The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  I wouldn’t have the TV on; it masked the noise from the street, voices and footsteps of anyone approaching the house. I wanted to intercept any visitors, steer away any bearers of bad news, shoot any messengers. I took up residence in the kitchen, on guard at the kitchen table. It drove Elpida mad. I was in her way as she tried to work. But it was the only time I could relax slightly, the only time I was in control. I could see her, and I could see the door.

  I hadn’t slept properly for weeks, but where before lust for Irini and pleasurable plotting of sexual liaisons had kept me awake, now it was nightmarish fantasies of confrontation and crisis. Yet when I did sleep, it was often of Irini that I dreamed, but the dreams were no longer a pleasure. I was always hunting for her; I knew where she was and was on my way to her, but I always woke before I found her, and I woke feeling empty. I worked, but couldn’t concentrate, making too many stupid mistakes until my father shouted at me to pull myself together or go home. I wouldn’t go home, not in working hours. I drove up the mountains and hid there, knowing if anyone saw me they’d assume I’d planned a rendezvous, which could only make matters worse. I went into a church once, St Lefteris’s, lit candles and prayed with all my heart for an easy way out of the mess. Is that what I got?

  I ate little, smoked too much, veered from manic good humour to foul temper and melancholy.

  Elpida quickly drew the only logical conclusion. She went one day in tears to her mother, and told her I had found another woman.

  Sixteen

  It seemed to happen in a single day that Theo changed towards me. To everybody else, it was a day like any other; to me, it marked the first hours of a long and bitter end. He walked by me on the street, and there was no hello, no smile or backward glance. He turned his face from me – he turned away! – and passed me by, with no acknowledgement, as if I were a stranger. And I felt a little lurch of fear, and tears pricked my eyes, and I was cross with him; but I forgave him – it didn’t take me long – by finding ways to justify his rudeness. I told myself that he was being prudent; the eyes and ears of spies were everywhere.

  And then, one morning I was waiting in the post office, and as I stood in line, he came in too. I didn’t need to look; I knew his voice as he called out to the postmaster. I knew his voice, because it brought deep blushes to my cheeks, and put a tremble in my fingers.

  The queue was long; the new girl they had hired was inefficient, taking too long with every customer, even for the buying of a single stamp. Theo was impatient, and he shouted to the postmaster from the back of the queue. I remember his voice, and I remember his words; I’ve heard no more words from his mouth, since.

  He shouted, ‘Stellios, give me back that envelope my wife dropped off this morning. She forgot to put the cheque in it.’

  And the postmaster broke off from weighing parcels, picked up a stack of stamped mail, and riffled through the envelopes, until he found the one that Theo’s wife had brought.

  He held it out for Theo.

  And Theo, pushing his way forward to the counter, trod on my foot.

  He didn’t seem to notice – not me, nor that he’d hurt me. He offered no ‘excuse me’, or ‘I’m sorry’, which would have been good manners, even if I’d been a stranger.

  And I began to realise that strangers were what he wanted us to be.

  Outside, he was there, with friends. He had the envelope still in his hand; he was listening to a joke, and when the punch-line came, I heard him laugh much louder than the others.

  It didn’t hurt, so much, that he didn’t say hello; it wouldn’t have been so bad if he only hadn’t looked in my direction. But what he did was far, far worse; he saw me there, and turned his back on me.

  Days passed, and his remoteness persisted. She, at first, was desperate for contact, for some small sign that he still cared. More time passed, and she would have been grateful for a sign that he knew she existed; to him, it seemed, she had become invisible, and irrelevant. With no word of explanation, without a smile for friendship’s sake or the simplest of goodbyes, he had left her.

  She could not let him go so easily. She searched for him in all the places she had been sure to find him, but he was gone. Hour after hour, she waited and watched at the window, but he never passed. In her distress, she became reckless; she walked by his house, brushed her hand against his truck, peered through its window to see again the setting of their magic. It was nothing but ordinary – just the cab of a truck. A blue glass charm against the evil eye hung from the rear-view mirror; an empty carton of strawberry-flavoured milk lay on the floor. Of the man she had believed in love with her, she found no trace.

  As she walked home, a vehicle slowed behind her. Her heart leapt, believing it was him, but the car which pulled alongside her was grey, and the man behind the wheel was Zafiridis. His hopes were high; he’d heard the whispers of her immorality, and what she’d given one, she’d surely give him too.

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a ride. I’m going past your house.’

  His breath was sugary with peppermints, but at the gums, his teeth were thick with plaque.

  ‘I prefer to walk,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s no trouble. Get in.’

  His eyes ran over her body; they scanned her legs, and came to rest on her breasts.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I prefer to walk.’

  He watched her go, enjoying how her hips moved, then turned the car and headed back the way he’d come. Her refusal was, to him, quite understandable; with her new reputation, she couldn’t afford to be seen with any man. But he could tell by her expression that she wanted him; his timing had been off, nothing more. She wanted romance, and some gentle handling; and the time for romance was the night, when he could come and go, and no one would ever know they’d been together.

  It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. At first, I thought it was going to be easy, because I was afraid of discovery and disgrace. I was looking after Number One, trying to believe it had all been a game and I was coming out of it unscathed. If only she doesn’t make trouble, I thought. If only she doesn’t make things difficult.

  She never did.

  She changed. I took something from her, without ever meaning to. Every time I cut her in the street, I could see her spirit shrink, though she pulled herself up tall, pretending not to care, because she thought I didn’t care. And I didn’t care, at first. I thought, she’ll get over it. She’ll have to. But I could see she wasn’t getting over it, and neither, in my heart, was I. In both of us, the cut had gone too deep.

  I set my face against her, and with no evidence to feed on, the gossip slowly died. But now came something unexpected: as my fear of exposure diminished, I began to miss her. I missed her more than I can say. My life lacked everything it had lacked before; there was nothing to look forward to except the endless trail of days all the same, the tedious business of life’s dull progress. There were no highlights in my days or moments of joy, no liftings of the heart or soarings of the soul at the sight of her smile. As I had witnessed it leave her, the ability to smile left me. Sometimes as I passed her, face averted, in the street, I thought I could feel her reproachful eyes on me; I knew if I looked into her face, what I would see would be the question, Why? Like a dog that’s been kicked, she began to cower from me, but, hand on heart, I’d never treat a dog of mine the way I treated her.

  I wanted to explain to her; of course I did. I wanted to sit down with her, and tell her why it had to be that way.

  But I was afraid to speak to her; I never dared. Not one more word ever passed between us.

  What are you thinking, now? Are you asking yourself why I didn’t go to her, to be with her instead of with the wife I didn’t love? Are you wishing that I still might, and are you hoping against hope there’ll be a happy ending? Do you think it would it be better for us all, in the long run? Are you saying, Theo, don’t be a fool, don’t let her slip away, run to her, love conquers all?

  Not in th
is case, my friend. In this case, it doesn’t work out like that at all.

  I thought about my duty to my wife and child, and to my family. Who would care for Elpida and Panayitsa, provide for them? Would it have been right to put responsibility for them back on her father, to hand that burden to an old man at the end of his working days? What had Elpida done to deserve disgrace, and desertion? She had always done her duty by me; in her own way, she had loved me.

  And where would Irini and I have gone? To stay here would have been impossible; in the streets, they’d have spat on her, and shunned her. Maybe we could have gone to Kos, or Athens. We might have gone abroad, to Australia, or America. But I’m from here; this is my place. How could I turn my back on it, on my family and friends, for ever? I knew this island would never let me go free; it would haunt me and call me back, always.

  And would Irini and I have continued to love each other, after we set up home together, far away; or might we have come to hate each other? That is the question to which there is no answer. Because I was afraid to try.

  I chose Conformity over Love.

  Do I regret it?

  What do you think?

  One morning, as she went early to the grocer’s, he was sitting, alone, at a café table. Forgetting herself, she stared at him with greedy eyes; he turned his face towards the counter, and called out for his bill. Shaking, anxious, she went on. Service was slow at the grocer’s, and, returning, she found him gone. But the cup that he had drunk from was on the table, and the glass ashtray beside it held the dog-end of the cigarette he had smoked.

  Dare she sit in his chair? Craving, desperate for contact, she did so, and felt the ecstasy of knowing she touched an object so recently touched by him. She wanted to touch his coffee cup, put it to her lips, learn something of him from it, and furtively she glanced inside it, trying to figure from his dregs how he took his coffee: with milk, or without? With sugar, or not? Such mundane details of his life were unknown to her; the café owner knew more of him than she, for he had had the information to make the coffee.

  And the cigarette butt: it had touched his lips a dozen times, and was an object she could treasure, a piece of him to prize. She coveted that worthless, stinking piece of trash as a relic of her saint, as a believer would covet a splinter of the True Cross. But how to take it? At her back, the old men were already at their backgammon; they would miss nothing that she did.

  The unsmiling café owner stepped up to her table and, asking for her order, picked up Theo’s cup, and swept away his ashtray, and the relic. The old men rattled dice, and cast them on the board, whilst behind the counter, the café owner dumped the dirty china in the sink, and knocked the cigarette end into the garbage.

  She waited for her coffee with tears in her eyes which must not fall. The coffee, when it came, was cold, and bitter; she drank it for appearances’ sake, and walked home alone along the road where he always used to pass.

  For Andreas, it was hard: hard to watch his wife in her unhappiness, hard only to guess at its source. In the house, she was like a wraith, tearful and remote. He did not ask why; there was no need, because in his heart, he knew. He feared the answer, if he asked; he dared not try and comfort her. He kept his distance, and stayed out of her way.

  Then, one morning as he walked down to the harbour, he passed a house whose courtyard door stood open; glancing in, he was amazed. Within the courtyard, a potted Eden flourished. Geraniums flowered in deep reds, pinks and white; miniature roses and slender lilies bloomed amongst squat and spiny cacti; tall grasses rustled against lush ferns. A young lemon tree bore miniature yellow fruit, cream-petalled gardenias grew beside heady-scented jasmine; overhead, a trellis stretched, supporting a canopy of cool greenery and the royal-purple trumpets of exuberant morning glory. Entranced, Andreas stood and admired this work of art, this small, exquisite garden which was someone’s labour of love.

  In the harbour florist’s, he bought seeds, compost and terracotta pots.

  ‘My wife needs a hobby,’ he told the florist. ‘Something to stop her brooding. She gets lonely, whilst I’m away.’

  The florist watched him go with knowing eyes. He hired a taxi to carry home the makings of a garden, and there he left them beneath the struggling grapevine, to speak to her for themselves, if she would only listen.

  Andreas went to sea; he was gone for many days, until one evening, as the swallows dipped and called across the valley, she heard his step behind her. The green shoots of the seedlings were beginning to appear; as she sprinkled water on the pots of sunflowers, he picked one up, and gently touched the new growth with a fingertip.

  ‘They’re doing very well,’ he said.

  She turned to him.

  ‘Perhaps you have a talent for it. Green fingers.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He rarely touched her, these days, but now he put a hand on her shoulder, and she let it remain.

  ‘I’m glad you’re finding an interest, Irini,’ he said. ‘I want you to be happy again. I want us to be happy.’

  She looked down at her own hands, and at the little pots sprouting blades of leaves, and considered his words. Happiness, she thought, is for other people. What I have is plant pots.

  She turned her face to his, and as her tears began to fall, he folded her within his arms and held her close.

  He said, ‘I still want you, Irini.’ And as her tears flowed into weeping, he was content to be the shoulder that she cried on.

  She found a place for her garden beyond the village, near the chapel of St Fanouris, where the wide-stepped grain terraces still traced the hillside contours. Andreas bought her tools, and went with her to clear the hard-packed ground, cutting back the spreading branches of the fig trees, digging down to uproot the thistles and the long-established weed-grasses.

  She made the pilgrimage daily, carrying a bucket to fetch water from the chapel well. As they grew stronger, she planted out her seedlings, working until there was nothing to do but weed amongst the rows, and wait for the blooming of her garden.

  Her work stimulated talk; she was a fallen woman, and her motives were in doubt.

  ‘It’s not her land,’ complained the women in the grocer’s. ‘She’s after squatters’ rights. She’ll fence it, and sit tight. Ten years, and it’s hers. You’ll see.’

  The grocer, weighing white rice from a sack, asked, ‘So whose land is it?’

  But no one knew. The land was long-deserted, abandoned in the war, and no one was left who could remember who had worked it when wheat was still grown there.

  The young men in the bars claimed it was a smokescreen.

  ‘She’s meeting someone there,’ they said. ‘He puts it to her in the chapel.’

  But no car was ever seen there to identify a lover (she’d had one; she’d take on anyone, now), and the only man they ever saw her with was her husband.

  So, finding no co-conspirator, they questioned her sanity.

  ‘She’s touched,’ they said. ‘Who in their right mind would walk all that way each day, just to grow a few tomatoes?’

  But the old men spoke in her defence.

  ‘You’ve all gone soft,’ they said, ‘with your motorbikes and your supermarkets and your TV. In our day, we walked for miles to scythe the wheat. We worked until our hands bled, in all seasons, in all weathers, tending crops. You walked and worked, or you didn’t eat. If the woman’s not lazy like you, leave her alone.’

  Shepherds coming down from the hills detoured to review her progress. In the cafés, they made their reports. She had worked hard, and done well; they confessed themselves impressed.

  Word reached Theo that his mistress had turned gardener. There was no need to ask questions; he simply listened, and, learning where, he drove up in the truck to take a look. Too afraid of spying eyes to stop on the road, he slowed to a crawl as he passed the terraces; he saw the hard ground worked into tilth, the seedlings planted out in mounded rows, and in the corners, already blooming, pale-blue f
lowers he was too far away to identify.

  But of the gardener herself, there was no sign.

  The forecast for the coming week was good; the breeze had lost at last the undercurrent of winter, the air was light and bright, the alpines were in bloom.

  Andreas had stacked the boat high with lobster traps, and, kissing her lightly on the cheek, had left before the sun broke the horizon.

  ‘For certain,’ he said, untying the oily rope that moored the boat to the jetty, ‘I’ll be back with you by Friday.’

  She caught hold of his arm, and brushed his cheek with her dry lips; the odour of fish was about him already, even before he cast off.

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘Good fishing.’

  Later, when the sun had gained some warmth, she took the new, red watering-can he had bought her, and slowly walked the long road to her garden.

  Someone had been there.

  The fragile stalks of the tomato plants had all been snapped; the aubergines and sunflowers had been uprooted. Their wilted foliage had already lost its brilliance, bright green slipped into the grey of dying plants. The burgundy-edged lettuces had been trampled; the chick-peas (which had done so well) were strewn across the flowerbeds she had marked out with stones. The pot of spearmint stank, of drying urine.

  She sat down on the flat rock where she’d sat for many hours, lately, and surveyed the ruined garden. She gazed beyond the terraces to where the mountains rose in sharp-stoned pinnacles. Behind the chapel, a solitary goat bleated to be free of its pen. Far below, the navy sea seemed still; out there, somewhere, Andreas fished, alone, and here was she, with people close, yet more alone than he.