In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree (18 page)

Age 41 Years, 1 Month, 23 Days

The next morning, the sky is a bright blue, the birds are singing in the trees, the little girl in the new house opposite is running about on the balcony, squealing her happy sounds. Theo spares a thought for Bob the dog. He misses his bark and hopes that he is with new owners who care for him.

The sun caresses through the spiky branches of the monkey puzzle tree as he sits on his balcony. The pines hiss a little melody in their very top branches. His morning coffee is perfect.

‘
Palyatzis, palyatzis
,’ A plaintive cry rings through the street. It’s a Gypsy, collecting scrap metal, old clothes, anything that can be sold on in the flea market in the centre of Athens. His horse’s hooves clop slowly as it pulls the cart. Theo wonders if they come around before dawn, making choice pickings from all that is thrown out.

He blows across the coffee to cool it a little.

‘
Palyatzis
.’ The call is louder now, the sounds of the horse’s hooves at the end of the lane.

It is early yet, but soon he will set out to visit Tasia, buy a new shirt on the way, take flowers. Be open and honest. Court her.

‘You can take this lot.’ The harsh tones of Maragrita’s mama cuts through the beauty of the morning.

The rag and bone man calls to his horse and pulls gently on the reins. In his cart, he has the base of an iron bed and a metal bath with a hole in the bottom.

‘What do you have, lady?’ His clean white shirt highlights his dark colouring.

‘
Everything those ungrateful peasants left behind.’ Her shrill voice cracks the still air.

‘
Funny feeling in the air today, don’t you think?’ the Gypsy observes, stretching.

‘
Funny people is what I think. You give them everything, a house for free, and they are still not grateful. Wanted to go home, back to their peasant ways. But how did they afford it, that’s what I would like to know?’

The Gypsy sniffs the air.
‘There’s something,’ he says.

‘
Stole it. That’s what I think. How else would they suddenly have enough to just get up and leave? One minute, stealing dog food to eat and the next travelling right across Greece. Maybe it was them that stole my dog and sold it.’ She stops to take a breath as if the thought is a new one.

The pine trees creak louder.

‘Definitely something in the air,’ the Gypsy repeats. ‘Right, what do you want me to take?’

‘
Here, I’ll show you. Ungrateful dog-stealing peasants,’ she mutters as she walks, their footsteps fading around the corner.

A flash of colour and the Gypsy queen next door is on the roof, a basket of washing on her hip, today she has three children following her and at the back of the line, the baby—who is now almost independent. How can she have so many children all so young? Even if she has one every nine months, and if that is the case, then why is she not pregnant now? Or maybe she is.

‘Good morning. How are you?’ Theo has not felt this social for weeks.

She smiles her reply.

‘Great day to hang your washing. Not a cloud in the sky today.’ Theo looks up.

The Gypsy looks up, but she returns his gaze with a frown.

‘You think it will rain?’ Theo asks, surprised.

He puts his coffee down, but the table rocks. He steadies it. It keeps rocking. He suddenly feels dizzy and grips the arm of his chair to stand. His legs are like jelly. The Gypsy girl looks at him, wide eyes. The children scream. Theo widens his stance.

‘Earthquake!’ he shouts.

The Gypsy has fallen. The three children shriek. The baby cries. Someone over the road yells. The horse whinnies and rears, its harness jangling.

The whole balcony becomes liquid, but Theo’s eyes are on the children. The building they are on is vibrating; the cracks in the roof visibly widen. The Gypsy woman on the floor is trying to stand.

Theo grips the balcony railing, inches along towards them. The Gypsy
’s eyes are wide, staring. The children are still screaming, the baby crying. A man’s gruff voice comes from somewhere, and a screech from below. He glimpses Margarita’s mama in the shade of the monkey puzzle tree. The Gypsy man is running to his horse. Theo climbs the balcony railing.

‘
No!’ the Gypsy queen shouts at him. The children beckon him with wide, streaming eyes. Their opens mouths scream. The sound of terror. He edges on the outside of the railing. Closer to the flat roof, the horror stricken children. The handrail buckles, a shrill screech of grinding metal as it rasps free from the pillars. There is no choice. Theo leaps as the railing breaks loose. His hair flying behind him. Wind rushing into his face. Fearing he will fall short. Eyes squeezed closed. His hand hits first, elbows buckling. Chin and chest smear against concrete. He lands prone, his feet over the edge. The flat roof of the old house is shaking alarmingly.

His eyes open face to face with the Gypsy. Time slows. He notices with perfect clarity that a quarter of one of her irises is green, her lips a perfect bow.

‘The children,’ she bawls. Theo is up on his knees but stands, only to fall. He tries again. Grabs the queen by her arm. Hauls her to the top of the spiral staircase. Puts her hand on the handrail and pushes her. They must get off this roof. The house will collapse.

The children grab at his trouser legs. He lifts the baby, but the tremors gather momentum and he can no longer stand. Sitting at the top of the steps, he g
rasps the infant to his chest. The children he urges down in front of him, shuffling one step at a time. He wraps their tiny fingers around the uprights, shouts at them to hold on. They need to hurry. The place is collapsing, kicking up clouds of brick dust. One child reaches the bottom.

‘
The road. Run for the road,’ Theo commands. Two of the children disappear into the dark. The staircase enters the house at the back through a tiny courtyard cluttered with a tin bath, plant pots, and brooms. One child sits in shock, hysterical.

Theo grabs this child, mounts him on his hip, arm around him to keep him there. Inside the house is lightless. He scrabbles his way past unseen furniture. Dust clogs his breathing, drying his eyes. He heads for the strip of light, hoping it will bring him to the alley, the road.

The street is full of people clinging to each other. Some praying, some crying, most standing, looking dazed. The horse is still shying, rearing, the Gypsy rag and bone man trying to keep control, struggling to stop it bolting with the scrap metal cart. A big man lies in the road, the Gypsy queen pulling at him.

‘
Get up,’ she shouts, and the man groans. Theo pushes the children toward her.

‘
Mama,’ the Gypsy girl shouts above the wailing crowd and whining horse, the whites of her eyes growing large.

‘
Where?’ Theo asks. She points to the hovel. Bits of the roof edge are falling to the ground. Dust plumes out the window. Theo cannot tell if the earthquake has stopped or not. The building is moving, but it could just be collapsing. His legs still feel like jelly. Adrenaline surges through this body.

Theo turns to run to the house.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Margarita’s mama’s voice scolds over the sound of the horse’s whinnying. The Gypsy gripping its bridle. A baby cries. A child shrieks.

Theo runs, pauses at the door, but there is no light. Into the dark he stumbles, where the air is thick with brick dust. He kicks something hard, steps on it, over it.

‘Mama,’ he calls. What else should he call?

A creak of wood, dust sprinkles onto his hair. Silence. The earthquake has stopped, but the building still groans.

‘Mama.’ He hears a rustle and with his hand on the wall, he makes slow progress through the doorway. A squeak, and a rat runs over his feet. Hopping and kicking, he feels through the door. A moan.

‘
Mama?’ He feels his way, trying to pinpoint the sounds and comes up against a mound of something soft. Clothes. Another mound. This one is warm, and it coughs. Feeling her shape, Theo lifts the lady and hurries to leave. The old lady shouts something, but her tongue is foreign to him. Roma, the language of the Gypsies.

The dust falls more rapidly. The creaking of wood increases. Theo staggers to the door into the daylight. Someone runs to help him. The rag and bone man takes the old lady from his arms. The Gypsy queen thanks him over and over. The man she was pulling at sits dazed in the road, blood running from a cut in his hair, a line of children behind him, wide-eyed.

Theo turns his head just in time to see the roof of the hovel slip sideways, and the whole building crashes down into the alley. A cloud of dust rises from the rubble and the people in the street cough and turn away. The old Gypsy woman repeats her Roma words.

‘
Was there someone left?’ Theo asks, his voice loud.

‘
No, she is pining for her wedding ring. It was beside her bed.’ The rag and bone man interprets. Theo lowers her gently to sit on the low wall of the house opposite, across the road from her demolished home.

He exhales and coughs.

The Gypsy queen is checking her mama over for cuts and bruises.

‘
Are all your children here?’ Theo asks, suddenly exhausted, gasping for breath. A group of onlookers has gathered up the road, behind the Gypsy man who is still sitting on the tarmac. The Gypsy children are still crying. Their Greek neighbours try to soothe them, wipe away their tears. A woman brings a tray laden with glasses of water from inside one of the houses. It seems only the Gypsies’ hovel has suffered serious damage.

The Gypsy
’s mother is a frail, weathered-looking woman dressed in a shocking array of colours and patterns, layered flowing skirts and a polka-dot headscarf. She sits on the wall and takes a cigarette from the rag and bone man, who listens sympathetically to her wailing in her foreign tongue. The Gypsy girl hugs her but sucks back her emotion, her pride keeping the tears unshed. The children are still being comforted by the other people on the street. None of them run to seek assurity from their mama or baba, which strikes Theo as odd, but then, everything is unbalanced at the moment. The Gypsy man with the cut on his head is trying to stand.

Theo looks back at the remains of the house. His own place next door has lost the middle pillar on the balcony, pulling the railings with it, but otherwise it seems sound.

The new house across the road appears unchanged except for a layer of dust turning the normally dark windows white.

There seems to be little other noticeable damage in the street. With the terror receding, Theo has an irresistible urge to pee. He staggers to his handkerchief garden and stands on the far side of the monkey puzzle tree, leaning his head against the rough bark.
He grips the solid immovable tree for assurance, and his gaze fixes at its base. Hidden in the grass at the base of the trunk he is surprised to notice large seeds, brown and shiny tapering to a point at one end and flattening to a withered dark leaf the other. He picks one up, solid smooth, the promise of life amidst the destruction, the parent tree unmoved by the tremors whilst offering no resistance. To be like the tree, solid, unmoving, able to sway in the wind, rather than break, but hold fast in an earthquake. A twitter of a bird causes him to look up into the complex criss-cross of branches and at the blue sky beyond. Fears for his life and other peoples’ safety drain away and he is left exhausted, taking deep breaths. He grips the seeds tight and puts a handful in his pocket, feeling their smooth perfection with his fingers.

The Gypsy with the cut head is now up, but still unsteady.

‘Your husband seems okay,’ Theo says as he approaches.

The Gypsy queen turns sharply.
‘He is my brother.’ She looks relieved to see him on his feet.

Theo frowns and shakes his hair, which is heavy with dust.
‘But your children?’ he says before he can stop himself.

She looks back at the string of six Gypsy children intermingled with the onlookers. Theo doesn
’t recognise them all.

‘
They are not mine,’ she says simply and pulls her mama closer, rocking her. The woman keeps repeating her Roma phrase. The Gypsy queen whispers Roma back to her, soothing.

The sound of fire engines lets them know that others on nearby streets have suffered damage, too. Theo knows that deaths may come from shock, heart attacks, suffocation beneath rubble, and head wounds. He crosses himself. Slowly, the residents filter back to their houses, looking for damage, checking on their neighbours. The Gypsy rag and bone man gives his horse a drink from Bob the dog
’s bowl, which still sits by the outside tap, before leading his steed away.

Soon his cry can be heard down the street. He will return with a full cart tonight.

The dark-skinned family sits on the low wall, the children pressing themselves into the Gypsy girl’s open arms.

‘
Whose are they, then?’ Theo sits on the low wall, one of the few Greeks who remains.