The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  Clio wasn’t sure. She kept Nestor’s revelation to herself, not even telling her parents. Each of her parents dealt with Germans every day, and Clio feared that their awareness of Nestor’s—and Yannis’s—actions would reveal itself in their behavior. Besides, they didn’t notice much about their children now, wearied and preoccupied with the work they were ashamed to be doing. So Clio watched over Nestor, at first barely letting him out of her sight, lingering at the edges of soccer games or scuffles by the fountain at Plateia Georgiou. Eventually, Nestor seemed to prefer staying home to dragging his burdensome sister around the city. He loitered around the house, picking at anything he could find to eat in the kitchen, wandering up onto the roof, where Clio was determined never to follow. She watched him one day stalk a Japanese beetle in the front garden so that he could tie a string around its leg. He slipped it into a matchbox and carried it up the stairs to the top of the house to fly it around his head like a lasso.

  That must have been where he was the day the Germans came for him. Clio was in the basement, sitting in one of the storage rooms on a pile of rugs still rolled up for the summer. She had her sketch pad with her but hadn’t opened it. Instead, she hugged her knees to her chest and watched the dust motes rise in the light from the window. The house was quiet, and she could almost imagine that she was in her clover house at the farm—on some day from what now seemed her very distant childhood, before the war had made even the clover houses feel unsafe. When she breathed deeply, the twine creaked around the rugs, just like the clover stalks shifting in the breeze.

  “Clio!” It was Nestor shouting. “Clio!” He came running down the stairs. “Clio, hide me!” He rushed into her arms, breathing hard, his eyes wide.

  She heard deep voices upstairs and the knock of boot heels on the marble floor. None of the others were home, she realized, or, if they were, they were staying hidden. The voices quickly grew louder and then there were two men, German soldiers, in the door of the storage room.

  One of them grabbed Nestor and said something in German. The other one replied and stood in the door, his rifle barring the way out.

  “Let him go,” Clio said.

  “Clio!” Nestor was crying now.

  The first one spoke to Nestor again in German.

  “Clio, what is he saying?”

  She didn’t know. They had stopped their lessons when the war broke out.

  “He doesn’t understand you,” she said to the man’s back. “What do you want?”

  He faced her, swinging Nestor around with him.

  “This boy is a partisan,” he said in choppy Greek.

  “No! No, he’s not. He’s just a little boy.”

  Nestor’s crying grew stronger.

  “He will tell us where the others are. Where are they?” He shook Nestor by the arm. “Wo?”

  “Nestor, you don’t know anything,” Clio said, wanting to make it sound like a fact and not a warning.

  “Where is Yannis?” This was the soldier by the door. Clio couldn’t help herself; she turned around at the sound of Yannis’s name. The door guard smiled. “Ah,” he said. “Maybe you both know. Who’s going to give us what we want?”

  The other one twisted Nestor’s arm, and the boy cried out in pain.

  “Clio!” He stared at her. He was asking her what to do.

  She stepped toward the soldier who was holding Nestor.

  “I know more than he does,” she said.

  The door guard came into the room, took her arm, and turned her toward him. He looked her up and down.

  “What do you know, Mädchen?” He tipped her chin up.

  Nestor had stopped moving. He was old enough to understand this new danger.

  “I know about the guns.”

  “She knows about the guns,” he repeated to his partner, and they both laughed.

  He pointed the barrel of his rifle at Clio, and she gasped. Nestor began to struggle again. The German lowered the barrel to the hem of her dress and poked at the fabric.

  “Do you know this?” he asked. “And this?” He was lifting her dress. Clio could feel the cold of the metal against her thigh.

  “Leave her alone!” Nestor broke free and fell upon the soldier, who pushed him off without taking his eyes from Clio.

  “Not unless you tell us,” he said. Then he said something in German, indicating Nestor with a tilt of his head. Clio understood only Yannis and junge. They knew she was lying.

  “Clio, what do I do?”

  The German had brought his face closer, but the barrel of the rifle was still between her legs. He raised it up so that it was lifting her onto her toes. She winced at the pain of the metal pressing into her. The soldier moved the barrel down and she dropped back onto her feet, exhaling, and then he jammed it up again fiercely. She cried out at the sharp jab. Tipping forward, she braced herself against his chest and quickly snatched her hands away in revulsion.

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell,” Nestor said, sniveling now.

  “I know, Nestor,” she said, gasping from the pain.

  Again, the soldier lowered the rifle barrel slightly and jammed it back up into her. He made questioning noises of encouragement and laughed as he repeated the movement over and over. She thought she could stand the pain if this was all they did to her. But she knew it wouldn’t stop there. The other soldier was close behind her, and all her fear concentrated on the possibility that he would take hold of the barrel’s other end. She felt the heat of him at her back, smelled the sour odor of sweaty wool from his uniform. His rough fingers scraped along her neck and slipped into the opening of her blouse.

  “Nestor, I need you to give them what they’re asking for.” As she said the words, she felt once again that blanket falling over her, muffling sound and smothering her emotions. She thought she could protect Nestor, take his place, but she was too weak. If he gave them the information, maybe he could save them both.

  She took a deep breath to subdue the ache between her legs and spoke again.

  “You need to tell them where to find Yannis.”

  “All right,” Nestor said, as if to himself. “All right. I’ll tell. Oh, God, I’ll tell.”

  The rifle barrel was still pressed against her thigh. What if they didn’t let them go? What if they hanged Yannis from a tree and added her and Nestor too? What would their signs say? Traitor. She and Nestor would need two signs each.

  Nestor named a village Clio had never heard of, in the foothills of Panachaïko. Yannis’s band of partisans were hiding out there, armed with heavy Breda machine guns and Berettas and Carcanos, all taken or bought from the Italians as they gave up the fight. All these names for weapons. Clio listened to her little brother say these words as if he were speaking a different language.

  But the Germans appeared satisfied. Smirking, the guard slid the rifle barrel from between her legs. He made a show of wiping it with a rag he found on the pile of rugs, and both men laughed. Clio didn’t move. Even when she heard the front door slam shut, and even when Nestor buried his head in her chest, she stayed still, thinking of the shame that held both of them now.

  “We can’t talk about this to anyone,” she said.

  “I know.”

  21

  Callie

  Sunday

  The cathedral of Agios Andreas is standing room only, and we sidle our way through to the back row on the left. We join the revelers fresh from the parade that ended just moments ago, at 6:00, their high spirits not yet muted by the solemnity of the church. To my left, a teenager’s satin costume peeks out from the hem of her good winter coat, while her father’s Carnival whistle hangs around his neck on a neon-pink lanyard. Aliki tugs us all into place, making sure Demetra, my mother, and the aunts can see the priests through the crowd. She turns to a group behind us and presses her finger to her lips.

  Taking my spot next to Nikos, I look around the cathedral. It is brightly lit by an enormous wooden chandelier that hangs on a long chain from the central dome. It�
�s more of a ball than a chandelier, like a miniature earth suspended from the heavens painted on the domed ceiling. Giant pillars mark out the space beneath the dome, each pillar covered with an elaborate mosaic. The light from the chandelier makes the tiles glimmer, and the saints look down on us with large eyes rimmed with black.

  Aliki and Nikos seem to know everyone in the cathedral. On the way in, they kissed people on the cheeks and made whispered introductions for me. Some of these people were at the memorial service, I can tell, and they greet me with suppressed embarrassment for my absence the previous day. Now Aliki gazes straight out at the altar, while Nikos occasionally catches someone’s eye and smiles. The most devout are seated in pews right by the altar, their heads bowed in prayer. Aliki must wish she were among them. As the service goes on, I copy my relatives, crossing myself when they do, murmuring the responses after I have heard them a few times. Demetra does the same, giggling up at me once she senses my ignorance of the rituals. The cantor’s clear tenor trills precisely in the mournful minor key of Orthodoxy.

  I find it hard not to be swept up in the mystical feeling of the cathedral, with its incense clouds and the muted jingling of the silver censers and icons and the rich colors of the priests’ embroidered vestments. The cantor is singing to us, singing for us—asking God to forgive us so that we might be ready to re-enter paradise.

  “Kyrie, eleison,” he sings, as the priests light a series of seven lamps.

  I look over at my mother, on the other side of Nikos. She stares straight ahead, into the back of the man who has shifted over in front of her, but it doesn’t seem to bother her. I see her lips moving in response to the cantor’s call.

  I haven’t had a chance to speak with her alone since yesterday, though I’m not sure what I would say if I could. She doesn’t need my sympathy; she doesn’t seem to want it. And there are no more questions I can ask except to push her on the one remaining mystery from her life during the war: What did she do to make the Germans leave her and Nestor alive? That event lies at the center of the story, like some minotaur lurking at the heart of a labyrinth. But I can’t slay that monster for her. It’s not mine to slay. There’s no thread my mother can unspool to lead me to the labyrinth’s core. And even if there were, she would cut it.

  Yet Nestor wanted her to tell me this story. This is the part I can’t quite understand. I look at my mother again, wondering why Nestor would insist on revealing their shared guilt, and I feel I am missing a lesson he very much wanted me to learn. I don’t believe he wanted to punish her. He would have simply told me the secret himself if that was all he wanted. No, he wanted to make it so that my mother and I could speak of this, in some way, together. He wanted some message to pass from her to me.

  But what if Nestor was wrong? What if it would have been better for me, safer for me somehow, not to know? What if my mother is trying to protect me now by keeping me away from the deepest heart of her sadness?

  The priests disappear and for a moment it is quiet; people clear their throats and shuffle their feet as if getting ready, but I don’t know for what. Then the priests reappear from behind the icon-covered altar screen, now wearing vestments of somber black. It is Lent. The crowd begins to press forward, spilling out of the pews toward the altar as the priests move toward them. Our row moves out into the aisle and joins the gentle pushing. The teenager and her father bow their heads, their hands clasped before them. I look back to Nikos for instruction; he thrusts his chin out, telling me to go forward. I nudge Demetra along by the shoulders, easing her into the crowd.

  I see now that we are asking the priest for forgiveness. One by one, people bow their heads to him and kiss his hand.

  “Forgive me,” he says, “a sinner.”

  They repeat his words to him and move on.

  When it is my turn, I stifle thoughts of my religious hypocrisy and remind myself that I have come here willingly.

  “Forgive me,” I mumble, “a sinner.” Mimicking Demetra, who has gone ahead of me, I touch my lips lightly to the smooth skin of the priest’s hand and turn slowly away.

  A woman near me leans in and kisses me on the cheek. She says the priest’s phrase and looks at me with an expectant smile. Startled, I repeat her phrase and she nods, satisfied. Everyone around me is repeating the same words; we are all asking for forgiveness and granting it to those around us. I exchange kisses with Demetra, Nikos, and Aliki, and then turn to my mother.

  “Forgive me, a sinner,” I say, giving her a kiss on each cheek.

  “Forgive me, a sinner,” she says.

  She looks at me and gives me a tiny tilt of the head, part shrug, part question.

  We are among the first to emerge from the cathedral, spilling down the stairs into a city that is strangely quiet for the first time since I arrived. From Plateia Georgiou, a woman’s voice booms over a megaphone, announcing the winners of the Treasure Hunt. Down by the harbor, the first tentative fireworks are crackling up into the twilight. Near the cathedral, firecrackers pop.

  Nikos tries to convince the aunts to stay for the display and for the burning of the Carnival King on a float in the harbor, but they say they prefer to watch the fireworks on television. Thalia, Sophia, and my mother draw close to one another, and, the next thing I know, they have said good night to us and are walking off together, three small but upright bodies in the swirling crowd. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know what shift or compromise has occurred to let the other two embrace the third. But perhaps it just comes down to the fact that it is still their city, after all, and they walk through it together as though nothing can alter their place in it.

  As we head for the harbor, we are joined by Marina and Phillipos and some other friends of Aliki’s and Nikos’s, whom I recognize from our entrance into the cathedral. A group of nearly a dozen now, adults and children, we make our way down crowded streets to the sea, running the last bit as a cluster of giant golden blossoms bursts over the Gulf of Patras.

  Back at the apartment, I clean up the kitchen while Nikos and Aliki settle Demetra down from the day’s excitement. I keep thinking about Agios Andreas, the saints’ big eyes, the sweet incense clouds, and the murmurings of forgive me humming beneath the giant dome. My own murmur too. Did it mean anything, or was I, like Demetra, simply repeating the phrase without really understanding it? I start drying the dinner plates and notice, with some surprise, that there’s a tremble in my hands. I realize suddenly that I need to call Jonah. It’s his forgiveness I need now.

  I wait until everyone has gone to sleep, and I pick up the phone. It’s dinnertime for Jonah, and I expect to catch him boiling up some pasta before he heads out for the last night of the weekend.

  “It’s me,” I tell him.

  “Yeah.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Okay.”

  He is waiting, but I don’t know where to begin. Finally, he is the one who starts.

  “I changed some meetings around so I could leave early on Tuesday. I’m going to meet you at home.” The word hangs in the air.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because I agree with you,” he says. “We need to talk.”

  “Jonah.” He’s waiting. But I can’t finish.

  “Callie. What is it?”

  “I just needed to hear your voice.”

  “Okay.” He pauses. “What’s going on, Callie?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice.” My own voice tightens up now, and I’m afraid he can tell that I’m about to cry.

  “Callie, you’re freaking me out a little. What’s going on?”

  “Jonah, I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. We can do it when I get back.”

  “You called me, remember?”

  “I know.”

  There’s a long silence.

  “I think you’d better tell me now,” he says.

  I think about all the times in the past that I kept things from him—not even big things like this—and about how much of
myself I held apart. There’s an enormous cost to coming clean now. I could lose him, right when I’ve discovered he’s what I want.

  “Okay,” I say. “I slept with someone.” He says nothing. “Jonah,” I almost whisper. “Did you hear me?”

  “Jesus, Callie. I heard you. Want to say it louder?”

  “No, Jonah. I didn’t want to tell you now, over the phone. But I want you to know that I screwed up. And I want to talk to you about it.”

  “Shit, Callie.”

  “I’m sorry.” I try to say the words so that they’ll mean something.

  “Just so I know,” he says, after a pause, “are you still wearing my ring?”

  “Yes.” I don’t know whether that’s the answer he was looking for.

  There’s a very long silence. I brace myself.

  “What the fuck, Callie,” he says finally. “What are you doing? I thought we were okay. I thought we were good, actually. That’s why I proposed. Because it was good.”

  “It was good.”

  “So why did you fuck it up?” I can tell he wants to shout but he won’t allow himself. As if the lawyer in him is preventing a show of weakness.

  “I don’t know, Jonah. I just want a chance to talk about it.”

  “You slept with someone.”

  “Yes.”

  The silence is so long that I really think we may have been cut off.

  “Look,” he says finally, and his voice is flat. “I don’t know what you want to do when you get back, but I don’t expect you to find someplace else from there. Maybe I can go to Ted’s again. I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh.” I wait until my own voice is steady and start again. “Okay. Should I get the T to Charles Street, then, on Tuesday?” What I’m asking is if it’s all right if I show up at our door.

  “Sure. But I don’t know what happens after that.”

  “It didn’t mean anything, Jonah. You know that.”

  “I do know that. And that’s the worst part, Callie. That you would do it for no reason. It’s like I don’t mean anything. Like we don’t. I almost wish you’d fallen in love with some guy. At least then I wouldn’t feel like some asshole whose fiancée cheated on him just for the sex. God, Callie. I need to hang up.”