It was autumn, several decades ago. It was raining. The damp soil had taken on the scent of pine and somewhere far away towards the forest a single piece of sky stretched out silky, as if an angel were setting his scythes in the light. Her wedding dress was neither silk, nor taffeta, nor muslin, which was in fashion. A simple long white dress, more reminiscent of an ancient Greek tunic, "old and outdated" - so it had been said. It had a "knitted series" as Homer would have said, but only on the sleeves "poor". She couldn't help but smile at the memory of the remark her friend, the philologist Maria, had made, when many years later, seeing it in the photo, she hugged her at Kir-Kor in Heraklion, continuing to tease her in a good-natured way.
She remembered moments in her life that weren't rosy...
-Is this the bride? We thought she was ours, from our part, she looks completely foreign.
-Foreigner, that's what they call her, a child had said.
The mind had already counted the life together, the one that the foreign bride was destined to live in a foreign land with them. A sob unfolded inside her, a flag, while a flock of migratory birds traveled to the South. She remembered...
- Is she Greek?
- Well, she has curly, black hair, she wears pants, they say, she...
- Does he speak Greek?
- "Mark is learning it now," the youngest of the group quipped.
He remembered... It's just that sometimes words become so, so capable of hurting you, wounding you, making you bitter, breaking your wings so much that you never forget it.
She wanted Marcos to tell her many things, to take her by the hand and run away, to escape from that failed performance that didn't suit her, but it was too late. He always lacked courage. Parents, relatives, guests, what would the world say? The world with the seductive shots, who used to pick up even the whisper of the cigarette ash that fell to turn it into gossip. A new god was blackening them: "Marriage."
A touch on her waist, a spark came to life in her eyes, she did not know that those same eyes would soon be filled with coals. Half of her self was still in her place, the other half there, in the other place, she had begun to doubt not so much the man she had trusted, but all those who seemed to have a right to her life. Many thoughts lingered on her lips. It was when she believed that in their union, she brought love as a dowry, this small fortune of her soul. She remembered...
- And what weak Hermes, is she worthy to give birth to?
- A mouse, maybe.
- Where did he find her?
- To the shrimp! All laughing together, aunts, sisters-in-law, neighbors, they found it very funny.
They had opened their mouths as if they were falling off cliffs. Then they swallowed the whole rose-scented Turkish delight, a wedding treat, without water, but it was not able to sweeten their conversations. Words sometimes haunt, they become ticks, especially in the ear, they stay in the eardrums for years, not letting the soul rest, sowing despair and doubt in an illegible, harsh language, full of riddles and enigmas.
She saw herself from a distance.
She pitied that old, innocent self of hers. That Stranger of youth, who, feeling all eyes fixed on her in the churchyard, shy by nature - the foreign bride, let's not forget - having blushed with the laughter and indiscreet comments, at the first step, somewhat timidly, stumbled on the loose marble and, stumbling with mockery, let the bouquet of carnations fall from her hands onto the mosaic of the staircase. Oh yes, she remembered clearly that, as she bent down in shame, she had caught a few glances of poisonous shuttles. And she had turned pale as, reaching for his hand to hold her pleadingly:
-Let me take a breath, just a moment.
- Come in, the priest is waiting, he had distinguished the sister-in-law's voice.
She was young, in love and beautiful. She didn't feel good in her wedding dress, this garment was constricting her even though it wasn't tight, it was burning her even though it was soaked in the rain. She remembered how on their first date he had told her excitedly "you're wearing the sun in your flesh". And what wouldn't she give to hear it one more time at that moment, to have told her "take this off, it doesn't suit you, I prefer you even naked, but not in this!" and to have the words perched with the first longing in her chest, where the once nameless desire now had names.
How she wished she had heard one word, even if it was whispered, but she could hear it, an "I love you"! She remembered her grandmother: "it's just that with one word sometimes everything is saved, or with one word everything is lost."
"Come in, the priest is waiting," he had heard it a second time, from his sister-in-law and mother-in-law, all at once.
Several years later they would continue to mention her, the foreigner, in their conversations, always saying “she”. They would also comment on her unusual name in their parts, “Xeni”, even though they had never said it. Strange people indeed, they spoke with more contempt than love, even about members of their families, especially women, let alone “she”, who was not only a bride, but also a foreigner, the Xeni with the black curly hair.
"Courage, patience and a good heart, don't be picky," her uncle Stefanos, her father's brother, had comfortingly advised her, adding that she had no reason to fear as long as she held on to the principles and virtues with which she had grown up. "They will love you in time."
"Marriage," she internally spelled out, and between the two syllables the abyss swallowed her up. She remembered that after this thought she had entered with her right hand, as they had interpreted her, into this noisy festival, but in the depths of her soul she was certain that it was a farce, a great farce in the unstoppable irony of life.
And she wouldn't say that life, her life, had turned from a duty into a burden, no, but every time she recalled her first arrival in the small town, she felt the same agitation, the same knot in her throat. Her hands trembled, her eyes filled with fear, as when just a few glances were enough to make her feel what living together in the inhospitable new family environment would be like. Later in the years that followed, when she discerned the threatening tone in the voices - especially her mother-in-law's - pale with fear, sometimes she pretended not to hear and sometimes she hid behind the walnut tree in the garden, in the goat's hut with the hay or, at best, in the neighboring half-ruined Muslim ruin, full of shadows and ghosts, as they had threatened her.
-She's young, don't keep badmouthing her, father-in-law.
-And the youth of "her", a flaw is... the mother-in-law.
When you enter into a marriage, the version of life you expect is none other than that famous "life blossoming" that was written on the greeting cards. And she had heard this no less than two hundred times and had read it just as many more times, misspelled in some, but it didn't matter since she believed that one way or another, wishes come true, and besides, her ex-partner and current husband had promised her the same.
“The thing is, language sometimes runs too fast and people tend to share wishes and promises, so that you create false expectations.” That’s what her good psychiatrist, Nikolas, had once told her in Idomeneos.
Now grown up, Xeni crossed paths one afternoon in the square with some of those people, vaguely familiar, guests at her wedding at the time. Guessing their identities, she paused. She thought about how so many years had passed, she deeply regretted that they were passing her by, pretending not to know her, like back then, when they didn't even say "good morning" to her.
She sat on the bench behind the kiosk. She was cold. She brought her arms and hugged her shoulders. She heard every noise around her, but she saw nothing and no one, the tears wouldn't let her see. Words, facts, figures, incidents that had devastated her came back to her memory unsaid. They were torturously claiming vital space from the little she had left, but no, in the cracked joints of her heart, she was sure they didn't even fit as memories.
He returned home.
The key creaked in the rusty lock. She almost ran, down the hallway to the back, to their old room. Panting with excitement, she turned on the left lamp on the bedside table. The mirror sucked in everything around her, everything except the shadows, which she felt were being pulled by her hands, her hair, her clothes, her insides. She tiptoed to the edge of the bed, stretched out to the closet, took down her small, old suitcase. She blew out the dust, opened it. At the bottom was the knitted blanket and the embroidered sheets - the ones her mother had once made on the wedding bed - and on top were handkerchiefs, ties, diaries, albums.
She sat down to the side. The silent internal monologue had created a tension in her, a sadness - how many bad feelings! She chose the black and white photos, looked at the faces, bringing to mind the people she had been associated with in her life after the marriage in that house. She wondered how many were truly honest. She distinguished some, faded by time, she had difficulty with others - you see, behind the masks, faint traces of morality confused her. But some faces did not need a second reading, no, old-fashionedness, envy, malice, greed, hypocrisy, lies, selfishness were blatantly obvious.
It was very burdensome at her age to make such an assessment, to admit that it was not her fate that was to blame, but herself, she herself had a share of responsibility, "she", who measured her life by the unpleasant episodes and not by the good moments she had known, even if they were few. She also considered it important that, since, as they say, a basic characteristic of mature age is bitterness - and this is because over the years the illusions that exert a certain charm come out of the tight shoes and thresh barefoot - it was time to throw away the blinders.
So it was time to distance himself, but from whom? Most of them were dead, he thought, and making a grimace of disgust as if death had sanctified them, he took a deep breath, reaching for his soul. "Life and death in the power of language" - he had read that somewhere. Now "damn the foreigner's sleight of hand, damn the sleight of hand for everything" he said courageously, and these were the two words that needed an entire life.
Autumn. It had been nearly forty days since she had been accumulating frost every morning and frost at night. She had noticed that the ridge of the mountain - Dulka opposite - like some immense giant with glass eyes, was watching her intently every time she approached the window with the cracked pane. For better or worse, she didn't know. But tonight, as soon as the sun went down, rain broke out and was getting stronger, and the wind seemed to suddenly lurk even in the keyhole and the cracks in the door, tonight, tonight, tonight everything was different. A howl - perhaps a stray dog on the street - and immediately a lightning bolt soon became the cause of the lights going out. The night had begun to flash with lightning, the gutters couldn't keep up with the water, and the furious wind was bending the branches of the orange tree towards the window.
She got up, wrapped herself in her robe, looked for matches in the drawer, lit a candle. Now, she stood upright over her open small, old suitcase. She was getting closer. She held a wind chime in her teeth, she was trembling all over. Lighting up that past up close, she preferred to drown out the words that rose to her lips - there was no one to understand her anyway - now the era had overtaken her...
"Distances, yes, distances from memories...
And from the memories of that wedding" - far from the illusions and deceptive images of an imaginary happiness that he never granted.
Now, having escaped the supposed guarantees of her dream married life, in a better situation than in the first half of her life, she loved simple everyday things, pursuing only the possible. She did not want to risk losing what was left, this little bit of the second half of her own life.
"Not only words, but also deeds, to see you, Foreigner," from within her. She soaked a piece of fermented seven-dough bread in wine. Her soul was filled with flame...
"Tomorrow, Xeni, tomorrow," she said out loud now, and she didn't know if it was the candle that lit the fire or if it was her soul that had dripped so much complaint onto those old yellowed photographs.
Tomorrow, in the name of love
Life of Diktao
Corfu 8 December 2024
photo OrnaW, https://pixabay.com
