(Chapter 11)
Previously: Telemachos appears in the courtyard for the first time, looking for a room for his sister — and meets Sevasti.
I brought a chair from the room and said: 'Please, sit down, sir,' and it was then that he turned his head for the first time and looked at me. I will never forget that look. When he turned to say thank you as I brought him the chair, those green eyes of his went over me from head to toe. What an impression I must have made on him. A woman — even a barely-hatched young woman — has the instinct to know when someone is looking at her, and exactly what kind of look it is.
I paid him no particular attention, because I saw a man in uniform with a mustache — it never crossed my mind there could be any future in it. He said: 'Thank you, Miss.' I tore a page from my notebook, brought them a pen — one of the old ink pens — from the room I used for studying, and he drew up the agreement himself. My father could read and write too; he had needed only one more year to finish gymnasium. But he left that task to the man in uniform. I stood over him and watched him write, and I remember thinking with a kind of wonder: this man knows his letters. He had beautiful handwriting and impeccable spelling. I was a very strong student — I caught things on the fly — and I would have spotted any mistakes easily.
After they said their goodbyes and he paid the deposit to my father, he made arrangements and brought his sister. He went to Monastiraki and bought her a daybed, a mattress, a wardrobe for her clothes, a small table, two chairs, and a gas burner for cooking. Simple things. It was I who showed him the room, because my father had said: 'Open it up so the gentleman can see it.' But I was embarrassed because the wash basin was still sitting in the middle of the floor with all the water in it, and I said: 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't have time to clear it away.' He said: 'Not at all, Miss.' That same day I gathered my things and took them back to our family room, and he found it ready the next morning.
The day after, he brought the furniture and set it up, and the day after that he brought his sister. When he brought her, he introduced her to my parents and said: 'This is my sister' — but I wasn't there to see it, I was at school. They told me afterward that he had said to her: 'From now on, anything you need, you ask kyria Maria [Mrs Maria]. Don't let me come by unexpectedly and find you wandering the neighborhood — I'll send you back to the village on the same ticket you came on.' He meant she was to stay in the house. Any help she needed, she was to ask kyria Maria. If she wanted company, if she wanted fresh air or to clear her head, she was to go to kyria Maria. This was to keep her from drifting around the neighborhood — to protect her name and her honor.
She was thirty-seven or thirty-eight, a spinster by then, because finding a husband in the village hadn't been easy for her. She was also proud — she was the only daughter in the family. She had learned to work with her hands; she had an embroidery machine and did embroidery for girls who were getting married, so she held her head up in front of people. Her family considered her someone of standing, because she did household work rather than field work like the other village women. It was her mother who went out to the fields in the morning, and who still carried water for her only daughter when she came home.
My mother took a liking to her, felt sorry for her. Being here alone, she often cried; she didn't take to Athens. My mother must have felt a kinship with her, because she herself had left her family behind and come here without knowing a soul, and she knew how hard that was. We sometimes helped her get ready. My sister and I would do her hair together, because when she was looking for a husband she went on introduction visits — meeting the family, the whole custom. She had a sweet face, well turned out, but as I told you she was a country girl, getting on in years, and finding a groom wasn't easy.
But Telemachos had to marry off his sister before he could marry himself — it was his obligation. When he came to see that doing so under these circumstances would be an uphill battle, he thought it through and found a solution.
He went down to the village and called a family council. He spoke directly to Aristi, his brother's wife: 'I have come for the following reason. If Aristi is willing to give the money her uncle sent her from America as a dowry, so that I can buy something in Athens in Eleni's name and get her properly married, then good. But if she won't give that money, I will send Eleni back and you will have her on your backs for the rest of your lives. In exchange for that money, I am signing over to my sister-in-law whatever share of the family property belongs to me. Everything I stand to inherit — she takes it. Do we have a deal, Aristi?'
Aristi was young then and didn't understand the full weight of things, so when she heard that her husband's sister would be sent back and they'd have her for the rest of their lives, she agreed. 'All right, Telemachos, all right,' she said. That same moment, my father-in-law put the best of the properties in her name, as replacement for the money she gave. Taking that money and coming back to Athens, Telemachos searched and found a plot of land in Galatsi — in those days Galatsi was all market gardens growing flowers. He found a sizable plot, six hundred square meters, with a single room on it, brick-built, the kind they called plinthokisto. He bought this plot in his sister's name, and with that deed in hand, he found a groom.
Telemachos wasn't worried about walking away from his inheritance. Those properties were down in the Peloponnese and he had no intention of ever going back. He had his salary in Athens. He kept his word too — even when his father died and a will was found afterward. In the will, his father had left him a small piece of land with some olive trees, because someone had advised him to leave something to both sons so they wouldn't contest it. Telemachos neither accepted it nor did anything else. That piece of land is still sitting there today, outside the village.
Telemachos's family was close-knit, and still is. The women who married into it, Aristi and I, played their part as well. Aristi was an angel. She may not have been educated, but she grew and matured into a very sharp woman who kept the family on an even keel. As for our mother-in-law — from what I learned from others, since I never had the chance to know her properly — she was a remarkable person. Hard-working, always out in the fields, she didn't fuss much about the house as long as there was work to be done outside. She had said: 'Whoever my children bring home as a bride is welcome. As far as I'm concerned, she will be my own child.'
Aristi was the first to marry into the family, and as they told me, because she was from a different village, the wedding took place at her village church, and afterward she had to come to the groom's house as a bride. My mother-in-law waited for her at the door holding the key, which she then handed to her, saying: 'Welcome, my daughter. You are now the lady of this house and its mistress. You will be in charge from this day forward. I will be out in the fields in the morning. If you want to set a plate of food in front of me when I come back, I'll sit down and eat it.'
Aristi told me all this after we became sisters through marriage, because I hadn't had the chance to know our mother-in-law, and she shared these moments with me to show me what kind of woman she was. By the time Telemachos brought me into the family, our mother-in-law had been left paralyzed and had lost her mind, and it was as though I never truly met her.
Aristi had a very wealthy uncle in America who supported his nieces. Even after she had given her dowry money to Telemachos, he sent her more money. Telemachos then made sure the new money was used to buy her a property of her own.
With the dowry money he also bought a plot of land for his sister. Because the marriage arrangement was made simply but decisively: the prospective groom's first interest was in the land being offered as dowry. When he saw it, he said to Telemachos: 'Can we do something — sell the land and buy a taxi for me instead?' 'No,' said Telemachos. 'Land will never lose its value; it is something real and solid. A taxi is just wheels, and the money put into it can disappear any day. If you accept under these conditions, then fine.' He didn't want his sister to lose her dowry. And the groom said: 'All right.' The engagement was celebrated in our courtyard on the feast day of Saint Eleni. The groom arrived with flowers and it was made official.
Not long after, Telemachos found a contractor, talked him into giving him some flexibility, and built a room behind the existing one, making two rooms in total. He put in a toilet too, outside the rooms. One room became the bedroom, and the other served as kitchen and sitting room. And with the house finished, the wedding could take place.
I was witness to all of this, and lived through every part of it, because Eleni was there in the courtyard. During the two years she lived with us, I was going to school, of course. Sometimes when I finished school I would find Telemachos walking ahead of me and we would walk together for a while. It never once crossed my mind that our meetings might not be accidental — that they were for my benefit. I addressed him in the formal register, called him 'sir,' and he called me 'Miss.'
When he came to visit his sister, he would sit with my father and they would talk. I believe that even then he had already decided to marry me. But he didn't know how to bring it up or say it — because his sister was still unmarried. And of course I was young, and he had no way of knowing how I would feel about such a proposal. But the main problem was how he could possibly have conversations, make overtures to my father or my mother, while his sister was still an unmarried woman living under their roof.
Until he married her off, he couldn't marry either. And don't imagine that his brother having married Aristi earlier was the normal course of things — that happened for a different reason entirely.
