Three Summers

by Margarita Liberaki

  “I have noticed dogs react,” said Mother in a slow and measured voice so as to balance out the overly excited Mr. Louzis. “They bark strangely those nights and—”

  “And they howl. Yes, why not just say the word ‘howl’?”

  It was me who had spoken in such an unjustifiably self- righteous way.

  “You didn’t let me finish my sentence, Katerina. Please don’t interrupt next time.”

  I was embarrassed that she had spoken to me disapprovingly in front of David. Of course I could have gotten back at her by saying where I’d seen her only an hour before. Instead I said in a tone that could be read as concealing either great respect or great impudence, “You wouldn’t have finished the sentence, Mother.”

  David turned and looked at me. At the same moment Mr. Louzis and Mother exchanged a glance.

  “It’s time to go,” they said.

  They got up. David and I got up, too. I pulled on his sleeve, letting him know I wanted him to stay behind a bit.

  “Tell me something,” I said, “when exactly did Mr. Louzis arrive at the pastry shop?”

  “Twelve, twelve-thirty, I don’t know . . .”

  “Please try to remember. It is very important.”

  “About ten minutes before you did. Yes, that’s right.”

  So perhaps he had been “up there.” He could have left afterwards, when I was sitting on the sidewalk deep in thought. And when he saw me? Perhaps that is why he said “Katerina, you are a dreamer.”

  “And Mother?”

  “She arrived a little before him.”

  He wouldn’t say anything more. He hung his head, his brow furrowed. That’s why, out of stubbornness, I didn’t explain my abrupt disappearance from the stationery store. Only at the end of Aniksi Avenue, before Mother and I turned right and Mr. Louzis and David, left, did he give me his hand—he was obliged to—and instead of saying “bye,” he said very softly without changing the expression on his face at all, “You’re impossible.”

  •

  In the short distance I walked alone with Mother we didn’t say much. I wanted to annoy her, to get her angry. I would have liked to see her lips tremble and her eyes flash. On the other hand I loved her more than ever.

  Perhaps she also felt something similar, since I heard her say abruptly that I should pay more attention to the way I dress when I go to Kifissia, not to wear faded dresses and muddy sandals. But then she said, “David’s a very nice boy, isn’t he?”

  “Not in the least,” I said.

  At the table she found another reason to reprimand me. I, though, totally absorbed with the thought of going to that house in the afternoon, an idea that was fast becoming a decision, didn’t notice her. I said nothing, and that made her even angrier.

  “Your impudence knows no limits,” she cried, and leaving her food unfinished, she left the table.

  When someone gets angry because you’ve screamed at them it’s a bit depressing, but when it’s because of your silence . . . I felt a drunkenness, a sense of triumph. I looked straight ahead with a fixed stare. Everyone’s attention was focused on me.

  “The truth is that Katerina hasn’t done anything wrong,” Infanta bravely said.

  Grandfather of course didn’t participate in the conversation. Each day he grows more and more distant. It’s as if he has already begun to die.

  “Yes, but it’s her attitude . . .” shouted Aunt Theresa. “Just look at her.”

  Mother was standing out on the veranda. I was still looking straight ahead. Except that my cheeks were bright red.

  “It’s as if she were out to provoke the whole world.”

  Aunt Theresa, in support of Mother, was also angry.

  Infanta and I then happened to exchange a glance, and I’m not sure how it happened but we started to laugh. We laughed so hard tears were running down our faces. We had forgotten Grandfather, who had calmly lit his pipe and was watching us as he smoked. His face, serious to begin with, became cheerful and then serious again. Grandfather was like that. His mood would swing from deep melancholy to extreme happiness and then back again, all of a sudden, for no obvious reason. Perhaps, though, it is just his eyebrows that give this impression. They are so thick that when he frowns, all sorts of wrinkles appear between his eyes, and then when he stops, they smooth out and lift, leaving his forehead open and giving his face a totally different expression. Grandfather’s face has something undecided about it, unfinished, vague. In this way Aunt Theresa resembles him.

  I couldn’t stand it any longer and, taking Infanta by the hand, I ran out into the garden to the back of the house so that they wouldn’t hear us laughing. Every time we looked at each other we began laughing all over again.

  “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at me!” Infanta would cry.

  “But you’re looking at me,” I would say, and then look at her.

  And we’d keep laughing. We loved each other most when we were laughing. It’s as if there was an understanding between us, illogical, but intense. The same thing happened with Maria. In any case we always ended up saying the most important things to each other after we’d been laughing, in the sudden silence that would follow.

  But our laughing bothered Mother. Perhaps it was because she felt excluded even though she was the one who had brought us into this world. We did love her, just in a different way. She ought to understand.

  It was late afternoon when I found myself in the cool silence of my room. I fell asleep immediately and dreamt that I was sailing. Perhaps this was because a few hours later, climbing up the hill, I would turn my head and see for the first time a bit of sea in the distance. All these years and I hadn’t known that at exactly that spot of the meadow you could see the sea. Life was so unpredictable!

  •

  I put my hand between the iron railings and lift the latch. My legs are shaking as I walk toward the veranda. The elderly man and the woman, who were bent over the table before they heard the gate creak, stare at me. I have an excuse, though. I’ll pretend I have a message from Mother.

  “Good evening.”

  The elderly man shows no sign of surprise. As for the woman, she gets up immediately to give me her chair and, going into the house, says to him, “Play a little with the girl and I’ll be right back.”

  All of this was certainly strange.

  “Sit down,” the elderly man says.

  “I only wanted to tell you . . .”

  “Please sit down. What number do you want?”

  His tone of voice is courteous yet authoritative. The woman has gone. I look at the table. It is covered with a green cloth with numbers on it, and in one corner there is a small roulette.

  “What number do you want?” he asks again, this time impatiently.

  “The five,” I say, slightly uncomfortable.

  “I’ll put my money on the twenty-eight.”

  He says this phrase slowly, weighing each syllable, keeping his eye fixed on the wheel. At the same moment he picks up a bunch of multicolored chips that are in front of him and lets them drop one by one onto the table, thoughtfully holding the last one a little longer than the rest, and finally placing it on the twenty-eight. He gets up and throws the ball. We wait.

  “Five,” he shouts suddenly.

  He turns and looks at me. I become as small as I can in my chair. But his look is friendly and full of admiration.

  “I once broke the bank with the five,” he says. “It came up three times in a row.”

  “He’s crazy,” the woman whispers, appearing again.

  His look is impassive, his limbs lifeless. He absentmindedly strokes his pajama buttons, perhaps because they look like chips, and every once in a while he takes a deep sigh. He is wearing huge slippers. His heels don’t reach the ends. And the way his feet are, one next to the other, they seem vulnerable, touching.

  Suddenly he becomes lively again. “It’s your turn to bet,” he says with authority.

  I take a chip and put it on the five. Mecha
nically, of course. I then turn toward the woman. It’s time to find out. I pronounce my mother’s name with trembling lips and begin to explain her made-up request, when . . .

  “Five!” shouts the elderly man.

  He’s very upset. For a moment I also get a bit upset and forget my reason for being there. “One chance in thirty-six that that number would come up,” he was saying with a tremor in his voice, “and here it is twice.”

  The woman had shown nothing at the mention of my mother’s name. I say it again slower, just in case she didn’t hear me, and try again to explain the request. I wait for something to happen, for the elderly man to start screaming, for the woman to faint—something. One or two seconds pass.

  “We don’t know that lady,” she says.

  She seems to be lying.

  “She comes here often,” I insist. “I’ve seen her come here with my own eyes.”

  “Well, if we say we don’t know her,” she says again in a high voice, annoyed now.

  “How can that be, why even this morning . . .”

  “Oh, it must be the lady who goes to the little house around back,” she cries.

  She becomes nice again.

  “Is she your mother? Go past the vineyard and take the little road down . . .”

  But I’m not listening. I’m already far away. And I see the little house around back blurring into an image of the elderly man whose feet seem so vulnerable in their huge slippers. The five has come up twice, the wheel turns, everything is spinning in my head: David, Mother, Mrs. Parigori, my sister Maria who is expecting her second child, I’m almost running, then I lift my head, I’m not sure why, and see standing before me, tall and thin like a cypress, an old man with thick white hair. His face has an immeasurable calm and wisdom about it, as if he has been born and died twice.

  “A warm welcome to Anna’s daughter,” he says.

  He gives me his hand and we climb the steps together. I find myself in a well-lit room full of books. The sun has set.

  “You’re the youngest, right? Katerina?”

  My lip trembles. Everything that has been gathering inside me today is now going to burst. My legs feel weak but I also have a nervous energy. I try to lift my head. I stretch my neck . . . But at the same moment I meet his eyes, deep and sky blue, peeking out from beneath his thick, untidy eyebrows.

  “I wanted to spy on Mother,” I said slowly.

  He smiles.

  “Never mind,” he says, “it’s no big sin. It’s just that you love life so much.”

  Silence.

  “Sometimes one feels the need to broaden one’s horizons, eh?”

  “Do you mean to make a single life like a thousand lives?”

  “Perhaps . . . Yes, something like that. It’s why some people travel, others read, and others spy.”

  His voice has no trace of irony. He gives the word “spy” the same value as the others.

  “And you, what do you do?” I ask slowly.

  I watch him flip through some papers in front of him. He turns one page and then another, and another.

  “It’s the journal of Andreas, my son,” he says absentmindedly. “He travels.”

  And as if he’s forgotten that I’m there, he begins turning pages and reading a line here, a line there, then stopping, going back again . . .

  “Algeria, June 25th. Today Algeria is celebrating the return of the pilgrims from Mecca. Life is good. We are going to hold a ball. The heat is insufferable; the dry, hot wind won’t let up. Tomorrow we leave for Gibraltar.

  “Sailing toward Gibraltar, June 28th. I am on duty ten hours a day. On July 3rd we’ll be on the Atlantic and then back to the Mediterranean on August 27th.

  “Madeira, July 7th. This is the most beautiful island, the prize of the Atlantic, even more beautiful than Skiathos. Only there is no harbor and so we are anchored in a little bay where the ocean waves toss us about. From here we’ll set off for the Azores. St. Miguel in particular. Everything is green in Madeira. How about our little garden? I am missing Kifissia.

  “Sailing toward the Azores, July 9th. It’s two in the morning and I am manning the sails. But as it is raining hard I’ve left my post for a bit and come down to the control room to write you. These days the sea’s the devil. I’ll be home around the end of September, and I hope to find the house with the carpets already laid down.

  “St. Miguel, July 13th. Now as I write you it is eleven o’clock in the evening, four in the morning your time. The landscape here is strange, grand, with lots of volcanoes and gardens full of pineapples. From here we set out for Portsmouth.

  “Portsmouth, August 9th. Yesterday we arrived at the most northern stop of this summer’s trip. But let me start at the beginning. We first went to Le Havre where we anchored for five days because the sea was very rough and when that’s the case there’s no joking around. We also needed fuel. I even got to Paris. I saw the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles, and in the evening I snuck into a cabaret. When I left that night I felt horribly sad. London is only three hours from here by car. We were invited by the ambassador and so we went. I saw Buckingham Palace, St. Paul’s, the Albert Hall, the zoo, the British Museum. We left a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier. We happened to be there during Navy Week. Nelson’s ship has its own tank of water. We have really been suffering with the cold and rain that doesn’t stop. Horrible food. The people are extremely polite, but it’s strange—they don’t drink water. Their streets are as clean as the floors of their houses. When I get home I would like to find the carpets already laid down. It creates such a nice atmosphere. British girls seem so serious, as if they didn’t want you to look them in the eyes.

  “Lisbon, August 17th. The journey from Portsmouth to here would be impossible to describe. We passed the Bay of Biscay, the ship’s graveyard, as it is often called. We suffered some damage, tore a sail. Not one good day of weather, all rough sea, cold, rain, and storms. Lisbon is very beautiful. Tonight I’m going to a bullfight. When we leave here we only have two more stops, either Bizerte or Oran and then Palermo or Naples.

  “Gibraltar, August 27th. We left the Atlantic behind an hour ago and are now in the sweet Mediterranean. We’ve anchored to get fuel, at six we depart for Bizerte. We leave Bizerte on September 9th, and on the 11th we will be in Naples. On the 22nd we’ll arrive in Poros and on the 23rd I’ll come to Kifissia. I would very much like to find the house with the carpets laid down. We’ll return by way of Malea, not Isthmos.”

  Silence. Two minutes pass, maybe more. The light goes dim as if it was about to go out, but then gets strong again. Something’s not quite right with the electricity.

  “That was from his first voyage on the training ship Aris,” I hear him saying. “Since then he’s gone to so many places . . . Of course all voyages are really one—the voyage. And in this way Andreas, by leaving some days from his life in Barcelona, some in Le Havre, some in Athens, carves a single, unique line. That’s the line I want to find and express, the line that represents the essence of his life and that perhaps even he doesn’t know about. I want to be like the artist who, in a moment of inspiration, captures a resemblance, expressing the whole person, the person at all times in one painting. I once saw a painting like that. It was of a woman. But you could also say it was about submission. Submission was characteristic of that woman, but in her life it wasn’t obvious, it didn’t reveal itself all at once, instead it spread itself among her various gestures, each one quite distinct from the next. It wasn’t condensed the way it was in the portrait, which managed to combine a submissive look from one day with the submissive movement of a hand from another day, and so on.”

  He looks at me carefully as if for the first time. His expression changes. He smiles, even laughs a little. His laughter has the unconscious cunning of a child.

  “You should know that I won’t tell you your mother’s secret.”

  “I’ll figure it out on my own.”

  “All secrets are simple, and all simple thing
s are secrets. If you really want to figure it out . . . Anna . . . But what were we talking about? Oh yes, about the painting of the submissive woman, and about the single, unique line in each person’s life. Those who travel, like Andreas, deceive themselves. I, on the other hand, who for forty years have looked out of this small window at this same bit of garden lit up in the day and dark at night, know about this. The difference is that some become slaves to this uniformity, while others see its harmony. It’s always a circle, a line making a circle. A little earlier you asked what I do to broaden my horizons. Well, I create people, make them up. I write about lives that are connected to each other. But now I am writing about someone like my son; this character will resemble him the way the painting of the submissive woman resembled the submissive woman; that is, it will be more real than he is himself. On paper his extraordinary indifference must turn into harmony and force, the same with the irresponsibility in his eyes that makes life seem like a wide sea. There are no limits for Andreas. He is truly free; he feels no responsibility, no obstacles. He doesn’t know what thinking means. Isn’t that cruel, but also beautiful? If on returning from a journey he doesn’t feel like seeing me, he doesn’t come to visit. He goes off for another year or two. But then he writes to me every day. He sends me his journal, and there are times when his words are so tender and childish. He tells me when he is cold or hungry or if he has had a strange dream. And when he writes about the places he travels to he is like the bird who turns, scraping the ground with its wings as it changes directions because it is about to rain, noticing in a new place only the volcanoes and gardens full of pineapples and whether the people who walk the streets are black or white. This wouldn’t have been enough for me. All sorts of other questions would have plagued me. I would have wanted to know what was hiding behind these appearances. But now I’m sick of searching. Now I’m only concerned with forms. Forms are so beautiful, like those branches in the tree where the one breaks into two and the two into four . . . Everything starts with one, no one should forget that, because forgetting that is like forgetting God. The one branch becomes two and two, four, or if you like you can go the other way and start from the many branches until you get back to one . . .”