by Sara Alexi
The more he worried, the more lonely and isolated he became, and the more isolated he became the more he worried. Then he too began to notice that he was beginning to forget things, simple things, like orders he was supposed to process at work on one occasion, and forgetting to lock the door when leaving home. He could never remember the names of Aphrodite’s cousins, which both she and her mama used as proof that he was not interested in her life. For a while he thought he had fundamentally changed since he was married, that something inside his head had come loose, maybe. The world had become a vague, dreamlike place that lacked any real significance for him. He never felt alive as he had done when he was climbing, or as content as when he was picking mangoes in Israel.
He reached the lowest point in his marriage and began to feel completely separate, not only from his wife but also from his own physicality, his emotions and even his behaviours. The more Aphrodite nagged and complained, the more detached he became from his feelings. With some effort he managed to modify his behaviour to satisfy his wife and mother-in-law, but it felt like an act and he felt himself changing, disappearing, being replaced by a sort of hazy non-person who looked and felt like the old Miltos but who had no real substance and might disappear at any time … It was slightly better at work but he no longer identified with anyone there and he began to lump the rest of the employees into categories. There was his baba’s gang of decisions-makers, the coffee drinkers, the workaholics, the proactives, the idlers, the geeks. But none of those groups had anything to do with him. He was alone, and unreal.
So when he found his wife in Augustinos’s – the account manager’s – office one day, drinking coffee, and his intuition told him that all was not as it seemed, he didn’t know how to react; he was no longer able to trust his own judgement. His conscious brain argued that he was in no position to judge anyone. Who was he, anyway, to pass judgement on other people’s actions? Hadn’t it been pointed out time and time again by Aphrodite, or by her mama, that he didn’t think straight? So he simply placed the memo he was delivering on the table between them and said nothing. As he backed out of the office, though, he felt himself sink further into himself and he retreated just a little more from reality.
The following Monday, six days later, at eight fifteen in the morning, Miltos was shaving, getting ready for work, when Aphrodite announced that she was indeed having an affair with Augustinos, and had been for the last two years, and that she was pregnant with his child. She stood in the doorway, making eye contact with him in the mirror as he froze at this news, his face half lathered, and then she calmly stated that she had never wanted a child with him and had taken precautions to ensure she did not. He put down the razor and stared back at her, not knowing what to do or say.
‘I am leaving you,’ she said, and at this he dropped the razor, turned and staggered towards her. She reacted as if she expected him to hit her but that was not his intention. He pushed past her into the bedroom, to sit slumped on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands as he felt his energy drain.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked, but there was no feeling in the question. ‘Mama has already packed and gone,’ she continued. ‘She left when we saw the results of the pregnancy test.’
Through the fog that threatened to engulf him, this information, that her mama had already gone, gave him the slightest relief. At least it meant he would never have to see that old witch again, and he clung to this thought as he would have a buoy in a storm at sea. Aphrodite continued her narrative.
‘Do you need me to get anyone?’ But she was zipping up her suitcase as she said this and he did not bother to answer. ‘You can find us at Augustinos’s house, but there is no use coming over and thinking that we can talk about things or go backwards. It was over long ago, we just never admitted it.’
She paused and he could feel her staring at him. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ This last question harboured a hint of concern but she quickly continued, ‘You see, this is the problem, always has been. You don’t open up to me. Everything goes on on the inside and you have never let me in, and nor have you ever come out. Goodbye, Milto.’
With this, she turned, grasping the handle of the suitcase, no doubt aiming for a dramatic exit, but the case was too heavy and she had to drag it along the deep pile of the rug. Then bump, bump, bump, she was down the stairs and scraping it across the hall floor to the front door. There was a man’s voice; it could have been Augustinos’s, or it could have been a taxi driver. Then the door shut and the car drove off.
Miltos sat for a while on the bed, not moving, absorbing the new silence in the house; then, slowly, he straightened, dropped his hands in his lap and looked up without seeing. In a flash he could feel! How he could feel! The world was real again, he was real again, and it was as though steel belts had been removed from around his chest and he could breathe again. He meant to just stand up but once his legs got moving he jumped on the spot until he found himself leaping on the bed and bouncing on it, knees to chest like a small boy. He only stopped when the phone by the bed rang, and he climbed down from the bed, smoothed his hair and answered the call.
‘Milto, everything all right? Just that you are an hour late.’ His uncle’s voice was smooth, authoritative.
‘Yes, fine.’ Miltos’s voice gave nothing away.
‘So, you are coming in now?’ His uncle’s tone rose at the end, but it was not really a question.
‘No,’ he replied, and before his uncle could make any response he replaced the receiver, took his passport from the bedside drawer, grabbed his car keys and drove to the airport.
That was the beginning of his two-year walk-about in Thailand and Indonesia. He stayed in touch with his aunt and it was she who sold the apartment and put the money in his Thai bank account.
‘I will make sure she does not get a penny, and I have told your uncle to sack Augustinos,’ she spat down the phone when he called her from the airport in Bangkok.
‘No, Thia, he is a good account manager. Let him stay. He will do his penance having to live with her and her mama.’
‘You should never have married her,’ his aunt began, but he cut her short. She had been just as keen as his uncle that he settle down, join the firm and have children. Well, his duty was done, and during the time he was in Asia he phoned his aunt less and less until, finally, he stopped altogether.
On his return to Greece he found that they had moved and the factory had closed because of the downturn in the economy. He did not make any effort to get back in touch.
But all this was years ago and the only part of it that makes him sad now is that he has never had children.
He looks at the packet poking out of the home-made letter box. The lizard is back.
‘What must it be like, eh, lizard?’ He addresses the miniature green dinosaur. ‘To have a home rather than a house, somewhere that you receive letters and not just bills? And, most importantly of all, where they don’t make you feel crazy!’
But the lizard doesn’t answer. It just sticks out its tongue.
Chapter 17
Miltos leaves the lizard and continues up the hill. The track is steeper further up and before he reaches the top he stops again to catch his breath. From this vantage point, the village looks as if it has been designed by a very young child who has just discovered the joy of drawing and colouring. Some of the houses are set along the curve of the roads, but others are at awkward angles and the road has been forced to meander around them. The church appears comically large compared to these orange-roofed dwellings, and the boys playing football in the open area in front of it are mere ants.
The fountain in the centre of the square has been painted bright blue inside and seems at odds with the sepia tones of its surroundings. From up here it looks as though it is full of water, but Miltos noticed earlier that it is dry and dusty. The outskirts of the village give way to orange trees that march in line, and curled and twisted olive trees that make use of any place where the gr
ound is uneven. Here and there, low, barren hills push their way up out of this carpet of green and these are crowned with tiny whitewashed churches, some sporting garish neon-blue crosses. Overall, however, the plane is flat and the citrus trees dominate. Periodically, this emerald coverage is broken by clusters of orange roof tiles where the villages have sprung up. Saros town, away in the distance to the left, is mostly hidden by the hill Miltos is on, and just the very edge can be seen, where it dips into the sea, along with one or two white specks – boats that are anchored in the harbour. The bay is a wide, sweeping curve that extends a finger of blue all the way up to the edge of the village at his feet. High hills flank the far edges of the plain, a haze of purple, standing majestic.
‘Beautiful, just beautiful,’ he whispers to himself, and he turns his back on the sight to push himself on to the final summit beneath the pine trees. The sun is very hot and he is beginning to feel the need of some shade.
As he nears the trees the ground becomes springy with pine needles and the air takes on the scent of resin. He expects to hear only cicadas singing but there is another sound too. He could swear that in amongst the bugs’ rasping calls he can hear a melody being quietly picked out on an acoustic guitar. He steps more lightly, reluctant to disturb whomever is practising under the trees, and as he rounds a fallen tree he is surprised to find the player so close.
‘Ah, you are playing well,’ he says by way of introduction, and then he takes a sharp breath at the sight of the familiar face.
‘Yeia,’ the young man with the guitar says, briefly glancing up. ‘I am just picking out a few chords but nothing is coming.’ He is sitting cross-legged in amongst the pine needles, with his guitar over one knee. There is an assured air about him.
‘It is a good spot to spend some time in,’ Miltos says.
‘And you have come at the right time. I need to clear my mind, take a little break.’ His smile is all teeth, even and white, emphasised by his deep tan.
Miltos steps forward again and sits down in the space the man indicates for him.
‘I’m not mistaken, am I?’ Miltos asks. ‘You are Sakis, are you not?’ There is just the lightest quiver to his voice. It has been a long while since he met someone whom he holds in such awe.
‘Yes, I am Sakis.’ As well as the assurance there is also, and unexpectedly, humility in the way he speaks.
‘I saw you just last week at Lycabettus in Athens, and before that six months ago, in Thessaloniki.’ Miltos makes a point of trying not to stare, but it is a shock to see one of his musical heroes so close and in the flesh. Sakis seems different here under the trees; his chin is lightly stubbled and he looks more youthful than he does on stage.
‘I hope I entertained you.’ Sakis flashes the smile that has graced his album covers.
‘Yes, you did, thank you.’ It is strange to feel himself struggling to know what to say. After all, Sakis is a man like any other man. Then a host of memories of things he has read and heard about come flooding back to him. ‘So this is the village that you disappeared to after winning in the Ukraine!’ he blurts out, remembering the headlines around that time, when the papers tried to guess where it was that Sakis had run off to.
‘Yes, this is it, but I would be much obliged if you would keep that to yourself.’
‘Does the press really not know where you are?’ Miltos asks, but Sakis does not answer. ‘Or do they?’ he adds lightly. ‘Was it all just a way to get more publicity?’
Sakis continues to play as they talk, his fingers running swiftly up and down the frets: a gentle plucking just loud enough to hear. Miltos presses him. ‘Did you really need more publicity after winning for Greece? I mean, the whole of Europe was singing your song.’
Sakis strokes the neck of his guitar now and chuckles to himself, but it is not a happy sound, more a reflective noise. ‘No, I did not need more publicity. Let’s just say it was a bad piece of management. I lost my voice, came to stay in the hotel by the beach – you know the one?’
‘Stella’s? I’m staying there.’ Miltos’s eyebrows lift.
‘Yes, well, I was meant to stay there for a week, out of the limelight, to speed my recovery. During this time my manager was meant to sign me up to go to America but it all went horribly wrong, But as it turned out, it was all right in the end!’
‘America! But all your stuff is so steeped in rebetika, traditional Greek music!’
‘As I said, it turned out right.’ Sakis plays a harmonious chord as if in triumph.
‘Well, if you don’t mind me saying, the music you’ve been releasing since you won has been on a whole new level. Really, it’s amazing. Recently I have been driving a lot – that’s my job at the moment, to drive – and I listen to all sorts of music, you know, to pass the time, but I keep coming back to your stuff again and again.’
‘I am flattered.’
‘But to change your style of music after your win, that was brave?’ Miltos studies Sakis’s eyes. Perhaps that is what he himself needs, a little more courage, to change direction and find himself?
Sakis takes his time, looking out over the village and then further, across the panorama. He seems very comfortable with silence and Miltos listens to the cicadas. Their volume has not yet reached its summer peak, and their rhythmic call is intermingled with birdsong from high up in the trees. Somewhere in the village, towards Saros town, a donkey brays, the end of its call wobbling and diminishing to a rasping wheeze. So lost does he become in the sounds around him that when Sakis finally speaks it makes Miltos start.
‘Winning such a prestigious song contest was very flattering and I could easily have lost myself to the attention and the fame, the money, the prestige, all of that. Who wouldn’t?’ He breathes out noisily through his nose before continuing. ‘I am not sure I would ever have dared to change my musical direction at that time, had I not become ill. But it was not the illness that changed me. It was the influence of this village.’
He breathes deeply again, but this time it is a contented sound. ‘Being here provoked a change in me and in my music. But you must know the effect of the village? You don’t live here or I would have seen you around, but I take it you have family here?’
‘Oh no – no one. Like I said, I deliver and collect rental cars. I just came to exchange one that was faulty. It is all just by chance that I am here, really.’
‘Really.’ The way Sakis speaks makes Miltos look at him to see if it is a question or a statement.
‘Yes, really,’ he says, but he is not sure if it was necessary. Then, feeling slightly uncomfortable, he tries to put the focus back on Sakis. ‘So you blame the village, eh?’
‘It had a strange effect on me.’ He strums a couple of chords.
‘I know what you mean.’ After he has said this, Miltos wonders if he really means it or if he is just agreeing to smooth over a feeling of awkwardness that he alone seems to be feeling.
‘Do you?’ Sakis strums another chord and hums to it, which excites Miltos. It feels like a personal one-note concert from a man whom people normally only see from afar. ‘In what way has it affected you?’ The musician speaks almost idly, but it makes Miltos think.
‘Well, I have only been here for a day. I arrived last night, you see, but you are right.’ He reflects, ‘I have had so many conversations with so many people and the interesting thing about each of them is that they have left me thinking – you know, turning things over in my mind that I have not thought about for years.’
‘Such as?’ Sakis looks down at his fingers and plays a chord that makes a muscle under one of his eyes twitch as if it gives him physical pain.
Miltos looks up and out across the plain.
‘Oh, you know – old loves, the ones that made me want to be a better person … How all the girls I have known since then have not matched up to that first love. The ones that were fickle – or maybe that was me?’ He lets out a short sharp laugh and then looks down at the ground. As he picks at the layers of the pine
needle carpet, it changes from grey, where the sun has soaked out the colour, to sienna brown, and deeper still it is a burnt umber. Half a dozen tiny insects scurry away from the light as he lets the needles fall back into place.
‘I had a conversation about controlling women,’ he continues, ‘and that made me realise that most of my life I have sought to be the dominant one, and I wonder now if this has been why none of my relationships have worked.’ He pauses, and Sakis plays three notes very softly. ‘I have talked about, or at least thought about, the fact that I have not had children, and I had not realised before how much this really bothers me.’
Sakis plays the three notes again and then rests his fingering hand on his knee. ‘It did the same to me, this place. Made me ask what was important. That was why my music changed. It was not a brave move. My integrity was challenged, and it made me feel like I was dying. I had to find out who I really was.’
He plays the three notes again, and adds on a chord, then another. ‘What do you think? I think I may have the beginning of something.’
The change in subject momentarily confuses Miltos until he realises Sakis is talking about his notes and chords. He is about to answer when Sakis changes tack again. ‘It sounds to me like you are thinking about settling down, maybe?’
Miltos’s mouth opens and hangs there until Sakis looks at him, and he quickly shuts it.
‘I have met someone,’ Sakis says bluntly. ‘English, but she has a business here with Stella – not the hotel, or the eatery.’ Sakis smiles as if he is about to reveal a secret, and Miltos wonders if he will get to meet this Stella before he leaves. She seems to be the centre of everything.