Some of the families from the boat started out among the harbor houses, knocking on doors, looking for rooms. But I couldn’t seem to make myself do that or do anything at all. This was the first time I’d been entirely on my own. A chilly wind blew off the sea and I felt I’d come to the edge of the earth.
“Let’s do it together,” a voice said behind me. Froso shoved her suitcase along with her foot until it was next to mine. “Not exactly the place you’d choose for a holiday, eh? What do they do for fun on Saturday nights, shoot each other?”
We left our suitcases at the waterfront café and walked to the outskirts of the village, the side closest to the camp. The houses there were also white cubes, like the buildings in the harbor. Behind them were what appeared to be well-tended vegetable gardens with orange and lemon trees and arbors of grapevines. Doors and shutters of the houses were painted bright primary colors and women opened them to look at us, new strangers in town, as we passed. They called out.
“I have a room. Very nice. Come and see.”
“Very cheap, my house. Best in the neighborhood.”
“Here with me you’ll be closest to the camp.”
We looked at some of the offered rooms, which were plain but tidy and clean. While showing us around, the women tried to get our stories out of us with questions about our relatives in the labor camp: what they’d done, how long they were sentenced for, how much we had to spend on a room. The island, we were told, had been all but forgotten by the world until the camp was built with prison labor.
“What can we do?” an elderly woman named Stavroula asked. She was tiny, shrunken with age, but her eyes never stopped sizing us up. She raised her hands in the air as if there was no choice but to take whatever the situation offered. “Such are our lives.” She had a room for rent in her house next to the abandoned village schoolhouse. Her spare room was sunny and clean with its own bathroom and entrance. It was the best we’d seen but only big enough for one. Froso decided to take it once Stavroula had agreed to let Dimitri squeeze in when he was released, until they could return to Crete. But what about the schoolhouse? I asked, thinking maybe I could get it for nothing as it wasn’t being used.
“Oh, it’s been closed since before the war,” Stavroula said. “The Ministry of Education in Athens, they stopped sending teachers. Our children grow up not reading or writing.” She raised her hands in the air again. “It’s not right, but what can we do?”
I went next door and peered through a dirty window at one large room with shadowy shapes of student desks piled on top of each other. I wondered again if I could have this for no or low rent if I offered to clean it up and do something with it. I had an idea so when I went back to Stavroula’s, I asked if she thought the village might be persuaded to let me live there for the time being. I could fix it up a bit and get it ready to reopen, which was sure to happen eventually, wasn’t it?
Froso took a look and said, “But it’s so primitive, Aliki. And dirty.”
“With only an outside toilet,” Stavroula said. “And it’s not good for a young woman to live alone. No one would have a good opinion of this.”
I insisted it would be fine for me until I had a better idea how long my husband would be at the camp. It was the first time I’d used the word husband and as it came out of my mouth, I tripped over it. Stavroula raised an eyebrow and glanced at Froso, who hadn’t seemed to notice. Stavroula went on tut-tutting about the schoolhouse, but in the end she phoned her cousin, the mayor of the village, who also turned out to be the local official in charge of the camp. Camps as small as this one, I gathered, often did not have commandants assigned to them but only guards who reported to a local person, in this case, the mayor. Stavroula said that although her cousin, the mayor, was very busy with important duties, he would try to make time to see me.
After two hours of waiting around for him outside Stavroula’s house, the mayor arrived in a long white car with a driver who must have been a detainee, as he wore the same drab uniform. The mayor himself, a plump, middle-aged man in a rumpled brown suit, climbed out of the car, apologizing for the delay.
“It’s a new group, you know, just arrived today.” He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his forehead. “Such a confusion. Well, it’s always the same, getting them to understand how we do things here.” There was a long-suffering tone to his voice and he looked at us with sad eyes as if he actually expected expressions of sympathy.
When I told him what I proposed about the schoolhouse, he said that yes, Stavroula had told him, but no, the place wasn’t suitable for a young woman. What would everyone think? I should find a place in a house with a nice family.
“I could pay a little,” I said.
“No, no, it would not be correct. We must be respectable here, where we have the holy icon. What would Our Lady think?”
He then went on about the history of the island and the marble quarries. All this seemed to have little to do with anything, especially considering that he was supposed to be so busy, but he clearly enjoyed the opportunity to give a little lecture. As he was describing “the exquisite, translucent quality of our marble,” he got back into the car and his driver started the engine. I had to say something, anything, so I blurted out, “Look, I’ll teach the children. Then it’ll be a real school. No one could object to that, could they?”
He told his driver to turn off the engine. “Are you a teacher?” the mayor asked out the car window. “You didn’t mention it before. And at your age? What experience do you have?”
“Well, I’m not a proper teacher with papers from the ministry,” I said, unsure of how to continue. And then I knew. “But then, you don’t have a proper school. Your children are growing up ignorant. I can read and write.” I felt the color come into my face as I spoke, knowing I could barely read and the only book I had was Stelios’s well-worn copy of The Iliad. But Stelios once said that whole generations had learned history and language from it. And it had worked with me, sort of. As I talked on, I felt myself growing into the argument I was making. I concluded firmly, “Why not let me try and see how it goes? What’s there to lose? Only your children’s ignorance.”
The mayor looked me over while asking questions: where was I from, who were my people, why had I been on Crete, who was it that I had in the camp here? When I’d told him, he said, “Seems to me he made a good choice in you, young lady. Well, let me think about it.” He nodded to the driver and the car drove off.
“That was quite a performance,” Stavroula said behind me. “I’m sure your, uh, husband would be proud.”
“Can you really teach?” Froso asked.
“We’ll see,” I said, and I went next door to the schoolhouse. I nudged the door and it opened. “Well, he didn’t say yes, but then, he didn’t say no,” I said aloud as I went in. Pushing the student-sized tables and chairs to one side, I laid out my belongings on the floor and made a list of the cleaning supplies I would need. Then I walked back to Stavroula’s house, where she was talking to Froso, and suggested we walk out to the camp. Where was it exactly?
“Oh, I wouldn’t go today,” Stavroula said. “It’s too early.”
“Too early for what?” we asked.
“For visits.”
“I want to see my Dimitri,” Froso said. “And I’m going to.”
“My cousin won’t like it,” Stavroula said. “And just when you’ve made a good impression, Aliki.”
“But we’re only here because of our men.”
As we walked, Froso said that Stavroula was “all talk, talk, talk. She and that mayor—already I know more about this place than Crete, where I’ve lived my whole life.”
Outside the town, the island was barren. Sails of whitewashed windmills stood motionless beside the dusty road in the late-summer heat. We passed a village where most of the houses were abandoned, roofs fallen in, shutters ripped off windows, wee
ds everywhere. A dead plane tree stood in what must have been the plateia. I supposed the marble in nearby quarries had been exhausted and the workers had moved their families. In ancient times, the mayor had said, thousands of slaves worked the quarries.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Froso said, “a rock is just a rock.”
Chips and chunks of marble were everywhere. I picked up one the size of a lemon and held it up to the sun. The light seemed to be inside the stone, which almost glowed with it. The mayor had been right about its translucence. A rock was not just a rock. A truck passed us heading back to town with blocks of it in its bed. I supposed they would be loaded onto boats in the little harbor.
As we neared the camp, other women who’d been on the ship had already gathered there. We exchanged greetings and talked about the places we’d found to live. There was a sisterly sense among us, as we traded names and stories and our reactions to the dismal camp on a stony hillside with only a guardhouse and lots of ragged tents. They trailed down into a huge cave that was the entrance to one of the quarries. The other side of the hillside dropped into another quarry, a deep pit that held a small lake far below. The near side of the quarry lake was on camp grounds and the fence ran up to it. The far side was outside the grounds, but there was no way to cross to that side. It was said that seawater seeped into the abandoned quarry through underground caves. No one knew how deep the lake was, but there were rumors that sea creatures had been trapped there by currents long ago and bred in the dark water.
“These people here, they believe anything,” Froso said.
The guardhouse was built entirely out of chunks of the crudely cut, unfinished stone. There was a wire fence around the camp, but it didn’t look substantial. I supposed that, as we were on an island in the middle of the sea, there wouldn’t be much point in escape attempts. There was no one in the guardhouse and no visible detainees so we stood around in the sun waiting for someone to appear. The women were all from Crete, of course, strong women who’d tilled fields and raised families. I wondered if they’d been among those who’d attacked the first German parachutists with scythes and pitchforks.
Finally a guard with a rifle came out and shouted at us, “Not today! Go home. The new arrivals have duties to learn.”
There was a moment of astonished silence then a low grumble started up from those of us who’d been standing in the heat. Some of the women tried to argue with the guard, saying how long we’d waited and that we had a right to see our men. The guard just repeated what he’d said before. A few of the women in front hissed at him and spat on the ground at his feet. There were about twenty of us and we moved forward as a group. The guard shouted a command and at once a good dozen or so others came running and aimed their rifles at us. Was the mayor inside? I wondered. Would he appear?
The women became enraged; some of them picked up shards of marble from the ground. This was all happening so fast; surely it couldn’t be like this every day. In my memory flashed the night in my own village, the women throwing handfuls of pebbles at the Germans. And everything that followed.
Then Froso said, “Let’s go, Aliki. We’ll be back tomorrow.” She took my arm and we started to walk away. This seemed to break the tension and some of the other women followed us, tossing their stones to the ground, cursing. “Well, we see how it is here,” Froso said. “None of this ‘a few months in exile, helping out the happy villagers.’”
“We’ll be here every day,” one woman said.
“We’ll make those guards miserable at the sight of us,” another said.
Some of the others joined us in agreement, saying: We have our rights; those guards are born of women like everyone else. Who are they to aim rifles at us? I liked these strong-minded women with their ferocity and their warmth. They were different from the local women I met the next morning when I went to the general store to get the items on my list of cleaning supplies. Stavroula had told me when I got back from the camp that the mayor had phoned to say I could use the schoolhouse for the time being and we’d just see how it worked out (or not).
The store was a jumble of a place, just one large room and a little storeroom in back. It reminded me of the store in the mountain village on Crete. Canned goods were mixed in with farm implements and baskets. Fresh fruit and vegetables were next to brooms, mops and lightbulbs; pickaxes and jars of pickles were stacked with boxes of screws and rolls of bandages. Women exchanged gossip in the crowded aisles and men stood out front talking about crops and tools. The women questioned me about my husband, my family, my place of birth. Nothing went unremarked in some way: everything I said was greeted with nods, clucking noises or sidelong glances. Although they were curious, the women showed little warmth. I thought of telling them I was a teacher, but I didn’t have the courage. It was a relief to step outside with my purchases.
Passing the harbor, I noticed that the morning ship had docked. There were no new detainees getting off this time, just a few passengers. But there was a small group of detainees boarding the ship to leave the island. They were laughing and joking with each other, clearly delighted to be going home. At least no one’s here forever, I thought. Some do go home, just as Stelios and I would be going home sometime soon. And then I noticed the small figure standing there with his suitcases among the passengers and realized that he had indeed been the boy waving on the dock. Takis hadn’t yet seen me and for a few seconds I had conflicting urges; the first was just to walk on. But he looked so lost and helpless, a truly motherless child standing there. Still, I was angry that he’d followed me and now he’d probably be angry at my desertion. But he is here, I thought, and this is an island. There’s no escape.
I went over and stood near him until he noticed me. His face lit up but quickly turned into a scowl.
“How could you do that?” he asked.
“I had to,” I said. “Stelios needs me.”
“And I don’t? I thought we were a family. You always said we were. Don’t you want me in it anymore?”
His eyes and voice were full of hurt. He was again the old Takis, the pouty boy of the British barracks, but the pout only partly covered the anger. He scuffed his right foot along the ground.
“You had no right to follow me,” I said. “You should have stayed at Theo’s. You know you’ve got a chance for a new life there.”
“But I don’t want a new life if it means being alone. I start to, well, you know.”
“I thought you were beyond all that.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not.” There was an awkward silence. I didn’t want to think what sometimes not really meant. I said that Theo wasn’t supposed to have told him about my leaving until after the performance.
“There wasn’t one,” he said. “I went looking for you because I missed Yannoula. I was so sad I didn’t know what to do. When you weren’t there, I asked Theo, and do you know what he said? He said I should leave you alone, let go once and for all. ‘What do you think you’re going to do?’ he asked me. ‘Marry her someday?’ I hit him. Blood came out his nose. He threw me out of his café.”
“Oh, no, Takis.” I stepped back from him, almost afraid he might hit me too. “Poor Theo. He’s been such a good friend to us.”
“Not anymore.”
“No, I expect not.” I supposed that was the last we’d see of Theo, even if we ever went back to Crete. But was Takis likely to hit anyone else? I changed the subject.
“How did they let you on the ship? You’re not a relative of a prisoner.”
“No one asked me anything; they just took my money after I got a ride to Agios Nikolaos on a truck. What about you? You’re not a relative either.”
“No one asked for papers.” This was partly true. I didn’t say that they’d only glanced to see the marriage papers in my hand. Withholding truth—it was easier than lying but amounted to the same thing, I supposed. But I didn’t want to risk his anger now that h
e’d taken to hitting people.
“How’s Stelios?” Takis asked. “How long’s he going to be here?”
“I don’t know. They wouldn’t let us see any of the detainees yesterday.”
There was a long pause. The ship’s horn blasted three times. It was time for it to depart. I couldn’t let it go without him.
“Listen, Takis, you’d better get right back on board. You can just make it. There’s nothing for you here. I didn’t ask you to come and I don’t want you here.”
His head jerked back as if I’d slapped him. He put his hand over his mouth while his eyes, full of hurt, looked at the ship in the harbor. He’s leaving, I thought. I’ve hurt him that much. But instead he stood there in silence and then the ship’s horn blasted once more. We could hear the announcement that all nonpassengers must go ashore. I reached out to him, intending, or so I thought, to give him a nudge on his way. But instead I pulled him to me and held him. By then the ship’s engines had begun churning and the space between the ship and the quay widened slowly. There was now no chance of him leaving that day. I’d wavered, and there was nothing more to be done about it. Where would he go here and what would he do? If he stayed more than a day or two, how would I tell Stelios? They’d been getting along much better back in Heraklion, but that didn’t mean Stelios would want him here with me.
I sighed and picked up one of his suitcases and started the walk back to the schoolhouse. He followed along in silence. As we approached, I saw Froso ahead waiting for me. We’d planned to return to the camp together that day. I whispered to Takis that I was going to introduce him as my brother and he should play along. I didn’t know how else to explain his presence.
“Oh, the boy on the dock in Heraklion,” she said, giving me a look. I’d forgotten that she’d been with me at the railing when the ship pulled away from Crete. “You didn’t say he was your brother.”
“Sometimes I wish he weren’t.”
Takis glared at me, but Froso said, “That’s the way with brothers. I’ve got one too.”
My Last Lament Page 27