The Explosive Nature of Friendship (8 page)

The toilet stank and, as usual, there was no paper. He wiped his face on his shirt. Mitsos could not understand his reactions. He tried to think logically but all he got were images of the girl in his head, and a fury ran through him when he thought of Manolis. It could not be; every fibre of his being rejected. The whole idea was ludicrous. Manolis himself would not allow it. His family would not split off a portion of their land and give it to him. No, the concept was beyond reason. It just would not be. It could not be. His Baba had been misinformed. He took several deep breaths and calmed himself before returning to his coffee.

‘
You ok?’ his Baba asked.

‘
Yes, fine.’ He looked out of the window but the seat by the tree was empty. The donkey, still shackled to the cart, was sleeping where it stood. The girl was gone.

The baby sleeps away the morning. Mitsos sits on a chair by the back door, the bright sun on his face, gazing and dreaming. Adonis brings a letter from the post box when he comes to collect his son. It is from Mitsos’ lawyer. Mitsos recognises the writing and puts it on the mantelpiece to read when his brother has gone. Adonis makes a speedy departure, as usual, accepting neither coffee nor a seat, eager to return to his modern air-conditioned car, leave the old life behind. After he’s gone Mitsos remains sitting in the kitchen.

He stares at the new envelope, but his eyes are drawn to the pattern created by the black smoke stains up the front of the fireplace where the smoke escapes in the winter when the wind blows from the south.

It is a wide fireplace with iron hooks in the back wall on which to hang cooking pots. The mantelshelf bears cut marks where his father, and probably his father before him, used it as a narrow table. He can remember his father resting there to saw through rope on a worn leather goat collar to take off a bell. His mother had shouted at him for gouging lines in the plaster but his Baba had argued that it was cut all over anyway so what did it matter?

His elder brother
’s initials are carved into the plaster on one side. Mitsos can remember the day. His brother had felt the belt as a consequence of this action, and had been made to paint the whole fireplace too. Pale green. Mitsos has always disliked the colour, but has never done anything about it. Not when his Baba died and not when his Mama died.

He stands and picks up the letter and puts it in his breast pocket and smooths it flat. It is beginning to feel real.

He is hungry and has no food in the house. He will go to Stella’s again.

Stella is sitting outside in the warmth. It is too early for most people
’s lunch. She has the same short flowery dress on. She sits with her legs extended, slumped in the attitude of a sulking child, sucking her frappé through a straw. She pushes herself up in the chair a little and shields her eyes from the sun with her arm as he approaches.

‘
Early for you, Mitso.’ Her hair is frizzy from the daily heat of her job. She usually has it tied back but today it rests on her shoulders. Mitsos can imagine her in a more serious dress with ribbons in her mane. She is a woman who is easy to look at, petite, lithe, strong and a little bit wild.

‘
You alone?’ Mitsos speaks quietly.

‘
He’s gone into town. Something to do with a deep fat fryer, he says, but he has taken the English girl with him. Abby. She works here now.’ Stella sniffs in adamant defiance. ‘You hungry? I have made a new batch of lemon sauce for the chickens but they won’t be done for another hour or so. Chips will take over twenty minutes as the oil’s not hot. So I can only offer you beer, ouzo or good company.’

Mitsos looks at the paper cup of frappé.

‘Or you can go across the road and get a frappé and a cheese pie from the new sandwich shop and come and join me here.’

Mitsos pulls a chair from inside and sits next to Stella on the roadside.

‘How was the baby-sitting?’ she asks.

‘
Fine.’

‘
You seem distracted. What is it?’

‘
Did I ever tell you of Manolis’ and my first big disaster before he got married?’

Stella laughs at the thought, drains her coffee with much gurgling and sucking, puts the empty paper cup down on the ground and settles back. She does not answer but is clearly ready to be entertained. She watches the woman who lives across the road, next to the sandwich shop, come out in her housecoat and sweep the road in front of her house. Mitsos follows her gaze. He has seen this a hundred times before, all over the village since he was a boy: women brush and even wash the pavement and roads in front of their houses. Normal life. A young village girl walks past in a T-shirt declaring she loves New York even though, Mitsos is sure, she will never have been there, never have been further than the nearest town probably. He wonders if the next generation will feel they belong so much to the village that even the road is theirs to sweep.

‘Go on then,’ Stella demands impatiently.

Mitsos is pulled back from his daydreams to recall the past.

Mitsos
’ father dying, when Mitsos had just turned thirty, surprised everyone. Cancer, they said. There was talk that it came from the chemicals that the farmers sprayed on the oranges. Ever since he could remember he had seen his Baba spray the oranges each year. First with a hand pump, pumping away, surrounded by the poisonous mist making rainbows in the sun. Then later on his tractor, in a cloud of high-pressure venom, each tree well covered, along with his Baba and no doubt his Baba’s lungs.

It is only recently that some farmers, or workers, have begun to use masks when they spray, but most still do not.

Just before he died, his Baba said he felt unwell and wanted to see the doctor. That alone told Mitsos it was serious. Doctors were characters from the cinema, to be avoided in real life.

He had gone into the town one day for the purpose and had not come home that night. Mitsos
’ mother went into town next day and found him in hospital. Then he was dead.

His elder brother was making ready to leave to go and live in Corinth, his new wife
’s home town, where she had land more fertile than any in the village. His younger brother had been reading in his room, a skill Mitsos never really mastered. Mitsos had just returned from taking the goats to pasture, the odour of the beasts still on him, when a taxi pulled up at the end of the track and the driver said he had been sent for them all by their mother.

A little confused and with some trepidation they all, including his brother’s fiancée, piled into the taxi and were driven to the hospital to find her distraught. She sobbed and wailed, her hanky flying, as she expressed her loss, her anger, her abandonment. Her emotions were terrifying. The boys stood in a line, dumbfounded. It was Mitsos’ elder brother’s fiancée who took a step towards
her and put a consoling arm around her shoulders, his brothers following her lead. Mitsos had found her despair too alarming and remained motionless.

No one missed Dimitri, except his widow, perhaps, but the boys weren
’t even convinced that she did all the time. They felt only relief. Mitsos’ elder brother tried to make his escape all the sooner, but his mother needed him now. Then the lawyer came.

There was a Will, it all went to the boys. The choice pieces of land went to the youngest, as he had the most distance to travel to independence. The eldest, on the presumption that he was the wisest, was left the worst piece of land, in this case a piece of saline-soaked sandy soil fit for only growing beets. It had been the family joke. Dimitri, the eldest boy in his family, had inherited it and now it would be passed on.

The two younger boys had laughed when they heard that the eldest would get the beet plot. It felt like a reprisal for his bullying. It was a flat piece of scrub land, stony, sandy and pretty useless as it was down away from the village by the sea. The salt water soaked into the soil, making it all but incapable of growing anything but beets. Mitsos’ and Adonis’ sides had ached laughing at their brother’s lot whilst their mother sat in her room and cried.

It was the same evening, with no Baba to govern his movements, that Mitsos went into town and chose a bar in which to get drunk.

The bouzouki player was good and the wailing clarinet player was loud; another man sat nursing an accordion to very little effect. The usual types of suited men sat in groups and pairs, ties pulled loose. The smoke hung like an eiderdown over the tables and chairs, giving a metaphoric atmosphere if not a breathable one.

Who should be there but Manolis. He seemed to be on the same mission as Mitsos judging by the number of empty shot glasses before him. He had grown lean with the army and farm work, and his eyes were darker blue than Mitsos remembered. His dark mass of curls seemed bleached, presumably by the daily sun, to give it golden flecks. There were two women sitting with him, one on either side. When he saw Mitsos he hailed him loudly, jumped from his stool and greeted him with a bear hug. Mitsos was flattered by his enthusiasm, as well as the admiring looks that Manolis
’ interest generated from the women he was with.

‘
What’s new?’ Manolis asked.

‘
Not much,’ replied Mitsos. ‘Baba died.’ Manolis congratulated him on his new-found freedom and asked what land was his now. The women were dismissed; this was man’s talk.

Mitsos downed a whisky and told the tale of Adonis
’ and his hysterics over the beet land. Manolis congratulated him again and refilled his glass.

Manolis told of his gambling prowess, which added to his income, as he took his father
’s workers for their day’s pay night after night.

‘
What do they live on,’ Mitsos asked, ‘if you keep winning their earnings, and where do they sleep with no wage to pay for a room?’ Manolis said they could always eat oranges. His Baba, whom he was now calling by his first name, Costas, (in fact he was calling him Old Costas), had put wide shelves up in the old barn and rented the berths out nightly to illegal immigrants. It was cheaper for them than a hotel, safer than under the trees, offered some protection from police raids and, if they had no money to pay after gambling, they were offered half-price berths whilst they worked for free to pay off their debt.

Manolis laughed his evil laugh as he told of one man who owed him so much that he had to work for a month for nothing to pay him off.

Mitsos had had enough whisky by this point to find it funny, and the two of them became increasingly loud. In the end they stopped buying single refills and bought the bottle so they could fill their glasses at will. Two unsavoury-looking girls came in and attached themselves when they saw the bottle, and the four of them drank until Mitsos thought he would fall off his seat.

‘
We best go where the landing is soft then,’ Manolis said, and took the bottle, his glass and one of the girls out into the night.

The other girl took Mitsos
’ arm but he wriggled free and told her to wait, he needed the toilet. The door to the facilities also led to the alley behind. Mitsos made his escape, fell over some soggy cardboard boxes of kitchen waste, used the wall to support himself, flicked pieces of unidentifiable food from his shirt, and staggered his way round to the front of the bar, to see Manolis and the girl disappearing towards the beach.

He could not hurry, his legs would not allow it. Manolis was getting further and further away. The girl
’s white shirt glowed in the moonlight and the bottle swinging from Manolis’ hand glinted. They disappeared from sight behind some eucalyptus trees at the beaches edge, but Mitsos knew Manolis’ haunts.

He needed another drink, and he hoped he would catch them up before the whisky ran out. The town seemed quiet now, and he wondered why he had ditched the other girl.

He had reached the eucalyptus tree when the girl in the white shirt ran back past him towards the town.

Mitsos swayed onwards to the sea
’s edge to find his friend.

‘
Silly whore!’ Manolis was shouting and turning circles, his arms outstretched. His head thrown back, the moon on his face, he made the noise of a goat and threw himself down on the sand.

Mitsos collapsed beside him and snatched the bottle.

‘Whatswaswrongwithsherthen?’ Mitsos’ words came out as a stream and there were too many ‘esses’.

‘
Ach!’ Manolis made a swift full arc with his arm and dismissed the crying girl from his mind.

The bay was so still, the water without a ripple, a path of light to the low-hung moon; the coast on the opposite side of the bay dotted with lights, the land black against the dark blues of sea and sky. Mitsos appreciated the beauty, although it puzzled him that there were two moons. He could hear the faraway putt-putt of a night fishing boat, a dog calling another dog, and goat bells once in a while. It was the music of his country, the sound of his home. He was revelling in it and presumed Manolis was doing the same.

‘Got it!’ Manolis slurred and stood up. He ran to the sea and in up to his knees, and dipped his head in the cool water, flicking his hair back as he came up. He returned, soaked, with only the odd patch of dry on his shirt.

Manolis stopped looking at the two moons and turned his attention to the two Manolises standing before him. He shivered at the vision. He put his head on one side.
‘Got what?’

‘
I have our future. I have our wealth laid out before me. I have all the girls you could wish for and I have the most fun way to make a living. Are you in?’

At that point, for Mitsos, sleep was a far more attractive proposition than any amount of wealth or girls, and he lay down in the sand using his arm as a pillow. But Manolis was dancing from foot to foot as if he were a boy again, not a grown man, the moon turning his blue shirt silver. Mitsos had seen it all before and closed his eyes. Manolis tried to rouse him but sleep was all but upon him. He felt Manolis grab him by the arms, and before he could get his bearings Manolis was dragging him backwards through the sand. Mitsos felt disorientated. Bright moon, midnight blue, pale blue shirt. He closed his eyes and wondered if he had wet himself, but as the level of wetness rose, he opened his eyes and saw he was in the sea. Manolis continued to drag him.