Back in Margariti, Chevi, in the company of Cochina, prepared for the long winter.
“My cousin writes from Germany with news of work,” Cochina told Chevi.
The women sat by the well in the yard, braiding together onions to be hung in the cellar for later use. Cochina stood up and went to the fourno. She arranged pans of bread inside the large cement dome. It pushed a steady current of heat from its gaping black mouth and the red coals blinked at her from within. Cochina, had her kind tactful way, always trying to help Chevi, mindful of a person’s dignity and a woman’s limited choice.
“Cochos is talking about joining him,” she said.
Cochina’s cousin was one of many men from the area who worked in Germany, sent his pay home and afforded his wife and children—in addition to an income for adequate food and shelter—household goods that those without a person in Germany, could never acquire.
Germany.
To Chevi, it was a far off place that, until these past months, had been the villages of the invading soldiers of her youth, tall men with unsmiling faces and domes of metal on their heads, one of which would hang in the shack behind her house for generations, fascinating her grandchildren as they recognized the helmet from their history books. But for their yiayia, those Germans had come and terrorized the villagers, had eaten their sheep, their chickens, and their goats. Far worse than that—they had taken their olive oil, a guarantee of life, its nutrients and fat used as protection against starvation and they had left the people of the valley hungry. Those Germans had drunk the water from their wells, lived in their churches, shit on the graves of their loved ones, and then returned to Germany, leaving behind the smoldering houses they had set fire to and the lamenting cries from the widows and mothers of the dead. And now, twenty years later, Germany did not need to come to Margariti to take her sons, for she sent them willingly.
And Chevi, had noticed a different German invasion. At first it came in a trickle through the cracks of the isolated mountains and primitive roads of her valley, later becoming a flood as roads were paved and distances shortened by air travel. Those new Germans smiled at Chevi in Parga, as if they had been life-long friends, scaring the chickens as they sped by on motorbikes wearing floppy hats and dark glasses—you can’t trust someone who wears dark glasses. They aimed cameras at her as she sold her goods in the market place and their young women shamefully showing their bodies, wearing nothing but underwear to swim in the sea, many of them leaving their breasts exposed, and the Greek boys there, gawking, with barely a thought that these were the people who had taken so much—the childhood of so many, the dreams of a generation. But there they were, swimming, drinking, dancing, as if the blood of Greeks had not been emptied onto these beaches by their fathers and uncles.
But Chevi also knew about this new opportunity in the place called Germany and now with five little mouths to feed, she needed to focus only on that.
“Nikos told me—did your Johnny mention to you? Theodore, you know, George’s father? He went to the office in Igoumenitsa and wrote some papers for it—to work, to work in Germany.”
Chevi helped Cocina move the loaves around with a long metal spatula, “And now he’s going to Athens to see a doctor, then to Germany and work.”
Her thoughts turned to Tomas. How could she put this idea in his head? With a long sigh, she imagined life, with a steady stream of products from this mysterious place. She knew from the stories that she had heard—few of which had been accurate, most having been pure fabrication or at best, gross embellishments of the truth—for if one were going to leave his village, his family, his entire life, for a far off place where people did not speak his language, to work from dawn until dusk in the closed air of a factory, then go to sleep in cramped quarters with burping, farting men from every corner of Greece, then one would make it seem a glamorous life, and who could blame him? They hauled back televisions with screens that showed only fuzzy white with a far off Italian voice, or bicycles with an inflated-tire-life of about a day on the steep inclines and the sharp rocky edges of the village paths. But mostly, Chevi longed for those precious monthly visits to the post office that she had seen the women who had men in Germany make—to collect that envelope with the blue paper that the postmaster recognized and changed to drachmas, which could be followed by a visit to the butcher, the grocer, the man who sells cloth. It was all there; she only needed to get Tomas there.
She sighed.
Cochina knew the hardship her childhood friend endured.
“We’ll have a cup of coffee,” she said pulling some hot coals to the front of the fourno. Spooning the pulverized coffee and some sugar into the water of the copper brigi, she held the long handle so the pot was positioned over the heat, stirring a few times, patiently coaxing the powder into a pungent elixir. The brown liquid rose to the brim swirling in pools of foam and before it could bubble to a boil, it was pulled from the heat and poured into the small cups, the frothiness sitting on top like the foam on a turbulent sea.
The women sipped their coffee and talked of superficial happenings of the village, but both knew the reason for this coffee. When it was finished, and turned upside down, the thick residue of the bottom, dripped into the saucer, creating a trusted window into the future with its drying patches of brown on the inside of the cup.
The two women, foreheads together, turned Chevi’s cup over and looked inside.
“Money, Chevi” Cochina whispered and smiled at her friend.
“Money leaving me, not coming to me,” Chevi answered quietly, contemplating, unsure. She was the more gifted one with cafetzu, having had so many of her readings come true with births and deaths and travels. Of course, the fact that those events are the most common of life even when not prophesied in the coffee grinds of one’s cup was left unspoken, if it had been a passing thought. So Cochina pulled her head away, nodding silently for a moment, thinking, and then with her own interpretation she said, “Chevi, you are going to pay for something good, maybe.”
“Ridiculous,” thought Chevi. “How can I pay if I have no money? And how can money leave if it is not here?”
Then she saw it. “A road, Cochina. Here, look.”
“Yes, you’re right. Perhaps a road to Germany!”
Yes, Chevi saw a road. It was clearly a message that someone would travel. It was a long road, maybe a road to Germany but the end of it was closed off and that was very frightening. A closed road was not good.
A few days later, the village was abuzz with the news brought back by Theodore from his visit in Athens. He was not accepted to work in Germany. He had flat feet.
“Flat feet,” Chevi thought, “aren’t they supposed to be flat?”
The stigma settled over Theodore’s house like a suffocating fog. He was not a real man. It was an embarrassment to the members at the café—though not applying at all for such work, did not seem to qualify for shame. He could not go to the Promised Land called Germany. His family would suffer and he could not stop it.
* * * *
“Mama!” Nikos ran to the top of the stairs and flew through the doorway, “Did you hear?” He was out of breath. The news was ground breaking. None like this had ever been his to report.
“George’s mother is going to Germany. She is working in Germany. She’s leaving next month.”
Chevi stood under the grape vine that had grown up the side wall and settled on the exposed stone, creating a leafy roof over a small cement platform outside the bedroom. She knew and respected Katherine but she wondered, “What will she do with her children?” She continued poking the wood coals of the fourno that sat on the platform.
“Nikos, you must have heard wrong,” she said, “George’s mother has four children.”
Nikos wiped the sweat from his eyes. “George’s father is going to take care of them.”
It was a simple idea.
Theodore was planning to do what no other man in Margariti ever had, or ever would afterwards, and he would
never realize that his every act was carefully observed over those ten years that followed as he went about washing clothes at the spring with the other women, collecting wood on the mountainside and hauling it on his back, cooking daily meals and baking bread in the fourno, all tasks the women of the village were doing. And he was part of that group that also collected the blue paper at the post office—his wife conspicuously absent from the village events—but because of it, Nikos watched his friend, George, enjoy a fruitful life, while his own family descended further into poverty. Tomas and his buddies joked about Mama Theodore. But Nikos stored that memory and kept it safe for many years—that commitment George’s father had for his family—Nikos would call upon it when he needed a model to guide him in his later life.
That afternoon, as Chevi heard this news, she wondered about being a working woman alone in a foreign place. Going there with another woman would make it less scandalous and much safer. She decided to pay Katherine a visit the next day. And when she left Katherine’s house, she was determined to go with her the following month but first she needed a plan for the care of her children while she was gone.
* * * *
The bus door opened and Chevi climbed down the stairs. Baby Fotis, his breath lightly falling on her neck, slept in the sarmanitsa on her back. Little Anastasia gripped her mother’s hand as she jumped from the last step to the rocky dirt road below. The rest of the journey would be on foot, up the steep paths that no motor vehicle would attempt for many years.
A monologue played in Chevi’s brain as she prepared her words for her mother-in-law—hoping she could convince the old woman to help her.
“When is the best time to approach her,“ Chevi wondered, “perhaps in the morning.”
The ornery woman seemed to grow more hostile with each hour that was added to the day, which explained her father-in-law’s disappearance as the evening approached, busying himself with some unnecessary task made to look necessary. Unlike most other men, he’d never visit the cafénio or taverna for that would present the worst of humiliations—as he had learned early in his marriage when she had come looking for him, screaming insults for all to hear, hitting him with a stick, kicking and spitting—too horrible to relive.
So Chevi climbed the mountain path slowly and when she arrived at dusk, her mother-in-law ordered her back out into the fading light—children still in tow—to collect water from the well and wood from the brush growing on the far side of the ravine. Returning with her load balanced between Anastasia on her hip and Fotis squirming between her shoulder blades, she was overcome with exhaustion. Chevi fed the children where they had fallen onto the sleeping mat, then curled beside them and slipped into a restless sleep, words swimming in her head, emerging in dreams of dark wooded ravines and wild animals.
In the morning, she approached the old woman before she could bark out new orders at her nifi.
“Mother-in-law, do you know why I am here?”
“No.”
“I’ve come to ask for your help.”
“Then, ask.”
Chevi hesitated. She pulled her thoughts together, breathed in hard and then spilled the words from her lips, leaving them in a heap beside the old woman.
“Tomas does not work. Sometimes we don’t even have bread. I go to my cousin for beans and wheat. My children are hungry. I want to go to Germany to work. I will work hard and send money. I will send money to you too.” She ran out of breath.
Her mother-in-law was silent, waiting.
“Please, mother-in-law . . . if you could take these two little ones, I’ll leave the older ones with Tomas and—”
“Are you crazy, Chevi?” Her mother-in-law looked at her in earnest. “I love my son. You took the best boy from me, but I know him and if you leave your children with him, they will die of starvation.”
She watched the tears fill her nifi's eyes. “Go home. Tell your husband to go to Germany. It is his duty.”
She was right. The coveted blue papers from the postmaster would not have the same meaning to Tomas as it would have for her. She could imagine him sitting in the taverna, buying drinks for every person who passed by and she could see the hungry eyes of Nikos, the sunken bellies of Vaso and little Eftihia. So that morning, without hesitation, she started back home.
Chevi reported his mother’s message, but it fell on deaf ears. And for each time she brought it up, Tomas seemed to spend more time at the taverna. And that is where he was when The Man From The Bank came into the yard one afternoon as Chevi was drawing water from the well. Nikos and Vaso, with their neighborhood friends, had been running after the chickens and within the chaos Chevi almost did not recognize that there was a stranger among them. The Man From The Bank apologized for startling her as she scooped Anastasia off the ground, placing her on her hip in a protective stance. The sudden movement shook Fotis awake in the sarmanitsa and he started to cry. As the chickens squawked and ran in a frenzied circle, the children laughing and screaming, The Man From The Bank tried to collect his thoughts.
“Madam, I am here to inform you that,” he took a deep breath and continued, his eyes darting around the yard as the children kicked up the dry dust, creating little clouds of haze along the ground, “the Bank of Greece has not had any payment for the lien on your home in quite some time, years in fact.” The Man From The Bank cleared his throat and continued his rehearsed speech, raising his voice above the mayhem around him, “if payment is not made within the next sixty days, your home will be put up for auction and—” He hesitated. It became apparent that although there was more to this speech, he was changing course mid-sentence as he exhaled loudly and looked Chevi in the eyes.
“My dear woman, are these all your children?” He softened.
Chevi had not understood every word, but she had understood this person was a threat. So she fixed her black shawl around her, straightened her head scarf, and met the man’s gaze with a smile.
“Yes, these are all my children,” she answered.
“Listen.” The Man From the Bank shook his head slowly. “I’m going to give you a piece of paper. You must give it to your husband.” A thought occurred to him. “You do have a husband, don’t you?”
“Oh yes.” Chevi hesitated for a moment and then added, “But he is never here.” She made a fist with her thumb pointed out toward her mouth, tilting her head back as if she were drinking. The man’s face registered understanding and then disgust as he handed her a paper.
“Give this to your husband, and be sure he brings it to the town hall in Igoumenitsa as soon as he can. Do you understand?”
Chevi nodded. She realized then, without knowing why or how, that a great calamity had been averted. The man, having seen the children and the condition of the burned out home, had assessed the property to be nearly worthless which would allow them to pay a trivial fee, removing the lien and giving the master of the family complete ownership without debt to the bank.
But The Man From The Bank had seen many scenes such as this. He was grateful for a job with an income to feed his own family but to see this poverty, this desperation, was heartbreaking. He decided to stop in the town square to have a cool drink and to clear his mind, before his next encounter.
In the taverna, he gingerly sipped his orange soda, silently practicing his speech so as to have it flowing more professionally.
“George will think me incompetent,” he thought.
He imagined the bank manager, the papers in his carrying case, and the conversation that they’d have when he returned to his office. He opened the bag, took out a folder and placed it open on the table. He read the directions to the next property. It was in that same village.
“Past this taverna, up that embankment,” he thought as he looked out the window and mapped a route in his head.
“A warehouse.” He wiped his brow. “If it is unoccupied, I will—”
“Orange soda, friend?” His thoughts were interrupted by the friendly voice at the next table.
&nbs
p; “Come join me for an ouzo,” said the stranger, with a smile and a beckoning wave. “It’s on me. Tell me about your troubles. You look like a kind man with a difficult job.”
Chevi was at the top of the stairs, just entering the front door when Tomas, his fist in the air and shouting obscenities, started up the dirt path of the yard, back from the taverna. He flew up the stairs and arrived in her path within seconds, shouting about the humiliation she had caused him. The children ran to the far edges of the yard to escape his wrath.
“How dare you talk to a strange man,” he grabbed her arm, “and such lies! Such humiliation! You fool!” As he brought his hand up for the strike, cousin Miti’s voice awoke him from his rage.
At the bottom of the stairs, in his warmest voice, he yelled up to his cousin’s husband, “Tomas, how are you dear friend? Come and have a cup of coffee with me. Mitina has it in the pot as I speak.”
Chevi brushed by them both and ran to Chavana’s house, to visit with her friend for as long as she thought was necessary.
In the morning, Tomas took the bus to Igoumenitsa for business. He could read and write so he knew things and he was eager to tell all who would listen how he saved his home that day. Those who had been in the taverna when The Man From The Bank accosted Tomas with the humiliating insults—not being a real man, leaving his family to live in squalor, his children without shoes, his wife alone to face the poverty—chose not to bring that information into the forefront as Tomas told his saving-the-house story. But the humiliation remained and it was that which compelled him to look into the possibility of a job in Germany.
The Nifi Page 10