Chapter 13 Chapter 12

1951 Anna has been married for four years now, and her new status makes her feel like a duck to water.She loves her husband dutifully and reciprocates his passion for her.Anna was the perfect wife to all those around her.However, she knew that the whole family was eager to hear the news of the pregnancy, but she didn't worry about not having a child at all.There is still a lot of time to have children, and she likes this carefree life too much to lose it because of becoming a mother.Aleftria brought up the topic one day when he and she were discussing the furnishing of a spare bedroom in Naples.

"This used to be a nursery," she said, "when my two girls were little. What color do you think would be good?" Aleftria thought she had created the perfect opportunity for her daughter-in-law to talk about her plans and her desire to be a mother, but to Aleftria's disappointment, Anna only said that she liked light green. "It matched the fabric I ordered to cover the furniture," she said. During the summer, Anna, Andrés and their parents would stay for a while in the neoclassical villa in Naples, which Anna has now completely renovated, and Elevatoria felt that the fine curtains The flimsy furniture was impractical, but it seemed she couldn't get in the way of the young woman.In September, the family set off to move into the main house in Elounda.The house, Anna, slowly remodeled it to her own taste, even though her father-in-law preferred the dark style favored by his generation.She frequents the store in San Nicolas.One day in late fall, she went to the store to look at the trim she had chosen, and came home after checking the latest progress on the drapes.She rushed into the kitchen and kissed the back of the head of the man sitting at the table.

"Hi, dear," she said, "how's the press today?" This is the first day of olive oil pressing, an important date in the calendar, and it is always very dangerous to use the press for the next few months, whether the machine is working properly on the first day.There are countless baskets of olives waiting to be pressed, from which thousands of liters of olive oil can be squeezed, so making sure everything works is key.The golden liquid poured from the press into the large-mouthed ceramic jar was the foundation of the family's wealth.In Anna's view, each jar of oil is another meter of fabric, another piece of hand-made clothing tailored for her, with creases that fit her curves.These clothes, more than anything, show the difference between her and the village women. The skirts on them are all out of style, just like the skirts worn by the old grandmother a hundred years ago.Today, against the biting November winds in the bay, Ana is wearing an emerald green coat that wraps tightly around her breasts and hips, with lavish loops that hang almost to the floor.The fur collar stood up to protect her neck, warm her ears, and caress her cheeks.

Anna crossed the room, the silk lining of her coat rustling against her legs.She babbled about the day's chores and boiled water to make coffee for herself.At this moment, the man at the table stood up, and Anna turned around, screaming in fright. "Who are you?" she said out of breath, "I... I thought you were my husband." "I guess so." The man laughed, thinking her confused look was funny. When the two stood facing each other, Anna looked at the man she greeted so warmly just now. He was obviously not her husband, but he was very much like Andres in every way.Broad shoulders, black hair, and now he's standing there, even about the same height as Andres.The chiseled nose and slightly slanted eyes of the Pandoraki family are surprisingly identical.Anna felt her mouth dry when he spoke.What kind of trick is this playing?

"I am Manoli Vandoraki," he said, holding out his hand, "you must be Ana." Ana knew that Andrés had a cousin, and had heard Manoli's name a few times in conversation, but nothing else.She never thought he looked so much like her husband. "Manoli." She repeated the name, cutely.Now that she's trying to regain control, she's made a mistake and carelessly hugged a total stranger, and she feels stupid. "Does Andres know you're here?" she asked. "No, I've only been here an hour, and I'm going to surprise everyone. It obviously worked for you! You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I think so," Anna replied, "You two look so much alike that it's unbelievable." "I haven't seen Andres in ten years, but we look alike. People always mistake us for twin brothers." Anna could see, she could see, that this version of her husband was actually quite different from the original.Although Manoli had the same broad shoulders as Andrés, he was thinner, and she could see the protruding shoulder blades under his shirt.His eyes were full of smiles, and the lines around them were deeply lined.He thought it a good joke that Anna mistook him for his cousin.Anna soon discovered that he had picked this time to come back on purpose.Life is made for fun, you can see that in his smile.

At this moment Andrés and his father came back, and seeing Manoli standing there, they cried out in joy and surprise.Soon the three men were sitting together, drinking a bottle of plum wine, and Anna withdrew to arrange dinner.About an hour later, when Eleftria came back, the second bottle of plum wine had already been drunk.The two embraced and shed tears of joy.They immediately sent a message to Andrés' sisters, and the following Sunday they had a big reunion party to celebrate the return of Manoli, who had been away for ten years. Manoli Vendoraki is a free-spirited young man who has spent the past ten years largely in mainland Greece, squandering a sizable inheritance.His mother died giving birth to him, and his father died of a heart attack five years later when he was thirty.Manoli grew up hearing whispers about how his father died of a heart attack, real or not, that made him decide to live every day, every day as his last.He found the philosophy sound, and since the death of his father, Iannis van Doraki, his uncle Alexandros had been his guardian, but even he could not restrain Manoli.As a child, Manoli discovered that everyone around him had endless work, countless responsibilities, and the only days to enjoy were All Saints' Day and Sunday.But he wants to be happy every day of his life.

Although his memory of his parents is getting blurred day by day, he is often told that his parents are good people who have done their duty all their lives.But does their exemplary behavior do them any good?Not even death can stop it, can it?Like eagles snatching defenseless prey from bare rocks, fate seized them.To hell with it, he thought; even if he couldn't beat fate, he wanted to see if there was any other way to live than in the mountains of Crete before he was buried. Ten years ago, he left home.Occasional letters to aunts and uncles—some from Italy, some from Yugoslavia, but mostly from Greece—reassuring them that he was still alive and otherwise had little contact with his family.Alexandros understood that if his brother Iannis had not died so early, Manoli would have inherited the Pandoraki estate by now, not Andres.But this idea is just a hypothesis.At eighteen, Manoli was given a small cash estate, not land, which he spent in Rome, Belgrade, and Athens.

"A good life comes at a good price," he confided to Alexandros upon his return. "The best women are like good wine, expensive but worth every drachma." Now, however, Continental The woman wiped everything out of him, and he had nothing but a few coins in his pocket, and his uncle's promise to hire him to work on the estate. His return caused quite a stir, not only for his aunt and uncle, but for Andrés as well.The two of them are only six months apart in age, and they can actually be said to be twin brothers.When they were young, they knew almost everything about each other's thoughts and felt each other's pain, but after the age of eighteen, they parted ways and took completely different paths of life.It's hard to imagine what life will be like when Manoli returns.

However, he came back just in time.Alexandros Vandoraki is retiring next year, and Andres really needs help running the estate.They all thought it would be better for Manoli to take over the job than to hire an outsider.Although Alexandros had some doubts about his nephew's ability to really get to work, he put those doubts aside.After all, Manoli is his family. For several months, Manoli lived at home in the Elounda estate.There were many rooms in the house that were never used, so his presence did not inconvenience anyone, but in December Alexandros gave Manoli a flat.Manoli loves the family life and wants to be part of the dynasty he adamantly left a decade ago.However, his uncle wanted him to marry and start a family in the future and insisted that he should live in his own home.

"You'll be lucky to find a girl willing to live in a home where there are already two mistresses," he said to his nephew. "Another woman is asking for trouble." In the past, Alexandros used money to hire outsiders to manage the manor, and Manoli's house was lived by the manor.The house is at the end of a short private drive, less than a kilometer from the main house.With four bedrooms and a spacious living room, it's a great bachelor's home.But Manoli is still a frequent visitor to the host's house.He wants to eat and drink like Alexandros and Andres, and here are two women who do it for him.Everyone liked his lively talk, but Alexandros always insisted that he must go home no matter how late it was. In the past, Manoli always lived an erratic life here and there, flying from one place to another like a butterfly.Wherever he is, he always leaves broken promises.As a child, he always pushed the limits.Just as a provocation, he once put his hands on the fire until the skin was charred; on another occasion, he jumped from the highest cliff on the coast of Elounda, and his back was severely scratched, and the surrounding water was covered with blood. stained red.In other European capitals, he gambled down to a shirt and made a thrilling return.That's the way he does things.He found himself playing the same game involuntarily in Elounda, but the difference here was that he now had to settle down.Even if he wanted to go, there was no money for him to go away. To Alexandros' surprise, Manoli worked hard, though still not as dedicated as his cousin.Andres always took his lunch out to the fields to save time at home, but Manoli preferred to run for hours under the poisonous sun and eat it at the large dining table in the Vendoraki's kitchen. his lunch.Anna didn't refuse.She welcomes him here. Their intercourse was less a conversation than a flirtation.Manoli made her laugh, sometimes until she burst into tears.She liked his amusing humor, and the gleam in her dilated pupils when she met his gaze was enough to keep Manoli from going to Olive Grove all afternoon and staying here. Sometimes Eleftria lived in Elounda instead of Naples, fearing that her nephew wasn't really focusing on the estate. "Men are not supposed to hang out in the house during the day," she had said to Anna once. "This is where the women are. Their territory is outside." Anna ignored her mother-in-law's grievances and welcomed Manoli more warmly than before.It seemed to her that their close blood allowed their friendship to exist.According to the local customs, women are much more free after marriage than before marriage, so Anna spent an hour with her "cousin" every day, sometimes longer, and no one doubted it at first.But slowly, some people felt that Manoli went too often, and gossip spread. During one lunch that spring, Manoli lingered there longer than usual.Anna sensed that he had no scruples, and she shuddered at the thought of putting herself in danger.Now he always held her hand when he left, kissing her very abruptly and artificially.She could have taken the gesture lightly, but the way he squeezed his middle finger into her palm and put it there made her shudder.Even more provocatively, he stroked her hair.These inanimate things, he said with a laugh, she started anyway, he teased her by kissing a stranger's... hair.And so on.That day he picked some flowers from the meadow and gave her a bouquet of poppies, which were a bit wilted but still bright.So romantic, she was fascinated by him, especially when he took a flower from the bouquet and pinned it carefully on her breast.His touch was so delicate that for a moment she wasn't sure if his rough hand touched her smooth skin by accident or if he ran his fingers across her breast on purpose.After a while, she felt his hand gently caressing her neck, and her doubts disappeared. Anna was originally a very impulsive woman, but something pulled her back.My God, she thought, this is crazy.What am I doing?She imagined herself standing in this large kitchen, face to face with someone who looked like her husband but was not her husband.She knew that someone might be watching from the open window, but no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she knew it was definitely not ambiguous.She had a second to walk away from him and not let him kiss.She can still choose. She lacked nothing after marrying Andrés.He is affectionate and dotes on her, and she is free to change their home as long as she wants; she even gets along well with her in-laws, as long as she is a little more tolerant.However, they settled too quickly, into patterns, and like many of these marriages, life was so predictable that no real surprises were likely to occur for the next fifty years.When all the anticipation and excitement of the beginning of a new life has passed, Anna finds it just as dull as her old life.Lack of the shudder of a tryst, the shudder of an affair.Whether such a thing was worth risking everything for, she wasn't quite sure. I should stop, she thought.Otherwise I might lose everything.She spoke to Manoli in her usual haughty tone.She always talks to him like this, it's their game.He, on the other hand, was rather frivolous, and she treated him as if he were inferior to her. "Look, young man," she said, "I have a husband, you know. You can take your flowers elsewhere." "Can I really?" Manoli asked, "and besides, where am I going to take them?" "Well, my sister doesn't have a husband yet. You can go to her with flowers." As if the real Anna was standing somewhere in the distance, she heard a voice say: "Next Sunday I will invite her Lunch. You'll like her." The following Sunday was Saint Giorgis Day, so there was good reason to invite Maria and her father.Anna saw them as an obligation rather than a special pleasure; she felt that she had no common language with her dull sister, nor with her father.For the rest of that week, she dreamed of Manoli's wandering touch, looking forward to the next time they would be alone together, but, she mused, there was a dull family dinner before that. At this time there was still some shortage of food in Crete, but this never affected the family life of Pandoraki, let alone the saint's day, and holding a feast on this festival was of course a religious obligation.Giorgis gladly accepted the invitation. "Maria, look! Anna invites us to lunch." "This is really a bit of a lady's air," Maria said sarcastically, "When?" "Sunday. In two days." Maria was privately delighted that they had been invited.She longed to see her sister more, because her mother wanted it, but as the day drew near, she felt a little jittery.And Giorgis, relieved at last of his long sorrow, rejoiced at the thought of seeing his eldest daughter again. Annoyed at first by the sound of her father's new truck in the driveway, Anna forced herself to walk slowly down the grand staircase to meet them.Manoli had come earlier, reached the main entrance before her, and opened it. Maria was not at all what Manoli imagined.She had big brown eyes he had never seen before, and they stared at him wide open in surprise. "I'm Manoli," he said, and striding towards her with his hand outstretched, he added: "Andrés' cousin." Anna did not mention at all in her letter that Maria and Giorgis were completely unaware of the arrival of long-absent relatives. Manoli has always been good with beautiful girls, but he has never been with a girl like Maria, who is sweet and innocent.Manoli took a good look at Maria: her slender waist, her moderate breasts, her strong arms fashioned from years of hard physical labor.She is both slender and strong. At one o'clock, everyone sat down to eat.Alexandros, Eleftria, their two daughters and their respective families, there were at least twelve people.The conversation was lively and noisy. Manoli had planned in advance that he was going to tease Anna's sister.A seasoned apprentice like himself would do the same out of habit.But he didn't expect Maria to be so pretty, so easy to tease.Throughout lunch he dominated her with humorous remarks, and though she was not used to such frivolity, she avoided his witty comments.Her outspokenness set her apart from most of the women Manoli had met, and in the end he had to drop his joking tone and ask her some questions about herself.He found that she knew the herbs on the mountain and understood their curative effects, and they seriously discussed the status of herbs in this world in a society where science is advancing with each passing day.Maria is nothing like Anna, one is a natural pearl and the other is a polished diamond.One has a natural luster and has a unique irregular shape.The other was cut and polished to radiant beauty.Manoli loved both of these jewels, and he was struck by this sweet, soft-eyed girl who gave her everything to her father.She can't play tricks, innocent and pure, and he finds himself falling for her unexpectedly. Ana watched as Manoli drew Maria into his magical world, telling her stories and making her laugh.She watched her sister melt into his tenderness.Before lunch was over, Ana realized what she had done.She drove Manoli away, gave him to her sister like a wrapped present, and now she wants to get him back.