One Summer in Crete

by Nadia Marks

  The rape, though acknowledged, was never spoken of again. Calliope, though distraught herself, maintained a calm exterior and threw herself into aiding her daughter towards recovery.

  Almost three months later, the young girl at last started to eat and to regain her physical strength. Froso’s emotional state was still fragile; she suffered from nightmares and night sweats and her body felt alien to her. For long weeks it was beyond her capacity to accept that Kosmas had been snatched away from her and had gone forever, all happiness and the future she had dreamed of destroyed in a few moments.

  The realization that Froso was pregnant hit both mother and daughter like an earthquake. Calliope remained resolute, all the while praying to the Panagia for her guidance. Froso, on the other hand, after her initial state of shock at the discovery that she was with child, was certain, as she told her mother, that the baby in her belly belonged to Kosmas. She was convinced beyond doubt this was the fruit of their union on that fateful day when they consummated their love for the first time. The baby she was carrying was the gift that her beloved had bestowed on her. If she couldn’t have Kosmas, she would have his flesh and blood. She was sure that this was the truth, no less, because the Virgin Mother came to her in a dream and told her so – the child would be the living manifestation of their love; she had no doubts.

  But Calliope had her misgivings. She feared the worst. She tossed and turned in bed, prayed to God and to all the saints and angels. She made her pilgrimage to the Archangel Raphael and begged him to guide her actions. At last she concluded that the baby must be loved and cherished as any blessed child that came into the world and the circumstances of its conception were immaterial. The baby would be innocent at birth and he or she should grow up bearing no stigma of shame or doubt. A precious life had been granted to them and, since it was God’s will, they would love and cherish it.

  Still Calliope spent more nights and days pondering and assessing their predicament. Eventually, in the course of her visits to the church during which she devoted much time entreating guidance from the Holy Mother, she reached a profound decision. She resolved that the wisest course of action, in the best interests of the child and of them all, would be for her, Calliope, to assume the role of the mother while fifteen-year-old Froso became the big sister. A young unmarried girl with a child would certainly arouse disapproval and suspicion in the neighbouring area. That secret must be guarded at all costs. The two of them, with the help of Nikiforos, would raise the baby in the loving context of the family fold, protecting the child from the stain of illegitimacy and more pain that the special circumstances of its birth might cause. The pledge of silence that the village had taken on the night of Kosmas’s burial applied to Calliope’s decision too. The secret of one family would be the secret of the entire community; everyone was implicated in the crime, they would all make sure that the girl was kept out of sight during pregnancy from nearby villages and the truth would remain hidden always.

  At first the girl rebelled against her mother’s plan. ‘You will always be the child’s mother, Froso mou, no one can take that away from you,’ Calliope counselled her daughter. ‘Look how your little brother feels about you: he loves you more than if you were his mother, you are his friend too. We have to think what’s best for the child, my girl. This is no time to think only of yourself.’ Froso had to agree with her mother; besides, no one would be taking her baby away from her. They would all live under the same roof as a family. But when the time came and especially when baby Eleni began to talk and would call Calliope ‘Mama’, Froso felt the sting in her heart.

  16

  The silence which descended upon the three women after Froso finished speaking engulfed them like a fog. It rendered them and, it seemed, the world around them, mute: not a leaf stirred, cicada song ceased, even the waves of the sea were hushed.

  At first all Eleni was aware of was her pulse pounding in her temple and neck, until a small faint sound became audible: Froso’s muffled sobs. Eleni blinked as if trying to clear her vision and looked at the older woman.

  ‘You . . . my mother?’ she whispered in a voice alien to her, as if someone else had spoken.

  Froso took in a gulp of air, held it for a moment and closed her eyes. ‘Yes . . .’ she finally murmured, ‘my life has been one long secret.’

  Calli, who had been sitting motionless between her mother and Froso, became aware that she had stopped breathing. She took several deep breaths and stood up abruptly as if she had been stung; then, sinking back into her chair again, she opened her arms to hold the shoulders of the women on either side of her, silently pulling them towards her. No sound was uttered. None of them was aware how much time passed while they remained huddled together in this embrace. At last Calli dropped her arms, stood up and went into the house, returning with a bottle of raki and three glasses. She placed these on the table in front of Froso and Eleni as they sat, still holding each other.

  ‘We need help to unlock our tongues and our hearts,’ she told them. She looked at Froso and poured out the drink. ‘Yiayia?’ she murmured and handed her a glass as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  It was still early in the day. During the last few weeks when Froso began telling her story to Calli it had always been after their evening meal and she talked well into the small hours of the night until fatigue and emotion got too much for her, leaving Calli wanting more. This time was different. They had the whole day ahead of them, it had hardly gone past lunchtime when she finished speaking and Calli was grateful that they had time ahead to try and process what they had just heard, even if she knew that this was only the beginning of that journey. Their world had now been altered forever.

  At first Eleni was unable to speak: her thoughts were incoherent, and no clear emotion had taken hold; then gradually the tears began to pour, and the weeping followed. Nausea mixed with rage rose in the pit of her stomach. She looked at Froso and demanded to know how could she and the entire family keep silent during all those years? What right did they all have to keep this from her?

  ‘Silence hides the pain,’ Froso replied wearily. ‘Once the decision was made, there was only one thing to do, and that was to abide by it. You cannot imagine how many times I breathed those unspoken words just to myself: “I am your mama, Eleni mou. Calliope is your yiayia.” I would stand alone in front of the mirror in my room and whisper the words so only I could hear them.’ Froso’s voice broke into a sob again. ‘You cannot imagine how my heart ached, especially at the beginning, but eventually we all became used to it. You were a happy child, you were growing well, and I had always to remind myself that it was for the best, for your own good.’

  Eleni sat voiceless, struggling to keep under control the trembling that had taken hold of her body. ‘Your father was beautiful in every way, body and soul,’ Froso said. ‘He knew you were here, I felt him near me every day.’

  ‘How can you be so sure!’ Eleni suddenly burst out, anger rising in her voice again.

  ‘The same way I knew undoubtedly that you were his.’

  The afternoon was slipping past and neither food nor drink had passed the three women’s lips since Calli had brought out the raki. Like the night before, she realized that it was time for some nourishment and she was best able to put her mind to the task. She left Eleni and Froso in the garden and took herself to the kitchen. Bread, olives, cheese and a salad of tomatoes and cucumber were as much as she could manage to prepare, her mind still full of her aunt’s new revelations. She was assembling the plates on a tray when her mobile rang, almost causing her to drop the jug of water she was filling.

  ‘Calli . . .’ Nicos’s voice echoed hesitantly, ‘are you free?’

  ‘No . . . maybe later?’ Hearing his voice restored some of Calli’s equilibrium. She needed to see him but for now she needed to be with Eleni and Froso more.

  Late afternoon found them still sitting under the olive trees. Although more needed to be said, the time had come when the three women had no m
ore strength to continue. Sorrow, anger and regret had shrouded them for hours, talking, demanding, crying, until fatigue overwhelmed them and there was nothing more to do but rest.

  Back in her room, Calli began reflecting and sifting through all that had been said. Her mother’s existence and knowledge of who she was had been transformed, and the same went for herself too. She remembered what she had told Eleni earlier, without realizing its significance: life is rarely what it appears to be. Her thoughts turned to Froso and once again since her arrival on Crete, she felt pangs of remorse. All through her childhood, Calli’s attitude towards this woman had consisted more of rejection than of acceptance; now, the irritating expressions of love the older woman had lavished on her started to make sense. Froso had a love in her heart that was inappropriate for the role of an aunt and had to be kept secret. If silence hides pain, Calli thought, surely secrets fester and create wounds that cannot heal if left unspoken. How ironic, she mused, that she had always longed for a grandmother and missed Calliope when she died, yet all the time she had a yiayia who was alive and well and was desperate to love her and be loved in return. At last she fell asleep, images from her childhood jostling in her head. The path ahead was going to be a difficult one for them all, and as long and winding as those Cretan mountain roads.

  She woke with a start. She had slept deeply without dreams as if to block out the revelations of the day. As consciousness and memory returned, Calli leapt from her bed and ran to her mother’s bedroom, only to find it empty. She found Froso alone in the garden, sitting motionless at the table under the olive tree, her hands on her lap, eyes closed.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Calli asked, alarm in her voice.

  ‘She’s gone.’ Froso’s reply was almost inaudible. ‘Hours ago. I heard the garden gate open.’ She spoke in staccato breathless sentences. ‘I was in bed. I’ve been sitting waiting for her.’ Froso fell silent, closing her eyes again as if shutting out the world. Calli’s anxiety rose; she looked fretfully around her, wondering where her mother might have gone in her distressed state.

  Lying in bed, utterly drained, Eleni longed to rest, to regain some vestiges of strength to continue. Fatigue had claimed both body and mind, the depletion of physical energy resulting from emotional exhaustion. Although she could barely keep her eyes open, wishing for blessed sleep, her brain would not allow it. Among the troubling thoughts that filled her head, a niggling question kept repeating itself: how could she, a woman who believed she had psychic powers, a gift that she had been so proud of all her life, have failed to sense any of the dramatic events that had just been related to her? How could she have lived this long without some kind of sign? Was her everyday family life, her background and upbringing, all she had ever believed in and accepted without question, based on a lie? Finally she got up, threw on some clothes and crept out of the house; there was no point in lying there unable to breathe. She needed air, to run in the open and to be alone, as she had done when she was a child and felt hemmed in at home. Haunted by a thought which she dared not articulate or bring to the foreground of her mind she fled, taking a path that led towards the hills. She knew of a small grove with a few carob trees that had been spared the fate of others hacked down and replaced by olives: a little plot of land which she had claimed as her own private hideout. She ran most of the way until exhaustion and emotion took hold of her once again, and arrived panting, face streaked with tears. Once she had been able to run there with ease, barely breaking into a sweat; now she was no longer young, and though she was still slim and agile for her age, her heart was heavy. She stood under a gnarled old carob, laden with pods which hung from its dusty branches like black stalactites. Eleni threw her arms around the trunk and stood hugging the tree, sobs wracking her frame. Could she ever have imagined all those years ago, when she had escaped here as a girl seeking solitude and peace, what she now knew? Peaceful was the last thing in the world that she felt as she leaned against the tree, trying to draw breath. She wanted to scream, to release the tension in her throat and in her soul; to push that dark thought further into the recesses of her mind and exterminate it altogether, but she could not. All that she could do was to let her tears flow, until there were none left.

  At last she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and, hardly thinking, reached up to pluck a carob pod hanging above her head. She bit into its leathery outer skin, thankful that her teeth were still strong enough to reach the softer, fleshier part of the fruit that was easier to chew on. Its sweet pungent taste instantly, subliminally, transported her to a happier time, a time of innocence when life was simple, when she knew what all the familiar people who were dear to her stood for, and who she was. She lowered herself to the ground; leaning back against the tree trunk, she sat there chewing, spitting pips onto the earth, until the entire pod was gone. As she ate, she let her mind drift randomly, until the pressure she had felt in her chest and throat all day started to lift. What sleep had failed to achieve earlier, the time it took to eat that carob fruit succeeded in bringing to her. She let her mind wander back into the past, the faces of family members and friends superimposing themselves in her thoughts. At last an idea started to take shape, causing her to stand up, brush herself down and hurry towards the village until she arrived in front of old Pavlis’s house.

  She found him sitting on a wooden chair out in his yard listening to the news from an old transistor radio.

  Eleni pulled a chair close to him, hoping that if she was in his direct vision he would be able to see and hear her better as she spoke. Now she waited for his response.

  ‘Yes, it is all true,’ the old man finally said.

  She had already started to piece together vague images and events from childhood as she sat under the carob tree. Memories of visits to the village cemetery with Calliope, Froso and often Uncle Pavlis started to return to her like faded reels of film. She began to recall being taken along from a very early age on those visits by her mother and big sister, and while she played among the cypress trees and chased butterflies the two women would sombrely busy themselves at the graves. Visiting the dead was a common and regular occurrence for all families, not only in order to pay their respects but also to ensure the graves were maintained, to replace the flowers and light the candles. Although many of their deceased relatives and friends of the family were buried there, one particular tomb – Eleni now remembered – seemed to take more of Froso’s time and beside it she would fall into mournful silence. Uncle Pavlis too, when he visited with them, would hold Froso’s hand and linger with her beside that grave.

  ‘I never had any doubt that you were my brother’s child,’ the old man said, finding Eleni’s hands and cupping them in his. ‘My brother died for nothing. His life was cut short before it began properly. But your existence, my girl, was a comfort to us all. It was as if we had part of him still with us.’

  ‘How could you be so sure?’ she said with a sharp intake of breath – then instantly wished her question unsaid. That idea had to be exterminated, it must never surface again; she could not tolerate its existence even as a glimmer of a thought.

  ‘As sure as the sun that rises every day,’ the old man replied. ‘You have his eyes.’

  ‘Then why was I not told?’ she demanded, knowing what his answer would be.

  ‘The oath of silence was sacred. Even if the crime we committed was justified, we still had to keep it hidden from outsiders and from the surrounding villages; no one must know, it was too risky. Your grandmother’s decision about the circumstances of your birth had to be respected too. Froso was so young and what happened then was our village secret. It was between us and God and no one else’s business.’

  As a Cretan herself, Eleni knew and recognized all that Pavlis was saying. Having been brought up on this land, she was familiar with the passions and vendettas that had taken place over the years, and of the hot blood that ran through people’s veins. Yet still her brain rebelled and rejected the silence.

  The old
man let her stay while her questions kept coming, her curiosity and sorrow found the way to express themselves in words and after all these years he was finally able and willing to speak.

  ‘I am probably the only one left from the old folk,’ he told her. ‘Most of my generation are now gone or too old to be of any use. Froso has lived with this burden all her life . . . I know she wanted to talk to you about it for years, she told me that many times but couldn’t summon up the courage. When the end feels near then courage returns, or perhaps it’s not courage, perhaps it’s the wish to depart with a clear conscience.’

  ‘She didn’t commit a crime . . .’ Eleni’s voice trailed off.

  ‘She carried the weight of that secret all her life, she often talked to me about her burden but there was nothing to be done. We all did our best to make sure you had a happy life, Eleni mou, a normal life. What’s the difference – a mother, a grandmother, a father, a grandfather? It’s all the same so long as there is love, and you had love all around you, my girl, from everyone.’

  17

  At a loss as to what to do or where to look for her mother, Calli reached for her phone and dialled Michalis’s number.

  ‘Does your aunt have any idea where she might be?’ was his first response, without knowing what could have provoked Eleni’s disappearance.

  ‘I don’t know . . . I haven’t asked,’ Calli replied, flustered, and turned to look at Froso. After finishing her call she pulled up a chair next to her aunt.

  ‘Do you know where Mum might have gone?’ she asked gently, trying to keep calm.