have children.’ She had brought out the ouzo to toast Eleni and her young man. But Eleni had stood up then, sending the chair crashing, and stormed from the room. She went back to Piraeus the same day.

  Marina sighs. She didn’t understand Eleni’s actions then and she doesn’t understand them now. Eleni saddens her. So sweet when she was little. Eight was a difficult time, any time a difficult time to lose your dad. Stupid man. What a ridiculous way to die.

  Irini takes the cloth that Marina is holding against her head. Irini bends to inspect the wound and pats and dabs gently until the sticky blood is out of Marina’s short hair.

  ‘It looks OK to me. It has stopped bleeding, but I guess you should rest or something. Where are you staying?’ She is up and moving again, not one to keep still.

  Marina wishes she had Irini’s energy to run the shop. The hours at the shop are long and she is grateful that Costas from across the road works for her in the afternoons so she can catch up on her sleep. The evenings feel the longest, from six until about eleven thirty. Then the shop becomes her sitting room, with visitors, a television on the wall and a spare chair for friends. But often she is alone for long periods. It’s all very tiring. Yes, Irini’s energy would help.

  Marina yawns. �
��Nowhere yet, anywhere. Somewhere without tourist prices.’ She giggles.

  ‘What about Zoe’s?’ Irini points towards the wall at the far end of the garden and Marina sees a lichen-covered red-tiled roof peeking over the top a short distance away. ‘She’s as cheap as it gets here. She’s bound to have room as she never advertises. Illegal, I guess.’

  Marina stands and wobbles a little. Irini skips to her side.

  ‘No, I am fine. Just tired,’ Marina says.

  ‘I’ll come and introduce you. Let me take your bag.’

  Irini gambols out of the garden door. Marina follows her to the house next door, which is built side-on the to path. The lower level looks shut up, as if used for storage. The first floor, at right angles to the path, has a balcony with a wrought-iron railing running along its length and several doors leading into the house. The gate, off the path they are on, hangs open, offering access to a gaily tiled courtyard liberally furnished with flowers in terracotta pots. A rickety iron staircase leads up to the first floor. The central door at the top is tall and ornately panelled. It was a grand house at one time. Over the decades layers of paint have rounded the panelled edges, and to Marina it looks organic. She runs her hand across it thinking of the generations of people who have come and gone.

  Irini pulls some weeds from a pot of flowers further along the balcony, and comes back to throw them out onto the path in the direction of her house as Marina reaches the top step.

  ‘Zoe hasn’t the time to do everything.’ Irini smiles, and knocks on the door.

  Chapter 3

  Muted, insincere voices doling out clichéd lines dominate the sounds coming from inside. The door is opened, a fist width, by a middle-aged woman, grey around her temples, with a flat face, almond-shaped eyes and a wide mouth. Someone else turns down the television’s drone.

  ‘Yes?’ She has a slight lisp but her voice is firm.

  ‘Roula, let whoever it is in.’ Roula turns to the person inside and Marina sees she has different coloured bows in her hair at the back, at odd angles.

  ‘But we don’t know them.’ Roula keeps hold of the door edge to stop it opening any further.

  ‘Roula, just open the door, please.’

  ‘It’s me, Mrs Zoe. Irini.’

  ‘There, you know Irini, open the door.’

  ‘There’s someone with her.’ Roula opens the door wide and walks back inside, no longer concerned.

  Inside is cool and dark. Dust hovers and swirls in the strips of sunlight streaming through the slats of half-closed shutters. On first glance everything seems white. The windows extend from waist height to ceiling all along the wall above the path outside, and halfway along the adjacent wall, giving the impression of a conservatory. The room is divided by a beam running across the ceiling where a wall has presumably been removed. Beyond the visual divide, two stiff-backed sofas without arms and two matching chairs are arranged around a low table. Judging by the tidiness and the pristine condition of the furniture, which is clearly decades old, Marina presumes this part of the room is left ‘for guests and best’.

  ‘Come in, Irini, come in. I am just feeding Gran.’ This must be Zoe.

  Marina’s eyes adjust and she takes in more detail. She can see, next to a table in the middle of the room, a bony old woman is seated, her hands curled inward across her chest, one side of her face drooping. She groans quietly. Roula has taken a hard-backed chair by the wall and watches a television that is mounted on a bracket attached to the dividing beam. She has turned the sound up again and is immersed in the soap opera. There are several wooden chairs lined against the walls under the shuttered windows. On one of these is a large old lady leaning over to one side, her weight melting her into the seat, fast asleep. Near to her is a pile of clothes heaped haphazardly on another chair in the corner.

  ‘Hi, Zoe. I have brought you a customer!’ Zoe is standing in front of the woman by the table, a spoon in one hand, a bowl in the other.

  ‘Ha, don’t let the tax man hear you say that.’ Zoe has a halo of white hair loosely knotted on top of her head. Her wrinkled eyes are moist and her creased mouth is soft. She catches a drip on the thin woman’s chin with the spoon. She pauses and turns to Marina. ‘You know how it is, can’t afford to be legal, can’t afford not to take people in. Pay for this certificate, pay for that legality, all before you’ve earned a drachma.’

  ‘It’s the euro now, Mum.’ Roula corrects her without taking her eyes from the television. Zoe wipes one hand on the thin material of her clean white bib apron, through which the bold floral pattern of her shapeless dress can be seen.

  ‘Can you turn that down a bit, please, Roula?’

  ‘I love this programme, Mum.’

  ‘Just a bit.’ Zoe puts down her spoon and picks up the remote control, and turns it down.

  ‘Aw, Mum!’

  ‘Anyway, come in, come in, come in.’

  ‘Mrs Zoe, this is Mrs Marina.’ Irini uses the formal address of her mother tongue.

  ‘Very pleased to meet you, Mrs Marina.’ She wipes the thin lady’s chin with the edge of her apron. ‘This is my mum – we call her Gran for Roula. She had a stroke years ago. Recovered quite well but another one five years back and, well ... Before that I looked after houses for foreigners.’ She sighs and puts a spoonful of food to her mother’s open mouth.

  Marina’s memory returns to the documentary. Care-taking for the foreigners, the man had said, was golden work. They had zoomed the camera in from a distant shot to a close-up of a very grand house. Americans usually, he had continued. Charmed by the island, they bought holiday homes but then found the distance restricted their visits more than they had imagined. One or two just needed a housekeeper to hold the key in case of an emergency, plumbing, drains, and to get the house aired before they came. Even though the work was negligible they paid well for such a passive job.

  ‘A nice job, I imagine?’ Irini asks. Zoe smiles and nods.

  Was it a nice job? Marina wonders. The documentary had included an interview with a property manager. Many of the foreign owners rent their houses to other tourists when they are away, he had said. So the key holders get paid well for looking after them. They become responsible for the change-overs and the comfort of the paying guests.

  Marina imagines the stresses of dealing with demanding guests, worried owners, lazy cleaners, and rejects it as a potential career choice …

  ‘Yes, I would meet and greet the holiday-makers from the hydrofoil, and have a donkey man arranged to load their heavy bags, and charge a little extra on top of his pay, too.’ Zoe lays the spoon across the bowl and puts some imaginary money in her back pocket, and chuckles at her own naughtiness, and shrugs as if to say ‘needs must’.

  ‘I would arrange the cleaners, and charge a little extra,’ she continues with a twinkle in her eye. ‘A little here, a little there …’

  The documentary had followed some new arrivals on their way to a villa, winding through a maze of narrow lanes. This endorsed their dependence on the key holder, Marina had thought, before they had even set foot inside the property. The tourists would never have been able to find the house alone.

  ‘And you were on call for the guests throughout their stay in the houses?’ Marina asks. Zoe is scraping around the bowl to get the last of the food.

  ‘Yes. At the end of their stay I would arrange the return trip with the donkey.’ She mimes putting more money in her back pocket, this time holding on to the spoon and smearing gruel on the back of her skirt. ‘They gave good tips because I looked after them.

  ‘But sometimes it was very stressful. If there were building works nearby it was a problem. If a donkey was too loud, a problem. If the air condition failed, a big problem. With some people, everything was wrong. Then it was hell.’ But Zoe smiles at the memory.

  ‘Mostly it was a wonderful well paid game,’ Zoe concludes. ‘I had a huge bunch of keys at my belt and all the neighbours wanted to know what they were for. They saw my work as a myster
y. Back then there was only me doing it. Now there are more foreign owners and more key holders. But when it was just me I was the only person on the island who knew who lived where, right across the island, both Greek and foreign. Still do, mostly.’ Zoe takes a breath and finishes feeding her mother, putting down the bowl and spoon.

  ‘I must be off. Come and see me when you’re settled, Marina, and I’ll show you round the island.’ Irini puts Marina’s bag on the floor as she leaves.

  ‘So, what can I do for you, Mrs Marina?’ Zoe asks.

  ‘I need a room for a few days, nothing fancy, just somewhere to lay my head.’

  Zoe gives the dish with the spoon to Roula, who passes them through a hatch to what Marina guesses must be the kitchen, without taking her eyes from the television. Zoe wipes her mother’s mouth on her apron again and then wipes her own hands.

  ‘Well, you won’t find anything fancy here,’ Zoe says.

  There is a guttural chortle from the corner. Marina focuses on what she had taken to be a pile of clothes, and which now reveals itself to be a diminutive man creased like an old newspaper. His jacket, too big for his scrawny frame, has slid off his shoulder down to his elbow.

  ‘And your fancy days are over!’ Zoe leans over to him and pulls his jacket back onto his shoulder and pats him on the back, smiling kindly, before turning to Marina again.

  ‘My bother-in-law, Bobby,’ she states, and continues without giving Marina time to acknowledge the introduction. ‘There’s a room two doors along.’ She points towards the tall front door and indicates the way to turn. ‘Shower, fridge, bed, balcony, sea view. No air conditioning, but there’s a ceiling fan.’ She opens a drawer under the table and rummages around until she finds the key. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Thank you, I need a little lie down.’

  ‘Yes, is time for Gran to lie down too.’ Zoe walks behind her mother’s chair.

  ‘Right, well I will go and get settled then. Nice to meet you all.’

  But Zoe is already concentrating on manoeuvring the wheelchair. The large woman is still asleep in her chair, as is Bobby now, and Roula is talking to the man on the television. Zoe’s Mother grunts at her. Roula replies, ‘Yes, I know, Gran, have a good sleep.’ To Marina, the grunts are indecipherable.