The Explosive Nature of Friendship (9 page)

Mitsos tried to find his feet but the sand shifted under his weight and there was no getting up. The water rose to his shoulders and splashed in his nose, in his mouth. He coughed and choked but still his arms were being pulled. His head went under, panic rose in his chest, he twisted and squirmed and the grip on his arms relaxed at last. But still Mitsos could not stand, the sand was shifting, he could not tell which way was up. He kicked and floundered with his arms. His fight for survival cleared his head quickly. He turned onto his hands and knees and rose to a squatting position. He gulped some air and lost his balance, but he had seen he was facing the shore. On all fours he pushed himself forward as fast as he could until the water shallowed. He gasped some more air and the panic subsided. He crawled further, his head out of the water, crouching, then standing. A hand came to steady him. He slapped it off and stamped up the beach and sat on the rocks, catching his breath.

‘
You nearly bloody drowned me!’ Mitsos shouted.

‘
I needed you sober.’

‘
Go to hell!’ Mitsos stood up to walk away. His toe touched the bottle of whisky. He picked it up. Manolis put his hand out to claim it but Mitsos flung it with all his strength into the sea.

‘
Hey!’

‘
Go to hell.’ Mitsos was up by the eucalyptus trees. Manolis ran after him.

‘
Listen, this is it, all our problems solved.’

‘
You being dead would solve all my problems!’ Mitsos never forgot these words. He even wanted to take them back as he said them, but part of him meant them. He was horrified by his own feelings. He was not the man he thought he was. But nor was Manolis, who had nearly drowned him.

Manolis had stopped walking as he spoke and stood, a dark shape under the trees, the moon on the sea visible under the branches behind him.

Mitsos had turned to say, ‘That was too much.’ But he did not make it clear whether the near-drowning was too much, or his own harsh words. Manolis would interpret it as he chose. He did not move.

‘
Come on, we are friends, no?’ Mitsos felt an increasing need to erase the effect of his words so he could forget he said them.

‘
Are you with me then?’

‘
I don’t know until you tell me the plan.’

‘
Do you want me dead or are you with me: which is the truth?’

Mitsos was in a corner. It felt familiar
– but wishing someone dead, that was not the man he wanted to be.

‘
I am with you, Manolis.’ His words came out as a sigh.

‘
Right, here’s what we are going to do.’

Manolis put forward his dream, painted in shining colours. With his arm around Mitsos’ shoulders, his silver words proved, without an inkling of a doubt, that it would be successful and they would not only be rich but also happy. The work itself, he said grinning at Mitsos, his eyes on fire with intensity, would be nothing but fun. All Mitsos had to do was swap his prime land with his brother’s beet field.

His brother, when told of the wish to make the swap, had felt it was a harsh joke but Mitsos (urged by Manolis), to prove he was serious, took steps to do it legally, and soon the field was his, his brother laughing.

Manolis had bought double whiskys all round when he heard the transaction was complete. The next day he arranged to meet Mitsos at the beet field and told him to bring any spare boards, wooden props, chipboard, old doors and discarded windows with him. Mitsos’ Baba had rebuilt the chicken shed before he died, and pieces of the old shed were stacked against the new. Mitsos loaded the lot onto a cart and towed it to the beet field with the tractor.

They resurrected the chicken coop, down by the sea
’s edge in the beet field, extending it and raising the roof. To the front they built decking onto the sand and lined up some roughly made tall stools against their improvised counter. When it was finished they painted the whole thing with bright orange paint that Manolis had acquired from somewhere. Mitsos stood back to admire their handiwork, but Manolis took a hatchet and cut palm leaves from the trees along the lane to the beach and they nailed them all over the hut.

‘
Hawaiian style,’ Manolis said, but he did not laugh in the work as he had done when they played the donkey trick, or even the paint scam before the lids came off. There was a seriousness that made Mitsos feel uncomfortable. Manolis’ emotions seemed to be all over the place; one minute he was angry, the next hysterically jolly. Mitsos found it difficult to keep up. The carefree boyish attitude that characterised him for so long had been rarely in evidence during their work.

When the job was finished Manolis took a board and wrote
‘Beach Bar’ in big letters across it and nailed it to the chicken coop’s roof.

The bar was open for exactly three days. On the first two no one came, even with the first drink free for the ladies.

On the third day they put up balloons and signposts, hung hammocks from the eucalyptus trees that bordered the beet field along the sea side, and had drunk a fair amount before the first guests arrived.

The man from the hardware shop brought his son and his son brought five of his friends. They pooled their money behind the bar and the drinks kept flowing. Three tourist girls came next and ordered cocktails Mitsos had never heard of, and as they drank they joined the boys.

Manolis invented all manner of drinks, blues, greens, reds. The clients seemed as perplexed as Mitsos as to their provenance but Manolis declared they were ‘Greek style’ whenever the question arose, and the mood was such that no one really cared as long as the alcohol kept flowing.

More people arrived, mostly tourists.

Manolis turned the radio on in his car, the volume on full and all the doors open. The party really started kicking.

The music must have drifted over the water, as more and more people came. Twice Mitsos had to go for more bottles whilst Manolis held the fort and flirted with his blue eyes at the western girls.

The second time Mitsos returned with more alcohol Manolis took him to one side and thrust him a handful of notes. ‘Here, keep it safe. You will have all the money you need to buy your land back if we carry on like this tonight.’ Mitsos looked at the amount in his hand and felt slightly sick at the responsibility of having so much money. He looked around the back of the bar for a place to put it but everywhere seemed too open, or too obvious. He stepped into the night and stuffed it down his trousers and returned smiling.

People kept coming and Manolis stuffed more money into Mitsos
’ hand. Mitsos was half drunk and felt, once again, that Manolis was truly a god.

Until two sober-looking men in black shirts arrived.

‘Hey, have a drink boys,’ Manolis offered. When he held out his hand for payment that was their signal and they identified themselves.

‘
You must close the bar immediately.’

‘
You have no licence,’ the taller man added.

The second man stepped forward.
‘Greek law says you cannot build on the beach. Also, you had no planning. It must be pulled down immediately or you will receive a heavy fine.’ Along with his briskness he was clearly enjoying his power. Particularly when he said they would face a hefty fine.

Manolis protested and waved his arms about, and opened the till to show how empty it was.

‘How much money you have taken,’ the taller man explained patiently, ‘is not the question. The law has its penalties.’

‘
You will be informed of the consequences. Meanwhile, we strongly suggest you dismantle the bar.’ The shorter man smiled as he spoke.

‘
Which, incidentally,’ the first man added sniggering, ‘looks more like a chicken coop.’

Then they left.

A balloon popped. Mitsos jumped.

Manolis began kicking chairs, bottles and glasses in the sand. He was beside himself and he could not vent his anger enough for it to subside. Mitsos tried to talk to him, to work out the problem, but Manolis was speechless. His eyes shone with anger and something that, to Mitsos, looked a little like madness.

Manolis jumped into his truck, started it up and revved the engine hard. Mitsos felt afraid. He saw two people sitting on the far side of the bar, kissing. He ran to them and grabbed the boy by the arm. The two rose, protesting. Mitsos did not release his grip but swung the boy nearer the trees, out of the way, the girl following.

The revving truck
’s doors slammed shut as it jolted forward and crashed through the chicken coop, splintering the dry wood into kindling. Mitsos put his hands in the air, and his mouth fell open. He had guessed Manolis was going to take this action, he had seen it coming, but the reality of the event seemed too dramatic.

‘
Panayia, mother of God, stop!’

Manolis backed off the pile of firewood and climbed out of the truck, grinding broken glass on plywood pieces.

‘Every time you try to do something in this town some jealous bastard gets in your way. Who told them, eh? Who tipped them off? Some jealous bar owner, that’s who.’

‘
But Manolis, we have spent the day telling everyone we met there was a bar here. No one needed to tip them off, we advertised ourselves.’

‘
No. Someone tipped them off for sure …’ He jumped back into his truck and shouted through the open window, ‘I'll find a way to get even,’ and he laughed that strange chilling laugh as he drove away.

Stella is watching his face as he tells his story. As Mitsos turns to her she closes her mouth. There is a sudden crescendo of noise. A boy of no more than eight years old rides past on a moped, revving the engine and trying to do a wheelie. He rounds the corner at the square and the sound dwindles.

‘
What happened next?’ Stella asks.

‘
Well, the licence people got in touch very soon after that. It is amazing how some wheels turn so slowly in Greece and others are like lightning. They contacted me as I was the land owner. We got a fine, and when I went to Manolis with the official paper he said, “I gave you the money.” I thought the money he had given me was my half. It seemed very unlikely that Manolis would give it all to me, even if it was only for safe keeping. But he said it was, so I paid the fine and was left with nothing.

‘
Except a beet field.’ Stella laughs dryly, sliding down in her chair and crossing her legs out in front of her as she looks up towards the square.

Mitsos takes the envelope from his pocket. The rustle of the paper attracts Stella’s attention.

‘
What’s that?’ Stella asks, shielding her eyes to see better. Mitsos wouldn't mind sharing it with her. It would feel like a weight had been lifted to share it with at least one person. She is probably the only person he would feel happy telling. He doesn’t intend telling his own brothers. The older one is a bully, has been all his life like his Baba, and the younger is happy as a town dweller now, so his opinions would be biased towards the modern world. No, this is his business, and if he is going to tell anyone then it will be Stella. She won't judge or condemn, and she wouldn't want anything for herself or cause trouble. She will probably offer some sound advice, if she says anything at all.

He opens his mouth to speak. But then there is Stavros. He is not a kind man. Mitsos doesn't want Stavros to know his business. If it wasn't for Stavros he would probably eat chicken and chips more often. In fact, if it wasn't for Stavros he would take Stella out and have someone else cook for her, in a taverna in town, God knows she deserves it. But taking her out would mean taking Stavros too, and he has no desire to spend any time with him at all. He closes his mouth again and puts the envelope back in his pocket.

His foot begins to jiggle, shaking side to side rapidly. He nearly spoke without thinking. She is just too easy to talk to. He doesn’t feel he has control of himself.

‘
I have to go.’ He stands.

‘
But you haven’t eaten. The chicken will be ready any minute now.’ Stella sounds almost alarmed. Mitsos feels tempted; he is hungry, but he needs to think. Recalling the beach bar has changed his perspective. Manolis owed him. He needs to talk things through, even if it is just with himself.

‘
I’ll get a cheese pie from across the road.’

‘
Oh, ok.’ She sounds disappointed but Mitsos cannot make out if it is due to the loss of business or the loss of his company. It sounds like she will miss the company but that is surely just his own misplaced ego wishing, his desire to talk to someone twisting his perspective. He is a one-armed sixty-five-year-old farmer; she is just a girl in her late forties. He is not so lonely as to be delusional to the point of thinking she holds anything more than a casual friendship for him. He is just another customer. Besides, she is married. To Stavros.

He puts his hand in his pocket to pay and then realises he has not bought anything.

‘See you tomorrow?’ Stella crosses her arms across her chest.

Mitsos nods, but it is more an acknowledgement that she has spoken than a consent. Guarded.

He concentrates on his balance as he crosses the road. He has not brought his shepherd’s crook with him today. He buys a spinach and feta pie, with a thick crumbly pastry made with olive oil, and makes his way to the kiosk.

Vasso apologises profusely, blames the striking lorries, blames the ordering process, blames the entire Greek system for Mitsos
’ cigarettes still not having arrived. Mitsos looks at the other brands. They do not appeal. He cannot be bothered to get used to another flavour. He will wait. Vasso gives him a packet of chewing gum as compensation.

He turns up the lane towards his house. The whitewashed wall where he had squatted all those years ago, drawing in the ground with a stick when Manolis had been jumping around trying not to tell him the details of donkey-swapping idea
– it seems so long ago.

He wonders, if he had declined that one piece of mischief, would all the rest have followed? Would he have ended up with the beet patch rather than the prime agricultural land left him by his Baba? If he had avoided Manolis from the beginning and not been there when he got into trouble the first time, over Theo
’s carnival suit, maybe he would not have been cast as a trouble maker and people would have treated him differently.

If he had been treated differently, more kindly, softly, maybe he would not have been so busy fighting to be himself, so headstrong; he might not have felt the need to take the stance that resulted in him turning Marina down. Maybe he would have grown up working on the farm by his Baba, making his Mama proud, and accepted the offer of an arranged marriage and been happy?

What a bloody hypocrite Manolis turned out to be. All that teasing he had done over the potential arranged marriage, and then he accepted the very same girl.

Mitsos turns into the track towards his home and kicks the gate open. It reverberates. He kicks it closed and fastens it, shutting out the world, the people who treated him like a trouble maker, the wrong decisions he made, all on the other side of the chipped painted metal gate.

He heads up the track, looking at his feet. The leather on his left shoe is coming away at the toe and the sole scrapes as he walks, but he doesn’t care. He wants to rip it more. Tear it apart and throw it to the wind. Rend his life apart and let the pieces be taken away on a gust. He lifts his chin to the sky, and through clenched teeth and closed lips he suppresses a wail, moisture running from the corners of his eyes back across his temples and into his grey hair.

He stops walking and waits for the feelings to subside but the anger is bubbling. When it turns inward he wants to explode, howl, shout; when it turns outward he wants to do harm.

How could Manolis have not played fair over the beach bar when he, Mitsos, had put up his land, his inheritance, as a sacrifice? What sort of a friend would do that? No, a friend would not do that. A self-centred, hypocritical, ignorant villain would do that.

He howls again, from the pain of the one-sided friendship, for the lack of care, the absence of love. His lips bitten between closed teeth, the sounds rumble in his chest until he gives in and opens his mouth and hisses,
‘What’s wrong with me?’

A bird squawks from the nearest tree and flies off over the hill.

Mitsos’ feelings dwindle and rationality begins to return. He wipes from his temple to his hair line with the back of his hand and draws in a deep breath. His sadness feels heavy in his chest, a rock on his lungs, his mouth pulling down at the corners.

How far back had Manolis not been a friend? It was obvious when he returned from his national service that he had changed. He was much more self-obsessed. The boy was gone. He still had the charm and command but not in the same capacity. The girls didn't flock around him in the same way. Even he, Mitsos, had only gone along with him because he had nearly been drowned. No, not because he had nearly been drowned, but because he had wished Manolis dead and felt guilty.

Mitsos blinks and dismisses the uncomfortable memory. He has reached the brushed-earth yard and changes his focus to look out at the world. He hangs his bag with the spinach pie in it on a hook by the back door.

The almond blossom is so thick now that hardly any black branches are visible. Right at the top a few twigs appear as black lines etched in the deep blue sky. Blossom clings in clusters to their length. Years of hard pruning have brought good crops but left nubs and angles where branches have been hacked off. These stumps offend Mitsos, the suppression of life, organisms forced to grow in a particular way because of damage inflicted on them when they were young.

Mitsos looks up to the sky. Not a cloud, deep blue, another scorcher.

He has wandered the length of the grove to the wall that Manolis once hid behind before the donkey swap. Mitsos puts a leg over the low wall; it had seemed so much higher then. He puts his hand on the top to maintain his balance as he lifts his other leg over. The land climbs sharply up to the hen-house.

It had been his old hen-house, too, that the villain had driven over; there had been no mention of that. He could have used it elsewhere.

He probably wouldn't have, but that is not the point. It was not Manolis
’ to drive over with his truck.

Mitsos expels air noisily through his nose and looks around him.

Whilst he is up by the chicken coop he has another look for the eggs hidden by the broody hen. The chickens cluck as he approaches, expecting corn. It is a soft, homely sound. When he was very small, he had tamed one until she could be held. In the end she would only eat corn if she was sitting on his knee plucking grains from his hand.

Then there had been the engagement and the marriage. He picks up a stone and throws it with all his strength out across the roofs of the village.

The engagement party demonstrated how cruel life could be. Everyone was at Manolis
’ family’s house, the three brothers, their parents, neighbours, Mitsos, his brothers and their parents. And in she had walked with her mother. She looked terrified. She daren't even look up. Mitsos wanted to grab her by the hand and run from the room, take her somewhere she could grow and blossom unconstrained, without deformity. But he hadn't; instead, he had drunk too much ouzo and watched silently.

She lifted her eyes on occasion, just for a second, to scan the room. Her head stayed at the same angle, chin to the ground. She repeated this gesture a few times and Mitsos realised she was looking for something. Manolis was between his two brothers and they were all getting heartily drunk, not one of them paying any mind to the girl he was to marry. When the three brothers gave an almighty cheer and raised their glasses together she looked up and gave each one of them a hard stare. Realisation came to Mitsos that she didn
’t even know to which one of these buffoons she was engaged. His heart reached out to her. Manolis had not even bothered to introduce himself, let alone put her at her ease. It was in that moment, on top of the recent beach bar rip-off, that Mitsos began to hate him. For a second time, he wished him dead. He had been shocked at the strength of his own feelings.

His mother came and stood beside him.

‘How old is she, Ma?’ Mitsos asked.

‘
Just turned fourteen.’ Mitsos tried to swallow. The wedding was scheduled for the next week. He gulped a mouthful of ouzo to loosen the lump in his throat.

The festivities had gone on all night. Manolis and his brothers became more and more drunk until they went outside to celebrate with a gun in the garden, shooting the stars. Mitsos watched Marina, who jumped at the sound of every shot. He could stand it no longer. He walked over to her as she stood by the wall unnoticed, an unsipped glass in one hand and a plate of untouched food in the other. He took the plate of food from her and put it on a side table.

‘Marina …’ But no words would come. He waited, but his thoughts were scrambled. He urged his brain into action but for some reason he began to internally question whether he had fed the chickens or not. He raised his hand to touch the fingers that held her glass.

Marina
’s mother bustled over to chaperone the exchange.

‘
Congratulations,’ whispered Mitsos, and Marina’s mother led her away.

That was the moment he made his pledge. He had let Marina down by not consenting to his marriage to her, and now she had a lifetime of that villain Manolis to endure. If she became unhappy it would be his fault. He could not undo the situation and so he pledged that he would look after her from afar. He would look after her by trying to get Manolis on the right track. He would guide Manolis and plant seeds in his mind to make him the best husband it was likely he could be. He would stick by Manolis so the money would not all be spent, so that he would not stray from her and so that he would get home every night. He would play bodyguard, chaperone, financial advisor and spiritual guide to her husband-to-be. He would be Manolis
’ friend in order to be her friend. He owed her that much at least. Beautiful Marina.

He went home.

Manolis asked him to be best man. Mitsos, despite his newly kindled hatred, agreed to this, his first conscious action to fulfil his silent pledge to Marina. Manolis, who seemed just as fed up about his wedding as Mitsos was, decided to go out the night before his wedding. Mitsos accompanied him.

He was laughing loudly and turning his blue eyes on every girl that came into the bar. Mitsos had known him long enough to understand that he was looking for an opportunity, a single girl he could take down to the beach in the moonlight. Mitsos wanted to cry out ‘Have you no respect for your marriage to Marina tomorrow?’ but he knew Manolis would laugh in his face and so he stayed quiet.

The bar was filling with young tourists in their late teens and early twenties. There were some Greek boys of the same age lining the walls. Mitsos smiled. He and Manolis were now thirty. They might feel like boys but they no longer looked liked boys. To these young girls they would look like old men compared to the youths leaning casually around the bar.

‘What are you smiling about? I have to get married tomorrow,’ Manolis barked above the music.

‘
Why?’

‘
What do you mean, why?’ He drank down his whisky and caught the barman’s eye, nodding for a refill.

‘
Why did you agree to this? Why are you still agreeing to this? Call it off, Manolis. You are not a man for marriage.’

‘
Don’t I know it! But I have no choice.’ Mitsos waited, nodding for Manolis to tell more. ‘I had a little bit of fun.’ He took a swig of his whisky. ‘You weren’t around. It was whilst I was in the army. Well, this fun …’ He drew it out, looking into his glass. ‘It wasn’t …’ a long drag on his cigarette ‘… strictly legal.’