The House on Paradise Street

by Sofka Zinovieff

  Aunt Alexandra’s reaction to Antigone’s return was completely different. I went down to her apartment after 5.30, knowing she would have finished her regular two-hour nap – a non-negotiable habit to which she attributed her lasting health and beauty (though she didn’t put it like that).

  “Here? Back in Greece? She can’t be.” Her breath came loud and scratchy. She had already applied her regulation powder and lipstick – the bold red of her youth – but her lips now looked livid against a chalky face.

  “Wait,” she said, removing her hearing aids from both ears, thus becoming almost entirely deaf and unable to hear any more of the undesirable news. It was a useful ploy that often gave her time to think. She adjusted something on the pink, snail-like devices that produced a squeal, and then fitted them back into place. She patted her bouffant hair as though checking it was still all there and tucked her hands into the waistband of her skirt – an unusual but characteristic gesture of hers that I associated with intransigence.

  “She can’t just come back. I made a promise that my sister will never enter my house again. I cannot let down Spiros. Before he died, he reminded me of that.” Alexandra’s face had sagged from shock.

  “I won’t go back on my word.” She looked at me severely. “Antigone destroyed our family. She led my brother Markos to his fate and she wanted to destroy Greece. Before she left, she sent a burnt letter to me and Spiros.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the worst thing you can do to your family. I’ll never forget opening the envelope and pulling out the letter. It was charred ash around the edges. Pieces came off in my hand and left marks on my clothes. She wrote that she would never see us again. Spiros said it was black magic, a curse, and that my sister was a witch.”

  Gradually, as I filled her in on the details of Antigone’s return, Alexandra regained some of her control and poise. She asked about her sister with a formality that came of using a word that is normally taboo: Antigone, the unspeakable name, the disgraced person. I understood better why it had been such a bitter experience for Alexandra when Nikitas and I named our daughter after her younger sister. Looking back, it was perhaps an uncharacteristic decision to follow the conventions of Greek naming, where grandparents are honoured in their grandchildren’s names (paternal side first), but I liked the name and Nikitas apparently wanted to commemorate his missing mother. Despite Alexandra’s love of propriety she had been appalled. Even after fourteen years, she was still unable to bring herself to call Tig by her baptismal name, preferring Beba – Baby – or any number of endearments (my gold, my eyes, my lamb, my love, my bud) rather than pay tribute to her sister in this way. She had always been Yiayia Alexandra–Granny Alexandra. And in spite of the tension that persisted between her and Nikitas, it was Granny Alexandra who had taken Tig out for walks around the neighbourhood when she was little, who had had her to stay when Nikitas and I went away for a few days, and who had provided a solid sense of extended family for our trio.

  “There are many things you should understand about Nikitas’ mother.” Aunt Alexandra was pulling herself back into control. “She betrayed us. First, the family, and then her country. She joined a band of brigands that was ruled from Moscow and wanted to turn us into a miniature Soviet Union. We’ve all seen what happened in Albania.” She was getting into her stride now and drew herself up straight. “You’d think they’d been saints from the way they talk about themselves, but they were bullies and thugs. They’ve even admitted it themselves. There are those on the Left who regret provoking the civil war and destroying Greece. There’s a book called Luckily We Were Defeated, Comrades, by Lazaridis, and he was a friend and fellow prisoner of Beloyiannis. I suppose you know who he was?” I confessed I didn’t and Alexandra explained about Beloyiannis being “the great martyr of the Left”, who was executed in 1952 as a traitor.

  “They were wrong.” Alexandra sounded stronger as she lined up her arguments in impregnable rows. “You can’t believe what they did – the killings, the brutality, how ruthless they were. They slit people’s throats with tin cans to save on the bullets. And as for children… they were even worse than the Turks, with their ‘gathering of the children’.” Paidomazoma – the very word was chilling, conjuring up centuries of Ottoman domination and cruelty, when the best of the empire’s children were forcibly plucked out and sent for lifelong military service as Janissaries in Constantinople. During the Civil War, the communists had “saved” vulnerable children from warfare by taking them to the eastern bloc or “stolen” them from their parents in order to indoctrinate them abroad. It all depended which side you believed.

  “They didn’t care about Greece, about their fatherland, and they saw the Allies as enemies because they were ‘Imperialists’. Such nonsense. They just wanted power. That’s all there is to it. And thank God, they lost.”

  “I know both sides did lots of bad things,” I said, trying to appease Aunt Alexandra. “But I’ve never really understood why the family took it so personally that Antigone had different beliefs. She was still a daughter and a sister.”

  “She took Markos.” The intransigence was clear in her tone. “He was still a schoolboy when she made him leave everything and go with her. He wasn’t even shaving yet – a baby, but they gave him a gun and he was dead before his nineteenth birthday. He didn’t deserve that. My mother begged and pleaded, but Antigone was pig-headed. She could do anything she liked with Markos and she didn’t understand that certain things come before ideals and grand plans. I don’t want to make a list of accusations.” Aunt Alexandra smiled at me. “I know we can’t live in the past. But you must be careful. You can knock all you like on the deaf man’s door. My sister will never change.”

  I told Alexandra I’d see myself out by the kitchen door, planning to say hello to Chryssa in the kitchen. Morena was there with her, preparing green beans for a stew, older now, like all of us, with two children of her own. No longer the nervous immigrant I had first met before I married Nikitas, she had become a solid family matriarch, whose sons spoke Greek like natives.

  “That’s nice, you’ll meet your mother-in-law,” said Morena, straightforwardly and not suspecting the degree of trouble this visit might entail after I announced the news.

  “Tell me what you remember about Antigone,” I asked Chryssa.

  “Antigone was a good kid. They were all good kids.” Chryssa said she remembered playing with all three of the Perifanis children during the long summers up in the village. Her father had worked for Petros, their father, caring for the old stone house when they were away, and tending their large orchard and vegetable garden. Each week he had sent a box of vegetables, seasonal fruits and fresh eggs to Athens, taking it down to the train station at Lianokladi, and it had been collected at Larissis station in Athens by one of Petros’ employees.

  “There is nothing for Antigone to be ashamed of. In a civil war, everybody loses. And Greeks know better than anyone how to put out their own eyes. We don’t need help with that.”

  * * *

  The next day, I rang the newspaper and asked to speak to Danae. I wanted to know what she had discovered and was curious to find out more about her. I couldn’t help a touch of envy creeping through me as I dialled. Who was this woman who had known so much about Nikitas and his preoccupations? Why had he confided in her and not me?

  “Surname?” they asked at the switchboard.

  “I don’t know. She’s a sub-editor, I think.”

  “Ah, Danae Glykofridis, I’ll put you through.” Her surname – Sweetbrow – was gratingly charming.

  She didn’t sound pleased to hear from me. “How are you, Kyria Perifanis? My condolences, once again. I didn’t have an opportunity to speak with you at the funeral.”

  So she had been there. I wondered if I’d seen her. “I would like to meet you if you had time. I’m trying to gather up Nikitas’ research and I know you were helping him.” I tried to stop my voice sounding too spiky, though Danae did not.<
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  “Things are very busy at the paper. I’m not sure what I could tell you.”

  I rose to the challenge, not wanting to let her get away so easily. “It wouldn’t take long.”

  “What sort of thing are you interested in?” Her tone was neutral now, if wary.

  “I’m just sorting through Nikitas’ papers, doing a bit of my own investigation into his life. I wondered whether you could tell me something about the direction he was taking his book.”

  “I didn’t do that much.” I heard her lighting up and exhaling smoke that sounded like exasperation. “He wanted me to find out more about the beginning of the Civil War. I’ve been going through the archives, especially at the Communist Party, and also what’s left of the police records. So much was burnt after the end of the Junta.”

  “What about his personal story? I know he wanted to investigate that.”

  “He told me I must never talk to anyone about that,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t discuss it. Not even with you.”

  I was so surprised, I laughed. A horrible, distressed sound.

  “He made me promise.” She was making it even worse.

  What were these promises I didn’t know about?

  “I could tell you what I’ve found out about the British interest in Greece in the 1940s,” she continued. “About Tsortsil” (I always used to find the Greek pronunciation of Churchill amusing). “That’s what I’ve been doing most work on recently.”

  I didn’t want a history lesson from this woman. I was sure she would have learned all the best lines from Nikitas about how dreadful my sympátriotes – my fellow countrymen – were. “What about the Wasp?”

  She paused. “I’m very sorry. Really. But I always keep my word.”

  Later, I thought of sarcastic remarks I could have made about the mistaken idealism of youth, but I just said, “OK, I’ll call you again if I have some specific questions.” I put the phone down and banged my desk so loudly that Alexandra rang from below to ask if I was all right.

  10

  I dreamed that Greece might still be free

  ANTIGONE

  “How long will you be staying in Athens? Will you go back to Moscow?” She was full of personal questions, this English girl. And she had an unnerving way of turning to look at me while she was driving, and swerving in and out of the traffic like a Muscovite taxi driver. She may be quiet but she is not timid. The truth is her curiosity has helped me escape a prison of loneliness. I never thought I would, but I have come home. I once believed I had created a life in Russia, but it evaporated like breath on an icy day. I have so little to show for those decades – only a bolt hole on the tenth floor that I don’t care if I never see again. Not even my books. Ideals and dreams are all very well for the young, but at the end we yearn for the soil and roots from which we came. I realised this very late.

  Her questions caught me off guard.

  “I want to make sense of Nikitas’ life and I can only do that with your help. Will you tell me what happened to your brother? And Johnny? And what about Nikitas’ father? I hardly know anything. Who was this man Nikitas told me about – Kapetan Aitos? Did Captain Eagle have a family? Is there someone left?”

  I told her that was all history. “Leave it,” I said. “You can’t bring back Kapetan Eagle and I have no idea about his family. Let the dead rest and get on with your life.”

  Mod looked at me with frustration and opened all the car windows abruptly when I lit a cigarette. I don’t know what to tell her.

  When I arrived back in Patissia, Dora was with the young daughter of one of the Ukrainian prostitutes.

  “I’m just helping Sveta with her homework. There’s stuffed cabbage leaves in the kitchen. Help yourself while we finish.”

  I wasn’t hungry and went straight to my bedroom, lying down on the narrow bed. It was covered with a lumpy, crocheted blanket that dug into my back and smelled of the village – sacks of wool in our store room, ready for spinning. Markos and I used to hide in there, underneath the main house in Perivoli. It was where I first smoked, aged ten. I had stolen some cigarettes from Uncle Diamantis, whose supplies from the Papastratos factory were endless. Markos watched me, as though admiring my daring, then took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and inhaled like a real old professional from the coffee shop.

  * * *

  When I think about the war I sometimes forget how proud we were in the beginning. That was when our tired old dictator, Metaxas, pronounced his famous “No!” to the Italians. No, they would not be allowed to come and trample all over Greece. Our defeat of Mussolini’s macaroni-eaters up in the snowy mountains of Albania was a triumph against all the odds. The names of Koritsa, Ayioi Saranta and Argyrokastro became famous across the world. They gave hope at a time when only the Greeks and the British were holding out against the fascists. But then the Germans joined in, bombarding Athens, flying in over the docks at Piraeus and across the city. A siren was set up near our house and when it started, we’d run next door to the Lambakis house which had a shelter in the basement. I always tried to take my dog, Irma, which annoyed Kyria and Kyrios Lambakis.

  “Leave the dirty dog outside,” Kyria Katina said each time, and I refused to go in without her. My mother called Irma my “lady-in-waiting”, for her loyalty. I’d found her as a muddy, black puppy, roaming around on Ardittos hill several years earlier and though of uncertain ancestry, she had turned into a well-behaved highly intelligent dog. Whenever the siren rang Irma howled with fear, like a second warning. “A devil’s hound,” Kyria Katina said. But in the shelter Irma was quiet, keeping one eye on me and the other on Kyria Katina who whispered prayers. They always lit the oil lamp under the icon that Kyrios Kostas had hung for extra protection.

  Gradually, our boys started returning from the Albanian front and my school became a reception station for the wounded. You’d see lines and lines of soldiers arriving on foot, having walked all the way. Their faces were blank with disappointment and shock. Many came without boots, their feet bound in cloths, with gangrene and frostbite. Some were ill, others had lost arms and legs. Uncle Diamantis returned missing a toe, and two fingers from his left hand. Although he’d been a political prisoner on Aegina before the war, they allowed him to fight for his country. After that he always walked with a limp and he never played his guitar again. But the worst thing for everybody was not the injuries, but the disillusionment and humiliation.

  The Germans arrived in Athens in Holy Week of spring 1941. By then, there was nothing left of the British army stationed in Greece – they’d moved to Egypt, along with the Greek forces and a provisional Greek government. The Greeks stayed there, under the thumb of the English, until the Germans left. My father called us all inside and we sat in the drawing room with the shutters closed. Everyone had shut their windows as though in mourning and the entire city was quiet. The only noise was the tanks rumbling like a distant storm. It was one of the few times I saw my father weep. For him it was a dishonour; he was deeply ashamed. And he wasn’t the only one. Koryzis, our Prime Minister, shot himself. But shame was just the beginning. By the winter there was practically no food as the Nazis took away what we had. The English naval blockade meant that food was not getting through at all. It was better to let us starve than help the Germans. Even with money and ration cards, there was barely anything to buy. Our weekly crate of fruit and vegetables from the village could not be loaded on the train any more. It was the first time I ever felt hunger as something more than just the pleasant prelude to a meal. And we were among the lucky people. We tried to sell off things from the house, but money became almost worthless. You couldn’t eat it. Father had to lay off all but one of the seamstresses at his atelier – she did repairs in exchange for bread or beans.

  People started dying of starvation. It became common to see them collapse on the street, but I still remember the first time I ever saw a dead person. It was my sixteenth birthday, in November 1941. A school friend and I were
walking along Hermes Street, looking at what remained in the shop windows, checking for a bargain. I bought some wild greens from a woman who said she gathered them on Hymettus. Later, however, my mother said they were not edible and threw the lot away. It was just after the barrow with the greens that we saw the corpse. He looked about forty, dressed in a suit and hat – an educated type. His body lay curled on the pavement and I noticed the slightly yellow teeth protruding from his open mouth. After that, we got used to it. Every day we saw the carts and trucks filled with bodies. Our lives moved so quickly away from privilege. That’s what war teaches – the order we take for granted can just vanish like theatrical scenery. Our everyday existence is a fragile facade. Behind it lurks violence and chaos.

  Soon, the only people flourishing were the black-marketeers. In our neighbourhood there was one man who profited from hunger – Dimitris Koftos, Alexandra’s future father-in-law, though we didn’t know that at the time. He had a grocer’s shop in Archimedes Street from before the war, but during the occupation he lived like a pashà. Kyrios Dimitris got fatter when everyone else was losing weight. He had big moustaches like a nineteenth-century brigand and tiny piggy eyes. Soon he was buying up houses from people who were forced to sell them to survive, and he acted like the local boss.

  Everyone knew Kyrios Dimitris had links with the Germans and Italians. He closed his shop and stuffed his cellar with sacks and tins, and things that you couldn’t get – not just flour, beans and oil, but chocolate and sugar. And sometimes good bread – not the dreadful black German stuff with potato flour. Kyrios Dimitris only sold food if he knew you as he was frightened of getting caught. My mother used to send Alexandra over to get some black-eyed beans or lentils because she always came back with something extra in the bag – a few biscuits or some eggs. She was very pretty when she was young, with her blue eyes and light coloured, curled hair, and Spiros, the oldest of the three Koftos sons, had his eye on her. I can’t imagine why she let someone like him pay court to her. I’d have thrown the eggs back at his head.