That image of him praying at the Rosebud Café was in my mind when we walked back to Kolonaki. I suddenly felt concerned for Alexandra. I had been startled by his disconnection, the way he zoned out when things got difficult between us and how he often spoke out loud to the god who was like a telephone implanted inside his head.
Alexandra was pretending to sleep on the soft, blue sofa when we arrived home. Christos tiptoed towards her, gently took off her slippers with the lambs on the toes and placed them neatly on the floor. He turned off the main light and switched on a lamp, then put his finger to his lips. Ssssssssh.
‘Don’t wake her.’
Alexandra was wide awake.
He was always ready at her side with a blanket, a sheet, a cushion. He seemed keen to put her to sleep at every opportunity and she played along with her husband’s role as the anaesthetist of their household.
Alexandra was definitely awake. We were looking at each other with our various points of view.
The next morning, I packed my suitcase and folded up the camp bed they had provided for my stay. My father had already left the apartment for work and had not woken me up to say goodbye. I found Alexandra standing in her nightdress on the balcony. She seemed engrossed by the tame squirrel that was leaping across the branches of a tree nearby. She turned Evangeline away from her breast so she could look at it, too.
I think I must have startled her because she jumped when I said goodbye.
‘Oh, it is only you, Sofia.’
Who else would it be? If it had been my father, would she have yawned and declared herself ready for a nap on the soft, blue sofa?
When I thanked her for making a space for me in her home, she told me she was sad to see me go because she would have no one to talk to in the mornings.
Her long cotton nightdress was white and virginal, trimmed with lace on the sleeves and neck, unbuttoned so she could feed Evangeline. Today, her short hair was greasy and unbrushed.
I realized that I had never seen her with a friend.
‘Do you have brothers and sisters, Alexandra?’
She gazed again at the squirrel. ‘Not that I know of.’ She told me that she was adopted. She had grown up in Italy but now her parents — not her biological parents — were elderly, so it was not easy for them to make the journey from Rome to Athens to see their granddaughter. She was worried about their pensions because there was austerity in Italy, too, but she had regularly sent them money when she was working. Now it was not so easy to do that because my papa had other plans and ideas, but she thought it would sort itself out in the end.
She turned Evangeline towards her again and kissed her daughter’s plump cheeks.
It was almost a holy experience to see the orphaned young mother with her own beloved child clasped to her breast.
Perhaps she had been easy prey for Christos because she longed for a father who was also a husband. The Donald Duck posters and lamb slippers and jellied candies and pretending to sleep on my papa’s shoulder might be her attempt to make another childhood for herself. A childhood in which she had not been abandoned.
My sister was clasped to her nipple, her little toes waving in the air as she suckled, her eyes wide open and dazed, oblivious to everything except the dizzying milk in her mother’s breast.
Alexandra blinked. ‘Would you mind bringing me a glass of water? I haven’t got a free hand.’
I filled a glass with water from a bottle in the fridge and put ice in it and a slice of lemon, and then for Alexandra’s extra pleasure I threw in a strawberry.
She looked wrung out.
I kissed her pale cheek. ‘My sister is lucky to have such a gentle and patient mother.’
She wanted to say something to me but kept swallowing the thought.
‘What is it, Alexandra?’
I was getting bolder.
‘If you would like me to teach you Greek, I would be happy to have something to do when the baby is sleeping.’
‘How will you do that?’
She looked at the squirrel again and pointed out how trusting it was to have come so close. ‘Well, if you look at the alphabet while you are in Spain and get familiar with it, then I can email you sentences in Greek and you can reply in Greek, and this way we are having a conversation.’
‘Yes, let’s give it a go.’
I thanked her again, and then I said in Greek that she should feel more free to help her parents in Rome financially.
It was quite a complicated few sentences to formulate in a language I don’t speak, and it was even more complicated because it’s she who is the economist.
She smiled and replied in Greek. ‘Did you say I should feel “more free”?’
‘Yes.’
‘I am freer than I have ever been.’
I wanted to ask about this, but I don’t have an ear for languages. Anyway, it would take a while for me not to think of the Greek language as the father who walked out on me. I kissed my little sister on the soles of each of her brown feet and then I kissed her hands.
As I wheeled my suitcase to the bus station to catch the X95 to the airport, I suddenly felt more like myself.
Alone.
Lying on top of my clothes in the suitcase was the flower my father had made from his struggling thoughts. A flower made with paper, like the books that my librarian mother had spent her life indexing. She had catalogued over a billion words but she could not find words for how her own wishes for herself had been dispersed in the winds and storms of a world not arranged to her advantage.
The Greek girl is on her way back to Spain. Back to the medusas. The sweaty nights. The dusty alleys. Back to Almería’s massive heat. Back to me. I will invite her to plant my olive trees. Her job will be to dig a planting hole. Afterwards, I will have to tie the trees to bamboo poles so the wind will not determine their shape. A tree cannot be given form by the vagaries of the wind.
Medication
My mother started to shout in Spanish for water. ‘Agua agua agua agua.’
It sounded like agony agony agony.
It was like being in the same room with Janis Joplin, but without the talent. I brought her a glass of water and then I dipped my finger in the water and spread it over her lips.
‘How was your father?’
‘He is happy.’
‘Was he pleased to see you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I’m sorry he was not more welcoming.’
‘It’s not for you to be his sorry.’
‘That’s a funny way of putting it.’
‘He is his own sorry.’
‘I feel for you.’
‘You can’t do that either. You can’t feel for me.’
‘You’re in an odd mood, Sofia.’
She told me that while I was away she had suffered from water on the knee. Matthew had kindly offered to drive her to the General Hospital in Almería. She had strained a ligament, but it was all straightforward. The doctor had given her a whole new menu of medication. She was feeling nauseous on the antidepressants, although she said it might be the new prescription for high cholesterol and blood pressure, against dizziness and for acid reflux. He had also sorted her out with prescriptions for an anti-diabetic agent, anti-gout, anti-inflammatories, a sleep aid, a muscle relaxant and laxatives, due to the side effects.