by Sara Alexi
Tucking his denim shirt into his jeans, he tightens his belt and turns his attention back to the goats. Another kick moves the stone securing the gate to one side and the herd pours out as one mass. Feeling eyes upon him, he looks down to the house. His baba is standing there staring back, perhaps wishing he was taking the goats out himself. One or two remain within the walls of the windmill and in a stride, Yanni chases them out to follow the others. Originally, the mill was roughly plastered and at one time painted. Here and there, patches of plaster cling to the stones, but mostly, it has flaked off over the years. The floor is earth and goat droppings. The smell is faintly acrid.
‘Come on, come on then,’ he calls and then whistles through his teeth. The goats bleat, run, bounce, and frisk about, spreading out, the brown and black and white wiry coats melting into the hillside. Their dull bells clonk and clank, indicating their whereabouts, arpeggios with no resonance, an orchestra of one-note soloists, the sound enchanting, filling the hill, a gently dramatic moment. Yanni’s heart expands.
‘Why do people rush?’ he asks the air as he stands watching the bobbing white tails fan out.
As he walks, he overtakes the animals that follow in a loose pack along the track up through the top cluster of pine trees, over the bald crown of the island, and down onto the steep still back side of the island. Here the cicadas are deafening, their rasping love call sung loudly and desperately, their brief lives above ground lived to the full; a few days to find a mate before their energy is gone and they fall to the ground. Both goats and shepherd leave the trees and noise behind them and take a path that heads down the hill to the water’s edge. The bugs’ cacophony mellows, then fades and becomes intermittent. Not far down the path is a smooth rock in the shade of a lone almond tree where Yanni sits, the tree’s trunk black against the blue sky, the branches dark, twisted and knotted in shocking contrast to the soft white blossom.
The animals spread out, settle, and begin to eat, each bite bringing them closer to Yanni, slowly gathering around him until he picks up a small pebble and throws it at the billy goat with the large curling horns. The animal sidesteps away with a clang of his bell, and the other goats follow him, resuming their feast some distance away.
‘What to do?’ he asks the silence. Dolly’s soft muzzle invades his thoughts, a wisp of an image amongst many. She may have been a tool for work but she was a wise and gentle beast, a good companion. He will probably never find another donkey like her for intelligence and willingness to work. And what will happen when the summer delivery work is over and the island grows quiet? Will he be able to keep his promise to the foreigner?
The American said he wanted to start building his house in September. The ruin he has bought is high up in the town, not as far as the pine trees, but nevertheless many steps from the port. Some stone remains from the building that once stood there, but more will be needed, brought by donkey from somewhere else on the island. Also every timber, every tile, every bag of sand and cement, every pipe, every light switch, every chair, every plate, knife, and fork will be brought in on the rusting old cargo boat. It has been agreed, he has shaken on it. He and his donkeys will do the job, haul everything up to the ‘plot with a view’, as the American referred to it. Even before the building work commences, there will be the rubble to clear from the site. Bags and bags of it. The charge is by the bag, two bags to a mule.
This work would see him and his parents through to the spring with ease. But with only one donkey, the American might not tolerate the time it will take. Will the builders wait? It is more likely that the American will just hire someone else as well. No one has fewer than two animals. With three donkeys working side by side, his work will be less, his pay will be less.
‘I have no choice,’ Yanni tells himself. The nearest goat looks up from its grazing, mouth chewing, dull yellow eyes staring blankly. ‘I must go to the mainland.’ The goat wiggles its tail and bends its head again. The idea does not sit easily; he never imagined he would ever leave his island, not for any reason. He has never really managed with people. It seems to him that everyone agrees to an unspoken big pretence of ‘civilisation’, but the truth is people are no different from his herd of goats. They all want the best branches for grazing, the deepest shade to stand in, and really there is no thought for the other goats beside them, just an unspoken pecking order. But he does not see life like that. He knows the herd will fare better if they work as a whole. His mama is always saying that his way of thinking ends up with him being taken advantage of, but is any other way better? Only last week, he advised a German couple to use the taxi boats once a week to take their bottled water along the coast to their newly bought summer house. If he had not done so, he would have delivered water to them every day for weeks until they wised up. His suggestion saved them a lot of money. It left him with less work. His mama was cross.
‘What business is it of yours to advise this man, Yanni?’ she scolded after he relayed the day’s events to his baba.
‘But how could I look this man in the eye after taking his money day after day, knowing I was taking such advantage?’
‘Any other donkey man would have,’ his mama sulked.
It is a lot easier if he just keeps himself to himself.
His hand fumbles as he takes the book from behind his tobacco pouch in his pocket. The book Sophia gave him all those years ago.
It falls open at a familiar page. When she gave it to him, the words seemed like nothing but squiggles. Now he can read, now he knows it off by heart. Under his moustache, his lips tighten. He briefly snorts, his head nodding. The irony is not lost on him. It was her brightness that lit his soul and his ignorance that lost him his chance. With diligence and help, he put his ignorance behind him. But it was in losing his ignorance that he came to know that she could have once been his.
If he had stayed ignorant, maybe the pain would be less now.
He strokes the page and reads the verse, in English, that she ringed with her own pencil all those years ago. Who says adolescent love is not as deep and real as any other?
Thus much and more; and yet thou lov’st me not,
And never wilt! Love dwells not in our will.
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still.
Looking out to sea, Yanni scans the horizon. He focuses there, his vision holding nothing but sea and sky. He stares hard, willing his mind to settle on nothing until his thoughts pass like dreams, forming of their own accord, all relating to the island, his island, where he was born and his family have lived for centuries. If he can have his wish, he will die here having never seen another land, living nowhere but in the stone hut. He has no wish to see more or do more. He is almost content. Sophia has faded as the years have passed, she will fade more still until one day, he will have perfect peace. He rolls up his sleeves. The sun has found its strength, the promise of the usual scorching summer.
His mama has no idea what she is saying when she suggests he get a wife. It would be like tearing out his heart and throwing it under stampeding hooves, a demand to dismiss his loyalty to Sophia. For what—an easier life? The very harshness of his life keeps the memory of her alive, the stark contrast highlighting her tenderness. Sometimes his mama does not know him at all. But then, Mama never did know about Sophia.
So long ago, he needs to learn to let her go. She was no more than a girl then, and he was just a boy. He can picture himself back then in colourless, shapeless shorts, his skin as brown as chestnuts, his hair always growing too fast for his mama’s scissors to keep up with. Sophia wore dresses that had no wrinkles, her hair always neatly combed, but she was always quick to take off her shoes once they were away from school. She climbed the scrubland above the town like a goat. He would run, fall, run again, lose her, find her, call for her. She would call back; he seemed always to be trying to keep up. Away from school, they played as if they only had one mind. He lost all sense of self and felt a content
ment he has never known since. But at school, his awkwardness would return, the giggles would begin behind his back, and he and Sophia would become two people again. He her silent follower, she his defender.
‘You laugh and pick fun, but you are children who play with toys and sleep on your mothers’ laps when Yanni is out doing a man’s job, herding goats and milking sheep.’ She would stand, in the playground, with her hands on her hips, her back straight.
‘We can smell the work he does all too well.’ Hectoras would usually be the one to reply, trying to gain Sophia’s attention for himself.
‘And without it, you would have no milk to suckle on. Until you have a job of your own, I would not be too quick to judge others.’ She was outspoken, brave, afraid of no one.
How much of a different person will she be now? Across the water, all grown up. Off the island, in a land of sophistication, complex rules, and modern ways.
With each green bite, the herd moves nearer to him, now almost on top of him as he lies back in the sunshine, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. A hoof clips his foot as the animal’s blind march for food moves it forward. Yanni throws another stone; the goats scatter away, startled. He will wait for them to eat their way towards him again, one more stone’s throw, and he will take them back.
The time comes too soon. He pockets the book which has been lying on his chest. He uncurls slowly and calls his animals with a whistle. The goats eat on but as he walks, they munch towards him until they finally lift their heads and follow him, now hurrying, now taking a bite, back to the windmill’s corral. He listens for any distant bells that may have wandered, but the hillside is silent. He looks over the scrubland. Here and there are houses which are now nothing but ruins, piles of stones. Where walls remain standing, gaping holes are left where the roofs once were, and blind eyes show lifeless interiors. It won’t be many years before Mama and Baba follow Dolly, and then what? Will he remain alone up here with all these ghosts or will his life change so much that only the cottage will remain and that too will lose its roof and eventually the walls begin to crumble?
Chapter 3
The animals leap and push back through the gate toward the windmill, hurrying to be first inside the corral. Yanni secures the gate with the stone and strides down to the house. The chairs around the wooden table at the front of the house are empty. His mama and baba, even at this early hour, forced inside by the growing strength of the sun. A tempting aroma of rosemary and tomatoes drifts from the open door. Mama will be standing by the stove fed by a gas bottle, spoon in one hand, pan handle in the other, chattering away to Baba, who will not hear a word. Cooking is a practical excuse to be inside, in the relative cool when the temperature reaches its heights outside. The food she prepares will not be eaten until the evening brings a wisp of a breeze and the sun loses its strength, and only then will the outside table be laid. If work keeps Yanni in town, or fatigue lengthens his return journey up the endless hill, his food will be set to one side, kept warm, and when he arrives, both Mama and Baba will sit at the table to keep him company even though their bellies will be full.
The bucket is already at the bottom of the well. Yanni hauls it up, fills two waiting pails and, slowed by their weight, takes even steps back to the goats to pour the water into their troughs. How would life have been if the well had dried up along with the others? Maybe it would have just hastened the inevitable. They wouldn’t be living up here, and his life would have been different right from the start. He would probably have spent more days at school. In fact, that would have been guaranteed without goats to look after. He pours the water into the troughs and the animals drink greedily. He returns to the well.
He pulls the bucket up again, brimming with ice cold water. He trudges steadily back up to the goats and after decanting the last bucket, Yanni kicks the gate closed again.
Swinging the empty pails, he heads back down home. He should set off soon for town, but first he checks on the pregnant ewes that seem content in their low-walled enclosure behind the house. The enclosure always makes him smile. It is a standing summary of who, or rather what, has always determined his life. He thought, at the time of building the low walls, he was making a choice, having a say in his world. The naïvety of youth.
‘I will build a new room,’ he can remember saying, so proud, so young, around the time he knew Sophia, and he began to gather stones. Boulders for the base and smaller stones as the walls rose. ‘You will have your bedroom back,’ he announced to his mama, who just smiled. The house is made up of two rooms, the second of which is the only bedroom. It has no windows, just a space filled with a thin mattress on a wood-and-rope base and a curtain for a door. A room that became his the day he was born. It was not the greatest prize in the world to offer back to his mama. Besides, she and Baba seemed quite happy to sleep on a similar bed in the main room. But he was at an age when a room separate from her and Baba would give them all space and at that age, he felt the need for some privacy, too.
So he had begun. A few stones here and a boulder or two there, the walls began to grow, until, on returning from grazing the goats one day, he found his baba had topped the wall with wire fencing and herded all the pregnant sheep into the half-built room, its walls now tall enough that they could not jump out.
After the ewes gave birth, the lambs took over, and after that the kids, by which time the sight of livestock in the half-built room had become familiar and Yanni had the feeling that his separate dwelling would never be finished.
The following year, the ‘house-pen,’ as it was by then referred to, was whitewashed, even along the top where the next row of stone would have been laid, and Yanni let go of the idea that it might one day be a room of his own. Sophia had left the island by then and he lost, well, what was it, a spark, energy, hope? Besides, the animals must come first. Their welfare determined his life, just as they had determined the days he could attend school in the brief years it was available to him. It had to be that way. It was their livelihood.
He walks round the end of the house-pen, one eye checking the distended bellies of the ewes. The scoop for the barrel sits on its lid. The wide-bellied sheep bleat with anticipation. Inside the pen, dividing walls have been erected. Some of the animals are bullies who leave the others hungry. Yanni gives some grain to these large animals first, adding a calcium mix, before repeating the process for the others, the wide bellies gently pushing each other out of the way.
His mama rounds the corner of the house, bottle in hand, and she lifts one of the newborn lambs out of a separate corral and tucks it under her arm. This starts a frenzy of bleating from it and from the two that remain in the pen. These are the rejects, unwanted by their mamas. They were pushed away when they tried to suckle and had to be rescued before they starved.
He and his mama walk together, with no need for talk, to the house front. She smells of onions. Sitting with the lamb on her knee, its little hooves dig holes in her woolly skirt as it nuzzles and pushes the bottle she holds. In no time, the bottle is nearly empty and its actions grow stronger until it is sucking air. She pulls the empty container away and the lamb’s bleats fill with panic until she lifts it and gently takes it back and puts it into the pen with the others. They head butt each other and jump on the spot for a moment before she takes out the next and repeats the process.
Yanni knows that in a day or two, more will be born and soon after that, it will be time to make yoghurt. The thought is pleasing. Bread and yoghurt for breakfast. It reminds him that he must bring up more flour to make bread. The sack they have will soon be empty and he must fix the crack where his mother says heat is leaking from the domed bread oven that leans against the house wall nearest the well. Unless his baba has fixed it already. He goes to look at it.
His mother finishes with the lambs and returns, wiping her hands on her apron, which is already dirty from this morning’s chores. It will be washed and hung on the line by the time he comes back for lunch and a sleep at mesimeri.
> Yanni smiles at her and heads towards his donkey.
‘You okay, son?’ she asks. He nods. ‘Going down?’ He nods again. ‘Can you get your father a coil of fence wire whilst you are in town? And we need more coffee. We only have Nescafé left.’
Yanni feels no need to answer. He would bring the town to her if she asked, but is glad that she would never ask. The mass of people is as unnerving to her as it is to him, and he cannot remember the last time she went down there, not her or his baba.
The wood and leather saddle creaks as he lifts it and places it on the donkey’s back. Suzi is sleeping in the warmth and she starts awake and then immediately drifts off again as Yanni fastens buckles, loops, and ropes.
‘What do you dream, my beauty? Of flat fields full of flowers and trees for shade, Dolly by your side?’ He stops to consider her. Her muzzle is greying.
‘Yanni, here, give her some more water before you go,’ his mama says.
The water splashes from the bucket into the bowl she has given him, from which Suzi drinks her fill.
Yanni deftly rolls a cigarette while her nose is in the water. When he is sure Suzi is satiated, he takes the bitless bridle and scans the ridge. There are two ways down. The way they came up last night, along the ridge a way, past the monastery where only eight monks now live. The old ways are fast dying out, even on the island. That way follows a paved track down through the pine trees. Or he can go the other way, down the compressed earth track which is quicker but steeper.
‘Don’t forget the wire and the coffee,’ his mama reminds him. His baba appears in the doorway, makes eye contact and nods.
