(Chapter 16)
Previously: The move to Menidi, far from her family in Athens, sends Sevasti into a depression. The depression worsens after the birth of her first child.
Do You Ask a Sick Man If He Wants to Get Better?
The first day my mother left our house in Menidi, I had that whole ordeal with the crying baby — not knowing what was wrong or what to do. Thankfully, a kind woman appeared, knocked on my door, and helped me. When Telemachos came home from work he found her there and heard about our day. The night passed, we slept, and the next morning he said: 'Pack your things — we're going to your mother's.' And we stayed with my mother until the baby was eight months old. Summer came and we had to baptize her, so we went back up to Menidi. Four more months passed and we celebrated her first birthday up there. But it seems that by that point he had already made up his mind.
My husband kept his cards close to his chest, never said anything, and always presented me with a done deal. But it seems he had been suffering too. During the months I spent in Athens while pregnant, and then after the birth, he had been going up and down constantly, back and forth for me, the baby, and the house. At some point he arrived at the idea that we needed to move to a new house, in the city. When it was just the two of us, it didn't bother me not to have electricity or running water — we managed, either with an oil lamp or I would go and fetch water in a small jug. As for the clothes, my mother would take them, wash them, iron them, and bring them back. But now, with a child, electricity and water had become urgent necessities, and the laundry was an enormous problem.
When we celebrated the baby's first birthday, he had already taken a house — on his own, without telling me a word — right next to my mother's house, at Agios Panteleimonas in Ilissos, at the Steps. He hadn't said a thing. After the birthday celebration was over, he said: 'Do you want to go to Athens?'
'What would we do there?' I said. 'Just walk around?'
'No — to stay!' he said.
'You know,' I told him, 'what kind of question is that? Do you ask a blind man if he wants to see? What are you asking me? You've seen for yourself how hard life is up here.'
'And where would you want to live?' he asked again.
'What do you want me to say?' I told him. 'We need to be close to my mother so we have some help.'
'Get ready,' he said, 'because that's where we're going.'
'Where?'
'At Agios Panteleimonas, at the Steps.'
But that was my own neighborhood. No further description needed — I knew exactly which house it was. 'And why didn't you say anything?' I asked him.
He said: 'I had things to sort out, a lot to get done before it could happen. I wanted it to be a surprise. Now we just need to find a day to move our things.'
And one day, a Sunday, we closed up the house in Menidi and brought everything — there wasn't much — to Neos Kosmos. We left the Menidi house behind to use as a summer retreat, somewhere to go with friends in the summer. And that's what we did, until we sold it once the children were a little older.
My three children were two years apart. We stayed four years in that house in Neos Kosmos and that's where my first son was born. But when I was pregnant with my second son, we realized the house was too small — it couldn't hold us all. It had a hallway and two rooms, that was it. There was no sitting room, only bedrooms. But I had gotten used to it and I loved being close to my family. I loved that my church, Agios Panteleimonas, was right across the street with nothing blocking the view from the window. I could walk outside and be immediately in the church square. Every evening, grandma Maria would come and take the children to play outside the church courtyard.
So when my husband said we would have to move again, to a larger house, I objected. I didn't want to go anywhere else because I had a comfortable life. I told him: 'Where would we go?' and he said: 'If you stay here, you'll be squeezed for the rest of your life, with no room. In such a small space, we can't even bring in furniture.' And I told him: 'What does it matter if we don't have furniture — don't we always celebrate your name day? Don't we always manage? I don't want to leave here.'
But one Monday I went to do my shopping at the street market that was held every Monday right in front of the house. There I ran into the sexton of Agios Panteleimonas, a man called kyrios Pantelis [Mr Pantelis] — named after the saint, like the church. I said: 'Hello, how are you?' I was smiling, and I had my older daughter by the hand because I always took her with me. My mother stayed home with the younger one, the little boy. And I had my belly rounded out because another baby was on the way.
I went to church in those days, but not as regularly as I'd have liked, because there were no diapers then. When I took my daughter, she would wet herself and soak the floor and I was mortified. I used to put small cloth squares on them but they didn't last long. There were those plastic pants that children wore over the cloth, of course, but they were uncomfortable for the poor little things. The children didn't like them — they got a rash. In the end — imagine — I couldn't keep up with my son anymore and I ended up letting him run around the house bare, even in winter. I told myself: he'll do what he does and I'll clean it up afterward.
So that day I see kyrios Pantelis and say: 'How are you?' He says: 'I'm trying to find a house to buy.' And on a whim, teasing, I said: 'I'm selling mine!' The house we were in had been built on his father's land — he had been born on that very plot. He, the sexton of the church across from our house, had been walking around our house looking for something to buy. I didn't know that — so I said it as a joke.
He took it seriously. 'Are you pulling my leg?' he said. 'Not at all,' I said. He told me: 'I want to buy it so I can come back to my father's land, back to where I was born, back to my own home.' I thought to myself: hold on a moment — this is a real opportunity, because whatever price I name, he'll pay it. So I told him: 'I mean it. We're selling for a hundred and fifty thousand drachmas.' I knew prices, knew what houses cost, and knew that for our standard of living, that was a lot of money.
'So much!' he said. 'Yes,' I told him, 'because the house is move-in ready — anyone can just walk in.' Which was true. But I told him to come at midday to speak with my husband. 'I'll come,' he said, 'I'll definitely come — I'm very interested.' And he did come, though Telemachos had come home earlier because I had left a gap. Kyrios Pantelis asked me: 'What time should I come?' and since I knew my husband came back around two in the afternoon, I told him to come at three.
When my husband arrived I said: 'Shall I give you the news? I sold the house!'
'You're impossible,' he said. 'Be quiet — what are you saying? You didn't want to leave the house and now you're telling me you sold it?'
'I went and sold the house and I sold it at a good price,' I told him. 'Don't say a word,' I told him.
'How much did you sell it for?'
'A hundred and fifty thousand.'
'You're impossible!'
And I told him: 'Get ready — kyrios Pantelis is coming now to discuss it, and don't drop the price by a single thousand. If you drop the price, we won't sell. Hold firm to what I said.'
Kyrios Pantelis arrived and said: 'Your wife told me such-and-such... Is it true?' And my husband told him: 'Yes, it's for sale.' 'But for 150,000...' he said, with a grievance in his voice. 'That's what I'm selling it for. Take it or leave it.' We didn't tell him we were moving for the children's sake. Kyrios Pantelis wasn't worried about space anyway — he had three grown children himself and they would all fit. He wanted that house so badly that he accepted, even though Telemachos wouldn't budge on the price. They drew up a preliminary agreement then and there and he paid a deposit.
He was in a hurry to move in, since he was renting and wanted a home of his own. The only condition my husband set was that we be given two months to find another place and move out — July and August. They went to a notary, drew up the contract, and kyrios Pantelis handed over all the money. And so we began looking for a house.
In the end, though, we didn't come out ahead. We ended up paying more to move into the new place — for one reason or another we were constantly spending money.
The only thing we found at that point was a a ground-floor apartment in Koukaki for a hundred and eighty thousand, and it wasn't even finished — it had all sorts of things missing. It was just a roughed-in set of rooms, plastered but with no interior fittings, only external ones. So at least it was lockable and had a door. And the seller wouldn't come down from a hundred and eighty thousand, nor would he do any of the work himself.
Telemachos thought it over — he had seen how much I loved the light that poured in from all the windows when we looked at it, how much I loved the view over Faliro and the Acropolis — and in the end he agreed to take it. To agree, he had to take out a bank loan. Which is why for the rest of his life he never wanted to hear the word bank. Because the bank is the greatest loan shark and the most official thief there is. He took out a loan — sixty thousand, I think — and I don't even know how much it ended up being by the time he paid it off, because interest piles on interest and the money keeps growing. Not to mention that the bank puts a mortgage on your house, meaning that if you can't pay they take it.
We worked at tremendous speed because we were under pressure from our buyer to move out in less than two months. 'Kyrie Pantelis,' I told him, 'don't you understand that I have three small children, two of them infants, one still in my belly — and we found a house but we found it half-finished. Give us a little more time to get it ready so we can move in. Don't hold a knife to my throat as well. You have a house, for better or worse — you won't end up in the street. Do us this favor. I don't want to be out on the street; I want to have a place to live.' He was a good man and gave us one more month — but not a day more.
Going back to my husband, I told him: 'Before anything else, if you don't put floors in that house, I'm not going in — I don't care whether it's wood or mosaic.' In every house I had ever lived in, the floors were bare concrete. And I had seen what a nightmare it was to do floor work when you had a family, while other things you could at least manage.
And so it was done. Telemachos moved fast and found the mosaic tiles and had them laid. They are exceptional tiles because he knew a craftsman from Menidi who was famous in the trade — they called him 'the king of mosaics.' The craftsman came and asked if I wanted one room with a real wood floor. I told him: 'No, no — I have small children and they wet themselves and wood doesn't clean easily. Not to mention it warps and soaks up all the moisture. Put mosaic throughout so I can mop it.'
As for the patterns, he chose whatever he liked — didn't even ask me — but I trusted him because he had done extraordinary work in Menidi. He did it all himself, without any other workers, and very quickly. When the owner who lived on the first floor saw how beautiful it was, he was full of envy — he called the craftsman and had his own place done too. And the basement and the upper floor. The entire building now has mosaic. He even did the staircase, the shared areas, and the courtyard — right out to the sidewalk. We were the only building in the neighborhood with a mosaic sidewalk.
But then the electricity company came along and dug up the pavement, then the water company, then the telephone company — and they destroyed it. A little while after we moved into Koukaki, in November of '59, my youngest son was born there. By that time the house was furnished and I was at peace.
I knew this was where we would live our lives.
