A Self Effacing Man

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Oranges.’ Mitsos is the one to reply.

  ‘Ah yes. Learning the ropes, eh, Cosmo? Your mama did not let you have much to do with the farm, did she?’

  Cosmo feels a surge of energy in his chest. Babis is his junior by a fair few years, and if anyone is learning the ropes in life it is him. Thanasis clinks his glass of beer against Cosmo’s bottle in an obvious effort to distract him.

  ‘Yeia mas!’ says Thanasis encouragingly.

  ‘Yeia mas,’ Cosmo replies, looking away from Babis to touch glasses with his friend.

  ‘They think they are doing us a favour by keeping things from us, but it is rarely the case.’ Babis speaks with his mouth full.

  Stella delivers Thanasis his food, and Babis a beer and a glass, and lingers.

  ‘We were discussing the pros and cons of strimming under the oranges,’ Mitsos informs Stella, ever the diplomat.

  ‘Weed killer, best thing.’ Babis takes a slug of beer.

  ‘Well, perhaps we have enough chemicals these days?’ Stella says and returns inside at the call of her name, to the other farmers waiting to be fed. Cosmo has noticed that lunch is her busiest time. Babis watches her go, his mouth open, ready to answer her. Cosmo can see the half-masticated food and looks away.

  ‘I think she is right,’ Thanasis says. ‘We spray on this and that – we don’t really know the harm we are doing.’

  ‘Best oranges in all of Greece from around here!’ Babis says defensively, waving his fork to emphasise his point.

  ‘Yes, but at what cost?’ Mitsos says. ‘Highest cancer rates in Greece.’

  ‘My uncle died of cancer,’ Cosmo says. ‘Who’s to say that was not caused by all the stuff he used to spray on the trees.’

  ‘You have a point. There is a high cancer rate around here. You cannot deny that, Babi, and it is always the farmers,’ Thanasis says.

  ‘Hmm, that’s because all there is round here is farmers. Stella do you have any bread?’ Babis calls into the eatery.

  ‘I’ll get you it.’ Mitsos is on his feet before he has finished his sentence. Cosmo continues eating in silence. For a while, Stella and Mitsos used ready-cut chips and they always cooked them perfectly but recently they, or rather Stella, has gone back to hand-cut ones using village potatoes. She put the price up a little, but no one is complaining. They are the best chips he has ever tasted, golden and crispy, and the inside is not all fluffy like the ready-cut ones – instead, these actually taste of potatoes. He scoops up some lemon sauce using a chip on his fork.

  ‘There you go.’ Mitsos puts a basket of bread on the table, waves away a butterfly that threatens to land and goes back inside. Thanasis gives Cosmo a sly look. He understands why Mitsos has retreated.

  A cat runs across the road from the tiny sandwich shop and begins to wind around their legs.

  ‘Pssst, get out of it.’ Babis pushes the animal away with his foot. Cosmo nips a bit of chicken between his fingers and lets his arm dangle by his side. The cat is there immediately and delicately takes the morsel.

  ‘So I take it you will not be spraying with chemicals, Cosmo?’ Babis puts his knife and fork together and rubs his hands on his extended belly. He has on a very clean white shirt, but one of his fingers must have touched the chicken fat because now there is a greasy streak.

  ‘As far as I know, your mama never did spray the oranges after your baba died,’ Thanasis recalls. He is a slow eater. He savours his food and waits between mouthfuls.

  ‘Couldn’t afford to after he was dead.’ This was one of the few things his mama had to say about the oranges. Each year, she would state that they did not have the money for the chemicals they needed for the oranges to fatten – the chemicals that probably killed her husband – but the way she said it, it always sounded as if he, Cosmo, should do something about it. On his wage there was not much he could do, so each year the time would come when she would moan, and he would let her, and then it passed. Then, later in the year she would complain that there was not enough money to spray the oranges with copper sulphate to keep them on the trees longer to take advantage of the selling price going up as January gave way to February. In all, the oranges seemed to be more trouble than they were worth. She said she got little money for them anyway, but she never said how much. Well, he will give it one year, see what he can do, and if the income is too small to be worthwhile he will live off his postman’s wage, maybe even sell the farmland, if anyone would want it. Yes, why not! Be free of it altogether. He lifts his beer.

  ‘Yeia mas!’ he says, and Thanasis looks at him enquiringly before responding.

  ‘Yeia mas!’ Both he and Babis drink.

  ‘Ha – I know,’ says Babis suddenly, putting down his beer. ‘Sell your oranges as organic. Yes, and charge twice the price.’

  ‘You need certification for that,’ says Thanasis, shaking his head. ‘No chemicals for fifteen years and no chemicals within a ten-kilometre radius!’

  ‘Well, there’s been no chemicals for over fifteen years, that’s for sure,’ Cosmo says.

  ‘Right, that’s me done,’ Thanasis finishes the last of his beer. ‘I have a donkey in foal, so I’d best get back. Come over later, Cosmo, see if it is born.’ He sorts through some coins and chucks them on the table, calling inside, ‘Ade geia, Mitso!’

  Cosmo shifts his chair away from the table slightly.

  ‘So, is the probate finished?’ he asks Babis by way of conversation, looking inside to see if Mitsos is going to rejoin them.

  ‘Takes time, takes time. I will need your signature on a few papers soon, but there is no rush, is there?’ Babis is picking at his teeth with a toothpick he has taken from the holder for the salt and pepper pots.

  Cosmo feels in his pocket for money. He is out of change, so he pulls out some papers from the top pocket of his jacket and finds a twenty-euro note. Normally he would wait for Mitsos or Stella to come out, but on this occasion he decides to go in to pay. He leaves his plate, his beer bottle and the papers from his pocket on the table.

  Inside, both Stella and Mitsos are laughing at a joke someone has told, and it takes a moment for Stella to see him, but when she does she is quick.

  ‘I would have come out,’ she says as she hands him his change.

  ‘Thanks, Stella.’ He pockets the coins and steps back into the heat of the day. Tomorrow he will eat inside, where it is much cooler.

  ‘Looks like you forgot to deliver one!’ Babis says, and he taps at the papers Cosmo left on the table. The letter to Maria, in that scrawling handwriting, is on top, creased, corners bent and looking very worn. Cosmo’s next step falters.

  ‘You’ll be getting the sack if you don’t deliver them!’ Babis laughs at his own joke and then he abruptly stops and a deep frown lowers his eyebrows.

  ‘Actually, you don’t have any letters that you are meant to be delivering to me tucked away somewhere, do you? Only, I am constantly expecting official correspondence – you know, with my work.’ His voice is suddenly pompous but his frown does not lift.

  ‘No, of course not!’ Cosmo’s voice comes out squeaky and high. He reaches to gather his bits of paper but Babis has picked Maria’s letter from the top and is swinging it by one corner between finger and thumb.

  ‘Actually, this could be good timing. I could deliver the letter on your behalf and that would be a very sweet introduction to Maria Pikrokardou’ – he reads her name from the envelope – ‘as I don’t believe she has made a will yet.’

  ‘No.’ Cosmo stands abruptly and snatches the missive back. Once it is safe, he tries to recover himself. ‘Er, best not, as I believe regulations state every letter has to be delivered by an official postman.’

  ‘Yes, but at least if I took it, it would be delivered.’ Babis stands and wipes his hands and mouth on a napkin. ‘But if not me, then best you do it, Cosmo, else how can we trust the mail?’ He picks up his car keys.

  ‘Did you enjoy that, Babi?’ Stella comes out with a till receipt that she gives to Ba
bis, and whilst he is distracted Cosmo hurries away.

  Lying in bed that night, Cosmo reluctantly admits to himself that, of course, Babis is right. He should have delivered that letter straightaway. It is his job, his responsibility – and it is not his place to make judgements, however much hurt the letter might cause Maria.

  As he tosses and turns, an even more sobering thought occurs to him. Someone else knows about the letter now – what if Maria were to discover that he has withheld it? That might be even worse, might damage their relationship permanently. She would not trust him after that!

  These thoughts keep Cosmo awake much of that night and the next, leaving him sluggish and bad-tempered.

  Chapter 8

  With the letter in his pocket again, and knowing what he must do, lunch at Stella’s is not the pleasant experience it usually is, and he pushes the chicken around his plate with his fork. He resolves to deliver the letter and starts in the direction of her house, but the clock strikes three, reminding him that it is mesimeri and not a time to be calling on anyone’s house. With some relief, he turns back towards his own house. He will deliver it after five, when the day begins to cool and the villagers surface again.

  When he awakes at six from a surprisingly refreshing afternoon’s sleep, Babis’s threats do not seem as powerful as they did, and he decides to give himself one more day to think very carefully about how he can read the letter to Maria without alienating her, sure as he is of its contents.

  Before the sun is fully over the horizon, and while the whitewash of the cottages still has a bluish tinge, Cosmo is already under his orange trees wielding the strimmer Thanasis lent him last night. Cosmo spied the machine when he went over to see the new donkey foal trying to find its feet. He is a little groggy now as the easy conversation resulted in a game or two of tavli, and a glass or three of ouzo, sitting on upturned orange crates either side of a half-barrel that serves as a table under Thanasis’s own orange trees. Cosmo mops his forehead. It is not hot yet but he is sweating profusely.

  ‘Too much ouzo,’ he chuckles to himself and he continues to strim. The contraption hangs from a strap over his shoulder. It is awkward and he is not used to manual labour.

  ‘Who on earth did you get to do this for you, eh, Mama?’ He looks up at the deep-blue sky between the orange trees, and swats at a fly. He would indeed like to know who she used and how much they charged, but there is also a part of him that would like to shake off the label of ‘laziness’ that the village has pinned on him. He knows he is being a little stubborn: Mitsos or Thanasis would have given him the name of a worker, or he could have chosen one of the men who loiter around the square in the morning – although there are not so many to be seen these days.

  He looks more closely at a deep, shiny leaf on one of the trees, where a ladybird has landed, her wings still showing, extended below her bright red shell.

  The Russian illegal immigrants have all gone since the downturn in the economy, and so have the Bulgarians and Romanians. There are only a couple of Pakistanis left, who have been here for years. One of them, he knows, is called Mahmout, but he finds him shifty, always grinning, and that alone is enough to put Cosmo off hiring him.

  He slaps at another fly and looks back at the work before him, and he wonders what he should do with the dried grass once he has cut it all down. He will have to rake it all up, no doubt, and then what – burn it? Or does he leave it on the land to work back into the soil? That must be a fire risk, to let it lie there all summer, which defeats the object of strimming it.

  He switches off the machine, accepting that the task is too much for him. The sudden silence makes his ears ring, then the sound of the cicadas takes over and, from somewhere within the trees, the rasp of a jay can be heard. To his left, far away, are goat bells. They could be Mitsos’s goats, or Nicolaos’s, or Grigoris’s. He turns around to survey his progress and his shoulders drop as he realises how little ground he has covered. He has done a good job of strimming a path along the fence, but the grass is still long under the trees. It looks like he has given the place a bad haircut!

  ‘It is hard to get under some of the trees where the branches hang so low,’ he mutters to himself. ‘Ah, but that will be great for the picking season.’

  He bends his knees a little and leans back with his face skyward, his hands rubbing at the small of his back. When should he prune the trees? Is that done now, too? Because if so, it would be easier to do that first.

  He steps forward, readying himself for another onslaught on the weeds. A branch catches at his arm and tears a thin jagged line along the surface of his skin.

  ‘Ow!’ He examines the damage. The line is red but not bleeding, and he rubs at it and glares at the offending branch. There are oranges hanging from it: hard green balls no larger than his thumbnail. If he were to cut this branch, he would lose a couple of dozen oranges. Multiply that by the number of trees in the orchard – if he were to prune all the low ones now – and that would be a good amount of fruit lost. He will not prune them now even if you are supposed to: it would be madness.

  The sun has risen higher and a glance at his watch tells him it is time to go into Saros to collect the mail. He cannot remember the last time he was so happy to climb on his bike to do just that, but today anything would be a welcome break from strimming. The strimmer itself is left leaning against a tree.

  The familiar journey to Saros feels different this time as he peers into the orchards either side of the road with different eyes. He notices which have been cleared of weeds and which haven’t, which have been neatly pruned and which have been allowed to run wild. He makes a point of looking out for any signs of pruning – branches on the ground or raw ends of branches – but he finds none, and concludes that this is definitely not the season to prune. It feels like a relief: he does not need more work. He will go without his afternoon sleep today and carry on strimming, and maybe by the evening he will have made enough progress to justify an ouzo and a game of tavli with Thanasis at the kafenio. He could always ask Thanasis when the oranges are pruned, but – well, even though he probably knows Thanasis better than anyone else, he still feels a bit embarrassed to admit he doesn’t know something so fundamental.

  Thanasis, on his smallholding on the other side of the village, his brows knitted together, is feeling Coco’s leg. The throbbing pulse has definitely gone. Her foot is not hot and now he wonders if he overreacted to the sight of her swollen hoof and the roll of fat on the side of her neck. She is a sweet, gentle beast, but no longer young, and that will be why she was dumped. The young donkeys nip and jostle each other, but Coco just likes to snooze. She exudes a sense of peace and he is delighted that she does not have laminitis and is not in pain. Her eyelids droop.

  ‘Aren’t you, my lovely, just a little tired?’

  Her head hangs over the fence and her eyes are closed, lashes flickering at the flies. A game of tavli would be nice right now, but it is early. Cosmo will not be finished for hours. Maybe he will clean out the donkey barn whilst it is still relatively cool. If only he could teach donkeys to play tavli, his world would be complete. After patting Coco’s neck and kissing her forehead, he leaves her and picks up the broom and the shovel. The vegetable patch is doing well this year so far, and bagging the surplus manure was a good idea. He has a few regular buyers from the village now, and at a euro a bag everyone is happy. The flies rise in a cloud off the manure as he enters the barn.

  At the depot in Saros, everyone is busy. It has been two months since Cosmo’s mama died; for a while everyone treated him a bit more carefully, but now they are back to normal, mostly ignoring him. He silently collects the mail and heads off. Some days he sorts through the letters, putting them in order at the depot, and other days he goes back to the village and does it on his kitchen table. Some of the farms are a long way out of the village itself; some are up past the monastery and, on occasion, he has not attempted to deliver letters there the day they arrive, instead waiting one or mayb
e even two days to see if there will be more letters so he can deliver them all together. Since Babis’s goading, he has decided he will not do that any more. He will deliver any letter the day it arrives. Maria’s letter is the one exception, and the envelope is now stained brown where he spilt a cup of coffee on it at home last night as he staggered to bed, and now it altogether looks like it has been trodden into the wayside and retrieved. He is not sure which is worse now: its lateness or its condition.

  The drive back to the village is pleasant, the flow of air keeping him cool. His jacket has been abandoned for the summer, as has his helmet. It is far too hot for that. Besides, he only pootles along, at no speed at all, really.

  At home he puts the water on to boil. He watched Theo at the kafenio carefully one day to see how the coffee should be made and he has been practising ever since and, he thinks, he is becoming very good at making it now. Whilst the water is coming to the boil he lets the letters cascade out of his bag onto the table and begins to make tidy piles in the order of his route. He stops to add the coffee to the water and then he watches and waits until it is done and takes his small cup of the intense stimulant to the table.

  The job has changed over the years. There used to be just letters, mostly handwritten and not many of them. As time passed and people became better educated, the number of letters increased and his sack became heavier. Then the computer took over, with the immediacy of email and texting. At one point his job dwindled to the point where he wondered what he would do when the post office closed. He was preparing himself for that when, slowly, the delivery of parcels began to dominate. Bigger parcels became more frequent, and that was when they introduced the notices that he drops off in their stead to say there is a large parcel and the recipient must go to the post office at Saros to pick it up. Internet shopping had become the way, and while his sack grew heavy with the smaller packets, delivery notices dominated the letters.