Three Summers Page 8

  The kitchen is in the back part of the house; it is lit by the fire from the oven. The flames play with Maria’s face, making it change expression, though inside her nothing has changed. A shadow across her eyes makes her seem sad, another enlarges her mouth as if she were laughing, then many flicker together playing on her skin, her forehead, her cheeks. And even though the flames and their shadows are all the same, each one makes Maria look different, making her seem to feel things she doesn’t feel, see things she doesn’t see and will never see, and all this creating an illusion that is only skin-deep. Her hair seems red, at times golden, and when she moves away from the fire it gets darker.

  Marios wants to hold that highlight in his hand, but reflections can’t be held. A sadness overcomes him. How is it possible for someone to read about anatomy all afternoon, to put everything that he learns in perfect order, and then suddenly for him to get it into his head that he wants to hold a reflection? He sits outside the kitchen; his forehead gets wet without him noticing. Maria is moving back and forth. She takes two eggs from the third shelf, she breaks them in a deep plate, and begins to beat them. Her feet in her summer sandals are firm on the ground. Up to her middle she is motionless, though her right hand and shoulder are moving. Her breast becomes a wave. Marios would love to get lost in that wave. His throat is dry. If he raised his head a bit he could quench his thirst with rainwater.

  •

  Maria doesn’t know he’s looking at her. She tosses the beaten eggs into the milk in a saucepan on the stove. She takes a spoon and begins to stir. Her eyes fix on the flames. She forgets herself. She leaves the spoon in the pan and, putting her hands on her waist, she arches her back. It’s times like this she would like to be in Kritikos’s cottage. One afternoon she had started to go. It was after a long midday nap of strange dreams. As soon as she awoke, hot from sleep, she dove into the cistern to cool off. But the cold water didn’t make the dreams disappear. She ran to her room, quickly slipped on a dress, and went out.

  She stood in the middle of Elia Avenue. If she went to him, if she went inside his house once more she would never be able to leave again. And she knew she didn’t want to stay forever. She sat on the root of an old olive tree and cried a bit. Her body was full of longing.

  Marios could see that her body was full of longing. Perhaps . . .

  “Maria!”

  She turns abruptly, frightened. For a second she seemed to hate him.

  “How did you get in here? Why did you come in here? Are you spying on me?”

  “I was admiring you, Maria.”

  His voice is soft, timid, because he wasn’t able to catch the reflection. Maria knows this and despises him for it.

  “You’re wet again. Come on in and dry off.”

  Marios climbs up the last step and sits in the chair by the door. At that moment a change comes over him. He finds a new strength. He can concentrate completely on what he wants to say.

  “I’d prefer if our children were more like you,” he said. “You’re healthier, more beautiful.”

  His voice is calm, a calm that frightens Maria. She starts to laugh but her laughter gets caught in her throat. She starts to walk toward him but her feet won’t move. They seem nailed to the floor.

  Marios slowly draws his box of cigarettes out of his pocket and takes one . . .

  “I forgot my lighter at the lab,” he says. “Do you think you could give me a piece of coal?”

  Mechanically she takes the tongs and chooses a piece of coal. She takes it to him. For the first time she feels that she, the stronger one, must obey him, because she will carry his children. This thought passes like lightning through her brain as she extends her hand to give him the red hot coal. There is still one last chance, to throw the tongs out the open door of the kitchen, to watch the red hot coal dance into the night and fall to the ground. Just one toss. If I take this last step, if I give him the coal, I will become his wife. But if I throw it . . . Her hand shakes. The step is completed, her hand approaches Marios, who, upright, bends over to light his cigarette.

  “You know I’m not a virgin,” she says, then, as if to get back at him.

  Marios grows pale, very pale indeed. He doesn’t know what to say, perhaps he is ashamed that Maria is not a virgin.

  “I love you, Maria,” he says after a bit.

  Then she rests her hand on his shoulder and looks him in the eyes. She has the air of someone who has made up her mind.

  •

  One morning at dawn Nikitas arrived on his gray horse. We saw him from the terrace before he reached us. He had stopped the horse at the top of the hill. After a moment he gave her a kick and took the incline at a gallop.

  We had just woken up and were stretching our arms and legs in the sun, dancing around. Although Maria and Infanta may have been very serious during the day, they still danced around in the morning. We wore soft rose-colored nightgowns, the same color as the dawn.

  “He’s come to go racing with me,” said Infanta.

  “How do you know?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “He may be on his way to Mr. Louzis’s.”

  “No, he’s coming here.”

  We didn’t have time to say anything else because Nikitas had stopped in front of the wooden gate and was waiting for Georgos, the gardener, to let him in.

  From up high we could only see his blond head and the smooth rump of his horse. The mare was named Victoria, but Nikitas called her Vicky. She was a beautiful specimen, with a shiny coat, bright white in some places and darker, almost gray in others, and the gray bright in some places and darker, almost black, in others. That horse made me realize how similar white and black really were.

  We had known Nikitas for years. He lived in another part of Kifissia, in Kefalari, and was a friend of Marios’s, Stefanos’s and Emilios’s. We had gone to his house and he had come to ours on rainy autumn afternoons when everyone—Stefanos, Eleni, Margarita, Emilios—gathered around the phonograph playing records and dancing. But he had never come over by himself, especially not at this hour.

  Infanta’s eyes were bright; the thrill of the race shone in them. And although they were always dry, as if she couldn’t cry, for one moment a moist veil covered them. They were green like the depths of a grassy lake, and every once in a while little flecks of brown appeared turning green and then vanishing.

  She lifted her shoulder-length hair with both hands and let it drop absentmindedly.

  “I’m going to get ready.”

  When we came downstairs, Maria and I in our summer dresses and Infanta in her cinnamon-colored trousers and shirt, we saw Nikitas on the veranda and Aunt Theresa asking him, rather coldly, how it occurred to him to race with Infanta.

  “The girls suggested it that night at Marios’s, and . . .”

  “Yes, we did,” I said upon arriving. “Good morning, Nikitas. How are you?”

  Nikitas wore a blue shirt, the color of his eyes. His forehead was wide and round, and his blond hair was short. When the wind blew it stood on end like porcupine needles. He wasn’t handsome, but he had beautiful hands.

  “Good morning, Infanta. How are you?”

  But after that we couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’ll go get Romeo ready,” Infanta said at last.

  We watched them leave, at first slowly, without talking.

  •

  At this time we were all consumed with Maria’s wedding. Grandfather was a new man and called in builders to build another house on the property. He oversees everything himself, the stonework, the measurements. The day we set the first stone we killed a cock. Its blood splattered the foundations. They say this brings good luck.

  In the meantime Mother is getting the dowry ready. Aunt Theresa and a seamstress from Athens help her. Maria goes on long walks by herself, and then when she comes back she tries on a blue nightgown or a white petticoat in front of the mirror and explains with great precision what she does and does not like: “This pl
eat a little to the right, this tuck less obvious, and the belt, tighter, like this.” She turns from left to right, and even gets another mirror so she can see how it looks from behind. She smooths her hands over her body, as if she were caressing it, making sure the line is to her liking. She doesn’t hide the fact that she is admiring herself. If she were alone, she might even throw off the last piece of clothing and dance naked in front of the mirror, totally satisfied by this image of beauty that is her own. Having no other desire for the moment she would feel a perfect separation from all other living things. She would be the only thing left in the world.

  “Don’t you think the yellow suits me better, Mother?”

  Maria’s voice is full like her body.

  “Yes, yellow goes with your dark hair.”

  “Dark women are always more attractive,” the seamstress throws in. She herself is as dark as a gypsy.

  All that can be heard is the sound of scissors. The room is full of white, red, and blue snippets, and others with flower patterns. I hang around in the midst of all this not knowing what to do, picking up a snippet and then dropping it. I lie down and listen to the seamstress tell her stories. The poor dear had three loves in her life, all failures. Oh, to be able to give shape to such experiences, to make them live after their death . . . I get all excited when I hear people talk about their lives, about things that have happened to them, even the simplest events. I feel that in the telling they have greater significance than they had in real life.

  The fact that Nikitas comes over in the morning now and then affects us all. Human lives are connected, so it matters, and if he stopped coming maybe it would matter even more. “Good morning, Nikitas. How are you?” Infanta says when she sees him arrive. “Good morning, Infanta. How are you?” Nikitas answers. Then they grow quiet, mount their horses, and leave. They never mention who wins. And to tell you the truth we weren’t much concerned either because our main interest was Maria’s wedding.

  The house is coming along—the dowry, too. Everyone is happy. Maria is calm. Father too seemed pleased when he heard the news. I think he was moved because he immediately started talking about a new invention of his, not stopping to ask about the details of the wedding. Or perhaps it was just indifference. As for his own affairs, he didn’t say a word. Nonetheless something was in the air . . . One day when I went to see him at his office, still dizzy from the bright sunlight outside, I dimly made out a woman in the shadows, a beautiful blond, who on seeing me approach, greeted Father hurriedly and left. That night I told Mother. She asked me whether the woman was tall or short, whether she was beautiful, what color her eyes were. “I didn’t get to see her eyes,” I answered, “but her hair was blond and she was beautiful.” Mother seemed to look sad. “Not exactly beautiful,” I quickly rejoined, “more garish.”

  Marios comes over often in the evening and keeps us company. There are days when he’s cheerful and others when he’s sad. Maria is always the same. Except that a grudge seems to be growing inside her.

  “Don’t think that I’m already yours,” she told Marios one evening in the stillness of the garden.

  A desire to escape . . . She knows it’s her last chance.

  “I don’t. You’re free. If you don’t want to get married . . .”

  She lowers her head, surprised by her own words, by everything. She searches his eyes in the dark. She takes his hand and squeezes it.

  “Don’t take this seriously, Marios. I know I’m going to become your wife and that’s how I want it.”

  Marios leaves. He’s both scared and hopeful. On the way home he tries to remember what the great philosophers and doctors say about the nature of woman. The theories get all mixed up in his mind. He can’t match them with real life. He sees that his father no longer tries to understand his mother. One day Laura Parigori opens the door to a beggar and gives him her dress. The next day she gets angry with the servants for opening the door to “one of them.”

  Maybe it’s that Laura feels a certain disgust for misery. Back on the island of her childhood everything was beautiful. She lived in the best house, every object—the chair, the candlestick, the plate—was a work of art. In the evenings they would gather around the big lamp and talk about music, art, poetry . . . A fine warmth would envelop her at those times. Her mother would sing. She used to have a lovely voice. She hasn’t sung since she moved to Athens. Instead she puts on her makeup even though she’s nearly sixty-five and goes and sits in the fashionable coffee shops and plays cards. Laura sometimes tries to talk to her about the old house, reminding her of the chandelier in the living room, the window that looked out on the sea . . .

  And once she started to say something to Yannis about it. It was summer. She was on the veranda. Yannis listened the way one listens when someone is telling a story about something that happened long ago. Then she stopped, perhaps out of fear that his distant manner would make her own memory distant.

  And that memory elevated her in the eyes of God—she knew it—so it had a special place in her heart, the way a certain corner of her old room near the window also had a special place. It was the corner with an armchair, a little desk, and a shelf with books, dried flowers, and old photographs. There was a box full of shells somewhere behind one of the photographs. Back then she and the other children would set out for long afternoon walks along the shore. Some shells shimmered and could be detected from afar; others were buried in the sand, and you had to dig to find them. Her friend Ernestina found the most. But Spiretos secretly gave all of his to Laura as they were leaving. She thanked him with her eyes. She was facing the sea. He was facing her. She watched him. His body and his face seemed to dissolve in front of her, but his black eyes grew larger and larger, becoming two dark, steady, solitary points in the sea.

  One time Leda found those shells and wanted to keep them. Mrs. Parigori grabbed the box from her and gave her an angry look. “Mother is strange. At times she scares me,” Leda said to Marios that evening. Marios gave a short laugh because he remembered his walks in the ravine as a child when he’d been afraid of the rushing water and had clung to his mother, but she hadn’t taken him in her arms. A book would be lying open at her side. Later at night in bed when she drowned him in kisses, his heart wouldn’t warm up; the loneliness had spread inside him when the shade had fallen in the ravine. The darkness came so quickly at dusk that many times it would be night before they could climb the slope to the open field. Marios would often step on sharp stones or scratch his big toe on thorns.

  When they reached the open field, Marios would begin to sing. Laura would hug her book under her arm. She wanted to run across the field to the other side and fall down and sleep. She would sing too, a melancholy tune.

  “As if returning from a land of fairy tales,” said Mr. Parigori, who would be waiting for them on the veranda. Laura’s cheeks were red and she had wild lilies in her hair. Marios held some in his hand and had a pensive look about him. “So what’s up? Did you see any dragons, any water nymphs?” Both of them were confused and couldn’t say a word. “So what’s the matter, Laura? Is it your nerves again?” He muttered something else while she distractedly arranged the flowers in a vase. Then he took Marios on his knee and showed him photographs of all the animals and plants of the world, telling him about their habits and ways of life.

  His mother’s words always left Marios feeling uneasy. There was something bitter about them. Whereas his father’s words gave him a sense of ease, almost happiness. Nonetheless he preferred his mother’s.

  One evening—it was odd—on hearing Maria laughing down by the cistern, he thought it was his mother, even though their voices aren’t at all alike.

  •

  The wedding took place at the end of the summer. It was a warm, sweet day. There was neither sun nor clouds. It was neither hot nor cold. The leaves hadn’t begun to fall. Some were green, others yellow, and others reddish.

  All the relatives came, even Father. Father hadn’t seen the property for th
ree years; that is, since I was seriously sick when he came every afternoon and sat by my bed.

  “How are you, Miltos?” Grandfather asked on the morning of the wedding. Aunt Theresa greeted him coldly and politely and Mother said, “I wish them all the happiness in the world . . .” “Me too,” said Father with difficulty, unable to look Mother in the eye. Later they pulled away from the others and walked together for a bit along the road. It was the first time I had even seen them next to each other. Mother was a little taller than Father, just a bit.

  “He seems like a good kid . . .”

  “Yes, he’s a good kid, a fine family, and a scientist as well.”

  “Do they love each other?”

  “He has loved her since he was a child.”

  “And she?”

  “Well, since she wanted to marry him? Children are so peculiar, Miltos. You never can tell . . .”

  Anna sighed and looked off into the distance. Wasn’t she partially to blame for that? For someone to open up to you, you must also open up to them. She was never able to take that first step with anyone, not with her father, not with Aunt Theresa, not with Miltos, and not with the children. Even when she was playing the piano in front of them she made sure she used the same restrained tone all through the piece so as to not give away her feelings. Though when she was alone at dusk and the last light of day fell on the white keys while the rest of the room was already dark, she would forget herself and take the first step. But then there was never anyone there to respond so her overture meant nothing. One afternoon Katerina had abruptly opened the door and rushed into her arms in a whirlwind. “How did you play that, Mommy? Play it again. Play it again.” Katerina’s cheeks were red and her eyes damp. “Play it again, Mommy, come on.” “I wasn’t playing. It was the radio,” she whispered, and the iciness was there again.

  “You can’t tell with them,” she repeated. “They have the strangest ideas . . .”

  “Today’s children make demands on life,” said Father. “They have courage and independence.”