by Arnold Zable
Uncle’s walking stick had a life of its own. It had nine lives. I once saw it almost fall into the fire. I saw it all but crushed by a donkey. I saw it fall over the road into the path of a swerving car. At times it seemed abandoned, a solitary stick at rest against the bedroom door, but mostly it remained in the hands of its master.
Andreas would clutch it, twirl it, lean on it and, when seated, rest his head against it. It bore the full weight of his arms and upper body in the town square when he stood and talked to a friend he had not seen in a while. I saw it on cliff tops supporting an old man gazing at the waters he had once plied. And many times I saw it in the distance, in the hands of a bow-legged sailor and rider of donkeys, limping to the old kafeneion in Stavros, the largest village on Ithaca’s northern heights.
To this day I prefer the old kafeneion to the bars and cafes that have sprouted on the main street, but there have been changes since I was last here. The floors are tiled, and the counter is marble, as fitting for a modern bar. Yet the old men still gather each morning, and they return, post siesta. A single light bulb still sheds a glow over each table, and the cards fall upon the green felt late into the night.
‘A big wind today,’ says one of the players, a former seaman, absent-mindedly. The men lift their heads and glance at the tourist bus that arrives mid-morning. The tourists are on the island for a day, and in Stavros, barely an hour. They roam the streets, cameras in hand, enter the cafes for a quick bite, and crowd around the bust of Odysseus on a pedestal in the village square. They study the map that tracks his journeys, photograph the bust, and are gone without a trace.
As the wind rises we retreat from the cafe terrace. The church clock, on the opposite side of the square, strikes eleven. The clouds have buried the mountains. They regroup, fall apart, and leave unexpected clearings of blue.
‘How long will the winds blow?’ I ask.
‘Don’t ask me, ask him,’ replies one of the players, pointing at the sky.
Shadows slant over the mountains with the lengthening rays of the sun. We are returning from Stavros, a forty-minute walk from the Village of the Forty Saints. A kid bleats. Sheep pause to eat by the verge. Martina digresses to chase ill-fed cats. Below us, the last donkey of the north stands by a path, braying at the skies.
Late afternoon we are back on the balcony. Sunlight falls on the chapel, a white enclave high on the slopes, shaded by a cluster of trees. It is the eye of the mountain, I tell Martina, the guardian of the northern heights. Every time I have entered it, I have found a candle burning. Who makes the steep trek to light it?
The chapel is dedicated to John the Baptist. His eyes stare from an icon on the wall opposite the entrance. He holds a platter on which a replica of his head lies severed in a pool of blood. I feel a chill every time I see it, and I am reminded of my father’s rage.
We have been on the island a week and our daily routine has been secured. We make our way to Stavros where we are invited to a gathering in Polis Bay to mark the first catch of the whitebait season. The boats have been out since early morning and have long returned. For the fishermen Ithaca is a constant presence, always within sight. I envy them their good fortune. They possess it all: the sea and the harbour, the departure and the return.
Old seamen jump like agile goats on and off the boats. They have dragged ashore the nets, secured the ropes, fastened the hatches and hosed down the decks. Several hundred guests are seated at tables beneath the plane trees, metres from the quay. The aroma of frying fish drifts from the kiosk door. Fishermen deliver plates heaped with olives, feta and whitebait.
A priest walks the quay with an assistant, blessing the fleet. The guests are too busy eating to take much interest. Vassili points to the crowded tables and claims there are over thirty retired sea captains seated among the guests. ‘There are more captains and first mates than ordinary seamen,’ he tells me. ‘We are an island of captains; how can it be otherwise for a people who do not like being ordered about?’
Vassili, a retired public servant, cannot help but speak his mind. He reveres the Homeric myths, but loves nothing more than to deflate them. He had received threats in recent days for writing an article in an Ithacan newspaper that challenged the conventional view of Penelope. She had not waited faithfully for Odysseus to return, according to his version, but had slept with all the suitors. As a result she had borne a child, Vassili had written, and called him Pan, because no one could know who, among the suitors, was the father.
‘Those that threaten me claim I have insulted the myth of their chaste Penelope, but it was not I who said this,’ argues Vassili, ‘but ancient Greek philosophers, like Duris of Samos, for pity’s sake.’ This is how it is on the island: true believers and sceptics live out their days side by side.
Uncle Andreas was a sceptic. Like many self-taught men, his philosophy was a homespun fusion drawn from his years at sea, countless conversations in waterfront cafes while holed up in Ionian ports, his endurance of the Occupation, and the books that randomly came his way. ‘He would still be reading when the cocks crowed,’ Ourania complained.
‘I am a citizen of the world,’ his hapless brother Manoli proclaimed on the other side of the globe, his legs firmly planted on the ground, his chest puffed out, the veins on his forehead pulsating. His aloneness was palpable when he made his claim. ‘All men are created equal and should not starve,’ he added. My father was a man of noble sentiments, but as a child I lived with his dark moods, his anger. And I was afraid.
Though he was an atheist, Manoli would have found common cause with Dionyssios, the priest. I see him from the balcony at the wheel of his utility careering by. He stops at the all-purpose corner store for a round of drinks, to add to the considerable quantity he has consumed in cafes on the way. ‘Exo ftokhia, ke kali cardia,’ he says, ‘out with poverty and in with good heart,’ signalling yet another round.
His greying hair is thick and tied in a ponytail. He walks with quick steps propelled by a nervous energy and a robust smile. He had worked as a stonemason before studying for the priesthood, and to prove he still possesses great strength, he shakes hands with a vice-like grip.
Once, while giving me a lift from Vathy to the village, he asked: ‘Why haven’t you had a child?’ I was sitting beside him in his utility while my partner sat, out of hearing, on the tray.
‘You are thirty years old and time is running out,’ he said without waiting for an answer. ‘Your husband should do as I did. After years of trying, my wife had not conceived. I went to Doctor Kouvaras, who knew how to treat problems with remedies far more affective than potions and pills.
‘The doctor instructed me to climb beyond Kathara monastery, to the wooded peak of Mount Neriton. “Put your builder’s hands to good use,” he said. “Make a hut out of branches and deck it out with cypress leaves, and on the next full moon take your wife to the monastery. Do not tell her where you are going. Lead her by the hand to the hut and, as soon as you enter, take her with passion.” I followed his advice to the letter, and my wife conceived. That is why I have a daughter, and grandchildren to keep me company in my old age,’ he chuckles.
I have caught the Ithacan disease. I digress and chatter about this and that, but I want to slow the story, as the island has slowed me, and convey its rhythms, the ebb of its silences. There will be time enough for the storm. I wish to begin with gentler times. I have come, yet again, in autumn. The summer chaos is over, the holiday crowds gone. Motorcycles that tear through the villages like a plague of mosquitoes in July and August, are far fewer in number. They call it the little summer of St Dimitri, this October interlude, weeks of clarity and warmth that herald the descent into winter.
It was October when Andreas would leave the island for Athens. His restlessness would increase as the day of departure drew nearer. I would hear him swearing late at night from his bedroom. Perhaps he was dreaming of old enemies, taking stock of unfinished business. Perhaps fuming at the inevitable passing of his days.
Thinking back on that time, I tell Martina the tale of the almond tree. We are sitting in the renovated kitchen, which has absorbed Andreas’ old bedroom. ‘There is a saying,’ I begin, ‘“I said to the almond tree, speak to me of God, and the almond tree blossomed.”’
My mind wanders for a moment. I think of the kitchen, as it once was, with uncle’s bedroom directly off it, his curses audible through the half-open door. Martina is annoyed. ‘You’re not here again,’ she says.
‘One morning aunt Ourania departed on the early bus for Vathy,’ I resume. ‘She planned to be out for the day. “Come with me,” uncle Andreas winked, soon after she was gone. He was in high spirits, released to do as he pleased. I was to be his unwitting partner in crime, the extension of his thin arms. He led me outside to the almond tree beside the house, and handed me a saw.
‘“Cut it down,” he told me.
‘“Are you sure?” I asked.
‘“The almond tree is a pest,” he said, pointing to the young olives on either side. “It is interfering with their growth.” Despite his assurances, I remained uneasy at sawing through such a young tree, ripe with sap.
‘“It has not been producing well,” Andreas added, as if reading my thoughts. Besides, it was too late, Martina. The tree was toppling to the ground. We cut off the branches and left them at the feet of a tethered goat. Her yellow eyes glinted in the sun as she chewed the leaves. Her teats swung in rhythm with her lunges and bites. I cut the larger branches into firewood, as directed, and stacked them in the katoi.
‘Andreas harnessed the donkey and led it through the village. To every passer-by he called out, proudly: “Where are you going lazy bones? We are off to work!” We unwound from the hem of the village past a row of stone cottages to the family grove.
‘“There are olive trees one thousand years old,” Andreas said, tapping the trunks with his walking stick. “There are millions in Greece and no two are alike. Each one bears a character of its own.” He moved about the trees and inspected their lower branches, felt them with his hands, jabbed them with his stick, and finally settled on one. It jutted horizontally from the main trunk, one metre off the ground.
‘“The branch is diseased,” he pronounced, and told me to cut it in four parts. “Siga, Siga,” Andreas advised. “Take it slowly.” He sat down on a stone, leant on the stick and directed the work. Uncle talked. I cut. The diseased branch was reduced to four logs within an hour. Andreas tied them to the donkey with an expert hand and we made our way back. “Where are you going lazy bones?” he asked passers-by. “We have been to work.”
‘Nearing the house, he quickened his pace. “We should hurry,” he said. “The bus from Vathy will soon be back. We will light a fire and have the kitchen warmed up by the time Ourania returns.”
‘He need not have bothered. She had arrived home early. And she was not pleased, Martina, not pleased at all. “Leave him alone for a moment and see what he gets up to,” she sneered.
‘I left the warring couple in the kitchen and retired to the bedroom from which I could hear Ourania, thundering. “You have cut down a neighbour’s almond tree! That bit of land belonged to her! How could you? I leave you out of my sight and see what you get up to?”
‘Ourania’s accusations grew louder, more strident. Andreas erupted. “Shut up!” he roared, stamping his feet on the rotting boards of the kitchen. “Enough damn you! Leave me alone.”
‘They continued to argue back and forth until finally, the house subsided into silence. By the time I ventured back to the kitchen, Andreas had retreated to a neighbour’s house to lick his wounds, Ourania had sunk into a dark depression, and the almond tree, far from talking of God, had disappeared into the bowels of a goat, and the dark recesses of the katoi.’
‘I know all the places in the story,’ says Martina when I end.
‘Not the old kitchen,’ I reply.
‘I like the new one,’ Martina retorts. ‘The rest of the house is too old.’
That autumn, ten years ago, would be the last time I saw Andreas. He returned with me to Athens to spend the winter months with his daughter’s family. Ourania had left to winter in Athens weeks earlier. Andreas’ bags were packed and ready at five in the morning, well before the taxi arrived. He was unusually silent, brooding. Perhaps he sensed what was to come.
We left the house in darkness. Only shepherds were about on the road to Stavros, urging their flocks to pasture. In the kafeneion, taxi drivers and insomniacs sipped coffee. We glanced at the lights of the bakery as the taxi swerved from Stavros onto the cliff road, and I imagined the vista behind me as it appeared from the opposite direction, on the final approach to Stavros.
I had seen it many times, the shroud lifting to reveal Exogi, the highest village, and above it, the peak of the mountain, the folds sweeping down to the lower ridges. The undulations resembled green waves, lighter in times of drought, darker after the rains. On the slopes could be made out a scattering of hamlets, swathes of olive groves and cypress.
In my mind’s eye I saw the northernmost hamlet, the Village of the Forty Saints, and beyond, to the last house overlooking Afales Bay: the cliff path ascending to the remains of the mill that Andreas had worked during the war. Its conical red-tin roof perched on the circular walls like a witch’s hat. The inner steps spiralled to the grinding-stone. The mill’s innards resembled the workings of a broken clock, stilled by neglect.
We had crossed the invisible portal and the northern heights were behind us. I too was now afflicted with the curse of Ithaca, the longing for the return, a desire that flared as soon as a parting was imminent. The black peaks of Kefallonia, towering over the three-kilometre strait between the two islands, accompanied us until, abruptly, they too were gone: locked from view as we negotiated a series of hairpin bends to the east coast.
The taxi sped towards the port of Vathy and, still, Andreas was silent. His silence persisted as we boarded the ferry. He stood on the upper deck, one hand on the rails, the other resting on his walking stick, and gazed at the procession of vehicles being directed into the hold. The lamps lining the esplanade were giving way to the dawn, as the ferry unwound from the inner harbour and set course for the open sea.
Andreas remained by the rails as the mountains grew smaller, less defined, until the island was reduced to two peaks, one in the north, the other south. Ithaca appeared like a coiled spiral, turned in on itself, on its intimacies and enmities, its ghosts and abandoned dwellings. Stenos kiklos, a closed circle, from which we were now shut out.
Other islands appeared, the chain known as the Echinades. The islets had been way-stops for smugglers and partisans, stepping-stones to the mainland, where corsairs once withdrew before stealing back to sea under cover of darkness. And where Andreas, the resistance aide, had hidden by day to avoid patrols of enemy boats.
Andreas remained on deck even as the port of Patras drew near. He sat by the rails with his chin pressed on the crook of the walking stick. Kilometres out to sea, the port appeared huddled at the base of a towering hill. The sun had lifted into the mid heavens, a golden disc over the Ionian: a sea of many returns, and one last parting.
Uncle Andreas died two years later. I was long back in Melbourne. In those final months he sat on the balcony of his daughter’s apartment in Athens. His mind was wandering, his body falling apart, but he knew what he wanted. He leant on the balustrade and cast his words to the winds, to passers-by on the pavements, to anyone who would listen.
‘Take me to Ithaca,’ he shouted.
‘You are not strong enough to return,’ Ourania insisted.
‘The wind is up. The boat is waiting’ said Andreas.
‘You need rest, hospital treatment,’ the doctors advised.
‘The boat is leaving. Take me to the port,’ Andreas demanded.
‘You heard what the doctors said,’ interjected Ourania.
When no one was home, he would descend to the street and approach strangers. ‘Take me to Ithaca and
I will pay you,’ he pleaded, and held out his wallet.
Days before he died, he rose from his hospital bed, grasped the walking stick, glanced about to make sure no one was watching, and stole out to the corridor. He steadied himself on the wall, and hobbled from the foyer.
‘I am in prison, held captive by fascists,’ he shouted at passers-by.
‘The wind is up. The boat is waiting. I beg you, help me escape.’
Now, in keeping with the curse, I have returned yet again, and all that remains of my uncle’s presence are the tales he recounted on the balcony, by the kitchen fire, on the decks of ferries, in coffee houses. And the tales I have heard of Stratis, my paternal grandfather, and Mentor, my mother’s father.
This is my final accounting. I have assembled the journals in which I recorded Andreas’ rambling discourses, Mentor’s manuscript, penned in Greek, and the first chapter of my manuscript: a tale of a boat called Brotherly Love. At night, when Martina sleeps, I set them out on the living room table. The first task, I have determined, is to translate Mentor’s memoir.
I prefer it here, in the living room, on the unsteady boards, beneath the ceiling ribbed with cypress beams. It is the room closest to the sea. The winter is approaching, and the chill has descended. The church bells have struck eleven. The village is wrapped in silence.
Ithaca. I cannot recall the first time I heard the word. I was raised on the opposite side of the globe, yet it had always been there like an ancient longing welling up from the sea. I grew up surrounded by water. An embankment sloped from the house to the mouth of the Patterson River. Port Phillip Bay was visible from my bedroom window, and one kilometre upstream the river fed the swamps. Perhaps Ithaca was where the migratory birds headed when they left for their flight north.