Snakehead (5 page)

The last lamp was guttering. We decided to spare the oil and go to bed.

Whatever she was hiding, our new waitress had told the truth about her skills. She didn’t know a thing about cooking, serving food or attending to guests. But she was a thorough housemaid, and a speedy learner. The only half-truth was when she’d said she could weave “a little.” Her weaving was superb. She’d brought a frame loom dismantled in her pack, along with a finely carved shuttle, hanks of dyed yarn and some outlandish loom weights of carved stone (not solid gold!). Word quickly got about. Over the next few days a procession of the finest weavers in Seatown came to visit the little room on the flat roof. Our matriarchs were impressed by the quality of her work, her knowledge of dyes and yarns, her daring use of color. They also liked her respectful manners; and they liked her silence. “The more a young woman thinks, the less she speaks,” said the great Balba (our chief weaver) to Papa Dicty. “She seems to me a sensible girl. Let her stay.”

She tried not to show her interest in the refugees. But we noticed that when someone raised the subject in the taverna (and of course people were talking about them), our new waitress would drift over, trying to make it casual, and listen to the conversation. We made up errands for
her so she could go out and explore, and check up on her people on the quiet. This trick—it was Anthe’s idea—didn’t work. Kore didn’t say no, but she always found some reason why she couldn’t go out just then.

We introduced her to our household gods, Mémé the cat and Brébré the ferret (that’s
gods
with a small
g;
in our language it means “pets”); and she was approved. We introduced her to the poultry. Our yard geese grudgingly agreed not to yell blue murder at her, after a few days…. I showed her the forge and the little furnace yard, where Dicty worked on gadgets like his wheat-ribbon press. “In my country,” she said, giving me a thoughtful look, “metal-working is a craft reserved for princes.” … I didn’t comment on that.

When we realized that our fugitive
would not
leave the house alone, Papa Dicty arranged things so that the four of us young people had time off together—and Pali and Anthe and I pretended this happened all the time, which it certainly did not!

We showed her the glories of Seatown, which was a short tour. The only place worth seeing was the Enclosure, and we knew she didn’t want to go there. We took her up into the hills west of the town so that she could see, across the ripening terraces of hard wheat, the forest-clothed “mountains” (rather small mountains) of our island’s heart. In hard winters we have snow and ice up there. We go and cut the ice and bury it in a deep cave, then bring it down in summer—so that we can have iced
desserts and fresh meat at Dicty’s through the hottest weather. Just the way people did before the Disaster, when our taverna was a seaside mansion. Pali and I said we’d show her the cave one day. She said thank you, in her quiet way; but her eyes shone. (Anthe hated the idea of being underground!) We took her sea bathing in our favorite cove, north of the harbor. She could swim, but she’d never been in the sea before. We took her to visit Aten and his wife.

Moni the Naxian was a skilled herbalist. She showed Kore the leaves and flowers of the opotato, and they were soon deep in conversation about the curious qualities of that rare plant. They went off for a study-walk around Moni’s garden while we stayed with Aten and played with the children. It was the same story as with the matriarchs of Seatown: Moni was impressed, and mystified.

“This girl is
extremely
learned,” she said. “And so young. Who
can
she be?”

I’d been afraid Kore wouldn’t get on with Anthe and Palikari. She was so proud and reserved, I’d thought she’d look down on my friends. I was wrong about that. In a few days she was best mates with Anthe, our impulsive, sarcastic wildcat. She had Pali confiding in her, as if she was his big sister, about the painful state of his heart. He had no prospects, nothing but his place at Dicty’s. How could he convince Anthe to accept him as a serious marriage suitor? I’d see the two girls with their heads together. I’d see Kore listening to Pali’s troubles while
she helped him clean up behind the bar, and I was terribly jealous. But we didn’t talk about our real troubles. Whatever she heard about the truce between Papa Dicty in Seatown and his brother in the High Place, she didn’t hear it from us. And she didn’t tell us her secrets either.

The feeling that everything had come to a crisis slipped away from me. Yet the tension was still there: in her somber eyes, in the burden she would not share. She was playing a part—trying to be this other girl, Kore, traveling to see the world, our new best friend. But you’d look around and she’d be gone. She’d be back in that poky little room: alone, silent, working at her loom.

I went up to the roof one night, with the feeble excuse that I was bringing her a better lamp. The door was half open, so I could see her at work. Mémé was curled up on some hanks of green yarn, Seatown yarn: a gift from Balba. Everyone could get close to Kore except me. I even envied the cat. I knocked on the wood. She looked around, and didn’t say a word. At least she didn’t say go away. I propped myself on the doorjamb. “You’ll ruin your eyes.”

But it was impossible to “make conversation” with this girl. She’d look you dead in the eye, and your pointless phrases crumbled.

“Am I using too much oil? I’m sorry, I forget myself. I’ll stop.”

“Oh no!” Panicked by her nearness, I heard my voice
come out as a strangled yelp. “I, uh, brought you a better lamp…. Kore, don’t you
ever
sleep?”

It was easier to call her Kore now that we weren’t speaking Greek. A lot of islanders have Greek names, after all, including myself. They’re fashionable.

“Of course I do.”

“I just wondered, because I hear your loom going through the night.”

She counted threads with her shuttle. “I’m sorry if I keep you awake. Sometimes I just don’t get sleepy.”

“Nor I, sometimes. What are you working on? I can’t make it out.”

“It’ll make sense when it’s done.” Then she turned and smiled, the same look in her eyes as when she’d laughed at me, on Naxos dock, in that moment when I’d
known
that she felt the same shock of fire as I did. “At least, I hope it will.”

I said good night. I left her and lay awake with that smile in my arms, like a barbed treasure. How could I feel like this, whenever our eyes met, if she didn’t feel it too? I love you but it can’t happen, that’s what she was telling me.

Adamant, absolute …

My mother, when she’d seen the way Kore behaved, said,
There’s a girl who has been watched and kept indoors all her life
. But I felt that my girl (who could not ever be mine) was in a prison of her own making. She was behind bars even now: shackled by chains no one else could see.

K
ore had been with us ten days; midsummer was upon us. It was the hottest part of the afternoon. I was renewing our whitewash: on the trees, along the coping of the terrace wall and around the flagstones, ready for the festival. The hearth burned low. Mémé the cat and Brébré the ferret were fast asleep on the bench beside it, curled together so that you could hardly tell where orange-spotted tabby cat ended and gingery-furred ferret began. The waterfront was dead quiet, except for the soughing of the summer wind; the taverna was empty. Kore and Anthe, nominally in charge, were sitting by the wall of the dining room in cool shadow, talking about art.

I could have hustled them into helping me, but the whitewashing job was a peaceful, mindless one. Popo the housepainter had been around, trying to persuade us that we wanted a few red shells or blue dolphins to add to our
festive finery. We’d politely declined, but he’d left his colors, saying he’d be back later, to talk to the boss. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Anthe, who kept touching the pots of yellow, red and blue that Popo carried around with him in a bucket. She was fascinated; she couldn’t leave them alone. I was interested to see what would happen.

“I don’t like these old pictures,” said our wildcat. “I know they’re ancient, and precious. But if you’re just going to copy what already exists in life, why bother? Art should be about making something new.”

“The court ladies aren’t lifelike,” answered Kore sleepily. “They all have the same face. And whoever saw swallows flying in a double row like that? It’s the patterns that mattered to the painter, you can tell.”

“All right, but still, why imitate things?” Anthe’s small, strong hand had lifted the brush out of the red paint pot, as if she couldn’t help it. She looked at the wall beside her. Unluckily, there was a bare patch, at a convenient height. “When you’re weaving, don’t you often make patterns without pictures? Don’t you think that your colors are
enough on their own?
The way the best meat should be served almost raw, and the best salad vegetables barely dressed?”

“But dyes are imitation colors, Anthe, and so is paint. It’s not ‘redness’ in that pot. It’s ground-up Egyptian beetles. Oh, Anthe,
don’t …
“

Too late.

“I know about the beetles,” said Anthe. “Don’t tell me
about beetles.” She looked at the bright red splash she had made, and seemed to decide there was no use stopping now. A sweep of blue, a splotch of yellow, a gaudy orange swirl over the place where red and yellow had dripped into each other. “You see what I mean? Honest colors, and nothing but!”

It had happened so fast. At least, so far, only a gap in one of the precious paintings was affected. I dumped my whitewash brush and came over, moving like a hunter. Anthe was armed and dangerous; we had to get the yellow brush away from her,
carefully
, before worse happened….

I shifted the bucket of paint pots out of reach. “But what is it meant to be, Anthe dear?” asked Kore, edging to grab the wildcat’s wrist.

“Nothing! It’s just
color
.“

Palikari and Papa Dicty came hurrying in from the street.

“You have to come with us!” Pali was out of breath. “Trouble! We need to move the refugees, right now!”

The boss looked at the daubs of paint on the wall, and then at Anthe, who was standing there red-handed (or yellow-handed). “Have you changed your trade, child?”

“No-o-o!” Anthe wailed, coming out of her mad fit. “Oh no! I’ve ruined my life! I don’t know why I did that! Master! Forgive me!”

“If you haven’t changed your trade, then get started in
the kitchen. You’re on your own. People still want to eat, even in hot weather. Send Koukla out to mind the front desk. Perseus, Kore, come with us. You’re both needed at the Enclosure.”

They told us what had happened as we hurried through the streets. The boss had been making his usual rounds with Moumi, talking to people as they rested in the heat of the day: hearing grievances, picking up news. He’d been met by an informant of ours, who brought an ugly rumor. The king had decided that those ill-omened earthquake refugees had been camped in the Great Mother Enclosure for long enough.

“Your king would invade a sanctuary!” Kore cried.

“Oh yes,” said Pali grimly.

“I doubt if Polydectes would really commit such an affront,” said the boss briskly. “But our relations with the king are not good, Kore, and he could apply pressure. We should put temptation out of his way, right now.”

We’d reached the Enclosure, which stood at the north end of the curving waterfront, at the foot of the High Place hill, inland from the jumble of Seatown’s houses and alleys. It was an ancient holy place, not walled, just encircled by a fence. The buildings inside were wattle-and-daub, nothing permanent except for the bathing caves, and the sanctuary itself. The gates were open. Kore stopped, as if brought up short by an invisible barrier. I saw a look of
dread
in her eyes.

“I was hoping you would be able to help us, dear girl,” said Papa Dicty, watching her. “If you know any words of their language at all?”

She nodded, and swallowed her terror. “I’ll do what I can.”

Moumi was with Holy Mother and the sisters. There were twenty “families” of refugees who had not yet been resettled, including an old man in the hospital who seemed to have no family or friends…. Holy Mother, who had no respect for anyone alive, was very annoyed with all of us, including the boss.

“I have no objection to sheltering them, Dicty,” she snapped. “The victims of an earthquake are sacred. They may stay with us as long as need be, no matter what the king says. But first you send them here, then you tell me I have to make fresh plans for distressed foreigners, using nothing but sign language, in an afternoon. Not one of them speaks a word of Greek. I could have used a modicum of notice!”

The boss apologized humbly, but he’d made up his mind. The next hours passed in a blur. Kore helped the nuns to prepare the refugees. Moumi, Dicty and Holy Mother, who knew every household in Seatown, came up with ideas, and gave us directions. Palikari and I tramped the streets, and the nearby farms. Nobody turned us down when we explained the need, except for the people on the Koutala path who had sickness in the house. I had a new respect for the decency of ordinary Serifiotes by the
end of the day. But it was tough going. We were
beggars—
even if we were begging for others, not for ourselves—and as some wise person once said, there is no harder trade. Nineteen families, with their belongings and babes-in-arms, were moved to private households. The bedridden old man stayed. As Holy Mother said, with any luck he’d be safe home with Great Mother before the king could get down the hill.