Tears welled up in Sofia’s eyes. Alexis had never seen her mother cry.
‘You mustn’t be too hard on yourself,’ she whispered, drawing her chair up close and putting an arm around her mother. ‘If you and Dad had dropped a bombshell like that on me when I was eighteen, I would probably have done just the same. It’s totally understandable that you were so angry and upset.’
‘But I still feel so guilty about it, and I have done for so many years,’ she said quietly.
‘Well, I don’t think you need to now. It’s the past, Mum,’ said Alexis, holding her closer. ‘From everything I’ve heard about Maria, I think she probably forgave you. And you wrote letters to each other, didn’t you? And they came to your wedding? I’m sure Maria wasn’t bitter - I don’t think she had it in her.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Sofia, her voice muffled as she struggled to suppress her tears. She looked away towards the island and slowly regained her composure.
Fotini had listened quietly to this exchange between mother and daughter. She could see that Alexis was making Sofia look at the past from a new perspective, and decided to leave them alone together for a while.
The Vandoulakis tragedy, as it was known, was still chewed over in Plaka, and the little girl who had been left without a father or mother had not been forgotten by those who had witnessed the events of that memorable summer night. Some of those people still lived in the village. Fotini strolled into the bar and had a quiet word with Gerasimo, who then gesticulated frantically to his wife. They would drop everything and come; their son could serve behind the bar for a while. All three of them hastened to the taverna.
At first Sofia did not recognise the small group who had appeared at a table close to where she and Alexis were sitting but as soon as she was aware that the elderly man was mute, she realised who it was.
‘Gerasimo!’ she cried. ‘I remember you now. Weren’t you working in the bar here when I used to come and visit?’
He nodded and smiled. The fact that Gerasimo was dumb had intrigued the little Sofia. She remembered being slightly afraid of him, but also recollected how much she enjoyed the iced lemonade he made specially for her whenever she and Maria called in at the bar, which was where they usually went to meet her grandfather. She had more difficulty remembering Andriana. Though she was now plump and terribly afflicted with varicose veins, which were ill concealed by her thick stockings, Andriana reminded Sofia that she had been a teenager when Sofia used to come to Plaka. Sofia dimly remembered a beautiful but rather languid girl who would usually be sitting outside the bar chatting to her friends while groups of teenage boys hung around, leaning nonchalantly on their mopeds. Fotini had found the brown envelope of photographs again, and once more they were spread out on the table and the family likenesses between Sofia, Alexis and their ancestors marvelled over.
The taverna was closed that night, but Mattheos, who was soon to take over his parents’ business, now arrived. He had grown into a mountain of a man, and Sofia and he embraced enthusiastically.
‘It’s so good to see you, Sofia,’ he said warmly. ‘It’s been such a long time.’
Mattheos began to lay a long table. One more guest was still to arrive. Fotini had telephoned her brother Antonis earlier that day, and at nine o’clock he arrived from Sitia. He was now very grey and quite stooped, but he still had those dark, romantic eyes that had drawn Anna to him all those years ago. He sat between Alexis and Sofia and after a few drinks he lost his shyness about talking English after so many years without practice.
‘Your mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,’ he said to Sofia, adding as an afterthought, ‘apart from my own wife, of course.’
He sat quietly for a moment before he spoke again.
‘Her beauty was a gift as well as a curse, and a woman like her will always drive some men to extreme behaviour. It wasn’t all her fault, you know.’
Alexis watched her mother’s face and could see that she understood.
‘
Efharisto
,’ Sofia said quietly. ‘Thank you.’
It was well past midnight, and the candles had long since guttered to extinction, before everyone round the table got up to leave. Only a few hours later both Alexis and Sofia needed to be on the road, Alexis to retrace her steps to Hania to meet up with Ed, and her mother to catch the ferry back to Piraeus. For Alexis it was as though a month had passed since she had arrived, even though it was actually only a few days. For Sofia, in spite of the fact that her visit had been fleeting, its significance was immeasurable. Embraces as warm as the day itself were exchanged, and fond promises made to return the following year for a longer and more peaceful stay.
Alexis drove her mother to Iraklion, where Sofia was to catch the night ferry back to Athens. There was not a moment of silence on the journey as their conversation flowed. Once she had dropped her mother, who would happily spend the day in the city’s museums before catching the ferry that night, Alexis carried on towards Hania. She had resolved the mystery of the past; today the future would be her concern.
Nearly three hours later she arrived back at the hotel. It had been a long, sweaty journey and she was desperate for a drink, so she crossed the road to the closest bar, which overlooked the beach. Ed was there, sitting alone and gazing out to sea. Alexis moved towards him quietly and took a seat at his table. The scrape of her chair alerted him to her presence and he looked round, startled by the noise.
‘Where the
hell
have you been?’ he shouted.
Apart from the message she had left for him four days earlier to say that she would be staying in Plaka for a couple of nights, she had not contacted him. Her mobile phone had been switched off.
‘Look,’ she said, knowing she had been wrong to be so out of touch, ‘I’m really sorry. It all got very involved and somehow I lost track of time. Then my mum came over and—’
‘What do you mean, your mum came over? So you were having some kind of family reunion or something and just forgot to tell me about it! Thanks a lot!’
‘Listen . . .’ Alexis began. ‘It was really important.’
‘For God’s sake, Alexis!’ he groaned with sarcasm. ‘
What
is more important? Buggering off to see your mother, who you can visit any day of the week when you’re at home, or having this holiday with me?’
Ed did not expect an answer to this. He had already sauntered across to the bar to get himself another drink, his back turned to Alexis. She could see the anger and resentment in the line of his shoulders, and while they were still turned she slipped quickly and silently away. It took her a matter of minutes at the hotel to stuff all her clothes into a bag, grab a couple of books from the bedside table and scribble him a note.
Sorry it’s ended like this. You never did listen.
There was no ‘Love Alexis’, no row of kisses. It was the end. She could admit it to herself now. There was no love left.
Chapter Twenty-seven
ALEXIS WAS SOON back on the road to Iraklion. It was already four in the afternoon and she would have to put her foot down to reach it by seven o’clock, in time to return the hire car and catch the ferry which left at eight.
As she drove along the smooth road, which hugged the coastline and gave her a continuous and spectacular view of the sea, a feeling of euphoria swept over her. To her left there was nothing but blue: azure sea and sapphire sky. Why were feelings of misery called ‘the blues’? she wondered. This bright sky and sparkling water seemed integral to her ecstatic sense of wellbeing.
With the windows wound down and warm air blowing through, her hair flickered behind her like a dark stream and she sang along loudly and passionately to ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ as the cassette whirred round in the car’s cheap tape deck. Ed hated Van Morrison.
This exhilarating journey lasted a little more than two hours, and as she rattled along, fear of missing the boat kept her foot firmly pressed on the accelerator. There was nothing quite like the sense of abandon she got at the wheel of a car.
With only moments to spare, she dealt with the irritations of dispensing with the hired car, purchased her ticket for the ferry and climbed the ramp which brought her into the bowels of the ship. She was all too familiar with the stench of fumes that greeted passengers boarding a Greek ferry but knew that in an hour or two she would acclimatise. Cars were still being driven on, and freight was being loaded on to the deck, along with plenty of commotion and shouting from a crowd of dark-haired men yelling at each other in a language that she was still ashamed she knew so little of. In this particular situation, it was probably just as well. She saw a door marked ‘Foot passinjers’ and disappeared gratefully through it.
Somewhere on this boat, she knew she would find her mother. There were two lounges, one for smokers, another much emptier one for non-smokers. A group of American students occupied the latter, while in the former there were several dozen big family groups returning to mainland Greece after their holidays to relatives in Crete. They were vociferous and all appeared to be haranguing each other, though in truth they were probably simply discussing whether to have toasted sandwiches now or later on in the journey. Alexis could not find her mother on this level so she went up on deck.
In the fading light she saw Sofia at the far end, towards the prow. She was sitting alone, her small travel bag at her feet, looking across at the twinkling lights of Iraklion and the vaulted arches of the great arsenal built by the Venetians. The pristine walls of the solid sixteenth-century fortress which stood guard over the harbour could have been built yesterday.
A day earlier it was Alexis who had been amazed to see her mother. This time it was Sofia’s turn to be surprised by the sight of her daughter.
‘Alexis! What are you doing here?’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought you were going back to Hania.’
‘I did.’
‘But why are you here then? Where’s Ed?’
‘Still in Hania. I left him there.’
There was little need to explain, but Alexis wanted to talk.
‘It’s all over. I realised how pointless it was, how half-hearted, ’ she began. ‘When I sat listening to Fotini describe your family and what they went through, what really struck me was how powerfully they loved each other. It was through sickness and health, thick and thin, until death parted them . . . I knew I didn’t feel like that about Ed - and I certainly wouldn’t feel like that about him in twenty, or even ten years’ time.’
In the decades since Sofia had turned her back on the people and the place that had nurtured her into adulthood, she had never perceived it all so clearly. Her daughter had made her look at these ancestors of hers as though they were characters in a drama. At last she saw not humiliation but heroism, not perfidy but passion, not leprosy but love.
Everything was in the open now, the wounds were exposed to the air and at last there was the possibility of healing. There was no shame in any of it. She no longer had anything to hide and for the first time in twenty-five years her tears flowed unchecked.
As the cumbersome ferry moved slowly out of the harbour and blasted its horn into the still night air, Alexis and Sofia stood against the railings, catching the breeze on their faces. Arms entwined, they looked back across the pitch-black water until, gradually, the lights of Crete faded into the distance.
Leprosy – A Continuing Problem in the 21st Century
Although leprosy has been eradicated in Europe, it is still a major health problem in developing countries. In 2004 over 400,000 new cases were diagnosed, around 70% of these in India. Leprosy (also known as Hansen’s disease) is caused by a germ similar to that which causes tuberculosis. It attacks the nerves of the hands, feet and face and, if left untreated, can take away the ability to move fingers, toes and eyelids. It can also destroy the ability to feel pain so that those affected are prone to injuries and burns which can result in serious infections and ultimately the loss of fingers, toes and sight. The longer the disease is left undetected, the more likely it is that the deformities, so often associated with leprosy, will occur. Coupled with the social stigma born out of fear and misunderstanding, those affected are often rejected by family and community. This means that many are afraid to come forward to seek treatment in the early stages of the disease.