The Gold Letter

by Lena Manta

“Do we know her last name?” asked Paschalis.

  “No,” Melpo admitted sadly. “A dead end.”

  “In my life, the dead ends are sometimes the way forward,” I observed, and stood up to get my phone.

  In a little while, I was speaking to my grandfather’s lawyer. I had reason to smile at what he told me, which I conveyed to my companions as soon as I ended the call.

  “Well, luck is on our side. Mrs. Kali is fine, given her age. When my grandfather died, he left her enough money to ensure her residence at a retirement home in Holargos. The lawyer’s sending me the address.”

  Right then, my cell phone made a noise, informing me that the message had already arrived.

  My legs trembled when I crossed the threshold of the retirement home. I didn’t know what to expect there. I imagined a scene of abandonment quite contrary to reality. The surroundings were pleasant, music was playing, and voices could be heard singing. Melpo was beside me again—she said she wouldn’t leave me alone until I found the explanation I was looking for. A fashionably dressed woman about my age appeared.

  “Good morning,” she welcomed us. “My name is Despina Karolou. How can I help you?”

  “I understand,” I began, “that one of your residents looked after my grandfather until he died. To be honest, I only recently found out about my family. I was in Germany; you see, I grew up there. So, I want to speak to Mrs. Kali. I hope she can—that she’s in a position to—”

  “Kali?” asked Mrs. Karolou warmly. “Kali is our heart and soul! As we speak, she’s rehearsing with the chorus! Head into the lounge, and I’ll bring her to you, assuming she’ll take a break from singing.”

  We stepped into a large room, very bright and cool. From the balcony door we emerged onto a veranda that looked out on a well-kept garden. Old people sat at tables and on comfortable chairs, some reading, others playing cards, while a group of women had gathered to talk as their hands busied themselves with crochet needles. Melpo and I chose a table a little apart from the others and sat down to wait.

  A woman approached a short time later, and we looked at her in surprise, not knowing what to say.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked. Her voice was strong and clear. “You interrupted my rehearsal. Who are you, and what do you want?”

  Kali Grigoriadi may have been over eighty, but she radiated the liveliness and energy of a woman half her age. Her white hair was well kept, and her dark eyes sparkled. I noticed that, besides her lips, her nails were painted and not particularly short. She wasn’t very tall, nor very thin; she was wearing a colorful floral-print dress and flat shoes. I coughed drily to clear my voice, and I tried to begin, but I choked a little and started really coughing until my eyes watered. Melpo patted me uneasily on back, and Kali got up and, with surprising agility, brought me a glass of water.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “What happened, girl? Did I frighten you?”

  “No, it’s not your fault,” I hastened to reassure her. “Although I imagined you very differently.”

  “Like what? A wreck? I chose to come here not because I couldn’t look after myself, but so I could have the luxury of spending my last days looking after other people. You see, all my life I was a servant.”

  “Yes, you lived in the house of Pericles Sekeris,” I said to her, smiling.

  “How do you know him?” she asked suspiciously, and for the first time, she turned to Melpo. Something stirred in the depths of her eyes. “Just a minute!” she cried out. “You remind me of someone.”

  “I’m Melpo,” she said. “Chrysafenia Sekeris’s niece.”

  “But of course! How are you, my girl? I remember you as a little thing running to play with the children. You woke up the neighborhood with your shouting.” She turned to me. “And you also remind me of someone.”

  “I’m Fenia—Chrysafenia. That’s what my mother, Smaragda Sekeris, named me.”

  Now her reaction was different. The old lady opened her mouth wide, and her eyes shone as tears came to them. She stood up, obliging me to do the same, and hugged me tightly.

  “My little one!” she kept saying as she kissed me. “It seems like only yesterday your mother was born. I took her in my arms for a while to give your poor grandmother a rest; with four children, she didn’t have a moment to breathe. Your mother was such a sweet baby! And such a sweet child later on!”

  “That’s why I came, Mrs. Kali. To ask you about my mother.”

  The woman let me go, and we both sat down again. She was sad now.

  “Unlucky, my little one. An unlucky baby.”

  “Did you know my father?”

  “Renos? Of course! I was part of their wedding.”

  “You?”

  “Yes, I swear to God. The three of us went to the church, and I exchanged their crowns. Smaragda was already pregnant with you.”

  “Mrs. Kali, I don’t understand. My mother loved someone else. How did she end up with Renos? What happened? You’re the only person who can help me.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, my child, but don’t imagine that it’s very much. I was a servant in the house. They didn’t involve me in everything. I arranged your mother’s marriage because your grandmother asked me to.”

  “My grandmother? Now I’m really confused!”

  “Wait. Let’s start from the beginning.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Athens, 1971

  It took Smaragda a long time to find the courage to cross the threshold of the house where he was waiting for her. She walked twice around the block, scanning for someone who might recognize her. Pointless. The people in the street passed her by without giving her a second glance, lost in their own problems.

  She took a deep breath and plunged into the apartment building on Lachanas Street, very close to her own house. On the second floor, Simos was waiting with his heart beating in the same rhythm. She went upstairs and arrived out of breath, nearly bursting with anticipation and shame. There was no other way, though. For months now, the parks, the squares, and the dark corners of Athens had become familiar to them. But the summer had passed, and the first rains had forced them to find a roof for themselves and their love, one close to her house, so they could meet there whenever she managed to get away.

  Melpo’s illness meant that Smaragda’s supervision was much more relaxed. Her mother was inconsolable over her niece’s cancer; she often ran to her brother’s house to look after him and cook for him since his wife was with their daughter. Also, Smaragda’s friend Persa, at whose house the couple had met, was always ready to cover for her. So, Simos borrowed a friend’s apartment. The young man pretended to be in school, but in fact he partied happily. Now and then he took a course, so his parents calmly continued to support him. As soon as he learned about Simos’s love and the favor he was asking, he agreed with a knowing smile.

  “Petros, don’t smirk at me like that,” Simos said sharply. “And get your mind out of the gutter. The girl is young and I love her.”

  “Did I say you hated her? Love is what gets this business started!” Petros insisted, winking at him.

  “There’s no business! We just don’t have a place to meet now that it’s getting colder.”

  “OK, friend, you don’t have to make excuses to me. Am I her brother or her father? Take the keys now, and do your business!”

  Simos huffed angrily, but he had no choice. He snatched the keys and comforted himself with the thought that at least he had no indecent intentions. But when he saw her standing on the threshold, excited and panting with her eyes full of love . . .

  Smaragda gave herself trustingly to him. Her lips met his tenderly, as usual, but her body trembled, and he didn’t understand how the kiss became deeper, how his hands undid her thin blouse, how he found himself kissing her madly and she kept letting him and at the same time pulling him to her.

  There was no embarrassment or regret. Everything seemed natural to Smaragda, and a smile soon lifted the corners of her
lips. He continued to hold her in his arms and scattered countless kisses on her face and hair.

  “You’re mine now,” he whispered to her, and she answered with a knowing laugh.

  “And you’re mine!” Smaragda concluded.

  “Ask whatever you want from me, and I’ll do it. This moment!” he went on in a voice filled with the intensity of the happiness he felt.

  “I want you to love me,” she said to him seriously. “Just that.”

  “Only that? It’s the easiest thing,” he whispered, disappointed.

  “You’re wrong. That’s the hardest thing, because I want it to last forever,” came her answer, and he held her in his arms again.

  “Forever, my darling. For a lifetime and beyond that!” he assured her. “Nobody will separate us.”

  She watched the girl go into the apartment building. She waited patiently on the opposite sidewalk. More than an hour passed. And instead of coming out by herself, she came out with him. They shamelessly kissed on the street, and then they parted. She felt something bitter filling her whole mouth and realized it was her saliva. It was impossible to swallow it, so she spat on the dirty ground. She trembled with rage and with something else she didn’t want to analyze. So the little slut has found a boyfriend . . . and he’s so handsome . . .

  Her teeth chattering, but not with cold, Hecuba was in no hurry to follow her sister. Anyway, she knew where she was going. Home, of course, to play the good girl, the obedient, oh-so-sweet one. Her stomach was churning crazily from the excitement; she felt sick, but at the same time a fierce joy flooded her like a wave, and her tight mouth widened in a smile. Suddenly she felt much better. Finally she had found a way to exact her revenge. That brat should never have been born. Now the time has come for her to regret it and all the rest—even that slap I got on account of her, before that silly party. He must have been there, and that’s why she wanted to go by herself.

  She walked back to the house much calmer than she’d left it. Now she had to make sure the doves had a true love nest and that it wasn’t some chance event. In the days that followed, Smaragda rushed unawares to the little apartment to meet her lover and her happiness while Hecuba waited on the sidewalk, scheming. Now she could do the damage she had been waiting so long to do. She had no doubts.

  That last time, as soon as Smaragda had disappeared behind the glass doors of the building’s entrance, Hecuba ran home, and her joy overflowed when she saw that, by some devilish coincidence, her father had returned from work early. Luck was on her side. She slammed the door behind her to attract her parents’ attention.

  “Where are you coming back from like that?” her mother wanted to know.

  “What do you care?” Hecuba asked boldly. “Why don’t you ask where your other daughter is?”

  “Fotini? At the conservatory? Has something happened?” Chrysafenia was anxious now.

  “You have another daughter, I believe! Where did she tell you she was going? To the cinema? Maybe to Persa’s house?”

  “Hecuba, have you got something to say?” Pericles intervened now, frowning.

  “Yes, certainly I have something to say, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to bear hearing it!” she lashed out nastily. “Because your young, spoiled daughter is in an apartment with her boyfriend. What they’re doing there, I think you can imagine!”

  White in the face, Chrysafenia jumped up. Pericles did so at the same moment.

  “You’re telling lies!” her mother scolded her.

  “Me? What reason do I have? But if you don’t believe me, come and see them with your own eyes walking downstairs in each other’s arms and kissing, after—Lord knows what they were doing. Come see for yourself, if you dare!”

  They followed her.

  Smaragda hadn’t even managed to step onto the sidewalk when she heard her father’s voice: “Smaragda!”

  She staggered, and if Simos hadn’t been holding her around the waist, she would have collapsed on the ground. She raised her eyes, and all the blood drained from her face as she saw her father, mother, and sister. She looked at Hecuba reproachfully. Why, Judas? For how many pieces of silver did you sell me? But she knew there was no reward for the betrayal. Only the satisfaction it brought Hecuba’s nasty spirit. She turned to face her father.

  “Yes, Father,” she answered him calmly.

  “What are you doing here and with your arms around a man?”

  He approached her, and the sound of the slap echoed and fled down the street as she would have liked to. Beside her, Simos, who had been caught off guard, recovered, and his body stiffened. He pulled her behind him to protect her from her father’s fury.

  “Mr. Sekeris, please.”

  “Step aside, you!” Pericles roared.

  Chrysafenia stepped between them. “Pericles! Please! We’re in the middle of the street! We’re becoming a spectacle.”

  “Mr. Sekeris,” Simos spoke up. “I understand your anger, but I’m an honorable man, and I love your daughter. Smaragda will be my wife.”

  They were all speechless after this last declaration. Pericles looked more softly at the young man in front of him.

  “If you had the intention of asking for my daughter, why didn’t you come to speak to me like an honorable man instead of taking her to some little apartment like a prostitute? Why didn’t you respect her?”

  “You’re completely right,” Simos said, “but please don’t let my irresponsible behavior be an impediment to our marriage.”

  “Wait a minute, young man—you’re getting ahead of yourself. I don’t even know who you are, what your name is, what work you do, and here, in the middle of the street, you want me to give my approval to a proposal of marriage?”

  “And again, my behavior was unforgivable,” Simos apologized. “But the circumstances got in the way of the usual procedure,” he said, and a timid smile came to his lips. “My name is Simos Kouyoumdzis, and I’m from an old Constantinople family. My father, Vassilis Kouyoumdzis, brought us all here after the troubles of September 1955. We have a store on Ermou Street, and we’re opening another on Patission.”

  As Simos spoke, he saw Pericles and Chrysafenia looking at each other as if they had been struck by lightning, especially the mother. Her look was filled with something the young man couldn’t explain.

  “Are you Vassilis’s son?” he heard the woman ask.

  “Yes, madam,” he answered in surprise. “Do you know my father?”

  “And your grandfather, Simeon. And your grandmother . . . ,” added Chrysafenia, and suddenly her expression became bitter.

  “Unbelievable!” Simos exclaimed. “So you know the family I come from.” He turned to Pericles now with more self-assurance. “Mr. Sekeris, will you permit me to speak to my parents and come to officially ask for your daughter?”

  Simos felt Smaragda trembling behind him and was trying to take her hand to give her courage, when he heard Pericles say, “You have my permission to speak to your parents. Whether they’ll come to ask for my daughter is another story!”

  “I don’t understand you,” Simos said, frowning.

  “When you speak to your parents, you’ll understand,” said Chrysafenia. She turned to her husband and said, “Pericles, let’s go home, please.”

  He nodded, angry and stiff. “Smaragda! Come with us, now!”

  Without another word, he began walking with his wife beside him. Hecuba followed with her gaze lowered, and Smaragda trailed even farther back. She glanced timidly once more at Simos, who remained rooted in place on the sidewalk.

  Nobody exchanged a word the whole time they walked home, deep in thought. Despite herself, Smaragda was weaving dreams. In the end, Hecuba had given her an unexpected gift, her evil plans backfiring, and she must not have been very happy about it. Smaragda wanted to laugh, but she resisted. Even from a distance she could feel her sister’s anger, the storm of her unsatisfied soul.

  But even Smaragda couldn’t imagine the scope of the tempest that now
raged in Hecuba’s mind. Even in her worst nightmares, she hadn’t expected this. Instead of the little slut getting a real beating, she’ll be engaged to a man only I am worthy of! She seethed at the thought that she had brought about a happy ending instead of the destruction of her opponent.

  Pericles walked steadily, without bothering to check whether the three women of his family were following him. He had never forgotten his wife’s story, the way she had revealed it to him that first night when a cold had kept Nestor in bed and given him the opportunity to make his move. Nor had her words been forgotten: “I don’t think Vassilis will ever leave my heart.” So what if the girl had gone on then to say she had followed her mother’s advice and not cried about a lost paradise. What she said made his ears buzz. “I don’t think Vassilis will ever leave my heart . . .” The words rang like a bell, again and again. Chrysafenia had never given him the right to doubt her, but deep down, he knew that she had never loved him as much as the man who might soon be his daughter’s father-in-law.

  Chrysafenia tried to match her steps to her husband’s furious pace. She cursed the hour when she had told him not just the facts but also the names. She was so anxious about his reaction that she couldn’t be happy about what was now going to happen: after two generations of heartbreak, the third would unite the two families. She wanted to take her husband by the hand, stop him, and say a few words that might calm his unnecessary storm. To explain to him that, after so many years, everything had been forgotten, that she felt nothing but tenderness for her youth, and no love for Vassilis. Perhaps she had never loved her husband as he may have wanted, but she no longer loved her adolescent dream.

  They all sighed as they entered the house. Hecuba hurried to shut herself in her room, aching from disappointment. Smaragda again tried to tell her parents something, but her father didn’t allow her. He sent her to her room, having first told her that from now on, even when she went to school, she would be accompanied by Kali, who would act as her bodyguard. The couple remained alone, and Chrysafenia was determined to make peace with her distant past.