The Fig Tree

by Arnold Zable

  A Sunday morning in St Vincent’s. Birth and death cross paths. Four generations of women sit in one room and at least, in this one moment in time, they find solace in each other’s company. At least, in this moment of time, they are together.

  A cancer ward in St Vincent’s. Lily is fading away. She is uncomfortable, despite a steady dosage of morphine. Nurses rearrange her frequently. For the past year she has been in and out of hospitals and rehabilitation centres, due to broken bones brought on by osteoporosis. It is as if her body, after years of service, is crumbling. And now this final blow: inoperable ovarian cancer, which has spread into her vital organs.

  Born in Melbourne in 1925, into a family from the legendary island of Ithaca, she married an Ithacan immigrant, and spent her life rearing three children whilst working in a series of shops and factories. Yet she also moved on to become active in the Union of Australian Women; and, for a time, in her later years, she visited factories to advise Greek immigrant women about contraception and their basic rights.

  Beyond all this, however, was a quality for which she will long be remembered—her hospitality. Hers was an open house. Lily’s refrigerator was always stocked with food and drink in readiness for the unexpected visitors who dropped by for an impromptu meal, a cup of tea, a coffee, a chat around the kitchen table.

  They came from everywhere, Lily’s many guests, among them her neighbours, and friends from across the road, from around the corner and surrounding streets. And from further afield, the friends, lovers, and in-laws that her children brought home in their restless wake. Her companions from the women’s movement, they too knew that this was an open house.

  So many visitors sat in her kitchen, surrounded by a growing forest of utensils: the mortars and pestles that would transform our annual crop of basil into pesto sauce; the oven-pans of various sizes which once shaped the spinach pies that were Lily’s specialty; and the tins of extra virgin olive oil, labelled with enticing scenes of the Mediterranean, always on hand, in bulk, the most essential ingredient in Lily’s Ithacan recipes.

  It was in the kitchen that I often saw them, Lily and her daughter, Dora, cooking together. Lily led the way, passing on recipes which had, in turn, been passed on by her mother, Poulimia, who came to Australia from Ithaca as a proxy bride, to marry a stranger called Constandinou Kecatos, who had left his village, on the same island, years earlier, in 1908, as a sixteen-year-old boy.

  Lily and Dora. Mother and daughter. At such moments the bond between them was palpable; two women working in the shadow of generations before them, in concert, fully focused on the task, the stillness broken just occasionally by a comment: ‘A bit more salt, Doramou.’ Yes, Lily did have the Ithacan taste for salt. ‘Not enough salt,’ she would say with a disapproving frown, when we went out to a restaurant and tasted another’s cooking.

  These are the images that return, late at night, as we sit by Lily’s bed. This is what we whisper about, her loved ones. Or muse upon. Or dream about when we doze during our final vigil. These are the images that dance in the fading light. These are the moments when we contemplate the things that matter most: the garden, the kitchen, odd memories, family tales, or the proverbs Lily passed on.

  She had one for every occasion. ‘Now that you have entered the dance hall you have to dance,’ she would say when her children took on daring ventures. ‘It’s hanging from my ear,’ she said when we asked if she’d seen something we’d carelessly misplaced. When she indulged her love of gossip, she would sometimes pause, as if catching herself, and say, ‘The camel does not see its own hump.’ If we were going through a personal crisis, she would remind us, ‘The night’s doings were seen by the dawn and laughed at.’ And if we persisted she would add, with an edge of steel, ‘Everyone cries for his own pain.’

  These are the memories that come to us now, and this is why it hurts to see her in so much pain. And this is why we are full of gratitude for the attention she receives from the nurses. It is an aspect of medical care so often unnoticed, and yet so obvious to those who are forced to spend time in a hospital ward.

  Doctors come and go. Surgeons perform their operations and move on to the next patient. They do what they have to do. But it is the nurse who remains to care for the patient; and it is the nurse who, at times, in the absence of loved ones, becomes a companion, a last friend of the dying, responding to whispers; listening to confessions. These are the unsung heroes of the city, those who stay put whilst the city enjoys its festival days.

  A cancer ward in St Vincent’s. Private griefs and battles are on open display. There is camaraderie among strangers united by a common fate. Emma is eighty-seven years old. In the mornings the nurses wash and dress her. For the rest of the day she sits in a chair by her bed. She seems ethereal. Her slender body is wrapped in a white gown. She plays with Alexander whenever he is in the ward. On the eve of her departure, she surveys the room with a mischievous grin and announces, to anyone who cares to listen, ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.’

  There is Tom, a tall man who has lost several kilograms in weight during the past month. I can imagine him as he would have been not so long ago—a muscular road-worker from the country. Like the other patients, he has followed Lily’s progress with concern. There is Cheryl in the corner bed, on the far side. Every day, without fail, her husband and daughter arrive in the early morning after an hour’s drive from an outer suburb. They tend her from morning till night in the wake of her chemotherapy treatment. Throughout it all Cheryl seems to maintain her composure and warmth.

  Eighty-nine-year-old Anna, Polish-born, oscillates between hours of gloom and moments of elation, as if she has just realised anew that she is still alive and cared for by the two daughters who sit by her bed. As Lily deteriorates, Anna is drawn out of herself, and she begins to inquire after her health. This concern for another appears to soften her, to ease her own discomfort. Then there is Theo, the ward joker, a middle-aged man who shuffles about with his drips in tow to chat with fellow patients, to dispense an amusing anecdote here, a joke there, offering words of comfort even on the eve of his own perilous operation.

  And all the while, running between them, answering their every need—checking pulses, blood pressure, intakes of fluids and tablets, administering oxygen, rearranging tired bodies, bathing patients wracked with pain—are the nurses. Always, it seems, they tread the fine wire that stretches taut between compassion and detachment, while outside can be heard the sound of traffic and bustle, of a city forever on the move.

  As she moves towards her final coma, it is the fig tree that Lily recalls. The one she planted in the final garden after half a lifetime on the move, with her restless husband, from shop to shop, from house to house, from one bayside suburb to the next. It was the one fig tree that she was able to see mature and bear fruit.

  It began as a fragile cutting, culled from aunt Mantina’s garden. Mantina was Athanassios’s cousin and Lily’s confidante, a woman who was born in Ithaca. A woman who understood fig trees. She had tended them on the island as a child. She took hold of a shoot at the base of her tree. ‘Just plant it in the ground when you get home,’ she said, as she wrenched it out of the earth. Lily found it hard to believe this was all it required. ‘A fig tree can push through concrete,’ Mantina assured her.

  The cutting did take root. In time the tree reached out to all corners of the garden. It grew so high that birds could safely eat their share of fruit. It sagged so low that the ripened figs hung like succulent teats, ready for the milking. It was so abundant with figs that the earth beneath it was a moist compost of fermenting fruit. It spread so wide that the branches became hazards. In the dark, in a moment of forgetfulness, I once banged my forehead against a lower branch.

  As the tree grew and stretched outwards, Lily grew inwards. She began to hunch over. Her spine succumbed to disease. Her steps shortened. Her fingers stiffened. Yet in her face, she seemed more youthful. It gained a childlike quality. One grandchild was born; then a se
cond. And for a brief time Lily was at ease, at home in her established garden. She was able to move from the practical to the aesthetic: from fruit trees to native shrubs, from grapevines to potted plants, from vegetable plots to flowers; while steadily, through each passing year, the fig tree extended its domain.

  And there were days, the best of times, when Lily sat under that tree, surrounded by family and friends, and by grandchildren who were born long after it had been planted. Again, it is obvious. This is where she wants to be. This is where she wishes to spend her final hours. This is where she should be. But the rules do not allow it. She is too weak to be moved, the doctors tell us. So we give in, and become accomplices, condemned to live with an enduring regret that Lily did not realise her final wish.

  A cancer ward in St Vincent’s. Dramas persist. Just as it seems that Roza has sunk into a coma from which she will not return, she stirs and sits up abruptly against a pile of pillows. Her husband and son rush to her side. It is late at night. Their vigil has been rewarded. Roza beckons to them, and they come close. I sit beside Lily. From this distance of five metres or so, it appears as though the three of them, Roza, her husband and son, are enclosed in a stream of light emanating from a bed lamp in the darkened ward.

  Roza extends one hand to the husband, the other to her son, and draws them to her. She tells them, ‘I will get better and we shall return to Greece. First we will go to Jerusalem. And then we will travel to the Sinai, to St Catherine’s monastery, to visit the desert monks and priests. Then we will return to Greece and build a house in the village. It will have just two rooms, perhaps three. That is all I need. As for me, my working days will be over. I will stay in the village and live out my years in peace.’

  She is talking of the village she was born in. She is talking of the village she left, as a woman of twenty-three, to make her way, with her husband, to Australia; the village that Yiayia, her mother, chose to remain in. She is talking of the dream she has clung to for over two decades of work and struggle; and for a moment at least, in a darkened ward near the heart of the city, this dream has flared up yet again, and enabled her to experience this last moment of fully conscious communion with her loved ones.

  A corridor in St Vincent’s. This is where we come for respite. A break from the heat. The corridor is one step removed from the cauldron. The door to the ward swings open, and shut. It is a place for talking. For remembrances. And sitting silent. Two nurses hurry by, like hurricanes tinged with grace. Dora sits with Alexander. He is asleep. And she recalls her journey, as a child, to another hospital.

  Dora was six years old at the time, travelling on a train. A ‘red rattler’, they called it, as it hurtled upon bumpy rails. She did not know where she was going. She had rarely left her bayside Melbourne home. Perhaps it was the first time. Her mother seemed preoccupied, sombre. The train stopped at stations with a fit of clanking, and resumed its journey with a slow start. Dora revelled in the changing pace.

  She wanted the journey to never end. Inside the carriage it was dark and cool. Through the window she glimpsed backyards, private domains on public display. Flitting by, she saw the spiky fronds of date palms against blue skies. She felt happy and new. Almost everyone about her seemed happy. But still, her mother remained silent, remote.

  The train journey ended. They walked side by side on a busy street. Dora was overwhelmed by the noise. They entered a tall building, and ascended in a lift. They stepped out into a corridor. A door swung open, and shut. Dora saw people lying in beds. She had never been to a hospital before, and she was frightened. The sun did not shine here. Everything seemed grey. They came to a room, and inside, on a bed, lay her nonna, Lily’s mother, Poulimia.

  The door to the cancer ward continues to open and shut. Alexander stirs. Dora pauses. Adjusts his blanket. And continues her tale. She is surprised at the clarity, at how much she remembers. And yet, how little. Perhaps it has something to do with corridors and impending death.

  They seemed united in an unspoken pact, Lily and her mother. Locked in each other’s pain. And Dora felt shut out. She wanted the day to be as it had seemed, just hours earlier, fresh and new. She glanced through the hospital window, and at the light streaming in.

  Dora sat by Poulimia’s bed. Her grandmother did not speak English well. She preferred to speak Greek. Although she understood her, Dora refused to reply in Greek. Besides, she did not know what to say. She did not know Poulimia well. They rarely saw each other.

  Now, years later, in a hospital corridor, she is beginning to disentangle the webs; to see the strange symmetries. Poulimia too was dying of cancer. She passed away aged fifty-four. This is just one of the few memories Dora has of her, the only image of a lineage of women, and of a grandmother who arrived in Melbourne as a proxy bride. She remains a remote dream recalled in a hospital corridor, where the doors to the inner sanctum silently open. And shut. Miracles can happen, Spirou, Roza’s son, tells me. He has just flown back from Greece, to join his mother in her final days.

  ‘Miracles can happen,’ he repeats. ‘I know. I have seen it.’ We are standing by Lily’s bed, he on one side, I on the other. I ask Lily if she minds us talking. After all, it is late at night. And she has complained of the noise. ‘Go on,’ she says, her eyes closed. ‘I am listening.’

  ‘Miracles can happen,’ Spirou persists. It is like a chant. ‘I was on military service in Greece. I saw a jeep crashing over a cliff. It plunged many metres below. It rolled over thirty-one times.’ I wonder at the figure thirty-one. Did he count each roll as he stood on the cliff-side?

  ‘At the base of the cliff the jeep burst into flames,’ he continues. ‘We found a way to the car as quickly as possible. Two of its occupants were dead. But the third emerged totally unharmed. And he told us that as the car plunged over the cliff and began its descent, he had felt, with certainty, that something, perhaps someone, was protecting him. It was as if an invisible blanket was wrapped around him. Yes. Miracles can happen. After all, my mother is still alive. And she wants so much to see her village one last time.’

  These are the stories told late at night in a cancer ward in St Vincent’s. Between people who just days ago were strangers. And this, in itself, is a miracle.

  A corridor in St Vincent’s. Roza’s husband paces about. Beside him walks Yiayia, with a look of incomprehension. ‘Why doesn’t the cancer attack the rocks,’ she says again. It is her incantation, her protest. Dora sits with Alexander, and with two friends of Lily’s, one from the women’s movement, the other a sister-in-law.

  Dora cannot help but feel devastated by her mother’s pain. And a touch of anger, a sense of abandonment. It rears up, unexpectedly, then subsides. Her mother is leaving when she wants her most. They had just entered common territory now that Dora has a child. She thinks of what could have been. ‘I wanted to share the secrets of child-rearing,’ Dora tells Lily’s friends.

  Dora is divided. Tugged one way, then the other, between her ill mother and the needs of the child. ‘What will the baby eat today?’ Dora says, as if thinking aloud. ‘He had rice yesterday. Perhaps I will feed him buckwheat today. He needs protein. I better get it right.’

  And she is haunted by her mother; her closed eyes, her withdrawal from the outside world. Lily had been so curious, so vital and alive. Now she no longer wants to know. Dora longs to see her. To speak to her at least one last time. To be of use. To help soothe her pain.

  It is then that she allows herself to break down. In the corridor. In the company of two women. One lifts Alexander from Dora’s arms. ‘I cannot believe she has cancer,’ she tells them. ‘She has always absorbed other people’s burdens. Now she is leaving when we have so much to share.’

  The women comfort her. They are older women. Child-rearers. ‘Be strong. Do not despair,’ they tell her. ‘You have your own child. It is your time. This is how it goes.’

  A corridor in St Vincent’s. The mood oscillates. There are subtle shifts. Lighter moments. Unexpected detours. Perhaps
the stories we tell in the corridor are an extended epitaph. There is the tale of how Lily got her name. It is not a typical Greek name.

  Lily was christened Erasmia Kecatos. In 1926, when she was one year old, an uncle, newly arrived from Ithaca, would take her for a walk in the surrounding streets. Neighbours strolling by once asked, ‘What is her name?’ Her uncle did not feel comfortable with the name Erasmia outside the family home. It sounded awkward in these streets. It underlined his poor grasp of English, his strange accent. He looked up, and saw a lily in a front garden. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed. ‘Name is Lily.’ And it stuck. So the story goes.

  There are other memories that take hold. Corridor anecdotes. The few images that will take root and return unexpectedly, at any time. Lily’s three children each have their own. For Dora, it is the coffee ritual. She associates it with Sunday afternoons. And the kitchen in Parkdale. The smell of it. The familiarity. Dora and Lily are cooking together. The silence is broken occasionally by a piece of gossip. Then they pause for the ritual. Always at the same time. It is as if they work for this moment, the four o’clock coffee break.

  Lily brings the briki to the boil. She pours two Greek coffees. They sit down. The pots are simmering. The meal is well on the way. It is a moment to savour. There are two small cups side by side on the kitchen table, glistening black. Then they break the rules, and add a dash of milk. Says Dora, ‘to take the bitterness away’.