The Fig Tree (7 page)

And all the while, running between them, answering their every need—checking pulses, blood pressure, intakes of fluids and tablets, administering oxygen, rearranging tired bodies, bathing patients wracked with pain—are the nurses. Always, it seems, they tread the fine wire that stretches taut between compassion and detachment, while outside can be heard the sound of traffic and bustle, of a city forever on the move.

As she moves towards her final coma, it is the fig tree that Lily recalls. The one she planted in the final garden after half a lifetime on the move, with her restless husband, from shop to shop, from house to house, from one bayside suburb to the next. It was the one fig tree that she was able to see mature and bear fruit.

It began as a fragile cutting, culled from aunt Mantina's garden. Mantina was Athanassios's cousin and Lily's confidante, a woman who was born in Ithaca. A woman who understood fig trees. She had tended them on the island as a child. She took hold of a shoot at the base of her tree. ‘Just plant it in the ground when you get home,' she said, as she wrenched it out of the earth. Lily found it hard to believe this was all it required. ‘A fig tree can push through concrete,' Mantina assured her.

The cutting did take root. In time the tree reached out to all corners of the garden. It grew so high that birds could safely eat their share of fruit. It sagged so low that the ripened figs hung like succulent teats, ready for the milking. It was so abundant with figs that the earth beneath it was a moist compost of fermenting fruit. It spread so wide that the branches became hazards. In the dark, in a moment of forgetfulness, I once banged my forehead against a lower branch.

As the tree grew and stretched outwards, Lily grew inwards. She began to hunch over. Her spine succumbed to disease. Her steps shortened. Her fingers stiffened. Yet in her face, she seemed more youthful. It gained a childlike quality. One grandchild was born; then a second. And for a brief time Lily was at ease, at home in her established garden. She was able to move from the practical to the aesthetic: from fruit trees to native shrubs, from grapevines to potted plants, from vegetable plots to flowers; while steadily, through each passing year, the fig tree extended its domain.

And there were days, the best of times, when Lily sat under that tree, surrounded by family and friends, and by grandchildren who were born long after it had been planted. Again, it is obvious. This is where she wants to be. This is where she wishes to spend her final hours. This is where she should be. But the rules do not allow it. She is too weak to be moved, the doctors tell us. So we give in, and become accomplices, condemned to live with an enduring regret that Lily did not realise her final wish.

A cancer ward in St Vincent's. Dramas persist. Just as it seems that Roza has sunk into a coma from which she will not return, she stirs and sits up abruptly against a pile of pillows. Her husband and son rush to her side. It is late at night. Their vigil has been rewarded. Roza beckons to them, and they come close. I sit beside Lily. From this distance of five metres or so, it appears as though the three of them, Roza, her husband and son, are enclosed in a stream of light emanating from a bed lamp in the darkened ward.

Roza extends one hand to the husband, the other to her son, and draws them to her. She tells them, ‘I will get better and we shall return to Greece. First we will go to Jerusalem. And then we will travel to the Sinai, to St Catherine's monastery, to visit the desert monks and priests. Then we will return to Greece and build a house in the village. It will have just two rooms, perhaps three. That is all I need. As for me, my working days will be over. I will stay in the village and live out my years in peace.'

She is talking of the village she was born in. She is talking of the village she left, as a woman of twenty-three, to make her way, with her husband, to Australia; the village that Yiayia, her mother, chose to remain in. She is talking of the dream she has clung to for over two decades of work and struggle; and for a moment at least, in a darkened ward near the heart of the city, this dream has flared up yet again, and enabled her to experience this last moment of fully conscious communion with her loved ones.

A corridor in St Vincent's. This is where we come for respite. A break from the heat. The corridor is one step removed from the cauldron. The door to the ward swings open, and shut. It is a place for talking. For remembrances. And sitting silent. Two nurses hurry by, like hurricanes tinged with grace. Dora sits with Alexander. He is asleep. And she recalls her journey, as a child, to another hospital.

Dora was six years old at the time, travelling on a train. A ‘red rattler', they called it, as it hurtled upon bumpy rails. She did not know where she was going. She had rarely left her bayside Melbourne home. Perhaps it was the first time. Her mother seemed preoccupied, sombre. The train stopped at stations with a fit of clanking, and resumed its journey with a slow start. Dora revelled in the changing pace.

She wanted the journey to never end. Inside the carriage it was dark and cool. Through the window she glimpsed backyards, private domains on public display. Flitting by, she saw the spiky fronds of date palms against blue skies. She felt happy and new. Almost everyone about her seemed happy. But still, her mother remained silent, remote.

The train journey ended. They walked side by side on a busy street. Dora was overwhelmed by the noise. They entered a tall building, and ascended in a lift. They stepped out into a corridor. A door swung open, and shut. Dora saw people lying in beds. She had never been to a hospital before, and she was frightened. The sun did not shine here. Everything seemed grey. They came to a room, and inside, on a bed, lay her
nonna
, Lily's mother, Poulimia.

The door to the cancer ward continues to open and shut. Alexander stirs. Dora pauses. Adjusts his blanket. And continues her tale. She is surprised at the clarity, at how much she remembers. And yet, how little. Perhaps it has something to do with corridors and impending death.

They seemed united in an unspoken pact, Lily and her mother. Locked in each other's pain. And Dora felt shut out. She wanted the day to be as it had seemed, just hours earlier, fresh and new. She glanced through the hospital window, and at the light streaming in.

Dora sat by Poulimia's bed. Her grandmother did not speak English well. She preferred to speak Greek. Although she understood her, Dora refused to reply in Greek. Besides, she did not know what to say. She did not know Poulimia well. They rarely saw each other.

Now, years later, in a hospital corridor, she is beginning to disentangle the webs; to see the strange symmetries. Poulimia too was dying of cancer. She passed away aged fifty-four. This is just one of the few memories Dora has of her, the only image of a lineage of women, and of a grandmother who arrived in Melbourne as a proxy bride. She remains a remote dream recalled in a hospital corridor, where the doors to the inner sanctum silently open. And shut. Miracles can happen, Spirou, Roza's son, tells me. He has just flown back from Greece, to join his mother in her final days.

‘Miracles can happen,' he repeats. ‘I know. I have seen it.' We are standing by Lily's bed, he on one side, I on the other. I ask Lily if she minds us talking. After all, it is late at night. And she has complained of the noise. ‘Go on,' she says, her eyes closed. ‘I am listening.'

‘Miracles can happen,' Spirou persists. It is like a chant. ‘I was on military service in Greece. I saw a jeep crashing over a cliff. It plunged many metres below. It rolled over thirty-one times.' I wonder at the figure thirty-one. Did he count each roll as he stood on the cliff-side?

‘At the base of the cliff the jeep burst into flames,' he continues. ‘We found a way to the car as quickly as possible. Two of its occupants were dead. But the third emerged totally unharmed. And he told us that as the car plunged over the cliff and began its descent, he had felt, with certainty, that something, perhaps someone, was protecting him. It was as if an invisible blanket was wrapped around him. Yes. Miracles can happen. After all, my mother is still alive. And she wants so much to see her village one last time.'

These are the stories told late at night in a cancer ward in St Vincent's. Between people who just days ago were strangers. And this, in itself, is a miracle.

A corridor in St Vincent's. Roza's husband paces about. Beside him walks Yiayia, with a look of incomprehension. ‘Why doesn't the cancer attack the rocks,' she says again. It is her incantation, her protest. Dora sits with Alexander, and with two friends of Lily's, one from the women's movement, the other a sister-in-law.

Dora cannot help but feel devastated by her mother's pain. And a touch of anger, a sense of abandonment. It rears up, unexpectedly, then subsides. Her mother is leaving when she wants her most. They had just entered common territory now that Dora has a child. She thinks of what could have been. ‘I wanted to share the secrets of child-rearing,' Dora tells Lily's friends.

Dora is divided. Tugged one way, then the other, between her ill mother and the needs of the child. ‘What will the baby eat today?' Dora says, as if thinking aloud. ‘He had rice yesterday. Perhaps I will feed him buckwheat today. He needs protein. I better get it right.'

And she is haunted by her mother; her closed eyes, her withdrawal from the outside world. Lily had been so curious, so vital and alive. Now she no longer wants to know. Dora longs to see her. To speak to her at least one last time. To be of use. To help soothe her pain.

It is then that she allows herself to break down. In the corridor. In the company of two women. One lifts Alexander from Dora's arms. ‘I cannot believe she has cancer,' she tells them. ‘She has always absorbed other people's burdens. Now she is leaving when we have so much to share.'

The women comfort her. They are older women. Child-rearers. ‘Be strong. Do not despair,' they tell her. ‘You have your own child. It is your time. This is how it goes.'

A corridor in St Vincent's. The mood oscillates. There are subtle shifts. Lighter moments. Unexpected detours. Perhaps the stories we tell in the corridor are an extended epitaph. There is the tale of how Lily got her name. It is not a typical Greek name.

Lily was christened Erasmia Kecatos. In 1926, when she was one year old, an uncle, newly arrived from Ithaca, would take her for a walk in the surrounding streets. Neighbours strolling by once asked, ‘What is her name?' Her uncle did not feel comfortable with the name Erasmia outside the family home. It sounded awkward in these streets. It underlined his poor grasp of English, his strange accent. He looked up, and saw a lily in a front garden. ‘Ah,' he exclaimed. ‘Name is Lily.' And it stuck. So the story goes.

There are other memories that take hold. Corridor anecdotes. The few images that will take root and return unexpectedly, at any time. Lily's three children each have their own. For Dora, it is the coffee ritual. She associates it with Sunday afternoons. And the kitchen in Parkdale. The smell of it. The familiarity. Dora and Lily are cooking together. The silence is broken occasionally by a piece of gossip. Then they pause for the ritual. Always at the same time. It is as if they work for this moment, the four o'clock coffee break.

Lily brings the
briki
to the boil. She pours two Greek coffees. They sit down. The pots are simmering. The meal is well on the way. It is a moment to savour. There are two small cups side by side on the kitchen table, glistening black. Then they break the rules, and add a dash of milk. Says Dora, ‘to take the bitterness away'.

Emerging from St Vincent's for the last time, late on a Thursday morning, on 20 October 1994, just hours after Lily passed away, I am struck by the contrast between the stillness that has been induced in us after three weeks of vigil, sitting alongside a dying woman, and the hurried steps of passers-by, the drone of traffic careering along a busy road.

And the thought rears up: what is the destination of all this movement? Where are we headed for in this dash through life? Why is it that it takes a brush with illness and death to make us think about deeper values, about fig trees and ancestral roads, about loved ones and the fragility of life?

Time becomes more significant when someone is dying. It slows to a more tranquil pace. Imminent death is a reminder. Each day may be the last, so we live it as if it were the first. We become aware of our breath. We see the shadows fall across the wall. We follow the subtle movement of the light. We hear the ticking of the clock. We are aware of sound: the breathing of the patient in the next bed, the rush of the traffic on the street below. We register the cough that reverberates through the ward. We follow the movement of a fly upon the wall. We notice that the wall needs a new coat of paint. We note the leftover crumbs on a plate.

And when we descend into the street between visits, we see the world with new eyes. We glimpse the driver clutching the wheel, obsessed with time, focused upon the destination, and not the moment. A passer-by glances at his watch. Ten metres later, he raises his wrist again. And he reminds me how often I glance at my own watch. We note the dramas of the night, the ambulances slowing to a halt, the bandaged man helped into casualty, the middle-aged woman with the blackened eye.

We come to savour the ritual of the walk, from the street to the hospital entrance, from the worn carpeted foyer with the statuette of St Vincent de Paul, surrounded by a clutch of children. We move from the foyer onto the linoleum floor. We come to know its patterns, the alternate squares of black and grey. As we wait for the lift, we are conscious of other visitors, and are drawn into a common concern.

When we re-emerge into the night, we see a younger brother of Lily's arrive; and we are reminded we have not seen him for so long. We stop to greet each other. We sit down on the wooden bench beneath a fluorescent light. And we talk.

‘Lily was a good woman,' he says. ‘She always served the family. She was ten years older than I. She looked after me when I was a child. She always looked after people.' There is space to receive his words. And time to touch his hand.