by Arnold Zable
Dora’s father, Athanassios, could return in name only. It is inscribed on the family tomb, beneath the name of his father, Yanni. Buried here too are Dora, the sister who died in childhood; and Athanassios’s mother, Sevasti, whose sudden death would always haunt him. We see the name of Dimitri, the brother who had remained. We last saw him on Ithaca in 1990. He died two years ago.
Athanassios and Dimitri, brothers who once sailed the Ionian Sea. One left, the other stayed. They lived much of their lives apart. Dimitri, who stayed, endured war and Nazi occupation. He joined the resistance and ferried partisans on dangerous missions in the dead of night. At war’s end, he lived through civil war, fratricidal disputes. Still, he sailed his boats, until he was forced to move to Athens to look after his sister who had fallen on hard times.
Yet he endured, and lived a longer and more contented life than the restless brother who left for more distant shores. Even when based in Athens Dimitri could return every year to Ithaca. He was within distance. He stayed in touch. He ventured back out into the Ionian Sea. Maybe this is why he survived. These are the enigmas, the subtleties of the immigrants’ song. And these are the mysteries we reflect upon, as we polish the ancestral grave.
Perhaps we should inscribe an epitaph. ‘Here lie two Ionian seamen who built a boat called Brotherly Love. They sailed the waters that stretch before us. It was their grand passion, an enduring romance. They were ardent lovers of the Ionian Sea.’
We have cleaned the tomb. Paid our respects. Walked the village roads. Tracked down tales. Yet there remains unfinished business, one more story to be told, of Athanassios’s mother, Sevasti. I have imagined the scent of her body, the aroma of toil and mountain herbs. Perhaps this is the scent Athanassios awoke to, as a child, only to find her body inert. That day the Easter bells tolled for both the resurrection and a woman’s death.
Nonno Yanni had brought her to Ayia Saranta as a bride, from the mainland village of Zeverda. Ithacans owned land there, and were connected through trade and brides. Sevasti knew no one upon the island when she arrived. She was accompanied by a half-sister, Triki, to ease her way into a new life. Sevasti was sixteen years old, and Triki four, at the time. We are talking of the turn of a century, the year 1900, more or less.
Triki lived long enough to tell us the tale. We met her on our previous journey, seven years ago. She was ninety-three years old. We recall her now, as we descend from the graveyard with Sevasti’s great-grandson, Alexander, by our side.
Triki had the appearance of a kindly owl, but in her body she looked like a sparrow; she was a tiny woman who flitted about. Her cheekbones seemed transparent beneath skin stretched taut over her skeletal frame.
Twelve years after she settled on Ithaca, a middle-aged lady came upon Triki on a village road. She asked her if she knew the house of Yanni Varvarigos. Triki pointed the way. Only later did she discover that the woman was her own mother. She had come to visit the daughters she had not seen for many years. ‘Ah. This is how it was with us,’ Triki had told us with a wry smile.
When Sevasti’s daughter, Dora, passed away, she was never the same, said Triki. Sevasti died three years later. Her heart just gave out. After her death, Triki looked after the three children while Yanni slowly made his way home. ‘There will never be anyone like Sevasti. She is irreplaceable,’ he is supposed to have said when he arrived back.
Before he could remarry he had to marry off his daughter Thalia. She was shown the photo of a handsome young man who was in America, building up his wealth. Thalia agreed to the match. As the wedding drew near she saw him for the first time. She was out walking with her father, near the village, when two men appeared on the road. Nonno Yanni pointed at them and said, ‘One of those men is to be your husband.’
It was then that Thalia realised she was to be married to a man far older than herself. Over twenty years older in fact. But it was true that he had amassed a small fortune. He made his money as a cloakroom attendant in New York. How many tips did it take from the wealthy men of the new world for him to grow rich?
Nonno Yanni remarried soon after his daughter’s wedding. His second wife, Filo, was lame. She was glad to have found security. She bore no children, but looked after the two boys. Freed of her duties as a surrogate mother, Triki also married. ‘For love,’ she says. ‘An Ithacan man. From the village of Laxos.’
At first, however, she became engaged. Her fiance had three sisters who required dowries. And a house that he wished to build. So he had left for Africa to make his fortune. He was gone for ten years. In the tradition of Penelope, Triki had waited. ‘It was necessary. He did what had to be done,’ said Triki. ‘But Penelope waited for twenty years. I am only half a Penelope,’ she laughed.
Athanassios did not return. Triki recalled the day he left.
She was holding her baby daughter. They waved to him from the balcony, as he made his way to the bay. ‘Athanassios was a good man, but always nervous. I could never understand why he rarely wrote. Nonno Yanni would go every day to the post office, and return empty-handed.’
Nonno Yanni lived to be over ninety years old. As he was dying he was surrounded by his children and friends. Except Athanassios. Yanni lay in the stone house he had built in his youth, in the rooms we live in now. He asked for a pen and paper, and wrote just one last word. ‘Athanassios.’ He looked at each of his children and friends, in turn, and died.
It seems to arise suddenly from a sun-filled silence, and within minutes a mere squall becomes a tempest. Torrents of rain soak the parched Ithacan earth. The storm attacks and recedes in waves. The shutters rattle. The cold seeps into the walls. But the stones remain solid, and the cypress beams hold fast. Grandfather Yanni built a house, and one hundred years later it can still weather a gale. We retreat into the ancestral home, and think of those still out at sea seeking refuge from the storm.
The tempest persists for days. And Alexander is elated. We dart out during momentary lulls, and see how charged the island has become. Ancient olives battle the winds. Hardy shrubs— bow-legged and gnarled—cling to mountain slopes. Herbs and grasses bend to the gale. The sea seethes. Its undertows run first one way, then the other, its currents collide and regroup. Dry wells are being replenished. The moisture sinks into the craggy earth. Boats tear at their anchors. Everything is struggling, swaying, dancing. The sky too is moving, changing colour within moments from thinning white to black.
In the village kafeneion the talk turns to the winds. Retired seamen, hunched over their cards, speak matter-of-factly about their power and nuances. They draw maps, and place individual winds at each point of the compass. Every direction is accounted for, and there are many variations. There is the east wind that brings rain, and the east wind that does not. There is the north wind tinged with ice, the south wind laced with heat. And there is the west wind now blowing, the bearer of rainbows within sun-drenched squalls.
The old men know the winds, for their lives once depended upon them. They know the winds because they began their apprenticeship as children on boats piloted by a father, an uncle, a family friend. Now, in their retirement, the winds blow in their dreams. By day, they sit in the kafeneion and focus on the company of friends. But at night, when the winds howl about them within their white stone homes, they are taken back to their many battles with the elements on voyages long past.
Here on Ithaca, seamen know that the elements determine our fate. When the winds are about, there is nothing to do but retreat, return to shore, secure the boats, and put up the shutters in village homes. And those who work the land, they too understand the power of wind and water, of fire and earth.
At times this quartet acts in concert; or they clash. This is apparent when we emerge during a break in the storm and return to the olive groves. The picking season is over. Our final task is to burn the discarded branches. But we must wait until the wind dies down before we light the fire. Or we can work the wind to our advantage, and place the branches in its path to arouse a dying bla
ze.
For hours we herd the flames away from trees and wind. At times the fire forms an alliance with the wind, and springs back into the fray. We move fast, like mountain goats bouncing over the rocky earth. There is little margin for error, no time to lower our guard. When the flames threaten to get out of hand, we haul water from a nearby well. And when the fire dies down, we observe the ashes giving way to the earth.
By day’s end we are fully spent. The eyes are softened by fatigue. The body is hardening. Our whole being is satiated with work. Every muscle, each sinew and tendon, and the very marrow of the bones, ache. This is the paradox of physical labour, the contradiction of village life. It is enervating, yet relentless. Exhilarating, but back-breaking.
We are now under Ithaca’s spell. It is an island of contours carved by millennia of wind, fire and rain. There are mountains that shield valleys, and harbours that provide safe passage from a raging storm. There are villages such as ours, which stand upon the lower heights, semi-protected by higher peaks. The homes are built of rock and stone to withstand the full force of a gale. And always, there is the sea; it caresses the inlets and coves; and when it seethes and attacks, the waves are contained by the curve of the bays.
In the last few days of our stay, we wander the island incessantly, to absorb the details, to imprint the landscape on our minds. Alexander perches on my shoulders, or runs ahead on the narrow paths. With each passing day of encroaching winter, the northern heights ebb further towards stillness. Out of this stillness sounds reverberate with greater clarity. Breezes rear up and recede in faltering gusts. Sheep- and goat-bells cascade across the slopes like overflowing springs.
We wander into hamlets we have never seen before. Fishing nets are draped over walls, hanging out to dry. They glow in beiges, fading charcoals and gold. Geraniums blaze crimson against silver-white stones. A lone duck wanders the path. Olive trees, stripped of their fruit, stand deeply rooted in the rocky soil. A blue ladder glistens in the winter sun. Hessian bags, recently full of olives, line the balconies as they dry. A washing line strung between two pines waves the family washing towards the skies.
We wander further, lured by the bleating of a kid goat. We come out onto a cliff-side path. The kid has just been born. The placenta is being picked by crows. It glistens in the sun. The kid cowers on a rock, while the mother hovers above it, on guard, alert. The blood is still fresh on her belly, her teats swollen.
The summer is long over. The harvest is done. The earth has been soaked by the recent rains. The air is scented with the smell of burning olive branches and sodden dirt, sheep dung and mountain thyme. A silver hue rests upon both the mountain slopes and the sea; Ithacan colours, the whites of its stones, its blues and greens, flow like matter transformed into vapours and mists. We move on, into the heights. Alexander feels comfortable now, even on the more forbidding slopes. ‘Higher. Let’s go higher,’ he urges. ‘Let’s go to the top of the mountain.’
We see the details, blue-flowered mints, white crocus, mauve cyclamens that jut through the rocks. Lizards and dung beetles dart about. Below us we hear the laughter of villagers making their way home from the groves. We hear the whirr of a chainsaw, the screech of a crow. And the crunch of our own feet upon the loose stone.
We follow new paths on our descent. We move past bags of freshly picked olives lined up on garden walls, like scalps won from a day of battle. A villager walks by with a bag of olive wood on his shoulders, a bonus for his nightly fire. A flock of sheep clusters in the shade. The sun is falling. We make our way to Stavros. Like homing pigeons we come to roost in the old kafeneion.
All the usual suspects are here, on the main street, and in the plateia, the town square. Inside the kafeneion Zacharias is bent over his game of patience. Cousin Rigo, the black-bearded anarchist, is arguing politics. In the square two fishermen are selling octopus from the back of a truck. Papou Spiros, the village priest, stalks about shaking the hands of believers and non-believers alike, with his steel-trap grip. ‘Out with poverty, and in with good heart,’ he bellows. It is his favourite saying. He grabs Alexander’s hand in a fierce shake and orders a round of brandies.
The sky darkens. Below us, in Polis Bay, the fishing boats are at harbour. Just one caique is making its way out to sea. The last donkey of Stavros trots by, ridden bareback. Young men sit on the terraces eyeing mini-skirted teenage girls as they walk by. A family of gypsies, fresh off the boat, stops, mid-square, in a van loaded with carpets. ‘Where are we?’ the driver asks. They drive off, music blaring as they proclaim their inventory of goods.
A slow unfolding is taking place. This is why we sit. It allows the silt of the mind to settle. It permits thoughts to unravel. Siga. Siga. Slowly. Slowly. ‘When you set out on your voyage to Ithaca, pray that your journey will be long, full of adventure, full of knowledge,’ wrote Cavafy. Another coffee please. Such a tiny cup but it can be made to last. The galaxies are now out. There is ample time to look about, and to see Alexander raise his eyes to look at the skies.
Occasionally someone joins us for a drink. A chat. Before meandering on to the next table. This is how it is every night. As Uncle Dimitri would say: ‘A man dies poor if he has not made time to sit and talk with friends.’
We feel his presence here. This is where Dimitri spent many hours in his final years. They called him Kouvendas, the talker. He loved nothing more than to sit and chat. I can see him now, bow-legged, in his worn flannel suit, loosely hanging on a wasting frame, walking-stick in hand, a retired seaman making his way through the streets of Stavros. It would take him hours to move from one end of town to the next. There was always another friend to talk to, yet another detour on a winter’s day.
On the return walk we glance at the dark shapes of Kefalonia. We can see the lights of mountain villages across the straits. Over Polis Bay a crescent moon glides between clouds with Venus in tow. Above us the lights of Exogi glitter like a scattering of stars. We approach Ayia Saranta, and acknowledge familiar cypress on the way. The cypress is a tree of the dark, a reflector of the passing phases of the moon. We move past silent donkeys asleep on their feet, and homes that stand like petrified ghosts on the lower slopes.
And it comes upon us, unexpectedly, an intense longing, coupled with a sense of belonging. As the date for our departure nears, it hits with great force. The thought of leaving, at this moment, is unbearable. Is this what Alexander’s grandparents and great-grandparents felt on the eve of departure? Is this why Athanassios was forever restless, ill at ease? Is this the curse of Ithaca, to remain in limbo, forever wedded to an island of seafarers and scattered clans? Is this why some emigrants would never cease thinking of their new homes as mavri xenitia, the black exile, and long for their return?
The Ionian Star arrives one hour late. It pirouettes with grace and precision, and drifts to the shore. The mobile ramp descends upon the quay. It is always the same, this instant of touching down; a halting of time, before the momentum resumes in a frantic rush of cars and trucks, passengers and hurried farewells. And, as if the past few months were an illusion, I am standing on the deck of the ferry with Alexander.
We bend back through the labyrinth, and spiral out onto the Ionian Sea. The boat trails an amber wake, glazed by the rising sun. For an hour I watch the island recede. The first to wane are the sharper colours, the mountain greens falling upon isolated coasts. The peaks sink under the horizon like an ocean liner capsized. I am still looking long after they are gone. The island is enshrouded within itself. It takes a while to accept the finality. This is the point when reality pales, and the myths creep in.
Then I glance at Alexander. His eyes are focused elsewhere. He is running upon the deck. Playing games of his own. Ithaca is an old chapter. Past tense. He has no time for nostalgia.
One month after our return to Melbourne, we are walking by the Carrum foreshore. We follow the shoreline as it curves from the river mouth towards the peninsula to the east. We have returned to the scene of the crime. And it
is only now that we can see why Athanassios chose this stretch of coastline for his most enduring home.
As we look towards the peninsula it is as if we are standing upon the balcony of the Ayia Saranta house. The two separate views, so far apart, on opposite sides of the earth, coalesce into one. The peninsula could be the neighbouring island of Lefkada, the distant cliffs, Sappho’s leap, and the bay, the Ionian Sea. This is why Athanassios lived here, despite the isolation. This was the closest he could come to the ancestral isle. This is where he was able to hear, with greatest clarity, the alluring call of the sea. It was both his blessing and curse. It was his homecoming.
The Ballad of Mauthausen
How beautiful my love is
in her plain dress
with a fine comb in her hair.
Nobody knew how beautiful she really was.
This is the tale of a song, the man who wrote it and the object found in hell that inspired it. I first heard the song in Melbourne in the mid-1960s, on a record I received as a gift from a close friend. She was born in Greece; I am of Polish-Jewish origin. We were classmates at a high school in Carlton. We were close— drawn to each other, perhaps, by our common status as children of immigrants.
I attended parties in her house; parties that flowed late into the night with dance and drink, and food cooked by her mother, a village woman; parties that revolved around the kitchen table with conversation and argument, a sense of kinship and warmth. But the friendship between the two of us was contained within boundaries. It was clandestine. Anything more would have met with disapproval from her family. And from mine. That is the way it was back then.
As for the song, I was drawn to it from the moment I heard the opening bars, the deep-toned voice of the singer, Maria Farantouri, and the depth of feeling with which she sang. Over the years I have heard it many times, and I have always been impressed by its perfect marriage of melody and lyrics, and the sense of longing that permeates it.