by Nadia Marks
The village up the hill, although not much larger than the village by the coast, was considered something of a centre for the region, having not only a school but also a post office, a small bank and two larger general stores as well as a weekly market. Once a month Calliope would accompany her daughter on the bus to do her errands and wait for Froso to ride back home with her. As the young girl grew, so did her good looks, and there were plenty of lads who were sweet on her. Calliope watched over her like a hawk, keeping any unwanted attention at arm’s length and her virtue intact, but it was the girl’s father who was ferociously protective, and made sure no male came near his daughter. Any marriage proposals had to be vetted by him and kept at bay until the girl became of age.
The young girl would have liked to continue her education after elementary school. But life was already hard for Nikiforos, trying to make enough of a living from his little grocery shop to feed not only his wife and children but his old parents and parents-in-law, too.
‘She’s a girl, what does she need more education for?’ he said to Calliope when his wife tried to put the case for keeping Froso at school for a little longer. ‘No sense in that. When the time comes and we find a suitable match we’ll marry her off. In the meantime she stays at home with you.’
Calliope had no option but to agree. Besides, those were hard days: schools were disrupted, male teachers had to go and fight, and children who reached the age of twelve or thirteen were deemed old enough to help their families. Girls stayed at home with their mothers to learn the ways of domesticity, knowing that before too long they would be married, while most boys would either go on to learn a trade, work in the fields, or follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers as fishermen.
Froso knew better than to complain for long; in any case she loved looking after her little brother, and since she could read and write she could find all the information she desired in books, which she could access from her old school library. Once or twice a month she would take the bus up the hill and pay a visit to her former teacher, Kyria Demitra, who was especially fond of her bright pupil. The teacher would always be ready to lend her a new book to take back home, which she considered a way of contributing to the girl’s further education. It was a rare thing to find a child in those parts who was eager to learn past leaving school and formal education. Froso enjoyed these little outings, which aside from collecting her books gave her the opportunity to escape from her parents’ watchful eyes for a short while. Calliope was loath to let her daughter out of her sight, but after the first visit, when she insisted on accompanying her, and after the reassurance of Kyria Demitra that visits to the school were beneficial for Froso, she reluctantly agreed to allow the girl to travel alone; besides, apart from everything else she had to do she had a young child to take care of too now.
‘It won’t be long before the marriage proposals will start flooding in, my girl,’ Calliope would tell Froso. ‘In fact some already have,’ she’d inform her, without giving too much detail as at her age there was no need to be concerning herself with such matters. There was one young man by the name of Mitros, from a well-to-do family in the upper village, whose family had already expressed interest in her, but it was not something that Froso needed to know about just yet. Calliope and Nikiforos’s desire was to make the best match for their daughter when the time came, but this was not the time; besides, they preferred to keep their options open, and wait and see if there might be an even better offer for their girl. The Mavrantonis’ answer to Mitros’s family was that their daughter was too young for marriage but in a year or so they would be considering their proposal. ‘Virtue and modesty are the best attributes for a girl. They are as good as a dowry, if not better,’ Calliope would insist, concerned that some boy might turn her head. But she had no reason to worry; Froso was a good girl, and the family was her main concern – until a boy called Kosmas came into her life. He was a couple of years older than Froso, and a fisherman like his older brothers, father and grandfather before him.
When Froso left school she was happy with her books as well as looking after her little brother and helping her mother take care of the house. Until the moment she became aware of Kosmas, the young girl had no interest in boys and romance, or anything much else apart from her family; but this particular youth captured her heart in an unexpected way. It was during a Panigiri, feast day: it was Agios Theodoros’s holy name day and the celebrations were to last three days.
Down by the sea, along the narrow strip of road running beside the coastline where all the kafenios and small tavernas were to be found, the vendors from the small nearby villages in the mountains had set up their stalls selling all kinds of sweet delicacies and local produce as well as trinkets for the girls, colourful bangles and necklaces, silver crucifixes and lucky charms. A band armed with Cretan musical instruments was set up outside one of the tavernas; as soon as dusk fell they started to play, and then the festivities commenced. The young lads and girls in their traditional costumes lined the street to take turns with dancing; the sound of music and the tantalizing aroma of meat cooking on charcoals filled the evening air.
Of course, this was not the first time Kosmas had seen Froso; the village was not a large place. But that day, when the girl’s eyes fell on him while he danced the Pentozali, the young man was troubled. Her gaze was intense, her black eyes he fancied were shooting sparks at him, which disturbed him, so much so that a couple of times he missed his step. She looked different, he thought as she stood next to her mother, she had suddenly grown and blossomed; she was not a child anymore. Froso, for her part, couldn’t tear her eyes away from the youth. She was sure she had never seen such a palikari (young warrior) before, or a more limber and more heroic figure than him. When it was her turn to dance with the other girls, it was Kosmas’s chance to feast his eyes on the graceful young maid who had stolen his heart.
When the dance was over, and the men were invited into the circle to join the women in a mixed dance, Kosmas leapt to his feet and took his place by her side. Once they linked arms and felt each other’s physical proximity, they both knew there could never be another for either of them.
Froso, now hopelessly in love, had no one to confide in. She worried in case her father found out, fearful that he would disapprove of Kosmas due to his humble background. She knew that her mother too would be hesitant as both parents were looking for a wealthier match for their daughter. Calliope also had a small child to take care of and relied heavily on her daughter to run the house with her. Besides, everything had its proper time in sequence in those parts: if a young man was sweet on a girl he was obliged to ask the girl’s father for her hand. If the girl was too young but he agreed to the match, the boy would have to wait. And Froso was still too young as far as her family was concerned. As the young couple’s love flourished, they both knew that they had no option but to keep it hidden. It had to remain a secret.
2
Crete, 2018
After Froso had been talking for some time, she came to a halt, sat back in her chair, took a deep breath and fell silent. Calli, transfixed by this tale of clandestine love instead of the account of her aunt’s ailments that she had expected to hear, hesitated to interrupt although a host of questions were competing in her mind. The older woman sat mute for a long while, her eyes fixed in the darkness as if staring at something, causing Calli to turn expectantly and look in the same direction.
‘He was such a good boy, my Kosmas,’ Froso said in a small voice, ‘a hero!’
Calli leaned forward and gazed at her aunt as if seeing her for the first time. She had assumed in her arrogance that she had settled for an uneventful home life as a single woman in the village.
‘All we ever wanted was to marry each other . . .’ Froso’s voice trailed off.
‘Why didn’t you?’ Calli burst out.
‘We had to wait until I was older before he could come and speak to my parents. My mother might have been more tolerant, but my fat
her was fierce, we were both scared of him; we knew he would never have agreed, so until then we had to keep our love secret.’ Froso reached for the jug of water on the table and filled her glass. ‘You can imagine how hard that was. This is a very small village and in those days it was even smaller.’ She took a sip and continued. ‘But we managed it . . . you know what they say, if the heart is willing you find a way . . . We continued to see each other secretly for quite a few months until Kosmas finally decided he would go to see my father.’
‘How did Bappou react? Was he angry? Surely Yiayia Calliope was happy that you had found a suitor?’ Calli shot out one question after another without waiting for a reply. ‘What happened, Thia, tell me . . .?’ Calli asked, eager to know more.
‘I will, my girl, I will, but not tonight. Tonight, I would like to go to bed thinking of Kosmas as we were when life was filled with love.’
That night Calli lay in bed, her head swirling with all she had learned that evening. Earlier in the day she had expected to be lying awake thinking about Michalis, as he had made quite an impact on her. But the revelations of the evening had overridden the events of the day. It goes to show, she thought, you can never judge by appearances. All her life until then she had dismissed her aunt as of little interest and unworthy of her attention, while for ten years she had believed that James was highly interesting and her life’s partner, only to discover the reverse. The story her aunt had left unfinished had equally surprised her. Froso had apparently been quite a rebel, led by love and passion, contradicting all Calli’s preconceptions. She had always considered her aunt to be a quiet, conventional, rather meek and mild sort of person, yet apparently there was a far more dramatic hidden side to her character that her niece had never met. Why had nobody ever mentioned her early history before? Surely her mother must have known about her sister’s fated love . . . Calli eventually fell asleep that night eagerly anticipating the next instalment of her aunt’s story. The following morning she woke early and ran downstairs to the kitchen in her bare feet, hoping to find Froso ready and waiting to continue with her story. Instead she found a note on the kitchen table.
Gone to Heraklion with Eleftheria for a hospital visit. There are eggs and freshly baked bread on the table for breakfast and plenty of everything else in the fridge for your lunch. See you this evening.
Alarm bells started ringing in Calli’s ears. Was her aunt suddenly taken ill, had there been an emergency? She had been so caught up with her new friendships, her attraction to Michalis, and the intriguing love story that Froso was relating to her, she feared she had neglected her poor aunt and her health. She should have asked more questions, she should have gone to the hospital with her, she scolded herself. But Froso had been so dismissive and evasive on the subject of her illness, and Calli, out of respect, hadn’t insisted on more information. Guilt washed over her as she stood in the kitchen holding the note.
At a loss of what else to do and reassuring herself that the hospital visit was perhaps a routine check-up, Calli returned to her room, changed into her bikini and made her way to the beach for her early morning swim and to wait for her aunt’s return.
Monday mornings were glorious down by the shore with not a soul in sight and the water as warm as a tepid bath. She swam for a long while, before stretching out in the sun and lying on her towel, mulling over what she had heard the night before. She tried to imagine Froso as a love-struck girl, and young Kosmas, the amorous ‘heroic’ lover as she had described him; and her thoughts turned to those British boys she had interviewed the year before whose teenage love had ended in pregnancy and parenthood, prompting her to reassess her own life. Young love, she thought, had always existed, it wasn’t only a modern social phenomenon, and apparently it was always beset by problems.
The sound of her mobile in her beach bag made her start, interrupting her thoughts. She only carried her phone with her these days for taking pictures, to save having to take her camera to the beach; she never expected anyone to call.
‘Yiasou, Calli,’ she heard the deep brown voice of Michalis greeting her. ‘Where are you, hope I’m not disturbing you?’
‘No!’ she replied, delighted. ‘I’m just on the beach.’
‘Would you like to meet up for lunch? I finish work early and I’m free for the rest of the day.’
If she hesitated before saying yes, that was only while she speculated when her aunt might be back and if she might need her; Froso’s sudden departure had played on her mind in the course of the day. Returning her mobile to her bag, she realized with surprise and a little guilt that the prospect of meeting Michalis made her pulse quicken. What is wrong with you? she scolded herself, smiling broadly. Behaving like a teenager! Only a week or so ago she had been romancing a man she had just met on the shores of Ikaria, yet now here she was distracted by the prospect of spending time with another man she had only recently met. ‘Clearly I’m making up for lost time.’ She spoke the words out loud as she skipped her way along the surf towards her aunt’s house. ‘But I don’t care!’ she answered herself out loud again, throwing her arms up in the air in joyous abandon as she began to run. She hadn’t felt this free, this jubilant in years and it felt good.
The little taverna that Michalis had mentioned the day before was half hidden in an orchard of orange, fig and silvery olive trees, shaded by vines all laden with grapes. As he had promised, they did indeed serve an even better briam than her aunt Froso, along with a dozen other dishes. Tucked away off the road which led to his village, it was almost empty when they arrived apart from a noisy table of local farmers, most of them sporting lavish moustaches and sun-baked skin, who were well into their meal and in high spirits, shouting across the table as if bawling to each other over the fields. Calli smiled to herself, recognizing this familiar Cretan characteristic. Once again James came to mind; he would always enquire with alarm what people were arguing about, and she would have to explain that there was no argument, just friendly banter.
‘I can’t carry on eating like this,’ she protested to Michalis, even as she tucked into chunky fried potatoes sprinkled with oregano.
‘Food is to be enjoyed,’ he said. ‘It’s a sensual pleasure of life,’ and leaned across to put another couple of pagithakia on her plate. These succulent yet crisp lamb chops cooked over charcoal were finger-licking tasty and Calli couldn’t resist them whenever they were put in front of her. The meat was always tender and any surrounding fat deliciously blackened and deliciously crisp. Every taverna seemed to compete with the others in perfecting this technique.
‘Is there anywhere you’d like to visit?’ Michalis asked after they had finished their meal.
‘I haven’t been to Knossos for many years,’ she replied. ‘Not since I was a girl.’
‘Then Knossos it is,’ he said and signalled to the proprietor for the bill.
Her experience in Ikaria had aroused her interest in archaeological sites and she had promised herself to pay this ancient place a visit while on Crete.
The mythical home of King Minos was as splendid and as improbable as the myth itself. Calli stood in the ancient ruins, gazing at the landscape that surrounded the site, acres of undulating land, hills and mountains, olive groves and vineyards, with the sea beyond glinting in the summer sun.
Suddenly, as they walked on, Calli was abruptly brought to a halt, her way blocked by a fully grown peacock standing bold and tall in front of her as he displayed his gorgeous plumage in a show of brazen confidence. She stood as if in a trance, gazing at the magnificent bird while he glared back at her.
‘Well, well . . . you have been honoured!’ she heard Michalis exclaim a few feet away. She turned to look at him and as she did so, the bird lowered its fan of iridescent blue feathers and stalked away nonchalantly as if the spell had been broken. ‘No matter how many times I have been here I have never had the pleasure of seeing this spectacle,’ Michalis said as he came to her side.
‘Why is it here?’ Calli asked with confusion
.
‘He’s not alone – there are many more of them roaming the grounds, male and female,’ he explained. ‘I think in Greek mythology peacocks symbolize protection and watchfulness because of their many eyes . . . On their feathers, I mean,’ Michalis added. ‘I suppose the eyes are meant to be watching over King Minos and his kingdom.’ He laughed again and took Calli’s arm.
‘They are such strange creatures,’ she said, still affected by the unexpected spectacle.
‘I know, they are bizarre,’ Michalis replied. ‘I’ve been fascinated by them since I was a boy. They used to bring us here from school on day trips – I remember many of the girls were scared of them.’
‘They are disconcerting,’ she said, ‘but I wouldn’t say scary.’
‘I looked them up a few years ago to find out a bit more about them,’ Michalis continued. ‘And I discovered there are all sorts of myths and mystical stories attached to them.’
‘Really, what did you find out?’ Calli countered, noting to herself that, recently, mysticism seemed to follow her wherever she went.
‘Apparently they represent an awakening, they’re a metaphor for transformation or something . . . which is hardly surprising, is it? Just look at them!’ Michalis laughed, and ushered Calli into what was believed to be King Minos’s throne room.
Michalis’s words, though spoken lightly, struck Calli as oddly profound. Wasn’t that similar to what Maya had said to her? Time for change, time for new beginnings? Hadn’t she told Calli something like this before they parted? So, was this bird a sign? A symbol of her new awakening, for her own transformation? Who knows? she thought, turning to look at Michalis who was cheerfully expounding all he knew about the site, about the Labyrinth and the Minotaur and the splendour of the Minoan civilization. As he spoke, Calli’s mind started to wander off again towards that poor duo, father and son, who millennia ago had tried to escape by turning themselves into birds.
