Still, there are plenty of people who love her. When Eleftheria brings her son Kyriakos to the house so he can practise his English, Lisa leaps up on them, attacking them with love as Stelios calls it. Kyriakos and I come up with a nickname for her: the Tilos Devil.
When Stelios and I have to go away for a few days, we leave Lisa with Nikos Taxijis and Toula. Their old dog Aris loves her, and although they generally keep him tied up, they have a large garden and orchard for the dogs to roam around in. They've always loved Lisa and want us to let her have pups so they can have one.
This is another seahorse moment, a point of cultural difference. Many local people firmly believe that a female dog should not be neutered, or at the very least should always be allowed to give birth to a first litter of pups, otherwise she will have psychological problems. On the other hand, I tend to think keeping a dog tethered somewhere remote for its whole life as a guard dog, as some locals do, would give it psychological problems. I ask what I would do with all the pups, knowing I wouldn't feel comfortable giving them to people who would keep them as guard dogs – that's not much of a life. Menelaos says it's OK, he'll kill them for me. 'No!' I say, laughing.
Lisa is a Greek dog, and lives on a Greek island, so perhaps she should live by the local rules, but I don't think they are always right. One day, someone convinces Stelios that Lisa is a boy, even though I'm pretty sure the pet shop and the vet knew she was a girl, and she does pee like a girl. I figure Tilos locals must know a thing or two about animals so I look at some rather unsavoury pictures online. She's a girl. Stelios still goes round telling everyone she's a boy until my next trip to the vet.
Unfortunately, as we're returning to Tilos after our days away, we hear that Lisa and the other dog have been showing off to one another, racing around the house during the night – it's been pandemonium. Aris has never escaped from his enclosure before now, but together they've been digging their way to freedom and roaming the valley. And although Lisa never touched our chickens, a couple of theirs have been killed. It's a shock. Suddenly, the little bars of chocolate we brought for Toula as a gift for looking after Lisa seem rather inadequate.
It's a good job she's adorable.
The blue sea at Eristos glitters, and the sand is now completely empty, fl attened by the first rains of winter. The kantina is moved off Eristos beach in preparation for storms. We have the island to ourselves and can relax and breathe normally again. It's warm enough to sunbathe some days; other days it's cool enough to walk to the mountaintops comfortably. Under a perfectly blue sky, I again try the path to the Italian house with Lisa. The sea squills are already blossoming – tall stalks rising from the ground, with clusters of white fl owers at the top. Soon Megalo Horio seems far, far below. And this time, at last, I make it to the peak. Beside the empty house, the ground is covered with small mauve colchicums and wild crocus with yellow centres and saffron and white filaments.
I'm never happier than on a new path, alone, discovering. Now that she's strong enough, I walk one day with Lisa to Louboudi, a pretty cove over a steep scrubcovered hill from Skafi; there's much scrambling to get there, and when we arrive there's a dead goat in the water which I know Lisa would love to investigate, so we turn straight back again, and in trying to find the proper path I find myself precariously clinging to the edge of a cliff. But down below, there are white caves and deep-blue sea with rocks clearly visible underwater, and the view is worth it. It's also good to walk with Anna's company to one of our favourite beaches, Tholos: up a steep path to the ridge above Livadia then all the way down the other side to a fjord-like inlet with green-grey rock, and water that's almost turquoise.
In the house at the honey factory, surrounded by fields, the smell of straw and herbs after rain is astonishing. At night, the sky is mostly unpolluted by lights. Pavlos and Maria originally encouraged me to switch on the electric garden lights in the evening – a seahorse moment, because for me the view of the sky full of stars from the dark surrounds of the house has been breathtaking and unforgettable. I've loved living here. But the house has been feeling small for a while, and with winter coming the three of us will be indoors more, making it feel even smaller. Stelios still wants to finish off his house at the horafi, but I'm not sure about living there, and it wouldn't really be any bigger, and would cost a lot – money we don't have. Renting seems to him like throwing money away, but I think it's easier for now.
When I saw that house in the village, I thought about just renting the office space, but then I considered how I sometimes felt cut off from village life down here, retreating to my own private world, especially in the dark of winter. I was concerned about losing my identity, people not knowing who I was. Perhaps it was time to join in the dance a little more. Or at least give it a try. So we arranged to take the village house after closing the kantina. It's hard to believe we are leaving the house at the honey factory. I will miss the old place and the family – even though I'll still see them around, Pavlos says it won't be the same.
But I love moving house and am excited when we settle into our bigger place in the centre of the village. Although the front addition is modern, the house has an archway with '1868' carved into the stone and painted over, and the courtyard has a couple of old millstones lying about and is dominated by a lemon tree. I love the fact that my office window overlooks the little whitewashed chapel, the ekklisaki. There are frescoes on the inside walls and ceiling, and basil plants in pots outside. Vicky says it is dedicated to Ayios Ioannis Theologos, Saint John the Theologian, whose monastery is in Patmos. She says it's medieval, and the old wall of massive stones it's built on is Hellenistic, from the time of Alexander the Great.
'All these little churches were privately owned. That one was in the family of Stelios' father's uncle, Apostolis Logothetis. He was a teacher, and during the Italian occupation he was persecuted because he taught Greek secretly. It was against the law to teach Greek, or even to speak it on the main street here. Because the Greek language was forbidden, and only Italian language was taught, gradually the parents took their children out of school.'
As I listen to Vicky's stories, Lisa chases a cat, and up the steps walks old Polixeni dressed in black, carrying her walking stick in a jaunty fashion over her shoulder, a bag of vegetables hanging off it. We have the occasional chat, and once when I was feeling down about making a mistake, she said, 'You can't know everything – you're young. When I met my husband I was only nineteen and I learned my work slowly, siga-siga.' I walk home past Irini's tiny shop below the kafeneion; her daughter, finished with her studies but unable to find work, has returned to Tilos and agreed to start giving me informal Greek lessons. The more I speak the language, the richer life becomes.
In the evenings here I listen to the bells of Rena's sheep as they come running down the mountain, and a woman's voice rounding up animals, shouting 'Elateh elateh, grigora griiigora!', come, come, quickly, quickly… In the mornings, I hear cockerels crowing down in the valley. One morning, I'm pondering the strange things I hear shouted across the rooftops and alleys of the village sometimes ('The mulberries are at the house!' – it sounds like secret code) when my phone rings and it's Stelios.
'Jennifer, have you spoken to Dimitri lately? People are looking for him – he hasn't shown up for work.'
Although he's been away for the summer as usual and we're no longer in touch regularly, my old friend Dimitris, the high school headmaster, did come up to talk to me on the beach when he got back in early September; then I saw him at the last paniyiri of the year at the church of Zambika several days later, but not since then. He's so steady and reliable, it's strange for him not to be at the school, where he should have been at the rehearsal for 'Ochi' Day.
'Let me know if you hear from him,' says Stelios.
He calls again an hour or two later. What he tells me doesn't seem real. There's been an accident.
Chapter 33
Life on a Greek Island
Someone spotted something
unusual on the high mountain road to the monastery. A water pipe running along the roadside was broken. Debris was strewn down the steep cliff. Dimitris' car plunged 300 metres down.
He and a German woman called Uta – apparently she had recently become his girlfriend – were thrown from the vehicle during impact. Tilos doesn't have emergency services, so the island is supposed to wait for a helicopter from Rhodes, but ordinary young men immediately ignore the rules and without a thought for their own safety they brave the treacherous slopes, hoping for signs of life. But they both died, probably the evening before.
For the men who went down there, how will they ever forget what they saw? Once again, I'm reminded of the intensity of life in a small community. The mayor must keep calling Rhodes to convince them to send a helicopter, so that the local men don't risk their own lives further to retrieve the bodies.
I find myself walking along the road towards where it happened but stop, not knowing if it's appropriate. I am walking again, in a daze, when I see a truck driving to Livadia in the late afternoon as the sun goes down; in case I didn't quite believe what had happened, seeing two wooden coffins in the back makes it feel real enough. I keep walking to the port and in the evening, under a sky full of bright stars, the Milky Way clearly visible, I see Dimitris leave the island for the last time. A small boat has come specially, and I watch its red light disappear into darkness.
For a while, the whole island is in shock, especially the children he taught. Two days later, it's his name day. It being a Saturday, he would undoubtedly have been out in the sea somewhere, fishing for octopus. I walk up the road towards the monastery to see with my own eyes, finally, where it happened and try to understand.
It's a beautiful place. He took me to see the sunset up there once. Perhaps that view he loved was his last. I was up here recently for the baptism of Eleftheria's niece – Kiki got pregnant at the same time as my first pregnancy – and I took photos of the view over the cliffs.
Now I walk down to Plaka, to the little bay on the promontory, and go out with my mask and snorkel. Dimitris took me out snorkelling when I first came to stay in Tilos for a month, introduced me to remote beaches and the underwater life of the island. I see anemones with wavy orange hair, a small eel's ribbon-body curling around a rock, and a slender fikopsaro, its tail fine and silver like a needle. He once said he'd always be there for me, and perhaps in this way he will be.
A week or so later, I see a woman on the deck of the ship crying and know it must be Dimitris' sister. When I introduce myself she greets me warmly and takes me to see his mother and meet his daughter. I've met Dimitris' mother before – we went to the Zambika festival together a few years ago when I was here on holiday. They have come to gather his possessions from his flat.
They ask me what I think happened and I confess I don't understand it. Although that road to the monastery scared me at times, he drove it regularly to fill his water bottles from the spring. He was extremely careful in everything he did, and didn't drink; he knew the road well, and it wasn't a particularly narrow or tricky section. The post-mortem found no evidence of a heart attack. It remains a mystery.
Clearing the flat is a terrible thing for the family to have to do, and in some ways it helps to have company. They also love Lisa – a dog can bring joy even in adversity, as I have learned this year. So, day after day, I drive down to Livadia with her to keep them company, and they invite me to visit them in northern Greece whenever I want.
Dimitris was a hoarder, and his apartment is full of things he diligently stored in case of emergencies. His family, understandably, find it very difficult to throw anything away, so my car is stuffed with things to take home, from fishing and diving equipment to cleaning products and plastic bags. I can't believe I'm doing this: there is something darkly absurd about it all. For years to come, I will think of Dimitris fondly whenever I open my cupboards… It may seem mundane but I think my old friend would have approved. My smart new office is equipped with desk, computer, printer, stationery, books, and a bathroom with a baby goat inside. Seriously. So I haven't left strange goat incidents behind.
I can't remember how Lisa got free, but she did, and the next thing I knew, she was at the top of the village and had cornered a black baby goat in a field. She didn't want to harm it, just bark at it. And she wouldn't let me near her. I tried to lure her away with every trick up my sleeve, but nothing was as much fun as the goat game. And then I thought of something: I picked up the baby goat and carried it back to the house. Lisa followed me and we slammed the gate closed. We had Lisa… but we also had a baby goat.
Just then, Menelaos came by, perhaps having heard the commotion, so I showed him the goat and explained. He said he thought its mother had died, and that we could keep it. I had bucolic visions of drinking our own goat's milk until Stelios pointed out it was a male. Still, wouldn't it be nice to have a goat, an orphan goat? But how would we feed it? Menelaos says we should feed it warm milk mixed with water.
Proving how much I know about raising goats, I put the milk in a saucer as if feeding a cat. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't know what to do with that: it's only weeks old, and we'll have to feed it using a rubber teat, like the thing on the end of a baby's bottle. Rena in the shop has one. So we warm the milk and soon I'm sitting on my office chair, holding a tiny goat while Stelios tries to get it to drink milk, and Lisa looks on in amazement and adoration, trying to lick the goat as if it's her baby. I notice the goat is absolutely covered in ticks and fleas, but it's still a beautiful moment.
As soon as the goat can, it retreats to the bathroom and hides behind the toilet, not terribly impressed with its new family. And there it stays for the night. I hope it will survive.
In the morning, I'm woken by the kid me-e-e-h-ing at the top of its lungs. How can such a tiny creature make so much noise? I dash downstairs, afraid the whole village will complain. How to get it to be quiet?
Then I hear another goat calling from the top of the village. I'm sure they're me-e-e-h-ing to one another. What if…? What if Menelaos was mistaken about its mother dying? I grab the goat, fleas and all, and carry it up to the field where I found it, to where a mother goat stands, demanding I return her boy. I set him down and he bounds across the field to be reunited with mother in a glorious moment worthy of Hollywood. There's certainly plenty of Greek drama in Megalo Horio.
Walking through this peaceful village on a November day with a blue sky above, sunlight spilling over stony grey ridges and the gentle arches of the church roof, pink bougainvillaea flowers spilling into blue and white alleyways and the Greek flag fluttering in the breeze, you might think this little island is a place where not much happens these days. And then 40 refugees, probably from Syria, are dropped by people-smugglers from Turkey on one of the most remote beaches of the island. Being just a few miles from the Turkish coast, we are part of the border of Europe. It has been years since the last boat of illegal immigrants came here, but it won't be long before the next arrives. We are about to be part of something big.
In late November rain, I'm with my mother and my second cousin in Athens. We have the Parthenon practically to ourselves. The massive columns look dramatic under dark storm clouds.
'I can't believe there's nobody here,' says Catherine, as we explore the Ancient Agora, once the heart of the city below the Acropolis. I found us a cheap and comfortable apartment to rent half an hour's walk from here via the ancient stadium and national gardens and Temple of Zeus. The weather is a mix of blue skies and grey, but we can wander the city without crowds or queues and we're grateful for soft drizzle rather than summer heat. We duck into cafes and eat mezes, winter salad and marinated anchovies, and drink cold little carafes of raki. At night the rain has cleared and we sit outside to eat prawns and fennel in ouzo, and tender lamb wrapped in paper with herbs and cheese and baked in the oven.
Mum and Catherine have come to Athens to spend my birthday with me since I have to attend the clinic.
I always th
ought I'd only want a child if it happened naturally. But back in September, Stelios and I decided to listen to what advice the specialists could give. Neither of us was really convinced by any of the three doctors we saw. One seemed understanding but nutty. Another seemed uncaring and pessimistic. The most arrogant of the three seemed to have the best clinic, but he was strictly an IVF specialist, and when I mentioned alternative treatment he turned defensive and blurted, 'They only believe in such things in Africa and countries like that.' Oh dear. I wasn't convinced that IVF was what we needed, but there was always a chance.
Life is short, my old friend Dimitris inadvertently reminded me, and we don't know what is coming. I've spent the last couple of years going for everything I wanted from life. So I decide simply to go ahead with the IVF treatment in Athens, and not lose any more time deliberating.
I take the metro north into the smart suburbs to the cheery private clinic. A hysteroscopy once again confirms I'm healthy, always good to know. I take out more cash than I've ever seen before, for the drugs to prepare my body. I have blood tests and scans. Stelios comes to Athens to do his bit. I jab myself in the belly a record five times one day but the nurses tell me my body is responding very well and the signs are excellent. I have a nice long sleep while they take out some eggs, and wake up in a warm, cosy room. The doctor is jubilant that lots of healthy eggs are collected, and a greater number than expected fertilise nicely. I'm not surprised – we've never had a problem conceiving.
An Octopus in My Ouzo Page 25