by Sara Alexi
‘Yeia sas?' Spiros called. 'Anyone here?' and he moved closer to the doorway. The dog ran inside.
'Hello?' he repeated, and was answered by a weak moan, a sound of pain. He stepped into the cottage and was on his hands and knees within seconds to aid the white-haired lady sprawled on the floor.
'Who’s that?' she said, through dried lips.
'Wait, I will get you water.' By the deep, stained and scratched marble sink was a pump, and with minimal movement he grabbed a glass and filled it, the dog nudging him to one side to drink the overspill.
'Here you are.' He put the glass to her lips and she sipped slowly. It brought back memories of nursing his mama in her last days and, although he would not have wished this old lady to suffer, he acknowledged to himself that it gave him comfort to care for her like this.
Time passed, but he had no idea how long he was there. An hour? Two? He sat as still as he could, giving the old lady sips of water. The cottage was small and dimly lit, but by now his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom. There was a giant wooden dresser, painted white, and now peeling, adorned with three brown bowls and a clock that had stopped. The old lady’s upright chair by the open fire softened with a hand-crafted cushion that had faded and sagged with age. A narrow bed, in the corner of the room, was neatly made. Occasionally, dust fell from the ancient roof tiles that were exposed above the rough timbers. The quiet was punctuated at intervals with the sounds of small animals scratching.
After some time the woman felt revived enough to try sitting. She seemed more comfortable now, and she drank greedily. Spiros was relieved to see the colour returning to her cheeks.
'Who are you?' she finally asked, and although he had had no intention of telling her anything, somehow the whole story spluttered out. At the end she gave him a sympathetic look and said, 'I think I’ve twisted my ankle. Seeing as you have no place to go and nothing to do, you may stay here. The donkey has been gone for some years now so you can have his shed.'
Helping her to her chair, he asked if she needed a doctor.
'What, so he can take money I do not have?' she scoffed.
'Is there anyone in the village you would like to come?'
'The village? That bunch of inbred idiots! Why would I want any of them to come?' she had sneered, and so they continued to sit until the sun went down. Later, after they had shared some feta and a handful of figs, he helped her to bed and then went out to discover the barn, where a soft pile of straw awaited him.
Chapter 10
The following day he tapped at the cottage door and peeped around it, expecting the woman to still be sleeping, but she was up and using an upturned brush as a crutch.
'Morning,’ she chuckled, ‘did the mice bite your toes?
He looked down at his feet, at the holes in his socks, and laughed and nodded his head. 'I’ve not been out to collect the eggs so these are yesterday’s,' she announced. Next to the sink under the only window in the room was a wooden table on which was perched a single-burner gas stove. A briki was boiling away fiercely, the eggs bouncing to the top and sinking again.
'Shall I do that?' he suggested. 'The less weight you put on your ankle, the quicker it will heal.'
'True, true,' she had said and she hobbled gratefully to the lone chair. 'There is yesterday’s bread as well, in the fanari. I don't bake every day now, it’s such a fuss getting the oven up to temperature.' She looked out of the window, and Spiros followed her gaze to the traditional domed bread oven outside, partly obscured by a mass of geraniums.
'You have everything you need, eh?' he said by way of conversation and took the bread out of the mesh cage hanging from the ceiling. The hopeful flies, unable to penetrate its fine gauze and disturbed by Spiros, buzzed round the room and out of the door, beckoned by the sun.
‘There is a table round the side,' she said. In the light of day he could see the old woman had a kind face; her voice was gentle and there was something very motherly about her.
As she had suggested, the table was around the far side of the cottage, scrubbed and worn smooth with age, and alongside it was a second wooden chair, and he brought both indoors. The old woman had very little by way of crockery and cutlery, and what she had was in the sink. He cranked the pump, creating a spray, and the sun that streamed through the window above the sink caught the droplets in its light and created a rainbow. As he worked he played with the prism effect, taking his time over a simple job.
The old lady watched him, and when all was ready they sat together and ate. The eggs were so fresh it seemed there were hints of the herbs the chickens had been eating.
'I am Spiros, by the way,' he said through mouthfuls of crusty bread that had been dipped into his egg.
'And I am Leontia,'
He blinked; he had never heard of such a name.
'It is an old Byzantine name from Constantinople, and I am very pleased to meet you.' And she gave a little bow, bending from the waist. The words were ready at the front of his mouth to tell her that it had not been Constantinople since 1928, that it was Istanbul now, but then most people on the Island still called it Constantinople.
The day passed amicably. Spiros helped her outside, where she gently gave him orders on how to tend her vegetable plot and asked him if he wouldn't mind clearing an area of stony ground where she wanted to plant courgettes. In his tending of the plants he learned a lot. Accompanying each plant was a narration from Leontia about the amount of water it liked and when. She said that some plants preferred to be watered at night, others in the morning, that some needed shade in the long, hot days, and that others thrived in the heat of the sun. She told him of the changes to the forms and internal textures that had occurred through the months as each plant had grown, and how, from watching her crop so carefully, she knew the perfect time to harvest each one. As well as learning about the plants, Leontia reminded Spiros that there was a way you could ask someone to do what was needed without being aggressive and dismissive like Argyro. But, more than anything, Spiros worked up an appetite.
'Can I cook some food?' he asked.
'Well, we have what is all around us on the bushes and in the ground, although there is a little food storage cupboard inside under the sink.' She paused to pat the dog’s head. 'The marble and the running water keep the temperature slightly lower there,' she added by way of explanation.
Spiros delighted in making for Leontia a simple dish of beans in a red sauce, the way his mama had taught him, and he swore to himself it was the most delicious food he had ever tasted.
Leontia declared it was alright, and after that she ate without comment for the next few days. During those days they set up a pleasant routine. She would sit in the house and give him instructions on what needed doing there, or she would sit outside and give instructions concerning the garden. He even repositioned some of the slipped tiles on the roof. Spiros found he enjoyed physical work and, although he went to bed aching in limb and muscle, he felt satisfied, and more importantly he felt needed.
At the end of three days, Leontia declared she would try her ankle a little.
'I’m not sure that’s a good idea,' Spiros said.
'Nonsense. I have to try it some time. Come here and be my support.' And, between the two of them, they got her unsteadily onto her feet.
'I will walk to the bush with the pink flowers. Come, help me.' They walked together, side by side, with Spiros supporting her weight, and when she got to the flowers she picked one and put it in her fuzzy white hair. To Spiros it looked funny and charming at the same time, and caused him to look rather more closely. She had clearly once been a good-looking woman, and he wondered if she would tell him about herself if he asked. For instance, why did such a lovely person live alone and why did she want nothing to do with the villagers?
'Now, I have walked five steps so we must celebrate,' she announced, and he helped her back to the house. She went in alone and returned with a handful of drachmas.
'Here, go to the village.
They have a market today,' and then she told him what to bring her. The spices she listed were unfamiliar to him.
When he returned he found she had been busy: she had lit a fire outside and spread the embers and had several pots bubbling.
'Welcome home.' She greeted him with a smile and, although her calling this place his home made him feel welcome and wanted, it also unsettled him. Was it his home now? When his mama was alive she had made their house his home; she hugged him like she needed him, like he was the air she breathed. He had always felt loved. He still felt loved by his baba but he did not feel needed. That was the difference. Here, with Leontia, he felt needed again.
Leontia took the various things he had bought, added pinches of this and that to her pots and replaced lids, and the smells became amazing, intoxicating, fascinating.
When he tried to lift the lids to better smell the aromas she tapped his hands away with her wooden spoon and her eyes glinted as if she was in the middle of mischief.
When served, the dishes were such as he had never tasted before, and with a proud look in her eye she declared that her grandmother had been French but, more importantly, her family came from Constantinople. 'Where they can really cook,' she added, with a dismissive glance in the direction of the village.
'What happened between you and the village?' Spiros asked, a forkful of asparagus in the lightest lemon sauce he had ever tasted poised before his lips.
'Arrogant, insular thugs,' she answered. 'And the kafeneio owner is a treacherous…' She finished her sentence with a word he had not often heard before and he looked at her wide-eyed and shocked.
'Ha!' she cried. 'You think the old cannot swear as well as the young! Serve me some more, would you.' And that was all that was said about why she lived on the fringe of the village.
When their stomachs were full and the dog was curled up with its tail over its nose they sat and watched the last of the daylight merge into the night.
'My mama cooked.' Up until then he had always thought hers was the best cooking in the world, but now, with his eyes opened a little, he realised that maybe she had been provincial, at least in culinary terms.
'Yes, you said,' Leontia replied.
'She was good, but that was better.' He felt like a traitor, but he could not deny the truth.
The jasmine beside the cottage was releasing its evening scent, and the last of the embers glowed in the fire.
'Will you teach me?' he asked.
'Most of my recipes have been passed down from mother to daughter. There are secrets in them we have not shared for generations,' Leontia said, and she settled back in her chair as if about to tell a story. Her fuzzy white halo of hair reflected the bright moonlight and, behind her, the lime-washed cottage glowed between the dark sentinels of rock. It was a beautiful sight, but the whole scene was a little odd, too – mysterious, somehow.
'I was married, you know,' Leontia said.
'No, you did not say.'
'Well, I was. To a man from that village. I did not meet him there, needless to say, I met him in Saros. My family ran the best taverna in town there. Do you know Saros town?' Spiros shook his head.
'Well, he courted me and we married and he brought me here. Well, not here to this cottage. He brought me to the village, to his house there, behind the kafeneio.'
The memories appeared to be distressing her.
'You don’t have to tell me.'
'Ah, but I think I do. I think I need to tell someone. I think I need to hear it out loud. I have a feeling I’ve been a very silly and petty woman and it has cost me dearly.'
'Then tell me, Leontia.' Spiros was sitting on the floor and he shuffled a little nearer to her feet.
'Well, he got me back to this tiny little village and I found that everyone who lived here, who lives there, is a relation of his. Not distant cousins but first cousins, sisters, uncles, close relations, and they did very little to make me feel welcome. So Vasilis, my husband, on that very first day of our arrival, announced I could cook and that they would all be welcome to come for a meal that night and I found myself cooking for a hundred and fifty people I did not know – nor, judging by the way they greeted me, had any reason to like.'
Spiros watched the last of the embers glowing and dying as she spoke. The coals glowed bright orange as the breeze caught them and then black as it dropped.
'Well, they ate and they said it was heavenly. But they said it to Vasilis, not me, and they declared his troubles were over. He could open a taverna and people from the villages all around would come and he could buy their produce. He would also need waiters and people to wash up, maybe someone to prepare the food for the cook. It seemed as if they all thought their troubles would be over with the opening of a single taverna. But no one spoke to me. They toasted Vasilis and they toasted their future and I felt like an outsider so I went to bed.'
Spiros could all too well identify with her loneliness, that feeling of being pushed out.
'Go on,' he encouraged her.
'Well, of course, Vasilis came to bed very pleased with himself and quite drunk on tsipouro, so I pretended to be asleep. The man who had courted me seemed to have disappeared and I was left with this brash, overconfident villager. The next day he was in a very good mood and he told me the plan that his family had dreamt up. It was better to keep the kafeneio, as it made some money, so they would use his cousin Yorgo’s house, which was the next most central one in the square. Yorgos could move in with us until a new house was built for him, and in his house we would open a taverna, and people would come from miles to eat. Do you know what he said then, straight to my face?'
'What?'
'He said that marrying me had been the smartest move of his life.' Spiros could hear the tension in her voice. 'And his words made me feel like a pawn in his game, and I looked back over his courtship, and all that I had seen as romantic and proof of his interest in me I then saw as hollow acts designed to bring him to that very moment, and my love turned, just like that.' She snapped her fingers, but they hardly made a noise. 'Into hate.'
'Didn’t you want to run a taverna?' He was not sure what to say. The power of the emotion running through her made him feel a little afraid.
'I realised I was stuck with him. After all, we were married… And I actually had no problem running a taverna – why not, I thought? But, as far as he was concerned, he was the big Vasilis, kafeneio owner, and no wife of his was going to work. No! He said I was to teach his unmarried cousins and they would do the cooking and serving and we, or rather he, would just manage it all.'
Spiros frowned into the darkness. It did all seem a little presumptuous of Vasilis, but what was so bad about putting her feet up and letting others do the work?
'I mean, these were recipes my family had protected for generations, right back from when my ancestors had the best taverna in Constantinople, and we were famed for our cooking. And he wanted me to give up these recipes, to actually teach them to a bunch of young girls I had never met before, on his say-so, without a “do you mind?”or a “please”. There was no respect, Spiro, none at all.'
Spiros bristled, a heavy breath accompanying a flex of his shoulders, as the weight of Argyro’s dominance still lingered there. He made a noise between a hum and a grunt, a sound that told her that he not only understood but also sympathised.
'So what happened?' he asked.
'Well, to cut a long story short, I refused. As you can imagine, Vasilis was not at all pleased. His taverna idea was going to save his whole family from their dependence on the turn of the weather and their crops. The frosts are harsh this high up. He was the man of the village and his little wife was showing him up. At least, that is what he said.' She paused and sighed heavily.
'But it was the way he did it, do you see? Maybe if he had asked me kindly, or included me in the idea, asked me to be the cook, even, maybe it would all have been different. In fact, I know it would all have been different.'
Spiros looked around him a
nd wondered how she ended up here.
'Did he die?' he asked, and then realised it was a tactless question and stumbled to soften it. 'I mean, is he...'
'Die! No. He is still there, running his kafeneio.'
'And you are here?' Spiros looked up at her profile.
'Well, he thought he could persuade me with the back of his hand, so I hit him with the end of the broom. The broom got snapped over his knee and he came at me with one end so I clonked him on the head with a pan.'
She chuckled, but it was not a happy sound, and Spiros did not join in.
'So, as he sprawled on the floor moaning and trying to get to his feet, I ran. I ran to the donkey barn, which is your room now. The house was full of straw back then. And I hid.'
'You must have been terrified. Why didn't you go back to – where was it, to Saros, to your family?'
'Oh, you just didn't in those days. Once you were married that was it. You told your mama your husband was beating you and she would look at you as if to say, “What can I do? Your place is with your husband.” I have heard this said. I only hope things are different now.'
'But he must know you are here now.'
'Of course he knows I am here now. He sells my eggs to the villagers, in his kafeneio.'
'So everything is alright, then?'
'He asked me back. Years and years ago. He did ask. But I had been living here for months by then, I had managed through a winter. I knew he knew I was here, because a friend of his came to the olive grove with his goats and he had seen me several times. But when Vasilis came I thought he had come to beat me again so I hid. He went away and next time he came with two chairs and a table and that little bed. I still hid, though. He is a big man. So he spoke out loud, to the trees, to the breeze, and asked me back.'
'You didn't want to go?'
'What kind of man leaves a woman on her own through a winter up here? This is not sea level. We are in the mountains, the winters are harsh, the frost bites. I was angry at him.' She paused. 'And now I am old enough to have mellowed, but also old enough not to want change. I am settled here and he is settled there. I have been too long alone. I could not live with someone now. It is all too late.' She spoke with energy and then her head dropped as if the fight had left her. 'And I look at what I have and what I have not got and I wonder if I have been a petty, stubborn woman.'