The sleek black donkey is called Marcos, and the old man who rides him is called Andreas. They appear early one morning while I am sitting outside, my back against the wall of the spitaki, a cup of tea cradled in my hands. The gate is on the other side of the house, out of immediate view. I hear hooves knock against the stones that mark the threshold of the gate. To give me warning, the old man shouts some unintelligible greeting that scares me out of my wits. spill tea on my lap.
"Kaleemera," he says gruffly, with a cautious smile. "Kaleemera," I return the greeting and reach for my dictionary He pulls his cane from its resting place in the ropes of the saddle, maneuvers Marcos to a stone, where he aims the cane, then slides off the donkey's back. His lower left leg and foot are deformed; the foot fits into a black boot cut open to accommodate its dimensions. How to describe Barba Andreas, the old shepherd? A yellow piece of cloth is wrapped around his head of white hair. He has a big white moustache, blue eyes, a dandy's flower stuck in the lapel of his green army jacket. Hands. What will I love most here, what will ! dream about years later, to return me to this place? The hands of the islanders. Their thickness, their roughness, their ugliness. Nails broken below the quick. Scars. Missing fingertips and lines of dirt.
Barba Andreas names the plants for me, pointing with his cane and leaning down to pluck off the chamomile blooms. Sitting on a milk crate, he lifts his bad leg up to rest on a stone. I remain sitting against the house in the shade. We both take in the view before us: slender Marcos, eating my melon rinds and shifting in what is, effectively my front yard: poppies; olive trees; the curved and plummeting body of the land, its shapes of green, sage-green, yellow, almond; rose and purple and gray shadow. The sky opens over everything like wide blue hands. And all around us, lassoing the entire island, the sea.
A bearish sound comes from Barba Andreas' throat. As though bored with the view -- how familiar it must be to him -- he turns back to me and says something I don't understand. He points in my direction with his cane. Is he pointing to the low table between us? I look at the table.' Is he pointing to my books on the table? I offer him a book, which he wisely refuses to touch. He pantomimes a motion, but I don't understand. Once more, he directly asks for something and pokes his finger against his chest. I don't understand. Finally, smiling but clearly frustrated, he grabs the tea-pot with one large hand, pours tea into the palm of the other, and raises it to his lips. "Ena poteeri!" he cries, and bangs his cane on the ground, demanding a cup.
Embarrassed, I jump up and go into the little house for another cup. I come out, pour tea, hand it him. He waves away my apologies. He drinks the tea in one go. How many Greek words do I know now? How many? Not enough, never enough. To learn another language one must re-acquire the greedy hunger of a child. ! want, I want, I want. Every desire begins and ends with a word. I want to ask a thousand questions. Where does the path behind the house lead and who lived here before and how do you make cheese and are the sheep in the neighboring field yours and what is this place, truly, and how do I go to the mountains behind the house? Because there is a gate closing off the field that leads to the mountains, and I am afraid to walk through it.
He understands my last, garbled question. "How do you go to the mountains?" he parrots back to me, almost shouting. It is an international assumption that when people don't hear and understand our language, we think they can't hear at all. "How do you go up to the mountains?" Now a slow laugh rumbles in his throat. "Me ta podia!" he cries. Every line of his face proclaims laughter. He slaps his knees, guffawing.
How do you go to the mountains?
Me ta podia. With your feet.
Open the gate, go through it, close it behind you. And walk to the mountains
spitaki- is the Greek word roomed shepherd's house
Karen Connelly was born in Alberta, Canada. She has published award-winning travel books such as Touch the Dragon: A Thai Journal and One Room in a Castle. She is also the author of two works of poetry.
When she is not travelling, Karen Connelly lives in Greece.
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