Read Online The Fig Tree by Arnold Zable - Free Book Online

incomprehension. ‘Why doesn’t the cancer attack the rocks,’ she says again. It is her incantation, her protest. Dora sits with Alexander, and with two friends of Lily’s, one from the women’s movement, the other a sister-in-law.
    Dora cannot help but feel devastated by her mother’s pain. And a touch of anger, a sense of abandonment. It rears up, unexpectedly, then subsides. Her mother is leaving when she wants her most. They had just entered common territory now that Dora has a child. She thinks of what could have been. ‘I wanted to share the secrets of child-rearing,’ Dora tells Lily’s friends.
    Dora is divided. Tugged one way, then the other, between her ill mother and the needs of the child. ‘What will the baby eat today?’ Dora says, as if thinking aloud. ‘He had rice yesterday. Perhaps I will feed him buckwheat today. He needs protein. I better get it right.’
    And she is haunted by her mother; her closed eyes, her withdrawal from the outside world. Lily had been so curious, so vital and alive. Now she no longer wants to know. Dora longs to see her. To speak to her at least one last time. To be of use. To help soothe her pain.
    It is then that she allows herself to break down. In the corridor. In the company of two women. One lifts Alexander from Dora’s arms. ‘I cannot believe she has cancer,’ she tells them. ‘She has always absorbed other people’s burdens. Now she is leaving when we have so much to share.’
    The women comfort her. They are older women. Child-rearers. ‘Be strong. Do not despair,’ they tell her. ‘You have your own child. It is your time. This is how it goes.’
    A corridor in St Vincent’s. The mood oscillates. There are subtle shifts. Lighter moments. Unexpected detours. Perhaps the stories we tell in the corridor are an extended epitaph. There is the tale of how Lily got her name. It is not a typical Greek name.
    Lily was christened Erasmia Kecatos. In 1926, when she was one year old, an uncle, newly arrived from Ithaca, would take her for a walk in the surrounding streets. Neighbours strolling by once asked, ‘What is her name?’ Her uncle did not feel comfortable with the name Erasmia outside the family home. It sounded awkward in these streets. It underlined his poor grasp of English, his strange accent. He looked up, and saw a lily in a front garden. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed. ‘Name is Lily.’ And it stuck. So the story goes.
    There are other memories that take hold. Corridor anecdotes. The few images that will take root and return unexpectedly, at any time. Lily’s three children each have their own. For Dora, it is the coffee ritual. She associates it with Sunday afternoons. And the kitchen in Parkdale. The smell of it. The familiarity. Dora and Lily are cooking together. The silence is broken occasionally by a piece of gossip. Then they pause for the ritual. Always at the same time. It is as if they work for this moment, the four o’clock coffee break.
    Lily brings the briki to the boil. She pours two Greek coffees. They sit down. The pots are simmering. The meal is well on the way. It is a moment to savour. There are two small cups side by side on the kitchen table, glistening black. Then they break the rules, and add a dash of milk. Says Dora, ‘to take the bitterness away’.
    Emerging from St Vincent’s for the last time, late on a Thursday morning, on 20 October 1994, just hours after Lily passed away, I am struck by the contrast between the stillness that has been induced in us after three weeks of vigil, sitting alongside a dying woman, and the hurried steps of passers-by, the drone of traffic careering along a busy road.
    And the thought rears up: what is the destination of all this movement? Where are we headed for in this dash through life? Why is it that it takes a brush with illness and death to make us think about deeper values, about