Those Who Are Loved

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘Mitéra! What are you doing listening to these people? Why? Why do you? Isn’t it enough that they’re ruining our lives? They’ve taken away our freedom to think and speak and breathe!’

  Themis had entirely underestimated her son’s brewing frustration. But it was her apparent indifference to his sense of injustice that had really infuriated him. Suddenly he was next to her and pulling the plug from the wall to silence the radio.

  ‘Why are you so apathetic? Why can’t you see what’s happening to this country? We’re dominated by fascists and Americans! And you don’t seem to care! Neither of you! I am ashamed of this family!’

  Nikos stood quivering with anger but Themis was shaking so hard that she had to sit down. She could feel the physical heat of her son’s passion.

  Giorgos had come through the front door in time to hear the final moments of his son’s tirade.

  Themis was struggling to contain her tears. She knew that Nikos had no idea how unjust his accusations were but at the same time she did not want Giorgos to be too hard on Nikos.

  With her whole being she wanted her son to know how hard she had fought, with her fists, with her sweat, with her blood, with her very essence. She had even killed. She had risked everything to combat the fascism to which he referred.

  Giorgos knew how deeply his wife felt and came round the table to comfort her. As he did so, Nikos shrank away, rightly fearful of his father’s wrath. He knew how protective he was of his mother.

  ‘Please don’t say anything, Giorgos,’ she asked him quietly, knowing that they both held fast to an agreement that the children should not be burdened with Themis’ past. Silence protected this family. If Themis spoke out to defend herself, then so many other truths might come tumbling out.

  The three of them looked at each other.

  Nikos reached out and touched his mother’s arm.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mána. I’m really sorry. It was wrong of me.’

  His contrition was genuine and his brief apology enough. The situation defused, he left the apartment and Themis and Giorgos were left alone.

  It was then that Themis allowed herself to cry.

  ‘H-h-h-how d-d-d-dare he speak to you like that?’ said Giorgos. ‘A s-s-s-son to his mother? If you h-h-hadn’t restrained me . . . I-I-I . . .’

  Anger was rare in this gentle man but, when he was roused to it, it was hard for him to contain. His stutter worsened and he could scarcely get out his words, so enraged was he that Nikos had shown such little respect.

  ‘But it’s how things seem to him, Giorgos,’ Themis said quietly, defending their son. ‘It must look as if we approve of the regime. We never say anything against it.’

  Themis heard the door and quickly dried her tears on her apron. Thanasis and the younger children were coming in and it was time to eat. A letter had come from Angelos that morning and it was the family tradition that one of the three younger children read out his news. Anna finished eating first so she slit open the envelope and along with the pages of transparent airmail paper pulled out a postcard.

  Dear everyone,

  Everything is going well. I started my internship last month and am now living in the centre of Chicago. It is a very exciting city – you can see it for yourselves on the photo. I work in one of those very tall buildings, on the eighteenth floor, to be exact, and have marked my window with a cross!

  One of the boys grabbed the photo from her and Anna protested.

  ‘Andreas, don’t snatch, agápi mou,’ said his mother. ‘Pass it round so everyone can look at it, please.’

  I am enjoying my job, working as a junior accountant in one of the big firms. They have promised to promote me when I pass the next set of professional exams and they are already paying me well (much more than I would earn in Greece). I have even bought a car! It’s white and fits at least four people on the back seat and has huge wheels. Everyone here has one and I go on trips at weekends with . . . my new girlfriend! She is called Corabel and she works as a secretary in the company.

  ‘Corabel?’ interrupted Thanasis. ‘Is that a name? It’s not a saint I’ve heard of . . .’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Uncle Thanasis,’ giggled Anna. ‘She’s American, not Greek. He hasn’t found a Greek Orthodox girl!’

  ‘And you’ve seen enough Hollywood films to know they have strange names over there,’ teased Andreas.

  ‘Let her continue!’ urged Themis.

  ‘Shall I start again from the beginning?’ asked Anna.

  The family groaned collectively, so she picked up from where Thanasis had interrupted her.

  . . . Her family come from the West Coast so she has a very different accent but I manage to understand her! We get very little holiday here, but in the summer we will take a vacation and drive across to see her parents. The roads are amazing – very straight and very wide and very smooth.

  Love, Angelos

  Themis could not deny it. There was no doubt that her twenty-three-year-old son was living the American dream, with opportunities beyond the reach of anyone in Greece.

  ‘He sounds happy, doesn’t he?’ said Giorgos, getting up to clear some plates.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ said Anna impatiently. ‘There’s a PS!’

  ‘Come on, then, Anna,’ said Themis. ‘Read it out.’

  Anna was enjoying being the centre of attention in this noisy family and was now reading with an American accent.

  ‘I tracked down our grandfather,’ she drawled, trying to imagine how her brother sounded these days. ‘He lives in Salt Lake City. I got a very short reply to my letter. He said he would come over to see me one day.’

  ‘Salt City?’ said Spiros, pouring salt on to the table and shaping it into a pile.

  ‘Spiros! Stop doing that!’ Themis murmured half-heartedly, her mind not really on her son’s bad behaviour. She was momentarily annoyed by the thought of her father and the obvious lack of interest in his old family but the moment soon passed. After more than three decades of absence she felt little connection.

  Nikos’ place at the table remained empty but when he came in later, he picked up the letter that was still lying there and read it carefully.

  He saw his mother on the balcony and went out to sit with her.

  ‘You’ve forgiven me, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of course, agápi mou,’ she said. ‘All you have to remember is that things aren’t always as they seem.’

  He was puzzled by her comment but the moment passed. He had something else on his mind. His brother’s letter.

  ‘He seems to be doing well, doesn’t he?’ said Nikos.

  ‘It’s nice to know how happy he is,’ she responded. ‘And a new girlfriend too, that’s . . .’

  ‘It’s more than four years since he left . . .’

  ‘I know. I just wish he would come home and visit. He did promise,’ said Themis.

  ‘Four years,’ emphasised Nikos. ‘And not once has he ever mentioned what’s really going on in that country.’

  ‘He sends us his news, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t mean that, Mána,’ said Nikos, aware that he must keep his voice low.

  His father was napping on the sofa just inside the doors.

  ‘I mean the real news. Vietnam, for example. America went in and slaughtered people who didn’t agree with their politics.’

  He knew his mother did not follow the news carefully these days but she had heard that many US troops had been withdrawn and a peace agreement reached.

  ‘All that’s over now, isn’t it?’ said Themis.

  ‘The action might be, but even when it was happening Angelos never referred to it. Thousands of innocent people died! And now there’s something new. Nixon is implicated in some kind of cover-up,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘It’s full of corruption, that country.’

  ‘Shh, mátia mou,’ urged Themis.

  ‘I know my father is sleeping,’ he said. ‘But it’s America that supports the colonels, Mána. They interfer
e here just as they interfered in Vietnam. They meddle wherever they want and nobody stops them.’

  Nikos had said everything he had to say, so he stopped.

  ‘But Angelos is happy there,’ said his mother. ‘And he was never interested in politics, was he?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Nikos. ‘He’s gone to make his fortune and I’m sure he’ll succeed.’

  ‘I’m glad that you’re so different from one another,’ said Themis, taking her son’s hand and holding it firmly in her own.

  Nikos got up, kissed her forehead and went back into the apartment. His father was just waking.

  Themis put the conversation to the back of her mind until a few months later when Nikos came home very late one night. It was early in 1973. She was tidying and about to go to bed but immediately noticed something strange about him. In spite of it being a cold night, he reeked of sweat, and she could see, even in the low light of the living room, that his hands and face were streaked with dirt. His trousers were torn at the knee.

  ‘Nikos?’ she asked. ‘What happened?’

  Her son was wild-eyed. There was a look of fear in his eyes, but at the same time she sensed his exhilaration and recognised the combination from her own distant past.

  He was still out of breath from the exertion of running, but eventually answered.

  His mother had brought him a glass of water.

  ‘I was helping out some friends,’ he panted.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘At the Law School. They’ve had enough of the Junta’s interference and they were protesting. I joined them.’

  Themis adopted her customary silence, whilst listening intently.

  ‘It’s almost six years, Mána. Six years since they took away student rights. We’re not even allowed free student elections. The ones they staged last autumn were a sham.’

  ‘So what happened at the Law School?’ she asked gently.

  ‘There was a demonstration and the police came. And they were violent. One of our group is in hospital. He’ll be OK, but he is badly bruised.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘I just caught the edge of one of their batons. Nothing more,’ he said, making light of his wound.

  Nikos drained the water in one gulp and handed the glass back to his mother.

  ‘People have had enough,’ he said.

  Themis carefully washed up the glass and went to bed, listening to the sound of Nikos in the shower. He was whistling. Perhaps it was a revolutionary song.

  The following day it was reported on a radio bulletin that a demonstration at the law faculty had been resoundingly crushed.

  The summer was even hotter than usual and the streets were quiet until the sun went down. Only then did people go out. High temperatures sat like a weight over the city, sapping the energy to stage demonstrations against the Junta. Nikos spent plenty of time with his uncle during those months. The upstairs apartment was a retreat from the noise of his own home where his growing siblings seemed to dominate the space. Andreas and Spiros, now thirteen and nine, were almost constantly engaged in a continual wrestling match, making it impossible to study. They called Nikos and their uncle the ‘yéroi’, the old men, as they sat on the balcony, facing outwards over the square like friends in the kafeneío.

  What they talked of was a mystery to Themis, but whenever she saw her son helping his uncle down the stairs for the evening meal she was touched by the strength of affection that existed between them. She could only assume that they never strayed into political discussion.

  When autumn came, the rhythm of life changed. Nikos was attending university classes again and the teenagers started a new academic year too.

  One evening in mid-November, when Nikos came in Themis recognised something new in his mood.

  Giorgos was outside on the balcony pruning two lemon trees planted many years before by Kyría Koralis.

  ‘What’s happened, Nikos? Tell me.’ Giorgos overheard his wife ask.

  ‘Don’t say anything to anyone, especially my father, but there’s a strike going on at the Polytechnic and I’m going to join in. And don’t tell me not to,’ he announced with determination.

  Giorgos appeared. He had heard his son’s words and they had irritated him, particularly the reference to himself.

  ‘It w-w-won’t do any good,’ he said. ‘So why even b-b-bother? The Junta will always win. They have a whole army behind them.’

  Nikos found Giorgos’ mild manner irritating at the best of times and this was the wrong moment for him to encounter such apathy.

  ‘I’m not even going to listen to you,’ he almost spat. ‘How can we be so different? How can you be my . . .?’

  Giorgos had turned his back. He knew what might come next from Nikos’ mouth and did not want to hear it.

  ‘I’m going to the k-k-kafeneío,’ he said, addressing Themis, and left immediately.

  Themis had always known that her husband’s sympathies were not wholeheartedly with the left but she suddenly felt annoyed by him. She was left alone now to face Nikos.

  Nikos was not ready to drop the matter.

  ‘I am sick of this family being so spineless! I know you hate the Junta, Mána. And I know why you are always silent. It’s cowardice. And I don’t want to be like you—’

  Themis felt her temperature rising. Like a bríki with coffee that had heated to boiling point, her anger now overflowed.

  ‘Stop!’

  The firmness in his mother’s voice arrested him. Her voice was generally so calm.

  ‘Please, Nikos, stop,’ she said. She was burning from within and could feel it even to the roots of her hair. ‘You have to stop now.’

  She gripped the back of a chair to steady herself. In front of her she saw not a child, but a twenty-five-year-old man accusing her of cowardice, she who had given everything, almost to her last breath.

  The passion of the moment took her. Was it not time he knew? And knew everything?

  Defying all that she had agreed with Giorgos, she began to speak in her own defence. It was impossible to restrain herself for a moment longer.

  ‘Listen. I fought for the left in the mountains, Nikos. I killed. I was captured and I spent months in prison. Months in exile.’

  Nikos was open-mouthed.

  ‘What? You’re only telling me this now? Why? Why didn’t you say anything before?’

  Nikos pulled out a chair and sank down into it. Themis took the seat opposite him.

  ‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘It seemed better to distance us all, that’s why,’ she said. Nikos reached across the table to touch his mother’s hand. ‘Your uncles were always arguing, and then it was me and Thanasis later. And then there was Margarita. She was . . . more on the right. Politics can be venom, Nikos. I didn’t want you to be poisoned.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why you said nothing,’ said Nikos, his throat almost dry with shock.

  ‘Because your father and I didn’t always agree on what was right and I thought it was better to say nothing.’

  ‘But why—’

  ‘It’s dangerous to be on the losing side, Nikos, so isn’t it better not to be on any side?’

  ‘No! If you don’t take a side, then evil wins.’

  ‘Sometimes evil wins whatever you do,’ she said, thinking of Aliki. The day of her execution was still so clear in her memory.

  Both of them were calm now.

  Suddenly she knew she had no right to keep the truth from the young man who sat opposite her. She was his mother, but so was Aliki. To deny him the right to know this was to deny Aliki’s right too. Her right to be remembered.

  ‘There is something else I want to tell you, Nikos. I think it’s fair that you know.’

  ‘You were a communist!’ he said with admiration, squeezing her hand. ‘And you fought! I would never have imagined . . .’

  He had seen his mother in a new light and there was a detectable hint of joy in his voi
ce.

  ‘Shh!’ Themis said softly. ‘Please keep your voice down.’

  Even now she did not want the other children to know, and certainly not her neighbours.

  ‘Your mother was a heroine of the civil war,’ she continued.

  ‘It sounds like it,’ he smiled. ‘And I am proud, even if I knew nothing of it until today.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ she said, looking very directly at him. ‘I’m not talking about me.’

  For a moment, Nikos looked confused. So who was his mother talking about?

  Themis saw all the colour drain from his face and now she took his hands in hers. His skin had an icy chill.

  ‘Your mother was a true heroine,’ Themis told him gently. ‘She died for her beliefs and for her principles.’

  Shock had grabbed Nikos by the throat and strangled his words, making his mouth so dry that his voice would not function. Not a single syllable could escape.

  Themis continued to talk gently for a few moments, trying to read Nikos’ expression as she did so. He was listening intently.

  ‘Her name was Aliki. She loved you very, very much and made sure that you were going to be looked after. She was a true friend to me when I was in need, which is why I became your “mother” and why I love you as though you are my own.’

  The revelation had come crashing down on Nikos like a meteor. There had not been the slightest warning of such an announcement and he was unprepared. Themis could see this and was beginning to regret her rashness.

  He had a dim memory of some other place in his early life, but not of another mother.

  ‘Aliki,’ he repeated hoarsely.

  ‘Yes,’ said Themis. ‘I will find a photograph I have of her. A photograph that was taken of us both. And I also have a beautiful drawing that she did of you. I will show you.’

  ‘Not now . . .’ said Nikos.

  He could scarcely take in what he had just been told and the words went round and round in his head: his mother was ‘a communist heroine’. She had been executed.

  Suddenly he stood up.