Sea of Many Returns

by Arnold Zable

  I have strayed into winter. The time of the fires is over, and the earth lies fallow. Snakes have returned to their burrows, and with each passing day the island becomes more silent. For the first time in many weeks, I take leave of the village.

  I catch the early morning bus to Vathy. Mid afternoon, hours after arrival, I climb the stone steps from the waterfront to the upper reaches, into a landscape of derelict churches and terraces. The remnants of pre-earthquake structures are falling into oblivion. Isolated chapels are tucked within the ribs of limestone ridges. I step into a chapel, and within its cool walls I retrieve the events of the morning, the bitterness that had flowed like a foul breath as soon as Adriani’s door had opened.

  My grand aunt Adriani, Fotini’s sister, had stood before me, a stout woman dressed in black, unsmiling. She showed me into the house where Fotini had spent her childhood, before sailing to Melbourne to marry Mentor. The walls of the parlour were bare except for an oil painting of a clipper floundering in a gale. The waves reared over the decks like a multitude of serpents.

  Adriani observed the formalities: served a spoonful of quince jam, a cherry brandy, a cup of coffee, and a glass of cold water set out on a white tablecloth. Everything was clean and correct, but her bitterness was palpable. She displayed no curiosity for what I had to tell her, no interest in my inquiries. I wanted to know about Fotini’s early years, her life on the island.

  My grand aunt did not converse with me directly, but circled the same infernal questions. Why had Fotini not sent more money? Surely she was rolling in wealth in a land of plenty. Why, after she left for Melbourne, had she abandoned her blood family? Why did she not care for her mother’s welfare, and not provide for her when she descended into dementia?

  Throughout her tirade she kept her eyes averted, as if addressing unseen forces. I wanted to scale the fortress, and wrest the tales I longed to hear. I wanted to deliver Adriani of long-held grudges and self-interrogations. I wanted to stand up and shake her, to tell her of Fotini’s struggles, and of the eyes that held me the last time I saw her. Glowing. Growing smaller. Dissolving in an ocean of white pillows.

  I had left the house, depleted. The harbour was a blaze of midmorning silvers, but its perfection mocked me. After months on the island, I was not welcome. Even at this hour, the zenith of the town’s commerce, Adriani’s house was shuttered.

  Yet, as I return to the port from the chapel I realise my efforts have not been entirely wasted. I now know the physical location, and that the youthful Fotini had stepped out daily to the sight of the harbour. She had seen the boys swimming towards the Lazaretto, the prison islet, and perhaps joined them. She had observed the clouds enveloping the summit of Neriton, and the bare masts of hibernating boats that crowded the water mid winter. She had known the daily returns of the fishing caiques, and their evening departures. Her childhood has entered the realm of my imaginings.

  At dusk, townsfolk stroll the esplanade. In the town square speeches are being made. The municipal elections are to take place this weekend. Trucks, busses and cars, are queued up in expectation. The nightly ferry is due to arrive any moment.

  For millennia it has been like this. When will the boat arrive? Will it come on time? Will my Odysseus be on board? Will I recognise him? And, now that I see him, is this ageing stranger the man I have so long awaited? Will he force himself upon me on the first night of our reunion? Will the unfamiliar odour of his body repel me?

  The ferry approaches like an ageing hostess gliding to greet guests and escort them to the banquet table. Passengers are filing out to intimate welcomes. Travellers, rucksacks on their backs, step ashore anonymously. They pause, disoriented in that awkward interlude between the voyage and finding one’s feet in yet another foreign port, the moment when the traveller longs for someone to greet them, and stares with envy at those who belong.

  I stroll back to my hotel long after nightfall. A family of gypsies is encamped beside the harbour. They huddle outside their van and cook over a portable stove. A blind seaman taps his way past a succession of municipal buildings. He passes a wall with a bas-relief bust of Odysseus and runs his fingers over its face, as if seeking reassurance.

  The chill is deepening. A motorbike hurtles into the back-streets. The sounds of the town band, in rehearsal, can be heard through a second floor window. Dogs roam the darkened alleys. The one waterfront coffee house still open is given over to old men and young travellers. An old drunk feeds his spaniel at a table. He lurches towards me, the spaniel at his heels, and sits down at my table, unbidden.

  ‘I have a cousin living in Melbourne,’ he says. ‘Fotis Karapangis. The poofter lives near a hotel, not far from the station. The poofter still owes me a fortune. You don’t know him? You have never met him? You live in Melbourne and you don’t know the useless wanker?’

  When I leave the coffee house for my hotel room the drunk stumbles after me, the dog at his heels, yapping, while his master sings his one line ditty, ‘You live in Melbourne, and you don’t know the poofter?’

  I set out from the hotel the following morning for the southern tier of the island. Grand aunt Adriani’s indifference has unnerved me. My uncle’s evasive circling has disarmed me. The old drunkard’s accusations pursue me. I have been on the island for three months and I am, after all, xeni, an outsider, despite my status as Manoli’s daughter. I am Me ta podia, the mad one who walks.

  I wish to walk out my separateness, but the black-clad women are calling, ‘Come! Join us. Master the art of waiting. You are the mirror image of the mother, who is the reflection of her mother, and of her mother’s mother, and of all who have gone before you. There is no way out. There is no option, but the waiting.’

  I branch off the unpaved road onto a narrow path leading to the fountain of Arethusa. The wooded slopes are bristling with myrtle and junipers. The white cliff known as the Raven’s Crag, scoured with veins of ochre, plunges forty metres to an isolated shoreline. I return to the road and approach the red soils of Marathia plateau. A dog trots towards me like a forward scout sent out to investigate. He circles, sniffs at my heels and, as if I have passed the inspection, leads me to a farmhouse.

  As we draw closer I hear the frenetic bleating of sheep corralled in a stone shelter. The dog leaves me by the wood-slatted door and runs off as if having completed its mission. The pen is dark, and reeks of damp and manure. The sheep are suckling newborn lambs. A middle-aged couple sit on pile of fodder beside them like doting parents.

  ‘I am the real Odysseus,’ the man says, with a mocking smile, as if greeting yet another fool in search of illusions. He has been a shepherd on this cape since childhood, he tells me.

  ‘My mother was a sheep,’ he laughs.

  ‘The landscape is beautiful,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, very beautiful, at first sight,’ he says with indifference, ‘but I have seen it too many times.’

  I pierce the veil of mist that separates Vathy from the northern heights and arrive back at the hour of siesta. All is quiet except for the beat of the loom. I descend the steps to the katoi. The door is wide open, the storeroom lit by a single globe. I stoop to avoid the thick lintel. When I adjust my eyes, I see it is not Ourania who sits at the loom, but a wisp of an old woman, my grand aunt Irini.

  ‘Ah, Manoli’s daughter,’ she says, when she sees me. She stands up and runs her hands over my face. ‘Manoli’s daughter,’ she repeats, as if in awe of my presence. ‘You have come so far to see us.’

  Thin as a sapling and growing smaller, Irini’s skin is stretched so taut her cheekbones are transparent. She is visiting from her home in Perahori, the Far Village, on the southern tier of the island. Like many women who come to the house, she makes use of one of the few looms that remain intact on Ithaca. Follow the story carefully. This is how ancestors meet and form their unions. Irini is in her seventies, but in an instant she is five, boarding a boat from the mainland town of Zaverda.

  ‘My sister Melita, your grandmother, was seventeen w
hen Stratis came for her as arranged by their families,’ she says, ‘and he was not much older.’ She pauses to retrieve the memory. ‘Melita had looked after me since the day I was born. She was twelve years older. I did not want to be parted from her.

  ‘I ran to the boat, as she was about to board, and clung to her skirt. I bit any hand that tried to tear me away and spat at anyone who tried to dissuade me. I finally got what I wanted, and was allowed to go with them. That is how I came to be on Ithaca.

  ‘And I did not mind at all. Three years later, your father was born’ she says, and again, reaches out to touch me. ‘Stratis was away in Afstralia at the time, and Andreas was not yet two. I heard Manoli speak his first words, and saw him take his first steps. I helped look after him in his early years, and I was the first to see him after Melita’s death.’

  Irini returns to her seat and adjusts the thread. The katoi is quiet, except for the sound of her working. Now that I am fully adjusted to the dim light, I see that my grand aunt’s eyes are alert with an inquisitive clarity.

  ‘Melita died on an Easter Sunday,’ she says, resuming her weaving. ‘The bells were tolling the resurrection. Within the hour they were tolling the death of my sister. Manoli woke at dawn and found her cold body beside him. He was ten.

  ‘They would sleep together in the bed that you now sleep in,’ she says, and points up at the cypress beams that serve as both a support for the katoi ceiling and the floor of the room above us. ‘She smelt of lavender and sage, and of sweat and the rocky earth. And on that Easter morning, she smelt of death.

  ‘Manoli ran from the house, screaming. He hid in the chapel of St John, beneath the summit, and did not return until nightfall. From that moment I became Andreas and Manoli’s mother. I looked after them for the two years it took Stratis to return from Afstralia.’

  Irini pauses. Her bony fingers grasp the yarn she is threading. I am impressed by their agility. She bends to the loom, and, regaining the threads of her thoughts, continues. ‘Stratis married again. His second wife was lame. Despina limped into the house on the day of her wedding and stayed there until the day she died. She bore him no children, but looked after the boys. She was pleased to have found a home and a purpose in life.

  ‘In Stratis she had the ideal partner, because he limped to the other side. When they walked the streets together they dipped in opposite directions, then flipped back together like springs.’ Irini cackles at the memory. ‘Two little springs,’ she laughs, ‘bobbing side to side.

  ‘After Melita died Manoli was never the same. He fled the house on the day of the wedding, and walked the many miles to Perahori, where I had gone to live with my husband. Manoli wanted to stay with me but Stratis insisted he return. He came all the way to fetch him.

  ‘It was Stratis who had arranged my marriage,’ Irini digresses. ‘He saw it as his duty to find me a husband before he was free to remarry. The impatient devil wanted a warm body beside him as soon as possible,’ she cackles.

  ‘Stratis made inquiries among returned émigrés and presented me with a photo of a young man taken in a Chicago studio. He had amassed a fortune, it was said, as an odd-job man, and was returning to Ithaca to settle in his native village, Perahori. One evening, Stratis and I were out walking when two men appeared, one older, the other younger. Stratis nodded at them and told me one of them would be my husband.

  ‘I liked the look of the young man, but he did not resemble the gentleman in the photo. I followed Stratis’ finger closely and saw that he was pointing at his companion. I was to marry a man who was twenty years older. The fortune he was said to have amassed proved to be an illusion. He had squandered much of it playing cards with compatriots. No matter,’ Irini shrugs. ‘We made a good enough life together.’

  My grand aunt stands up and walks towards me. She treads lightly on the rotting boards. On her feet she is an elf who moves like a puff of smoke. ‘I saw your father the day he left Ithaca,’ she tells me. ‘I made my way from Perahori to Vathy to farewell him. I stood on the waterfront with my two children and waved as the boat cast off. For a moment, Manoli looked towards me, but he did not wave back. His thoughts were elsewhere. That was the last time I saw him.’

  That is all Irini wishes to say. She reaches up to embrace me. Despite her slender frame, I sense that she possesses the strength of a stem that bends without breaking. Her entire being is tough, but devoid of ambition. She is feather-light. And smells of lavender and sage, and of sweat and the rocky earth.

  The sky is reddening. A half moon hangs in the mid heavens. The sun is yet to rise over the eastern escarpments. I climb the steep slopes of the Marmakas in the cold shade. When I am halfway up, the dome of the sun finds a gap between two ridges. The Village of the Forty Saints is singed violet. One by one the shutters are being flung open.

  As I scale the path I hear the sound of urgent bleating. Costas the shepherd approaches holding a newborn kid by the forelegs. He swings it like a dead rabbit. The kid’s mother follows them, distressed by the plight of her offspring. The kid is one day old, Costas tells me. The mother’s bells had alerted him to its whereabouts. He is taking it to join the ninety kids enclosed in the stock house to be fattened for days of feasting.

  The path narrows near the summit, and veers towards the chapel of St John. A stick of incense burns inside, and I wonder who had made the trek before dawn to light it and decorate the altar with sprigs of sage and basil. A portrait of St John hangs on the wall directly opposite. A shock of black hair tumbles to his shoulders. His eyes are intense, his brows severely arched. He holds a bloodied platter bearing a replica of his head, severed.

  Blood begets memories of blood. Manoli is in the backyard slitting a pig’s throat, guiding its blood into a bucket. Blood runs from the wounds of beatings, sustained in fratricidal battles. Blood flows in the streets of Athens as the colonels of the junta slaughter their young. And Manoli wakes to the sight of his mother dead in the dawn light. He is running from the house. He leaps over boulders as he scales the steep path. He is running for the white eye of the mountain. He takes refuge beneath the portrait of the saint and, years later, I hastily step into the morning light from the dark chapel.

  On my return to the village, the bells of the church begin to toll. An hour later, seated by the fire at breakfast, Andreas tells me, ‘Another one of my comrades is gone. Soon there will be no one left. We know nothing about the beginning or the end,’ he adds. ‘So we should leave them alone.’

  ‘When does the Maistros blow?’ I ask.

  ‘When it wants to,’ says Andreas.

  And today it storms. The water rushes through the village. One shutter, left slightly ajar, crashes hard against the window and shatters the pane. The entire island is swaying. Shrubs bending. Trees flailing. Skies moving, changing minute by minute, now black, now thinning to pale blues, returning to black. Dry wells are being replenished. The waters of the Ionian are racing, swelling from island to island, currents charging, splitting, regrouping.

  Cousin Andonis has long departed for the oil tankers. Ourania has left for Athens. The katoi is silent, the loom covered. The streets are besieged with water. For days on end the storm rages. The house becomes elemental, a shelter. Despite the rot, the beams hold fast. The ancestors built a house, and centuries later it withstands the storm’s fury. And two brothers built a tiny kitchen, and decades later its fire holds out against the cold.

  When does the Maistros blow?

  When it wants to?

  And when does a man die?

  When it is time.

  Andreas’ time is not yet up. He moves about the house, from kitchen to living room, from the fire to the bedroom. He lies back and hisses at the ceiling, curses ancient enemies. He dozes, wakes, and returns to the kitchen. His legs are bowed and thinning, his arms shrinking to reeds, but like the house, he holds fast.

  Emaciated cats have gathered by the roadside. On the mountain heights newborn kids and lambs huddle at the teats of their mothers. Th
e kids will soon be shepherded into enclosures for slaughter. In a ravine on the upper slopes, a litter of puppies stumbles about blindly, in search of nipples. The bitch searches for them through the streets of the village, her teats bloated.

  And Andreas yields. He raises his voice to the edge of anger. ‘Why was Manoli so stubborn? Where was he in the dark years of our struggle? Why did he leave me to sail alone? We built a boat called Brotherly Love my child, but the love soured. Why does the Maistros blow, because it wants to. Why did Manoli leave? I don’t know. How can I know the ways of my brother when it is hard enough to know my own?

  ‘All I can do, is tell the tale:

  ‘Once upon a time there lived two brothers. Manoli and Andreas. When they were born, times were hard. The rocky soil of Ithaca mocked them. Their meagre crops of wheat and corn died of famine. Warring armies cut off the island’s trading routes and destroyed its markets. Their father, Stratis, had no choice but to voyage in search of new pastures. He left the oceans far behind him and travelled to an inland city built on red dirt. Three years later he was reunited with his friend Mentor, and together they journeyed east from the desert city, the entire breadth of the land…’

  BOOK VII

  Mentor’s manuscript

  MELBOURNE 1917–1967

  AS I stood with Stratis on the steps beneath the clocks of Flinders Street Station, on a summer morning in February 1917, I was taken by a premonition that I would spend the rest of my days in the city in which I had just arrived.

  I had journeyed far enough to know that each place has its peculiar melody, its distinct beat. And on that first morning, it was the tread of many feet—men and women crossing crowded streets, disappearing into arcades, turning into cobbled lanes, vanishing around corners, unbolting shutters, unlocking doors, clattering into emporiums and offices, descending to basements and cellars, taking lifts to upper floors and garrets, on their way to mysterious assignments—that marked the beat of the new song.