Three Summers Page 6

  Outside on the porch Mr. Louzis and Mother were waiting for us. They sat opposite each other. Between them there was a table spread with an apricot linen tablecloth. On the table was a glass bowl of cut strawberries, sugar, and sweet wine.

  Maria and I ate with gusto, but Infanta barely tasted them. Her eyes were still misty, and when she tried to speak she sounded choked-up. Suddenly she coughed two or three times as if clearing her throat and said very loudly, “I want that horse.”

  We turned to look at her. Her lips had gone white.

  “I want that horse,” she repeated. “The colt with the cinnamon-colored coat.”

  Mother found herself in a very difficult position. She made desperate signs in Infanta’s direction, raising her eyebrows, and lowering them. She didn’t know what to do. Infanta took no notice. She was staring far off into the distance as if at the horse’s sleek legs running, running . . .

  Then Mr. Louzis laughed. He turned and looked at Mother, who was blushing.

  “Since she wants him, she should have him.”

  This time his eyes rested on Mother even longer.

  “Now, now. It’s just a childish whim. Two days won’t have passed and she will have forgotten all about it.”

  “I want that horse,” Infanta said again.

  We were all horribly embarrassed. I bent down and ducked under the table to retrieve an apricot doily. Maria nudged Infanta with her elbow, whispering, “Have you gone mad?”

  Luckily Mr. Louzis never stopped chuckling.

  “I see that your daughters have character,” he said to my mother, and she blushed even more.

  In three days Infanta had her horse and we sent Mr. Louzis two plump newborn piglets in return.

  Infanta never lets us ride her horse. In the beginning we were surprised. We thought surely she was being unfair. But we soon got used to it. Every day she takes him for a ride wearing her cinnamon-colored trousers and shirt, which blend in with the color of the horse, their single silhouette rapidly disappearing from view.

  At first it wasn’t that way. Romeo had a difficult temper. He didn’t want to be ridden, and when anyone mounted him he saw to it that he was in control. But Infanta was also stubborn and didn’t give in easily. When he misbehaved she pulled on his reins until he foamed at the mouth. Her own lips formed a thin, white line. She dug her spurs into his flesh. They struggled. Two or three times he threw her. Once on the way up the mountain he broke into a wild gallop. She straightened up, pressed her knees tightly against his sides, and drew in the reins so that her hands were touching the bit. Then she bent so far forward that she was lying against his back.

  It was one of those days when the mountains are close enough to touch and even the most difficult task seems manageable. The day before it had rained, so the woods gave off the bitter scent of damp undergrowth and pine trees, the animals had taken cover, the ant trails had disappeared, and a silence full of significance had settled. The horse, the only moving thing in the midst of all that motionless nature, was running, running . . . Infanta tightened the reins. Since she too felt a part of the stillness, she couldn’t bear all that life beneath her. Angry tears filled her eyes, tears that stuck and stung. Digging in her spurs only quickened the horse’s pace. The slope was steep, the earth soft and red—still damp—and the horse’s hooves sunk into the earth, just enough to secure his footing. Nothing was in his way. The sun had disappeared. His coat no longer glistened; it had become a dull gray green brown like everything else around him. Infanta stood out in her cinnamon-colored clothes. From a distance she seemed to be gliding through the air, hanging from some invisible point that kept moving farther and farther away. She was breathless; she couldn’t get rid of the agonizing stillness—her whole body was numb.

  Suddenly she raised her head, kicked Romeo hard with her spurs, and cried out, “Bravo, Romeo, faster, Romeo!”

  The trees, the bushes and everything whizzed past.

  “Faster, Romeo, faster!”

  The wind rushed into her lungs, straightening her body. She crouched down again, feeling free, her body nimble.

  “Run, Romeo, run.”

  The trees all blended together, the speed filling in the spaces between them making them seem like one endless tree. Opening her lips, at last she let herself breathe.

  When she came home that night we saw a whole new world reflected in her eyes.

  •

  Romeo and that long story have nothing to do with Father or with the Sundays we spent with him. They are connected to Mr. Louzis. Sometimes when I think about Father and see his face before me I also see Mr. Louzis’s face. It appears in an insidious way, positioning itself next to Father’s, uninvited. Does Mother really find Mr. Louzis’s jokes funny?

  Yesterday when we went to see Father, he seemed odd. As if he had something on his mind that he wanted to tell us but he couldn’t. He started . . . then stopped.

  “Did you say something, Father?”

  “Something, but now I’ve forgotten . . .”

  And then after a bit, “My how you’ve grown. You, Maria, are almost twenty, and you, Infanta, eighteen. And my little one, Katerina, already sixteen. How beautiful you have all become.”

  We looked at each other in surprise. Father never talked to us this way, with such tenderness. Not that he was cold. To the contrary: his eyes had the sweetness and calm of animals lying in sunny pastures. It’s just he couldn’t express it.

  “You know . . . I . . .”

  “What, Father?”

  “Oh, nothing. Was I saying something?”

  Soon Grandmother came in to announce teatime.

  “And I’ve fixed you a treat,” she said.

  She always prepared something, but every time she announced it as if it were an exception.

  In the dining room Uncle Agisilaos kissed us and told a joke, and then left whistling a tune.

  “All afternoon he was waiting for tea and now that it’s ready he gets up and leaves,” muttered Grandmother. “My children will never grow up.”

  For a moment while Father went in to get his handkerchief she turned to look at each of us in turn and said in an official voice, “Whatever your Father does you must love him.”

  “Of course we will. Whatever he does, we will love him. But what is all this about?”

  When we arrived in Kifissia and took the road down to our house, I saw a shaft of light, the last of the day, falling on the oleanders, making them even more beautiful than usual. And I thought to myself how different our road was from Father’s, how separate his life was from ours. And this made me sad.

  “How’s Miltos doing?” Mother asked when we arrived home. She always asked about Father.

  “Fine,” said Infanta.

  “He’s making a fantastic radio,” I said.

  “I think he’s gotten involved with a woman,” Maria said.

  Mother grew pale, just a bit.

  “How can you talk that way, Maria? Have you no respect?”

  And then a little later, “Why do you think that?”

  “Oh . . . some half-formed thoughts of Grandmother, some attempts by Father to tell us something . . . Who knows, we may even have a marriage on our hands!”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” I screamed, glaring at her.

  I hated Maria at such moments, I really hated her. I wanted to leap on her and pull her hair out strand by strand.

  All evening I was a wreck. I wanted to cry. Anything would have set me off—a voice that was too loud, a touch . . . But later in bed, lying there thinking, I began to wish Father would marry and become a little happier. Perhaps the prayer Rodia had taught me made me change my mind, or maybe it was just because I was half-asleep. I was always a better person just before I fell asleep.

  •

  After that Sunday Mother seemed preoccupied. Often in the evenings seated at the piano she let her hands fall to the side. Her mouth would take on a bittersweet expression, and her eyes would stare of
f as if remembering something.

  We would wait for her to play.

  She plays the piano without passion, using the same restrained tone all through a piece. Something is missing from her playing, something that is connected to Aunt Theresa’s painting and the distant and close-up clouds.

  At that hour Grandfather would be reading about trees and flowers or organizing his seeds in little boxes. His head would nod to the rhythm for a bit and then come to rest in the position it was accustomed to, bent a bit to the right. He was afraid of music. For him, it was magical. The Polish grandmother had worn a black velvet dress the evening of the concert, and a white camellia in her hair. Her eyes, usually closed when she listened to music, had opened, by chance catching his. He had felt her hands tremble, her desire. He had guessed what lay behind the quick rise and fall of her breast, the rhythm of her breath. He was losing her. “Bravo, bravo, bravo!” he heard her cry as the musician bowed to the audience. Later . . . But let’s see, these tomato seeds are better than last year’s, the tomatoes will be plumper. And about grafting the fig trees, I must tell Georgos to be careful, or perhaps I should do it myself . . .

  In the meantime Aunt Theresa shifts around uneasily. She sits in one armchair then gets up and moves to another. She can’t get comfortable. Dusk makes her anxious, because at night she keeps dreaming about the fiancé with the thick lips, though she never thinks about him during the day. A chill runs through her body. She wakes up dripping with sweat. And in the morning a dizziness, an exhaustion like a woman who has spent the night . . . But only momentarily. Just until she gets out of bed and opens the window.

  Memories . . . memories. The air is heavy with them. I can’t stand it anymore. I no longer fit in that big room with the piano, the little boxes of seeds, the peacock embroidery. I run outside and lie down on the grass. I look up at the moon between the two eucalyptuses; it touches the ledge of the cistern, and I can see the silhouette of a frog in its circle of light. But the frog is not on the moon. Like me, it is on the ground looking up.

  IV. A WALK

  THE LAVENDER bloomed. It happened suddenly, one morning. The evening before we had stroked the buds, which were still green and hard. We had begged them to open that night, and the next day from the window we saw six bushy rows of purple playing with the sun and hundreds of white newborn butterflies fluttering around, chasing each other, making love, only to die the same night.

  Maria began to cry. She went and embraced the stems, burying herself in their aroma, letting her tears flow freely. “I’m going for a walk,” she said after a bit; Mother asked her to pass by Kritikos’s to see what had happened in the end regarding the mating of Felaha, our goat. Kritikos had a billy goat and he was supposed to lend him to us for a few days. He was asking I-don’t-know-how-much wheat in exchange.

  “Tell him that he’s asking much too much,” Mother said. “It’s not as if we’re going to eat the billy goat. Offer him half.”

  “Why don’t we use Mother Kapatos’s billy goat?” I asked.

  “Because Kritikos’s is stronger and the kids will turn out better,” said Mother.

  So Maria got ready to go. She wore a sleeveless white dress that was open at the neck, and atop her black hair, the big straw hat with the cherries.

  “Why are you looking at me like an idiot?” she said when she reached the gate.

  “You’re different today, Maria. You have a strange glow about you. Not exactly you, not your eyes, but your skin, your cheeks, your arms, your legs, everything.”

  “You, my child, have a wild imagination,” she said as she closed the gate behind her.

  Outside the thyme was in full bloom and the sun was burning hot. Felaha, tied under a pine tree was chewing away. It would be the first time she’d gone with a billy goat, the first time she’d borne a kid. “If you only knew what was in store for you,” whispered Maria as she passed by. “If you only knew . . .”

  She began walking rhythmically. Her waist bent with each step, and she felt her body below her waist bending as well, and the motion pleased her. It made walking easier, as if she were flying, and each time she touched the ground she felt as if the earth was a thick substance that grabbed and then released her.

  The cicadas sang on and on. Every once in a while a bee passed in front of her. It made a few circles around her head and then flew off for more thyme. The birds had quieted down and everything—the pine trees, the earth, the animals—was a wave of heat. The vapor rising from the trees dimmed the sun.

  Just fancy asking for so much wheat . . . Unconsciously she quickened her step, as if she were trying to use up a secret store of energy. She could feel herself sweating a little under her arms, at her neck, between her thighs. But she wasn’t scared of the heat. She welcomed it. Under her skin it was as if the cells were dancing. And further in, the blood.

  She took the road that went down to Helidonou. It was a strange road because it was really five, each one parallel to the next and separated by a row of olive trees. Looking down you saw six rows of olive trees divided by spaces of earth. A whole crowd of people or a line of carts could pass by here. As Maria went down the slope she switched from one road to the next. She would be on the left side looking over at the rows of olive trees to the right and then without trying she would find herself on the right side looking at the olive trees to the left. This zigzagging took longer. But she wasn’t in a hurry.

  The houses were closer together again here. About forty all in a clump, crowded together out of loneliness, like people. The gardens were beautiful this year. The heavy rains that winter had done them good. They were full of green and the trunks of the trees were shiny. Tiny tomatoes were beginning to appear. You could already see the yellow stamen on the male pistachio trees, and the female ones waiting. The males would go to the females. All the females could do was ready their juices, receive the male, and bear fruit. They waited, in the burning heat, sensitive to any gust of wind that might bring them the seed.

  Come to think of it, not one of them was a man. Not Nikos, not Stefanos. And Marios was such a weakling . . . Of course she had never kissed him, not now that he was older, and his eyes did look as if they wanted something. Perhaps his body too . . .

  Stefanos, a few days ago, had unbuttoned her blouse, a green blouse the color of pine needles. They were lying in the forest. It all seemed very natural. She didn’t move. She watched each of his movements calmly, coolly. Later she closed her eyes and said to herself, Now I am closing my eyes. She heard the sigh that came from her chest and met up with his nervous fingers.

  Last year in the forest Nikos had unbuttoned another blouse, a yellow one the color of fresh hay. They were lying in the forest. It all seemed very natural. She closed her eyes, sighed, and the same sadness filled her. Something was missing. And the faces of the boys, bent over, searching, full of anxiety. There was really something very comic about them. She laughed. Both Nikos and Stefanos had gotten mad. “Are you crazy?” they had asked. She got up, one hand mechanically buttoning up the green, the yellow blouse. “If you could have seen your face in a mirror!” she sang out. “Oh my . . .”

  Those evenings on her way home she would stop at the church of the Panaghia, the Virgin Mary. She would lean her bicycle up against a cypress, sit down on the cement pavement in front, and light a cigarette. She would wonder if what she had done was a sin. It hadn’t hurt anyone. But why did she feel so sad afterwards? Perhaps the sense of incompletion, the desire for a truly generous offer, the way the pistachio trees receive the seed, keeping it inside them until they bear fruit.

  By the time Maria had arrived at Kritikos’s the sun was high in the sky. The sheep had returned from the pasture. They were all gathered under the pine trees motionless, with their heads down, some standing, some lying, packed tightly together. The breeze caressed their wool, making it flutter, but they didn’t even notice. This is what inexistence is, total inexistence. Among them there were a few goats with their brown horns and their sl
anted eyes; they looked like devils amidst angels.

  The house, surrounded by a low stone wall, was near the animals. Maria pushed open the wooden gate. The scent of dung and milk, thyme and billy goat met her. It rose and mixed in with the heat until it became something you could actually touch.

  In a corner by the wall a young man, naked to the waist, was washing. With one hand he poured water from a watering can and with the other he scrubbed his body vigorously, as if he wanted it to hurt. He wasn’t using soap. The water dripped from his hair, leaving a few beads on his shoulders that glistened in the sun and ran down to his trousers, getting them slightly damp. His belt was undone, and hung on either side. The beginning of his waist showed, slightly paler than the rest of his body. His hips were limber like those of a hunted animal. He had strong hands and a gentle body, white in those places the sun never reaches, like a baby’s.

  “Excuse me . . .”

  She stood at the doorway, undecided.

  He turned his head toward her. For a second he didn’t talk, he remained there looking at her, from head to foot, as if she were an animal he was about to buy and was guessing its value.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “Kritikos, I wanted to ask him about Felaha, about the billy goat, that is . . . if he’d take half . . .”

  “Father is at Gekas’s at this time of day, having a drink. But you can tell me. It’s the same thing. You’re Mr. Dimitris’s granddaughter, aren’t you, from the house in the meadow?”

  “Yes, from the house in the meadow. Kritikos was going to give us the billy goat for a few days and Mother said—”