By Sindhu Venugopal-Roy
There was a little boy with a big name – Methodius. Oh it was grand, the name. And a grand boy he was too. His sturdy little head was capped with brown curls and a watchful face was set off by brown cautious eyes. He was clinging to his mother’s apron as she chatted to Caterina, the landlady of a beautiful little inn in Zaros. We sat on little chairs pulled into the tiny rocky street outside the inn. The women were talking breathlessly in the slightly keening tone of the Greek language, while Caterina and I sat peeling artichokes. Caterina’s twinkling eyes and wrinkled hands wove a story as the neighbour, Methodius’s mother, rhythmically interjected. Not knowing what they said left me sensitive to the harmonies and rhythms that develop between two people who talked every day, back and forth for years.
Meanwhile, Methodius was getting decidedly unhappy about the situation as neither his mother nor his elder brothers seemed to take the least interest in him. His older brothers were kicking a football around near him but he was too small to join in. The oldest brother was being hateful to him and kicking the ball out of reach. He didn’t want to play with them. He wanted his mamma. ‘Mamma!!’, he said plaintively, tugging again at her apron. The mother, with her tired and friendly face carried on her conversation as she absent-mindedly put a hand on her son’s head. ‘Mammmma! Mamma!!’
She turned around, still lost in the flow of the conversation, and said something in Greek. Whatever it was, it was not satisfactory to Methodius. He looked around at something to vent his dissatisfaction on. His red lips stuck out stubbornly as he toed a gold and green artichoke that had rolled off Caterina’s lap. He felt the pain of all the world as he stood there, invisible and useless to everyone.
He let go of the apron long enough to kick the artichoke into a bush. He swiveled around, looking, hunting, for an object that would take the weight of his hopelessness. His eyes grew round and big as a tear rolled down his cheek. A thought came to him. He decided he would show the tear to his mother. She would surely respond to his suffering now. He went back to her, face upraised, the tear balanced on his cheek. She put an arm protectively around him but she still did not look! And the tear rolled down, wasted, unseen.
“Mamma…”. His voice trembled with the insult of her indifference. His older brother stopped his playing for a moment and came over to where we sat. He had seen me with my camera and happily decided to pose for me. His body had the consciousness of a twelve year old who has suddenly realized that he was now becoming a man. He put on a touchingly awkward camera-smile and I willingly clicked. The other brother, about ten and with smart grey eyes and a cocky little smile, joined him. They were happy to just pose – neither asked to see the pictures.
I signaled to Methodius to join us. The mute suffering face stared back. He did not move. He had been watching the little scene in silence but my calling to him seemed to him to be the signal to go back to his methodical crying. He repeated his demand in an automatic wailing tone that seemed separate from him. Insistent.
Caterina made a peace offering of a peeled and beautifully shaped artichoke to him but Methodius threw it back. His pain had grown beyond any hope now. His brother jeered him and teased him as his wails grew more strident. Even his mother, inured by years of the squabbling of three boys in the house, now had to pay attention. She yelled at the lads to take their little brother to play. Her voice was loud, but the face oddly unprovoked. She was the supreme mother, weathered and buffeted by three boys as they struggled for their space and identity in the family.
Methodius the sulking warrior did not capitulate. Even the rare invitation to join his hateful and wonderful older brothers in play could not stir the little one from the depths of his suffering. A mother who did not love him, he felt, she who had so many other tasks to be done and people to be talked to. He was a tag-along, an afterthought. His tongue could not articulate what his mind and heart felt so strongly, and so he wailed.
Suddenly, without the expectation of it, his mother finished her conversation with Caterina and turned to him and picked him up. She swung his wrathful little body high up into the air and with a swoop folded him into her caress. Methodius gasped, his breath caught by the surprise. His breath came out as a long whale of laughter but the eyes filled with real tears of sadness. So long… he thought as his mother laughingly nuzzled his cheek and kissed him, so long it took for his mother to see him.
The mother looked at the brown eyes and then did see him. She felt the depth of his need and caught him up as she murmured a little lullaby that she used to sing to him when he was a baby. Her older boys played with loud shouts, needing her warmth too. But their independence was still freshly gathered and too exhilarating. The oldest one looked his mother playfully singing to the little one. He looked away and then back at them. The new world pulled him in slowly and surely. His eyes suddenly smarted. He looked at his mother’s middle-aged cheeks and weathered arms.
“Little baby,” he called out to his baby brother in his language, without malice, as Methodius clung to his mother, relieved at last.
By Sindhu Venugopal-Roy