Afternoons in Ithaka Page 18

  ‘A few hours,’ George grimaces as I push down on his shoulders yet again.

  Finally, I bellow for the birthing stool; I have the urge to bear down. The nurse comes in, tells me what to do, but I ignore her. I know what to do, I want to scream. I crouch down. I feel as if I am standing at the junction between life and death, between darkness and light. As I push down, I call out in pain, in joy; a long primal scream. Our daughter comes out in one slippery gush. I look down to see her land safely in the nurse’s arms. Her mucus-covered arms and legs are flailing, the umbilical cord a bloody line still attaching her to my body. She is made of flesh and blood, fattened mostly by watermelon and toast. I am relieved to see that she seems to be a decent weight, and that she is not green and round.

  George snips the umbilical cord and the nurse takes the baby while I am led to the bed. I lie down and the nurse brings me our daughter. She places her on my chest and I feel a fierce, tender love. I know beyond a doubt that I would kill to protect this child. The thought both shocks and placates me. I know now what it means to be a mother.

  As I deliver the placenta, the nurse hands Dolores to George and I feel a sudden jolt; I don’t want to let her go. George looks scared he might drop her, but once he is holding her the look in his eyes is one of pure adoration. I want to enfold the three of us in my arms.

  The nurse offers me tea and toast and after six hours of labour, I gratefully accept. She comes back with a mug of sweet black tea and white-bread toast lathered in butter and Vegemite. It is by far the best thing I have ever tasted. Just as I am starting my tea, Dolores starts to howl.

  ‘This is as good a time as any to try breastfeeding,’ the nurse says wryly.

  I put my tea down on the table, well away from baby, and look at it wistfully. It occurs to me – not without a pang of loss – that from now on, my child’s needs will come before my own.

  Katerina’s watermelon and feta salad

  Watermelon sustained me through two pregnancies and is still my very favourite fruit. Katerina had been suggesting for a long time that I try it with feta, which seems an unlikely combination. But the watery sweetness of the melon contrasts beautifully with the creamy saltiness of the feta. The amounts should be 5 parts watermelon (cut in chunks) to 1 part feta (crumbled). For an additional burst of colour and flavour, scatter mint leaves over the top.

  The king of the beefsteak tomato

  The drowning man grips to his own hair

  Greek proverb

  He holds out a beefsteak tomato, which fills the palm of his hand.

  ‘Na, vlepeis. Auti einai domata!’ Look at this. Now this is a tomato!

  He passes the tomato into my hand. It is ruby red and feels heavy. I bring my nose down to it. It smells faintly of earth, and of sweet tomato nectar. The alchemy has happened yet again: a seed has become fruit. Dad complains each year that growing tomatoes is too much work, that he won’t bother next year; but the next season rolls around and he plants them again.

  He builds little makeshift hothouses from recycled glass and plastic, and places small pots inside. In the garden bed that runs beside the bungalow, he prepares the soil with sheep’s manure, digging it in. He makes aulakia, ridges, so that the water can soak well into the roots of the plant. When the seedlings have matured, he transplants them from the pots. He watches them grow from the bungalow window, until the view of the garden is overshadowed by the tall vines. Then they bear fruit, and he gives away more tomatoes than he keeps. He now has the luxury of a bigger yard in the middle-class suburb of Kew, no longer a patch of dirt in Collingwood. His tomatoes finally rival those of Vlahos and Tasiopoulos.

  Dad turns to three-year-old Dolores, who is sitting on a blanket under the orange tree.

  ‘Look what Pappou grew,’ he says. ‘A tomato.’

  She touches the tomato. He places it in her plump little hands. It’s all she can do to hold it up. She looks up with her serious brown eyes.

  ‘I’ll wash it and we can eat it.’

  He pulls it apart with his fingers and they eat it. Juice runs down Dolores’s chin and onto her dress. My mother – her Yiayia – clucks, berates my father, and runs to get a tea towel to place over Dolores’s clothes, but it’s too late. I laugh. Yet more washing.

  When they have finished eating, Dad makes a fist, covers it with his other hand, and snaps his fingers to make a clicking sound. This never fails to elicit a delighted laugh from Dolores. His fingers are stiff now, like those of his mother, but the skin is still smooth, the nails rounded. I suddenly remember his fingers snapping to the music, keeping time to his favourite song at a family celebration; a tune about an overcast Sunday that resembles his heart, which is always cloudy. When the melancholic tune ended, my cousins would pick Dad up onto their shoulders and dance around the room with him, he with a glass of beer in his hand. The challenge was to avoid spilling the contents of the glass. Dad revelled in the attention of his nephews.

  I smile at the thought. It’s been a long time since we’ve been to a dance. My cousins and I all have young families now, and our parents are getting a bit too old for dancing – or at least for sitting on people’s shoulders.

  Dad reaches into his back pocket. He closes both hands into fists and presents them to Dolores.

  ‘Pou einai I karamella?’ Where’s the lolly?

  Dolores picks the wrong hand, but he gives her a second chance and she gets it right. Dad tries to lift himself from the blanket. I help him up.

  ‘These bloody knees. They’re killing me. I’m going to bed.’ He makes his way to the bungalow, where the old single bed George and I shared during our courtship still sits. This is where Dad spends a lot of his time these days, smoking, chatting to neighbours who drop in, and napping. Mum is worried.

  ‘He keeps grumbling about his knees. Some days he can barely walk. And he’s stopped drinking.’ This last fact shocks her most of all. She’s never complained about him not drinking before. Dad always seems to have some ailment or other, and we’ve already been to the doctor about this. Nothing appears to be wrong.

  I nod, but soon my attention is diverted by our son, eighteen-month-old Emmanuel, who tries to waddle down the porch steps and lands on his face.

  A few days later, Mum calls an ambulance; Dad can’t walk at all.

  That night, the kids stay with George and I meet Mum at the hospital. Dad is lying between white sheets and looks a little relieved to be here; finally someone is taking him seriously.

  The doctors run a battery of tests over the next few days: knee X-rays and ultrasounds and blood tests. They can’t find anything. And yet Dad still can’t walk; he’s not eating. Mum takes him to the toilet in a wheelchair. The doctors start to look elsewhere in his body: his lungs, his brain. There is a suggestion that his problem might be neurological. I visit as much as I can, trying to catch the elusive doctors.

  The days turn into weeks and still, one test after another comes back negative. In the meantime, Dad keeps losing weight. He can’t turn his body in the bed; he’s in pain. A steady stream of visitors comes to comfort Mum and sit with Dad. They bring fruit from their gardens, chocolates that Dad can’t eat. They all say the same things: Kouragio. Courage. Ipomoni. Patience. Persastika sou. May it pass.

  Finally, with no clear diagnosis, they decide to transfer him to a rehabilitation hospital. Two orderlies lift him from his bed to a trolley. As the sheet slips away, I notice how thin his legs have become. They look like twigs that might snap in half at any moment.

  At the rehabilitation hospital, a doctor makes an initial assessment and calls me into his office.

  ‘I’m very surprised they’ve sent your father here. He is very ill. He should be in palliative care. He is dying.’

  My mouth opens. This is the first time someone has said the word, although it has hung in the air, unspoken, for the past few months.

  ‘Has anyone talked with you about this?’

  ‘No. Oh. I’ll have to tell my mum. And my brother. Oh.’


  ‘Yes. I’ll organise a transfer back to hospital in the next few days. I’m sorry.’

  I stumble out of the room and bump into my godmother in the corridor; she’s come to visit Dad. I weep on her shoulder. ‘Oh my God. He’s dying. How am I going to tell Mum?’ She holds me tight, comforts me.

  When I tell Mum that afternoon, she bursts into tears.

  ‘We have to get him home. I don’t want him to die in hospital. He has to see his garden again. And we mustn’t tell him he’s dying.’

  ‘Mum, we can’t do that. He has to know. Maybe he has something he wants to do, or say …’

  ‘Please, Spirithoula, he mustn’t know.’

  I try to spend even more time with Dad. I badger him to retell me stories I have heard countless times before. I press him for details, and he is glad to take his mind off his ailing body. He tells me tales of deceit and fun, poverty and resilience, tales drenched in rosy nostalgia: of racing with donkeys down the hills of his small village; of shooting bits of paper at his teachers through his makeshift gun; of being a laconic student with an exercise book in his back pocket and a cigarette in his mouth; of life as a young policeman, his trusty typewriter keeping him company on the rocky outcrops of Rhodes. And when he came to Australia, working in factories; drinking beer at lunchtime at Carlton United Breweries, or joking on the production line at Vickers Ruwolt ammunitions factory. ‘Thirty-three jobs, I had,’ he says proudly. ‘If some boss gave me the shits, I would leave.’

  ‘Pan metron ariston.’ Everything in moderation. ‘That includes work.’ He laughs.

  One day, I take a deep breath. There are things I must say before he goes.

  ‘Have I done anything to hurt you?’ I ask, a lump in my throat.

  ‘Only you know that,’ he says. His eyes are clear. They look at me directly.

  I’m a little angry. I had been hoping for absolution, a cathartic talk perhaps. But I have to laugh, too. He’s telling me that I’ve got to live with myself, with my own conscience. It doesn’t matter what he thinks, what might have happened in the past.

  ‘I’m sorry if I have. I love you, Dad.’

  ‘I love you too.’

  One day, I wait in his hospital room while they take him for yet another scan. He nearly chokes when they lie him down. They quickly wheel him back up to the room. His dark eyes look panicked, sunken in their sockets. Why are they doing all these tests? Is there hope?

  Five and a half months after Dad is admitted to hospital, the doctors call a family meeting. Dad is lifted out of his bed with a harness and put onto a trolley. He is wheeled into the room.

  Through a translator, he is told: ‘Mr Tsintziras, we’ve confirmed that you have Motor Neuron Disease. We think the best place for you right now is in a palliative care hospital. They will look after you there, make sure you are not in pain.’

  ‘Is there no cure?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. Your case has progressed very quickly. This is why you have had trouble swallowing in the last few weeks.’

  Dad seems resolute, as if he has been waiting for this day for a long time.

  ‘Maybe we could take him home, look after him there … the garden …’ Mum says.

  ‘I’m too tired to go home. I want to stay at the hospital.’

  Mum starts to cry. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He wasn’t supposed to know. My brother blinks, looks lost. The doctor and physiotherapist and social worker look away. Someone shuffles their feet.

  Dad doesn’t talk about dying to us. He tells my cousin’s husband, a policeman, that he wants a policeman’s funeral, an acknowledgment of his time in the force all those years ago.

  He is transferred to a palliative care hospital. All around him there are thin forms beneath white blankets who mostly sleep. He still manages to click his fingers for Dolores when she visits, and I pass Emmanuel over his bed for a kiss, but otherwise he lies still.

  When we are alone, I hold his hands, massaging them. It makes me uncomfortable to hold my father’s hands like this – it’s so intimate – but I don’t know what else to do.

  Two weeks later, a room full of family and friends stand around his bed. We have been told his death is imminent. His breath is laboured, strangely reminiscent of my own breath when I was giving birth. The nurses ask us to leave the room briefly so that they can make him more comfortable. I return just in time to see him take his last breath. Just like that, he is gone. I no longer sense him in the room; only his wasted body remains in the bed. I wonder where he has gone, if he is finally home at last.

  The hands that created the larger-than-life beefsteak tomatoes lie strangely still on the white sheets. In the dim light of the hospital room, I can almost hear the words of the Greek poet Seferis:

  I have seen in the night

  the sharp peak of the mountain,

  seen the plain beyond flooded

  with the light of an invisible moon,

  seen, turning my head,

  black stones huddled

  and my life taut as a chord

  beginning and end

  the final moment:

  my hands.

  NIKOS ON GROWING TOMATOES

  Nikos Vlahos grew up in the same village as Dad. They raced donkeys together, stole watermelons together and went to school together. And they came to Australia within a short time of each other.

  They also shared an aunt, Tasia. Nearly fifty years ago now, Tasia met my mother in a factory where they both worked. Tasia was impressed with the young woman who had recently arrived from Greece. She said to her, ‘I have two nephews. One is tall and dark, the other is shorter and fair. Who do you want to meet?’

  ‘I’d like to meet the tall, dark one.’ Mum, who is fair and blue-eyed, always coveted olive skin.

  Mum went on to meet and marry Dad. As for the fairer lad, the other choice, Nikos, he went on to marry Panayiota, my cousin Tina’s mother. Our families are still very close; I was the maid of honour at Tina’s wedding and godmother to her daughter Johanna. As I’m no longer able to ask my father for his tips on growing the best tomatoes, Theio Nikos said he would be honoured to step in. He too grows a mean tomato.

  You will need

  Tomato seedlings

  Seedling pots, 5 centimetres in diameter

  Potting mix (1 cup per plant)

  Mushroom compost (1 handful per plant)

  Organic pest-control spray, such as pyrethrum*

  Mulch, such as pea straw

  Garden twine

  2-metre wooden stakes (1 per plant)

  *There are homemade alternatives to commercial pesticides. Mix 2 cups water with ¼ cup oil, a few cloves of garlic, or several crushed chillies. Strain before using.

  Towards the end of spring, when the mornings are no longer frosty, half fill the seedling pots with potting mix. Place one seed into each pot and top with soil. Place in a warm spot (for example, on a sunny windowsill) where there is good air flow. If you wish, you can place them in a small hothouse or rig up a piece of glass on a wooden frame and place the pots underneath. The biggest threat to the plants at this stage is morning frost. Keep the soil moist but do not overwater.

  When the plants reach a height of 20 centimetres, prepare a garden bed by digging holes about 15 centimetres deep and 40 centimetres apart. Dig into each hole a handful of mushroom compost and water well. Leave to settle for a day or two.

  Remove the seedlings from their pots and plant one in each hole. Fill the hole with dirt then place mulch around the base of each plant to aid with water retention.

  Water the seedlings every 2 or 3 days. Once the first small tomatoes appear, the plants need a good soaking every 8 days, or more often if it is very hot. Keep the hose very close to the root and avoid watering the leaves. You can dig little aisles alongside each row of tomatoes and fill them with water if you wish to give the roots a good soaking.

  When the plants have reached a height of 30 centimetres, place a stake close to the vine and tie it lo
osely, so that it still has some room to move but not too much. As the tomato vine grows, continue to stake the plant upwards. Some tomato varieties can grow to more than 3 metres.

  After a few weeks, clip the shoots from the bottom of the vine, leaving only 1 or 2 of the upper shoots. This gives the plant a chance to strengthen and increases the chances of the flowers cross-pollinating.

  During these early stages of growth, spray the leaves with the organic pest-control spray. This will not eradicate all bugs (you may have to don a pair of garden gloves and pick the larger bugs off) but it will deter them. Cultivating companion plants such as basil and amaranth (see here) also helps to keep pests away.

  Ideally, pick the tomatoes when they have ripened on the vine. However, you may find that birds or other animals such as possums get to them before you do. In this case, once the fruit start to redden, you can pick them and allow them to ripen at room temperature indoors.

  Remember, at the end of the season, leave your best tomato on the vine and allow it to redden. When the plant has dried up, pick this last fruit and save the seeds (see here).

  The spring garden

  The woman who doesn’t wish to bake bread, spends five days sifting the flour

  Greek proverb

  Emmanuel teeters on a chair, little hands trying to work the latch on the screen door so that it stays wedged open. I resist the urge to say that the flies will come in and help him with his balance instead.

  ‘There,’ he says when it’s done, expansively gesturing with both arms in a wide arc. ‘Now we can see the garden.’

  And so we can. The view is uninterrupted by the grey mesh of the flyscreen, by the cobwebs that have collected in the corners over winter, or by the dust and fingerprints that sully the glass.