Dimitra Mantheakis - Melina Breaking Free

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.