by Lena Manta
The situation with Tayaris finally hit a crisis point when Julia was pregnant with her third child. Hara was five, Theodora had just turned three, and Julia was expecting a third baby in two months’ time that she fervently hoped would be a boy. One of the biggest bankers in Yaoundé had commissioned Fokas to design and oversee the construction of a villa, which left Tayaris solely responsible for all the other new projects that had come in. One day, a new client stopped by the villa’s construction site and asked Fokas to accompany him to his project’s site to take some measurements. Fokas agreed, and from the moment they arrived and he saw Tayaris there—with an uneasy expression on his face—he knew something was wrong. Tayaris tried to block him from entering, but Fokas calmly pushed him aside. When he began to examine the columns, he saw that the reinforcement wasn’t what he had designed. The iron rods were very thin and there weren’t enough of them. These “mistakes” would probably have fatal consequences for the final structure. Fokas turned toward Tayaris, frowning.
“The concrete won’t be poured today. Cancel whatever you’ve arranged!” he ordered. “If we pour now, the columns will bend right afterward and will have to be built again.”
“But that’s a lot of trouble,” Tayaris objected.
“You should have done it right from the beginning. I didn’t design it like that. Why did you make changes without even telling me?”
“I thought we were overdoing it with so much iron.”
“Tayaris, if you want us to get along from now on, no more changes to my designs!” Fokas shouted. “Do you understand? How much iron did you charge the customer for? Can I see the invoice?”
Even before Tayaris showed him the paperwork, Fokas knew it would be incorrect. His colleague had charged for one thing, but put in another.
Fokas grabbed Tayaris by the lapel. “Were you trying to destroy me?” he asked, shaking him from head to foot. “This is cheating! The man trusted us and we not only cheated him, but we could have killed him with a building that didn’t have sound foundations.”
Tayaris tried to escape Fokas’s grip but couldn’t. He looked at him furiously. “Are you really going to do this right now?” he shouted. “The blacks can see us! How can I give them orders after you humiliate me like this?”
Fokas suddenly let him go as if he was disgusted to touch him. “Tayaris, if you want us to continue to work together, what happened today can never happen again, otherwise we’ll dissolve the partnership the moment you find someone else to make a fool of. Agreed?”
“OK, friend, I made a mistake,” Tayaris replied softly this time. “It won’t happen again, I swear.”
“For the good of both of us, I hope you keep your promise.”
Fokas went home very upset. When Julia saw her husband, she demanded to know what exactly was going on. When he told her what had happened, the blood rose to her head; she turned red and her eyes flashed. Fokas regretted confiding in her. When his wife got into a state like that, she could become dangerous.
By chance, the next day, Tayaris came by the house to collect some papers for the office. Fokas was busy getting dressed for work, which left Julia alone to deal with him.
“What happened?” he said coolly to Julia. “Are you going to have another baby?”
She went up to Tayaris with a threatening air and made him step out onto the verandah, almost pushing him.
“What’s the matter with you?” he said. “What sort of behavior is this?”
“You really have to ask? Take care, because I’m not joking. The next time you try to play a game like that under Fokas’s nose and you endanger his reputation, you’ll have me to deal with!”
Tayaris smiled sarcastically, looking at the short woman in front of him, who’d stuck her neck out like a rooster ready to attack. “Are you threatening me?” he asked.
Julia stretched up onto her toes and cursed her size; even like this she only reached up to his chin. But what she lacked in height she made up for in anger. “Don’t mock me, Tayaris, or you’ll regret it! I’ll send people to deal with you. And they’ll all be black. I may not even have to pay them. Maybe they’ll do it for pleasure!”
Tayaris seemed at a loss.
“This is something that will stay between us. Fokas doesn’t have to know,” Julia added. “Just do your work properly and you won’t have to protect yourself, at least from me.”
Just then, Fokas appeared, putting a stop to the conversation. He looked for a moment in surprise at his wife, who was bright red with anger, and Tayaris, who was clearly embarrassed. Fokas had learned over the years that he couldn’t stop his wife from speaking her mind and doing as she pleased, so he decided not to intervene in whatever had just transpired. He was sure that the scene he’d stumbled upon had to do with yesterday’s events on the building site, and he could imagine that Julia was angry because someone had upset her husband. She was unbelievable, this woman. Sometimes she reminded him of his mother.
Tayaris took the papers he wanted and left. Fokas followed him, while Julia stayed on the verandah alone with her thoughts. Her words might have been a little exaggerated, but she wasn’t wrong about the fact that a lot of people hated Tayaris. First and foremost Faida’s father, Abdul. He had worked for Tayaris for a month but had left, unable to bear the man’s racist behavior. Every time Abdul thought of Tayaris, his eyes would flash with anger. Christian had told Julia that the name of Tayaris was hated by most of his workers and no one in the business world had much faith in him until he began working with Fokas.
Before long, though, the episode was forgotten as Julia’s confinement overshadowed everything else. When the baby arrived—yet another girl—Imela at first laughed heartily, then, unlike at past births, quickly disappeared.
“Just like my mother,” Julia said sadly after the old woman had left. “I only pile up girls!”
“And who told you that was a bad thing, my love?” Fokas asked as he held the child in his arms.
“Anyway, I’d have liked to have used your father’s name,” Julia said, taking a deep breath before she went on. “But this one will have your mother’s name instead.”
Fokas looked at his wife without any expression.
“Don’t look at me like that, Karapanos! It’s years ago now and I’ve forgotten it. Why do you still hold on to it? You can sit down and write your mother the news.”
“Me?” Fokas found himself in a very difficult position.
“You. And I won’t discuss it further. Enough! It’s ridiculous for me to correspond with my mother-in-law while you refuse. You’ll sit down and write to her today and I forbid you to make any reference to the past.”
When Evanthia opened the letter, she was doubly surprised: her son had finally written to her, and, what’s more, announced that the name of her third grandchild was Evanthia. She asked herself if she could hope, now, that they would return home and she would finally see him after so many years.
Julia looked at Imela, unable to read the expression on her face. The old woman had stopped by for no apparent reason, and, now, as Faida translated the purpose of the visit, Julia’s smile faded. She suddenly turned pale and her eyes filled with tears. The young mother had complete confidence in the midwife, but she simply couldn’t accept her advice not to have any more children. It seemed like silly nonsense that Imela had seen something in little Evanthia’s placenta. So Julia didn’t say anything to Fokas and was careful to forget what she had heard.
But she was forced to remember it when she became pregnant for the fourth time and nothing seemed right. Faida was very worried, and, as soon as Julia reached her ninth month, Imela came by the house every day, even though she was finding it hard to walk. The delivery was difficult, and as soon as the child was born, Julia knew she would lose it. It was a boy—small, sickly, almost blue, and Julia couldn’t help remembering how her mother and grandmother had given birth to strong girls, but with boys they were unlucky. She cried bitterly when the baby died a week later, and she
turned to Imela for an explanation.
“I told you, my lady,” the old lady said while Faida translated. “Something inside you doesn’t make good male children. Have as many girls as you like, but you’ll never hold a boy tight in your arms. And since nobody knows beforehand what baby is coming, don’t do it again!”
“But you saw from the previous birth that something wasn’t right. You said you saw it in the placenta.”
“And in this one too, I saw it, my lady. Don’t have any more children, because you may be in danger yourself and you have three girls who need you.”
Julia hung her head in defeat as she realized how right the old woman was and asked her to forgive her for not having believed her earlier. But Imela just smiled.
“Don’t be sorry, madam. I wasn’t angry with you. If people don’t suffer, they don’t learn.”
“Strange,” whispered Julia. “My grandmother said the same thing.”
“All people who have lived a long time, like me and your grandmother, have the same minds, whether they’re white or black,” the old lady observed, then left.
Julia told Fokas everything that Imela had said and he scolded her for not revealing it all from the beginning, after little Evanthia was born.
“That’s enough now!” he said tenderly. “We don’t need other children. We’re fine with our three girls. The important thing is for us all to be healthy and happy like we are now!”
When Hara blew out the twelve candles on her cake, Julia remembered how her mother always said, “When you have children, you don’t realize the time passing.” She had been so young when she first set foot in Cameroon and last year she had turned thirty-four. Fokas’s hair had turned gray and he wore glasses. Faida, who had been a girl when she first met her, now stood in front of her as a real woman, although not yet married. Whatever Julia said, she couldn’t persuade her to marry and have her own family. In the end Faida had started to cry and ask her if she didn’t want her with them anymore, so Julia had decided not to raise the subject again.
Christian and Helene happily admired Julia and Fokas’s children. Their own oldest girl was already engaged. To Julia it seemed as if someone had suddenly moved the clock forward. It had already been some time since she had realized that both she and Fokas had become a part of the local society and that, even more bizarrely, they had somehow attracted the adoration of the locals, which sometimes reached extreme levels. Now she could laugh when she remembered what had happened the previous year, but at the time she hadn’t enjoyed it at all.
It was just after Julia had intervened to save the life of a young boy who’d come home with terrible pains in his belly. Faida’s mother had run to get Julia, who came and drove the boy to the hospital, where he was operated on for a ruptured appendix. The young man’s life was saved and he came home smiling a week later. Julia again found herself with two parents at her feet wanting to thank her—it wasn’t the first time she’d saved someone in the village. In fact, it had become an open secret that the white woman who lived nearby was a person with feelings, who cared for everyone and who ran to whoever needed her, just like her husband, who was a good and honorable man.
No one was surprised, then, when one day, two weeks later, Julia found two men on her doorstep holding a big basket of fruit. They explained that it was a gift that would always be there. Julia couldn’t understand how a basket of fruit could exist forever, but she accepted it, thanking them. Everyone knew her love of fruit and the fact that she would never say no to it.
She started peeling a piece from the basket when she heard the shouts of Abdul, who called to her from the yard. She was frightened by the panicked tone of his voice as he jumped up and ran to see what was happening. He asked her if she’d been given a basket of fruit, and when she said yes, he asked if she’d eaten any of it. When Julia said she hadn’t yet, Abdul seemed really relieved. The fruit, he told her, was poisoned. His fellow countrymen were famous for making strong poisons that they dipped their arrows into to be certain that anything they hunted was doomed.
“And they wanted to kill me?” Julia asked, bewildered. “But why? I thought they liked me.”
“That’s exactly why they did it!” Abdul explained. “They were afraid you might leave and they wanted to keep you, even dead, in their country.”
“But that’s terrible!”
“Perhaps for you, who has a different way of thinking. To them, though, you are a sacred woman, and they want to keep you with them to protect them. Don’t be angry with them, madam,” he begged her. “They didn’t do it as a bad thing.”
When Fokas returned, Julia told him what had happened. Her husband seemed to partly understand the mentality of the locals. “If they love you like I do, I understand how desperate they are to hold on to you,” he said.
In any case they agreed to be much more cautious from now on with whatever the locals offered them.
Meanwhile, quite suddenly, an inexplicable nostalgia for her homeland overtook Julia. Her in-laws were openly begging them to come back. Evanthia and Kyriakos had aged and wanted to see their son and daughter-in-law again. Julia wondered how her own mother was, and her grandmother, and all her sisters. Over the years, their correspondence had dwindled almost to nothing. The children and the rhythm of her life in Cameroon had made her almost forget her own country. There were moments when she was ashamed of that, but however many promises she made to herself to be a more regular correspondent, something always intervened and nothing changed.
She spoke to Fokas about it and for the first time he realized that Africa, even though it started as a temporary solution, had become permanent. With the money they’d saved they had enough for three lifetimes, but everyday life had completely absorbed them, and the dream of return remained a dream until his wife forced him to confront reality. They had stayed there so long—perhaps they should return.
They had begun to discuss it when Fokas’s office undertook a large project. It was a bridge, the construction of which would bring a lot of money to the business.
“Two years,” he announced to Julia, just after Hara’s birthday. “Two more years and we’ll leave. We’ll go home to our country.”
“Are you telling me the truth, Fokas?” she asked, touched.
“I swear to you. This bridge will bring us a substantial profit and then we’ll leave. And to show you that I’m serious, I already sent all the rest of our money to Greece.”
Julia leapt into his arms. From the very next day, she began to prepare the children for their return. She spoke to them daily about their country, about their grandfather and grandmothers, and promised them that as soon as they returned they’d take a big trip with their father to get to know Greece.
Her greatest problem was Faida. As soon as she heard that they planned to leave, she burst into tears so pitiful that Julia didn’t know what to do to calm her down. Finally she promised that they would take her with them to Greece, and only then did the girl stop crying and look at her with gratitude.
“Are you telling me the truth, madam?” she asked, wanting to be reassured.
“Have I ever lied to you? I’ll take you with me and I’ll see later what you have to say so far away from your family,” Julia scolded her affectionately.
“But you’re my family now . . . don’t you know that?” whispered Faida. Julia, deeply touched, hugged her.
The plans for the bridge were delayed a lot. It was the most demanding project Fokas had ever undertaken, requiring great care and precision. The responsibility was enormous. Of course, Tayaris did nothing but rub his hands together, thinking of the money that began pouring into the agency’s account. Fokas hadn’t told him anything about his decision to return to Greece after the completion of the bridge, although even he wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to maintain secrecy.
After six months, everything was ready for construction to begin. Fokas seemed very anxious, and Julia began to feel a strange uneasiness inside her too. She wished her husban
d had a different partner. The episode of the iron reinforcement on the building site still haunted. Tayaris had stayed out of trouble, keeping his end of his bargain with Julia, but this time fate was not on their side.
A bad cold forced Fokas to take to his bed. It was impossible for him to oversee the work and so his partner was left with complete control. A few weeks earlier, Fokas had finally announced his plan to return to Greece. Tayaris had seen the company’s profits decline as the flow of work that Fokas brought in was suddenly cut off. So, he decided, since this was their last project together, it would have the greatest profit.
He canceled all the first-class materials that Fokas had ordered and replaced them with cheaper materials, pocketing the difference. He reduced the iron and concrete without appreciating how dangerous this was. He cut corners wherever he could, and when the first part of the construction was completed, it collapsed like a house of cards, killing several workers. Tayaris ran to Fokas’s house to ask for his help.
Fokas’s hair stood on end when he heard his colleague explain what had happened. He grabbed him by the shoulders in a fury. “What did you do, you scum? How could you? We’re ruined! Do you understand?”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen, friend! I swear. They’ll catch us. It was a state project. They’ll have informed the police by now and they’ll arrest us. We’ll have to leave secretly so they won’t find us!”
“Ah, so apart from being a crook, you’re a coward too!” yelled Fokas. “They’ll arrest us, because we’ll go and give ourselves up.”
“Have you gone crazy, Fokas? They’ll put us in jail for the rest of our lives! Think about your children!”
“You even took the trouble to think about them!”