by Tamar Hodes
‘You’re impossible,’ said Jack. ‘I’m heading for the couch.’
The next morning, Esther and Gideon awoke to find their father asleep in the living room. His large frame was awkwardly angular on the narrow settee.
‘Why are you here, Abba?’ asked Esther.
Jack jumped up and forced a smile. ‘It was just a bit hot in the bedroom, sweetie. Now who wants a story?’
‘And breakfast on the balcony?’ said Frieda, putting on her bravest face.
iv
And so the Silver family settled into their new routine.
Gideon, aged eight, attended the one-room school on the hill, Jack went to his study to write, and Frieda painted in a studio she rented by the quay. It had an easel, a table for her paints and a blue chaise longue. Through the large windows, she could see the boats rocking on the water and occasionally she would see an avocet. She admired his thin, carved body, his slender legs, his bill, sharp and upturned, and the way the sun illuminated his perfect, feathery back. Through the wooden door, she could smell the bread baking in Demi’s rough ovens. Each day she bought a crusty loaf, stamped with the wooden imprint of each family, and it was still warm by the time she arrived home.
Esther loved spending time with Evgeniya, her smooth, dark skin and her wide smile. Each day she wore an apron the colour of sugar almonds, pink or lavender blue. Her dark frizzy hair was pulled into a tidy bun. When Esther cuddled up to Evgeniya, her large body was all soft hills and valleys, curving in and out, providing plenty of places for the little girl to nestle in and find refuge. Evgeniya smelled of lemons and wild flowers.
Esther spent the mornings at nursery where she played with the other children. Building with wooden bricks, playing in the sandpit, and spats over who had the best doll first were similar to the events in the kindergarten in Israel and so Esther slotted in well.
While Esther was at nursery, Evgeniya would sweep the wooden floors and do the laundry on the washboard in the marble sink. Then she would fill the iron with hot coals and press the clothes. She would also prepare dinner, maybe crumble feta cheese over sliced tomatoes and olives or grind hummus from chickpeas, garlic and olive oil before scooping it into a pottery bowl, pitta bread arranged around it like the petals of a large flower.
Evgeniya collected Esther at lunchtime and led her slowly home, passing the dry and papery bougainvillea clambering along a wall. Esther’s small white hand pressed into her smooth dark one, they might spot a gecko scurrying along a ledge or a bright butterfly alighting upon a tree. As they walked the uneven paths, they would see wild narcissi and anemones strewing their colour among the tall, dry grass and the camellias, their waxy, glossy leaves catching the light. Although Esther spoke no Greek and Evgeniya no English, there was no mistaking the maid’s pointing at something delightful with her finger, her squeals of delight, or her genuine embraces. Sometimes they would sit and cuddle on the balcony, Esther pressed into her ample bosom, and she would plait ribbon in Esther’s hair and sing songs with words the child did not understand.
Often Evgeniya had more work to do, sweeping, carrying buckets of water into the house, cooking and laundry. Esther was quite happy to play with her dolls on the balcony, dressing them in the clothes that Evgeniya had made, brushing their hair and bathing them in the plastic tub she had given her, half-filled with water, not enough to be dangerous but enough to make it realistic.
At about three, Gideon would walk home from school. Then later the parents would return and eat the meal Evgeniya had prepared. They might spend some time together but then each return to their own occupations: Jack to his study a few minutes’ walk away to carry on with his book; Frieda to her studio to paint; Gideon would arrange his rocks and fossils on the balcony and label them; and Esther would tell her dolls stories, or sing them songs, cradling them.
But some evenings the family spent together. Jack would tell them stories and the children liked to see if Peter the butterfly was at home in their father’s beard: he never was. He was always travelling in Italy or France or Spain and that would lead Jack neatly into a story about the butterfly’s recent adventures.
Or the family would sit at the table on the balcony when the dinner plates were cleared away and Frieda would bring beads and threads to make necklaces with or open her paint set where the colours were set in blocks like a bright ice-cube tray, and they would all have a go at painting the view from the terrace, egged on by her encouraging words.
Sometimes, she brought out her flower press, its alternate layers of green blotting paper and cork, held down tightly with a wooden lid and four butterfly screws. When the family went on walks around Hydra, they would pick flowers and bring them home to press. Forgotten about, weeks later, the press was opened and there they were, dried and flattened and ready, to make cards with or stick on letters sent to grandparents in Israel and South Africa.
Esther loved these evenings when they sat together, focused on the task, making their own circle, their backs to the world elsewhere. But Gideon often left the table and returned to his rocks and fossils.
‘Do you not want to join in with us, Gideon?’ Jack would ask.
‘Leave him,’ said Frieda. ‘He likes to be on his own.’
By this time, Evgeniya would have returned to her own home a few yards away to care for her husband, Nikos. People said that they had a son, Costas, who was a waster. Both men had lost their fishing jobs due to their excessive drinking.
Nikos was large, unshaven and always seemed unfriendly. He wore loose trousers and a vest. The family could not believe that someone as wonderful as Evgeniya could be married to such a misery. There was a smell of drink on him no matter what time of day. A few times, he came to the house when Evgeniya was looking after the family. On one occasion, he arrived in the afternoon and they shouted at each other in the kitchen. Esther couldn’t understand what they were saying but she could hear angry voices and the sounds of something smashing.
Much later, when the children were in bed, Jack and Frieda sometimes went to Douskos’ Taverna to talk about philosophy and art and, as time went on, they felt more and more comfortable there.
The family began to feel rooted, making connections with the shop owners, friends and school. They also registered with Dr Benedictus who had a surgery by the harbour. His plump, smiling wife was the receptionist and their daughter Keri was Gideon’s school-teacher. The surgery was whitewashed and from the windows you could see the boats and the gulls, so that going there made you feel better even before you had seen the doctor. He was a white-bearded man with warm eyes. Whatever condition anyone presented him with he nodded in recognition: he had seen it before and in a more acute form. If he hadn’t, he referred you to the hospital in Athens so all eventualities were covered.
A few yards away from the Silvers’ house, Marianne and Axel were struggling. Their house was right by the two wells so there was always fresh water for them. Their home was adorned with Tibetan rugs and straw mats hanging on the walls. Their carpenter Francisco had made Axel a worktable and there he sat at his typewriter. At first their lives on Hydra had been idyllic. Marianne would read Axel’s writing, marking with a red star where she felt the story flagged. She too was writing, doodling, filling journals with her thoughts and dreams, sitting in Kamini on the rocky beach and pouring her heart onto the page.
All this had changed when, not long after returning from her father’s funeral in Oslo, Marianne was walking barefoot back from the beach, sandals dangling in her hand. When she returned to their house, she saw a petite, dark-haired woman in her living room.
‘This is Patricia,’ said Axel. ‘My lover.’ Marianne’s first thought was relief that Axel Joachim was at Magda’s house.
‘What? You said that this would be a fresh start, that from now on…’
‘I know what I said. But I can’t be tied to one person, like a dog on a lead. Marianne, I love you, I will always love you but I need to be with Patricia.’
‘She can
’t live here.’
‘Yes, she can, and she will.’
‘Are you crazy? We’re all going to live together, the three of us?’
Patricia shrugged her shoulders and left the room. They could sort out their own problems.
‘Listen, Marianne. You are the paranoid, neurotic one who has to own people.’
‘Believe me, Axel, I do not want to own you. I don’t even want to touch you.’
‘You are not my jailer, you little witch. I will sleep with whoever I like.’
‘Then why did you marry me? Just to betray me?’ Her face was red, her normally pretty features twisted in anger and fury.
‘You don’t want a husband. You want a prisoner.’
‘How dare you?’ and she lunged at him. He grabbed a clump of her blonde hair and pulled it until her scalp stung.
‘Let go of me, you bastard,’ and she kicked out at him. He pushed her back and she fell on the stone floor but not before she had spat in his face. She saw an ugly globule of saliva slide down his cheek. ‘I wish I had never met you. I wish you were not the father of our precious little boy.’
‘Why don’t you fuck off then back to Oslo where you belong? This island is too exotic for you and your little rules. Hydra is all about freedom and that’s what I want.’
‘By freedom, you mean do exactly as you please with no responsibilities or regard for anyone else. You are the most selfish man I have ever known and I wish I had never met you.’
‘Really?’ said Axel, coming up close to her face and spitting on her as he spoke. ‘I feel exactly the same. I need someone who understands and nurtures my artistic needs, not a little housewife in an apron putting the dinner on.’
Marianne wiped his saliva from her face and leapt towards Axel. Her fist caught him on his face and his skin reddened.
‘How dare you speak to me like that? You think you are a genius and I am nothing. It’s the other way around. You are a deluded man, a dreamer, who is worthless. I am better than you. You are the dirt beneath my feet.’
‘You fucking little bitch,’ he shouted and shoved her against the bookcase. She felt her back hit the wooden structure and the sting as he slapped her hard in the face.
For a moment she could not see clearly but she shook her head and her vision cleared. Her cheek smarted.
‘Only a coward hits a woman,’ she snarled. ‘You are a piece of rubbish. Our son deserves better.’
‘Better than you,’ he shouted. ‘You are a useless mother, more interested in yourself than others.’
‘You’d know all about that. I hate you,’ she shouted and ran out.
Wiping away her tears Marianne felt bitter. The island was pure and clean and hopeful: everything that her marriage to Axel was not.
She had no choice. They would have to continue to live in the house together: Axel and Patricia, Axel Joachim and Marianne. It was an uneasy arrangement, in which no-one would ever feel comfortable.
She thought of Momo and her warm optimism. What would she say now about her granddaughter’s life? And what would Marianne give to feel her loving arms around her?
v
‘You have come, Marianne. I wondered if you would.’
‘You gave me your address,’ she said shyly. ‘Why would I not?’ Leonard was framed by the wooden doorway of his whitewashed home as if he were a portrait. His dark hair, open shirt and linen trousers seemed, at the same time, casual and sophisticated. His heart thumped when he saw Marianne, in a blue cotton dress, leather sandals, her hair tied back, her face slightly reddened by the sun.
‘Your house is so beautiful.’
‘Thank you. I haven’t finished unpacking yet but come in. Let me show you the view.’
He led her up primitive stone steps past large, empty rooms to a wide terrace, tiled in ochre. Marianne gasped when she saw the landscape: mountains rising majestically from the ground as if they had no intention of ever stopping, and the white, red-rooved houses strewn haphazardly across the island like children’s blocks. In the distance, she could see the coloured boats in the harbour and the birds wheeling in the canopy of the sky, stretched wide and hopeful.
He stood so close to her that he could smell the light floral perfume she wore and imagine the softness of her skin.
‘That is Mount Ere, two thousand feet high, and there is the Monastery of the Prophet Elijah. Every year at Passover, which is coming soon, Jewish people leave a cup of wine for the prophet Elijah and open the door so that he may enter. You should come and join us. I never dreamed that I would live beside a prophet. And now our feet are standing inside your gates, O Jerusalem.’
‘You’re Jewish?’
‘Yes. But I have shed the traditional Judaism of my childhood. This island allows you to make your own rules.’
‘You speak as if the island was a person?’
‘It is.’
‘I love your home. So you’ve left Charmian and George for good now?’
‘Yes, what a relief. I don’t think I could take their acrimony any more. My grandmother left me a small inheritance so I bought this house. I knew about Hydra many years ago as my friend Jacob Rothschild’s mother married the painter Ghikas and they have a house here.’
‘Oh, of course, everyone has heard of Ghikas. How amazing.’
‘Mind you, when I arrived and went to visit Jacob’s mother, she didn’t know who I was and said that Jacob had never even mentioned me!’
‘Oh. Where is that house?’
‘A seventeenth-century mansion, forty-seven rooms, on the hill, overlooking the harbour.’
‘Yes, I think I’ve seen it in the distance but never been there. But you are happy here, even without knowing many people?’
‘I feel that I can write in this place. I sense that Hydra has the power to transform people. When you come out of the sea here you are covered in plankton, your body shining as if you have become someone else. Writing requires you to release that part of you that is reluctant to show itself but is there nonetheless. It takes courage. It is hard.’
‘Like being in love? Like allowing yourself to be exposed, to be vulnerable, to let others see the person you usually hide?’
‘Yes. Writing is nakedness. You are born that way but your whole life you cover up. Writing insists you peel those layers off. As Jung said, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” But you have to be ready for the task. No-one else can do that for you.’
They looked into each other’s eyes, his dark, hers blue, and the Aegean sun seemed to light them from within. Marianne looked down shyly.
‘Do you have a routine here?’
‘I get up early and write and there is a beautiful silence, a genuine one, very welcome, not like the moody silence between Charmian and George.’
They both laughed.
A thin maid, older than most, with grey hair and dressed in black and white checks, brought out a tray.
‘Marianne, this is Kyria Sophia, my wonderful helper who takes care of the banalities of life so that I can be free to write about the banality of life.’ The women smiled warmly at each other.
After the maid had gone, Leonard poured them each coffee in white cups. The porcelain caught the light and glinted.
‘You say you write, Leonard, what are you working on at the moment?’
‘A novel, poetry, lyrics for songs. I get up at seven each day and work until lunchtime. It is cool in the morning and there is a purity in the air, a cleanliness that helps me. If I am stuck I look to the sky, the place which demands the most of the birds and stars. How could I let it down? How could I not honour it by offering it the best words that I can? You cannot deliver smudges to the heavens. It is the home of angels.’
Marianne loved the sound of his gritty voice, listened carefully to each word he said, did not want to miss a syllable. She was calmed by the gentleness of his ideas, so different from the fury of Axel. ‘I want to write but I cannot find the right words.’
‘There
are no right words, just language and music and you have to pluck at them, like you would do grapes from a trellis.’
‘You make it sound easy, but which words do you choose?’
The coffee was strong, the sun gentle, and Marianne felt at ease with him. She thought: when I write, I struggle, yet I can speak so easily to you.
‘It is something to do with the light, the way it pours freely here upon you, connecting you to the truth. You cannot lie in this white sun. It will not let you. It will catch you out.’
‘So writing is telling the truth?’
‘A version of the truth. It is like religion. It asks you to commit yourself to a certain kind of honesty.’
‘It sounds like you are quite religious?’
‘I was brought up in Montreal, going to synagogue with my parents, but it was too rigid, too routine for me, too inflexible, bound by rules. Here I light the candles on Shabbat because I want to, not because I am commanded to, and then I meditate. On Saturdays I go to see Demetri Leousi, an islander here. Do you know him?’ Marianne shook her head. ‘He learned an old-fashioned kind of English in Istanbul so we can talk. Also, in New York he fell in love with a Jewish woman so he sees Jews as special, not to be feared. He says that I am the first Jew to own a house on Hydra and he sees that as a gift.’
‘So you have created your own rituals?’
Leonard laughed. ‘Yes, I have replaced my parents’ traditions with my own. That is the irony. But there is so much about Judaism that I love: the juxtaposition of pain and joy. Even in a wedding the bridegroom stamps on glass to recall the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. The symbolism. The imagery. The poetry: the mountains skipped like rams, the hills like young lambs. I love the psalms. But tell me about you. How do you come to be on Hydra?’
‘I was born in Oslo but my father and brother were both ill with tuberculosis, and my mother had enough to do. So I spent most of my childhood in Larkollen with my grandmother, Momo.’
‘And what was Momo like?’
‘Wonderful. She told me stories about princes and the sea. She made me curious about the world and encouraged me to travel. She fed the birds bread each day and when I was little, I would make too much noise and frighten them away so she taught me how to be still and listen so that the birds would come to me.’
