One night, it takes a power cut for me to stop and notice the sky, incredibly bright with countless stars, and the Milky Way like a splash of white paint across it.
In mid-August I'm at Harkadio Cave in the early evening for a festival being held in the open-air theatre – an evening of dance performances. It's the first time I've been here at this time of day, and I realise what a spectacular view there is towards Megalo Horio, with sunset colours over the sea at Plaka, and the broken peak of Nisyros island in the distance. But we're not here to enjoy ourselves: Team Kantina will provide the souvlaki stand. Stelios and two friends set up a long charcoal barbecue, filling huge buckets with ice blocks supplied by Nikos the fisherman, and hundreds of cans and bottles. The pork souvlaki are juicy and tasty, but we only have time to taste one before customers start arriving – schoolchildren who'll be performing dances and are already hungry and thirsty. My job is to help people to drinks, and take the cash. There's a brief lull when I go to watch part of the show, and I'm thrilled to see the teenagers I know perform impressive dances. Two hours later, I am laughing as I struggle to add up in my head the cost of seven souvlakis, two beers and a Coke, trying to make change in the dark with fingers numb from rummaging around in the buckets for well-chilled Amstel. But we sell out of souvlaki and the evening is declared a success. My learning curve this year has been rather steep, but it's rewarding being involved.
Soon it is the festival of Panayia Kamariani, which goes by in a blur of dancing and greeting new friends. The Koupa, a couple of nights later in Megalo Horio, feels relaxed and intimate, now that I know more of the community. There's a familiar sense of anticipation as the evening starts in the kafeneion overlooking the church, the young musicians warming up. As always the older men walk down the stone steps, arm in arm, singing their way into the square with its smooth grey sea-pebbles. They stop, arms clasping one another's shoulders, their deep voices finding the last words of the song. There's nothing ceremonial, nothing forced or for show; things simply happen this way, the same way every year, and everyone knows what to do. Just as Fotis will be the first to lead the dance, and his wife Maritsa will be watching from her seat where she's been waiting patiently for hours. It makes me feel goose-bumps and a lump of emotion in my throat.
Continuity: it's something I consider a lot here. It's hard not to, when I look out from my house to the cave and the stone walls on the hillside where people have lived since prehistory to the present day. The children of the island who I've come to know will help shape its future. It's hard not to think of continuity when we have spent our summer running the kantina on Eristos beach that Vangelis ran, welcoming old friends and new. Although things change, the island's traditions are strong and keep the community together – just as in the circular dance of the sousta, arms bind the line together, old and young.
I grew up in a community with history and traditions specific to the north of England. There was a procession from one village to another every Whit Friday, a feast day after Easter – I remember as a little girl carrying a posy of flowers and holding the ribbon of a banner – and there was a big brass-band contest in Dobcross at night, while we kids ran around firing at one another with peashooters. In August there was the Rushcart, which brought morris dancers from around the country to compete, and push and pull the cart of rushes up and down hills from one village to another, stopping to drink beer and dance. My family left Saddleworth when my father's job moved to London, but I've returned for Rushcart and it makes me happy to see festivals that still celebrate a community's heritage.
Perhaps it's something we all think of more as we get older: the continuity of life. Continuity is part of my reason for wanting a child, because I love my family and want to keep it going; I'd want my own child to have the kind of old-fashioned freedom and days playing outdoors that I had in the Saddleworth villages.
Here in Megalo Horio, the jolly priest Papa Manolis, in his black cassock, his long grey hair tied in a ponytail, is an energetic dancer and gives the young men in their casual shorts and jeans a run for their money. Stelios' father Nikos dances rarely but with great feeling to his favourite song, and I feel I've come a long way when I'm able to dance alongside him and Vicky, and Telis and the priest. For me, it's the best Koupa yet. And in true, traditional style, two old guys drink too much, there's a fight and they have to be pulled apart. A Koupa wouldn't be the same if someone didn't get punched in the nose.
I hear a chanting one morning soon after, from the direction of the village. I check my diary and see it's 27 August, the anniversary of Saint Fanourios, finder of lost things.
Among the panoply of saints in the Greek Orthodox Church, Ayios Fanourios stands out head and shoulders above the rest for his precise and irresistible brief: I will find what you are looking for. I've certainly found happiness and a home. Somehow, miraculously given that I've barely seen Stelios, my period's late – in fact it's something of an immaculate conception given that mostly we sleep at different times and in different parts of the house. Over the summer, without any expectations, I've been hoping that without any fuss, without all the stress of last time and the worries, I am quietly pregnant with a healthy baby. Last time, the laboratory in Athens confirmed that the foetus had not been healthy enough to survive. I've tried to balance a positive attitude this time with not getting overly excited, and kept the news from Stelios for as long as possible.
The good thing about sleeping outside in my tent in the cool night air is that Stelios needn't worry about turning on the light in our little house and waking me up when he comes home very late. I also needn't worry about mosquitoes. It's usually a very soothing way to sleep. But I am going to bed as usual in my tent one evening, with my comfy pillow and a torch and a book to read, when I notice an odd noise and can't work out what it is.
I unzip the tent and go outside with the torch. It seems to be coming from the empty building where we keep the recycling. As I approach, it gets louder – a sort of, well, crunching sound. I shine a light and get the distinct impression that something is happening inside those black bin bags of beer and soft drink cans. I pick up the wooden handle of a garden spade, and gingerly poke the bags.
Out flies a rat.
It dashes past me, and I notice the noise has stopped. On investigation, I find it has eaten through the bin bag and been gnawing its way through the drinks cans. Aluminium has been turned into metallic confetti. Presumably it's been having a party with all that sugar and beer. Thinking about it, I realise that the building must get very hot during the day, and even the sugar has probably fermented into something potent. The rat has been getting sloshed on the dregs. Rat-arsed. The booze explains, I suppose, the way it was dazed on the fence. The next morning there had been no sign of it; it was probably nursing a hangover.
Living surrounded by fields in a rural environment, you get used to strange, unexplained, screeching noises in the night, and creatures coming in and out of the house. I've had goats in the garden and birds in the bedroom, ants on my arm and bees crawling across my computer screen. But something will have to be done about this. For a start, unfortunately it means an end to the recycling plan. Meanwhile, the rat is emboldened and is soon breaking into the house whenever it feels like it, eating its way through the metal screens on the windows, even eating through the wooden window frame. It has become a bionic rat.
I mention something to Pavlos, as we have to explain why there are now large holes in the window screens.
'Poddygoss prepei na'neh,' he says. Must be a mouse. A large mouse with a long tail.
Early one morning, I hear it moving around in the kitchen. As I go downstairs, it hops through the rat-sized gap in the window screen and on to the windowsill. I grab a broomstick and manage to corner it in a little space behind the wooden shutter. Got you, I think. I prepare to give it a knock with the end of the broomstick that it won't forget in a hurry. But I hesitate, wondering how much force to use. It takes one look at the broomstick, jumps aboard and
comes running down the handle towards me, at the last minute making a comedy dive, limbs akimbo, and dashing off to safety.
Chapter 21
The Cheese Thief and the Rabbit
At Eristos, suddenly the Greek campers are packing up to take the ferry home. But there's a steady stream of visitors from northern Europe again, those who dislike the midsummer heat and prefer the quiet. They linger over sandwiches and beers and bottles of retsina, looking out at the sea. All summer, we've been meeting interesting people. I can see why Stelios has made some of his best friends on this beach over the summers.
He will keep the kantina open for the first half of September, without placing any more big orders. Meanwhile, I'm writing an article on romantic, historic boutique hotels, and am enjoying a little indulgence at a place in Rhodes Old Town that housed the Sultan's harem in the nineteenth century, when the island was still ruled by Ottoman Turks. The current proprietors of Nikos Takis Hotel have decorated it in an extravagantly eastern style, all cushioned divans and sequinned wall hangings, and tasselled four-posters trailing with gauze, pinks and greens and yellows. From one window of my suite I can look out at the Palace of the Grand Masters from the days of the Crusade, a mosque and various ruins. From the bathroom, with its blue tiles and flower patterns, I can see ships come and go in the harbour. It's a shame I can't drink the complimentary champagne – but my second cousin and great aunt can, sitting out on the terrace with its view over rooftops.
I wish I could just enjoy all this – my family and this luxury – but although I'm seeing the doctor for a scan tomorrow, I'm not feeling as pregnant as I did before. The symptoms don't seem to be there. It could be that my body's better prepared this time, but when I called the doctor about my concerns he said to come in right away.
And the next day, I find out that it is true: I'm no longer pregnant. The foetus is not developed enough for them to determine what might have been the problem. They will do a long list of other tests over the coming months: the doctor apologises but they don't do them until you miscarry twice. I realise I'd been kidding myself about not getting my hopes up. It feels very, very bleak, and once again I collapse with grief. Stelios asks if he should close the kantina and come over to be with me but I tell him I'm fine with family here.
It's better, really. My second cousin Catherine, who's the same age as me, has had health scares; my great aunt Cath tried to conceive for years before having Catherine in her early forties. Talking about these things helps me feel less of a freak, less of a failure – not the only one who got it wrong, surrounded by happy pregnant women and their friends and children… They are staying at a resort hotel in Kallithea, and over glasses of wine on their balcony that evening, we talk and laugh – which is very good medicine. I'll have to have surgery, then once again let my body recover. For the rest of the week I move into a pension in another part of the Old Town, the Stathis Hotel, which is just off Saint Fanourios Street and I visit the church somewhat tearfully. There's a friendly bar nearby where they let me plug my computer into the wall, so I can distract myself with work, and in a dark corner, nobody can notice that I'm crying over a heaped bowl of comforting pasta.
I've stayed at the old-fashioned and simple Stathis Hotel several times over the years and know Yorgos, the man who runs it. He has to go to the hospital the same morning I do for a problem with his leg, so he'll take me in the car. I explain I need the private hospital – my doctor only works at the private one – but he takes me anyway as he has plenty of time, which is very nice of him. I ask him what it's like at the public hospital and he grins. 'It's a good hospital. There just aren't any doctors.'
This time, I know the procedure: fasting from nine o'clock the night before. Hungry, cold, dehydrated, I make my way across the polished lobby and through the empty corridors of the clinic, numb as I undress and lie in that cold, bare room, waiting; I feel so pathetic in the surgery room, waiting again while people come and go, chatting. I feel sheer release when the anaesthetist puts me out of my misery; I'm starting to love anaesthetics.
My cousin and great aunt meet me afterwards at the hospital, and we laugh at the 'Greek Night' at their hotel that evening. I enjoy the week with them, joking about how kind Yorgos talks to me through the window of my bedroom when I'm getting dressed and has pinched half the cheddar cheese Catherine brought for me.
Anna emails, asking if I'm at home having a nervous breakdown, and whether after a week of being brave I might be able to handle the distraction of the last festival of the year in Tilos. I'm still away, I explain, though I would have loved to go to it with her. The last paniyiri means summer is drawing to a close, but it also means we can go on walks again, so we make plans to walk to Gera when I'm back.
Another thing puts a big grin on my face unexpectedly one day: the Saturday outdoor market, or laiki, at the end of town by the cemetery between some ancient Hellenistic walls and Zephyros beach. September is a wonderful time of year for produce: fruit and vegetables, bowls of eggs and jars of home-pickled capers, vine leaves and fruit preserves.
'Rodakina, glyka san emena!' – peaches, sweet like me – shouts a man. Peaches are in season and piled high, filling the air with a heady aroma, and only €1 a kilo. There are colourful peppers, some long and twisted like witches' fingers, tied with string, for 50 cents a bunch; and gigantic squash pumpkins. I stop to admire fat green olives and thick green olive oil in plastic water bottles. I'm invited to taste the olives and they're delicious, meaty and tangy. Fetines, explains the man – this year's.
Men and women, young and old, wander the rows of stalls and stop to chat to one another. A young woman rides her moped up to say hello to a friend and is handed a bag of nectarines. There's a beautiful display of woven strings of garlic, their dry skins not bright white like the imported stuff but pinkish-grey and earthy. Fresh fish stalls glisten with sardines.
One stall has only grapes, pale green and ebony black, strung in bunches all around. A fellow passer-by comments, 'Now that's a shop!' I ask if it's OK to take a photo, and get a free bunch of grapes.
In a market in Provence the previous year, I was chastised by a cheese seller for photographing his stall, so I'm careful now to ask permission. But here no one minds at all. The garlic seller even tidies his stand especially for the photo and asks to see the picture so he can show it off to his friend. Greece, I love you.
The melons, with their orange-coloured flesh, smell delicious and I apologise to the stallholder that I can't carry one back with me – my bags are already heavy. He cuts me a slice anyway, and the juice drips down my fingers. It's sweet but not too sweet, and I notice from the sign that it was grown in the fertile area near Kameiros. I am powerless to resist, and ask the melon-seller to choose me the smallest he can find; somewhat missing the point of my original protests, he throws in a second melon for free.
The previous autumn, Stelios rummaged around in my dictionary one evening to explain to me that he was a 'failed rabbit killer'. Killing rabbits is illegal in Tilos because all the wildlife is protected, but he had almost hit one accidentally while driving home. If he had hit it by mistake, he could have made stifado with it – one of his favourite foods, a stew made with onions, tomato, spices and red wine. Remembering what skinned rabbits looked like in butchers' shops in France, I shuddered at the thought.
This autumn, the rabbits seem to have a death wish. Like the partridges that fly out of hiding when you walk down a path, the rabbits seem to wait at the side of the dirt track until the car is near, then dash out in front. Stelios accidentally hits one, and asks me if it's OK to skin it. I make him do it outside and take it to his parents rather than put it in our fridge. A couple of nights later, I can't avoid hitting one, too. It seems a shame for it to die in vain, so I tell Stelios and he goes to collect it.
At last, the drinks fridge is pretty much empty, and it's time to close the kantina for the season. There remain a few delightfully oddball naked characters staring at the sea on Eristos beach,
but not enough business to make it worth staying open and we both need a holiday. I'd like to see more of Rhodes, and he wants to taste souma to order for the kantina for next year. So we take the ferry, borrow his cousin's car and drive to Embona.
We pass Kameiros as we make our way down the coast, then turn inland, winding up into hills covered with pine trees and vineyards as the views become more spectacular. Remote Embona is high under the peak of Attaviros, the highest mountain in the Dodecanese islands. The village's sunny climate is perfect for traditional winemaking as well as olives, fruit and honey. The light is clear at 800 metres and in late September there are few tourists. We find rooms, have a lunch of grilled pork, salad and tzatziki with local wine, and lounge in the late-afternoon sunshine by the swimming pool, looking up at green trees tapering out into a bare mountain ridge, and the sun setting over the fields that slope towards the distant sea.
An Octopus in My Ouzo Page 16