by Sara Alexi
'You took your time,' Argyro greeted them.
'Pork tonight!' Spiros said as he bounced behind the counter.
'Well, don’t have it cooking all afternoon, it’s a waste of gas.’
A brief frown from Spiros and a tightening of his jaw told Vasso that his good mood was already gone. Maybe she could help?
'Perhaps it needs cooking for that long,' she ventured.
'Oh, so now we have two cooks. That’s all we need.' And with this she indicated a pile of dirty cups in the sink.
Vasso sighed and started on the washing-up.
Needless to say, a few hours later there was an argument about the length of time the pork had been in the oven. It reached the point where Argyro was turning it off and Spiros was turning it on again. If it hadn't been so sad it would have been comical. Vasso kept one eye on the open door, hoping that Stamatis was unaware, but voices were now raised and customers who were about to sit walked away.
The pork was delicious, however. Since she had been eating Spiro’s cooking, Vasso had put on weight. Not much, but she was pleased that she was not quite the stick that she had been when she first arrived. She almost had curves.
Spiros did not stay around the taverna that night. He said he was exhausted and left very soon after Stamatis and Argyro. It was strange being in the courtyard and then in her little room by herself, and a little lonely.
That night, she dreamt of pigs eating celery, their little tails wagging with joy, and when she woke she lurched to the bathroom and was violently sick.
Chapter 19
'You’re up late.' Stamatis was brushing the leaves from the courtyard. Vasso did not dare speak. There was nothing left in her stomach but she still felt she might be sick again. 'You don't look too well. Are you alright?'
Managing a 'yes, thanks', she went through to the taverna, unsure how to handle the situation. It felt like food poisoning – a disaster for a taverna. Should she tell Argyro what she suspected – that it was the result of her short cooking times? Or should she broach the subject with Spiros, knowing it would result in more arguing between the pair?
'You ill?' Argyro glanced up from her magazine, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other. The smell of the cigarette turned Vasso's stomach.
'Oh, you alright?' Spiros came around from the counter and led her to the front door, towards the fresh air.
'Always something with that one, sickly little thing,' Argyro grumbled, and she continued to read her paper.
'Spiro.' Vasso sat at one of the tables, all of which were empty this early in the morning. 'I think that perhaps you were right about the cooking times.' He looked at her quizzically. 'I think I may have food poisoning. I’ve just been really sick.'
First he turned white and then a deep red flush rose from his neck, up into his cheeks. He pulled his arms back from around her and put his hands flat on the table, but as her words sank in he clenched his fists, the knuckles turning white. He pushed himself up from the table.
'Please, Spiro. Please don't argue with her today. I cannot stand it any more.' She didn't expect him to do her bidding but as he looked into her face he sat down again.
'But this could be a disaster. If everyone who ate the pork last night gets sick that will be that. No one will come again, and we will have to close.' He looked across the harbour. The yachts, sporting flags from around the world, were moored side by side, some two or three deep off the pier. They bobbed gently and the halyards clicked lightly against the masts. The sun reflected off the sea beyond the harbour wall. So peaceful, but for Vasso just the sight of the water moving made her head swim, and she feared she might be sick again.
'We must talk with Stamatis and Argyro.' He stood decisively and beckoned his baba, who was talking to Ilias the fisherman down by the water’s edge. They were discussing the morning catch.
'Please do not argue,' Vasso implored as they headed into the taverna, Stamatis following.
Inside, Argyro looked up from her magazine and sighed.
'Now what?' she asked.
'We have a problem.' Spiros kept his tone steady.
'Don't I know it!' Argyro muttered and looked back to her magazine.
'Vasso got food poisoning from last night’s pork.'
Vasso expected him to add, 'because you would not let me cook it long enough.' She waited; they all waited, but he said no more.
Both Argyro and Stamatis stared at her.
'I was really sick,' Vasso said, and wondered why she felt guilty.
'I had the pork,' Argyro said. 'And I feel fine.' One side of her upper lip curled up at Vasso. 'Stamatis, you had it too, didn't you?’ But there was an edge of anxiety in her voice.
'I did, I did.’ Stamatis eagerly placated her.
'Well, then?' Argyro waited for Spiros to say something.
'So maybe it was not all of the pork, just some of it – the trays that were cooked nearer the bottom of the oven perhaps, where it was cooler? It will only take one or two people to be sick to kill my business.'
'Our business,' Argyro corrected and Vasso felt like she was losing the ability to remain standing. But she was not going to give Argyro the satisfaction of seeing her collapse again, no matter how weak she felt.
'Did you notice who else I served from the same tapsi?' Spiros asked her.
'Dimitri,' Vasso answered.
'So if he is sick then we have trouble.'
Stamatis was already out of the taverna and turning towards Dimitri’s little shop, where he sold miniature plaster windmills with the word Orino written on the sails, ashtrays with dolphins across the bottom and the words Orino Island around the edge, and other tourist paraphernalia.
The others waited in silence, watching the doorway, the islanders walking past, a boat coming into harbour. Argyro did not even care that a group of backpackers had sat down outside and no one had rushed out to serve them.
Stamatis came back smiling. 'He's fine,' and all eyes turned on Vasso.
'I was sick!' she protested.
Argyro sighed heavily, as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders and nothing could be done about it. She pointed out the tourists to Stamatis and returned to her magazine.
'Vasso, will you be alright? I need to start on the lunchtime food,' Spiros said as he went behind the counter, and then he was lost to her, in his world of cooking. After a few minutes he spoke to Argyro.
'How did you like that scare? Better not to risk it, wouldn't you say?' and Argyro made the smallest movement, blinking and shifting her chin sideways and down, in very subtle agreement.
Vasso remained standing exactly where the whole discussion had started, with no one near her. Spiros was lost in preparation, Stamatis was busy chatting to the German backpackers, suggesting a cold glass of beer, and her own mama was across the water, so far away.
Her stomach had stopped complaining but now she felt like crying. She wanted to go home.
Looking over to Spiros, even his beauty did not seem enough to make her want to stay. She twisted the ring on her finger and wondered how she had managed to become entangled in this feuding family. The thought crept up on her that maybe she was nothing but a distraction for Spiros, because, now that he was cooking, he seemed to have precious little time for her, ring or no ring.
Maybe she had been foolish to get engaged so soon. But it had all felt so right – so overpoweringly right.
It occurred to her, however, that perhaps it was Argyro who was right, and that she had indeed been rash in accepting Spiro’s advances so soon, and she found herself wondering whether she had given everything to a man who perhaps, maybe, did not even care about her. But no…! Could it really be wrong? She tried to push these thoughts away.
There it was again – the sensation that the world was spinning, the precursor to fainting. No way was she going to give in. Blinking hard, she marched on stiff legs to the courtyard, into her room and through it to swill her face with cold water in the sink. The spinning receded, but she s
till felt like crying.
With a wet face, she sat on the edge of the neatly made bed. For so many nights this bed had been a place of such harmony and comfort, but recently it had seemed to offer loneliness and longing. So much had happened so quickly. How long had she even been here, now? She had arrived… Now, when had it been? The days had merged one into another. The corners of the printed icon above her bed had curled in the heat, and the whole thing was kept straight only by the weight of the calendar stuck on its bottom edge. The curled leaf said it was July, but perhaps it was already August and she had forgotten to tear off the page. She tried to work out the days, make sense of the time – and then the blood rushed in her ears and her forehead turned to ice – the reason she was sick loomed with such force that her hands began to shake, and the rest of her turned to stone. Last week should have been her uncomfortable week, but it had passed unnoticed.
She was pregnant!
Chapter 20
How on earth had such a thing happened? At first she had been nervous, and he had reassured her again and again. He said he was being so careful. And he was being careful. Even on those later occasions when she was ready to throw caution to the wind he had been steadfast. So how could it happen? An accident, a slim chance? Why had she thought she was immune to such an event? Because it felt so right? Because they were engaged? What on earth had possessed her to take any risk at all, no matter how remote? But she knew the answer to that, too. She had allowed the risk because Spiros possessed her. He had noticed her, made her real, made her feel beautiful, desirable. Someone as handsome as Spiros had lifted her out of her own perception of herself and made her feel that she was so much more than she really was!
But what she had actually become was less. Now she was a stupid young girl, pregnant out of wedlock.
She checked the calendar again. Maybe she was wrong, had miscalculated. But the brief hope was extinguished before it took a firm hold.
Back in her village, everyone knew what sort of girl got pregnant before marriage. She had known from quite a young age. Her own mama was always quick to tell people when they first met that her husband had died – an explanation for Vasso's existence, in case her faded widow’s weeds were not enough to bestow respectability.
And yet here was Vasso, a decent woman, daughter of a decent woman, unmarried and pregnant. And, therefore, no longer respectable.
Her head dropped into her hands and the tears that had been threatening all morning burst from her in big wailing sobs. She held her hand over her mouth but the truth was she did not care who heard. Wailing and crying were so much less a public offence than her real crime.
'Oh God in heaven, have mercy on me,' she called, but in that moment she felt there was no God. If there was and he was fair he would not have allowed her to become pregnant. If there was a God, he had deserted her – and maybe she deserved that. No maybe about it! Had she not been taught that it was not God’s law?
She wailed anew and sank to her knees.
'Please, please, God, let this not be true. Let me be wrong. Let this not be happening. Please find a way to take this away.' And a dreadful thought came to her that was surely even worse than an unmarried pregnancy. Was there a way? Would it be such a sin, so early on?
She shook her head and the tears did not stop. She might be the sort of person who could become pregnant before she was married, but she would not become a murderer – because, according to what the Church had taught her, that was what it would be. 'Isn't it?' she asked out loud, because somewhere in the back of her mind she could remember hearing of a woman who had done just that – a woman who was married to a man who beat her and who did not want to risk having children. Or was all that just gossip?
'What are you doing on the floor?' Stamatis asked, peering into her room.
She flinched, not having expected anyone to come, no matter how hard she sobbed. But why could it not have been Spiros? If it had been Spiros he could have taken her in his arms and made it alright, couldn't he?
'Are you still sick?' Stamatis helped her up onto the bed.
'I was trying to pray,' Vasso sobbed.
'Oh, sorry, am I interrupting?
'No – please don't go.'
'I’m sorry you are unwell – can I get you anything?'
'No.' She waited, weighing it all up and wondering what to do. 'Stamati,' she began, after a pause.
'Yes – what is it, little one?' His tone tender.
'I want to tell you something.'
'Then tell me.' His voice was soft.
'It’s not easy.'
'Then tell me slowly.'
She remained silent.
'Or tell me all of a rush and get it out quickly.' Stamatis chuckled at his own joke.
'I think that, if Spiros is serious, we need to get married sooner rather than later.'
Stamatis said nothing, but she could almost hear his mind working. After a minute or two a new light came to his eyes as he made the connection.
'You mean?' He looked from her face to her stomach.
Vasso nodded.
'Fantastic!' Stamatis was grinning from ear to ear. 'Oh, congratulations, my dear.' And he took her into a hug so tight she could feel all the bones of his ribcage against hers. When he released her, he was still smiling, but she wasn't. It was a relief that Stamatis had reacted in such a way, of course, but how would Spiros respond?
'Does Spiros know?' Stamatis asked, when he saw that she still looked sad.
'No. I’m not sure he will be pleased. He’s all absorbed in his cooking.'
'He will be delighted!' Stamatis replied – a little too quickly. 'Shall I bring him in so you can tell him?'
Now, later – did it really matter when?
'Erm… before I call him' – Stamatis faltered – 'um, well, it does occur to me that, well, to be – it's, well, um, Argyro…' Little beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he struggled to express himself. 'She has this way of relating things to herself. I mean, I don't want to take the joy out of this but it is possible that she might not be as pleased as I am, because – well, because she cannot have children, do you see?'
'You are a good man, Stamati,' Vasso said, after listening to him struggle to tell her what she probably could have worked out for herself, had she thought about it.
'I will get Spiros.' He patted her hand and stood. 'Spiro, can you come here?'
'Not just at the moment… I’m just sealing the chicken,’ came the reply.'
'If you can, it is rather important.' Stamatis gave Vasso a smile and then left, meeting Spiros in the courtyard. She heard a brief muttered exchange as they passed each other, and then Spiro’s head appeared around the doorway.
'Are you feeling any better?' he asked, and looked back to his kitchen. 'What is so important?' His fingers fidgeted on the doorpost.
'Spiro, I need to know you love me.'
'Of course I love you. Have I not told you I love you? And you have a ring on your finger. Can we not have this talk when I’m not cooking? It's just that the chicken…'
Vasso looked down at her hands. 'I’m pregnant,' she said quietly.
His fingers stopped moving. His eyes widened. Was that a look of joy or horror? She could not tell. He seemed to remain immobile for minutes, longer, but a part of Vasso knew it could only be seconds.
'That’s great,' he said finally, but he was still by the doorpost and his voice was not strong, it was not sure. Then he moved, he was in the room, he sat next to her, took her in his arms, kissed her hair, put her head under his chin. 'That’s fantastic.' Now he sounded sincere.
'Really?' she asked.
'Really.' He held her even tighter.
'I cannot tell my mama. Not till we are married.' She pulled away so she could look at him.
'Then we must get married as soon as we can. I will make kokkinisto. If we invite one person from Orino we will have to invite them all. That will be – well, it could be up to a thousand people passing by, more even. We will need
five hundred kilos of meat. I must talk to Stefano’s baba. You know, Stefanos the donkey boy? He has a big goat herd. The tomatoes – if we need to, we can ship them from the mainland...'
'Spiro!' Argyro’s harsh tones came from the taverna.
'I can borrow larger pans from one of the hotels…'
'Spiro!'
'Yes, yes, it will be amazing.'
'Spiro!'
'And I will need some smoked paprika!'
'Spiro!' Argyro yelled again. 'Something is burning.'
'Coming!' He was on his feet and was about to leave when he paused to take Vasso's face in both hands and kiss her, then left with a real spring to his step. But Vasso wondered whether the life in his limbs was because of the child in her belly or the thought of cooking for the whole of the island.
After quickly tidying her hair, she left the courtyard through the side gate.
Chapter 21
The side street was a dead end if she went inland, and the other way it led to the harbour. She pressed herself to the wall and peeped round to see what Stamatis was doing, which way he was facing. He was assisting a very pale-skinned woman, who was wearing shorts and a big floppy hat, her finger tracing down the menu that Stamatis held for her.
Looking the other way, Vasso judged that she could dodge between people, nip behind a laden donkey and make her way unseen. Stamatis probably wouldn’t notice her at all if she walked at a steady pace.
The only part of the island she knew was the harbour, and the coastal path that led from it. She released her hair from its ponytail and pulled it across to half cover her face. When Stamati’s customer sat down and he went trotting inside with her order, Vasso set off, first very briskly to cover maximum distance, and later slowing down so as not to attract attention. Where the last shop gave way to the rock face she allowed herself to relax a little, and, as she did so, tears welled onto her lower lids and she tried to blink them away. The sun on the water was almost blinding to her blurred eyes, and she stumbled on, not knowing where she was going or even why. She just wanted to go, put distance between herself and Spiros, be far away from the smells of cooking and the bickering and Argyro. Really, she knew she wanted to go home but she also knew she could not – not as long as she was single. Her mama would die of shame. Most likely, her mama would send her back and tell her not to return until she was married. That was just how things were.