Chapter 11
Darkness and Light
It stays sunny for so long that I don't mind seeing clouds again in early December. When I've had enough of being tethered to my desk, staring at a computer, I lace up my hiking boots and start walking, not necessarily with a plan of where I'm going.
While people always tend to be friendly on Tilos, at this time of year everyone says hello or waves when you pass them on the road because there are no strangers. Winter in Tilos is reinforcing my love of solitude, however, and I gravitate towards lonelier places like Ayios Andonis. The settlement has only a few houses, some half-built, a disused petrol station, a little harbour. With clouds brooding over the craggy hilltops, and a lonely boat on the grey sea in the distant misting rain, it feels beautifully desolate; flotsam and jetsam on the empty beach make me imagine the beginning of a dark mystery novel.
I follow a road I've never tried before, uphill through dark-green trees along the side of a reddish crevasse. At the top, I find Nikos the goat farmer, with his black beard and unruly hair, just closing the gate on his animals. Yesterday, 6 December, was the day of Saint Nicholas and we were invited to celebrate his name day. At the end of a dark road, Nikos' house was warm and festive. His partner had been cooking for days, it seemed: keftedes, or meatballs, revithokeftedes or chickpea fritters, dolmades made of cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and meat, salads – the plates just kept coming. I couldn't bear to watch, though, when she ladled pure thyme honey into a jar and then mixed it with synthetic spicy ketchup out of a squeezy plastic bottle to make American-style chicken wings. I know it's just my being a food snob, preferring everything to be local and natural, but it was another seahorse moment.
During the evening, Nikos told me that one of the goats most prized for its ability to produce milk and young is an English breed, which has long ears and a spotted coat 'like a Dalmatian'. I nodded away as he talked, so pleased to be getting by in a conversation in Greek about goat breeds that I didn't stop to think until later that he might be winding me up. So now I ask if he was making fun. No, he says, he was totally serious. He keeps different breeds, he says, pointing out an alpine goat with wide twisted horns and distinctive markings that's clambering up the hillside.
'These goats here inside, they're just the bad goats,' he says. 'They like to go down to the village to find food instead of looking for it up here. It's good we're getting some rain. Without that, there's no grass and I have to buy maize.'
We admire the view over the sea and the valley. The light rain is wetting my clothes, but it's not at all cold. I say goodbye, then descend to Ayios Andonis and follow the stone footpath around the mountainside to Megalo Horio, a bird of prey hovering above. Arriving at the village, I am struck by how beautiful the tiny whitewashed alleyways in that part of the village are, the bougainvillaea heavy with magenta flowers even in December, lemons ripe on the trees. This last month Tilos has been more beautiful than I've ever seen it, the light so clear, Eristos bay glowing silver with the afternoon sunshine.
It's been the gentlest of Decembers; warm enough to swim in the sea and do exercises in the sun on the beach, and yet cool enough to be perfect for walking – no need to carry water, and in hiking boots I can cut across country and head for the hills, spotting brightyellow crocus and mauve colchicums. I feel very lucky to be here over the winter.
The views keep changing, depending on the weather and which way the wind is blowing. On a sunny afternoon at Ayios Andonis, the island of Nisyros appears more clearly than I have ever seen it before, every topographical feature of the distinctive volcanic dome clearly defined, sheer cliffs plunging into the sea – you could practically see what they were having for dinner up in the village of Nikia on the rim of the caldera. From my house, looking down the Eristos valley, the island of Karpathos is often visible on the horizon like a rock rising from mist. One day when the sea at Eristos is dark grey and almost navy blue, a gap in the clouds opens and a streak of silver spreads across the water.
Another afternoon I explore the old donkey track to the abandoned village of Mikro Horio, where I disturb a couple of families of sheep; the lambs are obliviously suckling their mothers, wagging their little tails, but the ewes look alarmed at the intruder. Back down in the valley, I see a few old goat carcasses. A Byzantine chapel near Harkadio Cave is now a home for goats, judging by the floor, but the altar is ancient carved marble.
Pavlos sees me returning to the honey factory. 'You've got a car and yet you're still walking?!' Yes, thankfully, I am. Exhausted but happy, I boil spinach-like horta and fry a couple of the fresh eggs Pavlos generously brought the other day. I eat them with leftover roasted peppers, tomatoes, onions and courgettes in lots of oil and herbs. No point in walking if there's no feast at the end of it.
At dusk I go out to the village to take pictures of the simple white stars strung over the road for Christmas, and white lights in the shape of a boat wishing everyone khronia polla, many years – a phrase that can be used for any happy celebration. Tall Yiannis who works for the telephone company OTE is walking his dogs; a couple of ladies sit on a terrace sorting vegetables; Eleftheria's brother Zafeiris is scaling a huge fish on the main road; a little boy is out walking alone. Low voices can be heard from the kafeneion, and it's quiet enough to hear conversations from houses in the tiny alleys with their old, curved walls, all whitewash and flowers.
Here, there is none of the fuss that often goes with Christmas, no spending frenzy, no sales – the shops are exactly the same as they are all year round, and mercifully without Christmas tunes. I would love a quiet Christmas in Tilos, but it will have to wait for another year. Soon I am leaving for England, for work and then celebrations with family, when Stelios will join me. I am fortunate to have people I love, who want to see me. And it's good to catch up with colleagues and clients face to face. Living permanently in Tilos doesn't have to mean spending every day, every week here. The important thing is that it's my base, my rock, my place to come home to. As an adult, I've never felt so strongly about the place I call home before. I want to keep calling this island home for a long time.
For my last swim of the year in mid-December, I walk to Skafi beach and little fish jump out of the sea as I wade in. By three in the afternoon the beach is getting covered in shadows; as I return home at four, the sun is just going behind the mountain. Pavlos arrives soon after on his little scooter, switches it off and lights up his cigarette.
'Iremia,' he says. Peace. 'I want to come and drink my coffee here.' He puts his hands in the pockets of his jacket and like a magician pulls out four eggs. 'Freska.'
On Christmas Day in London, I meet my 10-year-old cousin Luisa for the first time. She's grown up on a farm, and I recognise that she's bored being stuck in the house all day surrounded by adults. So I walk with her down to the river where we watch the geese and the swans, and she can climb on railings and run down the muddy path, and I tell her about the magical island where I live.
Stelios arrives on Boxing Day. He's never travelled outside Greece before. I meet him at the airport and we walk into my dad's house to find a party in full swing. It certainly puts his English to the test, but he charms everyone.
The next day, we go to see the sights in central London. The train into the city slows down at a station where works are going on, and five men in high-visibility jackets and hard hats are standing around a hole, leaning on their spades, looking on while a sixth man digs.
'It's just like Greece!' says Stelios, grinning.
Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square look dreary and grey, and I wonder why people flock to see them. Stelios is much more impressed by a sports car dealership and other fancy shops in Kensington on our way to an absurdly expensive lunch with some visiting family of mine. We get on well and have fun, and the only thing he dislikes about England is being unable to sit inside and have a cigarette with his coffee. So on his second morning, I'm pleased to see the sun faintly shining. I take him to a French-style cafe and
we sit outside so he can have a cigarette. His parents have been calling him every day, just as they do back home – this is normal for a Greek family – so it's no surprise when his phone rings. But it's suddenly clear from his expression that something is wrong.
His father has had a stroke. Thankfully the doctor was close by in the village and he was treated right away, and the helicopter was called to take him to Rhodes general hospital. We change our flights, cancel all our plans, dash to my mum's for the afternoon and then fly back to Greece.
By the time we arrive at the hospital, the doctors have given Nikos tests and say he'll be fine: the stroke was minor. If he'd lived on Rhodes he could have gone home, but they don't want him taking the ferry to Tilos until they're sure. Although I know Vicky and Nikos, it's suddenly very intimate arriving to see them in the hospital and it gives me a bit of a shock when Nikos refers to me as the nifi, meaning 'bride' or 'daughter-in-law'. But it's an enormous relief to everyone that Nikos is well. We stay at his cousin's flat in one of the villages and pass a low-key New Year's Eve, feeling that sweet relief of a terrible darkness averted.
When we return to Tilos, the hills and fields are bright green, and there are white almond blossoms. In the Eristos valley there's an abundance of yellow Bermuda buttercups with clover-like leaves, but when I reach the beach it's hardly recognisable: big waves are sweeping in under dark clouds, the wind is blustery and the beach is strewn with seaweed and wet driftwood right up to the treeline. As I walk back, though, the sun comes out and it's so hot I have to pull off my jacket and scarf and jumper.
January is full of colour. Around Livadia and on the pink path to Lethra beach, the hillsides are covered in wild cyclamen, dark-green leaves with white or pink flowers. More often than not when out walking, I see a large brown eagle hovering on majestic wings high above the fields, and one day I set out in the car down the dirt track and startle an eagle that has just caught a snake and is carrying it off. There are three pairs of rare Bonelli's eagles on the island, which is unusual as they tend to require a large territory for hunting. This powerful bird, known locally as spitzaetos, lives in southern Europe, north Africa and the Middle East as far as Asia, hunting for rabbits and partridges, mice and lizards, and searching up to 200 miles a day for food. The other major bird of prey here, the Eleonora's falcon, is more abundant, eating insects or small migrating birds. Together with the Mediterranean shag or cormorant, known as a thalassokorakos or seacrow, which nests in crevices or caves near the sea, these endangered species are protected in Tilos. Unspoiled islands provide rare ecosystems for them.
It rains for three days straight. In what seems like a break in the rain, we drive to Plaka for a walk, but don't get much farther than the little church of St Nicholas. We wait in the abandoned house on the hillside, watching the rain on the trees where the peacocks are sheltering, and listen to the sea down below. I think what a beautiful place it would be to live – completely impractical, but beautiful. The island has so many empty houses, half-finished or half-dilapidated.
Rain often brings thunder and lightning, and being on a rock in the middle of the sea seems to intensify the storms. We unplug the power cable on computers and modem as soon as we hear thunder, but one evening at the first big flash of lightning, the modem makes a loud crack and a bright white spark and explodes into pieces. We hadn't thought of unplugging the phone line. The same happens to others in the village, even those with surge protectors. That lightning is powerful stuff, and this little house on its own in the Potamia valley is vulnerable. We need to keep a spare modem, as the nearest shop is in Rhodes. Yiannis the technician is kept busy by the storms.
Through January, I wake often in the early hours to lightning flashing through the windows, thunder very close, and have to run down and unplug everything. Sometimes I'm so cold afterwards I'm unable to get back to sleep, listening to the noise of the wind howling and the rain lashing the walls. I only have a couple of tiny electric heaters, and this is turning into a particularly cold winter. When I first agreed to rent the house, it was just for a few summer months, and there was no heating installed. I must speak to Delos about putting in a heating unit – here on the island people usually have air conditioners fixed to the wall for blowing hot air and cold, unless they have a wood-burning fireplace. For now, I decide to keep everything unplugged at night, and stay as warm as possible in bed. I pile on all the quilts and blankets.
Surrounded by farms and wild food, we are lucky here, and the winter is constantly relieved by spells of sunshine and the joys of nature. But winter has its challenges, and the austerity measures that have been imposed across the country make things tougher. People like Vicky who work for the local council have only been paid for one month out of the past six. Strikes affect the ferries the island relies on. When the ferries can't come because of strikes or storms, the shops start to run out of fresh vegetables and meat. There's nowhere now to pop out spontaneously for something different for dinner, although Kastro restaurant in Megalo Horio will always make food if we let Dina know in advance; otherwise, every meal has to be cooked.
During this winter, five older people have died on the island; one was in his eighties and still walked every day and loved dancing at the festivals. Another, Eleftheria's grandfather, was ninety-four and she says he seemed perfectly fine the evening before – he simply didn't wake up the next day. It's normal, and not a bad way to go, but when I see the abandoned ruins of houses in and around the village that blend in so beautifully with the landscape – stone walls, wooden roof beams, an olive press overgrown with a rambling prickly pear bush – I start to think about the old ways dying out with the old people of the island. Young people from Tilos, if they find a way to stay on the island, tend to prefer modern, more convenient houses.
There is something about being part of a very small community on a small island that intensifies the experience of life. I start to recognise the slow, off-key tolling of the church bell that signifies death.
Chapter 12
Death and Life
February starts out warm and bright; I turn off the heaters, open the doors, and dry the washing outside in the sun. When I walk towards Eristos I can hear the waves from far away across the silent valley. In the other direction towards Skafi, there's often the lovely jangling of bells as Menelaos herds his sheep down off the mountain.
All the rain has brought up beetroots in abundance, and a few are big enough to pick. I prepare them as we ate them at the restaurant in Athens: boiling until slightly soft when the skins peel off easily under the cold tap; cooking the green leaves and stalks quickly afterwards; chopping them all into fork-sized pieces and drenching them in olive oil, lemon and finely chopped garlic. On days when the sea's not too rough for fishing, we sometimes eat fish soup with homemade bread, or palamitha, a kind of tuna, baked in the oven with potatoes, olive oil, lemon and herbs. I make salad with lettuce from the garden, or vrouves – wild greens.
Back at my office in the UK before I moved here, I would often waste my lunchtime going to Marks & Spencer to do food shopping, then seeing the twenty-minute long queues at the checkout and abandoning the idea. Here there's no need: in winter the kitchen is constantly full of big bags of oranges, cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli and spicy horta leaves, which Stelios is now dutifully buying from the farm vans in Livadia when he's there with the car. During the winter, he drives the car to work, rather than take the motorbike; I wonder where all the coffee cups are disappearing to, then find them in the car.
And it's green as St Patrick's Day all over the island. Wherever I walk, I am constantly startling families of goats, the youngsters bounding about on stocky legs, play-fighting and making a beeline for their mother's milk. On the way up to the village I take the shortcut through the field with Rena's goats and sheep. One little goat is leaping up high in the air on all fours, trying to headbutt his friend. Another has discovered that a hay bale covered in plastic makes a great slide, and keeps climbing up and slithering
down it. When they see me, they stop playing and act serious, pretending they were just munching grass all along.
Then a big storm rolls over again – thunder and lightning, wind and rain. The strength of the wind is measured on the Beaufort scale, which ranges from one to ten, and this one's at least a nine. While I'm in Livadia for an English meet-up with the children, the storm takes the power out. I expect the kids to pack up their books and go home, but they keep doing their exercises by the light of their mobile phones. They're used to it. I grope my way down the rain-slick school steps in the pitch black. At home at seven in the evening with the power still off, it's too dark to do anything except read in bed by torchlight. The wind howls like a banshee around the house, scooping up crates and old beehive frames from the honey factory and blowing them around the yard while rain and hail scratch at the door. Rain floods the road and wind whips up the sea; the walls of our house absorb the damp and I run out of jumpers and socks to pile on.
Once the storm dies down, I take the opportunity to go to Rhodes on the Dodekanisos Express. The sea hasn't completely calmed down but there are things I need to do and my schedule doesn't give me much leeway. Locally known as the Spanos after the owner, this ferry is a fast and reliable catamaran that goes up and down the Dodecanese islands twice a week, connecting Tilos with Rhodes and Kos – though it doesn't give you enough time to do your errands and come back on the same day.
An Octopus in My Ouzo Page 9
