Orthokostá

by Thanassis Valtinos

  Chapter 27

  That’s how they captured Penelope Kaloútsis. It was Pikinós who got her. I’m not all that certain, maybe Yeorghía knows better. And someone else. There were two of them. And when he got hold of her she told him, Now listen here, you came here after me, you came to capture me, why, if you scratch between your teeth, my bread will still be there. All this in Ayisofiá, before they burned it down. She was from Kastrí. From the Farmasónis family. Not Farmasónis. Kaloútsis. Farmasónis was her mother’s name. Kaloútsis. Anyway, they caught her, they took her somewhere, I don’t know where. They said to Orthokostá. And they slashed her up afterward, poor thing. They say she put up a fight, we weren’t there to see. Fought for her life. But they beat her down.

  —In the detention camp they told me, If you see them taking folks out that door, you know they’re taking them to be executed. The monastery had two doors. They took Penelope out that same door.

  —She had the flu, that’s exactly what they said. And Pikinós got her up out of bed and took her in. Because she might have given shelter to someone there. And they left. They went and burned down the whole village, those rebels. And the people got out, they went across from there.

  Chapter 28

  The old man had become romantically involved with Leonídas Grigorákis’s daughter. Venetsána. They went to school together, to the junior high school. It was a rare thing in those days for a girl to keep on with her studies beyond the second year, or the third year of primary school. We’re talking about the end of the past century. Around that time. Eighteen ninety-five. At any rate, that childhood romance ended up in a formal engagement. Rings were exchanged. An engagement party was held, right and proper. In the end, due to some whispering, and perhaps some political expediency, the marriage was called off. Leonídas was the mayor. Of what was then the municipality of Tánia and Dolianá. And the Grigorákis kin had been keeping that office in their family. So the marriage was called off, and not without incident. On Saint Nicholas’s Day,1 after church, the folks from Karátoula were making their way home. At Láni the road forks. The old man invited his fiancée to go to his house. His brother Nikólaos was in America. His only brother. And the bride-to-be was going to make loukoumádes.2 To celebrate his name day. But her mother didn’t let her go. The old man was insulted, he grabbed the girl by the hand and insisted that she follow him. Stubborn as mules, both the groom and the mother-in-law. And Venetsána in the middle. Weak-willed. Finally the rest of her relatives intervened. They attacked the old man. He jumped off the road, down into a vineyard. He took out a pistol from his back pocket, he fired a few shots in the air. His third shot nicked the mayor’s wife’s long woolen vest. Grazed her hip. An entirely superficial wound. At that point Konstantís Grigorákis, Koufós’s father, threw himself at the old man. Who had just enough time to bash him with the butt of his pistol, he knocked out a few of his teeth. And he kept insisting that his fiancée follow him to his house. But the girl refused. Look what you’ve done to your house now. Believing the mayor’s wife dead, and seeing the other covered in blood, she thought he’d become a criminal. After what you just did to your home, where will you take me? She refused. The old man got mad, he took out a pocketknife, and he slashed all her clothes. He slashed them and threw them away. Left her half-naked. He was out of control. They said they found her shoes all the way down in Kokóis’s yard. So the engagement was called off once and for all, in spite of the exchange of rings and the much-vaunted announcement of the engagement party, and in spite of the fact that he had made an official trip with his fiancée to Roúvali, where they baptized Zagléras. Who was a small child then. Not only that, when they passed by the house of my grandfather-to-be, my mother, a young girl then, came out and pinned some basil on them.3 Here, cousin, have a long, happy life together. Cousins, four or five times removed. Cousins. And the old man used to repeat that story. Who could have told me that in two or three years’ time the woman you have next to you as your fiancée will have left you and the woman who wished you well for your wedding would be here instead? That she would become your true wife, who you would spend sixty whole years of your life with, who you would have children with and acquire property with, who could have told me that? Eventually the old man was taken to court because of that incident. And he was condemned in absentia to one or two years. At which point he absconded to Mount Parnon. And ended up in Sítaina. He had no obligations, he had no sisters,4 only one brother in America. And he left his mother down there at the mill, she collected the milling fees. Nineteen hundred three or four. He was twenty-five, the old man. He remained a fugitive for several months. Then he initiated some legal action. An objection or an appeal—at any rate this resulted in an indefinite postponement. At which point he gave himself up and was waiting for the re-trial. At that time his uncle, my grandfather that is, was trying to marry off my mother. And he asked the old man to expedite the negotiations. The prospective son-in-law was from the same village, from Roúvali. Today the father-in-law of my brother Aryíris. Vasílis Vavásis. Also called Ayeroyiánnis. They’d go to the taverna, they’d bargain. Raise and lower the numbers. And I want so much, I’m from an upstanding household, and on and on. So the old man says to him. Listen, Vasílis. You know the girl, she’s sixteen years old. She hasn’t got much to her name. Her brothers will help her from Athens, but she only has so much. No, I need to have four thousand as her dowry. We haven’t got four, we have two thousand. That’s all we have. Money was very hard to come by then. You could search all of Kastrí, all the villages around there and you couldn’t squeeze out four thousand drachmas. At which point the old man exploded. The other old man, my grandfather, that is. Tell me, he says to him, if I have a she-goat, an ugly woman in other words, an unmarried woman, a she-goat. A derogatory term. And I give you ten thousand, will you marry her? The answer: I’ll do whatever’s best for me. And grandfather blew his stack. Let’s go, he said. They paid the owner, this happened in a taverna, over by the elementary school. Where Tákis Zekiós’s laundry shop is today. They paid, grandfather grabbed his fez.5 He used to wear a foustanélla6 back then. So he grabbed his fez. Even if you give me the moon, he says to Vavásis, after what you just said I no longer want you as a son-in-law. Good day, good day. And they left. When they reached Karamítzias’s gas station, the old man stopped short. Hey, nephew, I just thought of something. What is it, Uncle? Why don’t you marry her? I almost fell over, my father would recount. Oh, come now, Uncle. I’m no uncle, he says to him. They were cousins, four or five times removed. Very distant relatives. Although I looked into it, I could never get to the bottom of things, I never found precise information. At any rate they were fourth or fifth generation. Of course in those days the notion of kinship was different. Social scientists say that the farther south we go the closer the bonds become. In Crete and in Egypt, this was always so, and of course I don’t know what part climate plays. But even in our parts, in those years, degree of kinship was a decisive factor. Both in terms of social bonds and of the unavoidable disputes where sides were taken, offensive or defensive, depending on the case. Then again, degree of kinship as a reason to prohibit a marriage is recognized by law. It’s also recognized by religion. In the old days the restrictions were more stringent. Today marriage is allowed between fifth-degree relatives or more. Up to four degrees—that is, for first cousins—it’s forbidden. In limited cases of course, even that may happen. With the consent of the church. In other words, if you’ve got your first cousin pregnant, they allow you to marry her. In limited cases. At which point the old man, my father, lost his temper. First of all, he tells him, I don’t even know if I’ll be convicted. Or if I’ll go to prison. I’ve asked for a reprieve. I’ve made an appeal, but I don’t know what the result will be. Let’s agree on it now, says the father-in-law, and whenever, God willing, you are finished with this business, then we can announce it publicly. Taken by surprise, or so the old man claimed, he gave in at once. But I believe there were other thi
ngs that aroused him. My mother’s age, sixteen years old, and a certain feeling, a latent incestuous undercurrent, intensified because it was forbidden. So they agreed, and several days later, when the rejected, as it were, son-in-law returned, having fallen in my grandfather’s esteem because of his principles, now remorseful of course, he was informed enigmatically that it was too late. It seems the repentant suitor had his suspicions. Or had found out. So he gets right up and takes himself down to Ayiórghis. Ayiórghis-Douminá. To where my grandfather and my mother were. It was that time of year, they had vineyards and they were spraying. He goes there, he finds my mother in the vineyard by herself. My grandfather had gone to fetch some water. So he finds her in the vineyard. With two or three of his friends. And he tells my mother, I’m from an upright household, and I’m this and I’m that. What does Kékeris have, he tells her. All he has is a plain old mill and nothing else. I have olives, I have other things. With those two or three friends he had probably gone there to abduct her. But my mother said to him firmly, I don’t want you. So get out now before my father comes and something bad happens. My mother had the good judgment at the age of only sixteen to sense danger. And with her threat that something bad might happen, he too realized that he had no hope. All because of my mother’s good sense. So he took his friends and went down toward the wood. He didn’t go on the road, so as not to run into my grandfather. He went through the wood. Some time after that, when my father’s acquittal concerning the incidents during his previous engagement came through, they announced the new one. The marriage arrangements were finalized, and a few weeks later the wedding was held. And for sentimental reasons it was held in Roúvali. At the house of his father-in-law. Not long before that Timoléon Bílas had died. The father of Panayótis. The lawyer. And there had been much weeping and wailing in Karátoula. The result of a blow from Kótsios Bílas. They weren’t related. Just had the same name. Of course in the villages the same name is never accidental. All because of some little wall over by the threshing floor. Bílas’s threshing floor. That too belonged to Bílas. A small protective wall, an abutment for the overlying terrace. And that’s the custom to this day. The wall had come down and the owner up above had to fix it. So they were quarreling. Old Kótsios kept telling Timoléon to pick up the rocks. And they had an argument about those rocks and he hit him with his pickax. A small retaining wall, only 50 or 60 centimeters high. Old Kótsios Bílas was tried for that and went to prison, I think for four years. Even though the blow wasn’t fatal. Or at any rate it didn’t cause immediate death. But in those days there was no penicillin and such things: his wound got infected thirty or thirty-five or forty days later, and he died. And there was weeping and wailing. For that reason my father thought that the wedding should not be held in the village. It didn’t hold up ethically because the whole village was in a state of mourning.7 So they held it in Roúvali. With guests and everything. They got them together, held the ceremony, and went to eat at the father-in-law’s house. As a matter of fact, the old man left his bride there for some months. I think it was for a year. Because it says in his day book: The writer hereof was married on March 29 of 1907, and I left the bride at the parental abode. It’s written like that, in katharévousa.8 And when one year had elapsed I received her permanently in my home. And again he invited guests for a meal, even though the wedding had already taken place. In any case he brought his wife to his house, there was a ceremony for her arrival and installment in the conjugal home. One year later. Because the neighborhood was still in mourning. He was a compassionate fellow, my father. Which could in fact be borne out by his civic-mindedness. He baptized tens of children. And all those koumbároi ruined him. He would collect five or six hundred drachmas every now and then. In his taverna. On Sundays or whenever there was a trial. And by nighttime there wasn’t a cent left in the cash register. He’d given it out in loans. According to what he thought this or that person needed. That’s how he lived, and when we remarked to him that that money belonged to the whole family, he would answer with the saying “’Tis better to give than to receive.” By Saint Paul the Apostle. Because those people were poor, they never gave the money back. I’ve saved some of his account books. With credits written in, and all that. From 1905 and henceforward. Account books where he wrote about the mill and the taverna. This much for wheat, that much for barley. The Kouloúris family, all of whom are dead now. Their generation is dead and gone. So are the others from Roúvali. This much for corn, that much for rye. The charges. The so-called miller’s fee. Lots of account books. From the taverna too, of course. Wine and tidbits, so much. On the house, so much, cash payments, so much. I have his diary. Aside from his marriage, it refers to various other events in his life. In the same old-fashioned handwriting as in 1907. Until he died. The birth of each of his children. Perfectly written save for one or two mistakes. First child, female, born on such-and-such day of the month, baptized immediately, given name Marigó, who died after twelve days. Second child, male, born on such-and-such day of such-and-such month, in the year 1909, baptized by Marínos Marinákis, given name Anáryiros. Third child, male, born October 4, 1920, baptized in Ayios Yiórghios-Douminá, on such-and-such day of the following year, by Konstantínos Papakonstantínou, given name Konstantínos. And me, after a gap of ten years. As a matter of fact, it aroused my curiosity because it refers to Monday as the day. But the “4th” is not so clear. It’s not clear whether it’s the 4th or the 6th. There’s a smudge there, from the ink used to write it. Lilac-colored ink. So I made an inquiry to the Athens Observatory asking if the fourth of October of 1920 was indeed a Monday. And it was. And it continues with the birth of the second child Marigó followed by the birth of Dóxa. A kind of official family record. I also have a small number of his letters. From America. Because in the meantime he emigrated. I have more of my mother’s letters. Letters to him. Which he saved and which he brought back with him when he returned. Written by the hand of Yiánnis Bakoúris. He wrote my mother’s letters. And he read them the letters they received. Yiánnis Bakoúris, the brother of Yiórghis Bakoúris, of so-called Koútavos. I think he’s no longer alive. He had married Sophia Támbaris. Their house was just past the church. That house is a wreck now. Sophia whose name was so respected. And esteemed. Well, Yiánnis Bakoúris was my mother’s secretary. There were no telephones then. And correspondence took a month, letters took a month to arrive. Nor was it easy to travel, the way it is today. An emigrant would return, and he would bring five or ten dollars to five, or ten, or fifteen people. And greetings from this person or that person. And so on and so forth. To their families. That’s how things were in 1916. In 1917. In America the old man was staying with someone from Oriá. From Bernorí or Oriá. They were living together and they quarreled, for what reason I don’t know. Perhaps he didn’t pay his rent, perhaps about some loan. I don’t know. And the other fellow left for Greece. And one day he arrived back home. He came back. One by one they went to him, women, sisters, mothers, they would ask him about their relatives. My mother started out too. I’m not sure if old Marigó went with her. My father’s mother. My grandmother. At any rate my mother went. Perhaps they both went together. And they saw him. He says to them, Your husband back in America, he says to my mother, is a good-for-nothing. That’s how he described him, a good-for-nothing. He hasn’t got a penny. He plays the horses, he’s become debauched. He may even be married, he may have other children. But he has no money. He described him to her in the darkest of colors. Of course the women began to cry. They went back to Karátoula, they put their heads together, and they had Yiánnis Bakoúris, their secretary, write a nasty letter: you did this and this and that. And if what that man from Bernorí told us is true, then our curse be upon you. The old man got angry because it was all lies. The product of the other man’s unforgivingness. Because I think that during their argument the old man had given him a good slap. Still quite excitable over in America, he had slapped him. And humiliated, he had come to sow the seeds of doubt. To
destroy the family harmony. His wrongdoing was enormous. That man from Bernorí. He could have said, I didn’t see him, I don’t know. And he was deliberately deceitful because he knew that my father had made money and was doing quite well. My mother had written to him. They had told him not to send money here. Because they had more than enough. They had the mill and they made a good living. There was also the shop in Kastrí. Which later became a taverna. They gave it out for rent. When the old man came back he found the rent in the bank. He also learned that my mother had loaned five or six thousand drachmas with interest, at that time, to Polýdoros Mántis. The father of Mántis, the monk. Money from wheat and various other products she would sell. They had vineyards that were more than five strémmata9 in size. They sold six or seven thousand okás of walnuts every single year. They had huge walnut trees at the mill. And their own needs were minimal. So she had told him not to send any money. Well, at any rate. When the old man received her letter he immediately thought of murder. Of going back and killing that slanderer. But he couldn’t get away from his work. So he goes and sends a large sum of money. Without writing a word. A huge amount of money for that particular time. Through the National Bank of Greece. As evidence of the truth. Five or six thousand dollars. Were we to convert that money, the amount would be equal to at least one hundred thousand today. We’re talking dollars. I’m quite conversant with numbers. The money arrived in Trípolis. The postman received the notice from the bank. He went to Karátoula. There was no one at home. He goes down to the mill. He finds my mother up near the woods. She had climbed a birch tree and was pruning it. He gave her the notice. Of course neither she nor my grandmother knew how to read. The postman left, they went back to their house in the evening. Yiánnis Bakoúris was away. They took the notice and went to Papa Dimítris Siahámos. Who was a schoolteacher and a priest. The father of Vasílis who later became a priest. They showed it to him, and he was literally dumbfounded. According to my mother. All he said was, That’s a lot of money, Konstantína. The next day they went to Trípolis. With Polýdoros Mántis the muleteer. Because Papa Dimítris was a priest, but mainly because of the large sum of money, the director of the bank received them in his office. Some coffee, Ma’am? Coffee, old man? To gain their favor and all that. And then he says to my mother, Do you want to take the money with you? They might steal it from you there. There was no bank in Kastrí then. A bank was opened later on. In 1929 or ’30. At the behest of the Kanglís brothers. Upon their request from Canada to open a branch in Kastrí. And to make their brother-in-law the director. Manolákis Horaítis. In 1929 or ’30. And the bank director advised her to leave her money there on deposit as foreign currency. Which she did. Five years later, when the old man came back, he found the money untouched. In other words, a gold mine. But of course that money went out the window in the end. With Protopapadákis’s notorious law.10 It had all been changed into drachmas in the interim. So all the old man’s hard work went to waste. His hard work in America. He didn’t have time to fix so much as a keyhole in the house. They had Aryíris and he left. He was three months old when the old man left. Four months. He came back in 1920, and he had me. For ten consecutive years he stayed away from Greece. From 1910 until December 1920. Well, at any rate. In that way, with that check the family cohesion was restored. After that they exchanged letters, explanations were given. And of course they understood that that fellow from Bernorí had told them lies. I think he had died when the old man came back. It doesn’t much matter. The old man came back in December 1920. With nine trunks in tow. From America: shoes, coats, underwear. Five double-barreled rifles. Nine trunks in all. Some were ours, some were not. Because other people gave him some too. Folks from Karátoula who wanted him to bring them here to their families. He arrived with twelve or thirteen mules from Másklina. Because the train came to Másklina in those days. He had telephoned the muleteers and they were waiting for them. Muleteers from Másklina. They hauled the cargo from Eleohóri to Laconía. There was no road. There were no cars either. And that’s why Vozíkis came out against opening a public road. That old Harálambos. President of the Parliament, from the Populist Party. Because dozens of muleteers would lose their livelihoods. From Kastrí and from Másklina. Who received large fees for transporting cargo from the train between Másklina and Laconía. And they meant votes. In any case the road was built later on. There was already one as far as Koúvli. Trípolis to Koúvli. From Koúvli up, the road was mapped out in 1929. But the payment for it was approved under Metaxás’s coalition government. With Metaxás himself the minister of transportation. So the old man arrived in Másklina. With two or three others from Kastrí. People heard about it, the children came out to meet them. The “Brooklyds”11 are coming. That was told to us by Aryíris but mainly by Yiórghis Mantíkos’s father-in-law. Who as a letter carrier would transport the mail from Másklina to Kastrí–Ayios Pétros. Aryíris arrived in Mesorráhi. At Ayioi Theodóroi he met Mantíkos’s father-in-law. Riding on a mule. Old man, have you seen the Brooklyds? Keep going, they’re on their way. Aryíris kept walking. There were other boys with him. They walked about two hundred meters more. There across from him was my old man. Also riding a mule. With the trunks following behind. He saw Aryíris, he didn’t recognize him. Who are you? Yiánnis Kékeris’s son. Have you seen my father, Old Man? The old man jumped down, he hugged him, he kissed him. He had left him as an infant a few months old, and now he found a grown boy eleven years old. I’m your father. And he immediately took out a gift for him: either a watch or a fountain pen. I don’t know if the mules with the baggage came through the marketplace or turned off at Koútselas’s water mill. I mean if they took the old cobblestone road below Andrianákos the schoolteacher’s house that comes out at Kápsalos. In any event my father wanted to go through Kastrí. To the shop that was the reason for his going abroad. It had been bought with money from my mother’s dowry, but it wasn’t enough, and it went into debt, and he was obliged to go abroad to pay off the debt. So he and Aryíris were walking toward the main square. But a policeman arrested him there. Before he left for America he had hit a man named Siouroúnis. He had been giving Old Man Kirkís, my old man’s father-in-law, some trouble, down along the borders in Ayiórghis. They were both dual residents. So he asked to have a word with him, they exchanged views, and in the middle of all this he trounced him with his cane. Whacked old Siouroúnis. The father of Apostólis Siouroúnis. He whacked him one, and he fell headfirst down thirty steps to the basement of Dimitrákis Kasímos. At any rate he wasn’t killed. By the time the trial was held the old man had left town. But he was condemned in absentia. I don’t know how many years he got. So the policeman arrested him. Oh, come now, dear fellow, come my good man. Nothing. The policeman was adamant. He locked him in the cellar. Vanghelió Koutoúzou took him a roast chicken, and he ate. The next day they escorted him to the state prosecutor. Of course the sentence had been struck from the records. It had been five years since it was pronounced—that is to say, since it was imposed. The judge ordered that he be released immediately. He also reprimanded the policeman for his oversight and the serious abuse of his authority. And so the old man went back to the village. Just days before Christmas. And from that time on he was a slave to the marketplace. He had no other sons, only Aryíris. I arrived one year later. I was born on October 20, 1920. Therefore I was conceived in January. Right after my father returned from America. He had left my mother when she was sixteen or seventeen and he found her when she was twenty-six or twenty-seven. At the height of her maturity and her sexual prowess. During the campaign in Asia Minor. And so as not to join the army, the old man managed to get himself appointed as a grammar-school Greek teacher. In Tservási. As a junior high school graduate. On the first of November elections were held. The elections Venizélos12 lost. The old man supported Venizélos, so of course they transferred him. To the island of Ithaca along with Yiorghoulís, another schoolteacher. But the old man didn’t accept that transfer. He didn’t have many childr
en, he had brought his money from America, it was enough for him. He didn’t accept the transfer. At which time his military reprieve came through. And he had to present himself to the regiments at the Náfplion Army Headquarters. He was now a soldier. Then came the devaluation of our money, with Protopapadákis’s internal loan. The British and the French had refused to reinforce Greece because of the restoration of the throne. Because of the behavior of Constantine, who was considered an enemy of the Entente Cordiale. Because of his sympathy for the Kaiser’s brothers and sisters, Kaiser Wilhelm II. So all the money was lost. Then the old man opened the taverna, in the marketplace. The Asia Minor campaign came to an end. At the same time he was also appointed a justice of the peace court clerk. He slowly got back to his routine. With his koumbároi, with those drinks on the house, with meager earnings from here and from there. With the mill, which his mother was running. He made money again. Which he lost once again in 1936 with the Agrarian Reform Law13 under Metaxás. But the final blow came with the law enacted by Svólos14 during the Occupation. Or rather after the Occupation.