Watching the Wind Blow (The Greek Village Collection Book 9) (11 page)

The next hour on the boat feels like an eternity. The coastline seems to pass more slowly although they have not diminished their speed. The port police have gained on them but almost imperceptibly. The sun’s steady, incessant heat is relentless and the only movement for a while is a hand across a forehead or a thumb across a drip on the end of a chin. Irini has considered jumping again, but if he can shoot a child, perhaps he would not hesitate to shoot her. It seems so far removed from that kiss they shared, that moment of safety and acceptance. She wants to return to that, that sense of
everything is going to be alright
.

She wonders why the port police don’t do anything but at the same time, she has a sense of relief that they haven’t. She is not ready yet. Would it be worth the risk to call them again to get someone to telephone Stathoula? There is no way that it will cross Petta’s mind. She glances at her watch. He will probably have been down to the port by now, looking for her. Seeing the boat missing he will have found Yorgos, and know everything. Poor Petta. Thank goodness Angelos is too young to understand.

She walks up to the bow, leans against the pulpit, and watches the water being split by the stem. Sam remains in the cockpit, his head hanging, his forearms on his knees. He was, and is, asking her for forgiveness, but why? The tension between them now has reignited her fear. With the pressure on her to forgive, to release him from the painful place he is in, isn’t he putting her in the same position his baba
put him in? She could say the words, but she knows she would not have feeling behind them. Lying would be the best move, but those days of ingratiating herself to her yiayia, to anyone, to stay alive, she is not sure she is prepared to return to that.

To hell with him! Let him suffer. If he had given half the thought she is giving him to the little girl, that child would be alive now and maybe he wouldn’t be in this situation.

Unless, of course, things had been different and the child really had been strapped up with explosives.

A shiver starts in her shoulders and runs down her spine.

It would be nice if a dolphin would come now, release her mind of all this. Leaning over, she looks deeper into the surf, the spray catching her face, refreshing and cool. He is no different than Pavlov’s dogs, salivating at the sound of a bell. The spray wets her t-shirt and she stands straight. The wind and the sun dry it in minutes. If he is only a Pavlov’s dog, what really does she not forgive? What is the stumbling block?

Holding onto the pulpit rail, she leans backwards, the sun on her face and her eyes closed. The stumbling block is forgiving him for allowing himself to be made into one of Pavlov’s dogs, for telling her that it is possible. She does not want to know that a man can be conditioned to react in such extreme ways even when that reaction is against his nature.

She does not forgive him for showing her that the last shred of what she would call humanity can be stripped from a person and they can commit such atrocities even when their nature tells them otherwise. That is what she cannot forgive. For what is true of one will be true of another. What if she ever has to wear his shoes, or those like them? She does not want to know what she could be capable of. The emotional scars she has already cut deep enough and are enough to live with.

Damn him.

Damn him.

No, love him.

It is the only way to undo such evil.

She grips her left breast to feel her heart beating beneath. It aches for people like Sam, and it aches for all of mankind. It aches for the horror of life, the ugliness the world makes possible and for the fact that people make that horror manifest.

Then she lets go of her own skin and looks down into the water. She hates him.

Arms across her chest, she takes her time to wander back and lies down on her back under the boom, looking up at the mast. She does not want to be near him. With a glance, she sees he is standing, leaning against one of the stays at the back of the boat, his hips pushed forward, one hand to his groin, his back to her.

If she were a man, she would probably not use the inside toilet either but in this moment, this base action describes all he is.

Her eyes close and she drifts. When she wakes, he is lying next to her, not looking up the mast, but at her. If anyone else were there to take a picture of them in the moment, with the sun shining, the sea a calm endless blue, two people lying prone, only their heads turned as they look at each other, the result might be an advert for sailing, or for Greece, full of fun, friendly people and long, warm nights.

She turns her head away from him, closes her eyes again, tries to shut out the chaos of emotions he creates.

‘Tell me about your village or how you met your husband? Something normal,’ he says.

‘Normal. You want normal? After stealing this boat because you are running from something, taking me as a hostage at gunpoint, belittling the value of my life down to a shrug, you now want normal?’ She has run out of energy to be with him. She will lie here for a moment or two, longer if necessary. He will, in all probability, drift into sleep in the afternoon sun and when he does, she will soundlessly slip into the water and before he wakes, she will be far away.

Maybe a story will send him to sleep.

‘Okay. How I met Petta,’ she introduces her story.

‘With the hell I had lived on the streets, I was broken. I didn’t believe in society, or people, or care, love, friendship, nothing. I felt stripped of, how do I say, stripped of any connection, a place in the world. All around me, I saw the evidence of how thin the coating of civilisation was. I saw the characters people could become if they too ended up clinging onto the edges of life as I had done. It made them appear like they had two faces, the real one hidden, the polite one doing the bidding.’

As the day has progressed into the afternoon and the temperature has risen, the deep of the blue sky has intensified; it is almost purple.

‘I was amazed that my cousin cared enough to take me in. I did not trust her, nor her sister. I wondered what their motives were, but they had known my parents and, more importantly, my yiayia was also their yiayia, although they saw less of her than I did, living with her every day.’

Irini turns her head to see if he is asleep yet and flinches to find him staring at her. She turns away and continues looking at the sky.

‘I fought their care. I tested it and threw tempers. But they, both Stathoula and Glykeria, stayed calm and constant and I began to slot back into the workings of a household. You know: washing up, doing the laundry, taking showers, all of which were big things to me. On the streets, I had done none of those things for three years. Once back in company, I thought that their expectations that I should be doing these things were a pressure, like the pressure Yiayia put on me to not be me. It felt like being asked to give up who I was.

‘One day, I just did it automatically. I picked up my clothes from the floor and took them and put them in the washing machine along with Stathoula’s clothes from the basket.’ Her voice softens, quiets. The words come out more slowly.

‘It didn’t even occur to me what I had done until I went into the kitchen and Stathoula smiled at me in this particular way she has, as if to say ‘well done,’ and ‘I love you,’ all at once.’

She puts her hands above her head, relaxed, the light wind blowing across her armpits, cooling and silky.

‘I don’t really remember a lot of details after that until the day Stathoula got me a job. I was terrified. To go out into the world. They would see me for the fake I was, the street dweller, the problem. The first job was just handing out leaflets for a fast food place. Stathoula went with me and did not leave me until she was sure I was comfortable. The place I stood to give them out was down in Monastiraki, do you know it? Next to Plaka, near the Acropolis.’ She turns to look at him.

‘No,’ he replies.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. It is just a busy shopping place. Stathoula went shopping, so every couple of hours, I would see her walking past. But no one shops for eight hours, so I knew she was really there for me. At the time, I wondered why Stathoula kept walking past. Did she not trust me? Did she think I was going to run away? That evening, Glykeria served a meal and afterwards brought out a cake she had made and iced, with the word Irini on it. The icing had all run, and when I read it, I thought it said Irida. Do you know Irida? She was a goddess in ancient Greece. Well, not exactly a goddess, but I don’t know the right word. Anyway, she was my favourite and she makes the rainbows. In Greek, the coloured part of the eye is called irida, from her. She still calls me that, Glykeria. Always Irida, not Rini or Irini.

For a moment, she says nothing, remembering Glykeria calling her Irida. Stathoula called her it too but soon went back to Rini. It became something personal between her and Glykeria and it gave a sense of place, a sense of belonging.

‘Go on,’ he encourages. He is showing no signs of being sleepy yet.

‘I had a series of short-term jobs, one for a week, another for a weekend. I think Stathoula thought it was the easiest way to ease me back into the world. Then one day, on a break from one of these jobs, I went for a walk in Plaka.’

The square at Monastiraki was a cauldron of nationalities, a morass of merchandise, a nucleus of impromptu happenings. Entry to the square was impossible without pushing past one of many fruit barrows that blocked the roads that bled outwards from the paved hubbub. These hand carts on metal wheels, piled high with pyramids of fruit, all but formed a barricade that blocked day trippers exiting from the metro or ambushed the shoppers coming down from Athens’ central square of Syntagma. Some of the flat backs supported elaborate water fountains that cascaded into metal moats designed to keep fresh the coconut meat being chipped from their hairy shells with large knives. The stall holders called their wares in loud baritone voices, vying with one another to be first in line to skim the fat wallets brought by ever-eager pedestrians.

It was the feel of the square that Irini liked. When she was homeless, her nimble fingers also liked the easy pickings of the fruit stalls. Not the bananas, which were in bunches, nor the grapes, no matter how sweet, but the pears and the apples. One grab and you were away. One from each barrow, tucked under her shirt or down into the pocket she had improvised inside the front of her skirt. Once round the square and she had enough to feed her for a couple of days if nothing else turned up.

But those days were gone, thank goodness. Now she worked at a kafeneio, making coffee for old men. She had a home and family, a mattress to sleep on with clean sheets, running water, electricity, and clean walls. Now there was no need to be sly as she passed the barrows; she had no need to be afraid. In her pocket, a
tiropita
, not even a bought
tiropita
but one Glykeria made last night, the feta crumbled into the filo pastry with a sprinkle of herbs. The smell when it was baking had drifted throughout the house and was equally as tempting as the
stifado
dinner that was cooking alongside it, the aromas mixing as they leaked into the warm night air.

Taking out her pie, she watched the backpackers file out of the metro, looking left and right around the barrows, trying to place themselves in the kaleidoscope of the square. The streets that led up to central Athens were lined with expensive clothes shops, the occasional oriental rug shop pressed in between, and the odd quality fur shop that looked out of place in the scorching summer heat. One or two art shops offering sculptures of broken Ionic columns and paintings of Olympian disc throwers also staked a claim and left their doors open with well-dressed experts loitering in them to explain their finer pieces to potential customers who dared to glance in the windows.

Another wide street led away from the square to climb a slope. The left side of this street boasted archaeological ruins, fenced off and mostly ignored, as this was the base of the Acropolis and higher up, grander things awaited. Where this road joined the square, street sellers displayed their goods on unlicensed tables. The illegal aspect, the insecurity, the risk taking, was what gave the place a feel of youthfulness, possibilities, creativity, life!

An African man selling fake designer handbags stood next to a young mother with jewellery fashioned from ring pulls saved from drink cans. Her nose was pierced and she had a tattoo on her thumb. Her child stayed close. Next to her, an old Greek man sold things that looked like he found them in his attic. He offered, in an ornate gold plastic frame, a print on canvas of a grand old English king. Next to that was a red plastic telephone box, the height of a whiskey bottle, with the words
Jack Daniels
where the word
Telephone
should have been. There was a futuristic orange telephone, all curves, from the 1960s, a baseball glove with ‘I love Greece’ woven on the back, and a chess set with three pawns missing. He sold things that Irini had no idea she wanted until she saw them. She picked up an enamelled ladybird keyring which was particularly pretty and a paper knife with a totem pole handle that might be useful.

Next was a man who challenged passers-by to a game of
tavli
for a small wager. He was in the middle of a game, concentrating, a small crowd gathered around him and his young opponent.

These street sellers were almost her friends when she was homeless, at least in as far as they weren’t her enemies. But unlike her, they had places to stay and ways to make money, even if they were illegal. She could only steal and, at the time, she looked up to them as leading lives to which she could aspire.

As she took out her
tiropita
, which Glykeria had wrapped in a linen napkin, it occurred to her that in the hierarchy of life, the unspoken pecking order, she was now one above these people. It stopped her from taking her first bite as she looked around. Now she could see the bitten nails, the unwashed hair, the cheap plastic shoes, where before she saw the t-shirts without holes, the fact that they had shoes at all, and the wasted money that had manifested itself as tattoos, and lipstick on the women’s mouths.

But still, the feeling was there, the tension of suppressed youthful energy that society contains and, in this area, found an outlet through the street vendors’ creativity.

A crowd was gathering in the square’s centre. Through the crowd, she could see a group of boys with a cassette player, the volume of which was turned up as they began to dance. The spectators formed a circle around the boys, growing thick, and cheers and waves of excitement ran through the crowd.

Irini spotted a child, his way of moving and dress familiar. His feet were swift and silent as he made his own shoeless dance, weaving through the crowd. He had hands like moth wings, too gentle to feel and with no flamboyancy to attract anyone’s attention. But like a moth drawn to the light, his hands were pulled, always, towards the open handbags and bagging jacket pockets. He created his own rhythm but he made sure no one noticed his performance and as the cassette player’s melody wound to its conclusion, the boy, like a puff of air on gossamer, was gone. Flitting, no doubt, to another blossom, to deflower another innocent tourist.

The
tiropita
was delicious. Maybe Glykeria would teach her how to make them; then it could be something for her to contribute to the household.

In total, there are eight streets that exit the square and it is what Irini considered to be the eighth street that she always used to gravitate to before her yiayia’s funeral and, again, she felt drawn there now. It led to the area called Plaka.

Irini turns to see if Sam is asleep, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off her.

‘You know Plaka?’ she asks. ‘The Neighbourhood of the Gods,’ she says, looking into his eyes. He doesn’t respond. ‘Oh come on, you must know it. Everyone who has been to Athens knows it. It is all very old, near the Acropolis. Narrow streets. Even now, if you know where to go up near the top, there are tiny whitewashed huts and old people trying to live like it is the olden times with a goat tethered to a stake and a dozen chickens. No?’

Sam rolls his head against the teak decking to say
no
but his eyes are alive, the green reflecting the energy she is portraying. The corners of her mouth turn down and her eyebrows raise at her disbelief that he has not been there, and she continues her story.

This eighth street was crammed with narrow shops. No space had been left unexploited by the individual traders. Cellars had been converted, corridors turned into narrow emporiums, alleyways roofed and painted, shop fronts divided into two to squeeze in one more trader. Sometimes you stepped up to a shop, or descended into a cellar. Some were along corridors, the shop itself hidden around the back of other buildings, and each sold their own variation of fashion: studded leather jackets, tartan miniskirts, corseted dresses with layers of netting under the micro skirts which were displayed on shop dummies with broken fingers, paint-peeling faces and matted wigs. Others displayed t-shirts with slogans, broomsticks shoved through their arms and then suspended on string from nails hammered into whatever is solid. Thigh boots were displayed on amputated mannequin legs topped with officer’s hats liberated from armies all around the world. It sparked her imagination and thrilled her senses as incense perfumed the air and music drifted from each shop.

Irini had a sense of belonging here. Here, the rejected was given new life, the mismatched found a home. In these streets, it was possible for the alternative: to avoid becoming mainstream.

At the entrance to this road, instead of a fruit barrow, stood a man with a stall on spindle legs. With a quick movement, he could close his stall like a book, the legs falling alongside and, slinging the strap that was stapled to the wooden construction over his shoulder, he could be closed for business and running in less than three seconds. She knew; she had seen him do it when the police used to raid for the unlicensed, trying to clear the street traders on a regular basis to clean up the area.

He was still there, the man with the folding shop, selling oversized cigarette papers and silver jewellery that turned your fingers black. Bald at the front, his receding hair was held in a ponytail down his back. He had a darkness around his deep-set eyes that did not look healthy and his shaved chin was smooth and slightly shiny. She had never spoken to him, but she had heard him speak.

Behind where he always stood was a recess in the wall. It was the perfect fit when a police raid came and she needed to get out of the way. It was also a good place to eat her stolen fruit and still be able to watch the world whilst remaining hidden. She stepped next to it. It smelt of urine and looked a lot dirtier than she remembered.

The man with the folding shop served someone. He was short-tempered and could not be bothered with the customer’s questions. His accent when speaking Greek was thick.

He was English.

It struck her as odd that someone with such a privileged background, brought up in England that has a welfare system, should end up selling cigarette papers off an illegal stand on a dingy street in Athens. She could remember thinking when she first heard him speak, in her fruit-stealing days, that, surely, when you have such a privileged upbringing, you must only end so low by choice.

At this point in her story, Irini stammers and a rush of heat climbs her neck. She looks over to Sam, the English pirate, but there is no sign that he has taken this comment personally and so she continues.

The first shop, down this street that she loved, sold shoes. Ridiculous shoes with platform soles and high heels, boots that did up with buckles up to the knees and heels so high that twisting an ankle would be an ever-present danger. She liked that the designers had stepped out of the conventional and looked at footwear with a disregard for tradition.

The next shop was in a basement. It sold French horns and bagpipes, vinyl records and medals. It never appealed much. Beyond that was a girl who designed her own clothes. Very friendly but never seemed to sell much.

And so it went on. And on. Until the street abruptly ended where another street crossed it. The land opposite was bare earth offering the occasional top of an ancient wall, waiting for an archaeologist to come and investigate. The house on the right corner was private and the place on the left, a taverna.

Her
tiropita
was all gone and her break must surely have been over.

Loud voices at the taverna made her casually glance over. One of the men speaking was taking a bouzouki out from a hard case. She loved music; she would stay just for the first chord. The spindly tree she leant against gave her shade. The paving flags beneath it cracked and raised, roots forcing their way through, demanding room. She shifted her feet to find flat stones, greater comfort. From practice, she knew how to use the tree to half-obscure her, leaning against it, melting into its shape.

A chord was struck and an old
rebetika
song echoed across and back from the ancient ruins. Someone began to sing and then a tall man with broad shoulders and narrow hips with his back to her stood, moved by the music, his arms thrown out to the side. His dark hair was wavy and long enough to touch his collar. Crumpled jeans suggested he was in need of an iron, or an ironer, but his boots, with Cuban heels, had been carefully polished. He moved with joy and with a certain delicacy that well-built men sometimes have. It was as if he was full of helium and was having trouble staying grounded, bouncing on his toes from step to step, his neck loose, his head rolling in response to the rest of his body. The sun drenched him and the musician. It was as if he was rejoicing to be alive, like a butterfly caught in a draft, blowing happily, with rhythm, whichever way the wind blew.

Then he turned.

His eyes, creased in the corners, danced without seeing, lost to the rhythm. His chest expanded in his jubilation and his soft smile was that of a man without a care in the world, and the ground shifted beneath Irini’s feet. He was the inverse of all the darkness she had seen and felt. He was on fire with being alive and she saw how different the world could be depending on how you chose to view it.

‘I don’t know how long I was standing there staring at him dancing. I didn’t even hear one song become another and the rhythm change, but all of a sudden, I was snapped out of my wonderful thoughts as, in time to the music, he stepped towards me. His hand was held out, inviting me to join him. His arm slipped over my shoulders and side by side, we danced, our free arms outstretched and I become part of his joy. His exuberance was infectious, the world open to me, and anything was possible. And what was possible, became.’