by Defne Suman
Their sons never came home again.
Katina closed her eyes and buried her nose in her daughter’s hair, between the laurel leaves of the makeshift crown. Panagiota’s neck was wet with her mother’s tears.
The letters stopped coming. And then in the spring the neighbour’s son, Yanni, brought the bleak news. The labour battalions were essentially prison camps, and the Christian boys were starving and utterly destitute; when any of them fell seriously ill, they were left to die in their own filth. Yanni managed to stay alive despite being at death’s door with typhus only because a kind doctor had happened to visit the battalion. He was even given four weeks’ leave to recuperate and sent home. Katina and Akis learned the truth from Yanni, himself just skin and bone and prone to talking in his sleep about the camps; he spoke of the living lying with the dead in putrid, windowless ditches, of being left without food for weeks yet forced to continue breaking stones every day.
The loss of her sons left an irreparable hole in Katina’s soul and she wasn’t sure she could be a strong mother any more with what remained. For the past three and a half years she had carried on mechanically going about her daily tasks. Yes, she filled Panagiota’s dowry trunk with care; and when she could catch her daughter, she taught her embroidery and how to roll dolma thinly and how to marinate lamb in milk. When chatting with her neighbours at their coffee-scented picnics or in front of the door at dusk, or when reading poems her daughter had written, she sometimes forgot her grief and smiled. But in that still place behind her pupils, the emptiness from where her soul had migrated remained unfilled.
She had become ever more obsessive about Panagiota, increasingly uneasy at how tall her daughter had grown and how much attention she was getting in the neighbourhood on account of her beauty. Her predominant emotion these days was anxiety. Sometimes she spent a whole morning praying in front of the icon of Agia Ekaterini, her namesake and the protector of young girls. Now she was afraid that because of the Greek landing that all the young people were so excited about, she would lose control of her daughter. She couldn’t sleep for thinking about how to protect her.
There was a great boom from somewhere in the distance, and Katina jumped up from her seat in the window.
‘Get up, Giota mou. Get up! I don’t know what’s happening, but these noises – cannon shots, fighting – do not bode well. Let’s not sit in the window. Come, daughter. Your father will have heard it and will come home now.’
Panagiota couldn’t take her eyes off the street.
‘Giota mou, se parakalo, please. Come, daughter. Let your father not see you at the window.’
‘Aaah! Mama, look. Look! Ela, ela edo, come here and look!’
Panagiota was kneeling on the mat, pointing to something under the eaves of the house across the street. Water was pouring from the rooftops in a flood, and rainwater was surging like a raging river from the broken section of the drainage canal in the middle of the street, carrying with it frogs, geranium pots, dead birds, newspapers, handkerchiefs and children’s toys in a rush towards the square.
Katina came back to the window. ‘I can’t see anything, child. Where are you looking?’
‘There – over by Fisherman Yorgo’s door.’
Katina squinted and saw something moving outside her neighbour’s door. The branches of the lemon tree continued to strike the windowpane. ‘What is that? Who’s over there – is it Niko? Or Muhtar?’
Muhtar was the neighbourhood’s short-tailed, yellow street dog.
‘Yes, Muhtar is over there. But look carefully – there’s a woman there too. Do you see her?’
Kneeling up on the mat like her daughter, Katina saw a fashionably dressed European lady standing under the eaves of the house across the street. She was wearing a dress the colour of a pomegranate flower with a sharp white collar. A small, chic hat sat slightly askew on her head, and a gauze veil covered her face. She was leaning against the wall of the fisherman’s house, with the tip of her umbrella, the same tan colour as her cape, resting on the ground.
Panagiota’s excitement was not unfounded. One did not see such beautifully attired European ladies in their poor neighbourhood.
‘Mama, look, she’s crying, I think. Her shoulders are shaking, and she’s sopping wet.’
Mother and daughter pressed their noses against the window, trying to get as good a view as possible. The woman looked like she might fall over.
Katina laughed. ‘Look at our Muhtar! He’s soaking wet too, but he’s still holding his tail high. He’s protecting the woman – it’s as if he’s saying “this will pass”, as if he knows a secret we humans don’t. Bravo, Muhtar, St Muhtar!’
Panagiota was pleased to hear her mother’s laughter. ‘Manoula mou, shall I go down and bring her here? Maybe someone close to her has died. Look, she’s crying. She could drink some tea with us and we could heat up yesterday’s kuluraki bagels in the stove and offer her those. She could warm up and dry off. What do you say? I could speak French with her and you could hear how much I’ve learned.’ Beneath her curly lashes, Panagiota’s black eyes began to shine at the thought of a European woman in their house.
‘Of course not, daughter! She’s just sheltering from the rain. As soon as it stops, she’ll get in her motor car and go. Is it up to us to comfort a European woman? You’re just looking for an excuse to go outside, beba mou, my baby.’
Just then the woman drew a handkerchief from the silk purse hanging from her wrist and with tiny gestures dabbed the raindrops from her nose, face and forehead. Opening her elegant umbrella, she glided down Menekse Street towards the square, as if she were waltzing across a dance floor. She turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
Panagiota watched her leave with a dreamy look in her eyes and murmured, ‘How beautiful she is!’
Getting up from the mat, Katina grumbled, ‘What could you see that you call her beautiful, you silly girl? Through the rain, and with her face hidden by that veil. She might be quite ugly under there. You are much prettier than her. Come on, get up from the window now – you’ve turned into a pot plant, sitting on the sill like that.’
Before getting to her feet, Panagiota, dressed like an Ancient Greek virgin in her white smock and laurel-leaf crown, leaned out of the bay window and took one last look at the corner around which the European lady had vanished.
Zito O Venizelos
When Edith reached the little neighbourhood square, she took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her face again. Crying in the middle of the street? What was happening to her today! She had grown up in a family that never showed emotion in public, so this was most unusual and disquieting.
Holding her head high under her umbrella, she continued to the edge of Psomalani. She had come out to look for Butler Mustafa, to ask him to arrange a motor car to take her mother to the train station. She had walked as far as the inner part of the Hadji Frangou neighbourhood, above the French Hospital, but then the rain had caught her. It had to be the extraordinary situation in the city that was making her so emotional; there could be no other reason for this sudden grieving over forgotten losses and crying about them in public.
After she and Avinash had made love in the hallway that morning, he had set out for the British Consulate and she had got dressed by herself, without bathing, for she did not know how to heat water for the basin. She was due to visit her grandmother, who was a patient at the French Hospital, and had arranged to meet Juliette Lamarck there. In the absence of her housekeeper and with no means to reach her mother, Edith had no idea if the plans had changed. Had everyone in Bournabat heard about the arrival of the Greek fleet in Smyrna? The fleet had been expected since the beginning of May, but the actual arrival date had been kept secret until the last moment. As her mother was to have taken the eight o’clock train, most probably she was not yet aware of what had happened and would come to the hospital as agreed. Edith decided to take a quick look at the quay and then continue to the hospital.
The touch of
the sun’s rays after the rain had released the smell of newly freshened grass and flowers from the well-kept gardens of Vasili Street, and the strong wind blowing in from the docks added a whiff of seaweed and salt to the mix. The little bell on her wrought-iron garden gate jangled as she left and echoed down the empty street. Beneath the deep blue sky, the cobblestones shone as if recently polished. Rays of sunlight beamed down upon the city from behind the clouds. She trod carefully, avoiding any loose stones so as not to muddy the summer shoes she had chosen to wear. Without a maid to help her, she’d been unable to put on a girdle, so she felt naked under her dress the colour of pomegranate flowers and conscious of the sweet imprints of her lover’s hands on her body.
Gazing down the silent street ahead of her, the irrational fears of earlier returned. The neighbourhood was always quiet at this hour of the morning, but today it was utterly deserted. Everyone else had obviously locked their doors and closed their shutters, just as Avinash had advised her to do last night, and escaped somewhere. Why hadn’t she left the house with Avinash? The hospital was on the way to the British Consulate; they could have walked there together. Her determination to do everything by herself was sometimes very tiring.
At Aliotti Boulevard, she got a shock. The elegant avenue was strewn with rose petals. The wind coming off the sea was lifting the petals into the air and then whirling them to the ground again, covering the street in a velvety carpet of pink, white and red. The gypsies had left their baskets lined up on the side of the road; they must have run down to the docks or maybe they had fled when they heard that Greek soldiers had come. Edith closed her eyes and inhaled the fragrance of the roses. The father of her Paris schoolfriend Feride used to send his daughter bottles of rose oil every year, to sell if she got stuck for money. French people used to go crazy over it. As did Avinash. Ah, Avinash… Had he too seen these rose petals chasing each other, she wondered.
As she turned into Mesudiye Street, two lines of schoolchildren appeared before her, laughing and singing songs as they headed to the docks; she could hear a band playing down by the sea too. It must have been these sounds that she’d heard from her house, mistaking them for the sounds of Smyrna being bombarded. How easy it was to deceive oneself! The street was becoming more crowded with each step, and unlike in her own silent neighbourhood, the people here had put on their holiday apparel, slicked down their hair and run out onto the street with flags in their hands. As she was about to turn on to Frank Street, she was swept up in the crowd, mingling with young girls dressed in white and carrying daisies, and old women with jars of rose oil in their hands.
The quay was so congested, a dropped needle wouldn’t have reached the ground. Everybody from seven to seventy was there, waving blue and white flags at the ships anchored in the harbour and shouting ‘Zito o Venizelos!’ in honour of the Greek prime minister, the man behind the plan to have Smyrna given to Greece. Long live Venizelos! The ships sailing into the harbour one after the other were answering the cheers with a continuous blowing of whistles. Church bells added to the racket.
Edith was borne along, past the fancy hotels, fashionable cafés and theatres which lined the street, down towards the quay. She greeted a few acquaintances in front of the Sporting Club, then made her way over to the Pantheon Cinema, from where Zoe was waving to her. Zoe, holding her little daughter by the hand, was shoving people aside as she tried to move forwards. Her curly brown head kept bobbing in and out of view like a cormorant amidst the sea of hats. Finally, she was at Edith’s side.
‘Mademoiselle Lamarck, they have arrived!’ she shouted with childlike excitement. ‘Do you see them? Miss Edith mou, they have finally come!’
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining in wonder, as if she had witnessed a miracle. Her daughter repeated her mother’s words like a parrot. Edith had known Zoe since she was a girl and had never seen her so happy.
‘They arrived early this morning,’ she said, swallowing half her words in her haste, as if she’d been starving and was now gulping down her first meal. ‘My husband brought me the good news at daybreak. “Get up, Zoe,” he said. “Ela grigora, come on, be quick.” I thought it would be like last Christmas – you remember, when the dock in Kordelio collapsed under the weight of all those crowds who’d gone down to greet the soldiers, and ten people were drowned. I thought it would be chaotic, like then, and that nothing would come of it. But it seems my husband knew beforehand and hadn’t said anything. People set up camp here on the docks at midnight, sleeping on bundles and bales. This time the Greeks really did come!’
Edith remembered well what had happened last Christmas. Rumours had spread that the Greek ship Leon was on its way to Smyrna. The local Greeks unfurled a giant Greek flag at the entrance of the Church of Agia Photini. People everywhere got very worked up and there was even some singing of the Greek national anthem in bars. But then nothing happened.
Avinash had explained that the Greek forces hadn’t been given sufficient support by Britain’s Lloyd George or other European countries, so they were obliged to abort the landing. But now, with the Italians having taken over Kusadasi and Antalya without permission from the Allies, Venizelos had hurriedly been given the green light and had despatched the first warships into the harbour.
Zoe, who knew nothing of these powergames and would not have believed them anyway, was warbling like a bird. ‘But this time is different. This time the soldiers who landed in Smyrna will not leave. We are saved! We are free, Miss Edith! Freedom has come at last! Look at our evzones! My heroes, my brave lions, how handsome they are in their traditional white uniforms, in their foustanella.’
Girded with swords, Greek soldiers in khaki-coloured skirts and with black pompoms on their boots were doing a folkdance around the weapons piled up in front of the Hunting Club. Zoe’s little daughter waved to a blue-eyed officer with a proper moustache who was standing near the sea. He smiled back at her.
The place was like a fairground. Peddlers were wandering around carrying sweets, nuts, and halva trays on their heads, occasionally setting down their wares in whatever tiny space they managed to find in order to catch their breath. Edith saw several vegetable sellers entering the merry fray, their donkeys laden with sacks. Her other two maids were over in front of the Café de Paris, holding blue and white flags in their hands. They laughed and nudged each other whenever they happened to catch a soldier’s eye. Church bells rang out continually. All of the local Greek women, young and old, showered the passing soldiers with flowers. Zoe, trying to make herself heard above the noise of a marching band that was passing, shouted, ‘Ah, Kyra Edith mou, I wish you’d been here a little earlier. You should have seen our bishop the Metropolitan Chrysostomos kneeling to kiss the Greek flag. All of us, even the men, were drowning in tears. Then the whole unit got into formation and paraded along the quay. Flowers rained upon them; rose oil was poured on their heads. This is a dream come true!’
As she looked at the crowds, Edith suddenly felt exhausted and very alone. Why did she never feel as if she belonged anywhere? Why couldn’t she share in this happiness? Her only desire right then was to get away from all those people milling around, to be by herself, alone with her growing unease.
The French Hospital with its well-kept garden shaded by lofty cypresses would be a refuge from all the noisy confusion, but how could she walk there against the press of all these people? She needed to find a vehicle. While she’d been talking to Zoe, she’d been carried along by the crowd to the Passport Pier. Pushing her way past the adolescent boys yelling at the top of their voices, the Armenian mothers holding their black-plaited daughters tightly by the hand, the peddlers wandering here and there, she managed to get to Frank Street with its row of shuttered shops. There was not a carriage to be seen. Should she have chosen a different route and gone to the British Consulate to ask Avinash for help?
A vague booming sound came from the direction of the wharf, followed by an explosion. The battleships were presumably firing t
heir cannons. But all at once the cheering ceased, and then there were howls from the streets. Edith saw a young woman running towards her, up Quai Anglais Street, with her son in her arms, screaming, ‘They’re shooting the soldiers! They’re firing on our evzones.’
The soldiers, their bayonets drawn, had dispersed among the panicked flood of humanity. When someone shouted, ‘Machine gun!’, the crowd surged up from the docks like a giant ocean wave, heading towards Edith. The schoolchildren who’d been marching in pairs just a short while ago were now crying; old women with jars of rose oil in their hands were rushing up to passers-by asking for help, and black-robed priests trying to calm the crowd with their arms opened wide were bumping into women running up the street with their children hugged close.
Edith, squeezing through the crowds in haste, managed, after much bargaining with a coachman waiting under the plane tree at Fasoula Square, to get him to take her to the French Hospital. The closed carriage jolted down the cobbled street, past mothers anxiously pushing their children dressed as Ancient Greeks indoors, past fathers bringing down the shutters of their shops and closing the blinds. In front of Dame de Sion High School an Ottoman gendarme was holding the hand of a boy who was speaking Italian as he cried and asking him in French where he had last seen his grandfather. The crease between Edith’s eyebrows was so furrowed now, it was causing her pain. She was still panting and her cheeks burned as if touched by ice. When the carriage slowed down in front of the hospital, she jumped down before the horses had come to a halt and raced past the confused nurses in their long black dresses, who were trying to guard the gate, and into the well-kept courtyard.