The House by the River

by Lena Manta

  “How long is this going to go on?” she asked.

  “What do you want, Mother?” Theodora responded in a tired voice.

  “I want you to recover. You’ve wept, you’ve beaten your breast, you’ve exhausted yourself—enough! You’ve tried to kill yourself in the prime of your life.”

  “Do you know how old I am?” Theodora sadly reminded her.

  “What do you think? I’m your mother, I know when I gave birth to you. You’re still young.”

  “So what do you want me to do? Get married again?”

  “That wouldn’t be a bad idea. What’s eating you, my girl? Why have you given up like this?”

  “Because there’s no reason to go on living. I raised five children and look at me—alone, without anything to wait for.”

  “And I thought you were smart! This was their home, Theodora, and it will be their refuge if they ever need it. If something ever goes wrong in their lives, they’ll need comfort and support. They’ll need their mother. So get back on your feet and stay strong!”

  “Mother, you’re dreaming. They won’t come back. They’ve left for good. Melissanthi only sends a postcard once a year; Julia does the same. I don’t even know what Aspasia’s doing, and Polyxeni—I still can’t believe she left like that. Magdalini is the only one who sends me letters, which is how I know she’s doing very well and is happy where she is. So why should they come back?”

  “Don’t wear yourself out with grief, my girl. You never know what life will bring. Time has its returns . . .”

  “If they ever come back it will be because there, where they went, they didn’t find their dreams. And I don’t want that either. Let them be well, let them be happy.”

  “There, you see? That’s a good attitude to have. You can get through this.”

  “The only thing I see is my loneliness, and I can’t bear it.”

  “You’ll get used to it. You’ll stand on your own two feet again and you’ll go on living, and you’ll wait for them to come back if they need you. And if you can’t bear the loneliness, as you say, there are still men for you in the village.”

  “Mother, please! Don’t start with the matchmaking again.”

  “Fine. Then learn to take life as it comes, and don’t let it bring you down.”

  Julia was right. Theodora didn’t want to go on, but she had to. She didn’t think she could manage it, but in the end she stood on her own two feet again. Everyday routine returned to the two women’s lives. The kitchen smelled of Theodora’s hot bread again, and the garden filled up with the vegetables she sowed in orderly rows and tended with love. The wait for mail was agonizing for them both, but neither of them showed it. When there was news from the children, Theodora read it again and again before the letter or card was placed among the icons. The few photographs that reached her hands would be worn out from her kisses before they too took their place on the mantel.

  With every year that passed, however, the postman stopped by less and less often. One spring, after the trees and flowers bloomed and the days had grown noticeably longer, Theodora decided to pass the time by fixing up her mother’s old house. Even she didn’t know what had inspired her to restore the forgotten little house that was falling to ruins a little distance from her own. She brought in workmen to repaint, build a completely new indoor bathroom, and replace the roof tiles.

  “Will you sell it?” her mother asked, when she saw the house looking once again as if it had just been built.

  “Of course not! Where did you get that idea?”

  “So why did you spend so much on it? What will you do with it? Perhaps we should rent it?”

  “I’ll think about that. Let’s wait and see. For now, I think I’ll fix up the house we’re living in too. It’s been years since the girls left and we haven’t really looked after it. And it’s time we had a few comforts. Besides, what else can I do with the money I’ve saved from the crops?”

  The two women moved into Julia’s house while the renovation took place. Theodora didn’t have to scrimp at all. She even built new kitchen cupboards from scratch. She painted the house, built a new, large bathroom, and ordered a television. Julia was angry when she first saw the big box that had a voice like the radio but pictures as well. Theodora laughed at her mother when she would only watch from a hiding place behind a door like a little child. But after a while, curiosity drew the old woman to the “magic box” and she sat next to her daughter to watch the news. She said nothing, but her eyes were open wide.

  “Do you like it, Mother?” Theodora asked.

  Julia put her finger to her lips to shush her daughter. “Shhh!”

  “What on earth’s the matter with you?”

  “Speak more softly, my child,” the old woman scolded. “Can’t you see? The man’s speaking. It’s not polite to interrupt him.”

  Theodora started to laugh. She then turned off the television and explained as simply as she could to her mother the technology she was experiencing for the first time.

  In time, Julia became fanatical about television, to the point where Theodora was uneasy. As soon as she switched it on, her mother sat motionless, watching everything with fascination. Even the foreign serials interested her, despite the fact that she couldn’t read the subtitles. When she didn’t have any work to do, Theodora would patiently explain to her what was going on.

  Theodora seldom read newspapers and magazines, so during the years when they were full of stories about Leonidas and Polyxeni, she was totally unaware. That is, until the village grocer filled her in. When she came down to the village to shop one day, the expression on Mr. Karavassilis’s face made an impression on her. The old man looked at her as if he wanted to tell her something but was hesitant.

  “What’s new, Kyria Theodora?” he finally asked. “Do you hear any news from your daughters? How are they getting along?”

  “They’re fine,” she answered as she filled her basket.

  “And Polyxeni? Have you heard any news from her?”

  Theodora looked him in the eye and his expression made her chest feel tight. “There’s something you want to tell me,” she said uneasily. “Has something happened to my child?”

  “No . . . don’t be afraid. But down there, where she went, she became famous, Kyria Theodora. They say she’s an actress.”

  “Where does it say all that?”

  The grocer spread the newspaper out in front of her. It was hard to make out her daughter’s face in the badly printed photograph, but it was definitely Polyxeni, even though another name was written in the caption. This “Xenia Olympiou” was certainly her child. Theodora’s eyes opened wide when she read further down about the man who had died outside her daughter’s home. Miss Olympiou collapsed when she heard the tragic news. Theodora looked in bewilderment at Mr. Karavassilis. She was as white as a sheet so he hurried to offer her a chair so she could sit down.

  “Don’t be upset, madam,” he said soothingly. “At least Polyxeni is well.”

  “Well? How could she be well after what happened to her?”

  “Maybe you should go to her?”

  The simple question struck Theodora square in her chest. Since Polyxeni had left home, she’d only sent them two cards and they had said coolly and simply that she was well. Theodora knew her daughter didn’t need her—and perhaps she didn’t even want her around. She got up slowly from Mr. Karavassilis’s chair and straightened herself up.

  “Polyxeni chose her own road. If she wanted peace and quiet she could have stayed here. I don’t need to go anywhere.”

  Theodora left, unbending and dry eyed, which surprised the old grocer. She was a very hard woman indeed, he thought. Of course, news of Polyxeni spread across the village again and again. From that day on, whenever the newspapers wrote about the young starlet, Theodora drank in every word. At least that way she knew what was going on in her daughter’s life, even if she didn’t like what she read. At first she tried to hide all news of Polyxeni from her mother, b
ut Julia caught her one day with a newspaper and when her eyes fell on the photograph of her granddaughter, the game was over.

  “What business does our daughter have in the newspapers?” the old woman asked. Theodora had no choice but to tell the truth. Julia listened carefully and then shook her head sadly. “Who do you think she takes after?” she asked.

  “Did she have to take after someone? That one, Mother, was different from the time she was a very young child.”

  “At least she succeeded,” Julia noted and a glint of pride shone in her eyes.

  “What are you saying? What did she succeed at? At making fools of us?”

  “Why is she making fools of us? She’s doing her job—the papers don’t say that she’s doing cheap and scandalous things. If you think about the fact that she left here a few years ago with nothing but a bag of bread, and today she’s acting on the stage and in the movies . . . I’d say she takes after you.”

  “Me?”

  “Hmm . . . who else had so much stubbornness in them except you? And anyway, instead of being happy that our daughter was so successful, are we supposed to be ashamed?”

  “Do you know what the village is saying, though?”

  “The village can mind its own business! Are we going to have them judging us? Let them look at their own daughters—all they did was get married, have three kids each, get fat as cows, and spend their time fetching their men from the café where they get drunk. No. Our girl was clever not to end up like that.”

  Theodora finally gave in. She had to admit, against all the odds, Polyxeni had made an enviable life for herself. She hugged her mother with her eyes full of tears. “Oh Mother, what would I have done without you all these years?”

  “You’d have cried over your bad luck. That’s what you’d have done.”

  The next summer, a traveling cinema company brought the first film Polyxeni had made to the village. Julia was adamant about attending. She wasn’t about to miss her chance to see a film in which her granddaughter was acting. When she and Theodora turned up just before it began, a mutter spread through the crowd. But in spite of the reaction of the gossip-hungry villagers, Julia made her way to the front row with her back straight and her head high. When the film ended, everyone came up to the two women to congratulate them. At first Theodora thought she would faint from embarrassment—she wasn’t used to so much attention and she still wasn’t entirely sure about her daughter’s chosen profession—but she finally accepted their congratulations with dignity, just as her mother did.

  “I wonder how I did that,” she said later, when they returned home.

  “If you hadn’t done it today, you wouldn’t have been able to face going out tomorrow. That’s why I forced you to go—besides the fact that I wanted to see the child. This is how we shut those small-minded gossipers up. Why should a mother be ashamed of a daughter who makes money and is so successful in her career that the newspapers write about her all the time? It should be your pride and joy that your child is a success.”

  Yet again, Julia was right. The village not only accepted the fact that it had birthed an actress, but the locals began to boast about Polyxeni’s success as if she was their own daughter. A crowd of people went to see every film, including some from neighboring villages, and every achievement of Polyxeni’s in Athens was discussed with unbelievable pride. When they read that their girl, their Polyxeni, would be playing in a film in Italy, it became the sole topic of conversation. Some of the villagers even brought gifts to Theodora.

  Still, in spite of what her mother had said, Theodora worried about her daughter. Polyxeni might have money and success, but was she happy? Years later, when Polyxeni began to act on television, Theodora would look intently at the lifeless box and try to decipher from her daughter’s expression if she was all right, but her efforts were always in vain. She began to escape more and more frequently to her icons, reading again the letters she had already read a thousand times, looking at the photographs and crying. She hid all this from her mother, of course. She only shared her sorrow and distress with her husband. Theodora often went to his grave, lit a candle, and sat beside him.

  “I don’t know if you’re so high up that you can’t hear my voice, but I’m telling you again that you made a mistake, choosing to leave like that. You left me alone, Gerasimos, and you did the wrong thing by me! I needed you and you abandoned me. If you were here, maybe things would have been different. Maybe the children wouldn’t have left. And even if they had still left, we would have at least had each other.”

  More than twenty years had passed. More than twenty years since the wedding of Julia and Fokas. It was as if that ceremony had opened the gates for all of her children to leave, one by one. Where were her daughters now, she wondered. Had fate been kind to them? Had they known happiness, there where they’d chosen to go? Would she die without seeing them again?

  Melissanthi got off the bus and looked around the familiar village square of her childhood. She had sold the car before she left, and Christos had undertaken to sell the factory and the house as well. She’d made it clear to him that her return home was final. Athens would never see her again.

  The plane tree welcomed her with a gentle rustling of its leaves and she smiled. Countless times she’d sat in its shade. It was there, on the bench under its branches, that she had noticed Apostolos for the first time. Everything had started from there. She picked up her suitcase and moved on before anyone recognized her; she wasn’t ready to meet anyone she knew. Her feet seemed to carry her by themselves to the only place where she hoped to find peace: her home.

  A few minutes before she reached the last bend, her courage deserted her. She sat on a large rock and hid her head in her hands. What if her mother wasn’t alive? What if the house had been abandoned and was now in ruins? She had been gone for more than twenty years. A lot could have happened. And Grandmother? Grandfather? What could have happened to them, she wondered. How could she have been so hardhearted toward her own family? How could she have turned her back on the people who raised her? What would it have cost her to visit, even for a day, the place where she’d grown up?

  “In the end you were right, Mother,” she said to herself. “The river carried me away like a little branch. It took me away and now I see that it was a journey without a destination. But everything is finished. It’s enough if you’re still alive to forgive me.”

  She got up determinedly. Whatever was waiting for her around the bend, the hour had come for her to face it. She leaned against a tree and the view took her breath away. The river was shining in the rays of the sun, the house looked bright and new, and smoke was coming from the chimney. Tears blurred her vision, and she closed her eyes for a moment, thinking that she might be dreaming, that the longing in her heart might be creating what she wanted to see rather than letting her see what was really there. When she opened her eyes again the picture was clearer. Her house was in its place. She began to run toward it, not feeling the weight of her suitcase, then she stopped and stared at the river.

  “In the end you didn’t manage it,” she said to the flowing water. “You took me away as you promised, but I managed to go against your current. I managed to come back.”

  Melissanthi managed to drag her eyes away from the green reflections and fix them again on the house. The garden was planted as it always was. Now she was certain that her mother was fine; only she could keep the garden like that. She pushed open the garden gate, and walked on, looking straight ahead. The old chestnut trees seemed to be waiting for her. Maybe the plane tree in the square told them, she thought, and smiled. Everything was full of life around her. Everything looked like people welcoming her. She pushed open the front door, which was unlocked as usual, and went inside, where she took in all the changes that had taken place. She smiled when she saw the television. So civilization had reached here at last. It must have passed under Mount Olympus’s nose secretly. Perhaps Prometheus had defied Zeus again, as he did when he gave peo
ple fire.

  She put down her suitcase, which contained only the bare necessities; she didn’t want to return with baggage from a past she wanted to forget. Apart from her simplest clothes, in a box in a corner of her suitcase she had placed photographs of Apostolos, of her son, and of Angelos. She didn’t have the courage to leave those behind. Lovingly she stroked the furniture of the large living room where her parents had once received their visitors, then she went on to the other rooms that had once been the jumping-off place for the five girls of the family. It was almost as if not a day had passed. The house had been updated, but almost everything had been put back in its place, even some of her sisters’ broken toys. In the room where she had slept with Julia, carefully folded in a drawer, were the ribbons their mother had used to tie their hair into braids. Moved, she sat down on her bed and from there she heard the voices of her mother and . . . yes! That was her grandmother. So she was alive. Melissanthi was overcome with so much joy that she wanted to run and embrace the two of them but she was afraid.

  Just then, she heard Theodora’s voice. “Oh, Mother! What do you want with the wool? Who are you knitting for?”

  “For you,” Julia answered. “A jacket for the winter. And anyway, what would I do with my hands otherwise? What would I busy myself with? Perhaps I should start smoking?”

  “So for you it’s either knitting or smoking. There’s no other option . . .” Theodora suddenly stopped speaking when she noticed the suitcase. “What’s this suitcase?” she asked. “How did it get here?”

  Melissanthi finally found the courage to stand up. She went toward the living room and stood like a statue in the doorway. Theodora noticed her immediately and just stared at her for a while as if she couldn’t believe her eyes. She brought her hand to her mouth to hold back a cry of joy and surprise, while Julia crossed herself as her lips formed a prayer of thanksgiving. Melissanthi couldn’t hold back any longer. Her mother’s arms were open now, waiting to hug her, and she had a great need to be wrapped in their tender embrace. Theodora held her daughter joyfully and began kissing her face, her tears merging with Melissanthi’s. The younger woman then found herself going from her mother to her grandmother and back, as the two older women stroked her, as if they were trying to make sure that their minds hadn’t deceived them, that the firstborn of the family had returned.