by Sara Alexi
‘I would hope you would be more concerned with what that would say about us.’
‘The whole town is looking at me as though I am a fool who cannot control his wife. I have to be able to hold my head up. How am I going to do that with people whispering and sniggering?’
‘No one decent is going to believe it.’
‘Really? That is not what I am hearing all over town. You have no discretion in your work, you keep it from no one that you are nothing but a servant for those Americans. You show no prudence in your comings and goings. How can I maintain my pride when my wife is throwing herself–’
‘I don’t see you objecting to the money I make!’ she interjected.
‘Ah, yes, well you would bring that up, wouldn’t you. Rub salt into the wound.’ He leaned towards her as he spoke, flecks of spittle on his chin, in the corners of his mouth. His eyes were watering. It was his pride that was hurt. She earned far more than he did and hers was the steady wage that they relied on to pay the bills.
‘We need the money.’
‘We have never needed the money.’ Born and raised in Korifi, like her, he grew up working hard. He was so uninterested in material things that he had never even thought of owning a new pair of trousers until the day they married. Quality of life had always been his priority, and for him that meant being in the hills, just him and Arapitsa, and the rabbits, or grouse, depending on the season. Now the children were gone it made for a lonely life for her.
‘You don’t need money because we have it!’ It was not that she really resented his choices in life, but, rather, if she was brutally honest, that somehow she had expected more for herself.
And as Christos shouted she fell into a safer place: the comfort of her memories. After working at the carpet factory for a couple of years she had begun to draw up designs of her own. She took them to old Konstaninos and, after long and careful consideration, he made a few using her patterns, and they sold well and she was given a bonus. But it was a declining business and the factory closed when she was only fourteen. By this time some of her childhood friends were betrothed, but Rallou had long since made the decision that an early marriage was not for her and, after two years back at home, just after her sixteenth birthday, she got a job in a kafenio in town and moved back to live with Vasillis, who now had two children. She enjoyed that job and would probably have happily stayed had it not been for the offer of another job in a kafenio in Athens, at double the wage.
How exciting life had seemed back then. Anything could happen, and she really thought it would.
‘Are you even listening to me?’ Christos shouted at her.
Chapter 5
No, she was not really listening to him. She was wondering what happened. The Athens job had been such fun. Maria, the bar owner’s wife, took a shine to her and for a while she became the mama for whom Rallou had so yearned. She lived with them in Athens for two years but, at Maria’s suggestion, she did not stay working in the bar for more than a month. Instead, she got a job at a travel agent’s and that sparked a wanderlust that remained with her.
‘You know what, Rallou. If I was young again, as young as you, I would go.’ Maria was wrapping rice in cabbage leaves and packing the parcels tightly into a pan.
‘Go where?’ Rallou was back from work for mesimeri – siesta time, which would give her enough time to eat and maybe even take a little nap before she had to return at five.
‘Wherever you like! You work in a travel agent’s, don’t you?’ The leaf she was rolling split and the rice poured out. She took another leaf, laid it flat on the chopping board and ran a knife along the length of the thick stalk, thinning it out so it could be bent without it snapping, then spooned in rice and dill and rolled again. It had never occurred to Rallou until that point that she too could travel.
The planning was almost as exciting as her final departure. Maria encouraged her and suggested that travelling with a package group was probably the safest way to go – at least this first time.
At the time it had felt almost unreal – so exciting, such an adventure – but later, looking back, it almost took on a dreamlike quality, as if she was no longer sure which bits she had imagined and what had really happened. First she went to Paris, where she visited the Louvre and Notre Dame, and wandered through the backstreets and then lingered in the cafes with their tables on the pavements. Then the group flew on to London, where she saw the Houses of Parliament, and London Bridge. She was only going to stay a week in each city, but sometimes life will not be contained, and as it turned out she spent over two months in London.
‘Rallou!’ Her husband’s voice brought her back to the argument. His hands were on her shoulders and he was shaking her.
‘What?’ she snapped and he let go, but it didn’t stop his rant.
‘You are lucky we live in these times and that I am as easy-going as I am,’ he was saying. ‘There are men on this island who still do not let their wives go out to work, and perhaps with good reason.’
‘What am I supposed to say to that – thank you for letting me work?’ She stepped out of the light of the open back door so she could see his face more clearly.
‘Most women are satisfied with children and a house to clean, and a man to look after. There are women out there who would love to be in your shoes. We may have been married for twenty-eight years …’
She had been so flattered by his interest in her after her return from her travels.
It was Harris who pointed him out, initially.
‘Have you seen Christos since you got back? Grown at least a head taller. And the way his hair used to stick up – well, you’ll see, he’s had it all cut. You should have seen him combing the olives.’ She paused to look towards the village as if he could be seen now. ‘Will you help me take up one of Mama’s dresses?’ she added excitedly.
In the time Rallou had been in Paris and London, just a few short months, he had become one of the tallest and strongest of the boys from Korifi, and so good-looking, or maybe she had just not noticed him before she went away. He would lead the hunts up there on the hill, and whilst his friends would return having only caught one bird he would have three. How exciting it had seemed to have his admiration.
‘I am worried for you, Rallou.’ Harris had come to help her as she daydreamed whilst collecting the eggs from the chicken coop. She was just replaying an event from the day before in her mind, recalling Christos drawing water from the well for her, the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled right up over his shoulders, the sun on his arms. ‘You are paying with fire,’ Harris continued. ‘Do you know that he was practically engaged before you came back? To a girl from Corfu. Educated, too,’ she added. ‘Training to be a nurse. What if she comes back? What if Christos is just playing with you till she returns?’
But Rallou could only see Christos by then. Their love – she already knew it was that – felt like a continuation of the same whirlwind that took her to Athens, Paris and London, and so she went with the flow and they were married within six months. She could not have realised that it would, in fact, mark the end of the freedom, of excitement.
‘Twenty-nine years,’ she corrects him.
‘Twenty-nine,’ he agrees, without thought. ‘But you seem to forget how many women wanted to marry me back then. Not just up in our village – here in Orino town too.’
‘What are you saying? That I should consider myself lucky? I seem to remember that it was you who chased me when I returned from London. And how exciting you promised our lives were going to be. We were going to open a shop, build a house, become the talk of the town with our popping to Athens whenever we felt like it. We were going to travel, have children. But you have never travelled any further than the edge of this island! The only thing in your list of promises that came true is the children, and precious little you had to do with them!’ She shouldn’t have said that. That was unfair. But was it? She struggled on her own with them when they were babies whilst he carried on as if nothing
had changed in their lives. The only thing he did more of was whistle. His incessant whistling. As she became more and more tired he seemed to spend ever more time up in the hills shooting at birds and trapping rabbits. He would whistle as he stepped into the house as if he had none of the cares but all of the energy in the world. His edible trophies would be displayed to her and she was expected to applaud and admire, and then cook the rabbit or bird, or whatever it was he had shot. At one point, when one baby was teething and the other refused to suckle, she was so exhausted that she went to Vasillis and his wife for help, or at the least just a word of comfort. But Eleftheria had started with her depressions by then and there was nothing they could offer. Their world had become insular and dark. Their own children were staying with Eleftheria’s mama for the winter. So Rallou retraced her steps, passing by what would later become Harris’s house, in another two years or so, when she married Stephanos.
‘I provided for those children! I put a roof over their heads,’ Christos snarled, and her eyebrows shot up of their own accord.
Some provision! At first the disputed house seemed like an adventure – their own little place. A place to laugh and love and curl up with one another. Harris moving in opposite was just the icing on the cake. When Christos was out she would chat with Harris and the world was a perfect place. But what was meant to be just somewhere to make do before they bought their own house no longer seemed exciting when the first child came. As Harris pointed out, you cannot have holes in the roof and the wind blowing in through the gaps in the windows and under the doors all winter, not when you have a baby.
The house had been Christos’s grandfather’s and he didn’t make a will, and so, like so many houses in Greece, it was inherited by Christos and thirteen cousins, and no one could agree what should be done with it. Several of the cousins were for selling the place as it was but could not agree on the asking price, whilst another felt that this was foolish, and that they should renovate first, so as to maximise the profit. One thing they all agreed on, apart from Christos, was that the house was not really habitable in the state it was in. But Christos and Rallou were used to rough living, being brought up in Korifi, and, at the start at least, it was an adventure. For a while Rallou held out hope that Christos would make improvements to the house, but as he pointed out – and Rallou did have to admit that he had a point – it made little sense to spend time and money on a property that was not wholly theirs. Besides this, if the cousins saw improvements made to the house, who knows, perhaps they would make trouble and try to get Christos out so that they could use it instead. This might all have been fine if Christos had provided in other ways, but the cupboards, as her own children grew, were as bare as when she was a child. As soon as food came through the door it was eaten. As Harris was quick to point out, Rallou never dreamed she would have to bring her own children up the way they themselves were raised, not now she lived in the town. One consolation was her job with the Americans; that gave her enough to spoil the children a little. Not that they were neglected. They were cared for and kept clean and loved. How often had she spent the day washing clothes – all by hand back then, before she bought the washing machine, which was paid for, of course, out of her wages. The hours she spent, digging the soil and generally tending the allotment in their garden, cleaning the perpetual dust from the house as well as sewing clothes for the children and keeping them entertained! She struggled with the daily chores on her own, minding three children under six, with never a rest, continuing until she was ready to collapse. Then, what eventually became her most hated sound in the world would stir her from her fatigue: the happy sound of his whistling as he came down the track behind the house and in through the back door, all bouncing with energy, excited by his day, a rabbit in his bag.
‘He means well, Rallou,’ Harris commented, and to a degree she was right. ‘Surely it is better that he creates excitement with the children rather than ignoring them altogether? How is he to know that you had spent the last hour or so calming them to the point that you could at least sit down? He is only a man after all, and you cannot expect him to be so sensitive.’ As Rallou started to reply, her newly married sister held up a silencing finger and pointed out, ‘Now, I know what you are thinking. But you must remember that Stephanos is a unique individual.
‘It is natural for Christos to expect for you to continue just as you did before any of the children arrived. And besides, shouldn’t your focus be on the children now, rather than on what Christos does?’
Sometimes it did not feel like Harris was helping at all. Was Rallou supposed to jump up at his return, skin the rabbit, or whatever it was he had brought that day, and cook it whilst he washed and rested upstairs after his day in the hills? Perhaps that was what a good wife should do? But then to serve him his food and wash up, all before getting the toddlers ready for bed – surely, if you put it all together that was expecting too much of her? How was Rallou meant to know? Harris was too young to be a real role model. One thing she never discussed with Harris was her pleas of exhaustion when she and Christos finally got to bed. What was once a time she wished the clock would run fast towards, and which she would stretch out into the early hours of the morning, became a time that she dreaded.
After the children started school, life became easier for a while. But when the third joined the other two each day it did not feel like the liberation she had anticipated. For a month or more it was a shock. It felt as if her role had been taken away and a vast emptiness had come to replace it. She felt she was not needed, and it gave her time to breathe and look about herself and digest her situation, and it was not what she had expected it to be. And then the homework started. First one needed help, and then the next, bringing home reams of homework every day, and double at weekends. She took to preparing the food whilst they were at school so she could sit with one after another at the kitchen table from when they came home until bedtime, struggling with maths, geography, ancient Greek.
Christos had never spent even a day at school and could not help, and so it was left to her. But as soon as her precious children found a degree of independence it was as if the Americans caught a whiff of her freedom. How exotic they had seemed, how worldly and exciting. Who wouldn’t have snatched the job they offered her? All they wanted of her was to ready the house a few days before they arrived each year and to make the keys available if a plumber or an electrician came to service the boiler or the air conditioning. It wasn’t until they got to know her more that they asked more of her, but the truth was she did precious little for her substantial monthly wage. She had even said as much, at one point.
‘Ah, but it is to eliminate worry,’ Lori had cooed. Lori did not look like she had spent a second worrying in her life, with her painted nails, long kaftans and strappy, thin sandals that would break if she were to step off the cobbled pathways of the town.
‘Yes, I guess that is really what it is, so we know the place is safe when we are not here and ready for when we come,’ Ted had drawled, taking his hand out of his white linen trousers so he could tuck a tip in her apron pocket. Lori had given her a lingering smile and nodded in agreement.
Rallou took some deep breaths and returned her thoughts to Christos. It would be better not to argue, let him have a rant, then allow him to cool down. When they were both calmer they could talk over the situation.
‘Yes, you did provide for them,’ she said, ‘and we can be proud of them. Look at them now!’ Rallou hoped this would distract his thoughts, change the direction of the conversation. Their young son was at university in Bristol, in England, and the eldest daughter, Natasa, already a doctor, was married to an Italian and living in Bari, where he had an important job at Karol Wojtyła Airport. To everyone’s excitement, Natasa was pregnant with her first child. Their younger daughter had married an Australian and they had moved out there. Together they ran a business that had something to do with underwater barriers to protect the beaches from sharks.
Christos fal
tered, as if catching his thoughts, but Rallou’s diversionary tactics had not worked, and he turned on her with renewed energy.
‘You spread your poison to the children too. They are not satisfied to stay here with normal jobs either,’ he spat. She had not seen that coming. He had never uttered a word of disapproval regarding their children’s choices before. It surprised her that she had been blind to his feelings on the matter – assuming that it was something he had felt before and not just something he was saying to spite her in the moment.
‘What? How can you resent what they are doing? They will never have to carry firewood to light the stove or worry if they can afford clothes for their children or new clothes for themselves!’ After they were married she never had the sort of clothes she dreamed of until she took the job with the Americans and, in the very early days, she spent much of her time altering the children’s clothes so they fitted as they were passed down from one to another because they could not afford to keep buying new.
‘Is that what it is about then?’ Christos sneered. ‘New things, whatever money can buy? Is that how the American son has you, then?’
And that was it. Without even reaching for her bag she stormed out of the back door and up the track, her lungs burning with the effort before she even reached the top, and then she walked the length of the ridge to her childhood home and her baba, her safety net.
They have reached the hives by the time Rallou finishes her synopsis of the argument, and she lets out an exaggerated sigh. ‘I see,’ her baba says.
