by Nadia Marks
‘I have a bad feeling about your precious boy,’ his father would tell his wife anxiously. ‘One of these days a father or a brother will show your son what he thinks of him.’
‘They egg him on, those females,’ she would jump to his defence. ‘Don’t you see how they provoke him? What’s the boy to do? He’s a hot-blooded male.’
‘You won’t be saying that if he gets one of them in trouble and one day ends up lying in a pool of his own hot blood,’ he’d hit back, despairing of his son’s misdeeds.
Angeliki was easily the prettiest girl among all of Savvas’s conquests but she was also headstrong and difficult; the only girl in her family, adored by her brothers, she was used to having her own way. She had also decided that she wouldn’t give in to Savvas’s sexual advances, even if she wanted to, until she had him all to herself. She would be nobody’s fool. He was going to marry her or else . . . but Savvas was as stubborn as she was and no one was going to tell him what to do. He was certain he would eventually have Angeliki and as many other girls as he wanted to.
He heard the flick of the knife opening before he saw the blade flash in the moonlight. He had taken a shortcut through an apple orchard and was merrily making his way home after a secret meeting with a new girl. The knife missed his heart by inches. Angeliki’s three brothers had followed the couple to their lovers’ hideout and ambushed him on his way home. Nobody was going to make a fool of their sister and dishonour their family name. He hadn’t stood a chance – he managed to drag himself to the front door of his house, where he collapsed bleeding into his mother’s arms. No one needed to tell Savvas’s father what had happened, he knew in an instant.
‘You see, woman,’ he shouted at his wife, ‘you see? I told you this was going to end badly! You can’t treat people’s daughters like this and get away with it. It was only a matter of time.’
‘Stop your shouting,’ she wailed, ‘our boy is dying! Do something.’
But Savvas was lucky. He didn’t die. For three weeks he lay in bed while his mother and the doctor saw to his recovery, and then one night under the protective veil of darkness he left the village. He left like a thief, on horseback, with his cousin and uncle, his mother’s brother, who took him to their village on the coast, where he stayed, not daring to return home again. He kept in touch with his family through letters to Andreas, who was the only member of the family who could read, while his mother cried and sobbed at what she called the loss of another son. His father was relieved to see him go.
‘He has disgraced our family,’ he would tell his wife whenever he saw her weeping. ‘Stop your crying, woman, you should thank God and all the saints that they didn’t finish him off and pray that the village won’t blame us for that boy’s wrongdoings.’
‘He didn’t commit a crime,’ his wife would wail. ‘He didn’t kill anyone, but they tried to kill him . . . and for what?’
‘Admit it, woman, it was coming to him, that’s all I’ll say and you know it’s the truth. I’m just grateful that we have one son with morals. Our Andreas is a good boy.’
In the years that followed, a question would often flash through the father’s mind – could it be that the decline of their grocer’s shop had something to do with Savvas’s legacy? Perhaps, he thought, the village didn’t forgive and forget so easily.
However, as Maroula told Andreas when he was trying to convince her that they should follow his brother to the city, Savvas was lucky and luck seemed to follow him wherever he went. Some months after his departure, he had found a job with a man called Christos, to whom his uncle introduced him. Christos owned a bakery just outside the city of Paphos, a good forty miles away from their village. With the job, Savvas also found board and lodging with Mr Christos, who, as luck would have it, not only had a beautiful wife but also three still more beautiful daughters.
‘Now, my boy,’ his uncle told him on their last night together before he left them to move in with his employer, ‘I know this family. You will be surrounded by what has previously nearly been your downfall and my advice to you is you must resist.’
Savvas was sitting at the kitchen table with his uncle and cousin and their glasses of wine while his aunt and his two female cousins bustled about producing little dishes of mezze for them. This ritual usually took place when the men decided to have a night of drinking and discussion, which of course had to be accompanied by food. They were steadily downing one bottle of village red wine after another and even when the food finally stopped and the women went to bed, they would continue talking and drinking into the late hours of the night.
‘I know you’re a hot-blooded male, my boy, you are my nephew after all,’ his uncle said, flashing a knowing grin, ‘and passion runs in all the men in our family.’ He reached for the bottle to refill their glasses for a toast. ‘But you have to govern your desires, or you could be in danger again. This is a good job for you, do the right thing and you’ll be fine.’ And at that they all raised their glasses to Savvas’s future.
‘I’ll do my best, Uncle,’ he replied and meant it.
Despite his good intentions, Savvas, faced with four women and a maid all under one roof, found it almost more than he could manage to avoid temptation. However, in moments of weakness his uncle’s words would visit him and he would refrain from acting on his impulses.
‘They are a good family and they treat me well,’ he wrote to his brother Andreas a few weeks after he arrived in Paphos. ‘I like Mr Christos. He’s a good man, but the best thing about living with this family is the women! You should see them, brother, they are magnificent creatures and so well bred, too. There are three pretty sisters and the maid isn’t bad either, and . . .’ Savvas continued enthusing, ‘there is the mother, too. You should see her . . . but yes, I know, I know, don’t get upset . . . I know I must behave myself or I’ll come unstuck again.’
But, as much as he wanted to, it wasn’t easy to break the habits of a lifetime. Savvas therefore came to a serious decision. For the first time in his life he decided that he would choose one girl as the focus for his romantic attentions and put the others out of mind, even if they were not out of sight. He took his time in making his choice between the sisters and finally he settled on eighteen-year-old Penelope, the middle one. She, he concluded, was the fairest of all three and with the nicest disposition. She was slender and tall, with hair as black as a raven’s, while her skin was as white as the dough he kneaded for bread every day. Her eyes, the colour of mountain honey, were framed by thick, black, arched eyebrows and her easy smile held sensual promise. He was subtle with his attentions, making them known to her whenever possible but taking care that no one else was aware. The girl didn’t take long to succumb to his charms; she thought he was the most handsome young man she ever saw. Rarely, if ever, did any of the girls come in close contact with such a fine-looking young man.
The baker’s house was a two-storey imposing building made of limestone. On the ground floor a veranda ran along its entire facade and wrapped itself around both sides of the house. All doors, reaching from floor to ceiling in every room, opened onto the terrace, while on the upper floor the four bedrooms led out onto balconies overhanging the garden with a view of the sea. The garden itself, like the veranda, occupied only the front and two sides of the house as the back was reserved for the bakery. This included a big oven house, a storeroom, a work room, plus Savvas’s sleeping quarters. Savvas had never seen such luxury. He had grown up in a house made of mud bricks, with a hole in the ground in the backyard as a latrine, and a tin bath in the kitchen for bathing once a week.
This was the house of a man with money and status, and one day, he vowed, he would have all this and more for himself.
Although he was expected to spend his free time in his room, Savvas did take his meals with the family and from time to time, with the approval of their father, the girls would insist that he spent some evenings with them. Mr Christos was a kindly man and he gradually started to regard the hard-workin
g boy as part of the family. Those evenings spent in the house, sometimes playing cards or simply sitting and talking, gave Savvas the opportunity to secretly convey his affections to Penelope – a furtive glance here, an accidental touch on the arm or leg under the card table there, were enough for the girl’s heart to be set alight. It wasn’t long before she started to initiate contact with him.
‘If you really love me you should speak to my father,’ Penelope cooed in his ear one hot summer’s night after secretly stealing into Savvas’s room.
‘If your father would have me as a son-in-law, I’ll ask him tomorrow,’ he replied, pulling her close and kissing her full on the mouth.
What more could he want, he asked himself? He would have a pretty wife, a big dowry and a job for life!
‘If my daughter agrees and wants you too, I would be a happy man to welcome you into our family, my boy,’ Christos told Savvas when the young man asked to see him in private the next day after work. The baker had always been regretful that his wife had failed to produce a son for him – if he had had a boy he would have been able to teach him his trade and pass on the business, in which he knew his daughters had no interest. His biggest concern of late was what he would do if Savvas ever left him. The boy was proving to be an asset: he was a natural baker and had a good head for business. Christos’s bakery had enjoyed the monopoly in Paphos for many years and his wish had been to expand to another city; perhaps now with Savvas on board this could be a possibility. The boy was turning out to be the son he had always wished for.
The news of the engagement was received with great jubilation by all the family and friends and the wedding plans were already on their way for a spring wedding. May as always was considered the best month for a marriage, when the earth was exploding with the scents and colours of wild flowers, and the heady aroma of roses followed you from every garden.
It was about six weeks before the big day and the preparations were well on their way when Penelope’s mother, Martha, unexpectedly walked into the bakery looking for her husband. Savvas had been up since dawn firing up the clay furnace with wood and had been hard at work for hours making the loaves which now lay on the wooden slab in rows ready for baking. He had just finished placing a batch of loaves in the oven when his fiancée’s mother came in.
‘Kalimera, Savvas,’ she greeted him cheerfully. ‘Have you seen Christos?’ she asked, glancing around the empty room. ‘I can’t find him anywhere, I thought he might be going into town.’
‘He’s gone already . . .’ Savvas replied, perplexed as to why his future mother-in-law didn’t know this since he was sure he had seen Christos wave goodbye to his wife that very morning as he got into his carriage.
‘Really?’ she said absently, moving closer to him. ‘I must have been in the kitchen and missed him,’ she lied. ‘I wanted to ask him to pick up some things from the market for me,’ she continued, reaching out to touch the young man’s bare forearm. Her hand on his naked flesh lingered there a little too long for comfort and sent familiar shock waves through his body; she was standing so close that he could feel the heat emanating from her, and the smell of rose water which she used on her skin and hair clouded his senses.
‘Are you going into town sometime soon, Savvas?’ she asked softly as he tried to move a little further away from her. ‘If so, can I come with you?’
She edged closer, her breast almost touching his arm now.
‘I’ll . . . I’ll . . . let you know,’ he stammered and his throat felt as dry as a sand thistle.
‘Good!’ she replied and then, turning her back, she walked out of the oven room, tantalizingly swaying her ample behind, leaving him standing drenched in sweat. His employer’s wife had been an object of desire ever since he arrived in that house, but he had tried to turn a blind eye to her charms, until now.
In the days that followed, Savvas couldn’t get the woman out of his mind. She stirred up feelings he’d been trying hard to suppress and which were now rising to the surface to taunt him again. He had done well over the last year or so, he had managed to fight back his old weaknesses and bury his bad habits. He had made up his mind he was going to marry Penelope and nothing was going to stop him . . . but the fire that his future wife’s mother had ignited in his loins was proving hard to ignore. He tried to avoid being alone with her but she, on the other hand, always seemed to pursue him. When she stood close to him the sap would rise, and in spite of himself, so did his lust towards her.
Whenever she happened to be alone in the house she would make an excuse to visit him while he worked. It was on one such day that she followed him into the storeroom where he had gone to pick up a sack of flour; she slipped quietly into the twilight of the room and closed the door behind her. He had tried so hard to resist her but, despite himself, that day he could not.
A solitary porthole high up on the wall near the ceiling let in a beam of light that barely illuminated them, and in the musty darkness of the room he could see her eyes glistening as she moved closer and reached for his hand. In a swift movement of his arm, he pulled her tight against him searching for her lips, his hands moving over her monumental buttocks, which he had been fantasizing about cupping ever since he set eyes on them. No words were exchanged; she moaned with pleasure as he kissed her neck and ran his hands over her body. Then as quietly as she had glided in she pulled away from him, turned around and walked out, leaving him rooted to the spot and wanting more.
Despite her age, Savvas found Martha sumptuous; she was as ripe as the plums from the orchards in the mountains whose juice ran down your face when you bit into them. The old saying he’d heard so often in the village coffee shop when he was a boy suddenly came to his lips – ‘It’s the older hen that has the juice’ – and for the first time it made sense to him. He had no idea what they were referring to then, but now he understood; how right those men had been, he nodded in agreement to himself, and wondered if Martha was possibly more exciting and sensual than her youthful daughter. He had not desired an older woman before, his experience had always been with girls of his own age who had to be coaxed into his lovemaking. So how could he resist a woman like Martha who was now not only provoking him, but evidently eager to taste the illicit fruits of desire.
Savvas had never been one to restrain his lust even if of late he had tried his hardest. This, however, was too much to forgo. Besides, Martha knew well enough that he was to marry her daughter and she was apparently not concerned, so why should he be? This was a gift from heaven, he kept telling himself, he was being rewarded for being so good for so long. It was an offering from Aphrodite, the goddess of love herself, who just like Martha was a daughter of Paphos.
And so once again Savvas yielded to his natural inclinations and decided to sample the delights that Aphrodite had sent his way in the form of his mother-in-law, who was apparently proving to be a true descendant of the goddess of love. ‘What harm could it do?’ he asked himself. ‘To resist would cause more pain than to accept.’ So eventually Savvas reached the conclusion that it bore no harm to bed the mother of his future wife and, moreover, that it was his duty to spread his love and carnal pleasure to a woman who was so obviously in need of it.
During the following weeks that led up to the wedding, whenever they had the opportunity, Savvas and Martha swam in a sea of sexual bliss.
Sometimes, if they were sure they were alone with no one around, they would sneak into his room, and there in the dark, on his bed, they’d make hurried love without even bothering to undress. It was always rushed, fervent and sinful, and feverishly exciting. Never had Savvas been so aroused or relished a more willing and complaisant sexual partner. The girls in the village had been economical with their favours and even the ones who yielded to his passionate pleas and allowed him to go further always proved to be awkward and inadequate in comparison to Martha. She, as it turned out, was what he had been looking for all along during those years of chasing girls.
The flurry of work for the wed
ding preparations seemed to offer ample opportunities for Martha to be alone in the house. Christos was always out and about; now the maid and the girls were also busy running errands most days. Trips to the dressmaker for fittings, or visits to the zaharoplastio – the finest confectionery in town – for the sugared almonds and the loukoumia which Penelope was so particular about, without which no elegant wedding could be complete.
‘I will make the loukoumia,’ Christos had announced to his daughter, believing that as the top baker in Paphos it was for him to make these traditional sweet pastries stuffed with pistachios and almonds for his daughter’s wedding.
‘You are a master baker, Papa, everyone knows that,’ Penelope had said, trying to appease her father. ‘No one bakes bread as delicious as yours. But you are not a zaharoplastio and I think the job for my loukoumia should go to the best.’ The father of course relented – how could he refuse her – and the girls continued to dash around town making their orders and purchases, leaving the coast clear for Martha to visit Savvas at her ease.
Although Savvas was now spending all his spare time with the family, he was still sleeping in his room next to the bakery, which he would soon be giving up in order to move into the house with his bride.
‘What are we going to do when we no longer have this room?’ he heard himself murmur wistfully into Martha’s ear one day as she lay beneath him on his bed, her skirt raised, her legs wrapped around him. He waited for her reply but none came; assuming she hadn’t heard, he repeated the question. Still she didn’t speak, and when after a long pause she finally replied, to his dismay her answer was not at all what he had anticipated.
‘We will do absolutely nothing!’ she said sharply, not looking at him while she sat at the edge of the bed adjusting her clothes. Her voice had a steely edge to it and her reply came as an unwelcome surprise as well as carrying a sting to his heart. The words he had expected to hear from her were something along the lines of ‘nothing can stop us’ or ‘nothing can come between us’. ‘Do nothing’ had never crossed his mind.