Olive and Vine
We had neither tape recorder nor camera when we set out for the village of Lakones on Corfu. We had dispensed with the tape machine on this - our sixth visit to Greece; camera had been working overtime and was having a rest day.
Parking the car under the shade of some tall Corfiote olives, we gazed down where the bays of Paleocastritsa spread their peacock tails between rocky headlands that looked like dolphins floating at rest and looking out to sea.
It was mid-afternoon of a day in May. Nothing seemed to stir except some lazy tweittering in the trees and the occasional out-of-tune honk of a donkey in the distance.
Then the silence filled with music. The strong, slightly nasal sound of a woman’s voice floated from some terraces of olives somewhere up the winding road that led to the hilltop village.
In sinuous spirals the voice rose and fell - the intervals close in half and quarter tones. We caught some of the words in Greek ‘my love’ and ‘heavy-hearted’. As usual with Greek folk songs, the tune was melancholy, drooping at the cadences, then rising as with effort. The voice seemed pagan - as one could imagine the chant of an ancient priestess.
We left the car and walked in the direction of the music. A brilliant flash of colour gleamed through the tree-shaded dimness. A figure turned towards us, and we spoke the usual country greeting, “Xereite”.
From eyes black and shiny as the olives she was gathering, she looked at us, half fiercely, half timidly, in a way that the French call ‘farouche’. Her face was lovely. Perhaps Nausica would have looked so. We were actually near the hay where the daughter of Alcinous aided the shipwrecked Odysseus.
Black hair curled from under her scarlet kerchief. She wore a dark bodice from which her long full skirt flowed in folds a softer red than the kerchief. We had seen many women and girls gathering the olives but never one so vividly attired. Beside her were two large panniers in which the small sweet ripe olives of Kerkyra shone like polished beads. A handsome boy of about five played quietly nearby, and a little further off a donkey grazed peacefully, occasionally lifting its head to nip off a succulent olive branch embossed with the delicate white flowers.
We stood and watched the woman’s strong, shapely brown arms move rhythmically to the sound of that enchanting voice, resounding through the olive terraces as if blossoming from them. A nymph In the olive groves - another Daphne, I thought. Far below, the monastery dozing through the centuries, wisely paid no attention to the presence of such as these.
We praised her singing and said how much we regretted not being able to take her photograph.
She shrugged graceful shoulders: “I always sing. It makes work and sorrow lighter. We had a hard winter. The olives this year will not be good.
She ended with the usual fatalistic Greek exclamation: “Ti na kanome? (what can we do?).”
For a while we stood and listened. Occasionally she turned and smiled slightly, but for the most part she continued collecting the olives to the rhythm of her singing.
My husband exclaimed, “We must return tomorrow with the camera - what a lovely picture she will make.”
I demurred - “She may not be here - shall I ask her?” But we were diffident and did not ask.
We returned to the car and listened for more than an hour while the rich, strong, harshly-sweet notes, perfectly-tuned - dropped like rivulets of sound into the hot afternoon. I said to my husband, “I don’t think tape or camera would have been able to record this.”
Reluctant to go, perhaps we fell into a doze, for suddenly we were aware of silence. We looked back through the olive trees and saw that the little group had gone. With a cold feeling of loss and disappointment, we felt we might never hear such music again.
We began the downward drive along the road that corkscrews through the terraces of Corfiote olives with their strange perforations, like holes in Henry Moore sculpture. A cheerful voice hailed us, “Deutsch - English?” Greeks in the country seem to take all foreigners for German. A burly peasant with the face of Baccus was smiling at us. His eyes were small and crossed and his grin showed large teeth. He wore a cap hut I thought it might be to conceal his horns, for I felt we might even be looking into the face of Pan.
To his obvious delight, we replied in Greek.
“You speak Greek “ he exclaimed, “Where do you come from, where did you learn your Greek?”
He laughed with delight when we told him we originated from London, “I like the English and the Americans best - they always stop and speak to me. The others don’t. They only grunt and pass by.”
He mixed his Greek with words from English, French and German. My husband praised him, “You are interested in languages?”
“Oh, I like to know a little of everything. But I like English best the sound of it pleases me.”
We enquired about the woman in the scarlet kerchief who sang so beautifully.
For a moment he looked perplexed, then laughed, “We have many pretty girls who sing beautifully. They are our downfall. We are not all as clever as Odysseus.” He relented. “But the women are not all bad. In the old days when men complained about women and said they should not enter the churches, our great Empress Helena reminded them that Our Lord was born of a woman, and ever since there have been Icons of Our Lady in the churches. Did you know that?”
He told us that his name was Spiridion after the patron saint of Corfu and asked us where we were staying and how long we would be in Kerkyra. “Come to Lakones to drink ouzo and eat with me,” he invited.
For some perverse reason, my husband said we could not stay, but we promised to return.
“Good, good “ he exclaimed, “bring a big bottle, and I’ll give you the best olive oil in Greece - delicious and very good for you.” He grinned, “It’s a light oil - a spoonful in the morning, and you’ll never have stomach trouble.”
We asked if he wanted to ride down the mountain with us, but he nodded in the negative, lifting his chin slowly in the characteristic Greek manner, “My groves are close - I don’t need a ride.”
A wave of the arm and another Bacchic grin and he had vanished into the shadowy olive terraces. It was nearly six-o’clock - afternoon In Greece, when people come drowsily to life after the long afternoon siesta.
My story must be left hanging in mid-air. Unfortunately we didn’t go back the next day, but the one after. We were now conventionally equipped with camera, tin for oil and packets of cigarettes for “Mr. Bacchus”.
But the time must have been wrong, for we saw neither our Nausica, nor Bacchus. Perhaps the weather was to blame. Clouds hung heavily about but didn’t release the needed rain. A wind sprang up and sighed among the olives, stirring the silence of disappointment.
It appeared too obvious why we had no film nor tape recorder that other day. My husband scoffs, but I think that he secretly agrees we saw visions from an antique world on the road to Lakones among the trees planted by the Venetians four hundred years ago, and said to live a thousand years or more.
Page(s) 55-59
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