When she arrived at the wooden gate, before she opened it, she stood for a moment to catch her breath. Her face was sweaty even though it was cold. I think I’m pregnant again, she had thought then, even though Yannis was only four months old.
She also thought that no one should know that she had gone to church, that it should stay a secret the way the strange dreams she had as a child were secret, the ones that made her blush and shiver. All of that was mysterious, and the bowing down in church that made one feel so strange.
How nice it is to have a baby sleeping in the next room . . . Only every once in a while does he cry in the night. Perhaps a bad dream. Marios says she’s to blame when he cries out like that because she talks to him too much during the day. “Children get nervous from too much talk,” he says.
Marios has become very serious. His words are measured and he doesn’t hang out with Nikitas, Emilios, or the others anymore. He doesn’t have any time; he’s at the hospital all day, leaving early in the morning with his father and then returning late at night. In the car Mr. Parigori told Marios about his past life, his professional struggles, his love for Laura. Marios would then tell him of his ambitions and how he had fallen in love with Maria when he was only a child. “Perhaps she loved me back then, too, but she didn’t show it.” And he thought about how he had suffered, the way she had acted with Nikos, with Stephanos and the other boys. He had seen her kissing Stephanos.
Life was different now, very different, now her devotion seemed excessive and weighed on him. It was as if since she had denied herself the rest and put up such boundaries, she wanted what was left all to herself, like the child she had borne and the others she would bear—hers, all hers. As he was dressing in the morning her gaze annoyed him. He thought about the thin, blond nurse who would say to him in a high voice, “Mr. Parigori, you will be even greater than your father.” Maria never said things like that, she just looked after him, his food, his clothes, as if he were a baby like Yannis. She wanted to have her way in those matters. But she still had a habit of asking how his day went at the hospital. What did he do? Whom did he meet? In particular about the women. Were there any beautiful patients, any extremely beautiful patients? He couldn’t describe how it was at the hospital, it was something very different from this life here, she wouldn’t understand. He couldn’t tell her that the lady with appendicitis chose him of all the doctors the day she had pain in her kidney. She took his hand and brought it to her heart, just above her breast, and squeezed it, saying, “My doctor, I’m in pain, in pain, in pain.” Nor could he tell her about the blond nurse. So what was there left to say? Nothing. There was nothing to say.
The first few months of Maria’s pregnancy were tiring, strange. She was anxious. Even her voice changed. She remembered the outing to Parnitha last February with a group of doctors and their wives. The car had to stop because the road was blocked by snow and they were obliged to go on foot. Marios happened to go ahead with one of the other wives and she was left behind walking slowly, feeling heavy, especially on the uphill parts. On the way down she fell behind again. Marios stopped to help her so she wouldn’t slip on the slope. He put out his hand to hold her arm and she broke into tears, for no reason, there in the middle of the snow. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is anything wrong?” She said that she had once been hit by a snowball in the eye, a really hard one, and that she had just remembered it; that she had pulled a muscle getting out of the car, just a little, nothing serious, but she felt so heavy, she didn’t know what was wrong; and why couldn’t she keep up with the rest of them on the uphill parts, like him and then that woman who seemed to have such a light step. She didn’t know what was the matter, the snowball had been hard, and now that she thought about it, it had been painful—very painful. And she cried in the middle of the snow and Marios didn’t know what to do, how to behave.
Later she would have bouts of melancholy where she would sit around silently, and when you tried to say anything to comfort her she would answer, “But I am happy.” The agony of happiness, Marios would think, and he would remember the great joys of his life: the day he graduated, his wedding, the birth of his first child. “Then why such a face?” he would ask brusquely. He wanted to escape, but from what? He wasn’t sure. “Why are you just sitting there?” Maria turned and gave him a long, thoughtful look. His words must have hurt. Well, so much the better. “Don’t you understand that your expression annoys me, your mood?” He raised his voice. She tried to smile, her lips trembling.
In the morning before he left for work he was nervous. He was always sure that he was late and that it was everyone else’s fault. He would get cross with Spyridoula because the milk didn’t boil fast enough. This bothered Maria and she would raise her voice, saying something to hurt him. Marios would then respond in the same way, and so on. These scenes always left her feeling slightly sad, a drop of bitterness in her day; and drops accumulate over time, the way salt from the sea settles grain by grain and forms a layer.
Then evening would come. Oh, in the evening he was happy and calm as if the stillness that reigned in the garden at that hour had taken over him as well. The day was over. He would go take a peek at little Yannis, who was sleeping. He laughed, told jokes, and made Maria very happy. And at night when he felt her sleeping in the next bed, his love for her would grow and overflow and he would want to wake her and caress her face, her body and her feet—out of gentleness of course, not the passion he’d once felt. He especially wanted to caress her belly, which was large for the second time, and if it was possible to feel with his palm the heartbeat of his second child, the way she said she could.
EXCERPTS FROM MRS. PARIGORI’S DIARY:
September 2nd. My dressmaker told me that if I was just a little thinner from my waist down, I’d look twenty. I went on a very strict diet, but my build is to blame. Even though I’ve lost weight, my waist and thighs are still heavy. My skin, though, is very nice now. Yannis says it’s in its second bloom. Probably because I eat a great deal of fruit and tomatoes, and avoid salty things. The little bit of lipstick I use is becoming.
Last night I had insomnia and I read a whole book. I read until the sun came up. The book said that woman has two different and contradictory desires, on the one hand to be free and on the other to submit. In Maria, obviously the second has won out. As for me, I’m not sure. It’s as if the two sides are still fighting it out and that in the end neither one will win. That must be why I am never content.
Perhaps this is the last time I will fall in love. I am almost forty-five. When our eyes meet, mine grow dark. “What’s the matter, Laura, are you dreaming again?” he asked at the feast day of Profitis Elias, and his look was deep, so deep, and I said . . . As for his hands, his hands, ah, what can I say? I can never get enough of looking at his hands. I adore them.
Mrs. Parigori once said, “There is nothing as exasperating as conjugal bliss.”
V. DAVID’S PROPOSAL
MARIA sleeps calmly now. As soon as she falls into bed she sleeps a sweet, dreamless sleep. She remembers with a certain nostalgia those sleepless nights when she was a girl and when she was first married.
“These days I don’t sleep a wink,” I told her the other day. She said it was normal for my age.
Maria has no inkling of my worries, which at times reach such a level. The day before yesterday I saw Andreas’s ghost right in my very own room. He was wearing his naval uniform, and as he passed he leaned down to look at a jar of grape jam that was on the bureau. But I shouldn’t be seeing ghosts. Only children, they say, see ghosts. Their soul is not yet completely tied to their body, so they can communicate with that other world. Besides, Andreas is not dead, and only dead people can be ghosts. But I’m sure he leaned over to look at the jam, and he was wearing his uniform.
I also hear strange cries at night and see lights going on and off. One of them must be the light in David’s observatory because at night he writes his book, which is already
a thousand pages. As for the cries, lately there’s a lot of quarreling over at Kapatos’s because Koula has been flirting with a young man after sewing class and comes home late, and since she is still young, who knows what could happen, she could even end up with a child and not know what’s hit her.
All these things are linked together and I want to know how. That’s why I’m so anxious. Also, I want to be able to describe the brilliance of the world just before the sun sets, when it falls on the grass, and how green the grass looks, and all the other beautiful things I’ve seen, for it’s a shame for them to last only as long as I am looking at them.
“To be able to feel the essence of things and to be able to express it in words. To express their shape, their color and their sound.” The old man had written that in one of his books. He writes about lives that are intertwined, and his main hero now is his son Andreas. “He has lied ever since he was little.” That’s how one chapter begins, and then it goes on to tell of how Andreas, because of his cunning, was able to lead a group of Jews to Palestine. The British weren’t allowing any Jews to enter Palestine, and there were captains who collected huge sums from the poor Jews with promises that they would take them there, and then after sailing for days and months they would let them off somewhere else. They even said that one captain drowned a thousand and pretended it was a shipwreck. So Andreas, as soon as he arrived in Palestinian waters, knowing that no ship had managed to disembark in the harbor, unloaded all the rescue boats and ordered everyone into them; then signaling for help, he took the ship and fled. This left the British in a difficult position. They couldn’t leave the people in the boats, nor could they send them back, nor could they drown them. So the Jews landed safely.
Certainly the way the old man writes about these things is quite different. It sends shivers down your spine to hear him read, something like awe, and you can only think of the world and all its brilliance. His heroes come to life before your eyes. As if you had opened a door and there they were each with their own particular walk and smile. You’re almost scared one will come too near and touch your hand or try to caress your hair. This is also the way they appear to him at night before he sleeps, whether he likes it or not, and they insist on keeping him company, never giving him any peace. Each one with his own ideas and expectations, one accusing him that he didn’t do a good enough job creating him, the other that he gave him too small a role, always leaving the old man feeling guilty. The happiest heroes are the ones that die, he says; it’s that final experience that their soul thirsts for. The dead man is wise in the eyes of the living and perfect, like a precious stone worked to the point where no chisel could improve it.
“I also feel a thirst for death when I see that bright red rose bush in the sunlight.” Listening to the old man speak like this I think of Grandfather, who is scared of death. He can’t bear to hear of animals dying or plants wilting. The strange thing is that the vagueness Grandfather used to have in his face and in all his gestures has started to fade. Also his gait is unstable. He seems uncertain. His features are changing, finishing themselves off. His hair, which was not exactly white or black, has suddenly become all white, the wrinkles on his forehead, on his cheeks, and around his mouth have grown deeper, final. Before, when he looked around and his cool, absentminded gaze would fix on a plate or a piece of furniture, it was as if he were asking where these things came from and what they wanted. Aunt Theresa would also do this. Now, though, his gaze doesn’t wander. Yes, his face was taking its final form, and that scared me because when it had taken that form, Grandfather would die.
Maria can’t see such things, nor would she bother about them if she could. It’s as if she has forgotten about all of us. Just as you see her coming toward the house, she disappears. It’s been such a long time since we sat together at the pavilion amidst the jasmine. The other day I tried nonetheless to get her to listen to me, her and Infanta. I told them how I had seen Mother going up Othonos Street, and how I had followed her, and how I had seen her lift the latch of that house. Infanta got up and left before I had finished my story—they say Nikitas is with Nina for good. Everyone has seen them together. As for Maria, after she had heard my story to the end, she smiled. “I don’t see anything mysterious,” she said. “That man must be an acquaintance of Mother’s and she went to visit him. It’s very simple.” Then I got angry. I yelled down to Infanta, who was strolling a little ways away. I told them neither of them were worthy of such secrets, that even a person of normal intelligence, not as smart as us, would understand that something was going on, that there was a connection between the crumpled piece of paper that Mother had clasped in her palm and the old man. Didn’t they want to know why she shut herself up in the living room for hours, why she never spoke to us of the old man. “You certainly don’t deserve to hear such things,” I told them, “and I’ll never speak to you again of these matters.”
The funny thing was that now I was the one hiding from Mother. I would go up the hill as if I had business in Kifissia, and then head up there, taking all sorts of precautions. When I lifted the latch I would look around carefully. I went to visit the old man often. I liked listening to him talk, read. I even liked to look at the papers scattered on his desk and the straight row of books on his book shelf. All these things, though, increased my anxiety. This man had found the link I was looking for.
He also wrote about a well eighty meters deep that Andreas used to leap across when he was a child just to see if he could make it. And how he never studied in school but would beat up all the kids until he was finally expelled. And the same thing happened at cadet training camp—he was forever laying into someone—so he was dismissed and his future was in danger, when he happened to save the daughter of the commander-in-chief, whom he found drowning in the sea, and they forgave him. And then later as captain—his achievements, his bravery, his recklessness. “You struggled and put up with a great deal on my behalf,” he wrote in his journal to his father. “Now I hope you can take satisfaction in my achievements: by the grace of God, I command a ship.”
And then there’s David, who’s always walking up and down in the meadow, and I have to hide from him as well. And if he doesn’t find me at home he interrogates me later:
“Where were you yesterday afternoon?”
“On a walk.”
“Where?”
“A walk. I don’t remember where.”
Then he looks worried and tries to light a cigarette, but he can’t find his lighter in his pocket . . .
“If you were an astrologist you would know where I’d been,” I told him one afternoon, laughing, and I ran off and he ran after me and we ended up hand in hand under a pine. It was very nice—I love David, I love him very much.
Andreas is the freest of men, and that’s because he has no idea what “tied-down” means. He doesn’t even feel bound to his father—only in his journal does he show him any tenderness—nor to his child. Unfeeling and unscrupulous, says Nina.
After we had been sitting under the tree for quite a while and we were very close to each other David said, “Katerina, I’m going to make some serious decisions.”
“I hate serious decisions,” I told him, and left abruptly.
Andreas is both the freest of men and the craziest. He does not know what life is, but he is life itself. He has no imagination, but everything he does exceeds one’s wildest dreams. He may never have thought about how wide the world is, but he measures it every time he travels the sea, he measures it with his body and soul. The waves break across the deck, the foam rolls in, while he, unmoved, sways this way and that like the mast. The Sea Captain. That’s the title the old man has given his book. He very much doubts Andreas will ever read it.
All these things are linked together, and I must find out how. The way Kapatos spits twice on the floor when he gets excited, the way I laugh loudly and sometimes for no reason feel so sad, the way Mrs. Gekas’s hips wobble when she comes down the hill on Aniksi Avenue, and Grandfather’
s face changes shape, and Nikitas doesn’t wear blue shirts anymore, and Mr. Louzis is hopelessly in love with Mother.
Mr. Louzis has been coming over in the afternoons again. The pebbles in the garden grind under his heavy step and Grandfather was obliged to trim the branches of the pistachio trees along the path because they were suffering so from Mr. Louzis’s abrupt movements every time he changed his walking stick from one hand to the other, paying no attention to whether he hit the branches or not.
Anyhow, I will think about all this when I lock myself up in my room for a week. Things have reached such a pitch, my life has come to such a difficult place, that it is the only thing left for me to do in order to calm down and make the necessary decisions. If I could I would go to the desert like the hermits; there, they say, a person can concentrate better, find himself, the way a diver finds the bottom of the sea. But let me put things down in the order they happened.
Yesterday afternoon when the old man was reading me a chapter of The Sea Captain I suddenly saw Mother’s green dress and her shoes coming right toward me the way a train in the movies gets bigger and bigger, filling up the whole screen. With one leap I found myself in the next room. She was already knocking at the door.
I heard my mother greeting the old man in such a friendly and polite way: “I brought you a jar of grape jam.” And I waited. The moment had come for me to learn everything.
I heard her talking about the apricot trees, which bore a lot of fruit this year, and about the tomatoes, which caught some disease. About the rabbits that died and nobody knew why—did the cat drown them? Was it the male rabbit? And about Felaha, who got better, from all the care, of course. About little Yannis, who has started to stand and puts everything in his mouth, even stones, and about Maria, who would soon give birth to her second. “If it’s a girl she’ll have my name,” she said. “If it’s a boy they’ll call him Miltos. Not that Miltos has shown any interest. He would never let on, but in any case it’s the proper thing to do.” About Infanta, who has been so moody recently, and about me and how anxious I’ve been and how I have a difficult personality. “Luckily she doesn’t lie anymore,” Mother said. “She used to spin such tales as a child . . .”
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