Life Studies

VazamBam

by Vassilis Zambaras

“Hunchback Dwarf at the Market”

Rides by
On her custom

Scaled-down
Bicycle,

Ignores our questioning
Glances

And pauses before
A stall

Full of fresh green leafy vegetables,
To show her farmer lady friend

What it is she has
We were wondering about

In that small
Brown flower pot—

A snail,

Small as a new-born baby’s thumbnail
And a tiny tenderfoot tortoise—

Miniature grotesques

Along for the ride
Like the rest of us,

Looking curiously
Larger than life.

MELIGALAS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—8/30/10—Rita (that’s her real name) is a real ball of fire—as any resident of Northern Messenias will quickly verify. You can see her any time of the day, any season of the year, on her trusty mini-bike going to or from one foraging job to another. It’s her only means of making a living and she does an excellent job of gathering seasonal goodies most people are usually too busy to pick on their own.

In early summer, she gathers oregano; in late summer she picks plump prickly pear fruit using an opened tin can that has been nailed to the end of a long stick. When she has capped the fruit, she gives the stick a careful twist until the prickly pear plops into the bottom of the can.

With the first autumn rains, she collects snails; winter is wild greens time and she knows just where to find them; late winter is narcissus rising and Rita sloshes in galoshes across the rain-soaked plain of Northern Messenias, picking the fragrant flowers by the proverbial bushel and then proceeds to make the rounds of the villages, hawking her sweet-smelling bouquets to shop owners and individuals who might want to make their lives smell better; spring is when wild asparagus springs up and Rita stalks these tender delicacies like a true daughter of Euell Gibbons. She has been doing these things for as long as I can remember and her tenacity and perseverance as a salesperson is legendary, but don’t take my word for it when you can get a firsthand, eyewitness account from someone who has seen how this mighty dwarf operates.

January 18, 1984

I was in my study when I heard a knock on the front door. When I opened the doo,r I saw the dwarf who lives in a nearby village. She was walking back out to the street, and I realized she much have knocked several times before I heard. I called and she turned, came back with a big bunch of narcissus tied together with a string. Radiant yellow bouquet. I asked how much. Fifty drachmas.

She rides a small bicycle. We have smiled at each other in Meligalas for months but before today never exchanged anything more than standard greetings. I like her, was very happy to buy something from her. Vassilis told me she makes her living by selling seasonal things that can be gathered in the countryside: greens, snails, wild asparagus, flowers.

I wonder if now she will come every once in a while with something seasonal. That would be nice.

Ten minutes after I typed the above paragraphs there was another knock. It was her again, and again she had a bunch of narcissus. She handed it to me, seeming certain I would take it. And I did. I smiled as I paid. She looked up at me seriously.

January 20

Awakened this morning by a knocking on the front door. It was the dwarf with three bunches of narcissus which she held out to me. I couldn’t think of what to say. Leslie and I have been talking about how we are low on money this week. The dwarf looked up silently, continuing to hold the flowers out. I asked her to wait and went to talk with Leslie. We agreed to buy one. The dwarf is serious about her business and didn’t smile.

January 21

The dwarf came again today. Leslie and I were in the kitchen. The dwarf must have knocked at the front door any number of times before going around the house, up the back stairs, and across the terrace, to knock on the kitchen door. Now we have four bunches of narcissus.

After she left, I wondered what she thinks. After all, we live in a small house; why would we want four big bunches of narcissus in the space of three days? We put one in my study, one in our bedroom, one in the kitchen, and we took the fourth over to Vassilis’s mother for her name-day.

January 22

Woke up this morning to a knocking on the front door. The dwarf had left a bouquet of narcissus at the threshold and was walking away. I took the flowers and walked out to her to hand them back. She refused to take them. She said she had many and pointed to where she’d parked her little bicycle at the corner. Several bunches of narcissus were tied to the metal rack above the back tire.

I said today we didn’t want any. She repeated, in a friendly way, she had many. I walked with her to the corner, trying to think of what else I could say in Greek. “Now we have many and today we don’t want any more,” I said, “but thank you very much.” She smiled and accepted the flowers.

—from John Levy’s excellent book on Greece, We Don’t Kill Snakes Where We Come From: Two Years in a Greek Village, available from Querencia Books, 8987 E. Tanque Verde Road, #111, Tucson, Arizona 85749, USA.

I wonder what kind of poem Robert Lowell would have written after doing a careful study of Rita’s life.