In the Heart of the Storm
Vasiliki lit a cigarette, took a drag, bitterness filled her mouth, and she immediately put it out. – Old habit…, she murmured. And what hadn’t her son told her about the cigarette, hers. “I don’t smoke much, my little bird*,” she justified to him, and her eyes sparkled with love. “None, Mom Vasiliki, none!” he scolded her, but so sweetly that she never believed how much harm it did. The other woman looked at her silently, she barely knew her, more from what her daughter had said – and those only roughly – she didn’t understand what had upset her at that moment. Vasiliki stood up – she couldn’t stay in that place – and opened the first drawer of the large sideboard to take her tobacco; she didn’t need it at that moment, but did it out of awkwardness. Nevertheless, she rolled and lit another, blew the smoke from her lungs, flicked the ash, and refilled the glasses with tsipouro. “I hurt… I was hurting… I am hurting…” she wanted to tell Ilaria, she felt she envied her life – “With the same man, loved until the end!” she had admired the other day, surely her daughter had already told her everything.
* My little bird.
She wanted to explain that she carried many wounds, but… But she saw her sad eyes, Ilaria was a happy person, she knew it, she understood it, a happy person who had fought a lot and was still fighting, and: My God, she thought, what could she say? What else to expect? Vasiliki didn’t speak, didn’t complain about her own wounds. If the other wanted to see her happy with an enviable life, let her see her that way. Maybe that was better. For both of them. Now the room was filled with shadows. Everything had taken on different dimensions, just as the truth that knocked on the doors of their lives had taken on a different dimension and demanded to enter and set things right. Or blow everything up. – Before I continue, I want to see the child. They climbed the stairs as quietly as they could, it creaked with every step – the sea’s humidity had seeped into the house, making the stairs groan, as did the two women. They tiptoed so as not to wake the baby. If there was anything untainted, something hopeful in their lives, it was that child.