by Lena Manta
“I’m already leaving tomorrow for abroad.”
“And a good thing too! And when you come back, take care to forget that you know us.”
“That’s just what I intend too. Enough of the Karapanos family!”
Kyriakos left, having made up his mind not to go home right away. He had to think, and if he saw Evanthia in front of him he wasn’t sure he could keep his self-control. He felt partly responsible for what had happened. He should have realized that Evanthia would not have stopped after that fiasco with the “magic spell.” He should have realized that her good behavior over the last few months was intended to hide what she was plotting. How could he have imagined that she’d begun to feel some affection for her daughter-in-law? How could he have believed that she’d leave the couple in peace?
He couldn’t decide what to do first. Should he go straight to his wife or to his son? And if he chose the first, how could he manage not to do what had never passed through his mind until now and beat the daylights out of her? If he went to his son, what would he say to him? How would he summon up the courage to tell him that his mother was responsible for everything over the last year and a half as she tried to separate him from his wife?
With his head ready to burst, Kyriakos decided to go to his store. Among his accounts it would be easier for him to calm down and put his topsy-turvy thoughts in order. Kyriakos kept a paint store and was proud of the fact that it was the largest in Thessaloniki. Thanks to his efforts, it did a roaring trade.
He arrived around closing time and went straight to his office, where he poured himself a drink and sat down, exhausted.
What he was most afraid of was Fokas’s reaction if he found out what his mother had been up to. He was always a strange child, and it wasn’t so rare for his reactions to leave them stunned. However much Evanthia tried to train him, he never accepted being a “mama’s boy.” For a moment, Kyriakos was tempted to not say anything to him about his mother’s scheming, but to simply confront Evanthia and force her to promise that she’d never do anything to undermine her son’s marriage again. But how could he believe such a promise? He poured himself another drink, but hadn’t yet taken a sip when he saw his son walk in, clearly upset.
“Fokas,” he said, and shuddered at the coincidence. The answer to all his uncertainties had unexpectedly presented itself.
“Father, something very serious has happened; I need your help!” Fokas told him and collapsed exhausted into one of the armchairs.
Kyriakos filled a glass for his son, and offering it to him, sat down opposite him. “I’m listening,” he said calmly.
Fokas began speaking quickly. He explained that something was going on between his wife and a client of the office. Then he showed his father the photographs that had come in the mail. Kyriakos had to admit that Evanthia’s man had done amazing work. Anyone who saw those images would assume that the couple in them were lovers—here, they were walking along, here they were looking in shop windows, and here the man is tenderly kissing the woman’s hand.
Fokas had said all that he wanted to say and stopped, out of breath, looking at Kyriakos.
“What should I do, Father?” he asked. “I love my wife and I would have sworn that she loved me too! But what’s she doing with him? Sure, he’s rich, but Julia never showed an interest in money to the point where she would . . . do you understand?”
“I understand, but I’m afraid that you don’t. And you should be excused for not understanding.”
“What don’t I know?”
The moment had arrived for the whole truth to be told. Kyriakos Karapanos told his son everything from the beginning, even about his aunt who had so unjustly died because of Alexiadis. He hesitated for a moment before he relayed the story behind his son’s so-called food poisoning, but the knife had to reach the bone. Fokas’s face, as his father’s story progressed, kept changing more and more.
“Now you know everything,” Kyriakos said when he’d finished.
“Damn the moment I asked to find it out!” Fokas gasped and threw back his drink in a single gulp.
Without speaking, Kyriakos got up and refilled their glasses. “I don’t blame you, whatever you’re thinking at this moment,” he murmured and sat down again opposite his son. “Your mother exceeded every limit, and to be honest, I feel a little bit guilty that I didn’t tell you then about the magic potion. Maybe, if I had, we would have avoided the present situation.”
“I don’t think so. My mother, as you said yourself, went beyond all reason, and I intend to do the same.”
“I was afraid of that. Be careful, Fokas! Be careful that the punishment doesn’t go beyond the crime. Worse things could happen.”
“I’m leaving, Father.”
“To go where?”
“Someone made me a proposal and I rejected it for the same reasons I’ll accept it now: because of my mother.”
“What sort of proposal?”
“An old acquaintance of mine named Tayaris is a contractor in Africa, in Cameroon to be exact. He’s suggesting that I go there too. There’s plenty of work and the money is really good. So I’ll take my wife and I’ll leave. When the conflicts between my mother and Julia began, you yourself told me to take her and leave, so Mother wouldn’t see us every day and would calm down. It seems that the change of house wasn’t enough. Now that I’m putting an ocean between us, maybe she’ll understand what she’s done.”
“It’s a very harsh punishment, my son, and the worst thing is that there’s an unintended casualty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me. I wasn’t to blame, but I’ll be deprived of you and your family too. The only thing that will comfort me is if this ends up being a good opportunity for you, and not just revenge.”
“You mean you think this is a good idea?”
“As a father I find it awful, but logic indicates something different. Still, I wonder if I’ll ever see you again.”
“When we’ve set ourselves up down there, we’ll come back. I promise you that.”
“And I promise that I’ll be OK and get on with my life even if you don’t come back.”
Moved, Fokas covered his father’s hand with his palm. When they looked at each other, both of them had tears in their eyes.
“Who will tell Evanthia?” Kyriakos asked sadly.
“I will, but not yet. I want to get everything ready and then announce it to her. Please don’t say anything to her. I know I’m asking you something very difficult, but . . .”
The two men hugged each other and parted. Before he left, Kyriakos had another drink. He’d like to have gotten drunk, but he knew he still had to confront Evanthia.
Fokas went home and Julia greeted him as she always did with a smile. He hugged her tightly, to her surprise.
“What’s happened to make you nearly squeeze the breath out of me?” she asked cautiously.
At that moment Fokas’s face darkened. Then he fastened his lips to hers as he picked her up in his arms and carried her hurriedly to their bed. Julia, almost shocked, watched him hastily undress.
“Fokas, have you gone crazy? The kitchen . . . the dinner . . . it’ll burn,” she managed to say.
The weeks that followed seemed like a whirlwind to Julia. Fokas had accepted Tayaris’s proposal for Cameroon, and they had to prepare everything as quickly as possible: passports, visas, and a heap of other details. Her husband had demanded complete secrecy about their departure. He’d asked her not to say anything to anyone, not even to his mother.
“I promise I’ll explain everything to you as soon as we leave,” he soothed Julia and she obeyed without asking any details.
They would take very little furniture with them. Tayaris had rented a house for them down there and had shown them some photographs from the faraway, unknown continent that would be their home for the following years. Their house was a little outside Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, and Tayaris had bought a map so that they could understand more or less
where they were going. The unknown names with their strange pronunciation delighted Julia, who repeated them again and again so as to get used to them. The official language of the state was French, so she decided to learn it as soon as they set foot there. Of course there was a local dialect, but it wasn’t the only one. There were two hundred local dialects, Tayaris had said, and Julia’s eyes grew wide.
The journey had fired her imagination. She was in a hurry to arrive, although she was glad to learn that there would be other Greeks there. So she wouldn’t be too homesick, her husband’s colleague had assured her. He was the dark spot in this whole story, but Julia didn’t dare say a word to Fokas. She didn’t like this man at all. Something in his eyes, and the way he looked around him made her shudder. His opinions about easy profits made her very anxious. He seemed capable of selling his own mother in order to make money. It also disgusted Julia that when he spoke about the local population, his language was disrespectful and racist. For Tayaris they weren’t people but animals to do the hard work. Julia had never seen a black person in her life, but she always believed that the color of a person’s skin didn’t make any difference. The heart and mind were what mattered. Still, she kept her thoughts to herself. She concluded that perhaps she was in a hurry to make inferences about a man she had only just met, and that wasn’t right.
When the tickets were in his pocket and all the papers in order, Fokas announced that he would go see his mother and tell her they were leaving.
“But I must come too so we can say good-bye to them together,” Julia said.
“Believe me, it isn’t necessary. My father will take us to the boat tomorrow and you’ll be able to say good-bye to him then,” he reassured her.
“I don’t understand. How can I leave without saying good-bye to your mother? We may never see her again,” Julia protested.
“My darling, I told you I’d explain everything as soon as we leave. Be patient for a little while. For now, trust me! There’s no need for you to say good-bye to my mother.”
Fokas went out, leaving Julia with a thousand questions.
Evanthia opened the door to her son. She had no idea why he’d come by unannounced at this hour. She also didn’t know why her husband happened to be home.
At Fokas’s first words, her face darkened. When she saw the photographs of Julia with her apparent lover and heard her son say that he knew that she was behind this dirty business, she paled, but she didn’t dare deny anything. She realized from her husband’s expression that he also knew what she had done. When Fokas finished, he looked at her sternly, his arms crossed on his chest.
“So—fine!” Evanthia said boldly. “I don’t deny it. I tried every way I could to get a woman I thought wasn’t worthy of you away from you.”
“And despite all your failures in these machinations you set up, do you still think you were right to do so?” Fokas asked her.
“I don’t know . . .” For the first time, Evanthia seemed to be at a loss.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I always knew you were pigheaded, but I never thought you would stoop so low in your efforts to have me to yourself. You played your hand and lost, and now the time has come for you to pay.”
“Do you want me to ask forgiveness from your wife?”
“Oh no! It’s too late for that. I can’t go on living in fear of what you might do next to Julia. So I’m taking my wife and leaving here.”
“What do you mean? Where are you going?” Evanthia’s voice lost its calm tone and her eyes filled with panic.
“I’ve been offered a chance to work in Cameroon.”
“In Cameroon? That’s in Africa!”
“Exactly.”
“You can’t be serious. Tell me that you’re saying this to punish me!”
“Tomorrow night we’re getting on the boat. Everything’s ready.”
The next moment Evanthia collapsed. Kyriakos caught her and made her sit down. Sobs began to rack the woman’s body, but Fokas remained unbending as he looked at her.
“I’m sorry, Mother, that you brought things to this point. Everything would have been simpler if you hadn’t disliked my wife so much.”
“Son, please, I promise you that I won’t do anything bad anymore! I swear I’ll do anything you want. I’ll even fall at Julia’s feet to ask her forgiveness. Just don’t go!”
“It’s too late, Mother. Besides, Julia doesn’t know anything about all this. I didn’t tell her because she has her limits too.”
“We have nobody but you! What will happen to us all by ourselves?”
“You’re still young and very healthy. And I don’t intend to spend my life in Africa. I’ll go there to secure my future and I’ll come back. Until then you’ll have plenty of time to think and to . . . forgive yourself.”
Fokas tried to leave but Evanthia suddenly stood up and clung to him. “Don’t do this to me,” she begged. “I can’t bear it!”
Her son gave her a bitter look. Then he pulled her hands off him and turned to his father. The two men exchanged a glance full of understanding.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” his father whispered.
Fokas nodded and left.
Kyriakos knelt beside his wife, who was sitting down again and crying with her head hidden in her hands. “Stop crying, Evanthia. Let’s ask God to keep him strong, so we’ll be hugging him again very soon,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“What did I do? What did I do?” Evanthia asked herself between sobs.
“I told you this wouldn’t end well, but you didn’t listen to me. Now neither you nor I can change his mind.”
“You knew everything,” Evanthia accused him.
“Yes. A series of coincidences helped me find out the truth about your wonderful scheme, and when the boy came to me, shattered by the apparent infidelity of his wife, I told him everything.”
“Why didn’t you stop him, Kyriakos? Why didn’t you try to make him change his mind?”
“Because leaving may turn out to be for his own good—and yours too. Putting some distance between yourself and a problem makes it seem that much smaller. The distance will make him forgive you sooner, Evanthia.”
After a journey that seemed endless to her, Julia wasn’t in a state to judge much about her surroundings. After the boat, she didn’t remember how many train cars they got into, and she didn’t know how many miles they rode. She couldn’t remember anything about the changes in the landscape, nor could her mind count all the languages that had reached her ears. But she did remember the first black person she saw. She had widened her eyes a little in fear. The man opposite her seemed very strange to her, and it wasn’t long before he became aware of her staring and glared back at her. He turned to Fokas and asked him in English why his wife was looking at him like that. Fokas explained that Julia had never seen a black person in her life and she was simply intrigued.
The man smiled. His teeth flashed blindingly against his black skin and he turned to Julia, who was now really embarrassed. The man looked at her calmly and thanks to Fokas, who acted as their translator, began a conversation with her. He told her that his name was Christian (also his religion, he told her) and that he was married with two children. After introducing himself he held out his hand for her to shake it. Julia looked at the pink palm that contrasted sharply with the rest of his body. When she placed her hand in his, she noticed it was warm and strong and his grip exuded confidence and kindness. Before long they were talking like old acquaintances. Julia and Fokas were enthusiastic when they found out that Christian also lived in Yaoundé. For the rest of the trip Julia managed to teach him a few Greek phrases, but they laughed when Julia tried to say some words in his native language.
Christian turned out to be a wonderful traveling companion, and the information he gave them about his country was really useful. Cameroon, he told them, took its name from Rio dos Camarões, the “Shrimp River,” as the Portuguese had called the river Wouri. Nearly half of the country was covered by for
ests inhabited by various ethnic groups, the chief of them being the Bantus and the black Sudanese tribes. In the southern part, where they would be living, the Bantu people and their various tribes were dominant. He himself was from the Basa tribe. Most of the country’s inhabitants, he went on to tell them, lived in villages. The capital Yaoundé was very European, at least in the center. Seventy percent of the country’s population were farmers and the area around Yaoundé produced mostly cocoa. Julia and Fokas were glad to hear that the area they would be living in was fairly rainy, with a relatively cooler average temperature of about seventy-seven degrees. Still, it would be humid.
From Garoundere the three travelers took the train that would lead them to their final destination. Exhausted as she was by the heat, Julia managed to stay alert and see enough from the window to realize that she liked this country much more than she had imagined. The landscape delighted her. In some areas the vegetation was really dense, while along the Sanaga River, one of the largest in Cameroon, large areas of forest had been cleared for cultivation and dwellings.
At the end of their journey, Tayaris was waiting to drive them to their house. Julia was annoyed with him when he seemed reluctant to give Christian a ride to his house, which was only a block away from theirs. With Christian out of earshot, she argued with Tayaris. Fokas took her side, so Christian joined them in the jeep, unaware—fortunately—of what had been said.
The house was a pleasant surprise for Julia. A short distance from the city, it was surrounded by other small houses. It reminded her of her own house by the river and her eyes filled with tears. As she looked at the small garden full of flowers, her mother’s garden flashed before her. As she climbed the few steps that led to the wooden verandah, she had the feeling that she was treading on the boards where she’d taken her very first steps in life.
Inside, the house had many more amenities than she’d imagined: a large, light kitchen, four bedrooms, and a comfortable sitting room. A very pleasant black girl hurried to make a deep bow when she saw them. Her hair was hidden under a scarf and she wore an unattractive brown dress that was too big for her while her feet were imprisoned in some heavy shoes that were clearly uncomfortable. Her skin was a deep russet color that matched the color of her dress, and her eyes were full of intelligence and warmth.