Nicolai's Daughters (8 page)

Nicolai kicked at a stone. “My wife died,” Nicolai said. He picked up the stone and threw it into the water. The breeze blew sand into his eyes. He blinked once, and then again. The tiny grains remained, grating.

“I never heard you had a daughter,” Achilles said.

“I didn't marry a Greek girl.”

Achilles nodded. “Come out with your cousin and me tonight.”

“I don't know.” He rubbed his eyes and blinked again. “I'm not much in the mood.” He was barely functioning. Couldn't Achilles see that? Nicolai couldn't handle going out and trying to make conversation, pretend to take an interest in what they were doing. He tapped his thigh, stood staring at the distant mountains beyond the bay.

Achilles put his arm around Nicolai again. “It would do you good to get out of that house.”

He met Achilles and Dimitria at the old
bouzouki
in the centre of town. Achilles ordered a large platter of
barboni,
a couple of bowls of olives and several plates of grilled vegetables and potatoes. He waved and more baskets of bread came.

“This is too much,” Dimitria said.

“
Ella.
How often do we have a special guest from America? We have to celebrate. Isn't that right, Nicolai?”

“I'm with my cousin on this one. This is too much.”

Achilles shrugged. “So, as I was saying, I have spoken to a few people about this project and they're as excited as I am.”

Nicolai put a couple of potatoes on his plate. He felt Dimitria's eyes on him. He looked up. She smiled and looked away. She leaned back into her chair and tilted her head towards Achilles. She wore a light green turtleneck. Nothing unusual or special about it. Why had he noticed?

“It'll be an exciting project. You need to get your mind off things.”

“What things?” Dimitria asked.

“I don't think I was supposed to say anything,” Achilles said.

“My wife passed away a little while ago. My daughter is with her godparents,” Nicolai said. He suddenly felt tired. He leaned his head against his hand.

The music started. Achilles raised his voice. “I have big plans for us.”

“I don't make plans anymore,” Nicolai said. It was nice that she didn't ask him anything about Sara, whether she was Greek or not. All those silly questions.

Dimitria wiped her mouth, dropped her napkin on her lap and patted his hand. That image again. Her father found them asleep, her head on his chest. They were scolded. He was told to go home and tell his father what he'd done. He hadn't done anything so he said nothing. He didn't see much of her after that.

Nicolai picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth. Her hand fell away.

After dinner, they listened to the music for a while, then Nicolai said he was tired and was going home. “We'll come with you. Let me get this,” Achilles said, pointing at the check in the middle of the table. He opened his wallet and flipped through the bills, counting under his breath. Setting the bills down, he took his change purse from his jacket pocket, opened it and picked out a few coins. He shook the purse as if looking for more, then emptied it onto the table. He looked at the check again. “Interesting.”

“I can help.” Dimitria pulled her purse from the back of the chair.

“No woman of mine has to pay.”

Nicolai reached for the check. “I'll handle it.”

Achilles picked up the bills, put them back in his wallet and leaned forward to tuck it into his back pocket. Dimitria elbowed him. He smiled and said, “You Americans are very fortunate. Yes?” He scooped up the change and dropped it into his change purse, clicking it closed.

Nicolai ignored the comment and paid the waiter.

“How is it living with your parents again?” Achilles asked.

“My father hasn't changed.”

“Kalavryta was hard on that generation,” Dimitria said.

“My father got over it,” Achilles said, “but he was young. Yours was older.”

“What do you mean?”

Dimitria squeezed Achilles's hand and shook her head.

“What did I say?” Achilles asked. Smiling at Dimitria, he said, “People react to things differently, that's all I wanted to say.”

Achilles walked a little ahead of Nicolai and Dimitria along the dark streets. He whistled. The breeze pressed against them, cool and persistent. Dimitria pulled her jacket off her shoulders, Nicolai held it up for her, and she slipped her arms through the sleeves. Had she leaned back against him? Or was he imagining things? He hadn't been close to a woman since Sara died. He pulled away.

They dropped Dimitria off at her house and Nicolai recognized it as the one he'd walked past the day he'd arrived. She must have been the woman he'd seen working in the field. He'd forgotten a lot about this place.

At the next corner, Achilles veered down one street, Nicolai took the other. “I'll call you,” Achilles said. “To talk about a few things.”

He could still hear Achilles's whistling long after he rounded the corner for home.

The next day, Nicolai ran into Dimitria on the street on his way to the butcher to buy a roast for his mother. Four bags of groceries were inching their way down her arms, just as she tried to hook another one on.

“These are bigger than you are,” he said, taking her bags. Her forearms were scored red. “Look at your arms,” he said.

She pushed the sleeves of her sweater down. “This will pass.”

Nicolai chatted about the food they'd had at last night's
bouzouki
, how he couldn't get Greek food like that in Canada.

“You're not happy to be home, though.”

“Why does everyone have to read more into what I say?” He was tired of watching what he said around his father. And if he wasn't careful with his mother, he knew she'd put words in his mouth. And now Dimitria was doing it too? He was so sick of all of this. He picked up his pace without really intending to.

She pulled his arm and stopped him. “I only meant these aren't the best circumstances for your return.”

He nodded. They continued walking towards her house in silence. When they arrived, her mother opened the door. “And who is this?”

“Don't you remember Nicolai?” Dimitria said.

The woman was dressed in black from head to toe. She squinted. “Why can't you carry your own bags? It is not a man's job to do this.”

“I'm a relative,
Thia.
It's okay for me to help my cousin.”

The woman grabbed the bags from Nicolai and shook her head. “Young people today don't know what to do.” She disappeared somewhere in the house. Nicolai and Dimitria stood on the front step.

“My mother is suspicious of all men,” Dimitria said. “She wonders why I haven't married and had children like all my friends.”

“How about Achilles?”

Dimitria put her finger over her mouth. “Don't let her hear you.”

“I don't expect many mothers like him.”

She shrugged. “We pass the time together. We're just friends. There is nothing more to it than that.”

I guess everyone needs a friend, he thought. “I suppose asking you out to lunch is out of the question.”

The eagerness he saw in her eyes scared him. Why the hell had he opened his mouth?

“Yes, but you should do it anyway,” she said.

He looked away. “Okay, so how about it?”

Dimitria opened the front door. “I'm going to the café for lunch, Mamma. I will return soon.” She slammed the door behind her.

Her mother came from the back of the house and hurtled out the front door behind them. “Why not have lunch here?” she asked. “We have food at home. Why waste your money?”

“Thank you, that is very nice of you,
Thia.
I could take the two of you out.”

“Look at me.” She pointed to herself. “I'm not dressed. Stay with us and tell us about your life in America.” She kissed him on both cheeks, put her arm in his and led him up the walkway and through the front door. Nicolai heard Dimitria scuff her feet behind them. As a child she used to do the same thing when she didn't want to play with him or his sisters.

His aunt arranged cold cuts on a platter, made a salad and cut some bread. Nicolai sat at the kitchen table and watched while Dimitria set the table and filled the glasses with water.

“You are missing a fork here,” her mother said, pointing to one place setting. She shook her hands at the sky in mock frustration and winked at Nicolai.

Dimitria got another fork.

“She's a dreamer, my daughter. I have to watch her all the time.”

“She thinks I'm this way because I'm an artist.” Dimitria sat down. She put some salad on her plate and took a piece of bread.

“Offer our guest something first.” Her mother pulled at her own hair in an exaggerated way. “She won't find a husband because she doesn't know what it means to be a wife.” She laughed.

“I won't spoil anyone,” Dimitria said, “especially a man.”

“Isn't this the way women are in America, Nicolai?” her mother asked. She passed the platter to him. “Please have more. You've taken so little.”

Nicolai put another slice of cold roast beef on his plate. “Yes.” He could never tell Sara what to do. She'd put him in his place. He loved that about her.

“And look at all the problems they have.”

“You watch too many soap operas, Mamma.”

Nicolai laughed and passed the platter of cold cuts to Dimitria. She placed it on the table in front of her mother without helping herself.

“Eat,” her mother said.

“No, thank you.”

“God put animals on the earth for food.” Her mother's hands were on her hips.

“And we treat these creatures badly.”

“This one has funny ideas.” She pointed at her own head as if to say her daughter was not altogether there. “Ignore her.”

He liked watching the sparring between Dimitria and his
thia
. He wished he could be this comfortable with his own family. Sometimes when he was alone with his sisters and his mother, sitting around the kitchen table, he could be. But he was a kid the last time he remembered that happening.

Later, his
thia
told Dimitria to show him her sketches. “If you like boats, you will like what she draws. If you don't, well, I guess you won't.”

A small studio had been set up at the back of the house. Nicolai banged his head on the doorway as they entered. Dimitria turned on the light and he ducked under the archway. The room opened up to a drafting table her father had built for her.

Scanning each print on the wall, he studied the details, and then stood back to get a different perspective. “You're good.”

“I just play with this and sometimes a tourist buys one.” She stood beside him, her hands behind her back.

He moved to see one of her other sketches and brushed up against her. Both apologized and moved away. He walked over to the sketch she had on her table. “I should probably get back. I haven't bought that roast yet and my mother must be wondering where I got to.”

Dimitria nodded. “How long will you be staying?”

“I don't know.”

She stood a few feet away. “Take your time,” she said.

“I'll thank your mother before I leave.”

“She'd like that. Her daughter is apparently too ungrateful for that kind of thing.”

He smiled.

As soon as he entered the house, his mother snatched the roast from him. “I've been waiting for this, but I guess you were too busy having lunch with your cousin and her mother to worry about that.”

“How did you know?”

Her back was turned to him. “My dead brother's wife called and said she didn't realize you were back, why hadn't anyone told her?”

“So what's the big deal?”

“We have our life. They have theirs. We don't mix and disturb each other.”

“If family is all we have, as you always say, why don't we?”

She turned to face him. “I suppose you told them your whole life story.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You need to keep some things to yourself.” She put her hands on her hips like she used to when he was a boy and she was annoyed with him.

“You don't want me to tell anyone about Sara? About Alexia?”

She met his eyes. “It's only that we have to invite them here now.” She turned towards the counter again. “This is difficult.”

“You don't have to if you don't want to. We had lunch. So what? It just happened. There are no expectations.”

“There are always expectations,” his mother said. She rinsed the roast. Watery drops of blood leaked onto the counter and floor as she settled the lump of meat into the old dented roaster.

2010

Diakofto was a cluster of houses huddled together on a spit of land dangling into the Corinthian Sea. Alexia first saw her father's village from the highway.

At this distance, the village looked like the postcards her father used to Scotch-tape to the wall above his desk. The tape would give way in a corner and the pictures would bend forward. When he bothered to notice, he'd add more tape. The images became smaller and smaller as the border of tape grew wider. Dust settled and darkened the tape. No way he'd take those postcards down and throw them out. No way. She'd dreamt about going to Diakofto so many times when she was a child. But he'd waited too long. Don't, she told herself. You're here. He's dead. She shook her head.

“What's wrong?” Katarina said.

No one had said a word for the last while. Strange for them to be so quiet. They must be tired. “Nothing,” she said. “I was thinking about my father's postcards.”

“Strangers do not see our village is special.” She patted Alexia's leg. “You will.”

The relatives in the row behind her came to life, briefly to drone their agreement.

So far it didn't look very special to Alexia.

She peered at the village through the van's grimy window. She wished she could wash the window, so she could see more clearly.

The van veered off the highway onto a steep, narrow road, then onto another. Alexia noticed a gas station that seemed to be an old hardware store too. On the opposite side of the road, a highway was under construction: rebar sticking up like a skeletal spine, workers climbing its back, trucks milling back and forth kicking up dust. Where was the recession she'd read about in the news back home? Surely the construction she saw in Athens and in the towns along the highway could not have reached this tiny place. She'd imagined Diakofto like the idyllic villages in the Greek travel ads: captured once and forever unchanged. She liked the sound of that. She smiled, and at the same time gulped down hard, then again. Where had they come from, these ridiculous tears? Get a grip, she told herself, staring out the window. She swallowed, opened her eyes wide, bent forward slightly and wiped them against her shoulder. I need some sleep. That's all.

Two rocky peaks loomed above the highway construction, blackened and disconnected. She hadn't expected mountains. She'd intended to research this place before she came, but in the end, she did what she always did. She updated her colleagues, prepared a transition plan, met with her clients, wrote instructions about how and when to reach her, given the ten-hour time difference, and spent time cajoling Dan into believing the office would survive without her. Her personal agenda got lost somewhere in her professional obligations.

She squinted up at the mountains.

“This is where our town gets its name,” Christina said, “
dia
means through and
kofto
means to cut.” She met Alexia's eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Many years ago, the mountain cut in two.”

“How?”

“Nobody knows. An earthquake, maybe.” Christina shrugged. “An act of God. One minute it was a mountain like all the rest. Then, everything changed.”

Christina turned and drove down what looked like the town's main street. Cars, tractors and mopeds were double-parked with the street vendors' miniature trucks, which were weighed down with fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, copper pots and pans. Men sat at small tables outside cafés. Women with shopping bags slung over their arms and lists gripped in their hands stood in line in darkened bakeries and butcher shops. Small groups of young people milled about on the sidewalk. Solon rolled down his window. Alexia could smell the sea but couldn't see it. A copperware vendor shouted and women pushed at each other to gather around him. A donkey brayed.

Solon yelled to someone sitting at the corner café opposite the railroad station. The man turned and waved. A car horn blasted.

“
Ella
,” Solon shouted, then rolled his window up. “No one has any patience.”

This was Greece, Alexia thought. Loud and in your face, just like her father. She relaxed a little. Her father had told her that there was always noise, people would stop to chat and gossip, that everyone knew everyone. It looked like he'd been right about that.

The van crossed the railroad tracks and turned down a residential road. In the schoolyard, a teenager shot a basketball at a naked hoop. Modern houses with dull aluminum shutters lined the streets. In front of the houses, goats sniffed at the ground behind lopsided wire fencing, bleating their protests. Vegetable gardens ran alongside each house. Lilacs were in full bloom. The roads here, like the main road, were paved. “These houses are so new,” Alexia said.

“You wanted something old and falling down?” Christina eyed her in the rear-view mirror.

“We modern, too,” Maria said. “It is not only in America.”

“It's just that my dad said things never change here.”

“He thinks everything stay like he left it,” Christina said. “Life changes here like it does for other people in other places. Those who leave forget.”

Alexia had expected to spend her days poking around quaint ruins and meandering through cobbled streets. But viewed up close, it didn't look at all like a postcard. That was a trick of the light and all this white aluminum siding and stucco. In fact, except for the fields and animals, Diakofto didn't look much different from one of Vancouver's suburbs. “What do people do here?”

“Live,” Christina said.

“We enjoy what we can,” Maria said. “Not too much.”

“Do you get bored?”

Christina slapped the steering wheel. “Boring is for people with nothing.”

Katarina nodded, the rest agreed and Alexia gazed down at her watch, feeling as though she'd been told off. She was still on Vancouver time. Nine a.m. Normally, she'd be in a meeting at this time. Her days started at five a.m. with a shower. Then, she'd eat her dry cereal, make a list of things she had to do. At the office by six, she'd get through emails, then review her files before others came in.

The van crept along narrow lanes. Alexia peered into the windows of the houses they passed. Through the lace curtains she could see tidy kitchens, messy living rooms, someone reading at a table, and in the last house, a silhouette behind a shower curtain.

They lurched to a stop. An old goat meandered across the road.

A man's hand reached out and groped the glass shelf beside the shower. He flicked back the curtain and snatched the plastic bottle on the sill. A streak of bright white shot though his thin beard. His mouth opened in a grin. She blinked and turned away.

The van inched forward.

At the end of a dead-end street they pulled up to a narrow, three-storey house. “Thanks be to God,” Solon said, jumping out first. The others tumbled out onto the sidewalk, stretching and groaning. Solon took Alexia's bag and Christina walked ahead through the door. Alexia stared at the plain lines of the house, aluminum siding, shingled roof. Where was the village she'd imagined? Where were the whitewashed stone houses, the blue wooden shutters, the labyrinth of pathways? Where was the past?

Christina took Alexia's hand and pulled her into the doorway of the first room they passed. It had two loveseats covered in bright wool blankets. A television with twisted rabbit ears sat in one corner. Family pictures hung on the wall, some in tiny ornate frames, others in large ones. They were scattered about as if set there the moment they came into the house, wherever a spot could be found, no thought given to any order.

Christina pointed to a miniature Acropolis near the television. “A gift from a relative in Athens. And the vases are for the roses Solon brings to me each day from the garden,” Christina said.

“
Ella
.” Solon said. “No one cares about this.”

Maria and Katarina smiled, winked.

They were so proud of how little they had, Alexia thought. “It's very homey,” she said, nodding.

Down the hall, the kitchen held a chrome table and four wooden chairs. High cupboards hovered over a tiny fridge and stove. At one end stood a fireplace encased by blackened walls. “You like it. No?” Christina asked. “Homely? No?”

“Um, homey means comfortable. Warm. Homely is another thing.”

“This is problem with English. So many words are the same.” Christina shrugged.

“Greeks invented the alphabet,” Solon said. “What can anyone show us?”

The entourage cheered. Solon patted Zak on the shoulder. “Yes or no?”

“I didn't mean to criticize,” Alexia said. “I'm sorry.”

“He has to argue.” Christina hugged Alexia to her. “Come. See the rest.”

Doors opened and banged shut behind her as Alexia was shown the next floor, which had a bathroom and two closet-sized bedrooms. They all shuffled up another flight of stairs to the attic. Maria pushed ahead of Katarina. This started some of the younger cousins shoving. The acrid scent of sweat made Alexia light-headed. Did they all have to go on this tour? Hadn't these people seen this house about a million times before this?

Christina said she had made up a room in the attic in preparation for Alexia's arrival. The white walls were freshly painted. There was a twin-sized bed, an armoire, a desk and a wooden chair. Heavy dark beams outlined the low ceiling. She could stand fully upright only in the centre of the room. Alexia thought about princesses imprisoned in towers.

“Christina did very nice job,” Katarina said.

Christina smiled, put her hands behind her back and looked away as if waiting for confirmation from Alexia.

“
Ne
,” Alexia said.

“
Bravo,”
the rest cheered. “You one of us.”

The sudden outburst made Alexia jump.

Maria slid her arm inside Alexia's. “Don't worry. Soon, you get used to us.”

“Come see.” Christina pointed at the double doors at the opposite end.

Maria pushed Alexia towards them. Christina whispered to Solon and Katarina held her hand over her mouth. The others formed a semi-circle around Alexia. She reached for the handles and opened the doors.

A terrace strung with bougainvillea and grape vines stretched before them. Christina pointed to her small pots of rosemary, thyme, basil and marjoram. “Very nice for cooking. No?”

“I don't cook much.” Alexia thought about the baking she used to do with her mother, then Mavis. Why had she stopped? It used to be so much fun.

“And look, lemons,” Christina said. “Juice in morning. Every day you want.”

More herbs surrounded the old lemon tree rooted in a clay tub.

Alexia nodded.

Long rectangular planters filled with bright red geraniums hung from every corner. Maria pointed to the royal blue, pink and bright yellow pillows and throws that covered the weathered chairs and benches. “Christina make these.”

“They are beautiful.” Alexia picked up one of the pillows and held it to her chest.

Christina smiled. “
Ella,”
she said. “Let her rest now. She's tired from the long trip.” She herded everyone off the terrace. Each aunt, uncle and cousin hugged Alexia or touched her shoulder or arm as they walked past. She tried to acknowledge them with a smile or a returned hug. Christina waited until last. She held Alexia at arm's length. “I am so glad.”

“You've done so much.”

“Nothing.” Christina left.

Alexia closed her door. It had been a long day. She needed sleep. The trip had finally caught up with her. She heard the clink of glasses downstairs and walked back onto the terrace. From here, it looked idyllic. You couldn't see the highway or the new construction. Olive groves stretched to the mountains. She smelled basil and leaned down, clipped a leaf and brought it to her nose. She inhaled deeply.

The next day she woke in the dark, got dressed and tiptoed down the stairs, runners in hand. She sat on the floor in the front hall and laced them up. The front door scraped against the floor as she opened it. She winced. Another door creaked open upstairs. She hurried outside, pulled the door up slightly and closed it behind her, then ran up the deserted street. She didn't know and didn't care where she was headed. She just wanted to exercise her travel-stiff body.

She followed one street, then another, down to the edge of the water where fishermen lined a concrete overhang, poles in hand or propped between piles of rocks. The sky over the mountains blushed pink. The breeze echoed in her ears. Her lungs ached in a good way. She needed this.

The group of men fishing on the shore turned as she got near. The scent of the sea hung over them like a net. Leaning into the others, one man said, “
Amerikanithia.
”

No, I'm Canadian, she thought. But who really cares? They don't know the difference. “Good morning,” she called as she passed.

Alexia ran up another side street and out onto the main road where the bakery and the butcher shop were now lit, their doors propped open. Coming towards her, an old lady no more than five feet tall dragged a cart behind her. The woman waved at Alexia, forcing her to stop.

The old woman's voice was calm, but her stare fiery, her face creased into an angry scowl. Alexia leaned in closer to see what she could do to help.

The woman's hair was pinned into a black scarf. Grey whiskers grew out of a mole on her cheek. Her breath was stale. She pointed at Alexia and crossed herself, muttering in Greek. Alexia shook her head. “I'm sorry. I don't speak Greek.”

“You want to know where I got these?” Alexia said, pointing to her shorts.

“No good.” The woman shook her head vigorously and muttered once more under her breath, crossed herself again.

“Have a good day.” Alexia kept her voice light, continued to smile. Of course she wouldn't wear her shorts to the office, she thought, but she was out for a run. No one was supposed to see her. She set off at a jog. After half a block, she turned. The woman was still there, staring at her.