by Sara Alexi
And how do people cope with the instability of working for other people? The possibility of being unemployed at a moment’s notice, no money coming in and no way to bring money in? She too is in that situation now, the convent doors closed firmly behind her. Her shoulders tense and raise. What if the sandwich shop does not make a profit, if she cannot make a living, then what? Her jaw stiffens.
A shriek of laughter comes from the taverna. Mitsos has the sausage tongs in his hand and he is wiping his eyes with the back of his wrist, laughing so much, he is crying.
That’s the other side of all this uncertainty perhaps. What she would give to abandon herself and laugh like that, like she did back at school. The fridge rattles as it reaches temperature and the motor switches off. She needs to give the fridge a bit of a clean. Now would be as good a time as any. Keep busy; it is one answer.
The heat of the afternoon gives way to a softening of the light and a slight breeze. A pink hue over the village announces the evening drawing in. The children pour from the bus, coming home from frontistiria, the cramming schools where they have exhausted themselves to keep up their grades. They pour into the shop in a tired exuberant mass, buy the last of the cheese and spinach pies. The sausage rolls are gone and there is only one piece of bougatsa left.
The lady who owns the house next door to the shop comes out to sweep the dust from the road in front of her house, her white apron stark against her mourning black. She stops just to have a word. She talks of God and the strength He gives her, her eyes drawn to the lone cream-filled pie.
‘Thirty years ago, my husband died. You are a nun, you know how to live alone. I do not. It is lonely for me.’ Sophia can hardly bear to hear, nods without listening. She cannot think of anything the lady will want to hear so she says nothing.
‘You are wise,’ the woman informs her. ‘I have a daughter. She is a good girl, don’t get me wrong, but she is out all the time, making her own life. Which is as it should be. But it is the love I have for her that makes it so painful. My selfishness wants her to stay at home with her mama.’ She puts a flat hand on her chest. ‘Which is selfish.’ The hand lifts from her chest a fraction, her fingers pinched together, and she taps the smallest sign of the cross onto her rib cage, her eyes again wandering to the bougatsa. ‘But it is God’s will that must be done. We manage on what little money I have.’ She makes a huge dramatic sigh and rests one arm on the counter.
‘Can I offer you the last of the bougatsa?’ Sophia breaks the ensuing silence and takes the well-worn path behind the counter to put it in a paper bag.
‘Oh no, no, no, I couldn’t,’ the woman protests, her hand outstretched to receive it. ‘Things are not that bad. I am just not very good at being lonely.’ She takes the bag and Sophia wipes the crumbs from the counter and folds the cloth, putting it in the sink.
‘Is anyone?’ Sophia asks.
‘Ha!’ The woman barks her laugh. ‘With belief like yours, everything is possible.’ She forgets her broom as she walks back to her house with the paper packet. Sophia waits until her front door is closed, then she takes the broom and puts it inside the woman’s gate. Back at the shop, she counts the change in her pocket from her tips to pay for the bougatsa.
There is nothing left to sell now until the delivery comes in the morning.
Everything is cleared and clean. She makes a note of what sold out first and what they need to order more of, then counts the day’s takings and locks the till. A man stops and asks if she is closed, buys a can of beer, so she leaves his money on top of the till with a note so she will not forget what it was for tomorrow.
Outside, she takes a second to admire the fairy lights all lit up round Stella’s tree. Is that a vanity, wrapping lights around a tree? It looks pretty, whatever it is. She pulls her stool inside and shuts and locks both the door and the window. The chain around the drinks fridge outside gets stuck under one corner of the door and for a moment, she wonders if she will have to call Mitsos over to help, but it suddenly frees itself. The chain and padlock seem unnecessarily thick and heavy to protect some cans of fizzy orange and colas.
When all is secured, she stops to think, looking up to the smeared grey of the Milky Way. She cannot remember who will be giving her a lift back to the convent today. She puts her hand over her stomach as it turns with a little panic and then she smiles, her hand drops, she pockets the keys, and strolls looking at a million stars in the dark sky, heading towards Juliet’s.
The men in the kafeneio briefly glance her way as she passes, but all eyes are on a basketball match showing on the television that is balanced in the window of the café, facing out to the square. Tables and chairs have been pulled outside into the cool of the evening and Theo is trotting backwards and forwards across the road with coffees and ouzos. His halo of frizzy hair bobs as he moves, and he is smiling. Always smiling. She has heard that he too is loved but the woman refuses to marry him. The luxury of such a choice.
Her arms and legs feel light and floaty. No abbess to face, no hours of evening prayers in the church that manages to be cold at this time of night even in the middle of summer. No hushed silence in icon-lined corridors.
The front of Juliet’s house is lit up with soft orange lamps. It glows in the dark, inviting. Her feet slow and she savours the approach, a ripple of excitement running through her chest.
‘Hi,’ Juliet calls from the sofa where she is lying with a book. She looks so comfortable.
‘Don’t get up.’ Sophia sits in one of the wicker chairs. The cat that was pinning Juliet’s arm jumps off the sofa and up onto her own knee.
‘Was work alright?’ Juliet puts her book face down over the arm of the sofa and takes off her glasses to put them on top.
‘Oh yes, thank you.’ It feels a nice question to be asked. ‘How is your book?’
‘It’s a bit dry. It’s about Greece, the role the church has played in its history.’
A little of the charm seems to drain from the moment and just for a fleeting second, Sophia experiences a feeling she cannot quite recognise which is aimed at Juliet and her choice of books. Reason states that Juliet’s choice of book has nothing to do with her, but the feeling persists, and it dawns on her that the feeling is anger. Her lips part and she makes the smallest of gasps. Her hand flinches, never completing the movement to raise to cover this reaction, but the twitch is a tell-tale sign. Her cheeks glow a little warm and she looks at the floor.
‘You okay?’ Juliet asks.
‘Oh yes, sorry.’
‘No, you are not. What is it?’
She cannot blurt out that she is angry that Juliet is reading such a book. How ridiculous that would seem. Besides, what difference does it make to her what book Juliet chooses to read? She takes a moment to let everything settle.
‘Walking up here.’ She turns to look at the arch over the drive to indicate what she means. ‘It all looked so perfect, so peaceful, so inviting that I forgot about the church.’
‘Oh, I see. I think …’ Juliet sits up a little, moves her book and glasses to the table beside her so she can lean on the arm of the sofa. Something in the way she looks around the patio without really seeing suggests she is going to say more, which Sophia would be glad of. She opens her mouth to unlock her jaw.
‘Tell me, did you always know you had a calling for the church?’ Juliet’s voice is not loud but the question slaps hard. Her head jolts back and her eyes grow wide. ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Juliet adds on, but it softens nothing.
Chapter 21
The cat jumps off her knee, trots across the patio, up onto the wall and over the other side, gone. Its absence from her lap, the warm spot suddenly exposed to the breeze leaves her feeling naked, vulnerable. Juliet is not all she seems. Of all the questions she could have asked, she chose the one that cut straight to the heart of the matter. In her one question, she has suggested opening all those closed doors in her mind and her heart to let her life fall out. She can imagine the pitiful conten
ts spread in a thin, transparent layer and there, staring back, exposed for the world to see, the worst sin of them all: her wasted life.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,’ Juliet says. But she does not move, she does not break the spell. Nor does Sophia want to let it go. She just needs the courage to speak. Start with one word. Just one, and let what follows follow.
‘No,’ is all she manages. Her breathing is shallow, there’s a knot in her stomach and a tightening in her throat. A film of cold sweat across her brow gathers and a dribble of sweat runs down one temple. She wills herself to say more. ‘I never chose it.’
‘Oh.’ The exclamation from Juliet is light, surprised, inviting more. ‘How old did you say you were?’ It’s an easy question to answer.
‘I was thirteen.’ It seems like yesterday, so much rushes back at her. ‘Vetta was living in the storeroom with the nets down at the port, much to my mama and baba’s horror and the gossip of the island. Stamatia had married Yorgos, the half-American, and they had moved to Athens. Angeliki was engaged to Miltos by then and cooking alongside his mama every night in their taverna, and everyone was trying to keep Sada away from Aleko and his bad moods and never-ending bottles. It seemed the island was always talking about us for one thing or another and I was the last straw, I think, for my mama.’
‘You? They were talking about you?’ Juliet asks.
‘Yes, especially about me.’ Although it crosses her mind from time to time, most days, she hasn’t thought in detail about it for years. It would be preferable not to think, but her past is crowding her thoughts, demanding to be spoken out loud, and Juliet’s calm presence makes it feel safe enough to speak. Once, as a nun, she had a pain. It began under her tooth, just a niggle, nothing really, a dull pressure. Her body wishing to rid itself of some minor infection. Ignoring it seemed like the easiest option and sure enough, it went away. Well, sort of. It turned into an earache, only slight, nothing that anyone could do anything about surely? Then it went away all together. It was forgotten about until a lump appeared on the roof of her mouth. It wasn’t exactly painful but nor was it pain free, and it affected the way she spoke and the things she ate and it was all she could think about. But still she did nothing, hoping it would come to a head, burst, and let the poisons drain. But that wasn’t what happened. After some days, the lump left her mouth and it was natural to believe she was in recovery. Maybe it had popped in her sleep, who knows? The good thing was it was gone. But then the pain started in her throat. It grew worse and worse until she could neither speak nor eat, her limbs lost power, and a doctor was called. She was on a variety of tablets for weeks. She spent many days in her unadorned cell looking at the arched ceiling, too weak to do anything else. Sister Maria was her designated aid and she came a couple of times a day with food and to pray with her. Other than that, she was left alone.
‘If you had said something sooner, it would have been easier to treat,’ the doctor scolded her. ‘If the lump was still on the roof of your mouth, we could have drained it, got rid of the poison, and you would have recovered quickly. But now the infection is in your system. It will take time.’ Then he packed up his bag and left her to two weeks of silence and solitude and boredom.
This feels the same, but she is not sure which stage of the process she is at. Wherever she is, though, speaking now, draining the poison must be the right choice.
‘There was a boy, Hectoras, who was also a cousin, but distant, through marriage. If you look hard enough, nearly everybody is related to everybody on the Island.’ There, not so hard. ‘I had seen him around all my life but I first really had anything to do with him at school. By the time I had reached thirteen, he showed some interest.’ Not hard at all.
‘You mean in you?’ Juliet asks.
‘Yes.’ It’s getting harder. ‘He would come to the house on errands from his aunt. She was a second cousin to my mama, also though marriage. She wanted fish. My baba was a fisherman. Did I say that? With my mama, Hectoras was very polite, correct, but always spoke down to her. One day, when she was out, he sent my sisters away on little jobs.’ Speaking the words is becoming painful now. Sophia forces herself on. ‘I begged them not to go but he had declared his intentions by then and they thought it was all part of the courtship. His ways were not right. His words were crude.’ She looks away across the drive, memories of his bitten fingernails scratching her skin as he pinned her to the wall, his hands forcing their way up her skirts until she kicked him and Sada returned. ‘I told them he was not right but I did not want to get into trouble again. I told Sada, and she understood. After that, she did not let him alone with me again.’
‘Didn’t you tell your mama?’
‘She did not believe me.’ She looks at Juliet, who has developed a small frown, her shoulders lifting a little, asking for more information. ‘I have always spoken out about things, ever since I was small. It is almost like a compulsion. If I see wrongs, I have to speak out. But it has been held against me.’
The smell of the headmaster’s office, the stale smoke, the damp walls, the faint odour of ink returns to her nostrils as she begins to tell of that memory. Her mama was called to the school because Sophia had spoken out about an event that was not just and the accused had not liked it. This was her first crossing with Hectoras—Hectoras the bully. All the children knew who he was. They all thought Sophia brave for standing up to him but as it turned out, Hectoras was not only a bully but also the son of the mayor’s brother and, to play out his defence, he was also a very convincing actor.
‘She’s lying.’ Hectoras brought tears to his eyes. His father in his new white shirt looking sympathetically at her mama in her Sunday dress, now a little tight after years of wear.
‘I am not!’ The accusation stung Sophia like a bee. ‘He had Yanni pinned on the floor and he spat on him.’ Sophia can remember her fists clenching so tight, her nails dug hard into her palms. Her jaw was so clamped, it hurt to speak afterwards.
‘I would never do anything so disgusting! What a mind you have,’ Hectoras threw back, calm, controlled, condescending, the tears still glistening. He was good.
‘Children, children,’ the headmaster soothed.
‘Perhaps we could ask this Yanni,’ Mama suggested. Her own tears were real.
‘He is away with the goats now, won’t be back … well, my guess is, probably this year.’ The headmaster shook his head at this futile line of enquiry.
‘We do not teach our sons to spit in my family,’ the mayor’s brother said. ‘If we had such manners, how would my brother have been elected mayor?’ The question hung in the room, waiting for an answer, but none came. Sophia knew at this point that the argument was lost and she stared out the window up to the hills, up to the place where Yanni might be, and she wished herself up there too. ‘May I suggest that this young girl, Sophia is it?’ The smooth tones broke through her reverie and she looked into Hectoras’ baba’s eyes as he bent to meet her gaze, on her level. He smelt of coffee and a chemical-based perfume. She wanted to cough, put her hand across her nose but did not want to appear rude. ‘That Sophia was mistaken.’ He straightened himself and addressed the adults. ‘Boys will be boys and he comes from a strong family. Maybe what Sophia saw was a little game of rough and tumble and her imagination did the rest.’ The headmaster sat down at this point behind his large desk and shuffled papers that looked like they had not been moved for a decade. Her mama glanced at her sharply and Sophia noticed her mama’s stomach relax outwards, straining her dress, as though she had given up making the effort to hold it in. Hectoras’ baba, sensing his victory, slapped his son on his back, made his excuses, and they marched from the room, leaving an awkward silence between Mama and the headmaster. Sophia’s disgust came as bile into her mouth and she ran from the room. Her mama caught up with her halfway home and lectured her about taking a firmer grip on the real world and to stop making such trouble. She was nine years old, and her mama did not seem to believe anything that she had said after that
. Sophia prided herself on her honesty, for standing up for what was right, and it stung, her mama’s disbelief.
‘That’s harsh,’ Juliet says as she finishes speaking. This is the first time she has had the courage to tell her story to anyone besides Sada and Yanni, and it comes as a huge relief to hear that a stranger can recognise how unfair it was. Of course, in the totality of the world, it is and was a small event, but it was one to have devastating consequences for her later on.
‘So that was why your mama didn’t believe you later on?’ Juliet clarifies. Sophia’s arms lay lifeless in her lap, her legs without movement, her whole body slumped in sadness.
‘Yes,’ she answers softly, readying herself to lance the root of the poison.
Chapter 22
‘I am scared to tell you.’ The words come of their own accord.
‘Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to,’ Juliet advises
‘No, I want to, but I don’t want you to hold these images in your head, to live with this horror that I have lived with.’ Sophia is not sure she intended to say these words but now they are out, it seems only fair to warn Juliet. She waits for a response.
‘You know, I have lived through some horrors myself.’ Juliet seems unperturbed. ‘And I have talked about them.’ She exhales as if remembering the times. ‘And I thought, maybe even hoped to some degree, that the horror would be transferred to the other person so I would not be alone, so that I could really share it. But the truth is, no matter how graphically you tell it, you can never express the depth of the impact that it has on you. The other person can only guess how it felt for you by relating it to the horrors of their own life.’ She takes a breath. ‘I may not feel what you felt, Sophia, but it will awaken my own memories and in doing so, I can get as close as it is possible to get without actually experiencing it myself.’ She looks from one of Sophia’s eyes to the other. ‘But you and I will be safe, Sophia, because it’s not happening now.’ After a pause, she adds quietly, ‘But you don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, of course.’