by Sara Alexi
‘Stop! What are you doing? You’ll kill him.’ A man, slightly younger than Yanni himself, but taller and bulkier, with a shallow forehead and hair that does not lie flat runs at him, bowling both of them over. A stone digs in Yanni’s back, they roll, Spiros exhales in his face—garlic—then round again. Yanni throws out his leg to stop their momentum; everything becomes still. Spiros wriggling out from under Yanni, breathing in big gasps, struggling for air.
‘Breathe slowly and deeply,’ Takis says, as if this is ritual they have been through a thousand times before. Spiros is wheezing. ‘Asthma,’ Takis clarifies. Yanni stands and backs away. The men eye each other warily, but the tension is passing. ‘Spiros, come here.’ Doing as he is commanded, Spiros shuffles across the ground. Takis holds his hand out and Spiros gives him the roll of money. ‘Right, come on.’ He looks up at Yanni, ‘There is no need for us to fight; we are all men here. We could have left you in that barn to die, but we didn’t. So be reasonable and I will be reasonable too. Here.’ He peels of a few notes from the tightly grasped wad and holds them out to Yanni.
Yanni’s ears buzz, his fists clench, his whole frame begins to tremble, and with a step, he is standing over this cockroach of a man who dares to negotiate with him with his own money, the cost of which was Dolly’s life, the money that will ensure his family’s future.
With an open hand, he slaps the man across the face, the shock and fear instantly registering in the man’s eyes. Yanni has never struck anyone before this day and he wonders if his own shock registers as clearly. He tries to unpeel his fingers; his fists have automatically clenched. If he has to strike again, it must be with an open hand. He will use fear, not force. From the look on Taki’s face, it is clear who has control now. Yanni’s spine straightens, his shoulders drop back, tensed, his chin lifts.
‘Here’s what we will do.’ Takis stumbles a little as he stands. The strength in his voice is forced. ‘We can split this and call things even.’ He holds up the money. ‘Then you and I …’ He takes a step toward Yanni, slowly, unthreatening.
Yanni’s voice comes out like the breeze through the barn, hissing, suggesting its power, the damage it could do if it gained any strength. ‘Don’t you talk to me about what “we” are going to do.’ Takis stops moving and blinks rapidly. Yanni holds out his hand, palm upwards. Takis looks sadly at the money and slowly hands it over. ‘Now go.’ Yanni can hear the growl in his voice, like a dog. He is surprised at his resolve, the emotion behind it.
Takis, looking at the ground, shakes his head and turns towards a battered truck parked at the side of the barn, which until this moment, Yanni has taken little notice of. ‘Not the truck,’ Yanni says.
‘But it’s a good few miles back to Saros. I am not such a young man.’
‘If you get into this sort of business, you must be able to take the consequences. Throw me the keys.’
Takis fishes keys from his pocket. ‘But how will I get back?’
‘Use your feet. And Takis, unless you want me to come find you and give you another slap, I suggest you stay out of sight for the next couple of days.’ Takis throws the keys to land on the ground at his feet.
Behind him, Spiros stands and shuffles forward as if to follow Takis.
‘Not you, Spiros. You have had enough bullying.’ Yanni watches Takis turn off the rough road and takes a footpath that cuts straight down the hill, but out of the corner of his eye he can see Spiros. At first his eyebrows arch, worry lines across his forehead as he watches Takis leave. Then his look of concern relaxes and slowly, he begins to grin. Finally his shoulders pull back and he shifts to stand alongside Yanni, his chin lifted high. They watch until Takis disappears behind the curve of the hill.
‘Right, drive me to the village.’ Yanni bends to pick up the keys and throws them at Spiros, who fumbles the catch and drops them.
‘Me? I cannot drive. They told me I was too stupid to learn.’ His eyes shine as tears rush them, his shoulders dropping in an instant.
‘Well, one of us has to and I have never even sat in anything more than a bus and a taxi so Spiros, it is time to learn.’ Yanni pats his shoulder before walking to the old pickup truck. His stomach grumbles. Lower down the hill are orange groves, and the thought of their sweetness, their juiciness makes him suck in his moustache in anticipation.
The truck shudders as the ignition is turned. Spiros experiments with the pressing of pedals. They shoot off quickly, to stop just as suddenly. Yanni remains patient, remembering the hours Sister Katerina sat quietly opposite him as he struggled to twist syllables into words. There is no rush. If he grips the chair and braces himself against the door and gives Spiros some time, he will get it. The truck bucks and stalls as they begin to crunch down the hill.
‘A little too much speed perhaps,’ Yanni suggests. ‘Tell it to stop.’
‘It’s not a donkey; there is no telling it. It is pedal or a lever,’ Spiros shouts over the noise of the grinding gears, his feet lifting and pressing. Their speed decreases. ‘Ha!’ he exclaims. The driving becomes less erratic and they bump along down to the bottom of the hill and onto the main road. Yanni leans from the window to grab oranges off the trees as they pass, leaves and thin branches coming, too.
‘Turn to the village. We need to see Babis.’ Yanni peels an orange and hands half of the segments to Spiros.
The truck half-mounts the pavement by the kiosk, but it attracts no interest at the kafeneio. Several trucks and many motorbikes are huddled in around the square wherever they can. One moped is leaning against the fountain, a truck is parked alongside a car, the two vehicles taking up half the road. If anything is in the way, it is not such a hard job to find the owner as he sips coffee and argues politics. Yanni cannot help but look to the sandwich shop, but there is no one outside; not even the stool is there.
The door to the house needs a shove; the coats have fallen again. Babis is sprawled on the sofa eating a cheese pie, a can of beer balanced on the arm of the sofa.
‘Ah there you are,’ Babis says, but his eyes remain fixed the television. Yanni is not sure what he expected to return to. He didn’t know what to expect, but with the sight of Babis lounging on the sofa and his casual ‘There you are’, he finds his fists clench. Whilst he has been locked in a barn, his life threatened, Babis has been drinking beer and watching the television!
‘Do you know …’ The ordeal he has been through is pressing to be released. But he hesitates. It has happened; he is no longer in the barn. How will making Babis aware of it change what is going on? But his teeth grind and he begins again. ‘Whilst you’ve been sitting here. …’ But Babis does not even look away from the screen. Yanni takes a few laboured breaths. There’s no point in feeling sorry for himself, he has suffered nothing compared to what the families of the village will suffer if their homes are taken from them. He must focus on looking forward, what needs to happen, that is the question. What needs to happen next.
‘Have you been to see the mayor?’ Yanni finally barks.
‘The mayor? Why would I go to see the mayor? Awww!’ He cries this last sound and throws one hand in the air, ‘Would you look at that? They cannot give a free shot for that!’
Yanni’s fists tighten again, his forehead knots, his eyes narrow. Can Babis really be so dim? Need he explain it? No, because Babis was the one who explained it to him. Maybe he has not understood properly?
‘From what you told me, what the mayor is doing is not only criminal but inhuman. These are peoples’ homes we are talking about.’ As Yanni, speaks Spiros puts his head around the door. Babis stops looking at the television now, his face becomes rigid, his jaw clenches. Yanni makes the introduction. ‘Babis, this is Spiros.’ Babis looks from Spiros to Yanni, fear in his eyes. ‘Oh it’s alright Babis. He is with us now.’ Yanni reassures but at the same time wonders how Babis would know that Spiros was ever even a threat. With his words, Babis’ face does not immediately relax, but he manages to compose himself.
‘Yeia sou
Spiro.’ He says his welcomes slowly and loudly. Spiros gives a little wave and smiles. After prolonged eye contact, Babis turns from him back to Yanni. ‘Look Yanni, Gerasimos is dethroned, which leaves plenty of room for …’ He stops to think of how to express himself. ‘For things to change.’ He grins. ‘So let the mayor do what he will and let us do what we will.’ He lifts a six pack of beer from the floor and holds it out to Yanni. ‘Beer?’
Yanni steps to the television and pulls out the plug.
‘What did you do that for?’ Babis wails.
‘If you only think about how things will change to improve your life, then how does that make you any better than Gerasimo?’ Yannis asks. ‘Have you no filotimo? No decency, no pride, no honour, no higher thinking?’
Spiros picks up a photograph in a frame on the sideboard, a picture of Babis’ mama and baba when they were young.
‘Put that down,’ Babis says. Spiros gently replaces it. ‘Look, I have to do what I have to do. My mama has no one else. From a young age, I have done what is needed to pay the bills and put enough food on the table. It is a dog eat dog world over here, Yanni. We are not all family like on your island. The mayor is a big shot with plenty of influence. If I step on his toes, there will be no work for me even if there is no one to take my place.’
‘I, of all people, know your history.’ Yanni pauses and looks him straight in the eye. ‘But you cannot use that as an excuse not to do what is right. If you do nothing, you are stepping on everyone’s toes in this village and then what life will you or your mama have when her friends turn their backs on her?’
‘Can I ask a question?’ Spiros says quietly. ‘What has the mayor got to do with this? I don’t really understand what is going on.’
‘I don’t think you understand how wide the mayor’s influence goes,’ Babis says, but with little assertiveness.
‘What has the mayor got to do with my house?’ Spiros asks.
‘You will, just a minute.’ Yanni answers Spiros quickly. ‘Babi, once you know something, you cannot un-know it. I know what I know and my conscience will not let me walk away. Too many people’s lives rest on this. We are going to the mayor. If you come, then you will be seen to be standing with us. If you do not, how will you be seen?’
Babis stands and throws his arms into the air. ‘You come over here and you poke your nose in where it is not wanted. You talk about rights and wrongs of something you don’t really understand and then you give me ultimatums like that. It was you, after all, who broke into Gerasimo’s office in the first place. Without opening the door for me, we would never know what we know. So if you go to the mayor, you will have to own up to breaking and entering. The judge in Saros is a friend of the mayor’s, and they will throw the book at you.’
‘He’s my uncle,’ Spiros says.
‘I broke into Gerasimo’s office?’ Yanni asks.
‘Yup! Up the bougainvillea and in through the window.’ Babis smiles now.
‘Onto a balcony?’ Yanni sits on the armchair, recalling dream-like images.
‘Yup.’ Babis opens another beer. ‘You want one, Spiros?’
‘No thank you.’ Spiros remains standing by the door.
‘You opened the door. I went in to change the numbers on the contract and by chance, I happened to find on his desk the proposal to the mayor from the German firm, and Gerasimos named as his legal representative. It just all fitted together. A quick flip through his address book led me to the surveyors in Athens. Gerasimo’s business card and a little legal pressure got me the information I needed from them, which was enough to make Gerasimos run. Which he has. His office is empty, his car has gone, opening up Saros and the surrounding area to me. The mayor, on the other hand, is a much bigger fish. But the bottom line is it was you who did the breaking and entering.’
‘You okay, Yanni?’ Spiros asks. ‘Does my family get to keep their home?’
‘So I say to you, you choose, Yanni. How do you want to be seen?’ Babis plugs the television back in.
Chapter 15
As the door slams behind him, he hears the coats falling onto the floor on the other side. His feet carry him away from the square, up the hill, wishing he was on the ridge, goats by his side. Sister Katerina said a lot about fear and denied that there were demons. It seems to him that fear gives life to demons. Since stepping on mainland soil, his fear of not being a good guest has taken solace in an ouzo bottle. He has drunk so much, his memory has failed him, he has fallen asleep in company and even broken into someone’s office. He has become involved in politics and the ways of the world that he has spent most of his life trying to avoid. He has been kidnapped, gambled his money for his freedom, and he has beaten up a defenceless old man who, in all fairness, had kidnapped him. While he has been busy doing all this, he has left his poor baba to cope by himself and, if she is not already, then very soon, his mama will be worrying why he isn’t home.
The problem isn’t how he will be seen; the problem is who he is becoming.
The houses are below him now, the road peters out into a path and the rough land leads up to a clump of pine trees that top the hill. A cockerel crows somewhere in the village. The vegetation thins and is replaced with a bed of pine needles that deaden his footsteps and add to the hush of the wind that whispers through the tree tops.
Is it because he is a solitary, reticent creature that he cannot be amongst men and carry out three simple tasks? Buy a donkey, deliver a parcel, and maybe visit an old friend. Is he such a fool, such a simpleton? Has he learnt nothing in his studies with Sister Katerina? What did all that learning give him?
He sits to look over the village spread before him, at the whitewashed walls and red tiled roofs surrounded by orchards of olives and oranges that spread as far as the eye can see, all the way to the foothills of the faded purple mountains that surround the plain. There, to his left, almost entirely hidden by the hill he sits on, is the sea lapping at Saros town, the sparkling blue that stretches a finger towards the village, making it the ideal spot it is. He drops his weight heavily to sit, leaning back against a tree, his feet pulled in, arms resting on his knees, his hands dangling. There are houses dotted across the plain as well as in the village and within each house, there will be a family, each most likely with a mama and a baba, and papous and yiayia maybe, and children who will get married and the cycle will go on, generation after generation. Even the most uneducated man manages to keep this cycle going.
What did all that learning with Sister Katerina give him? He knows now what it didn’t give him! It didn’t give him the peace he seeks. It was not the desire to speak foreign languages or to ‘better’ himself, whatever that means, that motivated him. In fact, he does know what it gave him because he has found the same thing in the bottom of an ouzo glass! It gave him an escape, a sense of doing something to avoid actually doing something, an anaesthetic. As long as he was learning, taking steps to decode Sophia’s poem, he had his excuse to remain a recluse. Withdrawing away, like a monk, on the top of an island rather than getting out there amongst men and finding himself a wife—and a life. Bottom line: He is nothing but a coward. Fearful and hiding.
No, the question is not how will he be seen but who has he become.
He is not proud.
A donkey brays and Dolly comes to mind. He sighs and takes out his tobacco. His fingers linger around the book, his heartbeat quickening. To be brave, fight his fears head on, how different would his life be? Would he have found Sophia already? Would he have talked to the woman in the navy skirt? Maybe his life would have been even more complicated.
How is he meant to know what to be reticent about and what to be brave about? Maybe that’s why there are social rules. Maybe they help?
Trying to help this village, surely that is something he needs to be brave about, put himself second. What does it matter how he is seen if the villagers keep their homes? But then again, what does he really know of the mayor of Saros? The mayor on Orino Island is shifty and out f
or himself, but everybody knows everybody’s business on the island; there’s not much the island mayor can keep hidden. But here, maybe the mayor is a bigger fish, maybe he will be able to just bury the whole affair even if they confront him with it. If that is the case, Babis will not come out of it at all well and then how will Babis and his mama cope? Perhaps keeping himself to himself is the best course after all. Perhaps he should just get his donkey, deliver the Sister’s parcel, and leave. Getting involved in other peoples’ business is never a good idea, maybe even seeing Sophia is a bad idea.
‘Oh why is it all so complicated?’ He stands. ‘I just want to be quiet.’
He looks down at the houses in the village, aware that getting rid of the mayor’s lawyer, Gerasimos, is not enough. Every last one of the houses will be declared unsafe, including Babis’. Every last one of them will be bought up cheaply by the company that fronts the mayor’s dealings. Then the whole town will be sold as a job lot to the German firm and turned into a walled holiday destination, boasting its own coastline. The mayor will get rich beyond his wildest imagination. The tourists will be bussed in like cattle and trapped in their individual holiday homes, herded to eat at the tavernas provided, drink at the kafeneios run by the organizers, buy their sunscreen at the German-run corner shop and the people who have lived there for generations will be displaced and forgotten about, all for the sake of this inhuman theme park.
Apparently, Babis said, the same German firm bought an onion field on the coast just outside of the village a while back, built a hotel on it, and are raking in so much money, it will fund the entire project.
One man’s get-rich-quick scheme of selling his onion field could be the downfall of the entire village.
‘Why do people not work for the good of the whole?’ he asks the breeze, which answers by lifting the ends of his moustache. He twists them to a point and then flattens his hair with a stroke of his hand.
‘And her house too, the woman in the navy skirt, where will she go?’ But the breeze does not answer this time. ‘It’s a business that relies on fear,’ he tells it.