Dimitra Mantheakis

Melina Breaking Free

A true story

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Melina Breaking Free

Preface

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9 - SARANTOS

CHAPTER 10 - DINA AND PAULINA

CHAPTER 11 - MARY

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13 - SOFIA

CHAPTER 14 - IAKOVOS

CHAPTER 15 - URANIA

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17 - PAULINA

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19 - MELINA

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

EPILOGUE

Impressum neobooks

Melina Breaking Free

Melina Breaking Free

based on a true story

by

Dimitra Mantheakis

Dimitra Mantheakis is one of the most prominent and gifted writers in Greece today. She grew up in Sparta and attended Athens University where she studied literature and archaeology. Her international best-seller I, the Taliban’s Wife has been translated into three languages and was on the best seller lists in Germany for many months.

Melina Breaking Free is her seventh book, an acclaimed example of modern Greek literature, and the first to be translated into English. Dimitra Mantheakis lives in Athens with her husband, Alexis Mantheakis, an author and political analyst. They have a daughter who is a journalist.

Preface

1950’s. In a small isolated Greek provincial town in post-Civil War Greece a closely-knit group of young friends - Melina, Sarantos, Iakovos, Sofia, Mary, Urania and Paulina - will discover that behind the curtain of strict morality and social righteousness their fellow villagers’ passions are boiling over and there are hidden secrets. As they grow older the young protagonists will pass from innocence to an awakening of the flesh with these sexual experiences indelibly marking their lives. They come to realise that sex is not only pleasure but hides numerous disappointments and pitfalls when games of sensuality also involve the heart. Shattered dreams, abandonment, exploitation and callousness lie ahead for the newly-initiated youths and girls as they are called on to handle each new situation according to their character and beliefs. Will they be able to overcome unforeseen obstacles in their struggle or will they be swept away by what appears to be written for each of them by Fate?

Loves that last for a lifetime, hatreds, passions, sex steeped in infinite sensuality, deep disappointments and a search for redemption are interwoven in the telling of this tale of awakening desire. Reading Dimitra Mantheakis’ latest book will perhaps make the reader recall their own first stirrings of the flesh and have them identify with the sentiments and experiences of the young protagonists.

CHAPTER 1

1950’s. The pale light of the winter morning illuminated the small provincial town wedged in the embrace of the valley whose dark green foliage and dense humble bushes still held onto the previous night’s rain. The two mountains, one to the left and the other to the right, appeared to be hugging the houses, roads and orchards below them in an embrace of stone. One mountain, almost vertical, rose up darkly, menacingly, totally stripped of vegetation with its back bent as if hunched over, kneeling in prayer. Depending on the play of the sun’s rays the strange colour of its rocks and its crevasses made up of precipitous gorges one moment were blue and the next grey, and black in their depths. The other mountain, lying sensuously on the horizon and covered with dense vegetation sucked life from the red earth that covered it like a mother who would never deprive her suckling children of her breast, reminding everyone that it would not stop nourishing its children, the trees and plants,.

And in the distance, the sea. Restless, a traveler, greedily licking the white pebbles on the shoreline, covering them with seaweed juices and the taste of salt, and then withdrawing, sated, in a light swell that crashed noisily on the weathered rocks of the two headlands.

A frosty breeze slid over the red tiled roofs, rhythmically slamming the half-open window shutters and quietly whispering secrets hidden behind the frozen window panes to the wide open ears of fireplaces, and they, in turn replied with a puff of smoke and a promise not to cave into to temptation and disclose any of these revelations.

The small town was almost totally cut off from the rest of the world. A solid mass of age-old rock exactly at the point where the two mountains met each other, blocking the entrance to the interior. The narrow snakelike road that climbed up over this hard physical barrier didn’t offer an easy way of escape. Cars struggled up the steep inclines, gasping round dangerous curves, disappearing in dry stifling clouds of dust in the summer, while in winter they crept at a tortoise-like pace so as not to slip off the road surface and tumble into the gaping chasms, and this of course when the road was not completely blocked by snow which often turned into ice, a cunning deathtrap for those not properly taking the hazard into account.

To the south where the valley reached out towards the sea, the exit to the outer world was limited to short trips in small fishing boats. The diminutive cove did not have a respectable harbor to receive larger vessels and give the town a chance to develop.

The townspeople had become used to their isolation. Many of them had never gone beyond the rock border while the older ones among them had no desire to do so. Most learned what was going on from those who bought two-day-old newspapers or from the radio at the café, or at the house of some citizen fortunate enough to be able to afford a wireless set. Their favourite pastime was learning about the lives of others. They wanted to know every detail about what was happening in their neighbours’ houses; their curiosity focused primarily on gossip and only rarely was there a real interest in the troubles of their fellow villagers.

Whenever a scandal, according to their concept of one, became known, and before news of it had travelled as far as the café, it had already become a monstrous issue. Tongues wagged, analyzing the incident at length, dissecting with their criticism the person who was unfortunate enough not to have effectively protected their personal affairs. But how could anyone do this when everyone’s eyes and ears were focused on everyone else, and no voice, no whisper, no movement was able to escape the attention of someone, anyone, who, with newly acquired information in hand immediately rushed to broadcast the news to an audience voraciously standing by to receive and spread the word? Thus every situation was common knowledge even though some people had the illusion that the armour they wore over their personal life was without chinks and leaks.

The bell sounded at the old primary school, breaking the total silence that reigned in its classrooms. The pupils jumped up, as if on springs, and poured noisily out into the schoolyard. The pupils in Grade Six who had just finished the February written exam did the same. Several of them went out with an expression of intense dissatisfaction, two or three were crying because they had been unable to respond to the demands of the exam and were shivering in fear at the prospect of their parents’ reaction, but for some others, their small faces glowed happily. They had managed to once again do well in the difficult last term exam.

A group of children broke away from the crowd and sat on a stone ledge. They were children who had been friends from their first year at primary school and who were always together at every juncture of their lives, good or bad. Urania, Mary, Sofia, Paulina, Dina, Iakovos, Melina and Sarantos.

Urania, the headmaster’s daughter, was a dark, precociously developed girl whose interests were school, church and Sunday school. She never left her home alone and her friends had to visit her when her strict father allowed it only at her house. Paulina, the daughter of a nurse, had lost her father when she was five, and her mother struggled to support her and her two younger sisters. Melina, with chestnut hair and huge marsh-green eyes, skinny as a rake from privations caused by her cart-driver father being unable to earn a daily living wage, now shivered as usual because of the cold; her hand-knit woolen pullover unable to warm her. Her family did not have enough money at home to buy overcoats or even a long warm cardigan.

The young girl tried to warm herself by rubbing her hands together, but this was not sufficient to stop icy tremors from running up her spine or to stop her teeth chattering. She looked with a measure of envy at Urania’s snug coat and the other girls’ long thick jackets and wished that she too could have had something similar to wear. The boy sitting next to her, Sarantos, took off his old windcheater and tried to put it over her shoulders, but Melina, reacting with pride, gave it back saying she did not want it because she was not cold, an excuse that was patently false and foolish. Everyone could see that she was frozen to the bone.

Sarantos was a tall, thin lad, with thick dark blond hair and large melancholic eyes. His father too had difficulty feeding his family with the produce from his field. His meager peasant farm income was eroded first by floods, then by frost, and finally by drought. If it hadn’t been for the olive trees that took care of their annual requirement for oil and olives, taking care of a small part of their living expenses, the family would surely have died of starvation.

Sarantos’ friend, Iakovos, short and bow-legged, chestnut haired, with a wild unruly mop that reminded one of a bush, twittered, as always, with a permanent smile on his lips, as if life had given him all the bounty in the world. Cunning and mentally agile, in spite of his young age, he would always find a way round any obstacle. His father’s humble hole-in-the-wall shop and its penurious income were never enough to suppress his optimism. Only from time to time would one discern an occasional shadow passing over his eyes to reflect some new worry gnawing at his entrails. He usually drove these thoughts away quickly by uttering some nonsensical comment or by teasing the girls present so that the others would not notice his inner pain.

Dina, dark-complexioned as a gypsy, was an exotic beauty with her almond-shaped eyes and raven black hair; she was taciturn, only taking part in the children’s conversation when it was absolutely necessary. Her father’s taxi managed, to date, to support the family by being on hire even during winter’s cutbacks when customers became few and far between owing to the bitter cold.

Mary, red-haired, with pretty features, already had the makings of a future beauty. Sweet-mannered and retiring, but only superficially so, was well-dressed because her aunt who had emigrated to America sent clothes for her sister’s children. Her elegant and confident bearing made her stand out from the other primary school children. Her father who was the owner of the provincial town’s only pharmacy managed better than his fellow citizens because of the dollars sent every month without fail by his sweet-natured and generous sister-in-law.

The members of the young group were the elite of their school’s class since all of them were top students. The rest of the class had nicknamed them ‘the Gang’ because whatever they did they always did it together, whether this was to achieve distinction in their exams, winning at sports or even when indulging in just some minor mischief as if there was a contract that bound them to act as one.

Today, in a difficult math’s exam, they had perfect scores as they discovered when cross-referencing their answers after leaving their classroom.

“What a pity that these weren’t June’s exams!” said Iakovos. “We would be done, and in four months we would be in high school!”

“Mind you, the four months remaining until the school year is over will be gone before you know it!” said Melina, and the others agreed.

“Let’s go home and have a bite to eat!” suggested Urania whose appetite was legendary. “I’m starving!”

They started off home, dropping off their fellow schoolmates at their houses, one by one. Sarantos was last since his house was on the edge of town in an isolated spot. When the children referred to high school he felt his stomach tighten. He didn’t know how his father would take it if he mentioned that he too wanted to attend since his father kept telling Sarantos he needed hands to help in the fields and that education, for them, was a superfluous luxury because they could not afford to pay labourers to help them in the field. He would have to talk to his father, to prepare him from now and tell him he wanted to go to high school and later to university. He trembled at the thought of his father’s reaction, knowing his views on the subject, but Sarantos was determined to face up to him, come Hell or High Water. He opened the outer gate whose rusted hinges screeched like the angry cry of a cat and he went in.

“Each time he says he will fix the hinges but he does nothing!” the young boy thought, angry at his father for his negligence. The smell of oregano, mint and lavender that his mother had planted in the pots placed in the protected lee of the whitewashed garden wall filled his nostrils. He enjoyed being welcomed by the mixed herb scents because they gave him a sense of belonging, as if they were greeting him in their own way because they recognised him. He walked towards the front door and put the heavy iron key that he removed from the large stone on the right of the entrance into the keyhole. He opened the door, but suddenly stopped. He heard a noise above, as if something was breaking. Then he heard voices, interspersed with the sound of someone quietly crying. The sounds were coming from his parents’ bedroom. The loud, angry voice was his father’s, and the sobbing sounds were from his mother.

“He’s drunk again!” the boy thought bitterly as he stood motionless next to the ancient staircase. The interspersed voices continued for a while. Then silence. A door was slammed shut and his father, pulling up his trousers, appeared at the top of the stairs. He stood there for while, lit a cigarette, and slowly, deliberately, started descending the steps like a man with cramp in his legs. A strong smell of wine permeated the air as if someone had opened a barrel of spirit.

With an expression of disgust Sarantos retired to a dark niche in order not to be seen and fixed his eyes on his father’s outline. Mitsos, tall, light-complexioned, heavily built, somewhat unwieldy at forty three, mercurial and changeable, had deep wrinkles furrowing his brow with prominent veins standing out on his temples and a hooked nose. The scattered red blemishes around his eyes, a result of his alcohol consumption, crooked and tobacco-stained teeth set in a wide sensual mouth that was fleshy, like that of a woman, were witness to the kind of life he led. But his portrait, without a description of his eyes, would be incomplete. Mitsos had the heartless eyes of a man indifferent to those who loved him; they were light blue with a penetrating chill that reflected his inner coldness. His cold gaze betrayed an intense flow of energy that made known his desires and commands. He was a person who was difficult to stand up to and it was easier said than done to refuse to carry out his orders. Was it fear, was it respect or the timidity of the weaker in the presence of a stronger party, or all together, Sarantos did not know. What he did know was that he feared his father and was unable to confront him without aggravating the situation, whether he approached him gently or by raising his small stature in defiance to demand the obvious.

When Sarantos heard the iron garden door closing he ran up the steps and stood under the eve of the open bedroom door with the broken lock that however much his father took to slamming it shut the wooden door would always open again, exposing the interior of the room. His mother was standing next to the edge of the bed fixing her petticoat trying at the same time to tie the belt cord of her dressing gown with which she had tried to cover herself, without success. She turned round and looked at her first-born son. Her expression was one of weariness and despondence; her face was drawn, pale, her full lips trembling, something she tried to hide by biting them when she saw the young boy. Her eyes were wide open and there was a tear on the edge of her long lashes that she clumsily tried to wipe away. The gentle expression of her brown eyes fixed itself on Sarantos’ figure. Her look had the inner light that in some people is bestowed as a gift; a light that despite all the conflicts, disappointments and travails, there are those who in a strange manner manage to keep it going as if this inner flame was kept permanently alight by their soul.

The woman’s look validated the common expression that the eye is the window of the soul and Eleni’s soul was her children, a great source of motivating power that gave her the strength to be patient and to endure; to put up with her drunken husband whose unbridled sexuality tortured her and had become an unbearable yoke. She was unable to struggle against him to resist his constant sexual attacks. His mind, made irrational by wine, didn’t respond to her pleading. “Please, no, the children…!” Nor was he put off by her weak hands’ efforts to restrain him. In his condition her efforts to bring him to his senses, to shame him, were in vain. And yet she had married this man because she had fallen madly in love with him causing a huge rift with her teacher-father and her relatives who couldn’t fathom how the educated only-daughter could find common ground with the rough farmer, even with his, then, masculine good looks. Eleni had carefully hidden her worries from everyone so that she would not hear them say “We told you so, but you knew better”. Her pride had forced her to justify her choice and not to give the others the right to pressure her to take a decision that was, for her, not an option. She didn’t want to be the “town divorcee with three children”, an easy and permanent target for the gossips frequenting the cafés and other gathering places.

From the moment she failed to exercise iron discipline to prevent her companion from taking a second drink after the first one, and after the second, a third, a fourth, and so on, she had to pay for her inability to make a stand against him. Things did not change for her as the years went by. The situation remained the same, with the additional element of an explosion of extreme aggressiveness by her husband whenever she had even the slightest objection to his pressing sexual passion. Thus she swallowed her humiliation, again and again as she was turned into a sexual object, without her consent, without her willing involvement, wounded, feeling cheap and humiliated that the father of her children chose to completely ignore her own desires, her own beliefs, in order to satisfy his insatiable physical appetite. In order to overcome her embarrassment now Eleni started to compulsively clean non-existent dust from the icon of the Virgin Mary in the wall niche. Sarantos felt swamped by a wave of pity. He felt tenderness, a sensation of warmth for his mother Eleni interwoven with love and affection, raising the temperature of every molecule in his body, just as it did when he burned with frustration and anger whenever he overheard the conflicts taking place behind the closed bedroom door. Mother and son looked at one another without saying a word to break the silence in the room, and Sarantos was so wound up by the tension of the anger that fed his desire to do something, anything, to drive out the sadness from his mother’s eyes that his nails, clenched tight in his fists, bloodied his palms without his feeling anything as if this same silence with its pervading presence had contained the rhythm of his outburst. As his mother stood motionless the slanted rays of light that came in from the window made her face appear radiant, and she was so beautiful, despite her sadness and the shame in her eyes, that Sarantos froze in admiration and also in empathy. How could this woman with the angelic profile endure from the time that the boy could remember himself, this unpleasant situation, not reacting, not leaving his father, to find peace and tranquility? These unanswered questions constantly tormented his thoughts and only resulted in causing him permanent agony and stress.

His mother approached him, took his hand, lifting it to her face and pressing it gently against her still wet cheeks to wipe away her tears. Then she embraced him and stroked his unruly hair. They both sat down without speaking on the disordered bed, holding each other’s hand, looking at the objects around them, the mirror, the side table, the table under the window and the glass of water; objects to which the midday light’s play gave a magic dimension as its rays gently touched them. The smooth passing of day’s bright light into the evening’s shadows imbued them with a sensation of an illusion that the gloom of night would hide their secrets, thrusting them into obscure corners, invisible to everyone, corners that nobody would see or discover. They both daydreamed that they were gradually leaving themselves behind to go to another place where something else was waiting for them. The place to which they went was empty and bare, but it was their place of truth, it was their reality - a field of silence, uncultivated, profound, deeper still than their dream of escape which in the end didn’t offer them a way out but acted to strengthen their fortitude and bond.

The companionship of mother and son was able to lift them clear of the impasse, albeit temporarily, and to mitigate the harsh impressions on the person experiencing them and the person who was often the witness. They stood up, still clasping each others’ hand, perfectly synchronized, and squeezed together they descended the staircase to go into the kitchen. Huddled next to the lit fireplace Sarantos two young sisters looked at them with the wisdom of the whole world in their childish eyes. Their mother placed a kiss on each of their foreheads and, late now, started to lay the table. In order to change the mood Sarantos asked his mother “What happened with the school matter, Mother? I want to go to high school. Will you tell him to let me attend? I don’t want to spend my whole life working in the fields!”

His mother looked at him and said “You know your father and how stubborn he is. I promise you though that I’ll do what I can to change his mind. Decisions in this house, Sarantos, are not up to me, but I will try.”

Eleni then filled bowls with steaming hot lentil soup, took some olives out of an earthenware jar, cut several strips of salted tunny fish in oil, and, putting a small wicker basket with freshly baked bread on the table she sat to eat with her children, despite having no desire to consume anything.

CHAPTER 2

Dina and Paulina had agreed that as soon as they ate lunch and finished their homework they would meet in the square. They had heard that Syngelides, the merchant, had acquired a new stock of attractive dresses with elasticized puffed sleeves and thick wasp-nest patterned busts in white, pink and pistachio. The two girls would not, of course, buy one; they only wanted to see and admire them. Looking at the dresses they would lose themselves in the fantasy that they owned them, that the dresses were tight against their skin and were lifted outwards from their legs by stiff petticoats. Since they could not satisfy their desire to own them, at least their eyes would feast on the wonderful colours and the sophistication of the metropolis displayed in their modern design.

At five o’clock in the afternoon they met and, hand in hand, started out for the square. Sofia’s parents hadn’t woken yet from their afternoon siesta and Paulina's mother, the nurse, after a quick midday meal left in a hurry because she had to administer an injection to a patient outside town. When the girls stopped at the emporium they fixed their eyes on the shop window. The three mannequins wearing the dresses were stunningly beautiful and looked so alive that one almost expected them, from moment to moment, to walk through the glass and cross the street. Exclamations of admiration came from the girls' lips; they could not stop looking, and looking again, to choose the colour that suited each one of them.

They stood transfixed for a long time, noting every detail of the dresses, from the hem to the necklines with the elaborate ruffles. Then, silent, and deeply disappointed by the reality that the dresses would never be theirs, they started on their way back home. The cafes were full of men drinking their afternoon coffee, playing gin-rummy and poker. Many of them were sitting outside, despite the bitter cold while the noise of bone dice on backgammon boards inside echoed off the vaulted café roofs. At the other end of the square Paulina saw her mother, Vaggelio, passing by. “My mother, my mother!” she said to Dina, pulling her along in order to catch up. The two girls had gone just a few steps further as Vaggelio was passing in front of the establishment called HOPE, the café that had the most customers at that hour, when a gaggle of men sprang up from their chairs and lined themselves outside the door.

“What happened, Vaggelio? Was it sweet, was it sweet?!” shouted a taxi driver. “Screwing in the middle of the day! You certainly go for it, don’t you!” said the kiosk owner, and one after another the men followed suit with similar comments directed at the nurse. There was a frisson of banter; in seconds even those who were not in on the secret had been made aware of her achievements on previous afternoons. Vaggelio did not have a patient who needed an injection. She had a rendezvous at the grove below the chapel of St Fanourios for a tryst with Stelios, the boatman, a strong two meter-tall youth. Vaggelio was on fire, rushing to be held in Stelios’ embrace, to draw life from the vitality of his youth, to become one with his male presence. A widow from the age of twenty three, she had never managed for even a moment to harness the flame in her body whose insistence to couple with a male hadn’t given her a moment’s rest. Whenever she found a partner to quench her insatiable ardor nothing could stop her, she could hardly see in front of her, blinded as she was by desire. How many times had she switched partners, unconcerned with whether her lover-stud climaxed once, or a dozen times! Men interested her only from their waist down and by how much stamina they exhibited during their coupling. She didn’t want a steady companion because she was quickly bored and demanded new material to enter her voracious, insatiable vagina. Additionally, a permanent liaison, with its restrictions, would cause complications.

Gossip about her was rife in the provincial town but she had sealed her ears. She did not care that she had become the area’s laughing stock. Snide remarks and derision in the cafes were minor annoyances to her. She didn’t even think about the effect of her behaviour on her children, who, at least in the case of her eldest daughter Paulina, who was old enough to hear and to understand the insinuations or the direct comments of their fellow townsfolk such as “Your mother certainly knows how to fuck, doesn’t she?” or “Ask her, when will it be our turn?!” made the girl bow her head, blushing with shame and anger at the crudeness of the comments. The unconscionable speakers made statements that from time to time were excessively rude, never taking into account that Paulina was not even twelve years old yet. Today Vaggelio had gone beyond her usual bounds and met Stelios at the isolated grove, assuming that no one would be around as it was the heart of winter. It was enough for her to wait for nightfall to have the dark as her ally and shield, but her need for sex today was so great that she felt her thighs scorching her. She thought she would die if a man didn’t enter her as soon as possible. When she met Stelios it was with difficulty that she gave him even a kiss. Her hands immediately seized his private parts and violently unbuttoned his trousers. Stelios grabbed her by her hair and threw her down onto the wet ground. He lifted up her blouse to let her full breasts spill out. He pushed his head between them, sucking on her nipples and cupping their roundness. Then, impatiently, he freed the gate to his erotic paradise from her panties and with his penis fully erect, he pushed it into her. A loud cry broke out of Vaggelio’s lips and her body stuck to him like a limpet, fervently following the rhythm of his movements. In spite of the biting cold her forehead was dripping with sweat, brought on by her sexual excitement. Each deep thrust made her cries even louder, bringing her ever closer to a climax. And when her orgasm convulsed her she felt as if a bolt of lightning had been released inside her, and instead of ashes, it left, as it ebbed, a slaking of her desire, a soothing retreating sensation of sweetness. Stelios climaxed with a groan and whispered “You are mine, you are my woman!” But Vaggelio didn’t even hear him. Then he lay down resting on his elbow next to her with his hands fondling her breasts which had tipped sideways. Absorbed by the whirlwind of their passion they had not noticed two intruders in the nearby thick bushes who were watching the heaven-sent spectacle, a sight that was so exciting for them that their hands tried to give themselves relief, initially by stroking their fully erect members, and then by movements that were in rhythm with those of the two stuck-together lovers’ bodies. When self-gratification had brought release from their fired-up state they pulled up their trousers and impertinently appeared next to the couple lying on the ground, saying “To your health!” and hurried away before Stelios had a chance to stand up and give them a good hiding.

“Oh, My God!” Vaggelio said as soon as she saw the village witnesses, clumsily trying to cover her nakedness. “They’ll make a laughing stock of us in the village.”

Stelios replied “It’s a pity I didn’t manage to catch those two bastards. I would have fixed them in no time! But what is done is done.”

Vaggelio thought for a few moments about what would follow and then stoically accepted the situation. It wasn’t as if this would be the first time that everyone would have been gossiping about her and that her amorous activities would be the talking point in all of the town cafes. Coming to terms with the state of affairs she turned and started to stroke Stelios’ crotch to excite him so he could take her on another journey to a sensual place that had become the very reason for her existence.

When Vaggelio was done with her sexual activities with Stelios, sated, she started homeward. The only thing that bothered her was that to go home she would have to cross the square. She knew that at this moment the cafes were all full and that the voyeurs would already have broadcast the news to the others, leaving out of course, their own reaction to the spectacle they had witnessed.

“We caught Stelios on top of Vaggelio in the Ayios Fanouris’ wood!” They said, hurrying to let everyone present in on the stirring details.

The news travelled like fire in a tinder dry forest. And just wait until the evening when all of those present would be back home for dinner and would let their wives know about the incident! It would be then that the whole village would be abuzz. The women would stigmatize, for the umpteenth time, the immoral behavior of Vaggelio, saying “the woman has no shame and makes her children objects of ridicule! Let the Lord protect us from females like that!”

The truth is that if the village had other equally skilful nurses like Vaggelio the housewives wouldn’t have let her past their front doors. But she had such a light hand coupled with the depth of her nursing experience and knowledge, that the old, the children and the sick all needed her skills! Two or three housewives who tried to replace her with other nurses deeply regretted it when they saw the replacements’ lack of expertise and rough bedside manners when dealing with the family member who was ill. Her eagerness, her infinite patience with bad-tempered patients and her gentle manner towards all those who were ill, as well as her immediate response to any call for help, whether by day or night, made her irreplaceable. They may have scorned her and been “ashamed on her behalf” as they liked to say in their conversations, but in their hour of need they always called for Vaggelio, diluting, of necessity, their scorn and contempt for her.

Paulina and Dina had arrived at the front of the cafes and didn’t miss a word of the mockery and vulgar remarks coming from the café clientele directed at Vaggelio. Paulina was so agitated that her heart almost stopped. Her cheeks, from shame, became awash in a deep crimson colour and tears brimmed in her eyes. She wanted the pavement to split open up and swallow her up to save her from the public humiliation; she craved to be the victim of a sudden heart attack and drop down dead to stop the filth that she was hearing, dirt that her own mother had put in the tormentors’ mouths with her unbridled behaviour. Her wishes weren’t realised. Her mother was now in front of her with the men cat-calling and mocking her and Paulina felt herself overflowing with hate. Hate for her mother and hate for her unrelenting village compatriots. Vaggelio, beaming, as if she had not heard a word of what her fellow villagers were saying, said to the young girls. “Where to my girls? Out for a walk?”

Dina replied, “Yes!” Paulina, with her eyes overflowing, cast a bitter look at her mother, a look containing a world of accusation, and, skirting her, she ran off to hide at home, leaving the two others to stare after her. With an embarrassed “Goodbye” Dina walked away and Vaggelio started on her way home. When she arrived she saw Paulina sobbing loudly on the settee. She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. Paulina turned from her and pushed it away in disgust.

“Don’t you dare touch me! Don’t you touch me!” shrieked the young girl. “You made a fool of me with your filthy actions! I don’t want to know you! I’m ashamed to have you for a mother!”

Vaggelio did not react to Paulina’s violent outburst. “Let her talk! She’s still young!” she said to herself. “When she grows up, she will understand what nature is!” Vaggelio identified her own insatiable passion with the desires of other people, considering that everyone felt the same pressing demands of the flesh that she did but that the others were hypocritical, concealing their true nature from others with a mask of righteousness and abundant insincerity. The use of their own body was their God-given right Vaggelio felt regarding her own expressions of passion. To have sex was for her a completely natural function since she was in the prime of her life and was deaf to criticism, to mockery, to contempt and the unending gossip around her. She knew that she could not tame her body that regularly rebelled, demanding to instantly couple with a male, no matter what difficulty lay before her to achieve this.

“Let them look at their own mess!” she muttered whenever a new piece of gossip was making the rounds and the village was buzzing about her. “If I opened my mouth, many of these “respectable” homes would be wrecked” she said to herself. The only thing that bothered her was that her children were growing up and were reacting intensely to the bitter gossip, but she had no way to calm them and to make them accept her way of life. On the other hand she had no intention of curbing her sexual activities because they were far beyond her control. Men were the beginning and end of everything in her life, a panacea for the uncontrollable desires that, when they took over, made her sick with longing.

Dina, Paulina’s friend, returned home, her melancholy mood reflected in her eyes. She felt infinite pity after observing her friend’s bitterness during the episode in the square despite not having quite understood what all the fuss was about and why the men were saying rude words to Paulina’s mother, Vaggelio. “What did she do to them to make them so nasty to her?” the girl wondered. “Did she kill their fathers or mothers?”

Much as she searched in her mind she couldn’t find an answer that justified the virulence of the public attack against Vaggelio. Her mother, seeing Dina’s dark mood, asked her, “What happened Dina to upset you? Didn’t you like the dresses in the shops, or was it that we can’t afford to buy one. You know we don’t have money for extras, my child.”

“No, no!” the young girl replied. “There’s nothing wrong. I didn’t even think of buying the dress. It’s just that I am tired and I realised just now that I haven’t drawn the map of Magnesia Province for class, and I am too tired to do it!”

Under no circumstances would Dina embarrass her friend by describing to her mother the unfortunate incident in the square. There was also the risk that her mother would get angry and not allow Dina to go out in public with her fellow student. She, however, was very attached to Paulina and did not want to be deprived of her companionship. Dina rushed to her desk and sat down to draw, trying to put out of her mind the events that had shaken her up that afternoon.

Mary, the chemist’s daughter, went by her father’s pharmacy to meet him and accompany him home. She always enjoyed this mid-day walk in his company because they had the opportunity to talk, despite his telling her off often for things that she got up to because of her restless nature which was diametrically opposed to the impression given by her innocent and reserved facial expression. In spite of the fact that she had been smacked often whenever she had gone beyond the limits of “proper behavior” she bore him no malice. She knew that it was her fault and that her parents had to discipline her. When she became stubborn and words had no effect her tongue became as sharp as a razor, as her mother would observe, since the young girl would frequently talk back, and then a slap or two would be enough to bring her to order, until the next time, and the next.

The chemist’s household was a happy one. Penelope, the mother, was an able housewife and a good wife and parent. Additionally she was very presentable, a brunette with a gentle and sweet beauty. The lives of the family ticked by like the workings of a well wound-up clock. If Mary, her eldest daughter, were less unruly and did not upset her so often with a rebellious nature which refused to willingly succumb to her parents’, or others’, every orders, things would have been quieter at home because there wouldn’t be any conflicts. But, you see, neither advice nor physical punishment seemed enough to restrain Mary, who, whenever she set her mind on something, would turn the world upside down to do it - like the other day when she had slipped out of the house and went alone to a fair at a neighbouring village, 5 kilometers from their own town. The family had spent hours looking for her. Everyone was out in search of her. It was well after dark when someone who knew Mary saw her wandering about, admiring the goods on sale at the stalls, and hurried to inform her father. She got the beating of her life, but never once said the word “Sorry”. She had done what she wanted and the consequences had been expected, but were of no importance to her.

Urania, entering the hall of the old two-storey house where she lived, flared her nostrils inquisitively two or three times as she always did when she returned from school to identify from its smell the food her mother had cooked. Today her nose picked up the aroma of freshly-fried fish. She smacked her lips in pleasure and ran up the stairs, two steps at a time. She rushed into the kitchen. The large table had already been laid and her three siblings were in their chairs, snatching at fried potatoes piled on a dish in front of them. The sight of a mound of tantalizing freshly-cooked red mullet with their crisply fried crust tickled her appetite, and, of course, the presence of the essential wild greens and freshly home baked bread supplemented and completed the fare on the family table.

Maria, Urania’s mother, with her talent for organization and budget management skills succeeded in feeding her family and paying domestic bills, in spite of her high school headmaster-husband, Yannis Ioannides’ small salary. This was no mean achievement, taking into consideration that there were six mouths to be fed, beyond other needs for food, school supplies, essential house cleaning goods and whatever else a family needed in order to merely manage. The only help the small family budget had was from the family olive grove and vegetable garden which Maria, with her talented hands, planted and tended herself. No money to hire a field hand! She spent an hour or two every day working in the cultivated field securing the family’s annual olive oil supply and abundant provisions of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Maria’s appearance was usually reserved and strict. Her smile rarely reached her eyes and there was always a shadow deep inside them. It was the result of a dark secret that for years she had concealed far inside herself and was not about to confide to anyone, ever. She remembered, as if it were just yesterday, that night on the island of Aegina. She was engaged to marry Yannis in two months time. In August she had gone with her parents to Aegina to see her bedridden grandmother, Maria, before marrying Yannis and moving with him to the provincial town where her fiancé had been assigned to a post, and she wanted to stay for a short while with the old woman. She didn’t know whether she would be able to visit her later because of how difficult it was to travel in those days, as well as not knowing what the conditions would be for her as a married woman. Three days later her parents left but she stayed on until the end of the week to look after her grandmother until the woman who took care of the old lady came back from an unscheduled trip to the town of Lamia where her eldest daughter had just given premature birth to her first child.

It was a warm and pleasant August evening. Her grandmother had dropped off to sleep and Maria went out for a walk to get some fresh air and relax from the fatigue of the day. It was a pity to go to bed and not to take in the magic of the full moon, the cool breeze coming in from the sea, and the sensation of her bare feet sinking into the sand as she walked along the beach. The scent of jasmine and the night flower bush coming from her grandmother’s garden just twenty meters from the shore filled her nostrils. She walked slowly along the beach and sat on a tall rock absorbing the incomparable beauty of the landscape around her; a setting gilded by the rays of the full moon that ploughed a shiny path across the dark water, as far into the distance as she could see.

She was enjoying the sensation of having the whole bay to herself and of being mistress of this corner of paradise. But she was wrong. She was not alone. There was another claimant to the dark kingdom with its silver highlights. A few meters away the glow of a cigarette intermittently lit up and went out. When Maria noticed the presence of the unwelcome intruder into her world she jumped up in fright. The man realized that his presence had startled the woman and shouted out to her, “Don’t be afraid. I came here, like you, to take in the magic of the evening!”

He approached her and introduced himself.

“Demosthenes Andreopoulos, civil engineer. I am from Salonika and I am in charge of supervising public works on the island.” He stretched out his hand and Maria felt herself obliged to give him hers, more from embarrassment than from any desire to do so.

“Maria Iakovou. I’m staying with my grandmother at that small house you can see there.”

They shook hands firmly, examining one another with curiosity. He was tall, athletic in build, with strong masculine features, thick brown hair, with a piercing look that seemed to look onto her soul. She, slim and dark-complexioned, with almond eyes like those of a gypsy, almost as tall as he, had a full mouth and an upturned nose that gave her face a mischievous look.

“A good-looking girl,” thought Demosthenes to himself.

“Manly and good looking!” Maria noted silently.

They sat down a little further along on a flat outcropping of rocks by the beach and started talking as if they had known each other for years. Was it the magic of the night, was it that they were all alone in the isolated dream-like cove, was it the concurrence of a fateful encounter that opened their hearts and loosened their tongues making them confide their deepest personal secrets without any inhibitions? Neither of them could say. Maria told him that she was about to enter into an arranged marriage with Yannis, who was a very nice man, and Demosthenes told her that he was married and had two children. He had married Martha when they were fellow students at university and he got her pregnant. His conscience had not allowed him to abandon her or to demand she have an abortion. Neither option was acceptable at the time owing to the then prevailing social attitudes. He did his duty, without having those feelings that, according to him, were necessary, and on which a proper marriage should be built - physical attraction and a deep love that would last for a lifetime. He respected Martha, adored his children, but he totally lacked the excitement of feeling that his wife was a part of his body and soul.

Demosthenes felt the physical presence of Maria invading every cell of his body. He felt a flush that made him dizzy and, needing to explain its disturbing effects on him, he justified his reaction, attributing it to the temptation of the night, to the salt scent of the sea, to relief at being finally able to confess the truth regarding his marriage about which he had spoken now for the first time in ten years, and moreover, to a woman who was a total stranger to him. A stranger? Why then did he feel her so close to him, so warm, so attractive to the very depths of his being? And Maria in her turn could not understand why she kept snatching glances of admiration at his profile, why could she herself feel the swelling of his well-exercised chest each time he drew on his cigarette without her facing him? She was too innocent and inexperienced to understand the age-old primordial workings of nature that now made her body and heart begin to respond to secret commands.

At some moment Demosthenes’ hand accidentally touched hers in the dark. An electric-like impulse passed through his body into Maria, in a split second, like lightning. Neither of them pulled away. They turned towards one another, looked into each others’ eyes, and their lips met in a kiss. Their breathing became deeper and after the first kiss there was another and another. Without saying a word Demosthenes picked her up from the rock and put her down on the sand. His hand slid onto her breast, to her stomach, and then he lifted her dress over her head. Impatiently he pulled at her underwear and started to stroke her naked body. She shuddered with each caress. It was the first time that she had not wanted to resist a man’s advances. She begged him not to stop exploring her body with his hard mouth. In a little while his hands pushed her legs apart and his strong member entered her. Maria let out a cry that for a moment restrained Demosthenes, but she immediately pulled him forcefully on top of her, urging him to continue. Their bodies, united, moved in a wild wavelike rhythm while their groans could be heard above the splashing of the waves. Demosthenes, lost in ecstasy, tried to hold back his climax which was about to erupt, waiting until Maria had reached her peak. He felt her vagina squeezing him, squeezing him, followed by a loud moan signaling satisfaction at her release. Demosthenes let loose his desire inside her with such force that it almost made him faint. Then he lay down next to her, clasping her tightly to his chest.

When he got his breath back he lit a cigarette and stroking her hair he whispered, “Did I hurt you Maria? It was your first time, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, Demosthenes, it was my first time and it was wonderful!” she replied, kissing him on his neck. A little later Maria, without any reserve, stroked his penis until it became as hard as steel. He re-entered her, triumphantly, and their bodies were soon flooded by supreme satisfaction.

Dawn was breaking when exhausted from their all-night embraces and with their bodies soaked in sweat, despite the morning chill, they pulled themselves apart. Naked as they were, they went into the water to wash off the damp residue of their night of love. Wet and trembling from the cold of the dawn air they put on their clothes, hugged, and kissed each other goodbye. There was no need for any elucidation at that moment. The adventure was about to end with the coming appearance of the first rays of the sun that in a little while would dissolve the magic of the evening. For the passion that had given them such satisfaction there was no tomorrow. They would each follow a private path back to their responsibilities and obligations.

Demosthenes watched Maria walking away until she disappeared behind the wooden garden gate of her house. He felt a tightening in his heart and a bitter taste in his mouth. He had unexpectedly stumbled on the Ultimate, and he had lost it, without having the right to pursue his claim. With a deep sigh he started on his way back with his mind and soul stamped with the image of Maria who had become his wife, his ideal and inestimable companion, for just one night.

Back at her grandmother’s house, Maria, lying fully clothed on her bed, brought back to mind, again and again, every moment, every word, and every movement of the dreamlike night. She pinched herself to make sure she was awake, that it wasn’t an illusion, that everything that had happened was real. It didn’t bother her that she had given herself so easily to a stranger, offering him her virginity. If she had a hundred virginities she would have sacrificed them for the indescribable fulfillment she had experienced. Neither did she think about her fiancé, Yannis, nor about his reaction when in two months time he would probably discover that someone else had reaped the fruit of her harvest. Respecting her innocence and her virginal shyness, all Yannis had enjoyed until then were some kisses and a few embraces. At this very moment, no external circumstance, no social restraint could spoil the pleasure springing from the echo of her happiness and the relaxation she felt in her body, sated as it was with love.

A shadow would be cast over the memory of that strange evening the next month when Maria returned to Athens and vainly waited for her period. The strong and uncontrollable passion in Aegina had borne fruit. The odd thing was that the thought of an abortion never entered her mind, even for a moment. Her bizarre stubbornness carried the risk of exposing her. She started desperately looking for solutions beyond the only logical one, an abortion. She decided to confide in her cousin, Myrto, the “fast” one of the family who kept others’ secrets safer than if they were in a bank vault. Myrto, so full of charm and coquetterie and the joy of life, didn’t give a hoot about the constant criticism from her family circle that often stigmatized her “unbridled”, as they called it, behaviour, and her frequent switches of sexual partners that made her relatives bow their heads in shame for the lost lamb of their clan. Good-natured Myrto had solutions for all of their amorous entanglements. When she found out about Maria’s doings she advised her cousin to keep the baby, and since she was about to get married, to present the child as Yanni’s. Maria was horrified when she first heard the proposal. She did not want to deceive her fiancé, but, word after word, Myrto convinced her that there was no other way. “Nobody,” she said, again and again, “can be hurt by things they do not know.”

She repeated it so many times that Maria succumbed to her advice.

Maria married Yannis and seven months later she gave birth to her “premature” daughter, Urania. Myrto had fixed the problem with the obstetrician convincing him that with his collusion he was saving a potential victim from the wrath of her relatives who would severely punish Maria who had strayed from the narrow path. Yannis did not for a moment have any doubts about his premature daughter, on the contrary, he concentrated all his love and devotion on the two women in his life. The arrival of a second daughter, and later the birth of twin sons completed his circle of happiness. Maria was an exemplary mother and wife and ran her household with perfect order and discipline. No one ever learned her secret and no one would learn it in the future. Only at night when she felt the lukewarm embraces of Yannis did her mind travel to that enchanted August evening brimming over with sexual passion and her body sought that urge, that intoxicating sense of excitement that was now only a distant and priceless memory. She knew she would never again experience such sexual tension, never would her body seek with an almost obsessive desire to have a male enter and pull her apart as Demosthenes had done then. On the one hand she was lucky because Yannis did not notice, or pretend he did not notice, that someone else had beaten him to the looting of her vaginal passage, and Maria was grateful for his discretion.

When her schoolmates left Melina at her doorstep she entered the dilapidated two room house where the six members of her family lived. Her mother, on her knees, was brushing the wooden floorboards with ochre. Despite the freezing February cold, beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. Each time she stretched her hands forward to spread the mixture on the planks “Ohhh…Ohhh” sounds came from her lips, but that which made the girl’s heart tighten was the expression of sorrow in her mother’s eyes. The endurance of a lifetime of tribulation was focused in that look, or was it despair? How many times had Melina not seen that same expression when watching her mother examine the three kitchen cupboards, looking for something to cook for her family on those days when her father’s wage had not entered the family purse because no one had hired his cart? The pitiable woman tried to dilute the trachana or the rice soup to make it suffice for all the mouths she had to feed. Melina observed her mother time and time again when with her back bent she washed the family’s clothes on the washboard out in the yard in the severe cold in the middle of winter or in the scorching heat of summer, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing, with caustic ash powder until her hands were on the verge of bleeding.

They never opened up their house on a feast day nor did a visitor ever cross their threshold. They didn’t have the money to buy the essentials for those occasions. And Melina was envious then, during festive days, to see the illuminated houses of others with people coming and going, music pouring out of open windows, and her smelling the tantalizing aromas of food that made her stomach gurgle in protest at her deprivation. Melina, out of pride, never accepted invitations, knowing that she could not reciprocate. She cried to herself from time to time and on other occasions became furious at her family’s wretchedness, hurling anathema at their poverty and realizing that her grandmother’s constant solace “let us be happy that we have our health!” sounded empty to her ears, and was anything but consoling.

“Is there an illness worse than poverty?” wondered the young girl. “Is there worse torture that an empty stomach, the overcoat you don’t own, frozen hands and feet when the winter brazier dies out because there is no more coal? Money is the cure, the only cure! Without it you are nothing and others see you as nothing!”

Many similar thoughts found a nest in Melina’s mind, as if she was a grown-up woman, and they verged on becoming an obsession. The worry and humiliation with which she watched her family suffering like Christ on the Cross, but without hope for the future, was killing her. She preferred not to have been born because she could not put up with this daily anguish from as far back as she could remember. She couldn’t bear seeing her underweight siblings getting up from meals with their stomachs still half empty, and young Melina pursed her lips, promising herself she would put her life in order one day at any cost.

Mary entered her house and threw her satchel onto a chair. Her mother was spreading the green baize material over the table in the living room. “Are they going to play cards again?” wondered the girl. She was fed up twice a week hearing the knocking of knuckles on the card table and smelling stifling cigarette smoke coming through cracks in her bedroom door. Her mother Penelope, like so many of her compatriots, had acquired a card-playing habit. Wherever they looked for her, one could be sure of finding her at one or another poker or rummy table. She had long ago got over the stage of playing an innocent game of biriba and had entered very deep waters. Penelope could hardly wait for her daily family obligations to be over with, to be free to play cards either at home or at a house of a friend with the same passion.

She was a good-looking woman who took particular care of her appearance and took full advantage of the dollars sent without fail every month by her sister from overseas. Penelope felt no remorse at parting with some of this at the green felt covered table since her sister was unmarried and the money that she made from her business was more than enough for her. Penelope wasn’t doing anyone any harm by wanting to enjoy herself a little. Provincial life was so boring and the days were so much one like the other without her beloved pastime!

Menelaos, her doting husband, had a permanent weak spot for her. He went to great lengths to justify this need of hers since Penelope didn’t have the opportunity to let off steam by enjoying herself at nightclubs as she had in Athens from where he had brought her to this isolated province when he had opened his pharmacy. The whole family put up with their mother’s vice because she had been given the go-ahead by the father, the head of the family, despite the secret disapproval of the children who knew the futility of expressing any objection. Neither of their parents would take any notice.

CHAPTER 3

Iakovos rang the doorbell of his house for a long time after managing to get away from his schoolmates. He had forgotten his keys and he wondered what they were doing by not opening the door for him. “Have my mother and sister gone deaf?” he asked himself. He waited for a quarter of an hour, in vain. He then decided to go to his father’s newsagents shop two blocks away to see if his mother had gone by there. When he arrived he found the shop closed and the shops next door were also closed for siesta time. “Maybe they’re coming home via another street,” he thought, and started off again for his house. When he arrived he rang the bell, but again there was no reply. The young boy was worried now. “Could something have happened to them?” he wondered, concerned. He waited for another ten minutes and then went next door and rang Mrs. Katina’s doorbell. The woman appeared dressed in a bathrobe with curlers in her hair. “Have you seen my mother, Mrs. Katina? I’ve been ringing for a long time and they aren’t replying and the shop too is closed.”

“Come in, my boy!” the woman said. She made him sit in the kitchen and said, “They took your father away this morning. They are taking him to Athens with Aristides, the barber, and Melpo, the teacher.

“Who took him, Mrs. Katina?” he asked with an expression of worry.

“Well, I don’t know. The police…with these damned politics!” Katina replied.

“But he only came back six months ago. Why did they arrest him again?”

“My boy, I haven’t a clue. They said he refused to sign some papers and he will be sent with the others to one of the barren islands for exiles. How stubborn he is, that father of yours! He could have signed and saved you all and himself from all this bother!” Katina commented.

Iakobos went silent. What could the poor boy say! It hadn’t been the first time his father had been jailed for his political convictions. It was twice as difficult for him now because after his father was freed from jail the last time the boy had thought that their worries were finally over and that no one would bother them again, no one would bang on their door in the middle of the night, nobody would drag his father like a sack of potatoes to lead him to God-knows-what prison, God knows–to-what isolated location. The boy felt indignation welling up inside him. His anger wasn’t directed at that moment against the police; he blamed his father for his obdurateness and his adherence to inexplicable, for the boy ideologies that had been the cause of so much anguish and so many worries for them. What business of his was it to get involved in these to-dos, regularly abandoning his work and family? Wasn’t their poverty enough? Had they the luxury of getting involved in situations that only promised them trouble and no benefits? His anger brought tears to his eyes. Then he thought about his mother and sister and the fear they must have felt. He wiped his wet cheeks and nose with the back of his hand and asked Mrs. Katina if she knew where the women were.

“The were at the police station from this morning in the hope of persuading the chief officer to let him go, but as Sotiris, the taxi driver, the father of your classmate Dina, told me, they didn’t achieve anything. He saw the three of them being put into the back of an army lorry with some others from nearby villages and they left for who knows where. I believe that your mother and sister will be home soon,” Mrs. Katina said, stroking his head to console him.

Iakovos didn’t want anyone to touch him at that moment. Even his natural cheerful and playful character didn’t allow him to recover and to get over the latest hurdle by arming him with patience and endurance. The story of his father had gone on too long. The family had no business paying for his mistakes and to be left in limbo for months whenever they took him away. But whatever Iakovos thought, as angry as he got, he knew that he was helpless to do anything. These situations could not be fixed from one moment to another.

Ten minutes later from the window he saw his mother and sister with an expression of disappointment on their faces. He rushed outside and ran towards them. Kiki, his mother, hugged him silently and Tassia, his sister, looked at him sadly with her eyes red from crying. Iakobos knew what would follow, and for who knows for how long. His mother would break her back carrying crates of water and soft drinks and organizing a myriad of items, wearing out her legs to serve customers for endless hours to keep them happy so that they wouldn’t go to shop elsewhere else. Tassia would start working overtime at night at the dressmakers where she worked to earn a little more to help add to their meager income. 12 year-old Iakovos was determined to help out, as much as he could, after school at their little shop in order for his mother not to collapse from overwork. As a last resort he could do his homework behind the counter to allow Kiki to pop over to their house to prepare a meal and do her housework while Iakobos looked after the newsagents shop in the afternoon.

The three months that remained until June and the summer holidays went by quickly. The group of friends finished primary school and sat their high school entrance exams. Sarantos fought all this time to convince his father to allow him too to go to high school. Eleni, his mother, stood by him and supported him as much as she could. In the end and after interminable discussions that almost always ended up in arguments and swearing by Mitsos, his father, the mother and son managed to get his much-desired approval.

The exam results were announced and the inseparable group of friends went on successfully to the next step of their education. Each of the children kept deeply hidden in their hearts aspects of their family life, painful or happy, as well as their worries and troubles, not because of a desire to hide something, but from pride and a wish not to become objects of pity for their peers. The children were still young and they did not know that nothing would remain hidden for ever under the relentless provincial sun.

The years went by and the boys became men, almost, and the little girls of yesterday filled out and became women, each one metamorphosing with an individual style and each one harbouring her own private dreams and secret ambitions. Melina, had her mind fixed on redemption from the privations of poverty only through the panacea of money, as she had visualized it over the years in her mind, Urania, getting to know love by slipping away from the supervision of her head master father, Paulina, hoping every day there would be a miracle and that her mother’s sexual desires would cease, Dina, hoping that her taxi driver father would reform and would no longer frequent gambling dens and places of ill-repute, shaming her mother and sisters, Mary, desiring a house that would no longer be turned into a gambling nest by unwelcome visitors, Iakobos, looking forward to expanding his business to become a successful and important merchant to allow his mother and sister to stop wearing themselves out at work while his father was exiled for years on the prison island of Makronissos. Sarantos dreamed of conquering his great love, Melina, who though she must have caught on to his unrequited love from the way he showered attention on her, did not include him in her personal plans. She didn’t want any poor person near her, no matter how much she liked them. The constant humiliations caused by the wretchedness and hardships that her family had lived through, for years and years, had wounded her deeply and irreparably.

The members of the group may have been at different stages of maturity now that they had reached the age of seventeen, and they may have dreamed and planned their futures, but they didn’t know if their parents would give them the go ahead, either for further studies, or to follow a professional path in the capital, far from their small town. Conditions prevailing in their families, their worries, the hardships, and the delights or disappointments of their childhood years were deeply etched into the very depths of their being, irrespective of the fact that none of them had ever chosen to confide, even in their friends, despite the love that they shared for one another, in order not to compromise their family members more than the adults had exposed themselves to the judgment and criticism of their community. It was obvious that final decisions regarding their future would depend exclusively on the disposition and the economic capacity of each family at the specific and critical moment.

At that time, Mary, the strong-headed one of the group, was already under siege, so to speak, by a young neighbour, Anesti, who had studied architecture at Bologna in Italy and on his return to his country after an absence of seven years wanted to establish himself professionally and to settle down. He wanted a hometown girl with whom to create a family after all the affairs he had with girls belonging to a variety of nationalities at the overseas university. Pleasing in appearance, he was soon targeted by mothers as a potential husband for their daughters who were much attracted by the title “educated abroad”, as they said to their friends. Three or four matchmaking proposals did not tempt him in the least even though the brides had a respectable dowry. None of the girls attracted him sufficiently for him to give up his freedom.

He met Mary one afternoon at his house when she had come to visit his sister Niki. Mary in no way resembled the slightly-built child he remembered from the sixth grade of the local primary school. She had become a tall, slim, perfectly proportioned young woman with a pretty face. The only thing that brought to memory the cheerful young girl of the past was her long, carefully-groomed red hair that had always been her trademark characteristic.

In the beginning Mary did not take much notice of the young man’s discreet approaches. Later though, influenced by repeated compliments voiced about him by several girls who had set their sights on him, she started noticing him, finding him to be very much to her liking. In two months they were in a relationship and Anesti, who had fallen in love with her, felt he was walking on air. Mary, it was true, didn’t feel the same way for Anesti. She found him interesting, she liked him, she was flattered by his choosing her from among so many rivals who wanted to lay claim to him, but that was as far as her sentiments for him went.

The next month Anesti asked her father for Mary’s hand. The pharmacist replied that Mary would have to finish high school first, but the young man was impatient. He tried to impress on her father that his daughter would not need any qualifications as she would become his wife and the mother of his children. He did not want Mary to work and if in the future she were to become bored at home, she could occupy herself at his office which was not short of architectural assignments for houses and shops. But Mary, even though she was a very bright student, wanted to get married to escape the restrictions of life at home. She would be able to go out with her husband whenever she wanted, to stay out late in clubs, to travel and to run her house the way she wanted to as its only mistress. Her mother, her ally, had two more daughters to marry off and considered Anesti to be a godsend present for their family because he didn’t demand a dowry. Their finances were unable to allow them to live well and at the same time to provide money and homes for all three daughters, according to the social custom. The pharmacy provided for their needs, but left no room for savings, let alone any investment in property. The help that they received from their sister-in-law was for exclusive use by Penelope for her personal needs and she selfishly did not share this money with anyone else.

Despite her mother’s logic and Mary’s own wishes, the pharmacist’s inflexible resolve for his daughter to finish high school, and then to do whatever she wanted, prevailed. Anesti gave in. He wanted to have good relations with his future in-laws, and, in any case, the waiting period was limited to just a few months. The two families agreed to keep the engagement secret in order to avoid problems for Mary at school. The engaged couple limited their meetings to visits to relatives’ homes and no one suspected that there was anything more than mere friendship between them. The young architect satisfied himself with a few snatched kisses and Mary’s lack of experience and her innocence thrilled him. He was not in a hurry to possess her. In a little while she would belong to him, would be his wife and he would have the opportunity to teach her, step by step, everything that she did not know in the sexual sphere, a prospect that built up sweet anticipation in him.

In the meantime the other hopefuls did not give up their dreams since they were unaware of Anesti’s commitment to Mary. Without their mothers’ knowing they phoned him, offering to meet him. It was plain that they wanted to use their physical charms to tempt him and to make him see them differently, with the prospect of their becoming a permanent fixture at his side as his wife. Anesti was a male and was not about to reject the voluntarily offered fruit brought before him. When the village shops closed at lunchtime and all their fellow citizens went home to eat and to have their siesta he remained behind at his office after telling his staff to leave. He would leave the door unlocked and wait. Taking a hundred precautions, each of the young women would slip into his office and from there it would be ‘Showtime’. After two or three trite exchanges of conversation Anesti would make his move. He was surprised by the fact that the girls’ reactions were all the same, as if they had agreed on a common game plan. “Don’t Anesti! I haven’t been with anyone before. All I’ve had was an innocent flirtation before now!” and other similar phrases to convince him of the attraction of their virginity. Anesti saw things from a different angle, so much from their willingness to submit, as from the experience he discerned from their behaviour. Two out of four visitors may not have “gone all the way” but they were supremely familiar with everything else in the repertoire of sexual acts. The other two, from the first half hour, and after receiving the exciting caresses of the experienced man, gave themselves without resistance and begged for him not to pull out. Their screams of passion were so loud that Anesti, to avoid getting into trouble, had to seal their mouths with his hand for their cries not be heard by a neighbour or a passer-by outside.

He had sex with them everywhere. On his desk, in the revolving chair, on the floor, even on the sink of the office kitchenette. One of his partners, after squeezing him dry by her repeated demands for “More! More!” as if a man were a machine, turned and said to him “I imagine that now you have made me your woman, you will marry me! I won’t let you have your way and then dump me.”

Anesti laughed, saying “The person who should marry you is the one who deflowered you before me and taught you so many of the tricks that you did for me, if indeed my predecessor was just one in number! Judging from your performance I personally very much doubt that he was the only one. I am tired of always having the number “2” on my back, as the second lover in the sexual career of most of you. If you want we can continue to have a good time together, but that is as far as it goes. I have no intention of tying myself up with anyone. Besides which, you came here on your own. I didn’t phone you, chase after you or know who you were.” The girl, pretending to be insulted usually shed a tear or two, but in a little while grabbed his private parts and with her capable hands prepared him for a new round…

For several months Anesti enjoyed himself, making love to the girls by rotation, after the other ones had pressingly demanded that he enter them to feel his organ deep in their vaginas. Anesti overcame his initial hesitation and after the third or fourth date there wasn’t a single position that he had not tried out with them, nor any erotic game that he had not played either with his penis or with his tongue. It was true though that they too offered him pleasure, exploring his almost permanent erection with their lips with the ulterior intention of enslaving him with their sexual encounters and to permanently trap him in their nets. Luckily for Anesti, none of them knew of the existence of the others, and even though all four were friends, they had not opened their mouths to say anything. One could say, of course, that at a time when girls would not admit even to kissing a boy, would any of the young women dare to admit the extreme sexual limits they had gone to during lunch hours at Anesti’s office? The hills would blush!

A little before the beginning of June Anesti, sated by the erotic encounters now they had nothing new to offer him, was not willing to copulate with them and satisfied himself with oral sex. As soon as they, each one in her turn, demanded satisfaction with conventional sexual penetration, expressing their dissatisfaction at his unwillingness, saying that he “excited them and then left them to simmer in their own juices”, the architect found an excuse to get rid of them, one by one. He was sure that they would not let slip even a word about the hours of depravity they had spent with him. In any event, he himself felt absolutely nothing emotionally for any of them. When he satisfied his male sexual longings that were so pressing and intense at his young age of twenty-seven, and after he indulged every fantasy that came to him with his willing partners, he could hardly wait for them to leave his office so he could take a shower and wait for his day’s work to be done so that he could visit Mary.

After each round of debauchery with his “volunteers”, Mary appeared even purer, even more innocent, and the thought that she would soon become his wife and that he would be able to explore every part of her body made the erection springing up from his crotch so obvious that he went to great effort to control himself so that he would not give himself away and be made a laughing stock. It is a fact that he missed his lunchtime activities with the hot and subservient provincial girls who were not wanting in imagination, nor in their ability to put their thoughts into practice compared to the females he had connected with in the past; women who had enjoyed the freedom of offering themselves to him, wherever and however they desired, without limits, and without raising a social outcry. He had, however, to be careful not to give his sexual partners more rights over him by extending their presence in his life because the hour of his wedding on the fifth of July was approaching and there would be a scandal in the small town if his activities became known, as well as the fact that Mary, for sure, would leave him if she were to find out what had been going on…and the last thing that Anesti wanted was to lose the only person who spoke to his heart.

CHAPTER 4

Anesti’s and Mary’s wedding took place with as much glamour as the pharmacist’s family budget would allow. The wedding dress was a masterwork, white and plain in design, projecting the bride’s fine body and emphasizing the sweet charm of her face. Looking at the groom standing next to her in church, Mary banished the shadow that lodged itself deep in her eyes. How much she wanted to be madly in love with the man who was becoming her husband, how much she wished that his charming appearance would electrify her and make every cell in her heart and body long for him! Yet, however, there was nothing in her, beyond respect, a surfeit of liking for him, and the carnal wait. She had been unable to tie her heart to his with a bond of love in all the time that they had been secretly engaged…

The girls who had shared passionate sexual siesta hours with the architect were also invited to the wedding with their families. Each of them, separately and secretly, was seething with anger and envy, because sexual passion, their imaginative games in bed and their limitless submission to every desire of Anesti, whether conventional or beyond socially acceptable limits, had been unable to tie him down. Their mothers were equally annoyed, considering that the groom had slipped through their fingers, taken from them by Mary the Bland, who, moreover, was penniless; but none of them betrayed the true feelings well-hidden behind the hypocritical smiles of joy that they put on for the bride’s happiest hour.

After the bridal couple’s dance they went back to a table which was exclusively for Mary’s childhood friends. Paulina, Sofia, Dina, Urania, Iakovos and Sarantos once more voiced, with much gesturing of hands, their plans for the future to their school friends. Dina told them that she would pursue her dream to be on the stage now that she had graduated from high school. Paulina would become a dress designer, a field in which she had displayed talent, filling many albums with her sketches. Their problem was that in Athens things were still in a primitive phase regarding their chosen professions and would limit their career potential. They wanted to spread their wings to other places. Their burning aspiration was directed at New York which appeared magical in their minds. The problem was how to find a way to pay for the expensive tuition at the schools there. They would also have to overcome the objections of their parents, but that, for the moment, didn’t much bother them. They would overcome hurdles in their own way, come hell or high water! Sarantos told them to contact immigrant Greek organizations to apply for scholarships. Perhaps luck would be on their side and they could find the much-needed economic help they were looking for.

“Isn’t Spiros Andreadis, the photographer’s son, studying to be an engineer with funds provided by the Church and by Greek emigrants? His father didn’t have a bean to send him to America,” said Sarantos, inflating the girls’ hopes. Urania had no professional ambitions to present to the others. She wanted to get married and to occupy herself with her husband and children as soon as possible. Sofia on the other hand told them that she wanted to work as a municipal employee at the town hall and her father had already had a discussion with the local Member of Parliament they always voted for, and he had promised he would assist in getting her hired. She was a pampered only daughter and didn’t want to distance herself from her family’s embrace for any reason...

Iakovos didn’t have room for dreams beyond the narrow limits of the small family shop at this given moment. He had an unmarried sister and his mother to look after as he was the only male at home now that his father had become a mere visitor, coming and going to prison and from exile to exile. The only person who had nothing to say was Melina. Looking at the pretty dresses of the other girls her heart tightened. The dress she was wearing had been lent to her by Mary, as had been her shoes, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to attend the wedding. She forced herself to swallow her pride not to hurt Mary on her wedding day. What plans could she make for tomorrow, to establish herself in a career and have better prospects? Jobs in the provinces were difficult to land and were only available to those with an ‘in’. She had nothing, except for poverty, privation and daily humiliation. Being a top student at school didn’t seem to offer her better prospects. She indeed had a will, but she did not have a way. It looked as if the rest of her life would be like this. She would be lost as a salesgirl in some shop, or as an assistant in a restaurant kitchen somewhere, if indeed she were lucky and managed to get even this, and never able to break free from a life of drudgery and her destiny. Tears welled up in her eyes and she stood up to move away not to be noticed by her school-mates and for them to start asking questions. This was not the time for compassion or for her to spoil her friend’s milestone day with her melancholy. No one noticed her leave the venue where the wedding was being held as she made her way towards the beach. She took off her shoes not to spoil them with the wet sand, borrowed as they were and having to be returned. When Mary said she could keep them and the dress as well, she had refused. She did not want charity. All she had wanted was to be helped out temporarily...

She walked along the beach crying, unaware of the natural beauty of her surroundings. She had been overcome by the ugliness of her own life. At least she could be alone for a little while before going back to her stifling hovel to face the usual questioning by her parents who would bombard her with pressing questions if they saw her clouded mood, something that today fortunately would not happen as her younger siblings were home alone with their sick grandmother. Her eye had caught her mother secretly folding sweets in paper napkins and putting them in her worn handbag to take home to the younger children. Even this act made her feel shame and pain. She felt sorry for her family and self-pity at being an integral part of this humiliating situation; a state of affairs that had not changed in years, no matter what effort or physical exertion she had expended for them at what was a permanent grindstone for her. What was worse was that any hope that a better future would one day dawn, had died in her. And this was killing her; slowly, slowly, but steadily…

She spread out her scarf and sat on a flat section of a rock that had not been wet by the waves. How much she longed to ride a wave that would take her far away to a world that was different from her daily routine, where there would be rays of light for her too; a chance to change the void she almost always felt inside her as a result of the pessimistic thoughts that wandered about inside her head not allowing the birth of even a fleeting smile of optimism to reach her lips! She leaned her head forward inside her folded arms, resting it on her raised knees, and cried, and cried, seeking release through the outburst brought on by the fathomless sorrow in her soul…

She almost didn’t notice Sarantos’ hands as they gently touched her shoulders. The youth had discreetly followed her having noticed from her dulled eyes that his Melina was not well. And when Melina was not well, Sarantos felt even worse. Such was the pain and love he felt for his ever-beloved…

Melina turned and looked at him with eyes that were full of stars from the reflection of light in her tears. Without a word he opened his arms and she huddled into his embrace. Sarantos began drying her wet cheeks with gentle kisses. Then, he started cautiously at first kissing the lips he had dreamed of kissing from the time they were children, and then progressed with passion as years of pent-up desire overtook him. Melina did not react. She clung to him, like a leach, as if to a savior. Tonight she wanted to belong to someone, even temporarily; she wanted to be special to someone outside her family. No one, except Sarantos, had ever been by her side, not a single youth among the many in the village had ever tried to approach her, to flirt with her, or even to look at her with interest and persistence, to show that he had noticed her. Lost in the maze of her complexes Melina had never realized how stunning, and at the same time wild, was her beauty, but at the same time so off-putting with the hardness of her eyes, her mask of indifference and the coldness of her face that made all those who admired her unable to cast a second, more direct glance for fear of provoking her, untamed as she was, to attack them verbally and to make fools out of them…

Without her realizing it the girl had raised, on her own, a barrier between herself and her secret admirers, believing that poor and humble as she was she was unworthy of attention and not worth approaching. What idiot would want to accompany someone who was the very embodiment of wretchedness, to enter her house that was in a state of disrepair and to become witness to her family’s struggle to survive for yet one more day? These were Melina’s thoughts, her self-respect in tatters, having lived through traumatic experiences that had become hurdles to every natural ambition, barriers cutting her off even from those things that anyone else would consider to be normal and expected. She was in a hole, never expecting to ever find her way out into the light of day, never to be able to spew out the bottled-up sentiments that were choking her. At this moment, with its burden of sentiments, Melina, who could feel Sarantos’ hands touching her lightly and gently, as if she were fragile as crystal and experiencing a wave of tenderness emanating from his words and actions, wanted to think of nothing else and nobody else. She was the one taking the decisions that influenced her actions and not the mores of society, she said to herself tossing her full head of hair aside into a crack in the rocks. Sarantos strong hands moved across her back, stroking her from the base of her neck to her buttocks. She let her head fall back, allowing his mouth to explore her lips her neck and the top of her full breasts. Her young flesh woke, putting forth pressing demands which, fired by passionate kisses and sensual caresses, became a need that insisted on immediate satisfaction. Distant and frigid Melina had metamorphosed into a living flame, feeling for the first time in her life that someone else was totally dependant on her wants and on her approval or rejection in order to proceed to the next level. She had been unaware that Sarantos had achieved some expertise in the management of matters of the flesh. Or was it perhaps her own submissiveness that guided her to take the right steps to gain that total knowledge and to excite every cell of her body?

Suddenly she was overcome by a sensation of having total power, even if this complete dominance had only one object, Sarantos. Melina wanted to travel along the entire route without caring if she came up against a dead-end at its end. The future had no connection or dependence on the present and she wanted, with all her will, to remain enmeshed in this warm embrace and to taste the present…

As if she had years of experience she cupped his face with her long slender fingers, tasting his lips with light bites and then pressed her mouth against his, wanting to suck out his very soul with deep and exhilarating kisses. She felt him moan and shake in reaction to her passionate response. At one moment Sarantos getting his breath back murmured, “Stop now, my Melina, I won’t be able to control myself if you stop me later, if you don’t want me to go on…”

“I don’t want to stop you!” Melina said, out of breath. “Teach me everything, show me everything, right now!”

Sarantos hugged her with an iron grip against his body and Melina felt herself being pressed below her abdomen by a part of his body that she had only seen in statues. The evidence of his response to her made her shiver in anticipation as to what was to follow and which she was now more than ready to accept. Only he could give her what she wanted, here and now…

Sarantos pulled down the material of her neckline and her round and heavy breasts spilled out before his eyes. The youth caught his breath at the magnificent sight. Unable to control himself he stroked every curve and her nipples became hard to his touch. He put his head between them, licking every inch as Melina hugged him tightly to her afraid that he might stop this enthralling sensual exploration. Waves of electricity coursed through her body making her feel such tenderness and such heat between her legs that it was almost painful for her. Her passion was so intrusive, so hot, so demanding that it made her vision blur and created a sensation of dizziness that welled up from her stomach.

Sarantos lifted her dress over her head, placing it on the rock to keep it dry and then took off her panties. Melina was not wearing a bra. The girl was completely naked now in front of him with her perfect curves exposed to his view and to his wandering hands. The sight of her beauty burned him like a hot wind in a summer drought. He lifted her up in his arms and put her down on his jacket that he had spread out on the sand. When he leaned over her Melina impatiently unbuttoned his trousers and without any hesitation or shame stroked his penis that had become as hard as steel for her. “Don’t Melina, don’t!” he implored her. “Not yet, please!”

Melina stopped stroking him and waited. He opened her legs wide and lay on top of her. His moved his member slowly up and down along her Mound of Venus, stroking her clitoris and the outer part of her vagina with his erection. A cry broke free from her mouth as she pulled herself even closer to him, following his movements.”Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” she shouted in a hoarse voice, as if any man could have checked his passion at that stage. Sarantos wanted to make the foreplay last as long as possible to make her reach the heights of longing. He had been in love with her for so many years and now that she was giving herself to him he sought to reach the limits of his will, which, to tell the truth, he was about to exhaust, in order to give her the greatest possible pleasure. Her immediate response, in reverse proportion to her customary iciness and her refusal to allow anyone to read her sentiments, including her very closest circle, was an unexpected, or rather, a welcome surprise for him that made him melt with tenderness tightly interwoven with strong desire…

Sarantos looked at her face and Melina responded by exploring his, her eyes half-closed with heavy eyelids. Melina discerned a tension such as she had never seen before. He resembled a hunter who had finally trapped his prey, looking as if the only object of importance was the valuable quarry which in this instance was she. But her pursuer at this moment was trapped between her two legs and instead of being the hunter, he was the quarry and had been totally conquered…

With an impatient movement the young man unbuttoned his shirt that stood as the only obstacle between him and the nakedness of her flesh. In front of Melina’s eyes was spread the largest, widest expanse of smooth male skin that she had ever seen. Tight muscles were folded under its surface, inviting her to touch them to test their strength and endurance. She lifted her head and with her mouth found his nipples which she sucked on, just as he had sucked hers, with the same sensuality. Sarantos shivered bodily and his skin stood up in goose-bumps, thrilling her. He then turned sideways and started stroking her vagina slowly, gently, arousing her, centimeter by centimeter, sending waves of pleasure and warmth through her body. With a touch as gentle as that of a feather he stroked the length of the inside of her legs, not stopping. He leaned forward and with his tongue he touched her private parts. Her body responded with an involuntary spasm and her lips, beyond control now, begged him to touch her again with his manhood. Her hands tried to pull his head up towards her face, holding him tightly and digging her nails into his flesh because she had run out of patience in her anticipation of reaching another, higher, peak of pleasure…

At last his penis was back between her legs and was playing again around the periphery of her opening, guided by his hand. Then, slowly, carefully, he put the tip of his erection into the opening of her vagina. He pushed forward a little with his hips and then drew back. A cry came from Melina’s lips.

”Don’t leave me, don’t stop!”

Again his erection toyed inside her, for a little while longer, a little deeper. The girl grabbed him between his thighs and with as much strength as she could muster she stuck him to her in order not to allow him to try and withdraw as he had done before. She felt the large hot entry of his member sealing her vaginal cavity, moving inward, bit by bit. A momentary sensation of pain was immediately drowned out by passion and her desire to climax. Now he was completely inside her, deep in her interior, and she wanted nothing else in the world at this moment. Every deep thrust made her groan and her hands sought to confirm that he was fully inside her. The lower part of her body moved without guidance, on its own, to the rhythm of his movements, stuck to his body and sending such strong waves of pleasure that she thought she was about to lose her mind…

Their rhythm soon became more intense, more frantic, and suddenly a bolt of lightning appeared to burst inside her; a new sensation bringing satisfaction that she never before could have imagined. Her body shuddered from the overwhelming orgasm that continued vibrating in her, up and down, prolonging the infinite sweetness. After a few seconds she felt Sarantos’ convuslion deep inside her and heard his cry of release. They continued moving for a little while longer with their bodies together with the intent of prolonging for as long as possible the exquisite mutual feeling of utter bliss.

“I love you, Melina!” whispered Sarantos, pulling himself carefully out of her vagina to lie next to her. Melina felt wetness in her private parts; the wetness that was evidence of the pinnacle of the unexpected carnal pleasure she had just experienced. “So this then is the sexual act!” she thought. “It’s worth doing all the time!” Silently, she leaned forward and kissed Sarantos passionately on his lips. His chest rose up and down as he tried to get his breath back. Then she reached out with her hand and stroked his manhood that had lost its previous stiffness. “It was wonderful, Sarantos!” she said. “Can we do it again?”

The youth smiled and started sucking on her mouth before wandering over her breasts with his lips, stroking the hair on her Mound of Venus with his hands, and directing his tongue to sensually lick her clitoris. Melina squirmed and continued stroking him, while at the same time sucking on his nipples and nibbling on his earlobe. Her hands did not for a moment wander from his penis which she now felt rising up and coming to life again. The harder she felt him become, the more she was overcome by waves of desire coursing through her body. When she felt him hard as iron she bent down and her tongue started wandering up and down, with more attention to the head, exactly in the manner that Sarantos had done for her clitoris. Sarantos responded to the exquisite sensation of her tongue on his now complete erection with a series of groans, inarticulate exclamations and uncontrollable jerks.

Suddenly he caught her by her bent shoulders and said to her, “Enough! I can’t take any more!” He grabbed her, turning her onto her back and rushed to enter her. Melina shouted out, egging him on to continue with his frantic movements. “Deeper, deeper, Sarantos!” she repeated, again and again. Their bodies rolled left and right, stuck together as if they were one. The hardness that was moving inside her made Melina feel such vibrations of pleasure that she felt she would die from unfathomable bliss. How she wanted this wonderful sensation to last forever! But the time for the final outburst, for the magnificent climax, had come for them both in perfect synchronization. Their bodies had identified with one another in the mutual quest, in this unbelievable journey towards a common destination that was the soothing of their desires and passion, and for the satisfaction demanded by their flesh in its hunger for sex.

For a few minutes they lay next to one another with their hands entwined, sunk in sweet torpor. Only their irregular breathing revealed that they were alive. Suddenly Melina jumped up. “How long have we been away?” she exclaimed anxiously. Sarantos fumbled for the watch in his trouser pocket. “An hour and a half!” he said. “Oh, we’ll get into trouble!” Melina replied and running, she plunged into the sea. Sarantos, still lying down, leaning on his bent elbow, observed her naked buttocks as their white roundness shone in the moonlight and he again felt passion stirring his private parts.

“Come to your senses, Sarantos!” he chided himself. “They’ll catch onto us and we’ll be in trouble.” He stood up and entered the water to wash off the sand that was sticking to him. They came out of the water, holding hands and exchanging kisses and then stood for a while to dry off in the summer breeze. They then put on their clothes after shaking them carefully.

“I’ll leave first!” said Melina. “Come later from another direction not to raise suspicions!” A final kiss and Melina started in the direction of the wedding venue. Anxiety had welled up in her. “And what if they looked for me?” she wondered. “What will I say? I’ve been away for almost two hours! And what if they connect my absence with that of Sarantos? I’m done for! Who’ll be able to stop their tongues wagging?”

When she reached the wedding party she discovered with relief that nobody was at her table. The couples on the floor were following the rhythm of a melodic slow dance, the lights were dimmed and the silver light of the moon illuminated the tightly clasped figures of the dancers. Mary and Anestis were tightly clenched and were kissing. When the dance finished and her friends came back to her table, no one asked her where she had been. It seems, she said, freed from her earlier anxiety, that they had not noted her absence among so many people, absorbed as they had been with eating the flavorsome food and drinking good wines and dancing. It wasn’t as if they did this every day. Besides, it was a unique opportunity to flirt with the girls or the boys they liked and they weren’t about to lose it by spying on the doings of other invitees.

Sarantos arrived fifteen minutes later and sat at the opposite corner of the table. He filled his glass with wine and whenever he could he stole glances at Melina, thinking over every detail of the past hours. She had opened the Gates of Paradise for him, she had offered him unique moments of such intense carnal pleasure that they had been almost painful for him and which the young man was sure he would never experience again for the rest of his life. This girl was not only the goddess of his soul; she was also queen of his body. She had offered him her body with a sweet willingness that became a fire that had burned him. She wasn’t a girl; she was a volcano whose lava of desire and her responsiveness, after setting him entirely on fire, had calmed his years-long desire to dominate her, to make her his completely, something that he couldn’t have dreamed of at the beginning of the evening. Sated with pleasure, he silently begged that the experience that had been a fantasy beyond his wildest dreams and ambitions would continue…

Mary went from table to table, talking and joking with the guests who were slowly beginning to leave, having eaten their fill and exhausted themselves by dancing without stopping. The last to leave was her own group of friends. She invited them all to come for a farewell meal at her house the next day. In the evening she and Anesti would leave for Italy on their honeymoon. The first night of their wedding would be spent at the seaside hotel where the reception was to be held. When the last of the wedding guests had left the couple went up the stairs hand in hand to their tastefully decorated room. They sat for a while on the balcony admiring the silver reflection of the moon on the sea which appeared to shiver at the contact, and then they went into their bedroom. Anesti took off Mary’s wedding dress with practiced hands and while kissing her passionately he removed her lace underwear.

Mary responded with ardor to his kisses and caresses. The girl had waited, after all, for six whole months. She was young and her flesh had its demands. Her husband dragged her to the bed and before long, and without taking enough time in foreplay, he rushed to enter her. Mary screamed in pain and her passion dissolved. With effort and in extreme discomfort she put up with him until he had finished. When he lay down next to her, panting, the girl tried to rid her face of any signs of disappointment. The sexual act was in no way like the ones she had read about in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” where every scene had tickled her senses and made her look forward impatiently for the moment when, she too, would experience something similar. How many times had she not thumbed through the forbidden book that she had bought secretly on a trip to Athens with her father and had been hidden in a steamer trunk carefully wrapped in a thick shawl covered with a pile of clothes? How many times when her parents were away had she not read, and read again, the passages describing the heroine’s sexual encounters, spinning her own erotic romances where her senses were awakened and her unquenched desires could only be tamed by the force and the art of an experienced lover! Tonight the scene that she had been nurturing for so many years in her imagination and had fed with her sexual urges had nothing in common with what she had experienced and which had been particularly painful for her, despite its brief duration. “Perhaps it was unpleasant because it was my first time,” she thought, and the explanation sounded convincing to her. “I hope the next time and the ones after will be completely different,” she said to set her mind at ease.

In a little while Anesti was back on top of her and deep inside her again. It wasn’t painful this time, but she found it impossible to follow his rhythm. He couldn’t touch some relevant spot that would strengthen her longing and her passion to allow her too to get somewhere, and after a while all this back-and-forth of male hips tired and annoyed her because she was unable to participate. She listened to Anesti grunting and soon after he fell by her side, satisfied, while she felt that she was suspended somewhere else and not a part of what had taken place, as if it were not her body that had been conquered. She bit her lip to prevent herself from crying and creating a situation with her husband. He put his arms around her waist tightly and went to sleep on her shoulder with a smile of contentment on his face…

Mary stayed awake for the rest of the night. A fear had been born inside her that had not been there at the beginning of the previous evening. Could it be that she was frigid and unable to experience satisfaction and that her body was incapable of reaching orgasm despite her strong desires?

She put aside this annoying thought and the next morning when Anesti woke up with an iron-hard erection, Mary concentrated on the stirring sight. She stroked Anesti everywhere on his body, she kissed and was kissed by him passionately and longing woke up in her for what was to follow. And what was to follow, followed, and Mary’s thirst was again not quenched this time either. She felt anger well up inside her, looking at her husband who was satiated and rid of his load, smiling with satisfaction while she was still in suspense and hungry, with a sense of pressure in her vagina that had not found a way out to release her. She wanted to shout out, to tell him something, to make him concentrate on her problem, but, seeing his contentment, she did not dare. “Next time maybe things will be different. I’ll get used to accepting him inside me, I will get used to his rhythm, and doing that I will climax too!” she thought, and hung her hopes on it…

But even this hope ended in disappointment in the times that followed, and they were many, as Anesti was brimming with youthful vigour and sexual release was a pressing issue for him. The fact that he wanted her and sought to copulate with her, excited Mary, but for her an orgasm had become a rarely stumbled-on treasure, or rather something belonging to an unseen world. The woman tried all possible positions since Anesti was particularly inventive, liking variety and whatever was different. The result was the same. Mary was driven to a frenzy by her desire to climax, with a fire burning her private parts that could not be extinguished by the entry of her husband’s organ, slowly or quickly, into her, or in any permutation. And the woman found refuge in the bath after their encounters, finding release by masturbating. “What do I need a man for if I can satisfy myself?” she asked herself cynically and in anger on occasion. Immediately afterwards she would repent for being unfair to Anesti. It wasn’t Anesti’s fault. His private parts were well formed and of generous proportions, and he was experienced in this field; even the frequency and variety he brought to their bed was enough to prove that he excelled in the sexual game. It was more than clear that the problem was hers. It was impossible for her to climax with a man inside her, even one who was dynamic and vigorous, and this realization almost brought her to a point of despair. She decided not to think about the matter in order for it not to become an obsession with her, and, additionally, to never tell Anesti about her inability to climax. She pretended to experience release, assuming a facial expression of ecstasy so as not to upset him, since, despite the fact that Mary discreetly guided him many times to do what she wanted and he followed her instructions willingly, there was never however a cure to her sexual problem…She would leave things as they were for it would be a pity to disturb the equilibrium of her otherwise harmonious marriage because of what, clearly now to her, was her own physical dysfunction.

CHAPTER 5

The day after Mary’s wedding Sarantos, not being able to get a moment of sleep because of the excitement of his unexpected and epic coming together with Melina, went to wait in a café on the edge of the town square since Melina would have to go by there to go to the street market.

Sarantos knew that every Saturday Melina bought vegetables for her family. They didn’t shop in the town greengrocers’ shops except on exceptional occasions because their financial difficulties made it necessary for her to buy provisions from the street vendors’ stalls. Today was Saturday and Sarantos hoped that the girl would not sleep in as a result of last night’s wedding and the late night. And his hopes were not disappointed. At ten thirty he saw Melina approaching from a distance carrying her shopping net, and his heart skipped a beat in excitement. He stood up quickly and crossed the main street to accidentally – supposedly - find himself in her path. When she approached him he greeted her with an engaging smile, full of love and tenderness. She blurted out a dry “Good Morning” and moved as if to continue on her way. Sarantos was upset and started to walk alongside her.

“Are we going to get together later, Melina?” he asked her. She stopped and turned to look at him with such a frozen look that one would have thought she was addressing some undesirable, and said to him. “No, Sarantos, we won’t meet today, nor in the future.”

Sarantos was stunned. “But Melina dear, last night we…” he didn’t manage to finish the sentence.

“Last night we both gave in to the madness of the moment, Sarantos,” she replied to him. “What happened was a mistake and can’t be repeated. Besides, you know that I am not in love with you and last night’s happenings were only physical. I don’t want to have a relationship with you and I would like, if you too have no objection, for us to forget everything and go back to the day before yesterday when we were just friends. I don’t want anything more than that,” she said, and turning to her right she walked away, leaving him stunned in the middle of the street. Sarantos almost collapsed from shock. He could not believe what he had just heard a few moments earlier. How could a woman abandon herself unconditionally with such sexual frenzy, and as a virgin at that, and the next day be able to utter such harsh words? “But what have I done to her to make her treat me like a stranger, like an enemy? I neither forced her, nor did I do something without her consent, nor did I insult her. She knows that I have adored her for years. Oh God, what can I do now? What has bitten her to make her throw me aside like used goods, talking to me about friendship and other nonsense?” he asked himself in desperation. Tremors ran up and down his spine. His kneed buckled, unable to hold him upright. Breathing as if someone were choking him he collapsed onto the first café chair he saw and ordered a coffee to recover. He was so agitated that he scalded himself drinking it, hot as it was, spilling half of it onto his trousers, his trembling hand unable to keep the cup still.

This unexpected rejection was strange, unheard of, but primarily illogical he thought, if one took into account what had taken place the previous night. Sarantos tried to find an explanation, repeating her words over and over again in his head, but could find none. And suddenly his wounded pride made him angry.

“If she wants to lie down with everyone for a night and then not to say even good morning to them, it’s her problem!” he thought, so primed with anger that he felt his cheeks burning as if they were on fire. He immediately regretted his cynical silent words, the result of the humiliation he felt at her harsh and unexpected rejection of him. For a second he thought of approaching her again to ask for an explanation, even to beg her, but her words – like knife stabs – came back to him. “I am not in love with you. Last night was physical.”

There was no need to talk to her again on this subject. It was closed forever for him, following her declaration. Any attempt to approach her would humiliate him even more and would ridicule him. He wanted to have a friend at that moment to share a few words with him, Iakovos for instance. But he couldn’t share his thoughts because he didn’t want to expose Melina. He loved her deeply, you see, despite the deep wound she had made in his heart…

He got up from the chair after cleaning his trousers with his handkerchief and a little water and with slow steps, like that of a convict, started off for home. Entering the yard he saw Eleni, his mother, digging among the geraniums. When she lifted her head and saw him she was surprised by his appearance. His face was deathly pale, his tall proud bearing was gone and instead she saw his hunched shoulders, his brown eyes looking dark, huge, and full of sadness. Eleni wiped the sweat off her forehead and ran to put her arms round him.

“What’s wrong, my son? Are you ill?” she asked him.

Sarantos shook his head in negation.

“Come, tell me what is happening?” his mother said, drawing him to the wooden bench in the shade. Sarantos was so bound to her that he knew that she would listen to him with her heart and mind. He told her in a few words what had transpired with Melina and the developments that morning. Eleni listened without speaking. When he finished recounting his story she said to him.” My son, I have known Melina from when she was born. She is neither superficial nor a girl to indulge in casual sex. She has been through hard times in her life and both you and I know of these difficulties. Perhaps she is afraid of committing herself because she hasn’t got the strength to continue living in poverty and misery. And you, Sarantos, even if you married her, couldn’t change her life for the better. You haven’t got the means to do so. I know that you have been in love with her from the time you were a child but it seems that for Melina that is not enough. What is most likely is that she has exhausted her reserves of strength and doesn’t want to take you on board only to dump you later. Don’t bear a grudge against her, my son. Don’t let your pride blind you and lead you away from the reality of the situation. Of course she wanted you when she came to you without any reservations, but she didn’t want what would follow. Give way to your anger and justify her! It seems that the girl could not do anything else!

Tears involuntarily ran down Sarantos cheeks as his mother spoke. Eleni wiped them away and kissed him gently on his brow.

“Mother, I can’t stay in this town any longer. You must understand that, I am finished. There is no room for me here anymore!” Sarantos murmured.

“Relax, my boy, and together we will find a solution. Let me think and we’ll discuss it again. Go and lie down now and we’ll talk later.”

Sarantos, obedient as a child, walked off towards his bedroom. She remained alone and ruminated over her son’s confession. She understood his hurt as memories came back to her of Sarantos as a little boy, still in shorts, when he would often say to her when they were alone, “When I grow up I will become a judge and marry my Melina!” And Eleni would laugh at the seriousness of these childish declarations, but she herself had looked on the young girl as her future daughter-in-law. She couldn’t understand how any woman could ignore this strapping young man with his handsome face, good character and the charm that his presence radiated. And Eleni was objective in her judgment!

She herself had leaned on this mutual understanding and love for years, on the love coming from her son, to face her own martyrdom. The moment had now come for her to stand steady as a rock in his own moment of emotional turbulence because she knew of the lifelong love of Sarantos for Melina and she had seen the depth of his feelings for her. She feared that her son would wither away because he would not be able to avoid seeing Melina, without questions being raised, because they were both in the same tightly-knit group of friends. She was sure that his wound would bleed however much he tried to come to terms with the fact that his dreams had been shattered. The wisest thing would be for Sarantos to distance himself from the town. But where should he go? They had no relatives or friends in Athens, and there wasn’t enough money to send him away to study as the young man fervently desired. It was then that she remembered Paschalis, her cousin, who was well established in Australia with flourishing businesses, who, on many occasions when he travelled to Greece had told her that he would gladly invite the whole family to come to Australia. But Mitsos, her husband, wouldn’t have a word of it. He didn’t care about his children’s future and about better living conditions. He was very happy to continue emptying bottles of wine, playing cards at the café with his friends, and exerting himself in the bedroom…

Eleni sprang up resolutely. She knew what she would do. She would write to Paschalis. But there was another matter to be settled. She needed to find money for the expensive boat ticket, which under no circumstances did she want to request from her cousin. She would ask for the money from her father, explaining the reason to him, in a roundabout way. The truth was that the previous year when her teacher father had retired and offered her half his golden handshake compensation, Eleni out of pride had refused the money. She would go straight to her family’s village now to settle the issue, if indeed the offer that had been made the previous year was still valid and her father had not used the money for something else. She would talk to Sarantos only when the matter of his ticket funding had been settled as well as the issue of his living expenses for his first few weeks in Australia.

Without saying anything to anyone after what had happened that afternoon, she boarded the bus for her village. Half an hour later she walked into her parents’ house. They were worried to see her in front of them without any warning. Usually she visited them on Sundays with her children. Mitsos never accompanied her because he couldn’t stand the sight of her parents. They had similar sentiments for their son-in-law whom they considered a good-for-nothing, and for the big, or rather unforgiveable, mistake on behalf of their pampered daughter, whom he had, in their opinion, turned into a spineless little woman without any character. Eleni took her father aside and said that she needed the money, asking him if he still had the ability to help her.

“The money is for you, my child. We are old and don’t need it. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the bank and withdraw it. Only, I want us to meet somewhere out of doors so that I won’t bump into Mitsos and have some sort of argument develop”.

They agreed to meet the next day at noon outside the main church. As agreed, her father gave her a bulging envelope, wishing her “May everything go well for the boy!” Eleni, overcome with emotion, kissed him gratefully and went back home. She called Sarantos and told him what she had done. Sarantos was visibly relieved as she spoke and his reaction calmed Eleni. She had harboured a fear deep inside her that his statement “There isn’t enough room for me here!” that her son had blurted out were merely words of disappointment, bitterness and of the moment. She immediately sat down and wrote to Paschalis. Sarantos went to his grandparents while waiting for a reply. He didn’t feel like meeting his friends or, of course, Melina, who would be with them…

Fifteen days later Eleni’s cousin wrote back saying that they were eagerly looking forward for Sarantos to come and they were already preparing the guest house for him to have his own independent space. Eleni bought the ticket for her son’s long trip. Her soul mourned her coming parting with Sarantos, but above all and everyone was his peace of mind, his own mental stability. His departure was at the end of the month, in ten days time. Sarantos returned to the town from the village and informed his friends of his decision to emigrate. Everybody was saddened by the news. Melina, at the other end of the table, cast him a sorrowful look, without making any comment, something that Sarantos interpreted as only regret at the departure of her childhood friend. Her face was very serious, in fact so expressionless that the young man could not discern any other emotion there.

When the day came for Sarantos to leave, his grandparents, his family and all his friends went to the bus station to see him off. Mitsos, his father, was noticeably absent. He had provoked great arguments, swearing and shouting that now that he needed extra hands to help him in the fields his son was running off overseas. Eleni for the first time raised her voice and warned him that if he continued like that she would take the children and also leave with Sarantos. Mitsos cowered, but was constantly drunk and refused to wave him off at the bus and didn’t condescend to say even a simple “goodbye” to his son. When the boy was walking across the yard towards the street gate of the house he shouted “I don’t want to see you ever again!”

Eleni begged Sarantos not to respond, saying that it was the wine that was talking, not his father…

Eleni and his sisters hugged him with deep sorrow in their hearts, trying to hold back their tears. All of his childhood friends wept as they said goodbye. They had no idea when, or if, they would see him again. Melina, standing at the edge of the pavement, and half-hidden by the others was waving her hand. As the vehicle started off Sarantos, overcome by emotion, looked back at his beloved friends for the last time. His eye caught Melina’s face, pale and drawn. Large tears were running down her cheeks. Or was it his imagination?

In a little while the bus disappeared round a bend in the road leaving behind clouds of dust and the bitterness of parting.

CHAPTER 6

Leaving the bus terminal the youngsters decided to have a coffee at the village square to wind themselves down from the emotionally charged moment. When they sat down Paulina said “We’ve grown up and our group has started to scatter! First Mary got married and we see her once in a blue moon, now Sarantos, and who knows who will be next…”

“Probably you with Dina,” said Iakovos. “Did you hear anything back from New York?”

Dina replied that her uncle, who was the priest at the main Orthodox church in Brooklyn, had managed to get two scholarships from the Greek expatriate community for the School of Film, one for Paulina for acting classes, and one for her Dina for costume design. They had also found free accommodation for them for a year. It would be up to the girls to decide when they would go.

A thorny issue was how their parents would react, the girls having purposely avoided telling them anything in order not to find obstacles in their way, but the two girls realized that they could not keep putting off telling their families about their plans for ever. They already had open tickets.

“I was right when I said we would be left alone here!” commented Iakovos melancholically, knowing that even if he wanted to leave the provinces his family obligations would not allow it. Urania and Sofia were shaking their heads thoughtfully. On the one hand they were happy to see their childhood friends spreading their wings to their future, but on the other hand they regretted losing companions with whom they had been together from nursery school. They knew that their absence would be very obvious. Only Melina, sitting quietly in her chair, hardly made a sound. She was already hiding a big secret from her friends and it would be sure that she would never ever reveal it - her night of sex with Sarantos. She loved him, she felt for him; guilt and bitterness stabbed at her, knowing that Sarantos was leaving because of her, but she would never admit it. She had deprived him for many years of a more permanent place next to her, putting aside every emotion that could commit her. Emotions were one thing; harsh reality another. She had fought many battles in her life until today; she had been splattered with the mud of humiliation and was determined not to wage another fight that had to do with her personal life. From now on she would chase after what was easy, what was painless, what was comfortable. The night with Sarantos was a present that she gave first to herself and then to Sarantos. She wanted to be flesh of his flesh, a piece of his soul; she wanted to lock inside her forever the mental and physical integration with her fellow traveler of all these years that her difficult decisions and the need to distance herself had made her send away, even after their magical coming together. She wasn’t worthy of honest, good-looking, pure Sarantos, and he wasn’t the right man for her. He was lacking in those prerequisites that she had laid down and which came down to just one thing – money. And there couldn’t be a bigger obstacle for long suffering Melina…

Two hours later the group broke up. It was time for their afternoon rest. Dina was determined not to put off telling her father about her plans any longer. Whatever he did, whatever prohibitions he may try and impose on her, she would leave. When her father came, she courageously told him all about her plans. She expected him to react violently, but what his tired face showed was worry and agony.

“Where will you go, a mere girl, to a strange land at the end of the earth, my child? Are you out of your mind?” he said to her.

“I won’t be going alone, father. Paulina will be with me. My uncle has arranged everything for us, school and accommodation. There is nothing here for me to do professionally and I want to work and improve my life. Please don’t stand in my way. You’ll ruin my future!”

Her father listened to her as she spoke without uttering a word. He saw that the die had been cast. Dina, obstinate by nature, could not be convinced to change her mind. Besides which, he had no alternative to offer her. He was just a poor taxi driver scraping to make ends meet. For him to marry her off would be difficult. There wasn’t a dowry with which to tempt a husband. If he went against her wishes, she would run off secretly, and he knew that his daughter would have thought of this too. He was forced to agree and to let her leave…

The two next hours went by with advice being given and to the pointing out of various things to her. Dina was very willing to listen to advice. The much desired green light had opened the way to new prospects for an optimistic and hopeful future…

When Paulina returned home she found her mother Vaggelio cooking beans. The relationship between the two women had for many years been tense. Paulina never understood or ignored Vaggelio’s sexual behaviour that infuriated, belittled and shamed her. Each new affair of Vaggelio’s caused such tension and anguish in her that even when she went out with the group to the village square her mind was driven to such despair by the whispers and hints that she thought that even the trees were mocking her. How many quarrels, how many bitter words, how many tears had been wasted. Vaggelio would not change her tune and would never change her habits until she grew old when not an attractive male, but any male, would come near her…

Paulina felt no obligation to update her about her decisions. She had no respect for her. She didn’t even know if she loved her though she bore the title of birth mother. All she wanted to do was simply to announce that she was leaving, more concerned for her sisters who would be left behind to carry the burden of their mother’s behaviour and the social sarcasm that accompanied it until they themselves would come of age and be able to disappear to avoid the long term outcry and the endless comments of their fellow citizens.

When they sat down at table Paulina told them of her plans. She was leaving the town for good. Vaggelio was taken aback but did not put forward any objections. The relationship between her and her daughter had been a pot that had been boiling for many years. Maybe it was better for both of them for their daily conflicts to end with one of them leaving, for the good of the younger children.

“Do whatever God tells you,” she said to Paulina. Her younger sisters burst into tears and begged her not to go away. Paulina was resolute. One day they would understand that her choices were very limited, or to be more exact, only one – to flee in order to save what was left of her personal pride and dignity that her hot-blooded mother, according to her, had soiled.

A month later the two girls left to chase their dream. Dina’s father would drive them to Piraeus in his taxi in order for them to avoid the ordeal of travelling by public transport. Kisses and hugs again; an emotionally charged scene, again, at the parting from friends and relatives. Paulina and Dina held back their tears in order not to appear weak because they wanted the last image they would project of themselves before leaving to be of two dynamic young women who had no fear of the unknown and would be prepared to work hard and conscientiously for a successful future.

The group of youngsters, decimated by the absence of Sarantos, Dina and Paulina, felt like someone who was slowly but steadily losing their limbs, one by one; losing parts of their childhood, one by one. First there was Mary, married now, who couldn’t share in their life and limited herself to meetings for a coffee at her house, or at birthdays and holidays, then Sarantos, and now Dina and Paulina. Those left behind were Iakovos, Urania, Sofia, Melina and Mary, who, as soon as her friends’ taxi was out of sight left for her home because she had to cook lunch for Anestis, her husband. Sofia told the others that she was starting work on Monday at the Town Hall. The Member of Parliament who had been approached by her father had kept his promise to him for fear of losing votes and the young woman would from now on have a secure job and an assured, albeit small, wage and would not have to worry in the future.

Urania, on the other hand, was in constant conflict with her father, the headmaster. Despite the fact that she had finished high school at the top of her class, she stubbornly refused to sit her university entrance exams. The only thing she wanted was to marry for love and have a family. She didn’t want to work anywhere. Her parents were driven to distraction by their disappointment, but for hard-boiled Urania it was all just water off a duck’s back.

“However much you insist, you won’t get anywhere! I am going to live my life as I want and not as you have planned!” she declared after their last argument the previous evening. Her father was so incensed that he threatened to throw her out of the house.

“I’m not prepared to have you in my way, lazing and not wanting to do anything!” he shouted at her.

“I’ll look after the house, I’ll cook, I’ll help in the field, and thus mother will get some rest,” Urania answered back. With her mother Maria’s intervention, matters calmed down somewhat. Her father went to lie down with the bitter certainty that a worthy and cultivated brain would go to waste and would limit itself to mundane, commonplace, working-class chores.

After Mary’s departure the four remaining members of the group stayed behind in the square to drink a coffee. Iakovos became the brunt of jokes by the girls because of the way he noisily and hurriedly sucked up his cold instant coffee through the straw, having to go and help his mother at their small haberdashery. He soon left and the three girls stayed behind, looking curiously around them at the faces of various unknown of people sitting near them and at the passers-by. The tourist season had begun and a number of foreigners had arrived at the attractive seaside town.

“Finally, we are going to liven up a little!” commented Urania, scrutinizing a good-looking Scandinavian tourist with interest. “I’m fed up with seeing the same faces again and again! Isn’t he a dish?” She asked her friends, pointing out the object of her admiration. They agreed and carried on commenting on every new arrival that passed in front of them.

Melina took little part in the incessant chatter. Her eyes were focused on a shiny expensive-looking sports car. The vehicle stopped a few meters away from the girls. Its driver, a handsome man of about thirty five locked it and went to sit at the next table, ordering a coffee.

“Cool guy!” whispered Sofia so as not to be heard by the man. Melina could not take her eyes off him. She was impressed by the flashy car and realized that she also liked its driver. It looked like the stranger was flush with money. At some moment the man turned and looked without interest at the girls making them hurriedly take their eyes off him. His gaze, concealed by his dark fashionable sun glasses stopped at Melina. Her unpolished, almost wild beauty impressed him. “Nice piece!” he thought. “I hope she also has a good body.” From where he was sitting he could only see Melina’s face. The rest of her was hidden from view by the torsos of the other girls.

Half an hour later the girls stood up and started for their homes which were in different directions. The man was waiting to see Melina stand up, to judge her as a whole. “She has a very feminine body!” he noted, feeling a wave of desire to possess the girl overtake him as it coursed through his veins. As soon as the young woman had gone round the corner he got up and quickly went to his car. He followed Melina’s passage from the opposite side of the street.

“I hope I can stop her somewhere to say a couple of words to her,” he thought. Ten blocks further on the girl turned left into an uphill dirt road. Stepping on the accelerator not to lose her the man approached and said to her “Miss, can I talk to you?” Melina did not reply, but smiled almost imperceptibly. The stranger pulled up the car at the side of the road and started walking next to her.

“Please go away!” Melina said to him. “My neighbours will see us and I’ll be in trouble with my family.”

“Tell me your name and when we can meet. My name is Paris and I’m from Athens…”

“Oh, so he is from the capital!” noted Melina. “That’s positive.” She turned and looked at him directly, studying his face. He had attractive regular features and when he smiled there was a flash of perfect white teeth. Paris lowered his sunglasses, resting them on his nose and his eyes, blue as the spring sky, fixed themselves playfully on her.

“Have I passed the test?” he asked her. Melina laughed. He was very cute and spontaneous. “I’m Melina,” she said.

“You couldn’t be called anything else, pretty and sweet as you are!” he teased. “When will I see you again?” he asked her.

Melina opened her mouth to refuse but his hand reached out and squeezed her elbow.

“Please don’t say no! I only want ten minutes of your time!”

The truth was that Paris had impressed Melina from the first moment. She told him she would meet him at sundown at eight where the beach ended and the rocks began.

“I’ll find the spot, Melina,” he saidblowing her a kiss as he entered his car and in a few moments he was gone around a bend in the street.

Melina looked around to see if there was a neighbour on a balcony or at a window. Luckily she didn’t see anyone. She went home and spent the next few hours until eight bringing back again and again the image of the stranger, impressed as she was not only by his appearance and by the expensive car that gave him more status in her eyes, but also by his relaxed manner and his easy ability to approach the opposite sex. Yes! She liked Paris and wanted very much to see him. Immediately though an unpleasant thought came across her. What would she wear for their meeting? She had such a limited set of clothes! She went to the makeshift wardrobe that contained all the family’s wear and started searching through the section that was hers. She looked at two or three items that were hanging there. As designs they were not worth talking about and were so worn by time that they would look as if they had come from a waste bin, even though they had just been washed. Her heart tightened again. How tired she was of not even having the essentials, how disgusted she was by poverty and its constant privations! It was so unfair that she couldn’t buy a new, even cheap, dress and to have to make do with hand-me-downs or clothes borrowed on special occasions from her friends and being dependant on others’ charity.

“When will this martyrdom, this humiliation, end?” she wondered for the thousandth time.

She found a T-shirt and a skirt that didn’t show signs of constant wear. She would wear these at the meeting that she was determined to attend. She washed her hair which gleamed when she let it down over her back. She would have wanted to have lipstick to brighten up her lips, but it was an item that was beyond her means.

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll be a natural beauty!” she sarcastically said to herself. At ten to eight she was already at the spot where she was to meet Paris. On the way there she thought that she may be going to the beach for nothing and the most likely outcome was for the chap not to show up at all; that his whole approach had been nothing more than a joke on her. Her heart leaped when she saw his car parked at a distance and him standing next to it and smoking.

“Welcome!” he said to her when she approached.

“Do you want us to stay here or to go somewhere else?” he asked her.

“Let’s leave here as soon as possible not to be seen by anyone!”Melina said. “I don’t feel like provoking gossip and causing problems…”

Paris opened the passenger door, put up the car top and sat behind the steering wheel. In a few minutes the car was swallowing up the country road and the wind as it rushed in through her open window was tousling the girl’s rich mane of hair. Paris sneaked glances at her.

“She is very beautiful and unaffected, despite the rags she is wearing,” he thought.” Imagine what she’ll look like if properly dressed and if she goes to have her hair done and face made up! She’ll be a true Goddess!”

Melina on the other hand thought that his light-blue long sleeved shirt suited him well while his discreet aftershave blending with the smell of the leather seats gave her a sensation of pleasure. It was the first time she had been in such a fine car; it was the first time that she experienced such luxury and she wanted to savour every moment. She was greatly flattered by the fact that this cosmopolitan man had noticed her and had chosen to go out with her.

“Do you know somewhere where we can eat? I’m a stranger here and haven’t any idea of things around here.”

Melina said that she knew a village on the side of the mountain that she had heard was scenic and had a good taverna. She herself had never been there. Besides which it was only a few kilometers away from where they were at that moment. Paris turned the wheel, following her directions, and the highly-tuned car with a murmur started up the steep road which wasn’t in the best state of repair. Fifteen minutes later they arrived in the centre of the village. Huge plane trees spread across the flagstoned square and several tables were set out in the open space while rushing water bubbled in channels to the left and right of them.

“What a lovely place!” exclaimed Melina.

“It is certainly idyllic!” agreed Paris, leading her to a table hidden behind the trunk of a huge tree. They sat down and ordered food. The platter of grilled meat gave off a delectable aroma when it arrived at their table. Melina wanted to gobble everything down in a flash, but held herself back for her escort not to see that she was famished.

Paris watched her empty the plates of delicious and well-cooked meat with such appetite. He didn’t know that at her home they only ate meat twice a year or perhaps on one or two other occasions when invited to a wedding or a baptism. When they had finished their meal they stared into one another’s eyes for a while, slowly drinking their wine.

“You impressed me from the first moment I saw you in the square!” Paris began. “I would like to know more about you…”

Melina told him, in five short phrases, everything that had to do with her. She didn’t have anything spectacular to say about herself. Her biggest accomplishment was her high school diploma. The only point at which her voice perked up was when she admitted to him that she hated the provinces and that it was her heart’s desire to leave and go to Athens to find a job to try and change her life. She couldn’t stand the monotony, the boredom and the gossip any more, nor the lack of prospects for something better. Nor did she want to marry a fellow villager and be buried, so to speak, forever in her home town.

Paris, in his turn, told her that he had an import-export company, that he travelled extensively and lived in New York for most of the time. He didn’t spend more than three or four months a year in Athens.

“You’re very lucky to be able to live how you want, and where you want!” said Melina. “God help us who live in the village and will waste away here for the rest of our lives!”

“Don’t say that!” replied Paris. “People only fail to do things they don’t want. If someone has goals and persists, at some point they’ll succeed. Determination is needed, and a little luck of course!”

“Where would I find luck? It passed by and didn’t stop for me!” she thought but didn’t say this out loud to the stranger.

They spoke for a while longer and Melina said to him that they should be getting back. She didn’t want to be late and to have to explain where she had been to her parents. At ten thirty they were back again. Melina told him to let her off before they entered town so as not to be seen. So it happened. Before she got out of the car Paris embraced her and kissed her lightly on the lips, stroking her face gently.

“I like you a lot!” he said to her, but strangely he didn’t carry on kissing and stroking her. Melina felt goose-bumps of pleasure rising on her skin when he touched her, but didn’t say a word.

“Will I see you tomorrow at the same place?” Paris asked her.

“Yes! At the same time,” the girl replied and went off.

They met every day for several days in a row. The man explained that he was passing through her town but had stayed behind only because of her since she had captivated him with her beauty. Three weeks went by. Paris, except for a few kisses, hadn’t asked for anything more. Melina felt like a queen to see this desirable man showing so much interest in her, for just a simple provincial girl and didn’t pressure her at all sexually, as other men would do, in order to bed the woman who had drawn their attention. His discreetness, his politeness, made her fall in love with him. He had everything she would want in a man. Good looks, money, manners, a life in cosmopolitan centres – Melina’s dream - travel, expensive clothes and a way with words. What made her wonder was what did a catch like this want from her, since in all this time he hadn’t progressed to even one daring caress, something that would be well received by her. Melina wanted to sexually “try” a man-of-the-world who had entranced her. She had nothing to lose even if he abandoned her the next day, which was the most likely outcome. She didn’t believe that she could conquer Paris emotionally, knowing that for sure many interesting women of his social standing would have passed through his bed. However many thoughts and questions went through her mind she couldn’t drum up the courage to ask him where he was going with all of this.

One night Paris, taking her hands in his and kissing them tenderly, said to her, “Melina, my dear, in two days I have to leave for Athens and I would like to take you with me. I am charmed by your beauty and sweet manner and that’s the reason I stayed so long in your town. I have my own apartment and if you want you can stay with me. It’s an opportunity for you to live the things you dreamed of and to change your life. Don’t reply now, please. I want you to think about my proposal and to tell me tomorrow what you have decided.”

Melina couldn’t contain her curiosity and asked him, “In what capacity will I be coming with you, Paris?

He looked at her affectionately. “In whatever capacity you want Melina, dear. As a friend, a companion, or whatever you want to call it!” the man replied.

When Melina left him she was confused. On the one hand the opportunity to leave the provinces was a gift from heaven, on the other hand she thought about the pain she would be inflicting on her family and the repercussions for them. Lying on her divan-bed that she shared with her sister, hearing it squeak each time she turned, and in the near-dark of the room she could see three other people lying on mattresses on the floor: her grandmother, her younger sister and her brother. The frequency of her father’s cart-hire fares had been reduced greatly and then almost exclusively only to transporting animal fodder, since trucks had entered the goods transport market and had pushed aside the out-of-date animal-drawn carts. Her washerwoman mother’s daily wages had become rarer because local households had bought washing machines. It was a matter of time before they would be left without any income at all. These miserable thoughts made her come to a decision. She couldn’t put up with this kind of life any longer and she would take her chances. The next morning when she found herself alone at home for a while because her grandmother had gone to a neighbour for her morning coffee and her siblings were playing in a nearby field she sat and wrote the following letter to her family.

“My dear parents,

I am sorry to cause you pain but I am leaving for Athens. It is impossible for me to carry on living under these conditions. When I find work I will send you a little money for the children. I hope you will understand me and not hold my leaving against me.

With kisses and with my love forever,

Melina.”

She folded the letter carefully and put it into her pocket. Then she found a worn travel bag and packed her few personal belongings. She covered it with a blanket and went out to phone Paris. It was 9 a.m. and he was still asleep.

“I’m coming with you, Paris,” she said. “Come in an hour to the end of my street to pick me up.”

“I’ll be there!” he replied and got up to start packing his suitcase. He paid his hotel bill, hurriedly drank a coffee and started off for Melina’s house. At 10 a.m. on the dot he saw her running towards him holding onto her travel bag. Paris opened the door for her and placed her bag on the back seat.

“Leave quickly so they won’t see us!” she said to him out of breath.

The man put his foot down on the accelerator and in a short time the car was beyond the town’s limits.

Mrs. Magdalini, a neighbour of Melina’s who was hanging out her washing on her balcony saw the sports car and the girl with the travel bag getting into it and hung over the railing with great curiosity to see what was going on. She looked at the driver and noted he wasn’t from their parts. He was a total stranger.

“Now where has the blessed girl taken off to with the stranger?” Mrs. Magdalini wondered, anxiously. She went indoors and told her invalid husband about what had happened. “Should I inform Mr. Nikos, Melina’s father, Manoli?” she asked him.

“Stay where you are and don’t meddle in other people’s business. Whatever they are going to find out let them do it on their own. I’m not in the mood for an altercation!” Manoli said to her firmly.

“My husband is right,” the woman thought. “Mr. Nikos may be insulted and get angry if I tell him what I saw. Let it pass! We’ll soon find out what happened. “

In the afternoon when Melina’s parents returned home they found their daughter’s letter on the table. They almost collapsed when they read its contents.

“What a mess the wretched girl has landed us in,” cried her mother with sorrow in her heart. “Who will stop people gossiping now?”

“I thought we had been through everything, without this happening. Our daughter taking off!” said Mr. Niko sternly.

“What do we do now?” asked the mother. “Where will we find her to bring her back?”

“We can’t do anything,” the father replied. “She is over 18. She isn’t a minor for us to call the police. Whatever was to happen to us has happened! We’ll have to wait for her to contact us sooner or later.”

A few hours later the town was buzzing with gossip. Two or three other villagers had seen Melina in the sport car and had told everyone.

“The cart owner’s daughter has run away with a boyfriend!” they repeated in the cafes, each one adding his own pinch of spice to make the story more interesting. Melina’s parents didn’t have anywhere to turn with shame and worry. Their daughter had never caused any problems in the past. She hadn’t given anyone the slightest excuse to comment or gossip about her before and had always stood out at school because of her high marks and for her obedient and pleasant character. This unexpected turn shattered them and they didn’t know how to handle it or how to face up to public outcry. For their daughter to run away in such a manner, with someone unknown at that, was not only a heavy burden, it was an unbearable one for these conservative people whose only possessions were their good name and their moral life. Their heart was wrung by their daughter’s criminal thoughtlessness that had demolished the last bulwark of defense that they had in their society. At this moment even the worry of what would happen to their child and in whose hands she was had been superseded by the anger and indignation of the shock she had sprung on them. Mr. Niko would have wanted to have the young lady in front of him and to give her the hiding of her life. Instead of that he banged his fist on the table, swearing and uttering curses and empty threats while the rest of the family shrank into a corner, deeply hurt by the sudden calamity that had descended on their home…

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