STELLA PIERIDES

Born in Athens, Greece, Stella, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, lived in London for many years. She now lives in Bavaria, and is member of Munich Writers. She is currently working on her novel Alexandroupoleos 40. She has co-edited and contributed to two books: Even Paranoids Have Enemies (Routledge) and Beyond Madness(JKP). She has also written articles and reviews. Her most recent short story "Of Love and Fish" was published by Spiked-Magazine.co.uk in November 2004.

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HER BROTHER'S KEEPER

Milia lets the phone ring seven times. She counts the double shrills before reaching across her computer to answer it. She resents the interruptions to her writing routine: reading the news on the internet, after breakfast. The Guardian, The Independent, the BBC. Brewing herself a cup of fennel tea. Then working on her computer for three hours before attempting anything else. Even before making her bed, or washing up. Now her morning will be wasted.
      "Hello?" she booms with annoyance.
      "Milia, this is Michael," the voice starts and, word by word, goes on to destroy her peace of mind. "I am sorry. We knew it was coming. We expected it. She was a brave woman." He coughs. "I am afraid Lisa died early this morning." Milia stops listening.
      "Milia? Milia!" Michael shouts from the other end of the phone, worried about her silence. She puts down the receiver and stands up, walking to and fro for a while, then she stops. She feels silence oozing from her being and filling the room. She feels aware and not aware. Suspended between the news of her friend's death and the wish to keep her alive. She notices little light is seeping through her net curtains from the grey London sky.

Standing in the middle of her darkened room, in the middle of ten million people, Milia runs her hand gently through her hair, following its waves with her fingers. Suddenly feeling cold, she picks up her lavender shawl and wraps it round her shoulders. She bends her head and rubs her nose on it, inhaling its smell of dried fruit and rose hips. She feels calmer and keeps her nose to the cloth, her eyes unfocused. It occurs to her that she should be crying. But she is not. She feels empty instead. Empty of tears, empty of friends, empty of life. She pulls her shawl tighter. A sound like a whimper escapes her. How am I going to tell Christian, she thinks to herself. He is so sensitive. How is he going to react?

Milia's brother comes home from work every evening, at six o'clock. Looking at her watch, she counts the hours till his return. Five hours to fill till she hears his key turn in the lock, his feet press the wooden stairs into creaking. Five more hours. She thinks she might visit the toilet. Perhaps not. Not urgent. It could wait. She lowers herself on her unmade bed, its white bedspread hardly disguising a duvet without a cover. She hears her neighbours' children scream, and looks at the clock next to her bed. Half past one. What happened to the last half hour? She must have drifted off. Her father's Komboloi catches her eye. Spread on her bedside table, his amber worry-beads look like honey-drops on a string. When she was a child she used to play with them, always breaking their string. They would clack and clatter their way all over the kitchen floor. He used to thread the amber stones one by one, squinting his eyes and wrinkling his nose, shaking his head at her and sighing like he was suffering. "The Komboloi is not for girls," he used to say. "Only your brother is allowed to play with it." His admonitions hadn't deterred her. Until he replaced the string with strong plastic thread that resisted her hands.

She picks them up thoughtfully now they belong to her - he is not around anymore to disapprove of her. Click, click, click, the beads drop quickly. She closes her left hand around them, leaving a piece of the thread exposed. With her right, she plucks one bead, till it drops down the thread to click on the bead below. One click, one second. She takes a deep breath. She knows how to time it, she needs to get into her rhythm. Milia loosens her shawl. Now, not too slow, not too fast. Click, pluck the bead, click. Click, pluck, click. Two o'clock. Click, pluck, click: Two thirty. Click, blessed nothingness, click.
      She gets up, throwing the worry beads on her bed. Milia picks up her coat, umbrella and nylon headscarf, and walks out. She had wanted to see the Brancusi exhibition at the Tate Modern and she now makes the decision to go ahead. There is still enough time before her brother comes home.

Walking to the Unterground, Milia feels hungry. She has not eaten since breakfast. If only she had spoken to Christian this morning, she would know his state of mind now. She would know how he is likely to take the news. But she could not have predicted what was going to happen. And their lives are strange, so strange. She came back to live in this house after her father's death, two years ago. She feels at home now, settled here. Anyway, home is where her manuscripts are. All four of them, thick with ideas, dense with type, pungent with time past. She smiles to herself at the last thought, and the man in the ticket booth smiles back. Four pickled novels, it occurs to her and she smiles again. She knows they are perfectly happy where they are, locked away inside her right hand drawer; in her desk, in her bedroom, she reassures herself. For a moment, she wishes she were back home to touch her desk drawer with the tips of her fingers; gently, ever so gently.

The image of her house follows that of her desk, filling her mind. Big and cavernous, dark and segmented. Three floors of enormous rooms, created by knocking down internal walls; a kitchen at the back, on the ground floor, a bathroom on the second floor, and her unused study, on the third. She occupies the first floor room and Christian the second. Their common living room is on the ground level, but they hardly use it. As if they do not share a life.
      On the whole, it suits them well. Though through the creaking floorboards they can hear each other, they can spend weeks, or more, without meeting. The narrow, winding staircase that worms itself through the tall house is their emergency exit. She is usually having breakfast long after he has left for his job, somewhere in town. Or he is having his supper long after she has had hers. Of course they follow each other closely. She knows when he is constipated and he knows when she is having her period from the number of times they flush the toilet. In short, they communicate by hearing. Whenever they come close to meeting, like this morning, it is a meaningful occasion.

But, this morning she had been selfish. Christian had just finished his breakfast when she walked in their kitchen. She heard him busy himself outside. She took her time to greet him, for it was snowing. She loves the snow and it's so rare to see it in London. She walked to the window that overlooks their Victorian house garden and stared at the wild flakes that floated down graciously, past the top of the Magnolia tree and the bulky bushes. She made a mental note of the image, so that she could use it in her short story. Rubbing her hands to keep them warm, she hesitated before clearing her throat. When she shouted a greeting, he did not answer. She thought he was annoyed at her for not having spoken to him earlier. She shrugged, made a cup of coffee, cut herself a slice of bread and sat at the table. Raspberry jam on cream cheese was her indulgence and she had indulged herself, not letting him upset her.
      They did not speak. She wishes they had, now. But wisdom coming after the event is not wisdom at all. If only. But she is a woman on her own. How much can she bear? How much can she control? Her mind goes blank at this question.

The beeping of the Underground doors closing brings Milia back to her present. She takes a seat, realising she had not needed to open her umbrella on her way to the station. It must have stopped snowing. Did the snow melt in the street? She is shocked not to have noticed. Now, here, in the bowels of the earth, she looks around. Then, remembering the tube etiquette - no staring - she lowers her eyes, trying to concentrate on the space between two pairs of leather boots, belonging to the passengers sitting opposite her. She dares not look sideways, both people sitting on either side of her concentrating on their books.
      Milia is reminded of her own reading about Brancusi and the pictures she has seen of his work. Wonderful sculptures of faces, of objects that attract, repel, shock, attract again. Forms she wants to caress or just stare into. When she first saw his Sleeping Muse, she became transfixed. She looked at the egg-shaped head lying on its side and she tilted her head herself, imitating it. Christian had said it was erotic but then he saw eroticism wherever he looked. Milia had kept her head sideways till her neck hurt. She became the Muse. Then she had seen photographs of Brancusi's Endless Column. A long upright column made of what looks like beads. Milia whispers, "One on top of the other, they reach all the way to heaven. Like Lisa, my friend, on top of my father, on top of my mother on top of …" She shakes her head, her transparent scarf slipping backwards. Where did that come from? She looks around her. Nobody seems to have noticed anything. She rubs a stain off her coat sleeve and pulls her scarf forward. She pulls her shawl higher up, so now it emerges from her coat. She decides to get off here, not sure exactly where here is, the tube travelling between stations. As it enters the station, she sees the sign: Holborn. It will do.

It was not a good idea to go to an exhibition on a day like this. Milia sways on the Unterground platform, her eyes catching the images of Egyptian and Greek sculptures, of Mummies, of sarcophagi on the walls. Preserved bodies from centuries ago. Ghosts from the past. She averts her eyes, undoing her buttons. It is getting too hot in here. She opens her coat and loosens her shawl. With a trembling hand she wipes beads of sweat from her brow.
      "No," she says out loud. "No." She shakes her head as she decides to go back home. "No." She finds her way to the Northbound Piccadilly line platform as if by miracle. The carriage she enters feels heavy with smoke, though she knows no one could possibly have been smoking. There is not a single seat free. A young man gets up, smiling.
      "No," she says, "No."
      He looks at her with surprise and sits back, before someone else takes his seat.
      "Suit yourself," he murmurs.
      Milia, holding tight on the handle bar, lets her body follow the rattle of the tube, relaxing into its short jostles this way and that, rocking without a thought in her head. She dozes upright, as if the tube is her mother rocking her. With a start she checks her station. Holborn.
      "Holborn?" she cries out. "It can't be Holborn!"
      "It is Holborn, love," a woman responds. "Holborn all the way!"
      Milia does not believe her. She does not believe her own eyes. She looks around her, through all the windows in the carriage. It says Holborn, but it cannot be Holborn. She retches. Now she remembers something else. She read on the Internet about the Ghost Stations of London Underground. There used to be an old station, near Holborn that has been closed for many years. A ghost from the British Museum was supposed to haunt it! What nonsense!
      "What nonsense," she says to the eyes of a man looking at her. He nods. Nevertheless, she vomits. A forceful creamy-pale liquid stream erupts from her mouth and, following gravity, lands on her shoes. Milia squeezes her face, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and tries to concentrate on her surroundings. I must get back home, she keeps repeating to herself. I must get home. The tunnel gets illuminated as the tube enters the stations. Russell Square, King's Cross, Caledonian Road. She takes a deep breath and rearranges her scarf. Holloway Road, Arsenal, Finsbury Park. She steps out of the carriage.

Approaching her front door, she hesitates. She pushes the garden gate open. She looks at her watch. Three-thirty. Three-thirty. Can she cope with the suspense? Can she cope with the approaching flood? She unlocks the front door. Hesitantly, she tiptoes in.
      "Christian?" she whispers. Again, "Christian?" No answer. She leaves her umbrella in the wicker basket by the door. She takes off her scarf, absentmindedly dropping it on the floor. The house feels cold. And silent. Slowly, she treads the stairs up her room. Creak after creak, she opens her door, she undresses and pulls her nightdress on. She listens out. No other creaks. Her gaze wanders to her desk. The right hand drawer is shut. She feels reassured. The Komboloi on her bed seems to call her. Picking it up she sits on her armchair by the window, and starts counting down the time.

Click, pluck, click. Bead, pluck, bead. And again. And again. Click, worry, click. Click, nothingness, click. Till it is six o'clock. Till Christian does not come home. Till she accepts that he died years ago. Till she realises how she emptied her life on the fiction that kept him alive. Click, lie, click. Till she feels the desperate loneliness, bloody click. She is not, click, her brother's, pluck, keeper, click. Long after the phone stops ringing. Till she hears Michael force the door and find her staring into the void, her mind more incoherent than her mouth. She is still holding on to the amber beads, knowing she will need them in the future: after the crisis is over and she mourns her brother's, and Lisa's deaths, after she unlocks the right-hand drawer and lets her novels see the light of day, long after she stops fearing words and their meaning.