Three Summers

by Margarita Liberaki

  “Will you just stay put, Katerina? You’re making me dizzy,” said Mother.

  It was as if the empathy I had for her last night suddenly dissolved and I became more and more stubborn, set on learning about her secret life. I thought of saying something to hurt her. Instead I decided to act totally indifferent—that’s what really annoyed her—and so I kept on sitting, getting up, going out on the veranda, coming back in . . .

  Only years later would I realize how much my love for my mother was like a lover’s: the stubbornness, the moments of hatred, and the limitless tenderness afterwards. And how my love for my father was the love of mankind.

  “You are impossible!” my mother screamed. “Impossible. I pity the man you marry.”

  I then felt like laughing. Poor David! And the way I was holding my cup it slipped from my hand, fell onto the saucer, tipping upside down, spilling all over the tablecloth. I couldn’t contain my laughter. All I could say is “It’s nerves,” and I ran out into the garden.

  What a beautiful day! The lavender has dried up but the scent is still there. The roses are blooming again, and the chrysanthemums for the first time. The bees are tricked into thinking it is still summer. But the cicadas have stopped singing; only their shells are left scattered at the base of the tree trunks.

  I found the old man writing The Sea Captain. He was seated at his desk in front of an open window, from which he could see the red rose bush that sometimes made him long for death. I began calling him from afar. He raised his head and smiled; under his thick white eyebrows his eyes were smiling.

  “So you discovered the secret?”

  And when I looked at him in amazement.

  “One only has to look at you—that triumphant air . . . Your neck is at least two inches taller than usual. As for your eyes . . . Her neck too used to stretch when she was proud of something, just the way yours does.”

  He then began to tell me about the Polish grandmother, slowly and in a soft voice at the beginning, but as he went on he grew more excited . . .

  He met her around the same time Grandfather had—he and Grandfather were cousins—and both of them fell in love with her. She was beautiful, ah, so beautiful, no words do her justice.

  “I met her first in Vienna. Remember how I told you about a lady who invited me to the opera and then made me wait two acts? When she came to Athens all the men fell for her and all the women hated her. It wasn’t only her beauty, but her laugh so lively and spontaneous it filled up the space around her—it could fill up a whole meadow—and then, I’m not sure how it would happen, but each man thought she had paid special attention to him. After a dance everyone left with the hope that she was in love with him. She had such a free, open way of walking, of holding her head . . . and when she scowled with astonishment because someone was rude to her . . . She thought it was extraordinary when people didn’t agree with her, when they didn’t anticipate her slightest desire. And if you tried to give her any advice she would get angry, her neck stretching up and her eyes glaring. I remember how they would get greener and how they had a little of the evil of cat’s eyes when you wake them by petting them from the head down. She loved life passionately, obstinately, as if she wanted to swallow it all, every second of it. Nothing was enough for her. She was never at peace. You should have seen her ride a horse, even the wildest, how she would run in the forest, how she would swim . . . Even in the winter she would go swimming, and then her laugh would echo strangely on the beach. And if she fell from a horse she never hurt herself. She never got tired swimming. It was as if she had a mysterious pact with nature. And because of this nothing scared her. Wherever she went, Dimitris and I would accompany her. She always wanted both of us, she said it amused her the way we looked alike—in truth we didn’t look at all alike. She seemed to prefer me, though. ‘You should drop medicine and write novels,’ she would say. I had just published my first book. ‘As for Dimitris, tending the garden is plenty for him.’ We had both fallen for her and this kindled a new animosity between us. The scales tipped one way one day and the other way the next. There was no time to be happy because of something she had said before she was saying the same thing to the other, making him happy instead. Then things would switch back again. It was enough to wear one down. It ruined our friendship forever. Suddenly one day she told me she was going to marry Dimitris and that she had decided this long ago. In the meantime I also got married and Andreas was born . . . I didn’t see them for years. I just heard that she would go to Athens for days, for weeks, and that Dimitris was unhappy . . .”

  •

  The old man stopped talking for a while. Then he said, “The Sea Captain is going well. It’s moving along.”

  His voice sounded strong and young. Then he lowered it again.

  “I didn’t see them, but I didn’t stop asking after them. The tiniest detail of their life was interesting to me. I found out about the birth of Theresa and Anna . . .”

  He stopped again. His voice was no longer animated, nor his eyes.

  “No one could decide whether she was good or bad . . . Once I remember when we were walking in the woods, her dog, a magnificent German shepherd who adored her, went after a chicken. She called it once, twice, three times, but he didn’t listen to her. She left Dimitris and me behind and ran to where he was, and before we could see what she was doing, she had beaten him so hard with the leather leash that he was wounded in two or three places and there was blood. The animal was in pain; he cried with his nose buried in his paws, not moving; he didn’t try to get up. And she was still beating him, making him bleed more. I took the leash from her hand. Dimitris, a little farther off, had turned completely pale. ‘I forbid you to interfere,’ she screamed at me in a rage, and on the way home she spoke only to Dimitris. Then for days she nursed the dog—she loved it too much. It was a phrase she often said—‘I love him too much.’ She said it about animals, places, things, even about the smallest, most insignificant thing, a dress, for example. Perhaps because she loved life itself too much. Truly, it was strange, her insatiable passion for life. So much so that it was as if real people and the facts were not enough for her; she made up her own people, her own facts, and she would relate these make-believe stories as if they had really happened. And you had to know her really well to know that it was all made up, because when she told her stories she seemed to believe them herself. She had a simple and natural way of telling them. Only at the very end after the last word she would look at you inquisitively as if you were the one who had been talking, not her . . .”

  “Tell me,” I whispered, “tell me how the Polish grandmother is now.”

  “That I don’t know. Even Anna doesn’t know. In her letters she says that she is well, and a thousand other things—sometimes amusing, sometimes sad—it’s impossible to know, though, what’s true and what’s false. As for her life, she doesn’t write anything. She refuses to speak about it.”

  “It’s really strange that she married Grandfather who isn’t, how should I put it, strong . . .”

  And then a little later, “But that’s how Maria married Marios. And Maria has the same laugh. It fills up the space around her, Maria’s laugh, it could even fill up a whole meadow . . .”

  Silence.

  “Only whatever happens, whatever happens, Maria will never abandon little Yannis. Nor Marios. Not the little Miltos. Little Miltos isn’t born yet; he’ll be born any day now. But Maria is sure it’s a boy.”

  Silence.

  “And Infanta has her beauty and her courage. Nothing frightens Infanta. She’ll ride the wildest horse. She never gets tired swimming, and then there was that time she killed a snake before our eyes. She raised the stick and hit it on its head and later its tail kept moving all by itself. And I? I am only like her because of my neck and the lies I used to tell as a child . . .”

  I was talking as if I was hypnotized. I had the Polish grandmother’s face before me, and that was it, a face I had never seen.

  “Do yo
u know,” the old man interrupted me, somewhat annoyed by my incoherent babbling, “any day now Andreas is coming. I got a letter from him.”

  I stood staring at the old man. I stared at him a long time.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you listening to me? My son Andreas is coming.”

  As I took the road home the wind had changed direction; instead of a south wind, it came from the north, down from Parnitha, passing through the woods, and then coming straight to us, right into our chests, passing through us and leaving us feeling clean and light. It’s almost frightening how light and clean you feel when the north wind blows.

  But these days the wind also switched the other way from north to south. When that happens a fine, warm rain falls on the flowers, mixing with the pollen, and the world fills with scents. Autumn has come, I thought as I walked down Aniksi Avenue.

  Now I knew a lot about the Polish grandmother and yet I knew nothing. Everything seemed vague, uncertain, her life a secret. And Aunt Theresa and Mother were cool and reserved, afraid that they might turn out like her, afraid of life itself . . . I wanted to know what the Polish grandmother’s eyes were like now, and if they still got greener when she was angry. Perhaps she doesn’t get angry anymore.

  I must make a decision. I must tell David. I would like to be holding hands with him now and running, or to be together in the olive grove, even if it was a little scary, it wouldn’t matter. “What’s the matter? Don’t you know I’m talking to you,” said the old man. “My son Andreas is coming.” Polish Grandmother, you, only you, would understand . . .

  VII. THE SEA CAPTAIN

  IT WAS morning when Andreas arrived at our property. At first all we saw was a carriage racing like mad—we saw it when it turned off of the road and came across the meadow at a fast clip, its wheels digging deep into the earth, staggering from one moment to the next as if it were going to turn over, its hood swaying this way and that, like the sail of a boat that you unfasten and re-tie when the wind changes so it almost touches the crest of the wave.

  When the carriage stopped in front of the house its wheels were covered in mud, the horse was foaming at the mouth, his eyes wild, his hindquarters sweaty. Andreas’s forehead was also a little sweaty. He was holding the reins and laughing. As for the driver, he was sitting in the passenger seat, cowering in the corner. “You almost killed me, sir,” he said. “And you’ve ruined my carriage.” “How much did it cost?” asked Andreas. “Such and such an amount.” “Take the money.” Andreas pulled out a huge wad of bills and gave them to him.

  Nobody seemed surprised by Andreas’s arrival. It was as if we had always known him. Mother and Aunt Theresa greeted him warmly. “The only thing,” they said, “is that Grandfather must not find out. Because of the old animosity.” But there wasn’t much of a chance, since Grandfather had locked himself up in his room now for days reading his medical books from morning to night. Every once in a while he would get dizzy. He was no longer interested in the trees and plants; it was as if he had never loved them.

  “Good morning, Maria, Good morning, Infanta, Good morning, Katerina,” Andreas said as he passed through the wooden gate and we looked on in amazement. He came up the path under the pistachio trees without shaking a single branch, not at all like Mr. Louzis. He climbed up the stairs to the veranda, taking huge steps, and plopped himself down in an armchair. “It is really very pleasant here,” he said, “one’s ear gets a rest from the sound of waves.”

  He stretched out his legs, leaned his head back. He was tall and sunburnt. He wasn’t wearing his uniform. He had on white pants and a white shirt with an open collar. He had white teeth. His laugh was strong, so were his hands. They weren’t at all like David’s hands. They were hairy, and they didn’t change expression depending on what was being said. They just squeezed the chair’s wooden armrests tighter. And then the iron ring on the fourth finger of his left hand would bother him, so he would take it off as he was talking, play with it in his right hand, toss it in the air, and then put it back on. “An astrologist told me that of all the metals, iron would bring me luck and of all the days, Friday. An astrologist, not an astronomer,” he added, looking at me. “And during the shipwreck of Corsica that ring saved me. I’ll tell you how another time. And in the harbor of Constanza . . .”

  In the meantime he had turned to Maria. “I’m expecting little Miltos,” she then said, “that’s why I’m so big.” And she remained there staring at him, her eyes wide open, so much so that we had to beckon to her to cut it out. But Andreas was also staring at her; he had left off mid-sentence, not caring what others thought. “That was when I was captain aboard the Jupiter,” he said. And Maria repeated, “I’m expecting little Miltos.”

  Aunt Theresa was shuffling back and forth, laughing to herself, letting out little exclamations every once in a while. She seemed to admire everything Andreas did—even the way he tossed his ring in the air. She urged him to tell them about his adventures, not his sea adventures, but his adventures with women. For example, she had heard that once—here her laughter was totally indescribable—that after the shipwreck when his ship was being repaired in North Africa he would fly to southern France where . . .“the parties, the parties,” she cried. “That’s what life is for . . .” And then there was that woman in Algeria in Oran who spent the whole day in bed—a beautiful big soft bed—and only got up after sunset for a quarter of an hour. She would come back holding a branch of greenery and fall back into bed. Scents were her weakness. “I like scents, too,” whispered Aunt Theresa, and she attempted to straighten her hair coquettishly . . . But she had very little hair, the poor dear, so her hand just slid over her white dandruffy scalp.

  “Perhaps you met my fiancé on your travels? His name began with ‘R’ and he had shiny hair and thick lips.”

  Infanta then began to laugh.

  “And Nikitas,” she shouted, “Nikitas too had thick lips and I never kissed them. Nina, your wife, Nina, kissed them.”

  “My wife?” he asked with a certain curiosity. “Ah, yes,” he said after a moment, “once I did marry a woman named Nina. It was all because of that letter, the one I tossed out of the airplane.”

  “Would you forget me as quickly, Andreas?”

  Infanta got up and walked toward his armchair as if to show him how beautiful she was.

  Why shouldn’t he forget you, I was about to say . . .

  In the meantime Andreas had gotten up, taken her hand, and they were running together in the garden. I got furious . . .

  “You are impossible,” I screamed after her. “You act as if all you care about is your embroidery with the peacocks. First it was Marios, then Nikitas, then David—yes, even David—I remember the way your eyes looked the night Maria gave birth when I told you about David. And now it’s Andreas.”

  “It will only last until she gives birth to a little Yannis or Miltos.” Maria said this. I turned and looked at her. We were alone on the veranda. Her face looked like a rose in bloom.

  “Do you remember, Katerina, how Marios was before we got married?” she said slowly. “Now he likes to stay in Athens as long as he can, and sometimes at home he forgets I’m there. He whistles as if the room is empty when I am right there in front of him. Because there’s a different sound—isn’t that right, Katerina—when you whistle and you’re alone than when there’s someone else in the room . . . especially on the high notes. Listen, I had a dream last night, a dream about you. Over there where the meadow stops, right there in front of our eyes, the sea began, a sea that got immediately deep and was more green than blue. On the beach heather and thyme were growing. We were going down a mountain path, the two of us, when we saw it. We also saw a ship anchored there, a strange ship, rectangular and red, more like a raft with a huge white sail. ‘Sister dear,’ you said to me, ‘I am going to travel.’ And as soon as you said those words the path grew like a snake unwinding and went into the sea right up to the ship. You followed it without even looking at me. And by the time
I had reached the ship and raised my eyes to see you, searching for you, you had become a white bird and you were flying above my face, but it didn’t seem strange, and I said goodbye to you, and I had such a strong urge to travel, too, it was as if I had already left . . .”

  “Maria, that’s because I will travel, really,” I cried. Softly though because they were coming back.

  “The Black Sea was stormy, a devilish wind from the Levant turned my ship inside out . . .”

  Infanta listened, eating up every word. They were even holding hands. She wouldn’t dare, I thought to myself, and that calmed me down. He spoke loudly, perhaps so that we would also hear. And his gaze wandered from Infanta to Maria, from Maria to me. It was as if he was looking at all three of us at once. His eyes were sparkling; and sometimes the pupil shrunk, making the white appear bigger and other times the pupil grew and took on the color of the ocean before a storm.

  “I can’t stand it,” whispered Maria.

  “What do you think about when you are traveling?” asked Infanta then.

  What a stupid question. Infanta’s not very smart. I’m the smartest of the three.

  “Dry and ironed clothes,” answered Andreas.

  “This day seems like a year,” Maria whispered again.

  “We’ll see, we’ll see which of you three will be the tall ship that opens its sails.”

  His voice was very strong now. I got up, leaving Maria on the veranda, pushing Infanta back . . .

  “I am ready,” I cried. “The rest want to go with you, but Maria can’t and Infanta doesn’t dare.”

  “At dawn I will wait for you by the cistern,” he whispered so that no one else heard.

  Early the next morning I found the words “I was just joking” written on the ledge of the cistern.

  “Andreas has left,” Aunt Theresa was saying.

  •

  It seems that my own crying woke me. And even though I knew Andreas hadn’t left because he had never really come, I couldn’t stop crying. It was all so beautiful.