“How about a walk first? Let me show you around the area.” We left my gifts from Chryssa and Alexandra in the car and continued on foot.
Nikitas took on the role of guide explaining Greek history to the ignorant foreigner. He told me why the area was known as Mets.
“It’s all down to nineteenth-century Germans and their beer.”
I wondered if he was teasing me.
“As soon as the Greeks were free from four hundred years of Turkish rule, the Great Powers wanted to find a king. So they located a teenager in Bavaria, who happened to be a prince, and they put young Otto on the throne.” Athens was a two-horse town, “with shepherds herding their flocks on the Acropolis and not much else,” when Otto’s entourage of Bavarian advisers and architects decided to transform the new capital into their own fantasy of ancient Greece. According to Nikitas, they were also beer-drinkers and preferred it to Greek wine. Their solution was to build themselves a beer factory, and for some reason they named the area Mets, after Metz, the beer-making town in Alsace. Failing to find me sharing his outrage, Nikitas continued with his theme. “You can see this German influence all over Athens.” He sounded as though they had done it to insult him. “They called it neo-classical and mixed ‘Greek’ columns with Germanic pitched roofs.”
I told him I thought they were so pretty, these few remaining family houses, like his aunt’s in Paradise Street, with their elegant facades.
“Yes,” he admitted. “But my grandfather had a clever architect who understood about the Greek climate, about having terraces and courtyards for shade. Most of those Bavarians just ignored vernacular styles that had evolved over centuries. And we were left with a tradition that is both fake and foreign. Nobody knows what ‘Greek’ architecture means any more.”
When we reached the First Cemetery Nikitas bought me a bunch of anemones from a stall. I didn’t know how to react to the gallantry. Perhaps it was partly his age, which was about the same as my parents’. But it was also his gaze that made me feel he knew something about me that I didn’t. I was pleased and intimidated, eager and wary.
“Are you hungry? Can I take you to lunch? We’ll go somewhere nobody else will take you, however much time you stay in Athens.” It was a challenge. I noticed the old woman who had sold him the flowers, observing the scene.
He led me through a monumental white entrance that was like something Mussolini might have built.
“I think you’ll like this place – the best ouzo and mezédes.” It sounded like a joke as we skirted a group of mourners waiting for a funeral and then turned sharp right along a covered marble walkway. At the end of the arcade was a diminutive café filled with cheerful, noisy customers who looked like cemetery workers – rough-handed grave-diggers and groundsmen, but also some pall-bearers in black trousers, white shirts and shiny shoes. The men were drinking ouzo, and eating plates of fried meatballs and other snacks. We sat on rush chairs at a table outside the door and Nikitas greeted the woman behind the bar by name, making a joke I didn’t understand and ordering ouzo and a “selection”. She laughed as she stirred something sizzling in a pan, while at the other end of the walkway, a funerary procession went by. It all looked intensely foreign to me. I was the outsider peering in, trying to understand.
Nikitas poured ouzo from a small bottle, clouding the clear spirit by adding ice and water.
“So, a toast to you. And to your research. I hope you find us very interesting and that you stay a long time.” The aniseed taste was strong and unfamiliar on my tongue and the alcohol went straight to my head. I tried some of the mezédes – oily fried cheese cut with lemon, strips of cucumber, a few wrinkled black olives.
Nikitas drank much more than me and paid me what I took for alcohol-fuelled compliments.
“Did you always have those little flecks of brown in your eyes? It’s the first time I’ve seen blue like that. And such pale skin – like a beautiful spirit from the woods that only emerges at night.”
Nikitas told me parts of his story. Later, I often heard him recount it to other people, usually in Greek, but it always had the same tone it had that first time, when it was in English. He was droll, but distant, the phrases codified and fixed as flags strung on a far-off boat anchored in quarantine. He enjoyed the shock on people’s faces when he said: “I was born in prison.” And I remember the jolt it gave me the first time, imagining this man – so confident and physically powerful – as a small boy locked away.
“After the war, you only had to say the word ‘communism’ and they’d throw you in jail. My mother was sentenced to life. And that’s how I came to be Greece’s youngest prisoner in 1946. My greatest achievement.”
Nikitas described his difficult relationship with his Aunt Alexandra, how she and Spiros adopted him when his mother went into exile – they couldn’t have children, but they never managed to treat him as a son. They lied that Antigone was dead and it took years before he got the story straight. Even now there was much he didn’t know. He never met his father, though he had discovered that his wartime name was Eagle – Captain Eagle – and that he had been killed during the Civil War.
I noticed how Nikitas’ humour dissolved into acidity when he spoke of his Uncle Spiros.
“The worst sort of fascist. A policeman whose glory days were during the Junta. When I was young he would punish me and beat me. He’d come into my room and stare at me before he removed his belt. And he called me ‘Little Bastard’.”
By the time we had finished one small bottle of Plomari ouzo and eaten several plates of the snacks, the sun was lower in the sky and it was pleasant to wander: past the archbishops, with their mitre-topped tombstones, and the bronze sculpture of an emaciated mother clutching a limp baby – a monument to the suffering during the Nazi occupation. Progressing along shaded paths that snake beneath cypresses and pines there were large family vaults and tidy graves with flickering oil lamps and fresh flowers. Sculptures lined the way: languid maidens, portly matrons and satisfied old men, all with fixed marble stares. We laughed at the signs saying: “Don’t steal flowers from the graves,” and I pretended not to notice when Nikitas’ arm brushed against mine, though I wanted to touch him. Stopping to admire the tomb of the Sleeping Maiden, he pulled my arm to make me stand with him.
“The long sleep. She makes it look quite pleasant.”
I hadn’t known that the English word cemetery comes from the Greek kimitírion – “sleeping place”.
On our walk we saw the tomb of Nikitas’ maternal grandmother, who had died the previous year. Maria Perifanis, 1897–1987. Someone had planted rose geraniums in the earth and he picked a leaf, rubbing it for the scent.
“She lived on the floor above Alexandra, so after she died, I inherited her apartment,” he said. “She was the best thing about my childhood. The bravest person I knew.” He didn’t tell me then that he had threatened to take his aunt to court to obtain his share in the freehold. But I sensed his strength next to me, with his bull-like sturdiness and broad shoulders that made people think he was shorter than he was. Oddly, people often think that I am taller than I am, and later, Nikitas was quick to point out that his height surpassed mine by at least half a centimetre.
We continued along the pathway to where a kink in the perimeter wall and a tall cypress tree created a corner that was hidden from view. Nikitas stopped and I hoped he would pull me to him and press me against the wall. There was a tension between us that I sensed could only be resolved that way. But he didn’t do anything, and just leaned back, a hand outstretched, as if testing me. There was a moment of hesitation, like the seconds before deciding to jump into cold water, before I moved in closer. Our breaths tasted of ouzo and there was a warm, resinous smell from the russet tree trunk that prickled behind my back. He undid the buttons on my shirt and the sun warmed my skin as he stroked me. I had sized him up as a “pouncer”, but he surprised me with his gentleness. Before we left, he smoothed my clothes into place and brushed the cypress needles from
my back.
Two days later, I left for Thasos, and although I came back to Athens several times during my year’s fieldwork, I didn’t see Nikitas. We hadn’t even exchanged phone numbers and I certainly didn’t want to ask his aunt. Even so, I loved my trips to the capital and embraced the freedom of the anonymous city. It might have been noisy and polluted (as the islanders repeatedly told me), but it was exciting and “erotic” (as Athenians were quick to point out). People looked into your face as you walked down the street, making a visual contact, however brief, that was not found in northern European cities. In Athens, I was able to drop the careful anthropologist’s persona I nurtured in the all-observing island community. I’d go out with friends I’d kept in touch with from the language school. Phivos, the youngest and most handsome of the teachers, took me to drink and dance at the noisy bars that were just reaching the height of their fashion in the late ’80s and that kept going until dawn. I enjoyed his good-natured warmth; his parents were justified in naming him after Phoebus, god of the sun. After our excesses, I’d stay in bed all morning and spend lazy days reading English newspapers and magazines, which were unobtainable on the island. Though my flirtation with Phivos was fun, it was Nikitas I thought more about, especially during my solitary winter evenings typing up notes and struggling over genealogical diagrams: matrilateral cross-cousins, patrilineal inheritance, agnatic lineage, affinal and consanguineous relations, spiritual kinship. I wasn’t unhappy; it was interesting trying to transform messy reality into orderly columns and codes. But it was easy to find myself back in the cemetery, pressing against Nikitas, feeling his chin rough against my cheek.
6
Fly in the milk
ANTIGONE
I thought of calling back Nikitas’ wife – no, his widow. My nýfi [bride, daughter-in-law]. Strange to use that word for the first time at this point in my life. But I couldn’t manage it. I knew she lived at Paradise Street with Alexandra, but I threw a black stone behind me when I left; I could not go back, begging to be let in by a sister who had disowned me. However, I could count on Dora. Ever since we were able to make international phone calls from home, I have spoken to her once a year and she has filled me in on who is left at the meetings, on her children and grandchildren. She had just heard the news when I rang and was very upset. She said, “May God forgive him.” She was always a good communist Christian. “I loved him very much.”
I told her my plan and she spoke as though we had last seen each other the previous month.
“I’ll be waiting at the airport. You can stay as long as you like.”
I packed a small bag (I am perfectly capable of living with one change of clothes) and took four old notebooks, the lock of my son’s hair, wrapped in paper, and a couple of precious photographs I like to keep near me. The journey passed slowly. I was squeezed between the window and a large Muscovite who drank whisky from the moment he boarded the plane. His eyes were mostly squeezed shut and I had to shove him back into place when he leaned against me. As we approached, I looked down to see Greece for the first time in fifty-nine years. The colours were more subdued than I remembered, the sea greyer. There was a strange orange glow. Perhaps I had remembered it wrong.
I wondered whether I would recognise Dora, but there she was, tinier than ever, wrinkled, but basically the same as when we had said goodbye. She opened her skinny arms to me and though I am taller, I felt like a child going to its mother. We stood there a while, embracing, each taking a look at the old woman that stood before her. Passengers hurried past, some making disapproving noises that we were blocking the way, but we didn’t care. That is one thing about having lived a communal existence – you learn to make your own space and to fight for it.
It was midday by the time we thought to check our watches, and the funeral was due to take place at one, so Dora hurried me out to get a taxi. As we waited in line, she looked at my luggage on the trolley and came in closer to examine a bag sitting on top.
“What have you got in there?” The bag was shuddering. I carefully unzipped the opening a fraction to reveal a mass of fur that was breathing heavily and hissing.
“Misha,” I said. “I promised a friend to look after him. What could I do? There was nobody I could leave him with.” I had given Misha a fraction of a sleeping pill before I put him in his carrier and luckily he had snored peacefully all the way through the journey at my feet. There were no customs problems bringing him into Greece, but it looked as though he had woken in a resentful mood. He flicked out a paw in an attempt to scratch me, but I managed to zip him up before he reached his target.
The main road into Athens looked more like Moscow than anything I remembered from the 1940s, and it was only when Dora pointed out the mountains that I began to get some sense of orientation. Hymettus, Pendeli, Parnitha. I understood where we were but I didn’t recognise anything – it was like arriving in a different city that had been dropped onto a familiar landscape. Tall apartment blocks loomed like strangers in the house.
“You can throw a black stone behind you, but sometimes it calls you back rather than keeping you away.” Dora understood why it had taken so long and why I had returned. The day was warm and I was already sweating in my woollen clothes and winter boots, but there was no time to go to Dora’s to change. The traffic was worse than Moscow and as we edged along, the driver sounded his horn in frustration and other drivers joined him until it sounded like a tuneless band. Dora told me news of her children: Panos lives in France and has lung cancer, and Evdokia is up in Thessaloniki and has recently got divorced. Dora didn’t complain. She looked sprightly and said she was getting on with her life.
“I have my health, Glory to God. I’m still strong.” Her hand was light on my sleeve, but I could see it had strength.
As we approached the cemetery I recognised my old neighbourhood – the streets I had played in as a child. It was more built-up, but through the window there was even the smell of resin glue from the marble-cutters. The taxi stopped outside the cemetery and the driver agreed sullenly to wait for us with my luggage. I removed my thick cardigan and left it with my coat on the back seat by Misha, still in his bag. As we shuffled through the entrance, my heart began thudding as it used to when we were waiting for the fighting to start in the mountains. My breath came fast and shallow. This was my son’s funeral.
We were late. Dora made enquiries and we were told to proceed straight to the grave. There was already another service taking place in the chapel. Dora led the way, but we made several wrong turns until we found ourselves at the back of a large crowd of people, most of whom were straining to get nearer to the grave. There must have been several hundred mourners – so many people who cared about my son. I looked at them, wondering what they had been to him. We were standing next to a smart young woman who was wiping tears from behind her dark glasses and two men who smoked furtively and muttered to each other.
“How many wives are there up there?”
“Not as many as there are girlfriends back here. The old fucker.” I think I flinched and the first man noticed Dora and me. He coughed and nudged the second into silence.
The priest’s chanting stopped, and after a pause came the sounds of earth hitting wood. Then the mourners parted and the priest came through, followed by a foreign-looking woman holding hands with a girl, who looked as I imagined my granddaughter might be – pretty but rebellious, with tangled dark hair and a powerful gaze that she turned on people who looked at her with pity. I backed away, holding on to the edge of a tall tombstone, just as I saw my sister coming, walking with an authoritative step. Alexandra saw me, but there was no glimmer of recognition and she kept walking. Why should she think that some old woman lurking in the shadows was the past returned to haunt her? I noticed that she was wearing my mother’s earrings – the diamond rosettes from Constantinople. I could never forget them. Her hair that absurd shade of blue that certain old women make the mistake of thinking sophisticated. Why not make it purple? Or green?
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Dora and I waited until everyone had left and then walked up some steps and along the path to the hole surrounded by wreaths and bouquets. A grave-digger was already shovelling the soil but stopped when we approached. I asked if I could throw in a handful and he held up a spade-load for me to take some, before stepping back respectfully. My offering had just scattered onto the coffin when I felt nauseous. My upper lip tingled and darkness descended.
When I awoke I was lying with my head on something soft yet lumpy.
“Are you all right?” Dora was sprinkling water on my forehead and lips. The grave-digger stood close by, looking down at me. I moved my fingers and felt the earth filled with small stones beneath me, and turning my head I saw that I was sprawled by Nikitas’ grave on what appeared to be a mass of white roses. All around, heaps of flowers were emitting a sweet smell.
Dora said, “We put the wreath under your head as a pillow.” She was always the practical one. “Just stay still for a few minutes. You’re tired and I expect you haven’t eaten much today.” I admitted I hadn’t and didn’t mention my heart. Dora and the grave-digger were talking. The man was ready for conversation now the crisis was over.
“Last week we had a woman try to jump in. They caught her just in time and were pulling her up by her arms. There’s not much we haven’t seen in here. There are others who almost live here, they’re so attached to the tomb. But I don’t blame them.” He asked Dora whether he should call an ambulance, but I insisted that I didn’t need anything like that.
Dora said, “Here, have some chocolate.” She brought out a small bar from her handbag, breaking off shards, like we used to do in the mountains when it was cold and we wanted to make it last. She fed them to me and the sharp fragments melted, sweet and smooth in my mouth.
The House on Paradise Street Page 6