by Maeve Binchy
David looked out the window. The afternoon sun shone down the hills over the olive groves to the blue bay of Aghia Anna. What could that boy be looking at in Chicago, Illinois, that would be one-tenth as beautiful as this? He grabbed the cushions and went down to help them pack Georgi’s van.
“This will cheer us all up, brother Georgi,” Andreas said with a happy smile.
David looked at him longingly. Imagine having a father who was so easily satisfied with simple things.
When they got back into town they went to find Thomas. He sounded very pleased at the thought of the feast and offered to get some wine.
Vonni said she’d check out the situation with Elsa and Fiona. She explained with admirable brevity to David what had happened and how Fiona might not feel like joining them.
“That’s terrible,” David said. “But maybe when you think of it, it might be all for the—”
“You know the expression ‘Don’t go there’ . . . David, this is the very occasion that phrase was invented for. You might think it, I might think it, but Fiona most definitely does not think it, I thought I’d warn you.”
“Very wise,” David agreed. “I always say the wrong thing anyway. But what about Elsa? I thought that she had gone off with her German friend.”
“I know I sound like some manifestation of the Sphinx,” Vonni said, “but to be very honest I wouldn’t go there either!”
The young policemen were delighted with the great smells of cooking meat, basted with garlic and rosemary. It had been an exhausting and draining time. It was good to relax with their boss, his brother, Vonni, and the four tourists.
One of the girls looked like a beauty queen, the other very washed out, as if she had been ill. The two men were very different—one tall and lanky in ludicrous baggy Bermuda shorts with pockets, the other small and serious with spectacles.
All the visitors made attempts to speak a few words of Greek; they knew wine was krasi, so the young police officers taught them aspro and kokino for white and red and how to say Ya sou with exactly the right pronunciation. In return they were taught how to say cheers, skoal, l’chaim, and slainte.
Andreas carved proudly, and the moonlight made patterns on the sea as the clouds raced across the sky.
“It seems so long since we were in Kalatriada,” Fiona said, “when the night was full of rain beating against the roof and the walls.”
“It was only two nights ago,” Elsa said. “And so much has happened since!” She reached out and held Fiona’s hand as a gesture of solidarity.
Fiona’s eyes filled with tears, and David flashed a glance at Vonni. How wise she had been to mark his card.
Down near the harbor they saw a group of young men gather in front of the little house that belonged to Maria and Manos. And soon they saw other people leave the cafés and restaurants to come and join them.
“What’s happening?” Thomas asked, anxious in case anything was wrong.
Georgi was peering down. “I can’t see. One of you boys go down and see if everything is all right,” he said and pointed at one of the policemen.
It was possible, unlikely but possible, that someone might have wanted to blame Manos for the whole tragedy. They had better be prepared.
Vonni spoke gently. “It’s no problem. Some of the young men said they would like to dance tonight in honor of Manos and his friends, outside his house, in memory of how he used to dance Syrtaki and other dances.”
“There isn’t usually dancing after a funeral here,” Georgi said.
“This isn’t a usual funeral,” Vonni said gently.
And as they watched, twelve men with black trousers and white shirts linked up arms on each other’s shoulders. The bouzouki players played a few chords and then they began—bending, swooping, leaping in the night as Manos and his friends had done until a few short days ago.
Maria and her children sat on chairs outside their little house. When all this was a long distant memory, perhaps the children would recall the night that Aghia Anna had come out to dance for their father.
The crowd grew ever bigger, and even from high on the hill they could see people wiping tears from their eyes. Then the crowd began to clap in time to the music and dancing, every single person joining in. From their verandah at the police station, the group was wordless, watching the scene. It was so different from anything they had ever seen before.
Then Elsa began to clap in time to the music, and Thomas immediately clapped after her. David and Fiona exchanged glances and joined in, as did Vonni, the young policemen, and Andreas and Georgi. They too had tears on their faces as they encouraged the young men in a dance of homage.
Elsa passed a paper table napkin to Fiona, who was crying openly.
“What a wonderful thing to do,” Fiona said when she could speak. “I’ll never forget this night as long as I live.”
“Nor I,” Thomas agreed. “We are privileged to be able to share it.”
The others didn’t trust themselves to speak.
And in an unexpectedly clear voice Fiona said, “Those same stars are shining on Athens and on all our homes. I wonder what everyone is doing and if they have any idea on earth what we are all doing here just now.”
NINE
In Fiona’s home in Dublin, they were talking about her as they did almost every evening. Her mother was looking at the pictures of Aghia Anna in the Evening Herald. “Imagine Fiona being in that very place!” she said in amazement.
“Imagine!” her husband grunted.
“But, Sean, it was good of her to ring in case we’d be worried about her. At least she thought that we might be concerned.”
“Why would we be concerned? We didn’t know where the hell she was except joined at the hip to that lout.”
Fiona’s father found very few silver linings in the whole situation. Very little cause to see the bright side. He picked up the remote control and turned on the television set deliberately to end the conversation. His wife went over to the set and turned it off.
“Maureen! Why did you do that? I wanted to watch that.”
“No, you didn’t want to watch anything, you just didn’t want to talk about Fiona.”
“I’m sick to death of Fiona,” Sean said. “And I couldn’t care less if she came back for the silver wedding.”
“Sean! How can you even say that?”
“I mean it. What’s the point of having her here for any celebration moping, hanging on to the arm of that spaced-out fool, telling us we don’t understand him?”
“She’s your child as much as mine.”
“She’s not a child, according to you . . . she’s a woman of twenty-four. She is entitled to make her own decisions. That’s what you said when you were standing up for her.”
“Sean, I said that we were only going to alienate her by attacking Shane, that she was old enough to know the choices she was making. I didn’t say that any of them were right.”
“Huh,” he said.
“I want you to listen to me. I invited Barbara around tonight to talk to her about everything. They’ve been friends since they were six years old and they made their First Communion; she’s as upset as we are.”
“She is not. She’s just as bad as Fiona. If a drug-crazed drunken loser like Shane turned up for her, she’d be off too. They’re all the same these days.”
“This is not the way we must talk, we must try to keep a lifeline open to her, tell her that we are here when she wants us.”
“I’m not sure that I am here if she wants us. She said some very hurtful things to you as well as to me, remember.”
“That’s because we said to her things that she thought were hurtful things about Shane.” Maureen struggled to be fair.
“She gave up her family, her home, her good job for what? For a foulmouthed drug addict.”
“We can’t help who we fall in love with, Sean.”
“Yes, we can. We don’t all go out looking for lunatics like Fiona did.” He was unbending
.
“She never intended to fall in love with a lunatic. Wouldn’t it be much easier for her if she’d found a nice banker, or a doctor, or a fellow who ran his own business? But that didn’t happen.”
“You’ve gotten very forgiving all of a sudden.” He was confused.
“I’ll tell you something, I was touched that she thought to ring us when this terrible thing happened. Whether we knew she was there or not doesn’t matter.”
The doorbell rang.
“That’s Barbara. Be nice, be reasonable please, Sean; she may be our only link with Fiona, our only hope.”
“She’s heard nothing from Madam either,” he scoffed.
“Sean!”
“All right,” he said.
In David’s house in the smart suburbs of Manchester, they had been looking at a television story on the events in Aghia Anna and were talking about their son.
“It must have been a terrible thing to see,” David’s mother said.
“It must indeed have been terrible if he telephoned us,” his father agreed.
“He has been away for six weeks, Harold. We have had ten letters from him. He does keep in touch.”
“Some of them were only picture postcards,” David’s father said.
“But he goes and finds a stamp and a postbox,” his mother defended him.
“Miriam, this is the twenty-first century, the boy could find an Internet café, send an e-mail, behave like a normal person.”
“I know, I know.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“Miriam, should I have been different, please tell me?” He looked at her, begging for the truth.
She reached for his hand and stroked it. “You have been a wonderful husband, a wonderful father,” she said.
“So why is our son out in this one-horse town in Greece if I was so wonderful? Tell me that.”
“Perhaps it’s my fault, Harold, maybe it was I who drove him away.”
“No, he adores you, we know that. It’s the business he doesn’t want. Should I have said something like be an artist, be a poet, be whatever you want to be? Should I have? Is this what was needed? Tell me.”
“I don’t think so; he always knew you wanted him to run the company, he knew that since his bar mitzvah.”
“So why was that such a crime? I built up this business for my father. He came to England with nothing. I worked day and night to try and show him that his suffering had all been worthwhile in the end. Where was the problem? I try to hand over to my only son a thriving business, that’s bad?”
“I know, Harold, I know all this.” She was trying to soothe him.
“If you understand it, why can’t he?”
“Let me tell him, Harold, please let me tell him.”
“No. A thousand times no. I will not have his pity. If I can’t have his love and respect, nor even his company, I will not settle for his pity.”
Shirley and Bill came back from the shopping mall. Andy had gone up to the university where he and other athletic members of the community gathered to motivate some of the students training for a marathon. They thought it was cool that old guys, who must be well into their thirties, still liked running.
Bill helped his mother to unpack the shopping and stack it away. “You’re a great kid,” she said unexpectedly.
“Am I?”
“Sure you are. I’ve never loved anyone on earth more than I love you.”
“Aw, come on, Mom.” He was embarrassed.
“No, I mean it. Truly I do.”
“But your own mom and dad? What about them?”
“No, they were fine, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as what I feel for you.”
“And what about Dad when you loved him? And Andy now?”
“That’s different, Bill, believe me. There’s something absolutely earthshaking about the love you have for your child, it’s unconditional.”
“What’s that?”
“It means that there are no ifs and buts. You are this special kind of person, nothing can get in the way of it. I wish I could explain properly, but when you love a guy or a woman, I guess too you actually can stop loving them. You don’t intend to but it happens, but never with your child.”
“And would Dad feel the same about me as you do?”
“Totally the same, Bill. Your dad and I didn’t see eye to eye about a few things, you know that, but we both thought and do think you were the best thing that ever happened to us. We never argue about you. Never. We just want the best for you.”
“Does Dad still love you, Mom?”
“No, honey, he still respects me and likes me, I think, but love, no. We just share our love for you.” She smiled at him encouragingly, hoping he would agree.
Bill thought about it for a while. “So why doesn’t he act like that?” he asked.
“I think he does,” Shirley said, surprised.
“I don’t think he does,” Bill said. “I think he wants me to miss him and be sorry he’s not here, and that’s very unfair. He is the one who went away. I didn’t. I stayed right here.”
Birgit saw Claus coming into the newsroom. “You’re back from Greece!” she said, delighted.
“Hi, Birgit.” Claus had no illusions that Birgit was happy to see him. If he were back, then Dieter would be back too. That was what interested her. And interested most of the women at the television network.
Claus sighed. Dieter didn’t even try and the women just fell over themselves for him. He waited until Birgit asked about Dieter. He assumed it would be thirty seconds. He was wrong; it was even sooner.
Birgit didn’t waste time on preliminaries, such as saying it all must have been very sad. “Dieter back too?” she asked casually.
“No, actually.” Birgit was a hard woman. Claus actually savored telling her the bad news. “No, he stayed on a bit. He met an old friend out there. Amazing coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“An old friend? Some guy he knew in the press corps?”
“No, it was some woman who used to work here, actually. He met Elsa.” It was a pleasing moment to see her face.
“But that’s all over between them,” Birgit said.
“I wouldn’t hold your breath, Birgit,” Claus said, and moved on.
Adonis looked at the newspaper pictures of the village where he had grown up. He saw the face of his friend Manos, whom he had known all his life. There was a picture of Maria too. Adonis had danced at their wedding. How extraordinary that newspapers all over America would have pictures and stories of his hometown. But he wouldn’t tell anyone here in Chicago.
He had come here all those years ago because Eleni back in Aghia Anna had given him a contact. One of her cousins worked here; he gave a job to a boy who had come with a personal recommendation. The cousin had moved on, but Adonis had stayed. He liked it here even though he was sometimes lonely.
But he would say nothing about the tragedy having taken place in his hometown. Why bring grief on himself? The people here in the greengrocers where he worked knew little about him and his background. If he told them then they would have to know why he didn’t stay in touch, they would learn about his fight with his father, the years of silence. They would never understand. These people that he worked with just lived for family; their fathers were in and out of their houses all the time. What would they think of a father and son who hadn’t spoken to each other for nine years?
Of course he could call his father to offer sympathy over what had happened in Aghia Anna. But then his father would take this as some sign of weakness, a giving in, an admission that Adonis had been in the wrong.
His father knew where he was. If he wanted to say something, then let him say it.
Shane didn’t know how to work the Metro in Athens. When they had been here before, Fiona had worked it out. The whole thing was called the electrico or something. Had she bought tickets in a kiosk? Or was that for the trolley buses? He couldn’t remember.
Shane knew that he wanted to g
o to the Exarchia area; he had heard on the ferry that it was full of ouzo shops and tavernas. He still had plenty of grass in his bag; he could sell it there. Then he would sit down and work out what he would do. He was free now, free as a bird.
Nobody would be coming at him with cracked notions that he should be a waiter for the rest of his life in a backwater. Fiona must have been soft in the head to suggest it. In the end of course, like everyone else, she had let him down. But then Shane had learned to expect that of people. And she wasn’t really pregnant. He knew that.
If she had been, she wouldn’t have gone off and left him when he was in the police station. She could well be on her way home to her awful family in Dublin. They would certainly kill a fatted calf for her once they realized that Shane was no longer around.
He worked out that he needed the Metro stop called Omonia. God, they had really ridiculous names here, and writing that nobody could read as well.
“Come in, Barbara.” Fiona’s mother ushered her in.
“You’re out late in the evening.” Fiona’s father didn’t sound very welcoming.
“You know how it is, Mr. Ryan, eight A.M. to eight P.M. and we’re an hour from the hospital.”
Barbara was cheerful and taking no nonsense from anyone. She threw herself into an armchair as she had done for years in this house, her red hair tousled, her face tired after a long day’s work.
“Will you have tea, Barbara, or something stronger?”
“Oh, I could murder a gin, Mrs. Ryan, especially if we are going to talk about Shane,” Barbara said apologetically.
Fiona’s mother turned to her husband. “Sean?”
“Well, if we’re going to have to talk about him, then I need an anesthetic too,” he said.
Fiona’s mother served the gin and tonics and sat down looking from one to the other. “I was wondering if we could write to Fiona and say that we sort of misunderstood the situation.”
Her husband glowered at her. “I think we understood the situation only too well. Our daughter is infatuated with a bog-ignorant criminal. What else is there to understand?”
