by Arnold Zable
When the news of Manoli’s death reached him, Andreas placed the telegram under his pillow and took to bed for a week. Finally he rose, ate breakfast and scaled the path to the cemetery. He picked his way between cypresses and tombstones, and mounds of earth that marked the graves of the recent dead. He lifted his hat in acknowledgment of those he had known, and stopped by the family tombstone where Stratis’ name had been recently inscribed beside the name of his first wife, Melita.
Andreas was an avowed atheist, but found himself, this once, drawn to the ritual. He cleaned the stone, removed the weeds and lit two oil lamps, one for Manoli, and the other for his father. He placed the lamps behind the glass in a bronze urn at the head of the grave, closed the lid and stood back to contemplate the flames.
He moved to the church terrace and leaned against the balustrade. The church stood on a ridge, dwarfed by higher peaks. To the west, on the upper ridge rose the village of Exogi and behind him, to the south, Mount Neriton. On the cliff path above Afales Bay, a villager was herding his goats towards the crest of the mountain. Like so many Ithacans who had stood here after visiting the cemetery, Andreas was struck by the contrast between the serene setting, and the proximity of death.
The following evening, he descended to Frikes Bay. From the upper slopes he heard the chatter of villagers on their way home from the groves. Hessian sacks, bulging with recently picked olives, were lined up on the roadside in readiness for the mills. Night had fallen by the time Andreas readied the caique.
He lifted anchor, guided the boat past the breakwater, and voyaged clockwise from Ithaca to Zakynthos, Kefallonia to Lefkada, waters he and Manoli had sailed many times. He anchored in harbours and coves on which they had beached Brotherly Love. He sailed for seven nights and, despite the winds and swells, the Ionian calmed him, as did the sight of the smoke rising from shepherds’ huts on the Marmakas on the morning of his return.
On the anniversary of his brother’s death he had Manoli’s name inscribed on the family gravestone beneath the names of Stratis and Melita. He would return once a year, not on the date of Manoli’s death, but on the anniversary of the day he left the island. All this I learnt years later, when I finally embarked on the journey that my father should have undertaken.
BOOK VI
The first return
XANTHE: ITHACA 1981
IT IS autumn and the springtime of revolution, and a burden has been lifted from the polis. I lie in my room off Syntagma Square, in central Athens, and listen to revellers passing by in the early hours, scattering laughter.
It is eight years since the tanks burst through the gates of the Polytechnic and the ageing colonels massacred their young; seven years since the junta was overthrown. And many decades since the dark times began: sending waves of Greeks in search of new worlds.
I have relatives in the suburbs of Athens, but I have chosen to stay on my own. Despite their generous pleas I stand firm. I visit them frequently but return to a room far removed. I wish to come and go as I please.
I observe the city with the eyes of a lover in the first weeks of romance. I am drawn to the flowers on balconies, rather than the rusting tin cans from which they grow. I strain my eyes for a view of the Parthenon and ignore the fissures in the pavements on which I walk. I sit in cafes and take photos of the old lottery seller who approaches my table, and barely register the poverty that lies at the heart of his quest. I am more taken with the poles festooned with tickets than by the trembling hands that clasp them.
I attend concerts with my Athenian cousins where poets recite to capacity crowds. The audiences ride the lyrics like surfers wedded to waves. We sit in nightclubs and listen to the music of the rebetes, whose banned songs helped sustain those in exile during the time of the colonels. We party into the early hours, and stumble out arm-in-arm with strangers who mirror our lust for romance.
I move about the city with a sense of urgency. I am making up for lost time. A country I have never known has become my passion. I now understand why some who have been away from their homelands for years, kiss the earth on their return. I have years of ignorance to make up, many gaps to fill. I sit at the edges of conversations and listen intently.
The talk returns to the fall of the junta. One moment is singled out: the July day in 1974 when Constantine Karamanlis returned from his Parisian exile to become Prime Minister of post-junta Greece. Radios broadcast the news throughout the city. Even weary cynics allowed themselves a moment of hope. Perhaps, at long last, brother would no longer kill brother.
I recline on a bench in a neighbourhood square as Athenians rush home for the siesta. The streets are gridlocked with busses, automobiles, pedestrians and motorbikes. Then, for a few blessed hours it is over. Blinds are being drawn. Shutters are closing. The city is falling into a collective slumber. The frenetic pace of my first month is slowing, and for the first time I register the rustle of citrus and mulberry trees, and the voices of women engaged in conversation over balconies as they air blankets and sheets.
I begin to see that beneath the chaos, Athens is a city of villages. Neighbourhoods are built around intimate squares, and each apartment, I imagine, is a haven from a bloodstained past. Is that how it is on the island?
Days later I observe the city from the slopes of the Acropolis. The still point between day and night is giving way to darkness. Below me the lights of Athens spread over the plains of Attica to the mountains. I begin to comprehend the essence of journeying: a sense of unfolding. ‘Siga. Siga. Slowly, slowly,’ say those who know what it is to wait. ‘Make sure the journey is long, full of adventure,’ recites the poet of Alexandria. Now that you are finally here, take your time.
Tomorrow I leave for Ithaca, where Uncle Andreas is expecting me. ‘Andreas? He is the one who knows the winds,’ a cousin has told me. ‘When he is away from Ithaca, his thoughts stray to the island. Wherever he sleeps, he hears the beat of the sea against the cliffs of Afales. Whenever he hears the radio, it is the weather of the Ionian he listens for. Whenever he sets out on a journey, it is the first sight of the patriko he longs for. What can I say? He is afflicted with the Ithacan madness.’
It is a four-hour journey by ferry from the port of Patras to the island. I stand against the rails on the upper deck and watch the crewmen. They fasten the winches, secure the cables, and when the boat is well clear of the dock, pause to draw on well-earned cigarettes. I cut off attempts at conversation and maintain my watch. I wish to savour my first voyage on the Ionian, to absorb the illusory movement of passing islands.
I scan the horizon for the first sign. That blue outline is Ithaca, a passenger tells me. An hour later it has grown into a massive presence. It takes time to realise I am looking at two islands. Ithaca and Kefallonia. Only when the ferry draws close, do I discern Ithaca’s true form.
Mount Neriton rears dark against a falling sun, and just as we seem set to collide, the ferry bends into a hidden bay and sails towards Aetos, the Eagle Mountain. A fishing caique at anchor in the centre of the harbour is as still as a curlew poised over its prey. I observe the first signs of life, a scramble of goats on the lower slopes, cars flowing beside the coastline.
The ferry spirals from the Gulf of Molos to Phorcys Bay, named, say lovers of Homer, after the Old Man of the Sea. The labyrinth tightens and, as if irresistibly drawn into a vortex, the ferry rounds the narrow entrance into Vathy, the inner harbour. Houses tumble like vines over the lower slopes to the esplanade. Shutters are opening to the coming of the boat. Figures drift onto balconies. Two women stand beside the seawall and pick over the catch of the day. Cats wait for morsels that may be cast their way like manna from feline heaven. Damp nets lie in tangled heaps over the seawall.
The limestone escarpments above the town lean over us, Mount Neriton now looms behind us. The engines are easing down. The captain is tense, the crew focused. One error of judgement will damage their craft. The ferry slowly turns its stern towards the berth. I follow the flight of the ropes over the
ramp. As soon as they are secured, the passengers disembark into a whirlpool of embraces and conversations that seem to have resumed where they left off, long ago, at the moment of departure.
Then abruptly it is over, sorted out, the luggage removed, the welcoming parties dispersing to all points of the island. Cars disgorged from the belly of the boat are well on their way to their destinations, and my taxi is on the isthmus. All day I have been in the hands of ticket vendors, shipping agents, stewards and seamen, masters of movement and change. I am now moving on firm land, tracing roads I had viewed from the upper deck of the ferry.
We scale the lower slopes of Neriton in a succession of hairpin bends from the east to the west coast. The sea bursts back into view. The mountains of Kefallonia, three kilometres distant, tower over the strait. I am sedated by the hum of the motor, and my dream of arrival.
The taxi slows on the approach to the village of Stavros. Old men raise their heads from their cards on the patio of a kafeneion. A bearded priest in a black cassock is crossing the square. A crowd surges around the tray of a utility heaped with fish. We break clear of Stavros into the northern heights. At the edge of my vision there is a sweep of mountains, and a hamlet beneath the highest peak. The falling sun sparks quivers of silver through rustling olive groves. It is too much to take in. The landscape is inextricably linked to other places, other times.
Ithaca. I cannot recall the first time I heard the word. It has always been there like an ancient longing welling up from the sea. And now that I am here, I am elsewhere: on the veranda of the Carrum house, the company dreaming into the night; and with Mentor at a Brunswick tram stop, waving for the final time, before he turns to stroll home. I am held captive by Fotini’s face, growing smaller in a hospital ward.
And I am mesmerised by Manoli. He is overturning the kitchen table, lifting it high on two legs. Plates, cutlery and food crash to the floor. He stalks out of the house and, within an hour he has cast off. He is steering the boat through the river mouth. Ithaca: perhaps this is where Manoli goes when his boat dissolves in the dark.
I am jolted from my reverie by a roadside sign: Ageii Saranda, Village of the Forty Saints. The taxi stops on the gravel beside the road. Uncle Andreas is seated on the veranda of a stone house. When he sees the taxi he clambers up the embankment. His walking stick points the way as he makes it onto the road. He kisses me on each cheek, and I am taken by the similarities and differences between Andreas and Manoli. I register them both at the same time.
At first I gravitate towards the differences. Uncle radiates affection. It takes time for the similarities to become evident. They reside in the placement of the eyes, his pointed nose and hardened body and, for an anxious moment, in the intensity of his gaze. They are proof that the umbilical cord drip-feeds ancestral likenesses.
We have not yet paid the driver, but he is in no hurry. He has witnessed the scene many times, the instance of the first meeting, Ithacans returned after years away. He stands to the side and chats to passers-by as he unloads my luggage. Aunt Ourania has remained in the kitchen. She waves through the open shutters. Only now do I take notice of the small crowd that has gathered about us. One by one they step forward and introduce themselves. Those old enough to have known Manoli, scan my face for resemblances.
Many eyes are watching. I have been seen. Everyone is seen. From windows and doorways. I have my first suggestion of the paradox. There is intimacy and love, but also, intense scrutiny, and there is nowhere to run. Except for the mountains, and they are far greener than I expected. It is autumn, yet the slopes are dense with pine and cypress, wooded with groves and orchards.
Andreas ushers me in from the rising chill. A fire is burning in the lean-to kitchen. A stream of villagers arrives after nightfall bearing gifts and gossip. ‘Manoli was a levendi,’ they say, ‘a beautiful boy. But he was nervous. He could snap at any time.’ It is a common refrain. ‘It runs in the family,’ Ourania laughs.
She delivers a feast of roast lamb, vegetable stew and wild horta soaked in oil. When uncle eats he does not talk. He attends to the business at hand. He hunches over the food and shovels it in. He eats every morsel, wipes the plate clean with strips of bread, and washes it all down with a glass of wine.
‘That was a good meal,’ he says, rubbing his hands.
He seats himself by the fire, leans over towards the dying flames, and pokes the logs with his walking stick. The flames rear back. ‘The fire is burning,’ he says, ‘and the fire loves us.’
Outside the wind is gusting. The weather has turned. The guests have departed and Ourania has gone to bed. ‘It is going to storm tonight.’ Andreas announces. ‘The fishermen are praying to St Nicholas.’ On his face there appears a mischievous smile.
‘One of my boats carried a statuette of St Nicholas. Once, with the approach of a storm, as the seas were beginning to threaten us, I grabbed the statuette and hurled it overboard. We survived the storm, of course, and the statue is still swimming somewhere.’
‘Manoli,’ says uncle, his attention abruptly shifting. ‘Why didn’t you write? Every morning Stratis would get dressed in his best, button his waistcoat, and adjust his cravat and tie. He would sit down at the kitchen table, and eat a slice of bread and two cloves of garlic, to which he swore he owed his good health. He would rise, put on his hat and jacket, take up his walking cane, and with a posture as straight as his ageing spine allowed, he would walk to the all-purpose store.
‘“Are there any letters today?” he asked.
‘“Try again tomorrow,” the shopkeeper replied.
‘When Stratis walked back to the house, his steps were a little slower, his back further stooped. He would make for the bedroom, undress, and lie down for an hour. Then he would rise, dress again, and begin the day anew.
‘I often wrote to Manoli and pleaded. “Send a letter to the old man. Just a few words will do. He thinks of you all the time. He wants nothing out of life anymore. Let bygones be bygones. It will make your father content.”’
Andreas stands up. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘What is done is gone.’ He walks to the door, and announces: ‘We have many days in which to talk. I am going to bed.’
My bed is covered in a spread woven in crimsons, ochres and blacks; the wrought iron frame leans against the bare plaster wall. I fix my eyes on the ceiling and count the cypress beams supporting the roof. The six beams are infested with white ant. Yet they hold fast. This is a patriarchal house, built to last. I am lying where Manoli was conceived, and where he slept beside his mother. It has been many years since he last slept here, far longer than Odysseus’ twenty years of absence.
I have come to Ithaca in October, when the island begins its slow descent towards winter. Winds flare in and out of silences that guide me to sleep, and I am woken, hours later, by a rooster’s crow. One crow begets a chorus of crows. The school bus is labouring up the steep incline from the lower village. It moves past the window and comes to a brief halt. I hear the chatter of children as the bus moves on. I become aware of a steady beat. The rhythm is hypnotic, a firm movement forwards and back. It rises from the katoi, the storehouse, directly under the floorboards. The day has barely begun and Ourania is at the loom.
I open the shutters. The eastern skies above the Marmakas are alight, but the rays are yet to rise over the ridge tops. The second window opens to the south, towards Neriton, the island’s highest peak. At this hour it is a black presence. I enter the living room, open the double doors, and step out on the balcony. The village is perched on a ridge opposite the Marmakas. On the higher reaches, the woodlands give way to exposed limestone.
It is forty years, two times Odysseus’ twenty, since the day Manoli left. Such calculations remind me of my limitations. I am not of this island, but a proxy, a second-hand version of the return. I cannot identify specific landmarks. All is new to my eyes.
What would Manoli have recognised on his return: the olive trees beside the house, the cypress that threatens to t
opple from the cliff into Afales Bay? Which landmarks would have moved him? The lean-to kitchen he and Andreas built? The groves once filled with voices? What would have dismayed him? The termites devouring the foundations of the house, the dead windmills on the heights?
I return to the bedroom, churning with questions, speculations. The beat of the loom is a counterpoint, a tranquilliser. ‘Give yourself to the island,’ it demands. ‘Walk its roads. Follow the coastlines. Crest the summits and explore the leesides. All will be revealed in its own time.’
Andreas is up early.
‘Buona mattina,’ he says when I enter the kitchen.
He is proud of his few words of Italian.
‘The storm is over, the sea, smooth as bone,’ he says.
He perches by the stove, brings the coffee to the boil and stokes last night’s embers until the fire re-ignites. Everything about the kitchen is small: the window frames, the door, the fireplace and sagging walls. The ceiling curves down from the main body of the house. The walls are white, the shutters painted in dark green. It is the kitchen built by the brothers.
‘What do you plan to do today?’ Uncle asks.
‘Walk.’
‘Go on your good way and when you return, tell me what you have seen.’
And so it begins, my incessant walking. Soon I will be known by the nickname, Me ta podia, ‘with the feet’, the mad one who walks and refuses to take lifts, the latest addition to the island’s gallery of the insane. I descend from the village to the port of Frikes. In the lower village an old woman limps from her cottage. The smell of frying fish drifts through the open door. Emaciated cats are lined up on the wall by the gate.
‘If I leave the fish for more than a minute, the cats will snatch them,’ the woman complains. ‘The mangy scoundrels are desperate for a bite.’ She limps towards the cats and raises an arm to shoo them off.
‘What does it matter?’ she says, on second thoughts. ‘I have no one but myself to feed anymore.’ Her husband lies in the village graveyard, she tells me, and her sons and daughters are long gone. ‘When their time comes, they will lie in graveyards scattered over godforsaken lands. Let the cats have their fill. Who cares? They can do what they like.’