The Explosive Nature of Friendship (7 page)

Fish be damned, Mitsos would like one day of love, one evening, one hour, when he can release all the care he has to offer and be cared for in return. People do not recognise how lucky they are.

The farmers sing with the same passion. In the corner sits a foreign girl. Her bag is on the floor beside her, and she clearly does not know what to make of the situation. Stavros is sitting at her table, pouring ouzo. The farmers stand to perform; they interlace arms, hands on shoulders, and dance in the tiny space. Stella moves chairs and tables out of the way, her sad eyes on Stavros who is grinning and flirting with the outsider. The girl looks slightly afraid.

One of the farmers is full of life; the lunchtime impromptu singing has brought energy to his limbs. He is feeling good, he has
kefi
, an appetite for life, joy. His hair is greying at the temples and his hands speak of years of toil, the skin thick and hard. But at this moment he is alive, his heart is full, he wants to dance, dance like there is no tomorrow, no fields to dig, no olives to tend. To dance as if his life depends on it. He climbs on a chair and then jumps onto the table. It wobbles and threatens to collapse, and the other farmers and Stavros cheer. But it holds his weight and he dances with his head brushing the ceiling, his friends on one knee clapping to encourage him. Outwardly, he is blind; there is only the music and the movement.

The girl claps self-consciously. Stavros shouts
‘Opa!’ The girl giggles.

The man on the table pauses on its edge. He is a youth again, he crouches low and then springs from the table, completing a somersault to the floor with an unsteady landing, but he does not fall, and everyone cheers. No one looks more surprised than he does that he is successful.

Stella spots Mitsos, but he is backing out of the shop. He does not want noise now, he needs to think. Stella nips across the room to him.

‘
What is it?’ she asks.

Mitsos tries to rearrange his face, take off whatever expression has prompted Stella to ask such a question, to leave his countenance blank.

There is always a chair outside the shop, for when business is slack and Stella just wants to sit and watch the world go by. She brings another chair from inside. The dancing and singing continue but the distance dilutes the intensity. The air is fragrant with goats. Somewhere on the hill a cockerel tells the time, incorrectly. Mitsos thinks it might be his bird. The damned thing crows all day long. He sits.

‘
So?’ Stella plops down and leans back in her chair, stretches her legs out in front of her and crosses them. She crosses her arms across her floral dress. It is the short dress with no sleeves. She is so petite she can wear such things and still look pretty, even though she must be in her late forties. Not, Mitsos thinks, promiscuous as some might look in such a skimpy tunic.

He wants to ask about the blonde foreign girl inside but he has the impression Stella would rather be distracted than questioned. He pushes Stavros
’ behaviour from his mind.

‘
I just talked to Marina.’ Mitsos quietly relates the conversation. Stella is the only person who knows of Mitsos’ secret love. The many lunches and dinners he has taken here have, slowly, over the years, unintentionally, cultured a friendship. She knows his story from the moment he and Marina first met.

He considers telling her about his visit to Juliet, about the letter. He could do with her wisdom on the best way to deal with it, but he does not trust Stavros, and after all they are married, maybe they have times when they are close. He decides not to. He tries a different angle.

‘What do you think Marina needs most in the world?’

‘
In all honesty, she needs what no one can give her.’ Stella does not hesitate in her reply.

‘
What’s that?’ Mitsos answers, with hope in his voice.

‘
She needs a memory of a husband who was good to her, who thought about her and who provided for her. With a memory like that she would feel like a different person. She would feel valued and loved and lovable. As it is, she sees herself as unlovable, worthy of neglect and unworthy of being put first. You can see it with her children. She sees them as having so much value and herself as having none. She does everything for them she can, breaks her back for them and just considers it the “right” thing to do. Over the years she has neglected herself more and more, and that has all come from him.’ Stella pauses and Mitsos stays quiet, taken aback by her passion. ‘Sorry. Did you want such a full answer?’ She smiles, but she is turning her head to look inside her shop. Stavros is still at the girl’s table but the dancing has stopped. He is giving her an apron and pointing to the grill.

Mitsos leans over and pats her hand kindly.

‘And you would know, Stella.’

Stella lets a tear fall.

At home that night Mitsos sits on a chair in his kitchen. It creaks every time he moves. The sky outside is dark and the white almond blossom glows in the moonlight. He recollects Stella
’s words. ‘What she needs most is a memory of a husband who was good to her, she would feel valued and loved and loveable.’

These words have an unsettling effect on him. It is almost as if he can think of a way to make everything right again but it just won
’t form into something concrete. But as he cannot – and would not want to – raise Manolis from the dead, her memory of him will remain the same. He dismisses these niggles as a deep desire for something that cannot be fulfilled.

An owl hoots outside the window. He opens the door to let in any breeze there is; it is still very warm. The owl is on one of the nearest almond trees. It blinks at him through the opening. He kicks off his sandals and pulls off his shirt and trousers. He stands naked in the moonlight, slightly sagging, slightly wrinkled, and yet he has the surest of feelings that his life is only just beginning. Something is around the corner.

He slaps his chest and then laughs at himself. He yawns and lies down on the day-bed. The air is now pleasantly warm; he will need no sheet, no pyjamas tonight. He stretches his legs out and rubs the stump of his arm. It still itches all these years later. He smiles again and stretches some more. Something is definitely coming.

Adonis sounds his horn as he pulls in through the gates. Mitsos is wandering around the orchard. He has just been up the hill to collect the eggs and he still has the bucket with him. One hen has been broody for a week and now there are no eggs in her box; she is hiding them to sit on. But he knows this hen, she will not sit for long, they will go cold and then she will start again with new eggs. Each time the eggs will be lost and will go bad somewhere, waiting to be stepped on.

He raises the bucket in greeting. Adonis leaves the car door open and walks across to Mitsos.

‘Broody hen, eh?’

'How
’s the little man?’

‘
Have you tried in amongst the pine trees up at the top? He's fine, sleeping.’

‘
First place I looked. Do you want to take some back with you?’ He lifts the bucket.

‘
Leni will be pleased. What do you do with them all?’ Adonis peers in the bucket at the speckled brown eggs. Mitsos is content that Adonis managed to escape the farm way of life. His schooling lasted until he was sixteen and then he immediately got a job in town. He completed his national service as soon as he turned eighteen. A better job and a flat in the nearby town followed swiftly. He continues to manage the shop in the village that sells fertilisers and pesticides. He is a natural businessman.

Anyway, he has rarely collected an egg or tilled the soil, or sat with the goats. Mitsos feels coarse next to him. Clumsy. Unshaven. But he is happy for Adonis. He looks down at the bucket of eggs.

‘I'll eat some, sell some to Stavros at the
souvlaki
shop, give them to you.’ His attention wanders and he grins through the car window at his nephew, who has woken up. He puts the bucket of eggs down to wave.

‘
Ok, here's his stuff. Leni says “hi” and “thanks”.’ Adonis lifts the baby from the car and handing him over he climbs into the driver’s seat. Mitsos puts his nephew down by the bucket of eggs and shuts the door on Adonis. The window is open and the air coming out is cool. Mitsos wonders at the modern world.

‘
Going to tell me his name yet?’

‘
At the baptism.’ Adonis’ head is already turned to back down the track.

Mitsos picks up his nephew in the car seat and wanders in the almond orchard swinging the baby as if he is the bucket of eggs. He would still like to find where she is laying them.
‘So, my fine young man, how are you?’ The baby gurgles, his hands outstretched for a passing dragonfly. Mitsos wanders a bit more, looking for the broody hen’s nest until, lazily, he sits on a stone that has fallen from the top of the wall at the far end of the orchard. He puts the baby-seat on the ground in front of him and takes a good look at his kin.

‘
I have had some good news since I saw you last, and between me and you I think things are going to change, somehow, in some way.’ The baby claps his hands and Mitsos slaps his leg to imitate the sounds. And they smile at each other for a while. Mitsos pulls a face, but soon returns to his serious topic. ‘My little friend, it gets tricky now. What is the best way to go about things?’ He looks through the trees. ‘Women are sensitive creatures.’ He sits, watching nothing in particular, his gaze altering distances in practised unawareness. He can hear a tractor in the lane and, behind him, goat bells on the hill, a hollow, flat sound.

He pauses, aware of flying insects, birds singing, branches rubbing one another and the broody hen strutting across the orchard towards the front garden, and then continues.

‘Women. You won’t know about women for some time yet, and believe you me, the longer that time is the better because once women are in your life you have never known pain like it. Pain in the head, pain in the ears, but the worst, pain in the heart …’ The baby makes a laughing sound and Mitsos laughs too. ‘So you think it’s funny, do you? Well, let me tell you it didn't feel so funny back then.’

His heart had tightened. His stomach felt as if it had turned around in his body and he forgot how to breathe. She was lovely, with dark brown hair loose around her shoulders, slim ankles, her head held at a confident angle. The way she moved mesmerised him. He watched her choosing tomatoes, her slim fingers feeling the firmness of each one, caressing the smooth surface, turning them over to inspect all sides. She handed her bag to the vendor to be weighed with a smile that sent shivers down his spine. She was young, almost too young, and her innocence surrounded her like an aura. So pure, so unspoilt. Had he made a terrible mistake by refusing the match? Mitsos vaguely recognised the girl. Her family was from the village, but since he had last seen her she had turned from a child to a woman.

He was twenty-nine at the time.

Other girls he had met through the years up until that point were of no consequence. Either he and Manolis had met them in the bars in nearby towns on a Saturday, which was an introduction demanding no respect, or they were pious village girls in church on Sunday. None had touched Mitsos’ heart.

At that age Mitsos and Manolis were not as close as they had once been. In their late teens they had finally been reined in by their families when Mitsos
’ family boat received an unwanted lining of oil-based paint.

Manolis had found the tins on a beach and persuaded Mitsos to take the booty back to the village in his family rowing boat. As they pulled on the oars in the heat of the midday sun, the lids had popped off several of them and a layer of paint flowed into the bottom of the boat.

That alone would have been enough to arouse Mitsos’ father to a fury but on top of that, some days later, there was a rumour of paint having been stolen from a hardware store, and Mitsos’ Baba decided enough was enough.

He organised a meeting with Manolis’ Baba and they agreed the boys should no longer see each other. To this end, they were finally enlisted to do their military service, which sent them to different regions in Greece, and they didn't see each other for two years.

When they came out, Mitsos with honour and Manolis in shame, they were doomed to finally share some of the strain of the family labours if they intended to carry on living at home. When Mitsos' Baba said he must
‘work beside him on the land’, he really did mean right beside him. It had been a shocking wake-up call even after the regimented life in the army. And when the long day had finished and his elder brother and father went home to relax, he was consigned to cleaning every last bit of the now very encrusted paint from the rowing boat with sandpaper and wire wool. It had taken weeks.

That was the beginning of a long period of sensible living, at least for Mitsos.

At this time his older brother was already engaged and most evenings were spent taking his wife-to-be out. His younger brother, not even nine years old, was always in bed and fast asleep before him.

One evening Mitsos was lying in the room he shared with his brother, not able to sleep for the heat, when he overheard his mother and father talking about arranging a marriage. As he listened, his name was mentioned. Enraged that his life should be planned for him, he jumped from his bed and burst into the kitchen ready to challenge them.

‘I do not want an arranged marriage,’ Mitsos stated as firmly as he could, the rage causing his limbs to shake. His father took a long draw on his cigarette and shook his head; his mother tried to calm him.

‘
You need to settle down. They are offering a reasonable dowry and her parents would come and work on the land beside you. It’s not a bad deal. See it as free labour for the price of a meal.’

Mitsos was lost for words. He valued his freedom, his independence. He felt shy around women; it would be hell having to spend every evening with one. What would he say, what would he do? He would have to wear a shirt all the time, know what time he would be home and, worst of all, be responsible for her happiness. He had seen bad husbands and what happened to their wives. He had vowed he would never be the same. He would not take a wife unless he was sure he could make her happy. As he didn't have a clue how to make a woman happy, he reasoned that marriage was clearly not for him.

His mother, over the next few days, had gently tried to plant lots of ideas in his head as to why it would be a good idea. But he was adamant, and finally, after months of fruitless discussions, the subject was dropped.

Mitsos was relieved, and he unburdened himself to Manolis. Manolis teased him relentlessly about marriage, but Mitsos did not really mind. He was happy to have escaped his fate, and soon Manolis dropped the subject too. Greek men, he had said, do not marry until they are forty, and even that was too soon.
‘This gives us over ten years, my friend,’ he had laughed.

It was nearly a year later, when Mitsos was in the nearby town with his Mama, helping her with some heavy shopping, that she spotted and pointed out the girl to whom his marriage had nearly been arranged. That was when his heart had tightened, his stomach felt as if it had turned around in his body and he forgot how to breathe. If he was ever going to marry then it had to be to a girl like this.

‘Is she still single?’ Mitsos asked his Mama.

‘
No, she is engaged to someone else in the village.’ The surge of emotion induced by this statement cut through his chest and wrapped a cord around his throat. He did everything he could to dispel the feelings. He refused to look at her any more and did his best to focus on the tomatoes, the heat, the sun, the bad points of all women. A little old lady in black pushed past with her basket of shopping. He consoled himself with the thought that the girl would one day be old and fat. He was best off free. He breathed again and looked away.

Days later he was sitting with his father in the kafenio, in their usual spot, with windows on all sides, when he saw her again. She was on the back of a cart being pulled by a donkey, coming straight towards them. The cart stopped in the square and she climbed down with the help of, presumably, her father. Her mother was there also.

‘Ah, so they have come to live. This is going to put a stop to his ways.’

‘
What, Baba?’

‘
Them.’ He jerked his coffee in the direction of the girl and her family. ‘They have a small house here, more of a storage barn really, and a little land. That is why they are marrying off their daughter. They need more land to be able to live, merge their land with someone else’s. Dowry and daughter for land. Simple as that. But you, of all people, know all this.’

But that was not the question he wanted answered.
‘Put a stop to whose ways?’

His Baba opened his mouth to reply but instead a laugh came out. It began as a short throaty scoffing noise but grew and grew until he was laughing so much his belly wobbled. He wiped a tear from his eye and tried to compose himself to speak again but the laughter returned. All the men in the kafenio turned to see what the merriment was, but only Dimitri knew and he was unable to put a sentence together. He slapped his thigh and looked again at the girl and her family until his laughter subsided.

‘Well, my boy,’ he finally managed, ‘you wouldn't marry her, but they were determined to find someone who would.’ He wiped his eyes and took a sip of coffee. ‘The deal was not so tempting, as the dowry was not so large and the parents will be a burden all too soon. It is not a good start for a couple.’ Mitsos thought he had finished speaking, as his Baba had taken another sip of coffee and put his cup down. After a minute he continued: ‘But there is always someone fool enough to take any offer.’ He turned his attention from Mitsos and nodded his head towards the girl who had sat down on the seat by the square’s central palm tree. ‘Who you see there, my son, is the future Mrs Manolis.’

Mitsos swallowed hard, but a lump caught in his throat. He could hear his heart beating in his ears and the hairs on his arm stood on end.

‘That is not funny, Baba.’ Mitsos heard himself but the voice did not sound like his own.

‘
Ha! You will miss your friend, eh?’

Mitsos had no thought of his friend. He stared at the girl sitting quite still as her Mama and Baba took their things from the cart. If he had never seen her again he might have forgotten her, but if she were to marry Manolis he would see her often, if not every day. His heart leapt at the thought of seeing her every day and, in a mad moment, it seemed like the perfect solution. He could see her but not be burdened by her. Enjoy her company but leave when he wished. But no sooner had the thought flashed though his head than he felt a sickness in his stomach. It was not all right for the girl. It was not right for someone like Manolis to marry someone so pure. He could guess what someone like that needed, and if he couldn't guess he could learn. Manolis would neither know nor care. She would not be happy with him. In fact, he could see nothing but misery for her.

‘It’s impossible!’ he blurted.

‘
Yup. They put the deal together after your refusal about a year ago. I think you made the right decision – the deal was not a good one,’ his Baba replied.

‘
She cannot!’ Mitsos’ voice sounded as if it hadn’t broken.

His Baba turned to look at him. Mitsos stared down at his coffee, picked it up, took a sip, trying to control his responses. His hand was shaking so he stood up declaring he needed the toilet and left the table.