As it became obvious that Froso was no longer in the mood to tell her more, Calli’s thoughts turned to the phone call.
‘It was Michalis who rang earlier, Thia. He is coming this way and wanted to know if I’d like to go for a drive.’ She looked at her aunt, waiting for her response.
‘And you must go!’ Froso replied at once. ‘You’ve heard enough miserable things from me for now; go and enjoy yourself, my girl.’
Her earlier conversation with Chrysanthi had whetted Calli’s appetite to find out more about this man who had captured her interest. If he thought she was a mixture of Western sophistication and Mediterranean warmth, she found him straightforward and unpretentious. His evident love of the land, his passion for his olive groves, was touching. Calli’s journey towards meeting people who followed paths different from those familiar to her up until then was apparently continuing.
‘Since it’s still early, I’d like to show you one of my olive groves,’ Michalis told her as they made their way once again towards the hills in his four-wheel drive. The higher the climb, the sweeter the scent of the air that blew through the open window. She greedily inhaled it and the oxygen which filled her lungs seemed to revive her. The mountain air had an almost purifying effect; it felt as if she was being purged of the distressing story of her aunt’s past which during the course of the day had been returning to haunt her.
‘This particular olive grove,’ Michalis explained after he had parked the car on a steep hill by the side of the road, ‘has some of my oldest trees, because it was the one that my great-grandfather had started. He owned a little patch of earth, and at first he planted twenty olive trees, then my grandfather planted another twenty and after him my father extended it further. And now it’s up to me and my brother!’ He made a sweeping gesture across the plantation.
As they walked and talked between the rows of trees Calli could see through their silvery branches the blue sea shimmering in the distance. ‘My grandfather always said that the winds that blow from north Africa make the Cretan soil rich and fertile,’ Michalis went on, his voice wistful and proud. ‘That’s why our olive trees grow so well and healthily. We have been cultivating and producing olive oil in Crete since the Minoan times and that’s why our oil is the best in the world,’ he boasted again. His enthusiasm was as evident as his undisguised love for his island and his pride in his trees; she really liked that about him. How endearing, she thought, was this passion of his for the earth and all that it sustained, and how much more human, more real his attitude now seemed than the acquisitive ambitions she had known in her city life.
‘By late October, November, we will start the harvesting of the olives,’ Michalis started to explain, pointing out the budding fruit on the trees. ‘For the bigger groves we do have some relatively high-tech equipment but for this one we all get together, young and old, and enjoy harvesting the old-fashioned way.’
Calli remembered as a child hearing her mother and grandmother recalling the olive harvest. They would describe to her and her brother how it was when everyone gathered in the autumn to turn the harvest event into a celebration. Their accounts of hitting the trees with sticks to shake down the berries, and the stories of donkeys and mules being loaded with sacks of olives to be carried down to the coast on their backs, sounded more exciting than anything the two children could imagine, so that they begged to be allowed to take part in it.
‘You’ll have to wait till you are both older and don’t have to go to school any longer before you can come and help your grandfather,’ Eleni would tell them when they pestered her to bring them to Crete for the harvest. But inevitably, as is always the way, once they were old enough to participate, they both lost interest; there was always some other activity far more pressing to do with their time which took priority in their teenage years and later in their adult lives.
‘My whole family and all our friends take part in the harvesting – you should join us some time,’ Michalis said as they stood under one of the oldest trees. ‘Stay till November,’