Three Summers Read online

  And turning her head Maria would see the pines and the house and in front of her the laundry hanging. Here there was no “who knows what lies around the next bend” like the song, here you knew exactly what was coming.

  What a lot of pain there is in giving birth, my God, what a lot of pain. She sweats when she thinks of it and her heart beats faster. She kept repeating to herself during the contractions, “Don’t scream, Maria, be brave, tomorrow it will all be over.” She clenched her teeth and didn’t scream. And the next day it was over, true enough. The child had been born, and she herself was lying peacefully in her bed. The memory of the pain, though, did not go away. That’s why she would sweat and her heart would beat faster whenever she thought of that night. And she knew there were other nights like that to come.

  She wouldn’t stop singing. The baby was asleep inside. Spyridoula would listen, transfixed, from the kitchen. Marios was not home. He left every morning at seven to pick up his father and then they’d both go to Athens. Maria and he just had time to have breakfast together and exchange a few words. Besides, Marios wasn’t very talkative in the morning. He seemed distracted and in a hurry to leave. He even scolded Spyridoula if the milk wasn’t ready on time.

  He would give Maria a quick kiss, just brushing her lips, and then set off at a brisk pace without looking back.

  Marios would come home in the evening. That’s when he’d want to talk. He’d describe everything that happened during the day. And when it was something particularly pleasant he would leap up from his chair and rush over to kiss her, warmly, not like in the morning. She would laugh.

  “And you, what did you do?” he would ask.

  What had she done? What could she say? She hadn’t done anything in particular the way Marios had.

  “Well, the baby . . .”

  “You should go for walks,” Marios would say then. “Why don’t you go with Katerina, who likes walks.”

  “But Katerina is in love. She will only want to go on walks with him or alone . . .”

  She’d laugh again.

  “Do you know I haven’t been to Athens for over a year?”

  “A year?”

  He looked at her with surprise. He looked her in the eyes.

  “A year?” he repeated.

  He went every day.

  And so they decided to go to Athens, to the theater.

  They left hand in hand. Though she began to regret it as soon as they were out the gate and walking across the meadow. And throughout the performance all she could think of was that little koukouki whose tiny hands could grab with such strength, making such beautiful fists.

  Often in the afternoon Mrs. Parigori would come for a visit, either alone or with Mrs. Montelandi. They would drink something refreshing and talk until evening. All about Athens—mostly gossip.

  There were times when Maria couldn’t stand it any longer. She would light a cigarette and go out in the garden. She didn’t know why, but she would often feel as if she were a girl of fifteen waiting to go for her first walk with a boy; in her mind she was wearing a dress with a floral print and looking expectantly at the gate. And who should be there? Why, Marios.

  “Oh, Marios,” she would say, and run toward him.

  What happiness, my God!

  “I missed you so all day long,” she would say. “This very moment I was thinking of you . . .”

  She would stop.

  “So tell me, what did you do today in Athens?”

  She would take him by the arm and they’d go into the house. Her dress didn’t have a floral print; it was a solid color, but a warm, soft one.

  “That dress really suits you, Maria!” Marios would say.

  “Do you think so?”

  He looked at her again and took her in his arms.

  “Yes, yes, it really does.”

  “You don’t think a floral print would suit me better?”

  “Nope, I don’t. Do I hear Mother’s voice?”

  “Yes, she’s here. So is your grandmother.”

  Marios would then take part in the conversation. It was pretty tedious. Maria would grow silent listening to him talk. But soon she would be adding her two bits as well, discussing A who got married and B who got divorced and whether A and B had done the right thing or not. Time passed and soon it was evening.

  “What are you doing tonight, Mother?” Mrs. Parigori would say to Mrs. Montelandi a few moments before leaving.

  “I’m going over to so-and-so’s.”

  Not an evening would pass without her doing something.

  “Me? But, don’t you know? I seldom go out. Yannis will already be waiting for me at home. We’ll eat and then I’ll go to bed and read a little.”

  She would sigh, say good night to everyone, and then both of them, Mrs. Parigori and Mrs. Montelandi, would descend the stairs of the veranda and vanish into the darkness at the end of the garden.

  Although recently Laura Parigori’s eyes shone more than usual.

  •

  I must have noticed it, the way I noticed that she had a new drawl when she spoke, because these things came to mind when I saw her walking in the meadow on David’s arm.

  Somehow I managed not to scream. Instead I fell to the ground like soldiers do when they see the enemy.

  They passed by only twenty feet away. It was dusk, almost dark. They had their heads bent together and were talking. At first I couldn’t make out what they were saying. But then I heard, “So you’ll be leaving in the fall?”

  I held my breath.

  “Nothing’s certain yet.”

  “Ruth told me.”

  “Yes, we got a letter from my father asking me to go. He might change his mind tomorrow and write again. Even if I go, I won’t stay long.”

  “So what is it that keeps you here, David?”

  At this point Mrs. Parigori must have turned toward him and smiled provocatively. I guessed this from the tone of her voice, not that I could see her. I couldn’t breathe at all now. What would David answer? “You?” or “Katerina?” The die was being cast.

  “The climate,” answered David in his usual, slightly ironic way.

  They had already passed. I couldn’t hear anymore. I stayed there on the ground, wiggling around like a worm, wondering why I wasn’t crying. I tried. I really tried, but no tears came. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I wasn’t thinking about anything, just gnawing on a piece of hay, already yellow and brittle. The summer was almost over.

  What was going on between them?

  I’ve never had such a horrible night. I couldn’t sleep, and the mere idea that another day would soon dawn drove me crazy. I heard the clock toll each hour. He was certainly sleeping soundly. As for her . . . perhaps she was awake like me. Mrs. Parigori, why did you go fall in love with David? Can’t you see that he has witch’s eyes and an annoying voice.

  That was the night when my love for David reached its peak. It couldn’t reach any higher. I was suffering, and this pleased me. There was no getting over this kind of love.

  So I began observing Mrs. Parigori, how she ate, how she talked, how she walked, how she lifted her skirt when she got out of the carriage as if it were long, the way she fixed her hair when the wind mussed it up.

  One evening I decided to walk by the Parigoris’ house. I had a plan. I found Leda in the garden. She was trying to make a swing.

  “I love to stay at home when everyone else is gone,” she said. “I can do whatever I like. What? You don’t believe me? Come on, let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll break a plate for you, or two, or three. Who’s going to stop me? Yesterday I broke four.”

  “That’s why you like to stay alone? So you can break plates?”

  “No, you don’t understand . . .”

  She had a faraway look in her eyes.

  “It’s just that I wanted to test myself, to see whether I am strong enough to break them.” She laughed.

  “They smashed into smithereens. And what a noise they made!”
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br />   While she spoke she puckered up her lips, wiggled her eyebrows, flared her nostrils. Then she took a little walk, more like a dance, and went back to the swing. One rope was already tied to the high branch of a pine tree. Now she just had to tie the other.

  “If you want to help me with this,” she said, “that’s fine. But I don’t have time to sit around and keep you company. The swing must be finished today.”

  She took the second rope and began to climb up the tree. I followed her.

  “Grab that branch—no, not that one, the other. Like that . . .”

  The task accomplished, we climbed down.

  “Do you want to try it first?” Leda shouted.

  Before I could answer yes or no she had already climbed on and was swinging, standing up.

  “Give me a push,” she said.

  She went higher and higher.

  “I’m going to reach the very top.”

  She pointed to the tree across the way. With each swing she got to a higher branch, and back, and forth, higher still, and back and forth. She was drunk. She shouted and laughed.

  When she reached the top, she let the swing slow down. From the standing position she found herself sitting. She dragged her feet on the ground, coming to a sudden stop.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  When I was a child I hated swings. They made me dizzy and gave me headaches. “Higher, higher, higher,” everything would swirl around me and on the way home I would stumble.

  “I don’t like swings,” I found the courage to say.

  But then I regretted having said it. Not just because of the disappointment I saw written all over Leda’s face, but also because in order to say something like that I must have changed and this change puzzled me.

  “Well, I like them a lot,” I heard her say a moment later.

  All serious, she sat down on the bench.

  “And do you know why? It helps me think about my idea.”

  I looked at her.

  “Yes, I have this idea. And when I swing and go high . . .”

  Perhaps we would become friends, Leda and I. I moved closer to her on the bench.

  “And what is this idea of yours?” I asked, pretending to look elsewhere.

  “I still don’t know exactly,” she answered, without looking at me. “It’s just that I want to do something with my life . . .”

  She was fourteen years old.

  “What?” I insisted.

  “That’s what I’m not sure of yet,” she said.

  Silence.

  “You also want to do something with your life, right?”

  I could hear my heart beating.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you don’t like to swing? Funny . . .”

  “I like walking in the meadow,” I said.

  “Ah ha! . . .”

  We were already friends.

  She dropped a hint about Petros and we laughed. We talked a little about the others as well; about Emilios, Stephanos, Eleni . . . It was time to go ahead with my plan. I mentioned David’s name as if by chance.

  “Sure, sometimes he accompanies Mother home,” said Leda. “Recently she seems obsessed with Ruth. I don’t know why.”

  •

  When two women love the same man they fight over him to see who wins. I guess I will have to fight with Mrs. Parigori. I will have to start going to Ruth’s just like she does. And then we’ll see whom David accompanied home.

  Ruth had a famous stamp collection as well as a catalog with a picture of each stamp, its history, and value. I would take a small collection of Infanta’s and pretend to do research in Ruth’s catalog. I liked this idea.

  Ruth was very pleased to see me: “I’m so desperate for company,” she said. “I want to talk to someone, to talk, discuss. I’m very lonely here . . . till Laura comes . . .”

  “Oh, does Mrs. Parigori come often?” I asked.

  “Almost every afternoon, especially recently.”

  I told her about the stamps and how I wanted to look at her catalog. She got all excited and started clapping her hands.

  “What a great idea!” she exclaimed. “What a great idea! I’ll also start collecting again.”

  She got up and walked around opening drawers, closets, full of enthusiasm for the new project.

  “Let’s go to the dining room and spread everything out on the big table there.”

  I didn’t dare say that the dining room had no windows and that it would be suffocating to sit in there with the lights on when the sun was shining brightly outside.

  “We’ll turn on all the lights,” she said happily.

  All lit up like that, the dining room looked as if it were ready for guests, as if it were night. I sat with Ruth under the lights amidst the papers and books. We had a magnifying glass that we looked through every once in a while.

  “What have we here? Two old wise men sacrificing their lives for the sake of knowledge,” said David, chuckling as he came down the stairs.

  He didn’t offer to walk me home. It was midday, so maybe that’s why. But still, it was as though we had never gone for a walk together, never looked at the reeds. “Oh, I’ll pay you back, David,” I murmured.

  But in the meantime I would go to Ruth’s and look at stamps with her. It was very boring. I hated it. As Ruth talked I’d get distracted and walk around touching the furniture. I would feel the wall, looking for a window. And when I thought about how there were no windows, I’d see in my mind those lit up red letters spelling “Emergency Exit,” which instead of a door conceal a solid wall.

  All this had an effect on my love. I spoke to David coldly as if he were my enemy. He was the one preventing me from the morning sun. I would never forgive him. “Please come tomorrow, please come tomorrow,” Ruth would say. And I would go in order to see David. I would throw him nasty looks, though, and he, in order to get back at me, acted reserved, almost formal.

  At home I was also difficult. I fought with my sisters over the smallest thing, and also with Mother. I was rude to Aunt Theresa—I had a history of hurting her anyway—I tormented Rodia. No one dared talk to me. “Just look at the evil in her eyes,” Rodia would say. “Look at that stubbornness.” One day when I was bickering with Infanta—I don’t know how I let myself do it—I pinched her arm. I was sorry immediately, very sorry. I asked her to forgive me and she did.

  All of this was of course David’s fault, the approaching autumn, my voluntary imprisonment in that sunless dining room morning after morning.

  I don’t know why, but one day Ruth showed me a photograph of her father. He looked exactly like David. Except that his nose was crooked, whereas David’s was Greek. Fortunately.

  “Their voices are also very similar,” said Ruth, “and the way they move, particularly the way they move their hands. Ah, and when Father spoke of the history of our people, only to hear his voice and see his hands made you cry.”

  Ruth was serious now.

  “He was a Zionist,” she said dreamily.

  I looked at her.

  “That is, he believed that the Jews should all go to Palestine to found their nation and live there. To cultivate its soil and build it up from nothing stone by stone . . .”

  Silence.

  “And he wanted to go himself to dig in Palestine with the young people, even though he was sixty then. He left the store he ran in England . . . But then he died.”

  Life is strange.

  “I’m a Zionist too,” said Ruth.

  The stamp catalog was still open in front of us.

  “Except that I’m not made for digging and such . . . I miss Stavros a lot,” she said. “Stavros is David’s father—I often dream of him.”

  I’m not sure why, but after that I wanted to give Ruth a small present. I thought she would like a little animal to place on her bureau next to the others. But since we had some darling new ducklings, I took one of them instead in a basket. She was as pleased as a child.

  “I never realized how m
uch more beautiful real animals are than glass and porcelain ones,” she said.

  She called him Donald like in the comics and built him a little pond. Donald gave David’s house new life.

  VI. IN THE OBSERVATORY

  THE CLOUDS wander across the meadow. Sometimes across the mountains. They make patches of shade as they pass, while everything else stays golden, as long as the sun is out. And when it disappears, all the color goes out of the earth.

  Then I think of the birds who travel to warmer climates. And I am envious. For them the whole world is their home. They fly across the ocean, the little ones resting on the backs of the bigger ones.

  It’s strange to be a Zionist, but I guess it happens sometimes. Perhaps it’s just as strange to be Mrs. Parigori and thinking about David. Especially when you have my sister Maria as your daughter-in-law and a grandson who is named Yannis after your husband.

  Everything is strange and new, and the weather changes every day. Yesterday it was raining. Today the sun has the color and sweetness of honey, and there’s a donkey braying sadly in the distance. Is there such a thing as a happy donkey? Now there’s a challenge, something to do with your life. Take a donkey and make him happy. I should run and tell Leda. You’d have to comb him every morning, give him as much as he liked to eat, take him for walks whenever he wanted without loading him up. And maybe then he’d sound happier.

  Father is waiting for the blond lady to get a divorce because—what a coincidence—it will be her second marriage, too. Although, according to Aunt Theresa, many things could happen before then.

  Maybe I’ll go over to Leda’s this afternoon and tell her my idea about the donkey. Then I’ll hang around on the way back just in case David and Mrs. Parigori pass by. I’ll see if I can hear something and find out what is going on. I am sure that when I met Mrs. Parigori at Ruth’s she looked at me differently. She kept stealing glances at me whenever I turned my head away. She must suspect something; maybe she found out that David and I had been spending time together, who knows? I kept looking at her as well, though only once straight in the eyes and then only to say, “You look just fine, Mrs. Parigori. You’ve gained weight, but you still look wonderful.” She was terribly worried about gaining weight. And David was between us talking first to one then to the other with his shrill voice and his laugh. He would clasp his hands and then spread them out so they filled up the whole table—two times I caught her looking at his hands.