The Memory Stones

by Caroline Brothers

  The plums are perched in a colander, or piled up in a tureen; still more are awaiting triage among the pages of last week’s news. Vasilis is peering over the half-moons of his glasses, one hinge replaced by a safety pin, selecting which ones should be stewed.

  Their skins are such deep purple they’ve turned blue under their halo of whiteness. The surface resembles frost, he thinks, like the glaze he is trying to perfect.

  ‘Sit down – have some coffee,’ he says as if she has always lived there, as if her presence now were an unremarkable thing.

  He slides the coffee pot across the stove and pours its contents into a mug.

  ‘Milk?’ he says, a tin with triangular perforations poised over the tongues of steam.

  She nods and sits on the old wooden chair beside the window. It squeaks on its rickety joints.

  Everything about her seems precarious. He tries not to stare but she is translucent almost, porcelain-faced, saltscoured. He is still adjusting to the new reality of her, trying to reconcile this apparition with the girl he met at Aigai, the one Dimitri fell for, the one who dug up the handle of a vase and thought it was a question mark in the earth.

  A narrow cat weaves between her ankles. With its damp nose it kisses her twice on the calf muscle; on stone-cool paws it pads over the tops of her feet. When she lifts it to her knees it retains the form of a parabola long after she releases it, put out at being moved.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’ Vasilis says. He wants to ask more, but now that he has the opportunity he feels a sudden reticence, as if he shouldn’t intrude.

  She nods again, stroking the fur. ‘I slept a lot,’ she says.

  ‘We noticed,’ Vasilis says. ‘Anastasia tried to rouse you a couple of times to see if you wanted to eat.’

  She looks surprised. ‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she says, wincing as the cat pincushions her thigh. It turns three times in a circle then settles against the crook of her arm.

  ‘He likes you,’ Vasilis says. ‘Normally they take days to decide.’

  ‘He hardly weighs a thing,’ she says, fingertips sunk in tabby stripes. A young cat, he is still half-kitten really, all pipe cleaners and sinew and coiled determination to survive.

  ‘You’ll have to meet the whole extended family,’ Vasilis says. ‘Luckily, they are mostly free from parasites, but Anastasia still won’t have them being in the house.’

  ‘Should I take him out?’

  ‘Keep him for now. Just don’t say I said so,’ he says.

  Outside, kittens are stalking each other in the bamboo clump or sunning themselves on the pebbles between the pines. Paws tucked into a W, a tortoiseshell cat ignores them from her lookout on top of the hull of an upturned boat.

  ‘So many pets,’ Ana says.

  ‘They’re not pets, believe me,’ Vasilis says. ‘They’re all blowins and vagabonds and strays. Word’s gone out that they can treat this place like some sort of animal sanctuary, and so they are coming in. That one with the limp – see that black and white one – one week ago she turned up here and is never letting me out of her sight.’

  ‘Maybe she is just showing her affection,’ Ana says.

  ‘I think she thinks I’m her bodyguard. If I walk up the path, she is following me; if I glance at the car, she is leaping into it ahead of me, even though she is terrified of roads. She is riding in the back window while I am driving, and is sitting there while I am doing whatever I am doing in the town, waiting till I am ready to drive her home.’

  ‘So she’s your guardian angel,’ Ana says. ‘Or maybe you are hers.’

  ‘Well, she’s picked the wrong person – I’m a very second-rate angel,’ Vasilis says. ‘It’s curious though. She won’t let anyone touch her, yet for some reason with me she is not showing fear.’

  ‘What is her name?’

  ‘They don’t have names,’ he says, with some animation. ‘I don’t want them to be having the wrong impression.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to have deterred them.’

  He laughs. ‘You’re not wrong about that.’

  An old Labrador-cross lies prostrate in the shade of Vasilis’s worktable, oblivious to the felines and the occasional wasp.

  ‘What about him?’ says Ana, gesturing with a nod. ‘Is he a vagabond too?’

  ‘That old fellow? No, he’s on holiday. He is living up in the village, but Nikos and Eleni are having to go to Athens for a couple of weeks.’ He shrugs. ‘What can I do? They bribed me with a mountain of plums.’

  One of them rolls off the table like a depth charge and somersaults across the floor. Ana mouths a silent ‘Ow’ as the tabby awakes and fixes his claws to her thigh. She prises herself free, then tickles him till his jackhammer purr resumes.

  A lifetime’s supply of cat crunchies slumps in a bag against the terrace wall. Four ducks sashay towards it while they are talking, taking it in turn to peck at the rent in its side.

  Vasilis shrugs. ‘They all eat it. The pelican will be here next. They are all just helping themselves.’

  While he is speaking he fills a jug and sloshes the contents into water bowls, squinting as the aluminium refracts the light. The Labrador opens one eye and lifts his head, then lowers it as Vasilis passes, his sandals slapping against the flagstones like fish.

  ‘Tough being a dog, isn’t it?’ Vasilis says, resisting the urge to scratch him between the ears. A pair of kittens tumble in a headlock across the yard.

  ‘Anastasia will be down for a break in a moment,’ he says, returning the jug to the kitchen and upending it on the rack. ‘Usually she is working in the mornings while the house is staying cool.’

  The triage of plums is over. A second colander is brimming, and a full cauldron is waiting on the stove.

  Vasilis looks at Ana. ‘Do you feel like eating anything?’ he says. ‘There’s plenty of bread if you like.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m okay,’ she says.

  Still, she has made progress, he thinks. She has come downstairs in daylight; she has had something like a normal conversation. Surely this must be a good sign.

  Vasilis leaves her pinioned by the sleeping tabby as he goes outside to tackle a problem with the kiln.

  Heat is creeping into the day. Barefoot on the terrace, a bead of perspiration races down Ana’s ribs beneath her nightdress. The wind has dropped; the pines are stiff as telegraph poles and the blue-grey leaves of the olive trees angle their edges to the sun.

  Already the cicadas are tuning up against an orchestral undertone of bees.

  And yet, still numb, these things she barely notices. Most of the time the outside world is peripheral to her, impinging at most by accident: the night-time sea, for instance, that slips into her dreams and interferes with the rhythms of her sleep. She wonders why she stops hearing it in the daytime, why once dawn breaks she is scarcely aware of its sound.

  Like the sea, the roar of traffic was always present in Buenos Aires; even in the new apartment, from streets away, the rumble of cars and the lament of sirens provided a kind of soundtrack to her life. But the urban racket never invaded her dreams the way the sea does, and she could sleep right through the cacophony oblivious to its clamour and cries.

  Immediately she douses these thoughts. She will not think about Argentina. This is why she has come here. She will not let it sidle in.

  She stays up only half the day. By lunchtime Ana is exhansted again, and barely eats, and doesn’t re-emerge from siesta.

  ‘She had a bad night,’ Anastasia says. ‘I could hear her turn and turn.’

  Vasilis has found what is wrong with the wiring and is fixing the kiln so he can fire in the next few days.

  Friends come by in the evening and they have dinner outside on the terrace. They drink rosé and finish off the lamb and eat dark plums in syrup out of small glass bowls. Still Ana doesn’t come down.

  The light of a single fishing boat rises and falls across water that unfolds in the dark.

  When Anastasia looks out over
the terrace the next morning, Ana is swimming.

  She has borrowed a pair of flip-flops to crunch across the shingle, and left them beside the half-buried log that separates the pebbles from the sand.

  The saltwater stings Ana’s eyes but buoys her; she had forgotten how weightless she feels in the sea. In the shallows, rings of sunshine flit across the sandy floor.

  There is marble in the hills and the sea is aglitter with mica. In the glare of the sunlight, the seabed is scattered with stars.

  Afterwards she stands dripping in a bath-towel on the terrace, shreds of sea-grass clinging to her skin. Anastasia lifts aside the curtain of rattly seashells and Ana smiles at her – the first smile she has managed since she arrived.

  Ana emerges onto the terrace with a water jug and glasses from the kitchen. At the outside table, Anastasia is topping and tailing green beans, their strings peeling back like rip cords under the blade of her paring knife.

  Burned hollow after last night’s dinner, a candle slumps in the middle of the table; a collection of periwinkles, arranged in a circle, surrounds it like a castle under siege.

  ‘Shall I finish them for you?’ says Ana, her glass atilt on the tabletop’s blisters of wax.

  ‘Could you?’ says Anastasia. ‘I’m running a bit behind plan.’

  Ana sits and slides the chopping board towards herself. Anastasia passes her the bowl, then goes indoors to check what she’s left on the stove.

  From the window Anastasia glances out at her, in the green light sitting sideways at the table, head bent to her hillock of beans.

  Will this be enough? she wonders: Sunshine? Swimming? Sleeping? Hands busy at some practical task?

  4

  The Aegean

  July 1999

  Anastasia looks up from her computer.

  Ana is standing one foot on top of the other in the doorway, her hair still damp from her shower after the sea. Self-conscious in her shift dress, she is unsure whether Anastasia will mind if she interrupts.

  ‘I knew that blue would suit you,’ says Anastasia, smiling as she gestures to a chair. Beached like a shipwrecked galleon, it is Anastasia’s favourite reading chair and the only truly comfortable one in the house.

  Behind it, the window sunk into the whitewashed wall looks like a cube of sky.

  Ana lifts an open book and some papers off the armrest and places them where Anastasia indicates, in a pile on the rug at her feet.

  ‘Anastasia,’ she begins, then falters, trying to order her thoughts. ‘Something happened. Before I left. In Argentina.’

  Anastasia straightens, her smile shading into a look of concern while Ana seeks a way to explain.

  ‘I got a summons to go before a judge,’ Ana says at last. ‘In his chambers at the Palace of Justice.’ In her pocket she has found a soft yellow ball that the kittens like to play with, and she squeezes it now in her hand. ‘When I got there, he told me that someone had made a denuncia . . . how do you say it? . . . a denunciation.’ She grips the ball hard. ‘About me.’

  ‘A denunciation?’

  ‘A formal accusation. Someone, it seems, has declared that I am not who I think I am.’ She trembles slightly, hearing herself say it for the first time out loud. ‘He said that my birth date was not my birth date. That my parents were not my parents. They are saying that my life is a lie.’

  It takes Anastasia a moment to understand what she has said.

  Suddenly Ana is fighting back aftershocks of feeling: anger alternating with distress. ‘He said that what I am doing is illegal. That it’s breaking the law, going around with a false ID.’

  Anastasia hears her unhappiness mounting as she speaks. ‘Slow down, Ana,’ she tells her. ‘One thing at a time. Did he say who your real parents were?’

  Ana drops the ball that bounces twice and rolls against the bookcase. She can’t bring herself to meet Anastasia’s gaze.

  ‘He didn’t give me their names,’ she says, almost in a whisper. ‘He just said they may be desaparecidos. Disappeared people. Which means subversives. Fanatics who plant bombs and kill people and die in shoot-outs with the police.’

  Deprived of the ball, Ana is twisting her fingers as she speaks. The skin along her forearm is puckered like a zipper where one of the kittens has scratched.

  ‘It was horrible, Anastasia,’ she continues. ‘He knew things. He knew I had these marks’ – Ana turns her head and twists her hair back – ‘and he said they had some photographs from my childhood. They must have been spying on me for years.’

  ‘Show me again,’ Anastasia says.

  Ana leans forward, lifts back the sweep of her hair.

  ‘I don’t understand how he even knew I had them. But he said they were scars, and that they knew how I came to have them there.’

  Anastasia sees the marks, sits back.

  ‘He said they were from my mother, my real one. That it was she who put these cross things on my skin.’

  ‘Your mother? Why would a mother do that?’

  ‘God knows,’ says Ana. ‘Nothing he said made any sense.’

  ‘And the pictures?’

  ‘I walked out before he could show me.’

  ‘Ana,’ she says. She draws her chair close and takes Ana’s hands in her own. ‘Look at me now. What’s your feeling about all of this? Could any of it be true?’

  ‘I have to go to hospital to find out,’ she says, misery sliding into her voice. ‘They want me to do a blood test. A DNA thing. So they can prove whose daughter I am.’

  Anastasia waits.

  ‘It’s a lie,’ Ana says. ‘It’s all made up. It’s got to be all lies.’

  Anastasia considers the possibility. ‘It’s a strange way to operate, though, don’t you think, if somebody’s lying? To lie through a judge, I mean.’

  But Ana isn’t listening, or doesn’t want to hear.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she says, anguish permeating her words. ‘They are my parents. They are good people. I don’t want them to go to jail.’

  Anastasia is startled. Ana’s logic is lurching in directions she cannot pursue.

  ‘What makes you think your parents would go to jail?’

  ‘Because that’s what it’s like in Argentina,’ says Ana. ‘It’s happened before. There was a big case a few years ago – it was all over the TV news. They accused this couple – the father was a police chief – of adopting a child illegally. They’d found some problem with the birth certificate. The judge insisted they’d stolen the child as a baby and threw the parents in prison.’

  Then Ana speaks about her mother’s fragile health, how her father is two years from retirement, how devastating such an accusation would be.

  ‘They do it to military families, to police families,’ she continues. ‘It’s a revenge thing. Human rights people are behind it – my father once explained it to me. And now it is happening to us.’

  Anastasia lets the silence pool between them. There is too much in what Ana is saying for her to advise her, too much she doesn’t understand.

  ‘Did the judge say that this was your situation?’ Anastasia says eventually. ‘That you were subject to an illegal adoption, too?’

  Ana tries to recall what exactly was said. She rewinds the fleeting film of their encounter: the silver-haired judge with his cold-edged voice; the prim psychologist with her bow-necked blouse; the desk with its high-backed chairs. What comes back to her is the speed of the conversation, and the intensity of the ringing in her ears.

  ‘What I remember is what he said about my identity,’ Ana says finally. ‘I can’t remember what he said about my parents, whether he accused them of any crime?’

  Her words hang in the air a moment, tilting and revolving like kites.

  ‘Do you not think you should look into this?’ Anastasia says at last. ‘Even if it’s just to confirm who you are?’

  ‘I already know who I am,’ Ana says, surprising herself with the sharpness of her tone.

  ‘So – you’re not g
oing to do the test?’

  ‘How can I do anything that might make trouble for my parents? And just imagine if it were true – why would I want to find out that I come from a family of terrorists who were more interested in planting bombs than they were in me?’

  Anastasia hears her anger and begins to apprehend what she’s been going through, grasps its implications almost better than Ana herself. She sees the shock, and the wrench on her deepest feelings, the doubt that threatens to shatter her sense of self.

  ‘Anyway, if they were terrorists, then they’re probably dead,’says Ana. She swallows hard. ‘I don’t want some bit of paper that replaces my living parents with dead ones.’

  Anastasia goes over to the window and opens it. The cawing of a seagull floods the room.

  ‘Are you sure the test isn’t obligatory?’ Anastasia says, pausing to look at her before going back to her chair.

  Ana pulls an envelope from her pocket. There are smudges on the outside and creases that show that it’s been folded and refolded many times.

  She hands its contents to Anastasia who examines the formal lines of Spanish, the stamp of the judiciary, the court’s Buenos Aires address. Though she doesn’t read the language, she can identify a telephone number and the address of an immunology department at a hospital, and a date that looks like a deadline by the end of the year.

  ‘Do you think they can they force me to do it?’ says Ana, her voice suddenly afraid.

  ‘I don’t know how these things work in Argentina. But this is a court order, isn’t it? Generally speaking, that’s not something you should ignore.’ Anastasia folds the letter and passes the document back. ‘Did you tell your parents you were going to see the judge?’

  ‘I showed them the summons. My father kept offering to accompany me, though he’d have had to take time off work. But I told him there was no need for it, that they probably just wanted to talk to me about something going on at the university, or maybe the tennis club.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘I didn’t see them. When I got home my father was at work and my mother was out.’ She looks up at Anastasia. ‘I tried to ring Lucas but he wasn’t answering, so I grabbed my passport and ran. I thought they were going to come after me. I thought if I could reach the airport, I might get a stand-by to Paraguay, or Brazil if a flight left sooner. Then, when I reached departures, there was a plane that was leaving for Athens, and I’d just got your postcard . . .’ Ana gives her a helpless look. ‘I know it was crazy, but I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t think who else to trust.’