The Unquiet Mind (The Greek Village Collection Book 8)

by Sara Alexi

  ‘Do you see what I mean though?’ Hectoras ignores Costas and takes a sip of ouzo. ‘We think we can handle the world because we can handle this tiny little island.’ Putting his drink down, he turns slightly to face Yanni. ‘Now, here is the interesting bit. You hardly went to school at all. You are a man who walks to the beat of his own drum.’ He stops to chuckle. Yanni’s eyebrows raise but he continues to stare out across the water. Hectoras’ chuckle becomes a laugh. ‘You sure you won’t have an ouzo?’ He looks around to catch Costas’ attention, but Costas is talking to two boys who have a puppy with them. When Hectoras hisses through his teeth to gain Costas’ attention. He looks up and acknowledges the two raised fingers, an ouzo each.

  ‘So here’s the thing. Seeing as you never did much schooling, do you have any idea how big and how different the mainland is?’ He waits. Yanni feels he is expected to say something, but nothing comes to mind. He pictures the goats running over the hills in the early morning light; he must get back to sleep to start a new day.

  Hectoras looks around to see if his ouzo is coming. Yanni looks at the sky, tries to judge how long the light will remain. Suzi is still sleeping. She should be rested enough by now.

  Two ouzos arrive and one is put down in front of Yanni. He tries to object, but it is simpler to let it sit there next to his lemonade, which is also untouched. Hectoras is silent again, still waiting for him to say something.

  ‘Everywhere, people are the same,’ Yanni finally says. ‘We are born, we scrabble about living, and we die. The rules do not change because you live on a small island or a large one. The only differences one man has from another are his own rules in his head. His honour.’

  ‘There, you see.’ Hectoras sounds triumphant. ‘You have not changed at all.’

  ‘Hectoras, is there something you are getting at?’ Yanni takes out his tobacco pouch. He will have one cigarette and then he will go.

  ‘You are going across to the mainland,’ Hectoras states, as if the decision has already been made.

  Yanni’s fingers begin to fumble with his tobacco pouch. ‘Maybe,’ he mutters.

  ‘The day before I went up to Athens to go into the army, I was terrified. You never did do the army, did you?’ It’s a question he neither expects an answer to, nor does Yanni intend to give him one. Being born halfway up the mountain has made conformities, such as registering his birth, more effort than it was worth. In the world of lists and paper, he does not exist. But he does not want to discuss his business with Hectoras.

  Yanni lights his cigarette and takes a long draw, his lighter still burning.

  ‘Until I was called for the army, I had never been off the island. The day I was due to leave was the most frightening day of my life. I can still remember the cold sweat that was running down my back. The ferry pulled in. It was the big old steel ship back then, you remember them.’ He coughs out a laugh. ‘My mama and baba standing so proud and I ran, ran to the nearest café and locked myself in the toilet. I was just in time.’ He chuckles at the memory. ‘But then I could not get out. My hands were shaking so much, I could not open the door. In the end, I had to call out and the waiter came. The most terrifying day of my life became the most embarrassing. But I was glad for the humiliation of being locked in the toilet. It took everyone’s focus away from my trembling bottom lip and my cold sweats. And for why? All because I thought the rules would be different, that the big world would be beyond my understanding.’ He finishes his ouzo.

  ‘So my question is, if I had not been to school so much and learnt the differences between this tiny island and the big world out there, would I have felt so much fear?’ With narrowed eyes and a smirk on his lips, he glances across to Yanni.

  Yanni leans forward, picks up the glass of ouzo that is reflecting pinks and pale blues in the setting sun and, putting it to his mouth, throws his head back and swallows it in one.

  ‘Ah!’ Hectoras replies. ‘I see.’ With this, he takes a cigarette from the soft pack in front of him and, lighting it with a match that transforms his features grotesquely in the half-dark, he watches Yanni’s face.

  Yanni grips the chair for moment and then without a word stands and strides stiffly to Suzi, who wakes with a start. It is difficult to see who leads who from the harbour.

  Chapter 7

  The cobbles under Suzi’s hooves click in time with the heels of Yanni’s boots. They lapse into a familiar rhythm and Yanni’s thoughts give way to a mercifully pleasant blankness.

  The wide path narrows and grows steeper and finally peters to nothing but a dusty track, used by few. It zigzags steeply out of town.

  If he were to leave the island, what if something should happen and he were to never come back? His mama and baba are growing ever older, and things that would have once not affected them now present insurmountable obstacles.

  Thoughts of them ageing brings also the inevitability of their deaths. One day, he will be alone up there, and what woman would ever choose such isolation? They cluster like chickens, needing the social whirl of each other’s company. If he is ever to even consider marriage, he must be ready to live in town. Something he can neither afford in money nor in peace of mind. There is not a woman alive who would choose to be his wife, if only because of his circumstances. After his parents are gone, he will not be choosing to be alone up there. He will be forced to be alone.

  Isolation is different from solitude, and what if something happens to him? When his baba slipped and broke his ankle over at the far grazing area, he crawled the distance home on his knees. It took him four hours and his knees were shredded. If Yanni had not been at home with his phone and his donkeys, it would have been another four hours to crawl into town. Baba would never have made it, and he was a younger man then.

  The monastery door is ajar, a slash of light taming the rough ground outside.

  ‘Well hello.’ Sister Katerina’s voice breaks through his gloomy thoughts as he pushes the door open. ‘Late tonight. Did you get everything?’ she asks with energy in her voice. She scans his face. ‘Yanni?’ she asks more gently.

  ‘I was thinking,’ he answers with no elaboration.

  She takes her favourite seat by the little church from where there is the best view of the garden. There is a jug of water and two cups.

  Yanni uses the moment to take the things he has brought for her from town inside. He puts them on the end of the long table before returning to sit with her.

  ‘Ah …’ A sigh that is almost a yawn is her greeting on his return. The sunlight is now nothing but a soft glow, somewhere between day and night.

  ‘I was thinking of whether I have to go over to the mainland, Sister,’ Yanni says.

  ‘Oh I see, and your dilemma is in wondering if you can put off the inevitable, perhaps?’

  ‘Inevitable?’ Yanni asks.

  ‘Maybe it is time?’ she says with a glance.

  ‘Are we talking in riddles today, Sister?’ Yanni laughs quietly, respectful of the mood in the garden.

  ‘It would not only be a donkey you were buying.’

  Yanni frowns and waits for her to explain.

  ‘Let me ask you a question.’ She straightens her robes over her knees. ‘If there were a good donkey on the island for sale, would you buy it?’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Yes, I would.’

  ‘So it is not from not wanting a donkey that you are not leaving the island, then?’ A quick roll of her eyes acknowledges her tangle of words. When the smile drops from Yanni’s lips, she adds, ‘Fear’s a funny thing.’

  Yanni turns from her to look over the garden. He reaches for his tobacco but, with a sideways glance at the nun, replaces it in his pocket. Instead, he grinds a pebble into the dusty earth with the toe of his cowboy boot.

  ‘We all feel fear when we face something new. There is nothing over there that you need fear. There is not a big demon out there eating islanders for breakfast or anything.’ She laughs at the thought and her mirth judders through he
r body. ‘Perhaps this is a lesson being offered to you so you can learn to trust yourself. Trust yourself with people perhaps, realise you have as much right to be here as the sun or the …’ She looks around herself to name something else, at which moment Suzi calls out her loneliness: big heaving bellows as if she knows her cries will never reach the ears of her lost long-eared companion. ‘Or the donkeys.’ Sister Katerina acknowledges the sound. ‘Sometimes we name a feeling we do not recognise as fear, but it may in fact be excitement, or anticipation, or expectancy, but we just have not understood it, or ever connected it with that particular event that we are experiencing. It is only as we step over that threshold, into the fear so to speak, that we can truly name it.’

  ‘Yes but meanwhile, we are feeling fearful,’ Yanni offers.

  ‘That’s what I am saying. It is not really a feeling. It is a thought, a pre-emptory thought. That’s the demon, and he is not on the mainland.’

  ‘You never mention God when you lecture me,’ Yanni says.

  ‘Do I need to?’ she asks. ‘I have always found logic works better with you.’ Her eyes dance a little, waiting for his response.

  ‘I think you are the demon that eats islanders for breakfast,’ Yanni rejoins, his attention being drawn by the sound of Suzi scraping her hoof on the ground outside. She will be hungry. He is also hungry.

  ‘There is another thing, too.’ Her hand raises to the cross around her neck. ‘Sophia.’ She waits. Yanni stops breathing for a second. ‘I cannot tell you how she is in the nunnery near Saros; maybe she has moved to another nunnery. But even if I did know anything about her life, I think it would make very little difference to you. The Sophia you hold in your heart, who keeps you from being at peace, is not the Sophia who has spent the last nineteen years in God’s service. Maybe it is time to face that, too; realise you are holding onto a dream, an imaginary person. Go Yanni, visit her, realise she is not the same person. Give yourself peace.’ The last sentence she says with energy.

  His throat is too constricted to speak. He smooths out his moustache and then wraps his arms across his chest. ‘No.’ He says it quietly.

  ‘Yanni, we have spent many hours together learning, and it was not revealed to me until recently what all the learning was for. Do not use the dream, a dream that, if treated right could turn into a lovely memory, to hamper your life.’

  ‘But …’ His voice is almost a whisper.

  ‘Again, we have fear, but is what you feel fear or is it another emotion that you will not truly know until you meet her face to face? Maybe it will be relief, relief that you can let her go. Or excitement, excitement that you no longer have your loyalty to her holding you back.’

  ‘But it may be heartbreak at my loss.’ Yanni is not sure if he says the words out loud.

  ‘And the fear is you would not cope with that loss. That is our ultimate fear, I think, the fear that we cannot cope.’ Sister Katerina makes it all sound so easy.

  ‘What if I cannot cope?’

  ‘What does that even mean, Yanni? How would it manifest itself if you “could not cope”? What would it look like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Ah, so now you fear the unknown again. Maybe “Not being able to cope” feels like sadness, or emptiness, or even hopelessness.’ Katerina waits for some acknowledgement of what she has said. Yanni lets his arms drop to his lap. ‘Feeling sad or empty or hopeless doesn’t feel nice, but how long do those feelings last? We cope with them, Yanni. It is part of human nature.’

  He leans forward, his elbows across his knees, his head hanging.

  ‘The truth is, Yanni, unless you go and you face these things, nothing will change. You will continue on the hill there with your parents, a piece of you yearning for a love that will never be, until God takes your family and then you will be truly alone, and maybe you will have missed your chance to find love and your dreams will be of little comfort then.’

  The garden is quiet. The day of buzzing and searching for nectar is over for the insects. The roses in the twilight look black, the moonlight gives a glow to the edges of the paths where Sister Katerina has whitewashed. Yanni wipes his hands down his jeans, sits back, and takes a deep breath.

  ‘So you will go?’ Sister Katerina asks lightly.

  ‘So I just walk up to the convent door, knock, and ask to speak to her? What if she doesn’t want to speak to me?’

  ‘For that, you must trust in God,’ she says. ‘Besides, I have something that I really need to have delivered to that convent. I would not trust it to go by post, so this is the only way. Will you deliver it for me, Yanni?’ The request is so gentle, but even in the moonlight, he can just see her eyes are sparkling, mischievous, alive. He nods; what else can he do? After all she has given him, the hours of her time, the patience, all he has learnt, how could he say no to anything she would ask of him? Especially something so simple as a delivery? It is so little to ask, and while he is there, he can buy a donkey.

  ‘Good.’ Sister Katerina draws out the word and rolls to her feet to glide indoors, returning after some time with a paper parcel bound up tightly with string. She hands it to Yanni.

  Yanni turns it in his palm before finding a pocket in which to store it.

  ‘Now, you should go tomorrow, I think.’ Nothing she says sounds rushed or pushing, but her delivery is emphatic nonetheless. ‘Don’t you have some family in the village over there? A second cousin was it? He came here once, I seem to remember. What was his name? Your mama will know.’

  Yanni feels he is falling into a hole. It seems not only that he must go but somehow, it has been decided that he must go tomorrow. The ground is opening beneath his feet and he dangles.

  Sister Katerina must see his hesitation as she takes a gliding step towards the boundary door. Yanni reacts by standing and walking mechanically by her side.

  ‘Tell your mama that if she needs to telephone your second cousin so he can prepare for you, she can come to use the convent phone. Also, as long as you are on God’s business, tell your mama you will be safe and I will be praying for you—personally.’ She indicates his pocket with the missive. ‘It makes sense for you to buy your donkey whilst you are there, does it not?’ They are at the big wooden door. Yanni nods his head compliantly. As an afterthought she adds, ‘If your mama has any worries tell her to come down to me anyway.’

  With this, she gently bustles Yanni out of the door, handing him a delicate rose that she nips off from the nearest of her bushes for him to give to his mother.

  Outside alone with Suzi, it is quiet. It is dark.

  A day to get there, a day at the convent and the donkey breeder’s place, and a day to travel home, he reasons, but he doesn’t really believe he is going anywhere yet.

  He puts the Nun’s parcel in the saddle bag and his hand automatically reaches for his tobacco pouch.

  Chapter 8

  It is dark. There is a door, no, a window, a light beyond. So bright. Better to keep his eyes closed, just for a moment. The bed he is on, sagging, soft, swirling. Still swirling with his eyes closed. Water would be good. It’s possible to make out the shadows of the ceiling. An oblong room. It is not home. But where, what time? It’s dark. Do the animals need feeding? He knows where he is, he knows everything, it’s lurking just beyond his grasp, teasing, taunting. What can he remember? A boat and a bright sea, his island receding. And then? Then voices, women with bags. Jostling and swaying. A sickness in the stomach. Voices arguing. A goat amongst people, bleating, terrified. More arguing, the goat leaving, more swaying, so hot. A change of people, laughing and rocking and then, and then …

  Perhaps if he sits up. Slowly. No, bad idea, lie down. His hand creeps across his stomach, up his chest, over his jaw, sweeping his eyes. Pressing and rubbing his temples does not alleviate the pain or the steady beat of the drum. Twitching his legs, his feet heavy; he still has his boots on. Why would he still have his boots on if he has laid down? Where did he walk? Images of orange orchards, rich and lu
sh, leaves so green, like nothing he has ever seen on the island. And olive groves, with bushy trees thick with fruit and, yes, he remembers that - water coming from pipes beneath them, the ground soggy with the excess. Then? What then? A turn in the road, a school with a brightly coloured fence. Houses with bright blue shutters. And then?

  ‘Hey Yanni, you’re awake. Come on my man, let’s go.’ The light from the opened door blinds him. ‘We must eat and celebrate.’ A hand grabs his arm and pulls. He shakes it off with a flex of his bicep. The hand has a weak grip.

  ‘Oh, you’re not one of these people that are all grumpy when they wake, are you? Come on.’

  Like the bucket falling from the well’s edge and spilling the water over the parched ground, in an instant, everything returns and soaks in. Being met in the village square by Babis, being hauled into the kafeneio, the open floor-to-ceiling glass doors, clusters of tables surrounded by work-worn faces. So many faces. Babis introducing to everyone his second cousin from the island. Unfamiliar face after unfamiliar face offering to shake his hand, an ouzo thrust into his open palm and a hearty slap on the back from Babis as he takes a sip which makes him gulp and the shot goes down in one swallow. A joke being made of islanders drinking, another glass in his hand, Babis telling expectant faces exaggerated tales of their brief meetings when they were boys, Yanni so much taller and older and wiser. On and on, Babis talked. What could have been said in five words took him twenty minutes. Yanni was tired from the jiggling and pounding and shouting of the journey, so many people, so much that was new and then with Babis droning on, his eyes closed in reaction to everything, shutting down, blocking it out, another slap on the back, another mouthful and then nothing seemed so bad; in fact, he felt quite pleasant for a while. Another glass in his hand feeling smooth and round, the burn in his throat. No idea what was going on, someone said … No, that was Hectoras on the island—on a different day, maybe he … No, it will not come.