A Song Amongst the Orange Trees (The Greek Village Collection Book 13) (6 page)

'Hey, you remember when he carried Theo's baba all the way back from Saros over his shoulder after a heavy drinking session?' Anna of the green fluffy slippers says and laughs as she holds out her glass to Thanasis for more ouzo.

'Ha, yes, and then there was the time he lifted a donkey for a bet and the donkey emptied its bowels,' Thanasis counters, and this is met with much laughter.

'What about the time he walked to Epidavros to see his sick uncle, what was his name, when his car was not working?' bird-like Katerina says. The response to this includes serious nods and murmurs and someone hands her a small glass of pale red wine. It seems there is no end to the tales, and each is accompanied by a slap on Sakis' back, as if he were the owner of the story. Each slap knocks a little more of the singer out of him. Jules is still talking and laughing with Yorgos, a glass of wine in his hand.

'Hey Yorgos, you were small but you remember Sakis' baba, right?'

Yorgos pauses his conversation with Jules.

'I remember him being a mountain! His big hands would take hold of mine and he would encourage me to walk up his legs, over his stomach, onto his chest, climb up him using my feet as he held my hand. Up and over his broad shoulders and sliding like a snake, down his back until I could reach his hand through his legs and I would tuck myself up tight and he would pull me through his legs. The game was not to touch the floor. Once round and then he would throw us up in the air like a ball. He did that to you too, eh Sakis?' He lifts his glass.

Sakis nods, raises his glass in return. He is doing his best to say as little as possible, save his throat.

'So, my boy.' Thanasis takes centre stage. The smell of roasting meat drifts amongst them, salads have been cut and put on the table along with piles of plates and forks. A woman is putting a tea towel over a big dish of feta to keep the flies off and a dog is sitting by a table leg, licking his lips, looking up hopefully. 'What brings you to breaking into your own house?'

A rumble heralds the school bus, noses press against the windows as the children inside spot the unexpected gathering of people. The bus drives past the house and stops in the village square further along. Within a minute, the schoolchildren begin to mix into the gathering. Hands reach for hunks of bread and slip under the tea towel for feta. A sea of black olives in a deep dish in the centre of the table drops a level and pits are thrown over the wall into Sakis'
yiayia's
overgrown garden. More glasses are brought and the water jug is refilled. Jugs of local wine cluster round an ouzo bottle on a separate table.

His neighbour is waiting for an answer. Why was he breaking into his own house?

It is a tricky question. If he tells them he has nowhere to live, he knows these people are so kind that he will get a dozen offers of a bed for the night. He would be grateful, of course, but somehow that would seal his role as the son of Costas the crocodile killer and, no matter how nice these people are, how kind and generous their natures, he is just not willing to do that. He has worked too hard to break free and prove himself on his own terms. Not one person has mentioned the competition that he won, not just for himself, but for his country. For all he knows, they may not even recognise him from the television. Maybe they didn't even watch it?

'I am just passing. Thought I would take a look,' he says vaguely. It’s almost true, but an idea is beginning to form in a little corner of his heart. What about doing up the cottage as a little country escape, a place to retreat to if America gets too much? The melody that sifted through his soul earlier plays again in his heart, softer this time, not so aggressive, with a slower beat and the phrase end comes, too. He must play it as soon as he gets back to the hotel, remember the shapes of the chords in the patterns of his fingers.

'You not stopping then?' Dora asks, her eyes moistening as if her emotions live close to the surface. Over on his left, he can feel Jules staring at him.

'Well, it depends on what the inside is like. If it is not too bad, maybe I will stay a night.' There is no need to explain more to these people

'The inside will be fine,' Thanasis assures him. 'The roof developed a leak last winter, but I fixed that. Dora gives the place a sweep out every few months.'

'But there are no mattresses,' Dora interrupts. 'We had to throw them out years ago. I have some of the linen still, though. I hope you don't mind, but we have been using it. After you did not come for first one year and then two, it seemed the best thing to do.' She is fidgeting and her cheeks are red, as if she feels she has done something wrong.

'Good for you.' Sakis puts her at her ease.

'But why not stay with us?' Dora’s face brightens.

'That is so kind,' Sakis says and Jules breaks away from Yorgos and comes to stand by his side. 'But I think I would prefer to revisit my
yiayia’s
house.'

'I have a mattress you can have,' bird-like Anna offers. 'Then if you come again, it is all waiting for you.' Sakis smiles his thank you; Jules takes a step closer to him. 'Katerina, what happened to that one your brother gave to you? I thought you said it was in your way.'

'It is rolled up and in the
apothiki
.' She speaks as though irritated. Then her eyebrows raise and her face brightens. 'Ah, but you can come across and get it.' It is clear she would enjoy the process. She looks around the company, nodding and smiling at her own importance.

'Meat’s done,' Yorgos announces, and this prompts everyone to take a plate. There is noise of cutlery and crockery. The patient dog barks and someone tells him to
Shh
. A child offers the animal a small piece of bread, which it sniffs at disinterestedly.

The more the villagers talk, the less his baba is mentioned, but nor does he get to assert himself and brag about his recent win. There is a moment when Katerina slips up beside him and whispers, 'I think everyone else was watching the
Olympiakos
match on the other side. You were very good. Well done.'

He turns to thank her and she smiles shyly.

'I think your friend Yorgos is the only person here who speaks English,' Jules interrupts them and Katerina looks down to her empty plate and heads toward the food. Jules has a plate of food piled so high that if he eats it all, he will not be hungry for months. Most of the people have gravitated to the table in the shade by the side of the house to sit and eat. The day is growing hot. The dog has taken refuge under the table and chickens strut from the backyard to clean up as crumbs are dropped. They show no fear.

As bellies fill, the chatter quietens. Thanasis and Yorgos pop over to Anna’s for her mattress and then, to the disappointment of Katerina, they go and help her to retrieve a somewhat old and stained mattress from her
apothiki
. A key to the front door of Sakis'
yiayia's
cottage is found and, by the sound of things—unseen from where he is being persuaded to eat some more grilled chicken by Dora—the back door is force opened from the inside.

Sakis feels a strange excitement with the anticipation of seeing the inside of his childhood home again. Thanasis calls him over, but he does not want to go in with everyone there. He would prefer a quiet moment to allow the memories to flood back, so he cheerfully raises his glass and continues to talk to Dora, who says she will sort out enough bedding for them both. She also has some eggs he can take over; the chickens laid well today. She has a can of gas for the tiny camping gas stove that she knows his
yiayia
used to make her coffee on.

'It is lovely to have you home,' she says and her eyes grow moist again.

The day is getting hotter and the neighbours head for their homes, to sleep through the warmest part of the day. Katerina wishes Sakis a fond farewell.

'I remember you as a boy. You've not changed much,' she says and pats his hand in a way that reminds him of being that small boy all over again.

Thanasis says he must go and make sure his donkeys have enough water to drink, and Dora hands Sakis a bag full of sheets that smell freshly laundered. Jules is sitting at the table, picking through the remains of the food.

'I am going back over.' Sakis raises his eyebrows in the direction of the cottage. Jules pushes his chair back and stands.

Yiayia's
Cottage

Sakis looks around. It is not another hotel, and definitely not his flat in Athens. It is just a room, sparse and plain. A chair by the bed, hooks on the back of the door where his clothes hang, and slithers of light slashing their way through the tightly fastened shutters. A glint on the wall, the gold of an icon, and he is grounded.
Yiayia's
house. A gecko runs zigzag up the wall by the door. A tendril of vine has found its way into the room through the shutters. He slept in this room when he was a boy. There is no rag rug on the floor by his bed as there was then, but otherwise nothing has changed. Well, there is precious little that could have changed. Four walls and a door!

He stretches and puts his hands behind his head. Yesterday, coming into the house after the impromptu gathering was a bit eerie. Mostly because he could not imagine the house inside without
Yiayia
being there, or the smell of her cooking and incense, or the bundles of sewing she always seemed to be doing. Even so, right from the creaking sound of the back door, it was all so familiar.

The small out room just inside the back door was empty. He couldn’t even remember what
Yiayia
used to keep there. Newspapers perhaps, baskets and empty crates that the local farmers used for oranges. Oh yes, and the sheets she used to spread under the walnut tree, and under the edge of these were his Sunday shoes that rubbed his toes, and her big black waterproof boots for the winter, so big that if he held onto the doorframe, he could get both feet into one of them when he was small.

The handle on the door to the main room is just as he remembers it: black and shiny. It even feels the same, too: smooth and cold. Cautiously, he pulls the inner door open a crack, almost afraid of what he might find. A nervousness that the stored-away, time-faded images he cherishes as preserves of his life with
Yiayia
might be proved fake. Looking into the stillness beyond, he almost expects
Yiayia
to be there, her hair falling from its loose bun, her saggy black trousers wrinkling around her ankles under her greying skirt. She always seemed to wear so many clothes, even in summer. But of course she is not there. No extended arm invites him for a hug, no smells of the food she was forever cooking, just stillness.

The shutters, now half-open on either side of the glass-panelled front door, allow in some light. Amazingly, the net curtains over windows and door are still there, a little torn, sagging low, but still there. They diffuse what little sunlight sneaks its way in, a misty half-light that only illuminates the top surfaces of the furniture. The table in the middle of the room is still there, its surface white with dust, dully reflecting the light. The chairs on the side nearest to him are only visible as silhouettes against it. This is the table where his meals were eaten, games played, where
Yiayia
would lay out material to cut before she sewed. A gash of light on the left-hand wall glances off the glass of an icon that has hung there all his life, the image obscured by dust and reflection. On the opposite wall, the mirror is smoked with a fine layer of time. It was always too high for him to see himself in. Now it seems to be hung low. The wooden ceiling glows almost orange above his head and hanging in its centre like a black spider is the outline of
Yiayia's
mama's brass chandelier.

The room brings a flood of memories he didn't even know he had. Memories of games played on the marble-chip floor with Yorgos. The time he helped carry wood into the house and a log end had gone through one of the small green panes of glass in the front door.

It is strange letting all these thoughts flood back to him; things he has buried away, boxed up and stored hidden for all these years. Of all the feelings and emotional memories that crowd his senses, the most dominant one is a feeling of being loved. Not just by his
yiayia
but by the people of the village.

As he lies in his bed now, new pieces of history drift back to him. Katerina, the bird woman from across the road, talking with
Yiayia
in the doorway of his bedroom before coming in and sponging his forehead with a damp cloth. He must have had a fever. His mattress on the floor and Thanasis weaving rope across his bed frame, being allowed to help. He felt so grown up helping Thanasis.

'You awake?' Jules calls from the main room.

'Yes.' Harris and Eleftheria mew in their carrier. That, too, was a jolt, going from the faded past of the cottage to the shiny interior of the hotel to get them. Like two different lives, the old ways and the new ways. He knows which he prefers.

'You want coffee?'

'Thanks.'

'I’m going with Yorgos into Saros. There is a market on. You coming?'

'No.' He needs time to wake up. His throat is much better today. He is going to be fine for America, he can feel it, and Harris and Eleftheria are going to be happier here than in his old flat in Athens. Dora will feed them and they can roam in the garden freely and hunt for mice and beetles. Yes, he is definitely going to do the place up.

Jules returns laden with bags of shopping. Even though he knows Jules had no money, Sakis is somehow not surprised that he has acquired food.

'Do we owe Yorgos?' Sakis has being going through a chest of old papers, finding photographs of his
Papous
and
Yiayia
and of himself, in shorts, barefoot, smiling. There is a picture of his
yiayia
and his mama together, which creates a lump in his throat.

'No,' Jules says but offers no more. 'Is there no kitchen?'

Sakis looks up from a drawing with his name on it and his age, four, and points to the domed adobe oven with a stoke hole underneath and the worn stone counter next to it with two circular holes above a pair of arched stoke holes below. Yiayia’s cast iron soup pan still sits over one of the holes.

'You’re kidding me?' Jules exclaims.

Now that he considers it, perhaps Jules has a point. They will have to get a fire going and wait for the embers to settle before they can even think of cooking.
Yiayia’s
life must have been so hard. The melody that has been haunting him comes again and this time, he takes out his bouzouki and strums it through, adding bass notes and grace notes to add richness. At this stage, he normally has lyrics springing to mind, but this tune seems to be without words.

'That’s nice.'

'It's new, but the words are not coming.'

'They will come.' Jules goes outside again as Sakis continues to work on the piece. It is nearly complete but still without words when he looks up again. His other senses have come back to life now the melody has a life of its own and will not be forgotten. The first sense to awaken is that of smell, and the most delicious aroma filling the room makes him realise he is hungry. Jules is standing by a metal countertop oven with an extension lead snaking out of the back door. His ability to gather for his needs is unbelievable.

'Ready in half an hour.' Jules goes outside again and soon returns, this time with a handful of something green, which he rubs between his palms over the cooking pot.

'You know, Jules, I am thinking of doing this place up, having it as a retreat for when America gets too much for us. What do you think?'

'I think it is
nécessaire
,' Jules says enthusiastically.

'So, seeing as you are here proving yourself to be the better cook, perhaps you could design the kitchen, the best layout?'

They take the food into the garden and sit beneath the walnut tree to eat at a rickety outdoor table.

'We have a day or two. We could start work now.' Jules' face is stippled in sunlight. The cicadas are rasping their love songs all around them in the orange trees and the chickens from Thanasis and Dora’s houses have come over to scratch the earth around the table for scraps. The ground under the walnut tree is fairly clear but elsewhere, the garden is a knot of brown, crispy weeds. Cat-sized tunnels have been carved into this undergrowth, and smaller runs, maybe for rats or voles, criss-cross in between.

They talk of how the kitchen would be best laid out, the improvements that they could make elsewhere. The outside bathroom needs to be made integral, tiled, with a new suite. Sakis is amazed at how well they seem to agree on everything, and time spins away. A cat comes and sits on Jules' knee and at one point, one of the chickens even jumps on the table, and they laugh as they flap their arms to shoo it away.

The temperature builds and they retreat indoors, and air-conditioning is added to the list of improvements. They sleep away the afternoon and Sakis awakes in the evening feeling almost one hundred percent better.

'I'll go and find a phone and give Andreas a call,' he tell Jules, who is lying on the day bed in the main room. His clothes are hung over the carved wooden back and the curved armrests at either end.

'Ah, you are better. Brilliant! Listen, the whole disappearing act is working really well. They are offering just about anything they can to get an interview. If you come up at the beginning of next week, I will arrange an interview with Ant 1 television and I will choose a newspaper. The one that offers the most.' He laughs. 'Then you can fly immediately afterwards to America, give the impression that you are a big international star and that they should be pleased to get whatever time they can with you.' He laughs again.

'So do you have the tickets to America?' Sakis asks. Part of him does not want to wait to go back to Athens, instead to go now, immediately. His win seems so far away now, it might as well have never been. He wants to go to the city and pull back the thrill he felt in winning, the taste of success. But the thought of the reality of what waits for him in the city—the parties, the false friends, the glitz and the glamour—don't seem as attractive as they did when he was in the Ukraine, before he was ill.

'The tickets. Yes. Well, when I say yes, I mean almost. Just ironing out the last details.'

'Do we have any money yet?'

'Yes. I have put some in your account. Are you still in the hotel?'

'You told me to move out.' Sakis looks at the receiver as if this would explain Andreas' question.

'Ah yes, just a minor glitch. Well, you can move back now if you want. Live like a king till you come up to Athens. I’ll send a car in a two or three days. Meanwhile, stay low, as your disappearance is really causing a stir. It is a stroke of genius.' He sounds very pleased with himself.

'It wasn't genius, Andreas. It was laryngitis,' Sakis reminds him.

'Yes, well you are better now, right? So all good. Stay low. If you are not at the hotel, where can I reach you?'

'If there is money in my bank, I will go and buy a mobile. Did you find my old one?'

'What, in all that chaos of parties in Kharkiv? Text me when you have one. Then we can be in touch. Bye.'

Sakis replaces the phone on the shelf of the kiosk in the village square and pays the lady who sits inside, surrounded by a plethora of everyday items that must be in constant demand. Cigarettes push for space next to batteries and boxes of paracetomol and bags of balloons hanging from a plastic strip. As she reaches for his coins, her sleeve knocks over a tray of insect repellent sprays, and these in turn send a pile of papers scattering to the floor around her feet.

'My accounts,' she says, giggling in a girlish way that is in contrast with her perfectly set hair and the crow’s feet around her eyes. 'I hate them.' And as if to reinforce this statement, she makes no effort to pick up the fallen documents. Instead, she offers Sakis a wrapped sweet from a bowl on the counter, smiles warmly, and wishes him a good day.

Somewhere in the hills, the sound of goat bells echoes and another recollection overtakes him. He was alone, sent out by
Yiayia
to buy matches, the box tightly gripped in his hand. The square was filling with sheep and goats as they were herded home, the biggest goats taller than him. They had seemed too big. Their underbellies hung with droppings and mud, the hooves clicking on the road, the animals' beards making them somehow human. He had been scared. Their slit eyes upon him, some of them so tall they looked down at him as they came. They trotted with speed; he was afraid. He had muffled his scream. Then arms were around him. He was lifted off his feet and then he was inside the kiosk. It smelt of perfume and hairspray and he was offered a sweet in a wrapper.

Sakis turns to look at the kiosk lady again. Surely it could not be the same person? Has she sat here all these years, doing the same job, meeting the same people? She smiles and waves again.

She had given him such comfort back then. Told him that she was afraid and how kind it was of him to stay with her until the animals had gone. He had left the kiosk walking tall. A man who had protected someone.