The reply to his marriage proposal from her family had been that the girl was too young and if he was interested, he would have to wait. Well, if she was too young for him then she was too young for anyone else too. As far as he was concerned he had first refusal, and if anyone was going to have her it would be him.
It was a wonder that Froso’s clandestine meetings before that fated evening had escaped Mitros’s notice, given how he made it his business to keep an eye on her. The incident terrified the girl, who would have liked to tell her mother about it, but dared not without betraying her secret.
‘I’ve seen him around, but I have never spoken to him.’ Froso tried to appease Kosmas when he questioned her about Mitros the next time they met at the churchyard after the service. The liturgy that Sunday morning had seemed unbearably long to her as she stood with her mother upstairs in the women’s sector of the church, looking down at the male congregation. She could see the back of Kosmas’s head and she was willing him with her persistent gaze to turn around and look at her. She loved playing that game whenever she wanted to attract his attention as she was ushered up to the gallery by her mother. As she stared, she saw him bring his hand to the back of his head as if he felt a touch, only to realize it was Froso’s eyes upon him urging him to turn to her. As the liturgy came to a close, she gestured with the faintest of movements that she needed to go outside, then, faking a dizzy spell, she hurried to meet him. There was to be a mnimosino that day and she knew there would be a delay before the congregation poured into the yard with their parcels of koliva from the priest, thus preventing any private exchange they might manage to snatch.
‘What business does he have with you?’ Kosmas muttered, his lips tightly set.
‘I don’t know . . . I promise I have never spoken to him,’ she pleaded, on the verge of tears. ‘I don’t know what he wants with me,’ she said again.
‘He wants you! That’s what he wants,’ he murmured as the congregation began to leave the church.
Froso was at a loss. What should she do? She wanted to talk to her mother, but she dared not; she wanted to meet Kosmas alone, but she dared not. She was frightened to go to the village to see her teacher and collect her book, but she dared not not go, as her mother would want to know the reason.
The only time the two lovers were able to see each other now was either at the churchyard or in the village square after the service, where it was customary for families to stop for a morning coffee before going their separate ways home on a Sunday morning. There was no objection to youngsters being seen talking together if other people were present, though for the two lovers, after having tasted the joys of their private hideout, it was less than perfect.
‘You can’t go alone to the school again,’ Kosmas told her.
‘If I suddenly stopped going after making such a fuss before, my mother would interrogate me.’
‘What if that creep starts bothering you?’
‘I’ll collect my book and then I’ll get on the bus and hurry home,’ she promised.
‘I don’t know . . . I have a bad feeling about this,’ he said, and a shiver went through his spine.
4
With trepidation in her heart yet determined that she would not let Mitros deter or frighten her, Froso braved the bus ride to the upper village once again, hoping to avoid an unpleasant encounter. Trying to recall all the previous visits to the library, she remembered seeing Mitros no more than half a dozen times and then only once or twice had he actually greeted her. Froso had paid no special attention to the young man nor had he made an impression on her. But for Mitros, Froso had become something of an obsession; an obsession that no one knew about apart from his mother, who had been his envoy to convey the marriage proposal to the girl’s family on behalf of her son as was the custom of the times.
‘She is not the only girl in the world, my son,’ his mother would tell him. ‘Look around at all the