A boat called Brotherly Love - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 6: Our Global Face
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Arnold Zable
EVEN THOUGH THE BROTHERS WERE SELF-PROCLAIMED ATHEISTS, they could not completely abandon the old ways. They nailed an icon of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of harbours and fishermen, to a cabin wall. Call it Nicholas, wild Poseidon, or Aeolus, god of the winds, the impulse to call on a higher power would rear with the rising winds of an imminent storm.
The brothers came to know the winds because their lives depended upon them. They came to know the winds because they had been taught to know them by an uncle, a village fisherman, a passing seaman, a family friend. Each wind was a living force, identifiable, capable of being understood. There was a west wind that brought rains, and a west wind that blew under cloudless skies. There were hot winds that brought storms and moist winds that trailed rainbows in their wakes.
Every point of the compass was accounted for, and each breeze possessed its personal name. Pounentes was a summer wind that blew from the west. Levantes, the east wind, bore the echoes of the Ottoman past. From the north-west, the winter Maistros stirred savage seas upon its flanks. The Sirocco blew with desert sands from the African south. Garbi was a fickle south-west wind that brought sun, rain and squalls. Below them all surged the Ionian, besieged by tempests and erratic swells, occasionally pacified by deceptive calms.
For days on end the calms would persist, until broken by an abrupt descent of chaos. "White squalls," the seamen called them. They swooped down from the mountain summits, spurred on by winds that swept away the sun. Within minutes, clouds blanketed the mountain slopes and encircling seas. The brothers would turn back and motor out to the deep where they remained to ride out the storm. Or, if close enough to land, they would lower the sails, spark the engine and make for the safety of the nearest shore.
Ithaca was the epicentre of their Ionian world. A map of the island was glued to the cabin wall. Its two elongated halves were joined by the narrow isthmus of Aetos, 600 metres wide. From desolate cape to cape, from Agios Iannis in the north, to Andri in the south, the island measured barely 30 kilometres. The boys did not need the map to navigate its shores. They knew each inlet and harbour, the coast's treacherous rocks and stretches of pebbled sand. They came to know the Ionian as well as the mule paths of the Marmakas. They knew its channels and undercurrents, its fishing grounds and remote coves.
Manoli and Andreas ferried passengers and freight to more distant ports. They sailed where boats confined by timetables could not. They crisscrossed the narrow strait to Kefalonia where they loaded shipments of robola wines that had been lowered down steep goat paths. They sailed south to the island of Zakynthos, where they exchanged the robola for virgin olive oils and grains. They journeyed east to the mainland towns of Zeverda and Preveza and returned with contraband tobacco, ice-packed beef and prospective brides. They voyaged further east to the mainland port of Patras where Brotherly Love berthed between giant freighters that lounged against the wharves like stranded whales.
They moved as far north as Corfu and passed within a breath of the mountains of Albania and the Adriatic coast. It was always the first approach to an unknown port that most quickened the heart. Silver rays poured into the sea through gaps in the clouds on an autumn afternoon. Corfu lay upon the horizon like an ageing dowager beneath a halo of grey light. The caique rounded the old citadel into the harbour and eased towards the wharf. The stucco-clad buildings were darkening into crimson facades. It was a glimpse of perfection, a moment of stillness before the onset of inevitable storms.
TWICE A YEAR, IN OCTOBER AND AUGUST, ON THE FEAST DAYS of Gerasimos, patron saint of Kefalonia, Manoli and Andreas were called upon to ferry the insane and possessed. Their loved ones were at their wits' end. Perhaps the dead saint would effect a miraculous cure. They would set out in the predawn darkness with their hapless kin for the journey across the strait. Those who resisted were forcefully restrained as the caique made its way to Sami Bay.
Manoli and Andreas observed their restless cargo, bemused. They were ferrymen. Detached. But for want of something better to do, they accompanied the possessed and their kin from Sami to the Omala Valley. A continuous stream of pilgrims descended into the valley. The crowds lined the ceremonial avenue that extended from the plane tree that the saint had planted, to the church.
The procession moved from the church grounds led by three boys dressed in white. Behind them, a file of priests accompanied the bier bearing their mummified saint. Mothers clutching sick babies, teenage daughters supporting their crippled elders, the possessed and the pious, the lame and the troubled, surged towards the oncoming bier and flung themselves upon the road. The brothers helped lay out the insane, as the four-centuries-old remains of Gerasimos passed over them. And, as if in defiance of the rational logic the brothers worshipped, hours later, when the boat cast off for the return journey, the change was palpable.
Madness had been subdued into temporary tranquillity, animal groans into muted euphoria. The insane stood on the deck and gazed at the receding island with the awe of infants. Their carers looked back at harbour lanterns sprinkled behind the waterfront. Their anxiety had given way to a meditative stillness. It rarely lasted, of course. Within days, perhaps hours, their burden returned. But this interlude of gliding homewards was reward enough for their efforts.
FOR SEVEN YEARS THE BROTHERS PLIED THE IONIAN TOGETHER and there came a time when the movement of the sea took hold. It was a spiralling motion, a curving from isle to isle, a circular movement of casting off and return. The brothers came to know the veil that falls at the point where one island recedes and another is about to come into view. In calmer weather they would surrender to the drift, and savour their moment of respite. The labour of departure was now well behind them and the labour of arrival yet to come.
At night, they sailed through a protean world. Shadows took fleeting form, before giving way to darkness. Chapels and monasteries on deserted heights abruptly appeared, and then vanished like pallid ghosts. Phantomlike figures could be seen making their way on remote roads. Villages twinkled above inlets and coves, and sang with the promise of shelter and warm hearths.
It was Andreas, the younger brother, who began to long for other worlds. He scanned the horizon with a gnawing restlessness. He was drawn to oceans bigger than the confined seas on which he sailed. He envied those islanders who set out on one-way voyages to the Americas and Africa, Asia and Australia, the great Southern Land.
Like his father before him, Andreas reasoned he would be gone for just a few years. He would return with suitcases fat with gifts and pockets stuffed with cash. He would return with enough wealth to place the finest marble stone on his mother's grave. He would shower his largesse on the village, extend the family house and build a villa overlooking Afales Bay.
He would construct bigger and better boats with which to ply the Ionian. He would acquire a fleet of caiques and run them from Frikes to the Black Sea, and upstream along Danube River ports. He would re-establish trading routes from the Ionian to the Adriatic and the fabled lagoons of Venice. Andreas pictured the day of his return, his arrival back in the village, the children chasing him, chanting: "Andreas is back! Andreas is back!"
No matter how hard Manoli tried to dissuade him, his younger brother clung to his plans. With a heavy heart Manoli finally ferried him, as he and Andreas had ferried so many others, on the first leg of their journeys towards new lives. For the final time the brothers descended together, pre-dawn, from the Village of the Forty Saints. They remained silent as they walked. They maintained their silence as they moved away from Frikes Bay; and they sailed south, in silence, within sight of the east coast.
Andreas did not allow himself to dwell on the passing landscape. He did not register the familiar landmarks, the three windmills dormant at the mouth of Kioni Bay, Mount Neriton looming as they spiralled into the Gulf of Molos. He remained detached as they bent their way into the labyrinth that conveyed them into Vathy Bay. He avoided eye contact, as Manoli helped him deposit his suitcases on the waterfront, and he did not linger over farewells. Without a word, Manoli untied the ropes and guided Brotherly Love from Vathy, past Aetos, the eagle mount on the return journey and, for the first time, he sailed the caique alone.
THE SUN WAS BARELY ON ITS ASCENT AS ANDREAS STOOD ON THE DECK of the larger boat, bound for Patras. His mind teemed with grandiose plans. He wanted to leap the oceans and immediately walk the streets of the new land. He looked distractedly back at the island. He barely noticed its receding presence. The first to wane were the sharper colours, the mountain greens on the upper slopes. He lost sight of the windmills and the Kathara monastery, perched upon the heights. The peaks sank into the horizon. The island was completely shrouded within itself.
Only then did he feel the shock of separation. Only then did it strike him that even though he had left Ithaca countless times, this was the first time he had cast off without the prospect of his return. He had not counted on this sensation. No matter how hard he tried he was seized by a sense of panic, the first intimations of a nagging doubt.
In the ensuing days his doubt grew. Perhaps, after all, nothing would become of him. He tossed in his bunk at night. He paced the decks consumed by conflicting thoughts. All remained a blur as he sailed south. There was no going back. There were no familiar harbours within reach, no sheltering coves to ride out the storm or familiar seas to take him home.
No matter how much he tried to ignore them, he was plagued by images of Brotherly Love, the caique moving homewards, huddled against winds and rains, or set alight by ascendant suns. In the cabin, the map of the Ionian, a pot of basil, the shards of a ceramic vase they had pulled out of the sea, the smell of tobacco and brine.
Then, the familiar sequence of the homecoming ritual – the dropping of the anchor, the flinging of the ropes, the unloading of the cargo, the stepping ashore to the greetings of friends. Gutting and cleaning their catch by the boat. Laying out the nets to dry. And always, Stathis, the village madmen, limping towards them, chanting his habitual refrain: "Ah. You are back from the sea. Did you bring any fish?"
Weeks later, as the ship sailed across the equator, Andreas's doubts sharpened. He had breached the gap between the hemispheres. The lines were drawn. He had not expected this. Like a mantra one thought, above others, repeated itself. It grew more incessant with each kilometre closer to the great Southern Land. It swelled as he first glimpsed the deserted white beaches of the West Coast. It resounded as he moved towards Fremantle port. Would he ever return to his beloved Ionian Sea? Would he ever see his Ithaca again? ♦