by Sara Alexi
The room brings a flood of memories he didn't even know he had. Memories of games played on the marble-chip floor with Yorgos. The time he helped carry wood into the house and a log end had gone through one of the small green panes of glass in the front door.
It is strange letting all these thoughts flood back to him; things he has buried away, boxed up and stored hidden for all these years. Of all the feelings and emotional memories that crowd his senses, the most dominant one is a feeling of being loved. Not just by his yiayia but by the people of the village.
As he lies in his bed now, new pieces of history drift back to him. Katerina, the bird woman from across the road, talking with Yiayia in the doorway of his bedroom before coming in and sponging his forehead with a damp cloth. He must have had a fever. His mattress on the floor and Thanasis weaving rope across his bed frame, being allowed to help. He felt so grown up helping Thanasis.
'You awake?' Jules calls from the main room.
'Yes.' Harris and Eleftheria mew in their carrier. That, too, was a jolt, going from the faded past of the cottage to the shiny interior of the hotel to get them. Like two different lives, the old ways and the new ways. He knows which he prefers.
'You want coffee?'
'Thanks.'
'I’m going with Yorgos into Saros. There is a market on. You coming?'
'No.' He needs time to wake up. His throat is much better today. He is going to be fine for America, he can feel it, and Harris and Eleftheria are going to be happier here than in his old flat in Athens. Dora will feed them and they can roam in the garden freely and hunt for mice and beetles. Yes, he is definitely going to do the place up.
Jules returns laden with bags of shopping. Even though he knows Jules had no money, Sakis is somehow not surprised that he has acquired food.
'Do we owe Yorgos?' Sakis has being going through a chest of old papers, finding photographs of his Papous and Yiayia and of himself, in shorts, barefoot, smiling. There is a picture of his yiayia and his mama together, which creates a lump in his throat.
'No,' Jules says but offers no more. 'Is there no kitchen?'
Sakis looks up from a drawing with his name on it and his age, four, and points to the domed adobe oven with a stoke hole underneath and the worn stone counter next to it with two circular holes above a pair of arched stoke holes below. Yiayia’s cast iron soup pan still sits over one of the holes.
'You’re kidding me?' Jules exclaims.
Now that he considers it, perhaps Jules has a point. They will have to get a fire going and wait for the embers to settle before they can even think of cooking. Yiayia’s life must have been so hard. The melody that has been haunting him comes again and this time, he takes out his bouzouki and strums it through, adding bass notes and grace notes to add richness. At this stage, he normally has lyrics springing to mind, but this tune seems to be without words.
'That’s nice.'
'It's new, but the words are not coming.'
'They will come.' Jules goes outside again as Sakis continues to work on the piece. It is nearly complete but still without words when he looks up again. His other senses have come back to life now the melody has a life of its own and will not be forgotten. The first sense to awaken is that of smell, and the most delicious aroma filling the room makes him realise he is hungry. Jules is standing by a metal countertop oven with an extension lead snaking out of the back door. His ability to gather for his needs is unbelievable.
'Ready in half an hour.' Jules goes outside again and soon returns, this time with a handful of something green, which he rubs between his palms over the cooking pot.
'You know, Jules, I am thinking of doing this place up, having it as a retreat for when America gets too much for us. What do you think?'
'I think it is nécessaire,' Jules says enthusiastically.
'So, seeing as you are here proving yourself to be the better cook, perhaps you could design the kitchen, the best layout?'
They take the food into the garden and sit beneath the walnut tree to eat at a rickety outdoor table.
'We have a day or two. We could start work now.' Jules' face is stippled in sunlight. The cicadas are rasping their love songs all around them in the orange trees and the chickens from Thanasis and Dora’s houses have come over to scratch the earth around the table for scraps. The ground under the walnut tree is fairly clear but elsewhere, the garden is a knot of brown, crispy weeds. Cat-sized tunnels have been carved into this undergrowth, and smaller runs, maybe for rats or voles, criss-cross in between.
They talk of how the kitchen would be best laid out, the improvements that they could make elsewhere. The outside bathroom needs to be made integral, tiled, with a new suite. Sakis is amazed at how well they seem to agree on everything, and time spins away. A cat comes and sits on Jules' knee and at one point, one of the chickens even jumps on the table, and they laugh as they flap their arms to shoo it away.
The temperature builds and they retreat indoors, and air-conditioning is added to the list of improvements. They sleep away the afternoon and Sakis awakes in the evening feeling almost one hundred percent better.
'I'll go and find a phone and give Andreas a call,' he tell Jules, who is lying on the day bed in the main room. His clothes are hung over the carved wooden back and the curved armrests at either end.
'Ah, you are better. Brilliant! Listen, the whole disappearing act is working really well. They are offering just about anything they can to get an interview. If you come up at the beginning of next week, I will arrange an interview with Ant 1 television and I will choose a newspaper. The one that offers the most.' He laughs. 'Then you can fly immediately afterwards to America, give the impression that you are a big international star and that they should be pleased to get whatever time they can with you.' He laughs again.
'So do you have the tickets to America?' Sakis asks. Part of him does not want to wait to go back to Athens, instead to go now, immediately. His win seems so far away now, it might as well have never been. He wants to go to the city and pull back the thrill he felt in winning, the taste of success. But the thought of the reality of what waits for him in the city—the parties, the false friends, the glitz and the glamour—don't seem as attractive as they did when he was in the Ukraine, before he was ill.
'The tickets. Yes. Well, when I say yes, I mean almost. Just ironing out the last details.'
'Do we have any money yet?'
'Yes. I have put some in your account. Are you still in the hotel?'
'You told me to move out.' Sakis looks at the receiver as if this would explain Andreas' question.
'Ah yes, just a minor glitch. Well, you can move back now if you want. Live like a king till you come up to Athens. I’ll send a car in a two or three days. Meanwhile, stay low, as your disappearance is really causing a stir. It is a stroke of genius.' He sounds very pleased with himself.
'It wasn't genius, Andreas. It was laryngitis,' Sakis reminds him.
'Yes, well you are better now, right? So all good. Stay low. If you are not at the hotel, where can I reach you?'
'If there is money in my bank, I will go and buy a mobile. Did you find my old one?'
'What, in all that chaos of parties in Kharkiv? Text me when you have one. Then we can be in touch. Bye.'
Sakis replaces the phone on the shelf of the kiosk in the village square and pays the lady who sits inside, surrounded by a plethora of everyday items that must be in constant demand. Cigarettes push for space next to batteries and boxes of paracetomol and bags of balloons hanging from a plastic strip. As she reaches for his coins, her sleeve knocks over a tray of insect repellent sprays, and these in turn send a pile of papers scattering to the floor around her feet.
'My accounts,' she says, giggling in a girlish way that is in contrast with her perfectly set hair and the crow’s feet around her eyes. 'I hate them.' And as if to reinforce this statement, she makes no effort to pick up the fallen documents. Instead, she offers Sakis a wrapped sweet from a bowl on t
he counter, smiles warmly, and wishes him a good day.
Somewhere in the hills, the sound of goat bells echoes and another recollection overtakes him. He was alone, sent out by Yiayia to buy matches, the box tightly gripped in his hand. The square was filling with sheep and goats as they were herded home, the biggest goats taller than him. They had seemed too big. Their underbellies hung with droppings and mud, the hooves clicking on the road, the animals' beards making them somehow human. He had been scared. Their slit eyes upon him, some of them so tall they looked down at him as they came. They trotted with speed; he was afraid. He had muffled his scream. Then arms were around him. He was lifted off his feet and then he was inside the kiosk. It smelt of perfume and hairspray and he was offered a sweet in a wrapper.
Sakis turns to look at the kiosk lady again. Surely it could not be the same person? Has she sat here all these years, doing the same job, meeting the same people? She smiles and waves again.
She had given him such comfort back then. Told him that she was afraid and how kind it was of him to stay with her until the animals had gone. He had left the kiosk walking tall. A man who had protected someone.
Renovating the Cottage.
With some money in the bank and the promise of more on the way, Sakis and Jules decide to start work immediately on the cottage. With all the shutters open, the sun streams into the cottage, highlighting charm—and age. At the very least, everywhere needs a coat of paint but if they are seriously going to spend any time here, it needs more.
It is not a hard decision to go in to Saros to look at plans for kitchens. The kitchen salesman’s brother is an architect, so they drift from one establishment to another to enquire about an extension. Jules has ideas of how the cooking area will work best and they both agree with the architect that a utility room for a washing machine should also be added.
The creativity of what they are doing is fun but Sakis feels out of his depth and consequently very reliant on Jules. When he finally got his own flat in Athens, it was fully finished. Before that, in his struggle to make enough for his own place, he always lived in other peoples’ houses as a lodger, a sofa surfer. Nowhere was ever permanent. It was always a struggle.
Playing sweaty smoke-filled nightclubs—and often conned out of his earnings—but with each club a little better than the last until after ten hard years, Andreas spotted him. Even Andreas was amazed that it did not happen earlier, as his talent was always recognisable.
Well, it was recognised: the nightclub owners saw it, the wheelers and dealers saw it. The truth was everyone wanted a piece, and that left very little for him. But Andreas really seemed to want to represent him and with that representation and the connections Andreas had, he was suddenly in demand at the larger bouzouki clubs in Athens. His face filled billboards around where he worked until Andreas made his cheeky, and, perhaps a little premature, move of putting him up against big names to represent Greece in the competition.
Sakis watches Jules taking the pencil from the architect to draw lines on the rough sketch they are working on together, which it seems he cannot describe without a common language. The architect is smiling, approving of the suggestion. Jules seems so comfortable in any situation, completely at ease with whoever he talks to. Sakis is very lucky to have found him as a friend. Just in his company, Sakis can feel himself unwind, not hold so tight to life, generally panic less.
In all those years of communal living and hand-to-mouth existence, he never made a real friend. Not really, unless you count Andreas. There were people who pretended to be his friend but really, it always turned out that their motives were selfish and ulterior. That singer, for example, who was trying for a quick leg up the nightclub rankings using his musical talent—and stealing some of his songs in the process. Or the time when he was pushed into being a frontman for a group because of his face, not his talent, and then dropped in favour of a girl’s face when the moment suited.
So to now be surrounded by a village of people who genuinely seem to wish him well and to have Jules by his side is unnerving and alien. Part of him would like to thank Jules for being his friend, but how can he put that into words? Besides, it would feel awkward to tell Jules how much he appreciates his support, his care when he was ill, his companionship whilst he waits to go to New York. Sure, Jules has asked for a bit of help once they are there, but he would want to do everything he can for Jules after the friendship he has shown.
And now this! This planning to renovate the cottage so they have somewhere to return to when New York becomes overbearing. The organising of the rooms so they can both live there comfortably.
It is remarkable how quickly the ideas become decisions. An extension is to be built to house both utility room, kitchen, new bathroom, and second bedroom. The traditional oven is to be left as a feature in the main room. Oil fired central heating is to be installed. The chimney to the fireplace needs raising apparently, to stop the backdraft of smoke that Sakis can remember used to give him a sore throat in the winters. The window in the bedroom is to be replaced with double doors into the garden and the garden—well, that can wait a while, but there is talk of digging out an area that will later be paved and covered with a vine-adorned pergola. That work might as well be done when they dig the foundations for the extension. Maybe they will even put a water feature somewhere, or a swimming pool beyond the walnut tree, in amongst the orange trees.
Sakis cannot remember feeling this happy—except when singing.
Then he always is this happy.
The architect makes a call and workers are scheduled in. ‘Strictly speaking, we should wait for the planning permission to be issued,’ he says with a smile, ‘but there in the village, no one will object, and it is really just a formality…’ They can start the work whilst he and Jules are away.
'Next summer, we can come for a holiday and it will all be done!' Sakis enthuses later that evening. Taking his bouzouki by its neck, he strolls to the far end of the garden, through the weeds that will be dug up, to sit on the low wall that will be repaired, and there he plays out his new melody. It is a full and haunting tune now, complete.
'That's beautiful,' Jules says when he returns to the house.
'But the words don't come,' Sakis mourns. 'I don’t even know what it should be about.' It annoys him that he seems to have such a block.
'They'll come,' Jules says and pours them both an ouzo. The night settles in. An orange glow bleeds from behind the shutters at the back of Thanasis and Dora's house, lending high contrast to the scattering of geraniums in brightly painted olive oil tins around the back door. Across the road, Katerina pulls her shutters closed. Next door to her, Anna's house is already closed for the night, and a hum of television sounds leaches into the stillness. The smell of jasmine is on the breeze and the village dogs are barking their evening chorus. Now and again as the wind direction changes, the jasmine is replaced with the smell of orange blossom. They are the smells of his childhood.
Somewhere up the street, someone is laughing. It is probably coming from the eatery near the square, with tables and chairs arranged on the pavement, around a tree that someone has wrapped up with fairy lights—a crude village attempt at enticement.
If only the owners knew that it is not the magical glow of the fairy lights that draws people, or him at least, but rather the familiarity that these villagers offer to both family and stranger. An unspoken acknowledgement that everyone is human and therefore equal. His competition win does not matter here; his transient fame bears no consequence on the present. Here, all that seems to matter is the moment. The conversation at hand, the immediate surroundings, the person in front of you.
It was his home once, so it should not surprise to him that here he has the feeling of coming home. But it does surprise him. What really rattles him is that, only by being here and feeling part of the village, he realises he has yearned for this for years. In his striving ever forward to some future situation where he would be surrounded by 'better' musicians
, 'better' nightclubs, 'better' wages, 'better' friends, it was all just a thin veneer that, if he had picked at its surface, would have revealed that the real hunger was to belong somewhere.
In this village, he belongs. With Jules, he belongs. Maybe Jules is the brother he never had? The father, mother, and friend he never had.
'What if we decide not to go to New York? What if we decide to stay here?' Sakis says, pouring a second ouzo and then lighting a citronella candle. The mosquitoes are out in force tonight.
'What if?' Jules returns the question.
'Well, would you be so sorry? Does this place not make you happy?'
'It is a very happy place. The cottage is very peaceful; you seem content here.' Jules stretches out in one of the new directors chairs they brought home earlier. He always melts into wherever he sits, but this chair seems to really suit his posture.
'Could you live here? Permanently? I could get a job in a local club, or maybe even teach music to the local children.' Sakis plays with the idea.
'Could be very good.' Jules does not seem to be really entering the conversation. He is looking up at the stars. With so few street lights anywhere in the village and no lights at all in the surrounding countryside, the sky is black and the stars wink one behind the other, layer after layer, further and further away in the warm night sky. Somewhere in the village, someone plays a traditional tune on the clarinet. A cat slinks out of the dried weeds, walks with such confidence right up to them, and then jumps on Jules’ lap. Jules doesn't stop gazing up at the night sky, but he strokes the stray absentmindedly.