Orthokostá
Page 9
Chapter 12
Her father would get himself drunk in Kastrí. The priest. He’d slipped into a drinker’s apathetic state. And he’d neglected his family. But my aunt had discussed this with the old man, and she’d put him in charge of their affairs. She’d handed things over to him carte blanche. That all happened in 1925, maybe 1926. I can barely remember it. That’s when Stylianós came from Chicago. Stylianós Kalamáris. He was from Karátoula too. Hard times. People were suffering. Wheat shortages, large families, lots of mouths to feed. People didn’t have enough of anything, not bread, not oil. Not even wine. Anyone in America was considered to be in the promised land. Should anyone show up from over there, everyone wanted him for a son-in-law. So Stylianós arrived. Someone would approach him, someone else would wine and dine him. He was short and fat, or rather he wasn’t all that short. But he looked short because he was fat. Big belly, no neck at all, his head stuck on his shoulders. The old man started working on him too. Diplomatically. I have a girl for you too, he tells him. From a good family. She’s my niece. Pretty, upstanding, good housewife. But I’m not sure she’ll be interested in you. There was a purpose to all this now. To this manipulative preamble. To lower his hopes as a possible suitor. He talked him up good; in the end he had his way. They arranged for him to come to the house so they could meet each other. His niece was notified accordingly. The old man’s second niece. She came to the house, they pulled out a bolt of cloth. Cloth they used to weave on the loom. They unrolled it to cut a blouse for my mother. That was the pretext. After a while the prospective bridegroom showed up. He came in, said good day, they said good day too. An unusual hour for the old man to be there. The whole thing was a setup. Let me introduce you to my niece. The niece was bending over a plane-smoothed wooden chest to measure the cloth. She didn’t suspect anything. Today she must be eighty or older. Iríni. She came here last summer. Stylianós isn’t alive now. She was plump, heavy. With white hair. But as a young woman she was pretty. At any rate she was thin, and nimble. So let us introduce our niece to you. He doesn’t waste any time. You know, your uncle and aunt here have been having a word with me. Do you know about what? Iríni was mortified. He came to the point, that fellow. In medias res. Right to the point. Iríni was so mortified that she dropped the scissors and the tape measure, if she even had a tape measure. I can’t remember if she took measurements or if she used a pattern to cut the cloth. Then she found a more convenient place to escape the onslaught. She opened the hatch and disappeared. Stylianós went over to her and leaned over. The hatch was open. You didn’t answer me, he said to her. She stopped on the third or fourth step. That’s when she realized that a marriage was being arranged for her. Whatever my uncle and aunt say, and my father, she said. The father came last. I agree. He was elated, he considered her response to be, and in fact it was, an acceptance of his proposal. He went out on the balcony—you can still see the bullet marks. He had a pistol on him, he took it out and fired one, two, three, four shots in the air. To proclaim to the world, to noisily trumpet the new-formed alliance. The balcony was covered by a big piece of tin, and he made a hole in it. That son of a gun, said the old man, he shot a hole in the tin cover and now it will leak. And that’s how the marriage was arranged. They had their wedding, went off to America, and had a family. And they lived happily for almost half a century. They had four children. Thanks to the old man’s clever ploy. Thanks to his sharp-minded strategy. To his telling him, I have a fine young lady, but of course she has no dowry, if you insist on one we’ll scrape something together. But I don’t know if she’s going to like you. Because you’re fat, and all that. He wore that poor man down. Broke his morale. Didn’t even tell him they had arranged for him to go to their house, or who the person was. Just told him the person will be at the house, but not who she was. So his curiosity would be aroused. And it certainly was.
Chapter 13
That fall in Athens we had a problem just surviving. When we arrived. That’s when we went there—Aryíris Nikolópoulos from Valtétsi1 took us there. There was a group of men from Valtétsi, with Papaoikonómou and the rest. They cooperated, they all voted for Tourkovasílis.2 Tourkovasílis, the head of the Bank of Greece at the time. And we went to see him. We explained the situation to him. Thodorís, Aryíris Nikolópoulos said to him. What are we going to do? What’s going to happen? Tourkovasílis had supported us in the past. He promised us that soon we’d be able to secure arms. So we could form teams in the Ermionís area. Where there was a sizable EDES3 organization. In the end the only thing he did was sign us up for the employee soup kitchen. All of us from Arcadia, everyone who had left from down there. To get meals there until we were settled somewhere. They had dining rooms in the basement of the central branch, where they cooked food, and we went and ate for free there. Until October 28. Which is why I said I left Kastrí in October. Until October 28. On October 28, Tourkovasílis was arrested. By the Germans. It happened in the bank’s festivities hall, where a ceremony had been organized in honor of Óhi Day.4 The third anniversary. With the approval of the board of directors, of course. But word of the gathering was leaked, and the Germans burst in and nabbed them all. The board of directors, the employees, everyone. Tourkovasílis was up in his office. He hears about it, he goes downstairs, he says to the Germans, Whatever my employees did was on my order. I’m the only one responsible here. So of course the Germans arrested him. He was court-martialed. They had him in jail in Kallithéa. They cut off his hair. They were going to execute him. And he got off by chance. Because right at that time they killed his brother Yiórghis Tourkovasílis. A former officer of the gendarmes, also a member of Parliament. ELAS caught him and they shot him. I think that this contributed to Thódoros’s being let off. He stayed in jail until the Liberation.5 Tourkovasílis. And later on, when Kýrou6 accused him in Parliament of collaborating with the Germans, he reacted in the well-known Tourkovasílis style. He had been elected a member of Parliament with the help of Maniadákis. Well, he took care of Kýrou, he waylaid him on Anthímou Gazí Street in downtown Athens, and he beat the daylights out of him.