***
Manos’s room was dark. Ksenia strode in and opened the shutters to let the sunlight in.
“Hey, wake up, sleepy head!” She pulled down the duvet to see Manos’s face. He stirred when she tousled his hair and opened one eye only, making grunting noises.
“Oh let me be! It’s early still!”
“No, it’s not! It’s ten! Come on, time for breakfast!”
“It’s not ten! You’re lying!” Manos sat up. He yawned, then scratched his head and stretched like a cat.
“Of course it’s ten! Zoe and I have been up since eight. It was a late night yesterday, so I let you lie in a while longer.”
Manos grinned. “Good girl! That’s what I call service.”
“Come now, off you go, you cheeky devil! Breakfast’s on the table.”
Manos got out of bed and stood barefoot on the carpet, grunting, as he looked around for his slippers. Ksenia walked to the open window where a pleasant breeze brought in sweet smells from her pots outside: carnations, roses, spearmint, marjoram, and rosemary. The trees were in bloom. Little birds rested on the branches singing gratefully for the coming of the spring. Under a lemon tree, Odysseus was lying on the ground chewing on a muddy bone he had just unearthed.
***
A tall man in his thirties sprinted effortlessly up the steps and rushed through the entrance of Pallada to find no one there. He was dressed casually in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. His hair was dark and short. His brown eyes scanned the reception hall, alight with enthusiasm. With a lithe movement from his strong shoulders, he dropped on the floor the heavy backpack he’d been carrying. He took a few steps forward and cried out, “Hello! Is anybody here?”
Daphne was in the laundry room downstairs when she heard him. She hurried to reception and when she got there, she still had a hand on her unkempt hair, trying to pull an unruly curl back from her face. She looked up and when she saw the man, she froze for a few seconds. She tucked the unruly strand of hair behind her ear and issued a self-conscious smile, as she wished him good morning.
The man’s eyes lit up. He’d expected to see Mrs. Sofia instead, for this was not the first time he was visiting. He greeted Daphne with a pleasant smile and lifted the backpack off the floor again. Daphne had already taken her place behind the reception desk, and he followed her there. He placed his hands on the counter, looking expectant and mildly amused.
“How can I help you?” Daphne’s gentle voice sounded an octave higher than it normally did.
The man gave an easy smile. “You must be new!”
“I’m guessing you’ve been here before, sir?”
He chuckled. “Oh yes! Quite a few times.”
“Well, in that case, welcome back! Is it a single room you’re after, sir?”
“Not quite . . .”
“Are you traveling with others?” Daphne darted her eyes to the entrance, scanning the street for any companions of his.
“No, it’s just me!” The man grinned like a Cheshire cat. He knew he was being naughty, confusing the girl like that; yet, he didn’t want this exchange to finish just yet. He locked eyes with Daphne without offering further explanations, magnetized by the flush on her cheeks and her brilliant green eyes.
Daphne tilted her head. “Can I ask, what kind of a room did we offer you last time?”
“Well, last time, it was Mrs. Sofia who . . . checked me in.” He gave a cheeky smirk. “Is it possible to see her please?”
“Certainly! I’ll go get her for you!” Daphne felt dumbfounded, but also quite relieved to finally have a sensible request from this very odd customer. He moved toward her as she passed by him, and she turned to face him, once again flustered by his strange behavior. As they stood facing each other then, he looked even taller and Daphne looked more delicate and more microscopic than ever before.
“I’m sorry, miss, how rude of me! Please let me introduce myself. I’m Aris, Mrs. Sofia’s son.” He offered his hand.
Daphne’s eyes turned huge, then she took his hand to shake. “Oh, how silly of me; I should have guessed!”
Aris chuckled. “How could you possibly have guessed?”
“Well, your mother has described you many times, and also, I’ve seen old photos of you on her wall among her icons. I should have recognized you.”
“Oh yes, of course! But don’t beat yourself too much! These photos are very old. My face is covered in pimples and I clutch schoolbags in most of them!” he said and they both laughed.
“You work on the ships, am I correct? It must be exciting, traveling the world like that.”
“It has its good sides, I guess. One has to take the rough with the smooth. It can get pretty tedious after a while. It’s not all fun and games as one might think!” He smiled pleasantly. “And I can tell you that the sea has its bad moods too. I shudder to think of a fragile-looking creature like you traveling at sea on a bad day. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“I’ll bear it in mind . . .” Daphne gave a little giggle. “Well, I’d better get your mother. I’ll only be a moment . . .” She made to leave.
“Wait! You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“It’s Daphne,” she replied with a warm smile and disappeared down the corridor. Seconds later, Mrs. Sofia came out of a room on the far end, rushing down the hallway on her aged legs like a schoolgirl on a field trip. When she appeared before Aris, he dropped his backpack and opened his arms wide. She rushed to him then, beside herself with joy, nestling in his embrace like a chick basking in the warmth of the mother hen.
“Oh my son, my pride and joy! Levendi mou, every time I see you, you seem taller than before! Oh, I shall go mad with the joy of it! How sudden! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I could have made something nice for lunch . . . We spoke on the phone only recently. You never said anything, you naughty boy! Oh you must be tired! How was your journey here? Did you have good weather at sea?”
Aris kept laughing and holding her tight, planting kisses on her cheeks, and she kissed him all over his face, caressing his hair while bombarding him with questions. Daphne stood nearby, happy for both of them but mostly for Mrs. Sofia. She hadn’t seen her son in two months.
At the guesthouse, Daphne often witnessed reunions among loved ones after long periods of separation. Her favorites were by far those between mothers and children. Every time she witnessed such a scene, she couldn’t help remembering her own mother. As she stood watching children of any age cradled in their mother’s arms, somehow it made her happy too; it numbed for a while her longing for her own.
“Come on, my son, let’s go and get you settled. You must be tired and in need of a good shower, but I’ll make you a nice coffee first. I baked some lovely cookies,” said Mrs. Sofia. Aris lifted his backpack, gave Daphne a happy smile, and made to go. His mother had already started to walk away.
“Don’t worry about the rooms, Mrs. Sofia! I’ll finish up on my own today,” called out Daphne as mother and son made their way down the corridor. Mrs. Sofia shouted out her thanks in response. Daphne expected Mrs. Sofia would want to give her son a cooked meal for lunch, and she’d also have to make up the foldable bed that she stored in her room for him.
An hour later, Mrs. Sofia had cooked a meal, helped her son settle in, and was now making the table. When Aris came out of the shower she sent him to reception to invite Daphne to eat with them. He was pleased to hear that and rushed there to fetch her. Daphne was unsure at first if she should join them, thinking mother and son should be able to share their news in privacy on his first day.
Every day at this hour, Daphne would have a quick lunch with Mrs. Sofia in her room. Most often it was sandwiches that Phevos also benefited from at the fruit store. But sometimes, Mrs. Sofia would invite them both to have a cooked evening meal that she prepared in her tiny kitchenette. Daphne knew what an excellent cook she was and when Aris announced that today’s lunch was pasta in tomato sauce, her stomach grumbled on cue. They both laughed with t
he apt, embarrassing sound and when Aris beckoned Daphne to follow, she did so gladly.
***
It was around midday. Phevos stood at the shop front basking in the sunshine. He’d just enjoyed a plate of pasta that had come as a wonderful surprise instead of the usual sandwich. His sister had brought it to him steaming on the plate, topped with lashings of grated Parmesan. The tantalizing smell of the Corfiot spice mix in the sauce tortured his sense of smell for five whole minutes until all lingering customers left the shop allowing him to finally devour his meal.
Phevos heard a rough, whirring sound and when he turned to look he saw Manos and three other boys. They were cruising down the road on skateboards with Manos in the lead. He seemed skilful. It was the first time Phevos saw him do that, so he stood to watch. He hadn’t seen those boys before, and he hadn’t seen Manos play in the street before either. The boys were halfway down the street, and if this was a race, it looked like Manos was going to win.
Phevos got excited for him and was about to cheer him on when an elderly lady approached. She needed help with weighing some greens, so he followed her inside the store. A couple of minutes later he was back outside, eager to watch Manos some more, but what he saw was not what he expected.
Manos was sitting on the ground on the other side of the street, his head hung low. He didn’t move, and just gazed at the skateboard on his lap. Phevos rushed over to him. He could tell something was wrong.
“Manos! What's the matter?” Phevos placed a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder. Manos looked up. His eyes were full of tears. The skateboard had a bad crack halfway across its middle, and a small piece was missing on one side. Manos shook his head, wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and tried to stand. Phevos helped him up.
“Tell me, Manos, what happened? Did you fall?”
“No, I didn’t . . .”
“Why is your skateboard broken then? And why are you crying?”
“He broke it . . .”
“Who? One of the boys that were here before?”
Manos nodded.
“Why?”
“Long story . . .” whispered Manos and started to walk away in the direction of his house.
“Manos, wait!”
“I’ll be okay, thanks,” replied Manos without turning around, still walking away.
“I’m here if you need to talk! I’m your friend. You know that, right?”
“Yes, I know. Thank you,” replied Manos, finally stopping to turn around and face Phevos. He managed a faint smile and turned to go again.
“Maybe we can fix it! Let me see it!”
“Some other time . . .” Manos strode to his garden gate, clutching the skateboard to his chest like a wounded friend, but in reality it was the wound inside his heart that he was nursing. Manos hid his pain well from the world. Perhaps that was his way to deal with it. To try to forget the cruelty in others that hurt him.
Manos opened the garden gate and rushed down the path, then through his front door. He walked along the hallway and was relieved when he heard his sister and Zoe chatting in the bedroom upstairs. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. He didn’t want to upset his sister again with his usual problems. He entered his room and hid his skateboard in a corner between the wall and the side of the closet. Fresh tears escaped from his eyes, but he wiped them away, then shuffled to the window, his shoulders hunched.
He had become better at this over time and was able to keep strong. From the window, he noticed Odysseus out in the backyard. He was lying on the warm soil on a clearing among the trees. His eyes were shut and his legs stretched out. Every now and then, he flicked his ears as if he was trying to ward off flies. He was such an amusing sight that Manos laughed, forgetting for a few moments the sorrow that weighed on his heart. His eyes darkened again at the thought that he had no other friends except for his dog.
None of the boys at school really cared to call him a friend. All they ever did was call him names. Children may be pure at heart, but they can also be very cruel with the weak. And their cruelty is what Manos had been suffering since his first day at school. The other children had initially asked insistent questions about his missing parents, imagining various scenarios about their vanishing that they felt obliged to relay to him over and over again. Later on, they started to tease and bully him, sensing his inability to stand up for himself.
These days in class, whenever the teacher would refer to parents, someone would point at Manos and say things like, ‘you don’t need to listen to this, it doesn’t refer to you’ or they’d whisper to each other stifling their giggles and pointing at him. They taunted him endlessly, especially around Christmas. ‘Santa won't bring you anything!’ they’d say. ‘He doesn’t care for orphans!’
Manos would listen and not contradict them even though he knew they were wrong. He knew for a fact that Agios Vassilis, as the Greeks call Santa Claus, remembered him every year. Every Christmas morning, Manos’s face would be the picture of joy to see all the parcels Santa had brought and also to find that the reindeer had once again enjoyed his humble offering of milk and grass in the garden. When he opened his presents, whatever they were, he was always happy in the knowledge that Agios Vassilis hadn’t forgotten him after all. It was some kind of confirmation to him. If the children were wrong about Santa forgetting him, then they had to be wrong about everything else. This meant he was no different to anyone else, and that he deserved to be happy, to have friends, just like his sister always said.
When he was younger, the children at school had often reduced him to tears but now Manos knew better than cry in front of them and show weakness. Over time, he’d gained strength that allowed him to act as if he was unaffected by it all. That had seemed to work along the way, and these days the bullying he suffered was nowhere near as bad as before.
Sometimes, he’d be invited to the odd birthday party, something that made him feel accepted as one of them. But, sooner or later, just when he thought he’d made friends, they’d betray him again, treating him like an outcast. Just like today. These boys had got annoyed because he’d proved to be faster than them on the skateboard, and the oldest boy among them had accused him of cheating. He’d pushed Manos to the ground and snatched the skateboard from his hands. His words still rang in his ears: “You jumped the gun! That’s why you finished first; admit it or lose this!” he threatened him as he shook the skateboard in his hands.
Manos sprung to his feet and tried desperately to take it from the boys’s hands while the others laughed. But the bully was a lot taller and stronger than him, and he raised it over his head, beyond Manos’s reach.
“Give it to me now!” Manos demanded, overwhelmed by the sense of injustice. He tried over and over again to reach high enough but hadn’t managed to snatch it from his grasp. As the other boys kept laughing, Manos felt a surge of anger consume him. That eventually made him drop his hands to his sides, scowl at the bully and stare into his eyes with determination. “I never cheated! You’re a liar! Give it to me now or else!”
“Or else what? What will you do, Orphan Boy? Will you beat me up? I doubt it! Or will you get Daddy to do it for you? You don’t have one, remember?” the bully said, laughing at his face. That was it. Six whole years of suffering quietly reached boiling point, causing Manos to punch the boy in the face with strength and courage he didn’t know he possessed.
He’d never hit anyone before. The demeaning laughter of the other boys ceased, and the bully let out a loud yelp. The skateboard dropped from his hands, as he brought them to his face. Manos bent down to pick his skateboard up, but the bully had got there first, somehow. He pushed Manos to the ground, his nostrils flaring, and started to pound the skateboard repeatedly against the cement wall behind them. By the time Manos got back on his feet, the damage was already done. The bully threw the skateboard on the pavement and ran away with the others, all of them clutching their skateboards like prize trophies.
Before disappearing around the corner
, the bully stopped and said: “This should teach you to call me a liar! Let’s see how you’ll cheat again without a skateboard. Serves you right, Orphan Boy!”
That’s what they’d always called him: ‘Orphan Boy’. But Manos didn’t feel like one because he had a sister who loved him. Because Mrs. Sofia had been a substitute mother to him too. He had the refuge of his home whenever the world hurt him and, most of all, he still had hope and the certainty that his parents would come back one day. Plus, he knew that wherever they were, they loved him as always. He had these beliefs thanks to his sister, and they’d been etched so deeply in his psyche that no amount of cruelty could ever draw them out.
Manos turned his gaze to the orchard again. A sense of comfort stirred in his heart as he watched Odysseus napping in the clearing, the invisible flies making his ears twitch. As if by magic, Odysseus raised his head and sat up, looking back at Manos with sleepy eyes. Manos smiled and Odysseus let out a loud bark wagging his tail frantically. The boy rushed out of his room and, through the kitchen door, got outside to meet his friend.
When you’re young, not only in years but also at heart, it’s easy to find joy in the adoring eyes of a dog. A warm snout against your skin can say so much, and their affectionate lick on your face will make you smile again, offering comfort just when you thought you were alone.
Chapter 9
When Zoe left the house, Ksenia walked up to the fruit store to see Phevos. In half an hour he’d leave work, and they’d go out on their first date.
“Phevos!” she called out to him from the pavement. His face lit up, and he jumped down the steps to lift her in his arms. She let out a squeal, and he put her down again to kiss her.
“I’ve missed you so much since yesterday!” As he spoke, he caressed her cheek with the back of his hand.
“Me too! Zoe just left. I’ll come and pick you up when you finish work, okay?”
The Necklace of Goddess Athena Page 9
