“It’s in the air,” he said. “Anyway, she’s old.”
“What do you mean?” Takis said. “Can’t you make her well? What kind of doctor are you, anyway?”
“What kind do you want? I’m the one you’ve got. If you’d like to move her to one of the big hospitals in Athens, and can afford it, then do it. But seas are high; there’ll be no ship for a while.”
“Isn’t there anything you can give her?” I said. “Just something. She’s usually very strong. We’ve been traveling and she’s just worn down.”
He put his stethoscope back in his bag and went to the door, saying, “I’ll send the women shortly.”
We didn’t know what he meant, but the talking brought Yannoula around.
“Oh, how lovely,” she said, sitting up, eyes glistening. “There’s someone at the door. I don’t recall his name, but he’s the gentleman who . . .” She stopped and glanced around her at us. “Aliki, Takis, could you bring him around here? I feel, oh, I don’t know how to say it, a little ethereal. Is that what I mean? No, more like ephemeral. As if I might float up to the ceiling like a balloon and bob around there.”
A spasm of coughing convulsed her and she fell back on the pillow. When the coughing had stopped, she lay exhausted.
“What are we going to do?” Takis asked. “We have to do something.” The words caught in his throat and his eyes were filling. I could think of only one thing.
“There’s no point in her being in this useless place any longer,” I said. “Let’s see if we can find a stretcher and get her back to the boardinghouse. At least she’ll be more comfortable there.”
But though we searched up and down the hall, we couldn’t find one. We tried other floors but with no luck. And I wondered if Yannoula would even know where she was. Were we doing this for her or for ourselves? When we got back to the room, two women in black were there, each carrying a small ceramic incense burner.
“The doctor sent us,” one of them said.
“But what do doctors know?” the other said. “They only turn to us when they’ve failed.”
They lit small cones of piney church incense in the burners and waved them back and forth over Yannoula, muttering something that Takis and I couldn’t make out. Then the first woman took a handful of cloves and dropped them on the two cones of glowing incense. A spiral of spicy smoke rose and perfumed the area, then drifted away. Yannoula shifted in the bed and seemed to relax. All tension went out of her and she smiled as she closed her eyes, as if she had a secret. There was a long exhalation of breath and her breathing stopped.
“May the earth rest lightly on her,” the first woman said, crossing herself.
“One door closes and another opens,” the second said, crossing herself too.
They left the room.
“Is she . . . ?” Takis asked.
I lifted one of Yannoula’s arms, but it was limp. I kissed her hand.
Then the women were back with a basin of water and a clean white towel, which they put down beside Yannoula. This was for St. Michael, they said, who comes to collect the soul.
“He’ll need to wash his sword and dry it.”
“What nonsense,” I said, as they turned to leave.
“We’ll be back for the basin,” one said from outside the door.
All I wanted was to be alone with Yannoula. I needed to say good-bye to her in my own way, which would involve washing and dressing her so I could let go. I asked Takis to go back to the boardinghouse and see if he could find her luggage, still unpacked since our return from the mountain village. She’d once said she wanted to be buried in her yellow gown, but I didn’t know if she’d brought it from Athens.
“I don’t want to leave,” he said. “I don’t want to find that dress. I know why you want it.”
“Please, Takis. I need a few minutes alone with her. I’ll be here when you come back.”
He stood for a minute or two, shifting weight from foot to foot, but then he left. I removed the basin and towel and rested my head on Yannoula’s still-warm chest and felt all energy drain out of me. I slid my feet into her slippers on the floor beside the bed and after a while I drifted away to that familiar room with the door ajar. Amber light came from beyond. And I felt as always that behind the door was some kind of true thing. It would have explained everything, but I couldn’t get near it, no matter how I walked in that direction. I heard a sound, words coming from somewhere outside, but I couldn’t make them out at first. And then I could.
I was Yannoula.
Will you sing the verse of me
waiting at the top of the stairs
for you to take my arm and
lead me down into the time
of being old, of being dead?
Here in this theater
where the play that was mine
finished before I could take the roses
you passed to me when
my last lines went unspoken.
Sing to me, Manolis, the song of us,
the song of our leaving and returning
as the painted moon behind us
sails through painted clouds.
The words repeated themselves until I recognized my own voice and felt Takis shaking me.
“You’re talking in your sleep, Aliki.”
“It wasn’t sleep,” I said.
“What, then?”
“I don’t know.”
He’d found Yannoula’s yellow gown so I . . . Oh, but you know, I can’t bear to talk about this even after all these years. Yannoula is in the earth in her long box and will be there for all time, turning as the earth turns, each day and night the same forever. It’s more than anyone can comprehend. We live our lives like termites inside a fallen tree, feeling our way along in the dark, blind and unknowing of any universe outside.
Takis was unhinged by Yannoula’s funeral and burial; he couldn’t seem to recover from it—and who ever does recover from that? At least he was distracted from what was happening with Stelios, so I spent as much time as I could comforting Takis and encouraging him to continue his performances at Theo’s café without giving in to grief. Then I realized it had been a couple of weeks and more, so I was afraid Stelios had already been taken to the island of exiles and I wouldn’t know how to find him. But when I went to see the captain, he told me that no, Stelios was still there in Agios Nikolaos. There’d been no available troop ships to transport prisoners and there wouldn’t likely be any until late August. I don’t know how I dragged myself through that long summer of waiting, but there was no choice.
But during that time Takis finally seemed to find himself through the shadow puppets; he turned to them more than ever now. So when the captain finally told me I should get to Agios Nikolaos as soon as possible, I told Theo I was leaving, wonderful Theo, who’d taken care of the funeral arrangements for Yannoula and stood by Takis and me through it all.
“Go with Stelios,” he said. “You must. Takis, well, I don’t understand him. But the town children, they love his Karagiozis. He has to stay for them; they’ll be his life. I’ll talk to him, explain everything so he understands. But you’re right, best just to go. Then I’ll tell him.”
He was giving me the coward’s way out. But Stelios was right in saying I couldn’t protect Takis forever. I packed my bag and took it along with Stelios’s bag to the bus terminal without seeing Takis. All the way to Agios Nikolaos, I tried not to imagine Takis’s reaction when he realized I’d gone. But I did have a clear sense of relief, the feeling of a burden lifted, one I’d carried ever since that terrible night in our own village. I wouldn’t have to think about what I said to him. I wouldn’t have to worry. I was on my way to Stelios and that was what I wanted. I was returning.
“Thank God,” Stelios said when I arrived. “I thought I was going to miss you. We leave tonight.”
> “Yannoula.”
He looked at me hard. I’d held myself together until then, trying to manage everything, with Theo’s help. But finally the tears came. Stelios didn’t say anything, but he looked stricken. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it. On the stage in front, an official announced that all relatives accompanying detainees were to leave the theater and present themselves in the harbor with their papers. I kissed Stelios quickly as guards moved among the men, shouting at them and herding them to one side of the theater with the butts of rifles.
In the harbor, the sun was going down as wives and children milled around with luggage and bundles of belongings. Froso waved me over to her, saying, “Have you heard? The island camp may be changed to a real prison camp. Not at all what we were told. Our men are supposed to be exiles—detainees—not prisoners.”
How did she know this? I asked. Her Dimitri had told her. It was a rumor passing among the guards. “But as my mother says, rumors are like cats. They follow you home; they eat your heart.”
Froso said that the island had produced marble from quarries in ancient times. Now the old quarries were being reopened and the detainees would be expected to work in them. It would be backbreaking and the length of time they’d be doing this was completely open. The only other thing anyone knew about the island was that it had a miracle-working icon of the Virgin in the Church of the Dormition. Many people with illnesses came there seeking cures during the Feast of the Dormition in mid-August. The detainees from the labor camp were obliged to help prepare the island for the event. But this year’s ceremonies had been poorly attended because of the difficulty of traveling for anyone other than troops.
“My Dimitri,” Froso said, “he isn’t strong. I don’t know how much work he’ll be able to do. And I don’t expect any icon to take an interest.”
For that matter how would Stelios manage this new ordeal? His leg hadn’t healed properly and he hadn’t gained back the lost weight. He and the other detainees were a sad lot when they arrived in the harbor about an hour later. They’d been issued drab gray uniforms and, with their shaved and scabby heads, they looked miserable. Once the detainees had boarded and were standing at attention on deck, the families were allowed to show our papers and board. We went belowdecks where a long, low-ceilinged room was filled with bunk beds with bare mattresses. There was a smell of mildew and of the toilets in the stern.
“It’s only for a night,” Froso said. “I can stand anything for a night.”
I went back on deck. The ship’s horn blasted its three mournful cries as the ship pulled out of the harbor. Standing at the railing, I was watching the harbor fall away when I noticed a small figure with suitcases run out to the end of the quay. Something about him made me think of Takis. But could it be? Surely not. And yet there was this boy with suitcases, waving both arms wildly. Daylight was nearly gone and it was hard to make him out. But whether or not it was Takis, I was suddenly overwhelmed by what I’d done. How could I have abandoned him? It was almost as if I’d severed a piece of myself. Looking after him in spite of whatever he’d done had been part of me for so long. Would he recover from my desertion? Would I? But I was right, right to be leaving with Stelios; he was my good return, my home. I’d made a choice.
“Do you know him?” Froso asked beside me. I hadn’t noticed her come up to the railing.
“Yes,” I said. “I mean no. Oh, I don’t know.”
“Hmm, sounds . . . difficult.” Just then the wind off the water slammed waves against the left side of the ship and the shattering spray drenched us all but especially the detainees. The guards had been trying to play cards under a tarp, but the wind and spray snatched them away, sending the men scrambling. I went over to talk with Stelios while Froso went to the other side of the deck to talk to her Dimitri, a slight young man with sunken cheeks. I couldn’t imagine him taking part in a hanging. He looked like a schoolboy who should be learning his multiplication tables.
Stelios asked about Yannoula and I told him the details.
“I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t part of my life,” he said. “I don’t know how old I was when Mother hired her. She’s just always been there. Almost more mother than Mother.” He looked out across the slate-colored sea in the half-light of evening. A wind was stirring the waves, slapping them against the side of the ship. We stood for a long while and then he said, “We only have each other now. Well, that’s how it should be, isn’t it? But what about Takis? Did you get away without him knowing?”
I didn’t mention the boy on the dock but told Stelios what Theo had planned and Stelios said, “Oh, poor Theo. I wouldn’t like to be him when Takis finds out.”
Sea spray burst over us and again ripped some of the cards away from the guards. The hot, dry wind of August called the Meltemi was battering the ship. The guards swore at it while the other men laughed. Stelios said he’d got to know many of them when they were in the theater in Agios Nikolaos. Most were communists and the guards were almost certainly nationalists. Others probably wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what they were. But most were being burned up by one kind of hate or another and the stories they’d told Stelios were bitter.
“The nationalists are really fascists who hate the communists, who hate one branch or another of themselves. They’re split over loyalty to Moscow or to their local leaders. They can’t agree on anything except how they hate the British. The royalist government likes them, of course, since it’s being propped up by them. Then there’s the military, gaining ground against the guerrillas everywhere.” He threw his hands in the air. “But even they have their purges and divisions.”
One of the stories he’d heard was about a village in the mountains that had been too friendly with the Germans. Some villagers had invited them into their houses and maybe even some of the women had taken them into their beds. Who could say if it was true or just rumors spread because of old resentments? But after the Germans moved on, a few men from the next village came in the night and burned down houses, two or three, no more. In return, men from the burned village came and shot up the people of the first village, killed their livestock, threw lye down their wells.
“One act like this always makes a bigger one. Finally no one from either village had anything, not sheep, not crops, not even their lives. When the Germans passed through again, there was nothing there, I mean, just charred remains.” He ran his hand back and forth over the stubble that had begun to grow on his scalp and said, “When they heard what happened, the Germans thought it was funny. Two villages were wiped out and they hadn’t had to lift a finger.”
In the countryside everything was personal. If you hated your cousin and he became a communist, you became the opposite. “It’s nothing to do with ideas, nothing to do with books. I think it’s probably not just the countryside but the whole country. I don’t see how we’ll ever get ourselves straightened out.”
The wind was picking up and the guards began handing out thin blankets to the detainees for the night. They probably wouldn’t need more because it was so hot. They were to bed down on deck. I went below, where Froso was pouring lilac cologne on a handkerchief.
“Do you want some?” she asked. “If you put it over your nose when you sleep, it might help.” But the sweetish aroma along with the foul odors of the room made me queasy so I took Stelios’s mother’s coat from my suitcase and came back on deck to one of the ship’s stationary benches.
Uncomfortable as the bench was, it seemed only minutes later when the blast of the ship’s horn startled me awake. We were heading for a gray smudge of land just as the big yolk of sun was rising behind it. The island slowly grew into an imposing brown rock with not much green on it. Sailing alongside, we looked up at high cliffs plunging down straight as a curtain to half-submerged boulders where waves shattered into foam. Some of the cliffs were streaked with white, the island’s famed marble, someone said, jutting out in places l
ike bones. Then the ship turned left and made its way into a little horseshoe-shaped harbor with a scattering of cement buildings, all cubes so brightly whitewashed that they dazzled in the morning sun. Passengers were to disembark there and the ship would sail on to the labor camp, which had its own small harbor on the other side of the island where the detainees would disembark.
“I’ll come find you as soon as I can get a place to stay,” I told Stelios. There was no hotel or inn on the island, I’d heard, but villagers rented out rooms in their houses. Stelios looked alarmed now that we were going to separate.
“Come with other women,” he said. “Don’t come alone. I don’t know how safe it will be. And keep asking for me if I’m not there.” Fear flickered in his eyes as he added, “Don’t let me disappear.”
“Don’t even think it,” I said, though I was frightened too. I’d be his only link to the outside in this tiny place where we knew no one. But what was I to do here when I wasn’t visiting him? It startled me that I hadn’t thought of this sooner. I’d been so intent on getting away from Heraklion and to Agios Nikolaos before Stelios left that I hadn’t thought further than that. For once, I didn’t have a plan.
We held each other as long as we could. I didn’t want to let go of him and I didn’t want to be alone. Ashore, I looked around at the little port. There wasn’t much there: yellow nets drying in the sun, local children gaping at us new arrivals, a café where old men played backgammon at outside tables. To one side were a few blocks of marble each the size of a small car. A crane was loading them one by one onto fishing boats, which ferried them to a freighter I could see a mile or so out. Had these been chiseled out by detainees? Was that what Stelios would be made to do?
My Last Lament Page 26