One Summer in Crete

by Nadia Marks

  ‘He . . . Mitros . . .’ Calliope paused for a moment and looked at her daughter, a furrow appearing between her brows. ‘When he asked for you, we told him he had to wait. How could we have known then that he was not honourable, that he was not decent,’ she sighed. ‘Kosmas should have done the same, he should have come for you. We would have told him that he had to wait too instead of going behind our backs and getting yourselves into trouble.’

  ‘He wanted to . . . it’s not his fault,’ Froso replied, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘Kosmas is a good boy, Mama, he thought Papa would refuse him, that he would think he was just a poor fisherman, not good enough for me, and that he’d put a stop to it.’

  Calliope stood silently by the stove, her back turned away from Froso, stirring sugar into the hot water. ‘Well . . . there is only one thing to do,’ she said eventually, turning to face her daughter. ‘The sooner we see you two engaged, the better. It will keep you both out of trouble.’

  ‘What about Father?’ the girl asked anxiously. ‘What will he say?’

  ‘Leave him to me,’ Calliope replied.

  It took Calliope several heated conversations with Nikiforos before she convinced him that this was the best course of action to deal with the situation.

  ‘Don’t you want your girl to marry for love like you and I did?’ she said to him, trying to appeal to his better nature when he started shouting that a fisherman’s son was not what he had in mind for his daughter. ‘You were a poor farmer’s son when you asked for me and my father didn’t object,’ Calliope shot back at him. ‘Money doesn’t bring happiness, you know that, husband. Sometimes it brings misery,’ she continued, putting an end to the conversation. Nikiforos might have been strict and fierce with his children, especially his girl, but when it came to his wife it was a different story: she knew how to handle him.

  Once their love was declared and a date for their formal engagement was set, Froso and Kosmas breathed a sigh of relief and were more relaxed about being seen together in public. Christmas was looming and as it was close to the festivities the two families decided to meet together and to pledge that their two children would soon be united in matrimony.

  A few days before Christmas, Calliope and Nikiforos invited the boy with his parents and siblings to a celebratory meal to discuss and agree on the union of their two families. Kosmas arrived with his mother, father and his two older brothers, Pavlis and Yiannis, all dressed in their Sunday best, the men, including Nikiforos, wearing traditional Cretan clothes, the fringed handkerchiefs around their heads adding a further air of gravity to the occasion. Pavlis, the eldest, was particularly fond of his little brother as Kosmas had taken him into his confidence about his love for Froso and their predicament. The girl too looked up to the young man and welcomed his support. ‘I say make your intentions known to the family,’ was Pavlis’s advice to young Kosmas when he first told him of the clandestine relationship. ‘I’m afraid her father would reject me,’ the boy worried. ‘What do I have to offer a girl like her?’ ‘Our good name, that’s what,’ Pavlis insisted. ‘We are a decent family, it’s not all about the money, my brother.’ But the boy was nervous and agreed with Froso, who was confident that if they waited until she was a little older, he might have a better chance of being accepted.

  So on that day Pavlis was particularly happy and joyful that the young couple were finally going to be united. Calliope had killed her best and fattest hen and made an extra load of sweet festive cookies. Everyone loved her famed melomakarouna that were made from either semolina or wheat, dipped in honey and covered in walnuts, and her equally delicious almond biscuits, flavoured with rose water and dusted with icing sugar, both usually reserved for Christmas Day and the New Year. But this was a special occasion: this year they would be holding a double celebration, she told Kosmas’s family. They would herald the birth of Christ and celebrate the betrothal of their two children. Nikiforos brought out his biggest bottle of raki, as well as his best red wine, made by his brother in the village, while Froso darted about with young Androulios making the house look festive. The little boy, filled with eager anticipation, helped his sister with the decorations, paying special attention to the small wooden ship, which in place of a Christmas tree was the festive centrepiece in every home at that season. The model ship, splendidly displayed, was a custom prevalent in most Greek islands, where the perilous chief occupation of its men was fishing, thus serving as both a symbol of gratitude and an offering for the men’s safety. Froso and her brother cheerfully busied themselves, making everything around the house sparkle: colourful balloons from every light fitting, tinsel and ribbons on all the door handles and windows.

  On Christmas Day after early morning mass, in front of the entire congregation huddled together in their tiny village church, Father Nicholas blessed the rings and performed the betrothal ceremony, announcing to all present that the two youngsters were now betrothed. After the service the two families gathered in Kosmas’s home for the festive meal. The day before, Manolios, the boy’s father, had slaughtered his pig, which he had been fattening for months, and Kosmas’s mother, Vangelio, spent all her waking hours cooking. She cooked one part of the animal in the oven and another part Manolios roasted over an open spit. Both meats were accompanied with spanakopita, a spinach and cheese pie, and several types of salads and vegetables. For dessert, apart from the traditional melomakarouna and kourabiedes, Vangelio made her famed baklava, filled with chopped nuts, flavoured with cinnamon and cloves and served warm and dripping in syrup and honey. That Christmas was the most enjoyable and memorable they had ever celebrated, and the festivities lasted for several days, as did the dishes that Vangelio had carried on making from other parts of the pig that had not been used for the main roasts.

  Christmas and New Year came and went and Froso’s birthday was celebrated by naming the day for their marriage.

  ‘I always dreamed of getting married on the first day of May,’ she told Kosmas as they sat in his mother’s kitchen one Sunday after church.

  ‘That’s too far away,’ he complained, shifting a little closer. ‘I don’t care which day we marry, so long as I marry you,’ he said and leaned over to give her a kiss – but thought better of it as his mother pushed open the kitchen door.

  ‘There will be plenty of time for all that,’ Vangelio said as she walked into the room, guessing what was in her son’s mind. ‘Be patient, you’ll be married soon.’ She smiled at them both again. She was protective of the girl, she knew what men were like, and nuptials were strictly for the wedding night, although she also knew that if a boy had his chance it was very likely to happen before. But Vangelio was oblivious to the fact that Froso’s passion was as fervent as her son’s.

  ‘Ever since we told everyone about us, I can’t even kiss you,’ Kosmas whispered in her ear once his mother left the room again. ‘We are always surrounded by people.’

  ‘The rains will stop before long,’ she returned, flashing him a dazzling smile. ‘In the caves,’ she added cryptically with mischief in her eyes, ‘the earth will dry soon.’

  Ever since the incident with Mitros, Kosmas had kept well away from the village, and Froso had reduced her trips to collect her books; as the festive season meant that the school was closed for some weeks she had had no reason to go there until now.

  Froso’s first few visits were swift and uneventful; she arrived in the village with the first bus, she made her way to the school just as her teacher was opening up, and then hurried home. At first the skies were still ominous and uncertain with clouds hanging dark and low, but by March the weather had broken, the days grew longer, the temperature milder. The swallows were starting to arrive and were busy making nests, and the air was perfumed with lemon and orange blossom.

  It was on a glorious day such as this, when the early spring sun had burned through the winter’s gloom, that the two young lovers agreed to meet once more in their hideout and steal some sensuous moments alone, even if it was for the brief
est time; though they would soon be married, they were also young and impatient.

  Froso didn’t go to the school to collect her book that day. Instead, to save time, she made her way directly to the cave. The scent of blossom mingled with the aroma of wild thyme was intoxicating; she clambered down the hill through the low bushes and thorny shrubs to the cave. Kosmas was already there waiting for her, having hidden his bicycle in the undergrowth among the yellow gorse and mimosa trees. They held each other tight for the first time in months, their hearts thumping in their ears, filling them with both excitement and fear. They knew it was risky, they knew after what had happened last time it was madness – what if they had been seen? But their love was stronger than their fear and, finally alone for the first time since their engagement was announced, they gave in to their passion.

  They were lying in each other’s arms, knowing that they must soon set off on their way back home, when they heard rustling in the bushes outside. Froso let out a small cry and brought her hand to her mouth. Kosmas, holding her hand, stood up, then releasing her hand and taking a deep breath stepped towards the entrance of the cave. There, his figure silhouetted dark and menacing against the light, stood Mitros, brandishing a knife.

  ‘No!’ A single cry was forced from Froso’s mouth before she saw Kosmas fall to the ground. She scrambled to her feet and dashed towards him as blood poured from his chest, and placed her palm over the wound. ‘Murderer!’ she howled, hurling herself over the body. Mitros tossed the knife behind him and stepped towards her. With one strong hand he peeled her away from Kosmas and pulled her up.

  ‘You are mine!’ he hissed. ‘He had it coming.’ He spat the words out, and pushing her to the ground, pinned her arms over her head with one arm and covered her mouth to silence her screams with the other as he forced himself on her.

  5

  Crete, 2018

  The night suddenly felt stifling. The breeze from the sea, which had been constant all evening, seemed to stop abruptly, along with Calli’s breath. She sat motionless, the perspiration which had broken out on her face now spreading all over her body. She had been listening intently to Froso without interrupting or noticing the passing of time. Now, to her horror, the story of young love and passion which had started so movingly the night before had turned into a Greek tragedy, a Cretan nightmare. She looked at her aunt, her ashen face streaked with tears; with trembling lips Calli tried to speak but could find no words. How could this be true? She had always heard stories and anecdotes about war and bravery, of the unforgiving Cretan temperament, of the hardness of the men mirroring the harshness of the landscape, their history of thrashing the Turks and defeating the Germans. She remembered the elders talking in hushed tones about mysterious events that had occurred in the caves and the ravines up in the wild mountains. But murder and rape, in their own family? The tales and yarns she had heard up until now were set in times of oppression and war, times of survival and slavery, historic times long past, or so she thought. What her aunt had just told her had nothing in common with those stories of long ago. This act of violence had taken place in the twentieth century, a few miles from where they now sat, and the realization took her breath away.

  Froso, voiceless now, was sitting upright in her chair, fatigue and sorrow etched on her pale face. She reached for her niece’s hand, squeezed it, then got up and went inside.

  Calli remained rooted to her chair in the garden, unable to move until the first star appeared in the pale sky. Only then did she take herself upstairs to lie on her bed. But sleep would not come. Nothing had prepared her for what she had heard in the course of the night. How could her mother not have known about her sister’s tragic early life? Or perhaps she did know but had not told Calli; perhaps the subject was a family taboo that could not be mentioned. Eleni discussed most things with Calli, they shared so much; surely if her mother knew she would have told her once she was old enough to understand.

  Her aunt had said that she wanted to speak to them both before she died, therefore Eleni must be ignorant of her sister’s secret past. But how was it possible for her aunt and her grandparents to keep silent all these years? Did anyone at all know anything? Questions swirled in her head, giving her a headache. She had to talk to her cousin Costis, to find out if anyone in the family, his mother perhaps, knew any of the story.

  As soon as the first rays crept through the shutters and across her bed, Calli gave up on sleep, got up and made her way to the beach. She knew that the only course of action to soothe her and put some order in her mind was a dip in the early morning sea and a walk on the shore.

  She was grateful for the coolness of the water, which made her body tingle, reviving her senses, bringing them, and her, back to the present, helping her to leave the terrible past behind. She swam a long way out to sea and then round the rocky promontory that divided the main beach from her own little private cove and lay out on the warm sand in precious solitude. She wanted to be alone, to think of nothing. She closed her eyes and for a few minutes surrendered herself to a kind of sleep, blocking any thoughts of murder and violation.

  She came round to the sound of birds’ wings fluttering above her. ‘Raphael . . .’ she whispered in her state of semi-wakefulness as, opening her eyes, she saw two swallows flying overhead, darting in and out among the rocks and over the surface of the sea. The soft whirring of their wings carried her back to another shore on another island some weeks before, when the same sound had disturbed and moved her so. She lay motionless, watching their playful flight through half-closed lids, as a faint memory started to take hold, of conversations she had picked up from her grandmother and some of the elders around the village when she was a girl, about subjects she had been unable to understand at her tender age.

  ‘It’s a blessed house when a swallow chooses to make its nest there,’ Yiayia Calliope used to say. ‘The energy in our village is strong and positive, that’s why they come back every year.’

  In her grandmother’s house a family of swallows would appear each spring to make their nest in the beams of the balcony below Calli’s room. She remembered how as a child she would watch with delight the parent birds feeding their young, flying in and out of the nest with morsels of food in their beaks, dropping them into the gaping mouths of their chicks. The spectacle filled the little girl with awe and later, when she was older, she would always try to capture the scene with her camera.

  Lying on the hot sand now, her limbs heavy, watching their flight, nimble and black in outline as they wheeled and dived against the blue sky, her mind wandered off again to Ikaria. She thought of the people she had met there and about her own spiritual awakening, prompted by Maya. Before meeting that extraordinary woman, she realized, her mind had been closed, dismissive of so much that she didn’t understand; but the older woman had helped her to open her thoughts to new ways of looking at the world and beyond. Once more she felt grateful for their encounter.

  The early morning swimmer who Calli had spotted in the distance with some irritation appeared to be swimming towards her, threatening to ruin her solitary contemplation. She made to get up and leave until she realized with pleasure that the person who had neared the shore and was now waving to her, was none other than Michalis.

  ‘Apologies if I am disturbing you,’ he said as he emerged from the water and crossed the sandy beach towards her. ‘You did tell me you were an early morning swimmer, but I didn’t believe you’d be this early.’

  ‘Not normally,’ she replied, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him. ‘Had a difficult night and here is better than lying in bed trying to sleep.’ She shifted sideways to make room for him.

  ‘Oh?’ He looked at her quizzically and sat down. ‘What happened?’ he asked with genuine concern.

  ‘I’ll tell you next time we meet . . .’ she replied, not sure that she would. ‘I’ve been watching a couple of swallows for the past half-hour . . .’ she added, eager to change the subject. ‘Don’t you just love th
em? My grandmother used to say it’s a blessing if they come back every year!’

  ‘It’s true,’ Michalis replied, ‘they do say that around here. They say that swallows have a sixth sense and always choose a place with positive energy to stop and rest during their migration. Have you ever noticed how many of them pass through the village? They all line up on the telegraph wires, it’s quite a sight!’

  Calli was struck by the irony of his words. Surely, she thought, if the energy is so good, then murder and rape should have no place near here . . . Then again, she decided, the land can be positive and blessed but there is no accounting for those who walk on it; the earth is not responsible for the people who inhabit it.

  ‘There has always been talk of unexplained things in these parts,’ Michalis continued. ‘Some people say that millennia ago aliens landed here, others that it’s the presence of the Holy Virgin that creates this feeling of serenity.’

  Or maybe it’s the angels, Calli thought, remembering her mentor Maya once again; who knows, she thought again, maybe she had really sensed Raphael’s presence earlier on. In fact, what actually made this island so special to Calli was hardly important to her; even despite last night’s revelations, it had been the place she had liked best since childhood, and she would be hard pushed now to have to leave it.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Michalis said as he started to get up, ‘I must go now, time for work.’ He reached for her hand, not to shake it in a formal gesture; he took it and held on to it in an act of physical bonding, flesh on flesh: two people who liked each other connecting, in much the same way that people here hugged each other when they met. He held on to her hand all the while he spoke, his big rough palm comforting, almost protective, and she liked it. ‘Would you like to meet later . . . this evening?’ He smiled as he spoke, and his eyes smiled at her too.