Intimate Distance (3 page)

His mother ladles food onto a warmed plate she's produced for him. She seems to think he can eat enough for three men of his size. She places the salad bowl at the side of his plate and bread for him to dunk in the dish of olive oil with vinegar at the bottom.

‘Ma.' He covers the plate with his hand. ‘I'm not hungry.'

Nevertheless he begins to shovel food into his mouth.

‘Mara – how you like Greece?'

He speaks English, pronouncing some words with difficulty. There's an intimacy in his tone I don't know how to respond to. I open my mouth to reply but Zoi cuts in.

‘Mara's mother is from Tinos. She is Greek. Her father is – was – a Turk, I think.'

‘He was from Efes,' I say. ‘But I never really knew him. Ephesus, don't you call it in Greek?'

Kiki doesn't seem to be interested. She begins to gather up plates and cutlery, stacking them in a neat pile at the end of the table. I motion to help but she waves me away.

‘So now you're home, when are you two thinking of marriage? We can wait a few months, but not more than half a year. People will talk.'

Her tone is casual. She doesn't look at me, doesn't include me in the question. She uses the traditional word –
stefanothitai
– crowned.

‘Well, we thought –' Zoi begins to say, glancing from her to me.

‘Who said anything about a wedding?' I ask.

I move my chair back with a screech over the marble floor.

‘Why else would you follow our son here?'

Kiki is genuinely surprised. Zoi is silent, hands splayed open on the tablecloth.

‘I wanted to see Greece,' I say. ‘And – I think I love your son.'

The statement I've just made surprises me. I think I love your son. Why qualify it? I love him. I love Zoi. Kiki appeals to her youngest.

‘What is she saying?'

Dimitri has stopped eating. He places his fork on the tablecloth and a dark stain seeps through the fine weave. His mother reaches out by habit with a napkin, still flitting her eyes from person to person at the table, and he grabs her by the arm.

‘Can't you ever stop? It's their first night here for God's sake.'

She jerks her arm at him, struggling to wrench it away, but he keeps it fast in his grip.

‘Don't you understand it's their business?'

Kiki is stunned. Dimitri keeps his tight hold on her arm. Their father raises his voice, and Dimitri releases her.

‘The shame,' she says. Her words are slow, drawn out. ‘The shame on the family.'

She straightens up.

‘What about your family, Mara? How does your mother let you go, follow a strange man halfway across the world?'

I don't answer. Kiki nods, looking from one son to the other now.

‘I see, so now I see.'

She can't seem to stop repeating those words. Then she gathers the pile of plates in both hands.

‘There's nothing more to be said, I suppose.'

Her voice is tight, small.

‘And you, Zoi?' Dimitri asks. ‘Aren't you going to say something?'

Zoi shakes his head, not looking at his brother or at me. He spreads his hands open in a mute gesture of appeal.

ON THAT FIRST
night in Athens I can't sleep yet I go to bed hours before Zoi does, pleading tiredness. He looks up as I leave; barely registering I'm gone. He's lying on the couch watching television, bare feet in his mother's lap. Dimitri's eyes follow me all the way down the corridor, and I jump when I feel him behind me, running to catch up.

‘Remember where light switch is? Come, I show you.'

He turns on the bedroom light, brushing the front of my body with his arm as he does so. I'm not sure if it's intentional and stand still, allowing it to happen. Again, his distinctive smell, the memory of leather sofas and school desks, days when the sky was low and threatening. The room fills with light blue, a strip of fluorescent bulb flickering on and off, like a question.

‘Is there a lamp in here? I like to read before I fall asleep.'

‘Come. I do not need mine.'

I follow him to his bedroom. In the dark he fumbles for the socket and with a yank unplugs the cord.

‘Come, you have it.'

‘You sure? Sure you don't need it?'

He doesn't respond. He's studying my face and I wonder what it looks like in the half-light, whether it pleases him. I feel silly then and still he continues to look at me in the filigree of shadow and brightness from the street lamps outside.

‘Do not worry. Do not worry about anything. What happened this evening, it is like this here many times.'

‘I don't feel very comfortable,' I whisper. ‘I don't feel welcome.'

It seems easier to say in the dark.

‘She mean nothing, my mother. Please. My brother want you to be happy.'

Then he puts his hand on mine where I hold the lamp and can't move my hand away from him.

6

AS DAWN PRICKS
the shutters with needles of light I open my eyes and strain into the grey, searching for something familiar. Shapes of strewn clothes and luggage and a dressing-table mirror blotted out in the corner. For a moment it was hard to know where I was: which city, which country. But I knew somehow I wasn't home. I lay on my back afraid to breathe, listening. Something woke me up. Voices coming from somewhere in the apartment, a woman's high pitch and the answering rumble of a man. I can't make out what they're saying but I know they're talking about me. I feel for Zoi, find his thigh with my hand. He's asleep, snoring gently.

I can hear some Greek words louder than others. The woman says
irresponsible
; the man replies
shut up
, as if pushed to it. The woman says, but she's a
Turkala
. I can discern one phrase clearly and put the covers over my head to block out the rest.
She doesn't even have a father
. I try not to think of my father but the idea of him knocks against my skull, demanding entry. My father. I only have one memory of him. Only one complete scene. It's a sanitised drama repeated so often I wonder if it really happened at all. But my mother assures me it was so – he came back from Turkey for a brief visit when I was seven – to see his ‘Australian' daughter. His swift leave-taking after that one encounter was more of a betrayal for me than the first time, as if now, on taking my true measure, he decided I wasn't worth the trouble. Yes, my mother would say. He was like that. Even with me.

I sit up and pull my hair back into a knot. The room is dark and I have no idea what the day outside is like. I open the ugly iron shutters, step onto the balcony and register vaguely that the concrete floor is already too hot to stand on comfortably. Olive trees lashed by hot winds. Noise from the coast road banked up with traffic, the Saronic Gulf a dazzled blue. All around, as I rest my hands on the balcony railing, is the sea. Too blue to look at for long; hurting my eyes with the shimmer of sun on the surface of the water.

ZOI AND I
don't touch each other for weeks. Or rather, I don't encourage any contact. In bed I turn over and present him with my back, a mute negative. I'm not sure why it doesn't feel right to be intimate, as if he's somehow moulded himself into another, younger man here. The Zoi I suspected he was before we met. A man I hardly know, and don't find all that interesting. A man of simple desires, like his brother.

He doesn't press me. Besides, it's hard with so many people close by, so many thin walls. Dimitri plays the radio by his bed every night, so it's hard to sleep as well, punctuated by the shrill sounds of bouzoukia and high-pitched wails. I lie awake and worry about my mother, alone in the nursing home. Our damp Darlinghurst terrace empty. I telephoned the home a few times, not asking much, not quite sure what to say. The outlines were too hazy to be coherent. They put her on the phone and I told her how lovely the weather was, how improbably blue and cloudless the sky was every single day, how hospitable Zoi's family were. On the other end, quiet breathing, nothing more.

I wonder if she misses her home, her bedroom. The old bath, that stands in the centre of our tiny upstairs bathroom like a shrine. Cherished, scarred by time, by the constant friction over years of all those bodies, lying down, getting up, turning laboriously like fish too big for their tank, losing the soap in the water and searching for it, frantic under the foam. On the white walls there's a multitude of faces, relatives long gone, faded, sepia-toned, receding into the steam as they dissolve in her memory.

THE BATH WAS
already green with age when her father brought it from town on the back of a donkey.

‘Poor donkey,' she said, then put her hand over her mouth, afraid of his rebuke.

He soaked in it on the first Sunday of every month, an hour before church. He was a man who prided himself on punctuality; otherwise Olga would be to blame. She heated the water in the cauldron on an open flame, testing it with her elbow in case he burned himself. Too hot, let it cool, fanning it anxiously, hurry up, hurry up, prayed he would not yell for his bath, no, only six in the morning and he, supposedly asleep, suddenly stirred, calling for warm water.

‘Come, daughter. Water!'

His voice moved like a beast through the house, catching between the stones of the walls.

Her red, raw elbow. Balancing the cauldron ahead of her with arms outstretched, she poured water into the tub, heaving and gasping while he stood aside and watched. Flicked a crust of sleep from his eye. She sprinkled handfuls of lemon leaves on the surface of the water. Averted her eyes from his careful disrobing, as he handed her the undershirt and long pants, soft lambswool stockings. Still warm from sleep, the odour of his resting body.

If she were late washing or drying these, his only set of clothes, he would have to sit in the cooling water and watch his extremities wrinkle. Rubbing thumb and forefinger together, swollen toes, shivering. Sad penis. Scum of soap on the water as he twirled it around with his hand.

As a child I was afraid of his photograph. Those white woollen stockings bunched at the knee, his stern face seemed to mock me. I'd never met my grandparents, on either side. Never known any aunts, uncles. Children with cousins seemed exotic to me. Only the photographs in the bathroom, my sole tangible link to a meaningful past. Grandfathers and fathers and sons, it strikes me now as remarkable that there's a total absence of women. My mother would take her bath under the gaze of men, displaying her nudity to an assembly of patriarchs. There must have been some quiet rebellion in that.

I told her on the phone about my trip to the temple of Poseidon, speaking into the silence. How Dimitri drove me along the winding coast road to Sounion, to see the stark ruins against the sea. Zoi hadn't come with us. I didn't mention that. Didn't say he was spending more and more time with his mother, aunts and cousins, surrounded by women and food.

Dimitri and I sat under the flowering trees of the museum café, gypsy boys begging, branches low. German tourists at other tables drank from huge jugs of beer, silent with each other, looking into the distance. I gulped mine down and Dimitri brought his hand over my lip, to wipe a drop of foam. When we came home Zoi wasn't there and we sat on the couch together, trying our best to ignore each other.

Zoi has found a casual job at the National University Hospital in the centre of town, works until late every day, angling for a permanent contract.

‘Only for the interim,' he tells me in bed. ‘Just until I help my parents for a while. Then we can decide when we'll leave for Australia.'

This is not what I'd imagined. He wants to stay, establish roots, while I'm left out, in the cold. He touches my shoulder, tentative. I jerk away.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing. I'm fine. Everything's fine.'

I want him to divine the source of my discontent without words.

‘You sure?'

‘Just let me sleep.'

‘Why? Are you tired?'

‘Yes.'

He strokes my back with long sweeping motions.

‘Where did you go today?'

‘The temple by the sea.'

He insinuates his right arm under my body, holding me from behind.

‘Did you like it?'

I let him kiss the nape of my neck, angling my head forward. His hands firm over my breasts.

‘My mum and dad met there, did I tell you? ‘

‘You never told me how he died.'

‘Don't really want to talk about it now.'

‘Why? Is it too painful?'

‘No – at least I don't think so. I never really knew him. It happened when I was about eight, after he came to visit us in Sydney.'

‘So tell me how it happened.'

‘Really, Zoi, I'm too tired.'

‘Why, did my brother tire you out?'

He presses the weight of his body on mine, still talking.

‘Do you like my brother, then?'

His voice fierce in my neck.

‘He's all right. Don't know.'

He twirls his fingers round and round on my navel, tracing an imaginary line to my groin.

‘He likes you, I know that.'

His fingers stop moving and I feel him hard against me.

‘Don't, Zoi. They can hear us.'

‘Don't you want him to hear us?'

I surrender to him, floating in that dark quiet space between time, borne along by the movements of his body, bodiless myself. My thoughts turn again, involuntarily, to my mother. There was shining light and bright water when she met him. Stranger. Older than her. Man in a cheap dark suit, with a squint in his eye. Olga was at the temple for the day and saw this tourist, this Turk, travelling for the first time in his life, though he tried not to let it show. He wouldn't even take off his jacket, sweating under the columns. He paid the tea seller ten drachmas instead of five. Offered her the glass without averting his eyes as she drank. Slurped his tea noisily. Stood balanced at the edge of the rock, holding his shoes in one hand. Marvelling.