by Sara Alexi
Perhaps playing her castle is a better move. Her finger on the castle again, she twists her lips to one side. He might make the obvious return. She remembers when she returned that time.
‘I came back one day and found the elder with the younger in his arms. There was no sound from either of them.’ Rubbing her chin as if she weighs up her options on the board, but if she is honest with herself, she is relishing, just a little bit, the telling of the history she is about to share, getting it off her chest, out of her private memories and into the world. After a while she says, ‘The little one’s leg was missing, a growing black wet patch on the ground.’
Sam does not flinch. Leaning back against the seat gives her a different angle on the chess board, but it doesn’t help to know what move to make.
‘For a good few minutes, I could not understand what I was looking at. But we lived by a railway line.’ She lets the idea sink in so Sam will know what she means without the need to be more descriptive.
‘The elder one ever so slowly and gently was rocking the younger one, who lay back in his arms.’ Irini remembers wondering where all the people were, why there was no one else there. Why didn’t the train driver stop? Maybe didn’t see. Maybe he just didn’t care.
‘The younger one stared at me but as I watched, I saw his disbelief in those eyes of what he was feeling. He didn’t seem to be in any pain but minute by silent minute, the black area in the dust grew bigger and the brightness in his eyes dimmed.’ She puts her finger back on the rook and then picks it up, hovers over a potential placement. She squeezes out the tears that tremor on her lower lids, to clear her vision.
‘He had never even seen the sea.’ Still holding the piece, she looks up and out over the water behind Sam. The boy would curl up in her arms at night. Too young to be without a mother, he had forced her into that role. In the night, he would wake sweating and shivering, his eyes wide, his mouth opened in a soundless scream, clutching her until she rocked him to sleep again. She never found out how they ended up on the streets, but she suspected that rough living was better than what they left. Until that day.
‘I watched as the disbelief in his eyes turned to panic and from panic to acceptance and acceptance to peace.’
When she first knelt beside him, he reached for and gripped her fingers like a baby in a pram.
‘The light in his eyes grew dull. They no longer seemed to see even though he was still breathing and his chest rose up and down, up and down, smaller and smaller movements until it stopped.’ She stretches out her hand as if it is cramping but really, she is trying to rid herself of the sensation of the remembered touch of the boy’s fingers growing weaker and weaker until he finally let go.
She places the rook in its new position. ‘Neither brother made a sound. It was like we were frozen. Then the elder brother got up and just walked away. I never saw him again. I sat with the child until my legs went numb and then I went for a walk, wondering what I should do with his small body. When I came back, he was gone. There was not much of a trail, but there were paw marks everywhere.’
Sam takes his eyes from the board to look at her. Dolphin eyes are all black; his are definitely green. He stares at her. She lets the seconds pass and then he turns back to the board and considers her move. She has been heard. She is not alone in her experiences. It is a thrilling feeling. It brings a sense of freedom.
His next move is not so aggressive and Irini, although now convinced he is the better player, can see a chance of winning if his playing goes the direction she thinks it might. But it is her turn again and his castle is a threat to her bishop.
Sam looks at the boats following them in the distance.
‘Are there binoculars on board?’ he asks. Irini has been so absorbed in the game and in her memories, and so used to his silence, that his voice makes her jump.
‘Eh, yes. Shall I get them?’
His hand goes to stroke his bandaged side, an indication that it hurts to move. Irini bounds below, grabs the binoculars from a shelf above the chart table, and runs back up the steps on deck. Sam is standing on his seat, facing the boats with his hand open by his side, waiting for the binoculars to be placed in them.
He focuses them. What will she say if he asks why the port police are following them? A game of chess, a confession of experiences does not turn a mercenary into a friend. She closes her eyes. What will she say? But why would he suspect her anyway? Because the only two people who know he is on board are him and her and he hasn’t told them. Maybe he will think that someone saw him coming on board. But surely he will be trained, sneaky, able to avoid detection. So it would have to be her. If he thinks she has told them then he’ll know the only way it would have been possible is by radio. Surely he would have seen that danger. So why did he keep her below to begin with where she had access to it and has since given her free range to go below whenever she has asked if he knows the radio could be such a threat to him?
‘Port police,’ he says.
‘Really?’ She tries to sound surprised. ‘Well I suppose, why not? I didn’t know they just cruised about, though.’
‘They are not cruising about. They are following us,’ he says. She cannot hear anything in his voice to tell what he is thinking. There is no anger, no shock, nothing. ‘They have been following us since we left Saros.’
Irini feels a sudden heat in her cheeks that subsides as quickly as it rises. It is in sharp contrast to the chill that runs down her back. She swallows.
‘Ahhh.’ Her tone wavers as if she has just realised something. The truth is she has just thought of an explanation for why the boats are there. ‘We didn’t go in with our passport numbers.’
‘What?’ Sam lowers his binoculars and sits back down.
‘When you leave port, you are meant to go to the port police with the passport numbers of everyone on board.’ This is in fact true and there have been several occasions when Captain Yorgos has sent her to the port police office with a crew list for the next day’s outing on her way home, to save him the walk. So lazy.
‘Can you radio them in?’ he asks. Irini shrugs. She has a feeling the police are meant to actually see the passports and the only reason why Captain Yorgos can go - or she can go on his behalf - with just the numbers is because he has been there so long and the port police know him now so well, they even sit and drink coffee together when work is slack.
Sam turns his attention back to the chess board.
He is a wanted man, the port police are following, and he is serenely considering his next move in chess!
‘It’s your go,’ he says and gnaws on the side of his thumb in concentration.
She looks blankly at the board. Well, what is there for him to do? They are not trying to arrest him. The boat is still motoring along through billowing waves under a blue sky … The whole situation is all pretty calm, really. Chess does seem like the best option to take their mind off an unknown future. The only option, really. What else would they do?
She opens, a new move.
‘Me too,’ he says.
‘Sorry?’
‘I have held a good man whose leg was gone.’ He makes his return move. Irini is open-mouthed, the chess game forgotten. She wants to hear of someone else just like her. Find out how he has coped. She is scared that he will not say more. He points at the board, encouraging her move. It is hard to concentrate.
He looks at the dangling flesh on his little finger.
‘Did that happen at the same time?’
He says nothing, just stares at the board.
‘It’s still your go.’
Perhaps it is better that he doesn’t say any more. Her own images are enough to cope with. She makes a move but the moment she takes her finger off the piece, she knows it is the wrong move. Besides, witnessing all she has witnessed is not the issue, really. It is how she got to be there in the first place that eats away at her.
Sam makes a counter move and looks at her and narrows his eyes as if to chastise
her for her mistake. The sadness she saw earlier is still there, but it is not so evident. He could easily have been one of the people she knew back then.
The next move she makes is defensive. What chance did she have?
‘I grew up on a farm. Well, a sort of farm. It was some fields up on the edge of Athens. It would be worth a fortune now. But we only rented it.’ With him bent forward over the board like that, she has time to study the top of his head. His hair is short but it grows strongly in two different swirls, a double crown. Is that unusual? They had a goat like that on the farm with a double crown. Sort of. Its fur grew in the normal direction up from its nose until it got to its forehead and then it swirled in the other direction, giving it a little fringe that stuck out.
‘Mama and Baba grew vegetables and took them to the laiki – the market. Every day, wherever there was one. Some days, they would be up at two in the morning and drive for three hours to sell what they could and then drive home, tend the fields, and go to bed to do it all again the next day.’
Marina, back in the village, grows vegetables. In the courtyard, she grows winter lettuces and tomatoes along the wall and out in their nearest orange orchard, she has cleared a space and has planted carrots and onions, herbs and squashes. Now that they live there too, Petta has planted potatoes, which Marina has avoided in the past because they are too hard for her to dig, and cheap enough at the market.
She sighs. A coffee in the courtyard, Angelos playing with… She stops herself. Thoughts like that serve no purpose.
Sam still hasn’t taken his turn. He looks back at the port police boats. She wants to distract him from thinking about them.
‘So from when I was a baby, they left my yiayia, my grandmother, in charge.’ She sighs again but with this sigh, her mouth draws into a straight line. ‘You know what I can remember, and people have told me it is not possible, that our memories don’t go that far back, but mine does. I remember my yiayia passing me when I was still young enough to be in a cot. You know the sort, with bars all the way around.’
Sam watches her face as she talks. He will not be shocked, he will not need comforting.
‘I didn’t like the cot because when everything was quiet, sometimes the rats would come out through the holes in the corners and from behind the few bits of furniture we had, sniffing hopefully, their claws tapping tiny sounds as they ran from place to place looking for scraps. Looking down on them from my cage, I found them frightening but I felt safe because I was high up. It was the sound of their claws on the wood. That scuttling, clicking noise. But if an adult was there, they didn’t come out, and there was usually an adult there. But this is not really the point. I was telling you about Yiayia.
‘Sometimes Yiayia would mother me as if I was the most precious thing in the world to her. Caring and kind.’ She smiles at this memory and then the smile drops. ‘The next moment, it was as if I did not exist. The change was so sudden, as if something had shifted in her head, in her thinking. Even if I cried at those times, it was as if she could not hear me. Her eyes glazed over and often, she would rock and stare out of the window and I would be frightened of her. Other times, it was even worse, as if I was something evil and dirty. If I cried for long enough at these times, she would throw the end of a piece of bread in my cot with me and then go out to the fields. During the course of the day, she would come in and out but each time, it was as if she was searching for something and she never seemed to see me.’ Irini stops talking to see if Sam will encourage her to continue.
With a glance, he does. She prepares herself before she continues. ‘But, and this is the bit that no one believes. I remember getting hungry and looking amongst the crumpled covers for the piece of bread and finding a rat with its teeth sunk into it. It showed no fear, this rat. I grabbed the bread and pulled and only then did it jump from my cot. After that, being alone was frightening. I thought the rats were going to eat me.’
Sam’s expression does not change. But nor does he show any signs of disbelief. Nor does he laugh, which someone did once. He just listens and Irini feels a great relief. She allows the feeling to settle within her before saying more. But eventually she feels driven to go on.
‘But although the rats were the immediate problem, it was my yiayia that caused the hurt. I never knew what mood she was going to be in, and what I did didn’t seem to influence her moods. It was all so uncertain and I craved her love, you know?’ She has never admitted this even to herself before. ‘Mama and Baba where there for so few hours a day, and when they were, they were either in the fields or sleeping. Yiayia was more like a mother to me because she was there the most. But trying to explain what it was like growing up with her. Well, it’s difficult to explain without sounding bad.’
‘You have told this to your husband though?’ he says, looking at her wedding ring.
The mental image of Petta fills her with love and yearning but also a loneliness. She cannot share this part of her life. He cannot even listen to it.
‘He finds it too hard to think of me in these situations.’ It is uncomfortable to confess this and she senses she is being disloyal. She waits for Sam’s judgement on Petta, but he says nothing.
Picking up the binoculars, he takes another look at the port police.
‘They will wait until it is dark,’ he says.
Chapter 7
‘Wait for what?’ Irini asks, but he does not answer.
The clouds over the horizon have grown mountainous; where they meet the horizon, they are dark and foreboding. The sea in that direction is green and ruffled, not enough for white caps to form but not the smooth silk of transparent blue that surrounds them. The gentlest of breezes lifts the longer strands of her cropped hair.
An image of Stathoula comes to mind. Her plane will have landed now, and she will be in the car, on her way down from the airport. Irini pushes the thought away, but at the same time is interested to note that the intensity with which she was anticipating Stathoula’s visit has diminished a little.
‘Put the sails up,’ Sam says. Irini looks at him blankly. ‘You know how?’ he asks. In theory, she knows how, sort of. She could take the cover off the boom and undo the mainsail. She could probably figure which ropes to pull to get it aloft but then? She has seen tourists leaving harbour with the mainsail flapping pointlessly, more of a hindrance than an aid. She doubts she would be able to do any better.
‘You have no idea, do you?’ Sam asks. He looks at the port police boats behind them. They are getting no closer. ‘I don’t suppose we could outrun them anyway, even if there was a strong wind and we knew what we were doing.’
Irini wonders at what point he began to see them as a we. She suspects it is a positive sign as far as her safety is concerned. With that thought, she wonders if she had better check in with the port police, find out what is happening. Surely it is just a matter of coming alongside and telling him that he is under arrest. Would he be stupid enough to use his weapon against them? There are two boats and no doubt half a dozen officers on each - all armed, presumably.
She looks at Sam. He is in a bad position, a sitting duck. Why have the police not come already?
‘So, with two parents and a grandmother, how did you end up on the streets? Did you run away?’ He seems to have lost interest in the chess. He leans back and stretches his arms out on either side of him, along where the cockpit seat moulds with the upper decking. His head rocks back and he closes his eyes.
‘It was black and white growing up,’ Irini begins. ‘My parents loved me, adored me even.’ A smile crosses her face and she sinks, just a little, into her seat. ‘Sometimes, if they came home late, they would wake me just to see me, which I would love.’ Irini stretches out, mirroring his position but she keeps her eyes open, watching his face. Talking to him has taken such a weight from her, the least she can do is entertain him with a tale, a bit of her history, to keep his mind from the port police.
‘But Yiayia treated me like I was a problem. It got to
the point as I grew that if I agreed with everything she said, then she was bearable, but I felt like I was living a lie to agree with some of her views. If I disagreed with her, it was as if I had unleashed a dragon.’ The simile amuses her and she laughs in the back of her throat, briefly. Sam still has his eye closed but he actually smiles. The creases on either side of his mouth are exaggerated and dimples form.
‘But one day, they did not come home. I went to bed and in my dreams I waited for them to wake me, but they didn’t. The next day after school, I rushed back to the farm expecting to see Mama bent from her hips weeding, Baba lifting and digging. But the field was empty.’
She stops talking. The emotions are still too fresh even though it was over twenty years ago. Yiayia didn’t need to tell her. She knew something had happened and the world she looked out on stretched away, seeming impossibly big and very, very lonely.
‘Irini,’ her yiayia called. She never did call her Rini, always Irini, as if being slightly formal would keep her at a distance. It did.
‘Come in,’ the old woman commanded. But Irini could not see the point of moving. There was no van in the drive. There was no Mama or Baba to love her. She stood in the drive unmoving and ever so slowly, she began to tremble. It started with her legs, up into her stomach, which quivered and knotted, seeped up into her chest, strangling her breath as it rose to her throat. Her mouth wobbled, her bottom lip quivered, and her vision blurred, swimming in unspilt tears.
‘Come in, do you hear me?’ Yiayia shouted, but her legs no longer seemed to be part of her and so she didn’t move. It took her yiayia’s hand on the back of her neck, gripping and pushing her, to make her walk into the house.
‘Where are they?’ she asked, once out of the glare of the late afternoon sun, but she knew the answer.
Yiayia just looked around the room, her eyes so wide, as if surprised. Then she began to lay the table for four people and talked to Irini as if she was her mama, asking her about her next trip to market, and how the last one went. Then Yiayia started asking Irini where Irini was and what time would she be home from school, complaining that the food would burn, even though none was cooking. So Irini shook her. Yiayia’s eyes rolled in her head and then she refocused and saw her grandchild and her mouth went small and tight and she walked out of the house.