In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree (19 page)

‘
Other Gypsies who work,’ she states. The brother eyes Theo.

‘
Theo.’ Theo puts out his hand to the brother, whose bruised face breaks into the sunniest of smiles.

‘
Gorgi,’ he answers.

‘
So you run a school?’ Theo asks.

‘
No, we give an address to get them into school,’ Gorgi offers.

Theo looks at the children, only one of them too young to be in school.

‘We were trying.’ The girl sounds defeated. The biggest child gives her the baby to hold. She rocks it and kisses its head. ‘They tell us to settle, they tell us to become responsible citizens, like you, but then they block us. No address, no school. No school, no education. So we take an address, we try again. They say they must live at the address, not just live there during the day. So we go to see people, talk, we begin to make progress.’ She tuts her indignation. ‘And now we have nothing, no home, no place for my mama, no work, nothing.’ She holds back the tears.

Gorgi puts his big arm around her.

Theo looks from brother to sister before leaning forward and patting the remaining dust from his head. He needs a bath.

One of the children laughs and reaches out to touch his f
luffy mop. Theo sees the little hand and leans toward the child. She touches it tentatively before wrapping both arms around his head and burying her face, emerging shrieking with fun. The other children come to join in, and Theo finds himself besieged with little hands and soft cheeks.

‘
Come on, children. Enough,’ Gorgi says, but the hair is too soft and they cannot let go.

‘
Now,’ the queen barks, and Theo looks up at her strictness.

‘
What will you do now?’ he inquires, the children now cuddling him, arms around his legs.

‘
We will stay here by the roadside until all the children are picked up, then we will find somewhere to sleep. I am Riya.’ She holds out her hand.

‘
Theo.’ He nods at her. ‘No, I mean about the children, taking care of them during the day, trying to get them into school?’ Theo rubs down his trousers. The dust has settled, making lines in the creases of his shoes.

‘
Start again,’ Gorgi says emphatically. The Gypsy mama is rocking backwards and forwards, muttering in Roma. One of the children strokes the old lady’s hair from her face.

They lapse into silence, staring at the pile of bricks and rubble that is now neither home nor a doorway to school.

Age 41 Years, 1 Month, 24 Days

The three glasses Aikaterina left behind are lined up with his own coffee cup, washed and ready. Theo stands over the stove. Water, sugar, coffee, patience.

How quickly the Gypsies
’ world has changed. How quickly everything seems to change in Athens. Everyone appears to be in transition, unsettled. And no one seems to be particularly happy, or to care about anyone or anything very much. No one seems to have any roots. The lonely existence he is experiencing is just the way of city living.

Balancing the three coffees without burning his fingers, he leaves his own cup behind. Up the five steps into the living room, where the sunlight pours in from the balcony. Through the window, with the railing hanging off and the house next door gone, he can see the family of Gypsies sitting by the roadside: the children kicking pebbles and pulling at one another, Gorgi staring at the rubble and dust that just a couple of hours ago was his home.

Holding her mama’s hand, Riya sits beside him. Her shoulders have rounded, some of her dignity sunk in her despair. Her hair is white with debris, her beauty hidden in the dust.

When the quake happened, the street filled with residents: excited, worried, offering words of comfort, united against a common foe.

Since they dispersed after the initial panic, not one has returned offering help.

The sun shines on the silent remains of the house, the space it used to occupy like an open wound. A plastic doll
’s head, abandoned, disembodied, sticks up in the middle. A bright red rag that was once a dress or a head-scarf, is lodged between heavy cement blocks. A single child’s shoe lies out by the pavement. The Gypsies have been so lucky. They have been so unlucky.

Theo lifts and replaces each finger in turn on the glasses of coffee; they are hot.

Just a couple of years ago, 1975 perhaps, Theo cannot recall, an earthquake shook his village. Everyone ran out onto the streets. The low stone cottages quivered. The church bell rang as it swung. People stood out in the open, in family groups, hugging each other till it passed. But the village houses have stood for hundreds of years, and they continued to stand. Some shutters did not close so well after the event, but that was a minor inconvenience. Cracks appeared in the plaster here and there. But that was all. The village stood sure.

All except Martha the widow
’s house. A walnut roof beam dislodged from the wall and crashed into her one room, the tiles running off it, like playing cards off a sloping table, filling her living space, lifting clouds of choking dust into the blue sky.

The news spread quickly through the village, and soon a human chain was assembled, tiles thrown from one person to another and stacked up into broken and reusable by the gate. With the roof joist removed and the majority of the rubble cleared, it was revealed that the widow
’s few pieces of furniture—a table and chairs, an old dresser—were smashed beyond repair. But Martha cried most over the loss of her dead mama’s portrait, which had fallen from its place over the fireplace. Neighbours scrabbled in the mess, fingernails ingrained with red dust, until it was found. The glass was missing, the frame broken, but the steely stare of a past generation remained unchanged. Whilst the men of the village set about fixing a new beam back in place, the women moved in, recovered and washed her linens, strung her blankets and sheets in their backyards. New plates were found to replace those that had broken, and Theo’s own baba gave a table and two chairs from the
kafeneio
. Martha herself was invited to stay at the Papa’s house, and the roof was back on in a day or two. There was no need even to buy new roof tiles, as so many houses in the village had a stack of spares piled up round the back, and enough were found to replace those that had broken.

Theo steps onto the Athens street, coffees in hand. No one else is out offering to help. The cars that pass slow as their passengers crane their necks to get a look at the rubble on one side and the destitute family on the other. The rag and bone man returns and picks through the remains, takes away some twisted pipes and a battered pan that has lost its handle, and leaves a few words of encouragement. But no one comes to offer care or aid. Is it because they are Gypsies, or is it just Athens?

Theo returns indoors to drink his own coffee, sitting inside on the sofa. Around mid-afternoon, he takes the Gypsies out a plate with bread, feta, tomatoes, and olives, which the children snatch hungrily.

‘
Don’t encourage them,’ Margarita’s mama hisses through her open window at him as he returns, yawning.

Later he lies on his back counting the cracks in his bedroom ceiling; there are no new ones. He begins to drift off but cannot help but think of the six little children outside who all need their afternoon sleep, too. Here he is with a main room bigger than their whole house was and only him rattling around in it. And underneath is the now-empty storeroom which, although damp and miserable, is at least off the street. Not that the sun is so hot any more, but the clouds seem to have come and gone, the temperature balmy. His thoughts drift until he slumbers.

As a matter of course, he sets out to work that evening. The Gypsies now have only two children left with them. The baby has gone, which gives Theo relief. They have moved back to the side of the road their house was on and have picked a torn, padded quilt from the mess and laid it on a flat piece of concrete slab that was once part of the roof. It sits, now at a shallow angle, on top of a pile of bricks that once made up the supporting walls.

Theo wonders what Gorgi and Riya will do once the last child is picked up.

There is evidence of the earthquake all along his route to work. A tree has fallen at the corner. There is a wide crack in a wall by the side of the road. But no more buildings seem to have fallen. Here and there are signs of the earlier panic—a stack of plant pots lies in a broken heap in one yard. Two bicycles have fallen on top of each other in another. He hopes Tasia is alright.

The second shutter is half-hanging off the Diamond Rock Cafe window. Theo pulls it off altogether and stacks it next to the first one. The acrid smell of stale tobacco hits him, and he coughs.

Inside, many bottles have fallen over. Some have rolled onto the floor and smashed. Some stand teetering precariously on the edges of shelves.

‘
Gamoto
,’ Dimitri swears, coming in behind Theo.

‘
Bit of a mess,’ Theo states.

‘
Get it cleaned up.’

Theo has no reaction to his rudeness. Dimitri is a man who has grown up in a city where the world doesn
’t seem to care, where everybody is a passing migrant and the people you try to have a straightforward, mutually beneficial relationship with just rip you off. He shakes his head in pity at the whole ugly situation and starts to sweep.

The glass pieces stick to the tacky floor and crunch as he walks on them. He searches around for a mop and bucket and swills behind the bar to clear up the worst of the mess.

‘Just do the one bar. The other can stay shut tonight.’ Dimitri perches on a barstool and pours himself a drink, watching Theo work.

‘
I imagine people will stay in tonight, glad to be safe with their families.’ Theo tries to make conversation.

‘
Or out celebrating they have survived, getting drunk to take the edge off the fear,’ Dimitri laughs coarsely.

When it comes to it, the usual crowd come in the usual order. Theo estimates the earthquake has made no difference.

Through the evening, he does his job proficiently, but he is distracted. The earthquake has worried him, made him think of the safety of his mama and baba and Tasia. The news on the television above the bar suggests it was a minor quake hitting his area of the city hardest. It will not have even registered down in the village, but it has kindled in him the need to pay a visit home, to check in.

‘Hello, Theo. One whiskey and an answer please,’ Phaedon says good naturedly, with a grin. ‘You have one yourself tonight, get over the shock of the earthquake.’ He indicates a pair of glasses ready to be filled.

‘
No, I won’t. Thanks, Phaedon.’ Theo pours. ‘As for your offer, it is almost definitely a yes, but I need to go home, check my family is safe, before I can commit. Does that make a difference to you?’

‘
Wise! You are always wise, Theo. A man should not jump into these things before weighing them up. If you go home and come back and you take on this place, then I will know you are committed. It is better for me.’ He lifts his glass. ‘
Yia mas
,’ he says.

‘
Will it be a problem with Dimitri’s lease if it takes a couple of days?’ Theo asks.

‘
He’s keen to renew the agreement. I’ll just keep him dangling a bit longer, but he’s got to go sooner or later. He’s bad news.’ Phaedon smacks his lips together as the whiskey burns his throat.

‘
He’s just learnt what he has been taught, I expect,’ Theo says.

‘
There you go again with your wise man thoughts,’ Phaedon laughs. Theo, smiling, goes down the bar to serve a group of girls.

The evening passes uneventfully. Theo pockets nothing all night and when they come to close up, Dimitri proudly boasts that he is right, their increase in income is because people are celebrating their survival.
‘Which proves,’ he adds, ‘that I have a degree in psychology.’

Theo chuckles to himself and closes up. Dimitri is almost out the door when Theo calls him.
‘Oh, the other shutter came off in the quake.’ He points. ‘Also I am going to see my family tomorrow.’

‘
If you go you can consider yourself sacked,’ Dimitri says coldly.

Theo holds his tongue. If he finds out about Phaedon
’s offer, Dimitri will not take it well, and he could come off worse than Jimmy did. Let Phaedon tell him when the time comes. Then, hopefully, Dimitri will be long gone before Theo steps in as new leaseholder.

Dimitri is waiting for a response.

‘If that’s what you want, or you could get a stand in.’ Theo is calm. ‘I’m sure Jimmy would be glad of a couple of nights’ work, and you will at least know he is going to be honest.’ Dimitri’s mouth opens and closes.

‘
Or you could try Makis, but I don’t think he can add up very well.’

‘
I mean it,’ Dimitri says.

‘
I know you do.’ Theo walks away.

The Gypsies have made camp by the side of the road. A small fire burns and lights up the faces of Gorgi, Riya, and a curved lump that must be their mama beside them in an orange glow. The woman is old; the concrete will suck the warmth out of her. Should he invite them in? He knows it would be the right thing to do, but Margarita’s mama is sure to tell Margarita, and she was adamant about sub-letting. They would not take it well. Most likely, he would lose the flat. But all that space for one man when a family is sleeping on the ground next door.

His tired legs climb the stairs.
‘It’s the way of the city, Theo,’ he soothes himself. ‘Dog eat dog.’ Unlocking the door to let himself in, he remembers the man in his white dressing gown, the old lady in her beaded dress, Dimitri and his cold aggression. ‘City life is not for everyone.’ He nods and a little dust falls to the floor. He has not washed his hair yet.

Neither has he had a drink since Aikaterina and Marinos came round with beer and cards. He decides to have a nip tonight, make his conscience a little fuzzy, his sleep a little more easy.

He cannot bear the thought of sitting on his balcony, looking down on the campfire, but he has been inside all night and needs some air. He will sit on the metal steps at the back, look up at the stars, drink to Marinos’ and Aikaterina’s journey. The back door unlocks noisily and he sits on the top step, relieved to take the weight off his feet. He takes a sip and feels the knots down his spine relax, his shoulders drop, his crown shift back, flattening his forehead.

‘
Ahh.’ He exhales and looks up to the stars. The Milky Way is not as brilliant as in the village, the lights in Athens too bright, but its glory is visible. Looking for familiar patterns reminds him of when he was a boy and his baba would point out all he knew. A rhythmical scratching and a rustle of leaves brings his eyes to the dark, unused courtyard. There are no rugs airing on the garden wall; the table is littered with leaves that no fastidious hand has swept away. He hears the noise again and peers into the corner, into the dark. Something moves. Theo tenses, puts down his glass.

‘
Who’s there?’ He stands. A moment of fear turns to delight. Bounding out of the corner, Bob the dog’s white mop coat bounces out of the shadows.

‘
Bob!’ Theo puts his arms out. The dog runs up the steps, and his front paws land heavily on Theo’s chest. ‘Where have you been, boy?’ Theo ruffles the dog’s dreadlocks, looks into its jet black eyes. This is all the excuse the dog needs to cover Theo in his wet tongue.

‘
Enough, enough. Down,’ Theo laughs. The dog drops to the floor and runs inside. Theo drains his drink, shaking his head with joy, and follows the dog inside. Bob is running from kitchen to front room and back, his nails tapping on the marble floors, the sounds more solid on the wooden steps, his tongue lolling.