Black Butterflies by Sara Alexi Page A

pink Marina thought she might never leave the house again, lest she die of shame. And when they manhandled the barge into the water, Manolis pulling at the front, and Mitsos pushing at the back, the whole village turned out to help, and to watch it sink. But it stayed afloat, and they slowly towed it through a calm sea to a nearby town behind a borrowed rowing boat. The village children ran along the shore shouting and jeering until they reached the town.
    There Manolis and Mitsos stocked the shelves inside with glasses and bottles and put up a sign outside which read ‘The Love Boat’. People stopped laughing then, as young tourists filled the boat night after night.
    The villagers had been kind to Marina who was seven months pregnant with Eleni then, with Manolis out night after night running his floating bar. At least they had money for a while. But like everything else Manolis did it all turned sour, and he got crosser and crosser, and they were penniless again within months.
    ‘But I got used to being on my own.’ Marina closes her mouth and lets her hands, which had been assisting with the telling of the tale, rest in her lap.
    ‘ Well, if he left you alone I would be calling him foolish, not unlucky!’
    ‘ Well, we must call him unlucky because it does nobody any good to speak ill of the dead, and it really was a ridiculous way that he died.’ Marina becomes grave and picks imaginary bits of fluff off her black skirt.
    ‘ We’ve all got to go sometime, and we all have to die of something. Not everything is curable. I keep my hopes up.’ Bobby sounds cheerful.
    ‘ What, that they will find a cure for you?’ Marina asks.
    ‘ No! That I’ll die before they do find a cure! I don’t want to become even more of a burden to Zoe! She has enough with Grandma and Roula, never mind taking care of Aunt Eleftheria and me.’ He nods towards the large sleeping woman.
    They both look at Eleftheria, who remains motionless, snoring ever so quietly.
    ‘Ah. They should make it longer! Three Two One. Three Two One. Does anyone want some water?’ Roula is up and jigging to the closing music.
    Marina has forgotten she is there.
    ‘Yes, please, Roula.’ Bobby shifts in his seat.
    ‘ Do you need a hand?’ Marina asks.
    ‘ No thanks. Grandma?’ Roula raises her voice. ‘Do you want some water?’ There is a low sound from the room beyond, and Roula takes some glasses from a cupboard and fills them from a plastic bottle by the door.
    ‘ I can’t understand a word Zoe senior says. Zoe can’t understand a lot of what she says either, although she pretends she can. But Roula has whole conversations with her,’ Bobby whispers to Marina.
    Roula puts a glass of water on the table for each of them.
    ‘Oh brilliant, I love this!’ Marina follows Roula’s gaze, which is fixed on the screen again, now showing a Turkish soap opera badly dubbed into Greek. The synchronisation is so bad that the man looks like he is speaking the woman’s words, and vice versa. Marina laughs. Roula tells her to ‘Shh’, and sits enraptured.
    Marina indicates the water and asks Bobby if he needs a hand, and he nods. She puts it to his lips and lets him drink before taking a drink of her own.
    ‘So did he die by the might of God, or the might of man?’ Bobby asks, licking water from his lips.
    ‘ Who?’ Marina looks at Bobby and back to the television to see if she has missed something. She doesn’t know the series and has no idea who he is talking about.
    ‘ No, your husband, you dizzy flower,’ Bobby says.
    ‘ Oh, him. It was another daft idea he had with Mitsos. They were always scheming to make money. The last scam was fishing. Using dynamite. They thought they were so clever. Drop the dynamite in the water, boom …’ Marina adds some hand gestures to bring to life the image of the explosion, spilling water on her skirt. It feels cool as it soaks through to her thigh. ‘And the dead fish float to the surface, and you gather them