The House by the River

by Lena Manta

  “Who is that girl?” Fokas asked.

  “This is Faida. She’ll help Julia with her work,” Tayaris answered.

  “But I don’t need help in the house,” Julia immediately announced.

  “Faida comes with the house,” Tayaris explained. “Besides, no white person here lives without a slave at their service.”

  “Slave?” Julia said in disgust. “What are you saying? Don’t even talk about that. I don’t want it.”

  “All right, all right! I used the wrong word. But if you turn her away, you deprive her of food she really needs, do you understand?” Tayaris said, losing his patience. “If you don’t like the word ‘slave’ call her a ‘servant,’ call her ‘household help,’ but don’t shame her by firing her. Basically, you’ll be paying her. Not much, but she’ll get some money from you. She just turned fifteen and she’s more or less a burden to her family.”

  “Burden?”

  “Of course. She’s one more mouth for them to feed. Welcome to Africa!” Tayaris concluded, smiling now.

  “But how will I communicate with her?” Julia added hopelessly in a last attempt.

  “It’s wonderful here, isn’t it, Faida?” Tayaris said, turning to the girl.

  “I speak Greek, madam,” she said.

  Julia couldn’t believe her ears. “That’s wonderful!” she blurted out.

  “Faida used to work for a Greek family who moved to Cairo, so you won’t have any problem.”

  The couple exchanged a defeated look before turning warmly to the girl who, was still smiling at them. When Julia held out her hand in greeting, Faida looked at her in surprise and wiped her own hand before giving it to her, as if it had been dirty. The same scene was repeated when Fokas extended his hand. Then the girl hung her head in embarrassment.

  “Faida’s not used to these sorts of things. So it would be better for you not to do anything like that again,” Tayaris advised sternly.

  Julia turned and looked at him coldly. “I thank you for your advice, and I thank you for the house,” she said. “But from now on I set my own rules in here.”

  Tayaris turned to Fokas to back him up, but Fokas just smiled at his wife. So Tayaris whispered some excuse and left.

  Faida’s help turned out, in the end, to be invaluable. Their first night in the house, she arranged their clothes with lightning speed, cooked them a light evening meal that they enjoyed on the verandah, and served them a dessert of fresh fruits they’d never seen or tasted, but were both crazy about. She left for her house when the couple, satisfied and relaxed, were enjoying their wine and listening to the night sounds mingling with some song that came from a long way off. They of course couldn’t understand the words, but it was so melancholy that they knew it must be about someone’s pain. The good food and the wine had relaxed them so much that they were in danger of falling asleep on the verandah in their comfortable armchairs. But, with a lot of effort, they finally reached their bed.

  “I’m glad we came here,” Julia managed to say before she fell fast asleep.

  Fokas didn’t answer but carefully closed the large mosquito net that surrounded their bed. He had every reason to fall asleep himself with a large smile on his lips.

  Julia adapted very easily to her new way of life—much more easily than Faida, who found it difficult to get used to the fact that the lady wasn’t like all the others. Faida was amazed when Julia, from the very first morning, insisted that they drink coffee together, sitting opposite one other. Fokas had left very early—Tayaris was waiting for him at the office they shared—and Julia had no desire to spend the whole day without talking to anyone. The young girl obeyed her mistress’s orders and sat across from her, but from the look on the girl’s face, you would have thought her chair was full of nails. She avoided raising her head until Julia became irritated.

  “Faida, I refuse to go on like this,” she complained. “I asked you to have coffee with me so we could talk. From now on we’ll spend each day together, and I can’t go on looking only at the top of your head.”

  The girl raised her eyes with difficulty. At first, she looked at her mistress shyly, but when Julia smiled at her she returned the smile. It only took half an hour for them to begin to chat. Julia wanted to know all about Faida, who, it turned out, was the oldest of nine children. Julia, in return, told Faida about her own family and her sisters. She spoke to her about Greece, and Faida talked about Cameroon and Yaoundé. Although Cameroon’s capital had some European culture, under the surface, the heart of Africa was beating. It was strong and full of passion. But the thorn in Cameroon’s flesh was always exploitation by white people. Things might be a little better in Cameroon than in other areas, but even here, some white people saw blacks as beasts of burden, as slaves, and this brought back bad memories.

  Julia could do nothing to convince Faida to speak to her using her first name. Rather, the girl insisted on calling her “madam.” And Faida nearly lost it when Julia began to take an interest in the girl’s clothes. It seemed ridiculous to Julia that Faida should go around the house dressed in such unattractive things. As it turned out, the previous mistress of the house was to blame: she’d asked Faida to dress in “European” clothes and had given her all those baggy dresses. From what Julia had observed so far, the women in Cameroon dressed in bright colors and wore wide, comfortable dresses with lovely jewelry on their arms and necks. So Julia asked the girl to wear whatever she liked from now on.

  “But if you really want to dress in the European style, I’ll buy you some other clothes that are not so miserable,” she said. “As for the shoes, I imagine they must bother you.”

  “The truth is they hurt me, madam,” Faida answered. “And I don’t like these clothes. They’re hot.”

  “So from now on, you’ll wear whatever you like. Throw out those heavy shoes, and what’s more, I’d like you to help me to find new shoes for myself. I don’t think mine are suitable for Cameroon.”

  If somebody had told Julia how much her life would change, and how suddenly, she would have said they were crazy. Yet within a few months she was unrecognizable. The sun turned her skin a golden color and her hair, which Fokas so passionately admired, became even blonder. Her fashion became more varied, with comfortable, cool clothes in bright colors, and she had learned to cook local foods. But her biggest weakness was fruits, and their table never lacked a great variety of them.

  The pace of everyday life was a little slower than she was used to, and her own country seemed very far away. She wrote as often as she could to her mother, who didn’t want to believe, at first, that her daughter would go to a place she didn’t even know existed. She also corresponded regularly with her father-in-law. Every week a letter left from Cameroon and every week one came from Thessaloniki.

  Julia had a particularly close relationship with Christian’s family. His wife undertook to teach her French, and Christian began to teach her to drive. Her hands trembled when she first took the wheel but after two months she could drive Christian’s little truck confidently. Fokas bought her a little car so she could get around. So, with Faida beside her, Julia began driving around the city, but never outside it, because that was dangerous.

  Neither Fokas nor his wife understood how the first year of their stay there had passed so quickly. After three years of marriage, Julia was slow to realize that she was finally pregnant, perhaps because her cycle had become quite irregular with the change of climate. Faida was the one who noticed that her mistress had begun to wolf down enormous quantities of grapefruit.

  One morning, the girl made up her mind to say something about it. “Madam . . . I think you’re going to have a baby.”

  Julia, who was peeling another piece of fruit, froze with her knife suspended in midair. That’s when she realized that her period was more than two months late, and she thought how silly she was to have been so absentminded. She said nothing to Fokas, but found a doctor by herself and went to see him. When he confirmed it, Julia burst into tears o
f happiness. She had begun to get anxious about not becoming pregnant, although at the beginning of their marriage Fokas had taken precautions because, as he’d stressed, it was too early for them to have a child. Now that their financial situation was sound, however, she knew he’d welcome the news.

  She told him that evening, and Fokas was overjoyed. He picked her up in his arms and spun around with her while Faida scolded him for it. He must be careful with “the lady who is having a baby,” she said.

  The girl had become her mistress’s guardian angel. She worshipped her with a passion and there wasn’t a moment she wasn’t beside her. Julia had met Faida’s entire family, who received her with gratitude, and she helped them in every way she could. They lived in a hut; the father was a laborer and never could earn enough to feed the family. Every week Julia sent them baskets of food and when one of the children got sick, she called a doctor, although this terrified Faida’s superstitious mother. Julia herself would watch carefully until the child took all the medicine that the doctor had prescribed. After the first illness, Julia made sure all the children in the family were inoculated. She had become the family’s earthly goddess and Faida’s life began and ended with her mistress.

  The pregnancy progressed normally. Julia complained that she had been transformed into a round ball, but Fokas smiled tenderly each time she said it, until she lashed out at him one day.

  “Why are you smiling?” she demanded. “Do you find it funny? Given my short height and how wide I am right now, I really am just like a ball. If I lie down I’ll roll!”

  “But I find you particularly beautiful with your belly, dear Mrs. Karapanos! You were never more beautiful, I swear to you!”

  The next moment they both burst out laughing.

  It wasn’t long before Faida moved into the empty room in the house. As the pregnancy progressed and the hour of giving birth approached, she didn’t want to be far away from Julia, and Fokas felt calmer knowing that his wife wasn’t left alone for even a moment. Of course he had a telephone installed in the house so that they could inform him right away and he could transport Julia to the hospital as soon as her pains started.

  One morning early in her ninth month, when Julia was saying good-bye to her husband, she noticed a few pains in her belly, but didn’t say anything to him. It was too early; she couldn’t be in labor. Anyway, if something happened, there was always the telephone.

  She sat down to drink her usual coffee with Faida, and a little while later, Christian’s wife, Helene, dropped by on her bicycle. Helene didn’t drive; every effort she’d made to learn had ended in failure. She laughed each time she described how she’d run the car into a tree her first time at the wheel; the second time, it was a wall. The third time she wasn’t so lucky and ended up hitting another car, whose driver gave her an unpleasant talking-to. For her good, but also for the general good and safety of the public, Helene had decided she would never drive again.

  Julia got up to serve her friend some cake she’d made the day before. It was then that she felt a warm stream wetting her legs. Surprised, she looked at the little lake of water that had formed on the floor.

  Helene immediately called out, “Your water has broken! You’re giving birth!”

  “But the doctor said . . .” Julia managed to stammer and immediately a strong pain cut her off.

  Like lightning, Faida was beside her and led her to bed.

  “Call my husband,” Julia whispered with difficulty. “I’m in pain!”

  Fokas was out of the office at some building site, but no one knew which one. In the meantime, Julia’s pains came more and more frequently and each new one was stronger.

  It was then that Faida jumped up. “Mrs. Helene, you put water on to boil and I’ll go get help,” she said decisively.

  “Where will you find help? You don’t know how to drive, and curse my own incompetence!”

  “I’m not going far,” the girl answered. “I’m going to get my mother.”

  Faida’s mother arrived almost immediately and she brought another woman with her. She looked so old that her black skin was full of folds, deep enough that her face had almost lost its shape. In her hands, with their gnarled fingers, she carried a large, multicolored cloth bag from which she took out dozens of small bags full of leaves of all sizes and shapes, as well as some sort of powder. Without any delay the two women got to work. They stripped Julia and the old woman examined her carefully. She said something to Faida in their own language and the girl ran to bring a glass with a little water in it.

  The old woman first emptied a little white powder into the glass, then some red. She approached Julia, who was groaning in pain, and gave her the mixture to drink. Helene drew Faida aside. “Are you sure that the old woman knows what she’s doing?” she asked anxiously.

  Faida looked at Helene reproachfully. “Imela isn’t just anyone,” she answered. “She’s brought hundreds of babies into the world. Don’t be afraid, madam, Imela does it better than a doctor!”

  “Yes, but what did she give her to drink?”

  “Just something to ease the pain.”

  Indeed Julia’s cries quietened down soon after, but Faida’s mother looked anxious. With her few words of French, she explained to Helene that the baby was coming the wrong way around and they had to turn it. Imela opened one of the multicolored bags and withdrew a green ointment, which she used to palpate all of Julia’s belly and the point between her legs. Helene watched with horror as the old lady shoved her hand inside Julia, who barely moaned. When Imela drew her hand out, it was covered in blood, but she smiled so broadly it revealed her teeth, which were pure white despite her age. She said something to the women and Faida translated the good news to Helene, who had taken on a deathly pallor.

  “Everything’s finished! The baby turned, and in a little while it will come,” the girl said.

  Imela gave Julia another liquid to drink and Faida explained that this was to help the mother give birth more easily. When Fokas and Julia’s daughter had finally made her appearance, the old lady handed her to Faida’s mother then turned her attention back to Julia.

  When Fokas returned to his office and they told him that something had happened at his house, he left like a madman. On the way, dozens of terrible thoughts leapt into his head, filling him with panic. Before the car had properly stopped he jumped out and took the stairs two at a time. He found his wife sitting up smiling in bed with their daughter in her arms, while beside her were Helene, Faida, Faida’s mother, and an old woman he’d never seen before. He stood there ecstatic at the sight.

  “Welcome,” Julia said to him teasingly. “Right on time to meet your daughter!”

  Later Fokas learned all that had happened, including the invaluable help of Imela. Despite Julia’s pleas, neither the old woman nor Faida’s mother would accept any payment. With the help of Faida, the old lady explained why she couldn’t take any money.

  “This family,” she began, indicating toward Faida and her mother, “are my people. I delivered all their children and the parents too. Julia, you helped them and you continue to help them. You’ve been like a sister to Faida, and this is the only way I know how to thank you. So don’t insult me by asking me to take your money.”

  Fokas and Julia’s daughter was named Hara, or Joy, because that’s what she brought to their home. The baby looked very much like her mother and her little face was always smiling. Besides her parents, Hara had many fanatical admirers, first among them Faida, who moved permanently into the house. Christian and Helene were the godparents, and their children looked in amazement at the baby’s golden hair. Enchanted with her curls, they carefully stroked them with their chubby little hands.

  The happy couple took lots of photographs of their baby and sent them home to her grandparents. Theodora took the photograph of her granddaughter in her hands and covered it with kisses before putting it under her pillow. For their part, Kyriakos and Evanthia stared ecstatically at their grandchild, although E
vanthia soon burst into tears. Despite her husband’s comforting words, she couldn’t forgive herself for having deprived him or herself of every happiness.

  A year after Hara’s birth, Julia announced to Fokas that she was pregnant again. When it came time for the baby to be born, Imela was called, at Julia’s insistence, to bring the child into the world. This second labor went much more easily than the first, and when it was over, the couple had a second daughter. They called her Theodora, since Fokas, with childlike stubbornness, refused to give the baby his mother’s name, just as he had with the first. He still hadn’t forgiven his mother and only wrote to his father. Julia, however, had begun very tentatively to write a few words to her mother-in-law now and then. She was astonished the first time that Evanthia answered, asking forgiveness for all she had done. Julia sat down and wrote back right away, suggesting that they never refer to the past again. Peace finally settled on the relationship between the two women, but Fokas didn’t seem to be moved when his wife showed him his mother’s letter of apology.

  “If my mother thinks she can persuade me to return like that, she’s fooling herself,” he said. “As soon as she gets her way, she’d start the same things again.”

  Julia didn’t answer; she could see there was no point. Anyway, she herself had no desire to leave Cameroon and all the people she loved there. The only thing that continued to annoy her was Tayaris. Despite the fact that Fokas seldom spoke about his work at home, Julia had discovered that his colleague had provoked a number of problems with his tendency to cheat anyone who naively trusted him. Most of the time, Fokas’s intervention had saved them from the worst consequences, but Julia worried about the day when her husband couldn’t contain the damage. Despite that, she had to admit that the office was doing extremely well, getting one job after another, most of them government contracts, which meant the profits were large. At the same time there were quite a few private clients who trusted Fokas with the design of their houses.