Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

Juliet pulls a face and turns her head from him.

“No, thank you.” She sounds almost cross at the interruption.

“You, sir,” he turns his back on Juliet to face Aaman, “you look like a successful man. You should have a nice watch to show your success.”

Aaman’s mouth opens and he readies himself to speak, but words are lost to him. He glances at Juliet for guidance. Her head is turned away, watching children at play in the square. He looks back at the man, recalibrating their relative social positions. He is aware of the uncertainty of his life, but to this man he appears successful. He feels the unease of being a fraud, and he looks down only to be reminded of his new clothes. He is wearing shop-bought clothes, head to foot, and he is sitting at his leisure in a cafe. Aaman looks around him. He wonders if all the people sitting at this cafe all struggle in some way, as he is, and if the clothes and the casual postures are as thin a veneer as his. The watch seller looks at him with expectancy. Aaman shifts his weight as he realises that he could, if he wanted, afford one of these watches. A waste of money, but to be in a position to buy one! Maybe he is who the vendor perceives him to be.

Aaman straightens his back and pushes himself farther back in the chair, growing in height. He is aware that he has nothing to draw on to know the correct verbal response in this situation. Nevertheless, his muscles relax and he begins to smile. He looks in the man’s eyes and is startled to see the hunger, the fear, the loneliness. He sees the possible brutality, tempered to fight for his survival. Aaman swallows and tries to settle the stir of feeling this ignites, but his struggle takes time. The man moves on. He is at the next table now, same watches, same words, and same smile.

“Are you all right?” Juliet asks. “You look like you have seen a ghost.”

“Yes. I am fine, really fine!” Aaman comes to terms with the side of the fence he is on.

Juliet smiles. He shakes his head to himself and snorts a chuckle before his attention is taken by some children jumping to catch bubbles blown by a street vendor.

They sit a little longer people-watching, enjoying the sun. Juliet puts her hand on his and gives it a squeeze before letting go. He smiles, and they get up to go home.

August shrieks its presence every morning at dawn with the voice of a million cicadas and builds an oppressive wall of heat by nine a.m.

Juliet concedes defeat and joins the rest of the country that seems to have taken the month off, the only exception being those civil servants who have drawn the short straw and who sit immobile under the air conditioning units in their dingy offices, mopping pools of sweat, stunned into submission by the heat and who, if it were possible, are even less inclined to get on with any actual work than in the cooler months.

It’s been a good year so far with plenty of translation work, and her bank balance is healthy. Juliet tells herself she deserves some time off.

The cafes and beaches overflow with Athenians and foreign tourists, both equally conspicuous, and Juliet begins to feel like a proper local in the presence of these intruders.

Aaman is finding August less restful. Two more people have come forward, having heard of his reasonable prices, and have asked for websites. Stella, after one of her English lessons with Juliet, asks if Aaman can do another site for her. She wants to re-open her father’s candle factory and sell to Greek communities abroad. “There are more Greeks,” she says, “living abroad than in Greece. Melbourne, Chicago. We will make international businesses. “But please,” she adds, “not to be telling my husband.”

Aaman tells Juliet, after Stella has left, that he thinks this is the beginning of the Internet boom for Greece. America is first in all things he says, followed by Britain, followed by the countries of Europe taking their turn, the farther to the east, the later to catch on. He says he is delighted that his speed and skills are growing quickly. But he also says he has explored other programming languages and begins to see the breadth of his chosen path.

Juliet points out that every new skill he masters increases his scope for employment. He says there is something new to learn every day, and each new thing he learns serves to show how much more there is to learn. It is a happy Catch-22 he says, pleased with the Western term he has picked up. He lets the words roll around his mouth as he says them.

Juliet is washing out the brushes and Aaman is bringing the furniture back into the sitting room. The kittens get under his feet.

“That’s the last room!”

“Your bedroom?”

“No, I did that first before you came.”

“So that’s everything?”

“Pretty much. The kitchen cupboards and the built-in cupboard in your room are done. The wardrobe in my room is wooden and just needed polishing. The bathrooms are ‘usable by local standards,’ as they say, and the garden is absolutely perfect!”

“So I have no job now.” Aaman is not sure if she is joking.

“Oh no! Now it needs maintaining. Round and round every year. Actually all the shutters will need painting, after the summer, ready for the winter, so we are not finished yet.”

“You have paint in your hair,” Aaman says, picking the kittens up one after the other to give them all a stroke. The mother cat is crunching noisily in the kitchen. The male cat is on the sofa.

“I’ll wash it after I have done these brushes.”

“I’ll do the brushes.”

“They’re done now. I’ll go do my hair.”

“I’ll do your hair.” Aaman laughs.

“OK.” Juliet laughs and goes into the bathroom and runs the shower. When the temperature is right, she takes the showerhead off the wall and kneels over the bath. She is getting all her hair wet when his hands take the showerhead from her. She laughs.

“I was only joking!”

“I know, but I would like to do something for you.”

He massages her head; his hands feel stronger than the force he is using. He puts the shower in the bath to pick up the waiting bottle. The shampoo is cold against her head. His fingers work from the base of her neck up, picking out knots of tension, working slowly, deliberately up to the crown. His fingers hypnotic, making small slow circles down towards her ears, the pace steady, rhythmic, stimulating follicles, relaxing thoughts. Juliet can feel herself transported, drifting.

Juliet’s hair feels silky and smooth, soft and feminine. Aaman is not sure where his gratitude ends and his masculine feelings begin. She has been so kind to him. Without her, he knows how different his life could have been. He thinks of the bearded man, alone, in the moonlight, lifeless. He had no Juliet. Aaman feels strangled with indebtedness towards her. But appreciation did not make the angle of her chin, nor did it make her stride, the whites of her eyes, her conversation, the thoughts in her head, this head under the slow caress of his fingers. The head whose thoughts create the possibility of a new life for him. Her thoughts were part of a world that he wishes to conquer, win, and return to her on a plate. But how much of these thoughts and feelings are thanks and how much is his own ego? If he removes his thanks and his ego, is there anything left that might just be the golden glimmer of something so precious for which men are willing to die? Aaman allows his fingers to dissipate these thoughts into the skull at their tips. He passes the golden glimmer, the feelings that men have died for. His breathing quickens, his heart beats faster and tears trickle down his face.

“Juliet,” he murmurs.

“What? I can’t hear you I have shampoo in my ears.” She tries to raise her head but Aaman’s hands push her head under the shower.