The Lace Tablecloth

by Anastasia Gessa-Liveriadis

  There was very little time to prepare the papers and whatever else was needed so that she could leave Greece with Olga. The same police officer who had refused to give her the notorious certificate three months earlier gave it to her now without any delay.

  ‘It’s also a way to get rid of undesirables! Letting them go is less costly to the country than keeping them in jail or sending them into exile,’ he said jokingly to his colleague.

  They arrived very early at the train station at the east end of town. The platform was empty and the ticket window shut. Tasia had been there for the first time four years earlier. She had gone with her class to plant acacia trees on the land around the building and was interested to find out how the trees she had planted were doing. It seemed that most of the trees had taken and were now strong and tall, ready to drop their remaining yellow leaves on the ground. In the intervening years the whole area had changed so much as to become almost unrecognisable.

  Like a gigantic silvery serpent the train appeared gliding over the plain, and stopped in front of the platform. They boarded, found a coupe and settled in its comfortable seats. In no time the nearby trees and the houses in the distance began to gallop, swerve and disappear as new ones appeared with amazing speed, under the rhythmic echo of the train wheels.

  As the last townhouses disappeared from her view, Tasia’s thoughts turned to herself, amazed at how superficial and heartless she was. How else could she explain her callous indifference to what was happening all around her, except if all this was happening in a dream and was not real. Maybe there was nothing real in this world. And yet, the rhythmic sound of the train was real, the thickets, the plains, the mountains and the trees running towards them and then disappearing behind them were real. Olga, who was smiling at her from the opposite side, was also real as was the empty feeling Tasia felt inside her.

  She felt a lack of air so stepped into the corridor and stuck her head out the open window. A blast of hot air hit her face, pushed her hair back and stretched her skin, closing her eyes. As the train went through a tunnel, the increased air pressure and the smoke filled her eyes and face with small cinders, making breathing difficult forcing her to pull back. A vast and varied world was parading in front of her: mountains, plains, shrubs, trees, and from the height of the bridge they were just crossing, she could see the broad bed of a dry river extending to the foothills nearby. She imagined torrents of waters rushing through it in spring when the snow melted. The far horizon was constantly changing and the sun played with the train as it meandered through the land.

  Suddenly, and out of nowhere, Tasia became bogged down with the idea of death. This was not the common death that happens to all people, but another type of death of all the familiar and concrete things, beliefs and concepts that give certainty and security and form each person’s identity. Had she ever felt secure and confident as a person? Were there specific reference points and landmarks she was afraid to lose? Were there people and things she was deeply connected to, or habits, traditions and ideas ingrained and determining her behaviour and her ways? Her parents, sullen and laconic, were themselves the tragic victims of historic events beyond their control. They carried the horrific childhood experiences of their generation. Refugees, orphans, and from different backgrounds they grew up without any specific cultural heritage or any strong tradition. She was also more or less a refugee, living most of her formative years alone, but also belonging to an unconventional family without strictly defined rules and ways, and therefore she had nothing to lose in that regard.

  Dancing madly in front of her was a boundless and unsteady world, without beginning and without end. How could she ever be capable of bringing it back to her memory the way it was now, or recognise it in years to come if she ever passed this way again? All these burnt villages, wastelands, neglected orchards and vineyards could not remain that way forever. They had to change. And if everything changed, if nothing remained the same, why should she ever come back?

  In one of Olga’s books she had read that Buddhists believed in reincarnation. She couldn’t understand the value of it, however, as nobody could remember anything from his previous life. Now, if she could choose to be born again or not, what would she choose? Definitely not to be born! If at a later date she had the chance to return to her village, would she do it? Yes, if her parents were still alive, but only for them and nobody else. If they were not alive, why should she return? For what purpose? She had spent the largest part of her life cut off from people, even from her own parents. She had no roots and wasn’t tied to anybody, even though once she would dearly loved to have been.

  The first year in high school she had made friends with Helen but their friendship had come to an end when Helen had left to become a dressmaker. Her loneliness had led her to believe there was an affinity with George because he happened to walk with her to the intersection one day. But when he saw her again he hadn’t even recognised her and had run to his pregnant wife to be by her side. No, she had no roots, no friends or other affiliations. She was a child of the wind and the clouds that bind and restrain nothing.

  Buses, trams, motorcycles, a sea of people, noises, smells and upheaval — that’s how Tasia perceived Salonica. Until now she had thought of Ptolemais as a city. No wonder Olga kept on teasing her. She thought of how incredible humans were. How had they managed to build such tall houses? And not only that, you found yourself on the top floor without having to climb any stairs! You entered a small box, you pressed a button and in no time at all you were on the fourth floor. From up there you could see a large area down below, and people looking incredibly short and distorted.

  ‘Do you see something grey beyond the buildings?’ Olga asked, coming to the window and standing next to her. ‘That’s the sea. Can you see how close it is?’

  The sea, the boundless, the legendary and mysterious sea! She had read a lot about it but had never seen it. It was the sea of Jason, of Aigeous, of Odusseous, of Papadiamanti.

  ‘But it’s grey,’ she said, feeling let down. ‘I was expecting it to be all blue!’

  ‘Naïve and gullible child! How much you have to learn!’ Olga teased her. ‘And to prove it, I’m taking you to the cinema tonight.’

  Tasia was amazed by the whole movie experience. My God, what luxury, what lavishness, what refinement: superb buildings, fantastic parks and gardens, beautiful women dressed in wigs and crinolines, things Tasia had never seen before. Startled and enchanted she forgot to read the subtitles and couldn’t follow the plot but that didn’t diminish her enjoyment. She was fully compensated by the marvellous music, the astonishing colours, the attire, and the magnificent scenery. However, she couldn’t help comparing the people of the film and their way of life with herself, the people she knew and their way of life. She felt deeply disturbed, recognising the stark differences and wondering what determined all that.

  New pictures, new ideas and thoughts, new experiences bombarded her mind and her senses to saturation point and, with no time to process them all, she was left distraught and confused. She couldn’t wait for the moment to board the ship and find a quiet corner so she could withdraw to her customary solitude and her dull and colourless world.

  L

  ike a tsunami the crowd pushed Tasia onto the gangplank of the big ocean liner and deposited her on deck. She put down her luggage, bent over the rails to look at the wharf. What she saw overwhelmed her. There was an enormous crowd crammed together down there to say their last goodbyes. There were the parents: old women dressed in black, old men easing the weight of their years and their pain by supporting their hunched bodies on their crooks. And there were the brothers and sisters. Tasia could read the pain on their faces and it filled her heart with sadness. That was one of her biggest failings: to get carried away by other people’s emotions. A monotonous and melancholy murmur drifted up the deck. And then the distinct and heart-rending voice of a woman lifted itself above the others, a curse, a lamentation:

  ‘My child,
my heart, my flesh and blood! Where are you going, my love? Why are you leaving me? Cursed be the war! Cursed be poverty! Cursed be the foreign lands that lure our boys and girls away, sucking dry the blood of our poor land!’

  ‘Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!’ repeated the crowd, like a chorus in an old Greek tragedy.

  Choked with tears, and with jittery legs, she followed Olga and the Italian steward down steep staircases, narrow and semi-dark corridors, more staircases and more corridors, until they were shown to their cabin. It was a small, windowless cell, deep in the bowels of the liner. On each side of the oblong room there were two bunks, one on top of the other. A wardrobe in the back wall filled the space in between. Close to the door there was a water tap over a small basin with a mirror hanging over it. The empty floor space was meagre.

  An incredible racket reached the cabin through its open door: the engine’s hum, the shouting of passengers as they searched for their luggage and cabins, the howling of Greek carriers, the calling of Italian stewards. Some passengers had stuck their heads through open portholes calling and trying to attract the attention of their loved ones down on the pier.

  Then, like the hoarse call of a strange beast, the ship’s horn sounded three times. The engine’s noise got stronger, the floor trembled, the whole ship shook and freeing itself from its mooring lines moved away from the port. Eagerly, and without being fussed about the condition and size of the cabin, Olga opened the wardrobe, pushed the suitcases inside, locked it, grabbed Tasia by the arm and practically pushed and shoved her up to the top deck, by now full of people.

  It seemed that everybody was up there away from their duties and their cabins. The Greeks hung over the rails, crying, calling out to their loved ones down on the pier, waving white handkerchiefs. Others, obviously non-Greeks, watched with great interest and some amusement.

  Olga and Tasia were the only Greek girls with nobody down on the pier to call and wave goodbye to. Tasia’s good-byes had been said behind closed doors in the village. As for Olga, Tasia thought, she was doubly fortunate in that regard: she had no family to bid farewell, accountable to no one, and wasn’t loaded with all sorts of guilt feelings and regrets.

  Casting her eyes around the deck Tasia tried to estimate the number of people and concluded there were more people than in her own village. All of them were going to travel together on this enormous floating city for approximately five weeks, crossing the fathomless seas. These people were total strangers to her but all were sharing a common fate as they travelled to the same destination.

  Tasia found a deckchair and sat down, looking down at the pier and the white handkerchiefs in outstretched hands until they faded away. There was a rhythmic sway of the seashore in tune with the distant horizon, and the tall city buildings seemed to be on fire as the glass windows reflected the rays of the setting sun. The warm evening breeze was most soothing. Olga — sitting in silence on a deckchair next to her — was staring out on the same horizon. One by one the people left the deck as the darkness obliterated the line that separated sea from shore. A full moon mounted the velvety black vault of the sky, leaving strange elongated shadows on deck and countless specks of shimmering silver lights on the water. The night was hot, full of mystery and anticipation.

  A pleasant nearby male voice cut the silence with ‘Oh, give me a home where the buffalos roam, where the dear and the antelope play’. They could see the silhouette of a man leaning against the rails to their left.

  ‘He must be a German,’ Tasia whispered to Olga, much impressed.

  She always admired people speaking other languages even the Blach and the Slavic that some people around her area had spoken.

  ‘No, no,’ objected Olga. ‘He is either English or American. He could also be an Australian because the words of the song are English.’

  ‘As a matter of fact you are both mistaken,’ intervened the singer in perfect Greek.

  ‘The song is American and it expresses the dream of early American settlers. My own dream about Australia goes something like this: Oh, give me a home where the kangaroo roam, where koalas and platypuses play … You see, only Australia has animals like kangaroos, koalas and platypus. It’s a strange and amazing continent, don’t you think?’ he said coming closer.

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ Tasia replied embarrassed, as she tried to conceal her ignorance about Australia.

  Who cared about the strange animals? They were definitely not the things luring her to the shores of this continent.

  ‘It’d be silly of me to ask where you are going, girls. But which state or city are you heading for?’ he asked.

  Uninvited, he pulled up a deckchair between the two and sat in a way that his leg touched Tasia’s. It forced her to pull back quickly, alarmed about the strange tingling in her body.

  ‘To Melbourne, to my fiance,’ she answered bluntly, eager to save herself from any possible temptation and to state her position clearly.

  ‘Is that so?’ he replied in a tone that Tasia thought revealed a mild disappointment. ‘In any case, my name is John,’ he continued. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tasia,’ she replied, twisting the yellow band she had found somewhere and wore on her finger as an engagement ring. ‘That’s my friend Olga.’

  She rushed to introduce Olga to him.

  ‘I’m pleased! I’m very pleased! You see, we’re going to be on this boat for four weeks or more. It’s going to be very dull and boring without company. You’re lucky as you have each other. But I’m by myself. How about adopting me? Say I’m your cousin or your friend, so that I can have someone to turn to.’

  ‘Why not?’ Olga rushed to answer. ‘We need friends and must find ways to kill time.’

  ‘That’s wonderful! That’s wonderful! From now on I can say I have two friends up here. Isn’t that right?’

  He looked at them both.

  ‘Of course. Certainly,’ Olga replied.

  ‘Let me ask you then, where are you from, girls?’

  ‘Where are you from?’ Tasia hurried to ask, annoyed somewhat by Olga’s tendency to control every situation.

  ‘I’m from Athens. I was born there and have lived most of my life there,’ John answered.

  ‘Really? Where? Which suburb, I mean?’ Olga wanted to know.

  ‘You know the city? Don’t tell me you are from Athens also!’

  He seemed delighted.

  ‘No, no!’ Olga answered again. ‘I’m familiar with the city because I studied there. I spent three years at the Helena Maternity Hospital, studying to be a midwife.’

  ‘Oh yes, the maternity hospital almost next to Likavitos,’ John reflected.

  ‘Yes. That’s where I would frequently go to relax after a heavy night’s work, and lie there under the shade of the pine trees,’ Olga continued.

  ‘I used to climb up there to the church of St George, frequently,’ John said.

  ‘That’s where we always went every year for the Resurrection service at midnight.’

  Olga was anxious to tell how familiar with that place she was.

  ‘Don’t tell me! That’s where I attended the Resurrection every year, also. How come we never met?’

  He had now turned himself in Olga’s direction, and the two of them became totally absorbed in their chit-chat, as if she wasn’t there.

  Out of nowhere, the words of a poem Tasia had learnt years ago, entered her mind: Μόνος ήρθα κάποια μέρα, μόνος πόνεσα για λίγο. Κι όπως ήρθα και θα φύγω… μόνος μες στο θάνατό μου. (I entered this world alone and I suffered all alone. And as I came I’ll be leaving; in my deathbed I’ll be alone.) Alone! Alone! She couldn’t stop her mind repeating. Alone!

  Alone! the ship’s engine echoed in her ears.

  Feeling betrayed and bitterly disappointed, Tasia got up, said goodnight and left without waiting for a reply. Tired and very emotional about the day’s events, she didn’t know which way to go, and got lost. She wandered throug
h big halls, saloons and dining rooms, up and down staircases, crossed several corridors, found herself on other decks with swimming pools, bars and cafeterias, and mingled with people speaking foreign languages and behaving in ways different from those of Greeks. When she eventually entered the cabin she found two women fast asleep on the two bunks on one side, and in order to make things easier for Olga who hadn’t as yet returned, she climbed up to the upper bunk on the right.

  She lay there tossing and turning unable to sleep. Every time she turned she hit the low-lying ceiling with her elbow. The engine’s steady and monotonous drumming sound seemed close by, as if coming from the other side of the wall. With the pitch and roll of the ship her whole body slid up and down, her feet and head touching the walls. From the lower bunk opposite, she could hear a strong but intermittent snoring.

  She was plagued by fears and doubts. Her feeling of loneliness and desperation once again came back to haunt her. What had she done? How had she got mixed up in this affair? Maybe she had trusted Olga more than she should have. Maybe she had made an enormous mistake.

  Someone turned on the lights, waking her up. She opened her eyes and turned around to see a young girl on the opposite bunk, almost naked from the waist up, trying to fit her volu-minous breasts into her bra, unperturbed about the presence of others. She was a robust-looking girl with bright brown eyes and rosy cheeks, her long hair parted in the middle and neatly plaited. The girl’s innocent lack of concern about the presence of others made Tasia feel uncomfortable, almost ashamed for her sake.

  In the lower bunk an old woman — over sixty Tasia thought — was carefully tying a knot with her gnarled fingers on her black kerchief on the side of her scalp. The moment she noticed Tasia was looking down at her, her whole face lit up with a toothless smile exposing her bare gums.

  ‘Good morning, my girl. Did you sleep well?’ she asked.