Nicolai's Daughters (9 page)

“Where have you been?” Solon's voice came from the direction of the kitchen, shadowed by the flutter of newspaper, a crackle of static and running water.

She pulled off her running shoes and walked into the kitchen, the floor cool against her feet. “Out for a run,” she said. “Did I wake you?”

Christina turned from the sink. Her smile disappeared. She bit at the bottom of her lip, crossed herself. “We go upstairs now and talk.” She quickly wiped her hands on her apron and placed them firmly on Alexia's shoulders.

“I could use a shower first,” Alexia said.

Solon dropped his newspaper.

“Too late now,” Christina muttered.

“You went outside like this?” Solon asked. “I do not understand.”

“Like what?”

“Our neighbours.” He clasped his hands and shook them in her direction, refusing to look at her.

“In America, they dress like this,” Christina said. “I saw this when I was there.”

“This is not America. We do not bring talk to us.” Solon got up from the table, walked past Christina and Alexia and out the front door. “I go to work, now. Fix this, Christina.”

Alexia stared at her aunt.

In the week since her arrival, Alexia had settled into a routine. She woke to the static of the radio, got dressed, went downstairs and adjusted the station, tuning the announcer back into the kitchen, clear as a stream, though it never stayed that way for long.

Solon looked up from his coffee. “It is this way.”

“Does it move by itself?” Alexia asked. Did he do it to annoy her or was it to give her a chore to do each day so she'd stop going for runs? She wore sweat pants and baggy shirts despite the heat. Still, it didn't seem to satisfy him.

“
Ne
.” He shrugged, picked up the paper, fanned it out and hid behind its pages.

She wanted to ask him about the radio, but her cell phone rang. She took the stairs two at a time and caught the phone before it went to voice mail.

“When are you getting back?” Dan said when she picked up.

“What are you doing there so late?” she asked.

“Someone's got to do it,” he said, the accusation sharp in his voice.

“I'm sorry. I'm trying to get to know my father's family. I need to do this.”

“I need you.”

“What do you need? I'll find some Internet café. I can do the work and do what I have to do here too.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“What's wrong? What is it?” she asked. There was silence at the other end. “Hey, still there?”

She moved around the terrace, into the corners where she thought she might get a signal, then leaned over the side, but found nothing but dead air. No connection with the outside world. She slumped in one of the chairs. Bougainvillea petals stuck to her shirt like crumpled tissue paper. She picked them off and held them close. They were so brilliant. So damn fragile, despite the thorns sticking out from each branch. Thankfully, they hadn't scratched her. She let the petals drop to the ground.

She picked up her bag, threw in her cell phone and went downstairs.

“Where you go now,
paidi mou?”
Christina asked.

“For a walk, fresh air.” She opened her arms as if for inspection. “Is this okay? Am I covered up enough?”

“Do not get lost.” Christina pretended to push Alexia out the door.

Not a walk, a mission. Alexia walked up one side street after another searching for a high point where the phone would work, but every street seemed to end either at the front door of someone's house or in an empty field of wildflowers. She walked up the unfinished sidewalk along the rocky beachfront. Wires hung from the streetlights, a few missing light bulbs. It was a beautiful spot, though. She saw how someone had put some effort into the place. Bags of cement were strewn about, most of them burst open.

No signal here either.

She raised her phone over her head, walked out into the field of overgrown grass and wheat and God knows what. Candy wrappers, bits of newspaper and squashed cans rustled underfoot. A man was ambling around, kicking at the ground as if searching for something he'd lost. She recognized him: it was the man she'd seen in the shower when the family had first driven into town. The shock of white in his beard was unmistakeable.

The man waved and headed towards her. Was she trespassing on private property? She didn't wait to find out. She hurried off in the opposite direction.

“You back so soon?” Christina said.

Alexia nodded and climbed the stairs to her room. She'd try again tomorrow. If she could just find a way to connect once or twice a day with the office, she could do what she had to do for Dan and get on with what she had to do here. It can't be this damn difficult. It's the twenty-first century. Even here. She dropped her bag, picked up her book, found a comfortable chair on the terrace and tried to read, though the question kept nagging at her: how do I make this work?

One afternoon while Christina was out at the market, Alexia found an Internet café not far from the house.

“Line no work,” the clerk said. She had heavy eyebrows and her hair was dyed purple black as if to match her tiny miniskirt and tank top. Her fishnet stockings had a Band-Aid on one knee as if this was meant to fix the hole and stop the stitching from running. She can get away with the Goth outfit, Alexia thought, and I can't wear my shorts when I run? “Maybe tomorrow in afternoon,” the girl said. There was no one else in the place. Still, she wiped down the clean tables.

“Does this happen often?”

The girl smiled and shrugged. “I only tell what they tell me.”

Alexia came back again and again. The Internet was hit and miss. The cell phone was hopeless. She thought about asking Christina if there was a larger town nearby, but then the scent of lilac would hit her, or she'd see the way the sun touched the tip of the olive groves, notice the shimmer of the mountains and she'd feel the tension drain from her legs. Maybe hit and miss with the technology wasn't bad. She could make that work.

Alexia put her laptop in the bottom drawer of the armoire under her running shorts, a pile of tank tops and jeans. The loose skirts and pants and baggy shirts she'd bought at a small store in the village were better for this climate and more acceptable to these people. She could do without their stares and lectures. It was bad enough having to be here without feeling like some kind of freak.

A breeze kicked up and blew strands of her hair across her face. She tucked them behind her ear. No connection today. Okay, she'd try tomorrow. But the cell phone. She wasn't giving up on it, just yet. It sat beside her. She checked it from time to time to make sure it had a connection. On her lap, the weight of Rohinton Mistry's
A Fine Balance
, Theodora's picture stuck between the pages as a bookmark.

She thought about her half-sister every day. She'd come all this way and hadn't yet talked to Christina about taking the package off her hands. It was still hidden in her room. She held the picture up. She'd found it taped to an inside corner of her father's desk. She would have missed it if the edge of the picture poking up hadn't scratched her hand.
Theodora. 19 years old.
A round-faced girl on a beach towel spread out over peach-coloured sand. A set of legs, hairy and masculine, stood over her. Whoever took the photograph had cut that person's body off at the waist.

The girl had smooth olive skin; her hair was light brown or blonde. It was hard to tell. The strap of her bikini top drooped off her shoulder, the one closest to the camera, as if to tease the photographer. But, it was the eyes that drew Alexia back to the picture, again and again: one hazel, the other a rich brown.

Christina walked out onto the terrace.

Alexia jammed the photograph back into her book.

“Ah, you're reading,” she said. “You like being here. No?”

Christina's apron was stained with spots that looked to Alexia like egg yolk. Close to her waist, the tiny seeds of a tomato were crushed against the fabric. A trace of flour lingered on her large hands.

“Catching up,” Alexia said. “I don't get a chance to read. Work gets in the way.”

“You get this reading from your mother. Your father didn't like the books.”

Alexia nodded and remembered how her mother used to go to bed early. “I need to know what happens,” she'd say, as she slipped her latest novel under her arm and padded in her baby-blue fleece pyjamas to her bedroom.

“Why?” Alexia had asked.

“We all have to run away once in awhile,” she'd call over her shoulder, before closing the door. When would she be old enough to do those kinds of things, Alexia remembered thinking.

“You think about her. No? And your father?” Christina sat down on the bench, wiped her hands on her apron and put one hand over Alexia's.

“I don't know,” Alexia said.

“You not alone. We help with everything.”

Christina's hand was wrinkled and spotted. Sara's had never aged. Stop thinking about Mom, she told herself. The package. It was a perfect time to bring it up.

“Christina…”

Christina turned towards Alexia, keen for whatever would come next.

The cell phone interrupted. Alexia jumped up and walked over to the edge of the terrace. “Hello? Hello?” She heard a muffled voice and leaned out as far as she could in hopes of capturing a signal. Christina grasped her from behind.

“What's wrong?” Alexia asked. The phone was dead.

“You crazy. Three floors down. You hurt yourself. For what? If they don't find you, maybe it good for you and them. No?”

“I should check my messages.”

Christina stood in front of her, blocking her way. “Why no take a look at what is around you?” Christina pointed to the olive groves. “What is messages when you have this?” She put her arm around Alexia's shoulders, and together they looked at the view. “We were talking about your mother and family. Nice talk. You wanted to tell me something. No?” She turned to face Alexia again.

Her smile was tired, yet keen. Alexia didn't want to hurt this woman, take away what little smile she could manage. “It is beautiful here,” Alexia admitted.

“Yes, we like it, but we do not see people from here. Your
thio
Solon and your
thia
sit on our stoop in the front instead. Better place to see. The neighbours across are fighting again with those on other side. They funny people. Not right in their heads. We see what happens. Interesting. No?”

“I've lived in the same building for six years and have no idea what my neighbours do.” Nor was Alexia all that interested.

Christina stood close. Her breath smelled of fresh pastry. “Being in each other's lives brings spice to our life.”

Christina's hands weighed on her shoulders. “It is like a soap opera.”

Alexia walked away and again Christina followed.

“No, not like television,” she said. “This real life.”

“Sounds like gossip to me.”

“It only talk. We need some fun. We do not know what happens tomorrow.”

Alexia shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Maybe we need change scenery?” Christina said.

Alexia pointed at the cell phone. “I should make this call.”

Christina told Alexia to get dressed because they were going out. “You will like it.” She hurried towards the double doors. “When you have to make call, you will.”

Fifteen minutes later, Christina called up to Alexia. She finished brushing her hair, and shrugged when she saw herself in the mirror as if admitting this was the best she could do. She took the steps two at a time, her skirt billowing and falling, and billowing again.

Christina told Alexia that the train, which followed the river from the Vouraikos Gorge all the way to Kalavryta, a village high in the mountains, was the most amazing ride in the world.

“People come from all over for the views.”

“So why aren't we taking it?” Alexia asked as they drove in Christina's car over the tracks and past the station.

“
Ah
,” Christina said. “They work on it now.”

“If it's a matter of a couple of days, why don't we wait?”

“Since two years they work. And they tell us it take another two.”

“What are they doing?” Alexia asked. “Rebuilding the tracks?”

“We don't know. They do not tell us too much.”

“It must be hard on the economy, losing all those tourists.”

“Money comes and goes like water through hands. Do you not see our politicians in Athens? They say they make mistakes. It is not their fault. They are
kleftis
. You know this word? No? And we pay. We always pay.” Christina shrugged. “We see what we see from the car. It not the same but is interesting for you.”

They drove along a narrow road and crossed under the national highway. On their right, trucks entered and exited Diakofto's industrial zone. Dust and exhaust fumes yellowed the air. The road tapered upward as Christina's car drove towards the turquoise sky ahead. “Upper Diakofto is there,” Christina pointed towards a village tucked in the hills. “It burn in big fires of 2007.”

Naked trees leaned against one another, littering the tattooed ground. Shells of houses stood beside others untouched by the fire. How could one be completely ruined, the one beside it left standing? “I read about it on the Internet. It was big news for days in Canada when it happened,” she said. “Did they ever catch anybody?”

Christina shook her head. “Bad things happen. We have learned to expect this.”

“Well, what do the police say?”

“People here know who did this, but no one talks. You don't know who you are talking to. Maybe a friend of one of these people who do this. You have to be careful.”

They travelled further up the road, leaving the burned land, the forest and the houses behind. Serrated mountains crouched close to the road, forming an impenetrable wall of rock. Beyond Alexia's window, the few guardrails still standing gave peek-a-boo views of unforgiving drops into the gorge. Alexia forced herself to look down. A forest of different shades of green hid anything that might lie underneath.