‘Your mother is safe,’ she said. ‘And little Themis. They’re both safe. Look, she’s over there.’
A short way down the road, they spotted the almost unrecognisable figure of their mother, her light auburn hair covered in white dust. Eleftheria Koralis’ clothes were coated with plaster, and the fine rain that now fell made them glisten. She was still fussing over Themis as the other three ran towards her, calling out.
One of the neighbours came out with a jug of water for them all, but no one seemed to have any intention of providing more than that. Their hospitality did not extend beyond a look of concern. The children stood in a huddle staring back at the dereliction, but their mother faced away, too distressed to contemplate the sight of it.
They stood immobile for some time as the rain turned to hail. When their coats began to soak through, they realised that they could no longer stand there. Themis herself was wearing just her thin frock.
‘I’m cold,’ she shivered. ‘I’m really cold.’
‘We’ll find somewhere to go,’ said her mother reassuringly. At that moment, perfectly on cue, the children’s grandmother appeared. Eleftheria Koralis had never detested her petherá more than at this moment, when she would have to fall upon her charity.
Only an hour later, they were settling into the older woman’s newly built apartment in Patissia.
Her mother-in-law’s sense of being right was all the more galling to Eleftheria when it was expressed without words. Her manner alone was clear enough. At this moment, they were poor in possessions and destitute of options, and the children needed a roof over their heads.
The following day, Eleftheria walked back to Antigonis Street to survey the damage once again.
She noted that all the beautiful items of furniture of which her parents had been so proud were beyond repair. Fragments of polished inlaid wood and finely chamfered edging were scattered like an unsolved jigsaw, but there in the corner, defiantly unbroken, was the mahogany dining table. It was the only still-whole piece of furniture.
With utter recklessness, Eleftheria stepped over shards of glass, jagged edges of plaster and splintered wood and picked about in the debris until she had found what she was looking for. It was a small chest containing her jewellery, and with difficulty she wrested it from under a beam. She was not going to allow looters such a prize. As well as obvious valuables, she wanted to find a few clothes. Identifying an old wardrobe in the maelstrom, she took out various items and shook off the dust. They were her favourite things.
Several days of fierce debate ensued. Eleftheria wanted to bring the table to their new home and, in spite of it being oversized for the space, stubbornly refused to give in. It was either that or she would take the children to some great-aunt or other in Larissa. With enormous reluctance, Kyría Koralis capitulated and the following day, the table was retrieved, installed and resentfully covered with several layers of lace cloth that even concealed its finely turned legs.
‘That’s all I’m letting you bring in,’ muttered the older woman as her own smaller table was carried out of the apartment.
Her daughter-in-law pretended not to hear.
The area of Patissia where the grandmother lived seemed far from the centre of the city, but as she regularly pointed out to the children: ‘It has so many trees! And so many lovely green spaces for playing and sitting.’ By emphasising the strengths of the area, she subtly criticised the one where they used to live.
The children soon settled in. They loved going down into the square beneath the house and finding other children to play with, amused themselves on the roof where their grandmother hung out the washing, weaving their way between the sheets to play hide-and-seek, and frolicked up and down the stone staircase, always looking out for the woman on the ground floor who might be coming out with her enchanting dog.
Perhaps what they loved most of all was that when they pressed a light switch, the room was always illuminated and when they slept they did not breathe dust but air. After a few months, when the buds on the trees down below began to uncurl, their dawn chorus of coughs was no more.
Meanwhile, the old house had been fenced off for safety. The authorities were waiting to demolish it.
Eleftheria Koralis and her children now owned no more than the refugees who had fled from Asia Minor almost a decade before. Thousands had arrived with nothing but the clothes they stood up in and the majority still lived in pockets of poverty round the edge of the city. The problem of finding accommodation for such a wave of newcomers was still not resolved and, unless she accepted Kyría Koralis’ hospitality, the family would have to join the queue. There was nothing else between them and penury.
‘I am sure we can rebuild,’ said Eleftheria Koralis to her husband, when he returned from sea. ‘We can clear the land and start again.’
Her husband’s response was an indifferent nod. He did not express it openly but the collapse of the old house did not bother him and he was happy enough that his family now lived in his mother’s apartment. The leaks and draughts in Antigonis Street had never allowed a comfortable night’s sleep when he came home from sea.
They had not been with old Kyría Koralis for long, but unhappiness already pumped through Eleftheria’s veins.
The apartment in Kerou Street was compact and organised, everything in its place, neatly stacked, impeccably swept, washed, tidied, ordered and aligned in rows. There was a central living room with two reasonably sized bedrooms and a small room previously used as a study by her late husband. She quickly turned this into a bedroom for herself, while Eleftheria shared her double bed with the girls and the boys took the other, twin-bedded, room.
Themis liked the whole family being on a single floor. It gave her a sense of security to hear her grandmother’s snores, audible even from behind the closed door, and her mother quietly muttering in her sleep. She was even protected from Margarita’s occasional spitefulness. The hair-pulling and pinching had stopped now that there was someone else close by.
Instead of dust and danger, there was the cheerful sound of music from a radio, the fragrant scent of cooking, the gentle glow of an oil lamp on the iconostasis and a sense of calm. The apartment might not have been big enough to run around in, but this meant that the older ones were allowed to play in the leafy square below and even to explore the nearby streets. The city became theirs and they soon got a sense of its limitless possibilities.
Kyría Koralis enjoyed the challenge of feeding them all in spite of continuing austerity. It was she who now disciplined the boys to do their homework when they came home, making them sit at the kitchen table until it was done. Bribery (a candy, more time playing in the square, even the promise of a visit to the sea) was a tactic she willingly used.
Only Eleftheria grieved what had been left behind and dreamed of regaining their lost life. The demands of a crumbling house had given her a raison d’être and nowadays she could find little incentive to get out of bed in the morning. Kyría Koralis began to be perturbed by the sight of her daughter-in-law slumped on her pillows at midday.
Whether the grandmother actually took over the family so completely that it eroded Eleftheria’s will to live, or whether the younger woman’s loss of will meant that the old lady was obliged to step in, would be hard to say. Themis had no sense of what came first. All she knew was that their current situation had been caused by the collapse of their home and her siblings told her that everything was better in their new life.
For many months, no one acknowledged that anything was wrong with their mother and Kyría Koralis carried on as if her daughter-in-law’s behaviour was normal. She sometimes took in a tray of food when the children had left for school, but Eleftheria rarely acknowledged or ate it.
It appeared that she was slowly and steadily starving herself to death. One day when Kyría Koralis came back from her errands, she found the big double bed empty. Perhaps she had finally decided to ‘pull herself together’, the old lady thought.
Tipt
oeing across the hallway, she peeked through a crack in the door to the small room and noticed her daughter-in-law’s outline beneath the counterpane. She crept in, removed her own clothes from the cupboard and swapped them with Eleftheria’s, which hung in the larger room. The exchange was done quickly. That night, she lay on the big bed with the girls leaning against her, a generous grandmotherly body providing a pillow for the sprawled tangle of arms and legs.
When Pavlos Koralis next visited, which happened less and less these days, it was with his mother that he discussed what should happen to the derelict Antigonis Street house. Themis was sitting in the corner one day doing a drawing when a lawyer came to the apartment. Themis was five now but adults still seemed to believe her either simple or deaf, and although much of the language was beyond her, she understood enough. It seemed that everything was to be decided between her father and her yiayiá, and she heard an unfamiliar word being used in relation to her mother. As she later attempted to describe it to Panos, it sounded like ‘sick’, but longer. The word they had in fact used was ‘schizophrenic’.
Eleftheria rarely emerged these days from the room at the back of the apartment. Pavlos Koralis and his mother agreed that the kindest action would be to find an appropriate private institution. It was the only solution for someone afflicted by such ever-deepening depression. A judge had granted power of attorney to Pavlos Koralis and he had managed to sell the site of his wife’s old mansion. Proceeds from the house sale would be used for her care.
The children were told that their mother needed to go to hospital for a while. They all understood that she was ill since why else would she stay in bed all day? And the promise that she would be treated, get better and then come home again was believed. Only Themis and her grandmother were there when a nurse arrived to escort her, and the small bag Eleftheria took with her supported the notion that her absence would be short.
Themis was briefly hugged by her mother and was puzzled that even on a cold day she left without putting on a coat. From the balcony, both grandmother and child watched the fragile figure being helped into a car and driven away.
When they returned from school, the other children were distraught that their mother had gone. They had hardly seen her during the past months, but knowing that her small room was now empty caused great distress. Margarita kept Themis awake with her crying that night, and even through the walls she could hear her brothers sobbing.
The psychiatric institution near Drama where Eleftheria Koralis now lived was in a decaying building with high ceilings and cracked walls. It was more than six hundred kilometres away and Pavlos Koralis only visited once, early on in her stay.
‘Pavlos thinks it reminds her of somewhere else . . .’ commented Kyría Koralis to one of her friends. ‘He says he hasn’t seen her more contented since they first married and moved into that awful house.’
Twice a year, a letter arrived reporting on her condition. She remained ‘stable’, but against what measure it did not say. The question of diagnosis was never raised, a fact that seemed not to trouble anyone, and the children accepted their mother’s need to convalesce. Even if she had not been so far away, they would not have been allowed to see her.
A wedding photograph of Pavlos and Eleftheria stood on Kyría Koralis’ dresser, more or less the only reminder of the absent couple.
Chapter Two
FOR THE NEXT few years, Kyría Koralis’ care of her grandchildren was exemplary. She now had the family she had always wanted. Her husband had been in the Hellenic Navy and had died at sea when their only child was small. Pavlos had surprised her by joining a merchant fleet, leaving an empty space in the centre of her life. Now she had a flock of children to fill her days. She was in her early sixties but still had boundless energy, as well as the ability to organise the young.
Every evening, Kyría Koralis enjoyed sitting at the head of the table and observing her grandchildren. She did not admit it to herself but the fact that Margarita had inherited her father’s large almond-shaped eyes (and her own round face and plump figure) made her the favourite. Thanasis also reminded her of Pavlos, with his chiselled cheekbones and broad shoulders. Panos was slighter in build, like their mother, and Themis also had Eleftheria Koralis’ skinny frame and an unmistakably reddish tint in her mousy brown hair. Old Kyría Koralis was privately disappointed that her grandsons were not taller, but blamed this on the poor diet they were all restricted to.
With her careful budgeting for food, and her skill with a needle, they ‘made do’ with what they had but it was not always possible to protect them from the growing economic depression. As they grew into teenagers, Thanasis and Panos often complained that they were still hungry after a meal. Kyría Koralis remained patient with them and made sure there was another loaf the next day.
It was Margarita whose lack of appreciation pushed her into losing her temper one day. For her granddaughter’s twelfth birthday she had painstakingly altered an old summer dress of Eleftheria’s.
Margarita’s eyes glistened with excitement as Kyría Koralis placed the package on the table in front of her, but her expression changed as soon as she opened it.
‘But that’s not a new dress, Yiayiá. You promised me a new one,’ she said petulantly.
Even with its bright buttons and braided hem, Margarita was not persuaded. The dress sat on her lap in a tangle of wrapping and ribbon.
‘There are plenty of girls who would dream of having such a dress, Margarita!’ Kyría Koralis told her firmly.
‘Yes, Margarita,’ interjected Panos. ‘You’re rude.’
‘Shut up, Panos,’ snapped Margarita. ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’
‘What you need to remember, young woman,’ said Kyría Koralis, addressing her pouting granddaughter, ‘is that new dresses are in short supply these days, even on birthdays. And for plenty of people, food is too. Not just in Greece but everywhere else. So please be a bit more grateful.’
Kyría Koralis snatched her handiwork from Margarita’s lap and left the room. Her understanding of politics was not extensive but she knew that the economic depression they were experiencing was far-reaching and it was time that her wayward granddaughter realised it too.
Even with the door of her own bedroom shut, she could hear raised voices between the children and then Margarita shrieking before a door slammed.
Themis had said nothing. In her entire life she had never worn a new dress. Only hand-me-downs from her sister.
Two days after Margarita’s birthday, the front page of the newspapers showed a woman bowed in grief over the corpse of her son. The desperation of tobacco workers in Thessaloniki had led them to strike and in an attempt to keep control over the crowd, police had opened fire and killed twelve men.
For some time, social division had been growing and with it an atmosphere of unrest. The threat of a general strike following this violence provided an excuse for the Prime Minister, General Metaxas, to impose a new regime. On 4 August 1936, with the King’s permission, he suspended the constitution, declared martial law and established a dictatorship giving him unlimited powers.
In former days, political arguments had only occurred when Pavlos Koralis visited and brought friends to the house. Nowadays they raged between Thanasis and Panos. Even from early teenage years, they had opposing views on how to deal with their country’s problems. Thanasis was in favour of the general and even admired Metaxas’ own role models, among whom was Mussolini. Panos, on the other hand, did not like the rigid order that Metaxas represented. In fact, he was not keen on discipline in any form. Sometimes Kyría Koralis had to remind them that if their father visited she would have to tell him of any bad behaviour. They were too old and tall now to be disciplined by her but the threat of their father’s wrath was enough to make them conform.
One of his rare visits coincided with a bout of rebellious behaviour from Panos.
It was the night of the weekly meeting with his EON squad. Ethniki Organosis Neolaias, the
National Youth Organisation, was the new movement into which the older three siblings had enrolled. Metaxas had established the organisation shortly after imposing his dictatorship, and soon it would no longer be voluntary to belong.
Panos hated going and had skipped it.
‘Why should I go?’ he demanded. ‘Why?’
He was now fifteen and almost half a metre taller than his grandmother.
‘Because it’s a good thing to go to,’ she replied. ‘You learn some discipline there.’
‘Discipline?’ he retorted scornfully.
She did not know that Panos had been missing meetings for some time. He detested everything about EON, from the intense right-wing propaganda to the fascistic double axe on the uniform.
By contrast, Thanasis looked forward to the military drills they had to perform and was already aiming to rise up the ranks. Margarita actively embraced it too. She loved the outfit and happily echoed the mantra that the woman’s place was in the home.
Panos had chosen an unfortunate day to challenge his grandmother. Their father had come back earlier that afternoon and was taking a rest in his mother’s little bedroom. The slamming of the door in the small apartment had woken him.
As he got out of bed, Pavlos Koralis could hear his son’s voice, slightly raised, and then his own mother’s authority being challenged. Everyone knew what the consequences of rebellion against the Metaxas regime could be. Refusing to be part of EON could result in expulsion from school, reduced job opportunities and who knew what other shame? Fury surged through him.
Themis was sitting at the kitchen table. As soon as her brother had come in, she wanted to jump up and warn him, but it was too late. The bedroom door had already flown open.
It was months since he had seen his children but Pavlos Koralis did not approach Panos from behind in order to give him a surprise embrace. Instead he gave him a mighty shove in the back.
Panos went flying towards his grandmother who, without a moment of hesitation, stepped to one side to avoid the human missile. He fell heavily, his forehead catching the corner of the table before he landed.
Those Who Are Loved Page 3