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Παρασκευή 16 Μαΐου 2014

RELEASED MEMORY – by Angeliki Bouliari

What if... 

I didn’t sleep well. I woke up several times during the night only to find out in desperation that I had tight teeth and fists and it would still take long for the dawn. So about an hour before the alarm clock would sound, I decided to end this torture myself. I got up, had breakfast and got ready to go. It would be my first day at work.
I followed my friend’s, Ismini’s, instructions and went to the gas station, opposite the General Clinic and waited for Tony, her friend and my colleague in the near future, to pick me up and get me to School. It was very early in the morning and an unfamiliar chill made me think that I should have put on warmer clothes than this simple, grey, woolen suit. Few people and cars were on the street. I felt strangely cut off from the rest of the world, wrapped in a dreary, familiar silence.
What if nobody ever came to pick me up?

Sunday morning, after the Church. Four years old. I have well brushed brown, curly hair, decorated with a big, white bow tie, I am wearing a grey coat, black glossy leather shoes and white knee socks. I am outside a huge, shut door of a house. “Now, I’ll ring the bell and the door will open after a moment and Grandpa will come and take you inside. I’ll come back in the afternoon outside here to get you”, says Mum. 
Me and Mum live elsewhere, far from here. Alone. Dad is always away. He visits us sometimes, but he doesn’t stay with us, as it happens with the other children. Mum says he travels a lot for his business and that one day we’ll live altogether and I’ll have a baby sister. And Grandpa is very angry with Mum, but he loves his only little girl. 
Mum is very beautiful, with her dark long hair and the white-pearl necklace. As she bends to give me a kiss, her hair touches my cool face, tickling tenderly my cheek. I reach up and idly caress for a while the all round and shiny white pearls.Then, she takes her warm hand from mine, she rings the door-bell and flees, the street corner swallows her up. Grandpa delays, the huge shut door scares me and I start biting my nails.


Παρασκευή 9 Μαΐου 2014

THE HAMSTER - A monologue, by Angeliki Bouliari


A teenager of about eighteen years old is sitting on the sofa and looking at a cage with a hamster riding on a wheel, set on the table in front of him. His mother a little farther is quietly washing the dishes.
“Mother, this must come to an end. Really, it’s high time it stopped. I can’t take it anymore. Ok, I know, you are worried, you are anxious, you are afraid. But I am young, I want to live, I want to feel alive. This isn’t living. Can’t you see? I am worse than this stupid hamster you brought me as a present! At least, this silly thing doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, has absolutely no idea what the world outside is about. Its universe is just this cage, it is happy with a little food and with this spinning wheel, which, I tell you, is driving me crazy!
It’s not my fault if you see enemies and dangers everywhere, if you’re afraid of your very shadow, if you dare not live. Look at your miserable life. Do you call this a life? Cleaning stairs and washing clothes and dishes. No man, no friend, no laugh. Tell me honestly are you pleased? No, I don’t care what you think, I just don’t want to end up like you!”
His mother stops for a moment what she is doing, her hands in the air, her back tense, eyes staring the white wall tiles above the sink, but she doesn’t turn or say a word. Then she gets back to her work.
“Listen to me, Mother! The illness is over. I am not an ill person anymore. Ok, I have to take some medicine for the rest of my life and follow a certain way of living, but no doctor said not to live at all. I was there, mum, with you - remember? - when they told us about the illness and the treatment and what to do and all this stuff. Normal life, they said. Go out with friends, go to a party, on a date, on a trip. Yes, normal life. Look around you, mother! Do you think this life, this prison, is normal?
Mother! I’m talking to you! Can’t you just stop washing these damned dishes and look at me? Why do you keep ignoring what I say, how I feel?”
As there is still no reaction from her part, the teenager gets up, goes to the kitchen, opens a kitchen drawer and takes a meat knife. His mother hears the sounds, stays motionless, but still doesn’t turn.
“Mother, look at me! You don’t want to lose this sight, I swear! Guess what! I am going to start by stabbing your pretty little hamster right in the heart!”












Δευτέρα 1 Ιουλίου 2013

COUSIN ANTONIS AND AN INVITATION TO DINNER - A Short Story by Angeliki Bouliari

At 7.30 in the morning, a secret alarm sounded into my head. Time to wake up, get morning medicine and take care of Shera. With half-opened eyes I slowly stretched my tired members and, oh, I immediately remembered, the most important, prepare a festive, mostly Greek dinner for my beloved cousin, Antonis. He would visit us along with his three women, his wife, Soula, and his teenage daughters, Rania and Giota.


With Antonis we’ve always been very close, me treating him like the youngest brother, him treating me like his eldest sister. Nothing ever came in between to disturb the peaceful course of our relationship. Though it is generally said that women don’t get well with exponents of their own sex, even their kin, fifteen years of Antonis’ marriage changed almost nothing in our friendship, and the atmosphere between our families is steadily loving and joyful. Anyway, I know they like certain dishes of my kitchen, so I started organizing an interesting menu on my mind, noting down on a piece of paper the relevant shopping.

I opened the door and the glaring summer sunlight rushed into the hall. Shera was already waiting for me outside, at the top of the white marble stairs, perfectly clean and white herself, sitting elegantly on her back feet. Never grumbling or impatient and nervous, she was staring at me with her green eyes in the usual proud and dignified way. It was the same way she had looked at me the first time I met her, at exactly the same place, which said: “I need help, but I do not demand or beg. I just ask you politely. You can help me.” She had only meowed twice, her posture and gaze showing nobility and mildness. At once I forgot that not so long ago I had told my daughters and husband that I was sick and tired of adopting pets which either left us or even worse died, making the girls cry and me search for proper graves so that their souls rest in peace.  I lowered my body and gently stroked her smooth fur. So beautiful. I loved her immediately. She was pregnant.

In the afternoon, when cousins and nieces arrived, we sat at the spacious veranda to first have coffee or tea with home-made cake and biscuits. Everything presaged a perfect evening.

We talked and laughed and took pleasure in watching one of the most enchanting Greek landscapes and sunsets, that of Loutraki. There is an amazing view from the veranda. First comes the garden, my special pride - I have planted most of the tall trees with my own hands, and then eyes travel farther to olive-tree fields full of daisies, poppies and wild flowers and bushes, cross the main road leading to the city and finally reach the long coast line. The sea is there with its varying colour and changing temper, and the sun, a red and purple disc with yellow brushes, sinking slowly and splendidly into the deep dark blue waters in the opening between two capes facing each other. It is a most magnificent sunset. Only Santorini’s can be compared to it, but I doubt the winner.

We welcomed the night with perfumed candles, tasty ‘mezedes’, sea-food pasta and flavourful local wine, and among other things we talked about summer holidays. “Why don’t you come here to spend a week with us? You’ll be our guests and we can all have a very good time!” I invited cousin Antonis and his family. They accepted with great pleasure.

At this point, there was chaos in the company at the table. Soula and her daughters, Rania and Giota, suddenly jumped up, pushed roughly back their chairs which fell on the floor with noise, and started screaming and shouting and running round the table to avoid the invasion of some enemy we couldn’t see. Cousin Antonis watched them without saying anything and obviously at a loss, he didn’t know what to say and do. We also watched them puzzled. We guessed that some insect or other small creature had suddenly appeared and scared them, and we smiled in understanding. Oh, these extreme reactions of the city people who have been alienated even from simple species of nature…

Shera was the dangerous creature! No, they weren’t afraid of her, they said among shouts and cries, but they, all three of them, found cats disgusting, they shuddered at a cat’s plain sight! I had to take Shera on my lap and lead her outside in the garden. My husband tried to calm our guests, he said Shera was a very nice and quiet cat who had recently given birth to some very beautiful kittens, but in vain. This task seemed more difficult than he supposed. The frightened group was now watching out for Shera’s new appearance and hardly enjoyed the rest of the dinner.

They skipped the dessert and after a while they got ready to go. They thanked us for everything and invited us to their apartment in Athens. Of course, I repeated our honest invitation to spend some of their holidays with us, but they murmured they didn’t know where and for how long they would go this summer and hurried away.

I don’t think they will accept our invitation.


Δευτέρα 10 Ιουνίου 2013

THE AUBERGINES

The aubergines

a short story by Angeliki Bouliari  

Both my mother’s husbands passed away prematurely, a short while after they had reached their sixties. The second at the age of sixty-three. In May of that year he received his pension, in June he was diagnosed with cancer. The doctors gave him a small extension of life through a serious, that is painful, operation, and so he had time to say farewell to us and we on the other hand to get used to the idea.  My own father was the first husband, but I don’t have much to tell you about him. They took a divorce when I was a little girl and saw him in no more than three or four occasions.

My mother is a very dynamic and independent person, though with a somewhat harsh and primitive behavior at times, perhaps because she was deprived of education, which became an obsession for her. Luckily things balanced out with me and my brothers, since we were all able to get proper education under her constant encouragement and through our will. Her brain is female, bears ideas all the time, however her boldness and heavy hand resemble a general. It would have been better if she were born a man. This would have helped her to impose her own opinions and realize many of her plans which never went further than this stage, since the first and best signature, that of the husband, was needed, which unfortunately was not available.

From this point of view, the husbands represented rather an obstacle in her way. But if she was young enough when she divorced the first one hoping for someone better, no matter if he finally didn’t meet her expectations either, when the second left her alone, too, she was by then of a mature age herself, in her early sixties, commonly considered old for new plans. Having often thought that her path of life in the role of a wife was predestinate, I told her once: “Oh, mother, whichever you had chosen, yet again you would be a widow now.” I meant, of course, that she would be alone, without company and support. I guess she didn’t like what I said, because she stared at me with severe eyes and asked me in a sibylline way: “You think so?” I suppose, now that I am thinking about it again, that she didn’t like this image for herself, of being a weak woman needing a man.

After the required mourning period had passed, Mother started driving regularly the car, enjoying her coffee with the accompaniment of some cigarettes and renovating her parental house in the country. When all works were completed, she announced to us that she would move there permanently. Ourselves we were concerned about her, whether after living her whole life in the city she would manage to get used to living in the country, and we hoped that she would spare her time between the country and the city, where we, her children and grandchildren, lived.

Soon it was proved that there was no reason for us to worry. Apart from her occupation with the housework, her energy was redirected to nature. She acquired a garden where she grew plants and seasonal vegetables and all kinds of herbs. A small poultry farm on the bank of the river passing nearby with hens and some geese were added in her occupations, while the ‘family’ was complemented with a fertile little cat and her six cute kittens, which, to her great joy, ran towards her upon her appearance on the path at usual lunch time and followed her everywhere like obedient little dogs.

 Soon, too, our hopes vanished that Mother would visit us in the city.

Of course, we were aware that since she had never been a conventional mother, she wouldn’t become a conventional grandma and elderly, yet again we had difficulty in accepting that all her life was now defined by the vegetable garden and the poultry and that there was no time left for us.  The plants, she said in a manner so authoritative that no objection or protest could be raised, needed continuous attention, so she had to be always present in order to protect them from the adverse weather conditions, and as far as the animals were concerned, they should be given food and water on a daily basis. There was nobody to undertake this duty with her own sense of responsibility. And she concluded with the suggestion that we should visit her, so she could see us and give us our share from the crop. Why was she getting tired anyway if not to provide us with fresh vegetables and eggs? On the other side, it was meaningless for us to talk about the family, work and children demands of each one of us. Our words were in question, hers never.

On such a visit of mine, on a like a lightning trip, last summer – I arrived midday and next morning I would leave – apart from the afternoon coffee-time, little other time we spent together. Mother was very busy with that whole new world she had created and of which she was very proud. To catch up with her and break my own news to her, I followed her everywhere running, because in spite of her age she walks upright so very fast that when I realized it, I stopped worrying about her health and smoking. So, I accompanied her as far as the drugstore where she bought medicines for two or three alone and impotent ‘elderly’ persons, and stayed with her afterwards while she was feeding the animals and putting water in the watering hole, and later on I watched her gather all hens and geese in their little houses and close tightly the doors, constantly watching out for her handsome but aggressive rooster who was very likely to attack her.

On the way back home and as it had got entirely dark outside, I felt certain that all kinds of her occupations were over and that we would have at last the opportunity to spend a lovely quiet evening together. In front of the garden gate, though, she suddenly stopped. “You go upstairs and I’ll come in a short while. I want to collect some aubergines that you take with you tomorrow.” There was no point in my saying that she didn’t have to do this or insisting on my keeping her company. It was getting chilly and cold, she said decisively, mosquitoes were always fond of biting me, the nettles would sting me and my legs would swell up and moreover my sandals would get dirty. Herself she was equipped with rubber boots, gloves, a knife and a torch. I obeyed.




I went home. I made myself some hot tea and drank it while watching the news on the television. Time passed but Mother still hadn’t appeared. I put a shawl on my shoulders and went out in the balcony overlooking the garden. In the total darkness I could only see a dim light and a human shadow going back and forth from one plant to the other: My mother and her torch.




“Enough with the aubergines! How many more am I going to take with me?” I said as calmly as I could.

“Aubergines you think I am collecting? I have other business more important to do”, she replied bent over a plant without looking up.

“What is going on?” I asked puzzled.

“There are some bugs here which go crazy for aubergines.”

“And what are you doing?”

“I am picking them up one by one from each aubergine plant.”

I stayed stunned. “One by one! Do you have to do that now? Can’t you do it in the morning?”

She laughed ironically. “It is at night they come out, and if I wait till morning, I will find no aubergines on their place tomorrow, not one. And it is a pity. I’ve grown them and taken care of them for so long”, she said and went on picking up the bugs carefully.

“And what are you doing with these bugs?”I asked without having got over the surprise yet.

“I put them here in a little bucket and I will throw them away on the other side of the road near the river. There they’ll find a lot of blackberries to eat!”



THE END

P.S. This short story first appeared in Greek, on : http://www.logwn-paignia.gr/tauepsilon973chiomicronsigmaf-15.html









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Δευτέρα 21 Φεβρουαρίου 2011

THE BUZZ OF THE BEE

For my daughters

Many little bees hidden on that tree... 
A street in Monte Carlo
(Photo: Angeliki Bouliari)

Do not slide, just climb up.

Do not dive, to reach the dark.
Just gently swim among your feelings.
Let them caress you and take you far.
Let them kiss you and show you who
you really are.

Watch ecstatic the bleeding sunset,
the transient glory,
the tragic disappearance.
But love warmly the early dawn,
the morning dew 
on the cool green leaves.

Get sad with the autumn naked trees.
You can even let your tears drop.
But let them feed you with the hope
of that first newborn bee,
on the flower of your plant,
in the pot at your window-sill.
Can you hear the happy buzz of the bee?
Can you share this song with me?