When I meet the little kids for English practice, they want to be outside in the sunshine, too, so we sit crosslegged in a circle in the playground, and I read them a story from a picture book about a spider that wants to be a family pet. Every time the family find the spider in a room of the house, they shout, 'Out you go!' The children don't just have fun, but they learn something: next time we meet, when one of them misbehaves, a smart kid puts up his hand and says, pointing to the miscreant, 'Out you go?'
It feels as though we have left behind that difficult winter as I stroll through the fields up to the village and say hello to people; I was too cut off during those cold days alone in the house. Although I like my own company, I need to make the effort to have more time for relaxation and social interaction.
Amid these thoughts comes an opportunity.
Chapter 15
Emptiness and Experience
Since he was a boy, Stelios has spent his summers at Eristos beach and the kantina: a little caravan selling drinks and snacks to the campers and other visitors.
Most recently the kantina was run by Vangelis and then his daughter Martina. Since her father passed away, Martina has decided to sell, offering it first to her friend and fellow cards player Stelios. He considered buying the kantina last time it was up for sale. There are many expenses involved, and he'd need to apply for the licence from the council. But he thinks it would be a good business for us for the future, another thing he can do without leaving the island – and something I can help him with, as it will soon be time for me to end the English sessions for the summer.
It seems a good idea, a positive move, and I admire him for his ambition. I offer to lend him some money if he decides to go for it. I like the idea of helping with an island business, investing in something that will keep one of its young people on the island.
Meanwhile, we have to take the early morning ferry to Rhodes again. We've got into the habit of taking our recycling over when we go and leaving it at the little depots at the harbour; it feels ridiculous, but it's hard just chucking things in the bin when I see all the rubbish that washes up on beaches – much of it from elsewhere, but it all goes somewhere. Since I'm not supposed to carry much, it's Stelios who has to take the plastic bags.
We're going for my third ultrasound, to find out whether our three-month-old baby is healthy – something that will determine the future of our lives – and I am a bundle of hyperactive nerves. Stelios doesn't seem to feel the way I do the momentousness of all that hinges on this scan. Instead of taking me directly to the doctor's, he has to go and get himself a spinach pie from a particular shop, which according to him makes the best spinach pies in Rhodes.
All the other couples in the doctor's waiting room look so happy, holding hands, so sure of what is happening. I feel that we must look out of place. I have that awful feeling again of having locked myself into this situation with someone who doesn't really understand me. Is it simply that I'm overwhelmed by the situation, by feelings of inadequacy and fear? It seems unbelievable that we've made it through the dangerous first three months without incident.
Stelios is fizzing with excitement as the doctor spreads the cold gel on my belly and an image comes up on the screen.
But I notice the doctor's mood changing. It's not the same as last time, the 'perfect' time.
'No,' he says. 'We have a problem.' He rubs his face with his hand.
I can't remember exactly what the doctor says after, when we go back into his office. It's possible he's speaking quickly in Greek to Stelios, but it's equally possible he's speaking English to me – it's all a blur. All I know is that last week I was three months pregnant. Now I'm not. We've just been very, very unlucky. From what he can see, the doctor believes its heart stopped beating a few days ago.
I will have to go to the clinic the next morning for an operation called katharisma, cleaning. Our little unborn baby is going to be hoovered out of me. And then the doctor can send it away to Athens for tests. He thinks he's seen something to indicate that it had Down's syndrome, and maybe that's why it wasn't healthy enough to survive, but we'll know more in a few weeks. This whole sad situation is going to cost hundreds of euros. I didn't do anything wrong, he says – not the swimming or the aerobics; most likely the embryo wasn't genetically healthy, and the body thankfully knew this.
I'm still numb when we leave the doctor's consulting room and go for a coffee. But my first caffeine in three months gives me the kick I need to ring my mum and let the tears start flowing properly. And they just won't stop.
We quickly leave the coffee shop and drive to a beach to be alone, but dark clouds appropriately enough cover the sky and it feels utterly bleak and cold. As I cry, Stelios tells me not to worry, we can try again, which makes me despair and think he has absolutely no idea what just happened. My feelings are incredibly confused and I can't talk to him, can't muster up the wherewithal to talk in Greek about things I don't even understand myself. The tears go on and on.
I must fast that night from dinnertime, so eventually we drive to a quiet village and find an empty restaurant. The sun comes out and we eat and drink some wine and the pain stops briefly.
Late in the evening, the doctor calls Stelios and tells him we have to go and pick up a pill from the hospital. No one tells me what it is until we get there. I have a feeling the doctor has been explaining things to Stelios in Greek, assuming he'll pass them on to me, but I've been told nothing. Messages and calls from my family leave me feeling calmer, though, and as I lie in bed for the next 10 hours, hungry and cold but with Stelios' warm presence beside me, I let the thoughts flow through me.
The next morning, for an hour and a half, I lie chilled and terrified in a hospital bed, with a needle stuck in my arm. Then I'm in the operating theatre and a kind nurse is complimenting me on my Greek and leaning against my leg – how wonderful that warm contact feels. The doctor, whose face makes me cry now, tells me he will see me here again next year to deliver my healthy baby. A deep-voiced anaesthetist tells me I am having a light general anaesthetic and asks just as he's about to slide the needle into my arm if I'm allergic (has no one thought to ask this earlier?), then jokes, 'Enjoy your dreams…'
That moment of feeling nothing is sheer bliss. For the next two days we must stay in a cheap hotel room in Rhodes as there's no ferry back to Tilos. I buy some clean clothes. At night, I feel that tiny bump that's now empty, think of that tiny thing that we already loved so much. Stelios meets up with his cousin and friends in the evening but I can't bear to be around people. I am terrified by how much I bleed, until Stelios calls the doctor on his mobile – he's said to call anytime – and finds out it's normal.
On the Monday, we go to catch the ferry and are completely baffled that no one's there. We've both forgotten what time the Monday ferry leaves, and have missed it. It's the first indication that Stelios has been going through hell, too, even though he hasn't shown it. When we return to town, we pass the recycling depot where we dropped off bottles before going to the doctor's appointment, and it seems like a year ago.
A few days after the operation, already my body and mind are, unbelievably, beginning to return to pre-pregnancy. My hair even feels like it's losing the haywire look it's been horrifying me with, and is going back to normal. How can something so big, so significant, with the potential to change the rest of your life, be over so quickly?
I am already losing all sense of why I was so unhappy from time to time during the past month. I suppose I did feel trapped, my life no longer my own, in the hardest days of winter. On our first day at home, after Stelios has been out working, he comes back and I hug him tight. I watch him barefoot in our garden, working on his onion patch, shouting for help every now and then. I feel better in myself, and wonder if it was just the hormones that were playing havoc with my mind. I am already feeling positive about the future; if I want to try again, I have to wait a few months for my body to heal. Friends write to say that miscarriage is not unusual but a
normal part of the process of making a child, the body getting ready for a healthy pregnancy. In the meantime, I have a whole Greek summer ahead to get happy again – retsina, swimming, dancing. Three months when I don't have to think about it.
I love eating fresh eggs again sunny side up, the yolks still runny – something that was banned during pregnancy – with vegetables in olive oil. For ten days I'm on antibiotics and am not allowed to swim. As soon as I'm free, I walk to Plaka in the sunshine. I leave behind the shoreline and scattering of houses at Ayios Antonis as the road rises towards the little monastery of Kamariani, with the mountain on my left and the sea to my right down below, clear and peacock blue. The sound of the waves carries up clearly. It feels far from people, far from anything except goats. The road winds in and out with the contours of the hill covered in sage and thyme bush and eucalyptus trees. There are olive trees on the cliff-edge blown sideways by winter winds. Where the path slopes down towards the curve of beach at last, the hills are green and lush, and the water sharp and clean.
There's a short poem I saw once on the subway when I lived in Toronto. It caught my attention because it was called 'Sunlight at Sherbourne and Bloor', which is where I was living, and the poet, Gwendolyn MacEwen, writes about cycling across the city and the bridge over the deep ravine, something I used to do. For some reason, it comes into my head today. She's thinking about the messiness of life, when it suddenly strikes her that each thing we do is built from the experiences we have and every choice we make; and because of that, every little moment is important. Or at least, that's how I interpret it. And I think that yes, taking this walk right now, seeing every beautiful thing around me, is the most essential thing I can do for myself.
Why does her poem come into my head that day? It's only later that I look MacEwen up to find out more about her. Lo and behold, she had a connection with Greece. She taught herself Greek, translated plays by Euripides and Aristophanes as well as writing fiction and poetry. After marrying first at the age of twentyone to poet Milton Acorn, who was nineteen years older than her, and getting divorced two years later (spookily similar to my own first marriage), she later married again – to a Greek musician, Nikos Tsingos, and opened a coffee house with him. She lived on the Danforth, in the Greek neighbourhood of Toronto, where I moved to after Sherbourne and Bloor. She died in her mid-forties, around my age – on my birthday, 29 November.
She would often have cycled across the bridge over the Don Valley as I did. By the time I lived there, the Don Valley had a bike trail and wetland where I would go to escape on weekends from my sometimes frenetic city life. A few weeks after Gwendolyn was born, her mother had considered jumping off that viaduct, and admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital. Gwendolyn died in poverty not far away, drinking heavily, far too young. But I discover that she left behind some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read about Greece. It's in a book called Mermaids and Ikons: A Greek Summer about the happy summer months she spent on the little island in the Aegean Sea where Nikos came from, Antiparos.
She describes it as an island of fig trees, thyme and oregano; they stayed in a simple house in a half-abandoned village. Nikos went fishing for octopus and she became accustomed to the sight of dead octopus being smashed against rocks to force the 'grey-white soapy substance' out, which makes the meat tender enough for eating. They ate octopus and drank ouzo with the priest, Papa Stephanos, who told them hilarious stories of the islanders, crying at the same time in his 'boundless love' for his people, and they walked home watching silver moonlight on the water of the harbour. They caught and cooked snails after the rain.
Her marriage to Nikos didn't survive: her illness drove him away. But for a few months she had been happy in a place just like this.
I start going on long walks again. Green fields spread below the rugged mountaintops where clouds hang. I watch eagles in the blue sky above, and swim at Skafi where the sea is so clear I can see the pink sand underneath. At Eristos I find a huge dead turtle washed up, nature in the raw. The garden is suddenly thriving with potatoes and onions, peas and rocket and radikia, a type of horta like dandelion leaves, semi-bitter and delicious. The fields are blooming. And I am about to experience my first Easter in Tilos.
Chapter 16
Big Week
The holy week before Greek Orthodox Easter is called Megali Evthomatha, Big Week. In many parts of the world, Easter is heralded long in advance by the arrival of a plethora of chocolate eggs of all shapes and sizes in the shops. In Tilos, none of the shops has chocolate eggs, but I do spot a local farmer pulling the intestines out of a dead goat hanging from a tree – people prepare for the feast somewhat differently. When I hold my last English session with the little kids before the holiday, I ask them to draw pictures of what Easter means to them so we can write English captions. All of them draw churches, some with candles and biscuits. Little Yorgos draws a big crucifixion with a crowd watching underneath. This is my first indication that Easter might be a bit more serious here.
The last time I went to a church service in Megalo Horio four years ago, an old woman glared stonily into my face for wearing a dress that showed some leg above the knee, prodding a bony finger into the offending flesh and making a sign of the cross. I'd been to Greek monasteries where the wearing of jeans was forbidden for women, so I'd assumed the dress was the only option in my holiday luggage. It's something of a surprise to find that super-sexy tight trousers and five-inch black spike heels are pretty much the order of the day at Easter services in Megalo Horio. It's an unexpectedly come-hither look.
The church service for Megali Pempti, Big Thursday, starts in the evening. After we hear the bell ringing, we leave our lonely house in the dark and take the motorbike down the dirt track. It's a cool and windy night. The church is smoky with incense; chandeliers and censers and crosses woven from grass hang from the ceiling; the dark old painted wood of the altar screen leans inwards; the haunting chant of the priest rises and falls. We light candles, and people kiss the icon. A cross with an image of Jesus is decorated with garlands of flowers. It feels very strange, and very mournful.
I go outside for a while, where Stelios is standing with a group of mostly men, but it's cold and dark and I feel alone. The service lasts several hours, and candles are lit from time to time. I find a place inside again, watch people coming and going, and gradually the trance-like effect of listening to an entirely sung service starts to feel less strange, more comforting. Unable to follow the words, and not being an Orthodox Christian or religious at all myself, I try a kind of meditation. In the two weeks since the surgery that left me feeling so empty, I've come to feel OK again. But a little space for mourning is in fact just what I need.
Church starts a little later on the Friday. For an hour or so, a service takes place around a representation of a funeral bier, which stands in the middle of the church covered in flowers. Children at either end hold candles, and I notice some of the older women stocking up on long, spindly red candles from the table at the back of the church. Then the priest leads a procession. Men carry the bier by its poles. We follow it up the steps behind the church, squeezing through the arched doorway, and along a dark alley through the village. There are few lights and now I know why the steps are whitewashed at the edges: so you can see where you're going in the dark. We pass the ancient wall of massive stones, then continue down towards the cemetery, disturbing the donkeys in the field.
At the graveyard, families disperse; people hold lighted candles in the dark. The priest circulates, stopping at each family and saying a prayer for their departed loved ones; his helper discreetly palms some money each time. Knowing little about Greek Easter, I am taken by surprise by this communal remembrance of the dead, and when I hear others crying it makes my own tears flow briefly. Stelios and I hug. It was a tough winter for everyone, with much loss. During the sad but beautiful ceremony, rain starts to fall and people repeat after the priest a phrase, aeonia i mnimi, eternal the memory, as we begin to f
ollow the bier slowly back to the church.
When I ask Stelios what time we'll be going to church on Saturday, he says to vrathi, evening. In fact, the church bell starts ringing at 11 p.m. Everything in Greece starts so much later than I expect.
During the many hours in church listening to chanting I don't understand, I've been rather obsessed with watching the priest's helper deal with the candles. One night he's chopping candles into small pieces, which ladies stuff into their handbags; another he's keeping an eye on the candles we all light on our way into church, snuffing them out as they reach their last couple of inches and throwing them in a box. Out, brief candle… Tonight's candles, for the celebration of Christ rising again, are white but stained red at each end.
Something else is different tonight: the profusion of vomves, bombs or firecrackers. Stelios has been complaining about the lack of vomves this year, and indeed to him part of the appeal of standing outside the church is setting off vomves to the annoyance of people inside. That older folks come outside to complain from time to time just adds to their fun. I'm afraid Stelios and I don't see eye to eye on this one. To me, the charmlessness of something that simply makes a loud bang cannot be overstated. Being sensitive to the sound, I finally flee the church when a loud crack echoes in the doorway.
An Octopus in My Ouzo Page 12