A Stranger in the Village

by Sara Alexi

  Nicolaos smiles at this. ‘Ha! It did, didn’t it?’

  ‘Ach!’ The grunt comes from the man at the next table. ‘You may well have done Nicolaos here a service by taking his mind off his toothache for half an hour with your tales, but you have done me no favours. Look at that, half an hour late. The wife will never let me hear the end of it.’ And the old man staggers to his feet, grabs his crook from the back of his chair and hastens from the kafenio.

  Miltos also leaves a short time later, and he wanders up to the garage to see Aleko, on the pretence of a chat; the real reason, though, is to keep himself in Aleko’s mind, to make his car a priority.

  The mechanic assures him he’ll be done tomorrow. This news gives Miltos a feeling of relief, although a part of him would have liked to stay for the baptism and the wedding, partly to see how the situation resolves itself but also because he quite likes Petta, and Ellie and Loukas too. But somehow liking these people unsettles him. He must move on.

  Chapter 20

  Down the road from the garage, across from the kafenio on the corner, a young girl is coming out of the corner shop with a bag of groceries. Miltos narrows his eyes, admiring her youthful posture, and recognises that it is Ellie, the English girl. She looks so young to be living here, in what is to her a foreign country, but then how much older was he when he moved abroad? About the same age, probably. Somehow the young seem so much more assured these days, with so much confidence. They seem to travel without a second thought, without any sense that they are doing something out of the ordinary. But then again, is he not the same now, always on the move? At eight months, this current job is something of a personal record.

  He rubs his forehead. Is it realistic to think he can keep wandering from place to place and job to job until the day he dies? Is it not inevitable that one day he will feel tired, maybe even weak, and then what? He hand slithers down his face and he rubs his chin, feeling the stubble. He must buy some razors.

  ‘Hello.’ Ellie shades her eyes with her hand and stops on the steps of the corner shop, waiting for him to catch up. ‘How is your day?’ she asks. Her manner is easy and light. As he has no fixed destination he sees no reason not to go in the same direction as her. She turns at the bakery and, without thinking, so does he.

  ‘I see you know this way back to the hotel.’ It is not a question. Perhaps it is best not to say that he does not – she might think he is stalking her! – so he smiles and says casually, ‘Thought I would go and have a quick shave.’ It is such a relief to be with someone so full of life who seems to accept his company without judgement. His limbs move more easily, and he feels like smiling for no reason.

  ‘That is my house, halfway to the hotel, there in the middle of the orange grove.’ She sounds proud. ‘Can you imagine anything more perfect?’

  ‘Perfect,’ he replies. Now, someone like Ellie, at her age, is too young for him, he knows that. And obviously, she would see him as much too old for her. It is easy to rule out the really youthful. But what sort of age group would suit him these days? His last brief relationship was in Bali, and she had been in her thirties. But how quickly conversation with her had petered out! She was excited about apps and social media, and he talked of the history of the island and places he had seen and had yet to see. She would enthuse, but only about the beaches and bars where they might pose and try exotic drinks. What was the point of travelling so far for a tan and a drink?

  She will be thirty-five or thirty-six now. Does that mean he has to look for someone older than that?

  Coiffured hair and a blue dress flash though his mind. He cannot deny the attraction he felt for either of the women in the village, but how would they see him? After all, he has nothing to offer. No farmland, no house, no business.

  Ellie leads the way through the narrow streets of the village. The whitewash of the low cottages here is a stark contrast to the old mottled orange roof tiles, which sit low to the ground, almost hiding the small windows that are hunched under the eaves. Around cottage doorways, geraniums burst from brightly painted olive oil tins. Cats bask in corners, in every colour combination possible. Everything reminds him of places his mama used to tell him about, the places in which she grew up. He thought all such villages had long since disappeared.

  Ellie turns down a narrow footpath between two old cottages where the paving stones are uneven. Up ahead there are no stones – just bare earth, trampled smooth by many feet. Ellie lifts heavy fruit on the branches so their thorns do not snag her hair as she winds her way around the trees. In amongst the shadows of the foliage ahead, there is a shock of white. It must be her cottage.

  ‘It used to be a farmer’s storeroom, and now it’s my favourite place on earth.’

  She speaks with such energy. Miltos squints at the building as they approach. The plasterwork has peeled off here and there but someone has painted the mud brick underneath it the same limewash-white as the rendered surface. The roof tiles are the old kind, like half-cylinders, one layer laid face up and a second laid face down to lock into the first. Age has distorted their colour; some are as dark as wet earth, whilst others are as orange as the fruit, and most are a combination of shades, mottled and covered in lichen. Here and there are patches of new tiles that look oddly out of place, and at one end, near the apex, plastic sheeting has been tucked under the ridge tiles – obviously a problem area. To Miltos it still looks like a storage barn. A chimney has been added at one side but its distorted and oddly shaped surface suggests that, although it appears to be an afterthought and recently built, old materials have been used. It is altogether a bit of a cobbled-together affair.

  The only distinctly new addition to the place is the windows. The wood frames have sharp edges and they are newly, but thinly, painted. At one time it would not have bothered him to have lived in such a place. He would have seen the romance in it, but these days he does enjoy his comforts.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ he says, reluctant to quell her enthusiasm.

  ‘It’s perfect. In an hour or two, Loukas will go to work. I have only a short shift this afternoon so when I’m finished on reception I will go and sunbathe down on the beach near him.’

  She makes an absolutely contented sound, somewhere between a sigh and a hum. ‘I love the summer, but winter was good too. The bar closed early and then we would watch the sunset together. Have you seen it?’ She turns to look at him but an answer would spoil her flow so he stays silent.

  ‘The darkness spreading over the water,’ she begins, as if reciting a poem, ‘the blue turning purple and then black.’ Then her tone becomes livelier. ‘It gets so dark we have to feel our way home through the orange trees some nights.’ This amuses her and she gives a short, merry laugh. ‘Then we can hear the night animals waking and scratching about, before we snuggle into bed together.’

  She pauses as if she is remembering this more clearly; a slight colour comes to her cheeks but it is almost as if she has forgotten he is there.

  In a moment she is back in the present and she reassures him. ‘But summer last year was good too. So I expect this year will be pretty much the same. The guests don’t seem to want to sleep. They often party through the night and Loukas can still be there at dawn. I love that too, but I do need to get up in the morning for work so I like this time of year best so far.’

  As they draw nearer to her home she puts a finger to her lips. ‘Shh.’ Her eyes shine. ‘Loukas is asleep.’

  Her excitement at this thought is evident and Miltos feels a wave of jealousy for what she is feeling, the promises of her future. It jolts him into a decision. He will quit this hire car delivery work, which is an old man’s job. He will get a job that will make him feel young again and he will find himself his own true love. Someone young and energetic, smooth-skinned and full of fun. Maybe he could return to Dahab on the Red Sea. When he worked there as a diving instructor, did he not have the pick of every girl that came? Yes, that is what he will do.

  ‘See you,’ Ellie says,
and she enters her house, closing the door quietly behind her.

  He is now alone in the orchard. Alone with the sounds of a couple of thousand cicadas and a magpie that is somewhere in the tangle of branches, invisible. He peers through the foliage in every direction until he spots glimpses of blue and takes the path in that direction. His feet gain a little momentum at the sight of the water, and he hurries until he is out in the open and he can look to his left and see the sea all the way to the horizon. It is as deep a blue as he has ever seen it. A slight breeze ruffles its surface and each peak reflects the sun, making him narrow his eyes and put his hand to his forehead to lessen the glare.

  From the sea’s edge it is a short distance to the hotel, which is surprisingly well camouflaged from this direction by a screen of bamboo. He is tempted to take off his shoes, feel the sand between his toes, but as the distance to the hotel is not far he does not bother. When he gets back to his room he will call the centre in Dahab, if he still has the number with him. If not, it will have to wait until he gets back to Athens. But at least the car will be fixed tomorrow, and he can be in the capital the day after that, or maybe even the same evening.

  Chapter 21

  There is a dryness to the heat that wasn’t there in Greece, and a heaviness, as if there is never any relief. The new airport at Sharm el-Sheikh is more contemporary and soulless than he had anticipated. Of course, he expected the country to have modernised to a degree since he was last here, but even so, the shining, glitzy shops and vast arches supported by a network of steel beams seem oddly inappropriate here in the middle of the desert.

  He wonders if the shelters on the beach, with their roofs of palm leaves and handwoven rag rugs on the floor, where people would gather to chat and smoke out of the sun, have been replaced with similarly modern equivalents. He checks his breast pocket for his passport and his PADI licence and shifts his small bag more firmly on his shoulders. Once outside, he unzips the lower portions of his lightweight waterproof cotton trousers and stuffs them into his bag. The weight and bulk of his walking shoes meant he had to wear them despite the heat, and he reminds himself again to buy sandals as soon as he is in Dahab, or sooner, if there is an opportunity.

  Behind him, a group of six or more girls in shorts lower their sunglasses from the tops of their heads and gasp at the heat, and then start talking all at once. An airport attendant in a long white jelabiya ushers them all off the tarmac.

  Inside, there is a false coolness, and the overworked air-conditioning units hum in the background. As he moves towards passport control the girls are close enough for him to discern that they are British. In fact, if his ears do not deceive him they are Londoners. All except one, who is American. She stands out because she is taller, too, with long, straight dark hair and even white teeth, and a generally more polished look.

  As he begins to tune in to their excitement he hears them say the name Dahab more than once, so he turns to smile at them. He could be teaching them the basics of diving tomorrow. They smile in return, but none of them makes real eye contact with him or allows the exchange to linger, and the icy finger of rejection touches his heart. But then he chastises himself and reminds himself he is not looking for a superficial fling any more. A more in-depth relationship will take time.

  Outside, he conducts a harsh negotiation with a taxi driver over a ride into town. Once clear of the airport’s sprawl, they travel across miles of flat, barren ground on the first leg of his onward journey, arriving at last at a town that springs from the desert.

  The taxi driver drops Miltos off in a square that is edged with small lifeless shops. He stretches and surveys his surroundings. The unadorned square houses and minaretted mosques, along with hotel complexes, dominating the skyline on the edge of town seem at odds with the arid land; more than that, it seems odd that civilisation has prospered here at all. Not that it has prospered a great deal – many of the shops are boarded up. In fact, there is just him and a lone chicken, which struts around, scratching in the patch of dust designated as the bus station. As he hauls his luggage over to the waiting bus, he begins to wonder how many tourists there will be in Dahab. Still, if it’s no longer a destination, it won’t be the first time he has been stuck somewhere with no money and no work, and it does not worry him greatly. He always manages somehow. But the thought tires him a little.

  The driver turns up eventually and climbs on board, the engine judders into life and the gears grind.

  The bus climbs through barren hills, rocks and dust, and Miltos rests his head back and closes his eyes. When he opens them again they are no longer in the mountains, and the desert stretches away into the distance on either side of the bus, flat and featureless. Ugly angular concrete buildings begin to appear on both sides of the road.

  Surely this cannot be Dahab! When he was here last the adobe buildings were sparse and small, and the hostels on the beach were the only sizeable complexes: eight or ten rooms clustered together, each made of sun-baked mud bricks. It was all so basic, the windows just openings without glass, the beds nothing more than raised platforms with thin mattresses on top. Dahab was a small oasis, with the word ‘small’ more apt than the word ‘oasis’. Of course, even back then, half a dozen shops had sprung up to cater for the tourist trade, and it was already questionable whether the ‘genuine’ Bedouin clothes and jewellery really were genuine, but the place still felt rural and remote and uncivilised, and that was what people loved about it. That was what he loved about it.

  The bus driver assures him that it is Dahab and he steps down onto the dusty roadside.

  Where before there was nothing but wooden goat pens, there is now a hotel three storeys high, and he is only on the outskirts. Further along there is another hotel, not as tall but just as shiny and new. After this, the buildings are lower, one or two storeys, and made of mud brick, just as he remembers them, but now the roads are full of shops that ooze their garish memorabilia, clothes and bric-a-brac out onto the dusty road.

  To his relief the very centre of the village – or should he call it a town, now, he wonders – is much as he remembers. The buildings are the same, although some extensions appear to have been built between the originals. These are also shops, but somehow they look aged and as if they belong. They too sell baggy hippy trousers, mountains of beads, inexplicable things carved from dark wood, and wind chimes that hang silent in the still air.

  With a hiss of air brakes and the throbbing purr of a well-maintained engine, a sleek new coach turns into the road ahead and stops. The doors glide open and air-conditioned coolness rushes out to mingle with the heat. The smell of sun cream dominates as a stream of young people climb off. The coach has come from the airport and it explains why there was no one on the local bus. The gaggle of youths climbing out is a very good sign.

  The tall American with the long straight hair whom he saw in the airport is there, along with the other girls. The American raises her eyebrows when she sees him again. The girls are followed by a group of young men in colourful vests that display hairless chests: their eyes are concealed with designer sunglasses and cords run from their ears to music players too small to make bulges in their pockets. The girls give them a good deal of coy attention; earphones are removed and Miltos can hear names being exchanged and lengths of holidays being compared. That was the sort of conversation he had last time he was here. Back then, the girls had backcombed hair and wore over-sized sunglasses, and they had been impressed by the fact that he had no return ticket.

  ‘You are a nomad. Like the Bedouins,’ Crystal from Arizona had said. She had kissed him on the beach later that night, and they had been a couple until she left two weeks later, promising to write. Then there was Agnetha from Denmark – or was it Marianna from Finland?

  Suitcases are taken from the compartment under the bus and the conversations become more animated.

  ‘I’m going to learn how to scuba-dive while I’m here,’ one voice says.

  ‘They say the Red Sea is th
e most beautiful of them all,’ someone replies.

  ‘It’s a diver’s Mecca.’ One of the boys tries to sound knowledgeable.

  Miltos leaves their chatter behind him, and walks off up the dusty road.

  Chapter 22

  Where once the hostels were spaced out along the beach they are now crammed together, with newer hotels in what used to be spaces between the original buildings. It is in this direction that the group begin to drag their suitcases, and Miltos walks a few steps away from them with his small bag slung easily over his shoulder.

  Most of the new hotels have grand entrances of tall mud-brick columns either side of the dirt roads that lead into them. Some are gated, some are open, and they all have signs hanging across these entrances, ranch style, displaying names that seem to Miltos to be no more than an arrangement of vowels with the odd consonant, spaces randomly breaking these groups of letters into words. Each complex looks as if it is built to fit the Western idea of an oasis in the desert, with palms dotted between buildings that have been smoothed over with a layer of mud. To his relief he finds the old compound easily, and not much seems to have changed. The place looks tired, with cracks in the adobe and a pile of very large and rather dirty cooking cauldrons piled up next to a tap behind the gate, beside which are not one but two men in dirty grey jelabiyas, lying full length on adobe benches against the wall, fast asleep.

  The palm trees in the enclosure have dropped their dates and they lie like measle spots on the light-coloured compacted earth courtyard. Some have been trodden into the sand and their edges have dried and curled. The leaves of the palms cast hard-edged shadows, but as Miltos steps into these darkened areas he finds they provide no relief from the intense heat.

  ‘Hello?’ he calls. Neither of the sleeping men responds, although one does turn on his side with a guttural objection.