“I knew something was wrong. The streets were empty. There was no one around, nothing but silence. As I walked toward the open door of the tailor, I heard a desperate wail. It sounded like a wild animal, but it wasn’t. I looked inside and saw it was a woman, Dora, Yianni’s grandmother. I stood in the doorway to see what had happened, what would cause her to make those sounds. I watched her, her dress and hair matted with her husband’s blood, screaming for her lost son.”
Yia-yia shook her head, her body shuddering again at the sounds and sights of that horrible day. “I pray you never hear the sound of a mother who has lost her child, Daphne. It is an inhuman sound, agonizing . . . I looked down, and there I saw her little girls kneeling on the floor, holding their baba’s lifeless body and begging him to wake up. It was like walking into hell, Daphne mou. I looked into Dora’s eyes, and I swear to you, I saw her being consumed by the flames of hell. And in that moment, everything changed.
“I knew what had happened throughout Greece, I had heard the stories. There was no television—I could not read the newspaper myself, but I knew nonetheless what those animals had done throughout Greece. And I could not let another family be destroyed, murdered. I would not allow it.”
Daphne felt her stomach tighten. She clutched the edge of her chair.
“That day, as I stood in the doorway in the Jewish quarter, the breeze kicked up, sending papers and leaves swirling in the empty alleyways. I took my eyes off of Yianni’s grandmother and mother for a moment and watched the papers and leaves swirling at my feet. Just as I looked away, tempted to leave that place and forget what I had seen, that is when I heard it. It was faint at first, the softest murmur, like the wings of a butterfly in my ear. But it was there, Daphne mou. It was there. At first, I denied that I heard anything. How could it be? But the wind kicked up again, and the voice grew stronger. It was a woman’s voice, soft and beautiful. I could hear her crying, I could hear her soft whispers between the muffled sobs. And I knew that my own yia-yia had been right. The cypress whispers do exist.”
Yia-yia closed her eyes again and sat in silence. The words that poured out of her seemed to have again taken her strength. Daphne held her breath and waited, but Yia-yia remained silent. Then, just as Daphne leaned forward to touch her grandmother, to make sure she was indeed awake, Yia-yia opened her eyes again and continued with her story.
“Daphne mou. I listened, and I understood what I needed to do. What my role was. That I had not been brought to this earth to be another forgotten widow, a burden on society, someone to be pitied and plied with handouts. It was faint, the faintest sound I had ever heard, but it screamed, Daphne. It screamed for me to do something. It screamed for me to help this woman, to get her away from there before the soldiers returned. It was the softest possible whisper, but it screamed that this was a good woman, a God-fearing and kind woman. A woman who deserved to be revered and respected, not treated like a gutter animal. I know so many good women, so many good men and their children, were beyond salvation that day, Daphne. I could not help them—I don’t know if anyone could have helped them. Those monsters murdered them all. And for what? I still don’t understand.” Yia-yia shook her head and looked deep into the fire.
“But this woman, Daphne, this mother, wife, daughter. She was placed in my hands that day. My hands, Daphne. These two very hands. These hands of a poor widow that never held anything of value. That day I held Dora’s fate in my hands, and I could not let her slip through my fingers.” Yia-yia cupped her hands, palms up toward the heavens as if to save the memories of that day from slipping through her fingers even now, so many years later.
She looked from her hands to Daphne. “The voice told me to save Dora and her children. And so I did. I brought them to Agios Spyridon that day. I knew he would protect them like he protects and loves us all. And he did, Daphne. We hid in the church. The Germans went door to door searching, knowing more Jews were hiding. But even as they hunted more victims, no Nazi entered the church of Agios Spyridon. Not one. I knew they would be safe there, that the agios would keep us safe. I knew that even without the whispers in my ear. When I realized there was no hope of finding young David, I brought them back here, Dora, Ester, and poor sweet Rachel. I brought them right here to our home and shared with them the little we had. As you know, we were very poor, and I had only one other dress, my good church dress. I gave it to Dora to wear, so she would look like one of us, Christian Greek, and not a Jew. We did the same with the girls, dressing them in the peasant clothes of our island. As Dora dressed Ester in a church dress I had been saving for your mother, the sweet child turned and asked, ‘Is it Purim already, Mama?’ Dora’s tears ran deeper than the sea that day as she answered ‘Yes, my sweet, it is,’ and dressed her children to conceal their faith.”
The old woman stared again into the fire, as if she could see the frightened mother and the scared, confused children playing out the scene within the dancing flames.
“Rachel’s death devastated us all. But after some time, Dora began to speak and eat again. She was a shade of what she had been before—but she managed somehow to carry on. Dora had lost so much, but what little strength she had left, she summoned for her only surviving child, for Ester. Your mother and Ester played together and grew to love each other like sisters. And Dora . . .” She sighed and looked up toward the heavens, knowing her friend was still there with her in some way.
“Dora and I grew to love and trust one another. We spent night after night talking, sharing stories and secrets of our people and of ourselves. They came to church with us, and although they did not believe in Christ as our savior, they respected our traditions and celebrated our holy days with us. They stood side by side with us, and as we said our prayers, they silently said theirs too, knowing that God would hear all of our voices, together, stronger. They respected and honored our traditions as we did theirs. I learned to keep the Sabbath with Dora. Each Friday we would prepare, cooking and cleaning together so there would be no fires lit and no work done in our home. I watched each Friday night as she lit the Sabbath candles, and we fasted and prayed together for their High Holy Days. I learned to cherish those quiet evenings together, Daphne. We both did. We became a family, and soon, we felt no difference—Greek, Jew . . . we were a family with many rich traditions. On August fifteenth, in fact, as the entire island celebrated Our Blessed Virgin Mary’s assumption to heaven, little Ester held your mother’s hand and the girls walked in a beautiful procession of all the children. One of the boys snickered at this, muttering under his breath that how could she, a Jew, walk beside Christ’s children? Father Petro heard the child and smacked the bad-mannered boy across the head before his father had the chance to do so himself.” Yia-yia clapped her hands and laughed at the memory.
“Daphne mou—” She pointed her crooked finger toward the sky, toward the heavens. “Daphne, it was Father Petro himself who set the tone for others to follow. I will never forget, Daphne. He would not allow us to bury dear Rachel in our cemetery, saying the laws of the church would not allow it. Saying he was certain as well that Dora’s own rabbi would not have allowed it. At first I was angry, so angry with him. How, I argued, how could God not want this poor child to rest in eternal peace, had she not suffered enough? But gradually I understood. Father was bound by the rules of the church. He saw me that day, on my hands and knees, preparing the earth to receive little Rachel’s body. Father Petro came and stood with me, helped me prepare Rachel’s grave with his own two hands. He prayed over her tiny body, the most beautiful prayers, asking God to take this child into his kingdom and lead her into paradise.
“And each time I heard the warnings—each time the cypresses would whisper to me and tell me the Germans were coming—I would send Dora and Ester up to the dark and difficult side of the island to hide. Each time we did this, Father Petro would take a cross from the church altar and place it on Rachel’s grave so the soldiers would not find her and disturb her eternal peace. Again and again the Germ
ans came, searching for Jews, intent on sniffing them out like a dog his dinner. Again and again they passed that poor child’s grave, and they never knew that what they were searching for was right below their feet. They never knew a Jewish child was buried right there, her grave hidden in plain sight.
“We lived in fear for six months, until the British solders came and liberated Kerkyra. But even then, Dora stayed with me here on the island, where she felt safest. Several more months passed, and finally a letter arrived from her sister in Athens, saying that she too had survived and that Dora had a home, a family to return to.”
Daphne could not sit quietly any longer. “But Yia-yia—how? How did you know all this? How did you know what to do, how to keep them safe, when to hide them? How?”
Yia-yia brought her fingers to her lips as if to quiet Daphne’s doubts. “I told you, Daphne mou. I have told you, but although you hear the words, you have chosen not to listen. It was the cypress whispers. It was the ancient voices on the breeze, the voices of the gods, our ancestors, my own yia-yia—a beautiful chorus of their voices, all joined together as one voice. One voice guiding me, guiding us all.”
Yia-yia reached out and took Daphne’s hand in her own.
“I know it is hard for you to understand, to believe. I too had little faith once. I was raised by my mother and grandmother, right here in this house. One day, as I was heading to play with the baby chicks, I found my yia-yia on her knees, crying under the shade of a cypress tree. I was no more than five years old, Evie’s age. ‘Yia-yia,’ I asked as I came up behind her and wrapped my little hands around her shoulder. ‘Yia-yia, what’s wrong?’ Still on her knees, my yia-yia turned to look at me. ‘It is decided. You have been chosen.’ She cried and pulled me into her arms. ‘What has been decided?’ I asked. And that is when my yia-yia turned to me and told me my fate. She told me that one day I would hear the island speak to me. That many would try to hear the cypress whispers, but only I would understand them. In that moment, in the doorway as Yianni’s mother wailed, I finally heard them. And that’s when I came to realize why Yia-yia was crying. My fate was both a blessing and a curse.”
“Your fate?” Daphne could not believe what she was hearing.
“My fate had been decided before I was born, Daphne. I was destined to understand the whispers. I had been given this gift that others would covet like Midas his gold. And at first I didn’t understand why, I didn’t know why I had been chosen. But then I brought Yianni’s shattered family home with me. Dora was a shell of a woman. We lived in silence for weeks. I shared with her what little I had, and finally, slowly, she began to share with me; stories of her family, their culture, their religion, and the skills she had learned working with her husband in the tailor’s shop. She taught me those skills—how to mend a blouse, how to make skirts from the sacks that held our flour and rice. How to make something valuable and beautiful out of scraps and rags. We mended old clothes and sewed new ones, and we traded our sewing for food and supplies. Your mother and I would have starved without Dora, without her guidance. When I saved Dora, she in turn saved me as well. I didn’t know that at first; I didn’t realize it until much later. Sometimes, Daphne mou, when we don’t know which path to take, when we feel hopeless and lost, we just need to be still and listen. Sometimes our salvation is right there, just waiting to be heard. The cypress whispers are always there for us, just waiting to be heard.”
Daphne remained still, as still as her body would allow. She had sat here year after year and listened to Yia-yia’s stories of myths and legends, and once upon a time she had even wished for them to be true. As a child she had wondered what it would be like to sit at Hades’ feast beside Persephone, or if she, unlike Psyche, would have had the willpower to resist stealing a glance at her sleeping lover. But that was a lifetime ago. The very words that she’d once dreamed of hearing now made her every hair stand on end. How could this be? How could Yia-yia really hear voices speaking to her from beyond the grave, on the breeze? How was this possible? It was crazy. It was impossible.
She did as she had promised; she listened without interruption, with an open heart and open mind. But now that Yia-yia had finished her story, there was one more question Daphne needed to ask, one final thing she needed to know.
“Do they still speak to you, Yia-yia?”
The old woman didn’t hesitate. “Yes, they do. I am still blessed.”
A gentle breeze rolled across the patio and between the majestic trees that surrounded them on all sides. Daphne held her breath and strained to listen. Nothing. Nothing but the sound of shivering leaves dancing on the breeze. The silence confirmed what she had known all along. The cypress whispers did not exist.
“What are they saying to you?”
Yia-yia didn’t answer.
“What are they saying to you?” Daphne repeated.
The breeze died down. The old woman released Daphne’s hand and looked deep into her eyes. Finally, she spoke. “They are saying that this man is not for you. Do not marry him, Daphne. You cannot marry him.”
Twenty-nine
CONNECTICUT AND BROOKLYN
2008
Alex’s parents had insisted the funeral be held in the Episcopal church where Alex had been baptized. It had always troubled the couple that their son had agreed to marry in the Greek Orthodox Church, with its foreign language and strange traditions. But Daphne had stood firm, insisting that their first steps as man and wife would be taken around the altar of her childhood church, where Alex had sat patiently waiting for her week after week. But as passionate as she had been about every decision when Alex was alive, she was as indifferent in his death.
“He’s gone. I don’t care,” was the mantra she had repeated when the funeral director asked her if she wanted him interred in the blue or the pinstripe suit, when the police reported back that the truck driver had indeed been drunk when he crashed into Alex’s car, and when Alex’s pale mother asked if she could say good-bye to her son in the church where she had watched him grow up. “He’s gone. I don’t care,” was all she could bring herself to say.
But on the day of Alex’s funeral, what had begun as mournful indifference evolved into exhausted gratitude. Daphne sat stone-still and watched as the funeral mass unfolded around her. It was a small, simple, civilized ceremony with no wailing, no lament songs, no women threatening to throw themselves into the casket, as the black-veiled women at Greek funerals so often do. The priest was young and golden-haired, wearing a simple white collar—worlds away from the ornately robed priests Daphne was accustomed to. The priest, in fact, was new to the parish and had never even met Alex. Daphne looked around as he rushed through the mass with his impersonal, monotone delivery. She thought how sterile it all seemed, how devoid of emotion . . . and for that, she was grateful.
After the burial and luncheon at the club, Daphne poured herself into the black car for the drive back home to Brooklyn and the reality of life without her husband. Evie, who had never been one for long car rides, wailed and cried from the moment they hit the parkway.
“Do you need me to pull over, lady?” The driver had looked into the rearview mirror. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine,” she mumbled.
When Evie’s cries turned to screams, he asked again, “Lady, do you need me to pull over?”
Still staring out the window, Daphne stuck a fresh bottle in Evie’s mouth.
He’s gone, and I don’t care.
The moment she stepped through the door at home, Daphne placed the baby carrier on the floor. She undid the buttons of her plain black dress and let it fall off her shoulders and down around her feet. She stepped out of her dress and carried Evie to her crib, thankful the baby had finally fallen asleep in her carrier. Getting Evie to sleep had become a nightly battle, one that Daphne had neither the stomach nor the strength for right now. She tucked Evie into her crib and removed the evil-eye medallion from the carrier before fastening it once again on the white ruffled crib
bumper. Daphne poured herself a large glass of wine and climbed into bed. Her fingers reached for the phone.
She answered with the first ring. “Ne . . .” The tears came again with the sound of her voice.
“Yia-yia . . .” She could barely get the word out.
“Koukla mou, koukla. Oh, Daphne mou. What a dark day. It’s a dark, dark day.”
“It’s done, Yia-yia. He’s gone. It’s finished.” She sobbed. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Koukla, I am so sorry. He was a good boy, a fine boy.” The sound of Yia-yia’s voice soothed Daphne. Soon, her glass drained, Daphne curled into a fetal position, the phone nestled under her ear.
“You will be all right, koukla mou. You are a strong girl. And you will be a good mother to that baby, I know you will.”
“I’m trying, Yia-yia. But it’s so unfair, and I’m so tired. I’m so tired, Yia-yia, I feel like I don’t have the strength to take care of her. How am I supposed to take care of her when I can’t even take care of myself right now?” She cried. “I just want to curl up and die.”
“I know, koukla. I know that is how you feel right now.” Yia-yia knew the feeling well.
“Yia-yia, will you do something for me?” Daphne asked as she wiped the tears with the corner of the bedsheet.
“Ne, koukla mou. Anything.”
“Tell me a story.” Daphne could barely get the words out. She reached her arm out to the side where Alex had slept and stroked the pillow with her fingers, just as she used to his hair. She laid her hand flat on the sheet, just where his head would have rested if he were still there lying beside her.
“Ah, kala. Ne, koukla mou. I’ll tell you a story.” Daphne closed her eyes as Yia-yia began to speak.
“I know your heart is broken today, Daphne mou, shattered and shredded. But there was once another beautiful girl, just like yourself, who thought her world would come to an end when she lost her love. But it didn’t. Life went on for her, Daphne mou, as I know it will for you. Her name was Ariadne—she was the daughter of King Minos of Crete.” Yia-yia could hear Daphne’s muffled whimpers on the other end of the line.
When the Cypress Whispers Page 22