Black Butterflies

by Sara Alexi

  The growl of the engine as the hydrofoil reverses its way out of the port brings the noise to a climax. It swings through the harbour entrance and disappears round the corner. The din subsides and a peace returns. The cafés are all but empty now, and the waiters loosen their gait in the comparative calm, now that the tourists have gone. They chat to each other from their territories about the football last night, the new Mayor, what they will do this evening, after work. Marina picks up her bag and wonders what to do now she is here. She knows why she has come, but how to go about it?

  The harbour is roughly three sides of a square, with a jutting-out pier all but closing the fourth, seaward side. The harbour is not very big and the really big boats are obliged to moor on the outside in the deeper water, or so the programme had said. Marina feels quite the expert. There are no boats there now. She walks slowly up to the first corner where the donkeys wait to take bags and tourists, furniture and water bottles, anything that needs transporting with more than a handcart. There are no roads here, nor cars or motor bikes, only foot and donkey on little cobbled lanes; unspoilt, lost in time, a slower pace of life, even for Marina. She sighs with pleasure at the thought of slowing down.

  ‘Hello, lady – you want a donkey to take you and your bag to your hotel? It’s either donkey or legs – there is no other transport here, you know?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Marina remembers trying to stroke the donkeys the last time she was here, and Aunt Efi hurrying her to keep walking. She doesn’t suppose it could be the same donkey. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘She’s about fourteen by now. Come on, I will …’

  Marina’s attention is caught by another donkey man. A Japanese girl is being helped up onto the last donkey in the line, and once she is uncomfortably aloft the donkey man lashes her bags to the lead mule. He stops his movements every now and again to twist his handlebar moustache. Neither the moustache, nor the action of twisting it, seems to suit his young age. A Japanese man is circling around them taking photographs, tripping over the cats sprawled on the cool marble flags.

  ‘Who is that?’ Marina asks.

  ‘Yanni, but his donkeys are no better than mine, we …’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘How old is he? First the donkey, now the man. Well, let me see. He was at school with my son, not the same year though, the year above I think, so that will make him thirty-five. Although anybody would be forgiven for thinking he is older. No humour, that one. Old for his age. Not like my boy, so full of life …’

  ‘You say he was at school with your son. So he has been here all his life then?’ Marina tries to sound casual.

  ‘He lives with his parents up on the ridge there.’ The man points above the houses to the skyline. ‘Hey, Yanni, there’s a lady asking after you here!’

  ‘Hush up, I was just curious.’ Marina smiles and feels her cheeks colour.

  Yanni, with the girl and her bags ready, leads them off, holding the first animal’s bridle. He glances at Marina before looking away again, with no smile, no pleasantry.

  ‘Good day,’ Marina calls, but Yanni just hurries his animals on with the command ‘Dai’, and the procession ambles away, the Japanese man still photographing the spectacle and laughing as he chatters to the girl, who is hanging on with both hands, looking very nervous.

  ‘You won’t get much out of Yanni. Now, which hotel am I taking you to?’

  ‘No, no thank you.’ Marina smiles as if to ask his forgiveness as she walks quietly away until she is under the clock tower. She has no hotel booked, she doesn’t know where she is going. In fact, it seems ridiculous to be here now. She is not normally one to interfere. She looks around at the houses encircling the port like an amphitheatre.

  The houses highest up, Marina knows, follow the line of a gully which is hidden from view and extend all the way to a second tiny harbour a couple of kilometres from the main port to the west.

  The only destination she knows is the house she stayed in with Aunt Efi on the other side of this hill. The shallow steps up past the bakery could take her directly there, or she could walk right around the harbour and go along the coast and then inland up that gully to some steep steps which lead there, in no hurry. She looks behind her. The donkey man is watching her so she sets off with purpose towards the coastal path.

  Chapter 2

  At the far end of the harbour the shops dwindle, and Marina turns the corner along the coastal walk past a jumble of jagged rocks. The port felt so busy and she is glad to be on her own. The absence of cars, bikes and roads slows the pace but seems to increase the intensity of activity at the port, which bustles with donkeys, handcarts and wheeled luggage. Marina takes a deep breath and exhales the rush.

  The sea sparkles. The rocks drop away and flatten off to the water’s edge on her right where a set of concrete steps have been laid to give access to the sea for bathing. By the steps she remembers there is a cave, with waves crashing inside, booming even on a calm day. She recalls young men jumping, laughing, through the hole in the cave’s roof to the darkened sea below, climbing out again and prancing their way back up, on the sharp, sun-baked rocks, to somersault from the edge of the cave’s roof into the deeper water. She had longed to join them, and had smiled at one of them but Aunt Efi had pulled her away by her sleeve.

  There are signs now, forbidding diving and jumping from the cave, but even so there are boys, now in knee-length shorts, ignoring the warnings, laughing, daring each other. She can hear Greek, English, French and German. Back then, it was only Greek.

  Marina looks up at the view across the sea, across the narrow strip of water separating the island from the mainland, dotted with islets. They float on white skirts, mingling with the sky. The view is a dreamy series of blues, each island a lighter shade behind the last, until in the distance they merge with the sky altogether, neither land nor cloud. Back then, she thought it was the best view she had ever seen. Today it catches in her throat, her chest swells, she’s glad she came. With a view like that, nothing else in the world matters.

  She walks on up the path, to another place she remembers, past the high rock where in her mind’s eye she once again sees the two men daring each other to jump from higher and higher up. Her heart had been in her mouth; she felt sure they would hit the rocks below, or that they would plunge too deep. But again and again they reappeared, flicking back wet fringes, and laughing. Marina smiles. Today the rock stands bare, and she hears snatches of a French conversation drifting up from the heads bobbing in the water far below. No one is jumping from the rocks. A concrete platform has been built at the bottom, with iron steps into the sea.

  The stone-cobbled path continues unchanged until she comes to where the steps drop to a smaller harbour away from the main town. Here, before the descent to where the fishing boats are moored, is a freshly painted taverna. That is new. The most popular restaurant used to be down by the fishing boats, but as Marina descends she sees that the building is now derelict, its windows black, lifeless, the doors nailed shut, faded signs still hanging. It’s a sad sight. Marina recollects all the black and white Greek films made in the sixties that had featured this, often using close-ups on the actors in a half-hearted attempt to disguise the location. She sighs.

  Marina heads inland, under twisted old pine trees that line the dry riverbed here, past dry wells, now used as dustbins, and onto the wide, gently sloping walkway that leads to the house she once knew. The houses here vary. Small whitewashed shepherds’ cottages sit beside large cut-stone mansions. The island’s history preserved to become rich foreigners’ holiday homes. Passing some of the larger houses, she steps closer to look up through the windows at the ceilings inside. The ceilings in the grander houses have intricate wooden latticework decoration that astonished her as a child. She stares up through a high window. It impresses again today.

  A meow draws her attention, and she looks down at a black and white cat, just past kittenhood, lithe and muscular. She leans down to stoke its hea
d and the cat raises itself on its back legs to meet her hand. As she walks on, it trots by her ankles. Her old shoes are comfortable on the warm, smooth stones. Marina watches her feet and wonders why her ankles are always so swollen. She’s been on her feet for nearly twenty years in her shop. Maybe that’s it.

  Maybe her ankles need a rest? She sits on a low wall by the path. The cat jumps up next to her. She strokes it.

  ‘I didn’t have a choice after Manolis died,’ she tells the cat. Eleni had been eight and little Artemis only three. Marina can still recall doing the maths. The orange groves were not really enough without an extra income. It had been a sad time, but Marina had found she could not grieve for Manolis; he had been too unpredictable, too wild, too selfish. She wouldn’t miss him, and he was hardly ever there anyway. But there was a change, and in that change she needed an extra income.

  She recalls the day after his death, wandering around their house, coming to terms with the fact that it was now all hers. Thinking of it as her own gave her butterflies in her stomach; she felt she was doing something naughty, that Manolis would rise from the grave and shout at her, or ridicule her. She poked a finger on the back of his chair – it had always been in the way there. Without meditation, she grabbed it by the arms and dragged it, grating its wooden feet on the stone flags. When she stood back to consider it in its new position, she felt as if she had slapped Manolis across the face. He liked things to be where they were, no change, even if it made Marina’s life more difficult with the children or the cleaning. She continued her wanderings through to the kitchen, and then back. The chair’s position felt uncomfortable, and she returned it to its original spot.

  After a couple of days it grew easier, with the funeral done and the mourners gone. Her mother left her alone a little more, still taking the grandchildren to distract them, but allowing Marina a little more space.

  She had been wandering through the house when she tripped on the rug, again, for the hundredth time. She bent to straighten its edge that her feet had rucked up. It was the ugly, cheap rug he had got from the gypsy. Marina sighed at the memory of those poor gypsies..

  The gypsies came into the village to sell their wares, rugs piled high on their van. Piled so high you thought the little van might topple. They pulled up, and the man got out. The door in the side of the van slid open and a dozen children gurgled out, leaving a mattress and bedding clearly visible behind them. The gypsy’s wife climbed down from the passenger seat, ignoring the children; head-scarfed, a big woman, wearing long skirts, stretching and yawning. When they arrived in the village, Manolis saw them passing the window and expelled a loud ‘Ha!’. He had wanted a rug for the sitting room, where the stone floor was cold during the winter. When he announced that he was going to get a rug from the gypsy, Marina had been a little surprised. They didn’t have money for such things. Eleni was growing fast and needed a winter coat. She was still running around barefoot, and it was getting cooler.

  Manolis approached the gypsy, showing all the signs that he intended to buy. Rug after rug was rolled out, and he exclaimed over the quality and the beauty of the patterns. The gypsy’s wife hitched up her skirts to step barefoot on the rugs, to point out interesting parts of the design with words that held no sincerity. Her children ran in circles around the square. The kiosk owner, whose kiosk had been tiny back then, a wooden pill-box selling cigarettes and matches and not much else, put up his shutters to save his windows from any potential damage, and to stop stealthy hands from making quick grabs.

  After half the rugs were spread out on the square, the gypsy man assured Manolis that the rest, still piled on his van, were duplicates, and that he had seen the full selection. Manolis held up a hand for the man to wait and popped back inside to take a bottle of ouzo and a couple of glasses from the shelf above the fireplace. Marina immediately knew he was up to no good.

  Back in the square, Manolis sat down in the middle of a large rug, glasses and ouzo in hand, while the gypsy looked on in astonishment. Manolis declared the choice was so rich that he needed a drink to relax him so he could make his decision, and would he, the gypsy, care to join him in a glass? The gypsy, not wanting to offend and lose the sale – nor, indeed, ever having said no to a free drink in his life – obliged, and a conversation was struck up about this and that. Before long, Manolis, as smooth as you like, took out his cards and began shuffling them absentmindedly. He found a topic of conversation that the gypsy was passionate about.

  Marina, who had watched from the corner of their house, seems to recall it was football. Whilst the gypsy was ranting, Manolis dealt him a hand, and whilst he was enthusing on some point about a recent match, Manolis, with his cards in his hand and a nod of his head, indicated to the gypsy to pick up the cards dealt him, which, with the ouzo doing its job, he did with no conscious thought, on automatic pilot, still talking. That was how the game started. Before the gypsy knew where he was, wagers of cigarettes were made, then the odd coin, until finally the gypsy had half his rugs staked against Manolis’ ‘grandfather’s solid gold watch’, which Marina knew was only gold plated, and which Manolis had been given for his eighteenth birthday. He said he had never liked it, fob watches being for old people.

  But what the gypsy had not reckoned on was Manolis’ cunning and, Marina suspected, his sleight of hand. Manolis lost persistently when the stakes were low, and just enough to keep the gypsy interested as they grew. But as the final hand was played, Marina knew the outcome before the gypsy suspected a thing.

  The children were shouted back into the van, receiving cuffs for no reason. The gypsy’s wife huffed and mumbled and pointed a wagging finger at her man, who responded by threatening her with the back of his hand. In less than a minute they were gone, leaving the square carpeted like a mosque.

  Manolis slapped his hands together and rubbed them, grinning. The kiosk man took down his shutters and opened again, and Manolis put his hands on his hips, leaned his head back, filled his lungs, and at the top of his voice shouted that he had very cheap rugs for sale.

  Whilst the villagers disapproved of Manolis’ carryings-on as a rule, they were not wealthy and were always keen to pick up a bargain. Manolis sold all but one of his entire stock of rugs in less than a couple of hours, at ridiculously cheap prices, and everyone, except the poor gypsies, was very happy.

  After straightening the kicked rug, Marina suddenly took action and pushed and shoved the furniture aside, and rolled up the rug. She pulled it by one end through the kitchen, out into the courtyard and through the gate. She left it on the edge of the square where some gypsy could pick it up and sell it on to some unsuspecting punter. A full circle.

  It was after she dumped the rug, and on returning to the courtyard, that she noticed the door to the outhouse was open a crack. This was Manolis’ domain, and no women or children were allowed. She tentatively pushed the door ajar, feeling fear as Manolis’ being dead didn’t quite feel real yet. Maybe he was still in there? There was a smell of must and mothballs, oil and stale smoke. She felt for the light switch, to find it encrusted with dirt. She clicked it on and wiped her fingers on her apron.

  Her eyes adjusted and her jaw dropped open. The room was full of farming tools and fishing nets, magazines and coffee cups with mouldy fur lids covering their half-drunk contents. There were leather jackets on hangers over hooked nails in the ceiling beams, and one corner was full of crates of wine. There was a stack of new shoes in boxes, and bundles of shepherd’s crooks, a row of paint tins, a tower of hats, six or seven foot pumps, a flock of lamps on top of a cupboard, a team of skittles … Every surface was stacked to the ceiling, and there was barely room to get in.

  Marina took a second to contemplate and then fought her way to the door on the other side of the room that faced the square. She drew the bolts and shoved it open. She called to a neighbour to spread the word through the village that Manolis’ things were going the same way they came in – on the cheap. The villagers first turned up out of curiosity b
ut soon came to buy. A scrum ensued and Marina provided coffee and biscuits. After a few days the piles dwindled, but still the villagers came. Rather than disappoint, Marina began to buy replacements for popular items and so her shop was born.

  It wasn’t planned, but from then on the girls always had winter coats and summer and winter shoes, even if they chose not to wear them. Life proved easier without Manolis and they grew to be relatively comfortable. When Marina added food to her shop’s offerings she also grew fat. Twenty years on her feet behind a counter full of sweets would account for the swollen ankles.

  Her shoes do look a bit worn, though. She has not lost the inclination to be frugal but perhaps it’s time to break in her new ones. Perhaps she should have brought them. The cat continues by her side right up to the first step. The steps! There are at least as many as she recalls, and they are just as steep as she remembers! The cat runs up the first flight, where it meets with other cats halfway, sprawled under the shade of a eucalyptus tree on the cool of the smooth, worn marble. They bump heads in greeting and the newcomer offers a lick here and there.

  Marina looks up past the cats until, there at the top, with windows on three sides, is the apartment Aunt Efi had rented. It could have been yesterday, so little has changed. This side of the house rising so tall from the old river bed, the rear of the house settled into the side of the hill at the top of the steps. Like the prow of a boat, it juts over the ravine. She remembers the hours she spent looking out of the window, wishing her days away.

  At the top of the steps, Marina recalls, a little way past the house, is a shop in someone’s front room. If it is still there they will have cool water.

  Marina changes hands with her bag and hitches her black skirt above her knees to begin the slow ascent. Her knees are fleshy and white, and she lowers her skirt just enough so she cannot see them, and begins.