Three Summers Page 14

  Once she complained in front of Mr. Louzis and he looked so sad you would have thought he was the one in pain. Mr. Louzis seemed like a hypocrite to me. It was a good thing he didn’t come over that often any more. He used to come every day, his heavy step scattering the pebbles, his cane rustling the branches of the pistachio trees overhead.

  Although he did bring Mother and Aunt Theresa a pot of flowers recently, a polite gesture on his part. And whenever he hadn’t been over for a while Grandfather would say, “You’ve forgotten us.” “I never forget,” said Mr. Louzis, and his voice was childlike and full of emotion. He looked off into the distance at the mountains of Parnitha and Pendeli. Imagine Mr. Louzis having a gentle soul—you never know. After all, there are books about murderers with tender souls.

  It was hot. The day was colorless, and there was no wind. Since morning the pine cones had been cracking open. Crack—you’d lift your head, it must be a bird sharpening its beak, you’d say—crack—and if you looked quickly enough you’d see the pine cone break open all by itself.

  Rodia teetered as she brought out the cherry drinks, and Mother’s eyes had dark rings under them. Nevertheless she smiled when she saw Mr. Louzis. She was wearing a pretty dress, pale yellow like unripe corn. Her hair was black and shiny.

  I liked the way Mother combed her hair, a part down the middle and then her hair flat against her head to the neck, where it was tucked under in a small bun, almost touching her back. When you looked at Mother’s profile there was a mysterious balance between that low bun and her nose, which was kind of sharp. Similarly, when you looked at her from the front her clean part balanced with the uneven spaces between her white teeth.

  “It’s a wave. It will pass.” Grandfather spoke into the silence.

  We understood that he was talking about the heat. Conversation then turned to international affairs, only to end up discussing Mrs. Parigori.

  “And the way she dresses . . .” continued Aunt Theresa. “She insists on being different from other women.”

  “I don’t think she wears anything out of the ordinary,” said Mother, who often came to the defense of someone to keep the discussion going.

  “She might not wear showy things, but is there anything more eccentric than to adhere faithfully to a fashion that existed ten or twenty years ago, to dress in the styles of 1930 in 1945, and of 1910 in 1930?” Aunt Theresa spoke quickly and then stopped. Of course her own attire was slightly anachronistic, but it wasn’t as if she consistently followed any one style. There was just a vague old-fashionedness about her. She might, for example, wear a yellowed lace collar on top of a smart, new dress.

  And when she happened to give a similar lace collar to Infanta, Infanta made the same mistake, but somehow on her it looked charming, as if out of an English painting.

  In the meantime Mr. Louzis had started to laugh.

  “She’s from Corfu, that’s why.”

  Amidst his guffaws he explained that in Corfu everybody’s a little eccentric.

  “My family’s also from the Ionian islands,” he said as he burst into laughter again. His white linen suit tightened as his belly heaved up and down. Some of his hair had come out of place and stood on end. It was silver, but his skin was young-looking, pale rose, without a wrinkle.

  The heat was unbearable.

  Mother looked at him with surprise. Of course it was fine to laugh, but this just wasn’t that funny.

  “And do you think Ruth dresses appropriately for her age?” Aunt Theresa continued. “Short skirts, ribbons in her hair . . . She even goes shopping in Kifissia in her shorts.”

  “She’s from England, that’s why,” explained Mr. Louzis, still laughing. Grandfather had to hold his stomach he was laughing so hard and Mother started too, even Aunt Theresa. I also began to laugh. We laughed and laughed . . .

  . . . Then all of a sudden we saw the fire. It appeared first on one of the peaks of Parnitha, to the right of Aghia Triada, and progressed like a snake along the ridge. It must have begun during the day but we hadn’t notice it then. The sky was red, you could see red flames and red smoke. I had heard that in such instances the forest animals run but can’t escape, the deer, the rabbits. Sometimes even the birds forget to fly.

  Mr. Louzis’s laughter solidified and remained on his lips like a seal. Aunt Theresa’s eyes shone with a strange voracity. If the mad woman had seen such a sight she would have died of sadness. Once she had almost killed Rodia for breaking the branch of a fig tree by mistake.

  Why the glint in Aunt Theresa’s eyes?

  “Artists must experience strong emotions,” she said suddenly. “Tomorrow I’ll start a painting of the fire.”

  All night Infanta couldn’t sleep. She stayed leaning out the window watching. For three days there had been no wind, not even a breeze, but now it would come. You could feel it like a hunch.

  The sound of it first reached us from the distant woods; like the sound of waves breaking on a deserted beach, it crossed the meadow and came to the nearby woods sounding now like the splashing of the sea as it licks the pebbles and then pulls away. When it reached us at last it ruffled the branches of the willow and Infanta’s hair.

  Infanta was near me at that moment. She couldn’t pull herself away. Her face was orange from the distant glow, her hair like the branches of the willow.

  “Infanta,” I said, “do you like the fire?”

  She leaned her elbows on the window sill and lowered her head, getting comfortable as if she were in bed.

  “Very much,” she answered.

  I expected that answer. I wanted to jump on her and beat her up. I was curled up in bed in the corner by the wall so that I wouldn’t see anything.

  “You were always like that!” I screamed. “Don’t you care about the animals in the forest that are trying to escape? And the mad woman whose heart would stop, who would just die to see so many trees burning—”

  “If anyone’s mad, it’s you,” interrupted Infanta, turning her head calmly the other way without taking her eyes off the fire.

  Well, that was too much. With one leap I came up behind her and I grabbed her by the shoulders. She didn’t move or raise her hand to hit me. But as I pushed her back to the window I caught a slight look of fear in her eyes. At the same time I saw the fire. With the wind it had spread. The red snake was advancing at a frightening pace. The flames licked the sky, taking the shape of dancing demons. My hands, resting motionless on her shoulders, dug deeper and deeper into her flesh. It must hurt her. It must hurt a lot.

  “I like the fire as well,” I said, letting her go.

  In return she made a little room for me at the window.

  •

  The fire lasted for three days and three nights. It almost made it to Bafi and burned people. Now the mountain looks like a wounded beast bearing its wounds to the sun. I’ll never forget the fear I saw in Infanta’s eyes the first night, nor her expression afterwards. One of these days my sister Infanta and I will get to know each other.

  •

  And to think that of the three of us she was the most fearless. Maria and I would shriek and kick our feet in the air if a bee came near, while Infanta would let it land right on her arm or her cheek. Sometimes we would dare each other to put our arms in the lavender up to the elbow after we heard lizards scuttling around in there. Only Infanta did. And one day when it turned out to be a snake instead of a lizard, Infanta took a stick and hit it on the head. Then she called us over—we had all fled—to show us how the tail was still moving even though it was dead. And if we happened to meet a herd of buffaloes in the meadow, she would go and dance in front of them, teasing them. On the other hand, she was afraid of the first day of school. And that fear never completely left her. When we returned from school in the afternoon, I remember, she would sigh with relief upon seeing the driveway. Anyhow she didn’t make friends easily. Only once in high school did she get close to someone. A new girl named Miranda had arrived. She was always ready to laugh. Every
one wanted to be her friend, but she chose Infanta. They would sit at the same desk and look at the same things. They read the same books. There were times when they would both be struck by the same beautiful thing. They would look on in silence together. And when they saw the first chamomile at the edge of the schoolyard, they wondered how winter could be over so quickly and have passed so happily.

  The next year Lina was the new girl in class and everything changed. Miranda switched places so she could be near Lina. She looked out her window now and avoided Infanta. The magic had disappeared. And for Infanta the fear of school and people started all over again. My God, how bitter she became . . .

  •

  It had been a long time since Nikitas had come over.

  He thought of Infanta at night before he went to sleep and in the morning just after he woke. He never dreamt of her, though, and all day he tried to forget her. When he thought of her, the pain was so sharp that he wished he could be indifferent. I don’t love her. And when he was indifferent, he insisted on rekindling the pain by imagining her in front of him. I love her. Neither statement was the whole truth.

  He would set off with Victoria early in the morning, making her gallop, totally consumed with getting there, as if seeing Infanta one minute earlier would make a difference, and then suddenly he would stop at the turn. He would say he was stopping so that he and his horse could catch their breath. But to tell the truth, it was because he was about to turn around and head back.

  The perfection of her face amazed him. Yes, the first time that he noticed her was at Marios’s. She was walking down the steps of the veranda wearing a white dress. Her hair was up. He remembered the white roses and how when he was a child he would go out into the garden after a rain and shake them.

  He lacked courage. He didn’t have experience like Stefanos and Emilios. If he wanted to dance with a girl he would wait until she put her hand on his shoulder. He would say to himself, “Next time I’ll put my arm around her waist, next time I’ll do it first.”

  With Infanta there was a moment when they both were standing still amidst the other dancing couples. They were even getting pushed around. They blushed. He didn’t put his arm around her waist. She didn’t put her hand on his shoulder. Their eyes, though, happened to meet and they both began to laugh. They started dancing. It was their own moment that no one else knew about.

  And when they lay next to each other in the woods, they talked like friends.

  •

  On that particular day he got it in his head to break off a twig of thyme and place it on her breast. They had just arrived in the woods. Their horses were grazing a little ways away.

  He tried to put it in the last buttonhole of her blouse. She leaned down, embarrassed, and helped him. When, a little later, she raised her head, she saw for the first time his eyes: dark, heavy, strange as if someone drunk were dancing there. I won’t look away, she said to herself, though she felt as if she were falling into a deep, dark abyss and that she was sure to get lost. She heard her heart beating, once, twice, three, four times, and then the moment had passed. She turned her head away and took a deep breath.

  “We rode a lot today,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too.”

  There was a faint sound of anger in his voice.

  “You know,” said Nikitas after a while, “the others say that we are in love . . . the gang that is, Emilios, Eleni . . . Petros is sure.”

  “Let them say whatever they like. I don’t care.”

  Her hair wasn’t combed. The wind was blowing. A whole strand kept falling in front of her nose over one eye. She would lift it with her hand and throw it back, her fingers revealing a growing impatience. You could almost imagine a moment in which she would grab it and pull it out of her head altogether.

  “Since we know we’re only friends, what does it matter?”

  Love for her was the sight of the rabbit giving birth, which she couldn’t bear. And one day she had seen two dogs . . . It was disgusting. And Maria with her belly out to there, getting larger each day—my God!

  “What are you thinking?” asked Nikitas slowly.

  “About my sister Maria.”

  Sometimes when she touched his hand or when her skirt tickled his leg in the wind he felt a tightening in his heart, in his stomach; he wasn’t sure exactly where, and he hated her. Then he would tell her something mean to hurt her. She would turn and look at him with her eyes slanted like when she had a headache, her lips a pale, straight line. Ah, she would never forgive him. She would pay him back. But for now she wouldn’t say a word. The more she restrained herself, the more angry he grew. He wanted to beat her. If only he dared. He would rush off and not be seen for days, even weeks. Infanta would wait. She knew he would come back.

  She would go out to meet him smiling. The bitterness that was left over from last time would be already almost gone.

  “Where have you been?” she would ask.

  In her voice and manner there would be a sweet submissiveness.

  Then crazy Katerina would come out of the house singing “Every woman’s life is a search for a master. Ah, the thirst for submission, the thirst for submission . . .” And then she would begin again, “Every woman’s life . . .”

  “Oh, Nikitas, you’re here?”

  She’d pretend to be surprised. Infanta would throw her a nasty look.

  “So, what happened? Did you forget about us?”

  Infanta threw her an even nastier look.

  Nikitas liked to watch the three girls walking in front of him hand in hand wearing their big straw hats.

  “Maria! Infanta! Katerina!”

  They’d all turn at once.

  Maria’s eyes were black, Infanta’s green, and Katerina’s brown. They would laugh. Still children. And Maria in the midst of them, her belly large and heavy, was somehow shocking.

  Mother would come out shouting, “Katerina, go upstairs and tidy your room.”

  “Later, Mother, later . . .”

  “Your clothes are all over the place. Go up immediately.”

  “I can’t now.”

  A door slammed. Mother was angry. Katerina would curl up in a corner, sad.

  •

  “Well, Nikitas,” she would say after a while.

  It was time for him to read them his most recent poem. Two minutes of silence passed. They moved toward the pavilion and chose their places. Nikitas sat by the table so he could spread out his papers. Another two minutes passed without anyone saying anything. All you could hear were the cicadas and the shuffling of paper as Nikitas tried to find the first page.

  He began.

  “Under the windows of the drowned men a peacock cries because its feet are ugly. And little Helen has left us.”

  A strange anxiousness is in the air. Nikitas’s voice changes when he reads poetry. The day has become cloudy. “What’s the title, Nikitas?”

  “The Shipwreck.”

  Infanta looks him in the eyes. A few days ago he offered her water in his hands.

  Aunt Theresa pops her head out of the window of her atelier.

  “I’m sending down your embroidery so you don’t sit around with idle hands.”

  Infanta takes it and arranges the colored yarns in a row on her knee. She pays attention to nothing else now.

  The peacocks, Infanta, Nikitas’s poem . . .

  “Look, here are the peacocks!” says Nikitas, pointing to her embroidery. He laughs and everyone joins in.

  IV. MOTHER’S SECRET

  BY ALL accounts last summer was a very different kind of summer. For a start there was the weather. Each day was like the next, the same heat and goldish tint, except for that one day with all the rain when Marios and Maria stayed shut up in the kitchen and then later came in holding hands and announced their engagement. And we were only expecting pudding. A shock, I remember, but a pleasant one. Infanta, her eyes moist and shining, did not stop laughing all evening. I even thought to myself that I must have be
en wrong to think that she was interested in Marios. Then it flashed through my mind that in novels and movies it is exactly such moments that sad people laugh the most. But then what followed and Infanta’s behavior made me quickly drop this idea as pure fancy.

  I have a tendency to make things up, to fabricate them and then later to think they’re true. When I was small I would describe dreams I hadn’t had, and when other people believed me I would end up convincing myself as well. I once told my school friends of a trip to Egypt, a place I had only seen in photographs. Another time I came home panting and told Grandfather and Mother how as I passed through the woods I saw two people cutting down trees and heard them say, “Choose the straight ones because they make good masts.” “I think one of them might have been Gekas,” I added, without thinking what I was saying. Grandfather dressed hurriedly to go to the police and I was obliged, after fifteen minutes of extreme agony and embarrassment, to explain that I had made it all up. As for why I chose Gekas, he had a habit of roaming about the woods, his eyes bulging, his head cleanly shaven. Who knows how long I had been secretly harboring a dislike for him.

  I then went through what they call a big moral crisis. I doubted myself. I, who tried to be worthy, had been proven worthless. I, who admired great deeds, had now done something so base. I would loiter outside of Gekas’s taverna just the way Raskolnikov did outside the old lady’s house, and when I happened to see him pull up three chairs to stretch out on, I made myself stare at his bulging eyes and his shaven head, just for punishment.