Snakehead by Ann Halam Read Free Book Online Page B

bar. I could see Kore’s profile, and her slender hands clasping her knees. She was wearing blue, atwo-brooched dress with a border worked in silver, like starlight in the midnight sky.
    Mando sang for two hours, mostly seated. Sometimes she’d get up and dance a few steps, with sweeping, ancient gestures. If it was a modern song that we all knew, she’d beckon to us, letting us know we were allowed to join in for the chorus:
    Oh, the red rose madder, oh, the blue hyacinth
,
    Oh, the yellow powder stain of the lilies in my garden!
    But there’s none so pure as the little white
convolvulus
,
    The little wild white convolvulus, who grows
where she shouldn’t
    Who grows where she shouldn’t!
Who blows where she shouldn’t!
All over our fields!
    This is a very naughty song, if you take the words the way we islanders take them. Everyone was laughing, nudging and winking at each other (there’d been plenty of drinks earlier). I saw Kore laughing too, her burden swept away by the power of the music. I wanted to be beside her, but I couldn’t leave my place. At last Mandogave us “Dark Water,” the funeral song. She sat down for this: leaning forward, her hands planted on her broad knees; and seeming to look through us, through the hearth’s flame-shadows, into a vast, lonely distance.
    Why are the mountains dark and why so woebegone?
    Is the wind at war there, or does the rainstorm scourge them?
    It is not the wind at war there, it is not the rain that scourges
    It is only Charon passing across them with the dead
    He drives the youths before him, the old folk
drags behind
    And he bears the tender little ones in a line at
his saddle bow
    The old men beg a grace, the young kneel to
implore him
    “Good Charon, halt in a village, or halt at
some cool fountain
    That the old men may drink water, the young
men play at stone throwing
    And that the little children may go and gather
flowers”
    “In never a village will I halt, nor yet by a cool fountain
    The mothers would come for water, and recognize their children
    The married folk would know each other, and I would never part them”
    The audience was completely silent. Partly, that was out of respect for the ritual song for the dead. Partly, it was Mando’s power over our emotions. Death will not be like that for me, I thought. Not me, because I’m immortal like my father.
    I didn’t care what being immortal meant. I never thought about it, and I didn’t want to think about it now. But the sadness drew me in. I understood, as if for the first time, that Moumi, Dicty,
everyone I loved
, would cross over the dark water, and I would be left alone. I would call after them but they wouldn’t know me. I would never see them again. Pain struck me, as real as a twisting knife.
    I saw that Kore had slipped down from the bar and was standing behind it, head bent. She can’t bear to listen, I thought. She has too many sad thoughts.
    The singer let the last long notes drain out of her and relaxed, reaching for a hefty tot of the finest Naxos Kitron liqueur. The whole room sighed together, tears were wiped and they all shouted for “Dark Water” again. I couldn’t understand it; once had been plenty for me. Mando smiled smugly, knocked back her Kitron, scratched herself underthe arms, and then she carried us away, once more, into the heart-opening darkness of grief. But
what was Kore doing?
    I watched as she finished covering one of Palikari’s scraped-wood tallyboards, her hand gripping a stylus, and grabbed another: as if she was making out some huge, impossible account for an Achaean millionaire, and it was a speed test. Pali and Anthe were peering over her shoulder, and looking at each other. I managed to catch Anthe’s eye. She lifted her hands, helpless and mystified. Kore was oblivious.
    I hardly noticed when the song ended, until the applause burst out. I was caught up in the strange little drama going on by the bar. Somehow it scared me, and I didn’t know why. I