The Explosive Nature of Friendship

by Sara Alexi

  Mitsos is about to get up and make coffee when he hears a ‘ping’. The copper kettle hanging from a metal spike in the fireplace pings again as another rain drop hits it, the chimney open to the elements. Then Mitsos feels a drop on his face. He looks up; the open rafters are showing no pinpricks of light and yet a drop of rain has come in, not from the chimney. Another. And another. Mitsos stands up and takes a pan and waits for the next drop to show him where to position it. No sooner has he placed the pan to catch the drops than another leak becomes evident. He watches and finds the spot where the rain is coming in. He looks up again; there is no sign of light through the tiles. He takes a bowl this time and places it to catch the rain.

  Outside the wind is picking up. He cannot hear it howling, the rain is too loud to hear the wind, but it is blowing the rain to a very steep angle. It rarely rains when the wind is blowing from this quarter, and when it does it is never this strong. Mitsos recalls gossip of global warming and melting icecaps, but it feels too far-fetched that this has anything to do with that. Besides, the problem of the leaks is too pressing to leave room for speculation on such a scale.

  He reasons that the wind must be blowing the rain under the tiles. The pitch of the roof in the kitchen is such that the wind must be blowing diagonally across and down them, but the pitch in the front room goes the other way; the wind there will be blowing diagonally across and up under them. Mitsos goes through the narrow hallway and opens the door to the little-used front room. He stops in his tracks. Water is coming in from the rafters in several places, running along the beams before dripping onto the floor in many places. A cascade is flowing from under the trim round the window, the windows themselves a timpani of sound as the wind blows a hard rain against them.

  Mitsos darts into action. He tries to carry two bowls at once and nearly drops them. He puts cups and bowls and saucepans and even his grandmother’s soup tureen around the front room. He pushes the chairs into areas where there is no water, arranges a towel under the window and then considers the bedrooms. These are in the oldest part of the house which has evolved, over the centuries, to accommodate his ancestors. The newest part, with the kitchen and front room, is mostly plastered breeze-block, the bedroom nearest the kitchen, where he and he brothers slept when they were young is made of plithra, a baked mud brick as dense as concrete, and the end room, his parents’ room, is built of stone. From the outside it all looks the same, all plastered over, painted white. On the inside, the bedrooms, although they too are plastered now, have holes in the base of the walls where insects, over time, have gnawed and scraped away the mud brick and the soft grouting between the stones, creating tiny channels from the outside to escape the heat and, no doubt, in the night scuttle to the kitchen and clean the floor of breadcrumbs. Tonight the holes will be refuge from the rain for a multitude of tiny beasties. Mitsos likes this thought.

  In the heat of the summer his parents’ bedroom keeps coolest and in the winter warmest. With the rain, the wind and the condition of the roof, in this, the oldest part of the house, his concern is that it might now also be the wettest. He passes his old bedroom and opens the door at right angles to it, into the cool stone-built room. He had moved from his childhood room into here one particularly hot summer, a few years after both his parents were dead. He had stayed right up until he got too lazy to even move from the kitchen at night. His day-bed became his night-bed when his limbs flopped into apathy with the introduction of regular nightcaps to blank his mind.

  The stone room is cool and neat, the bed is made and smooth, the shutters closed, the rain drums on the roof. Normally the room is so quiet he can hear the death-watch beetle quietly scratching away at the timbers that hold up the roof. He looks about the dusty floor for dark patches, the sign of rain pooling, but there are none. He runs his hand across the bed on both sides but, amazingly, it is dry. The wardrobe door hangs open, his vests neatly folded and stacked from a time before he stopped caring.

  He pictures Theo’s clean shirt at lunch time. He strips off his undershirt and puts on a fresh one and takes down a shirt from one of the hangers. He used to silently ridicule his dad for wearing a vest and shirt in summer, but now he does the same, it stops his shirt sticking. The rain is getting even louder. He changes his trousers whilst he is there; he cannot remember when he last did so. Then he recalls what he was doing and decides to check the second bedroom.

  In years not much has changed in there. Two beds are pushed up against the walls and one in the centre, with not even leg-room around it. White sheets cover the mattresses; the floor is dry except for a spot by the door. He puts his dirty vest there to soak up the moisture and returns to the kitchen and flings his dirty trousers over the back of a chair.

  It is a while since he has shaved. He heats water on the camping stove by the sink, leaving his lighter next to it. The razor feels harsh and his bristles are tough; it takes a while. As he shaves, he listens to the sound of the rain hitting the assembled pots inside his house and wills it to stop. He puts the blade down to feel the smoothness of his jaw. He looks younger without the grey stubble, but he needs a haircut too. He smooths off the remaining shaving foam from around his ears with a tea towel which he then puts down, on top of his lighter.

  Two of the pans in the front room are full so Mitsos pokes his head out of the back door for the bucket. It is by the donkey shed. The rain is so fierce that he will not make it there and back without being soaked. He takes his rubber fishing coat and hat from the wall, kicks off his slip-on plastic sandals, slips his feet into his rubber fishing boots, and with his sou'wester on his head and his long rubber coat around his shoulders he makes a dash for it. He grabs the bucket by the handle but it immediately comes away in his hand. He throws the handle into the barn. He lifts out the mop, but the head remains behind, an indentation in the stringy mess suggesting that something has been nesting in it at some point. He discards the mop handle and picks up the handle-less bucket, and as he runs back to the house he upturns it to discard the mop head.

  He exhales as he steps back into the dry, puts the bucket down, and pulls off his hat and hangs up the coat, creating a pool of rain water on the floor. He takes the bucket through to the front room, but as he carries it he sees that the sun and time have cracked the plastic and it is useless.

  ‘For goodness’ sake.’ He puts the bucket by the door and thinks for a minute before he takes a baking tray out of the range and puts it to catch the drips in the front room. There is nothing more he can do.

  He sits back down on the kitchen chair, looking out at the rain, and crosses his legs; his foot jiggles. He knows he will need a mop and bucket as soon as the rain stops. The roads into town will be flooded. He will have to go to Marina’s corner shop to buy one. He decides he needs a coffee first and returns to his little camping stove by the sink. He searches his pocket for his lighter but cannot find it. He looks on the mantelpiece but it is not there. He reaches across to the shelf behind the sink by the window for a box of matches; the soggy box disintegrates in his hand.

  ‘Oh, Panayia!’ he exclaims to his god and looks out at the rain, wondering if he should make a dash down to the square and get coffee either at Stella's or at the kafenio. The rain is easing. He hopes it will stop as quickly as it started. He gives it another five minutes.

  It eases but does not stop. He puts on his fishing gear and closes the door behind him. He is aware that he has not fed the chickens, but they will survive. His neighbour takes care of his goats for a cut of the profits and the trees don't need much work at this time of year. He has organised his life well for a one-armed farmer. He smiles to himself as he hurries down the track to the road. He quite likes the rain.

  The downpour has all but stopped as he reaches the square. He decides coffee comes before mops and buckets and he climbs the few steps into the kafenio. He begins to walk towards his table in the back corner when Theo approaches him with a coffee.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asks, and walks past him to a
table in the front window-corner. ‘There's a leak over your old table.’

  There are a few other men sitting drinking coffee, and they acknowledge Mitsos with a nod of a head, or a raising of a finger. One says ‘Yeia’, a casual hello. Mitsos turns to the table in the window. This is where his Baba would sit. Theo walks past him again with a second coffee.

  ‘You don't mind if I join you, do you?’ he asks.

  ‘Er, no.’ Mitsos pulls off his sou’wester and his old-fashioned, thick yellow rubber-coated jacket. He hangs them on the coat rack at the back and notices one of the other old men is barefoot with his trousers rolled up, another is wet up to his ankles, sporting socks but no shoes.

  ‘Everyone’s been caught short, it seems.’ Theo nods his mop of hair at the wet shoes lining the window’s edge. ‘Should have seen the rush to Marina's to buy buckets and mops the first time it eased. It was almost comical.’

  ‘Oh, I am on my way there myself,’ Mitsos says.

  Theo looks at him but says nothing.

  ‘I know it’s early, but could I have a whisky with this coffee? A bit of courage is what I need.’

  ‘No you don't.’ Theo stands and retrieves a bottle of whisky and a glass from behind the counter. ‘You want this in a separate glass or in your coffee?’

  ‘Theo, can I ask you a question?’ Mitsos looks over to Marina’s shop through the rain.

  ‘Sure.’ Theo is smiling, looking out at the world, leaving the whisky bottle on the table for Mitsos to decide what to do with it himself.

  ‘No, it's ok, never mind.’ And he gulps down some coffee and stands to leave, dropping some coins on the table.

  ‘Here anytime,’ Theo reminds him.

  ‘Actually, I might come back in a minute.’ He looks at his coffee cup, still half full. ‘I'll just go and get a bucket and mop from Marina’s.’

  ‘Ok, then get me a bucket whilst you’re there, will you?’

  Mitsos doesn't bother with his sou’wester or rubber coat. He makes a dash in the light rain across to the shop. The bell rings as he enters. Marina is sitting behind the counter, her feet up on a beer crate. The English woman, Juliet, from the old farmhouse, is talking to her. She turns and smiles, her hair no less gold in the artificial lighting.

  ‘Hi, how are you?’ she asks with a smile, picking up a new bucket she presumably has just bought.

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ Mitsos says politely.

  ‘I imagine you are.’ She smiles even more widely and leaves the shop.

  Mitsos watches her leave and then turns to Marina, who stands.

  They stare at each other before they both look away.

  The rain starts again.

  It intensifies suddenly.

  ‘Bad weather,’ Mitsos says.

  ‘Sold all my buckets,’ Marina replies.

  ‘Oh, that’s what I came for,’ Mitsos says, and turns to leave, clearing his throat.

  The skies open and the downpour over the square startles them both with its ferocity, and with it comes a sudden gust.

  ‘The wind’s changed direction,’ Mitsos observes. The shop door, that the English lady left open, bangs shut. The leaves of the palm tree in the square are swept over to one side and, to Mitsos, the view through the half-glass door looks like pictures of hurricanes he has seen on TV; but as dramatic as the scene is, he knows the wind is nowhere near as strong. The man in the kiosk has boarded up his two side windows; he is now pulling in all the boxes of chewing gum. He is screwing up his face, so Mitsos knows the wind is blowing the rain even in there. His kitchen is going to be flooded, with the wind in this direction. The tiles might not even hold. He wonders how much of the ugly furniture will be salvageable.

  The sky visibly darkens before everything is lit for a fraction of a second with lightning that bleaches the clouds. There is a crack of thunder. Marina jumps. The rain pouring off the roof is beginning to seep under the door. Marina pulls a beach towel from one of the shelves, releases it from its cellophane and hurries to pack it into the crack under the door.

  ‘Can I help?’ Mitsos asks as Marina rights herself. She has stopped the flow. They are standing very close.

  Another flash of lightning, and they wait for the crack of thunder which follows sooner than either of them expects. The lights in the kafenio blink as the electricity is interrupted. The rain is too intense to make out anything clearly outside.

  ‘Marina, whilst I am here I have something I need to talk to you about.’ He can smell her shampoo.

  Marina looks up to him, her mouth a hard line, the whites around her eyes so clear.

  There is a tearing noise and water starts gushing in from the ceiling directly over a shelf of toilet rolls. In the moment that it takes to register, Mitsos recalls this was the area where Manolis had kept his whisky when it was his store room all those years ago, whisky and water. The situation is far from funny but the thought makes him chuckle.

  ‘Panayia!’ Marina squeaks and runs as fast as her legs will take her to the far corner where she grabs at the toilet rolls and throws them, one after the other, behind the counter, away from the leak. Mitsos leaps after her and he stacks the toilet rolls neatly. When the space below the hole has been cleared they peer up at the grey daylight beyond. At least one tile has slipped. The next lightning flash is accompanied almost immediately by a drawn-out rumble of thunder. The wind is howling now, and tiles can be heard lifting and falling back into place in several other parts of the roof.

  ‘I’ve just sold my last bucket,’ Marina wails as the rain, which is now pooling in the corner, begins its route across the floor to a dip in the centre. There is another noise, a smashing sound, and this time they both look up expectantly, as rain begins to course in down the corner by the flour, where Manolis had kept the dynamite. Mitsos blinks rapidly for a second to rid himself of the memories.

  ‘Not the dried goods!’ Marina shouts above the noise, and both of them hurry to the corner to empty the shelves, placing the flour with the magazines, the bird seed on the counter. Marina pulls a pack of dustbin liners off a shelf and opens them, and taking one out she begins to fill it with newspapers and magazines. Mitsos helps as much as he can to put all the paper goods into the bag she is holding. Once it is full, Marina opens a second bag. Mitsos struggles to open a bag by himself between his hand and his teeth, cursing quietly into the plastic. Finally it opens and he hangs it on a shelf corner and begins to transfer the sugar and the cake mixes, adding a few packets of flour that have made it to the same shelf into the sack until the hanging corner tears and the contents spill back on the floor. Marina is bagging the knitting-wool and the bread.

  Mitsos tries again, the flimsy plastic stuck to itself so the bag will not open. Turning his back on Marina he chews it and pulls at the ragged edges with his teeth. Again he is letting Marina down. The plastic gapes, this time he holds one edge in his mouth as he salvages all that has fallen onto the wet floor. The flour is ruined. The sugar on top is ok.

  The lightning flashes and they hear a crack so loud that Marina puts her hands to her ears. The thunder rolls louder and the two of them duck at the sound. Mitsos looks out of the window in the door but all he can see is rain. Marina has gone to the stockings and tights section when Mitsos looks up to see the central roof beam bending. He stares transfixed. It snaps with an awful splintering sound. The whole roof caves in and a tree branch follows through the rip straight towards him. He dives in front of the counter and all he can hear is ripping, tearing and splitting of wood and glass smashing, until there is no sound except the pounding of the rain.

  ‘Marina!’ he shouts but there is no answer. He stands and tries to orientate himself but the shop is a mass of rubble and he cannot tell where Marina was. The elements are suddenly in the room, the rain lashing from all directions. He feels dizzy and the air is filled with new smells from all the broken packets of food mixing with the rain. He starts toward the household products and gets as far as the crisps, which are still all lined up on
the shelves. He rubs water from his eyes, his shirt is stuck to him, the empty sleeve flopping heavily. The branch is across the roof beam; both are a metre or so above the floor, held up by shelves and tins. The lightning flares again and the accompanying roar of thunder is immediate. Mitsos climbs over the beam, beyond which is a mess of foodstuffs, toiletries, cleaning products and rubble.

  ‘Marina?’ he shouts. He can hear his heart beat in his ears. The dark, cloud-filled sky is casting shadows. Nothing is clear, the lights have all gone out and the corners of the shop are in semi-darkness. He sees a movement and moves towards it only to jump back. It is a rat. He swallows and wipes more rain from his face. He is stepping on things that break and crush. He steps on something hard and round; he fears it is Marina's arm. His throat constricts, but reaching down he is relieved to find it is a torch. He flicks it on but there are no batteries in it and so he drops it. He feels along the floor and pulls up a packet. Ten-denier tights. He throws them behind him and waves his hand across the floor, feeling for what his eyes cannot see. He touches something soft and warm.

  ‘Marina!’ She makes a sound, and he laughs out loud with joy. He reaches under the beam along her arm to her shoulder; he lies on the floor and wriggles under the beam to see her face.

  ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Marina smiles.

  ‘I'll soon have you out.’ Mitsos smiles in return.

  The grating of stone upon stone silences them. The beam above them is sliding sideways. Mitsos begins to back out; there is a screech of wood, ripping, tearing, splintering. Mitsos scrabbles, the beam drops. Mitsos is hit full force across his back and he sinks to the floor, head to head with Marina.