by Sara Alexi
‘Thanks. How is Stephanos?’ Rallou asked after her sister’s husband as she moved the day’s newspaper so she could sit on the wooden chair by the smooth wooden table that took up most of the space in Harris’s light, bright kitchen.
Lean-tos are often dark but Harris’s kitchen has a transparent, corrugated plastic roof so the sun floods in. The back door is permanently open in the summer to let out the heat, but in the winter, with the oven on and a fire lit, it is the nicest room in her house. Everything in Harris’s kitchen has its place. Jars, neatly arranged on a shelf, hold rice and lentils, pasta and flour. The kitchen utensils are stuck to a magnetised strip that is screwed to the wall by the two-ringed gas stove. The tea towel is on a hook, the tapsia are stacked in size order on a shelf above. Even the rolls of silver foil and greaseproof paper have their own dowel holders attached to the wall. Harris’s husband, Stephanos, is quite the handyman.
‘Ah, he is fine, very fine. After he came home from work yesterday he painted the kitchen door at the back here where the sun burns it every summer.’ Harris sighed contentedly. ‘Has Christos cemented in that back step yet,’ she went on to ask, ‘before you trip over it?’
‘No, he stayed up on the hills last night.’ Rallou looked at the newspaper without much interest.
‘Again?’ Harris stopped making the coffee to turn and stare at her.
‘Watch it!’ Rallou laughed and pointed to the eruption on the gas ring. Harris lifted the tiny pan off and poured the contents into the waiting cup.
‘He is never down from those hills!’ There was a smile on Harris’s face but also a little touch of pity in her eyes as she spoke.
‘It’s fine,’ Rallou said in his defence. ‘He comes home with many rabbits and birds to eat or sell.’
‘Ah, you are too good, Rallou. You always have been.’ Harris began the coffee-making process again, stirring water and sugar over the heat, and then spooning in the coffee grounds, the dry mountain slowly sinking into the water. Then she waited for the water to boil, coffee-coloured bubbles glistening with sugar rising to the top, and just as it was about to overflow she lifted it off and poured it into her own tiny cup.
‘I don’t know why you say that, Harris. He is loving and kind and he has always made me laugh.’ She laughed as if to demonstrate, but it was not a genuine laugh. How often over their evening meal, she attempted to reassure herself, did Christos slip his boots off so his foot could find its way to the back of her calf under the table, just to make contact, just to be close?
‘I don’t think there are many like you that would put up with … Well, you know.’ Harris let her sentence trail off, and banged the briki into the sink, drowning the conversation out with the water rushing from the tap.
‘No, I don’t know. What are you talking about?’ Rallou’s smile faded from her face. What happened to the confident person she became when she left the island for Athens all those years ago? Back then, as if by magic, she suddenly didn’t feel uncertain any more. Life became clear, and everything felt transparent. That was when she was off the island. But this was the island and Harris knew so much about so many people, and was in possession of sources of information that seemed to just bypass Rallou.
‘You know me,’ Harris said, sitting opposite Rallou and slurping noisily at her coffee. ‘I am not one to get involved. If you can put up with things the way they are, then fine. What business is it of mine? After all, how long is it now? Twenty years? I just think, if your home is in dispute for that long it could at least be well maintained and comfortable whilst you have it. That’s all. But, if you agree with Christos, and another day up in the hills catching a rabbit is a better way for him to spend his time … Well, like I said, what business is it of mine?’
She had a point. The rabbits he came back with made good eating, but a day’s work in town would earn him enough to buy three such meals and still leave time to fix the back step, paint the gate onto the lane and maybe even replace the broken window in the apothiki.
So when Christos came home that afternoon she raised the question with him. He came in grinning.
‘Eh, Rallou, look what I’ve brought you.’ He sounded so pleased with himself. Not a word about having been away for the night. ‘Look, I am the fisherman now and I bring you a fish,’ he said, carefully holding his catch under her nose by its tail, avoiding the stinging spine and wiggling it to make it look alive. It was a scorpion fish, a bag of bones, skinny fillets not much good for eating, only good for soup. ‘Ah, ah!’ Christos was grinning, holding up a warning finger. ‘I can hear what you are saying to yourself, Rallou, you do not want to skin and cut it. But there is no need, I will cook you a fish soup, you need do nothing.’ He stood tall as he delivered this speech, eager for her response, the sun through the back door lighting up his tanned skin, picking up the silver flecks in his dark hair. A boy in man’s clothing.
But Harris’s words were in Rallou’s ears, and she thought that she and Christos could – no, should – manage better than that. ‘And who will be eating that?’ she asked. Fish soup was a poor man’s dinner. Christos’s smile dropped at these words, and his arm, still holding the fish, hung at his side. ‘Anyway, I have cooked pastichio. What am I to do with that? Throw it away?’ Her words, as intended, squashed him. She internally congratulated herself for having stood up against him. Harris would be proud. But then the sadness in his eyes and the hollow feeling in her chest, her desire to throw her arms around him and kiss him and tell him that she would love fish soup if for no other reason than because he had caught the fish himself, pushed her into an uncertain, confused place.
‘Well, maybe we can have the fish tomorrow,’ he muttered, his voice fading and his joy gone. But wasn’t this what he always did: make her feel sorry for him, by pulling this small boy act?
‘We need to talk, Christo,’ she said seriously, her eyes to the floor.
‘Oh no! Now I am in trouble!’ Christos joked, and he held the fish up to look in its glassy eyes. ‘Help me, little fish! We must swim away quickly. Rallou wants to be serious and that is not good for a man!’
‘It is serious, Christo. You are away a day and a night and come back with a single fish. Are you not aware that the pomegranate tree is getting too big and needs trimming? Every time I take the sheets in from the line they catch on the branches as I bring them back indoors. Sometimes it is quite a fight not to tear them. And the broom head is coming away again and I am not sure it will take any more nails before it splits. But apart from all the work in the house that needs doing, you could earn far more than a fish by working in town. Take a building job more often. Paint a foreigner’s wall …’
Christos lifted the fish to his ear, pretending to listen. ‘The fish says that it wants to drown itself now,’ but there was no laughter in his voice.
‘She said you would make a joke.’
‘Ah.’ Christos put the fish down by the sink, a frown growing. ‘So you have been talking to your sister again.’
‘Well, she is right. We’ve lived for twenty years not even knowing if our home is really our home.’ All the time they had lived there, Christos’s cousins had been in a dispute over who owned what percentage of the house. The uncertainty of their tenure disturbed Rallou’s peace and there was always the implication that one or another of the cousins felt it would be better to sell the house, or rent it to tourists in the summer, or some other scheme that would require Christos and Rallou to vacate their home. ‘I need a home, Christo. One I can call my own, one without plaster missing from the bathroom wall and steps that could kill me. One we care for.’
His shoulders slumped and he put his green canvas bag by the back door. ‘Now, that is your sister talking, the old witch.’
‘Don’t you dare speak about her like that! She raised me.’
‘Rallou, sometimes you are a fool. Just because she raised you does not make her good. She has been playing these tricks for years, and each time she draws you in and you believe her. She d
id it just after we were married, remember? Talking about some girl I had coffee with once or twice. The girl from Corfu – you remember. She built it up into something it never was. And then later, with the children …’
‘What about the children?’ This immediately put Rallou on the defensive. ‘Was I not a good mama to them?’
‘You could not have been a better mitera!’ Christos sighed. But maybe you were too good.’ He sounded exhausted now, and sat heavily at the small table by the sink.
‘And what is that meant to mean?’
‘It is meant to mean,’ he replied, his head jerking up to look at her, the whites of his eyes dominant, ‘that Harris was up to her tricks there as well. Pushing you to be ever more diligent until there was no room left for me and you.’
‘You’re jealous of your own children?’ she asked, and he just looked down at the tabletop and shook his head sadly.
‘You know what, Rallou, being married to one woman is difficult enough, but being married to two …!’ He stopped talking to take a breath. ‘I did not marry your family, Rallou, and this has gone on long enough. You need to sort it out.’ He stood up wearily.
‘Leave my family out of this!’ she demanded as he made his way across the room to the foot of the stairs. As he passed her, he turned so they were face to face for a second.
‘I don’t think you know who is good for you, Rallou. If you make the wrong choices, one day you are going to wake up and feel very alone.’
‘Is that a threat? Have you any idea what it is like for me when you are off on one of your two-day rambles? The ironmonger knows more about where you are than I do! Come to that so does the baker, the carpenter and the fishermen! They must laugh at me not knowing where you are half the time!’ She knew she had lost her temper, but she could not hold herself back.
‘At least you have to ask!’ he spat back, neither of them making much attempt at restraint now. ‘The whole town knows where you are and what you are doing with no one having to ask anyone.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ This last attack confused her.
‘Oh come on, everyone knows how much time you spend at the Americans’ house. Your sister makes sure of that!’
‘Well, at least I am earning money! At least someone is bringing a wage into the house.’ Rallou did not understand the insinuation, at least not at first.
Chapter 3
But Rallou does not relate any of this to her baba, who takes another sip of coffee. Sweet Baba, he has always done his best to support her. But, as always, his silence seems to ring with unspoken feelings.
At one time she thought his silence was because he did not like Christos. But that did not make much sense because, way back, before they were married, he seemed to love him like a son. It was after their marriage and their move into town that his attitude changed. Later, it got so noticeable that she asked him about it, but he denied any alteration in feeling towards Christos. He said he just felt bad at not being able to provide for her.
‘But Baba, I am a married woman with a house in town!’ she said at the time. ‘I do not expect you to provide for me.’ She was absolute in her assertion. Besides, she had never thought to question the custom – and anyway, it wasn’t personal. They are just like every other family on the island, if not in Greece, and, as tradition dictates, the family businesses – the goats, the olive trees and the pine sap collection – will be inherited by the boys, and the house will go to the eldest daughter, Harris, on that awful day when Baba dies.
She was only tiny when, at the end of a long conversation that she only half understood, he said, ‘… which means there is nothing left for you, my sweetness,’ he spoke like it was a confidence, his eyes moist and glistening, which was a rare occurrence when he was in his prime: he was such a tough man back then. ‘I am sorry, I have let you down,’ he added. She can remember that she was sitting by his side so she let her head fall on his familiar shoulder. She cared nothing for pine trees or goats or stones and mortar, aware, even then, that she had the most precious thing of all: his love.
Besides, a lack of dowry has made no difference so far. The ownership of the house in town may be under dispute but the truth is that the cousins’ arguments will probably go on for another twenty years, so there’s no immediate danger of losing their home. But if Christos, in the meantime, could make just a little effort to maintain it, for it to be more of a home, rather than just a shelter …
She takes a sip of her own coffee and looks in the direction of their olive groves.
The boys have had much of their inheritance already. Piece by piece it has been passed to them as their father’s strength has lessened over the years. Vasillis, the eldest, has already inherited the olive groves, which are to the south of the house, and out of sight, over the brow of the hill. With the oil from the trees and his shoe shop in town he now lives well. The second brother, Grigoris, has half the goats, which he pastures lower down, near the town, and he will get the rest when their baba dies. He has built his own place on the foundations of their great-great-great-grandfather’s house. Now, if he can build a lovely home why can’t Christos? Although it is true that Grigoris’s wife came with a dowry that included her own house, which they have rented out all these years, so he can afford to make his home comfortable. The other two brothers have already taken over the pine resin business, which they have ‘modernised’. What this really means is that, rather than go up there themselves, they now employ migrant workers to plod through the scratchy pine trees collecting the resin from the tins which, long ago, Baba attached below the gashes he slashed into the trees’ trunks to catch the sticky liquid. When they were children it was a shared job, the six of them struggling from tree to tree collecting the amber mess and then lugging it down to the beach to pour it into large containers that were picked up by boat every so often, to be refined into turpentine in a warehouse in Piraeus. Collecting it had felt so important back then.
A boat speeds across from the island to the mainland. It could be either Costas or Yorgos, who as well as working the pine business now operate a taxi boat, and they too are more than comfortable.
So, as is the custom, it will be Harris who will get the house when their baba dies – the big stone mansion atop the spine of the island. A place Harris has not laid eyes on since she left to get married just over thirty years ago.
Rallou studies a tiny boat moored over at the mainland. Harris does invite their baba to go and stay with her in town, though, every year. But most years he says he does not feel up to managing such a journey. The last time he went down he stayed with Rallou and Christos.
Her baba glances at her briefly, perhaps still waiting for her answer.
‘Yes, I am still working for the Americans.’ She sighs. The thought of Lori and Ted’s beautifully presented house lifts her eyebrows. There is so much to do before the family’s arrival, and she cannot stay up here too long. And with Greg already there, earlier than expected, she will need to remember to pop in and change his sheets soon.
‘I sometimes imagine taking a really long trip to go and discover all there is to see in America,’ she muses out loud. It is a throwaway comment.
‘Ahh. You have always had such an imagination, Rallou.’ He puts down his mug and his fingers reach for hers and intertwine with them. ‘Do you remember growing up here?’ She nods her head. ‘You all grew up with work as the normal focus of the day. You tended the animals, gathered horta from the mountains, taking it in turns to look after the beehives and generally doing all that was needed. Not one minute was free time. With all your little hungry mouths to feed everyone’s help was needed. And the stove back then was outside, do you remember?’ He looks to his left where the bread oven still stands, now with weeds sprouting from cracks in the domed top. ‘How much of your day was spent outside gathering firewood to stoke it?’ He chuckles a little and Rallou turns her head and looks at him. ‘But still you would delight me with your tales and fantasies in the evenin
gs, spinning such stories to keep us all spellbound.’ He is not seeing the outside world; instead, his eyes are flicking from side to side as he contemplates the pictures inside his head.
‘I put this down to you inheriting my intelligence.’ His eyes glint as he says this and his mouth twists into a brief smile. There is a long pause before he goes on.
‘And when you were not even ten you went to live with Vasillis in Orino, just after he was married. You remember?’
She was told at the time it was because she needed to go to school, but it also meant that there was one less mouth to feed up in the mountains. How different it seemed. She had a room all to herself. At first it felt so empty but soon she began to relish the space. There were orange and white bougainvillea outside the window and the sun would wake her in the morning. In Vasillis’s house in town there was no smell of goats and no dull clonking of the bells around their necks in the morning. But there was the smell of fresh-baked bread from the bakery. It wasn’t long before she settled in and began helping her brother’s wife with the chores around the house, and with the baby when it came; it was a welcome relief from the hard work that was the reality of daily life up on the mountain.
In the end she only spent two years at school, but in this time she proved herself so apt that by the time she left she could read fluently and write with enthusiasm, if not too much accuracy.
‘And then when you came home again, I think Harris felt a little left behind, perhaps?’ her baba adds.
The first day home she was so pleased to be back that she visited the goats and the bees and chickens, running around all her old haunts with such excitement. She also showed her baba what she could do, writing words and doing sums, and he praised her and hugged her and ruffled her hair. Harris told Rallou about all the dishes that she had learnt to cook whilst she was away, and took a page from one of Rallou’s schoolbooks and used it to light the stove. Rallou tried very hard not to cry, because Harris did not know about books and could not have meant any harm. But those books had seemed so precious at the time, and it was difficult to stop the tears.
