'I'll clean the spinach…' I say.
'… and I'll make the pastry! Teriazoume – we're a good match.'
I spend half an hour cleaning mounds of spinach leaves freshly picked yesterday, and put it into a pot to steam for a few minutes. (My other job will be to locate all the things Stelios can't find in the kitchen, even though they are always in the same place… Oh, and – feminists, please look away – cleaning up.) He makes shortcrust pastry with wholewheat flour produced in Rhodes, then fries up some onions. When the pastry has rested in the fridge and the ingredients have cooled, he makes up the pie with a thick layer of spinach, the fried onion and an egg or two, and it's ready for the oven. And the fish emerges from its foil package in the oven, juicy and delicious.
Happily exhausted, full of the joys of spring, I sleep the deep sleep of the two months pregnant on the ferry to Rhodes for my appointment with the doctor. It feels right this time. I've been cautious, taking gentle walks, sleeping a lot; taking my tablets three times a day, injecting myself, and any time left in the day has been devoted to eating folic acid-rich foods. Without allowing myself to think ahead too much after the heartbreak of last year, I'm hopeful that this is the one.
So I'm not prepared for the doctor telling me an hour later that this one has stopped developing, too, and there is no embryo left, no heartbeat. The doctor, who was always so positive in the beginning, has nothing reassuring left to say. He has no idea what the problem is, and when we sit in his office afterwards to make an appointment for the next morning to do the katharisma, he suggests I try specialists in Athens. I get out money to pay him as usual and he pushes my money away. He can see how hard this is for me.
I wish more than anything that I was still pregnant and this wasn't happening. For many years I used to feel acute pain at the ending of a relationship. Now, that holds no fear for me. But this… It's the hardest thing I've ever gone through. Worse things happen every day to people, I remind myself; I am still lucky in so many ways. I call Stelios with the bad news, and he says he can come over on the boat in the morning but I tell him I'll be OK – I know the routine now. Wishing I could just go home – at a time like this, it's hard living on a remote island – instead I walk and walk through the town, cry unstoppably, eventually finding the strength to sit in a cafe-bar and drink some wine to calm myself down. It knocks me out for a couple of hours in the hotel room before the rest of the sleepless, fasting night.
At the bus stop in the morning, I ask a driver which bus I need for the private clinic. He thinks, perhaps notices that I look like I need cheering up, and tells me to hop on. It's a school bus but he can drop me off at the right place. We set off to pick up the children from sunny neighbourhoods and he turns up some rock music loud, and I enjoy watching his banter with the children as they board the bus. When he stops at the clinic, I try to buy a ticket but he flicks his head and shoos me off. Amazingly, I arrive smiling.
But my smile soon fades. From my last visits, I already dislike this clinic that looks like a corporate headquarters outside; inside the vast, shiny marble lobby, the dolledup girl at the desk directs me down to the cold basement and instructs me to go to the tameio, the cashier, to sort out my paperwork. Previously I paid after the surgery, but they seem to have changed their system. Now before you see the doctor, they want to know how you're paying. The accounts room is full of people queuing, all clutching their differently coloured insurance books; I can't help thinking that a smart bomb wiping out the entire Greek paperwork system would do everyone a lot of favours.
The queue doesn't move in half an hour. I'm tired and sad and dehydrated from fasting and weeping, and I'm finding it hard to stand in line for so long; my body still thinks I'm pregnant, and is used to good rest and frequent meals. I probably should have asked Stelios to come after all. As the time for my surgery nears – the doctor had said he would try to do it before nine as he has a packed schedule after that, which is why I arrived early – I push to the front to ask one of the girls at the desk what I should do.
'You have to sort out your paperwork first. Just wait.'
Another half an hour passes. I go and ask another girl; they all look as if they should be working in the cosmetics section of a department store, as if they'd really care if they broke a nail or missed a hair appointment. She snaps at me harshly. I wander, unable to think what I should do. This is not a place that cares about me as a patient. It gives me the chills. I wonder if I should get on a plane to the UK; maybe a doctor there would be better able to analyse my problem in my own language. But it's the weekend tomorrow, and the doctor told me before that it's dangerous to wait too long. I go outside and sit on a wall, not knowing what I should do; unable to speak to Stelios as he's out fishing with no signal, and my phone is running out of charge. When I need food and am tired, my mind doesn't function properly, and I'm in such an emotional state my thoughts won't settle. I wish someone could help, tell me what to do. I think of calling my mum, but it would only upset her that she's not here with me and can't do anything. I suddenly see a taxi and grab it, and ask him to take me to the General Hospital.
I usually like hospitals, as my grandmother, my mum's mum, worked in one as a physio nurse when I was a child and I spent time there with her. This tired old building feels like a real hospital. A kind nurse at a desk with handdrawn posters and religious icons tells me I can see the doctor; I easily buy an appointment ticket, which costs very little. At least I have a chair to sit on during the next two miserable hours, as the waiting room fills with happy pregnant women walking in and out of the doctor's office to ask questions and have ultrasounds; just yesterday I was one of them, but now I am the failure, the one who can't have a baby. My body aches.
At long last, I see the doctor, a very busy man who's quite matter of fact about things. He can't help me if I've had three miscarriages, he says, but he can do the D&C surgery (dilation and curettage – katharisma in Greek) and after that I can try going to Athens to see a specialist. He directs me to the paperwork desk – where I wait for only 5 minutes before a friendly woman sorts out what I need – then up to the ward. More kind nurses do thorough presurgery paperwork, asking about allergies and illnesses and giving me a cardiograph. They also need to take blood. I am weak and the older nurse takes her time with the needle in my arm as she is teaching two trainee nurses how to do it. The blood doesn't flow; this happens to me sometimes – I was actually forbidden to donate blood the last time I tried in England. I try laughing about it but instead I go dizzy, lose my vision and faint. I'd forgotten how horrible it feels to faint. Then they give me a bed to rest in and I sleep a while – pure bliss.
When I wake up, I realise there's a newborn baby with the young woman in the other occupied bed in the room. Over the next few hours, I look out the window at the blue sky, and listen to the woman and her baby and her family who come to visit. One of the women comes over and strokes my arm, tells me not to cry. I feel selfish for casting a shadow over their happy moments, but I'm too sorry for myself to stop.
As the afternoon passes, I'm confused that there's no sign of my surgery, and worried about catching my ferry back home to Tilos tonight, as there isn't another for three days; I just want to be at home with Stelios and Lisa. I ask a senior nurse at the desk and she laughs.
'In your dreams you'll be in Tilos tonight! In your sleep!'
I ask for more information but she says she's really busy and I know she is; there's a woman fit to burst in a room nearby, hooked up to a machine broadcasting a loud heartbeat. I go downstairs to where I saw the doctor, but the whole corridor is deserted. I remember what Yorgos at the Stathis Hotel said about it being a good hospital except there aren't any doctors. Their salaries certainly would have been drastically reduced, some would have left, and their workload increased as resources are scarcer. There's no soap in the bathrooms and little toilet paper, though the place is spotlessly clean.
By the time it's dark outside, the senior nurse is not so busy and
is more sympathetic. I say I haven't eaten or drunk water for 22 hours. She offers me something but I say I'll wait in case the doctor comes, and I go back to bed. Later, someone puts a glycerine drip in my arm, and my body is able to sleep. The doctor wakes me at one point and explains the hospital needed the operating theatre for more urgent things today, but he'll definitely do it by eight in the morning. I sleep on and off. And although it is heart-breaking, it's also a wonderful experience to be in the same room as a newborn baby all night, hearing its frightened cries as it realises it's not safely inside its mum any more, then calming down as it suckles her breast.
A jolly, older man wheels me down to surgery in the morning; I am so weak I can't figure out how to get my arm and glycerine drip through the sleeve of the gown. 'Don't worry,' he says. I don't have the energy to explain that I'm not worried about the surgery but about my future. As we squeeze into the lift with another orderly and patient, he compares bellies with the other man, who agrees that he's fatter but sexier. I laugh and he realises I understand Greek, but he tells me he also speaks English so he can joke with the international patients sometimes. 'It's true, isn't it? You see a good-looking man, he is cold inside. But an ugly man, he is warm…'
After the surgery, when I wake up from the light anaesthetic, I'm moaning in pain as I'm wheeled back upstairs. Abdominal pain makes me howl – how on earth would I handle labour? Another kind nurse offers me a painkiller injection, which I readily accept. When I wake up again, she gives me my prescription and signing-out paperwork, but the senior nurse says there's no need for me to go and stay in a hotel until the next boat, I can stay here in the ward. The people here have been unbelievably kind and I know I did the right thing by coming here. They probably haven't been paid properly for months, and yet they care. I thank her but explain it's hard to be around pregnant women and babies now I've had my third miscarriage. She says there are women who've had ten, twelve. How do you handle that, I wonder?
'You'll have a baby,' she says. 'You're healthy and it's all up to your own body; wait six months and try again.' She and the other nurse, whose parents are from Tilos, give me chocolates and home-made honey cake to eat.
When I smile, they say, 'You have such a nice smile.' So I start smiling again, in spite of everything. I'm alive and healthy, and I'll be going home to Tilos soon, to my furry little girl.
Stelios tells me that once he understood what I was going through yesterday, he asked the mayor to help, and she actually rang the hospital and spoke to the doctor on my behalf.
Swimming, sex and wine are all forbidden of course for a few weeks after the surgery while I'm on antibiotics again. Hang on, how can you have life on a Greek island without swimming, sex and wine – isn't that what it's supposed to be about?! I joke to Stelios that I might be ready to do all three at once as soon as the time is up. All my maternal instincts will be showered on Lisa the pup, who makes me smile and laugh every day.
Chapter 28
Wild Beauty
We've had a recurring conversation for a while now about chickens. I was thinking we should maybe start with two. Stelios was thinking a dozen. I thought we should learn a bit about keeping chickens. Stelios figured it's easy. Three days ago, he was helping someone dig up potatoes and was offered half a dozen chickens in return. That's his story anyway. Just as I had the final word in the dog conversation, he had the final word in the chicken conversation. I have an inkling as to who will end up walking to the horafi to feed them every day. The same person who waters the trees and vegetables most days… But it's a good walk for Lisa and an exercise break for me.
Stelios will need to build a kotetsi, a chicken house. Recently he spent a couple of days carefully constructing a wooden doghouse for Lisa. She hasn't been in there yet, but the idea is that when she's old enough and it's warm enough outdoors, we'll make it hers. There again, we weigh up the likelihood of this dog – who will sneak up on our bed at any opportunity – ever taking to a doghouse. There's more likelihood of us sleeping in it. So another decision is quickly made to use it as the chicken house.
Tilos doesn't have any foxes, so there are no ground predators; but the crows and the eagles will go for a chicken, apparently, so the run has to be sealed well overhead. And because the chickens will be in the field with our vegetables and trees, they need a strong fence to keep them in their coop. Stelios carefully seals off an area around the chicken house underneath a big old tree that will provide shade in the summer. He's not just a pretty face, Mr Fisherman-Kantina-Man-Plumber-Chicken-Farmer.
Their first night in their new home is a cold, windy one; down in Livadia, the catamaran managed to stop in the afternoon but broke a rope doing so, and everyone on board was sick. Anxious to know if the chickens have survived the night in their new home, we drive to the field first thing in the morning, Lisa jumping up and down with excitement that we are going on an excursion. The chickens are right as rain. We bring Lisa inside the enclosure while we feed them, so she starts to get accustomed to the birds and learns not to harm them. She's only interested in eating their food.
On a bright day in late April with a deep-blue sky, we head out to gather capers on the cliffs at the edges of Eristos bay. Here, as in many Aegean islands, it's not just the round buds and berries but also the young stalks and leaves that are pickled and used in salad or with a meze. Caper leaves have been used since ancient times.
Caper bushes are obvious as splashes of bright green halfway down steep red cliffs. I try scrambling up, but the rock crumbles and, after a few scratches, I play it safe and look for more accessible bushes. I can't bear to watch Stelios reaching further and further into the most dangerous places, especially when Lisa's following him gleefully.
'I came here to gather kapari,' he says, grinning, 'so I'm going to gather kapari!'
We pick the newest shoots and buds, which snap off easily in our fingers; we manage to find just a few jars' worth, though I find a better cache later in the week and we go back to gather more. Picking does the bushes good, like pruning a tree, and as the shoots grow back quickly you can collect again from the same bush within a week or two throughout May. We leave the leaves in pans of salted water or seawater to remove bitterness, changing the water twice a day when a strong ammonia smell comes off. After five days, we put the caper leaves in old honey jars with a mix of brine and vinegar; a few days later they have turned a dull shade of green and are ready to eat. We now have a supply of delicious Tilos capers to add to the onions, lettuce, rocket, tomato and carrots in our own garden salad. All of it viologiko – no chemicals. We have locally gathered salt – a gift from someone, as it's illegal to gather it to sell… And I hope to have fresh eggs soon.
May is the time to gather rigani, or oregano, when the white flowers are just coming out and it's at its most pungent. So gather ye rigani while ye may – we take armfuls of the stuff from the fields at the back of the house, then hang it in bunches from the rafters of the empty house next door. When I want to use it, I snap off a head of dry buds and crumble it on to the food.
Lisa enjoys gathering wild food, too: she loves to eat the dead lizards she finds at the roadside. I never knew there were so many. I know we have an abundance of live ones, including a large savra who takes to sitting on the bathroom window, but there's no way she can catch those. She is part hunting dog, we now know from the vet, and gets excited when she sniffs the trail of a rabbit or a snake.
Along the way to feed the chickens at the horafi, we pass by the well-kept farm of Grigori, husband of Sofia, who has the kafeneion. Apart from growing all sorts of vegetables, he has an enclosure for goats. They have young kids in the pen with them now, and the babies bound around playfully on their spindly legs. Lisa's about the same size as a baby goat at the moment so they all eye one another with curiosity. One day a few big elder goats with beards and horns gather around and take a good look at her, before turning away, as if to say, 'Naah, not one of ours…' This time of year, when the goats have milk for thei
r young, is when the islanders make the fresh mizithra cheese. With a set-yoghurt texture and an extremely goaty flavour, it's an acquired taste, and I haven't yet had time to acquire it, as Stelios scoffs the whole half-kilo on its own, with a spoon, in two days flat.
Easter feels happier and less strange and gloomy to me this year, perhaps because it occurs later, in early May when the evenings are already bright and warm. On Easter Sunday, we are again invited to lunch with Stelios' cousins Nikos Taxijis (although he's now an ex-Taxijis), Toula and family to eat baby goat; this time it's stuffed with rice and roasted in the oven, and the rice and liver stuffing flavoured with lots of fresh herbs is delicious. Also at the lunch is the priest, Papa Manolis. It's a very convivial meal, and I'm surprised when Stelios argues with the priest about religion on Easter Sunday – but the priest doesn't seem to mind a bit. He's very friendly, and as we're chatting, he asks me if I'd like to read in church that afternoon. Apparently there's a section of the service, the evangelio, that should be read in different languages. I say I'd love to and immediately curb my wine intake, even though the service is not for several hours.
When we get home, I ask Stelios if I understood correctly. He wasn't listening, though, to that part of the conversation, so he doesn't know. The time of the service comes around, so I dress smartly and make my way up to the church – alone, as Stelios says it's too early. I get the sense that he doesn't approve. I stand at the back of the church, thinking surely it was a mistake, but the priest comes over and brings me to the front of the church. It feels such an honour and I love those old words, about the disciples who saw Jesus come back from the cross, and Thomas who wouldn't believe unless he felt the wounds with his own hands. I am bursting with pride, even though there are so many firecrackers going off that no one can hear what I'm saying anyway and the plaster is practically falling from the ceiling.
An Octopus in My Ouzo Page 21