by Arnold Zable
‘One evening a shadow fell over her. When she looked up she did not recognise the stranger. He told her that Ioannis was a friend of his and had sent him with money to make her comfortable in the last years of her life. She finally recognised the voice that had barely broken when he left.
‘Ioannis settled back in Stavros. He was a small man who walked with a stoop, and drank only lemonade. It is said that he sat with his mother on the steps every evening at the appointed time. He promised the people of the village a share of his wealth. He donated money to the building of the square and a community hall. There was one condition. They were not to cut down the plane tree under which his mother sat with him when he was a child.
‘All was well until a rumour spread that Ioannis had died. One of the villagers stole out and cut down the tree. “He’s gone. What does it matter,” he said. “Life goes on, and we need the land.” When Ioannis heard what had happened he flew into a rage. He left the village and never returned.’
Andreas pauses, lifts his eyes to the mountain.
‘Where does a man go when he leaves his home?’ he asks, lighting his next cigarette. ‘On Ithaca there are two choices, the sea or the mountains. Ioannis made his new home in Exogi. He built the pyramids in the final years of his life. He died alone, and it is said that he is buried there alongside his mother. Some say he erected the pyramids in her honour. Others say they contain the codes of a Masonic cult.
‘The people of Exogi were great drinkers,’ Andreas continues, without pausing. ‘They had a dialect that concealed their secrets. They were forever drinking and singing, and produced the best musicians. I would bring back wine from Patras, in barrels that weighed down the caique, and they purchased them all; and when the barrels were emptied they called on a black wine of their own.’
‘Stratis once told me that he preferred the village of Exogi to his own. He spent much time up there with Mentor. They were close friends my child. They wrote to each other for many years after Stratis returned. We were not surprised when Manoli married Mentor’s daughter. Such arrangements were common. We are so inbred on Ithaca we are dancing under the tables.’
‘My mother, Sophia, would often say the same,’ I remark.
‘Mentor would send Stratis photos of Sophia when she was a child,’ Andreas responds. ‘He took her to the same Melbourne studio, on the same date, each year. Sophia stood, holding a violin, against the same backdrop of trees on the banks of a stream. Stratis kept a collection in his wallet. He kept them until the day he died.
‘It was a grand tree,’ says Andreas, shifting tack. ‘It should never have been cut down. Manoli would meet his lover, Stella, underneath it. Stratis did not approve of Stella. The couple saw him approaching during one of their trysts. They edged their way around the trunk as he drew nearer. Many people saw it. We knew all about it. The people of Stavros stood in the square and laughed. But Stratis was so proud he did not notice. Everyone knew about it except Stratis.’
‘Who was Stella?’ I ask.
‘A woman from Corfu.’
‘What did Stratis have against her?’
‘It is a long story my child.’ Andreas replies, and sidesteps to a recurring concern. ‘Stratis died peacefully,’ he says. ‘He was in good health at the time. He grew old and died a natural death. The doctor came and said, “The fig has ripened, and has dropped off the tree. There is nothing we can do now.”
‘The day before he died he grasped a pen in his hand and wrote down just three words. “No letter today,” and on the next day, just one word: “Manoli”. My brother never wrote to him. I do not know why. Every day he would ask the postman if there was a letter, and the postman would say, “Try again tomorrow.”
‘Stratis was not the only one with this affliction. There were many others who did not hear from their children, and there were those whose children disappeared without trace. Old Kalliope had a son who rarely wrote to her. Her home is not so far from here, and is now boarded up. Soon it will fall in. Like Stratis, she returned from the post every day, empty handed. ‘She would say to Stratis as they waited in the store, “What business do we have here? Let others come and wait,” and she would hurry away muttering to herself.
‘One day she ceased coming. She became a recluse. Few people saw her for months, and those who did said she had gone mad. All day she sat by the kitchen table, and sorted and read the few letters she possessed, and when the pile was full, she started all over again. I know all about it. Every house has its ghosts.
‘Manoli was very determined. He was stubborn from an early age. He clung to his own thoughts. He was clever, and what he said, he meant, but he was nervous. And he bore grudges. We all have our slants, but some are steeper than others.’
‘Why was Manoli so stubborn?’ I hear myself ask. There are times, as Andreas’ voice meanders on, that I feel like a disembodied presence, suspended between mountain and sky.
‘It is a long story,’ uncle replies. ‘He was a good worker, but he was a driven man. That was how it was. He did not always do the right thing, but I loved him. I know all about it my Xanthe. I know all about it.’
Andreas shakes his head. His voice is tired, almost bitter.
‘I never asked him for anything,’ he mutters, as if interrogating his conscience. ‘When he left, I had my boat. I was making a living. Manoli did not write to Stratis, but he sent me a few letters. He wrote one when you were about to be born. He said he wanted to return to Ithaca.
‘I wrote back and said: “We will help you establish yourself. You can work on the boat, or set up a little business.” The next letter he wrote arrived after you were born. For the first time, he seemed content. He said he was anchored in Australia and happy to stay.
‘The final letter arrived not long after Stratis died. We did not know how sick your father was, my child. We had heard from other relatives that his condition had stabilised. His mind was wandering. It was hard to understand his writing. He wrote, “I am coming. They are sending me home.” I did not understand. They say he gambled before the end and died of a lost will. Never mind. What is past is past.’
I want to know more. Many things remain unsaid, and Ourania is back in the katoi. The weft and warp punctuate my thoughts.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Andreas insists. ‘Let the dead lie in peace.’
Andreas’ eyes are fixed on the mountain.
Ourania’s are cast down, fixed on the loom.
And for tonight, the conversation is at an end.
I wait for Andonis by the house well past two in the morning, the appointed hour for our fishing trip. Just as I am about to return to bed I hear the motorbike. He comes to a halt barely long enough for me to hoist myself onto the back. Andonis is in a hurry, and rides full throttle towards the port. I think of the abrupt transition from indifference to passion, from stoicism to childlike anticipation, in Manoli, obvious from the change in his gait as he left the house for the boat. He would stride from veranda to jetty with a sense of purpose. His face was alert, his entire being in harness.
I help Andonis transfer the provisions in Frikes, from the motorcycle to the boat. Even at this unearthly hour Omeros is about, empty fish trap in hand. He paces the waterfront, mumbling to himself. He watches while we make our final preparations.
‘He spends his days by the quay from dawn well into the night,’ says Andonis. ‘He places his fish trap here and there, and does not care that it’s faulty. He follows each boat that arrives and each boat that sets out. He stares at the water and claims he can fathom its thoughts. It is a madness that threatens all who spend many years at sea.’
Once we have passed the breakwater we move north off the east coast. The slopes of the Marmakas are black except for a lamp in a shepherds’ hut. We round Agios Ioannis, the northernmost cape, and sail towards Afales Bay. Just as we are about to drop anchor at the fishing grounds Andonis decides, on an impulse, to pursue a different course.
He turns the boat about and heads west. The
villages on the heights are huddles of lights, now visible, now hidden, as we move across the strait. Andonis’ reserve is gone. It is night, the boat is his kingdom and he is in sole command. What more could an Ithacan want? He sings, out of tune:
Ah, if I die, what will they say? Some fellow died,
A fellow who loved life died. Aman! Aman!
Ah, if I die on the boat, throw me in the sea
So the black fish and brine can eat me. Aman! Aman!
We round the northern cape of Kefallonia and motor south, one hundred metres offshore. The outlines of the mountains rise and dip like the vertebrae of an arthritic back. Villages are marked by concentrations of lights, but the darknesses between them are far greater.
Due west, beyond the horizon, juts the heel of Italy, well beyond sight. And south, beyond the Mediterranean, rise the desert winds of North Africa. We have left the intimacy of the coast. I am out on the open sea in a small caique for the first time. Manoli did not take me out on his boats. I spent my childhood on the shoreline, my feet swept by the rind of the tides.
Andonis stands at the tiller, his gaze fixed on the sea. He belongs in the company of men, and the fetid bowels of engine rooms. He smells of diesel and brine, and prefers to sail alone. He is kin to Manoli, both in blood and kind, far closer to him in spirit than his cousin, Manoli’s daughter.
‘Directly beneath us,’ he says, breaking the silence, ‘runs a fault line that passes through Sicily. It continues east over seabed valleys, cuts between Zakynthos, Kefallonia and Ithaca, and slices through mainland Greece like a subterranean wound. Quakes can erupt at any time. Perhaps that is why we are such a nervous people,’ he laughs.
The stars are fading, the skies giving way to the first hint of dawn. Andonis turns for the shore and heads for the bay of Assos. He moors the boat by the waterfront, and we cross a strip of land to a steep promontory. The ascent to the fortress is lined with carob trees dripping with the bread of St John.
‘I came here when I left the shores of Ithaca and sailed alone for the first time,’ Andonis says as we lean against a stone balustrade near the summit. At that moment his fate was sealed, he tells me. He wanted it all, both the Ionian and the oceans. From these heights he imagined the island of Sicily, the shores of Libya and beyond the Ionian, ports and seas encircling the globe.
‘I was seized by an impulse to run back to the boat and set out, just as others are inexplicably tempted to leap from buildings and cliffs. Andreas knew it as soon as I returned. He saw it written on my face, and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop me. Weeks later I left for Piraeus to work on the cargo boats.’
We stand on a landmass torn apart and reassembled over millennia by quakes and tremors. On one side of the promontory there are coasts and harbours, and on the other, the suggestion of yet another enemy on the horizon. The stories I have heard, and am yet to hear, are echoes of one refrain: Is there somewhere on Earth where I can find peace and prosper? Once the question is posed, the agony begins, the eternal dilemma: to stay or leave? To retreat behind fortifications, or cast our fate to the winds?
I arrive back at the house, mid morning, to disarray. Severed branches are scattered over the embankment. Pregnant Jovania perches on the top rung of a ladder. Olives ricochet on the groundsheets. Ourania rakes the fruit from the pruned branches. Andreas beats olives from the leaves with his walking stick in an effort to be useful.
‘What are you waiting for?’ says Ourania, and tosses me a hand rake. Her voice has changed. She is brusque and direct. The welcome is over. The village is being wrenched from its slumbers. All hands are needed for work.
At dawn the following morning Andonis draws up to the house in his utility. I help load the saws, sacks and groundsheets, and climb into the tray. Ourania eases her ample body into the cabin beside Jovania, and we hurtle from the unpaved paths of the village onto the cliff road. I look down at Afales Bay from my perch on the folded groundsheets. The Ionian glistens with the crimson skin of dawn. A snake flits across the rock face, its scales flashing in the first rays of the sun.
We turn inland and come to a halt in a clearing by the family grove. After a snack of bread and coffee, we set to work. Our first task is to spread the groundsheets. Jovania adjusts the ladder and climbs. Andonis moves ahead, chainsaw in hand. He removes entire branches and cuts them into small logs fit for the fireplace.
Once a tree is picked and the fruit heaped into sacks, we roll up the groundsheets and advance to the next. Goats graze on leaves left in our wake. Mid morning we pause for a quick meal of tomato, cheese and olives. I trudge home late afternoon, exhausted.
And so it begins, the picking cycle: from deep sleep to rude pre-dawn awakenings, Andonis signalling his arrival with a resonant beep. Soon after, we unwind from the streets of the village onto the cliff road. Day after day we labour under an autumn sun, interspersed by sudden squalls. We work against the onset of the cold, our eyes fixed on the fruit, backs turned to the sea. Andonis moves ahead wielding the saw like a man possessed. Ourania directs operations, yet, despite her hours of toil, ends her day at the loom.
She is plump and heavy and over sixty-five years old. She makes her way with the same steady beat to and from the groves. She insists on going out even as the winds are rising. The seas are dark, the skies heavy. Groundsheets tear at the rocks. Olive branches fall from the heavens. Ourania raises her head and nods towards Exogi, perched on the ridge beneath the summit. Her tale unravels in a drawl that matches the pace of her work.
She was born in Exogi, Ourania tells me. The man who was to become her father left for the Antipodes when he was young, and sailed back in 1912 to fight in the Balkan Wars. He returned to the island, ill and wounded, and stayed long enough to marry and father a child. Within a year of her birth, he returned to Afstralia.
While he was gone Ourania acquired the steady gait of the mountain people. She hauled wheat to the windmills, and planted flax and corn in the hidden valley. She descended to the springs of the Kalamo, and carried back water in ceramic jugs. She laboured in wood-fired kilns to extract powder from limestone, and when the picking season returned, she joined the daily two-hour trek to the groves.
The night was far from over when the convoy of women, children and mules set out. The slope bottomed on a lower ridge and ascended past the trees we are now picking. They crested the Marmakas by the windmill to the leeside where land-starved Ithacans had planted terraces far from their homes. They worked till dusk and trudged back at night: and by the time the three months of picking were over, night and day seemed as one.
At the end of the tenth season, Ourania’s father returned. He stayed long enough to impregnate his wife a second time, and again set sail for Australia. Ourania’s mother did not cease working as she neared the time of birth. She set out with the convoy when the picking season returned. As they climbed the final stretch to the village at nightfall, her labour pains began. Two hours later her second child was born, and the following dawn she resumed the trek to the groves.
Ourania’s father issued missives from afar. ‘Make sure that you retain enough oil in case of lean seasons,’ he wrote. ‘Use the money I send to buy a strong mule,’ he instructed. ‘He wanted to remain our boss even though he was absent,’ Ourania laughs. She rises from the stool, adjusts the groundsheet, resumes her seat and, with it, her tale.
Ten seasons passed. Ourania’s father wrote a letter announcing he was returning. On the day he posted it he received a letter from his wife. He sat on a bench in a park in Melbourne, unfolded the letter, and died of a heart attack. ‘Just like that,’ says Ourania. ‘One moment he was alive, and then tipota, nothing but a corpse. He was clutching the letter in his hands when he was found slumped on the bench.’ Due to the vagaries of the mail the two letters, the one saying he was coming home, and the other bearing news of his death, arrived in Exogi on the same day.
Ourania shrugs. There is not an ounce of regret, nor trace of sentiment. Her voice has maintaine
d the same matter-of-fact tone throughout. Let your men roam distant lands. Let them do what they must. What choice do we have? Bend your back to the mountain. Sow and reap.
With the passing days my body begins to adapt to the mountain. I graduate to the ladder beside Jovania and lean into the branches to prune, and when I’m done, I heap the fallen branches in readiness for the fires. And on my days off, I walk. It has not taken long to acquire my dubious status. I am Me ta podia, the mad one who walks.
I make my way to the kafeneion in Stavros, and sit on the patio overlooking Polis Bay. An ancient city is said to lie beneath its waters. Inside, at felt-topped tables, the men are gathered over their cards. Old Yorgos parks his battered Toyota in the square, and strides to the cafe arms akimbo, body leaning forward. He orders an ouzo, extracts a pack of cards from a shirt pocket, and plays patience. ‘We come, we see, and we disappear,’ he says. He wears a baseball cap with Durban emblazoned on the visor.
The children at the primary school have been released for morning recess. They chase soccer balls in the concrete yard beside the church. Spiro the fisherman crests the road from Polis Bay on his motorbike. His dog shares his seat, propped on its hind-legs, paws resting on the handlebars. A utility follows, filled with the morning’s catch. As soon as it parks a crowd gathers to haggle over octopus and snapper.
Panos approaches my table and introduces himself. A well-built man of sixty, he is neatly dressed in slacks and a chequered shirt. He speaks a hesitant English, and chooses his words with care. He had lived in Melbourne for five years, and knew Manoli well. They hunted rabbits and ducks, tracked their prey on the shores of lakes and rivers, and slept in their cars overnight. By the time the hunt was over, their clothes reeked of blood and the swamplands.
‘Manoli often took me out on the bay,’ Panos tells me. ‘At sea he was a different man. On land he was rough in his talk. Like many of us, he was a noisy know-all. Yet out on the bay he was, how can I say it, reflective?