The old man coughed then and began to talk. Now I’ll finally learn, I said to myself, now I’ll learn. And I waited. Time passed. “I must go,” I finally heard Mother saying, “in order to get home before dark. Father was a bit dizzy this morning. It had me worried.”
“Any news?” she added a little later. “No,” answered the old man in a barely audible voice. Then they whispered something I couldn’t hear at all.
The door opened and closed. I was terribly disappointed. I had lost my one chance. I was very distracted as I listened to the end of the chapter from The Sea Captain, and when I arrived home, late, I was in a foul mood.
Everyone ran to welcome me, which was unusual for us. “Katerina, Katerina,” they shouted back and forth, embracing and kissing me. “Congratulations, congratulations.” Mother then took me by the arm and in a formal way told me, “Let’s go into the living room.” Her voice was emotional. “Turn on all the lights,” she continued, “even the little light over the piano.” She had sat down in an armchair, and as I stood there in front of her she clasped my two hands. Grandfather, Aunt Theresa, Infanta, and Maria were waiting in a circle. Marios was sitting a little farther back. Rodia came running in.
“My child,” said Mother, “I wish you every happiness. We all love you very much. David is a fine boy.”
I turned and looked at them all.
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” I whispered.
“He asked for your hand, silly girl, just an hour ago,” Maria said, and her voice reminded me of her voice as a girl. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”
I don’t understand what’s going on,” I said again, somewhat stubbornly.
“How could you not know what is going on,” said Aunt Theresa, “if we know—”
“That you like him,” added Mother, trying to keep up appearances.
“And that you go for walks together,” Aunt Theresa went on. “And how . . .”
“Oh my little bride, my little bride,” Rodia began to sing.
I felt my body tightening, tightening . . . Blood rushed to my head.
“But have you all gone mad?” I shouted.
Mother then changed her tone.
“How dare you speak that way?” she said coldly. “What do you mean you don’t understand? David came and asked for your hand in marriage. And we all know that you love each other, that you love him, that he loves you.”
“So you want to force me to marry him?” I shouted again.
Aunt Theresa raised her hands to the heavens as if to ask for help. Rodia still hadn’t caught on and was singing away, “My little bride, my little bride,” and wringing the end of her apron.
“So you’re going to force me to marry him?”
Mother then got really angry.
“You are impossible, and crazy. No one can get on with you.”
And saying that, she dropped my hands, got up from the armchair, and began pacing back and forth.
“But all parents are like that,” I continued. “They never want true happiness for their children.”
Everyone looked aghast. Aunt Theresa almost fainted. Maria lowered her head, perhaps she was thinking that she would some day hear the same from her children. As for Mother, her eyes got red, a tear was just visible in the corner, but before it could run down her cheek, it disappeared.
Then I began to sob, such sobs . . .
“I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what I have,” I shouted. “Punish me, Mother, do whatever you want to me.”
“Calm down, child,” Mother said.
And after she had managed to hide her trembling hands, she lifted her head and said, “You are free to decide as you wish.”
That’s when I realized I had to shut myself up in my room for a week to calm down, and if it was possible, to find my soul like the hermits in the desert because there are times now when my own self so shocks and horrifies me.
VI. MOTHER’S SECRET (THE SEQUEL)
FROM UP here where I am I can see the sun come up from behind Pendeli a little later each day, and go down behind Elikona a little earlier each afternoon. Summer is almost over. Like a day when it’s almost over, the late afternoon just before dusk. The shadows in the garden have changed, even the shadow of the house is different, more beautiful this season, longer and thinner.
I picked up a book forgetting that I was only supposed to be thinking about David and everything he had said. About the movements of the stars, which have been calculated so precisely that we can tell the exact moment when a comet will appear a thousand years before it happens. About the constellations, which we also know a lot about, even those farthest away. About the theory of male and female constellations. Oh my God, how strange that even in the sky there are male and female domains.
From one of my windows the sky is milky white; from another, pale blue. I see the dust rising from the airplanes over at the airport. I am sorry I have cut myself off like this. But now that I told everyone I would, there’s no getting out of it. Besides I’ll gain some respect from them this way and I like that. Especially from Rodia. I know that because yesterday she came and told me various stories about real saints who go for years without seeing the light of day. Of course, God also gave us the sun, but it’s saintly to live alone away from other people, Rodia said.
I reminded her then of the bird that the neighborhood kids had chased with a hose and wounded on the wing which I had brought to my room so the cats wouldn’t get it—last spring it must have been—and then it had committed suicide. It went and banged its head against the wall once, twice, three times, over and over, till it fell dead.
“I’m talking to you about saints and you go on about birds,” Rodia said, somewhat hurt. Then she added that she would certainly go to Ikaria this year. For twenty years she had been threatening us all that she would up and leave for Ikaria. She liked to hear us beg, “Don’t leave Rodia, my dear Rodoula, my Roditsa. How could we live without you?”
The switches from the osier bushes and the reeds grow soft in the stream, how could he not notice this, how could he only care about his thousand-page book. “He’s the intellectual type,” said Ruth. But he also knows how to kiss, and he gets all confused when he strokes my hair and looks into my eyes. I love him very much at those moments. If I married him we’d have all the time in the world for looking into each other’s eyes.
I can’t sleep, it must be past midnight. Grandfather’s over his dizziness, but it scared him. I can’t sleep. My eyes are wide open, distracted, fixed on the top of the eucalyptus tree that fills my window. The tree is dark, darker than night.
And suddenly it is all lit up. Someone has turned on the light on the first floor. I leap out of bed, lean out the window. The light is on in the living room. Just as I am, in my nightgown, like a sleepwalker, I put on my sandals, throw something over my shoulders, go out into the corridor and down the stairs. Perhaps Mother is entertaining Mr. Louzis at this hour, and perhaps . . . I better watch out for the last few steps, they creak horribly, and across the way is the living room. I must slip by like a shadow, like a ghost.
My nightgown gets caught between my legs. I almost tumble down the stairs. I catch myself and go outside. It is cool and the birds are flying low. Not that they scare me, the whiteness of my nightgown is more frightening.
Mother is alone. She is sitting at the desk. Before her a pile of letters lies scattered. She writes for a few moments. Then her left hand rests on the envelopes, fingering them thoughtfully, while her right holds her head; her elbow resting on the desk.
She must be crying. I can see her rubbing her eyes with her fists the way children do, hunting for her handkerchief. Yes, she’s crying, a sob shakes her shoulders, she cries freely, as I have never seen her cry before. And she can’t find her handkerchief. Every now and then she looks again for it in her pocket, hoping that she didn’t search well enough the last time. She wants to blow her nose now; the tears fall on the desk, on the letters, the ink must ha
ve run on some of them. She looks again in her pockets and finds nothing. She gets up and goes out of the living room. It’s the first time her face looks so naked to me.
Who knows how I ended up over by the desk, how my trembling fingers opened up one of the envelopes, the letters dancing before my eyes: “My dear child, I would very much like you to send me, along with the photographs of little Yannis that you promised, a picture of the house and cistern and the meadow. If I remember correctly there are three pines by the gate and they are the tallest on the property. Because as the years go by, my memory of that part fades. Each day that passes I forget something and this is so painful to me . . .”
The Polish grandmother! . . . The Polish grandmother! . . . I can’t breathe. I want to shout but I can’t. I feel as if I had a knot in my chest, in my heart, in my throat. The Polish grandmother! . . . Oh my God . . . So that was my mother’s secret—they were writing each other all these years, maybe even since Mother was a child. What a passionate soul Mother has, and here she never shows it, instead she pretends that her only interest in life is setting the table with the utmost care, and making jam, orange marmalade in the winter, apricot in the spring, and cherry in the summer . . .
My eye falls on the lines she wrote just a minute ago. She is writing about me: how I behaved, and how I hurt her. Oh, Mother, will you ever forgive me? Why must you hide, Mother, why must you hide your whole life long, like Infanta, like me, like all of us? We are all hiding from each other, I from David, David from Ruth and Mrs. Parigori, Mrs. Parigori from Mr. Parigori, all of us, all of us are hiding from each other.
I open two or three more envelopes and cast a glance quickly across the pages. So that is it, she poured all the passion that gathered and settled in her when her marriage failed and she had to live alone without a man into these letters. Whatever sorrows and joys she had experienced and even those she hadn’t but wished she could have. And I didn’t know what to look at first, the letters of the Polish grandmother or Mother’s.
I am about to open another envelope when I hear Mother’s footsteps, regular and calm. I vanish through the balcony door like lightning and run into the garden. I am very cold and my cheeks are burning.
Mother sits down again at the desk. Her eyes are dry now. She is holding her white handkerchief crumpled in her hand. She throws a glance around the room somewhat nervously as if she feels the atmosphere has changed. She then puts her handkerchief back in her pocket and continues what she was doing; she puts each letter in its envelope, piling them one on top of the other and then tying them up . . .
Oh, Mother, if you only knew, oh, Polish Grandmother, if you only knew, how much I love you both, how much . . .
•
And I still know nothing about your life, Polish Grandmother, only that you are anxious to remember this place here. Rodia used to say that you left no part unexplored, by foot or horse, and that as soon as the sun had risen you were out in the meadow in your robe, which used to get torn by the underbrush and thyme, and you needed a new robe every year, and Grandfather would complain. And I, who have never traveled and know only this place, I could tell you where each stone is, each tree, the colors that the water turns in the cistern with each change of weather. You should see, Polish Grandmother, on really hot days, when you lie out on the ledge of the cistern and close your eyes, and then open them a little later, how a thousand little suns leap up and down before your eyes and all around water is reflected on the trunks of the pines, trembling and golden, like little waves, and everything glows, everything, and it makes you want to laugh . . . You should see the trees in my hiding place: how they’ve grown, their branches linked together, the shade so dense, so dense and refreshing in there. It is a good place for thinking, for philosophizing, as Rodia says. . . . You should see the color of the newly plowed field, fresh and virginal. Whatever you plant grows so quickly, doubling, tripling in no time; you’d think the mad woman had a hand in it . . . You should see, Polish Grandmother, you should see . . .
I have not gone to Lisbon or Algeria, nor to Madeira, nor any other place. I only know them from the map. You, my Polish grandmother, have gone all over the world, you and Andreas. That’s why places fade from your memory and you confuse one with another . . . Yes, the three pines are in front of the gate and they are the tallest on the property. We cut a lot of branches from one to lighten it. Also, because we needed wood for the stove.
And I will not stay here forever, Polish Grandmother, sometime I’ll set out for a tour of the world. And I might even marry, and shut myself up in that gray house of David’s with the red bricks around the windows and the fields that produce thousands of pounds of potatoes each year and so many onions. Not that David needs to cultivate potatoes. His father is a shipowner, but it’s just what’s done around here, everyone competes to see whose fields yield the most. And of course Mr. Louzis always wins because he has more land than anyone. Even his gardener, Kostas the cripple, has become rich, and all the other gardeners are jealous. And his daughter is not at all surprised when Mr. Louzis leans over and kisses her on the neck as she prunes the roses.
I’ll go on a tour of the world and I will meet all those people that the old man describes in his books, you and Andreas and all the others. How lives intertwine—Infanta’s with Nikitas’s, Nikitas’s with Nina’s, Nina’s with Andreas’s, Andreas’s with . . .
I will marry David, I love him and I will marry him. Then I will tell him to muss up my hair, all day long I will tell him to muss up my hair, that’s how we will pass our days. And we’ll stare into each other’s eyes for hours on end. And when he gets into that strange confused state of his and wants to kiss me, I will let him because, after all, he will be my husband. And then I’ll ask him to muss up my hair some more and that’s how we will pass our days.
My God, how low the birds are flying . . . they must be owls. The tragic sound of their voice tortures the soul but somehow one needs this song, and not the nightingale’s. Especially on such a dark night. Now, with the wind whistling in the pines, the bats come out in groups, making circles that are in such harmony with one another that you could swear they had plotted their arcs ahead of time, and then they turn and fly one behind the other in a row. The whistling increases, and so does the wind, the same way the sea gets angry and crashes against the rocks, filling the hollows, and each wave is bigger and stronger than the next. All the lights are off. People are sleeping. Maria’s house is quiet, quiet and dark. Only the lamp on Mother’s desk is lit. Mother’s also awake, like me, like Grandfather, whose light may not be on, but surely he’s not asleep, and like Infanta.
Infanta can’t sleep. When I go upstairs on tiptoe I hear her crying softly. A few minutes later when I am in my room I hear the last door in the hall opening, Aunt Theresa’s. Her uneven gait makes the floor creak and you’re sure she’ll fall, her feet will get tangled in her nightgown, something will happen, and she will fall. But she makes it to Infanta’s door, hesitates, and then goes in.
She is talking to Infanta now. These days she never lets her out of her sight. I can hear her whispering but I can’t make out what they are saying. A shutter is banging in the wind. The whispering stops. Then it starts again.
When I went out into the hall and stood outside Infanta’s door—that’s just how it happened, I wasn’t trying to overhear; besides, how are you supposed to sleep on a night like this?—I heard her saying to Infanta in a worried voice, “What did he want coming here again this afternoon?”
“He came to see me. He wants to see me . . .”
Infanta was crying as she spoke.
“I hope you treated him the way he deserves to be treated. That you kept your dignity and pride. Like we said, like—”
“I told him that he must not come back, that I didn’t want to see him, that I would never see him again . . .”
Then Aunt Theresa’s voice got very official and serious: “Now you are free, Infanta, free to reach that state of perfection.”
And then, “How about we take up that peacock embroidery again tomorrow? It kind of got put aside these past few months.”
•
And that night I understood why Mother went to visit the old man. The Polish grandmother sent her letters to his house, it was clear; besides that was the address on the envelope.
The next day I was in such a hurry to see him that I couldn’t wait until the afternoon. Already at breakfast I couldn’t sit still in my chair; I took a sip of milk and then got up to get something, sat down, took a bite of bread, went out on the veranda. Mother looked at me angrily. She didn’t like my manners. “It’s because she was locked up in her room for a week,” said Aunt Theresa as if to excuse me. Her saccharine voice got on my nerves. I must take Infanta aside and tell her to stop listening to Aunt Theresa.
It’s true, though, on Saturday I locked myself up and today it was Saturday again. Everyone was waiting for my decision. They hung on my every word, sneaking looks at me. But they were all proud and weren’t about to ask. Only Rodia smiled at me in a knowing, teasing way. As far as she was concerned there was no doubt. I was in love with David, love-struck as she put it, and I would marry him. I couldn’t accept this right away because I was still a girl and that’s the way girls are, that’s the way they should be about marriage, slightly ashamed. Mother didn’t appear at all curious. She was dignified as always. I looked at her, at her tired eyes.
Three Summers Page 24