Intimate Distance by Katerina Cosgrove Page B

bitter taste. She leads me by the hand out the back door. In the chill of the woodshed she heats a huge pot of water, makes up the fire, hauling in dry twigs and charred branches of pear-wood from a tree burnt down in last summer’s fires. There’s a twisted pipe leading out of the roof, repaired in places, patched with odd bits of tin. I have no doubt Pandelina did it herself with the tools heaped on the kitchen floor.
    â€˜Really,’ I venture, ‘if it’s so much trouble I don’t think we should – ’
    â€˜It’s done now; it’s done.’
    Pandelina sweats and heaves, bent over double. Zoi tries to help but she pushes him away.
    â€˜What do you know of this work, boy? Look at your hands. You’ve never touched an axe in your life.’
    She has incredible strength for her age. Soon the fire is lit, a huge pyramid of flaming wood and curling leaves, filaments of blue and red at the edges of the heat. She picks up the cauldron with difficulty, letting Zoi help her place it on a tripod above the fire. Then she leaves us there, shouting over her shoulder as she bangs the door shut.
    â€˜Don’t be too long, I want to lock up. You never know, these days, Turks and Albanians and the like roaming around the countryside, desperate for money – we’ll all be murdered in our beds.’
    I flinch at the mention of Turks. Zoi pours water over me in long silver rivulets. It runs in a warm rush down my body as I stand on the stone floor. Bells tinkle like stars as goats return home, unaided. Fat brown hens cluck wildly as they peck in long grass, and kittens smelling of hay and wood-smoke shy away from the rooster. The door creaks in the pressure of the wind and a brood of hens flows into the shed. It’s their evening roost and they arrange themselves comfortably up in the rafters, clucking against each other with small flurries of affection. Some make throaty noises at my feet, russet creatures on thin twisted legs.
    I turn my back on Zoi as he washes my hair, lowering my head to make it easier. He loops the coil over his left hand and lathers my head with soap, combing suds through the long strands with his fingers, rinsing it quickly with the rapidly cooling water. He puts the pot down with an outbreath and rubs the cake of soap up and down my back, with rapid strokes, then slower, lingering over my thighs. He rinses me again and I close my eyes against the force of the stream. Then he turns me around to face him, leans down and tips a little olive oil from a jar into his palm.
    â€˜No, Zoi, I don’t like it.’
    â€˜Come on, it’s good for your skin.’
    He’s play-acting, putting on his foolish voice.
    â€˜Extra-virgin, cold-pressed from my grandfather’s groves.’
    He’s authoritative through his laughter: pulls the hair back from my face and rubs the sweet green oil onto my chest and ribs and breasts, until they’re full with large nipples that betray me. I keep my head lowered, not looking at him, mutely suffering his attentions, shivering in the cold. Denying my slow arousal. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then decides against it.
    WE’RE INSTALLED WITH candles and an armful of sheets in the ancestral home. It hasn’t been lived in since Zoi’s grandfather’s death five years ago. On our way we pass the café on the main road where the bus left us earlier: the café glows with light at the end of the day, its silent ragged men playing cards and drinking. We’re tempted to go inside, spend a few hours in the warmth of strangers instead of in the dark cold house, but neither of us admits it. So we close the heavy door of the house behind us, shutting out the old men.
    I hold a candle out in front, afraid of hot wax, while Zoi drags our luggage over the doorstep, leaving a deep trail through the dust. There’s dust on chairs stacked in one corner, dust on the iron-grey shutters, in