In the Shade of the Monkey Puzzle Tree (15 page)

His birthday comes and goes, but it is never something he has celebrated, not like his name day. Even so, he thinks of his mama on the day and hopes she is well and that Baba has not turned to bullying her.

The summer heat is deadening, the air stifling. Athens begins to empty at the start of August, with families travelling back to their villages for their summer break. The tarmac pavements and concrete buildings throw back heat everywhere Theo goes. He walks to try and escape it but there is no relief. His legs keep going until he is up on the hill where he slept that one night, the hot climb now not even rewarded with a slight breeze, just brown, lifeless scrubland and a soberness he has not felt for some time.

On his return, he does not plan to pass by Tasia
’s street, but he finds himself on it. Slowing his pace as he approaches the
kafeneio
, he tears his fingers through his knotted hair, drags his palms down the front of his shirt. It’s no good, he cannot face her, he would not be able to look her in the eye when she asks the questions she is bound to ask about his job, whether he is making his mark. He must go back to the beach bar, get a job there as a manager, but could he take a smaller wage? He has grown used to seeing his pile grow. One day, it could be enough for his own bar, perhaps.

So he turns up a side street, glimpses her from a distance, stands under a wilting tree and watches her at work, he recalls her laugh, the way she looked at him. At one point, she looks up, beauty more radiant than he remembered, and Theo hides behind the slender tree, as if she could spot him at this distance. But her face is blank. Theo
’s palms sweat. At home, he has a quick drink before work starts.

He almost doesn’t recognise the man as he settles himself by the till and orders his drink.

‘
You the manager here now, then?’ Phaedon asks, smoothing, with both hands, his semi-circle of hair from ear to ear, his bald crown shining. It is too hot for his light coat, but he is still wearing a shirt and tie.

‘
Yes. You haven’t been in for a while; how are you?’ Theo serves his drink.

‘
Have one yourself,’ the man says, holding out a note.

‘
Thanks, don’t mind if I do.’ Theo pours himself a generous bandy but does not take the man’s money.

‘
Take it, please,’ he says. ‘And give me my change.’

Theo hesitates, looks around for Dimitri, but he is not there. Taking the money, Theo says,
‘You put me in a difficult spot.’

‘
I am sure you can handle it.’ Phaedon takes his change and sips his drink. Theo knocks back a brandy. The man’s eyes are on him as his throat burns pleasantly with the liquid. Blinking rapidly, Theo tries to compose himself, but there is something about the way the man is looking at him that is uncomfortable. He puts his empty glass out of sight, swallows the drink in his mouth. Someone calls from the other end of the bar and Theo thankfully goes to serve him.

When he returns to the till, the man is still there.

‘Poor Jimmy, eh?’ he says.

‘
Sorry?’ Theo asks, wondering if he has misheard, the music making conversation difficult. Makis is really overdoing the volume these days.

‘
Unfortunate, Jimmy,’ the man repeats, louder.

‘
What about Jimmy?’ Theo asks, a sudden weight in his chest.

‘
You didn’t hear? Anyway, he is out now.’

‘
Out?’ Theo eyes dart down the bar, checking for customers, his pulse in his temples.

‘
Hospital. Bad news. They took everything of value from his flat. Apparently he has, or I should say had, a pretty set-up: latest colour TV, music system, leather sofa, an expensive set-up. And cash. Which he could really use now, I guess. But at least they say he will be able to walk again at some point.’

‘
What!’ Theo shrieks so loud over the music that several people nearby turn to see what the fuss is. Colour rises in his cheeks, the brandy burning in his stomach, his legs weak. He grips the bar edge.

‘
Oh yes. Very unlucky, poor man.’ There’s no emotion.

Theo can find no words to respond. This has something to do with Dimitri, he feels it in his gut. And who is this man? Is he here to issue a warning? He rubs his hand down his legs, over his pockets to feel how much his take of money is bulging. It feels flat enough, but he needs to hide it better, get a money belt or something. He has thought about reducing the amount he takes each day until he no longer takes anything at all, but then his savings would not grow, his own bar forever out of sight. So although the idea is sensible, each time he has money in his hand, he makes the wrong choice. He can always start tomorrow.

‘When?’ Theo asks. He would like to mop his brow, but he does not wish to draw attention to his sudden sweating.

‘
The day after he left, I understand.’ The man sips the last of his drink.

Theo swallows.

‘Tell me. What do you make of Dimitri? Does he treat you well?’ Phaedon changes the subject with a light tone.

It must be a set-up. Theo pours himself another brandy. The man watches his every movement. The other girl working behind the bar comes to him with the payment she has just taken for a round. Theo automatically rings it up, gives her the change.

‘Do you hire the girls?’ Phaedon asks, watching her walk away. ‘Not as pretty as they used to be, but she looks like a hard worker.’

Theo tries to focus on what the man is saying, but he cannot shake the image of Jimmy in a wheelchair.

‘Er, yes. I don’t choose them for looks,’ Theo replies, not really thinking.

‘
Oh, what do you judge them on, then?’ the man asks, putting his empty glass down. Theo reaches to refill it, but the man shakes his head.

‘
Their nails,’ Theo says. The man gives him a sharp glance. ‘No, seriously,’ Theo defends. ‘If they have long nails, I don’t hire them. If they have broken, dirty nails, I don’t hire them. But if their nails are short and neat, I know they can work but also have some pride, and I hire them.’

The man smiles and flips a coin on the counter.

‘See you soon, Theo,’ he says, sliding off his bar stool. Theo wonders if this is a threat—how does he know his name?

‘
Oh yeah, cheers. See you soon,’ Theo shouts over the music and as soon as the man is halfway through the crowd, he pours himself a brandy.

October. 41 Years, 1 Month, 21 Days

A couple of days later, Theo returns from the shop with a tin of Greek coffee. Aikaterina is sweeping the steps up to his rooms. It has not occurred to him before that someone sweeps them, but it stands to reason, as they are always clean.

‘
Hello, Mr Theo. Sorry I am early today. Normally, I do it when you are out so I don’t disturb you,’ she says in her thick accent.

‘
That’s okay.’ Theo has an urge retreat to his rooms on the few occasions he sees her. Just her presence reminds him of his previous behaviour, makes him feel uncomfortable. But the shame is stronger, and he forces himself to find a word or two of conversation when they pass each other, to prove he is not rude, to relieve his guilt. They usually talk about the dog or some other neutral subject.

‘
Are you well these days?’ he begins.

She does not meet his gaze but offers a safe response.
‘Yes, thank you.’

‘
Are your family well? Where did you say you were from?’ Theo asks.

She looks up at this question, searching his face.
‘North,’ she replies, indicating a great distance with one hand, her hair straggling either side of her face.

‘
No, I mean which part of the north?’ Theo is flattered by her shyness, as if it is an implication that he matters.

‘
A place called Spillio, up near the borders of Turkey and Bulgaria.’ Her voice loses some tension, her face softening with her thoughts of home.

‘
Ah, a long way,’ Theo replies casually. ‘Do you miss it?’

At this, her face seems to lose structure, the corners of her mouth dropping, and tears well in her eyes.

‘Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to …’ Theo reaches out and touches her shoulder.

‘
I am just very homesick. We thought life would be better here, but…’ She looks down at the broom head, taps her foot against it, her voice almost inaudible toward the end of her sentence.

‘
Why don’t you go home, then?’ Theo asks.

The sound she makes is intended to be a laugh, but a sadder sound, Theo has never heard. He didn
’t want to get involved, but her anguish touches him.

‘
Tell me.’ Theo lets his own accent come through, encouraging her to talk.

‘
We were prepared to work really hard,’ she qualifies.

‘
Of course you were …’

‘
We thought this place …’ She stops and looks down the steps, her eyes darting. Theo is intrigued. He has taken to neither Margarita or her mama. It could be reassuring to know there may be a basis for his mistrust.

Aikaterin
a takes courage. ‘We thought it was something great. We were given that room for free.’

‘
For free?’ Theo realises there must be a catch, someone else coming to Athens and learning the hard way, poor girl.

‘
Yes. All we had to do was a few small errands, you know, if the old lady needed anything. But over time, things have changed and now she wants us here all day, every day, at her command.’

‘
Can you not find somewhere else to live?’ Theo asks.

‘
She won’t let us go so we can get steady jobs. I get cleaning jobs when I can fit them around her, but that is only enough to feed us. It costs to move, even more to go home. She knows it.’ She begins to cry.

Theo is not sure what to say or do. He takes his hand from her shoulder and shakes his head. With no warning, Aikaterina lets go of the broom handle and runs down the stairs, crying. The broom falls over and slides down a couple of steps. The dog barks as she speeds past him, and Theo hears the slam of the door downstairs.

Bob the dog appears at the bottom of the steps and looks up at Theo.

A car drives past.

‘Stupid,’ Theo chastises himself. ‘Just stupid. Will you never learn?’ He lets himself into his rooms and pours a drink from the bottle on the chimney-breast. After a couple, he feels a little better, pours a third and, nursing this, he steps down into the hall. The five steps are wooden and the face plate of the bottom one, he has discovered, is loose. He prizes one end and it pivots open on the remaining nail.

He finishes his drink. The cash looks so much more spread out in the recess than it did flat under the sofa cushion. One night, coming in particularly late with more cash than usual, he bundled it into its hiding place without counting it. In his smugness of the drunken moment, he felt that he was unstoppable and the money would grow quickly. After a couple more days, with a few guesses at the potential value of his swag, he stopped even trying to reckon how much was there.

He was on his way to getting his own bar, he just didn’t know how quickly. He has given up on the idea of working down at the beach place. There, he would get a manager’s wage, if he is lucky, which is alright, but it would assure that he would always be working for someone else. Whereas at the rate he is amassing wealth, he will be his own boss one day.

Another drink, and the bottle is more or less empty, discarded along with the new tin of coffee
. He runs his hands through the cash, grabs a handful, and throws it above his head and sprawls by the bottom step on the cool marble of the hall floor. It flitters down, some landing on his hair, some on his legs, spreading across the floor. He drains his glass and pours another.

‘
You, my friend, have cracked Athens, and soon you will make your mark.’ He raises his glass to toast his success. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Most of the whiskey goes in his mouth. He rubs his hand down his chin and his shirt, but it will stain. It is time to get more shirts anyway. Pulling it off, he staggers to his feet and flings it into the bathroom sink to run cold water on it.

‘
Later,’ he tells it and stumbles back into the hall, stepping on the money, which is spread all over the floor. He chuckles.

‘
Yes, my friend, we have figured it out. The only way to play this city game is to live like the city people.’ His words slur. ‘No
yiayia
will ever rob me of five weeks’ rent again. I can outsmart the best of them.’ But the smile drops from his face as a faded image of Tasia surfaces in his mind’s eye.

He looks down at his own legs and slaps one thigh, testing its strength.
‘And no one will have my legs for it,’ he slurs. ‘Poor Jimmy. But it is not as if I took the bat and put him in a wheelchair myself, is it? How was I to know how much you were taking? Jimmy, my friend, wherever you are, here’s to you. No hard feelings.’ He takes his drink, but his glass is empty. He reaches for the bottle but misjudges the distance and falls up the steps. His head hits the wall.

‘
Owww.’ He winces loudly but grabs the bottle to pour another drink all the same. ‘To you, Jimmy.’ He holds his glass up and wipes the sweat, stopping it from running into his eyes. The whiskey burns down his throat.

It takes a moment to work out what the red is on his hand. He blinks something away, then tentatively touches his forehead again. His fingers come away with fresh blood, not sweat after all. It doesn
’t hurt that much, and besides, it is nothing compared to the beating Jimmy took. He sits on the bottom step and then, forgetting his head, with a big grin, he leans forward, scooping an armful of money to his chest. He rocks sideways and closes his eyes, a smile on his lips. He didn’t get enough sleep again last night.

His eyes flicker open to an unusual cool. It also seems dark. Stiffly pushing himself up onto one elbow, he grimaces. The outside of his head hurts as much as the inside. One eye is sealed shut. He rubs crusts from his lashes and flakes of dried blood come away. He looks around at all the money, some of it with blood-stained fingerprints. Using the wall to help him to his feet, he kicks the money back under the stairs and when every note is in, he pushes the board home.

His shirt is still sitting in the sink soaking, which begs the question of what he will wear to work this evening. He should have bought two. He looks up the stairs and across the main room to the balcony, where the sky has clouded over. When August turned to September, Marinos, clipping the hedges at the time, wished him ‘
Kalo Ximona
’, a good winter. Now it is October, and this is the first sign of the weather changing. But even with the sky overcast, the temperature continues to be perfect.

Hastily washing and rinsing his shirt, he hangs it over the bath. It is a couple of hours until evening. It might be dry in time.

Supporting his aching head, he looks in the mirror.

‘
Oh God!’ he exclaims. There is a diagonal gash over one eye. The area under the cut has swollen and is coming up in a bruise. Dramatically, the blood has somehow run over one eye, across his nose, and over his other eye. Some of his hair is stiff and black where blood has congealed.

Once his face is swilled, he appraises the situation again.

‘No one will notice in that dark hellhole,’ he mutters to himself and takes his shirt, which is still dripping, out to the balcony.

‘
Coffee.’ Heading for the kitchen, he is comforted by his own voice. ‘I need coffee,’ he repeats. ‘Coffee, coffee, coffee.’

As he is just about to give up searching for the coffee, he spots the tin sitting on the steps next to the bottle of whiskey.

Back in the kitchen, he puts the bottle at the back of the deepest cupboard and closes the door emphatically. Levering open the lid of the coffee tin, he breathes deeply, enjoying the aroma, and is transported back to the
kafeneio
in the village. Stathis talking to Cosmo’s baba, Cosmo sitting on one of the high stools in front of him. The metal-framed glass doors are open wide, the sun flooding in. From his table in the square, Manolis’ loud voice drowning out Mitsos’. The older men, four to a table, arguing politics. His own baba running around joining in the conversations, keeping everyone happy.

There
is the Theo who was, standing behind the counter. He looks the same—the same greying halo of hair, same flared trousers, same soft eyes, same easy smile. But that Theo was a fool. That Theo was a victim.

That Theo no longer exists.

He exhales, his eyes downcast.

The other people do still exist, though, and it hits Theo how much he misses Mitsos and Cosmo. He misses Stathis. He misses his mama. Perhaps he even misses baba. He sighs.

He watches the bubbles rise to the surface in the
briki
, raises and lowers the pan, and watches them form again and again.

At least the old Theo didn
’t have to drink whiskey to cope.

He pours the frothy coffee from a height into his cup, watches the bubbles glistening.

That Theo walked with a bounce in his step.

He rinses the
briki
.

That was the Theo who could look Tasia in the face. Her image forms, but she seems a long way away, misty, a thing of the past.

The coffee done, he takes the small cup up to the main room.

The sofa in front of the fireplace, his salvaged table and chair on the balcony are still all the furnishings in the place and the rooms feel lifeless, stark. No table to invite people to eat with him. No comfortable chairs in which guests could drink their coffee.

Here in Athens, he lives worse than any villager. He has no rugs, no pictures, no television, no cushions, no company.

In the village, by comparison, he lived like a king.

It starts to rain.

He sits and watches the drops on the window panes as he nurses his aching head.

Day turns to evening. The rain gets harder.

When it is time to go to work, he pulls on his damp shirt and runs out to shelter under the tree and hails a taxi. The taxi driver laughs as he gets in; the rain has broken the monotony of his work. His cab is full of smoke and the radio is tuned to a station playing traditional b
ouzo
uki music. Strings of worry beads hang from the rear-view mirror and there are pictures of his children in brass frames stuck to the dashboard, either side of an icon.

‘
At least the rain will cool things off.’ He sounds jolly. The wipers only just clear a view of the road with each swish, and he drives slowly. The spray from the wheels raises like a bow wave, parting the water that has turned the road into a river. The storm drains they pass are banked up with leaves, creating a swirl in the flow but not clearing the deluge. The noise of the rain on the taxi roof is tremendous.

‘
Happens every year.’ The taxi driver’s eyebrows rise and lower in animation. ‘They put off clearing the drains and then rain washes down from the surrounding hills and they wonder why the whole of Athens comes to a standstill.’ He slows down to take a corner where the water is crashing against the curb. ‘All right for us taxis though, being diesel, the only cars that will keep going when the water gets this high.’ He pauses his talk to light a cigarette. ‘You must be going somewhere important to be out in this?’ He glances at Theo.