The Gypsy's Dream Read Free Page A

was still happy. When they were happy.
    A sound of farmers laughing drifts across the square. The kafenio is starting to fill up. This is a good sign for Stella. All day she will be slicing meat turned on the upright spit, stuffing it into the folds of grilled pita bread with tomatoes, chips and garlic-yoghurt dip, wrapping it in greaseproof paper, handing these giro to hungry farmers, lazy wives and starving school children. Eaten in the hand as they walk home, juice dripping down their chins.
    This is the sixth, no seventh, year she has been running her restaurant. Well, not exactly a restaurant. The four coarse wooden tables with equally rough chairs do not make a restaurant. An ouzeri , perhaps. She certainly sells enough ouzo, along with the charcoal-grilled sausages and chickens, to farmers who sit for half an hour and want more than the hand-held giro or souvlaki.
    Stella s miles. Seven years. She loves it. She loves being at the hub of the community. She loves the laughs and the banter. She loves serving food to the single men who all look a little crumpled and need some care. She loves putting extra sauce on for the children and extra chips when they buy a parcel of chicken to take home for their mothers. She loves Friday and Saturday night when she puts on the radio and the customers stay longer, drink more, enjoy themselves, the cool of the evening air adding energy to her limbs, and a bounce in her step as she serves and dances between tables.
    The farmers who come are a rough but jovial bunch.
    ‘Hey, Stella,’ they call. ‘Your potatoes are the finest in Greece,’ and the place dissolves into uproar, no harm intended. They fling compliments at her, these, who once threw stones. She gives as good as she gets, not offended by their rough ways and serves free shots of ouzo to the authors of the funniest comments, revelling in their flattery. Once Stavros had joined in. Lately he is more likely to clatter the spatula against grill, demanding her help.
    ‘Hey, Stella, don’t put any more fuel on that fire!’ the farmers hiss in a stage whisper, or ‘don’t blow on those coals, they will burst into flame,’ they warn as she scuttles to see what he wants, casting them a silencing look as she goes, giggles and whispers following her through to the grill room.
    Stavros ’ piercing blue eyes rarely turn to her as she enters these days. He will just throw the spatula onto the counter and go to sit outside. One time recently he had just spat the words, ‘The sausages need turning,’ and had taken the bucket out to get more charcoal.
    It isn ’t that what he says is cruel or unkind or untrue. The words themselves are harmless. It is the way he says them, his tone a window into his mind. What does he think of her if he feels free to speak to her that way? If she were the butcher the tone would be different; if she were one of the farmers even, then he would not be so dismissive. But the edge in his voice shows the absence of respect. It leaves her on the brink of tears. At these times a quiet desperation lodges in her, creating an urgency, compelling her to do something, anything to make the situation different, the feeling go away, to make things better.
    Sh e sighs and scuffs circles in the dust on the tarmac with the toe of her shoe. He was the life of the place once. More farmers’ wives had come then. He charmed them and made them feel special. He used to make Stella feel special once.
    Stella stops grindin g the dirt and looks over to the new sandwich shop across the road, just opened, and doing rather well it seems.
    These days, when Stavros offers more than a grunt all he has to say is that they need more business, tourists. He has even talked about employi ng a foreigner to help bring in these tourists, as if this foreigner will have an unlimited line of hungry friends trailing behind them. Why would the tourist come here, to this village, the same as thousands of others scattered across the backwaters