Marianna

by Mo Irvine © 2005-6

Reprint - First published, in different format, in What If? Canada's Fiction Magazine for Teens, May/June 2003

 

 

It was June when I first met Marianna. That day, still a newcomer to the unrelenting heat of Greek summer, I had found my way to the olive grove and sat in the shade of a tree, shifting my back carefully against the gnarled trunk. In the distance was the sea, a glorious, vibrant swathe of turquoise whispering gently against the sun-bleached pebbles. The sea and the shore were holding their own timeless conversation, and the sound soothed me.

I thought how lucky I was to be here. Back in England, the rain had been falling in steady grey sheets when the children and I had flown out of Heathrow. Here, it was already hot. The grass was dried to pale gold and the earth was cracked clay, for summer comes early to the Greek islands.

I think I dozed for a while, tired from the move and lulled by the sounds of the sea in the distance and the cicadas in the trees. When I came to, I looked drowsily around me, then down to the beach, where I spied a lone figure walking slowly along the shoreline.

 

Picking my way down, I abandoned my shoes beneath a stone pine and made my way carefully to the edge of the cool water. Perching on a rock in the shallows, I allowed the sea to caress my legs, and looked idly towards the figure I had noticed.

 

I could see now that it was a child, a girl of no more than eleven or twelve. She walked with a dejected air for one so young, her face turned always toward the sea. Her hair shone like sliced coal; it painted her shoulders and fell to her waist in a glorious, gleaming, heavy curtain.

She was wearing a shabby, ill fitting black dress. Either the girl had recently lost weight or, more likely, the dress was a hand-me-down, made from thin, cheap cotton and hand-sewn. I could see that it had been patched and mended by an inexpert hand. The skirt dipped unevenly to her calves, which were naked, tanned and lightly muscled, like those of a dancer. She was barefoot, but she walked across the smoothed stones as one who is accustomed to going without shoes.

Taking her to be the child of a local family, and thinking she could perhaps be company for my own two children, I smiled up at her as she drew close, but she simply walked past as if I was not there.

I felt piqued by this, but then realized her attitude was most likely the natural shyness of a child meeting a foreigner, so I scrambled to my feet and walked after her.

“Hello,” I offered, as I drew alongside.

She stopped as if shot, snapping her body taut as she slowly turned to look at me. She studied my face for a long time, as if committing every detail to memory, and I, stifling a gasp, studied her in return.

Close up, the child's face was almost ethereal; heart stopping in its beauty, reminding me of a painting by Waterhouse. The sleek and abundant hair, parted simply in the middle, framed an olive, heart-shaped face with high cheekbones and pointed chin. Her wide sensuous and un-childlike mouth seemed to give lie to her unmistakable youth. But oh, her eyes. Never have I seen such old eyes in a face so young. It was as if some unimaginable sorrow lay, heavy as a stone, on this girl's heart, struggling to escape through those dark windows.

I shook myself from my reverie and smiled down at her. “Hello,” I said again. “May I talk to you?”

Her answering smile put my unease to rest. She was, once more, just a child, walking along the beach in the sunshine. She inclined her head in an oddly graceful, almost regal gesture, and indicated a group of rounded rocks that tumbled from the trees to the water's edge. We walked over to them and perched as best we could.

“My name is Bridget,” I told her, “and I have come to live here, in the house up above, with my two children. Perhaps you would like to play with them some time?” As I asked the question, I nodded towards the olive grove and the roof of the house, barely visible above the silvery green leaves.

The child's head turned to followed my direction, a wistful expression on her face. “My name is Marianna,” she told me. “I do not play.”

Thinking that I had perhaps misunderstood her or she me, I said with a smile, “Well, perhaps not right now, but on another day you would be very welcome to come to my house and meet my children. They are girls, like you, and would love to make a new friend. Emma is eight years old and Georgia is twelve.”

“Georgia,” she said, savouring the name on her tongue like an unusual morsel of food. “It is a very beautiful name.” A smile touched her face and then was gone, eclipsed by some inner sadness only she could see. She relapsed into a silence that I felt unable to breach.

For an instant, a cloud scudded across the sun and, involuntarily, I shivered and looked up to chart its progress to the east, shading my eyes as the sun appeared once more. When I looked down, Marianna had gone. Without a word or a sound, she had vanished from my view like a wraith into the mist. I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms, before laughing to myself as I realized she must simply have scrambled over the rocks when I wasn't looking.

Retrieving my shoes, I walked slowly back up the track to the house. Once there, my children arrived within minutes, bringing the gardener's two daughters with them. In the rush to prepare a meal for them, my encounter on the beach flew from my mind.

Days passed before I was once more free to indulge in walking and when I finally had the chance, my mind was preoccupied. When I paused to take stock of my surroundings, I realized that my feet, quite unconsciously, had taken me once more along the track towards the beach. Intending to turn around and head somewhere different, my eyes lit on the child walking, as before, by the edge of the sea.

Hurrying down, I came out onto the pebbles, and shouted out for her to wait for me. There was a breeze blowing along the shore, and I thought my words must have been taken by the wind, as she did not slacken her pace.

I ran to catch up with her, wondering as I did, what compulsion made me want to talk to this child who obviously felt no need of company. A little breathless, I shouted, “Marianna, please wait!” At last she stopped, turning slowly to face me.

“Hello again,” I said, smiling down into eyes that seemed to look through me. She nodded her head in reply and then resumed walking. I matched my stride to hers and asked, “Do you live near here? I see you like to walk on the beach.”

At first, I thought she was not going to answer me, but then she indicated the ruins of a stone cottage high above the rocks at the far end of the bay.

“I lived over there,” she said starkly. After another moment of silence, she added, “Now, I do not.”

Lost for a reply, I said, “I told my daughters I had met you. They would love to have you come and play whenever you want.”

Marianna stopped and faced me once more. We were, by this time, halfway along the beach. We stood and eyed one another as the sun hammered the rippled sea into golden tesserae. The hot sand burned my feet.

The child slowly smiled at me, and I sensed an exquisite sweetness and pain in that smile. Patiently, sadly, as if she were the adult and I the child, she spoke.

 

“Kyria,” she said, using the old-fashioned term for ‘Mrs.', “I do not play.”

As on our first meeting, a cloud chose that moment to shade the sun and I glanced upwards, then down again. In that glance she was gone.

Wildly, I scanned the deserted beach, knowing it would be fruitless. Here there were no rocks to scramble behind. I was standing alone upon a flat pebble strand with only the sound of the sea for company. When I looked up into the sky, there was no cloud.

Despite the heat, I shivered as fear seeped through my body and galvanized my legs into action. I ran across the beach, crashed blindly through the trees, and continued without pause until I reached my own courtyard where, still shivering, I sat with my arms across my chest, bathed in sunlight and waiting for the ague to stop.

 

That night, Anna, the gardener's wife, came to dinner with her daughters. As Anna and I sat talking, my daughter Georgia came onto the patio. She announced petulantly that she was bored with childish games and sat down next to me.

Anna wagged a finger at her and said, “Girl, never be bored with your childhood. All too soon, it will be behind you. Many years ago, on this island, and on others, young girls were expected to marry when they were no older than you.” My daughter gave a small gasp of surprise.

“I remember my grandmother telling me about a young girl who lived just around the bay here, God rest her soul.” Anna crossed herself fervently. “She was eleven years old when her parents married her to a fisherman. He was thirty years old, but he was a kind man and by all accounts, he treated her well.

“The girl had a younger sister who visited her often. But when the younger child asked her to play the girl told her, ‘Little sister, my toys are behind me now that I am a wife. I do not play.'”

Georgia, enraptured, looked at Anna with rounded eyes. I sat perfectly still, watching the goose bumps as they broke out once more along my arms. I shivered as a cloud passed across the sky.

“And did they live happily ever after?” asked Georgia, ever hopeful.

“No,” I whispered.

“No,” said Anna, glancing curiously at me. “The husband was drowned at sea, and the girl, who was now neither child nor wife, was so distraught that she threw herself over the cliff so she could be with him.”

My daughter looked stricken. “Oh, that's horrid! She must have been so sad. What was her name?”

“It is many years since I have heard this story. The little sister's name I can remember because she was called like you, little one – Georgiana. But the poor woman-child, now, what was her name?” Anna paused in thought.

“Marianna,” I whispered. “Her name was Marianna.”

 

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