The Explosive Nature of Friendship

by Sara Alexi

  Sara Alexi

  THE EXPLOSIVE NATURE OF FRIENDSHIP

  oneiro

  Published by Oneiro Press 2012

  Copyright © Sara Alexi 2012

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental

  For Vikki

  Chapter 1

  The whitewashed village basked in the summer sun, the red tiled roofs hazy in the heat. The road shimmered, the dust along its edges still. Not even a dog barked.

  The kafenio, usually full of old men and farmers taking a break from work and wives, was empty. Behind the glass doors the old wooden chairs and rough tables were neatly arranged for their return. The chemist’s and bakery that also flanked the town square were closed. The area in front of the church was devoid of shirtless boys playing barefoot ball. The school on the edge of the village, on the road that led into town, was finished for the day. The sun was past its highest and people were asleep during the afternoon’s heavy heat. All was quiet, not even a dog barked.

  The deep dull thud was felt as much as heard, tremoring the ground like an earthquake, a sickening resonance that alerted the senses. Its unnatural quality penetrated the villagers’ slumbers, rousing them to an unsettled wakefulness, questioning.

  Sleepy, half-dressed people emerged from doorways, looking to their neighbours for explanation. Gates had rattled, windows had shaken, a glass had fallen over. They exchanged their experiences, trying to make sense of the unfamiliar sound. They felt alarmed but could find no cause to panic. They looked across the village to the sea, glistening in the afternoon sun; they looked up the hill to the dotted houses that nestled there amongst the olives. Everything appeared as normal. Sleepy, warm, unchangeable.

  Rubbing eyes, they drifted back to shady, cooler interiors, muttering and grumbling.

  It was only as the day’s temperature dropped, and people pulled back on their working clothes to venture outside that, clustered in unsettled groups, they heard the news, the whispers, flowing like water through crevices, until they all knew the source of the disturbance and were horrified.

  Marina's life changed in that instant.

  At forty-three, Mitsos’ life would never be the same again and he felt he owed Marina even more. His constant remaining question: how much was he to blame for everything?

  Fixed with twists of wire to the rusting metal gate at the end of the unpaved track is a homemade post box. Mitsos made it from pieces of an old wooden crate, with nails in his mouth, the construction pinned between his legs, his grey hair falling into his eyes as he worked. He was going to paint it, blue perhaps, like the sky, but then he took the time to admire the grain of the wood, rubbed his veined and age-spotted hand along its smooth surface, and left it unspoilt.

  Worried about the spring rains, he gave it a sloping roof using the front piece of an old drawer, still shiny and polished. The brass handle with its ornate back plate now sits uppermost to glint in the light.

  A lizard is sitting on the handle, its long toes spread as it basks in the morning sun. The grasses around the gate, dotted with delicate pink and purple flowers hiding in their length, are tall after the winter rains - the rains that found their way through Mitsos’ kitchen roof and dripped here and there on his kitchen floor.

  At his approach the lizard disappears down the back of the gate into the undergrowth. Mitsos smiles, takes a moment to follow its progress through the undergrowth. He bends to examine the flowers tucked away amongst the grasses, but he doesn’t pick them. Mitsos uses the drawer handle to lift the lid, edges the elbow of the same arm to hold it open as he slides his hand under and into the box to feel around. It is a well-practised manoeuvre. He scrapes his nails along the wooden insides to see if anything has become lodged flat, and with joy, and nervousness, he retrieves an envelope. He has been expecting this letter for days.

  Mitsos looks up at the clear blue sky and mops his brow with his forearm. Even though it is hot the spring rains have not finished yet and Mitsos can feel the pressure changing. By the gate the grasses rustle as another lizard runs through them, or perhaps it is a snake.

  He feels the envelope. It is thin, a single sheet perhaps. He heads up the lane towards the house.

  He wonders how long the letter has been in the village. The postman, Cosmo, brings letters to the village every day. But after a ride on his moped to the central depot in town and back, he often gets as far as his home near the square and feels in need of a little time to himself and a coffee. Then he often loses his sense of urgency, and the post can remain on his kitchen table sometimes for days before it is finally delivered to its destination. Mitsos recalls that Cosmo was just as lackadaisical back in school.

  Holding the corner of the envelope between thumb and forefinger, he reads the return address as he walks: Berlin. His breath catches and suspends; he stands still. The enormity hits him. He can feel his heartbeat in his chest, his pulse in his temples. If he handles it well this could put everything right … Mitsos feels an unfamiliar tremor of excitement. He puts the letter in the back pocket of his coarse serge trousers, breaths deeply to compose himself, and continues his steady pace home. There is never a reason to hurry.

  The track to the house is stone and mud, much of which the rains have washed away and which Mitsos has not repaired yet this year. Some stones stand proud, the soil around them eroded. He stops, checks his balance, which is good today, and is about to kick one of the stones away when it moves. At sixty-five his vision is filmy and the edges of things appear fuzzy. He screws up his eyes and looks more closely, his slightly bulbous nose wrinkling in the effort. The baby tortoise is no bigger than his palm. Its head disappears. After a while the creature slowly extends its neck out of curiosity, its eyes blinking. As a boy, he once collected three such tiny tortoises. With wood and chicken wire he built a corral for them, the construction careful, but the next day his creep of tortoises had all gone. A mystery.

  Mitsos lifts it to put it amongst the weeds by the track and continues his steady amble, the smell of rosemary drifting to him on the wisp of a breeze.

  His cottage is settled in a hollow on the rise of a low hill, and from the front there is an enchanting view across the village: lichen-covered orange roofs capping single storey whitewashed houses, each crouched low, in between neat vegetable gardens. Beyond the village, regimented orange groves spread across the plain and far away to the blue hills in the distance.

  Despite the uplifting panorama Mitsos no longer uses the front door, not since that day, to which fact the tangle of roses, tall grasses and overgrown succulents testifies. The featureless packed-earth rear is more private; he feels hidden here.

  The kitchen is dark after the bright sunlight. Mitsos briefly closes his eyes to adjust. The small, low, dirty, thinly curtained window casts sunlight in a shaft through the kitchen, across furniture that his grandfather made. The dark polished wood bridges generations and centuries, suffocating but reassuring. The house smells ever so slightly damp since the rain.

  Mitsos is fidgety and looks around for his cigarettes, which are not immediately apparent. He takes the envelope from his pocket and props it up on the painted plaster mantelpiece before commencing a more thorough search.

  His kitchen, like the other three rooms in the house, is sparsely furnished: a table and chair, a day-bed, a rug by the fireplace. Everything is foggy with dust, the colours sucked out by the passage of time.

  During his half-hearted search of the room he lives, and now sleeps in, he cannot avoid noticing
the sink of chipped, unwashed china and blackened pans. He is also running out of, well, everything. The vegetable box is empty. The mesh umbrella keeps insects from nothing but bread crumbs and the heavy fridge no longer works, although it now acts as an admirable mouse-proof storage bin for chicken feed.

  Abandoning the search for tobacco, he turns on the single tap and stares out of the window into the almond grove as he half-heartedly commences the chore with cold water and no soap. The cool running over his fingers feels delicious in the heat. He bathes his forearm and wipes his wet hand over his unshaven face.

  Then he recalls that he was about to do something that was both exciting, and scary. Or was that a memory leaking into the present from another day? He casts around the room for a clue until he spots the letter, the possible answer to his one wish. He leaves the washing-up undone, dries his hand on his trousers and plucks the envelope from the mantelpiece. Wedging it in a drawer, he takes a knife from beside the sink to open it.

  ‘Hey!’ Adonis’ head appears around the door, shiny-faced, shaven, clean, and then disappears.

  Mitsos puts down the knife and carefully places the letter back on the mantelpiece. He steps outside into the heat, which is both beating down and rising off the compacted mud yard by the orchard.

  Adonis takes a baby-seat out of his car and puts the sleeping child down in amongst the trees. He hands a large bag of bottles and nappies to Mitsos before giving him a hearty hug.

  ‘Leni’s written all the instructions on a piece of paper in the bag and sends her love ... And she asks when will you come to eat with us?’ He is smiling, full of life, and smart in his suit trousers and white shirt. They have the same nose but Mitsos is aware that his is bigger, as are his ears now, with tufts of hair growing from inside them and dangling lobes. Old man’s ears. His brother is smarter too. ‘But,’ says Adonis, ‘I had opportunities that you did not, more education ...’ He puts the nappy bag down by the back door.

  The new car, the baby-seat, the big modern bag smelling of sweet chemicals and the noise of the engine seem incongruous outside the back of the flaking whitewashed house, flanked by patchy painted flower pots and a swept-earth yard.

  ‘I still don't think this is a good idea. I won’t manage,’ Mitsos says. Baby goats are fine; he even has the patience to help a nanny to give birth. Feeding donkey foals and lambs is no problem. But a human baby – how will he know what it wants, and what if he misreads the signs? He blinks a few times and tries to calm his racing thoughts.

  ‘You'll be fine. He’s just been changed so you probably won’t have to deal with that. We trust you, so you should trust yourself.’ Adonis kisses the baby on the top of his head and, gently, pats his big brother on the back.

  Mitsos asks, ‘Have you thought what you are going to call him yet?’ He does not know how to even address his little nephew, let alone feed and change him. He considers his little brother rather rash in his choice of ward for something so precious.

  ‘Well, Leni wants to name him after our Baba but I have said no. Nor do I want to name him after her grandfather, Zorba.’ He waves his fingers at his son, playing an invisible piano. ‘Leni’s mother wants to call him Miracle, but if we go down that route I said we should call him Science.’ Adonis laughs at his own joke. Mitsos smiles to be polite but he has watched them struggle through two years on IVF programmes and the gesture does not reach his eyes.

  At the time he had thought it unnatural, but then again what else could they do when they had met so late? Adonis continues. ‘So we have decided on a name, but Leni is adamant that we do not call him by it until he is baptised, so he is “Baby” for now.’ He smooths the baby’s hair; his eyes close as if to sleep. ‘Leni is very traditional in that way,’ Adonis whispers to the child.

  ‘So “Baby” it is,’ Mitsos establishes. But a name does not quell his panic. He was no more than five when he found the nest of baby mice. He had picked one up and held it tight and ran to his mother to show her. His mother had been so cold. She just picked it up, from his pink palm, by its tail, and dropped the lifeless creature into the fire. ‘I still don't think leaving him with me is a good idea.’ Mitsos touches his nephew’s hair as gently as he can, testing his control.

  ‘It is only a couple of hours. Besides, you need to bond.’ Adonis is smiling, and this time pats Mitsos heartily on his back.

  ‘I don't think this is a laughing matter.’ Mitsos is serious. He tries to console himself that the mouse was nearly sixty years ago. He had held it tightly to keep it safe from falling. What he thought would save it had killed it. Maybe he still thinks upside down like that.

  Adonis slams his car door and turns his head to reverse down the track to the road. Mitsos watches him disappear as he backs into the lane, leaving the gate open. He turns to the sleeping boy. He objects to his presence. He's been alone a long time.

  True, just over a year ago he had opened the shop. Adonis had galvanised him into making an effort, to become part of village life again.

  They had taken on an apothiki, a small storage house, filled the rough wooden shelves with plastic bottles of powders, and sacks of chemicals, to be mixed with water for crop-spraying and blight-killing, lined up against mossy walls. But when the first trickle of farmers visited, mostly out of curiosity, Mitsos was abruptly aware that he still could not face the villagers. Adonis managed it for a while, but his heart was not in it either. Not one to miss an opportunity, he pays a manager to run the shop now. With relief, Mitsos returned to his solitary life, which he had been living for the past twenty years, happy to feed his chickens and potter down to the kafenio.

  He finds solace in his solitude now, the gentle change of the seasons the only influence on his quiet routine. The bugs and the small beasts all around him are his most constant companions. Besides, his life is harder than people think. They don’t realise how difficult it is.

  He turns to the house and tries to recall what he was doing, something important ... The child makes a noise, a calm cooing as he sleeps, his eyes fluttering, his fists clenching. Mitsos looks at him again, trying to understand this noise, like he tries to understand his chickens’ different clucks. Each one has a meaning if you take the time to listen. The child’s soft skin beckons him to touch again, his rough fingers rasping no matter how lightly he strokes.

  With the contact the boy becomes silent again and sleeps on. Mitsos envies his peace, his innocence. Truth be told, he envies his ease of living, his whole life ahead of him, unblemished.

  In stages he lowers himself to a sitting position next to the child. The ground is still cool from the night, the grass slightly damp. The baby is lying down in his car seat, so Mitsos lies back, spreading himself out, picking the sharper stones from under his back. Now they can enjoy the same view – or at least they will, when the child wakes up. He can hear insects all around him, scratching and rustling. He feels at one with his land; he pats the earth, appreciating the living it has given him.

  The baby’s noises change. Mitsos turns on his side to look at his companion, who has opened his eyes.

  ‘So young,’ he says with a sigh, and leans forward to kiss the little boy, the sweet smell of infancy lingering after he pulls away. ‘I was young once. It must seem impossible to one as new as you are.’ Mitsos rolls onto his back again. Lying in the weeds and the grass, they gaze up at the almond blossom. Bright white against a deep blue sky, the orchard full of warmth and the promise of summer; the smell of the earth dominant, a hint of ozone assuring all growing things that more rain will come.

  ‘Yes, I was young. We all were.’ Mitsos picks a grass stem and chews on it, slowly. It is the act of a man who spends much of his time thinking, slow, ponderous.

  His nephew stares at the blossoms fluttering in the slight breeze. He reaches out, wanting to touch them. Mitsos turns his head again to look at him. The infant is mesmerised by a fly. Mitsos waves his hand, driving it away, and the baby reaches for his watch, gold and shiny. Mitsos, missing the child
's interest, pulls his hand back and puts it behind his head. The baby squeals as the watch is replaced by a falling leaf. Side by side, they become lost in the maze of black branches of the almond trees.

  ‘When I was young,’ Mitsos begins, quietly, ‘I had a friend, we were like two peas in a pod. What a pair of idiots we were …’ His voice trails off, and he exhales slowly. ‘So much life wasted.’ He looks to see if his talking is bothering the baby, but it seems to be soothing so he continues. ‘The young are so foolish, and then we grow up and get some sense, but it is too late, too late.’ A tear comes to his eye, and he wipes it away. They are silent together for a long time. The leaves rustle; creatures can be heard passing through the grass. The occasional butterfly flits overhead. The world around them is alive and happy.

  When he resumes his narrative his tone is serious, quieter.

  ‘If I could turn back time, my little friend, so many things I would change. We were so wicked I can hardly bring myself to tell you.’

  The baby makes a noise. ‘Calm yourself,’ Mitsos responds. ‘I will tell you. We have a couple of hours together, for goodness’ sake. If my brother is serious and he wants this baby-sitting lark to be a regular event I may even get around to telling you how I lost my arm.’ He laughs sadly before adding: ‘There’s precious else you and I can do but talk. You being only a baby and me, well, me being the way I am now.’ He looks softly at his kin and wishes the baby an uneventful life.

  Mitsos falls silent for a moment. He has been thinking about the part he has played in his own life for so long that it feels a heavy burden. He decides to share it, why not? His talking will amuse the baby and he might finally make some sense of it all, two birds with one stone. He rouses himself slightly and adopts the role of entertainer.

  ‘So imagine us if you will, Manolis and Mitsos, young lads. Manolis always more of a man – he was a good head taller than me, with jet-black hair, blue eyes that mesmerised the women from when he was a very young age, first the mothers, then the daughters, and then the mothers again. Built like an ox and as wild as a wolf. There was no taming him.’ He looks at the baby to reassure himself that the talking will not upset the child but seeing its eyes so bright he continues, ‘Next to him, your good old Uncle Mitsos was just the sidekick, an afterthought for most people. Your Uncle Mitsos smiled more, I think. Your Uncle Mitsos definitely moaned less and was too shy to have a way with the women. I think your Uncle Mitsos perhaps thought things through a bit more than Manolis did, but Manolis – well, he was the ideas man. And did he come up with some ideas, let me tell you …’