It was still dark, opaquely black, with just a faint strip of light from the village square’s streetlamp peeking through the shutter. It couldn’t possibly be time to rise. I pulled the itchy goat’s wool blanket with the threadbare satin hem over my neck in half-sleep as I lay on the wooden floorboard with only a thin comforter for my mattress. I had slept badly the night before: a field mouse had somehow wandered in from the storehouse below and found its way into my room. At one point, as I frozemotionless on my rock-hard pillow alerted by the faint pitter-patter of the tiny foraging rodent, I had locked glances with its beady seedlike eyes in mutual alarm before pulling the blanket up even tighter hoping to ignore its intrusive presence. But it was now long gone, and I struggled to shake off the torpor still holding me in its grip.
The alarm clock on the mantel had shot off with a shrill clang simultaneously with neighbor Kira Katina’s cockerel sounding its second pre-dawn crow. It was precisely four-thirty, well before sunrise. There was no delaying now. I jumped up and sprang about with the elasticity of a hare, rolled up mymattress, folded my bed-things and dressed myself in the early morning chill. Then, the green-painted wooden shutters had to be opened. One of them, overlooking the steep reclining cobblestone path to the busy square, was kept permanently locked. Aunt Lidia was not too keen on encouraging neighborhood eyes to pry into her formal living room. The other two windows opened onto Kira Katina’s stone cottage several feet below on the mountain slope. I pushed aside the delicate tatted cotton lace curtains and unlatched the shutters one by one. Straight ahead the mountain range receded towards the town of Nemea still hazy with the indigo dust of nightfall. To the left, thedistant lake mirrored faint salmon undertones of the rising sun now barely visible. The starry vault stretched expansionless above, and I breathed in the crisp morning air immersing myself in the ancient aura of my surroundings with every breath. It was rumored that Aesclepius the mythical Greek surgeon had once walked these very paths millennia ago, and that an ancient lying-in clinic for women in confinement had been founded in his honor not far from the village. These thoughts absorbed mymind as I set about brushing my hair and lacing up my sturdy oxfords. It was mid-September, and I had volunteered to help with the seasonal grape packing on Uncle Stavro’s vineyards.
The cold dew on the roofless concrete patio shocked mytired body to attention. From the exposed outdoor tap, icy water poured forth from the mountain spring above. I looked up as Isplashed the freezing liquid on my face and watched as the heavy charcoal-colored rain clouds swiftly parted, clearing the sky in the eastern horizon. In the distance, a tractor could be heard pumping its way down towards the valley. I walked into the kitchen, bleached wooden floorboards creaking under foot. Uncle Stavro and Aunt Lidia were already at breakfast and Iimmediately sensed the unspoken tenor of urgency in the air. On the ivy-patterned oilcloth spread over the wooden table lay a modest breakfast of fresh, warm goat’s milk, powdered coffee, and dried crusts of yesterday’s bread.
“Hurry, up,” Aunt Lidia commanded. “You’re always so late. We have to leave soon. Did you sleep well?”
The pungent smell appalled me. “I’m sorry, but that goat’s milk—I don’t think I can drink it. Do you mind if I boil some water for tea? You do have rusks, don’t you? I remember we bought some in town last week.”
Uncle Stavro wiped his sleeve over his milk-stained whiskers and laughed sarcastically. “So this is what my sister has done to you in that sleek and civilized metropolis of hers, eh! Eat what you want, but we’re leaving in ten minutes—sharp!”
Suddenly, I felt acutely aware of my over-refined fussinessand ‘city’ ways. I watched them attack their humble breakfast with the vigor and ravenous animal spirits of a falcon at its quarry, and felt ashamed, realizing that, however I attempted to assimilate myself into their native lifestyle, there remained some habits and traditions that would permanently estrange me frommy relatives.
When I had finished my tea, the house was locked, the unwieldy skeleton key placed under the pot of flowering basil, and we were off to the vineyards in Uncle Stavro’s tractor. Aunt Lidia fastened a paisley bandanna over her hair then drew a bulky woolen goat’s blanket over our legs to keep away the morning chill. When we arrived at the fields twenty minutes later, neighbor Kira Katina and her daughter were already hard at work, both carrying large wicker baskets on their shoulders and winding their way between the rows of grape vines picking out the ripe, gilded clusters for packing. I was struck by their thick, ochre-colored tights and black leather slippers that gave them the appearance of graceful, elegant dancers weaving in and out of every cane with artful skill and precision.
Aunt Lidia sat herself down on a clearing of nettle stumps and baled hay between Mihali, a village elder, and a young bare-chested and sun-browned boy of about fourteen. “You can sit next to Taki,” Aunt Lidia said, pointing to the young day laborer whose mud-caked toes were poking out of his patched brown rubber sandals.
“OK, now tell me,” I asked with eager anticipation. “I want to know all there is about grape packing.”
“You have to move fast here,” Taki said, his shy smile exposing a broken front tooth. “Just pick the largest bunches from the baskets, three to a row, and place them together evenly in the crate and line them with sheets of pink paper from the pile. That’s all. Whenever you need another crate, just call out.”
Well, if that’s all there is to it, I thought. I began slowly, clumsily at first, arranging and rearranging each cluster of grapes, straining to make something of an artistic composition out of the layout. I fussed about and consciously strove for the effect of aesthetic perfection, an exemplary crate that any greengrocer would be proud to display in his prized storefront collection of comestibles. When I called for another crate, Uncle Stavro came poking over to inspect the work.
He took off his cap, shook off the dust then refitted it over his balding head. “Meh, it’s all right,” he said flatly. I was crushed. “But, look here,” he pointed with a stubby finger, “the edges are sticking up unevenly. They’ll be bruised. Try again.”
This time, I waited and deliberated, silently holding a cluster in my hand. I closed my eyes for a moment to focus myresolve. Then, I fixed my gaze on my neighbor worker’s hands, absorbing his energy, letting his effortless experience and unselfconscious skill flood my thought channels. I began again, without deliberation this time, simply allowing my hands to guide themselves, enabling each bunchstem to come to life and settle itself perfectly into its pre-ordained niche, abandoning any thoughts of forced calculation. The crates now filled themselves automatically as I allowed myself to ride the spirit of their force, blindly, subconsciously, through a mystical process of mechanical memory. Soon, I was listening to the idle chatter allaround, threading the air along with the subtle wildflower-scented breezes.
“How are the walnut trees going, Mihali?” asked Aunt Lidia.
“There are twenty of them this year. Three we’ll use for preserves. It’s enough for Katina to handle for our daughter’swedding next January.”
“How’s the boy—what’s his name—Antoni, isn’t it? He’s from a good family, is he? And Rena’s dowry?”
“We thought we’d give her twenty acres. Along with Antoni’s forty, that’ll give them a good livelihood for now. But he wants to live in the city. All the young people are moving away. Pretty soon, there’ll be only us elders left in the village.”
“Ah, Mihali, I feel for you,” Lidia empathized. “Since Amalia married, we’re all alone now, and our only son left for the city. He wants nothing to do with our village ways. What do you think, eh, Taki?” she asked, her eyes still fixated on her work. “Will your parents let you leave, too?”
Taki didn’t reply. He just grinned and let a roguish expression steal over the corners of his mouth revealing a small dimple on his right cheek. Then, spontaneously, his lopsided lips opened and burst out in song, an old demotic folk ballad that Ihad never heard before. The lyrics were typical: a young man falls passionately in love with a village maiden called Marigówho he secretly meets in the moonlight. She refuses to marry him; her eyes are set on another. But his heart is aflame and he vows that on the next full moon he will kidnap her and take her away.
I listened transfixed by the haunting melodic line, and felt the rising warmth of the midday sun gradually fill the air. As my hands worked abstractedly, my roving glance suddenly focused on a nearby pile of hay which seemed to be pulsating and rustling with a secret life force from within.
“What is this?” I shrieked in shock. “All this time this—this thing is lying there watching my every move and you said nothing?”
Taki and Aunt Lidia burst out laughing. “It’s just a harmless insect,” my aunt said derisively.
“This thing is massive!” I protested. “It’s at least six, seven inches— ”
“It’s a giant walkingstick,” Taki said, “a megaphasma. They’re everywhere. Look, they have no wings, they can’t fly—” He fearlessly picked up the slender straw-colored creature between his brown calloused fingers and held it tauntingly over my head.
“Stop it! Please, take it away—”
“Just so you’ll know what rich little treasures we have here in the village,” he said smiling knavishly.
Overhead, converging layers of nimbostratus clouds were rapidly starting to block the sun. Uncle Stavro sensed precipitation and coaxed the women to collect as many grapes as they could. “God forbid there’s a hailstorm,” I heard him mutter. “It will be our ruin.”
The baskets and crates were hastily covered with blue tarp,and as the first raindrops began to fall Uncle Stavro called us all to the small wooden shed nestled at the slope of the hill overlooking his grove of fig trees. Aunt Lidia unpacked a woven hamper and spread out a meal of sour bread, cheese, olives, tomatoes and scallions on an oilcloth over the bare earthen floorwhile Taki was sent to unstrap a large wicker-wrapped wine bottle from the tractor. We tore into the food and ate heartily—all seven of us—cramped as we were in the narrow ramshackle enclosure, sharing drink from a pair of tin cups.
When the plates and napkins were cleared away, Mihali produced a ragged pack of cards and shuffled out a game of Kumkan with Taki, while the women grouped themselves together with their knitting. I sat with Uncle Stavro before a small opening in the thin wooden wall, the only source of light.
“You know,” he said teasingly, “right there where you were sitting, your mother was once bitten by a scorpion when she was a little girl. She almost died.”
“Oh, no—why didn’t you warn me, Theio?” I asked. “It was bad enough to be surrounded by swarms of wasps and dragonflies. And, wait—snakes, horseflies, spiders, who knows what other hideous creatures. If I had known that,” I said brushing myself briskly, “I might have just stayed at home!”
“That’s just why I didn’t tell you,” he chuckled. “And the horseflies—they’re the worst, aren’t they!”
The sky darkened abruptly and low-flying clouds swept over the vineyard almost touching the ground. A faint rattle on the corrugated tin roof increased to a deafening clatter; tiny crystalline pebbles suddenly began to pound through the window and in the distance, through a wedge of sunlight near the fig grove, they glistened like illuminated chips of pearl jewelry. No sooner had they appeared, when the rainfall subsided.
“Thank God it wasn’t serious,” sighed Aunt Lidia while crossing herself.
“Doxa si o Theos—God be praised!” nodded Kira Katina.
The clouds drifted away rapidly, the sun reappeared, and from the direction of the distant town of Nemea, a rainbow formed in radiant ethereal particles stretching above us in a pastel-colored arch over the valley. I looked out the window entranced by the spectacle. The mountain range that housed all the neighboring hamlets formed an endless procession, like an army of ancient helmeted warriors—sentinels of a collective past that joined everyone present in a shared ancestry—spreading in grandiose symmetry steplike towards infinity, one stony crag rising behind another in every direction like a mythical landscape. This is my mother’s birthplace, I mused enraptured, letting myself be drawn into the grandeur of themountains, and the archaic legacy of the vista.
We returned to work for two more hours, and I now let myself be absorbed into my labor with a rush of exhaustive fury. At four o’clock we loaded the crates onto Uncle Stavro’s tractor and headed back to the village following behind by foot.
“You worked hard, didn’t you?” he said encouragingly. “That was real farm work you were doing.” I thought there might be a veiled patronizing undertone somewhere in his praise, but only smiled in reply.
When we arrived at the junction on the main road, the agent was already waiting for us with his truck. After inspection, he congratulated Uncle Stavro on his yield for the season, and settled a price for the load. As I began to ascend the steep slope home, I overheard his whispered murmuring as he drew my uncle aside.
“I see you have a new worker. We’ll have to redo some of the crates, you know. We’ll deduct for the extra labor. Make sure this doesn’t happen next year.”
I knew I had overslept the next morning. When I awoke late at seven thirty, the village was eerily quiet except for the occasional bleating of the ewe below in her pen. Padding to the kitchen, I found the note my aunt had scrawled on a torn strip of lined notebook paper resting under a pack of rusks:
‘Gone off to work on Mihali’s harvest. Back by sundown. Have dinner ready when we return.’
It was good to stay home.
Author of the debut novel Twelfth House and Shaded Pergola, a collection of short poetry with original illustrations, E.C. Traganas has published in over a hundred literary journals. She enjoys a professional career as a Juilliard-trained concert pianist & composer, and is the founder/director of Woodside Writers, a literary forum based in New York. www.elenitraganas.com
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Illustration: “Village Square, Corinth” — Watercolor & gouache by E. C. Traganas
