The House on Paradise Street

by Sofka Zinovieff

  Antigone turned to face me, but I was unable to say anything. I was deeply shaken. I put my arm round her shoulder and waited. She looked straight at me, registering the shock on my face, and when she continued, her voice was stronger.

  “It happened once more,” she said. “I suppose that later, when he learned I was pregnant, he must have known he was the father. Though he didn’t let on. From what I understand, he didn’t treat Nikitas like a son later, when he knew him. I never told anyone. I let my family believe that I was the immoral woman, the liberated leftist with a lover in the mountains. It was better that way. Better to have a beautiful lie than the ugly truth.”

  I asked Antigone how she could have left her son with the man who raped her.

  “Don’t forget that it is easy to simplify with hindsight. I didn’t have the choice to take him with me. If I hadn’t let him go, I would have stayed in prison and he would have been sent to one of Frederika’s fascist children’s homes. Later, it was impossible to go back and take Nikitas once I was in the Soviet Union. I thought I had done the best thing for him.” She paused. “I loved my son, but it was an awful thing to give birth to a child resulting from an abhorrent act of hatred. I wasn’t the only woman to suffer that fate. There was a girl at Averoff who lost her mind. She used to hit her baby, shaking it until it screamed. Then she would hug it and kiss it and weep for her brutality. We often had to take it away from her until she calmed down. She wasn’t really a bad person …”

  I waited for her to continue, not speaking.

  “I would never have touched Nikitas, but…” Antigone left the words unsaid. “When my mother offered to take him, it made sense. I knew that Spiros would be there, but I hoped he would be kind to the boy he had fathered.”

  I thought of telling her what Nikitas had said about Spiros hitting him, calling him “bastard”, lying about his mother being dead.

  “Nikitas grew up to be a wonderful man,” I said. “He was loved, he had two marvellous children, he was successful.”

  Antigone faced me square-on. “There’s something else you should know. “Nikitas found out.”

  “When? How do you know?”

  “The evening before he died, he rang up Dora. She was staying with her sister, down by the sea in Varkiza. Nikitas called her and asked her straight out. He said he knew, and that his assistant had been to the Communist Party archives and found everything there – all the torturers and rapists, with their names and dates. He had worked it out.”

  “Danae.” I groaned. She may not have had an affair with Nikitas, but she had been devastating in another way. I wondered whether she knew how lethal her information had been, whether he had confided in her.

  “I don’t know the researcher’s name,” said Antigone. “And it doesn’t matter. He would have found it out anyway. You can say that for the communists – they were good at keeping records.”

  I nodded dismally. It was stupid, if tempting, to search for scapegoats.

  “When Nikitas asked Dora to tell him the truth, she did.” Antigone looked at me with concern. “She said there wasn’t a choice. He said he knew. At the end of the call he said he would drive out to see her. He was upset and sounded as though he’d been drinking.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was wondering why he hadn’t told me, whether I could have said something.

  “Of course, Dora feels terrible about what happened,” continued Antigone. “She only learned about the accident from the television and didn’t know what to do. She wanted to call you, but she didn’t want to upset you even more. I hope you won’t hold it against her. She’s a good person.”

  I would like to say that after Antigone’s confession, we went downstairs and confronted Alexandra. I have pictured the scene: Alexandra expressing disbelief then shock, explaining that she had known nothing of the rape, the horror at what she was learning about her late husband. I tried to persuade Antigone that it was important we should tell her sister, even if Alexandra’s crimes were those of omission. Perhaps there could be a reconciliation. I pictured the two elderly women embracing in my apartment, learning to love each other again. My thoughts came out in clichés: working through the trauma, catharsis, closure…

  “I won’t even discuss that,” said Antigone, leaving no room for negotiation. “I told you because you asked. You needed to know. But what will anyone gain at this stage if my sister finds out?” She looked straight at me, challenging, but also with a warmth and openness I hadn’t seen before, as though her confession had lightened her. “Who knows? It might kill her to discover that her life was based on lies and that Spiros was a monster. I have kept it to myself until now and I want to keep it between us.”

  Antigone made me promise that I would not mention the attack to anyone.

  “What about Orestes and Tig?” I asked. “I think they should at least know who their grandfather was.” Antigone paused, considering the delicacy of her grandchildren’s position.

  “I don’t want the poison to drip on down the generations,” she said. “It needs to end. But perhaps you could tell them that Spiros was their grandfather – if that’s what you want. Without the details, at least at this stage. It’s very delicate, Maud. If my sister finds out, she will turn the subject into another battle between her and me. I can’t have this horror as the thing I brought back home. We won’t tell Alexandra.”

  * * *

  That evening, I consciously thought about my best times with Nikitas. I didn’t want everything to be dominated by his end, which threatened to become an obsession. My anger at him had died down, its place taken by a profound sense of loss. Now that I was not plagued by suspicions regarding Danae, I was able to return to what had been there all along – love and tenderness towards a complex man who had his flaws. The fact that he had been unable to share his dreadful discoveries, even with me, was awful, but not something I could hold against him. I realised that I would never know the extent to which he had been affected by finding out that Spiros – the person he had spent his life rejecting – was his father. I had no way of discovering what role it had played in his death, but I was now able to imagine Nikitas’ final hours somewhat better than before: the horrible realisation, the drinking, the conversation with Dora, the determination to see her and find out more. It was this last fact that gave some comfort, making me more able to rule out suicide. Not only do I believe that he wouldn’t have left us without a word, but I know he wanted information, he was onto a story. And in this verdict, I am backed up by the autopsy’s conclusion that his car crash was an accident. This is the version I will choose, though the truth is that nobody will ever be certain.

  I disagree with Antigone’s favourite expression – “It is what it is.” In fact, things frequently turn out to be dramatically different from how they first appear. The past inhabits us, as Nikitas said. It is not something to be put away in a box. Still, at this point, I needed to prise myself away from all the pain and history that threatened to take over my life. Instead of focusing on the horrors that had characterised my husband’s early years and his death, I thought about the good parts, above all, our summer trips, which were always unplanned; “spontaneous” is a defining word in Greek and Nikitas was loyal to the principle. One year we travelled around the mountain villages in Epirus and another we went down to Mani, but our favourite was going from island to island in the Aegean, changing location as the mood took us. Because we never booked boat tickets in advance, we often ended up sleeping on deck, using beach mats and towels as bedding, with Tig cocooned between us. We would wake up in the warm glow of the sunrise, with salt and oil smuts on our faces, and Nikitas would fetch coffee from the bar (Nescafé with tinned milk, but it tasted delicious).

  One summer, we ended up on a tiny island in the Dodecanese, near Lipsi. It was inhabited by a single family who owned a taverna with a few rented rooms. We were their only visitors. Nobody came to the bay where we went to swim apart from a few goats, their bells sounding as they trotted
down to lick the salt from the rocks. The sea was cool despite the burning July heat and shoals of tiny silver fish darted past as we swam. Nikitas spent one afternoon diving down to collect the black urchins that clung to the rocks and he taught me how to recognise the edible females – the larger, browner “priests’ wives” – which often have a small “flag” of seaweed speared on their spines. While he amassed a pile of the creatures, Tig, aged three or four, lay curled up asleep under a thin sarong in the shade of a huge, feathery-leafed salt cedar. Its branches dipped into the water and its twisted roots spread along the edge of the stony beach. In the early evening, as the sun slipped down, Nikitas looked to me like Odysseus – strong and quick-witted, making himself at home on a new island. He cut the brittle sea urchins open with a knife to reveal the bright, coral-coloured roe, which we ate straight from the spiky carapace on lumps of bread. The briny substance was like sea made solid, and we washed it down with aniseed ouzo in a tin cup. I pictured us, our bodies warm and salty, groaning with pleasure at the perfect simplicity of the feast we had conjured up.

  26

  Now it’s different

  TIG

  June 20th 2010

  Dear Mr Fell,

  I feel really bad that I never answered your letter. And now it’s been a year and a half since you were in Greece and since you wrote to me from England. I’m not used to writing letters. In the end, it was my mum who said I should write now. Mum said that now I’m sixteen, school has finished for the summer and I’ve got plenty of time, I should get writing. She thought you would be interested to hear our news, and that you’d have been sad to have missed the ceremony to bless Markos’ bones in the village so I should tell you about that. So finally, you’re getting my reply. I’m sorry it’s so late.

  After the forty-day memorial for Babas, when you went back to England, Yiayia Antigone and Chryssa told me they’d made a plan. They’d ordered a taxi to take us all the way up to Perivoli. I agreed to go along too – there wasn’t any school as they decided to close them down from early December because of the demonstrations, and nobody was going in anyway. It’s not the sort of thing I’d usually want to do, especially with my arm in a sling, but after everything that had happened I felt like getting away. We decided not to ask Mum to go. We thought it might put her in an awkward position with Yiayia Alexandra, who would probably be annoyed about the plan (it was only later that Orestes told me how he and our grandmother had “stolen” the bones!). I told Mum that I wanted to get to know my new Yiayia, especially if she was going to disappear back to Russia. Mum looked a bit worried, but agreed. She took me to the hospital for a check-up and then she kept making sure I had my phone charger and toothpaste etc etc. She even made us some sandwiches for the trip and came to see us off in her embarrassing hippy dressing gown (that she made from an old silk patchwork and is shredding at the edges).

  It was very dark and cold that morning. Chryssa carried the metal box with the skeleton and put it in the boot of the taxi along with our bags. And then, just as we were getting into the car, there was this cat hanging around the street, miaowing like mad. It was so funny when Yiayia Antigone got excited and started calling to it. I couldn’t believe it when she said, “Quick, try and catch him. It’s Misha. He’s my friend’s cat. He came all the way from Moscow with me. We must get him.” But the cat didn’t want to go to her, and was hissing with his ears flat. She was going “ksss, ksss” (the Russian way to call a cat), and Chryssa was going “psss, psss” (the Greek way) and even Mum joined in with “here kitty, kitty,” in English. In the end I managed to get him by keeping quiet, moving slowly and picking him up by the scruff of the neck like a kitten. He scratched me a bit on my good arm, but after that we gave him some milk and he calmed down enough for us to put him in a cardboard box with air holes and a blanket.

  It took about three hours to get to Perivoli. It rained a lot. I held Misha in the box on my lap and sat with Yiayia in the back and Chryssa sat in the front. The driver was a young guy and I don’t think he could understand what was going on, what with the bones, the cat, the teenager etc etc. Chryssa had picked some lemons from the tree and handed us quarters to suck, so we didn’t feel sick. They really worked.

  When we arrived in Perivoli, it was cold but our house was warm and a fire had been lit by one of Chryssa’s cousins or nieces. It was strange being there without Mum or Babas. The box of bones was placed on a table and Chryssa lit a kandýli with oil and there was a framed photo of Markos, who was really young when he died – only a bit older than me. I know he was your friend too. The next day they had organised a service for my “uncle”, like a kind of coming home. We were all so surprised when Mum showed up, completely unexpectedly, with Yiayia Alexandra and, unbelievably, Orestes. They said they’d just come for the ceremony and would leave for Athens again right after. Yiayia Alexandra said, “We are family and we should be able to bury our dead together.” And there was lots of hugging and kissing and it was all a bit much really, though it was a relief they weren’t quarrelling any more.

  Mum had told me and Orestes about Spiros being Babas’ real father and not Kapetan Eagle, like they’d always thought. But I didn’t really understand why she got so over-excited about the whole thing. It’s so long ago now. As far as I’m concerned, it’s “So what the eggs!” as Mum and I used to say. I hardly remember Papous Spiros, and “Eagle” died years before even Mum was born. What difference does it make when they’re all dead? I don’t know why Mum took it so seriously – they weren’t her fathers. She tried to explain to me about how hard it was sometimes, when life doesn’t turn out like the movies, when the baddies don’t get punished and the goodies don’t live happily ever after. But what did she expect? Did she think that life is fair? It didn’t really make sense to me, but she made Orestes and me promise not to tell Yiayia Alexandra. It would be hard to learn that your husband cheated on you with your sister. Nobody wanted her to suffer after all that time. I agree about that.

  After we had gone to the church with Markos’ remains, we took them to the spooky shed in the cemetery with a corrugated iron roof and a window with chicken wire instead of glass. I knew it was the ossuary but I’d never seen inside. I was surprised to find that it was stuffed with boxes. There were newer, shinier ones of metal and really old, crumbling wooden ones, and they all had skeletons in them. They were all people from the village who had been buried and then dug up after some years. So many dead people.

  All the bones made me understand better why Mum says she wants to be cremated when she dies. She told me they recently passed a law allowing it in Greece, but nobody does it because the Church forbids it. Perhaps they think it’s a bit lonely being burnt, compared to being part of a big collection of skeletons – like a party for the dead. Chryssa showed me where her parents and brothers’ boxes were and said she was glad they were still all there, close together, where she can visit them – Christos Kallos, Lukia Kallos, Panayiotis Kallos, Theodoros Kallos. My grandmother and Chryssa hung around outside the building afterwards, talking and crying. They said that they had “seen things here that nobody should see”.

  “It’s history now,” Yiayia Antigone said. “It is what it is.” And Chryssa said, “Yes, but we will never forget them.”

  A few days later, I took the train back to Athens on my own. My grandmother told me to look out for the huge, tall viaduct at Gorgopotamos when I passed over it. She explained how you had helped blow it up in the war and told me about the caves and the partisans fighting the Nazis. When the train went over, I looked right down into the gorge and imagined what it was like when you were hiding down there. Awesome.

  After our expedition to Perivoli during that strange December in 2008, Chryssa decided not to go back to Athens. She’d been meaning to retire to her village for years, but hadn’t wanted to leave Yiayia Alexandra alone. Then, once she was actually in Perivoli, she was certain it was the right time. She thought she’d stay with one of her cousins, but Mum said she’d be d
oing us a favour if she stayed in our house, so she did.

  “I keep your house warm,” Chryssa told me when I arrived this time. “If a house is cold and kept closed too long, it dies.”

  Yiayia Antigone decided to stay in the village with Chryssa for a while as she would be lonely back in Russia. I had hoped to go back and see her, to get to know her a bit better. It was fun to get a new grandmother all of a sudden. But then she died. One morning in February, she just didn’t wake up. The doctor said it was her heart. Chryssa said she’d been “ready” because she was where she belonged and had finally taken her brother home. We all drove up from Athens (again!) and had yet another funeral. We were becoming experts. I can’t say it was shattering like losing Babas, but it was sad that just when my real grandmother returned, she had to leave again. Yiayia Alexandra came and actually looked quite gloomy, even though they didn’t get on. She quoted a poem about death only being sweet “When we lie in our fatherland.” She also said, “It’s my turn next,” and we all told her we’d had enough of coffins and she had better keep going for a long time. Luckily, she’s been fine, and I often go to lunch with her when I get back from school and sometimes do my homework in her sitting room, because it’s much more peaceful and tidy than my room.

  Lots of people came to Antigone’s funeral at the church in the main square of Perivoli – the whole village turns up when someone dies. We walked past her coffin before they closed it and kissed her on the forehead, which was smooth but hard, like a piece of leather on a cold stone. Orestes and I stopped spending so much time together after that. I got fed up with his theories and I didn’t really like his friends who were always making plans to “kill the pigs”. They treated me like a child and I’d had enough of violence and death. Orestes is right that you can’t say “please” and wait for the fat politicians who run the country to see the light and do the right thing. You have to fight and make them change. But I was secretly quite glad when Thanasis and Fotis were arrested as I thought they had a bad influence on Orestes and they just hated everything. They were accused of being part of Revolutionary Cell, which has done some really bad things, including blowing up a bank (luckily it was empty) and shooting (and badly wounding) a policeman. They’re still awaiting trial, so it’s been a tricky time for Orestes. But the good thing is he actually got down to doing some work and he’s hoping he’ll finally finish his degree this year and stop being “an eternal student”. He wants to go to England to do a post-grad thing.