The Nifi

by Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas

  * * * *

  Days turned to weeks and little Nikos grew fussy. Chevi, exhausted from her daily routine and the addition of a new baby, was overwrought with worry. He seemed to cry most of his waking hours and he awoke at night so often. Wrapped tightly in the sarmanitsa on Chevi’s back, as she carried the wood through a ravine, the village echoed with his cries. Sauteria, the priest’s wife, called to her. “Chamomile and water, Chevi, with a little sugar. It will soothe his stomach.”

  The baker’s mother heard. “No, no, Coffee grinds and lemon with a drop of water, Chevi. That worked for my Mihali!”

  But then Chevi heard talk of the evil eye! She first heard it at the well. Laden with a full wooden barrel and turning to go home, one of the older women pulled her aside and told her.

  “Maria had wanted Tomas for her husband; perhaps her jealousy has brought down the evil eye . . . po, po, po terrible thing, poor child.”

  “What? Maria? Really?” Chevi had no idea. She shook her head slowly. Yes! She remembered. Maria had come close during the church service, admiring her little Nikos, having finally left the house for his forty day blessing.

  She ran to Yiayia Vasiliki who knew exactly what to do. The older woman filled a glass with water, poured three drops of olive oil in it, cut a piece of Nikos' fine white hair and sprinkled it into the glass. She whispered the necessary prayers and then pressed it to Nikos' mouth. Confused, the infant opened his round lips looking for the nipple and instead got a spoonful of liquid with hair.

  “It’s okay now,” said Yiayia Vasiliki, as he coughed and sputtered, “he will be fine,” but Nikos continued to wail.

  The following week, having exhausted all known remedies, Chevi elicited the help of cousin Evangelini to walk with her to see the doctor in Parga. She had a few drachmas left from selling at the market; perhaps it was enough.

  They were ushered into the small examination room by the doctor himself.

  “Not enough milk,” was his diagnosis. The kind doctor refused her last drachmas. “Eat meat and produce more milk,” he said. But Chevi had only those few drachmas in her apron pocket. She would not be able to buy any meat. If she killed a chicken, she wouldn’t have enough eggs. She and Evangelini discussed what the doctor had said and came up with a solution.

  “Thanasi and I will kill a sheep and you will have some mutton to eat.” Evangelini knew her husband would agree with such a plan and then they could sell the skin on the next market day to buy some necessary items.

  Chevi was satisfied. She did not like to take from her cousin but she knew that she would return the favor when a need arose. So with Nikos securely attached to her back, the two women readied themselves for the trek home. They walked through the center of Parga and passed the butcher’s big window as he wielded his cleaver against the giant wooden stump. But that is not where Chevi’s eyes were drawn. Instead, she saw, in the jeweler’s window, the answer to her son’s crying—a little round glass pendant of blue and white with a black dot in the middle. A mati! Yes, of course. She needed to attach that to Nikos' clothing to ward off the evil eye and then she was sure his crying and discomfort would end. She would also take the doctor’s advice; after all, he was an educated man. He could read and write like her husband and so, like Tomas, he must know things. But, the mati was sure to work. Anyone from the village would agree as did Evangelini as she followed Chevi’s gaze to the jeweler’s window. They would come back at the next market day with many eggs and a sheep skin and then they would have enough money to protect poor little Nikos. In the meantime, the mountain trails swallowed the infant’s cries as he continued to fuss.

  A month passed. Little Nikos grew stronger. Chevi had mutton for as long as it lasted. Finally, she was ready to return to Parga for the mati. She had her eggs and some beans and she knew, with the sheep skin, they would have the money for the jeweler. But she had not realized Evangelini’s need for a cooking stove with gas.

  “Imagine!” Evangelini said proudly when Chevi arrived at her house, “cooking without wood.” She snapped the knob on the white metal box and a blue flame rose.

  “Sit, Chevi. Have some coffee.” Evangelini began spooning the brown powder into the brigi—a tiny long-stemmed copper pot—ready to show off the marvels of the modern world.

  Chevi stepped back a few steps, expecting an explosion. She had heard about gas. It was dangerous. What a fool Evangelini was to waste money from the sheep skin on such a contraption. She would still need to collect wood to burn inside the fourno, to cook everything else. And now buying something more useful, like the mati, was out of reach. She was devastated.

  Evangelini read her cousin’s face. “Chevi, of course you will buy the mati. Nikos is not safe without it.” She reached into her apron pocket and brought out some neatly folded drachmas. “Here, I have not forgotten you.”

  So Nikos got his mati, and the fact that his digestive system was maturing as he grew stronger and the colic that racked his tiny body was subsiding, was not taken into account. It was the mati that cured him. And if there had been someone during my desperate sleepless weeks as a new mother with a colicky first born, who had suggested pinning a piece of round glass to her as a cure, I would have gladly travelled anywhere to get it.

  CHAPTER 5

  It was the summer of 1987. I was a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two: Nikki, three years old and Thomas, sixteen months. I was lying on a hotel bed that filled a tiny room with an open window that nearly touched the building beside it. It was somewhere after midnight but both lights were on. I was fully clothed, with Nikki face down on my chest, our bodies welded together by the heat that hoarded the breathable air. Little Thomas slept soundly at my side despite the groans of ecstasy that waft in through the open, unscreened window, from a woman in an undefined location.

  “She has to be done soon,” I thought, but she would continue until daylight.

  I gently lifted Nikki to extract her from my body, hoping for some relief, but she looked up at me and shook her head as if to say, “don’t even think about it.” So I released her to my chest again.

  Many hours before, we had said goodbye to Nick at JFK airport, ready to take the night time flight, which in theory meant the passengers could sleep, but was completely unrealistic in the café-like atmosphere among the returning Greeks. We had left Nick behind to work while we hoped to be relaxing in the serenity of the Greek countryside. The plan was that he would join us in a month with my parents. So with two toddlers in tow, I had walked past the security station pushing a cart that was bogged down by the weight of giant boxes of Pampers, a blowup swimming pool, a hammock, numerous suitcases and a mammoth radio—most of which, I would not use. And for so many years we would attempt to mix the two worlds, carting special pie pans and pots for Greek coffee back to New York, nail polish and make-up to the village—never really accepting that it was an undoable task

  When we landed in Athens, Vangelis and his wife, Fofo—friends who were originally from the northern area of my destination but had settled in Athens years before—had met us and brought us to their home for the six hour layover, as we waited for our connecting flight to the island of Corfu, where we would then take a ferry to the mainland and finally be driven to Margariti.

  With the passing hours, after these friends returned us to the airport and said their goodbyes, I waited in a crowded, un-air-conditioned-smoky room to embark on the next leg of the journey. The departure time came and went. There had been a few announcements, none of which I understood, though someone had attempted to translate them to English. The hours passed. Nikki and Thomas finished the water and cookies I had in my bag. I was such an inexperienced traveller with my naive faith in time and schedules, especially with something as official as an airport. That day would be my first serious lesson in Greek time, as I would learn over and over throughout the following years that scheduled times were merely a suggestion and the actual use of time with a clock and its numbers was rare. My question of “when?” w
as often answered with: in a few minutes that really meant hours. The repairman who scheduled his visit for before lunch had me wondering, “Is that the two o clock meal before siesta? Should we prepare a place for him at the table, or is he referring to the many hours between waking and lunchtime?” And the visitors, who planned to stay for a few days, would still be there after a week. A few, a couple, some. They were all words with ambiguous meaning, open to the individuals’ interpretation. And timetables were there merely as a reference but not to be taken too seriously. This distance between my own New-York-born concept of time and that of the Greeks would continue to plague me for years.

  But on that day, we finally boarded the Corfu plane, twenty hours after leaving New York. As the cabin pressure changed, Thomas pulled at his ears and cried for the entire hour. I was far beyond exhaustion, and I remember thinking that if the engines were to just putter out and we were to go down, I would be okay with that. Really. My judgment and my senses were numb. I was a rag doll with two children pulling at my arms. Landing in Corfu, I saw the full staircase being rolled up to the plane exit and realized that I would have the daunting task of carrying two toddlers, numerous small bags and the giant radio down them. And it appeared by the smell in the air, that Thomas was ready for a diaper change.

  That smell, along with my own rankness is what I brought to my two awaiting brother-in-laws, Fotis and Christos. Unfortunately, the delay had caused us to miss the midnight ferry—the last one from Corfu to the mainland, so we drove around in a taxi searching for a hotel. We were lucky to find one with a vacancy and if there hadn’t been a monstrously large praying mantis perched on the bed’s head board in that room, and if we had seen it before Nikki had—coming out of the shower naked, screaming and running into the hall—our stay there might have provided me with a bit of sleep before the lady of the night began her escapades. But, I lay down on that bed, after Fotis and Christos had slain the evil creature, and I was so sleep deprived, I did not have the energy to feel anything. Many years later, Fotis and I would debate about the size of that praying mantis, but I don’t think reality has much weight when fear is in control.

  So I waited for daybreak—enduring and being the strong adult, with the thought that soon I would have some rest as Margariti lay ahead. Yes, it’s true. I longed to be in Margariti.

  Hours later, the ferry docked in the bustling port of Igoumenitsa. We were brought to an apartment, embraced by cousins: five-year-old Dina and her younger sister, Marianna. And we were greeted by the aroma of a meal that my sister-in-law, Vaso, had prepared. Unbeknownst to me, we were to stay there for a few days. John, Chevi’s father, was dying, laid out in the small two-room house in Margariti, attended to by Chevi and though it was determined by some that the children should not be subjected to that situation and therefore should stay in Igoumenitsa indefinitely, Chevi insisted we be brought to Margariti, but first she needed a day or two to move her father back to his house up on the mountainside.

  So, after having a relaxing shower, bathing the children and spending a pleasant day, I assumed that the reason we were ushered into the bedrooms was because of the late hour, and that the following morning we would, no doubt, be in Margariti.

  But the next morning, after some gesturing and pantomime, and a few words of English like, “Go, work, you,” Christos and Vaso left the tiny four room apartment, and their children disappeared with them. I was left with my two toddlers—no television, no toys—hours and hours of my keeping them occupied and then silent during siesta time, something their internal clocks knew nothing about. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t taken to my destination where the children would be able to run around an endless yard, to play in the dirt, to make as much noise as they needed, and the bus could come and take us to the sea. Why? There were no telephones to connect me to Nick. I felt trapped. Years later, my mother-in-law, Chevi, would describe how she had tried to stay with her daughter to help with her newborns and how she had paced on the tiny balcony, feeling like a prisoner. I supposed this was more a matter of personality than culture, but at that time, several days into my trip, I was having difficulty holding onto my charade of contentment, and I began to unravel. It’s not clear to me so many years later, what had propagated it, but I remember just sinking down onto a sofa, the overflow of tears and Christos’ panicked call to his wife in the next room, “Vasoooo?”

  That is probably how I learned about the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, or as it was referred to, OTE.

  I was brought to a large dark-red official-looking building. There were numerous telephone booths along a wall. Vaso said something to the attendant and then I was ushered into one of them. Did I dial the number or was it done for me? I don’t remember, but I do remember the flood of home rushing through the receiver and Nick’s reassuring voice washing over me. The attendant’s gesturing and anxious chatter as he pointed to the rapidly changing numbers being tallied above the phone were dismissed with the wave of Vaso’s hand as she stood guard against any intrusion. She could not speak my language, but she seemed to understand this desperate connection.

  OTE became one of my favorite places, especially when I found one near the beach in Parga. And I gladly forked over as many drachmas as were necessary to connect me to my life support system in New York. The challenge was in arriving at OTE when it was actually open, as it followed the same limited working hours as all other businesses in Greece and I would be confronted more times by a locked door and a broken heart than by an open one.

  CHAPTER 6

  The New Year, 1957, approached. Chevi worked at a table close to the fire, pressing hard into the wooden board as she kneaded the dough for the New Year’s Bread, the vasilopita. Muffled voices could be heard ascending the stairs, hitting the entrance door. It opened with a burst of anger and Nikos watched his papou, his grandfather, as the older man entered the room. Tomas stumbled in after him.

  “You lazy dog.” John spit his words at Tomas. His son-in-law had promised to meet him in the olive grove to prepare for the picking but had been unexpectedly detained at the village taverna. John stomped on the floor, clumps of dried dirt falling from his shoes. Nikos saw the dry dust settle around this grandfather's shoes and then he followed the men to Chevi’s work table.

  Tomas said something that was not decipherable, ouzo fumes trailing him like a stubborn shadow. He stumbled and knocked the cradle, almost toppling his new daughter. With a heavy sigh, he remembered.

  “A girl. Troubles. Worries.” He shook his head, and then continued. It was almost a whisper. “But perhaps a strong worker like her mother.” He was lost in the reverie of the days ahead, when his children would grow to an age where they could be used for the labor needed. He leaned against the wooden board where Chevi pushed and pulled the dough.

  “We need more sons to work in the olive grove.” His breath stung her eyes.

  Chevi looked from one man to the other. “I need a coin to put in the vasilopita. We cannot have New Year’s bread without a coin.”

  “Put a stone in it,” Tomas chuckled, “who will know the difference?” and he walked into the bedroom. The straw mattress whined with his weight.

  Chevi looked questioningly at her father. His eyes threw jagged bolts of fire at the bedroom door, but he said nothing and walked out of the house. Chevi, carefully lifted her skirt to reveal her torn and faded undergarment. There was a small pocket with a zipper that had been hand-sewn onto it. She unzipped it and gingerly pulled out a one cent coin. She carefully zipped the pocket again, lowered her dress and kneaded the coin into the bread.

  In the morning, Chevi and Yiayia Vasiliki began preparations for the New Year’s meal. Evangelini and Thanasi came early with bags of nuts and cinnamon and a chicken that had been plucked and cleaned. Tomas—having anticipated the work needed before the festivities—sat at the taverna with Pavlos, gulping ouzo, his chair resting on the outside of the taverna wall, business closed for the day, for when he had innocently stopped by M
arkos’ house to wish him a Happy New Year, knowing the degree of disgust the taverna owner’s wife had for him, the result was as expected. Markos convinced him to walk into town where he would open his taverna for a special holiday cheer. Of course, Pavlos had joined them when he saw the pair pass by, his head entangled in tree branches, retrieving the lemons his wife had requested and at that very moment the sound of her lovely voice bellowing through the open shutter of the kitchen window with a new request. And so he engaged the men in some light conversation, not wanting to be rude, and then walked with them so they were not delayed for whatever business to which they seemed to be hurrying. And after the men raised their glasses to good health and then to prosperity, and once more to abundant harvests, Markos moved the tipsy men to the outer portion of the taverna, generously bringing the rest of the bottle, but locking the other bottles safely within. He then excused himself and returned home to celebrate the New Year with his family. At the same time Chevi, with her grandmother and cousin, was rolling out the wafer thin dough to make pies: spinach pie, sweet milk pie, cheese pie and kolokithi pie with chunks of pumpkin and raisins. They stoked the wood in the fourno until it yielded warm black coals of heat. Then they roasted the chicken, saving some of its meat for avgolemono, a hearty egg and rice soup with the juice of the lemons that little Nikos picked from the bottom branches of the tree when Thanasi pulled the boughs lower, the lemons hanging heavy with their tart juice.

  John dragged a long table from the tool shack, placing it under the tree, readying it for the relatives as they began to arrive. The table was one of Tomas’ creations, having used scrap pieces of wood and cleverly not wasting too many nails. John found rocks for each leg to steady it so the food would not roll from the table.