Afternoons in Ithaka Page 16

I am writing to inform you that you have committed a serious misdemeanor of the highest order, which can only be described as being SMITTEN (adj.): loving, adoring, amoroso, devoted, fond, tender, erotic … This is a serious crime and should be punished accordingly. I thus impose the penalty of one lunchtime rendezvous with myself, at a time convenient to both.

  Spiri Tsintziras

  Dear Spiri Tsintziras,

  I plead guilty to the offence as stated above. I believe I have an ongoing problem with this issue of being ‘smitten’. To be honest with you, this problem doesn’t seem to be going away. I can only concur with you that the first step in the corrective program would be to arrange a lunchtime meeting with you. I am sorry for my crime, but I can’t help it!

  George Mifsud

  Of course, I fight it. I am terrified. In the past, I’ve been attracted to men who are transient, wild, interesting: penniless out-of-work actors; waiters who drink well into the night. There was always a part of me observing, analysing, distancing myself so as not to lose my hard-won independence. Now I’ve met a man who is smart, creative, attentive – and very, very funny. My protective barriers, which I have been building up for so long, are falling with alarming speed.

  My first serious relationship was with a sultry Greek man on holiday in Melbourne – his name too was George. Next there was a long-haired George on a motorbike. I tease this new George that he is not the first George in my life. ‘Perhaps I’ll be the last?’ he says.

  I try to jeopardise the relationship with my ‘what ifs’ and ‘buts’ but George refuses to run away. He stands steadfast. He listens. He holds me tight and makes me laugh. Damn it, he trusts in us.

  So, what is a girl to do but leap into the delicious abyss?

  From the Night Cat, it is a whirlwind of dinners and circus performances. Pumpkin soups and coffees in bed. Weekends away and picnics by country roads. Lengthy partings on street corners late at night, when we must finally go back to our respective homes. And afterwards, on the phone:

  ‘I had a lovely time tonight.’

  ‘Me too. Now say goodnight. It’s late. And I saw you forty minutes ago.’

  ‘Goodnight, my love.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘One more thing …’

  Three weeks after we meet, George wants to show me the house he has bought in Preston. It’s five hundred metres from the rambling, raucous Preston Market, where we pick up tomatoes, crusty bread, dolmathes and plump olives. He doesn’t yet have the keys; settlement is weeks away. But we decide to have a picnic in the back yard and face the consequences if we get caught. We are lovers, untouchable.

  I bring some herbs from my father’s garden as a housewarming gift. I have never planted anything for anyone before. Pulling the herbs out of the ground, shaking the dirt from their roots and replanting them in pots – it feels good. My father watches me, amused and surprised. Perhaps he wonders if his daughter has finally met a man who will be able to tame her.

  At George’s new home, I water the herbs at the tap beside the house. We spread our picnic blanket on the lawn and eat our little Mediterranean feast. We lie back and dream of all the things we might do to transform the back yard from scraggly lawn to magic garden. The clouds chase one another in the sky, framed by the tan brick walls around us.

  The next day, we trade emails that build on the dream, sentimental brick by sentimental brick:

  Ah Spiri, my beautiful dancer … A dream … Our garden will flourish and be noisy with boisterous bees and sensual smells as our kitchen will be generous with tall tales and arousing aromas …

  Oh George, we have to make a start to all this delightfulness by building our mural – and from its branches will extend all these wonderful things. Today, I daydreamed about our seat, fantasising about ochre colours as a backdrop, perhaps a big pot of aromatic basil. A delightful peasant garden. I daren’t even think these fantasies, much less tell you about them, but here we are.

  A few weeks later, George’s family and friends help him move into the house. I hang back – shifting his things seems too intimate somehow, when I haven’t yet met his family – but drop in late in the day. I bring a chocolate cake with a plaque that reads, ‘Hello, George’s home’. His mother, Dolores, sneaks me a look as we plate it up together. Does she think, Now here is a woman who will make a warm home with my son? His father, Alfred, laughs contagiously. He dusts a chair for his wife and lets her sit down first. I can see from the way he touches her shoulder that he is still smitten. We sit on chairs and boxes, eating our chocolate cake from paper plates. George’s sister Josephine gives me an encouraging smile. It says everything is going well.

  I, on the other hand, take months to introduce George to my family. I have rarely spoken to my parents about my relationships. It is understood that the man you bring into the family home is the one you intend to marry. I have only ever brought one boyfriend home before. The next morning, my mother came into my room, crying that I had brought a ‘martian’ home – he was bald, short and flat-footed – and offering to pay my fare to Greece if I would leave him. When he left me some months later, they could barely contain their delight.

  For years, they have proffered single men as suitors: accountants and lawyers and electricians; tall ones, short ones, fat ones – all of them sons of Greek-speaking neighbours and friends. I have always declined to meet them. Now, I am twenty-eight, and my parents have almost given up hope of my ever settling down; I am altogether too outspoken, too outgoing, too independent.

  George is confused and hurt by my hesitation to introduce him to them. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ I assure him. I’m not ready to expose him to their scrutiny. But I desperately want their approval, too. I trust their judgment, harsh as it is. Once again, I feel the push and pull of independence and connection; I want to please yet I want to do as I damn well please.

  After four months of whirlwind courtship, I finally agree to bring George home. I am terrified. George is nervous. My parents are reserved. Will I be bringing home another martian?

  George arrives on the designated day. When my father shakes his hand, I see him glance up at George’s receding hairline. I cringe. Everyone in the Tsintziras clan has a spectacularly full head of hair. It’s going to be a long afternoon. We sit down to coffee in the formal dining room, where a lace tablecloth has been laid out for the occasion.

  ‘What do you do?’ my father asks George.

  ‘I’m a cartographer.’

  Dad looks to me for a translation. Typografos. He nods. An old, respectable profession. ‘And where is your family from?’

  ‘Malta.’

  ‘Malta is very close to Greece.’

  They start talking history and geography, and I breathe a sigh of relief. At least Dad won’t be asking, ‘What are your intentions for my daughter?’ before the coffee has had a chance to cool.

  My mother doesn’t say much as her English is limited, but she watches shrewdly over the rim of her coffee cup. I will no doubt get her full assessment later. Soon, Cousin Kathy arrives with her husband, Terry. They are loud and boisterous for us, breaking the tension. Then the doorbell rings again; it’s a neighbour from across the road. Then Cousin George happens to be driving past with Mum’s sister, Theia Sophia. So much for an intimate meeting of shy suitor and stern father; soon we have a room full of people, all talking at once. George smiles nervously, answers questions, drinks more coffee and eats everything that is offered to him. We hold hands under the table.

  Finally, the evening is over. My father seems impressed. George is tall. He has a good government job. And he clearly loves me. I think he has passed the test. Now he can visit whenever he likes. As we spend more and more time together, George even stays the night, sleeping in the single bed in the bungalow in the back garden. I sneak out after everyone has gone to bed, and creep in again before dawn. We maintain the charade for my father’s sake, out of respect, although we know that he knows what’s going on. And the emails continue, from
George to Spiri:

  And so

  Slowly, slowly

  Your story unfolds …

  Gently, gently

  My story unfolds

  And we sit and listen

  As our stories catch up

  With one another …

  hold hands,

  and embrace.

  A few months later, George and I talk of having children. We decide we’d like two. A boy and a girl. We will call them Dolores and Emmanuel, after George’s mother and grandfather. When George goes away to map fires in Gippsland, the ‘children’ write him a letter:

  Daddy, come home, we need you. Mummy said you were fighting fires and we got all excited like, but we want you to come home in time to read us a story.

  I write their names with a label maker and stick them onto two egg cups. I put these up on a high cupboard. We don’t want to tempt fate too much.

  How is it possible that a whole year passes? We go to an Italian restaurant, Marchetti’s Latin – a Melbourne institution – to celebrate our first anniversary. Its understated elegance and attentive, witty waiters are as far from our first meeting at ConFest as one can get. At the end of the night, I present George with ‘The Smitten Series’, 150 bound pages of our emails from the past year. Already we have created a past together. We hold hands across the table and gaze at each other, wide-eyed and optimistic about our future.

  Baked lima beans (Spiri to George via email)

  Dear George,

  The following recipe can be made in the company of lovers and friends. Two crucial ingredients are the laughter of children and the strains of Latino music.

  Ingredients

  250 grams lima beans

  1 handful of fresh herbs from the garden (parsley, basil, thyme)

  A drizzle of olive oil for frying

  A few cloves garlic

  1 onion, finely chopped

  2 or 3 cups tomato salsa (Spiri can provide passata, made lovingly)

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Method

  Soak the lima beans overnight in cold water. In the morning, discard the water, put the beans into a pot and cover them with cold water. Bring to the boil and simmer until the beans are tender but not soft. Towards the end, add a teaspoon of salt. Of course, kiss your lover as the beans boil.

  Preheat your oven to 200 °C.

  In a frying pan, heat a little oil and sauté the onions, garlic and herbs for a couple of minutes until the kitchen fills with their aroma. Add the salsa and simmer for about 15 minutes.

  Strain the lima beans and transfer them to a baking dish. Cover them with the tomato mixture and stir to coat. Bake for about ½ an hour or until the beans are soft (a second opinion may be required here and so Spiri will be available on a consultancy basis. Fees include tender kisses, laughter and maybe a few cuddles as an extra incentive). Serve with crusty bread and good wine.

  Love, Spiri

  This one is better looking

  It’s better to lose an eye than to get a bad name

  Greek proverb

  ‘She is just like a Maltese girl.’

  It’s the ultimate compliment from George’s Aunt Gracie. Our heads are bent over a tub of marrows. I help scoop the flesh from their insides. We will fill them with a mince-meat mixture and bake them. I try to learn the words for the ingredients we are using. Aribali: zucchini. Qarabaghli mimli: stuffed marrows. Aunty Gracie loves that I like to cook, that I am curious about the kitchen, about her language. She doesn’t speak more than a few words of English, and we communicate with our eyes and our hands. We are in Hamrun, in Malta, where George’s mother grew up.

  Aunty Gracie’s kitchen is no bigger than our bathroom at home, but her generosity is boundless. She has moved out of her bed and into the lounge room to have us stay with her. Her plush leather couch is covered in plastic, and there are gilt-framed photos of her children and grandchildren all over the house. There are pictures of George and of his father and grandfather.

  George hasn’t seen his extended family since he was two. His mother’s sister Polly has come all the way from England to see us. The whole clan was at the airport when we arrived, ready to hug and kiss us. George is still taking it all in, having grown up knowing only his immediate family in Melbourne. He is disconcerted to discover first cousins who look like him; he meets people who grew up in the same house as his mother and father, and others who remember him as a baby.

  Aunty Gracie gives us a guided tour of Hamrun. We visit the church of Saint Gaitano, where George’s parents married, and walk past the club where his father played cards. Carmena, an old friend of George’s mother, cries when she sees George. She remembers him sitting on the step as a toddler and sobbing when it was time to go to Australia.

  George’s cousin Charlie makes fenech for us: rabbit cooked in a whole bottle of white wine. It is tender, deliciously moist. We wash it down with Cisk, a Maltese beer. Others take us out to lovely restaurants with balconies overlooking the Sea. Everyone is very generous and it’s impossible not to be enamoured with this new extended family of George’s.

  When we’re not cooking and eating, we explore the stately capital city of Valetta. George is particularly taken by the expansive Grand Harbour, with its pivotal role in so many battles and historical moments. I’m impressed by its majestic beauty, but am more inclined to wax lyrical about the kannoli tal-irkotta, fried pastry tubes filled with ricotta, for sale at the chaotic bus terminal. We take day trips to Mdina and the Blue Grotto and the island of Gozo, where we eat lampuki (fish pie), toumpana (a baked pasta dish) and countless hobz biz-zejt (bread rubbed with tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and filled with tuna, olives and capers).

  We are taken aback at the piles of rubbish; on one of our walks we encounter a dead horse on the path. With 380,000 people crammed onto an island a third of the size of Melbourne, sanitation is a challenge. It gives us a new appreciation of the systems back home.

  George and I travel companionably, much to my relief. Perhaps if we can survive a nine-week trip together, we can manage a lifetime.

  After farewelling George’s relatives, we head to Greece. We barely stop in Athens, but make our way down to Kyparissia to meet Theia Kanella and my grandmother and start our one-month trip around the Peloponnese. I’m nervous about introducing George to the family.

  My yiayia, who is now living with Theia, looks up at George and doesn’t say much at all when she first meets him. I sense she is a little disappointed. Could it be the thinning hairline?

  George goes out to the shops and comes back with a fisherman’s cap on his head.

  When Yiayia sees it, she exclaims, ‘Who’s this? Did you get a new man? This one is better looking.’

  I translate for George and he laughs. He wears the cap for most of our stay, even inside.

  Theia shows us to our double bed; it goes without saying that George and I will be sleeping together. I thank her gratefully; my parents were so concerned about what the family would think of us travelling together, but no one has batted an eyelid.

  Theia and I take up where we left off. It’s as if I haven’t been away.

  ‘You said that next time you came to Greece, you would bring a man with you, and you did. Bravo.’

  During the day, George and I explore the town and swim in the sea. In the evenings, I cook with Theia. We visit my father’s village home, which has been locked up now. Inside, everything has been left as it was, as if someone might return any minute and start living here again. My aunt opens the blue shutters that look out onto the cemetery, letting in some air. When we walk through the village, no one comes out onto the road. We make our way to the graveyard and light a candle for Pappou. I walk past the headstones, noting the familiar names of my relatives: Vlahos, Tsolodreas, Tsintziras, Flindissis, Kolokotronis.

  On our last day, George and I go to a café in Kyparissia. We are inundated by the smell of cigarettes, the din of soccer finals on TV, the click of dice against a backgammon board. We
drink cognac as the rain pelts the muddy potholes in the square outside, shielded by the plastic walls that extend from the café proper. We lean together and kiss, still deliciously smitten.

  When we have said our teary goodbyes to my grandmother and aunt, promising to come again, we make our way inland to Kalamata. My cousin Natasha is now married with young children; my mother’s sister Pipitasa is living with her other daughter, Smaragdi. Pipitasa invites us to use her empty house in the seaside village of Analipsi and we gratefully accept. Nothing has changed there since Natasha and I sat in the front room some eight years ago. George and I are delighted to have the place to ourselves after spending so much time with family. We don’t do much at all: we sleep in until late, read, cook and watch television at night. The people in the village leave us alone.

  One night a torrential rain pours down and water comes in under the doors, flooding the floors. The wind howls and the trees outside bend dangerously back and forth. The phones are cut off and we wonder if this is it: perhaps the roof will cave in and we will die here.

  My aunt is on the phone the next morning, mortified. How could she have left us on our own? What sort of host is she? What will her sister say? I reassure her that we are fine, that it was all a big adventure. When she comes to check on us the next day, George helps her to prune some branches from the fruit trees. She takes us to her fields, where we collect oranges and potatoes. Although she is nearly seventy, she is still robust, still able to carry buckets on her shoulders after a lifetime of working the fields. She reminds me of my mother in so many ways: her generous laugh, her warm eyes.

  We visit Mum’s village, Petalidi, together with Pipitasa and Natasha. They open up the house where my maternal grandparents lived. Many things have been left as they were when I visited Mum’s brother, Theio Niko, some years ago: there are bottles of ouzo and oil on the table, a dated calendar on the wall. I remember when I met my grandparents on our first trip to Greece, how surely they moved around this home, how vibrant it seemed. So much work went on in these old village houses and now they stand empty. I feel a sense of loss, a dull ache that doesn’t go away for days. I think about my mother, about how hard it would be to see her family home devoid of life.