The Art of Becoming Homeless

by Sara Alexi

  Michelle shuffles in her seat to see where he is pointing. It is one of the mansions by the water’s edge, four floors high of solid stone, with windows and balconies overlooking the harbour. A four-faced pitched orange roof tops the warm orangey-cream stone.

  ‘Actually no, first I will tell you a story.’ He takes a sip of coffee, and a moment to really taste the flavour, smacking his lips and rolling his tongue.

  ‘You know, I think I am a bit hungry.’ Michelle says it quietly.

  ‘No problem, what would you like?’ He raises his hand and one of the other waiters comes over. He speaks a few words, they laugh, and Michelle feels a little uncomfortable.

  ‘We will have a choice. Now, where was I? Oh yes, a story.’ The second waiter quickly returns with a tray of spinach pies, bougatsa, toast and butter, and new coffees.

  ‘Once upon a time—you are comfortable, yes? I can begin?’ Michelle has just taken a mouthful of the bougatsa and is struggling to free the bite from the pastry, icing sugar all round her mouth. She nods and smiles as best she can.

  ‘OK, so once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when I was a boy, I thought I knew what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. I took the time to do the things necessary to make this come about, and the further down the path I was the more convinced I was that I was right. I have strong opinions and with these opinions came an arrogance in the belief that my way was the right way, the only way, and that everyone else was too blind to see that they were taking the wrong path.

  ‘My Mama tried to tell me that my single-mindedness was not necessarily a good thing, but her words fell on deaf ears. I continued on my way, but she did not give up. She tried many times to tell me that perhaps there are other ways to live life, that the choices I was making did not necessarily lead in the direction I was hoping to go.

  ‘But with the arrogance of youth and the feeling that my time on this planet was endless, I battled on, determinedly thinking I had all the time in the world to change my mind.’

  He takes another sip of coffee, looks at the food but doesn’t choose anything, then sits back contentedly.

  ‘Eventually I received my prize. I went to Princeton to study Astrophysics. I was young. I wanted to do amazing things.’ He speaks casually as if it is insignificant.

  Michelle stops eating and looks the waiter up and down. There is no sign of humour. Could he be serious?

  ‘Several years I stayed, lost in my studies, you could say.’ He laughs briefly. ‘Never any time to come home to my beloved island, but I still kept the vision of it in my heart, an ideal version of my life “back home”.’

  He pauses, his eyes focused inward.

  ‘I came home eventually, here to the island, after I graduated. My mother was pleased to see me, and I was delighted to see her and all my old friends, but after a few days I grew sad. The island seemed to have lost its charm, the people seemed slow and stupid, the methods antiquated and pointless, the traditional ways no longer made sense. I felt like an alien in my own home. I told my Mama of my sadness, and I also told her that for these reasons I had to leave again, live the rest of my life in America. It did not feel like I had a choice, and it made my heart heavy.’

  The bougatsa is gone and Michelle absent-mindedly picks up a piece of spinach pie. Her attention is fixed on the waiter.

  ‘The day I was due to leave, I had said goodbye to my father. My cases were packed and I was very stressed by the decision I felt compelled to make, and very sad. Mama called me inside. She said, “Come, son, let us have a coffee together,” and she made coffee in her little briki—that’s the Greek coffee pan, just big enough for one cup. She waited for the coffee to boil. The mixture came bubbling to the top, and she snatched it off the heat just before it boiled over. She poured it into her little cup, then she put the briki back on the stove to make a cup for me. When it was just starting to boil over, she took it off the heat, the froth subsided and she waited for the grounds to settle. Whilst they were settling, she filled my little cup with rich goat’s milk that she had just brought in from milking. Not just a splash—she filled it to the brim. And then she began to pour the coffee on top.

  ‘I watched, astonished, as the coffee overflowed into the saucer, filling that too and spilling onto my Mama’s clean white tablecloth. I could not believe what she was doing. I sat there with my mouth open, unable to move. But she just kept pouring, the coffee and milk mixing together and becoming cold and dilute. Into the saucer it went and all over the table, and still she didn’t stop until the briki was empty.

  ‘Finally I found my voice and I said, “Mama, what have you done? Have you gone mad? The coffee’s spoiled; it’s all over the table. What are you doing?”‘

  ‘“Why did it overflow, son?” she asked me. Well, at that point I thought she must have gone senile and I looked at her with love. “Don’t pity me, Costas Voulgaris,” she snapped. She always used my full name when she was cross … “I am enjoying my coffee,” she said. “It is you who is not.”

  ‘I didn’t leave the island that day, and, as you can see, I am still here. What can I do with astrophysics? Sure, I wanted to do something amazing with my life, but here everyday life is amazing, not by doing but just by being, and it is available for everyone to taste, just as long as their own cup is not so overfilled nothing else will fit in.’

  Michelle looks at him side on. She feels sure she has heard a variation of this tale somewhere before, but he has taken the time to adapt it for the moment.

  ‘Did you really go to Princeton?’ she asks. He doesn’t answer her. Instead he returns to what he had stated earlier.

  ‘You see that hotel over there? That was the first one I renovated. When I started, it was nothing but a shell and full of rubble. Now the tourists can come to stay and experience for a few days what I experience every day. If I had stayed with astrophysics, would I have achieved amazing things by now? Maybe, or I might still be waiting. But with the choices I have made I don’t have to wait to do amazing things. Now I see every day is amazing, everything on the island is amazing, everyone I meet is amazing, and instead of living in the future I live right now. It is perfect.’

  Michelle wonders how he is going to wind up this thought-provoking piece of entertainment.

  ‘Today, for example, it is amazing to be sitting drinking coffee with a lovely lady from England. And look, today’s work is finished as I have made her smile.’

  She could applaud him; it is so beautifully delivered, so nicely rounded. She is flattered that he took the time to present this piece of philosophy to her.

  ‘The loss is to the world of astrophysics, I think.’ She smiles. ‘Princeton should be proud.’

  He smiles but he does not grin. He is watching an Asian lady being lifted onto a mule that is baring its teeth.

  ‘How did you know, though? I mean, know that you wouldn’t regret such a decision, to stay here?’

  ‘It was easier than I expected. All the time I was away, I was just that—“away”. The work was “work abroad”, the people who loved me were here, the people who knew me were here, the people who cared about me, here. The people I worked with over there did not really care about me. They cared about the work, the working relationship, and the project. So really when I thought to make the choice, there was only one place that I could live happily, for the long term anyway.

  ‘It is not bricks and mortar that make our home, it is people who love us.’

  A group of rather red-looking English people enter the port.

  ‘If you will excuse me.’ The waiter stands, and in two easy strides he is talking to them.

  ‘Tea and toast, or maybe you have had breakfast already, in which case you must try our crab. It is the best on the island. Constantinos there catches it for me.’

  The old fisherman stops folding his nets to wave. ‘Every day he goes out, the most content man I have ever met. Now, who wants some of the best coffee on the island?’

  Michelle looks over the caf
é door where the proprietor’s name, ‘Costas Voulgaris’, is painted by a rather shaky hand. Owner, waiter, astrophysicist, she muses.

  Michelle lets her back curve into the chair; she, too, feels boneless, melted by the sun. Her mind is blank, washed clean by the waiter’s stream of words.

  She considers letting go of consciousness just enough for a quick snooze when she sees Yanni the donkey man walk into the port, his one donkey behind him.

  She must do something about him. She leaves some money on the table and stands.

  Chapter 8

  Yanni’s loss is apparent in the way he walks, lifeless, slumped.

  A girl in the office in London has a horse, talks about it like it is human, and seems to spend more time with it than with her boyfriend. The whole chambers knows about its schooling, its learning progress, how some things it learns faster than she does, and she feels she is holding it back, and how, over other things, she has to be patient, repeating them again and again.

  Until listening to her, Michelle had never considered what sort of bond a person could have with a horse. It seems it can be pretty intense. This is confirmed by the look in Yanni’s eyes.

  ‘Er hmm,’ Michelle coughs her introduction.

  ‘Ah, nothing broken then?’ he asks.

  ‘No, just painful.’ She is not sure how to approach the subject. It is not going to be a straight compensation discussion. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’

  He loops Suzi’s rein around a post. ‘I don’t drink coffee, thank you.’ The thank you comes as an afterthought.

  ‘Look, there is no way I can express how sorry I am about what happened.’ The image of Dolly’s last breath brings a lump to her throat, she squeezes a tear back. ‘I am truly really sorry, it was a terrible thing to have happened.’

  ‘You are alive.’ Yanni has taken out a tobacco pouch. He twists his moustache before beginning his ritual. His moustache seems odd on one so young, but most of the donkey men have them, and Michelle presumes it must denote status.

  ‘Yes, I’m alive, thank goodness, but this doesn’t detract from your loss.’ She wonders if he will understand the word ‘detract’.

  ‘She is gone. I will miss her. Suzi will miss her.’ He pats his remaining beast. ‘Last night, in the dark, she cried out her loneliness till nearly dawn. This is life, is it not? Life and death.’

  ‘Well, yes, but for you it is also your living.’

  ‘True, things will be a little harder this winter coming; we will not have so much to fall back on.’ He pauses to lick his cigarette paper before the final twist. ‘So maybe this winter we will make things stretch a little further.’

  As he uses the term ‘we’ Michelle has a sudden horrible thought that maybe there is a wife and children at home who will suffer.

  ‘You have a family?’

  He looks at her strangely.

  ‘Of course I have a family; every man has a mother and father.’

  This gives Michelle a small amount of relief, but she knows that doesn’t really make any difference. If someone suffers, they suffer, old or young.

  ‘I hope your parents will not suffer too much …’ This is her opportunity to lead into offering some compensation, but he rejoins with:

  ‘The only hope I had was to finish building a room, so my parents would no longer need to sleep on daybeds.’ He picks some tobacco from his tongue.

  Michelle tries to digest this information. She is not sure what it means, what a daybed is in Greece. Nothing comes to mind. It seems to imply they do not have a bedroom, but surely that cannot be right.

  ‘Well, what I was going to say was, I would like to recompense you for your loss.’

  He looks at her as if she has switched languages to Chinese.

  ‘Oh, sorry, I mean buy you another donkey.’

  He looks at the floor and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he mutters.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Why would you buy me a donkey?’

  ‘Well, I was on her when …’ She cannot finish the sentence.

  He shrugs and adjusts Suzi’s bridle, running his hand under the nosepiece so it fits without chafing.

  ‘You left her in my hands, you trusted me.’

  ‘No, I left her in your boyfriend’s hands. So is it his fault?’ Michelle begins to protest, but realises Dino not being her boyfriend is not the point of the matter. ‘Or maybe it is the fault of the dimos for not paving the path, or maybe mine for renting her out to you and not going with you to keep her safe.’

  Michelle finds his logic incomprehensible. She had the loan of the donkey, so it was clearly her fault, her responsibility. She is not sure how to explain to him the reasons why this is so, on his terms.

  He drops his cigarette end and grinds it to nothing with the toe of his cowboy boot.

  ‘If you had died, who would buy me a donkey? Because you are lucky enough to live you must buy a donkey? This is strange thinking.’ With this he has finished the conversation.

  Michelle has not.

  ‘In England my job is to see who is at fault. I am a lawyer.’

  ‘Ah, dikigoros.’ He nods as if all has become clear. Michelle bristles.

  ‘When things happen, it is someone’s fault, and that person is responsible for making good any losses.’

  ‘When things happen it is not always someone’s fault. Last winter a rock fell onto one of my goats. Whose fault is that? If you had been sitting on that goat would it have been your fault?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead he asks a question. ‘So what is the difference between rocks falling up or falling down?’

  ‘In my work, someone is always to blame,’ Michelle defends limply.

  ‘It is unfortunate work; you must never feel satisfied,’ Yanni replies.

  Stroking Suzi’s neck, Michelle struggles as pictures of Dolly swim in her mind’s eye. She feels guilty, but what could she have done?

  ‘Yanni, I would like to buy you a donkey. I have pictures in my head of the accident.’ She stresses the word ‘accident’. ‘It would make me feel better if I could give you a gift.’ Yanni’s face remains unchanged. ‘Please,’ she adds. He still does not respond, but his eyes flicker. He is thinking.

  ‘One minute.’ Nipping back to the café, she uses one of Costas’ receipts to write her phone number and email address on the back, but then crosses out the email address as she imagines it will be of little use to a donkey man on this island. She writes Juliet’s number instead, as a backup.

  ‘Here, this is a number in England where you can reach me, and I have also put a Greek number where you can leave a message. Please, please think about it.’

  A rather large man sweating in tracksuit bottoms and a white vest rolls up to Yanni and babbles in Greek.

  ‘I have a job, I must go.’ Yanni says.

  ‘Please call me,’ Michelle implores. He looks her in the eye for just longer than is comfortable before turning on his heel. Michelle watches him go, and as she is about to give up hope, he raises a hand and gives a stiff wave without turning around.

  The Greeks are growing in mystery. Their way of seeing is at such a tangent. All the people Michelle can think of would have taken the money and run, even if they didn’t want to replace the donkey, wouldn’t they? He could have taken the money to build this room for his parents, or just to help live through the winter. How can someone living so hand-to-mouth be so choosy? If his parents sleep on daybeds, he is not secretly wealthy like Costas Voulgaris the waiter. But perhaps the people she comes into contact with through her work are the sort who would resort to the law to settle their difficulties or even use it to their advantage. Perhaps there are scores of people, the majority even, who are like this donkey man? A whole world of people who don’t complain or try to make a profit from accidents.

  Michelle frowns. She was about to do something—what was it? The heat is delicious but seems to be sapping her ability to think. She shades her eyes with her hand and looks up. The sky’s blue is deep, no clouds, not
a wisp. High up, there is a ragged line, a vapour trail, the plane no longer visible.

  She leans against the post Suzi was tied to and looks out to sea.

  ‘Michelle, here’s a new case to cut your teeth on. It’s a small claim, but he is a regular customer, so keep him happy.’ Arnold Braithwaite, head of the Yorkshire branch of Dulwater & Marown, grinned as he passed her the folder. This was in the days before she transferred to the London office. Grasping the folder, she returned to her desk, eager.

  ‘What ya got?’ drawled William, who sat opposite her and liked to make a point of being her senior, although he’d only been at the firm a month or two longer than Michelle.

  ‘Cyril Buttershaw.’ Michelle read the name at the top of the file.

  ‘Ha, Septic Cyril! Bad luck!’

  ‘Why bad luck?’ she asked, but William wouldn’t give anything away.

  ‘You’ll see,’ he laughed.

  The next day she went to visit the place where Cyril Buttershaw had tripped on the upturned paving slab. He had made the same claim against the council three years in a row. He lived in a small, one-street village that looked like Yorkshire had forgotten about it, the houses set back from the road with a narrow strip of land in front that one or two had planted with flowers, nothing surrounding the houses but fields across which a single-track lane curled, flanked on either side by dry stone walls. For the most part though, these front yards were bare soil or a dumping ground for household refuse. There was a cluster of children’s bikes rusting on one, a mattress on another. The offending paving stone was near the end of the row of houses before the road turned a corner and disintegrated into the overgrown front gardens of the last two houses.

  There was not much to see. Michelle made some notes on her clipboard, holding down the paper against the keen wind that was blowing. She took a photograph as an aide-mémoire and then turned to go.

  ‘Are you from the law firm?’ The voice had the trace of a lisp.