Читать книгу Melina Breaking Free - Dimitra Mantheakis - Страница 7

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.