by Sara Alexi
Sara Alexi
THE RUSH CUTTER’S LEGACY
oneiro
Also by Sara Alexi
(Click the images below to buy on Amazon…)
Chapter 1
What must it be like to travel at such a height and at such speed? Can you feel either of those things, or is it like standing still, like you are on the ground and there is no real sense of moving anywhere at all?
Leaning to one side, Vasso can see more clearly through a gap in the vine leaves all the way up to the intense blue sky. Far, far above, a feathering of white froth trails behind a tiny silver plane.
How small it looks – just a sliver of reflected sun. And if they, in their huge aeroplane, look so small from down here, how small the village must look to them. Will they even notice it, these few dozen terracotta roofs, a cluster of whitewashed walls, the grand dome of the church and the central square, reduced to the size of a handkerchief from up there? All around the village are rows and rows of orange trees in their orchards, olive trees dotted in the fields, each farm a patchwork of squares spanning out towards the neighbouring villages, more clusters of terracotta roofs and whitewashed walls, nestling in the plain by the sea, spreading as far as the semicircle of mountains to the north. How inconsequential and small her world must seem to them. They, who will be going off to the islands for a summer of fun, visiting amazing places and staying in luxury hotels, or trailing around the vast ruins and gazing at ancient sites. How amazing the world is for some people these days. It’s no wonder so few of them step beyond the designated paths to seek out places like this village, even if it is full of the complexities of real lives. Why would anyone be here when there is so much to see in the world? How many tourists has she ever seen pass by her kiosk in the square? One, maybe two a year: smartly dressed, in new cars, and usually lost, seeking somewhere else, somewhere more mainstream. Always on their way to somewhere else.
If they knew all that went on here, would they want to stay a little longer, explore a little more? If only they knew how much more drama happens for real here. More than is ever produced on the ancient stages at the Herodes Atticus or Epidaurus. They would come in their busloads. Or maybe they would not. Maybe they would still be high up in the sky, heading to more exotic locations!
'Here you are, Vasso.' Juliet puts two glasses of frothy coffee on the table, ice clinking and chiming against the sides. 'What are you looking at?' She peers up through the tangle of vines, following Vasso’s gaze.
'Ah, nothing, just a plane.' Vasso takes the glass, its surface slippery with condensation. The day is cooling a little now, and the hills beyond Juliet's whitewashed walls have taken on a pink tinge. The cicadas, relentless in the heat of the day, are calming their rasping love songs. 'You’ve travelled a lot, Juliet. Tell me, what it is like up there so high, moving so fast? Can you feel it?'
'I don't think going to England and back a few times to see the boys could be considered travelling a lot, Vasso!' Juliet sits back in the hammock that hangs from the pergola over her terrace, her legs stretched out before her, feet bare, nails painted.
Vasso laughs. ‘There are people in the village, the old women, for example, who have never been to Athens, much less on a plane! What’s it like?' She looks down at her feet, in their worn flip-flops, and notes that her nails need cutting.
'Have you never been on a plane?' Juliet asks, and Vasso tuts a no. ’It's rather cramped, a lot of people in one place. I’ve been told that longer flights are better as you get more legroom. And a choice of films to watch.'
'Like at a cinema!' Vasso tucks her legs back in against the sofa.
'Yes! Well, no, not exactly. The screen is in the back of the seat in front, so it’s more like TV. You must have seen such things in films.'
'Ah yes, now you mention it.' The coffee is sweet and cold. Leaning back in Juliet’s sofa, Vasso can see nothing of the hill beyond the wall, but, from behind the house, from beyond Juliet’s lovely garden, beyond the nearest orange grove, drifts the sound of goat bells as the animals are herded in for the night. They chime and clang as they do when the animals are hurrying, the dog no doubt at their heels.
'I always had the impression you’d travelled a bit. I don't know why. I guess because you seem to know a little about everything.' Juliet puts her feet up on the arm of the old sofa, using her toes to push back the white throw that mostly covers the worn fabric underneath. She pushes her seat gently back and forth, letting her head rest against the canvas.
'Me, travel!' The thought seems strange, but exciting, and it makes Vasso laugh, which starts Juliet laughing too. This makes Vasso laugh all the more, only she doesn't really know why. Once started, the laughter doesn’t stop. There are those in the village who sometimes treat her as if she is a little simple just because she likes to laugh, and once upon a time she cared what they thought. Now she has reached an age where she is happy to throw reserve to the winds, and she laughs at any little thing she likes. It makes her feel young, defies time’s ceaseless march, and pushes back middle age, which in truth has otherwise taken a firm hold.
'The farthest I have been is Orino Island. Well, I went to Athens once, but it doesn’t count. It was only for a day.' The words come out between the remains of her chuckles.
'Really?' Juliet seems genuinely surprised. A cat jumps down from the wall and begins a tour of the terrace, sniffing cautiously.
'Really. And I was only meant to be on Orino for a summer, but as it turned out…'
'As what turned out?' Juliet lazily scrapes the froth off the sides of her glass with the straw and then runs the straw through her mouth.
'Ah, you know, life has a way of not going as planned.'
'Now you’re intriguing me.' Juliet puts her glass on the floor as the cat jumps onto her knee, back arched in anticipation of strokes, tail up, purring loudly. Juliet scratches the animal under its chin and its paws knead her lap. Soon, it turns round once and collapses into a sleeping heap. Juliet continues to stroke it absent-mindedly. 'Am I sensing one of your stories here, Vasso?'
It’s true, she always has a story to tell, but usually someone else’s. In the kiosk all day every day, she hears everything. But her time on Orino Island – that is her own story, and feels much harder to tell, if she is to tell it at all.
'You know something, Vasso, we’ve been having coffee like this quite often for – what, about a couple of years now, since just after I came? I don't mean this unkindly, but you know all about me moving here from England, and the divorce and so on. You know all about my lovely boys and their studies and careers and Thomas's wedding. You know all about my business, and how I make my living. Well, I know how you make your living, too, of course. But what I mean is, I know so very little about you!'
Vasso opens her mouth to speak, but she is not sure what she can say. 'There’s not much to tell. I’m just someone, a no one, who grew up in a village. Compared to your life, to anyone’s life, there is nothing to tell.'
'You are not a no one! Tell me about Orino Island! I’m sure your life has been just as full as anyone else’s.' Juliet stops swinging, her look intense.
'It was just a different time, and I was only sixteen. Thirty-odd years ago! Also the world was different then. People didn't travel so much, so what felt like a long way at the time is just a day’s outing now.’
'Tell me.' Juliet’s voice softens, encouraging.
How long has it been since she thought about Orino Island? Years, probably. Years and years. But now, with just this little prompt, a rush of emotion, containing lonely memories of rejection, swamps her.
'Oh, well that’s a surprise.' Using her index finger, she wipes away the tears that threaten to fall, and then pats at her perfec
tly lacquered hair.
'Vasso? Are you crying?' Juliet sits upright, leans forward.
'No, no, no. Well, a bit, yes, it seems so.' She wipes away another tear.
'About going to Orino Island?'
'Well, I was very young. Just turned sixteen, and my mama heard there was a job there that came with a room. She said it wasn't far, a bus ride and then the little taxi boat across and I would be there. We needed the money, you see.'
Chapter 2
It was strange, leaving the village – looking around her and knowing she would not see it again for a couple of months. Things she didn't normally notice or think about took on a special meaning. She looked up at the end window of the school on the edge of the village, which she had stared out of last year, wishing that lessons were finished as the teacher’s voice droned and the sunshine called her. Then there had been that delicious moment she walked out on her fifteenth birthday, knowing she need never step through the gates again. Those moments all seemed so close and so real as the bus sped out of the village towards the hills, away from the only place she had ever known as home.
The bus journey was very like the ride into Saros, only longer – much longer. The view from the window was pretty much the same as well, just more of it; row after row of orange trees lining the road, and later olive trees and then scrubland as they climbed up and up, twisting and turning until she felt sick and leant into the aisle to look out of the front window to regain a sense of balance. She tried closing her eyes but that just drew images of the village and all she was leaving.
There were some aspects of it that she would not miss. The strange sort of urgency that her girlfriends seemed to have developed since leaving school, for example, and the boys she had always regarded as friends suddenly becoming tongue-tied or, worse, cocky and arrogant. She understood what it was all about but something told her there was no one in the village for her so it felt… Well, almost as if she did not belong like she once did.
The bus climbed up and up the dusty mountains, leaving the plain and the orange trees behind, and then started a winding descent to the sea on the other side. The bus lurched alarmingly round the bends. Several times Vasso spied the sea in the distance and thought they must be near, but on and on they went until she could stand no more. Finally, the bus swung a hard right and they juddered down an unpaved road, crunching to a dusty halt by a crumbling stone farmhouse. Only she, an old lady and a man with a fine moustache had still to get off and so she followed these adults, past the farm buildings, and down a path to a concrete jetty.
Sitting on the sloping wooden bench on the jetty and looking out to sea, wondering, but not daring to ask, how soon the boat would arrive, Vasso experienced the strangest of sensations. It was a sense of real urgency, a prompting that she needed to be somewhere, but she had no idea where or for what reason. She looked around to find the cause of this sensation but there was nothing to see. It was as if she was meant to meet someone and had forgotten. Was this connected with home? Was there something she had forgotten to do before she left? Try as she might, she could recall nothing she had left undone, and slowly the nagging sensation lifted and was gone.
The old lady sat on the rickety wooden bench next to her and looked across the water. The island, which gave the illusion of being quite close, stretched its fingers into the calm blue sea to the east and west. It looked barren, with no sign of a house, let alone a town. Clutching her bag, which contained her best dress, her Sunday shoes, the letter from Mama's cousin, and a very small handful of drachmas, Vasso could not decide if what she felt now was fear or excitement. Already she missed her mama, but as she had only set out from the village two hours ago she knew this was just a reaction to being so far from home and so she shrugged and looked across the water.
'It will be natural to feel homesick,' Mama had told her as they sat on the doorstep looking up at the stars the night before. 'If you do not, then I must presume I did not do a good job raising you!'
'Mama, I know I’m going to miss you. I miss you just thinking about being away.'
Her mama had put an arm around her then, and pulled her close.
'And I will miss you, my little doll. But the way we must deal with this is to look forward. It is only for a short time – one summer. You will get to know my cousins, and then you and I will be together again.' Vasso had pretended not to notice the moisture in her mama's eyes and the tightening of her grip around her shoulders. She saw wrinkles around the corners of her mama's eyes that she had not noticed before. For a moment the woman next to her was not the mama who had cared for her all her life. She was an old lady, who had worn black since Vasso was a baby. The need for her, at the young age of sixteen, to go and earn a little extra money became not only more understandable in that moment, but a driving necessity.
Her mama sniffed.
'Now, about that tongue of yours, that sometimes gets so tied you cannot speak.' Mama's voice was gentle and kind, but, no matter, her words transported Vasso back to a moment she would rather have forgotten: the school play when she was only eight. She had begged not to be given a speaking part, but her teacher, Kyria Maria, had said it would help her to gain some confidence. Her part was short, just one line, but it was vital for the whole play to make sense. How she had shifted her weight from foot to foot, how she had tried to steady her breathing, twisting her fingers, imagining that the hall was not full of people but was just an empty room into which she must project her voice.
‘The room is empty,’ she had told herself. ‘I will speak the words into an empty room and then the next person will speak and the moment will be forgotten…’
‘Vasso, you are on.’ Kyria Maria gave her a little push onto the makeshift stage. The empty room suddenly filled as everyone’s eyes flicked from Cosmo, the boy narrating, to her, and she could not empty it again. Her palms sweated and she rubbed them together. She spoke the words over and over in her head with her eyes closed, waiting for the moment she must speak, and then there was silence. She opened her eyes to find the whole room looking at her expectantly, and her mouth dried in an instant; her tongue stuck to her palate and her breathing became laboured.
‘Go on,’ Kyria Maria prompted, and she spoke the first few words of her one line. In a panic, Vasso’s voice came out louder than she intended as she completed the sentence. Then her cheeks were on fire and she ran from the stage, through the cluster of parents into the schoolyard, through the gates and home. It took a week and a visit from Kyria Maria before she would return to school.
Her mama continued, bringing her back to the present, 'You must remember that you are just as important as everyone else you ever meet and no one, no matter what they have done or who they are, is better than you.
When Vasso had returned to school, the other children had teased her. Kyria Maria had shouted at them, and that had terrified her. Kyria Maria rarely raised her voice, and this time she, Vasso, had been the indirect cause. It gave her the most uncomfortable feeling of power. It terrified her that she had such power, and her voice became even quieter from that day on. Everything she considered saying she hesitated over, as she worked through in her mind what the consequences could be.
‘No better nor worse than you. They are just different.’
How hard her mama tried to give her confidence, and how ashamed she felt that she could not respond and be the daughter she wanted to be.
‘We each do what we can in this life.’ Her mama patted her hand. ‘As for you, you do not know what you will do yet and nor does anyone else, so they are in no position to judge you. So stand tall, you are stronger than you think – just acknowledge the feelings of shyness but do not let them overcome you. And above all, above everything, know you are loved.'
Vasso smoothed down her long hair and sat taller, filling out her chest with air so as not to appear quite so frail. A dot out to sea, near the island, slowly grew in size, gaining shape, until at last the little boat pulled alongside the jetty, bobbing and dipp
ing as the captain skipped on shore to tie her up.
'Orino Island,' he announced, as if there were anywhere else they could be going. The man with the moustache jumped on board, and the old woman slowly stood and shuffled towards the boat. The captain took her wrinkled hand and his biceps bulged, taking the strain, as he helped her on board.
'Orino Island?' he said again, looking straight at Vasso, and she stopped being an observer and became a participant. The boat pitched more than she expected as she stepped off the pier, and she found that she, too, gripped the man’s arm quite firmly to descend into the craft.
The vessel was just a fishing boat with an awning for the sun, and they sat around the edge and Vasso held on tight. The old lady kept her hands in her lap and swayed with every movement whilst the man with the moustache struck up a conversation with the captain, about hunting on the mountains of Orino Island in the winter. The motor seemed to have very little power and they made slow progress. The engine was housed in the centre of the boat in a box that reverberated like some giant's musical instrument. This rattling box was also the unsure resting place for a pile of fishing nets, tangled and encrusted with withered seaweed and smelling strongly of fish. Vasso tucked her feet under her and looked in the direction they were travelling. The bow of the boat threw up a foamy wave that threatened constantly to wash over the sides, but never quite did, and after a while Vasso began to relax and enjoy the motion.
As they neared the island it was with some excitement that she recognised that what she had taken to be a tumble of rocks in a cleft in the island was in fact roofs of houses cascading down a very steep slope, right down to the sea. She let out a little gasp at the town’s beauty. Undulating burnt-umber tiles, supported on slithers of whitewashed walls, formed steps up the hillside. This cubist pattern was broken up here and there by the rounded dome of a church. A dark-green band of trees crowned the town and, above this, the island was bald, with a rocky grey outcrop, bare, sun-baked and barren.
