The house on the cliff
After hiding the Ducky back in its cave above the reach of the winter’s waves - even when wet it weighed only a few kilos and was easy enough to carry on my back - tired out, and slightly dizzy from my hours in the sun, I set off homewards, not by the cart-road to the side, that would take me up an easy slope to the village road and along that to the house nearly an hour later - but by the steep and forbidden path up, through the rocks. It was then I heard the gardener singing, high above. What was he doing there, among the dry leaves of the irises at the top of the sea-cliff? Usually, this time of day he would be on the other side of the house, the shady side, watering his own, well-disciplined flowerbeds, tending his delicate green lawn, or beheading any flowers that he suspected of being about to wilt. He rarely ventured to this side, to the terraces that sprawled untidily up the slope, buttressed at odd intervals by boulders both rooted and hauled there for the purpose. Daddy had forbidden him to use his profoundly toxic magic potions against the wild vegetation here, especially the irises that spread out among the rocks, concealing the paths and crowding out other, less stubborn plants. My father and I loved the irises. They were a kind the villagers called krínos and others tzermánika - this botanical knowledge I had acquired from Aunt Eléni, always through the medium of her illustrated letters. The season of their glory was brief - no more than two weeks, three at most, between the Annunciation and mid-April, and they exuded a subtle, barely noticeable, sweet fragrance, especially when bought into the house. We never cut any to put in vases unless the wind had broken their stems. After the first autumn rains, grey-green, sword-shaped leaves appeared, reaching their full height just before the blooming stems appeared, a few months later. In the summer they were a mess, half-withered leaves breaking and leaning every which-way, bending and breaking, collecting old pine needles and dry weeds at their roots. The gardener could not abide disobedient growth, a stricture not limited to vegetation. One of my most horrible memories was of being squeezed between his fat knees as he struggled to wrest a greasy comb through the tangles of my hair, scratching my scalp and wrenching as if to uproot it. And even worse - his forefinger, wet with saliva, smoothing my eyebrows tidy. I must have been four or five years old. He was a creature of routines, and adhered strictly to the ritual of his day. He had no reason to be up at the top of the path at such an hour. Especially in the absence of the dogs that were his usual companions. Whatever had brought him there, his presence meant I had to change course. He would relish the chance to tell on me for climbing the forbidden path. And so I was forced to head for even more strictly forbidden territory, the dangerous footing among the tumbled boulders of the rockslide, in the direction of the cave. The cliff path has been off limits since long before I was born.
Made with FlippingBook
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTY1MTE=