by Sara Alexi
The Tractor
And Other Stories
ISBN: 9781311290847
Sara Alexi
Also by Sara Alexi
The Tractor
The men in the kafenio blink, sleepy-eyed, sipping at their first coffees of the day. Any talking is spasmodic: little snippets of news are exchanged with the least effort necessary. Later, the place will be noisy, with shouting and laughter, and the slamming of counters on the wooden tavli board, but the first coffee is a quiet one.
‘My moped got stolen, from right outside my gate.’
Silence. The sun lights the tops of roofs as it peeks over the distant mountains, a line of shade across half the village. The floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides of the kafenio at the top of the square offer a full view of the community as it slowly comes to life.
‘Asters Tripoli lost last night – again.’
The men nod in acknowledgement. The line between day and night creeps over the houses, shining on windows, reflecting orange, contrasting with the blue shutters.
Theo comes out from behind the counter with a tiny cup of coffee that is brewed to perfection, bubbles glistening on the top. He sets it down in front of Socrates, who is sitting on his own at one of the circular metal tables. He acknowledges Theo with the slightest movement of the head.
‘Ah, there goes Vangellis.’
A tractor passes the kafenio and turns down the side of the square, puttering past the palm tree and the kiosk. The vehicle belches black smoke, emits a series of crunching, grinding noises and comes to a standstill.
‘That’s it, then, the old tractor is finally dead,’ Old Costas observes. The other men agree, shaking their heads and looking down, lips held tightly together. Out in the square, Vangellis has climbed down from his metal seat and is peering at the tractor, scratching his head.
Just a few days later Vangellis marvels at how his new tractor drives so well and is so fast and smooth compared to the old one. The seat is sprung and it is a joy to manoeuvre. It isn’t really new, but it is new to Vangellis, and in much better condition than the old one. The man he bought it from obviously looked after it, and the price was a steal for such a good machine.
Vangellis steers the tractor carefully out of his orchard and onto the road that passes in front of Grigoris’s house. At the back there is a short path, which runs through an orange orchard and then the church’s olive grove, and which connects their houses. It is a path worn by time. Vangellis’s and Grigoris’s babas knew each other, as did their babas before them. Now their wives wear the path a little deeper. But it is an untrodden path for Vangellis and Grigoris. Between them there has always been a little competition – nothing strong, just a slightly abrasive quality to their friendship that has kept them at arm’s length from each other.
Grigoris is in front of his house as Vangellis passes, lying on his back under his tractor with a tray next to him. A thin black thread of oil is trickling from the engine into the tray.
‘Ah, you should get one of these.’ Vangellis presses the brake and pats the steering wheel of his nearly new tractor.
‘Kalimera, Vangelli,’ Grigoris greets him cordially, standing and stretching. ‘That’s a shiny new toy. I’ll bet you paid a pretty penny for that!’ Grigoris wipes his oily hands on a rag and steps nearer his neighbour to get a better look at his new possession. The paintwork is good, though there are tiny bubbles of rust here and there that show its age. But the engine sounds smooth and even, and there is no diesel smoke to be seen.
‘Runs like a dream, starts first time. I struck lucky with this one. What’s wrong with your old heap?’ He nods at the tractor, the oil now dripping slow drops.
‘Ah, could be one thing, could be another. Seems to be eating diesel.’
‘Ah, well, that’s where I no longer have a problem. They reckon the fuel economy is just unbeatable with these newer machines. Especially this one.’ As Vangellis speaks, he stands up on the tractor to make a point of taking a good look at what Grigoris is doing.
Grigoris in turn stands between his work and Vangellis.
‘You should get one of these, Grigori,’ Vangellis boasts, sitting down again and then shifting about on the metal seat a little. The scorching summer sun has heated it up in just the time he was on his feet. ‘Well, best be off,’ he says cheerfully, and a cockerel somewhere in the village calls raucously, as if in agreement. He seems to bounce in his seat as he drives.
‘“You should get one of these!”’ Grigoris mimics his neighbour and waves his hand dismissively in the direction of the tractor, which is disappearing down the lane. ‘If they paid me fair and square for the oranges I grow I could buy one of those,’ he grumbles. Vangellis is now level with the church, almost at the square where he will turn left towards his own house. ‘Unbeatable fuel economy, indeed!’ Grigoris goes on. ‘He would say the same if it was terrible. If I had a cold, he would have pneumonia, and if I struck oil, he would find gold.’
He continues to mutter to himself as he fiddles with his own tractor. The sweat runs from his brow into his eyes; the day is passing and so far he has achieved nothing. But there is nothing much he can do until the tractor is fixed. His forearms are black with grease and oil and his rolled-up shirtsleeves are grubby and marked.
‘Get one of those, indeed! And how has he afforded to get one of those? With the same number of trees as I have, how can he be doing so much better?’ He tightens the last bolt and stands again, brushing off the dust from his trousers and leaving oily smudges. He turns the key and uses the jump leads attached to a free-standing battery to splutter the engine into life. Black smoke billows out of the side of the engine. At least it’s running now, but it’s still not right. Grigoris sighs. He could spend another day struggling with the engine, or he could just use it as it is and get on with the work he has to do.
‘Turn it off!’ His wife, Lena, comes rushing out of the house. ‘Can’t you see I have washing on the line?’ She waves her hand and flaps her apron to clear the black fumes from in front of her. ‘If you want a happy life,’ someone once said to Grigoris in the kafenio a week or so before he got married, ‘make sure you have a happy wife!’ He cannot remember who it was, but it is sound advice. He prides himself that Lena is one of the happiest women in the village. He reaches out and turns the key immediately.
‘I see Vangellis has a new tractor,’ she says, turning to go back into the house. ‘How does he manage that?’
Grigoris sits on an upturned orange crate. Sometimes it feels as if life is just one long uphill struggle. This problem with the tractor has dragged on for weeks and the orchards are not tended – everything feels like it is out of sequence and piling up before him.
He needs to clear away the explosion of spring flowers and grasses from under the citrus trees. The weeds were lush and green in May, but now it is August and they have dried and withered. It is a fire risk and it will invalidate his insurance. There is also his pride. He likes a nice neat orchard, something in his life that he can control.
But there will be no clearing of the weeds, no spraying, no turning of the soil up in the top field. In fact, nothing can be done if this tractor does not work properly. He picks up a pebble and throws it at the tractor’s knobbly tyre. How has Vangellis managed to get himself a newer tractor? If they were a little friendlier maybe he could borrow it, or they could have bought it together, shared it. But imagine if he could get his hands on it permanently …
‘“The fuel economy is unbelievable!”’ He pulls a face as he mimics his neighbour again. He throws a second small stone at the old tractor; it is drinking diesel at the moment. He picks up a third, larger stone ready to hurl, but then his eyebrows lift, his l
ips part and he begins to chuckle. In his excitement he stands and jiggles, hopping from foot to foot. An idea has struck him, and it is the funniest, most cunning, most audacious of schemes! Could it work? Yes! It could!
‘What are you jumping around for, like a chicken looking for worms?’ Lena comes out with the empty laundry basket and begins to fill it with the sun-dried clothes from the line.
‘Oh, nothing.’ But he can hardly contain his giggles, and he grabs her round the waist and kisses her. ‘The clothes, Grigori,’ she protests, but she is smiling too now. The plan he has just thought up is brilliant – genius, even. But he can tell no one. He stifles his laughter and it makes the undersides of his ribs tremor. Not only is it a brilliant idea, but it is going to be fun!
That night he listens for the banging of shutters as the villagers tuck themselves in for the night. The chorus of dogs begins as the cicadas finish their rasping serenades, but otherwise all is quiet. It is still stiflingly hot inside the house and Lena has kicked off the sheet, her face slack, allowing a rivulet of saliva to dribble onto the pillow. Slithering from the bed, he tiptoes to the door, picking up his trousers and shirt on the way. He dresses as quietly as he can, hopping from foot to foot in the kitchen, which is thrown into slatted high relief by the moonlight through the shutters, and sneaks outside.
With a jerrycan of diesel in one hand, he tiptoes down the back path to Vangellis’s yard. There won’t be any noisy dogs this way. His neighbour’s house is dark, with not a light showing, and not a sound. The tractor is there in front of the house, shining dully in the moonlight. Grigoris stands in the shadows outside the gate for a few minutes, alert for any signs of life, and then, when he is satisfied that the coast is clear, he slides with the agility of a cat over to the tractor and, as quiet as a farmyard mouse, he removes the cap from the fuel tank. Then, slowly, quietly, he unscrews the cap from the jerrycan and lifts it up, carefully pouring the contents into the tank until it is filled to overflowing. Once done, he puts everything back as if he had never been there, his soft flip-flops leaving no marks in the dust, and he returns home and slips back into bed. Lena stirs but does not wake.
Despite having got his tractor going after a fashion, it refuses to start the next day, and Grigoris spends another fruitless day battling with the engine. Although he is exhausted, he makes the same midnight journey, to fill his neighbour’s tank again.
On the third day, Vangellis passes by as Grigoris is inspecting the glow plugs. He has spent all morning lying on his back under the machine, trying to get the spanner into the right position, and he has skinned his knuckles twice. Vangellis slows down as he passes Grigoris’s gate, grinning and bouncing on his metal seat.
‘Hello, neighbour!’ he calls, obviously very pleased with himself. ‘Oh, Grigori, you will not believe the fuel economy I am getting out of this tractor! If I had known I would have traded my old one in for such a machine long ago. You should get one!’
‘They are too expensive for me,’ Grigoris says sadly, purposely adding a certain thrill to Vangellis’s joy by admitting that Vangellis is the richer man.
‘Ah, you have to know the right people,’ Vangellis counters, in what is almost a sympathetic tone.
‘Maybe you do.’ Grigoris is not sure how much longer he can keep himself from laughing.
That night he does not refill his neighbour’s tank, nor the night after.
‘I finally had to fill her up,’ Vangellis says as he passes the next day. Grigoris says nothing, and struggles to keep a straight face.
That night Grigoris fills the tank again, and the night after that. Vangellis is boasting to anyone who will listen about the wonderful performance of his new tractor.
‘You just won’t believe the hours I am getting from that machine.’ His voice has grown louder and it has more confidence as he addresses the other farmers in the kafenio. ‘Never known a tractor like it. Unbelievable. Mitso, why do you keep that old Massey Ferguson when you could have one like mine? Theo, it would really keep your costs down when it comes to olive harvesting.’ On and on he drones, and each night Grigoris tops up his tank.
‘It seems to be running better and better.’ Grigoris catches him talking to Vasso when he stops to buy milk for Lena at the kiosk in the middle of the square. Even Lena mentions it when he walks into the kitchen.
‘If you got one of those machines Vangellis has, we would cut our fuel bills for the year in half, he reckons – more, even.’ Lena is gutting and preparing a fish, the scales all over her hands and on the counter, down the front of her apron, glistening with petrol hues in the summer sun.
By this time Grigoris has given up on his own tractor. He cannot afford to take it to Aleko the mechanic, and he has wasted many days on it to no avail. Vangellis would know how to fix it in an instant, always has been good like that, but he will not give that man the satisfaction. No, he has bigger plans than that, and if, meanwhile, he must dig his land by hand, then he will. Besides, he is quite enjoying the pace of working just with his hands, and he doesn’t spend anywhere near as much time in the kafenio now, so he saves money that used to be spent on endless cups of sugary coffee. He is feeling fitter, and Lena seems to have noticed too. Certainly, she appears to be enjoying his advances more now his pectoral muscles are tight and his belly is shrinking.
Tonight he will take another little wander, only this time he will suck out some of the fuel in Vangellis’s tank. Not all of it, just a bit.
This time, he creeps into Vangellis’s yard with an empty jerrycan and a length of plastic tubing. He puts the end of the tubing into the fuel tank and sucks on the other end to get it to flow, then directs the free end into the jerrycan. He spits out the taste of the diesel, but quietly, so as not to attract attention, and siphons out a couple of litres or so.
The next morning he is belching diesel and he considers it prudent to refrain from smoking. But apart from that, he continues with his day as normal, clearing the stones from the olive grove and building up the walls that support the terraces. That evening, Vangellis passes without slowing down.
At midnight, Grigoris sneaks out again and siphons more diesel out of the tank, and the next day when he sees his neighbour, Vangellis’s face is drawn and there is no smile.
‘Everything all right?’ Grigoris asks cheerfully.
‘Oh yes.’ Vangellis almost chokes on his feigned cheerfulness. ‘Just, you know, going to fill her up.’ He pats the tractor but there is none of the previous love for his vehicle showing.
The bragging is slowly replaced by whining as Grigoris repeats the same process three days in a row. The men in the kafenio either become bored with Vangellis’s moaning or have private little chuckles at his sudden change of heart over his wonderful machine.
The next day, as he passes Grigoris’s house, he comments, ‘It must be the heat, she seems a little thirsty.’ It is not so much spoken to Grigoris as to himself.
‘Oh.’ Grigoris does not trust himself to say any more.
That night, Grigoris all but drains the tank.
The next morning Vangellis comes past his gate on foot. ‘Where’s your tractor?’ Grigoris asks cheerfully.
‘Damn useless machine,’ Vangellis replies, kicks at a stone in the road and walks on past. But half an hour later he is back again; he hovers outside Grigoris’s yard and then finally rests his crossed arms on top of the wall, his chin on his hands.
‘So what’s wrong with your tractor then?’ He’s trying to sound casual, but the words come out strained.
‘No idea,’ Grigoris replies – and it’s true, he really does have no idea. ‘Could be anything. I’ve changed the glow plugs, and the oil but …’ He is ignorant when it comes to machines and he knows it.
‘It’s always been a reliable machine though.’ Vangellis puts his hands in his pockets and walks over to Grigoris’s gate.
‘Well, if you want to look,’ Grigoris offers.
‘Let me see, maybe it is something simple.’ Vangellis s
tarts poking about, clearly knowing what he is looking for. He is a natural mechanic. ‘Ah!’ He sounds a little thrilled but quickly covers it with, ‘Oh. Oh dear.’
‘You can see what it is?’ Grigoris asks. But he is not looking at the tractor – he is reading Vangellis’s body language.
‘Well, no. Like you said, it could be anything.’
Grigories steps back and sighs, but then with renewed animation he turns to face Vangellis.
‘Did you find out what was wrong with your tractor?’ he asks.
‘You know, I called the man who sold it to me, but the number he gave me must have been wrong as there was no answer. So I rang the dealership, you know, just to see if they had come across such a problem before, and they positively laughed at me when I told them how many hours I had been getting for so little fuel. They treated me as if I was a joke and even put the phone down on me in the end.’ Vangellis’s speech touches Grigoris, it is so open and honest, but he cannot stop his little game now. He is so close to winning, and he hardens his heart. ‘You know what, Vangelli,’ he says. ‘I think it is going to cost you a lot of money to fix your tractor but I reckon you could fix mine in an afternoon if you really set your mind to it. It is a machine you know well. You have seen it run for years.’ He pauses to let this sink in before continuing.
‘As for me, I would have to pay to fix mine, or pay to buy a new one.’ After a deep breath he says, as if it has just struck him, ‘Here’s an idea. What if we just swapped tractors? Then you don’t need to pay anything at all, if you think you can fix her. As for me, I would be taking a gamble. But a tractor that uses too much fuel is better than one I cannot use at all … What do you think?’
Vangellis’s eyes widen as the words sink in. His hands grab for each other, his palms rubbing together. He licks his lips and shuffles a bit from foot to foot, looking for all the world like a child who has just been offered an ice cream. Grigoris cannot resist twisting the knife.