The House by the River

by Lena Manta

  Just then, Angelos came into Melissanthi’s mind, and she wondered how he’d reacted to her letter. In her imagination she could see his blue eyes darkening, just like the sky as soon as a shower broke. She didn’t doubt for a moment the pain he would be feeling by now. She had chosen her words very carefully so as not to leave him any hope. She avoided saying where she was going, only that she’d be gone for quite a long time to allow him to get over his initial grief.

  The tension of the past few days and the sleepless night she’d spent before her trip began, together with the hot bath she’d taken, helped her to sleep deeply until morning. Still, when she woke up she felt that her long sleep had offered neither rest nor a sense of well-being. She pulled the curtains and looked at the landscape. It was still raining; everything was dull and gray.

  “Better,” she said to herself. “The weather matches my mood.”

  She dressed warmly, put on a raincoat, and went out for a walk. She couldn’t stand to stay shut up in her room. The absence of Angelos was already so painful she almost regretted leaving him. She thought of taking the first plane back, of running to find him and leaping into his arms, but her last dregs of logic held her back. She kept walking until she felt her legs wouldn’t carry her anymore, then hurried into a little bistro that smelled wonderfully of fresh coffee and croissants.

  She sat near the window to watch the rain that had grown much heavier, like a thick curtain, lashing the streets. People under umbrellas were walking hurriedly while the cars threw up jets of water as they passed. At the next table a couple sat holding hands, their eyes shining with the love they felt. The girl was leaning against the man and he was speaking tenderly to her, now and then planting a kiss on her lips.

  At that moment Melissanthi wondered just who she was kidding. Why had she thought that, in a city where love ruled completely and uniquely, she would be able to forget her own love? What did it matter that she was doing the right thing? Since when did the heart admit its mistakes and eagerly withdraw? Melissanthi suddenly stood up, paid her bill, and, careless of the heavy rain, went out again into the street. At least under such a downpour she wouldn’t see others living what she had abandoned.

  She almost smiled when she nearly bumped into a couple kissing in front of her, completely absorbed in one another. Without intending to, she stopped and stared at them. The couple separated themselves, then ran away, laughing under the rain. Melissanthi felt the rain on her own face, but to her it wasn’t rain; it was the blood of her wounded spirit. She returned exhausted to her hotel and ordered a meal brought to her room. Then she called Apostolos to tell him lies about the good time she was having.

  Three days in Paris had wrecked her. Even though the weather had improved a little, the sun, dull and murky, came out rarely. It didn’t have the strength to revive her or the city. Melissanthi had walked more than ever and looked in dozens of shop windows without remembering anything. She spent hours in the Louvre, incapable of appreciating its beauties. She drank and ate without tasting anything, asking herself constantly what she was doing here, and yet she didn’t leave.

  Five days later a strange day dawned over Paris—something like a duel between the sun and the clouds. Although at first it gave every appearance of being a sunny day, in the end heavy clouds defeated the sun, which hid behind them despite its efforts to rule. When it found some unseen opening, it sent its rays down—just enough to announce its presence, but immediately afterward a leaden wall imprisoned it.

  Sitting at an outdoor café despite the cold, Melissanthi absentmindedly watched the contest, certain that the waiter she’d asked to serve her outside must think she was crazy, at the very least. But it was impossible for her to go back into the small, warm café full of the voices of people who were living, who had feelings and could express them, whereas she felt empty of everything. It was as if her pain had turned her to stone.

  The first drops of rain that fell on her were quite heavy, a sign that a storm was coming. Melissanthi looked at the black sky and hurried to get up. Her hotel was close, but the way it was beginning to rain, she’d be soaked in a few seconds. Walking quickly, she took the road back. It was obvious that the raincoat she was wearing couldn’t protect her. She went into her room dripping and cursing. What had happened to Paris? Maybe, given the way her mind was scattered, she had arrived in London and didn’t know it? She undressed and got into the bath, where she let the boiling water suck all the freezing rain out of her, then got out and wrapped herself in a warm robe. She didn’t have many choices. She would spend the afternoon shut up in her room, happy that she had enough magazines to pass the time.

  The knock at the door surprised her. She hadn’t ordered anything and she wasn’t expecting anyone. Certain that somebody had made a mistake, she opened the door with a conventional expression on her face, ready to answer the stranger politely. Her mind refused to accept what she saw. Her logic rejected the sight, and she began to think she’d gone completely mad. In front of her stood Angelos, his features distorted with tension, his eyes red, and his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. Melissanthi took two steps backward, giving him the opportunity to come into the room and slam the door loudly. He grabbed her by the arms and shook her hard. Melissanthi’s hair escaped from the towel that held it and crowned her face.

  “Don’t do that to me again!” Angelos groaned.

  He indicated he had more to say but he couldn’t speak. He pressed his lips to hers with a force that showed how deeply he was hurt. He pushed her roughly onto the floor and fell on her just as he was, with his clothes soaking wet from the rain. Despite the pain his every movement caused her, Melissanthi, for the first time in days, felt alive. She helped him remove his clothes, and gave herself to him completely, her heart singing hymns and her body opening like a rose petal that accepts the sun’s beneficent invasion into its velvet recesses. His quiet weeping frightened her and woke her numbed brain. She turned and saw the tears flowing down his face, fed by two blue lakes that couldn’t bear the storm of his soul.

  She sat up, shaken. “You’re crying? Why?” she asked, reaching out her hand to stroke him.

  Angelos shot up. He wrapped a towel around himself and lit a cigarette. His gaze, impossible to read, was directed out the window toward the rain. “Why did you do that, Melissanthi?” he asked. “Why did you go away and leave me that letter? Didn’t you realize you were driving a knife straight into my heart? Didn’t it cross your mind that every word would open another wound?”

  “I thought I was doing the right thing,” she whispered as she put on her robe and clung to him helplessly, wanting his protection.

  “What cuts us in two can’t be right!”

  “When I was growing up, my father died because he refused to let them amputate his leg to save him from the infection. He’d stepped on a rusty nail.”

  “And what does our love mean to you? Is it an infection that made you try to cut us in two? Why? So that we can have a crippled life?”

  When Melissanthi didn’t answer, Angelos tried again. He took her by the arm, gently this time. He looked at her tenderly and his voice emerged as a whisper.

  “I can’t live without you, my darling. If you force me to do without you, then I’d rather die. I can’t breathe without you, and the sun doesn’t come out when I’m far from you. What can I do with a life in the darkness? When I read your letter, the ground slipped from under my feet. Don’t do that again to me, Melissanthi . . . please!” he said and held her tightly in his arms, with the urgency of a man who had nearly lost his life in a shipwreck.

  When he released her, Melissanthi sat overwhelmed on the bed. “How did you know that I was here?” she asked.

  “I was lucky—but also cunning.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I went to a club that I know your husband goes to. I pretended I had run into him by chance and started a conversation with him. I asked him, out of politeness, how you were, and it didn’t require a great effort
for him to tell me everything, even the name of the hotel where you were staying. Fortunately I had a passport ready.”

  Melissanthi lowered her head thoughtfully and Angelos took her face in both of his hands.

  “Listen to me, Melissanthi. Your husband is a good man who once rescued you from poverty. You generously gave him so many years of your youth and beauty and stood beside him with dignity and love. Right now he can’t offer you anything you want, and you can’t give him anything he can bear—so what harm are we doing?”

  “Maybe it’s too convenient, this position of yours?”

  “Melissanthi, it’s not right for you to feel sorry for your husband at a time when without you I’m lost. And I know you feel the same. You can’t persuade me it’s not so.”

  “I never said I’d stopped loving you.”

  “So never leave my side!”

  “But it’s wrong for you to be tied to a woman who can’t ever be completely yours.”

  “Yes, but with her I’m happy, whereas with another woman I’d only have a bad copy of life. I swear to you that I’ll never ask you to marry me again. I’ll be beside you on your terms; it’s enough not to lose you.”

  She looked at him, her eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks. Angelos collected their salt before his lips traveled to her neck, before his hands pressed her hopelessly in his embrace.

  Paris was suddenly flooded with light, and life was filled with color, now that Angelos held her hand on endless walks in the lovely city. The store windows suddenly acquired interest. Melissanthi found a thousand things to buy. She admired everything she saw and pretended not to hear his complaints that she was tiring him out in the cold. At night in the hotel, though, she was all his. She drove him crazy with the smell of her body, and his heart beat fast when he saw her eyes shining just before her pleasure was complete. They abandoned themselves to lovemaking all night, to the point where they didn’t have the will to leave their room, even for breakfast.

  They both knew that they couldn’t postpone their departure any longer. The month had passed, and they could no longer extend their stay in their earthly paradise. Angelos’s parents had already begun to be anxious every time he communicated with them, and on her side, Melissanthi understood from Apostolos’s voice that he wished his wife to come home.

  They booked their tickets for their return a day apart, for fear of meeting anyone they knew en route. Melissanthi left first. As soon as she arrived at the house, it seemed to her more depressing than when she left, and her husband seemed older. She felt guilty. In an effort to throw off the melancholy that the house provoked, she immersed herself in renovating it, overlooking the complaints of Apostolos as his wife decorated every room in the latest fashion. The 1960s had introduced a trend toward lighter furniture and brighter colors, and Melissanthi felt much better when she’d gotten rid of the huge sideboards and heavy suites. Only Apostolos’s study—which she’d been strictly forbidden to enter—remained untouched.

  On New Year’s Eve, Melissanthi organized a big party, in spite of her husband’s resistance to the idea. He had no desire to fill the house with various irrelevant and lazy people, as he characterized them. She, on the other hand, wanted to have a good time. They were always shut up by themselves in the house, their only visitors being Christos and Nitsa, who made Melissanthi dizzy with her thousands of imaginary health problems. Melissanthi invited everyone they knew, even Angelos’s family, since his father was an acquaintance of Apostolos. She didn’t want to find herself far from her lover when the New Year was beginning and Angelos was wild with joy. Of course they both knew that in front of so many people they would be confined to meaningless conversation, but at least they could exchange whatever expressions of love they wished with their eyes.

  The evening was a complete success and everyone congratulated the hostess on her splendid organization. Apostolos, however, seemed to be in an especially bad mood, and, a little after the arrival of the New Year, he withdrew to his room with the pretext of a headache. The festivities were at their height but none of his wife’s pleas could persuade him to extend his presence as the host.

  No one noticed Melissanthi go out into the garden to breathe a little of the freezing air of the first day of the New Year. She wrapped her fur coat around her and fixed her gaze on the stars shining on that sweet evening. When she sensed someone behind her, she didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. Angelos wrapped his arms around her, with his lips resting on her hair.

  “Happy New Year, my love,” he whispered.

  She turned and embraced him, then rested her head on his chest. “Happy New Year, Angelos!” she said.

  The young man lifted her chin, then covered her lips with his.

  “They say that lovers who begin the New Year together will stay together,” he said when they’d finished their kiss.

  “I’m happy, Angelos,” she said softly and clung tightly to him, making him lose control.

  Their breathing grew heavier as they cast their clothes aside and lay down on her fur coat, hidden from view by the thick bushes around them. They returned to the party some time later, although Melissanthi had to enter by the back door and change her crumpled dress and fix her makeup before anyone saw her. She simply explained her new attire as the result of spilled champagne. When the last guest left at dawn, she fell exhausted into her bed and smiled when she noticed the discarded dress still spread across a chair in her room. Her thoughts returned to the garden and the erotic interlude that had played out there in the first few minutes of the New Year.

  Melissanthi knew that nothing good would come out of the meeting. On the contrary, she saw Hell open its doors, waiting for her to step over the threshold. Mrs. Flerianos had asked to visit her, and had suggested that they should be alone, even requesting that she give the servants a day off. Now she was sitting opposite Angelos’s mother. Her appearance was hard while she looked carefully at Melissanthi in a way that made her blood freeze in her veins.

  “I suppose that we are alone . . .” Mrs. Flerianos began drily.

  “Just as you asked,” Melissanthi said.

  “Good. I don’t imagine either of us would want any witnesses to what we’re about to discuss.”

  “I don’t understand, Mrs. Flerianos.”

  “I think you understand completely, Mrs. Fatouras, except that I don’t think the term ‘Mrs.’ suits you!”

  “Did you come to my house to insult me?” Melissanthi shot back.

  “I came to your house to talk about my son. And don’t tell me again that you don’t understand, because I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Very well. I’m listening to you.”

  “I know you’ve been having a relationship with him for some time.”

  “How do you know about it?” Melissanthi replied quietly, knowing there was no point in denying it.

  “I saw you with my own eyes, taking your clothes off!” the woman shouted, her face red with anger. “Of course I’d rather have been blinded than come across that sight. But on New Year’s Eve, when I stepped outside from your party to get some fresh air, I didn’t imagine that I’d find the two of you.”

  “Please—you don’t understand,” whispered Melissanthi, ready to burst into tears.

  “What don’t I understand? You are a married woman. What business do you have with my son?”

  “We love each other,” Melissanthi answered steadily, but her calm tone made Angelos’s mother even more furious.

  “How dare you even say the word love when you’re referring to a man who isn’t your husband?”

  “Mrs. Flerianos, let me explain.”

  “I don’t want to know more details. I asked around and found out all about you. Fatouras picked you up from your goat village and turned you into a lady—and you repaid him with such disgusting behavior! You should be ashamed, but women like you don’t have any shame; they’re not even aware of their own immorality.”

  “Mrs. Flerian
os, please!”

  “Not a word. You’ll leave my son alone, now!” Mrs. Flerianos’s voice sounded like a gunshot.

  “I tried, I tried to break things off . . .” Melissanthi murmured. “Try to put yourself in my place.”

  “In your place? And how do you imagine that I could fall so low? And if you think that you can persuade me of the purity of your feelings, don’t bother! You married a man more than twenty years older than you for his money. Now that he’s getting old, you’ve gotten involved with my son who’s young and can give you all the fun you want!”

  “Now you’re being disgusting,” Melissanthi protested.

  That same moment, Mrs. Flerianos shot up like a spring, raised her hand, and gave Melissanthi a hard slap. “A luxury whore like you can’t call me disgusting! Bitch!”

  Melissanthi’s body felt as heavy as lead. Incapable of responding to the woman’s aggression, she looked at her without any expression. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

  “To leave my son in peace!” Mrs. Flerianos shouted.

  “But it’s not only in my hands. If you had let me speak, I’d have told you that I tried to get away from him for his own good, precisely because I recognize that this has no future. But he didn’t let me. I went abroad and he came to find me. I wanted us to separate, but he told me he couldn’t bear to be away from me.”

  “Who knows what tricks you used to seduce him!”

  “Don’t you see that such simple-minded exchanges don’t belong in this conversation, Mrs. Flerianos? I love Angelos, but for his own good, I’m prepared to cooperate. And however strange it may seem to you, I agree with you. At some point, Angelos must have his own family, and if I were a mother, I’d want the same thing for my own child.”

  Mrs. Flerianos looked at Melissanthi through half-closed eyes, as if she were trying to enter her soul and read the truth therein.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Melissanthi said firmly.