I.
Perhaps you don’t believe in little people, but they are beautiful like rain on a warm day. Like tears sweet from a love left behind. This one had a big nose, big eyes, a big chin and a big forehead. It made him look all the more serious. There was a shuffling sound with which he came out from somewhere on the left and with his hands in his pockets he caught up with her.
‘Is that a violin on your back and where do you go?’ she asked and ‘will you stay a moment and will you play me a tune?’
‘That I will’ he said ‘and will you feed me?’ He lifted his head and sniffing he pointed his bold nose in the direction of the pine nuts. Frossa pulled them out and gave them to him. He weighed them in his hand casually, ruffled his head of hair and made for a sunny patch of grass on their left. He sat there looking around and then looked up at Frossa intently, suggesting that he was wondering why she was still standing above him.
She would have pulled more against his attempt to will her into a position but there was, it seemed, a sadness in his eyes that went back a long way and, looking at him one wished with their heart to go that way too. She lowered herself on to her knees and sunk her bare feet into some soft mud between the grasses.
He started to play a melody as if he had pulled it down from the cloud above them to their right and swiftly wooshed it around them, encircling them before landing it in front of his feet. And the he sang this:
Don’t ask me if I love you
I am a bird and I fly
All the nests I have made my own before
Are now my wounds.
And if I love you
I am a traveling man and I go
And if I love you, I don’t forget it
I am a traveling man and I go.
Don’t strain your heart for me
I am a stranger to you
As much as you want to stay near me
Learn this and know: I am like a lie.
And if I love you
I am a traveling man and I go
And if I love you, don’t forget it
I am a traveling man and I go.
Violin and…
And if I love you
I am a bird and I fly
With a song always on my lips
That’s how my friends know me
And if I love you
I am a traveling man and I go
And if I love you I don’t forget it
I am a traveling man and I go.
And just like that, a wind blew and took his melody away, like as if it were ashes. And just like that, in the stillness you have only when there is a great forest near by, he began another song.
II.
With snap movements KIRI AZIS broke his earlier calmness. ‘Look at that’ he said ‘it’s near time’, as he packed up his violin. He went over a bit, lifted a large stone and brought out a back sack which he had hid there earlier for safe keeping.
‘You carry that’ he said to Frossa and gave her the sack. And so, in a moderate but felt rush they left that place and headed in towards the valley. Frossa was carrying his sack and so, she thought, she’d go with him for a bit.
Once they were on their way KIRI AZIS relaxed again into an easiness and timelessness that turned out to be his normal way. It was only in between things when he was changing what he was doing, Frossa noted, that he hurried. Almost as if each time he had to push a new engine along to get it started.
Looking around him he addressed her.
‘You don’t talk much for a big person do you.’
‘Hm?’ she said, ‘actually I was thinking about your last song. Where you said “the one who leaves remains forever captive”’
And so talking they reached a small village; a few houses really that decorated the landscape, small houses growing near big trees.
KIRI AZIS casual as ever said ‘thank you very much’, took his back sack off her and walked into house shutting the door behind him, almost in Frossa’s face.
A little surprised, though really she hadn’t known what to expect, Frossa stepped away from his house, stopped and looked around her. The sun was coming down ahead of her, the air was cooling, the pools of shade were long, the colors everywhere were sweet like a roast cooked in a clay oven for very many hours. Birds were singing and the tree leaves were chatting, the bushes and the climbers were letting of a scent extremely satisfying; one that had the texture of deep forest silence. I mean it had a quality where even though its constant you feel that it is accelerating, as if your hearing is opening more and more in astonishment as such silence.
Or you might say that their scent felt as pleasant as are a load of white sheets washed hanging outside in the yard to dry, and dripping, on a scorching hot summer afternoon.
Frossa was about to go sit down on a dirt hill to enjoy what was around her comfortably when she was called over by a woman. She turned to see an older woman sitting on a porch chair with a tin tray on her lap and a simple kitchen knife peeling a pomegranate. Two more whole pomegranates were on the floor next to her feet and in front of her sat a little girl on a little yellow chair, watching, with her back very strait, watching her grandmother and eating the bits of pomegranate she was given.
‘Yes lass come over here’ the woman said again once Frossa turned towards them. ‘Can we treat you to something? Sit we have tea ready sit’.
‘I am not staying’ Frossa said as she walked over to the empty chair but the woman was already on her way getting the tea.
‘Thank you’ said Frossa peering in through the door of the kitchen. ‘I am Frossa’.
‘Fine lassie’ answered the woman. ‘Sit. This is my granddaughter FOTINI. We are just eating pomegranates. She can eat them all day, even the premature ones’.
Frossa smiled. For one because that is like talking even if you don’t know what to say, but mostly she was smiling because she felt how happy and complete these two people were there this afternoon. The grandma was peeling the pomegranate skillfully and beautifully with love and the kid watching and eating and asking questions. Watching the colors, her grandmother’s skill, and the sound of the seeds dropping into the thin tin tray. Perhaps they sat like that many afternoons. They looked so complete and so happy that for one, they didn’t need to have Frossa over, but she didn’t bother them being thee at all. Complete like the colors of sunset, satisfying like communion.
What happened next was most amusing to an outsider like Frossa and yet it was performed with such a matter- of-factness that it almost carried the pretext of comfortable boredom.
A young woman with curly hair, pink cheeks and a farmer’s walk came over to the house, said her hellos to Mrs. KYRIA FOTINI, and acknowledged the unknown Frossa. She then tapped on the shut window shutters.
‘Yo’
‘I am coming’ came a voice from far inside the house. The sound of walking, and then the window was opened and a beautiful young woman, with olive skin and black eyes, a round face and sturdy figure hung out of the window holding a hair brush and brushing her long thick wet black hair.
‘I wont be a minute’ she said before noticing the unknown Frossa. She said hello and introduced herself as KAITI, pulled back into the house and shut the shutters. The farmer girl stood waiting.
She came out again, this time to the door. She was angry. Her air felt as if she was whacking you across the face with her hair, her voice was like a slap.
‘FOTINI, where is my blue clip, give it back to me.”
‘Go inside’ interfered the grandmother. ‘I put your clip in your top drawer’ she said. Her air came in pushing the young woman’s air back, like a rubber lining, like an eraser takes back a sentence.
‘She better stop taking them’ KAITI added on her way back to the room. No one responded.
‘Are you coming to SOTIRI’S wedding Mrs. KYRIA FOTINI?’ asked the farmer girl while she was waiting. The grandmother and her talked about that for a bit, meanwhile, FOTINI listened, wondering why the farmer girl never brings them any oranges since she has so many trees. She thought about how her gran told her not to be stealing any since it’s not right. What a ceremony of smells-and-more is walking through those orchards!
‘What eyes the little girl has!’ thought Frossa. ‘You think that she will probably see everything during her lifetime.’
‘And how is your family? Your brothers?’ asked the grandma.
‘Well, my brother came today. It is a great day because I love him, and it is a sad day. My parents relationship and the house they hold has no joy. It is both stressful and depressing. They have nothing good that they share between them. Not a thing.
Each exchange between them feels like you are eating your least favorite food after you are stuffed. I have to suppress my reactions all day long. When my dad is here with us I feel suppressed. Attempts to oppress me I have to dodge or dismantle. I feel disappointed emotionally.
I feel a thick lump in my chest, just here in my ribs where my ribs first come together. It makes breathing bothersome.
It is the frustration, the hurt and the truth that I suppress.
I cannot just come out and say the truth for what it is because both my parents are vulnerable.
My father is oppressive and vulnerable.
I hate that.
How sedated I have become that I no longer speak my mind with him. That is a disappointment.
I feel guilty or ashamed of phrasing the truth for what it is, because my dad walks a clumsy walk on some crystal lies.
He is oppressive because he is a liar.
But this isn’t about them anymore. For me, it is about my brother whom they affect.
I carry this weight
On my back and in my chest
And I don’t know how to deal with it.
Is it ok that I tell you about it?’
III.
Meanwhile, while the farmer girl spoke and KYRIA FOTINI listened to her, she had pulled a chair and sat near Frossa.
After that there was a pause during which no one spoke. And then came the sound of church bells ringing announcing the ending of that day. The bells rang sounding sweetly to the ears. It sounded as if all the sounds that were resting around that valley of houses were summoned together now to ring the church bells. They were gathered together will all the sounds that were chatting away with the land and the breeze, those standing around in the warmth of the evening. That whole family of sounds.
The birds heard the bells and chirped: ‘oh dear, is it time already? We had better go on our way, to the higher tree tops and prepare for the night.’
The breeze heard and it blew in collecting all the colors of the day and sweeping them onwards to their resting place.
KIRI AZIS heard the bells from within his house and put on the kettle. He brought in the washing he had just collected, and returned again to his doorstep to see if PAI TERIS and his other friends were already coming with their instruments to play with him. He didn’t see them in the horizon, but he went on and brought out his mugs and milk, and cushions for the chairs, because he knew they wouldn’t be long now.
He thought about PAI TERIS and of certain things that had happened between them. You might say that recently he has seen a side of his friend’s character that has disappointed him and in an important little way has made his heart recoil. Standing at his front door, he looked to the distant mountains and the cloud that was lowering on to them. He remembered something he had heard a man say in the market the other week, that ‘it is after you see the other persons limits that you can become genuine friends’.
Yes that’s true but no its not, he thought. He would see how the night went. If communication between the two would be good again, or if, in his shame regarding his feelings of withdrawal, KIRI AZIS would become polite.
KYRIA FOTINI and her company heard the bells and concluded their conversation as if that was the natural thing to do. KAITI came out to the verandah and the farmer girl stood up to join her. Both of them took a handful of peeled pomegranate seeds and concerned themselves with themselves. The sadness which had earlier lit up in the farmer girl’s eyes faded somewhat and left behind it only a slowness in her movements, though it was graceful slowness that suited her well.
Then came another sound, a happy one, one whose impact reached really only FOTINI. It was the sound of a small bell, ringing as a man pushed his cart down the road towards them. It was the ice-cream man. The excitement FOTINI felt was immediate. She began to look intensely concentrated and eager. ‘You’ve got time’ KYRIA FOTINI told her. ‘He is going to come down this way too. Go and get my purse, its on the table.’
And that is what happened. FOTINI met the ice-cream man, barefoot, ignoring her grandmother telling her to wear shoes. She brought back ice-cream, and one for Frossa who had said sure she would try one, and then sat alone at the other side of the house to eat it in peace, facing the fruit trees and playing with the dry earth with her feet. A fig tree stood with dignity near her, looking as if it loved her, and as if it felt satisfied and gratified to be present and offer fruit to the child.
Even the cement step FOTINI sat on and the marble of the upraised verandah she leaned her head against seemed as if they loved her and were fulfilling their nature by caring for her.
KYRIA FOTINI and Frossa were left alone. ‘Ok’, she said to Frossa, ‘look at what I am going to give you.’
‘You have come this way off to the left from the main path and that was good. It was nice having you and I have something to give you. But you ought not to continue any further towards the mountains. The forests are thick and many fantastical creatures live and work there. You don’t belong there and it is doubtful you would ever find your way out. Past that the mountains are steep and sharp and the fantastical creatures that live there can burn you with their breath, or crush your bones for the fun of seeing you spat. You don’t belong this way. You have a heart and a mind like no fantastical creature has, and if you plant them carefully, as humans should, a most beautiful flower will flower and its blossoms will be able to restore life to any dead person that eats them. The smell will be able to awaken any sleeping soul that passes by and smells it.’
‘But you must take care and work to raise what you can, what has been given to you. Otherwise it will be wasted and it will be a great shame. I know it will sadden the rocks both in your world of Men and in our world of the Fantastical. Go home and do your work. You don’t belong in these parts. It is as if you are trying to get to where you need to be, fast, but you choose to walk there backwards.’
‘Take this’. She took a kitchen cloth out of her large apron pocket. ‘When you lay it open on the table there will appear on it always something good and enough to eat. That way you can go home; even if there is a famine you will be ok. And if someone asks you for food you will have it to give them. Go home and don’t be afraid of hunger.’
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