•
I met Nina a few days later. Her eyes, which are set apart, much further than most people’s, impressed me, and her big mouth, red with lipstick, like a seal on a letter, the only showy thing about her. Her skin was the same color as her eyes and hair, a pale brown, sort of earth-colored. She always wore dresses that color too.
As soon as she arrived, she sat down, crossed her legs, and, opening her handbag slowly, got out a wooden cigarette case, took a cigarette, and lit it. Then she looked at the case as if for the first time. There were two heads carved on the top, two women, or a woman and a man, it was hard to tell. All you could see in their faces was the tragic, sensual timelessness of the African people, and a sense of melancholy.
Nina, though, was very lively. She talked about a million different things, leaping from one topic to the next and drawing from everything a conclusion, almost like a philosophical truth, which at first intrigued me, but then started to get on my nerves. She kept on using the word “intensity.” The old man listened to her silently. I did, too.
She was saying that the most intense moment of her life was when Andreas had thrown her a love letter from an airplane. It was when he had left the navy for the air force. Of course he didn’t stay there long either. He was such a rebel, always the first and best fighter in every uprising. Once they put him in jail for a year at Oropos. Then he went back to the navy, the merchant marine this time, and became a captain. That day, though, she had gone out into her garden. She was living in Faliron then, not by the sea, but inland a bit, in a beautiful house with a windmill and pistachio trees, when she saw the airplane circling above her, going as far as the sea and then back again, dipping so low she thought it would touch her hair. The letter fell and landed in the tree. It was only one week after she and Andreas had met. Later they got married, and then a child, then the divorce. She herself couldn’t remember dates. Everything happened so quickly and suddenly. One never knew what to expect with Andreas. For days, weeks, he would forget that he even had a home. Only every once in a while would he bring presents. He’d bring Nina the largest size dress, though he knew she was tiny, and the toys he bought were never appropriate: a two-wheel bicycle when the child wasn’t even a year old and only later a rag doll that cried when you pressed its chest.
“It’s best not to marry,” concluded Nina. “Besides, marriage doesn’t suit our age, isn’t that so?”
She had risen and was pacing back and forth. Every now and then she’d stop for a minute in front of a photograph or a book in the bookcase, which she would pull out just enough so that she could read the title. For one moment she bent down to smell a rose and her breathing was loud, exaggeratedly loud. Similarly, she took big steps as if to hide the fact that she didn’t have long legs. All of her movements, even the smallest, showed a studied naiveté, an affected simplicity. Her hair, straight and shiny, quite thin, wrapped around her face making a circle. Only at the temples was it thick, making her forehead appear narrower there.
“I’ve been dancing a lot recently,” she said out of the blue. “But it bores me. The Vita Nuova,” she said, pulling a book off the shelf. “I don’t understand why Dante wrote such a thing. How he meets his beloved and what he feels each time he sees her, over and over again from beginning to end. The only original thing about it is that fatal number in Beatrice’s life, the number nine. Nine . . .”
Nina looked into the distance for a moment.
“Nine is three times three,” said the old man.
“And it’s not that I want to go dancing,” continued Nina after she had put the book back in its place. “Different friends are always dragging me off. At times I feel as if I was destined for something more serious.”
“But dance can be something very serious,” said the old man, laughing. “When I was studying medicine in Vienna I was in love with a woman. The most serious moments of my life were the moments I spent dancing with her.”
He paused for a bit and then continued, always laughing. “She was beautiful, very pale with deep green eyes. One night, I remember, I was on call at the hospital, and she sent me an invitation to the opera, saying that she would be sitting next to me. I thought I was dreaming; she had always refused to go out with me. I got dressed and went to the opera and waited and waited . . . She must be inside, I thought. I went and sat in my seat. The first act finished without her coming, then the second . . . I got up and left, searched all over the city on foot; it was dawn when I reached the hospital. The next day she wrote, ‘I came for the third act. You should have waited.’”
I heard his words the way one hears sounds just before falling asleep. The same sweet vagueness. And perhaps because I didn’t try to understand their meaning I will always remember the feeling they gave me, in the same way that I won’t forget Nina’s or the old man’s posture, the way they moved, pronounced their words, their looks, their tone of voice.
My curiosity and interest in Nina grew out of the uneasy feeling she gave me. She was acting. That was clear. She was even acting when she opened and closed her eyelids or breathed. And she wasn’t beautiful, with such a big mouth and eyes so far apart. Her chatter, which on the surface seemed varied, was really quite insipid. In the middle of talking her voice would suddenly slow down and take on a plaintive tone. That was when you wanted to hit her. And I would wonder how it was that she seemed so charming if her legs were short, her body, bony, her face, ugly, and her voice, so plaintive. Because the fact remained, Nina was an attractive woman. Even if I tried to convince myself that she wasn’t, that it was all in my imagination, I still couldn’t take my eyes off the way she brushed her hair back, or touched various things with that affected freedom of hers, nor could I stop listening to that unpleasant voice of hers. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was whether that charm would have existed if she hadn’t met Andreas. I wondered whether the way he looked at her, the things he told her, and his touch hadn’t somehow been incorporated into her being and that her charm was now a reflection of his treatment of her.
I would imagine him standing tall on the deck of his ship giving orders, while all around him waves rose like mountains and the wind blew fiercely. He would be looking straight ahead, his collar turned up of course, and his arms folded across his chest. He would stand with his legs wide apart so he wouldn’t lose his balance, like a mast immovable in its base that nonetheless follows the rhythm of the waves, tossing this way and that, he would sway without changing positions, an inseparable part of the ship.
I also thought of him fighting enemy planes, the flames dancing across the deck. That had happened, it really had; the old man had read it to me from the journal. It was when Andreas was transporting ammunition from Bordeaux to Barcelona during the Spanish war. “Hell couldn’t be worse,” he wrote of the Spanish harbor. “Poverty and misery know no bounds here. People dressed in rags, hungry. Women, babies in their arms, waiting at the docks to give themselves to the sailors in exchange for a bit of bread. I told my men all hell would let loose if they took advantage of these women. Some gave the women bread anyway.” And further on he wrote, “I met Pillar. She has the blackest eyes and the most beautiful legs, but no shoes. I promised to bring her some back from France on my next trip.”
It was on the next trip that they were bombed. Five planes attacked the ship Ilona, a hard battle. The ship was cut in half. The bow went down with the steering wheel. Andreas was acting drunk, so was the crew. They rushed around like demons amidst the flames, their voices wild. They called the enemy planes mosquitoes. Thus with their crazed courage they were able to chase away the planes; they even shot one down, and with a makeshift steering wheel and motor they got back to the Spanish harbor with half a boat. Everyone was very excited, the wounded Ilona became a legend, and Andreas was decorated with the highest medals.
“Even Pillar’s shoes were saved,” he wrote in his journal. “But unfortunately she can no longer wear them since her legs were cut off in the air raid. What a shame, such beauti
ful legs. When I saw her in the hospital . . .” At that point he started writing about something else, totally unrelated, about a new way of disembarking, if I remember correctly.
During those same days I said to David, “Would you fly a plane over my house and toss me love letters?” He laughed a lot. “Would you sail a ship across the seas, and when it was cut in two continue on?” He laughed even harder. “What fairy tales are these?” he cried out. I was serious though. It often happens now that I am serious and he is laughing, or I laugh when he is serious. This is a change from last year. David wants to see me all the time. He comes over often—and to think that I went on those silly walks last year with Petros just to make him jealous! There are times when I want to see him so badly that I have to cry. I don’t think Nina is right that love passes quickly. “It only lasts until you know each other well,” she says. “When you can wait for him without being anxious, without your heart beating faster, then it’s over, the mystery’s gone.”
On the other hand I see Marios and Maria. They have known each other since they were children and when they see each other their hearts don’t beat faster. But surely they are in love, in a different sort of way, perhaps in a dangerous way, since the strength of their tie depends on their testing it, fighting against it, and someone is always getting hurt, and they both suffer. But it is love, and then they have little Yannis.
I tried to tell this to Nina, but she insisted that love only exists when your heart beats faster and you tremble like a leaf.
“What do you think of Nikitas?” she asked then. And when I looked at her inquisitively, “Yes, I met him last summer, and I know you and your sisters have known him for a long time. He seems like an interesting type, eh? Or, to be more forthright, he’s at an interesting age, the age when boys become men. You see,” she added, turning to the old man with a smile that hid a certain bitterness, “I’ve begun robbing babes from the cradle. It’s just that I’m so worn-out . . . these past few years . . . Andreas . . .” Here her voice took on that plaintive quality. It became distant and melancholy. I almost felt sorry for her. The old man was smiling.
III. THE FEAST DAY OF PROFITIS ELIAS
“COME on in, ladies and gentlemen, come see the wondrous sight, the greatest scientific experiment, the amputated head that will answer all your questions.”
“The mad woman’s hair, the mad woman’s hair . . .”
“Come on in, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll also see the goat with two heads and four—no, not four but nine—legs, ladies and gentlemen, nine legs, not one less.”
“Young girls, widows, and married women, here we have Kostaki, the bird from Australia who will tell your fortune . . .”
Is David going to come?
The air is full of fireworks, noisemakers, voices; it’s always this way on the feast day of Profitis Elias. And in the church the priest recites the liturgy. The crowd extends all the way into the courtyard, and when it moves slightly from the door of the church you can smell incense, human breath, and melted candles.
Ruth finds Christian holidays very picturesque, so she’s always here for them. She never goes into the church, but she brings with her fireworks that turn the night into day, and all the kids go crazy. It gives her a rest from her own religion she says—only last week she had to climb Mount Parnitha. She stayed for twenty-four hours without eating or drinking. And besides, you have to be constantly thinking of the religious meaning of the day, to concentrate and be respectful, otherwise it doesn’t count. Mrs. Parigori never comes to feast days. Our goat Felaha is sick and lies around all day on the hay and sighs. And there’s Amalia waving from afar. She’s almost done with teacher’s college. As for Koula, she has chosen to become a dressmaker and already bends her waist as she walks, differently though than Mrs. Gekas, whose hips tremble as if she were a mare before an open meadow on a spring day. Every once in a while Felaha lets out a cry, a sad cry as if she were asking for help.
Petros pulls on my hand, “Come, let’s go to the raffle.”
And since I see David arriving with Mrs. Parigori leaning on his arm so that the uphill won’t tire her, “Margarita will hate me,” I say laughing, and I let him take my hand.
“It’s because she’s in love with me,” Petros says.
Really, all these things are very funny: the priest chanting, the smell of incense, and the venders who insist that you buy their plastic bracelets and pins and rings with red and green stones, and Amalia who looks at it all with longing even if she reads those books. Can you imagine if the trees started dancing imitating all the people turning this way and that as they chat? But those kind of things never happen. Too bad.
“Come on over, Kostaki, ladies and gentlemen, the bird from Australia will now tell the English lady’s future.”
“Laura, Laura, come and let the bird from Australia tell your fortune. I’ve been told I don’t have many more years to live,” Ruth shouts. “Isn’t it amusing?”
Mrs. Parigori, over at the café on the corner, refuses with a nod of her head. She’s probably worried Kostaki will give away her secrets. She has in front of her an ouzo that she drinks sip by sip, looking sometimes at David and sometimes into space so that she avoids looking at the festivities.
“What’s the matter, Laura? Are you day dreaming again?” David says, smiling.
He looks at her attentively while his hands play with an empty glass.
“David, won’t you come with us to the Great Monster Show?” I yell as we pass by.
Petros and Nikitas giggle.
“Katerina always acts as if she’s drunk,” says Mrs. Parigori.
Petros and I buy a noisemaker and drive everybody crazy. I like life a lot. Margarita comes over.
“You certainly don’t have any manners,” she says.
David sneaks looks in our direction. He smiles when I turn toward him, but I know how dark his eyes really are. The other day in the olive grove he scared me, and then afterward I kept thinking of him, more than ever before. Perhaps we’ll go again to the olive grove after lunch when everyone else is sleeping.
“What do you mean no manners?” I ask Margarita, and laugh. Oh God, do I laugh.
Here comes Infanta. It’s as if a path opens before her. She looks at everyone with indifference. She is wearing the blue dress we bought in Athens. Her eyes are unusually bright. Nikitas seems troubled. She comes up to him, though, and greets him.
Maria is sitting on the stone bench outside the church. Nikos and Stephanos come up to her.
“How are you doing, Maria?”
They tell a few jokes and then ask about the child.
“We’ve certainly changed a lot,” says Stephanos.
“Yeah, we’ve changed,” says Maria.
“Have you heard about Emilios and Eleni getting married?” Nikos asks.
“Ah . . .”
“Your eyes, Maria, are more beautiful than ever,” Stephanos says.
She smiles. It is really lucky that the little one, Yannis, has her eyes and not Marios’s.
Why is Nikitas avoiding Infanta?
“Do you want to go to the shooting gallery?” she asks him.
He turns and looks at her surprised. It’s as if a lump has gotten stuck in his throat and he can’t say a word.
•
The truth is that the same morning strange things had happened. First of all, between the two stones of the well, there, where they always met, a flower had bloomed, a flower that looked like the sun and had many thorns. As they leaned down to look at it, their hair got all mixed up and they felt dizzy, as if they were losing blood. Infanta took a step backwards. Nikitas teased her—perhaps about her hair, which she had begun to wear tied back with a white ribbon. This look made her neck seem even freer, her profile even prouder; it was very annoying, more than when she jumped ditches without his help, or scampered over fences, or when she made Romeo leap over puddles by pressing slightly on his belly and they both seemed to be laughing in the air—yes, even the ho
rse was laughing.
Afterward, immediately afterward, Nikitas took a step forward and they came face to face. He put his hand on the back of her neck where the ribbon was tied, in a strange way, heavily, as if he wanted to make her kneel down in front of him; his eyes were shining, and his lips drew near hers, so near that they touched and . . .
Then Infanta, with the unruly gesture that horses make when you pull too hard on the reins, leaned down and abruptly turned her neck away. He was left with the white ribbon in his hand, unable to move. She was already running, her feet jumping over the thorny underbrush, her heart dancing, her lips pale, and the skin by her forehead and temples tight, making her eyes slant. For a moment she disappeared behind a tree, then she appeared again, then disappeared, and each time she was farther away.
When she felt that she was alone and that no one was watching her, there where the meadow begins and the trees stop, she collapsed on the ground beneath a pine with big branches and dense shade. Ever since she was a child she had especially loved this tree. If she happened to pass by there with her mother or sisters she would hang behind in order to touch its rough, dark brown trunk. In the summer she would search for cicadas in its branches.
Once she had an amazing dream as she lay there. She could never remember what it was about, whether it was about people, things, or clouds, only that when she woke up—she remembered this clearly—Jacob’s dream came to mind with the ladder resting on earth, ascending into the heavens, the angels climbing up and down. Her breath was unusually sweet. There was a wind, and the birds were singing, and she had thought that surely God was somewhere nearby.
In this way the tree became her secret. When she had first talked of it to Miranda, she trembled a bit—it was springtime and a slight breeze came through the window of their classroom. When they stopped being friends, the next spring, and she saw her sitting at Lina’s desk, she grew bitter and wished she could take back her words and everything she had said about the tree.
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