Paint the Wind, page 18
I was trembling when we were finally spent, and he held me until I was still.
“I promise I will come back for you, wherever you are.”
I wanted to believe him.
Chapter Twenty-Three
In the days after Elise and Oscar left, I slipped back into the melancholy and numbness that had marked my first months on Skiathos. I refused to go to the hut to paint. The memories were too raw.
YiaYia watched without saying anything, until we were in her workroom distilling summer herbs.
“Elise’s departure has been a blow to you. It saddens me to see you withdraw back into isolation. I find it especially tragic that you have stopped painting.”
“I’ve lost the will to paint. I was learning so much from Elise, and now, attempting to fill a canvas without her wise advice seems pointless and empty.” It was the safest answer, deflecting with some truth to disguise the greater loss of Oscar.
“You’ve never struck me as someone who gives up, Maya. You have a gift, and denying both yourself and the world of that gift seems shameful. If you are reluctant to go back to the hut alone, take Irini with you. Teach her what you have learned from Elise.”
Reluctantly, I agreed to YiaYia’s counsel, which I knew was closer to an order than a suggestion. The following Thursday, Irini and I climbed the hillside and I unlocked the hut for the first time since Oscar and I had said our final, desperate good-byes. I took a deep breath and entered the dusty, cobwebbed space. The light from the window fell on the straw-covered floor where we had lain. I thought that being here would rend me with pain, but instead of the memory of our last afternoon exacerbating my loss, it suffused me with wonder. Something extraordinary had happened here, and I knew I was supposed to embrace it.
“Are you OK?” Irini asked. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
I smiled at her. “No ghost. I’m happy to be back here, remembering the joy that painting gives me. Thank you for coming with me.”
“I’m excited to learn from you. YiaYia and Mama think what you teach me I may be able to translate into weaving. Shall I help you bring the paints and easel out?”
Irini’s exuberance spilled over the hillside as we set up and began to paint. YiaYia, as usual, was right. In teaching Irini as Elise had guided me, I hadn’t lost Elise.
One evening, Leo surprised me as I returned from Nota’s shop and walked with me back to YiaYia’s. It was unusual for him to do so, and I detected an urgency as he launched into an observation.
“You have lost the emptiness I remember from your early days here. Your art has helped. But despite whatever satisfaction your throwing paint at a canvas is bringing you, I believe you are still unhappy. The company of your family—of YiaYia and Pappou, of Irini and me—it’s not enough.”
“I have come to understand how loved I am by all of you and how deeply my Skiathan heritage has shaped me. But you’re right, it’s not enough. I’ve been torn from my life, my friends, my studies, my city. I don’t belong here, Leo.”
“Then what I have to tell you is important.”
I looked at him, not sure what he was about to say.
“Your father is considering marrying you off to an islander as the only way to ensure that you never return to the life you had before.”
I stopped in the middle of the path, horrified by his words. If I had I felt as though I had been thrust back centuries by my banishment to Skiathos, I’m sure that is exactly what my parents intended. Modern life as it was unfolding in twentieth-century Vienna was a threat, especially because of the way I had embodied the changes—with defiance, longing, and a plunging into the darkness of the human soul. I shivered at the reality Leo was presenting.
“How long has this been planned? How is it that you know?”
“I learned of it only this week, which is why I wanted to talk with you alone. YiaYia received a letter from your father and came to our house to talk with my mother, Theía Ekaterina, and Theía Anastasia. They didn’t know I was there. I overheard the conversation. Your father asked YiaYia to find you a good match.”
“Did YiaYia agree?” I couldn’t believe she would be complicit in such a plan.
“It sounded like she was reluctant, but feared that the only other alternative your father would accept would be the convent.”
I felt physically ill, overcome with a sense of despair deeper than any I had experienced since my arrival. I needed to be alone. I needed to think.
“Thank you, Leo. You are a true friend for letting me know.”
“I agree with you, Maya. You don’t belong here. If there is anything I can do to help you, please know that I will.”
He hugged me and I left his arms to return to the house, where I retreated to my room. I couldn’t sleep, my mind racing through a myriad of scenarios of how to thwart my father’s plans. If Oscar were still here, I would have turned to him. But Oscar was beyond reach. And even if I could somehow get word to him, there wasn’t time. By morning, the only alternative that had any hope of success was to reach out to Andreas and convince him to come for me.
At midday I brought Leo lunch down at the warehouse.
“Can you take a break and walk with me along the harbor?”
He agreed.
“Did you mean what you said last night, that you’ll help me.”
“In any way I can.”
“If I give you a letter for Andreas, can you get it off the island without YiaYia and Pappou knowing?”
“Yes. I can be the conduit of letters from you to Vienna and any that come in return. I’m down at the warehouse very day. The mail boat leaves from the adjacent dock every week and I’m usually the one who picks up the post for the business and the family.”
“Thank you, Leo!”
After Leo agreed to get a letter off the island and on its way to Andreas, I retrieved the stack of pages I’d written in the early days of my sojourn on Skiathos, untied the strip of fabric, and read through every one, from the earliest to the latest. None would do for the message I wanted to convey to Andreas. I took them all and threw them into the fire.
I was no longer the empty vessel who had arrived on Skiathos. With Oscar, I had discovered the possibility of a very different kind of relationship with a man. We had experienced passion as two equals, not as power to be wielded over the other. But in addition to the connection I had shared with Oscar, I had also absorbed the pull of family and the island’s beauty and wonder. I could not deny that Skiathos was a part of me. I did not want to stay, but I knew I would take a part of the island with me when the time came to leave.
How much of what I had experienced did I want to share with Andreas? How much of my experience mattered to him? When I opened my writing desk, I sat motionless for a long time. While I was desperate to stop my father’s plan to arrange a marriage with an islander, I was no longer willing only to be Andreas’s muse. I knew Andreas was my one hope for escaping Skiathos. But how much would I have to sacrifice in order to do so?
My desperation led me to lie.
I appealed to Andreas as if I were still the Maya who had inspired his portraits. The Maya who had adored, encouraged, and awakened his genius. The Maya who was offering herself to him again, if only he would come and rescue her. There would be time enough, once we were together again, to reveal that I, too, was painting. I brushed aside an inner warning that the studio might not be big enough for two artists, not because of its physical size but because of the size of the artists’ egos. I would deal with that when I was finally back in Vienna.
I sealed the letter, addressed it, and placed it in my prayer book for safekeeping until I could get it to Leo. The envelope lay alongside my drawing of Andreas, a memento of another time, another Maya.
The birthday of Leo’s mother, Theía Maria, presented an opportunity for me to bring the letter to Leo. I tucked it into the pocket of my skirt and passed it to Leo in the orchard, where we had volunteered to harvest a basket of peaches. He slipped the envelope into his own pocket and promised to get it onto the mail boat.
“Have you heard anything more about my father’s plans?”
“My mother and your father have been corresponding. She and YiaYia have been visiting with a few families with sons. ‘Opening the conversation’ is how it has been described to your father.”
“How much time do you think I have?”
“It’s not clear. From what I’ve heard from my mother, YiaYia is not satisfied with any of the prospects.”
“I can’t marry someone here, Leo.”
“If I could, I would rescue you. I would marry you.”
“You are rescuing me by taking the letter.”
“I hope this man in Vienna loves you enough to move heaven and earth to come for you. If I were him, I would have been on the first boat.”
“He doesn’t know where I am, and my father threatened him if he came near me.” Why was I making excuses for Andreas?
“And do you believe he’ll defy your father now, after all this time?”
“I know he loves me and he needs me. He’ll come.” I said the words to convince not only Leo but also myself.
Weeks passed without any word from Andreas. Finally, as I returned from painting one afternoon I met Leo on the path. He tapped his chest pocket. My heart contracted in anticipation. A letter from Andreas.
“You have something for me?”
“YiaYia told me you had gone to paint, so I came to look for you. He withdrew the envelope from his pocket. “This came on the mail boat.”
It was addressed to Leo, as I had advised Andreas to do. The envelope was covered in Austrian stamps.
“You didn’t open it.”
“It’s clearly for you.”
I ripped open the envelope with trembling fingers and scanned the familiar handwriting.
“He’s coming.”
“I thought you would be overjoyed.”
“I am. I’m stunned, actually. I was afraid he’d forgotten me. Found someone else. I’m trying to fathom what will happen next.”
“All hell will break loose is what will happen next. You knew that. When does he expect to arrive?”
I read the letter again.
“He planned to leave Vienna on the twentieth of August. It will take him two or three weeks. That’s how long it took Papa and me to get here.”
“That was winter. The boats make better time in the summer. He could be here next week. What’s your plan?”
“My only alternative is to convince Andreas to marry me.”
“How can I help?”
“Oh, Leo, thank you. My life is about to get very complicated, isn’t it?”
“As if it wasn’t complicated already? Listen, I’ll come this evening to take you to Stefanis’s place. It’s Friday night. YiaYia and Pappou will think it’s a good idea for you to get out with the young people. We can make plans there.”
YiaYia fussed over me at supper when I barely ate.
“Are you sure you didn’t get too much sun?” She felt my forehead.
“I’m fine, YiaYia, just not hungry.”
As promised, Leo came after supper to pick me up. I changed into a summer dress as if we were joining friends for music and dancing in the square. We took a table in a corner of the courtyard and ordered some soda and pistachio nuts. I was still too much on edge to eat.
“Did you bring the letter?”
I pulled it out from my pocket and opened it flat on the table.
“Did your artist give any indication as to what he intends to do when he arrives in Skiathos Town?”
“I told him in my letter, if he should come, to find you.”
“That make sense. He knows I’m the go-between. Once he’s here and you meet with him, will you leave immediately?”
“If I don’t, there’s a risk that Pappou and YiaYia will try to stop me. I can’t let them know. I hate this! The betrayal will kill them.”
“Would your father reconsider his threat to marry you off here?”
I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t see Papa the day he took me away from Andreas. He promised to break Andreas’s hands if he tried to interfere.”
“Andreas must love you deeply if he’s willing to risk his livelihood to rescue you.”
“I’m not sure it’s love. Need, perhaps. I’m important to him, but only because of what I’ve been able to do for him.”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I did. I had a sense of destiny with him—that his destiny and mine were intertwined, and that I was the source of his explosive creativity.”
“But you weren’t painting when you were with him, and now you are. Will you have enough to nurture both your talents? What is the price you’ll pay for marrying him, Maya? Do you believe marriage to your artist will stop your father?”
“Once I’m married, I’m no longer under my father’s control.”
“And so you exchange one man’s power over you for another’s?”
“What choice do I have, Leo? Marry Andreas, or marry the pharmacist’s son or the doctor’s son or the mayor’s son and remain on Skiathos for the rest of my life? How much painting do you think I’ll get done once the babies start coming?”
I tried to keep my voice low. In addition to there being eyes everywhere on the island, there were also ears.
“I’m sorry, Maya. You always chafed about the rules being different for boys and girls when you were a child.”
“And as you can see, they are still different. No one is forcing you to marry.”
I threw up my hands. I wasn’t going to be able to change the rules, as I had so confidently imagined in Vienna. I could flaunt them, persisting until I obtained a place at university and then immersing myself in the avant-garde as model and muse and lover, but that was where it ended. Marriage was a different thing entirely, a convention I was not likely to escape. My quest for freedom had only entangled me in the net of my own illusions.
“I’d like to go home.”
As we walked up the hill to my grandparents’ house, I told Leo I would write a letter to Pappou and YiaYia for him to give to them after I left the island.
“I know that means they’ll blame you for helping me. I’m sorry.”
“I’m trying to think of a solution that doesn’t require you to marry anyone.”
“I once believed that was possible, but not anymore. By coming for me, Andreas has given me a choice. Marrying him is the better alternative.”
We had reached the gate. I kissed Leo on both cheeks.
“Thank you for everything.”
“I’ll watch for Andreas and come for you when it’s time.”
The next day I went to the hut to retrieve Elise’s landscape that she had left to complete when we met again. I removed the canvas from its stretcher and rolled it up, placing it in a cloth bag to hide it as I returned to the house. I did not take my portrait of YiaYia. I planned to ask Leo to collect it and give to her after I was gone.
I took one last look at the hut and all it represented—my art and my bliss—and locked the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On Saturday morning, YiaYia announced we would be having guests for dinner on Sunday, Dr. Bakarezos and his family.
“His son has returned from medical school and will join his father’s practice. It’s good for the island to have a young doctor. I want to establish a cooperative relationship with him.”
YiaYia’s reason for inviting the Bakarezos family to dinner was plausible, but warning bells were ringing in my head. Only a few nights earlier, while Leo and I sat in the square discussing next steps, I had flippantly listed off the sons of the prosperous men on the island as possible husband candidates. I hadn’t known whether or not those men actually had marriageable sons, but I knew my father would only look at a professional man as a possible son-in-law.
I believed YiaYia wanted me to have a say in whom I would marry, and would not support forcing a union, but I also believed she thought the choice should be made among men approved by my father. I helped her prepare the meal and tidy the workroom on the chance that the younger Dr. Bakarezos might ask to see it. But I did not probe for any more information.
On Sunday, Pappou wore his good suit and polished his boots. YiaYia asked me to arrange her hair in a style she’d seen in a women’s magazine Ekaterina had showed her.
“Wear one of your Viennese dresses, Maya. It’s important that we appear sophisticated. Young Dr. Bakarezos has been away a long time. I want him to have a good impression. It’s important that he doesn’t think of me as a primitive, superstitious village healer, the way his father does.”
The Bakarezos family arrived promptly at noon. Old Dr. Bakarezos’s wife was dressed expensively in a dress that had definitely not been made on Skiathos. A diamond brooch glittered on her collar. Young Dr. Bakarezos was also fashionably attired in a well-cut suit that would have been appropriate in Vienna. He was self-assured and somewhat pompous. When he entered the house, I saw him sweep the room with his eyes, appraising everything from the rugs on the floor to the many books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. I waited for the same appraisal of me, the potential bride. That I came from an educated, prosperous family was only one part of the bargain.
We were seated next to each other at the dinner table. Young Dr. Bakarezos was attractive and articulate, and this brought a look of relief to YiaYia’s face. But my attempts to converse with him yielded only bored responses at best and dismissive opinions of most of the island at worst. His parents and my grandparents watched us intently—YiaYia with barely contained anxiety and Mrs. Bakarezos with pursed lips and a degree of suspicion that hinted she knew something unsavory about me. Eight months on the island had not been enough, apparently, to quiet the rumors. With relief, I expected that Mama Bakarezos would not approve this match for her perfect son.
