The Gold Letter

by Lena Manta

  “But there was another sister too. Why didn’t Hecuba do the same to Fotini?”

  “Don’t ask me! I never understood.”

  “And how did my mother respond?”

  “Bah, Smaragda was all goodness. In spite of all her sister’s abuse, a lot of which her parents weren’t even aware of, she always found reasons to excuse her. Your mother—and I said it to her back then—was capable of forgiving the devil himself!”

  I nodded. That I knew from personal experience.

  “And the house? Why does she want it so badly?”

  “So that you can’t have it. Her jealousy of your mother has been passed down to you now!”

  “Except I’m not my mother. And I’m not about to forgive the whole world.”

  “Good for you! Bravo!”

  Karim came into the room, looking pale. He held a tray with sweets, but his hands trembled.

  “Everything all right, madam?”

  “It’s all right, Karim. Don’t be afraid. She left, and she probably won’t come back.”

  “She is not a good person. I was afraid, madam, very afraid.”

  Melpo approached him, squeezed his shoulder, and smiled at him.

  “Come on, Karim!” she tried to tease him. “You survived bombs in your country, and you were afraid of Hecuba?”

  “Fear not for me. For madam,” he whispered, and his eyes rested on me affectionately.

  I approached him too. My caress was aimed at his cheek. The young man blushed and lowered his eyes. I took the tray from his hands.

  “Everything is all right, my friend,” I assured him. “We’re going to keep talking in the office. You go and collect Tiger. I’m sure with all the hubbub he took the opportunity to enjoy the food we left on the table.”

  With a shudder and a cry, Karim dashed out of the room, knowing I was right about our naughty black cat.

  I shut myself up again with Melpo in my grandfather’s small, welcoming office. We ate our dessert without speaking, in a companionable silence, enjoying its delicate taste. Karim called it mahalebi, and it smelled of rosewater and was topped with grated, toasted pistachio nuts from Aegina. We finished it at almost the same moment and looked at each other like ornery children.

  “I never say no to dessert,” Melpo exclaimed, smiling broadly.

  “It does seem that the same blood flows in our veins!”

  As soon as I said it, I felt my face fall. Since losing my mother, I hadn’t met a single person I felt anything in common with. Until now.

  “Won’t you tell me what happened?” the woman urged me.

  “I don’t know if I can bear it.” I sighed. “Renos, my father, was a monster, a mistake of nature. There was nothing human about him.”

  It came out of me in torrents—all the things that had happened, and my words caused a deep line to form between Melpo’s eyes. She listened practically without breathing so as not to interrupt me.

  “It was right before my tenth birthday. My mother had promised she would make me a big cake for the occasion, and I was going to invite my friends over for a party. But I came home from school that day and found a crowd of people gathered outside the house, including some policemen. My mother’s friend Anna was sitting on the steps crying. As soon as she saw me, she ran and hugged me. I remember that I had never been so afraid in my whole life. I asked for my mother, and instead of answering me, she just cried. She told me my mother had gone away, but I couldn’t believe it. I shouted that it wasn’t possible for her to have left me. I had a birthday in a few days, and she was making me a cake. They said she had committed suicide. That she had left a note and jumped from the balcony. I never believed it. Neither did Anna. She told the police about the violence she knew of. She swore that the handwriting in the note may have resembled my mother’s, but it wasn’t hers. Nobody believed her, and the police didn’t pay much attention. One fewer refugee. What did it matter to them? Who would miss her? Only me. And I wasn’t worth taking into account.”

  “And your father?”

  “Are you sure you want us to go into that chapter, Melpo? It might be too much for you.”

  “You’re here, in front of me. And if you can handle it, I can too.”

  I lit a cigarette with trembling hands and stood up. If she embraced me, I knew, I wouldn’t have the courage to dive into the deep waters of his evil.

  “Naturally, nobody could make Renos feel guilty. The German police asked him some questions and let him go. I forgot to mention my grandmother and grandfather—his parents. That’s because they were nearly invisible in my life. I don’t remember affection, hugs, or really any interaction the whole time my mother was alive. After her death, Renos turned to them. I was still young; I needed someone to look after me. But my grandfather was very ill with cancer. If I remember right, he died almost right after I went to live with them. Grandmother packed her things and made her dream a reality: she returned to Greece.”

  “And you stayed behind with your father?” Melpo dared to interject.

  I looked at her smiling, but without any joy. “Just him and me. I went to school, then came home to do all the housework.”

  “And Anna? Didn’t she help you?”

  “Secretly. I learned a lot from her: how to wash, iron, and cook. She always disappeared before Renos got home because if he found her in the house, I would pay.”

  “He beat you?” asked Melpo in horror.

  “Since my mother wasn’t there anymore, he needed someone to torture. In the beginning, it was beatings and threats. I tried to anticipate his every wish. I didn’t speak, didn’t breathe, hoping he’d forget my presence. I prayed he would come home blind drunk, because then at least he’d collapse on the couch snoring quicker.

  “The years went by, and when I turned thirteen, Anna and her husband moved away. There was some sort of inheritance, I think. They went to America. It was another huge loss for me. We spent the evening before they left crying. I had another reason to cry, of course. She left; I stayed. I think that, if she’d known what would happen, she would have kidnapped me. You see Renos, my doting father, soon discovered that I had grown up enough that he could have his way with me as he did with my mother.”

  I fell silent as the weight of those memories overwhelmed me. My body began to tremble again. I wrapped my arms tightly around it to hold it together. Melpo stared at me, frozen, her eyes wide.

  “Fenia,” she said softly, her voice almost a whisper, “you can’t mean—”

  “Every word,” I said, speaking slowly. “The beatings were only the beginning.”

  I stopped speaking, biting my lips. Years had passed, nearly three decades, but it was as if not a day had gone by. His dirty smell returned to my nostrils, the hands that felt my whole body, the pain, the sounds, the memories like knife blades that made me hemorrhage again as I had then.

  Melpo jumped up. Her arms hugged me, her lips kissed me, and her voice drove away the horrible things. She pulled me into the protection of her embrace.

  I became that girl again, the one who trembled in the dark because it meant the time was coming. I heard my voice again begging him to leave me alone. I called him “Father” so that he would remember who he was and how he was supposed to protect me, not throw me on the bed and fall on top of me. A dirty beast with an even dirtier soul. After that first time, it happened almost every day, and all I did was pray for death. But God didn’t listen to me, and I stopped believing in him. I was filled with anger, even at my mother, who had left me in his hands. Maybe she had committed suicide, I thought, unable to live like that anymore. I envied her. She’d had the strength to put an end to it. I didn’t. It took two years for him to get me pregnant. I was fifteen. I didn’t know what to do, where to turn for help. That was the first time I thought seriously about suicide. Some days I’d walk home from school and dream about jumping in front of cars; other days, the thought horrified me, and I returned to where I knew what was waiting for me. Once, I took his razor in my
hands. I admired the cold metal; I imagined it cutting my skin. I could even see my warm blood flowing and taking with it the wretchedness that was my life. But I put it down. It was so simple, so easy, and I? I put down the razor and ran far away from it. I wasn’t ready to be reunited with my mother. I blamed myself for being a coward, for not having the strength to save myself. And the more I believed in my cowardice, the more I hung my head and believed that I deserved all that torture.

  “Nobody deserves that!” Melpo said firmly.

  Then I realized I had been speaking aloud. What I thought I was saying in my mind, I had dared to utter. Safe in her arms, I could continue, however strange that might seem. Not a single living being had heard my secret. I made myself more comfortable in her tender embrace and spoke again.

  “I told him. I had no choice—it was starting to show. I’d never seen him like that. When he began hitting me and howling that I’d done it to shame him, I thought that if I lost my mind, at least I’d have nothing more to fear. His rage overwhelmed me. He behaved like a father whose daughter had humiliated him. He beat me half to death. It was then I discovered how much the human body can endure under torture. I did nothing to save myself. Since I couldn’t end it all on my own, he would do it—and it would be the first good thing he did for me. But I didn’t die. I woke up in a hospital, or rather, in a parallel universe.”

  “Why?” asked Melpo, and then bit her lip because she had interrupted me.

  But I finally had opened the chest of memories, and they flooded out, angry that I had kept them locked up for so long.

  “In the hospital, he acted crushed, full of concern. In his statement to the police, he was so clear and vivid: an intruder had stolen all his savings and beaten his daughter violently. And imagine, now he’d rushed me to the hospital like a madman only to find out I was pregnant. He had everyone’s sympathy. A despairing father whom fate had struck twice. First his wife’s suicide and now his daughter . . .

  “When I recovered, but before the police came back to take my statement, he informed me that if I didn’t corroborate his story, what I’d gone through would be child’s play compared to what he would do to me. He stayed beside me the whole night, threatening without mercy. In the morning, when the police came, he put on the most extraordinary act. And I did as I was told. I never forgave myself. When I got out of the hospital, I was more obedient than ever. I had decided on my own punishment: I deserved him.”

  “That’s terrible, maybe even more terrible than the abuse,” Melpo said.

  “I know. As soon as I recovered, my life ran like clockwork. I went to school, came home, cooked his food, cleaned, studied, and waited for him. If he had drunk a lot, he fell asleep. If not, he attacked me. I didn’t resist. It felt like my soul wasn’t in my body. Only two senses didn’t abandon me: smell and hearing. I still wake up suffocating in the stench of his body and his breath, hearing his animal grunts. All my other senses died. And the more obedient I was, the filthier he got. In any case, he had nothing to fear anymore. In the hospital, I had learned that his attack had cost me not only the baby I was expecting but any future children. I could never become a mother.”

  Melpo’s body stiffened when she heard my last words, and her arm, around my shoulder, drew me closer to her. The silence in the room was almost devout. Even the slight rustling of the curtains could be heard.

  I got up and went to the door. There was Karim. He was paler than I’d ever seen him. He was holding a tray. His clenched eyelids tried but couldn’t hold back the tears. His body was shaken by heavy sobs, as if an electric current were passing through it.

  I took the tray from his hands, and only then did he realize I was standing in front of him. He fell to the ground.

  “Sorry, madam. I did not want—but you were speaking, and I waited for you to stop before I knock on the door. And then I heard, and wanted to die, madam. So much pain. Forgive me for hearing. You must forget, madam. Not remember the bad things. I am here, beside you. Nobody will harm you!”

  I looked at Melpo, who was following the situation without knowing how to deal with it.

  “Take the tray at least!” I told her.

  She sprang up and took it. Finally, I could bend down and try to bring my friend back to himself.

  “Karim, please! Get up.”

  With Melpo’s help, I detached him from the floor. We sat him down in a chair, but we couldn’t stop the tears.

  “Can I bring you some brandy?” Melpo asked.

  “Are you crazy? He’s a Muslim—he doesn’t drink alcohol.”

  “So give him a cigarette, then.”

  “He doesn’t smoke.”

  “For God’s sake! Doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke—how does his mind get any relief?” Then she turned to him. “Karim, pull yourself together, young man. You’ve been through great suffering also, as I understand it, and you know that having someone else crying all over you about it doesn’t do a bit of good!”

  Her voice held some special power. It was much like a mother’s; perhaps that was the secret. Karim stopped crying. He wiped his eyes, and finally looked at us.

  “You are right,” he murmured. “But you, madam, how did you bear it?”

  “However much a person is tortured,” I said, as if talking to myself, “a person doesn’t stop struggling to survive. When we live peacefully, our stamina seems weak. Nobody knows what reserves of strength we have until we need them.” I looked into my friend’s eyes. “Wasn’t that true for you, Karim?”

  He pressed his lips together and nodded.

  “How did all this end?” Melpo wanted to know.

  “Has it ended?” I asked sadly. “Inside me, it’s still there. On the outside, another four years must have passed.

  “As I got older, the beatings stopped. He got in bed beside me every evening, even just to sleep. I waited until he was asleep and went to spend the night in the living room. I’d get into the bath and scrub myself for hours, sometimes until I bled. The unholy acts took on a larger dimension. He wanted more than compliance—he wanted participation. He wanted me to say I loved him, that I enjoyed the things he did to me. It reached the point where he gave me presents. He called me his wife. He was terribly jealous, and didn’t let me go out, even to school. A strange hostage situation began. I existed only to serve and feed his appetites. And the worst part was, I gave in to it. He was my whole world, and I became like a slave whose only destiny was to serve her master. He reduced me to nothing. I’m nothing.”

  “That’s enough, Fenia.”

  Melpo’s weak voice brought me back to myself, to the room where we sat. My chest of memories was open at last, and even the deepest, the most evil had been set free.

  “I’m sorry, but you wanted to know.”

  “How could I imagine?” she asked. “What finally happened?”

  “One night, he was late getting home. There wasn’t a drop of booze left in the house, and I was anxious for him to bring me something—I’d been drinking more and more, needing it. As soon as he came in, I snatched the bottle and began to drink. After that, I did everything I’d learned to arouse him. He died on top of me. His heart.”

  Melpo raised her hand to her mouth. Karim looked at me, his eyes popping.

  “On top of you?”

  “Yes. A nineteen-year-old girl pinned under a dead man. With all my strength, I pushed him off me and saw his glassy eyes staring at the ceiling. My eyes filled with tears, and I laughed. My mind had been split in two for so many years, so my reactions were split too. My eyes wept, my lips laughed. Some time must have passed before I pulled myself together. I got up and dressed before calling a doctor to confirm his death. Nobody suspected anything. I buried him and then had to think about what I would do. Suddenly, all my senses began to work again. I needed to get away from that house, but I didn’t have a cent to my name. I knew a trade, though.”

  “What do you mean?” Melpo asked, shocked again.

  “Exactly what you think I
mean. I decided I’d work for two years as a prostitute and save up enough money to make a new life. Then I’d leave Germany forever. At least that’s what I said.”

  “But that’s not what happened?”

  “No. Two years became five, and five became ten. I moved to Munich, where I could work in a better brothel and have better customers. When I turned thirty, something broke again inside me. I went back to the only source of comfort I knew: drinking. I stopped working. I lost all my customers. My money ran out quickly, and I found myself on the street.”

  “I don’t believe it!” Melpo cried. “My child, what you’ve been through!”

  “For three years, I was homeless. I ate out of garbage cans, slept on the street. I wandered around in darkness.”

  “And how did that end?”

  “However impossible it may seem, God must have remembered me. It was the evening of my thirty-fifth birthday, and my clothes caught the eye of some junkies. They beat me up and left me naked, almost dead, in front of a house.”

  “And someone found you?”

  “Angels found me. The couple who lived there came home and picked me up without a second thought. He was a doctor, and he stitched me up. They washed me and dressed me and put me in a sweet-smelling bed.”

  “Praised be His name!” Melpo cried, and her eyes lit up again. “Tell me it was the end of your martyrdom!”

  “Yes, it was,” I murmured, and I saw Karim murmuring thanks to his god too. I smiled before I continued.

  “Yannos and Savina Pantazis were Greeks who had been living in Germany for years. They didn’t ask any questions, just took me in. And when I recovered, to repay their hospitality, I took care of the house. I looked after them as if they were my children; the only thing I didn’t do was feed them with a spoon. Gratitude flowed from every pore of my body. After a few months, Savina announced that, after years of trying, she was expecting their first child. I cried before they did for their good fortune. Somehow, both of them thought I had brought them luck. The child that was born was a thrice-blessed little girl; she was the sun that shone on all three of us. Knowing I would never be a mother myself, I loved her like my own.”