Ekaterini

by Marija Knezevic

  ‘Just like at home,’ Lucija said, thinking of the authorities’ agility with peacetime issues like traffic signs.

  ‘Oh, it’s even worse here!’ Like most Greeks, Panagiotis stood up for Belgrade, thata metoropolis as he called it – if necessary against the Belgraders themselves.

  ‘Stop idealising Yugoslavia, it doesn’t exist any more. We’re history. Just look how you’ve built up your country. I almost feel I’m here for the first time – everything’s new!’ Lucija was the older of the two cousins, after all, and now that she had begun to lecture Panagiotis she immediately felt better.

  ‘That’s right. O Greece, o Hellas! There’s no country on earth more beautiful! And straight afterwards comes Serbia, Belgrade!’ Panagiotis couldn’t contain his enthusiasm.

  ‘What’s over there, behind those hills?’ Luka asked.

  ‘Turkey,’ Panagiotis suddenly went sullen.

  ‘And behind those?’

  ‘Albania.’ After that question, the driver turned up Pavarotti full blast and sat back to enjoy the drive.

  * * *

  When she went out and sat on the grapevine-shaded veranda for the first time and was hit by the mixed smells of the sea, the olive trees, the aubergines prepared by the neighbour Georgia and, finally, the coffee served the traditional way in a demitasse with a saucer, water and fruit preserves – Ekaterini knew she was HERE. That feeling is impossible to describe. On the contrary, it instantly renders the need for any words irrelevant. People who haven’t lived abroad for a long time, but have travelled, usually say ‘return’. For neighbour Georgia, Thessaloniki was the furthest away from Orfani, which the signs still called Tuzla, she had ever been. When she first saw Ekaterini meditating out on the veranda from early morning, she was moved to tears. Happiness? A touching sight? Who knows. ‘Look how much she enjoys it here in Greece!’ she said to Panagiotis, who for her was no longer just a next-door neighbour but a real hero for having done such a good deed.

  Ekaterini sat peacefully, looking at the potted basil for a while, or the cat slinking around the house, or the kids with beach balls and underwater goggles; she heard their chirpy little voices saying thalassa, the sea, and gazed with the same calm at her toenails as at her memories which rose and ebbed away again like gentle tides. She engaged with every instant of the scenes around her and inside her. She spoke to a butterfly, the dripping tap in the courtyard, aeroplanes in the sky, or Lucija. Once again she was able to hear several voices at the same time – precisely because she didn’t have to. She didn’t have to do anything.

  There’s no word for that individual feeling of existence in its totality, when you have the good fortune of feeling everything and all at once. Just as living abroad is impossible to explain. Foreigners just hope they will live to experience this some day, and in this way they really reconcile themselves; all their life they reconcile themselves with the truth that home now only exists in their jumbled, nomadic memory: a memory maintained by fantasy – often an outright invention – and succoured by the sweetness of victory greater than that of any battle when we manage to convince friends and family that things were exactly as we said. Nomads live on stories. Only in stories do they feel they exist. Ekaterini was finally able to abandon herself to her senses. And she listened to the language like a cherished melody, near and dear but hummed by someone else.

  The Parrot Café

  When I finally arrived too, I found them ensconced in the little prefab house, whose most populated area was the veranda. They were in the same clothes as they would have been in the flat Belgrade. It was as if a spaceship had beamed them from the living room to the sea, I thought, the only difference being that Ekaterini wasn’t watching TV but looking again and again at every part of the scene around her, at every fragment. She’d smile when a low-flying jet fighter disappeared with the same speed with which it had come, or when she caught sight of a fly and then inquisitively followed its seemingly aimless flight. Lucija held her position in the kitchen, grumbled and groaning. Luka watered the garden.

  ‘Grandmother, have you been to the beach?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I haven’t. Lucija simply has no time to do my feet. I don’t want to go out with such long nails. What will people say if they see me with claws like this?!’ She spoke these last words somewhat louder so Lucija would hear them through the window, despite the boiling oil, the smoke from the burning fish and the expletives she ejected at regular intervals. ‘Fuck this refugee life!’ she had just sworn, when she heard her mother rehash the pedicure question. She shot out of the kitchen faster than the most high-tech projectile.

  ‘Tell me, Mama, what sort of drudge do you think I am? Come on, what am I to blame for now? What do I still need to do that I’ve so carelessly neglected?!’ she asked in desperation.

  I found the solution by chance, just like I find everything else while out on walks. The Parrot Café, like all authentic locations, didn’t stand out in any way. On the contrary, it was one of a whole row of cafés in the one and only street of Orfani aka Tuzla. It was pure intuition. I strolled into its greened terrace without any prior intention of stopping or sitting down. I was met by several local young men making outspoken, derisive comments about American women. They behaved freely, in their own country, in their own language, which it’s true that few foreigners understand. The assumption that an American couldn’t know Greek was absolutely correct from the viewpoint of these village idlers. ‘Why?’ I asked myself for a moment before seeing my reflection in the window, or rather that of my T-shirt. In America it’s almost impossible to find a T-shirt without some kind of slogan or statement on it. This one said ‘What are you afraid of?’ I felt better now and calmly chose a corner where I’d sit for the next few months.

  ‘Watch it guys –,’ I told them in Greek, ‘some foreigners know your language.’

  The hulking guys went red with embarrassment and panicked. It was really a laugh to see. Now they were at pains to please me and offered me coffee, beer, juice, whatever I wanted. I had to have something – it was on the house, and not just that day, but every day for the Belgrade lady! When the first commotion subsided, Markos judged he could go for a little stroll on the café terrace. This tame, untypical specimen of a Yellow-headed Amazon parrot found a comfortable perch on my shoulder above the ‘What are you afraid of?’ Together we went to the bar, on a little walks around the café, read and wrote letters. Having discovered another ‘feeling of home’, I managed to persuade my veranda trio to acknowledge this location too.

  Ekaterini fell in love with him straight away. There was no going to the café without first preparing slices of orange or kiwi fruit. Even Lucija simmered down in one of the wicker armchairs. ‘My, he really is batty!’ she said and finally laughed. Luka sipped ‘iced Nescafé on the house’ and let his gaze drift out to sea. The beach was just a stone’s throw away because the whole of northern Greece is just one long beach. Pedicure problems and all other unresolved issues disappeared for good. Except for when one of the eternal regulars would curse NATO when their trucks occasionally entered Orfani aka Tuzla so the soldiers could take off their boots, feel the sand between their toes and tank their vehicles. But that passed too, just like on the TV screen.

  We went on spending the evenings on the veranda. Panagiotis supplied us with home-made wine in Coca-Cola bottles. Lucija relaxed after her day, which consisted mainly of cooking. Luka’s silence was open, as usual, like his smile; no one was able to penetrate it, but he gladly welcomed everyone. Completely alone, feeling the wisdom of experience and its message, over time he mastered a form of Mediterranean meditation. In fact, he managed to recall it from his distant memory. He was able to be distanced and yet participate in all that happened at the same time. He was the only one, I’d say, who took on that trait of the soil we found ourselves on – ‘all in good measure’. The women involuntarily retained the inexplicable gravity of the clime where we spent most of our lives. This isn’t to do with devotion, and even less w
ith tradition. There’s no word for it, nor for that strange gravity, nor for the female characteristic of carrying all one’s own emotional baggage and that imposed by others as well.

  A pleasant evening weariness came on and relieved us of the fear of sentimentality. Ekaterini asked me to put on the singer Gabi Novak for her. She knew the cassette off by heart, and she seemed to be waiting for that moment when Gabi sang in a whisper ‘I want to be beautiful for you tonight, and receive my time as a gift’ so as to read her whole life in the lyrics of the song. She cried evening after evening. Her tears flowed unrestrained. Lucija got irritated: ‘Change the cassette, for God’s sake. It’ll give Mama a stroke!’ But for Ekaterini it was beautiful crying, cathartic, or at the very least soothing. And while she wept, a smile kissed her face and reconciled the wrinkles. It even healed old scars and more recent ones, like the mark reminiscent of the hotplate where she made coffee and onto which her head fell when she once fainted. Her face gave in to emotion and every long-suppressed desire came out. ‘Louder!’ she said to me in both languages. I understood without words. That was a scene of happiness. Until then I had refused to speak the word ‘happiness’. I didn’t even allow it into my thoughts, feeling it to be a cheap fabrication, an ideology, and a number of other negative concepts I ascribed to this essentially innocent word. Not even when I saw the smile kiss the tears on Ekaterini’s face did I say ‘happiness’. I didn’t say anything. I knew.

  * * *

  In the division of the day, the evenings were dedicated to the past. I recalled my last summer holiday in Dubrovnik, with Zlatko, ‘my other you’, as I titled one of my books. Our partnership is one of the few relations which doesn’t change. Everything else resembles a film in an infinite number of episodes. My relationships came back to me as doggedly as all my struggles. There’s always one struggle or another: for the day to begin, to pass an exam, for a book to be published, to graduate despite the Party’s threats that I never would, and a whole sequence of battles which couldn’t belong to just one war, be it won or lost; the struggle with myself to reply to Carol’s invitation and go to visit her; the ensuing, never-ending battle between the two of us; and my ongoing struggle to convince her to come to The Parrot Café, or, as she put it, ‘to Europe’. She emphasised in every letter that it seemed like a film to her – which is exactly how I felt in her America.

  In contrast to the gravity of these literal and intimate geographies, the café was home to a constant celebration of moments which could be called the present, or just life; they simply happened there. The fisherman would drop in of a morning and show us first what he’d caught that night. We’d drink coffee together, haggle, and afterwards he’d amble off to open his shop. Much later the butcher came, not yet quite awake. Without an appointment, but just when she was needed, the hairdresser would turn up. Lucija and Ekaterini had their perms redone in the café. Papas, the Orthodox priest, was never without a cigarette holder between his teeth. Sometimes he came alone, another time with all his four children: ‘My wife has chased us out. She wants to tidy the house – women’s work.’ At the end of this everyday local parade the baker would also appear, whom Ekaterini had been eagerly awaiting all this time (or rather his awesome tiropita, or cheese pies).

  Everything synced and harmonised in that magic spot which otherwise only Márquez could have contrived. Neither foreigners nor their languages were foreign. Syrtaki went down just as well as Vaya con Dios. The serene summer heat accepted the afternoon thunderstorms, when all of us zipped out and rescued the chairs and tables, closed the windows, and brought in the glasses and pot plants, as if it was something we always did. Markos the parrot would only consent to go the storeroom, where the thunder was least loud, on my shoulder. ‘You carry him, he’s yours anyway!’ the ever-smiling young man would call out in his rush. He was the owner of the place, but we’d only recall that with difficulty when a new face turned up on our little scene. His natural levity showed in his innocent ignorance about any ‘plans’ and ‘projects’. Without any visible effort, that young man lived the ideal of every host – no one felt they were a guest at his place.

  Right

  Ekaterini spoke less and less but knew ever more. She radiated a universal understanding, a comprehension of things, and generally replied to questions with fewer and fewer words, or would just give me a piece of advice now and then in gratitude for me having ‘done something for her that no one else ever had’. Convinced that she was right, she carefully chose a way to make the painful truth as painless as possible.

  ‘Is Carol going to come?’

  ‘I suppose so. She says something different in every letter.’

  ‘She’ll come. You’ll see.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ In Orfani aka Tuzla I believed her every word.

  ‘Be considerate with her. She comes from a different world.’

  ‘So what? Let her get to know this one a bit. Maybe she’ll like it. Anything is more beautiful than her corn desert and five cities that could all have been photocopied!’

  ‘My child, everyone has their own world. Don’t press her. Be considerate because it won’t be easy for her.’

  ‘What could she possibly miss? There’s everything here.’

  ‘You have everything, and her as well, but her home will be far away. Listen to what I say, I’ve been through it all. And thanks to you, my darling, I’ve lived to enjoy this reward.’

  ‘Actually this is just how things panned out.’

  ‘I suppose you can put it that way. But you brought me here where I belong. I just want there to be less pain in your life than mine. We only have one life, so it’s not worth mourning. If you see something isn’t working, give it up. People take a long time to realise.’

  And that would basically be the end of the story, Ekaterini would let her gaze wander off wherever it wanted at that moment and lead her to the potted basil, to the palm in front of the house, to the sea or the opposite coast, which we could vaguely make out, and where, as Panagiotis boasted, Aristotle was born.

  * * *

  Carol told me she had a total of seven days holiday and straight after arriving at the airport she asked me if I’d organised everything. She fell into despair when she found out that our room, like the majority of hotel rooms on the coast, had no air-conditioning. She went down to the beach to let off steam; tall as she was, she had to bend to fit under the shade of the parasol, where she spent the whole morning reading. She rarely went into the water; as if it was some big swimming pool, she swam for exactly twenty five minutes with her obligatory diving goggles. She was constantly worried about the salt water possibly damaging her eyes, about the restaurants not seeming hygienic enough, and about people calling out in at least two languages she didn’t understand – she knew they were making remarks about Americans and that they were derogatory. Her anxiety extended to changing money on the street instead of in a bank, where the exchange rate was much worse, and to those nasty jellyfish allied with mosquitoes.

  When she demanded a hot dog amidst that abundance of fruit and seafood I was furious, but I bore my grandmother’s words in mind and kept it inside me. My silence paid off when I had the pleasure of watching her savour that sausage after first waiting a moment and eyeing it with tenderness. I hadn’t seen such gentleness in her for a long time, ever since our eyes first met at Chicago airport and I gave her grandmother’s cross inlaid with mother-of-pearl; she thanked me with her blue eyes and a gaze, never since repeated, which gave all of her being in return.

  Shortly before the end of her seven-day vacation we sat together on the terrace, already flinching at the pain of openly saying everything to each another. What was so deadening wasn’t the leaden task itself; after all, living in the Balkans had made me almost immune to the quandaries. It was something even worse – insolvability. And when she finally said You’re my failed project, words that I still feel I could die from this very minute, I realised how right Ekaterini was: Carol spoke the truth. I felt imm
easurable pain, she – emptiness. The former is bearable but the latter cannot be compensated for, like the deaths of people close to us, which the poet Marina Tsvetayeva speaks of after the poignant word ‘Be!’. When someone dies with whom your life has been fulfilled, she says, you miss them, but they’re still there; they’re not sundered from you because you feel their presence. But when someone dies with whom your life was unfulfilled, there remains only inconsolable sadness.

  St. Marina’s

  Ekaterini’s relatives Anastasia, Georgia, Panagia, Sula, Sofula, Angelikula, Christina and Zoey came to visit her. They each came at least once a month, like a pilgrimage, spread over the calendar like feast days. Visiting their aunt was a festive occasion, and each of them first went up to her, without allowing her to get up, bent over to kiss her, kissed her hand, crossed herself, said ‘May God grant you long life’, and then ritually gave her a fan.

  Life in Orfani with the old traffic sign is far from monotonous. Village fairs are held every week, starting on Sundays. In that one street the traders set up their stalls and pile them with baubles and trinkets, but there are also quality craft products, and the tourists who speak English and German don’t ask the price. The Greeks double the figure just for fun, and the foreigners pay it. The craft products all go by the first evening of the fair, and the locals who have done well pay the musicians to play. Ekaterini came out the next day, when the situation was clearer in the sense that there were less ‘barbarians’, wearing one of the elegant dresses brought for her by Anastasia, Georgia, Panagia, Sula or Zoey. She held a fan in each hand and flourished them elegantly like she imagined a Spanish lady would do. Her legs held up well enough for her to walk at least two lengths of all the stalls and make the most of both theatrical strolls by taking her time to choose a new fan. Lucija played bodyguard the whole time and took care that no one from the crowd even touched Ekaterini because she was convinced that the slightest bump would be the end of her. She was annoyed, bathed in sweat, and had to shout against the bouzouki music blaring from several loudspeakers.