Three Summers Read online

  “How was work today?” I asked, looking at Kapatos.

  This was a time of day when they didn’t mind an outsider dropping by for a chat. Only they made sure they never had to address each other. If the conversation led to this, they would keep their eye fixed on the outsider and refer to the other in the third person: “He says that he doesn’t know, but . . .” This of course was not the case between Mother Kapatos and her children. There, there was complete understanding. They knew that for their sake she hadn’t taken a single day off in twenty years, and that her eyes were sinking deeper and deeper into her skull, losing their glow. Her eyes were cast-iron black and her face was old before its time. She had no front teeth, though she was only forty.

  “We’re almost there. We’ve just about finished our part of the job. Now specialists will have to come install the telescope.”

  And as he saw a questioning look on his wife’s face, still seeming to respond to me, he added, “Telescopes are certain kind of tubes which when you put them up to your eye make it possible to see what’s happening in the heavens. They say that the moon has mountains and valleys . . .”

  “If we can’t even get our life right here on earth, what do we want with the heavens?” Amalia threw in, once again looking at me.

  And I wondered if that was meant for her father or for everyone in the world.

  “But that Mr. David is a difficult person,” continued Kapatos. “He’s working us to death.

  “He’s always been that way, every since he was little,” said Kapatos. “He was a difficult child. I know—oh did he make Kalliope suffer when she worked there! By the time she got him dressed he would have kicked her ten times, sometimes he’d have bitten her, too.”

  I felt joyous. That’s all I’d wanted, to hear about David.

  “And his mother would never let anyone beat him . . . Beating is catastrophic for children, she said. A crazy Brit, what do you expect? Oh, I forgot to ask about Tasia. It looks like she’s pregnant again, doesn’t it? We’ll be having another baby soon.”

  “So what exactly did David do to Kalliope?”

  “The upshot is that she couldn’t even manage a month in that house. And all the others who worked there the same, if not worse. A nice house, good pay, they’d say, but those children . . . and they’d hand in their uniforms.”

  “It certainly seems as if he hasn’t changed at all,” I said just to hear their response, waiting anxiously.

  They didn’t respond. Perhaps they didn’t hear. Mother Kapatos had her eyes glued to the little mound of junk; Kapatos started to get up because he saw Koula coming with his food. In the distance you could hear the boys, out of breath, getting nearer all in a pack, a sound like the hooves of galloping horses. Soon they were there with an empty nest in their hands. They had shoved the birds out and even shot one with a rubber band. They couldn’t contain their joy. Amalia wet her finger with spit and mechanically turned two or three pages, and then closed the book because it was completely dark.

  “Don’t just read Dostoyevsky,” she told me as I got ready to leave. “There are also contemporary Russians.”

  On my way back I had a cuckoo for company. I whistled at him, he whistled at me, I whistled back, and he answered. While I walked on the sharp stones, he flew from branch to branch. Amalia will become a teacher. She’ll go to a faraway village to educate children. While she’s writing the alphabet on the blackboard the rain will stream down the windows and the potholes in the empty schoolyard will fill up. David is writing a study about stars and he’s let his beard grow. Before I went to the Kapatoses I was thinking only of him. Now Amalia’s life is also on my mind. Also Nikitas’s, and Mrs. Montelandi’s, who had such a beautiful voice in her youth. Because sometimes the seduction of other people’s lives causes me to lose the thread of my own, and I become Amalia and Mrs. Montelandi, as if those particular people leapt forth from the millions of people out there, standing out like bare mountains at dusk. And the seduction is no less when those particular people, instead of leaping out, bury themselves amidst all the others, losing their distinction, a mob of unknown faces passing under my window. I can’t remember what David’s face looks like, I can’t see it the way I did in the afternoon when Kapatos passed by with a shovel on his shoulder. It’s chilly. Somewhere nearby it must be raining.

  THE SECOND SUMMER

  I. LAURA PARIGORI

  WHEN LAURA Parigori opened her eyes that Sunday morning, she realized that she had left the light on. The book she had started the night before was lying on top of her, its pages slightly crumpled. She could barely remember the page it was open to. She must have fallen asleep while reading and then slept soundly right until that moment. “Strange,” she whispered, “and I thought I had insomnia.”

  Often Laura dreamed that she couldn’t sleep. She would wake up exhausted, her body worn out from the idea of not sleeping.

  She threw off the sheets abruptly and stood up. She was wearing an antique nightgown. A wide lace collar hung across her shoulders and chest. And although from her middle down the fine material clung to unattractive curves and lumps, the lace with its embroidered flowers and birds gave her round, expressive shoulders the glow of a girl at her first dance. Her breast was full of tenderness and abandon.

  She glanced at the door and hurried to turn off the light. Yannis was odd about things like that. He could buy her the most expensive dress and spend money on her slightest desire, but he would complain if he saw the water running for too long or a light on in an empty room. Sometimes when Yannis stayed the night in Athens at the hospital, Laura would turn on all the lights and walk around as if it were day. She’d also turn on the radio as loud as it would go, and run into the garden where the light and sound would reach her altered and unreal.

  At that moment the bells from the church of the Panaghia began to toll. And soon the street was full of the sounds of women talking and children playing. The first service was over and the second about to begin. One by one, the villagers came out of the small whitewashed door, continued down the path between the four cypress trees, out onto the cobblestones of Aniksi Avenue, which then wound its way like a white ribbon between the red fields.

  “What beautiful countryside,” Laura said, leaning out of the window, sighing. “And good people, too.”

  She would watch them every Sunday as they passed by, the wife of Gekas, the owner of the taverna, always leading the way. She went to great lengths to be the first out of church. It was strange that a woman in a dumpy calico dress with plump hands could appear so attractive. “As long as the taverna, the wine, and my hardworking husband are fine,” she would say. Everyone had their suspicions, though, and thought that Gekas was really making his money the two times a week he went to Piraeus. What did he do in Piraeus? And why did he never mention it? “His sister is there,” Mrs. Gekas would say. “He’s so fond of her . . .” The more money he made, the more picky she became about her friends. She cut off relations with the wife of Michalis, the construction worker, and Kalliope, the egg lady, and instead put all her energy into cultivating friendships with the Kritikos and Kouvelis families, since they had the largest flocks around.

  “What beautiful countryside . . .” murmured Laura, sighing again.

  The morning rays came in through the open window and played on the wall opposite.

  She couldn’t bear the bright light, which made everything seem naked and the same. Leaning out of the window, she went to draw in the shutters. Once again she had forgotten that this house had blinds and that they opened and shut by pulling a linen cord. Why couldn’t she get used to this after all these years? Why did she always lean out instead of standing straight and proper like the maid?

  Immediately the room became familiar again; certain corners were lit up, others were dark, a coolness settled on the photographs, each book turned its appropriate color and shape. They were all things she loved dearly and wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. Besides, she didn’t have that
kind of transformative power. Things were the way they were. She couldn’t change the color of her eyes, or trade in her pudgy feet. Her feet had always been that way. Her breasts were beautiful, though. Only Ruth could change colors and moods. How she loved Ruth! Ruth could really make her laugh. When that lump in her throat became unbearable she would leave the house and either turn right toward the woods where she would lie on the ground and cry, or left toward Ruth’s where she would laugh until dusk.

  Anna was also nice. But ever since she got divorced she didn’t laugh much and she would only talk about her property and sew.

  “If I was divorced . . .” Laura was about to say. But old memories like sunken ships at the bottom of the sea suddenly rose up from the depths of her soul: hazy, trembling, a broken steering wheel, a bent rudder, masts jutting into space, the drowned treading water.

  The time the foreign doctor had come to stay—he rose early, took a walk in the garden, ate a great deal, wrote an article on vitamin C. “Gnädige Frau,” he would kiss her hand. She dreamt about him. And later when she met the small artist, his tiny slit eyes brimming with life, his nervous short legs, his exaggerated movements—like a rat. Yannis would have thought him ridiculous. And then there was the young man who kissed her as they danced, not knowing of course that she was Mrs. Parigori. Sometimes going down Deliyannis Street in the carriage she would see a man passing by, his step strong, proud . . .“Stop!” she wanted to cry to the driver. The bells jangled, the reins hung loose, the horse skidded a bit as he stepped on the asphalt scattering pink and white oleanders to the left and to the right.

  Nobody had ever suspected anything. She remained with her eyes wide open looking at the wild lilies, the water running in the ravine. Marios used to cling to her, but then he stopped needing her. Leda had never needed her. Suddenly something made her want to run and sing out of tune. Nothing would change. No one would ever know. The men would leave as they had come, her heart a house with changing tenants. This is what made life interesting, like a novel.

  “Laura, are you ready?” Yannis’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

  On Sundays they ate breakfast together in the dining room.

  “Almost,” she called out louder than necessary.

  “Why are you yelling? I’m right outside your door.”

  The door opened and Yannis stood there laughing. He sat down on the rumpled sheets.

  “I do like Sundays,” he said after a bit.

  “If only they would leave you alone. God rested on the seventh day, but not you. There’s always a telephone call, or a . . .”

  She looked at him tenderly.

  “I’m coming—just a minute,” she said, putting her robe on over her nightgown and going into the bathroom.

  Yannis glanced around the room. He had built the house with the fruits of his labor exactly as he wished. Only this room was somehow out of place. Perhaps it was the photographs with the old-fashioned clothes, the furniture from Corfu that Laura had brought from her father’s house, the chairs with the thin legs . . . It all made him feel the way Mrs. Montelandi did when she looked at him.

  The dining room, on the other hand, was bright and comfortable with practical, modern furniture.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked, sitting across from her at the big table.

  “I had insomnia, that is . . .” And changing her tone abruptly, “Where is Leda? I haven’t seen her this morning.”

  “She must be running around outside. Don’t worry.”

  Leda’s escapades were his joy. She had her own particular way of doing everything—such freedom. Marios resembled him, shy and hardworking, but Leda had found the perfect combination of the Montelandis and Parigoris.

  “Listen, Yannis,” said Laura, “I want you to talk to her seriously. She’s always off with those Kapatos tramps.”

  “All right, all right.”

  He thought of the photograph of his father he carried in his wallet crumpled up amidst his notes and prescriptions. His father had come from a poor family and worked his way up to boss in a printing shop. When he was young he must have been a tramp.

  “Yannis, for goodness sake, there is such a thing as different social backgrounds. The other day they caught her carting off someone’s fence to make swords.”

  “All right, I’ll speak to her,” said Yannis.

  He didn’t like to discipline her. But the truth was that Leda could pick up bad habits from those Kapatos kids. He’d already heard her saying “damn,” which just wouldn’t do.

  “I’ll go down and see if I can find her. At this hour she’s usually down by the boat pretending to be Bouboulina trying to save the Greeks from the Turks crying ‘Enemy sighted! All hands on deck!’ The other children fixing their eyes on the distant hills. The intensity of children’s play is strange, medically speaking—”

  “I’m on my way down too,” interrupted Laura, “to see Marios and Maria.”

  “How is Maria doing?”

  “She’s beginning her eighth month.”

  “So, in a month or so . . .”

  “Yes, about that.”

  By this time they had reached the door.

  “One minute,” Laura said, “let me get my umbrella, the sun is strong.”

  And they walked down the hill just as the second service was ending.

  •

  “Little white boat, floating by the shore, where are you going, who tends your oar?” Maria was singing softly sitting in a chair on the veranda with her two hands folded on her belly. Her feet hung, swinging back and forth to the song’s rhythm. Before getting pregnant her feet had reached the tiles; even her heels, she mused.

  She wore a light blue dress with yellow flowers. Katerina would say “yellow worlds” because she had just discovered a plant by that name and she kept chanting it over and over. Why should anyone get so excited about a plant called “yellow world”?

  Marios was watering the trees. They were Grandpa’s wedding present to them, along with the house: forty apricot and twenty cherry. Each Sunday morning Marios would put on a pair of shorts, no shirt, and go out barefoot to play gardener. He would dig with all his might, sweating hard, and when the water came down the trench and slowly filled the holes under the trees, he would lift up his head and take in deep breaths. It was during those moments he realized that he experienced true happiness. Whereas the big events—like when he graduated or got married to Maria or learned he would be a father—brought worries along with the happiness. He would get a lump in his throat, his heart would pound, his eyes would fill with tears, and he’d be at a loss for what to do.

  Maria’s melancholy voice reached him all the way in the orchard: “Who knows what lies around the next bend . . .”

  He looked in her direction. She had her eyes half-closed and was leaning her head back as if resting it on something, but the back of the chair only came up to her shoulders.

  He started to run to her. He had already thrown down his hoe when he stopped; the hole was overflowing. He blocked it off with dirt, letting the water pour back into the trench and then dug an opening to the next tree. For another minute or two he hesitated. Then with slow steps he walked toward the veranda whistling softly, feigning indifference.

  He approached her quietly, barefoot, while still keeping an eye on the water.

  “Maria dear, why is your voice so melancholy?” he asked.

  She was startled, as if she had been far away. She turned and looked at him with eyes even deeper and darker than they had been last year.

  “But I am happy,” she said absentmindedly, unfolding her hands and bringing them to her heart as if to get rid of some burden.

  The pain of happiness, Marios thought.

  “Shall I bring you an armchair?” he said. “You’re not comfortable in that chair, it’s too high off the ground.”

  “No, no, I’m just fine. The armchair hurts my back.”

  “Whatever you wish.”

  He caressed her hair and started to
leave.

  “I’ve got to go or the water will overflow.”

  She smiled at him the way a mother smiles at a child playing hooky.

  “Maria, I hope you don’t think I don’t want to stay with you and talk . . .”

  “Go on now. The water will overflow,” she said laughing, already swinging her feet back and forth. “‘Little white boat . . .’ Sometimes I like to be alone.”

  She was dreaming of the child God would send her. God . . . well . . . if God was the one who sent children. She was thinking about how she had cried after the first and second months of marriage, sure she was infertile. Her mother had laughed. “It doesn’t always happen right away, silly girl,” she said, remembering how it was three months before she had gotten pregnant with Maria. How happy Miltos had been then! Anyway . . .

  By November Maria was pregnant. Marios was thrilled. It so happened that they had quarreled a bit the morning she learned the news; the maid hadn’t ironed a shirt properly or something like that. Marios was not finicky, but it bothered Maria, who liked her clothes well washed and nicely ironed. And so they began to squabble, and Marios paced back and forth, dissatisfied. He had already forgotten that the cause of it was just a shirt. Then Maria told him the news—and suddenly everything changed.

  The only hard part was that the more time passed, the less she wanted to be touched. Strange creatures, women! The first evening of their marriage she was cold as marble, and the second and the third, the same. Later, though, it was she who wanted him. As soon as they lay down, she would curl up close to him like a cat and tell him sweet things. She would cover him completely with her arms, as if a warm, pink cloud at sunset had settled over him. Her whispery voice would excite him and then all of a sudden he would embrace her, knowing that her voice was soft enough.

  It was a period when they went out rarely, didn’t talk to anyone, and even between themselves said little. The two mothers complained about their aloof manner. Anna even broke down in tears one day when she took them a sweet and Maria forgot to kiss her goodbye. During this time Maria still wore tight nightgowns and brushed her hair before going to bed. Marios, pretending to read the newspaper, would watch her carefully from the bed where he sat: the slope of her neck as she pulled her skirt over her head, the curve of her waist as she bent down to unbutton her shoes, her face all golden in the mirror from the reflection of the lights. Her eyelashes spreading unnaturally long shadows under her eyes gave her an air of seriousness and mystery, a diffused intensity. Maria raised her hand and closed a box—it went click in the night—Marios waited.