Cave of Silence

by Kostas Krommydas

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  Anita walked with her head bowed, hiding her red and swollen eyes behind dark sunglasses. Mihalis walked behind her carrying her suitcase and I followed, shouldering my rucksack, lost in my thoughts.

  It was late in the afternoon and we were leaving the island. As we crossed the small village square littered with the remains of the previous night’s revelries, three men who were clearing up stopped what they were doing and fell silent, watching us pass. The same silence greeted us outside the nearby coffee shop, the customers standing up to look at us as solemnly, as if we were a funeral procession. The children stopped running around the war memorial and stood still, affected by the sudden silence.

  We reached the edge of the port feeling their eyes on our back and headed to the boat. Only a few fishing boats were beside it. Most visitors had already left.

  Mihalis helped Anita step on the boat and prepared to depart.

  Following her mother’s phone call, Anita was on the verge of collapse. She, too, had suffered a series of heavy blows. We had both been confronted with our families’ common past, which had been stripped naked before our eyes and left us reeling. We could not believe what had happened.

  Eleni Dapaki had died just as the truth about her was being revealed. Another incredible coincidence. Fate had been lenient with her, giving her more years than she had deserved. Divine justice does not always punish the wicked. I don’t know how she managed to make peace with her conscience, but based on the little I knew, she hadn’t seemed to suffer much, not in proportion to what she’d done. I still hated her, even now that she was dead. I hated her for what she did to my mother’s family and I hated her for ruining my relationship with Anita.

  Before everything came to light, I was absolutely happy. Now we were cold toward each other and, even though I knew she was not to blame, something inside me had shattered. It would be hard to regain what we’d had and there was not anything I could do about that at that moment.

  I had a sense of being a character in a Greek tragedy, everything happening at the right place, at the right time. Fate had spun its wheel to build up to a resolution that restored moral order and brought catharsis.

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  When I reached the boat, I turned back to face the mainland and say goodbye to the place. I saw Thomas walking toward me from the square. When he reached me, he placed his hand on my shoulder and said, “There are no words, my son, to say at a time like this. We will be waiting for you and your mother, get to know you both better— if, that is, she wants to return here after she finds out about her uncle. But tell her that there was not anything else they could have done. They thought that if they sacrificed one, the rest would live. They did not suspect… Agathe has always said that the survivors lived with this nightmare every day of their lives. They were all tormented souls. They made us swear to ask for forgiveness if anyone from Manolis’ family ever returned to the island.”

  I did not say anything.

  Nodding to the boat, he continued, “Forgiveness is a great virtue, my son. He who can give it can live a better life. Let go of your anger. We ask that you forgive what our loved ones did to Manolis; maybe Anita needs your forgiveness too. We don’t hate her. How is she responsible for what her grandmother did, years ago? It means something that the woman died today. Time is a gentle god, my child. He heals the most profound wounds.”

  His words touched me, and I was surprised. They seemed to resonate with me and washed away some of the hatred that was burning in my heart. While he spoke, I turned to look at the war memorial. He followed my gaze. “When the islanders returned, years later, they found the stones that had killed Manolis on the square,” he said. “They gathered them up and made this memorial. These stones were drenched in his blood.”

  Everything in the universe is linked in some way. Past and present join to push the future in a different direction. Time present and time past. Are both perhaps present in time future. The words of T.S. Eliot came to my mind as I bid Thomas farewell and stepped onto the boat.

  As soon as I was aboard, Mihalis untied the ropes and started the engines. We slowly exited the port and I, standing at the prow, looked out at the small crowd that was watching us leave.

  A woman’s shout tore through the air. ‘Shame on her!’ Most of the others seemed to be bothered by her outburst and hushed her.

  Soon we were out at sea. Anita was crying inside. She had been shaken by what the woman had shouted at her. I wanted to go near her, comfort her, but my overblown sense of pride did not let me.

  Watching the coastline in the hope of spotting Kryfó, I suddenly remembered the names we had seen etched on the rock, in the Cave of Silence. ELENI+M. Eleni and Manolis. It must have been them. That’s why they had been erased. And they had been scratched there nearly seventy years ago. Some higher force—destiny, perhaps?—had pushed me to leave our names right next to theirs.

  I wanted to ask Mihalis to turn the boat around and take us there and hug her as if nothing had come between us. I wished I could. I did not feel strong enough. Nonetheless, as the soft breeze stroked my face I began to feel a sense of freedom wash over me. I had learned my family’s story and it was setting me free.

  Anita came outside at that moment and walked to where I was standing. She looked devastated. Her eyes were red and she slouched, as if she could no longer keep upright after the blows she’d received. Her voice was hoarse from crying and she spoke in a cold monotone devoid of any feeling. “I spoke to production. They’ve booked a flight to Berlin for me, tonight. They changed the schedule so I can attend the funeral. You’ll shoot some of your scenes tomorrow and the day after. We’ll drop you off at the island, and then I’ll sail to where the airport is. My grandmother’s funeral is tomorrow afternoon. I’ll be back Tuesday morning. I want to speak to my mother. I haven’t told her anything. I think she must know the truth. I am almost certain she knows nothing. She would have said something otherwise. I don’t think the truth is exactly what they say. I know… I knew my grandmother well. She would never do something like that. All those years, she never remarried. She never seemed to have another man in her life. She always said she only fell in love once and it was forever.’

  “Yes, to the German she ran off with,” I said sarcastically. I regretted those words the moment they escaped my lips.

  She looked like I’d slapped her. “I think it’s better for both of us that I’m going away for a while. I can imagine how you feel, I understand. But put yourself in my shoes for a moment.”

  I opened my mouth to reply but she turned around and walked back inside. Why was I acting like this? It was as if I had two selves, one who spoke without thinking and another who thought and felt but did not speak.

  Electra was waiting for us at the port. She was carrying a large suitcase and jumped on board the moment the boat was moored. She greeted me indifferently and went inside to find Anita.

  I moved to the gangway, but something held me back. I turned and looked behind me. Anita was looking at me. We stared at each other for a few moments. I did not know what I felt. I tried to detect some feeling inside me but found nothing, just an ever-increasing void.

  I stepped off the boat and waited. Electra walked down behind me. She mumbled something I didn’t catch, and then walked off.

  I picked up my rucksack and walked toward the port gates. I sat under an empty carport and looked at the boat, watching it leave the port. I watched it until it became a dot on the horizon; Anita did not appear, not once.

  I took out my phone and brought up her name on the screen. My finger hovered over the dial button, but I did not call. Summoning all my courage, I dialed my mother’s number.

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  Maria had just hung up. The phone call with Dimitri had lasted over an hour. Kostas, listening to Maria’s end, could piece together enough scraps of conversation to figure out what was being said. He held her in his arms, trying to console her. Her
tears flowed freely, soaking his shirt.

  She understood now why Nikos had never mentioned Manolis. She had lived all her life believing that her parents had been shot in a mass execution at the village square after an informant betrayed them and that the two of them had managed to escape. The only personal memory she had of the event was the strange blue eyes of the young novice who had found them on the beach. She always thought he may have been an angel sent to help them. She had just found out the man was real, the Abbot on the island where her son was filming. She planned to visit soon, to meet him and thank him for everything he had done for them.

  Suddenly, spurred on by a new realization, she snatched the cross hanging around her neck and pulled it away, violently. The chain snapped and she flung it across the room. The only object connecting her to the past and it came from that woman! She no longer wanted to have anything from her; its touch burned her throat.

  Kostas picked up the cross and placed it on the coffee table. He then took Maria out to the balcony to get some fresh air. She tearfully gazed at the sea, as if she were traveling back to the island in her mind. She felt the need to return, see the place where she’d been born, where her parents had lived and died. She realized that part of her was always missing and that, even at this late hour, she had a chance to become complete. She felt no hatred for the people there. In any case, with the exception of Agathe, they were all gone.

  The premonition she’d felt when Dimitri had announced his intention to return had come true, but she could never have imagined the revelations that would follow and which she now struggled to accept. She couldn’t believe that of all the women in the world Dimitri would fall in love with the granddaughter of that accursed woman. What an infernal coincidence!

  She’d never interfered in his private life. She’d never proffered an opinion on the women he dated or who she thought he should date. Now she wanted to scream at him to get away from Anita as fast as he could. To give it all up and come back, if possible right there and then.

  She knew her son loved her. She knew, deep down, that the young woman was not to blame for what her grandmother had done. But she couldn’t stand the thought of meeting her—as her son had asked her to, when they all returned to Athens at the end of the shoot—for in her face she was certain to see the woman who had brought the reaper’s scythe down on her family.

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  Dressed in black, Michaela and Anita stood arm in arm before Eleni’s open grave.

  Only a few people had come to bid Eleni goodbye, for she had been a reserved woman all her life. She had kept to herself and made few friends, devoted her life to her daughter and her beloved granddaughter.

  As soon as the service was over, they thanked everyone who had come to support them at this difficult time and placed a few flowers on the casket that was waiting to be covered by the heap of fresh soil at the side of the grave. Beside them, Rina sobbed loudly.

  The two women turned back and started walking toward the cemetery gates. With all the funeral arrangements they had not had a chance to talk, and they both had a lot to say.

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  The sun was setting outside but they kept the lights turned off. The strains of Tristan und Isolde filled the room and the two women sat on the sofa side by side, in silence.

  Anita was holding the pages of Eleni’s letter in her hands, the open box on her lap. On the cushions between them lay scattered Eleni’s sketches and the pocket watch, which Eleni had bequeathed to Anita in her letter.

  Eleni explained everything. The events that led to her leaving the island and how she had ended up in Berlin, carrying the child of the only man she had ever loved.

  Anita felt drained but happy and relieved at the same time. She now knew that what she had heard on the island was untrue, that she could now return and set the record straight. Would they believe her? She did not care. She just needed one person to believe the truth—Dimitri. She wanted to run back to him and tell him the story, be with him again. Away from him, she felt incomplete; she suffered in his absence. She could not wait for filming to be over and for them to run away from everyone. To be constantly together, to touch him, to explore new worlds in each other’s body, to do nothing, to be happy.

  Before her trip to Greece, she could never have imagined that her life would change so radically, that she would fall in love so deeply.

  Reading the letter, she recognized the striking similarities in the way she and her grandmother had experienced love. So many years divided the two affairs, yet they had so much in common. How could that be? They even shared the Cave of Silence, the place where both women had experienced the most magical moments of their life.

  She had not shared what had happened on the island with her mother. Michaela had started recounting Eleni’s story first, then given her the letter. Now, it was Anita’s turn to describe events.

  The first words to come out of Michaela’s mouth when Anita stopped talking were an indictment of Dimitri’s behavior: “Shame on him! How could he treat you this way?”

  “Mother, he did nothing wrong,” Anita said, jumping to Dimitri’s defense. “He doesn’t know what we know. Try to put yourself in his place. I told you, he was as nice as he could be given the circumstances.”

  Michaela fell silent again, trying to reorganize her thoughts in the light of this new information. Had it not been for the physical presence of the letter, she would have thought all this was a dream or the ramblings of an over-active imagination.

  She got up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water. She wasn’t thirsty, just agitated, and needed to do something. She placed the glass on the coffee table and left it there, untouched. A few minutes later, she seemed to regain her composure. She turned to Anita. “Are you sure no one knew this story beforehand? That they didn’t bring you together on that island on purpose, to trigger this chain of events?”

  Anita had already wondered about this in the hours that had lapsed between leaving Greece and her grandmother’s funeral. No one knew she intended to surprise Dimitri on Saturday night, other than Mihalis of course, and she was ready to stake her life on the man’s honesty. Besides, no one could have engineered the car accident which had led to her leaving for the island. It had happened before her very eyes. And Dimitri would never have found out about her connection to Eleni had she not spoken up about it herself, when she saw the photo of the port. No, no human could have managed to set all this up.

  Michaela remained suspicious. “I want you to be careful when you return,” she advised. “Don’t try to convince anyone about what you know. If they don’t believe you, be patient until your work is done and then leave. I keep feeling like we need to take steps to protect you from some harm.” She looked at Anita’s melancholic expression and realized her daughter was thinking of Dimitri. “Do you love him?” she asked, fondly stroking her daughter’s hair.

  “What I feel inside is just what Yiayia writes about in her letter, what she felt for Manolis. I miss him, terribly. I’m ashamed to say that, when Yiayia has just died and I should be sad about her absence…”

  “Anita, don’t feel bad about the way you feel. I’m sure your grandmother would be telling you the same thing, now that I’ve read her letter and know how passionately she loved her man. She would tell you to run to him and tell him the truth. Tell him how you feel. If he doesn’t understand then you are not destined to be together. And he’d better understand or he’ll have me to deal with,” she joked. “I’m thinking about coming to Athens and meeting everyone.”

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  They sat in the dark, remembering Eleni and thinking over what the old woman had been telling them during the last months of her life. It was as if she felt the moment of revelation was coming and was trying to prepare them. All these years there was a part of her they had never known; a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that fate had suddenly decided to fling onto the table and make the picture complete.

 
; The women fell asleep on the couch in each other’s arms. Neither one of them wanted to go to their rooms and be alone that night. Anita was to take an early flight back to Greece. She was aware that what lay ahead might not be easy to deal with and sought the comfort of her mother’s arms.

  In Eleni’s bedroom, a beam of light from the streetlamp outside her window fell on the photo that was framed on the wall, lighting up her face as she rested in her beloved’s arms, eyes shut.

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  Anita had returned but we weren’t speaking to each other these days. We only addressed one another formally and when necessary, on matters regarding work.

  When she’d arrived she had tried to speak to me about what had happened but I was still cold and furious. We had our first fight. She insisted we were wrong about her grandmother and that she could prove it. I was too upset to listen, did not give her room to explain. I’d stormed off, outraged that she was trying to excuse that woman and her actions.

  The following day I apologized and tried to talk, but she was angry with me and stubbornly refused. She said there was no point to any of this.

  The production had tried to shield Anita when the story began to circulate among the crew, giving everyone instructions not to comment on anything and did not allow anyone to come near her. She had asked for this herself, but I think they would have done it anyway.

  Filming was purgatory for both of us, especially the scenes where we were in close proximity. Retake after retake was needed to get the scenes right, but the director never complained. Once the love scenes were over and we moved onto the part where the characters’ relationship breaks down, the tension between us suited the script perfectly and the director was full of praise.

  The last day of filming on the island finally arrived. I had one scene left to shoot with Anita in Athens, two months later.