by Kate Hewitt
“Anglika…” Parthenope murmured, and Ava rose from the table and held out her hand.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, haltingly, for she had no idea whether the older woman could understand English.
To Ava’s surprise, as Parthenope turned to look at her, she squinted, seeming to do a double take, and then her face paled, her mouth slackening in shock. Her hands trembled and she clutched at the cardigan draped over her humped shoulders. “Sophia…” she whispered, and Ava felt a thrill of shocked recognition at the name.
Eleni, clearly dismayed, waved her hands and spoke again in Greek. “Ochi, ochi…” No, no. She turned apologetically to Ava. “I’m sorry. I have not known her to be confused—”
“I don’t think she’s confused,” Ava said quietly. “My grandmother’s first name was Sophia. My mother said I looked like her when she was younger.” And acted like her too. Strong, apparently, stronger than Ava thought, even though she certainly didn’t feel it now.
Now Eleni’s face slackened in surprise, and Parthenope crossed the room to clasp Ava’s hands tightly in her own. “Sophia, Sophia,” she crooned, the name a lullaby. To her shock Ava saw tears trickling down Parthenope’s deeply wrinkled cheeks. “Me sighorite,” she whispered. “Me sighorite.”
Ava recognized the phrase from her online lessons, yet she still didn’t understand why Parthenope was saying it. I’m sorry. “Did you know my grandmother?” she asked uncertainly, and Parthenope spoke rapidly in Greek once more.
“My mother said, ‘Yes, I did,’” Eleni translated. She still looked surprised and even troubled as she continued to translate her mother’s words. “‘Sophia worked in the coffeehouse here in the village, before the Germans closed it down. She was my friend, and a good woman.’”
“I had no idea,” Ava said, strangely moved by this admission. She felt as if she’d been given a gift, a thread that connected her to this place, to these people. Amazing how it suddenly made her feel less alone. She had assumed that no one from her grandmother’s time would be left in the village. She hadn’t expected a connection to the past, no matter how tenuous. She hadn’t even considered it.
“Nor had I,” Eleni said slowly. “My mother never talks about that time.”
“My grandmother didn’t either. I’m afraid I hardly ever really thought about my grandmother even being Greek. She left Greece right after the war, and my grandfather was English. She never talked about anything to do with Greece.”
“It was a very hard time,” Eleni replied. She glanced at her mother, who had released Ava’s hand and now stood quietly shaking her head, her eyes still filled with tears. “No one talks about it now. No one ever has.”
Ava nodded and they continued eating in a thoughtful silence. She wanted to ask Parthenope about her grandmother, yet she knew the language barrier would prove too difficult, and whatever memories Parthenope held were obviously painful and perhaps even traumatic. I’m sorry. Why? For what? Ava knew she couldn’t ask, at least not yet. Eleni had said no one talked about it, and her grandmother certainly hadn’t.
Life is for living, Ava remembered Sophia saying whenever she’d been asked questions about her time in Greece. There is no need to remember.
Remember what? Ava thought of what Parthenope had said and she felt as if she’d been given a small piece of a puzzle she’d never expected to fit together. A puzzle that she hadn’t even known existed, and yet she now felt a surprising, deep-seated desire to complete it, and see its whole troubling picture.
3
July 1942
“You’re a good woman, Sophia—”
Sophia Paranoussis dodged the arm of the sentimental farmer who might have had a glass too many of the local retsina and went to the back room of the coffeehouse for another tray of glasses. She disliked her evenings here, when the farmers stomped in with the mud still on their boots and drank away their sorrows and what little money they had. She hated the thick fog of hand-rolled cigarettes and the oily smoke of the paraffin lamps that filled the room and whose reeking smell never truly left her hair or her clothes. The men would drink their retsina or coffee and talk of politics and farming over games of backgammon made from bottle caps until they finally went home to their wives and children, and to the prospect of another day eking out a meager existence from this hard and unforgiving earth.
Yet even though she disliked it, working several evenings in the coffeehouse brought in a little more money, and in these uncertain times those few drachmas were needed. Not that she was always paid in drachmas. With the Italians and Germans demanding half a harvest and inflation turning notes nearly worthless, sometimes she was paid in oil or wheat, or even tobacco, which she gave to her father.
Sighing, Sophia swiped a sweaty strand of hair away from her forehead and placed the tray of dirty glasses onto the low wooden table. It was July, and the heat of high summer made the back room nearly unbearable. Sophia spent most of her time in here, washing glasses and refilling jugs, keeping out of sight of the men. Today she’d gone into the front room only because Spiro had been called away.
Kristina, the owner of the coffeehouse, bustled in wearing her widow’s black, her hair piled on top of her head and covered with a scarf. A year ago, when she was forty, she’d been widowed even before the fighting between the Resistance and the Germans had become too dangerous, with bullets spewing across the streets in Athens. Her husband, Georgios, had gone there to sell the pine resin he’d harvested, and in a sudden fit of patriotic rage he’d pulled down a banner emblazoned with a swastika and thrown it to the ground. A German soldier had seen him and shot him on the spot.
When the news had traveled back to the village, everyone had been shocked into a respectful silence for Kristina and her son, Spiro, then just sixteen years old. Georgios’s act of defiance had been considered bravery rather than foolish bravado. Sophia would have rather had a husband at home, bringing in the harvest, but she’d said nothing. Villagers possessed both a fierce pride and courage, even if sometimes she felt she had neither, at least not in the same measure.
Yet in the year and a half since the Germans had marched on Athens, no Nazi had been seen in Iousidous or even near it. They’d heard rumors and stories, of course, ever since Greece had been carved up like a loaf of psomi by the Axis: the Bulgarians in Macedonia, the Germans taking Athens and the islands, and the Italians occupying the rest. Lax, even lazy, the Italian army had not caused life to change much in the village, unless you counted the soldiers who occasionally sauntered in and groped the girls; better to keep your daughters in the kitchens or lock them in the barns. If any Italian soldiers were seen in Iousidous, Sophia didn’t come to the coffeehouse, not even to stay in the back room. Yet even so, despite some of the soldiers’ lechery, no Italian took out his gun and shot a man in the head.
After Georgios’s death Kristina gained an unexpected liberty; most widows were forced to live quietly in their houses, talking to no one and barely lifting their eyes from the ground, yet thanks to her husband’s noble act the village accepted Kristina’s running both the coffeehouse and her husband’s smallholding, alongside her son.
Men tipped their peaked caps to her in the square, and with murmured blessings women gave her eggs packed in straw and rounds of goats’ cheese swimming in brine. In a small village rife with gossip and possessing strict rules about the roles of men and women, such concessions were a testament to the villagers’ respect for Georgios.
Now Kristina pressed her hands to the small of her back and closed her eyes. Sophia suspected she did not like working among all the men either, even though they respected her and few became actually drunk, which would be considered a disgrace. A glass of retsina and a story or song was the way to end the day, not stumbling home in the dark, out of your senses.
“One more hour, Sophia, and then we are done.” Kristina had asked Sophia to help at the coffeehouse after Georgios died, and it was accepted because a man could hardly work alone with, or unde
r, a woman. Things were changing even in a small place like Iousidous.
“Where is Spiro?” Sophia asked. She did not wish to go out in the front room again.
A funny little smile played around Kristina’s mouth even as she tensed. “Out.” She took a handful of tarnished coins from the pocket of her apron and placed them in the old cigar box where she kept her money, up on a high shelf. Sophia didn’t ask any more questions, even though she was curious. It was dark, late, and no one went out at night in a village like this, especially not in these uncertain times.
Kristina glanced at her, that funny little smile widening. “You are not going to ask questions?”
Sophia turned back to her tray of dirty glasses. “It is not my business.”
“No, it is not. Not yet, perhaps.” Kristina gave a little laugh, although the sound held no humor. Who was really laughing these days?
Sophia held her tongue, her head bent over the washing basin.
“At least Dimitrios has left, thank God,” Kristina said. She gave Sophia a knowing look.
Sophia kept her head lowered and pretended not to notice. She did not want to think about Dimitrios—or her sister, Angelika, who was pretty and playful and destined for trouble.
“You will have to worry about that one, eh?” Kristina persisted.
“He is nothing to do with me.”
“Not with you, no. But your sister?” Kristina laughed again, and this time the sound chilled Sophia. Dimitrios Atrikes had been in the coffeehouse earlier, swaggering about and laughing too loudly, as usual. He was only twenty, a farmer’s son like nearly every other boy in Iousidous, but he had fiery ideas and a loose tongue, and he liked to tap the side of his nose and wink as if he knew more than he was letting on. Sophia was afraid, for her sister’s sake, that he might.
“You don’t gossip like the other girls, do you, Sophia?” Kristina said as she reached for one of the dusty bottles of retsina. “But you know what I’m talking about all the same.”
Sophia glanced at her, discomfited by the knowing gleam in the older woman’s eyes. She watched in surprise as Kristina poured herself a glass of retsina; she’d never seen the woman drink before.
“You’re a quiet one,” Kristina said, almost thoughtfully, and from somewhere Sophia found her voice.
“I prefer listening to speaking.” It was safer that way.
Kristina smiled. “That’s good,” she said, and drained her glass. “In these times, that’s good.”
These times. These uncertain and terrible times. Sophia turned away from Kristina, closing her eyes as she offered a brief and fervent prayer to Theotokos, the mother of God and bearer of sorrows, to keep her sister safe, her family safe, even all of Greece safe, for since the Nazis had marched into Athens in April 1941, safety was no longer a guarantee. Sometimes it felt like a miracle.
Although their little village had escaped any real attention, there was a garrison of Italian soldiers only ten kilometers away in Lamia. The Nazis stayed to the cities, but Sophia had heard whispers of the atrocities committed in their name, battles fought right in the street between the soldiers and the andartes, the Greek Resistance. Thank God such things did not happen here… yet.
Even so, almost as frightening to Sophia as the thought of soldiers—Italian or German—was that of the andartes themselves. Sophia had heard whispers of the People’s Liberation Army, or ELAS, the communist-led Resistance movement that was growing in strength and, if some whispers were to be believed, could be as vicious and violent as the Nazis themselves. They marched into villages and demanded bread and blankets and sometimes even a sheep or a goat, although it could cost a man his livelihood, or even his very life if the Nazis discovered he’d been aiding, willingly or not, the Liberation Army.
One of the bands of guerrillas, Sophia had heard, was led by the ruthless Aris Velouchiotis. She had heard stories of how he had shot a man in the head for stealing a bit of bread… just like the Nazi had shot Georgios in Athens.
And Dimitrios Atrikes, her sister’s foolish admirer, was whispered to belong to that bloodthirsty band. Sophia had heard him in the coffeehouse, boasting about his rusty old rifle, given to him, he insisted, by Velouchiotis himself. Many of the men in the village, and women too, approved of Velouchiotis and his growing army, and Sophia suspected some secretly gave him and his men food and supplies even though whole villages had been burned for less. Still, that was the Greek way. Fight. Resist always, as a matter of pride and courage, no matter the consequence.
Yet Sophia felt only fear. She’d seen her sister, Angelika, listen to Dimitrios’s boasting, clearly taken by his broad shoulders and self-confident swagger, but Sophia knew better than to be charmed by such folly. Now, more than ever, was a time to keep your head down and go quietly about your business, attracting no attention, causing no alarm. Staying safe, until this endless war was finally over.
Angelika, however, didn’t think like Sophia. She never had. From a young age, she’d always had an eye for pretty things, easy pleasures. And in truth Sophia had been happy to spoil her; Angelika could be like a kitten she wanted to stroke, reveling in any attention or praise. But when it came to Dimitrios Atrikes… Sophia had seen how Angelika listened to him, liked him. Whenever she could, she was by Dimitrios, or as close as she could get, considering that in a village like theirs men and women were not left alone until words had been spoken and an agreement between parents made. Still, at the last feast day she’d smiled up at him and tossed her shiny dark curls. Who knew where it would lead? Girls had been ruined by less.
Sighing, Sophia gave Kristina a weary smile and then loaded her tray with clean glasses before heading back out to the smoky front room. She would talk to her sister tonight, and God willing, make her see some sense. That, she thought wryly, was what a good woman would do.
Yet when she slipped through the darkened streets back to her father’s farmhouse, which was nestled in the first curve of the street, its tidy front garden filled with pots of tomatoes and fat bulbs of garlic, the clothes mangle and the mud oven used for baking in the heat of the summer, she found it all quiet and dark. Her father, tired because it was the busy time of year, the threshing of wheat, had already gone to bed, having settled their cow, four sheep, and three goats in the shed on the side of the house.
Many of the villagers of Iousidous still slept with their animals in their front room with them, the hens roosting on the rafters, the sheep curled up by the hearth. Sophia’s mother, who had been a shopkeeper’s daughter from Lamia, had said she wouldn’t live like a beast, and so her father, Evangelos, had built a shed. Now, as Sophia put her pay in the dented tin on the mantel above the hearth, she was grateful for the clean space with its woven rug and a framed print her mother had bought on a trip to Athens as a girl. Her mother might have died just over five years ago from a weak chest, but the animals still stayed in their shed.
The money put away, Sophia went back outside to the stairs on the side of the house that led to the second floor, another luxury demanded by her mother. Most farmhouses were long and low, only one story. But Katerina Paranoussis had wanted bedrooms, and so her adoring husband had built two on top of the front room, with an outside staircase. Her mother had died in the front bedroom, the sheets speckled with her coughed-up blood. Sophia shared the second one with her sister, and even though it was after ten o’clock at night, the room was dark and empty, the cover on her sister’s bed still pulled tight across the thin mattress.
Sophia stopped short at the sight of that empty bed, knowing there was no decent or honorable reason why her sister should not be stretched out on it, asleep. What self-respecting woman was out and about at this hour, never mind during the war? Her sister needed to be more careful if she wished one day to see herself established as a married woman in this village. The gossip, Sophia knew, could be quick and brutal, tongues being as deadly, in their own way, as those terrible guns.
Just then she heard the clatter of her sister’s boots o
n the steps outside, and then along the hallway. Even when her sister was trying to be quiet, she was loud, overwhelming and impossible to ignore. She peeked into the bedroom, checking to see if Sophia had returned, and Sophia clucked her tongue loudly.
“And where have you been?”
“Oh, Sophia!” One hand flew to her chest and Angelika slipped into the room. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. “I thought you might be asleep.”
“You knew I was working at the coffeehouse. I’ve only just returned.”
“Oh, the coffeehouse,” Angelika said with a laugh, and Sophia tried to suppress the small stab of resentment her sister’s attitude sometimes caused her. She did not like working at the coffeehouse, but she was glad Kristina had asked her to help. What with the taxes levied by the occupying soldiers and the war’s inflated prices, the money they gained from selling wheat, wool, and pine resin did not go far. Often they went to bed with their bellies still half empty, although out in the country it was not nearly as bad as in Athens, where Sophia had heard they were eating rubbish and rats.
Sophia had been surprised when Evangelos had given his grudging acceptance for her to work; it was not fitting, of course, for a woman to work outside the home, but since Kristina was doing it, and they needed the money, he had said yes. He hardly spoke now, except to grunt a grace before their evening meal. The life had been leached out of him by her mother’s death, so sometimes Sophia thought he held as much spirit as the painted icons adorning Saint Stephen’s, perched high above the village, their unblinking eyes watching over them all.
Angelika had said nothing when Sophia had asked her father’s permission and made only a paltry effort to help either at the coffeehouse or at home. As well-intentioned as her sister could be, Sophia knew that Angelika had neither the diligence nor the interest to complete the many household tasks that needed to be done. She would start a chore, whether it was fetching water or kneading bread, and then she would wander off, the thing half finished, only to return with floods of apologies and even tears and yet do the same thing all over again. Most days Sophia could not even resent her sister for it. Angelika was too young, too pretty, and too naturally loving to stay angry with for long. It was like being angry with a kitten; Sophia only felt guilty when she scolded her.