The Buses and Other Short Stories

by Dora Drivas-Avramis

  “It is difficult for me to talk about it, not even your Dad knows the particulars; oh, he knows I suffered one night at work many years ago, but I’ve laid it to rest, because the incident left me with bitterness,” said Maria.

  “And let’s not go into the past now, let’s enjoy this perfect day and each other’s company; sometimes it’s best to leave the past where it’s buried. Sometimes the past resembles the large stone we turn over with effort only to find unsightly creatures underneath,” replied Thomas with a slight plea. Every word he uttered seemed precious.

  “But if we’re unaware of the past, we may not understand and appreciate the present,” Costa pointed out, looking to his wife for support.

  Thomas glanced at Maria searchingly, as if the cue had to come from her. She looked around and noticed some of her guests were ready to depart.

  “Please excuse me to say my goodbyes to our guests, Margaret please get some fresh coffee and sweets and I’ll leave it up to Thomas to relay the incident to all of you,” Maria said. “I’m certain he remembers it better than me and it’s more his story than mine.” The day darkened, the afternoon leaned on the shoulders of evening. A slight breeze fanned their faces as everyone fixed their eyes on Thomas. He reflected for a moment and said, “Alright, but I caution you this tale will not be amusing.” And he sat back in the outdoor chair, sipped his coffee and started the long-ago story.

  It happened when I was only three months in Canada, in my mid-twenties; an electrician, I was desperate for work. Like other immigrants at the time, we had come to add our skills, our strength and our desire to build a better Canada. But every employer required language skills, experience, references and so on, finding work was difficult. To survive we had to swallow our pride, forget our trade and work anywhere. I ended up cleaning an office building in Toronto’s downtown; that’s where I met your mother who was a couple years younger than me.

  It was mid-January, there were about thirty of us cleaning an office building which really required more than fifty employees, starting after five in the afternoon. We had to mop all the corridors, polish all the glass and furniture, empty the trash cans, vacuum the carpet—all before two in the morning. Most of us approached our duty conscientiously, especially the women. There was no time to talk about this and that; it was back-breaking work with no breaks and the minimum wage.

  A devout moral woman, Maria worked to get her house in order during the day; then, she volunteered at St. George Greek Orthodox Church; made time to write to her parents back in Greece, or sent them packages; then she hustled to complete her cleaning at night. With no time to lose, she focused on her job and with her serious disposition, she kept things orderly and clean.

  Not all women had the same sense of duty as Maria though, and Eva was the worst culprit. A young pretty girl, with long dark hair, eyes black as ink, and slender, she caught the attention of all the males. Obsessed with her looks, she spent much time grooming herself; work of any kind irked her and she avoided it like the evil one shuns the church. Eva was after Frank, the supervisor in charge of the cleaning operation. A tall, fair and freckled youth, he was completely captivated. When she became aware of his sweet glances, she conquered him completely and turned him into a love-stricken fool; they became a twosome in no time. Like putty in her hands, her control of Frank was obvious. We ceased calling him ‘Frank’ and nicknamed him ‘O vlakas Englezos,’ the stupid Englishman.

  If Eva had limited her influence with Frank to the dodging of her responsibilities, her coworkers would only gossip about her romance. But she wanted much more. She exploited her relationship even further and became the big boss herself to the point where the other workers, especially the women, began to despise and dread her. Completely unprincipled, she snitched on them regularly for any trivial infraction and everyone feared for their jobs. Besides taking it easy, she used the washrooms to polish her nails, and comb her hair; and, ordered the other woman to do her cleaning. Naturally, the workers resented this intolerable situation and were indignant, especially Maria. And then the flare-up ensued.

  One night, Eva said to Maria, ‘Finish a bit faster and then do my share of the work because I’m busy. And don’t look so serious, don’t be so preoccupied and ignore all of us; you’re not talking to anyone.’ Maria’s patience had reached its limit with Eva’s shameless manner and something snapped. She shook with anger and turned cherry colour, at once fierce and distressed, with a desire to tell everything, to speak of those things which she had kept securely within.

  ‘Look here, Eva, I’ve had enough of you bossing me around. Do you hear me? Get rid of your high and mighty attitude and look after your work. Grab the mop, so we can finish on time. Enough of you taking it easy and enough of your back-stabbing. Do some work!’

  Pandemonium arose. Eva’s face was drawn with anger and there was a fire in her eyes; she hurled certain phrases towards Maria, which I cannot repeat, then, ran to Frank to complain. We do not know what was said exactly, but with her cleverness, she had him body and soul, and could get away with murder. No doubt, Frank must have consoled her and told her that he’d take care of things. Little did the rest of us realize at the time that Eva had no equal when it came to spite.

  Just before two in the morning, we completed our work and headed downstairs where a small fleet of trucks waited to shuttle us home. We were drenched in perspiration after working for more than eight hours; bundled up, all of us moved in haste to face the bitter cold. It was one of those nights when the earth seemed frozen to death. The icy wind rose before us and cut our flesh like the knife’s blade. The moon, pale in its last quarter, appeared paralyzed, almost dying in the clutch of the frozen sky.

  Maria and I lived in the west end, we scrambled to get onto the truck. Frank was our driver and naturally Eva enthroned herself beside him in the front section keeping warm, as about ten of us sat on two wooden benches in the open back. We covered the lower parts of our bodies with heavy blankets.

  Even though there was no traffic, the truck moved slowly in the heavy snow. Besides us stomping our feet and blowing our hands to keep warm, I heard no other sounds. Like most of my fellow passengers, I was in a stupor fighting sleep and I desperately wanted to go home—desperately craved my bed’s delicious warmth. Perhaps this was the reason I didn’t notice that the truck had turned from its normal route and before long, came to a complete stop on a remote street. Almost instantly, Frank came around and motioned us to get out. Given the freezing temperatures, I assumed the vehicle experienced engine trouble and he needed our help. Freezing snow was coming down hard; the icy wind shoved the snowflakes in our eyes, mouths, and nostrils. We had no idea where we were.

  Then, he ordered us on the truck again. Maria was kept last, and when I reached out to help her up, Frank shoved her to the side and rushed to the front of the vehicle. Before we realized what had happened, the truck sped away. Instantly, I heard Maria screaming, ‘Panagea mou, Panagea mou!….,’ my all-holy one, meaning Blessed Virgin Mary, repeatedly. The tone of her voice, mixed with terror and appalling pain tore my heart. Grief passed through my entire body; I felt a tingling in my arms, a strangling feeling in my throat. An instinctive desire to help her gripped me, and in a fit of terrified daring, I murmured ‘God help me,’ and jumped off the truck into the immaculate snow that smothered everything.

  Buried prone in the snow, I heard Maria’s anxious and trembling voice, ‘T-th-tho-mas, are you alright? Brrrr…’

  ‘I-th-thi-nk so, w-wh-where are we?’

  ‘D-d-do-don’t know,’ she replied, and helped me up. I was experiencing an excruciating pain in my lower back and head. A cough seized Maria and once she recovered from it, she burst into tears and wept spasmodically, like one who has worked hard to restrain her tears. Her whole body trembled. For a few minutes, all we could do was hold on to each other, try to catch our breath, manage the uncontrollable shaking of our chins and find our bearings. The light from the snow-capped lampposts was dim and we
were disoriented in the semi-darkness. Besides the panic that came from the realization that we were lost and may not get home alive, the silence compounded our fear, a silence as profound as an all-white tomb in which nothing seemed to breathe any longer.

  We followed the tire tracks imprinted on the spotless snow, hoping to find the main road we traveled earlier. We noticed that the fierce wind had dropped, as if it had folded its wings and died; the snow still came down, and in the pale light, the heavy snowflakes resembled white butterflies whirling in a stark mad dance in the air around us and beyond. And they covered everything—the entire road; the bare branches of the trees; the rooftops, the chimneys and verandas; the waste bins; and the telephone wires. Everything was white, pure and holy. If we weren’t petrified, frozen, and anxious to find help, we may have stopped to admire the magic in the white, panoramic images around us. As the snow-capped images float in my mind now, I can say that the entire scene was pure poetry. Keep in mind that we came from Greece’s sun-scorched earth just a few months ago, and we had never seen so much snow in our lives.

  In silence we trekked for some time through the continuous fall of snow, which chilled the skin with a burning sensation as the snowflakes melted. We were sinking in up to our knees in the soft, cold mass, and we had to lift our feet high in order to walk, a challenging and tiring experience. We fell often. My feet were like sticks, I had no sensation in them, and I had to continuously rub my hands together but the flannel gloves didn’t protect my flesh from the freezing temperature.

  The time seemed endless, but as we advanced into a wide intersection, we noticed a snow removal vehicle, with a flashing blue light. As it passed us and cleared the snow, I noticed the streetcar tracks and realized we were on Bloor Street, near Yonge (it was before the Bloor subway was built). Instantly, I grabbed Maria’s hand and started walking behind it, not only because it was going west, the route our truck normally followed, but it was so much easier to walk on the cleared road.

  Then, suddenly two intense beams of light from behind signaled us to stop. We turned around and saw a yellow police cruiser; the driver motioning us to move by the side of the road. Two tall officers walked toward us. When they noticed the terror in our eyes and that we were ready to collapse, they rushed toward us and dragged us into the vehicle. Once inside, the officers gave us bewildered glances, for we must have looked like a couple of frightened snowmen. The car’s heat melted the snow on our dark clothing quickly, but it couldn’t melt away the fatigue and fear, the sorrow and loneliness, and the indignation choking us.

  My English vocabulary was limited to words like hello, please, thank you, sorry and so on; to express ourselves, we relied on gesticulation. Once I understood that the officer wanted our addresses, I reached for my wallet, passed him a paper and stammered ‘D-do-ver-court Road.’ We dropped off Maria first on Ossington Avenue and within five minutes I was at home too.

  As you can imagine, I slept badly that night, completely unnerved and haunted by sad thoughts. I sighed, and ceaselessly turned from side to side. Over and over I asked myself how it was possible for one employee to treat a fellow coworker and an immigrant from the same country with such malice. How could a human being be so creatively cruel? I was ashamed of Eva’s behaviour. Towards morning I was overcome with fatigue and fell asleep.

  Within a week, I decided to take up my cousin’s offer and move to Montreal. The day I went to bid Maria goodbye, the rain had melted all the snow and the sun was bright. She also had decided to look for another job, and we agreed to keep in touch. To my dismay, she also informed me of Frank’s and Eva’s accident late that stormy night as the truck skidded off the road. They were treated for severe concussions in the hospital.

  On reflection, when I’ve thought of their injuries, I remembered one of my mother’s many homilies. In her advice to me and my siblings to never intentionally harm another person, she’d say: ‘don’t try to dig someone else’s grave, for you may slip into it yourself.’

  Thomas ceased speaking. Costa put out his cigarette in the stainless steel ashtray and excused himself to join Maria, who was still with some guests. Nicholas rested his stunned face in his two palms and Margaret appeared shaken trying to control her tears.

  “Now, now, my dear, I told you it was not an amusing story. No need to cry, your mother survived the all white frozen route, as well as the lifelong route. On occasion, life took an uphill course for your parents, but look at them now with four sporting goods stores, this dwelling and two bright and caring children—and what an easy route it’s been for both of you.”

  Acknowledgements

  My heartfelt thanks to my skillful and perceptive editor Tita Zierer, whose suggestions and encouragement are very much appreciated.

  My gratitude to Toronto Public Library’s librarians, who introduced me to some of the finest works of world literature, and turned me into a voracious reader.

  My deep appreciation to Basil and Dina for their moral support.