by Kate Hewitt
“Yes, the coffeehouse,” she said now as her sister uncovered her head—she’d kept her head scarf on, at least—and began to take the pins out of her hair. “And where were you?”
“Just getting water from the fountain.” Angelika glanced up at her, her brown eyes guileless and full of appeal. “I wanted to save you the chore in the morning.”
“Fetching water on a dark night! I’ve never heard of such nonsense.” Sophia tried not to be softened by her sister’s obvious ploy. “You were out hoping to catch sight of Dimitrios stumbling back from the coffeehouse, weren’t you?”
“He wasn’t stumbling,” Angelika said with a giggle, and Sophia clucked her tongue.
“Angelika, louloudi mou, you could be ruined, completely ruined, for such a thing. Surely you know that? No decent man would marry you if he heard you’d been out by yourself, being stupid with a boy like Dimitrios.”
Angelika only laughed, looking delighted rather than alarmed. “Oh, Sophia, you fuss so. There was no harm in it. After five years of mourning, I think I deserve a little fun, and it really was only a little, I promise. I wouldn’t bring shame to our family.”
Sophia pressed her lips together. In other circumstances, she might have agreed. Five years, the expected length of mourning for the death of a mother, was a long time for a young girl to wear black and stay mostly inside, singing no songs except in church and making sure not to laugh or talk too loudly. Angelika, naturally so cheerful and sometimes even boisterous, had understandably chafed against the restrictions, but now that the time of mourning was finally over, she enjoyed her relative freedom a little too much. People would talk, and she would be called shameless or stupid, the worst insults for an unmarried girl. Besides, Sophia thought with a weary resignation, there was a war going on, little that her sister seemed to realize it. They lived in an enemy-occupied country fraught with danger, overwhelmed by deprivation. It was hardly the time for fun.
Sophia took a breath and forced herself to speak kindly. “I know you want your fun, and I understand it. You are young and pretty, and life has been quiet and hard. But Angelika, you know you cannot be seen alone with a man when you are unmarried.”
Angelika pouted. “We didn’t even talk—”
“Even so.”
“Don’t, Sophia, please.” Angelika’s face crumpled. She couldn’t bear being scolded, not even gently. She had been that way since she was a child, indulged perhaps because her mother knew that no more children would come; something had happened to her insides during Angelika’s birth. Even before her mother’s death Angelika had done little work, often playing with her rag doll or a bit of dough in a corner of the yard while Sophia and Katerina baked bread, salted tomatoes, or rubbed corn from the cobs. Sophia had never begrudged her for it; she’d wanted to protect her, just as she did now.
“Angelika, I worry for you. I want to see you settled, with a husband of your own, children too—”
“And maybe I will be, even before you are,” Angelika returned with a little laugh. “Who knows?”
Sophia felt as if a chill hand had reached inside her and taken hold of her heart. Please God, not that fool Dimitrios. She did not want the communist andartes brought into her life, into her very home, with their rifles and curses, and that was not even considering Dimitrios’s foolishness. “Maybe,” she allowed, “but not if—”
“Oh, stop, Sophia, please!” Angelika raised her voice, and in the next bedroom they both heard their father let out a shuddering snore. They stared silently at each other in the moonlit room, the tension snapping between them.
“Things are different now,” Angelika stated more quietly. “The war makes them so; you see it yourself. Could you have worked in a coffeehouse before the soldiers came? In the old days such a thing would not have been allowed. You would have brought as much shame to our father as I might simply by talking in the square!”
“So you did talk!”
Angelika just spun away and Sophia tried to suppress the needling hurt she felt at her sister’s accusation. “Are you saying I bring shame to our father?” she asked quietly, and Angelika turned back to her.
“No, no, forgive me,” she exclaimed, and with her childlike impulsiveness she hurried to Sophia, dropping to her knees to lay her head in her sister’s lap. Gently Sophia touched the dark curls, which were still as soft and lustrous as a baby’s. “I don’t mean any harm,” Angelika said, gazing up at her with dark eyes now luminous with tears. “You know I don’t. I just want to have a bit of fun, that’s all—”
Fun. It was a concept that felt completely alien to Sophia. There was work and need and duty, hunger and money and fear. There was no fun. But Angelika was only eighteen, and she’d lived in a dour household mourning her mother for too many years already. She was made for singing, for pleasure, for life. Sighing, Sophia touched her sister’s curls again, threading her fingers through their softness.
Angelika preened under her caress like a cat, her cheek pressed against Sophia’s skirt. Sophia felt herself soften as she stroked her hair, enjoying the moment of tenderness. “Don’t you ever want more?” Angelika asked, a soft note of longing in her voice. “More than this?”
Sophia’s fingers stilled. More? What more could there be than a house with a shed and two bedrooms, healthy animals, a good harvest? The only more Sophia wanted was safety, but she did not think her sister meant that.
“We need to find you a husband, moraki mou,” Sophia said with a sigh. “Then you will have this more. A home of your own, a child. That is what you need.”
Angelika closed her eyes and didn’t answer, which Sophia knew was her way of avoiding the conversation. Making no promises. But then Sophia could hardly make any, either. There were few husbands to be found in their village now, and Angelika would be considered young to marry. She dropped her hand. “Please be careful,” she said quietly. “That is all I’m asking.”
Angelika lifted her head and opened her eyes, gazing at her with liquid innocence. “I will,” she promised, and rose to take off her boots.
Sophia sat on her bed, fatigue overwhelming her. The air in the bedroom was still and stifling, and if she’d had more energy, she would have dragged her mattress downstairs and slept in the great room, where it was cooler. As it was, she barely felt able to undress and lie on top of the covers.
Tomorrow she would wake before the dawn, make coffee and bread and cheese for her father to take to the fields, and then set about her tasks for the day: weeding the garden, milking their cow, tending their sheep and goats, darning and sewing, cleaning and cooking, an endless round of duties that Angelika would help with, for a while at least. Then some errand would call her away for far longer than it should take—fetching water, feeding the goats… and Sophia would not see her until the afternoon.
A husband, Sophia thought again. Her sister needed a husband—no matter that she was several years younger than most girls were when they were married. If their father had been more attentive, he would have begun to arrange Sophia’s own marriage, but she knew he had not thought of it, much less talked to his sister, Andra, who would act as the negotiator. In any case, marriage-age men were scarce. A dozen boys from the village had already joined the Greek army two years ago, to fight off the invasion by the Italians from Albania; when the Germans had swept in, they’d fled, apparently all the way to Egypt, to be equipped and trained by the British forces stationed there. Sophia could not even imagine such a place, so far away from all she’d known, the round humps of the hills, the sharp smell of pine trees.
Others, like Dimitrios, had joined the andartes and melted into the hills, appearing occasionally to swagger around the square or demand food. Their names were whispered with quiet reverence; you never knew who was listening. And as for those young men who remained… Sophia ran through the motley bunch in her head. The baker’s son, who was a bit simple; a farming boy who was too young, another who had a squint, and one who was cruel to his mule. Maybe a few others
who worked the farms between Iousidous and Lamia. None of them, Sophia knew, would make the kind of husband she’d normally want for her sister, yet who could be choosy in times like these?
Sighing, she closed her eyes, but despite her exhaustion sleep would not come. Things are different now, Angelika had said. Sophia knew her sister was right, but Angelika had spoken with the confidence of the naïve, the blind faith of the innocent. She spoke as if change would be good, as if it were welcome, as if nothing could touch her. Yet how could any of it be welcome, with men being shot in their heads and whole villages disappearing in the space of a single night? Jews in Salonika, it was whispered, were being sent on trains God only knew where, packed in like cattle in a shed, and thousands of people died every day in Athens, from starvation.
Again Sophia felt that chill inside, like winter entering her bones, turning her old. She would not be surprised if her hair turned white before her twenty-first birthday. She wanted only to stay safe, to keep Angelika and her father safe. Was it too much to ask in this dangerous age? “Things are different now.”
Yes, Angelika, she answered silently, closing her eyes and willing herself to sleep, but I do not wish them to be.
4
Now
Ava woke to brilliant sunlight slanting through the slats of the window’s shutters. For a moment before she opened her eyes and faced the day, she pretended she was back in the terraced house in York she’d bought with Simon years ago, their first and only home. She did this every morning, no matter where she woke. It was her painful little ritual, with several precious steps, and she could not keep herself from doing it even though it hurt, sometimes almost unbearably.
Lying there, her eyes still shut, she imagined the sunlight was streaming in from the large window by their bed, filtered through the leaves of the horse chestnut tree in the back garden that they both loved. She slid one hand under her T-shirt, onto the soft flatness of her belly, and imagined it was firm and round. She could almost feel a tiny foot kicking into her palm, even though all was, of course, still. Then she pictured Simon next to her, sleeping on his back with his hands folded over his chest, as he always did. Ava used to tease him that he didn’t just sleep like the dead, he looked like he was dead. That joke had stopped being funny a year ago, when she’d held the tiny, still form of her daughter in her arms. Her little fingers had been pleated together under her chin, her eyes closed, and her mouth furled up like a rosebud.
Ava opened her eyes, blinking slowly in the bright, hard sunlight, so different from the gentle, more diffused light of England, and felt the pain open inside her again, as fresh and raw as ever. She knew she needed to stop imagining, every morning, how things could have been. How they used to be. Yet even though it hurt, she craved just the memory of the hope and joy she’d felt then; the remnants of those feelings sometimes felt like all that sustained her now. And, she feared, to stop doing it would be to allow herself to forget, and she could not ever let herself do that.
She stretched, swinging her legs over the side of the bed as the events of the evening before trickled through her consciousness. The drive from Athens. The dilapidated farmhouse. The kindness of Eleni. And perhaps most surprising of all, Parthenope’s confused apology.
I’m sorry. Such a strange—and sad—thing to say after seventy years. What on earth could Parthenope be sorry for now? What had happened all those years ago? Or had seeing Ava simply triggered a memory that held no meaning after all this time? Lying there, Ava remembered how the tears had slipped down Parthenope’s papery cheeks. Hardly a meaningless memory. Perhaps grief never lessened, not after one year, not after seventy. The thought offered both hope and sorrow. She wasn’t ready to let go of her own grief, but she wanted to believe she could one day. At least she thought she did. She could not imagine living this way forever.
And as for Parthenope… Ava knew she couldn’t ask the elderly woman what had troubled her so, at least not yet. Last night she had seemed genuinely distressed, and that in turn had distressed Eleni. As their guest, Ava had no intention of upsetting either of them, and yet she was intensely curious. As she dressed, she wondered whether there was anyone else in the village she could ask about it, and then she wondered if she even wanted to know. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. There was a reason no one talked about that time, just as her mother had warned her. Besides, Parthenope’s tears and apology did not suggest a happy memory; surely she’d experienced enough sadness and loss already.
Sighing, she ran a brush through her unruly hair and went to find Eleni in the kitchen. The older woman stood by the sink, spooning yogurt into a bowl. In the sunlight her gray hair looked almost blond, the light touching the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and the deep laugh lines that Ava saw as Eleni turned to her and smiled.
“So, you are awake. And hungry too, I think.”
“Starving,” Ava admitted a bit sheepishly. She still felt a little uncomfortable and even guilty taking this stranger’s hospitality. She could hardly imagine such a thing happening back in England, but life seemed different here in the rural heartland of Greece, as if she’d fallen back in time, to a simpler age.
“Let me help,” she said, starting forward, but Eleni shook her head firmly.
“No, no, it is all finished. You drink coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
Eleni arched an eyebrow, a smile curving her lips. “Greek coffee?”
Ava had heard about Greek coffee; it was a strong, syrupy espresso that you could stand a spoon in. “Yes, please,” she said again, smiling, and Eleni nodded in approval.
“Poli kala,” she said, and from a small copper pot she poured Ava a little ceramic cup of what looked like brown sludge. She pushed the sugar bowl towards her. “This will help.”
Ava murmured her thanks, then spooned the sugar into the coffee and stirred. Eleni began to slice a melon. “So will you go back to your grandmother’s house?” she asked as she fanned the succulent slices out on a plate. “Perhaps it will not be so bad in the light of day.”
“Or perhaps it will be worse,” Ava couldn’t keep herself from saying with a little laugh. “Either way, I need to have another look. You’ve been kind enough to let me stay one night—”
Eleni waved a hand. “It is no bother. We do not have visitors in this village too often, I can assure you.”
“You are very kind.” Ava took a tiny sip of coffee. It was so strong, it was hard not to wince or even shudder at the taste. “I suppose I’ll need to ring the electric company again—”
Eleni waved a hand again. “My cousin Vasileios works for Public Power. He can sort out the electric.”
Another seemingly insurmountable obstacle so easily pushed aside. If only all of her life could be so simple, so easy. “I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t met you last night.” Gone back to Athens, probably, in tears, and then maybe even all the way back to England, defeated.
Eleni shrugged, the movement both philosophical and dismissive. “You don’t need to worry about such things. After all, you are one of us.” She placed a bowl of thick Greek yogurt in front of Ava, a dollop of golden honey spreading in its center. “So your grandmother’s house…” she continued, turning back to the sink, “it has been empty a long time.”
“Over sixty years, I think. My grandmother, Sophia, moved to England sometime after the war. I really don’t know anything about her life in Greece.” She’d never even been curious. The thought shamed her now, at least a little. Why were the young never curious about what came before them?
She took a breath and let it out slowly before she added hesitantly, “It’s wonderful that your mother knew her. If she could tell me some things—memories—or tell you, rather, that would be—” She stopped as she saw Eleni shaking her head with the same kind of firm dismissal with which she’d discussed the electricity.
“My mother never talks about the war. No one does. It is as if it did not happen. In truth I am amazed she spoke t
o you at all.” She glanced away, her lips pressed in a firm line. “Even I do not know all of what happened here during that time, although of course there are stories.”
Ava was not really that surprised, but she still felt a flicker of disappointment. She stirred her creamy yogurt, watching as the golden honey melted into it. “Stories?” she repeated quietly.
“Terrible stories, about terrible things.” Eleni shook her head. “Violence of all kinds. Of course, at that time, such things happened everywhere, all over Europe. But in Greece… there was more. Starvation because of the Allied blockades, and the Germans, they took all the food. The economy—the whole country—was ruined for at least two generations, perhaps more if you consider the sorry state of affairs today.” She gave a small, sad smile and Ava nodded her understanding. She knew Greece’s economy had been something of a national disaster— it had been in the news enough back in England—even if it didn’t seem to touch daily life in this remote little spot. “And,” Eleni continued, “during the war 300,000 people died of starvation in Athens alone. Here, in the country, it was a little better. At least we could grow our own food, although that was taken too, first by the Italians and Nazis, and then by the andartes.”
“Andartes?” Ava had never heard the word.
“Soldiers of the Resistance. Communists on one side and monarchy-hating republicans on the other. Both violent.” She shook her head with a grimace. “When the Germans finally left, they fought each other and tore the country apart even further in a civil war that lasted years. Everyone suffered.”