Fear of Barbarians Read online

  When you finished telling the story, you were doing your last nail. As you lifted your head, you saw tears pouring down my face, you blew on your thumb several times, then wiped my eyes with it. To break the unbearable silence, you continued your story. ‘When I turned eight, I hopped on the bus every day at eleven o’clock, I went to the harbour in Heraklion and waited for the boat from Athens, it always arrived at noon, I stood and watched the river of travellers until the last one got off. When I saw that my mother wasn’t there, I returned home on the two o’clock bus, the same bus on which she never returned. I never stood in front of the boat, always off to the side, on a rock that looked directly into the passengers’ exit door; I was afraid that if she got off and saw me, she’d run off again. One day while I was sitting on the rock, an older man came up to me, he told me that he watched me standing on the rock every day and that he had written a poem for me. It was Odysseus Elytis. You have a taste of tempest on your lips – But where did you wander/All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea? /An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills/Stripped your longing to the bone/And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera/Spotting memory with foam!1

  You stood in the middle of the olive grove and recited ‘Marina of the Rocks’, but I couldn’t stop crying. There were so many things I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you that after I learned my father had drowned, I didn’t drink water for days, each gulp made me sick, and from that day on I hadn’t put fish in my mouth, it made me feel like I was eating my father. You kept reciting, but something kept tightening in my chest, and now I was feeling that same pain.

  Irini began to scream, ‘Don’t! Stop! Stop, please!’ When I looked at her, I saw her staring in fright at my right hand, I had squeezed the pillow so hard that the needle that had been stuck in the oar of the little boat was now in my palm, blood was streaming down to my nails, in an instant my nails were also red.

  ***

  Mihalis returned before sunset. Dinner was still not ready. The pillow with half an oar rested on my knees. He came in and, without speaking, sat at the table with his back to me. Irini sat opposite him. He didn’t even notice her; he pulled the bottle of raki towards him and poured some in his glass. I tried to signal Irini with my eyes to go to the other room, she sat there laughing ironically at me. She looked at Mihalis and placed her hands on the table. The ten soldiers stood one beside the other, this time they looked threatening, as though they could attack at any moment. Irini did not stop her ironic laughter. Mihalis lifted his glass of raki and poured it down his throat, and only then did he notice Irini sitting across from him. I jumped up to take her into the other room and then I saw that the red soldiers were under the table, I relaxed, I felt a great sense of relief. Mihalis looked at her severely and she immediately got up from the table and went into the other room. When he is sitting at the table, we are not allowed to sit with him, ‘A woman’s place is beside the table, not at the table,’ he would constantly repeat. He kept hoping I would give him a son, but I hadn’t even wanted to give birth to Irini, every evening I had prayed that I wouldn’t get pregnant so he would send me back to the convent. When I became pregnant with Irini, I knew it was the end of me, that I would never again leave Gavdos. I sat down again behind him and quietly asked him what was new. Without turning towards me, he poured himself another raki and began to speak: ‘This afternoon while we were sitting in Kostas’ taverna, the guy came in, the Russian. He shamelessly sat down at the middle table. When he saw that no one was coming to serve him, he loudly ordered a raki. Kostas told him it would be better if he left, that he had no place there, only islanders were welcome in the taverna. He replied that he was waiting for the doctor, he had something to discuss with him. The priest, who was sitting with me at the table playing backgammon, gave a sign to Kostas to give the guy his raki and let him wait for the doctor. He sat there and waited, but when he saw that the doctor wasn’t coming, he drank up the raki and left. When he had gone, Kostas angrily told the priest that he shouldn’t have served him, this would just get him used to it and he would start coming more often. The priest didn’t know what to say in his own defence, so he said that he knew what he was doing, but no one believed him, we all knew that even he wasn’t sure what was the right thing to do. Spiros said that he had seen the Russian standing in front of the doctor’s house, they talked about something and then the doctor let him inside. Later, when the doctor arrived, the priest asked him right off what he was doing with the Russian; at first the doctor denied having seen him at all except on the day they arrived at the port in Karave. Spiros told him that he had seen them talking, and that got him flustered, he wasn’t expecting that, he looked in confusion at me, then at the priest, then at Spiros, and finally he said that the Russian had come to his house begging him to go to their house and examine their friend who was seriously ill, but he had refused. None of us believed him, we know how greedy he is for money, he realised that and said he had to go, he had some work he needed to finish. When he left, the priest said we needed to keep an eye on him, he turned towards Spiros and told him to be on constant alert. Then Giorgos the lighthouse keeper came, he hadn’t been to the taverna for a long time, he said that Stella was unwell again and that maybe he should listen to the doctor and maybe it would be best to send Stella to the hospital in Souda, on Crete, there was a hospital there where people like Stella were sent, he wanted to say crazy people, but he fell silent, as if the word were unpleasant for him to utter. We all kept quiet, we didn’t know what to say to him, if she had only given him children…’ He turned towards me, it was the first time in a long while that he had looked me in the eyes, and he said to me, ‘You’re all the same! All of you!’

  I set the pillow on the windowsill on top of the basket with needles and thread, saying I was going to check to see how dinner was coming along. He continued to pour himself raki.

  * * *

  1 ‘Marina of the Rocks’ by Odysseus Elytis. Poetry International. Translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. From Orientations.

  Meeting: Oksana

  Above the sea there was a white cloud that hid Crete. I opened the window and breathed deeply; the air smelled of salt. Nothing soothes my unease as much as the sea. But here, closed in the house, all I can do is remember, remember you, and think back on those long winters in Ukraine, the snow that fell for days, and you and me sitting on the floor of your father’s study looking at the map he had drawn the night before. You wanted to become a cartographer like him and draw maps of undiscovered islands, but I didn’t want to be anything, all I wanted was to travel. And while we were sitting there that morning, which reminds me a lot of this one, I told you that if travel is the search for one’s self, I never want to find myself. You laughed aloud, I laughed too. Now I don’t even know when I last laughed like that, sincerely, wholeheartedly.

  Do you remember my watch with the brown wristband? It’s on my wrist even today, but the day we came here it stopped working, and anyway, here you have all the time for yourself, so why would you measure it? Nothing is like it was in Ukraine. I don’t even know Evgenii anymore. He is less and less present. He talked all night, but not with me, with Ruslan, a colleague who worked with us in Chernobyl. He doesn’t notice when I am lying beside him or when I get up. When he is awake, he stares at a point in space and doesn’t even notice my presence in the room. Sometimes I wonder why we even sleep together.

  Although the calendar says it is winter, outside it looked more like spring, which I took as a call to go outside. I didn’t even look to see whether Igor was in the house. When I got outside, I saw the woman standing near our house, it looked like she was waiting for me. I looked into her eyes the colour of the sea; a person could easily drown in them. We stood there and looked at each other. You could hear her daughter calling to her from the house. She’s always screaming. The woman set off towards her house and, without turning, went inside. I circled the house a few times, not knowing what to do. I thought
about going down to the sea, but I was afraid I would run into Igor. In the end, I decided to walk to the edge of the village. I went past a house which I knew was the priest’s, but except for several chickens running around the yard, I didn’t see anyone. Just past the house was a small church, and in the churchyard, a cemetery. The graves were facing the sea. I saw that there was someone standing behind one of the gravestones observing me. I thought it was the man with the sheep and I hurried to the way out. As I neared the gate, I turned once more, and I saw an old woman standing there. She had long, white hair, thick white eyebrows, and her skin was white, she looked like a porcelain doll. From behind the gravestones a black tomcat leapt towards her. It also looked at me. The woman smiled at me then suddenly disappeared with the cat among the tombstones. Every few seconds I caught a glimpse of its tail from behind a grave, and the woman would wink at me from behind a tombstone and smile. When they had disappeared completely, I headed back, I didn’t want Igor to see that I was out.

  Igor still hadn’t returned. When I climbed upstairs to the bedroom, I saw Evgenii sitting by the window looking at the sea. He didn’t even turn when I came in. I took a chair and sat beside him. We looked together at the sea in silence. I wanted to ask him what was happening with us, but I couldn’t, and as though he felt the same thing, he said without looking at me, ‘Who knows whether we made a mistake in coming here?’ He got up from his chair and lay down again on the bed. I stayed and looked at the sea and he looked at the point where he always looked. When I couldn’t stand the quiet any longer, I went downstairs to wait for Igor. It had already grown dark outside, and then it began to rain. Do you remember when your father told us that islands were unpredictable, how it could easily begin to rain and then a few hours later the sun could be shining again?

  I sat in the dark and listened to the rain.

  A Room with a View of the Sea: Penelope

  Ever since the first day I came to this house I have avoided the room on the upper floor. It’s the only room in the house with a view of the sea. I am not afraid of confronting the sea, I am afraid of confronting Crete. Today for the first time after so many years I looked over, across the sea, and it seemed unreal to me, as if it had never existed, as if I had never lived there, but that thought frightened me even more, because that would mean that I had never met you. Would I have thought of you at all, would I have had the courage to stand at this window if they hadn’t come, the barbarians? I opened the window and breathed deeply. It smelled of salt. I felt a queasiness in my stomach, it was the smell of my father’s death, the smell of your escape. I closed it quickly. I looked once again towards Crete, I wanted to assure myself that it was really there, that it truly existed. The white cloud that had been above the sea, hiding it, slowly pulled away, and there before me was the view I so feared. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, I wanted to make up for all these years. It is winter, I thought. Psiloritis must be covered in snow. And suddenly all the snow swept inside me. From the weight of the snow I couldn’t move from the chair. I sat and looked.

  The door behind me slowly opened. I sensed several hesitant steps approaching me. It was Mihalis. His eyes held the same fear as on the day the barbarians came. He was afraid of this room perhaps even more than I was. Do you remember how you told me that the day your mother left, your father called some workmen to block up the only window in the house that looked towards the sea, because he was afraid that you’d run off just like her? She had always sat at the window and looked out. What Mihalis feared most of all was that I’d come into this room and when I saw the sea, I would want to run away. But boats come here so rarely that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.

  ‘Where is Irini?’ he asked to break the uncomfortable silence. ‘At school,’ I answered. He sat on the iron bed, on the same bed on which he was born, on which his mother died, the bed on which Irini was born and on which I will most likely die, too. This is his mother’s room. He had told me that his father was a sailor and rarely came home. Once he brought his mother an umbrella the colour of ripe melon. She never used it, she rarely left the house, but she kept the umbrella in the wooden cupboard in this room, among her dowry items. Whenever she saw a boat, she would open the window and begin to wave it, she would wave until the boat had passed. He came less and less often, and she stood more and more often at the window waving. One day a sailor who had been with him on the same boat told her that he wasn’t returning and how they had stopped somewhere in Portugal because of a storm and they were sitting in a café in the harbour when her husband told them he was going to take a leak but never came back. At first, they thought he was drunk and had fallen into the sea and drowned, or that someone had killed him thinking he had money on him, but several months later when they stopped again in the same port, they ran into him in the café from which he had left and never returned; they hardly recognised him, he was a new man, he told them he had got married to a Portuguese woman. That evening when he went off to pee, instead of going back inside, he set off down the street and along the way he met a woman with an umbrella the colour of ripe melon, he set off after her, followed her to her house – she was a widow, with no children. He begged a sailor from Gavdos to tell his wife not to wait for him. As the sailor was leaving, he gave him his old wedding ring. When Mihalis’s mother heard this, she closed herself up completely in this room and never left, she got out of bed only when she heard a boat’s horn, she closed the shutters so as not to see the boat. One day when Mihalis came into her room to leave food for her, the window was wide open, she was holding the umbrella in her right hand, but she was dead.

  He sat and looked out the window, but not at the sea, he was looking at Crete; the only time he had visited Crete was the day he came to get me at the convent. There was no sign of remorse in his face, nor of happiness. He noticed I was looking at him and he smiled in embarrassment, I have never seen him laugh. ‘Strange things happened today. This morning the Russian came to the taverna again. He sat down and ordered a raki. When Kostas brought it to him, he asked when the doctor would come. The priest asked him why he was always looking for the doctor. He didn’t answer. He kept drinking and looking at the door. He drank it in two gulps. And just when he wanted to order another, Spiros came in and said that he had seen the doctor getting into a fisherman’s boat. He had a suitcase in his hand. We all jumped up, the Russian did too, he threw some drachmas on the table and flew out the door. The doctor had run off. The priest said he had always seemed suspicious to him, and that he was probably the one who brought them to the island, that it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that they had arrived the same day. While we were sitting there, we heard a scream from the taverna’s courtyard. It was Katerina, Kostas’ wife. We all went outside; she was standing there terrified, looking at a dead snake. The priest said it was probably that woman, the Russian, who had thrown it into the courtyard, and that she and her husband had probably been together.’ If this had taken place in winter, just a month ago, they would likely have blamed Stella, the lighthouse keeper’s crazy wife. They tied every strange thing that happened on the island to Stella, maybe someone might have thought of Aliki, the herbalist, but they were afraid of her and her powers and they didn’t even want to mention her name because it might get her riled up.