by Sara Alexi
There are stacks of letters about official church business, a collection of newspaper cuttings and a book by the poet Yorgos Seferis. He levers this out and as he does, it falls open at a well-thumbed page. The poem is entitled ‘Denial.’ The muscle in his thumb tenses, ready to snap the book shut when he sees in faint writing, erased pencil perhaps, the name Nefeli. It is written beside a line of the poem that reads ‘We wrote her name.’ He starts at the top and reads the whole poem. The final verse he whispers out loud:
‘With what spirit, what heart, what desire and passion we lived our lives: a mistake. So we changed our life.’ The last line is underlined.
He exhales and snaps the book shut. That sort of thing, encouraging feelings and emotions, is exactly what leads to trouble. What sort of man was his predecessor? He drops the book in the empty bin by the bureau and focuses on sorting through the papers. The occasional noise of Nefeli readying his breakfast drifts from the other room and he concentrates with greater earnest.
The first few letters are concerned with mundane church business and tell him nothing other than that his predecessor’s first name was Sotos. There is a bill for the covering over of the well, dated eighteen years ago. Why would Sotos keep that? It joins the book in the bin. A letter from a widow informing his predecessor that she will leave all her wealth to the church if he can promise her a place in heaven. This is something he has been told is common enough, but not something he has experienced personally until now. But there is bound to be a whole generation of old people in such rural villages as this. How many confessions, repentances, and accompanying gifts could he gain for the church? He could drop the idea of leaving a portion of their wealth to the church in his after-service thoughts every now and then, keep it fresh in their minds. There are many ways in which he can make his mark in the church, and this could be an easy one. Better to leave one’s property to God, he reasons, than to squabbling relatives. All too often, disputes occur when property is passed on and it’s not unusual to see houses decay and slowly fall apart because the heirs cannot agree.
Next is a newspaper cutting, its title missing. In fact, the whole of the first column is missing, but the subject is the church. Some of the clippings have yellowed with age, but this one looks fresh. It states that the ten thousand priests and bishops are not paid for by the church but by the state. Well, he didn’t know that. He reads on. The new government is trying to alter the law that exempts the church from paying property tax, which the writer of the article declares is shameless, as the church is worth over a billion euros. In the list of properties, there is no mention made of the four hundred and fifty monasteries that were cited in a recent memorandum that was sent round within the church. Maybe that is a good thing. As his new bishop said, it is not always best for the public to know everything. But then the article does go on to say that the Church is the second largest land owner in Greece after the state and holds a significant share in the National Bank of Greece. It says something about the church looking for a billion pounds of investment to build solar farms on the land they own to capitalise on their assets. He would like to be a part of that. That kind of wheeling and dealing excites him. The article summarises that all that has been previously mentioned does not include the eighty bishoprics and their own personal assets, ‘which they enjoy with considerable independence.’
‘Eighty bishoprics and their own personal assets, which they enjoy with considerable independence,’ he reads again, muttering the words whilst hardly moving his lips.
Maybe a bishopric in Greece could suit him. It sounds as if they have more freedom here than in America.
There is a tap at the door.
‘Okay.’ Savvas lets her know he has heard. Then everything stops. The news clipping falls from his hands. His breathing quickens slightly. There it is! A rubber-stamped document that seems to be the official transfer of the grand house to two named people. The last name is Nefeli. How fortuitous it is that he has found it so easily. Mind you, there is very little else in the desk. His predecessor can’t have been very active with regards to raising funds for the church. But even so. He must take his time to read it, decipher the small print that is written in tedious legal terms. He must find out exactly how official it is and whether there is room for some manoeuvre. If he got the house back for the church, that would be a boost to his position in the church’s eyes and it would surely be an asset if he sets his course toward a bishopric. With a bounce in his step, he goes to enjoy his breakfast.
Nefeli has moved the table from up against the wall to the centre of the room and there is a vase of delicate bluey-purple flowers in the centre. She has opened the shutters and a square of sunshine highlights all she has laid out for his breakfast. There is a smell of fresh bread and toast, coffee and, again, jasmine. With grace, she steps toward the door as he sits.
‘If I might have a word before you go.’ The way she looks from under her fringe stirs him, as if she is holding back a secret—or sharing one; he is not sure. It feels intimate even though she probably wears her hair that way to keep the world out. ‘Please, take a seat.’ He notes that the coffee in his small coffee cup glistens on top with tiny bubbles, no grounds to be seen. It pleases him. She sits perched on the chair’s edge as if ready to take flight.
‘How is your mother?’ It’s a safe opening that shows the right degree of concern. He waits, but she does not answer. Maybe it is more than shyness. Perhaps she is not all there. She doesn’t twitch or flex as she sits there, motionless. The curve of her neck down into her back, nipping in at her waist, is highlighted by the sun’s rays.
‘Good, good.’ Savvas breaks the silence. ‘Have you lived here all your life?’ She flinches at this.
‘I don’t live here, I live there.’ She turns her face in the direction of the grand house.
‘No. I mean…’
‘I used to live here,’ she adds. It catches Savvas off guard. He had not expected her to speak without being prompted by a specific question.
‘Did you like it when you lived here?’ It might be a good question or it might be entirely the wrong question. What if she hated it in the cottage?
‘I used to play in the olive grove behind and around the well until I fell…’
‘Ah yes, I heard you banged your head.’
‘Down the well.’
Savvas stops buttering his toast and looks up at her.
‘Sorry.’ But he thinks he has understood. ‘You fell down the well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good grief. Was it deep?’ He is trying to make out how badly her forehead is scarred, but too much of her dirty golden hair falls over her face. Her chin nods down and to one side and she consciously blinks. A very Greek unspoken yes.
‘Mother of God, you must have seen stars.’ He bestows a smile on her but it is not returned.
The glance she casts him is hard and cold as if he has just accused her of something. She is certainly not an easy person to talk to.
‘Well, I am glad you are alright.’ Where was he? What was he saying to her? Oh yes, trying to find out if she liked the cottage. Well, if she fell and bumped her head, maybe this is not the best tactic. He will try another.
‘Do you find the house you are in now a little big to maintain on your own?’
Her accusing looks softens and her fingers relax in her lap. Such long fingers. Like her limbs, long and graceful.
‘I am very grateful. It assures Mama a home whilst she is alive.’
The words fall like music to his ears. If she is right, the house is only theirs until her mama’s death. That could give him possibilities. God is smiling on him.
‘Yes, I am sure you are.’ Now, he mustn’t rush this. Play it carefully, first make her realise that he is looking out for her, build some trust. Then, when he has a plan, she will go along with his wishes. After all, it will be for her own good as well as for the good of the church.
‘By the way, I meant to ask, is it possible for you to
do my laundry?’ Diplomatic tactics. The laundry is part of her job description but he read in some magazine, years ago, that people trust other people not through flattery and gifts but by finding that they offer to do things for them. The article said that the logic is they would not have offered to do something for someone they didn’t trust, so, therefore, they conclude they must trust the person.
‘Fridays,’ she replies without feeling. It seems the trust thing will take time to sink in. Perhaps now he should back it up by offering her something in return.
‘And do you take days off?’ He tries to make it sound like a light enquiry.
This question seems to baffle her. ‘No.’ The word is cautious, as if the question is some trick.
‘Then I suggest you take a day off a month. How would that be?’ She is bound to be grateful.
‘And who will look after Mama on that day?’
‘Oh, I see. No, I meant a day off from your housekeeping duties.’ But she does not seem pleased, not even grateful, just another nod, lead with her chin, agreed with by a blink of her eyes.
‘Is that all?’ She stands.
‘Yes.’ Savvas thinks about asking for more coffee. Something about the awkwardness between them repels him but as she stands, the way she moves suddenly inflames him. It is nothing she does intentionally. Rather, it is the way one of her knees rounds the other as she stands, the way her hips settle, ready to move. She is like an animal, a fragile animal with callused palms from hard work. She leaves.
Once she is gone, he stares towards the light. The back windows look out over an olive grove, no blank church wall there. With the shutters closed, he had not realised how rural the cottage is at the rear, opening onto trees and more trees. He can imagine Nefeli as a small child running between them, her hair flowing behind her, her long limbs speeding her flight. Then to fall down a well… How scared she must have been. How long was she down there? That sort of experience is enough to make anyone feel the world is an unsafe place.
A flick of a memory demands his attention. The hours he spent lying in the crucifix position on the cold church floor in penance for some wrong he had done. His mama on her knees, praying for his seven-year-old soul. His baba so recently dead to the world. Everything cold. The floor cold, his mama cold in her heart, his baba cold in his grave. Cold.
He involuntarily shivers. He can understand Nefeli’s reserve, how easy it would have been for him to have taken that course, to have retreated inside himself, allowing his mama and the bullies at school to win. It was the softness and the concern of his mama’s priest that made the difference. He showed concern, compassion, offered support. Time and time again, he has sat in the sanctuary of the priest’s quarters reading the bible. Not because he wanted to read the bible but because that was what was expected of him when he sought refuge there and it seemed to please the priest. He sought the peace of those walls so often that one day, he found he had learnt some of the scriptures so well, he could quote them. The first time these pleasant passages came to his tongue unrequested was against his Mama. That shocked him. She accused him of something which he had not done and out popped a quotation: ‘Let him with no sin cast the first stone.’
Her face went white, her fists clenched, and she looked like she was going to explode. In response, his own legs tensed, ready to run. But the outburst he was expecting from her never came. Her tension uncoiled, her colour returned, and she muttered something that almost sounded like an apology. It gave him such a feeling of power, so he tried the same tactic to defend himself against the school ruffians. With Biblical quotes, he pointed out the errors of their ways, promising eternal Hell for their actions. To his surprise, they didn’t laugh. Instead, it seemed his words scared them.
Very soon, his position in life changed dramatically. His relationship with his mama became more equal, although she was still ever hard to please. He became someone who was respected at school. The teachers treated him with something approaching reverence. The only negative was from the priest who had showed him concern and support in the first place. He backed away as Savva’s confidence and arsenal of quotes grew. This was a response which Savvas struggled to understand. But to counteract the negative effect of losing the priest’s blessing, the bishop took him under his wing instead. He became a soldier of God.
Through in the bedroom, he pulls up the wooden chair to sit at the desk. The legs scrape across the floor, inscribing their mark in the layer of settled dust. The raffia seat is coming undone, something else that needs mentioning.
The officially stamped paper lays uppermost, Nefeli’s clearly marked.
He will read it through, focus his attention on getting into the big house. Then all this list writing and complaining about petty things like raffia chairs will be unnecessary. The book in the wastepaper bin catches his eye, and he finds himself retrieving it, the rhythm of the poem calling to his senses. Reading it over this time, it is the first verse that hits him hardest.
‘On the secret seashore, white like a pigeon we thirst at noon, but the water was brackish.’ He is not totally clear what it means, but it resonates. He thirsts but the water is brackish. That’s how he feels; driven by something like thirst, but the water he is offered is not clear, not pure.
No, this thinking is self-indulgent nonsense. It is all emotional drivel.
He pulls out the bill for covering over the well, which has stuck between the book’s final pages. Presumably Sotos had that done after Nefeli’s fall. If he had been here at the time he would have poured a truckload of concrete down it, sealed it forever, not just boarded it over with a piece of wood.
His mind is wandering again. Where was he? Oh yes, the official paper for the big house.
Head bowed, he concentrates, glad now that his mama spoke only Greek at home, although this document is mostly in official Greek, which seems more like ancient Greek, and despite his fluency, he struggles.
‘Ah. I see!’ It is not such good news. The two people named—Nefeli and her crippled mama—have official rights to the house for their lifetimes. They do not own the house, but they have legal possession of it. But that could be, well, potentially, his lifetime. That’s bad.
He looks up and stares at the blank wall. If he keeps in mind that Nefeli thinks she only has the place until her mama’s death, he must be able to work it to his advantage somehow. Perhaps if he offers her something more permanent for herself, she might give up the big house before her mama dies.
His gaze drops to the wooden floor.
Perhaps it is better if she never knows the house could be hers for her lifetime. As the bishop said, it is sometimes better that people do not know everything.
A tap at the front door rouses him. Looking at his Rolex (a gift to himself to celebrate the completion of the noise insulation on his church in America), he wonders why Nefeli would be back so soon. It is nowhere near lunchtime. Leaving the papers on the desk, he goes through to let her in, but it is not Nefeli.
‘Ah, er.’ He cannot remember her name.
‘Maria,’ she prompts. He hadn’t really taken note of her before. She is thinner than she appeared in her housecoat, sweeping the road outside her house, perhaps even on the skinny, malnourished side. She must be late middle age because her hair is a flat dark colour that only a bottle of dye can bring. In front of her ears, the roots flash grey.
‘Can I help you?’ He would like to continue with his thoughts, sort through more of the papers.
‘Yes, you can. Someone stole my bike a couple of weeks ago and no one has done a thing about it and then some items of clothing went from my washing line and I suspect it is the same boys, but there is no discipline these days, they run amuck, playing football when they should be at school and stealing peoples’ property.’
The last thing he wants to do is invite her in, but to stand talking on the doorstep is inappropriate.
‘Shall we go over to the church?’ He steps out into the sunshine, looks up. It is surprisingly hot. O
ne minute spring, the next summer.
‘No, Papas. The last papas offered some reflections after the Sunday service. It’s not traditional, but I know how you priests like the sound of your own voices. Here.’ She thrusts a sheet of paper at him, which he gingerly accepts. ‘I have provided you with some material for these reflections, best to give these young criminals’ families a bit of a nudge about their responsibilities.’
‘Thank you for your efforts, but I tend to write my own sermons, Kyria Maria.’ He pushes the papers back to her but she withdraws her hand. He all but prods her in her stomach with them.
‘You are new here, Papas. There are many things to learn about our village. One thing I know, and I am passing it on to you, is that there needs to be more self-discipline around here.’
He has seen this before in his parish in America, where there was a woman called Janet-Lee. Every week, she would have some grievance with someone and she would find their faults, write them up as a sermon without directly mentioning any names, and then deliver it to him to be read on Sundays. The first time she did this, she caught him off guard and he accepted the notes, but on reading them through, it was transparently obvious that vengeance was the motive and it was clear to whom she was referring. He burnt those notes in the fire. They felt potentially explosive. But having accepted them once, Janet-Lee seemed to think this was all the permission she needed to do it every week. Each essay, he put straight on the fire at home. But about two months later, in a quiet, almost bored moment when he had just received the news that his application for a grant to insulate the church had been turned down, he flipped though her latest offering and found within some very interesting information about a local council man involved in the processing of grant applications. With the right word in the right place, the grant went through smoothly, with a much larger budget than that for which he had initially applied. After that, he read Janet-Lee’s weekly offering avidly. It is amazing what people will do when something becomes personal. But as it is always personal when God is involved—does He not see everything, does He not know everything?—Savvas never felt guilt in using his knowledge in his dealings.