Read Online Intimate Distance by Katerina Cosgrove - Free Book Online

wing-like sheaths from the ceiling. There’s a fireplace with a tiny heap of ash in it.
    I start to cry. I sit with a thud on the floor, hold my head in both hands, wipe tears, streams of mascara run down my cheeks, glowing unnaturally in the light of the candle. I wait for Zoi to notice, to come and comfort me. But he doesn’t. He’s roaming around the house with his own candle like a trail of fire through the gloom, opening cupboards and inspecting behind each door.
    So I get up from where I sit and light all the candles the women have given me; stub-ends found in kitchen pantries, moulded pink children’s lambathes left over from Easter Sunday services, beeswax tapers like rolls of honey. I put them on the mantle, on the table, on every windowsill. Sniffing and sobbing in great gulps as I light matches, only to have them blow out or drop or burn my fingers. Zoi says nothing, standing in the middle of the room, hands dangling by his sides. He isn’t even aware of my distress, mentally traversing the narrow paths of the village with his grandfather. His fingers are curled tight in a little fist within the palm of the older man. He was a little boy when he first came to this house and his grandfather hides in the corners, away from my pools of light.
    12
    I WANT TO establish order in the grandfather’s house. Rhythm, security, some small sense of permanence. The floors are swept and mopped, windows washed, the brass fixtures on the shutters polished. I beat rugs on the railing of the terrace, woven rugs slippery and shiny with grime, always threatening to fall down into the chasm between the mountains. Curtains are washed and put up to dry, smelling of lemon and olive oil soap. Then I sit in the disorder of my cleaning, tired in the middle of the day, reading Ritsos.
    Zoi comes through the door carrying a covered bowl.
    â€˜Hey, Pandelina gave us some currant rice she made this morning.’
    I get up, using his leg to help me onto my feet, take the bowl from him, peeking under the white cloth and sniffing at the food. I put it into the kitchen and begin working again, starting now on my backpack, unravelling my clothes.
    â€˜I’m going to help old Pandeli bring the sheep home,’ Zoi says. ‘Do you want anything?’
    â€˜See if there’s any fresh yoghurt. I feel like something sour.’
    When he’s gone, I turn to his suitcase; take out his clothes, unfolding creased shirts and refolding underpants again before placing them in the cupboard. I linger over his toiletries, carefully arranging his shaving brush and soap and razors on the bathroom sill. Unscrew the top of his aftershave bottle and inhale its scent. Cinnamon and orange peel. I start to fold his jeans, thrown hastily over a chair last night, and my hand brushes over his wallet in the back pocket. I sit on the edge of the bed with it in my lap then pick it up, caress it, bring it to my nose and smell the rich leather. It’s soft, worn, moulded by all those years being carried in his trousers. I decide to open it, look inside.
    What could be the harm? All I’ll find are some dirty drachma notes; wads of out-of-date bus tickets and credit cards. Nothing shattering. There’s an old photograph of me displayed behind the tatty plastic screen. It’s a passport shot, the one I gave him when we first met; the only one I had of myself. Only my head and shoulders, a glimpse of what I was wearing; one of those silk shirts you could get for a couple of dollars at the markets. Chinese. Coffee-coloured. A string of cheap turquoise beads around my neck. The girl in the photograph stares ahead at her future self, solemn, lips slightly parted, less than a year ago. I like the photograph; it shows exactly how fresh I was when it was taken. A moment in time, stillness caught, captured.
    Alongside it is a photograph of Dimitri taken in a booth. He’s making a face and his big hands are also in the shot, palms