The Fig Tree (11 page)

Now, months later, he stirs from his sleep, opens his eyes, and hears the same rhythmic sound that had lulled him asleep.

And still aunt Agelo sits by the loom, in the
katoi
, and weaves.

We descend into the
katoi
for a long overdue clean-up. Georghia leads the way. She is on a mission. The
katoi
smells of rancid oil and dust. We cart out cypress beams and cobwebbed lanterns, rotting olive sacks and picking aprons, coils of wire, stale fishing nets, the abandoned toys of three generations, boxes of hand-woven rugs and blankets, and the wooden loom.

The objects blink in the morning sun. Alexander runs about them. He is ecstatic. The
katoi
is a heaven of forgotten days. The procession continues for hours. We transfer hand-dyed yarns and cloths, a dormant motorbike, framed pictures of saints obscured by dirt and cracked glass, and trunks girdled by steel hoops. The trunks are lined with Melbourne newspapers dating from the turn of the century and beyond. The
katoi
is being cleansed of ghosts, unfinished business; we unravel piles of decaying correspondence that had winged between distant worlds.

Against one wall there stands a row of
plitharia
, ceramic vases glistening with olive oil. We leave those in which the oil is clear, and we transfer the rancid oil to smaller drums. In the bottom of one vase there are drowned rats, perfectly preserved in the lower depths. They had eluded the rat poisons and traps, only to meet a more horrific death. Alexander stares at the rats. He follows me across the road and watches as I bury them.

By the third day the
katoi
is clear. We haul back the loom, the
plitharia
, the trunks, and grape-threshing bin and trunks. The
katoi
is now a museum. And we can see how large it is, spacious enough to substantiate a family tale that Dora first heard as a child in the various houses she lived in by Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay. It is a story that longs to be retold. It has about it the feel of legends.

Once upon a time, on the island of Ithaca, there lived two brothers, Dimitri and Athanassios. The boys were inseparable. They would descend from their hamlet of white-stone homes on the northern heights, to the port of Frikes, where they spent their days on the waterfront, among the fishing caiques that lined the quay.

In time they began to accompany the fishermen on their daily forays beyond the bay. The sea was their grand romance, their siren's call. When Dimitri was seventeen years old and the younger brother fifteen, they cleared a space in the
katoi
and set to work.

They cut the cypress beams under a waning moon, as this, they were told, was the time when the sap began to dry. They emulated the boat builders of Lefkada and Vathi, and used the tools fashioned by generations past. They sawed the logs into submission and laid the keel eight metres in length. They clad the hull and deck with planks of pine and caulked the gaps between them. They crafted the masts from cypress and cut the sails from cotton woven in the
katoi
. They built it in the shape of a
trehadiri
, the most revered of Ionian caiques.

And when the boat was complete, as if awakening from their dream, they realised that it was too large for the entrance to the
katoi
. The boys gritted their teeth, withstood the laughter of friends, and cut open the entrance until it was large enough to release their prize. So it was a caesarean birth which saw the boat emerge into the light of day. And it was the priest who christened it
Brotherly Love
, for he had seen how inseparable the boys were and had observed their love of the sea.

On the day the boat was launched the whole village accompanied them to Frikes Bay.
Brotherly Love
balanced precariously on a horse-drawn cart. Roosters crowed, donkeys bleated, children tagged along, and villagers waved from the balconies of homes that lined the way.

It was the first of several boats the brothers sailed to convey freight and passengers between islands upon the Ionian Sea. They ranged as far south as the island of Zakynthos, and north to Corfu. They passed within a breath of Albania and the Adriatic coast. They sailed east to mainland Patras and Piraeus, where they berthed between freighters loading cargoes destined for distant ports. And they came to understand the Ionian as an intimate friend. They knew its winds and currents, fishing grounds and remote coves. They knew the locations of its treacherous rocks and the warning signs of imminent storms.

‘White squalls', Ionian seamen called them. They could erupt out of the clearest of skies. They would swoop down from the mountain peaks, spurred on by sudden winds that swept away the sun and replaced it with a dark foreboding. All that the brothers could do was lower the sails, spark the engine, and run before the squall for the safety of the nearest cove. Or turn back and motor out to the deep, to ride out the storm.

It was the younger brother, Athanassios, who began to long for more distant horizons. Ithacans had returned from remote parts of the world with tales of riches and consummated dreams. At the turn of the century Ithacans had captained ships which plied the Mediterranean, the Danube River and the Black Sea. Others settled in Africa, Asia and the Americas, and the great southern land on the edge of the world they called
Afstralia
.

Ithacans possessed a hunger for adventure, and were skilled in the maritime arts. Like their symbolic forebear Odysseus, they were prepared to venture out upon unknown seas.

When Athanassios left the island, he was twenty-five years old. He followed those who had gone before him to
Afstralia
and in Melbourne he found work in shops and cafes. He extended his carpentry skills and built houses and shops. And as the war was coming to an end, he married Lily Kecatos, the daughter of Ithacan immigrants who shared his love for the ancestral isle.

Yet he was restless, frenetic, forever building boats in the backyards of his various homes by the sea. He was only content, as his youngest daughter Dora recalls it, when he was out at night upon Port Phillip Bay. As a child she would watch Athanassios descending from the house to his riverside moorings, carrying his nets. He would throw the nets onto the deck, clamber on board, untie the ropes, and motor out in the dying light.

Dora watched until the solitary lamp receded into the dark. She would lie in bed, and imagine him, steering the boat, casting his net, a man adrift in an alien sea. And she would see him return at dawn, from the bay to the river mouth. He would throw his nets onto the shore, sort out the night's catch, his body at ease, his mind at rest.

Upon the bay he was master of his own fate, whilst on shore he was on less certain ground, a man with a strange accent, battling to establish himself, to be accepted. His one constant was the sea. It was his calling, and the source of both his elation and regret.

Athanassios died in 1970. He was fifty-eight years old. And no matter how much he had longed for it, he never returned to the Ionian Sea.
Thalassa
is the Greek word for sea. It is a word that evokes epic voyages and ancient yearnings. And it is the word that inspired our own journey, with Alexander, a grandchild Athanassios was fated never to know.

This is how our own voyage was conceived. I was walking with Alexander on my shoulders beside the Patterson River, in Carrum, at the river mouth, where it flows into Port Phillip Bay. Carrum was the suburb in which restless Athanassios set up his most enduring home. We walked past the banks where Athanassios once kept his boats moored against makeshift jetties. Alexander, who was then three, pointed at objects on one of the vessels moored by the banks.

‘What are they?' he asked.

‘Ropes.'

‘What are they doing?'

‘They are keeping the boats by the banks.'

‘Why are they doing that?'

‘Without them the boats will float away.'

‘And what are the chains for?'

‘They are attached to the anchors.'

‘Where are the anchors?'

‘Under the water.'

‘What are they doing there?'

‘Without them the boats will float away.'

Blue skies. Boats bobbing. The scent of diesel fuel and brine. A mild sun. A river flowing out to sea. And a sudden recognition of what is so easily forgotten. This is a part of Alexander's ancestry. His maternal grandfather was an Ithacan.

A sailor. A builder of boats. A man adrift. A lover of the sea.

‘
Thalassa
.
Thalassa
,' I say.

‘Thafala. Thasasa,' Alexander repeats.

‘
Thalassa
.
Thalassa
. What a beautiful word.'

‘Thafasa. Thalala.'

‘
Thalassa
.
Thalassa
. Your grandfather loved the sea.'

‘Where is he?' Alexander asks.

He does not understand. Athanassios has been long gone.

Dead many years before Alexander was born. Such things are mysteries, impossible to grasp. He loves the new. He thirsts after what he sees; and today it is anchors, ropes, boats, a glowing sea. And as we walked it became clear. We would journey to Ithaca. We would stand side by side on the deck of the ferry, and watch the mythical island appear.

Six months later we cast off from the port of Patras, and move out upon the Ionian in search of the dream. Within four hours we are standing in the bridge of the
Ionian Star
. We are approaching the island. The captain lifts Alexander onto his stool and he grips the wheel. He surveys the panel of levers and buttons. He gazes at the navigation charts. Above us hangs a picture of St Nicholas, patron saint of seafarers, the Byzantine reincarnation of Poseidon, the unruly god of the sea.

From a distance the two islands, Ithaca and Kefalonia, appear as one. As we draw closer Kefalonia withdraws into the background. Mount Neriton rises steep and close. We bend into a fjord, towards Aetos, the Eagle mount. We pierce the vortex that spirals into the narrow entrance to the hidden harbour.

We are fully enclosed now, locked in. The circle is complete. We are drifting towards the town of Vathi, built upon a horseshoe bay. Houses rise like vines on a trellis over the lower slopes of a towering hill. Above the houses we glimpse isolated chapels tucked in the mountain's ribs. There are limestone ridges on the upper reaches, and groves of cypress standing tall between stately homes. We see swaying palms, and a row of lamps on the waterfront. Figures are emerging onto balconies. Shutters open out to the hoot of the horn.

A group of women stands beside a caique. They pick over the catch of the day. Cats linger nearby, awaiting unwanted morsels. Fishing nets lie in waterlogged heaps on the concrete walk. Inside the cabin the captain is tense, the crew fully focused. And Alexander is focused upon them

He senses the drama. He is attuned to the seaman's art. One error of judgment could cause severe damage to their massive craft. Alexander's eyes are fixed on the navigator's hands as they grip the wheel. He watches as the chain is released and the anchor reeled into the sea. He follows the flight of the ropes as they are flung onto the shore.

Slowly the sea gives way. The
Ionian Star
turns upon its own axis, and is guided towards the quay. The ropes are secured, and Alexander understands.

‘What is the anchor for?' I ask him.

‘To lock the boat.'

‘And why do we need ropes?'

‘Because without them the boat will float away.'

To know the men of the village observe cousin Eftimios. He sits in the courtyard mending his nets. ‘The wind is boss,' he says. The thing is not so much to fix the nets, although that is necessary, but just to sit and sift and allow things to sort themselves out. Perhaps this is why some villagers appear to leave so much half finished, undone. It is as if someone has decided, abruptly, to let go, mid-task, and take time out to brood.

Later that day the wind lifts and we see Eftimios on his motorcycle. He is a different creature now, his excitement barely contained. ‘The weather is right,' he says. ‘A perfect night for fishing.' He races to and from his boat. His motorcycle sags with bait, food and flasks of coffee, a change of clothing and bundles of nets picked clean.

He is going out alone. ‘This is the best way,' he says. ‘On the bay I am
vasilias.
My own king.' Dora recognises his excitement. This is how it was with her father, Athanassios. By nature, it seems, he was a brooder, but unlike cousin Eftimios he possessed a harder edge. He was given to sullen silences, angry outbursts and withdrawals. Athanassios was a troubled man. Except when the weather was right, the forecast good, and a night at sea lay ahead.

O keros
. The weather. It governed his life as it governs cousin Eftimios's now. He is motoring out, lured by the thrill of the hunt. His boat is his kingdom and he is in sole command. Later that night we think of him on his caique beneath the stars. The winter chill is descending. The nets have been laid out. He knows solitude. He knows patience. He is the king of his childhood seas. What more could an Ithacan want?

We descend in the evening, Dora, Alexander and I, from Ayia Saranta, to the village of Laxos. We make our way to Kaliope's house. She is Eftimios's sister, another member of the Varvarigos clan. The table is laden with food. It is both a house-warming party and a farewell. Her husband, Makis, has accepted the most dangerous assignment for a seaman, as an engineer on an oil tanker. He is leaving tomorrow. He may be away from his wife and two children, a boy of six, and a teenage girl, for ten months. ‘I have no choice,' he tells me. ‘You take the work when it comes. I have to support my family. This is the seaman's life.'

On the walls of his newly built house hang objects from foreign ports: wooden carved elephants, Chinese wall paintings, trophies from voyages past. I have seen them in the houses of other seamen on the island—ceremonial daggers from Turkey, porcelain dolls from Japan, statuettes of laughing Buddhas, Mexican sombreros suspended from the rafters, ebony sculptures of women with pointed breasts.