Afternoons in Ithaka Page 22
Psarosoupa
In the cauldron of pain, everyone gets their share
Greek proverb
Since our forest adventure five years ago, it has been a rollercoaster of hope and disappointment for Katerina: the unexpected offer of a trial treatment that kept the cancer under control for a few more years; periods of low immunity and hospital stays, followed by surprising comebacks. She manages to claw through each day, mostly keeping the black dog at bay. Rumi and Paulo Coelho and Kahlil Gibran help. So does her priest, who lets her ask the hard spiritual questions that plague her. She sees her counsellor, Felicity, regularly.
‘I’d love to meet this Felicity one day. She sounds lovely,’ I say.
‘Probably you’ll get to when I …’ She lets the sentence trail off. We both know what she means.
Not only has Katerina ticked off everything on her list since our trip without a map; she has also organised annual fundraisers for the organisations that have helped her. And she has stubbornly reminded all of her friends and family to keep it real, to be present, to enjoy every day. To me she says, ‘Keep writing, Spiri. Don’t worry too much about the mortgage. Have regular massages; you deserve them. Floss your teeth – it’s more important than brushing.’
‘If you had only five days to live, what would you do?’ she asks me one day.
I think for a while. I would spend time with family and friends. Hold my husband and children close. Write letters to those I love. Cook and eat. Read. Write. Swim in the sea. Now that I work from home, writing for a living just as I’ve always wanted and spending time with my family, there is not a great deal more to yearn for.
‘Probably the sort of things I’m doing now,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a pressing need to do anything differently.’
She looks at me quizzically. ‘Not many people I know are doing exactly what they want.’
I’ve lost track of how many times we’ve talked about death since that day in the forest. Death is a part of life. We have to face it. If we bring ourselves to talk about death, we can live a better life. These are her mottos, and she feels them keenly.
‘If I reach my fortieth year,’ Katerina says, ‘I will celebrate with a massive party. A bit like the wedding I never had.’ She smiles wickedly.
It seems like an impossible goal but, amazingly, after a terrible prognosis in her early thirties, the day comes. We gather to eat and drink in her honour, dressed in extravagant hats. She is the shining star of the show, our very own ‘Kat in the Hat’. The food is generous, the mood festive. The children win prizes for the best hats and slide across the dance floor. As we toast Katerina, I think back to that day in the forest and how far she has come. She is positively glowing, and I think to myself that those phone calls to announce her passing might still be a way off.
A year later, Katerina invites me for a weekend away in a fancy house on the water. She insists on paying: What else am I going to do with my money? I’m not going to take it with me. We luxuriate in the decadence of it all – huge glass windows overlooking a moody sea, gleaming open spaces, a glimmering heated pool. We swim and lie on deck chairs, talking non-stop and laughing and crying and singing as the mood takes us.
In the state-of-the-art kitchen I cook salmon on a bed of bok choi and a bastardised version of phó. Katerina delights; she hasn’t eaten this much in weeks. She is back on chemotherapy and I joke tentatively that, with luck, we will have a vomit-free weekend. We. As if I am in control of this too – a cooperative effort to keep the contents of Katerina’s stomach down.
I eat so much more than Katerina does. I pick furtively between meals: handfuls of nuts and chips and sultanas. It’s an anxious eating, to fill up the silences when Katerina sleeps. It’s as though I am stocking up – for what, I wonder.
We have a Scrabble marathon, putting all our energy into it. I cheat by looking at Katerina’s letters; we both refer to the guide for two-letter inspiration; and we tease each other mercilessly – about how competitive we are, about how cancer isn’t an excuse for playing badly – trying to distract each other. When the game finishes, late at night, we sit back exhausted on the oversized couch. We talk about everything, as we always have. About my concern that my kids don’t eat enough vegies. About the spots in Katerina’s lung that have shown up in the latest scan, and the three-centimetre growths in her liver.
In the morning, I whip around and tidy up – pack away the Scrabble game, wash the dishes, wipe down the bench. I tidy with a nervous energy. The many windows of the house let in the early morning light, and the clean, modern surfaces disarm me – I prefer the rustic surfaces at home, the peeling plaster walls and the well-loved kitchen table.
It’s during the quiet of the morning, while Katerina sleeps until the sun is high, that I realise how much energy I have, and how little she has. How much harder it is for her to get up, to carry herself up stairs, even to swim; her muscles hurt, her breath is short. I wipe around the big bag of medicines she has brought with her – drugs for pain, for nausea, for constipation, drugs that contra-indicate one another and set one another off – and I wonder when it will end. After eight years of treatments and fatigue and nausea, Katerina tells me her body is tired. She wonders when she will say ‘no’ to more treatment. I imagine how hard that will be. I sit there, feeling helpless, not wanting the moment to come but knowing that it must.
The sea beyond the balcony is still – I look closer and see tiny ripples glistening in the morning light. I worry that Katerina won’t wake up, what I would do if this were to happen. I try to avoid the dawning realisation that this is probably our last trip together. The reality of it is suddenly too close. I know, intellectually, what it means that the cancer is now in Katerina’s liver, that she has diabetes, that her appetite is waning. But a part of me refuses to accept it.
A few weeks later, I visit Katerina at her parents’ home and watch as she takes a few sips of a chicken broth her mother has made for her before pushing the bowl away. The look of pain on her mother’s face – she won’t eat; she has to eat to get better – but Katerina is no longer hungry at all.
Soon after, we have a picnic on the grounds of Heide, an artists’ colony turned gallery in Melbourne’s east. Katerina doesn’t touch the gourmet takeaway goodies. Dolores has brought a tape recorder and ‘interviews’ Katerina, who tells us how much we mean to her and what her favourite colour is.
We go for a walk through the picturesque gardens; walking down a grassy slope, George and I support Katerina’s weight.
‘Could this be it, Spiri?’ she asks.
‘You won’t even let me feed you,’ I say with a wry smile. ‘That can’t be good.’
She gives me a long, pained look. We don’t have to speak.
One week later, we sit around Katerina’s bed in hospital. Alex, her brother, brings a pomegranate from his garden, and we share it in the common room where we keep vigil. We rub ice on Katerina’s dry lips, hold her head up to open her airways, helping her gently along on her way. I make phone calls in the lobby – a few of Katerina’s friends, her counsellor, her music therapist – letting them know that if they want to come and see her, they should do it very soon.
Today, many people important to Katerina are here – her parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins and dear friends. We know one another more intimately after our vigil of the past few days. We share stories about Katerina: how she inspired us, her pithy mottos. Everyone is here but Katerina. Her absence is like an ache, jagged, too painful to touch.
I concentrate instead on the large snapper on the stainless steel platter in the middle of the table. Steaming bowls of fish soup are lined up beside it like an expectant orchestra facing their conductor. It’s almost a shame to ruin the symmetry of it, but the soup’s maker, Theia Evangelia, presses us to faye, faye, eat, eat.
There is nowhere to sit in the room filled with black-clad bodies. I hold the bowl in my hand and eat standing up. The broth is rich, the flavours simple and clean. The s
oup warms me, sating a deeper need for consolation. I suddenly realise how tired I am. The soup brings me back to myself, grounds me. I concentrate on the taste, on the sensation as it trickles down my throat. I scoop up the vegetables and rice, plump with fish stock, from the bottom. There is other food on the table, but this is all I need.
I expect Katerina to come in any minute and say wickedly, ‘Just tricking.’ But she doesn’t.
Theia Evangelia’s psarosoupa (fish soup)
Serves 6 to 8
Evangelia is Katerina’s maternal aunty. A short time after Katerina passed away, Evangelia invited me to her home to show me how to make this psarosoupa. We cooked and ate together. Some hours later I left, laden with homemade bread, an oversized tub of soup, a bag of garden greens and a few homegrown peaches, my stomach and my spirit sated.
Ingredients
3 litres vegetable stock
2 large potatoes, peeled and quartered
3 medium carrots, peeled and quartered lengthwise
2 onions, peeled and quartered
2 celery sticks, trimmed and cut into 8 pieces
1 tomato, quartered
1 lemon, peeled and quartered
½ small bunch continental parsley, chopped
¼ cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Pepper to taste
1 kilogram bony fish such as gurnard, salmon, trout, snapper, flathead, whiting, Murray cod or Australian herring. A mixture of bones, head and flesh is best, although you can also use a whole fish. Wash the fish, sprinkle it with salt and place it in the fridge.
¾ cup medium-grain rice
1 extra lemon, to serve
Method
In a large pot, combine the stock and all the ingredients except for the fish, the rice and the second lemon. Simmer on moderate heat until the vegetables are soft, then remove them with a slotted spoon and set them aside. Place the fish (including any bones, heads, et cetera) into the stock. When the fish starts to come off the bone (in approximately 20 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces), it is cooked. Remove it with a slotted spoon and set it aside.
Strain the stock through a fine sieve, then return it to the pot and put it back on the heat. Add the rice and cook until it is soft (approximately 15 minutes).
If you are using a whole fish, place it on a serving platter. If you’re using fish pieces, flake the meat off the bones and place it in a serving dish. Arrange the vegetables around the fish. Serve the stock and rice in soup bowls, with wedges of lemon on the side. Each person can add vegetables, fish and lemon juice to their bowl as per their preference.
The festival of the queue
Even if you are a priest, get in line
Greek proverb
The queue for souvlaki is twenty people deep. The people at the back look to those in front of them for information.
‘Can I pay for the souvlaki here?’
‘You need to buy a ticket first. Then you line up.’
‘What’s the wait? Haven’t they got any left?’
‘They’ve run out of cooked meat. It’ll be another twenty minutes.’
The queue for loukoumades, plump fried honey doughnuts, is nearly as long. Dozens of us wait outside a window that looks into a kitchen. We can see the soft dough being fried up, tantalisingly close. The loukoumades are taken out of the fryer, drained in a colander, tossed in honey syrup, sprinkled with cinnamon and put into paper bags. These arrive to us one bag at a time. We hold out our hands, our tickets, our money. We remind me of photos I have seen of the starving masses, queuing for bread during the depression years. But we aren’t starving. All around the grounds are picnic tables laden with food and drink: Greek salads and bread; feta cheese and olives; wine and cordial; dips and desserts. But the elusive souvlaki and loukoumades are worth waiting for. Everything is tis oras, of the moment, made to order. The meat was carved off the spit a second ago, the salads freshly cut, the pitas cooked and kept warm in deep basins.
Those who already have their souvlakis are sitting around under the olive trees. Most groups are made up of three generations. A grandparent near us runs around, trying to feed morsels of souvlaki to a two-year-old who has better things to do than eat. I’m here with Mum, and it is just the two of us. We are at the Festival of the Grape at the Holy Monastery of Panagia Kamariani in Red Hill. I’ve brought her away for a weekend of pampering. It’s the first time we’ve ever been away, just me and her. It is novel to have her all to myself, with no neighbours or friends or phone calls vying for her attention. Mum keeps trying to pay for things, and keeps wondering how George and the kids are faring back in Melbourne. Now that I see bigger family groups together, I wish they were here too.
The grounds of the monastery are packed and the priest, Reverend Elefterios, looks proud to have gathered us all to his metaphorical table. He has cultivated the land here for three decades, tending the olive trees and beehives and a thriving chook yard. We could well be in Greece except for the swaying gumtrees. In his sermon earlier this morning, he told us that the Festival of the Grape was observed by his own father, also a priest, back in Greece, always during August, at the height of the grape season. Mum and I stood up the back as he spoke; Mum and some other women took it in turns to sit on the few available seats. Most sat down slowly, painfully.
The Greeks left their country poor and worked hard, Reverend Elefterios said, and should be proud of what they have achieved. He too arrived poor, with just the shirt on his back. Murmurs of recognition rippled through the church. People nodded. Yes, me too, me too.
After the service, the priest leads the congregation outside and we gather in front of a tent piled high with boxes of grapes. He chants, blessing the grapes. He invites us each to come and get a small bag of grapes to eat or take home. An usher tries to get everyone to line up in single file, but the queue is three deep and chaotic.
‘Please line up. In a row,’ the usher implores to no avail.
I have to laugh. Some cultural habits are so ingrained, they’ll never change.
Now, when I finally make it to the head of the doughnut queue and get back to Mum with my hard-earnt loukoumades, she looks concerned.
‘I was getting worried. You took so long.’
‘The queues were huge.’ ‘
They’re starting the grape pressing.’
A crowd has gathered. The priest stands beside what looks like a sandpit and calls all the children to come forward.
‘Who’s going to be the first to start pressing the grapes?’ the priest calls out, voice booming.
A little boy volunteers.
‘You were the first last year. Now give someone else a turn,’ the priest teases. ‘Come on, boys and girls, come on, don’t be shy.’
Dozens of children step up, as do their parents and grandparents, cameras at the ready. The kids take off their shoes and the priest throws the first batch of grapes into the pit. The children squeal with delight and step onto the juicy lobes. Box after box of grapes goes in. The kids slip and slide and the priest is delighted. This is the new generation, and he does his best to make sure they are having fun.
Finally the crowd disperses and the ushers take the grapes away. Mum has enjoyed the spectacle, but is a little perturbed that the grapes and the juice are likely to be discarded.
‘They should use it to make wine. Why are they throwing it away?’
‘No one has washed their feet, Mum. And I guess it would have been too dangerous to put the grapes into a sack and have the kids climb on top of it.’ I don’t know the words for ‘public liability’ in Greek.
Mum isn’t convinced. ‘In our village, we didn’t worry too much about washing our feet.’
I shrug. Things have changed.
Mum gets up painfully from her chair – her knees are giving her grief. ‘Let’s go home. George and the kids will be waiting.’
‘I’m sure they’re having a good time without us.’
‘Still, you need to go back to your f
amily.’
We pack up our things, grab the bag of leftover loukoumades to take home and slowly make our way to the car to join the long line that snakes its way out of the grounds.
Chrysoula’s loukoumades (Greek doughnuts in honey syrup
Makes 20 to 30 small doughnuts
Ingredients
Doughnut mixture
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons dried yeast
4 cups lukewarm water
4½ cups self-raising flour
5 cups vegetable oil for frying
Syrup
1½ cups honey
½ cup water
Peel from half a lemon
Garnish
Cinnamon
1 cup crushed walnuts (optional)
Method
To make the doughnut mixture, combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, yeast and water in a bowl and mix well. Add the flour and mix well. Cover with cling wrap and a folded blanket and place the bowl in a warm spot for about 1 hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.
To make the syrup, place the honey, water and lemon peel in a saucepan. Bring to a slow boil and cook for 10 minutes.
Heat the vegetable oil until it is very hot. Using a wet spoon, drop one ball of dough at a time into the pan until you have 6 or 7 doughnuts. Agitate with a slotted spoon to cook evenly, and take them out once they have turned a golden-brown colour. Set them aside to drain on a tray. Continue this process until the mixture has all been cooked. Dunk each doughnut in the syrup, arrange on a serving dish and sprinkle with cinnamon and/or crushed walnuts if desired.
Laying down bricks and mortar
Everything in its time and mackerel in August