quite dare. And I’ll watch her from the window as she descends the path, and she’ll slyly pull that put-on face to let me know she’s suffering, for me.
She finds it hard, she says, living here. It’s hard for everyone, I say.
But you won’t see it.
Like memory, rose-pink and dangerous, imagination distorts truth—so you, the traveler, conjure what you dreamed you’d see. Here’s your village: a cluster of white-washed houses, all alight with dazzling geraniums, nestling together on the majestic hillside, looking down on a blue, shimmering sea.
No. Live here, and learn. Truth, and consequences. Here’s my village, high on the hill, exposed to the elements, whatever they bring. To thwart the marauders of centuries ago, its sitingwas perfect—but time’s moved on, and the road’s still so difficult, each coming and going is a journey. Its warren of pretty, cobbled streets that draws you to explore—Where does this go? This way, or that?—makes weary walking for old legs and women weighed down by heavy bags of shopping. And quaint, close-packed houses put your neighbors in your face—better keep your nose clean—and the cracks and crannies of old, stone walls make homes for every kind of vermin. At night, we fall asleep to the scuttlings of beetles and the scrabblings of rats.
T hodoris Hatzistratis—Theo—had been born on this island, and here he was likely to die. His father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father—all had been born here, and, with the instinct of small-time farmers, all married island girls and bred their blood line pure, like livestock. All would be buried, one after the other, in the same cemetery plot; all would occupy it for the Orthodox-prescribed time—seven years, or ten—and then their bones, picked clean by the creatures who manage our decay, would be disinterred, and laid in the crowded ossuary, stacked tibia on fibula with their fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and wives: as close in death as in life.
To know the place of his grave from early childhood has an effect on a man. To place flowers on the ground where he himself will one day lie makes him fatalistic, pessimistic. Ambition and ideas for life atrophy—after all, what is the point? Life’s point, on this island, was always clearly visible, up there on the hillside. Eyes raised from chores or play took in the high, white cemetery walls,where for every one of them the family tomb was waiting for their corpse. All knew exactly where life was leading them; all the eating, drinking, fornicating, worrying, working, wishing it were different, wishing there were more, were only steps on that narrow road. They were all travelling together, towards the cemetery gates.
Some years had passed since great-grandfather had been disinterred. Today, Grandpa was to take his place.
Grandpa lay, rigid and cold, in his pine coffin on the parlor table. The coffin, one of the undertaker’s standard sizes, was too long for him; it overran the table ends, and the mourners, coming and going, cracked the door on its foot. Every chair in the house had been carried into the parlor, backed up to the walls beneath the gilded icons; red-eyed from crying and from lack of sleep, the women sat where they had sat all night, lighting long, brown candles, snuffing them as they burned low, watching that the Devil didn’t come to steal Grandpa’s soul.
To see him lying there made Theo’s heart ache.
He bent to kiss the old man’s forehead. The skin to which he touched his lips was dry, and jaundiced like the skin of corn-fed chickens. The lines of Grandpa’s face had dissolved, and his wrinkles—deep enough, in life, to hold a matchstick—had all gone: his complexion had reverted to a youth’s. The women had made him respectable, much more so than he ever was in his late years; they had shaved him, and scrubbed and clipped his nails, and put him in his suit, his wedding suit (he owned no other, but age had
She finds it hard, she says, living here. It’s hard for everyone, I say.
But you won’t see it.
Like memory, rose-pink and dangerous, imagination distorts truth—so you, the traveler, conjure what you dreamed you’d see. Here’s your village: a cluster of white-washed houses, all alight with dazzling geraniums, nestling together on the majestic hillside, looking down on a blue, shimmering sea.
No. Live here, and learn. Truth, and consequences. Here’s my village, high on the hill, exposed to the elements, whatever they bring. To thwart the marauders of centuries ago, its sitingwas perfect—but time’s moved on, and the road’s still so difficult, each coming and going is a journey. Its warren of pretty, cobbled streets that draws you to explore—Where does this go? This way, or that?—makes weary walking for old legs and women weighed down by heavy bags of shopping. And quaint, close-packed houses put your neighbors in your face—better keep your nose clean—and the cracks and crannies of old, stone walls make homes for every kind of vermin. At night, we fall asleep to the scuttlings of beetles and the scrabblings of rats.
T hodoris Hatzistratis—Theo—had been born on this island, and here he was likely to die. His father, and his father’s father, and his father’s father’s father—all had been born here, and, with the instinct of small-time farmers, all married island girls and bred their blood line pure, like livestock. All would be buried, one after the other, in the same cemetery plot; all would occupy it for the Orthodox-prescribed time—seven years, or ten—and then their bones, picked clean by the creatures who manage our decay, would be disinterred, and laid in the crowded ossuary, stacked tibia on fibula with their fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and wives: as close in death as in life.
To know the place of his grave from early childhood has an effect on a man. To place flowers on the ground where he himself will one day lie makes him fatalistic, pessimistic. Ambition and ideas for life atrophy—after all, what is the point? Life’s point, on this island, was always clearly visible, up there on the hillside. Eyes raised from chores or play took in the high, white cemetery walls,where for every one of them the family tomb was waiting for their corpse. All knew exactly where life was leading them; all the eating, drinking, fornicating, worrying, working, wishing it were different, wishing there were more, were only steps on that narrow road. They were all travelling together, towards the cemetery gates.
Some years had passed since great-grandfather had been disinterred. Today, Grandpa was to take his place.
Grandpa lay, rigid and cold, in his pine coffin on the parlor table. The coffin, one of the undertaker’s standard sizes, was too long for him; it overran the table ends, and the mourners, coming and going, cracked the door on its foot. Every chair in the house had been carried into the parlor, backed up to the walls beneath the gilded icons; red-eyed from crying and from lack of sleep, the women sat where they had sat all night, lighting long, brown candles, snuffing them as they burned low, watching that the Devil didn’t come to steal Grandpa’s soul.
To see him lying there made Theo’s heart ache.
He bent to kiss the old man’s forehead. The skin to which he touched his lips was dry, and jaundiced like the skin of corn-fed chickens. The lines of Grandpa’s face had dissolved, and his wrinkles—deep enough, in life, to hold a matchstick—had all gone: his complexion had reverted to a youth’s. The women had made him respectable, much more so than he ever was in his late years; they had shaved him, and scrubbed and clipped his nails, and put him in his suit, his wedding suit (he owned no other, but age had
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