“Dad was like that.”
“Nicolai is brother, husband, father,” Christina said. “He was not like this.”
“He liked young women and his fun.” Alexia crossed her arms. I like you, Christina, and you’ve been very good to me, but I can’t help it, she thought. I lived with him. I know what he was like, what he really cared about. You have no idea. Wait until you hear about Theodora. Then you’ll know.
“He had reason.”
“You mean excuses,” Alexia said.
Christina’s jaw tightened. “How can you understand? You are so young.”
The mountains were the first thing Alexia noticed as they drove into Kalavryta. They hovered close around the tiny village, their snow-covered tips reminding her of Vancouver’s north-shore mountains. She liked mountains. They made her feel comfortable most of the time even though they sometimes scared her, too. It was gorgeous here and so peaceful. This might be the place she could tell Christina about the package, maybe over lunch. After they’d taken in the sights. It might be the perfect time.
They parked the car near the railroad station. A train with two passenger cars stood in front, its paint chipped and faded, rust creeping up its flank, poppies growing underneath its undercarriage and around its iron wheels. “While they fix the tracks, they leave the train to fall apart,” Christina said. “I never understand.”
Christina and Alexia crossed the quiet main street and walked up a cobblestone path. Train tracks were painted onto the stone. Alexia wondered if the train had once come this way. Christina slipped her arm inside Alexia’s. She pointed out the whitewashed houses, with their square wooden bay windows jutting forward. Alexia feigned interest and slid her arm out to take a closer look.
She knew Christina was trying to make this a special day for the two of them, but it just made her think back to the special days she used to have with her mother, “when Daddy isn’t allowed to come and we can go anywhere you want. It’s our time.” They’d held hands and giggled their way through museums, plays, Granville Island, restaurants, art galleries and the library. Later, Sara told Nicolai he wasn’t allowed to ask them what they’d been doing because it was girls’ stuff. She’d smiled when she’d said that and winked at Alexia.
After her mother died, her father had tried. She had to give him that. He had set aside some time each week just for the two of them, but they both got busy, him with his work, her with school. She didn’t care. Why should she? He didn’t.
“Revolution of 1821 started in this province,” Christina said, bringing Alexia out of her daydreams. “Independence from the Ottomans.” Christina puffed, out of breath.
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Greek history.”
“Your father teaches you. No?”
“Maybe he tried. I don’t remember.” An image flashed in her mind of sitting beside her father at the kitchen table, books in front of them.
Her neck was stiff, had been since she woke up. Christina’s feather pillows were lovely to look at, but not very comfortable.
“In 1943, the Germans burn the village and kill all men and all boys more than thirteen years,” Christina said calmly, as if sharing a bit of family history with a friend. “This building is museum now, it was school before, where Germans tried, but did not succeed to kill women and children too.”
“That’s horrible,” Alexia said. “Why didn’t someone stop them?”
“You are young,” Christina said. “You still believe you can make things better.”
Alexia touched Christina’s forearm. “But you can.”
“I do not know this.”
The building looked more like a government office than a school or museum. Christina said it had been a concentration camp run by the Italians from 1941 to April 1943. “Better the Italians than the Germans.”
They entered the first large room. Laid out under glass was a child’s notebook, the letters smeared and fading. Televisions and video equipment sat in various spots around the room, the murmur of voices echoed. They went over to the first television and listened to the testimonials of survivors. Alexia read the subtitles. There was no escape.
“Your grandfather was here,” Christina said.
Alexia turned to face her. “And survived?”
“His mother refuse to let him go.”
I knew it, Alexia thought. It was possible to change the course of events if you really wanted to.
The next room had a high ceiling and tall bolted doors on one side. On the walls were black and white pictures, the faces of those who died the day of the massacre. A light would illuminate one picture, then switch to another. Christina crossed herself. Alexia closed her eyes. There was too much suffering in the strangers’ stares. Too many young faces.
Christina stroked Alexia’s arm. “That is your great-grandfather over there in the top corner. He died with the others that day.”
Alexia waited for the light to find her great-grandfather’s face. She stared at the shadow of him, her neck aching with the strain of holding her head in one position. Her father had never told her about any of this.
When the light found him at last, Christina bowed her head in prayer. Alexia stared at the photograph in shock. It looked just like her father. It’s not him, she told herself. You never even knew this man. Still, she had to look away. She swallowed hard, her hands together behind her back. Squeezed tight. Her neck throbbed.
The light moved on to another photo, another set of features, another pair of staring eyes. Had any of them known what was going to happen? Why couldn’t they get away?
Behind the fenced grounds of the museum stood a life-sized sculpture. A life-like scene. Alexia moved closer, knotted her fingers through the mesh. Exposure to the elements had turned the sculpture green, but still the four bronze figures seemed so real. A dead man in a suit lay on a blanket, his eyes open to the sky. A woman tugged at the blanket where his body lay. A young boy no more than six pulled at her sleeve as if to persuade her to let go, leave the dead man behind. Another figure stood apart from the rest. A girl, slightly older than the boy, her arms limp by her sides. There is no victory in war, was scratched in various languages on the slab in front of the figures.
Alexia searched the girl’s vacant gaze and tightened her grip on the fence. The bronze girl looked to be the same age she had been when her mother died.
Alexia was eight. A bright yellow glow crawled under her closed bedroom door and woke her. Her eyes were dry and itchy as she stood at the top of the stairs outside her room. She rubbed at them and focused. Her mother lay on a grey gurney downstairs, her soft and worry-free face vacant and pasty. Mavis tried to hold onto Alexia when she ran downstairs, but she’d ripped herself out of the embrace, reached for her mother’s hand. She’d always had warm hands. This icy skin wasn’t hers. Alexia drew back at first, then took Sara’s hand and stroked it gently so as not to damage the delicate skin. She rubbed harder and still no warmth returned. Mavis tried to encourage Alexia away. Stuart was standing beside Nicolai, an arm around Nicolai’s shoulders. Her father had said, “Leave her. It’s okay.” Stuart nodded to Mavis, who stepped back. Alexia knew nothing was going to be okay again. Still she couldn’t give up. Her eyes throbbed and her hands ached. Time passed and no one moved. Alexia kissed the cold hand, and let it drop.
Alexia ran past her father, past Stuart and Mavis, and past the two paramedics who stood, one with his head down and hands behind his back, the other with his pinkie in his mouth gnawing like an animal caught in a trap. Locking herself in the bathroom, she turned the lights out and lay on the floor in the dark, her own hands frozen, the smell of her mother’s vomit still on the clean tiles and in the air. She shivered out of control, but she couldn’t get off the floor.
Alexia couldn’t think of this right now. Not now.
Christina put her arm around Alexia. “One day everything okay. The next all is wrong. The hands stop at 2:34 that afternoon, the moment the killing started.” Christina poin
ted to the clock at the corner of the tiny church in the square, then to the cypress-covered hill. “The big white cross at top of hill is for dead.” Christina crossed herself as all Alexia’s relatives did when they passed a church, a cross, a holy place. “We don’t like the Germans.”
“Things have changed since then.”
“People no change,” Christina said. “First the Germans tried to kill us all. Then we tried to kill each other because they left us to starve. Even now they try to cut the bread from our mouths. They say they are helping us with our debts. They are only helping themselves to the interest on the loans. And don’t forget German companies did work in Greece and were paid for that work. And they sold their products here too. They are not doing this for us. They are doing it for themselves. And if we cannot pay anymore, they will take our land, which is what they want. They have new ways but it comes to the same thing. Our destruction.” She shook her head. “And we Greeks are no better. You saw the burn land before. Some of the farmers do not like the development, the new highway. They do not like that our prices cannot compete with the prices protected by other European countries. They burn their land rather than let the government take it. And they burn the land so not to sell their crops for nothing. Fires do not stay in one place. Other land burns.”
She walked ahead of Alexia into the church. Gold icons covered the dark walls. Even with the heat outside, this small space felt cool and clammy. Beads of moisture trickled down the walls. A few short rows of wooden chairs ran the length of the room. It would be difficult to fit fifty people in here. Candelabras squatted in a base of sand in each corner; the light of flickering candles warmed and lit the church. One old woman swept the floor and a few others knelt with their heads bowed over their clasped hands. Alexia listened to their murmured prayers. Christina prayed in the front row. Alexia sat in the back and watched, removed but curious about their demonstration of blind faith.
Christina walked over to a group of candles in one corner, lit seven and crossed herself after each one.
The sudden ring of a cell phone was amplified in the stone chapel. Alexia snatched her purse. The elderly women turned and stared. Alexia fumbled. The ringing continued. The woman cleaning dropped her broom and put her hands over her ears. Christina placed her index finger over her mouth and made a sign to switch it off. Alexia dumped the contents of her purse onto the chair, groped through the mess, but still couldn’t find the phone. She sat on all her junk. The ringing finally stopped. The two old women stared at her, shook their heads and pointed to the crucifix at the front of the church. She mouthed the words, I’m sorry, but they turned away. One leaned into the other and whispered, and then glared back at Alexia as if to warn her she was being watched. She got up, stuffed everything back into her purse and made her way quickly out of the church.
The sudden heat and brightness made Alexia reel. This place was too much. First the museum, then this church, Christina’s stories, the old women in black. The harsh light. And those statues, that scene. Why couldn’t she get that little girl out of her head? The girl just stood there watching her mother struggling with the dead body. It was the girl’s father. It had to be. He lay on the ground like Alexia’s father had lain in his bed when she found him that morning. Tucked under the blanket as if he were still asleep, as if nothing was wrong. Except everything was. His room was freezing. Had she turned down the heat the night before? She couldn’t breathe. Where had the air gone?
The sun burned into the top of her head. She raised her arm to shade her eyes. She should have worn a hat today. Why hadn’t she?
She shook her head, stuck on her sunglasses, and took a deep breath. Stop it now, she said to herself sternly. It’ll be okay. She repeated the same words she used to say to herself when she was a child, soothing herself to sleep. It worked then. It would work now.
Christina came out of the church, wiped her face and put on her sunglasses. “Please turn off the phone.”
“I didn’t know it was on.”
“This is a holy place,” Christina said. “It is to respect.”
“I know.”
“If you know, you do not act this way. It is a shame for me and for you.”
Christina walked towards one of the three cafés in the square. Alexia watched her take a seat first, before she sat down beside her. An umbrella shaded them from the sun. Out of the dark building, an old waiter shuffled to their table. Christina ordered orange juice for the two of them without asking Alexia what she wanted.
“I’m sorry, Thia,” she said. And she was.
Christina met her gaze and smiled. “This is first time.”
“Excuse me?”
“First time you call me Thia.”
“I’m trying to learn a few words.” She smiled weakly.
“You make us proud, Alexia, if you learn your language.”
Alexia nodded and sat back. She took a deep breath. The images were already waning. It was just this place that made her think of things she didn’t like to think about. She had to refocus.
She was curious about why Christina had lit seven candles. Her father used to light candles in the church at home. When she asked him about it, he said, “I light one for your mother, one for my family and one for you, paidi mou, so God watches over you.”
“Why seven candles?” Alexia asked Christina.
“One for your mother, one for your father, one for people who die here, God rest their souls, one for your thio so he no make me mad all the time, one is for the family so they find way and one is for you. The last one is for someone you do not know.”
“Theodora?” Alexia spoke her name before she’d had the thought.
Christina didn’t move. Perhaps she hadn’t heard.
The waiter appeared with dessert menus and two glasses of water. Christina dismissed him with a dark look.
“It is good he told you,” Christina said.
“Did everyone know but me?” Alexia stared at Christina.
“It was never easy for him.”
“It’s not easy for me. I’m left to make a delivery for a yoes.”
“Do not talk about dead father this way.” Christina pointed her finger. “It no right.”
“He fathered a child with another woman and left her to bring it up. He never even bothered to see that child. What would you call that?” Alexia turned to face the church. Two girls sat in front, holding hands. They watched the boys and cheered. One of the boys kicked a soccer ball down the street and they scattered and ran after it. The girls skipped along behind them. Alexia wished she could follow.
“No his idea.” Christina touched her forearm.
Alexia turned in her chair. “Things happen.” She shook her head. “Is that it?”
“What is delivery?”
“He left a package for Theodora. He wanted me to give it to her in person.”
“What it is?”
“I don’t know. Why should I care?”
“You with family now. Take time. We look in package together.” Christina took a sip of her water, licked a drop that ran down the side of the glass.
Alexia wondered what else Christina knew.
“I was hoping I could leave it with you so I can go back to Vancouver and forget about it.”
“Vancouver again. Why? You stay here and not see her. She lives in Aigio, has husband and son and life. You do not have to run away from her.”
Alexia leaned in toward Christina. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t see her?”
“It complicated. No?”
Christina swallowed a bit of water and coughed. Alexia patted her back and signalled to the waiter for another glass of water. Christina’s eyes glistened and tears marked her cheeks.
“What does Theodora know about me?”
“She know nothing about you and nothing about Nicolai, God rest his soul.”
7
2010
Christina and Alexia wandered through the back streets of Kalavryta, heading for the path
that led them to Kappi hill where the cross stood towering over the cypress and pine trees. Neither had said more than a few words to each other since they left the café. Christina said this was a place of sacrifice and Alexia wondered if she was talking about Nicolai rather than Kalavyrta and the war.
“Dad would have loved it here,” Alexia said. Perhaps he had been, she thought. Not that he told her anything about it.
“It is sad place,” Christina said. “There is nothing to love.”
“Yes.” She’d put her foot in it again. How could she talk to her aunt about her father? About Theodora? She needed to know.
The road came to an end and a stone pathway began. On one side, a pristine lawn surrounded by pine, cypress and oleander trees. It looked peaceful, Alexia thought. You could lie here in the shade and read a book, forget yourself. On the opposite side, a low stone fence separated them from the twisting road that led to a parking lot at the top of the memorial.
“The ones who died here walked this hill,” Christina said. “Out of respect for their sacrifice, we no drive. We walk.”
Christina’s back was stooped as she trudged up the steep path. She crossed herself and muttered under her breath. Alexia kept her eyes on the cross ahead and the tall concrete slabs keeping vigil at its foot.
The manicured grounds near the top of the hill were punctured with metal crosses leaning into the grass. From each cross hung a chain necklace bearing a tiny wood plaque with a name and date. She couldn’t read the Greek letters. The numbers were the same: 13 – 12 – 43.
Christina stopped in front of each cross and prayed. Alexia stood behind her, waiting. Stay focused, Alexia told herself. She pushed the thought of that awful statue at the museum out of her mind. Clouds drifted over the sun, obliterating its bright light. She wrapped her sweater around herself, crossed her arms.
Beyond the crosses, the lawn disappeared into a forest. They found a path through the trees and walked up to the cross and the three lofty concrete slabs. Alexia held her skirt down against the wind. Etched into the concrete was a list of names and beside each name, the age the person died. 13. 15. 17. 14. Christina wept. Alexia stood to one side and poked at a pine cone with the toe of her shoe.
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