Being Enough

by Sara Alexi

  ‘You want some bread with your eggs, Baba?’ She looks again to the fanari; perhaps there is more of the staple than she first thought.

  As her baba does not answer she presumes he must be still dozing in the sun. She cuts two slices of bread; it crumbles at she does so, the yellow of the olive oil dominant. A plate in each hand, she takes them outside and puts them down on the table more noisily than is necessary.

  ‘Oh, er, what, was I sleeping?’ He stretches, blinking several times. ‘Oh, that looks good.’ They eat in silence, looking across the strip of water that separates the island from the mainland. Yachts with billowing sails make slow progress, the white of their canvas forming bright pinpricks that stand out on the blue sea, and taxi boats criss-cross the water, leaving a ribbon of froth in their wake. A fishing boat sits motionless and the islands continue to float in between. Out to the west the strip of water opens out to the vastness of the sea, which stretches all the way down to Crete and beyond, to Libya. It travels to places she once thought she might get the chance to visit but which are now just missed opportunities.

  Chapter 8

  In the few days Rallou has been there she has slipped easily into the familiar routine of work that mountain living demands. When she remembers, she waters the little yellow flower at the base of the balcony step as she passes with buckets of water from the well. She has also been taking the goats for at least one of the two outings a day they require, to give her baba a rest. But the jobs are not as pressing as they were when she was a child. These days Baba can afford to buy some things on the small pension he now draws. The tins of beans, tomatoes and sardines that Yanni brings up from town must make his life so much easier. His pension is small and cannot afford him many luxuries, although he has paid into it his whole life, but he can treat himself occasionally.

  Sardines are his favourite, and he says they keep their flavour well. He still grows his own tomatoes, too, but admits it is a relief not to have to get involved in the tedious process of boiling them and storing them in jars for the winter.

  Since Rallou arrived, her baba seems to have spent a great deal of the day sleeping on the porch, but then, why shouldn’t he? It gives her some satisfaction that her visit has had the consequence of being able to give him a break?

  The days have slid by so easily. She does not remember which day the cicadas began to sing but they are doing so now, at full volume. The summer is here! But there has been no sign of Christos. Not that she really expected him to follow her up here. For what? To beg her to return? He would not do that. As she is absorbed back into familiar routines she is surprised to find how much she really wishes he had followed her, and with each day that he does not appear it feels as if a band is tightening round her heart. Life may be less stressed without him around, without arguments about where he has been and how long he has been away, or taut silences, but in the growing warmth of the summer sun, which eases out the knots in her shoulders, and the peaceful solitude of her surroundings she finds that, without him, life feels like it is missing some of its flavour, some of the spark that his presence imparts, and she discovers that she is wishing he were here after all.

  One evening, whilst she is preparing the food, her baba comes in to show her a hardened lump of tree sap he has found, with a fly stuck in the centre.

  ‘In a few billion years that will be amber,’ he tells her and returns outside, examining his find, turning it over in his fingers. It reminds her of Christos coming home that time with the black stone.

  ‘Look at this!’ He came in clearly excited. ‘I think this is volcanic rock! Why else would it be black?’ He showed it to each of the children in turn, their small fingers feeling the rough texture, eyes wide at the possibility that it could be something special. He began to explain to them about volcanoes and to talk of Santorini, where the sand on the beaches is black. But all Rallou could think about was, firstly, why he had never taken her there, and, secondly, that the children were hungry, and that the hungrier they got the more fractious they would become.

  ‘Can I feed them, please?’ she said, and pushed past him to set the table. For a moment their small faces, Christos’s included, looked disappointed, but when she told them that she had made a special moussaka they forgot the black stone and began jostling each other to get to the table. Christos took his stone outside and sat on his own under the pomegranate tree. When she offered him food, he said he wasn’t hungry, and he went to bed without eating at all that night. The stone remained by his bed for months, perhaps years.

  Rallou sighs, sad he has remained in town.

  She knows that being up here is not a long-term solution. For a start, she misses the electric kettle, and her hot morning showers. But more pressing than that is that she will need to return to ready the house for Lori and Ted in a few weeks, and Greg will want his sheets changing soon. It is not them she wants to be away from, anyway. She likes her work, and she likes to be needed, she knows that. Without her, the American family flounders on the island. Her job, which originally involved just a couple of hours of cleaning each week, has evolved and now she is in charge of ordering and arranging fresh food deliveries and cooking some of their meals. She has helped Ted set up instructions with his bank to have the bills paid automatically, sitting with him at the computer to translate the Greek. Some bills, such as the water, cannot be paid online, and she makes sure that these are dealt with each month so that their supply is not cut off. She orders and takes delivery of the flower arrangements Lori likes to see on the hall table, fresh every few days when she is here, and, on several occasions over the years, she has accompanied them to Athens when the need has arisen for a native speaker to translate for them. Once she was even sent on her own to the tax office in Piraeus with some official papers. She has become a manager of sorts, and this gives them the freedom to swim and drink coffee, eat at tavernas and sit and read newspapers on the balcony when they are here, and it spares them worry about the house when they are absent. It gives them a complete break and it gives her pleasure to be able to offer that.

  If they are around when she is doing her work they talk to her of ‘back home’, and she listens with wonder at all America has to offer. Lori’s view of home and Ted’s are remarkably different. They live somewhere called Amelia Island, which, apparently, is a section of a beach called Fernandina in Florida. She has seen photographs of their house with its garden down to the beach. On the map their home is close to the border with the next state, Georgia. Once or twice a year they visit their second-eldest son, Scott, who at forty is already semi-retired (whatever that actually means) and lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, in a group of houses that, for some reason, have an electric gate separating them from the road. Even the names of the places sound so exotic, so magical, to Rallou. Lori tells her how she likes to drive along the east coast when her husband is away on business. The bit she likes best, she says, is the miles of open land with nothing but greenery on either side, just palm trees and tall grasses. It makes Rallou wonder sometimes why they make such a long journey to be on a tiny island in Greece in a place without cars or bikes or even its own water supply. But they say Greece offers them a trip back in time, a life that is simpler, more enclosed. She doesn’t quite understand.

  Their middle son Bryce lives, coincidentally, in Bryce Road, or was it Street, or maybe it was Valley? – anyway, somewhere in California – and travels extensively in his job as a representative of a high-tech company. It must be a demanding job because when he is in Greece he sleeps a lot. Then there is Greg, who lives in New York and was a stockbroker on Wall Street, and who owns a three-bedroomed house in somewhere called the Hamptons in New York City. He now deals in property, but judging by the amount of time he spends in Greece it seems this new career is not very demanding. He came to the island a month ago and she is not sure he has even left the house in that time. When she goes in to change his sheets and clean the kitchen, Greg will often be wandering about aimlessly in his shorts, if he
is up at all. Or he will be slumped on one of the sofas with a book about modern art. He arrived one day unannounced when she was flicking a duster over the place. His entrance made her jump, and he muttered something about his wife walking out on him recently and that they were getting a divorce. But he obviously does not want to talk and she has been thankful that the place is big enough that she can avoid him whenever it is necessary for her to go over.

  How she would love to take Lori and Ted up on their offer of a trip to America! The message they sent making the offer had come as a surprise. Rallou does not have access to a computer, and so when they want to contact her they will send an email to Andreas who runs the photographic shop in town, and he will print it out for her. Generally they will let her know the date that they will be arriving, and whether there will be any guests with them, and they provide a list of groceries. But last month, when Andreas stopped her in the street he informed her that she had been invited to America. ‘Not as a housekeeper, they say, but as a friend. Come to the shop later, and I will give you the email.’ Later that afternoon, when the shop was open again after Andreas had finished his mesimeriano – siesta – Rallou went round to the shop and found that it was true. As well as sending the usual instructions, Lori said in her letter that it would be excellent if Rallou would come back with them to see a little of America at the end of the summer, and not as their housekeeper, but as their friend. She said that she knew how interested Rallou was in the place and that it seemed like a lovely thing that she and Ted could offer, ‘as a thank you for the years you have kept the house on Orino Island for us.’

  The offer made her gasp, and she swallowed hard as she read through the email again at home, her heart beating faster and her mind spinning with the possibilities. But then Christos came in and rummaged roughly, and noisily, through the cutlery drawer for a sharp knife and she knew such an adventure was impossible. He had not been invited, and nor would he want to go, and he would not approve of her going alone. He would stop her – not in so many words, but he would gradually let his opinions be known clearly enough, without stating them directly, until they filled every room in the house with unspoken resentment. It would make her life hell. No, she could not even think about going, or mention the offer to him.

  That was before the argument. If she went now it would be an even bigger slap in his face and she wonders if he would even be there to come back to. Not that he would go anywhere – he wouldn’t want to lose face; but she could imagine him moving into one of the children’s bedrooms and closing the door.

  Chapter 9

  Counting the days off on her fingers, Rallou comes to the conclusion that she cannot stay up here on the mountain much longer. She must change Greg’s sheets, tackle the mountain of washing-up that he will have created, and sweep up the eternal dust that gathers between the stone slabs on the living-room floor.

  ‘It’s funny how in life things go around and back again, isn’t it, Baba?’ But her baba, in the chair on the porch next to her, is sleeping. She was thinking of how Lori and Ted’s stone-flagged floor used to be covered in threads and wool dust years ago, when the house belonged to the carpet-makers. Her loom had been by the far window, where Ted has put the old Turkish chest he brought back from Constantinople. The rug in front of it is not one they would have made there. It is Chinese and the pattern is somehow cut so the leaves and flowers lift higher than the background.

  So many hours she sat there, the tall window providing natural light. Three other looms filled the room, each by one of the tall windows. Now the windows offer one of the best views all the way down over the terracotta roof tiles to the port. The house is in a commanding position, and the whole town can be seen from the balcony that runs the length of the house at the front. They could, if they were here at that time of year, watch the mayor’s speech from outside the old naval school at Easter without having to move, the excessively large speakers echoing his droning monologue around the basin that contains the town. They will witness the festival from here, though. Every summer there is a celebration to mark a naval battle, led by a sea captain from the island, which contributed to the War of Independence.

  Rallou smiles at the thought. She likes the festival, the re-enactment. A plywood barge is constructed each year, to represent the Turkish fleet, and is pushed out into the bay, stuffed to the gunwales with fireworks. All the taxi boats, fishing boats and visiting yachts sail out to surround the Turkish boat, which is illuminated in the bay. The Greek boats sound their horns and release flares, and the Turkish boat is set on fire to triumphant cheers from the people lined up around the port, on the hills, on their own balconies. Rallou has seen fireworks on television, the fireworks of New Year ‘s Eve from London, Sydney, New York and Paris, but none fill the sky like the display that follows on the island, and her chest lifts with pride at the thought.

  But what had she been thinking, before recalling the festival? Was there something she had to do? The eggs, the goats, the cheese, gather some horta? No, she has already done all those things today. Oh yes, it was Greg’s sheets. Could they not wait another few days? No, perhaps not. But it is a long way to go down and back in a day just to change the sheets and do a little cleaning. She is not ready to see Christos; she doesn’t even want to think about him, let alone see him – not yet. So she cannot sleep at home to break up the journey. There is no way she is going to Harris and she does not feel ready to explain her position to Vasillis, no matter what mood Eleftheria is in.

  She would not feel comfortable, at this point, explaining to anyone what she is or is not doing. She has no real idea herself yet, so how can she explain it to others?

  Yanni’s house is closer to the town than her childhood home, all the way up here, but it is still a heavy stretch of the legs and directly up from town, an hour’s walk. However, from Yanni’s she can walk to her baba’s straight along the ridge and neither Yanni nor his mama or baba would ask any questions. They would just make room for her, sharing what little space they have. But she has never stayed there before and she does not really feel she knows them well enough to ask. Her baba would say just go, but she has lost a bit of that mountain attitude. In the town she would have to know them pretty well to presume. Or maybe that is just her way.

  There are always Tolis and Takis, though. Their house down by the boatyard is big enough and they only use a few rooms. It is a good two hours from the town, but it is at the bottom of the steep climb up the mountain and would break up the return journey.

  If she were to stay there the night, she could enjoy the walk back up the next morning. The track snakes past the boatyard into the pine trees, up and up, zig-zagging left and right until it finally breaks out through the trees where the cliff on the left-hand side keeps the valley in shadow until quite late in the morning. From there it is relatively flat until the road divides: left into a dell, where two whitewashed cottages are visible, or right, where you think you are just heading to a single, honey-coloured, two-storey stone house on a ridge. But, as you draw level with this building, you can see down a second dell behind it to the two dozen or so houses all crowded in together in the shade of the hillock. It is then the shortest of walks to go through and beyond this hamlet to where her baba’s house stands on its own. She has followed this route many times from town, but usually reaching the boatyard when the sun is high and the rest of the walk up the hill is a slog against the heat. If she stays the night with the Kaloyannis brothers she could get up at dawn, and in the first light of day the walk would be cool, refreshing even.

  She resolves to make bread so Baba is provided for and tomorrow she will make the journey as discreetly and as quickly as possible.

  Chapter 10

  Although part of her has not really wanted to leave the cocoon of her baba’s world, marching down the track early the next day feels like a freedom. He has entrusted her with one of the loaves of bread she made and a block of Yanni’s feta to give to Greg, and she is also burdened with eggs, wh
ich he has instructed her to take to Costas Voulgaris at his kafenio.

  He has also given her a bunch of flowers twisted round with a grass stem. They are for her.

  ‘Oh, Baba, that is so sweet, thank you, but how do I carry them? They will wilt before I get into town. She has seen these flowers before. They only grow high up on the tops of the mountains. Christos came home with a big bunch for her some years ago, but by the time he arrived home the sun had set and the flowers had closed up.

  ‘Ah, what a pity,’ he said. ‘The flowers are so small, so intensely blue, and I want you to see them. Perhaps if we put them in water they will open again tomorrow.’ So he put them in a glass of water but they did not open the next day. They had wilted even more.

  ‘They look like dead weeds,’ she said. Perhaps it was not tactful, but it was honest. There was nothing attractive about them at all.

  She lets the memory fade.

  It is nice to be moving and it is easy to recall the feeling from years ago, before she was married, before she had children, when she experienced the same feeling of freedom and was brave enough to travel to Paris and London.

  In retrospect, she was even braver than she knew, as just after she left France it became a very unsafe place to be, with people getting killed. She can remember reading in a newspaper in London soon after she arrived there that the French police had arrested nine people, including five ultra-leftist activists, in connection with a series of bomb attacks. Because she had no knowledge of French, this was the first she had heard of these attacks, and at the time a little shiver ran down her spine to think of all that had been going on around her whilst she was staring at Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. When was that, she tries to recall? It must have been around September. September, she muses, trying to calculate the year.