The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (28 page)

She never did.

She changed. I took something from her, without ever meaning to. Every time I cut her in the street, I could see her spirit shrink, though she pulled herself up tall, pretending not to care, because she thought I didn’t care. And I didn’t care, at first. I thought, she’ll get over it. She’ll have to. But I could see she wasn’t getting over it, and neither, in my heart, was I. In both of us, the cut had gone too deep
.

I set my face against her, and with no evidence to feed on, the gossip slowly died. But now came something unexpected: as my fear of exposure diminished, I began to miss her. I missed her more than I can say. My life lacked everything it had lacked before; there was nothing to look forward to except the endless trail of days all the same, the tedious business of life’s dull progress. There were no highlights in my days or moments of joy, no liftings of the heart or soarings of the soul at the sight of her smile. As I had witnessed it leave her, the ability to smile left me. Sometimes as I passed her, face averted, in the street, I thought I could feel her reproachful eyes on me; I knew if I looked into her face,
what I would see would be the question, Why? Like a dog that’s been kicked, she began to cower from me, but, hand on heart, I’d never treat a dog of mine the way I treated her
.

I wanted to explain to her; of course I did. I wanted to sit down with her, and tell her why it had to be that way
.

But I was afraid to speak to her; I never dared. Not one more word ever passed between us.

What are you thinking, now? Are you asking yourself why I didn’t go to her, to be with her instead of with the wife I didn’t love? Are you wishing that I still might, and are you hoping against hope there’ll be a happy ending? Do you think it would be better for us all, in the long run? Are you saying, Theo, don’t be a fool, don’t let her slip away, run to her, love conquers all?

Not in this case, my friend. In this case, it doesn’t work out like that at all
.

I thought about my duty to my wife and child, and to my family. Who would care for Elpida and Panayitsa, provide for them? Would it have been right to put responsibility for them back on her father, to hand that burden to an old man at the end of his working days? What had Elpida done to deserve disgrace, and desertion? She had always done her duty by me; in her own way, she had loved me
.

And where would Irini and I have gone? To stay here would have been impossible; in the streets, they’d have spat on her, and shunned her. Maybe we could have gone to Kos, or Athens. We might have gone abroad, to Australia, or America. But I’m from here; this is my place. How could I turn my back on it, on my family and friends, forever? I knew this island would never let me go free; it would haunt me and call me back, always
.

And would Irini and I have continued to love each other, after
we set up home together, far away; or might we have come to hate each other? That is the question to which there is no answer. Because I was afraid to try
.

I chose Conformity over Love
.

Do I regret it?

What do you think?

O
ne morning, as she went early to the grocer’s, he was sitting, alone, at a café table. Forgetting herself, she stared at him with greedy eyes; he turned his face towards the counter, and called out for his bill. Shaking, anxious, she went on. Service was slow at the grocer’s, and, returning, she found him gone. But the cup that he had drunk from was on the table, and the glass ashtray beside it held the dog-end of the cigarette he had smoked.

Dare she sit in his chair? Craving, desperate for contact, she did so, and felt the ecstasy of knowing she touched an object so recently touched by him. She wanted to touch his coffee cup, put it to her lips, learn something of him from it, and furtively she glanced inside it, trying to figure from his dregs how he took his coffee: with milk, or without? With sugar, or not? Such mundane details of his life were unknown to her; the café owner knew more of him than she, for he had had the information to make the coffee.

And the cigarette butt: it had touched his lips a dozen times, and was an object she could treasure, a piece of him to prize. She coveted that worthless, stinking piece of trash as a relic of her saint, as a believer would covet
a splinter of the True Cross. But how to take it? At her back, the old men were already at their backgammon; they would miss nothing that she did.

The unsmiling café owner stepped up to her table and, asking for her order, picked up Theo’s cup, and swept away his ashtray, and the relic. The old men rattled dice, and cast them on the board, while behind the counter, the café owner dumped the dirty china in the sink, and knocked the cigarette end into the garbage.

She waited for her coffee with tears in her eyes which must not fall. The coffee, when it came, was cold, and bitter; she drank it for appearances’ sake, and walked home alone along the road where he always used to pass.

For Andreas, it was hard: hard to watch his wife in her unhappiness, hard only to guess at its source. In the house, she was like a wraith, tearful and remote. He did not ask why; there was no need, because in his heart, he knew. He feared the answer, if he asked; he dared not try and comfort her. He kept his distance, and stayed out of her way.

Then, one morning as he walked down to the harbor, he passed a house whose courtyard door stood open; glancing in, he was amazed. Within the courtyard, a potted Eden flourished. Geraniums flowered in deep reds, pinks and white; miniature roses and slender lilies bloomed amongst squat and spiny cacti; tall grasses rustled against lush ferns. A young lemon tree bore miniature yellow fruit, cream-petaled gardenias grew beside heady-scented jasmine; overhead, a trellis stretched, supporting a canopy of cool greenery and the royal-purple trumpets
of exuberant morning glory. Entranced, Andreas stood and admired this work of art, this small, exquisite garden which was someone’s labor of love.

In the harbor florist’s, he bought seeds, compost and terracotta pots.

“My wife needs a hobby,” he told the florist. “Something to stop her brooding. She gets lonely, while I’m away.”

The florist watched him go with knowing eyes. He hired a taxi to carry home the makings of a garden, and there he left them beneath the struggling grapevine, to speak to her for themselves, if she would only listen.

A
ndreas went to sea; he was gone for many days, until one evening, as the swallows dipped and called across the valley, she heard his step behind her. The green shoots of the seedlings were beginning to appear; as she sprinkled water on the pots of sunflowers, he picked one up, and gently touched the new growth with a fingertip.

“They’re doing very well,” he said.

She turned to him.

“Perhaps you have a talent for it. Green fingers.”

“I don’t think so.”

He rarely touched her, these days, but now he put a hand on her shoulder, and she let it remain.

“I’m glad you’re finding an interest, Irini,” he said. “I want you to be happy again. I want us to be happy.”

She looked down at her own hands, and at the little
pots sprouting blades of leaves, and considered his words.
Happiness
, she thought,
is for other people. What I have is plant pots
.

She turned her face to his, and as her tears began to fall, he folded her within his arms and held her close.

He said, “
I
still want you, Irini.” And as her tears flowed into weeping, he was content to be the shoulder that she cried on.

S
he found a place for her garden beyond the village, near the chapel of St. Fanouris, where the wide-stepped grain terraces still traced the hillside contours. Andreas bought her tools, and went with her to clear the hard-packed ground, cutting back the spreading branches of the fig trees, digging down to uproot the thistles and the long-established weed-grasses.

She made the pilgrimage daily, carrying a bucket to fetch water from the chapel well. As they grew stronger, she planted out her seedlings, working until there was nothing to do but weed amongst the rows, and wait for the blooming of her garden.

Her work stimulated talk; she was a fallen woman, and her motives were in doubt.

“It’s not her land,” complained the women in the grocer’s. “She’s after squatters’ rights. She’ll fence it, and sit tight. Ten years, and it’s hers. You’ll see.”

The grocer, weighing white rice from a sack, asked, “So whose land is it?”

But no one knew. The land was long-deserted, abandoned in the war, and no one was left who could remember who had worked it when wheat was still grown there.

The young men in the bars claimed it was a smokescreen.

“She’s meeting someone there,” they said. “He puts it to her in the chapel.”

But no car was ever seen there to identify a lover (she’d had one; she’d take on anyone, now), and the only man they ever saw her with was her husband.

So, finding no co-conspirator, they questioned her sanity.

“She’s touched,” they said. “Who in their right mind would walk all that way each day, just to grow a few tomatoes?”

But the old men spoke in her defense.

“You’ve all gone soft,” they said, “with your motorbikes and your supermarkets and your TV. In our day, we walked for miles to scythe the wheat. We worked until our hands bled, in all seasons, in all weathers, tending crops. You walked and worked, or you didn’t eat. If the woman’s not lazy like you, leave her alone.”

Shepherds coming down from the hills detoured to review her progress. In the cafés, they made their reports. She had worked hard, and done well; they confessed themselves impressed.

Word reached Theo that his mistress had turned gardener. There was no need to ask questions; he simply listened, and, learning where, he drove up in the truck to take a look. Too afraid of spying eyes to stop on the road,
he slowed to a crawl as he passed the terraces; he saw the hard ground worked into tilth, the seedlings planted out in mounded rows, and in the corners, already blooming, pale-blue flowers he was too far away to identify.

But of the gardener herself, there was no sign.

T
he forecast for the coming week was good; the breeze had lost at last the undercurrent of winter, the air was light and bright, the alpines were in bloom.

Andreas had stacked the boat high with lobster traps, and, kissing her lightly on the cheek, had left before the sun broke the horizon.

“For certain,” he said, untying the oily rope that moored the boat to the jetty, “I’ll be back with you by Friday.”

She caught hold of his arm, and brushed his cheek with her dry lips; the odor of fish was about him already, even before he cast off.

“Take care,” she said. “Good fishing.”

Later, when the sun had gained some warmth, she took the new, red watering-can he had bought her, and slowly walked the long road to her garden.

Someone had been there.

The fragile stalks of the tomato plants had all been snapped; the aubergines and sunflowers had been uprooted. Their wilted foliage had already lost its brilliance, bright green slipped into the gray of dying plants. The burgundy-edged lettuces had been trampled; the chick-peas (which had done so well) were strewn across
the flowerbeds she had marked out with stones. The pot of spearmint stank, of drying urine.

She sat down on the flat rock where she’d sat for many hours, lately, and surveyed the ruined garden. She gazed beyond the terraces to where the mountains rose in sharp-stoned pinnacles. Behind the chapel, a solitary goat bleated to be free of its pen. Far below, the navy sea seemed still; out there, somewhere, Andreas fished, alone, and here was she, with people close, yet more alone than he.

A single puff of cloud passed overhead, and threw cold shadows as it hid the sun from view. Along the road, not far away, two black-clothed women walked, and talked with heads bowed low.

She sighed, and saw the beauty of this narrow place; just across the bay, the mainland held a million possibilities. There might be a life with Andreas; she tried to force from her mind a man who mattered more. The pills carefully hidden by St. Elizabeth had been thrown away so they could take their chances; maybe Nikos was right, and motherhood was her key to peace of mind.

She picked her way through the garden’s desecration, searching for survivors and what might be salvaged. There seemed, at first, to be nothing, but, looking closely, there was much: the root crops were untouched, some herbs still grew, and—unnoticed in a corner—the pale-blue-flowered forget-me-nots still flourished.

She gathered up the broken stalks of chick-peas.

Out on the road, the black-clothed women drew close.