In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Let me help.’ Theo pushes the door fully open and quickens his steps to be of aid.

  ‘Theo, my boy, you came back.’ The relief in the old man’s words tears at Theo’s emotions.

  ‘I am here, Baba.’ Theo hooks under his father’s arms and lifts him up. He, too, has lost weight. So frail, so small. Nothing much left of him.

  Yanni stays still, leaning against his pillow and regaining his breath for a moment.

  ‘Theo, pull up a chair. There is much I must say,’ the old man finally croaks.

  ‘Baba, I have just arrived, there is time. The best thing you can do is rest. There is plenty of time to talk when you are well again.’

  ‘No, Theo, the time is now.’ He tries to sound strong and firm, but his voice wavers.

  Chapter 20

  Age 41 Years, 1 Month, 25 Days

  Theo turns the chair by the bed to face his baba, putting the old man’s trousers and shirt over the end of the brass bed.

  ‘Oh my.’ His baba gives a weak laugh. ‘Who have we here?’ Bob the dog stops sniffing around by the door and comes bounding into the room and leaps up, front paws on the bed.

  ‘Down, Bob,’ Theo commands, but Bob takes no notice, and the old man buries his thin fingers in his shaggy coat.

  ‘Bob. That’s a foreign name; why you don’t call him Babis?’

  Theo sighs at his baba’s familiar overbearing tone and wonders why he came back. Nothing changes. ‘The dog’s name is Bob,’ he says quietly.

  There is a pause. His baba stops patting the dog. ‘Yes, of course he is,’ he says. ‘It is hard.’

  ‘What? What is hard? Naming a dog?’ Theo asks, smirking.

  ‘Getting old, son, getting old. Your body gives up before your mind is ready. You keep thinking you are the same, but you are not. The problem is the mind does not change. You get a bit tired, perhaps, but you don’t grow old inside.’

  ‘Oh.’ Theo cannot think of anything else to say, not sure why his baba is telling him these things.

  ‘Now my body has given up.’

  ‘Don’t say that. The doctor says it’s just exhaustion,’ Theo snaps.

  ‘Well, I think we can say my body has made a point.’ He chuckles. ‘But you have known for a while.’ His lips close tightly. He looks away to the curtains drawn across the small window, curtains that were sewn and hung before Theo was born.

  Theo shuffles in his seat. Bob nudges him with his wet nose, and he lets his hand drop from his lap, to feel the warmth of his companion.

  ‘You tried to tell me in so many ways. Offered to help, I can see it now. But at the time …’ Baba sighs. ‘At the time, you were a just a boy being cheeky, thinking he knew better than his baba.’ He laughs again, but it is a wistful sound.

  ‘When? What are you talking about?’

  ‘Before you left.’

  ‘How long do you think I have been gone, Baba? I have only had one birthday whilst I was away. I have not been a boy for twenty-five years.’ Theo wonders if the man is confused.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Baba, you are not making sense.’ Theo looks to the door, worried. Maybe he should call his mama.

  ‘You have not been a boy for many years and yet there I was, treating you as if you were still too young to know anything.’

  ‘When you were a boy, I worked hard to get the kafeneio full, to provide for you and your mama. I got to know what worked best and what didn’t. I felt proud of what I achieved. I was proud to show you all I had learnt, all I knew, when you came to work by my side. I showed you how to do things and what not to do, things I had learnt through trial and error. You looked up to me with admiration in your eyes, and my heart was filled. Your brother and sisters gone, you were my life.’ The old man swallows and Theo sees he is fighting with tears. He has never seen his baba cry before, and it doesn’t seem right for him to witness this, but he cannot turn away, mesmerised, his own face contorting in revulsion.

  His baba misunderstands his response. ‘It is true, son. You were my life.’

  ‘Shall I get you a coffee?’ Theo rises, eager to get away. He wants his strong, unmoving Baba back. His rock, the familiar tyrant, he knows where he stands with him.

  ‘Sit down. I need to say this all at once.’

  Theo sits. Bob rests his head on his leg.

  ‘And I was proud to work beside you, son. I was. But as time moved on, you became a man, and I am ashamed to say I never noticed. Your mama, she would tell me, but I could not see what she saw. I saw a boy trying to tell me my business. I was embarrassed that you would speak to me in such a way in front of the men in the kafeneio. Boys do not speak to their babas like that.’

  Theo opens his mouth and leans forward to defend himself.

  ‘I know, I know. It was not a boy speaking to his baba, it was a man speaking to a man. But the more you did it, the more I thought I knew best.’ A sound escapes from the back of the old man’s throat and Theo is not sure if it is a laugh or a sob. ‘It took your leaving for me to wake up.’ He lifts his chin, focuses on the ceiling. ‘I’ll be honest,’ he says and prepares to release his words. ‘I struggled on my own. I suddenly saw how much you did, how much weight you carried. At first, I told myself you had been overdoing it, showing off, trying to run the show, but as the days passed, I could not keep up with all I needed to do. I pushed myself, but your share was too much for this old body.’

  ‘So this is my fault, is that what you are saying? Mama said the same thing.’ Theo’s voice rises, his shoulders tensing.

  The old man looks up, puzzled. ‘No, son, no. I am explaining to you how much of the weight you took and I didn’t even notice. I am letting you know that …’ His voice grows quiet and Theo bends a little closer to hear. ‘I needed you.’ He exhales as if a weight has been lifted from him.

  ‘You boys alright?’ Theo’s mama puts her head around the door.

  Baba’s head jerks to look at her. ‘Woman, we are fine. We are just talking men’s business here,’ he says heartily, and her head disappears again. ‘It is hard for her to see me like this,’ he explains more quietly to Theo. ‘We must not worry her. I will get up this afternoon. It is hard for her to see me like this.’

  ‘Baba, she is not fooled by you. She knows you are ill. The best thing is for you to get the rest you need and not to worry.’

  ‘But the kafeneio has been shut for so long. Will you go, Theo? Will you open it?’

  Theo looks away.

  ‘It is hard to admit when you are past your prime, when you have to turn to others for help. It is not easy for a man to do that. It is like admitting a weakness.’ Yanni looks Theo in the eyes. ‘I did not want to recognise my weakness, or have others see it. Especially not you, son. But just for now, I must ask this of you.’

  Theo has a lump in his throat. Brave old fool. He could have saved them both a lot of anguish if he had said this before.

  The Diamond Rock Cafe pays another fleeting visit through his mind, dangling the lease as a prize, luring him. It may be dirty and dark, but there is none of this emotional stuff. No old men. He does not answer his baba but lets the old man presume what he wants.

  ‘So.’ Baba tries to shift his sinking weight up as his wife comes back in. She runs to help and she and Theo take a side each, hands under his armpits. When he is upright, he begins his sentence again. ‘So, I came to a decision whilst you were away.’ A bony hand fumbles under the edge of his pillow. He draws out the keys to the kafeneio.

  ‘There you go.’ He holds them out to Theo. ‘The place is yours.’

  Theo swallows the lump, his heartbeat quickens, but he does not immediately grab the keys.

  ‘Baba, I, well, I thank you. I mean, I really thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know what this means to you.’ He puts his hand up towards the keys but does not take them. ‘But I cannot take it.’ He retracts his hand. ‘I am going back to Athens.’

  His baba’s face crumples, his mouth twitches, and he seems to struggle
for breath. His mama puts her arm around him, looks in his face; his eyes are closed. They wait for him to recover. His breathing steadies, and he opens his eyes.

  ‘Son, the kafeneio is yours. It always was yours, it always will be yours. I worked to get it going not just to put food on our table but to give you a future. It was always for you.’

  Tears steal their way down Theo’s cheeks again. He rubs his chin and nose as if he is being thoughtful, wiping away what he can. But they keep flowing. His baba’s face is also wet with tears. His mama wipes them away with the bedsheet, her husband flapping her away.

  The old man clears his throat and gains the composure to say, ‘So, you can run it, you can sell it, you must do what you think is best. But yours it is, whether you are here or in Athens.’

  With this, he takes a breath and tries to throw the keys into Theo’s lap. They miss, land on the edge of the bed, and slide to the floor. Bob sniffs at them, and Theo picks them up. He has no idea what to say.

  ‘Also.’ He looks at his wife and feebly points to the wardrobe. She takes her arm from around him and stops mopping his tears to do his bidding. She fiddles inside at the back, behind the shirts, hung neatly in a row. Theo’s hand goes to his money belt. His mama is opening the secret drawer where his baba keeps the bank books. Maybe this is the time to offer back the money he took. He must. He must free himself of the guilt. His baba is being honest; he must be, too.

  ‘Baba, I have something …’

  His mama leans over him to pass something to his baba. Theo loses the thread of the wording he was about to use to explain what he did.

  ‘Son, here.’ His baba hands him the bank books. ‘I never gave you a wage. First, because I thought you were too young but as time went on, there never seemed to be a good time to begin. Besides, you ate at home, your dear mama bought your clothes, it didn’t seem like a necessity.’ His mama resumes her position by the other side of the bed, patting her husband’s hand, stroking and loving him.

  ‘So it’s all there, Theo, and more. Everything left over from what the kafeneio made. We have never spent all we earned, so there is a good deal to play with.’ His voice softens as he speaks. ‘It was always all for you, Theo. Your brother and sister had their share long ago when they needed help to build their houses, buy cars. The business was always for you. ‘

  Theo’s throat has constricted and any minute, his body is going to betray him by letting out a sob or making his nose run or releasing even more tears.

  Bob whimpers.

  ‘I think the dog needs to go out.’ Theo controls his voice as he speaks, gives nothing away.

  ‘Take him then, and whilst you are out, please do something for me. Go in the kafeneio. It will feel different now it is all yours. Go in before you make your decision. But whether you stay or go, will you do something else for me, Theo?’

  ‘What?’ Theo’s emotions are conflicting and he is not sure he can take anything else in.

  ‘Get yourself the most important thing in the world, son.’ He turns to gaze up at Theo’s mama. ‘Get yourself a wife.’

  Theo smiles because he feels that is what is expected of him and bows out of the door, Bob pushing past to bound out into the sunshine before him.

  Out on the street, he takes a great gulp of air. The suffocation of emotion in the room and the intensity of his parents was too much. The space in the lane is such a relief. Bob lifts his leg on a pot of geraniums that grows by the front door. Theo’s throat loosens and the threat of tears subsides, but he cannot walk and walk to become lost as he had in Athens, here there is nowhere to hide.

  ‘Bob!’ he calls and marches off towards the square, the kafeneio. The dog follows, hoovering up a wealth of new smells from amongst the weeds that line the road’s edge, chasing small rustles through the dried grass.

  Theo can’t bear to see Vasso whilst he feels as he does. Turning back on his route, he cuts up a side street which comes out by the church. A group of boys are playing football, but they ignore him, as does a donkey tethered to the lamppost, dozing. From here, he can just make it to the kafeneio doors and turn his back on the kiosk before she notices him. A couple of foreigners, migrants, watch from the square as he puts the key in the lock. It slips in as smoothly as it always does, but this time it has a different feel, more solid somehow, more purposeful. He opens the metal-framed glass door just enough to squeeze in and then shuts it again. The dark inside will make him almost invisible to passers-by while the sun shines on the windows. He doesn’t wish to face anyone just yet.

  Bob is sniffing around the fountain by the kiosk, its soft flow barely higher than the surrounding wall. Lifting his head, the dog suddenly looks about him in panic. Theo opens the door a crack and whistles once. Bob belts across and through the door, nearly going headlong into a table. Regaining his balance, he starts to sniff around the table and chair legs.

  ‘So Bob, it’s all ours. What do you think?’ There is no acrid smell of stale smoke. The counter is clean, and everything is neatly in its place, the scissors hanging on the hook he screwed in one day in winter when the weather howled and they thought, for the first couple of hours, no one would come. But then there was a break in the rain and the place filled to overflowing, with men seeking sanctuary from mops and dusters, cooking chaos and child minding.

  The cupboard doors are all neatly closed. The handles he put on as a replacement for the protruding screws his baba had been using. He was nineteen when he made and attached those handles. He remembers his baba hugging him close, telling him he was proud.

  He has done so much to the kafeneio over time. The aluminium sink is another thing he put in, replacing the cracked, chipped, and stained marble one that was too small to get more than half a dozen glasses in. In fact, everywhere he looks, he can see his own handiwork, evoking long-forgotten memories, snapshots of his life. How many times has he painted the chairs? They are mustard brown now, but the chips and worn areas show that once they were dark green, once they were light blue, once they were grey. Each time, it was his hand, his brush that transformed all forty of them, laid out in rows in the square to dry in the sun.

  Now that it is his, what would he change?

  He looks about him. A picture or two, perhaps. He liked staring at the ones in Tasia’s kafeneio when he had had enough of reading the jobs section of the paper. He stands frozen for a moment, his heart torn by her memory, hope so fragile, the distance too great.

  He looks about him again to break the spell, what would he change? Not much, really. He runs his hand along the long section of the counter they rarely used. It was too long for their needs, with all the coffee making concentrated at one end, the brandy and ouzo bottles to hand.

  He sighs a long, thoughtful noise. Bob has finished sniffing and comes for attention, nudging Theo’s hand; it still clutches the keys. Theo lifts the keys and looks at them. They would have been a prize to hold any time in the last twenty years. Right up until six months ago, this would have been enough. It would have been everything.

  The keys dangle, clinking together. The key for the upper storage rooms is newer than the big old key for the glass doors.

  ‘Come on, Bob.’ Slipping out of the kafeneio, Theo nips around the side of the building before Vasso has the time to spot him, Bob by his heels. The newer key fits a door there. He unlocks it and Bob, nails clicking, heads up the wooden steps before him. Theo likes these rooms, always has. His little bolthole.

  As a boy, he would hide away here when it was time to sweep out and wash the kafeneio floor. There were occasions when he would duck out of church and hide here amongst the sacks and boxes. Two low windows look over the square, a great place to watch the world and remain unseen when he just needed to catch his breath, or more often than not let his temper settle when he was working with his baba.

  He pokes at a sack. The precious sacks his baba has hoarded since before he can remember.

  Why now? Why, when he has set up a path for his own life, does his
baba decide to finally pass on the keys?

  ‘It’s to get me to come back, Bob.’ Bob looks at him, head on one side. ‘You know what he used to say about all this stuff that has sat up here doing nothing all these years? “You might need these one day”.’ Theo kicks a sack. It gives easily, softly. ‘Like me, keeping me hanging around because he might need me one day. And now he does. But too late, Bob. Too bloody late.’ Theo’s breath is heavy. He crosses himself for swearing, three times, like his mama does, like the Papas does.

  Theo pulls at the top of one of the hessian bags to open it.

  ‘Sacks!’ Theo pulls at the sacks inside the sack to see if there is anything else. ‘Just sacks! That old man always made out that all this stuff was so important, not to be touched and all it is is …’ He searches for a collective word for it but, not finding one, decides it is not worth the effort to think of one. He picks the sack of sacks up and takes it to the window at the back that overlooks a thin strip of yard between the building and the orange groves which extend as far as the eye can see.

  Opening the window, he drops the sack out. It is soon followed by another that is full of twine and chains and rope. Bob likes the game of drag the sack and barks each time one falls from the window to the yard below, his paws on the sill, leaning out. Theo finds great satisfaction in watching the hoarded rubbish fall and land, the room emptying. He works fast and without care, the sweat building up on his brow until there is nothing left to throw out apart from spare chairs for the kafeneio, an old padded armchair, and the bags of sugar, tins of coffee, and cases of brandy and ouzo. The room looks bare, feels fantastic. The wooden boards are a warm pale yellow. The sun lays squares of light through the two windows that overlook the square. The walls, once a deep sandy colour, are mottled. The pigment has sunk into the plaster, softening the tone.

  Bob jumps into the easy chair and curls up. He looks like a large, dried, discarded mop head.