Tales of the Unexpected Part III
…in the weeds? Trees, Bushes…
TSIKA AND I
PART III
THE CURE FOR CANCER?
The reasons for me to be punished were a lot, but small and simple; from going swimming without asking him or my mother, getting hurt at play, riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, running around during siesta time, speaking to people that I was told not to and plenty more violations that I cannot recall. But for certain I was beaten and punished once a day.
I shall never forget the following morning, after my punishment, I would get up cheerful and fresh for the first moment until my eyes fell upon my sister and brother who having heard my beating the night before, would be glancing at me with pitiful faces, although, I had grown accustomed to being punished, I never taught myself to accept their pathetic glances. I resented pity from the ones who were not as clever and brave as I
I still remember, even though I was treated like a dog and whipped like a donkey, I loved my father more that he ever knew. Dogs that treated badly by their masters are not generally apt to revenge for injuries inflicted upon them by their masters; but having developed faults similar to my father, during a painful punishment, if I had the power to inflict some injury on him or take vengeance on the whole human race, or make solemn vow never to help or relieve any man, woman or child from any pain, I am not sure whether I would have made such an attempt or not. I thought then and believe now that I was two people, as my father was two, the good and the bad, but when the bad surfaced more than the good, that of course was the ugly.
Whether his meditations were so intense as to be wildly disturbed by a young boy’s misbehaving or whether his feelings were so wrought upon his reflections that they required all the relief obtainable from belting one unoffending and defenseless boy, was a matter for an argument and serious consideration. Little by little, I got used to the treatment. I got used to everything, I did not really get used to it, I just made up my mind that I would accept it until he would see the light and discover who and what I was. I had find a solution which made things a little better and that was to seek salvation through dreaming, day dreaming that was and mostly during the night, skulking in my little corner. At those moments of dreaming I bore no resemblance of a boy who was abused, and at times I would feel like a hero. But then sometimes pleased with myself I would fall in a mood for odious dissipations. I had an awful conscience about it, but I did my best not to follow my mood.. It was after my phase of dissipating had passed that I took special pleasure in dreaming.
Later on when my pain had subsided and I was having a hearty talk with him on one to one basis, I would be dreaming or wishing to establish my character as to pass through life as a most admirable person who does a vast of good in secret and nothing would ever see the light.
It was many nights that we all set around the fire and talked delightfully. It was my father who talked mostly, and mostly about his service in the army and my mother would knit. From my earliest infancy she seemed that she was employed in the knitting, embroidery and loom. The picture that rises in my mind is that my mother and father weren’t only in love with each other but were also physically attracted to each other.
I often saw them walking in the fields holding hands and I sometimes had a nearer observation of them in the fire place room, playing around, when they were away from all eyes and ears, like teenagers, they were not only in love but also in heat. My mother was more reserved, a lot more reserved than my father. When they thought that there was no one around to see them, my father would reach and touch my mother but she would always repel and hesitantly pull away. I saw all that. I wasn’t hiding but I pretended that I was playing. My mother sometimes being more reserved than my father, would throw a look at me and realizing that I was sneaking a glance at them out of shear curiosity, she then would push my father’s hand away and would say something, “Don’t you have to go to milk Tsika?” and with those words she would leave the room with a non-chelant attitude. Tsika was our family goat that provided milk for the whole family.
The reason she was called Tsika was that she had two wide white lines starting from around her eyes and ran down on the sides of her mouth. She was a Maltese goat with no horns and long breasts full of milk and had to be milked twice a day. My father’s job was to take care of Tsika. He would every day take her in the fields for many hours every day for her to graze. It was my father’s chore.
On a nice sunny day my father would invite me to go along with him. We would start from the house and would stroll along the narrow path in the tobacco and or wheat fields that stretched around between the hills, for as far as the eye could see. Tsika would be leading the way hurriedly, as if she knew where she was going and my father would follow holding the rope which was tied around her neck preventing her from going into the fields of oats and wheat, and I would follow close behind.
Along the path that we marched on was a clear water stream snaking through the fields. In some places there were thick raspberry bushes as if to hide the stream from intruders. At times Tsika would jump across and my father would follow her, he then would stop and offer me his hand to go on the other side and he would always made sure before he let go me that I was secured.
Once we would reach our destination, Tsika immediately would attack the grass and my father would find a spot in the shade and there I would follow. After a while he would open the sack and bring out whatever my mother had put in the bag, which was mostly cheese, bread, olives roast pork or boiled goat and eggs. My father carefully and reverently would bring out the contents of the bag, always with a wide smile, spread it on a linen napkin in which the contents were wrapped, he would survey the food and then began to slice what needed to be sliced and in another napkin would place my share, making certain it was always more for me, then he would proceed with his eating and while he was chewing would throw a glace at me to see if I were eating and making certain that I had enough.
“Eat your bread!” my father would say, “Bread comes from the breast of Mother Earth.”
That was my father with me alone.
After that meal out in the fields, my father would make himself comfortable and would begin softly to tell me stories of the bygone days. It was very pleasant to sit and listen to my father’s stories directed to me. He had a brotherly, benign way of showing his fondness for me, which seemed in it to express a different man from the one who whipped me in the presence of others, as if to show others his character as a disciplinarian.
Most of the stories were about our relatives and other unusual town characters, particularly the ones who had passed away before I was born. Telling the stories, he would insert a lot of humor even when he spoke about pitiful characters, such as his uncle Scapetis who was in sane.
My mother, having known crazy Scapetis, when my father was angry with her or me she would whisper to me, “You must understand your father comes from the Scapetis family, he is a little crazy too. I would always disregard that remark knowing its source and its reason it was said.
“My uncle Scapetis,” said my father, while we were in the fields, “was a wealthy man, but he had his problem. He had suffered a head injury when he was a young lad and he sometimes would go berserk”
“How? What was he doing, “ I asked earnestly.
“Sometimes he would chase his goats for miles up in the mountains thinking that his animals were possessed by the devil. That is why he always had a lot of golden crosses around his neck hanging from golden chains, and he was shaking and rattling his chains, while running behind the frighten animals.” There he stopped and looked at me long enough for him to breath in and out three times, with his eyes shooting straight at me, as if he were about to tell me something important, “You see, Taki, I like gold but I never wear anything of gold, I am in fear that the townspeople may think that I am crazy too, like my uncle Scapetis,” said my father, removing his eyes away from me immediately after that solemn confession. He then looked straight ahead as if he were in trance, “Your mother would be the first to think that I was touched in the head,” said my father, turning to me with a grin on his face and I returned the grin only accompanied with a childish laugh.
“My uncle Scapetis traveled on foot many of times to another town, Pentalofo, fifteen kilometers from here to buy five pounds of rice thinking he found a bargain.”
“How long did it take him to make that trip?” I asked.
“Oh, the whole day.”
“The wear and tear of his shoes was more that he had saved.”
“What shoes?” uttered my father humorously astonished at my question. “He never wore shoes,” concluded my father smiling.
I remember the first time he told that story, I got so involved, for many reasons, but one reason was that I liked gold too and somehow I knew I was related to Scapetis.
“What ever happened to your uncle Scapetis?”
My father continued telling me that his uncle Scapetis developed a lesion on his lower lip; something that wouldn’t heal. Dr. Paeras, the town doctor, sent him to Athens for a better examination. Arriving there, he was examined and told by various doctors that the lesion was the “Amilito” meaning the, “unspoken,” that really meant it was cancer and he would die very soon. It was referred to by the peasants as “unspoken” thinking that it was contagious. When he returned to his hometown he was referred to by the townspeople as “MakarithV ” meaning “A goner” and they kept away from him, thinking his illness was contagious; they only looked at him with pitiful glances. The uncle would look around him and leered more horribly than ever, as if in triumph, at the attention that depicted in every face, so he stayed up in the wilderness with his goats. He milked the goats but didn’t make any cheese; he only let the milk run down the rocky hill, knowing that if the goats are not milked they would eventually go dry, he used to say ‘God thinks that if you don’t need something He will take it away.’
“His lip began to bleed more as the time passed thus he floundered in the wilderness looking to find a leaf, from a tree, plant, bush or weed to apply on the lesion to stop it from bleeding. Eventually he began to feel like a foundered horse reaching the end of his rope. At one point while he set on a large rock to catch his breath and gather his thoughts, he stretched his hand out and picked a leaf unconsciously and feebly applied it to his lip; suddenly the bleeding stopped and a feeling of relief followed shortly thereafter. First, bewildered and then overwhelmed, he began victoriously to jump, hop and dance and after a long while out of breath but with a lot of energy reached the edge of the ravine.
With all the anomaly in his poor head, he figured he found the cure for cancer, he threw his arms towards heaven and appearing ready to tell the world to begin a celebration, he suddenly froze on that spot remembering that he forgot the whereabouts of the plant from which the leaf had come from. He rushed back like a genuine mad man, jumping over the rocks and pushing through the goats, like most crazy men would do; he finally reached the vicinity but couldn’t locate the miracle plant. He was jumping from plant to bush and from bush to another tree appearing to hide behind the rocks as if he were in fear that he was pursued and about to be overtaken. He finally, out breath, energy and patience but full of anxiety, set on a large rock, spent the whole night there in that attitude.
The rising sun woke him up. He first shaded his eyes and looked at the sun; as the first thing most shepherds do to welcome the new day, he then looked down and saw dried up blood stain, then raising his head he saw the plant the leaf had come from.
“He found the cure for cancer,” my father said, grinning as if he were saying that his uncle with the all his craziness and stupidity he was cursed with, found the medicine for cancer, where all the Hippocratic disciples spending treasures, grants and dowries had failed.
Seeing that the lesion was gone after six months, his uncle went to town as if nothing had happened. Dr, Paeras seeing that miracle, took him to Athens where it was certified that the man who was to die was healthy and free of cancer. The word spread into the medical circle and many doctors, chemists, pharmacists and sick people stricken with cancer rushed to his uncle’s town looking for the cure. Uncle Scapetis, whether he knew the origin of the leaf revealed nothing to none, he simply and stubbornly refused to share that secret with anybody.
He never told the secret
The perpetual stream of people who pursued him night and day drove him further towards the edge and a couple of years after his cure he was found dead in the bottom of the hill with his donkey next to him. To this day no one knows whether that was an accident or suicide, but he died and the cure of cancer died along with him.
Even After his death, many eyes that have long since been closed their eyes in the grave, had looked for the cure but everything was in vain.
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