by Sara Alexi
The Eastern Fly
And Other Stories
ISBN: 9781311134554
Sara Alexi
Also by Sara Alexi
The Eastern Fly
Grigoris sits under his olive trees, looking out over the plain where he grew up. Below him his village is spread out, a patchwork of terracotta roofs amongst the rows and rows of trees that surround the only place he has ever lived. And there, just by his cottage, are pinpricks of gold, the last oranges left in the expanse of green before him.
Grigoris is putting off going home to Lena. He does not know a kinder woman, and normally they never argue about anything, but this is the one area of disharmony between them. She’s going to be furious, and he’ll never hear the end of it!
Every year Lena tells him not to play this game with the oranges. His baba never played the game and Grigoris is not sure where he first got the idea, but for years it has worked well, so why should he not have played the game this year? It’s so simple. All he has to do is wait. That’s the game. Just wait. Then wait some more, until after Christmas, if possible, when everyone else in the village has sold their oranges. Then, when Sergei or Timur come to buy more, he can ask any price he likes, within reason. It’s a simple game, but there is a catch. The fruit must be sold before February, when the frosts might come. One night of severe frost and the whole year’s crop can be gone, and his income with it.
Today is the twenty-ninth of January and there is no sign of Sergei or Timur.
Grigoris sits with his back against the olive tree, holding his crook upright between his knees. He rolls the shaft in his hands and watches the hole its blunt end digs in the dust.
This game of waiting has worked for him for years and years. Every time, he has been lucky, and the prices he has commanded when everyone else has sold their oranges have made the old boys in the kafenio gasp and shake their heads.
‘One year you’re going to come unstuck,’ Theo the kafenio owner would observe softly.
It looks like this will be the year.
The Russians have simply not shown up, and they are not answering his calls.
They were here in November and December, but since then no one has seen them.
He’ll not hear the end of it from Lena.
A vromousa lands on his shirt. He is about to flick it off, but how many times has he been caught out like that with these bugs? Squash them, harm them, and they stink and you scramble to get away. The flickering olive leaves are shading him from the sun and his backside has moulded to the ground, and he feels very reluctant to move. So, instead, he picks up a fallen leaf and offers it up to the green bug, which carefully and ponderously crawls on board. He examines the insect for a moment, then puts the leaf with the bug down on the ground.
If the Russians don’t show up in the next week, if they don’t get the oranges picked soon, it will be the frost that takes the crop. The weather forecast on the radio said it would be minus three next week. It’s hard to imagine that today, sitting in the shade of the olive tree to keep cool, but February is a deceiver, and a sunny day can be followed by a bitter frost at night. Lena will not understand. She will say, ‘Turn on the fans, Grigori. Isn’t that what they are for? Just turn them on and keep the oranges from freezing.’
But he can’t turn them on. He hasn’t told her, but the electricity has been cut off. He cannot pay the bill until he has sold the oranges.
She will nag him endlessly, not just now, but for years and years to come, dragging the subject up whenever she needs to score a point.
He looks down at his house. She is there, coming out of the back door, a basket under one arm to hang out the washing. For an old lady she moves well. Come to that, for an old lady she is still quite a looker.
He squints but from this distance he cannot make out her face.
If only he could think up an excuse, one she would believe.
He cannot say that no one is buying, because everyone else has sold, and he cannot say the oranges have not ripened, because they have all ripened. It has been a good crop for everyone this year. Maybe that is why Sergei and Timur have not come back. Maybe they have bought all they need already? But he cannot say that. The vromousa spreads its wings and flies vertically, landing on his shirt again.
‘Flies! Yes, that’s it!’ he tells the bug. ‘I can tell her that the oranges have some sort of fly, or weevil, and that until the pests are dealt with no one will buy.’ And if Sergei and Timur never turn up he can say that the flies killed the crop. Will she believe that? She must have heard everything about oranges that there is to hear, either from him or from her baba before him. So this will have to be a new fly, a new bug, from the East. Yes, from the East, that sounds good.
She has left her basket on the ground, still half full of washing, but she is nowhere to be seen.
Perhaps he should go and tell her now, whilst it feels fresh and real.
Using his crook, he levers himself up from the ground, shakes the stiffness from his legs and begins the slow saunter down the hill. He will stop in the kafenio for a nip of ouzo to help him sound calm.
‘Yeia sou, Grigori.’ Theo wipes his table with a grubby-looking cloth. ‘Coffee?’
‘Er, no, an ouzo.’
Theo hesitates, but only for a second.
Grigoris could count the number of times he has had ouzo during the day on one hand, and Theo knows this.
‘A nip of ouzo, or a fortifying glass?’ Theo asks, no edge, very gentle.
‘Fortifying,’ Grigoris replies. Theo goes behind his counter and returns with a glass of clear liquid and a bowl of ice. Grigoris spoons in a single ice cube and watches the ouzo slowly turn cloudy.
‘There will be no frost tonight, Grigori, nor tomorrow, they say.’ Theo is fishing, but Grigoris ignores him and rehearses his lines inside his head.
‘Hello, dear. Heck of a day. Still can’t get rid of that fly …’ ‘What fly?’ she will ask, and then he can tell her all she needs to know. Yes, it will work.
‘It’s a new fly from the East.’ He spits this last line out loud, and a new, even more cunning thought occurs – if he starts the rumour here it will back up what he tells Lena later, or she may even hear about it from another source, and that will make the story so much more plausible.
‘Fly? What fly?’ It is Mitsos on the next table, who sold his oranges early – in November, if Grigoris remembers correctly.
‘Oh, nothing that will affect you this year, my friend. Only my oranges, as they are all that is left.’
Mitsos turns to his neighbour, Cosmo the postman. ‘Have you heard of this fly?’ he asks, and Grigoris stifles a grin. If the postman knows about it, the whole village will have heard the news by morning. There may be no need to tell his wife a thing. In fact, he can say he was trying to keep it from her, to stop her worrying, but yes, sadly, it is true, they must pull their belts in, and it will be a lean year.
Brilliant! Grigoris is in high spirits now, and he throws a generous handful of coins on the table and makes his way home with a lightness in his step.
‘Yeia sou, Lena,’ he calls from the gate. She is in the garden, hanging the last of the clothes. Despite the ouzo and his earlier resolve, the nervousness is returning now that he actually has to face her, but as it turns out he needn’t have worried.
‘Ah, Grigori. I’ve just had Sergei on the phone,’ she says, coming round the corner with the empty clothes basket in one hand. ‘He says he is coming with trucks and workers tomorrow. He will meet you in the kafenio at ten to agree the price.’
Grigoris exhales with such force at this news that he feels a knot of muscle across his shoulders unlock so quickly that his arms go quit
e limp.
‘You all right?’ She studies his face carefully.
‘Oh, yes, yes, quite, yes. Yes, Sergei.’ He spots another chance to make himself look like he is in control. ‘Yes, I wonder why he is calling again,’ he bluffs. ‘We had already decided tomorrow at ten. Maybe he’s very keen this year, and the price will be higher than ever?’
Lena narrows her eyes at this, and Grigoris swallows, and fiddles with the keys in his pocket.
He sleeps so soundly that night that Lena has to wake him the next morning.
‘You’ve overslept,’ she gently chides him. ‘By the time you have grazed the goats you will be late for Sergei.’
The goats are happy to be out, and the day is sunny with a clear blue sky, and particularly warm for the time of year. The animals are a little reluctant to return early but, once back in their pen, they drink thirstily from their trough. He should go to the kafenio now, to meet Sergei. Or maybe he should wait and be a little late, make it look like he is not keen. That might push the price even higher. Yes, he will make his way to the kafenio, but he will not hurry.
The sun is beating down from a cloudless sky again, and Grigoris is aware of the sounds of the village around him. Birds sing and call to one another, hidden up in the trees and bushes on either side of the road. A dog barks in the distance, and a tractor rumbles somewhere behind him. Up on a slight rise ahead, smoke curls gently upward, marking a bonfire where some farmer is burning the prunings from his olive trees. Away in the distance, the sea sparkles, and Grigoris has to narrow his eyes against the glare. The sun’s heat on his limbs has a gentle, soothing effect, and the day seems full of possibilities, as though the whole world is waiting for him. Grigoris is aware that this feeling is helped along by his anticipation of a healthy profit, and he calculates figures in his head. The bills will all be paid, of course – that would be the sensible thing to do, and he will be able to announce to Lena that they are no longer in debt to anyone. A new tractor would be nice. Not exactly a new one, of course, but a slightly newer one than the rusty old Zetor. And then, maybe, there will be a little something left over to treat themselves. Perhaps a holiday? Yes, that would be the thing. Not to anywhere too fancy, but maybe to Orino Island, which they say is a romantic destination. A holiday, and a little time to focus on one another again, like they did when they were courting. Lena is still a good-looking woman, but neither of them is getting any younger. These thoughts bring Grigoris to the steps of the kafenio, and he is reluctant to walk up them out of the sunshine. But Sergei will be waiting, and the negotiations must be conducted.
‘Ah, Grigori,’ Theo welcomes him. ‘Coffee?’
Nodding, Grigoris looks around for Sergei. Mitsos is there, but not Cosmo, and Babis the lawyer has cornered poor old Socrates and is talking fast, leaving no opportunity for Socrates to reply. But there is no Sergei. Choosing a table by the window so as to spot him when he arrives, Grigoris waits for his coffee. Theo never hurries; he expects to wait.
‘Here you are.’ Theo puts a cup down on the table.
‘What time is it?’ Grigoris asks.
‘Eleven thirty.’
‘Eleven thirty?’ Has he missed them? Is it possible that his plan to look as if he isn’t interested has backfired?
‘Yes, why?’
‘Oh, I was supposed to meet someone.’
‘Oh, yes, Sergei. He rang,’ Theo says.
Grigoris’s raised eyebrows lower again, a smile breaks over his lips and his breathing becomes more even.
‘Yes, they said not to worry about them, they can go to the next valley, where apparently there are still some oranges.’ Theo takes the tea towel from over his shoulder and wipes his hands.
‘They have gone elsewhere?’ Grigoris asks incredulously. ‘Why?’
Theo frowns.
‘They said that they eat the oranges from the inside out, so they look fine but inside there is nothing.’
‘What do?’ His heartbeat is in his ears.
Theo frowns in return.
‘The Eastern Fly, Grigori. The Eastern Fly.’
The Letter
The square stone building stands three storeys high, just across from the harbour. It is topped with lovely old terracotta roof tiles, and the ground floor was long ago turned into a taverna and sold off separately from the upper part.
In the summer sun the stonework is a honey colour, the shutters a pale blue-grey. Just beyond the building, the heat shimmers off the tarmacked road that runs parallel to the sea. The building’s position affords spectacular views across the bay.
Nikki holds the big key in her hand. It’s her key now. It slides and then settles with a satisfactory clunk as she puts it in the lock of the high, ornately carved wooden double doors. They creak as they open, as they have always done. This problem, if indeed she decides to consider it a problem, is now hers. Just as she is entering the house, a cat she recognises as Toula’s appears from the shade of a bougainvillea bush across the street. It seems strange that Toula would leave the animal behind. It’s not as if Toula ever really wanted a cat, but in the time Nikki worked for her the animal seemed to make a real point of befriending the old lady. It was Toula’s husband, Apostolis, who refused to let it stay.
So the cat lives out on the street, where it always did, and begs for scraps of fish from the tourists at the tavernas. In any case, Toula divides her time between the village and London, where her daughter and grandchildren are, and the house in Corfu, and she could hardly be expected to take the animal with her. It’s a friendly little thing, and it ingratiates itself by rubbing its chin around Nikki’s ankles, but as soon as the door is open wide enough it shoots inside and up the stairs. Nikki follows it in.
With a cursory glance at the lift, as if she almost expects to see something there other than polished wood and ornate metalwork, she takes the stairs. Stairs she has washed and polished a hundred times, if not more!
At the top, the door is open, revealing the room beyond to be pleasantly bare. The tapestries that hung on the walls have gone, along with the heavy dark furniture. Most startling of all, but definitely the most satisfactory too, is that the ticking of Apostolis’s clock collection is now absent. The place is empty and it looks a lot bigger than it did when it was full of Toula’s and Apostolis’s lifetime collection of furniture, memorabilia and junk!
Without hesitation, Nikki steps towards the nearer of the French windows, that lead out onto the balcony. There are two balconies at the front, one at the side, and one at the back. With energy and joy Nikki delights in swinging open first the tall windows and then the louvred shutters. Each balcony has an elaborate wrought-iron railing and cantilevered supports of carved stone. As she flings open each set of doors, the sun streams into the room, lighting the place up in a way she has never seen before.
It is hers, all hers!
Outside, over in the harbour, the halyards clatter against the masts of the yachts moored there. The occasional moped or car passes on the road below. The taverna in the lower rooms will be shut at this hour but there is still chattering, because two women have chanced to meet and are talking directly below one balcony at the front. Many years ago, Toula planted a fig tree in a pot on the side balcony … and now it has grown so big the balcony is cracking under its weight. One of her first jobs will be to remove both tree and pot. If it is possible, she will plant it in her own garden, behind her house in the village. She steps onto the balcony gingerly, but it is still solid. Toula used it every few days to haul groceries up from the street, using an electric winch that Apostolis fitted there for his mama. The motor would whirr as it brought up vegetables or lowered the dry cleaning. It spared Toula’s old legs the strain of the stairs. Toula, to Nikki’s knowledge, never used the lift. She always said that it was unsafe, and now she has been proved right.
A brief frown crosses Nikki’s brow but she consciously forces it away. She will not give any credibility to the rumours. She could not, will not, believe anything evil of
Toula, who was a kind, dear old woman. How could someone give a gift of their house with one hand and murder their husband with the other? Could such a divided heart exist?
Nikki sighs. No, she does not believe it, and in any case she is not sad about Apostolis. He was not kind and she never cared for him. He barely acknowledged her. In all the time she worked for Toula, cleaning and keeping her company, she cannot recall even one time that Apostolis actually spoke to her, not directly.
‘Tell her not to move the clocks,’ she can remember him saying once. Why had he not asked her himself? Was she too lowly to be spoken to?
‘I don’t want these windows open.’ That was on one of her first visits. ‘The sun will fade the colour on the woodwork.’ He was referring to the longcase clock he was winding at the time. But even though he and Nikki were in the same room, the comment was addressed to Toula who, head wobbling slightly from side to side, left the vegetables she was slowly chopping in the little annex off the big room, which they had turned into a kitchen, and pottered over to where Nikki was polishing the legs of one of the over-padded sofas.
‘Would you mind, dear,’ she said softly, ‘not opening the windows? My husband thinks the sun may fade the antique woodwork.’
With all the windows open, Nikki turns to survey what is now her kingdom, hands on hips. She cannot help but smile. Despite the age-buckled floor, it is a beautiful room, with really nice proportions.
But what’s that? The room was completely empty when she came in, she is sure of it. Yet, now, there in the middle of the floor is a sheet of paper. With a quick glance at the windows she wonders if it could have been blown in. It’s possible.
It is thick paper with uncut edges, and it is covered with neat handwriting. A shopping list? No, it is more like a letter. Curiosity triumphs, and Nikki scans the first line.
He is not kind. As his mother it feels traitorous to say, but it is the truth. Apostolis is unkind.
