In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sara Alexi

  Theo raises his eyebrows and slows his pace. There are no wealthy people in the village, nor Saros really, not like this woman. Here in Athens, there seem to be pockets of them everywhere. The shiny door is opened to a squeal of delighted children. The ladies kiss on both cheeks but don’t smile, and the door closes.

  Theo walks to the end of the road, where he finds there is a small square, paved in concrete slabs and shaded by trees. There is a green grocer’s, a bakery, and a kafeneio, which is closed.

  Theo returns laden with fresh bread, olives, feta, and yoghurt and before reaching his own place, he pauses, squinting in the sun, outside the house next door with the flat roof. It is so like the houses in his village. The window at the front is boarded up from the inside, there is no sill, and the stones are exposed, the wall itself over half a metre thick. The depth would have kept the place warm in winter and cool in the summer.

  The warmth of the bread fresh from the bakery oven tempts him. He pinches off a mouthful as he stands looking at the crumbling old house. The front door hangs open, down an overgrown alley to one side, the opening obscured by a torn, faded curtain. A thin wash of white lime paint has at one time covered all the outside walls, but the elements have taken their toll and damp has turned them black nearly halfway up.

  The bread is slightly salted. He pulls off another mouthful. This hovel would have been a small house even in its day, and its position, sandwiched between taller, more modern houses makes it seem out of place, lost in an era when life was lived more outside, a time when people gathered together for entertainment rather than sitting isolated in their houses in front of their televisions. In the village, this house would have been maintained for some purpose. If the owner built a new house, then this would be full of sheep, or straw. It seems wrong to Theo, and sad, that no one seems to care, and it sums up the difference between the village and the city. He wishes suddenly for the sound of a sheep bleating, the clonk of a goat bell. He pulls off another hunk of bread and wraps the paper firmly over the end of the loaf.

  He pushes open the gate to his own place and the dog bounds up to him, jumping up and licking him, its woolly coat bouncing all over the place.

  ‘Down, you naughty thing.’ But Theo laughs, his good mood revived. His hands are full of his purchases and he has no defence against the animal’s onslaught. The dog bounds away and back again to repeat his performance, front paws on Theo’s chest, his nose reaching to his face, eager to lick. ‘Hey, hey. Down, you scoundrel.’ Theo turns his face away from the jumping animal and its eager tongue, holding the bread and feta above his head.

  ‘Hey, dog. Down.’ The man in the pin-striped suit comes from around the side of the building and commands the animal. The dog takes no notice, and the man grabs it by its collar.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Sorry,’ the man says, holding the dog, establishing the boundaries with his words, granting Theo seniority.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Theo laughs and makes his way to the steps. The man has a very strong country accent and, close up, the suit, made of wool, shows itself to be well used and poorly fitting.

  In his kitchen, Theo opens the window just as the cockerel crows. The fresh bread smell is overlaid with the smell of someone cooking tomatoes and herbs. He looks through the trees to see if he can spot the cockerel. Neatly cut lawns here and there are partially visible, but not much else. The branches of the trees over the wall behind the house are dense, but at least it is green, not the blank wall of another building. Theo smiles. ‘Job and house. How hard was that?’ he asks himself.

  With a plate of food in hand, he opens the balcony windows and pushes the sofa outside to sit and eat.

  It’s another glorious morning with wide skies and crisp air. The sun is gaining strength every day, the bright warmth settling into a heavy heat. This summer could be a hot one. A gentle hissing sigh draws his attention to some pine trees on the other side of the flat-roofed house, the wind just enough to cause two branches to rub together, a slow creaking. The monkey puzzle against the blue of the sky is something he could look at forever.

  Theo has made a sandwich of tomatoes and feta and he lifts it to take a bite, but his mouth doesn’t close upon it. It stays open, the sandwich suspended in mid-air as he stares at the young woman who has just appeared on the flat roof of the abandoned house next door. She has presumably come up a staircase on the far side of the building, and she has a basket of washing. Two small children cling around her skirts. Her long, straight hair is tied at the back of her neck, but that doesn’t stop the ends from blowing across her face. Her blouse has a low neck and her skirt is long and full. A Gypsy, but a fine looking Gypsy.

  Theo bites and chews as he watches her stretch out a line from a metal pole, her long fingers running along its length, her grip loosening to let knots unravel as she walks it to the branch of a tree that overhangs the back edge of the building. With deft hands, she confidently ties a knot and pulls the rope tight. The two children chase around her, and she gently chastises them as she hangs her washing, folding it over the line, no clothes pegs.

  With a jerk of her head, she looks straight at him. The distance between them closes, and Theo chokes on his mouthful.

  ‘Hello,’ he finally manages to say, but she does not reply. The two children stop running. ‘I am the new tenant here.’ He brushes away the bread crumbs from his lips and his shirt.

  She looks past him into the empty room behind as if expecting someone else. When no one joins them, she looks back at him.

  ‘Hello neighbour,’ she replies, looking him directly in the eyes.

  ‘You live around here?’ Theo asks.

  She snorts and her forehead furrows.

  ‘Well, you are hanging washing there and the other day, there was a blanket being aired, which I also presume is yours, so I guess you live close enough?’ He looks at the building on the other side of the flat-roofed hovel and wonders how a Gypsy could afford such a rent. His place is relatively cheap, but he doubts they all are.

  ‘I live here.’ She laughs and stamps her foot, but it is a defensive snigger of a laugh, an aggressive stomp. ‘Come, children.’ She picks up the empty basket and the three of them trudge down the spiral staircase out of view.

  Theo groans at his tactlessness. He could see she was a Gypsy; if he had thought it through, it is obvious. Few Athenians, if any, would rent any decent property to a Gypsy.

  He closes his eyes. He was about twenty when he first saw Stella. She had the same hard time too. No one had seen much of her until school started; she lived in a house behind the square, up the hill a little, with her Greek father and her Gypsy mother. Theo had already left school and was working in the kafeneio by then, but he remembers her walking to school that first day. She was full of bounce and joy, eager to be there, her eyes darting around and fixing on the other children, an eager smile, the long, straight dark hair. It was only a few weeks later that the same girl walked to school with her eyes to the ground, her mouth closed, the energy in her step gone. Theo worried for her, recalled his own hard time at school with the likes of Manolis, imagined only too well the bullying the Gypsy girl must have received.

  In his concern for her, he took to being around when school was dismissed. He never really made a conscious decision, it just happened. One day, he was outside the gates and there she was, head bowed, books in hand, steps long enough to get her home quickly, short enough not to be noticed, and he recognised the fear. He found himself at the school gates the next day, just casually passing, keeping watch over her from a distance. If the children were going to be mean, they would wait until no teacher was around.

  He kept up this spontaneous vigil for a while, but no one seemed to bother her. He found out her name was Stella, but he never talked to her. Then he missed a day, but went the day after, then he missed a few more days, and the days turned to weeks until he found himself outside the school once again at closing time just by chance, and there she was.

  He saw at once that t
hings had changed. Her head was bent lower, her books gripped tighter, her weight, with each step, on her front leg as if ready to run. Theo followed. A group gathered around her, keeping a distance, on both sides of the road. She turned up a side street, a shortcut to her house up a grass lane between the backs of some of the houses. The distance between her and the group closed, and then one of the children threw a stone. It caught Stella on the back of her leg, drawing blood, and she ran.

  Theo exploded into action, running up behind the children, knocking stones out of hands, grabbing them by the scruffs of their necks, only to let them go as he chased children closer to Stella. The child nearest her put in a few well-aimed shots. She had one hand holding her head and both her exposed calves were bleeding, but she never looked back. If she had, she would have seen him and stopped. The other children would have stopped, too, but she just kept running and Theo picked off the group one by one, until Stella ran into her house and slammed the door behind her.

  Theo’s chest heaved, his hands on his knees to catch his breath for a second before retracing his steps down the grassy, stone-walled lane, gathering the children as he went. When he had the majority of them in a group, he let out years of pent-up anger, he watched their eyes grow wide with fear and their little feet step away from him as his briki of rage began to boil. He stamped off, away from the group before he was finished, afraid of the strength of his own emotions.

  He was outside the school the next day, and he saw the children and they saw him. They did not follow Stella. He was there the next day, too, and after a week, he relaxed and only watched her go to school in the morning. He could tell from her walk, the way she carried her head that, although probably friendless, she was not frightened now. Since then, she has grown into a woman, probably gone twenty now. But he has rarely seen her out, occasionally going to the kiosk for her baba or down to the man with the vegetable cart for her mama.

  Theo looks back over to the washing drying on the roof next door, cursing himself for his tactless behaviour toward the young Gypsy woman.

  He finishes his meal feeling uncomfortable.

  He looks around and realises there is nothing he needs to do till the evening, when he will go to work again. It’s an odd feeling, and unfamiliar. He surprises himself by finding that he does not feel in the least bit guilty about this, and instead enjoys the luxury of being beholden to no one: his own master.

  He keeps an eye out for the Gypsy girl, waiting for her to return to take in the day’s washing, so he can make amends. He spends some time washing his own shirt and having a shower, but when he returns to his lookout, the Gypsy’s laundry has gone.

  The dog downstairs barks happily throughout the day and at one point is brave enough to come all the way up the side steps and look into Theo’s still-unfurnished room, only to flee when Theo welcomes him.

  Day turns to evening and the world takes on a pink light, but the heat continues. The man in his striped suit is in the garden again and the dog is still barking. Theo begins to see why the place was given to him cheaply. With a Gypsy living next door and a barking dog beneath, better places can be found unless the price is right. But still, it is cheap, even taking those factors into account. Something else that he is not yet aware of may be lowering the price. He recalls the noises in the night, tries to replay them in his head, but they make no sense. It’s not rats or cats; they do not murmur. He shivers, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end.

  Chapter 11

  Age 40 Years, 5 Months, 18 Days

  The Diamond Rock Cafe is not only open when he arrives, but Dimitri the owner is there, talking to a new girl who, although young, is dressed as if she is ready for a ball. The black dress plunges to an indecent level at the front, and when she turns, Theo is treated to a view of her back, which is entirely exposed down to her waist. A bead of sweat snakes its way down her spine. Theo looks away and coughs as he approaches. He has a vague feeling of guilt and recalls an image of Tasia in her tight bodice and flowing skirt.

  Dimitri is grinning like a village boy who has caught a big fish.

  ‘Theo, this is Leonora. We are opening up the front bar for her to work tonight.’ There is no reason for Dimitri to give him this information. He is just showing off his prize and displaying his authority over the staff. There is a strong smell of hairspray. Leonora.

  She seems a little uncomfortable and giggles nervously. It transpires that she has ambitions to be a model, and that Dimitri felt she could do with some exposure. Her voice emphasises how young she is, childlike.

  Theo represses his thoughts and tries to stop his eyes darting to her cleavage. Past the outline of her candyfloss hair, strung across the street, are electrical wires, silhouetted by the dark, rich evening sky. Theo thinks he sees an owl balanced at the apex, its head twisting. He tries to concentrate on this instead.

  ‘Dimitri thought I would attract more customers.’ She giggles as if this idea is utter nonsense. Theo wonders how old she is.

  ‘She will not be serving cocktails; she will send those people to you or Jimmy. You will support her the best you can.’ Dimitri leers at the dip of the dress, then goes inside, where Jimmy is cutting lemons on the unprotected bar top.

  ‘Would you like to see some pictures of my boyfriend?’ Leonora asks Theo, who is about to walk away. She takes a large photograph album out of her bag. ‘This is his work album.’ She strokes the cover before opening it. ‘He has already done some big work—magazines and that sort of thing—and now he is in talks with Olympic Airways to do a poster for them.’ She strokes each picture as she turns the pages of the handsome model’s portfolio. Theo looks at her again, tries to imagine her without the makeup. Surely she is too young to be working in a bar, too young to have a boyfriend, certainly of the type she is fawning over.

  ‘How long have you been courting?’ Theo asks, lifting his shirt off his shoulders, trying to stay cool.

  ‘Dimitri introduced us. We went for coffee last week,’ she replies, her tone serious.

  ‘How long have you been a model?’ Theo watches the creases that are almost dimples on either side of her mouth as she smiles.

  ‘Oh, Dimitri is just starting me out,’ she replies. Theo looks away from her, grits his teeth, and swallows.

  ‘Excuse me, I need to set up.’ He makes a break into the dark, stale-smelling bar. When he glances back at her, the girl is sitting at a table, lovingly kissing her fingers and placing them on the pictures in the portfolio of the man she met last week.

  ‘Focus, Theo. Focus,’ he tells himself. ‘A week or two here and then down to the new beach bar.’ But there is the money under the cushions of his sofa. The beach bar will not be able to beat that kind of income, unless he is the manager. ‘Right, so manager it is, then.’ He takes glasses that have accumulated on the bar top and puts them in the sink.

  Dimitri takes a drink to the girl outside. Theo checks his bottles. The special vodka is low and so is the Black Label. He lifts them from the shelves and crosses the open wooden floor that will all too soon be layered with cigarette ends being kicked about by a hive of closely sandwiched people. Halfway across, he throws the emptier of the two in the air with a flick of its neck. It spins once, and Theo catches it.

  ‘All right!’ Jimmy cries.

  ‘Got new ones? These are nearly empty.’ Theo says. Jimmy looks at him blankly for a moment.

  ‘In the back, man.’ He points to a curtain behind the bar at the far end. The space behind is small and unlit, the size of a cupboard, and on the floor is a row of extra-large, unmarked bottles. Theo backs out.

  ‘I don’t see any of this vodka or any Black Label.’

  ‘Ha, ha very funny. There should be a funnel in there somewhere,’ Jimmy replies and Theo’s eyebrows raise and his view of the place sinks even lower. Shaking his head to himself, he returns behind the curtain. It’s not right. They charge nearly half again for that particular vodka and everyone knows the Black Label is an expensive whiskey.
Theo sighs. Crouching on the floor in a dark corner of this dirty little bar to decant cheap spirits is another step away from the pride he used to take in making the coffee just right.

  He finds the funnel, which sits upside down atop a bottle containing a rose-coloured liquid. He shifts his feet as they stick to the tacky floor, removes the stoppers from the unmarked demi-johns, sniffing each to determine its contents. He locates whiskey and vodka and refills the bottles. His hands are covered with sticky dust, and he goes out to the bar to wash them before picking up his refills.

  Back at his little bar, he investigates the stale smell further, lighting a match to see into the backs of cupboards.

  ‘Your beer keg alright?’ Jimmy comes over to ask.

  ‘Oh, where is it?’ Theo asks. He has seen no barrel and has not thought where the draft beer comes from.

  Jimmy strides behind the bar, waving Theo out, and stands with his feet wide to lift up the floor planks, revealing a shallow dug out under the floor where the beer keg sits. Theo takes a step back when he sees, and smells, the foul, dark liquid that the barrel is slopping about in, but it appears to have no effect on Jimmy.

  ‘What in God’s name is that?’ Theo asks. ‘No wonder this place stinks.’

  ‘Stuff gets spilt, runs between the floor boards.’ Jimmy dismisses Theo’s concern.

  ‘You have to be kidding. How far under the floor does it go?’ Theo asks, putting his hand over his mouth, the stench getting worse. The fumes smell flammable. Jimmy shrugs.

  ‘You’re fine for beer. Just don’t light a match down here.’ He laughs, replacing the floorboards.

  Theo thinks of his clean area behind the kafeneio counter in the village, in which the paintwork may be old but it shines, and the floor is swept. Fresh air blows through the open doors all day, and there are no dark corners. Here it is all dark corners hiding secrets, Jimmy on the take, a young girl being used like bait, cheap drinks siphoned into expensive bottles, Gypsies living in a place not fit for goats.