The beasts provided the warm milk they drank when the family was thirsty and hungry in winter and the wonderful salty cheese.
Andreas ate, as part of his staple diet in growing up, the spit-grilled crispy, delicious and succulent flesh the animals provided the family.
This meat was also enjoyed by every villager on special occasions such as weddings, christenings and the celebration of various religious events including Holy Easter and Christmas and the honouring of patron saints.
As part of coming to terms with his senses, Andreas’s memory of eating meat was married with the seductive excitement of wonderful family occasions, a full belly, and the toasting to good health with home-made white wine made from the green grapes of the mountains.
Along the track leading home, Andreas passed the home of Lossos, who was the local butcher and handyman. Lossos was a proud man with ten children. Each child worked for him in one way or another. He also had the reputation of being as frisky as old George’s white American stallion, which lent itself to the local myth that he was a womaniser.
As Andreas passed by the house, Andreas could see through the back door of Lossos’s home. The glow from the burning logs in the open fireplace licked the darkness and shed light on what was happening in his private time.
Andreas liked him because he always spoke to Andreas and forever promised him that he would take Andreas to Athens when he next went there to sell his wares at the large open market near Piraeus.
Andreas had never been to Athens. In the history lessons, Andreas had read and learnt so much about the grandeur, history, and splendour of the ancient capital.
Lossos waved to Andreas to hurry home. He shouted that he had seen the teacher walk past shortly after sunset and that Andreas’s mother and father were wandering the village, looking for him.
Andreas walked at a slow pace then slowed further along the path as he heard the echo of gunshots rebound from the distant mountain. This was followed by the screeching of Aspros’s father, warning of the threat of a fox near the battery of chickens he always left in his front yard.
There was a rise in the track before the descent followed by a right turn leading to the front yard of his home. At this fork in the track, Andreas could smell the fresh oil that had been grinded that day in the old stone oil mill. Mules and donkeys drove the stone on loan from the villagers.
The smell made Andreas realise that his youthful body was now hungry and thirsty and needed replenishing. Against that need to satisfy his hunger and thirst was the knowledge that, if Mr Mavros was at his home and discussing his behaviour at school that day, there would be trouble. As a result of his actions he would need to read more Greek myths for eternal inspiration and seek the solace of his dreams to escape from the inevitable punishment of no food that night.
When Andreas entered the yard of his home, he looked towards the north and saw the familiar meadow, river, and the two mountaintops forming the background to the sea framed in the night setting.
The welcome by his mother, Aphrodite, was restrained and barren. She did not hug nor kiss him. She grabbed him by the right shoulder and took him up to the stairs towards the balcony.
Andreas and his mother entered into a hostile sitting room, interrupting the conversation Mr Mavros was having with his father, Kostas, near the fireplace.
His mother was the midwife for the village and its surrounds. Her hands and fingers were thin, and her knuckles large as a direct result of many years of her hands being constantly immersed in water to deliver babies hygienically.
Although her hands appeared frail and sickly, her grip was like the vice used by Lossos to shoe the donkeys and mules. She had delivered all of Lossos’s ten children.
To Andreas, his mother was very special. She was the village doctor and nurse. She knew the remedies passed on for generations and, with a few exceptions, fixed most ailments.
When she attended to the sick, she comforted them with her honey-sweet voice and her curing olive-green eyes before administering the healing potions to complete the holistic treatment.
On one occasion, a woman from the village was bedridden and in extreme pain. Andreas’s mother immediately diagnosed the woman as suffering from an inflamed gall bladder. She gave the woman milk from a donkey, and in less than three days, she was cured. The woman never suffered from ball bladder problems again.
Mr Mavros and Andreas’s father glanced at him when he entered. His father’s steel-blue eyes were filled with anger.
On the table were two glasses half filled with ouzo, a jug of water with accompanying water tumblers, and some mezedes, consisting of snacks of goat’s cheese, olives, stuffed vine leaves, and home-made bread for this unplanned guest.
Since there was slight hesitation from all present, his father led the charge by opening with this remark: ‘My beautiful son, where have you been all this time? School finished long ago, and the rooster is now sleeping with the hens’
His father always had an aphorism of either Greek or Turkish origin to pitch at the many victims of his irony or scorn. In the absence of these rehearsed lines, Andreas now regarded him a simple and ill-educated man.
Before Andreas could reply and offer his tempered explanation, Mr Mavros, to his surprise and delight, came to his defence.
‘Kostas, I did not come here to chide the boy. You must understand this before we continue. I told you what happened today with Andreas, and I was cut off midstream in explaining to you that actions are often louder than words. Andreas must exercise more discipline at school—sure, that is a fact—but I am here to discuss his future.’
His father was left speechless. He had a plan in place to punish him in the presence of Mr Mavros and assert his authority as the father of the Kapelis household.
Andreas had been the victim of this before.
Mavros had spoilt the strategy, and his father did not have the intellectual capacity to anticipate what was next on the agenda.
His father pleaded with Mr Mavros that he did not follow what was to be done following his conduct.
Mavros said, ‘In the heat of battle, one can never really be sure of the spoils of war. In this instance, I took time out to think about what Andreas had said to me before coming to your home this evening. His response to my question about freedom was advanced. Andreas is an exquisitely intelligent young student.
‘With your consent and approval, I intend to enrol him in the Department of Education’s studies for advanced students to provide him with the chance of competing for a place in higher studies once he has completed his schooling.’
Andreas’s father laughed.
Mr Mavros said that Greece was being run by a king with no proper roots to the homeland and that the world was driven by men who were always intellectually challenged and dangerously wielding great power.
Without pause, Mr Mavros talked about the ‘old foe’ at the border, wanting conflict again. He said that with Andreas’s innocence, purest of hearts, and intellect, education would arm Andreas with the necessary tools to assist in reviving the almost-lost intellectual reputation of the Hellenes.
At this point, his father was speechless. Mr Mavros hugged Andreas and accidentally brushed his whiskered face upon his tight boyish skin. He felt the tear on his cheek wet his chin as they embraced. Andreas did not want to let him go.
Andreas ate the sweetest of foods and drank watered-down wine served by his mother.
Mr Mavros bid Andreas goodnight and gently smiled.
His parents saw him out to the track at the entry to the yard.
Andreas went to bed and could not sleep. He heard the bed murmurs of his parents whispering the fact that they were proud of him and that he was a fine son. His mother sheepishly suggested that her son had inherited from her the gift of charisma.
Andreas could not contain his excitement and the longing for dawn to come so he
could go to school.
The next day, Andreas quickly swallowed a glass of tepid mountain tea made from a plant his mother picked near the church of St Nicholas.
Father John, who governed the village church, saw Andreas race to school. He was an old crusty priest with leathery skin. He possessed a huge grey-and-black beard covering his entire face except for his almond-shaped black eyes.
His stale breath either reeked of tobacco or alcohol or an offensive cocktail of both. He wore a black robe that had seldom been washed and displayed a huge ornate gold cross upon his chest, significantly contrasting his black attire.
For some inexplicable reason, he was a favourite and friend of the bishop of Patras. His Holiness Bishop Stellios was one of the most senior and prominent religious figures at the time. He was a powerful member of the inner sanctum of the Orthodox Church worldwide.
He would often visit the village on significant religious occasions, during Easter and Christmas, and express the Logos, the final word after mass. Bishop Stellios would stay at Father John’s house to enjoy the religious feasts, sharing the feast with Father John’s family—his wife, Mary; their three unmarried daughters; the twins, who were in their late teens, and the eldest, who was in her early twenties.
Both Father John and his wife had married late in life, and the daughters seemed to have distorted faces and were slow and awkward. They were lovely girls and treated Andreas with respect. As a fresh teenager, Andreas genuinely liked them and their company. They seemed to act and behave as Andreas did, but they were much older.
The older folk of the village would often talk about the wrongs in marriages involving second cousins. Andreas did not understand why that topic of conversation arose when there was a reference to Father John or his family.
After the blessed mass of Christmas, the bishop handed the children of the village wooden toys made by the bearded monks stationed at the Great Monastery near Kalavryta. Also, he gave the children handwritten books describing the 1821 revolution, which explained the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Greece, written by the sombre grey-habit-wearing nuns of Patras.
At Easter, he would present all the children less than eighteen years of age with a small taffeta bag, usually coloured red or blue, depending upon the sex of the child. The red bags were for the girls and the blue bags for the boys. Each bag contained the most exotic and delicious sweets. It was customary that in exchange for the gift and the bishop’s blessing, the children would kiss his hand.
The rumour was that the bishop was the heir apparent to become the next archbishop of the Orthodox Church. This never happened.
In the mind of Andreas, he rejected the kissing ritual but complied with the charade to receive the booty of pleasure. It was worth every effort he made to conceal this fraud. Some bags contained soft chocolates wrapped in colourful paper covered in foreign writing.
Andreas was frustrated in being unable to read the text so he could name the delight he experienced. The lack of knowledge was forbidding him from reading the script, and he felt helpless.
The writing was in English.
Other sweets were hard with an opaque covering and a tiny plum-coloured centre. It seemed that the oral enjoyment would last forever. He had the fondest of recollections that the senses in his mouth danced from the sheer joy of finally devouring the treat. Then there was the exhilarating climax of the plum centre remaining as a taste that could neither be continued nor forgotten.
His mother would often let the goats and sheep graze near the church whilst she attended to praying for the deceased loved ones who were buried in the cemetery next to the church. His mother would gather the plants to make the tea he felt slowly travel through his system as he raced up the familiar track to the hall.
All the children of the school were waiting restlessly outside the great door, which was unusually locked at this time of a school day.
It was the habit of Mr Mavros to drink his coffee at his large oak desk an hour before class commenced at 8 a.m. As Mavros prepared for the class, he would read the newspapers delivered weekly by the mocha-coloured gypsy fishmonger who came to the village by horse at dawn.
Mr Mavros would wait at the well beneath the entry to the village near the winding and treacherous road from the seaside to receive delivery of his contact with the world. The gypsy charged Mr Mavros a premium for the delivery of the newspapers from Egion, a major coastal town sandwiched between Diakofto and Patras and along the major arterial train line, shipping route, and road serving Patras and Athens.
The newspapers delivered to Mavros often smelt of sea and fish. The smell was there because the fishmonger haphazardly placed the newspapers between his saddle and the two large woven baskets carrying his load of fish and seafood balanced finely on either side of his burdened animal. The catch of the morning was sold efficiently to the early waking women of the village for lunch in summertime or, in winter, for the evening meal.
That morning, however, Mr Mavros was not to be seen. Andreas had known him for four years since he had taken over as the resident teacher in the village. Mavros lived and ate in the village. He had never been absent from the school even at times when he was unwell or seriously ill.
Mrs Parades, the coffee shop owner’s wife and the local aristocracy, was eager to come out of the Kafeneion, which was twenty metres from the hall. She telegraphed the news that when she had purchased fish from the gypsy at dawn that day, the gypsy had complained to her that Mavros was not at his usual spot at the well. He had always brought the newspapers for Mavros, and without his usual buyer, there was no one interested in the contents of the printed word.
Mrs Parades was quite friendly with the Lossos family. When Mrs Lossos went to attend to her rural chores, Andreas had seen Mrs Parades briskly walk down to the Lossos’s house and to personally deliver all his grocery requirements to Mr. Lossos.
On the other side of the road and directly opposite the Kafeneion was the home of the mayor, Mr Garoutas. He was quite a portly man; his frame and height were average in the village of tall men, and he carried an unusually robust midline.
He was well fed and opinionated and often took on the role of presenter. He did not care whether the news was accurate or not as the forecaster of local, regional, national, and international news.
His desperate attempts to be stately, commensurate with his office, failed. More so when he attempted to express an opinion or advance a point of view and state what he considered to be the facts of an event or topic. His ignorance was camouflaged by a thrusting of his arms and an aggressive sermon of knowledge.
Unfortunately, Mr Mavros would act as the keeper of the record and correct or challenge the garrulous gaffs of Garoutas in the presence of the villagers. Why Garoutas was elected as mayor every year—that fact was beyond the comprehension of Kostas, Andreas’s father.
Accepting that Mr Mavros was the intellectual yardstick in the village, Garoutas did not rate on his scale. He was a dull individual with less-than-inspiring features who rambled from a stream of consciousness rather than communicate with authority.
The elections were always after 1 May every year.
Andreas would notice that he would travel around the village at the end of April, campaigning and discussing his visions for the future of the village, and carried with him a Fakelaki (envelope), the contents of which were never disclosed nor discussed by the parties to the conversation.
Garoutas went towards the children as they patiently waited for the arrival of Mr Mavros.
The fact that the mayor was coming towards the hall at this time of the morning concerned Andreas. He recalled that his initial thoughts were that Mr Mavros was dead.
The way he died raced through the process of his thoughts. Was it an accident, a murder, exposure to the elements, his health, perhaps even suicide?
Mr Garoutas opened his explanation of the missing teacher with t
he following words: ‘Children, the conscription authorities from Patras came late last night to the village, and a meeting was held. The able men of the village were addressed and requested to volunteer to serve their country and protect our borders to the north. Mr Mavros was the first to volunteer his service in the name of patriotism and immediately signed up without debate, protest, or question.’
Andreas could not contain his anger at what he viewed as Mavros’s desertion of him as his student. He did not give him any notice nor bid Andreas farewell.
Andreas yelled without thinking, ‘Who will educate us now that he has gone?’
Garoutas had rehearsed his reply and said, ‘Arrangements have been made with the Department of Studies last week. A replacement teacher will be arriving in the next two weeks from Argos. We understand she is a bright young woman who has been teaching for about three years. Her name is Mademoiselle Peppas. In the meantime, I am sure you will all be delighted to hear that the school is now closed until further notice.’
Mr Garoutas then left and returned to the Kafeneion. The other children cheered and went to play. Andreas was devastated.
Aspros was in the fields, and it would take Andreas an eternity to find him to vent his despair. Andreas went to the Kafeneion to demand answers from Garoutas. He entered and stepped on to the flaking cypress wooden floors.
There were eight tables of varying sizes placed at random throughout the floor plan. Four large windows ventilated the place. As one entered, a lengthy hat rack was the resting place for the caps and hats the men removed to take their place. The smell of Turkish coffee was prevalent and the cigarette smoke was thick and could not be ignored.
There was a counter at the far end of the room, where Mrs Parades and her softly-spoken husband, Spiros, attended to the trade of their business. Garoutas sat at the table nearest the counter with other people of power in the village.
The treasurer, Mr Haralambos, and the secretary, Mr Grammas, were arguing with Garoutas on the question of who would attend to the rural work once the haemorrhaging of the vital men was complete.
Kapelis- The Hatmaker Page 8
