(Chapter 14)
The New Year's Lottery and the House in Menidi
The first years of our marriage were very hard — life was very hard. When we married, we weren't starving, but we had no money. We lived on his salary alone, and he was still in debt from his sister's wedding and from the cost of building the extra room for her. Money only came into Telemachos's hands when he managed to sell the apartment that had been his winnings from the lottery — a lottery he had won with two friends, the three of them splitting the prize equally.
The group that won the lottery were colleagues and friends from work. It happened at a taverna on New Year's Eve, where they had gone to eat. A lottery seller came in — the lottery of the Union of Journalists, which is now called the State Lottery. This lottery offered apartments as first prizes.
One evening when they went into a taverna, which had a festive atmosphere, in came a lottery seller — an old man, no one knew anything else about him. They looked for him afterward to thank him, wanting to give him something out of gratitude, but they never found him.
This old man was holding out his tickets and telling them: 'Come on, boys, take it — this is the last one and it's the lucky one.' They didn't want it, but he pressed them, telling them again that the last ticket was always the lucky one. They took it. The ticket cost twenty drachmas. The other two put in six and a half drachmas each, and Telemachos put in seven. He didn't say anything about putting in seven to get a larger share — they divided the winnings three ways. One of his friends kept the ticket and they simply wrote all their names on it. They wrote 'Dimitris' — I can't remember the other name — and 'Telemachos.'
On New Year's Eve the winning number was announced and, as every year, the draw took place at the Philological Society of Parnassos. Telemachos was somewhere else that evening, but the other two seemed to have a feeling about it and stood outside the Parnassos building, listening to the numbers come over the loudspeakers. When the winning numbers were called out, they announced that a particular number in a particular series had won an apartment in Omonia — a penthouse at 42 or 52 Didotou Street, I can't remember which. They went out of their minds with joy, looked at each other and said: 'Did you hear that right? Did you really hear that right? Let's find Telemachos! Let's find Telemachos!'
They searched everywhere and finally found him at his sister's house in Galatsi. It was New Year's Eve and he had finished his shift and dropped by there because it was on his way. His sister had a daybed in the second room and whenever he visited he would sit and rest there. The next day, on top of everything, was his name day — Saint Telemachos is celebrated on New Year's Day — and he had brought a small feast to his sister's house so they could celebrate together. He was very generous about things like that. Back in his family home in the village, both he and his mother Vasoula would celebrate on the same day, New Year's, and they would have a proper party. Even if there weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit down, everyone had to know it was his name day and there had to be a proper spread. After his sister married and had her own home, the celebration moved there and he would bring everything. They found him and said: 'What are you sitting here for? We won the lottery, we won the lottery!'
When they found him it was already Saturday evening and everything was closed. The next day, which was New Year's Day and his name day, was a Sunday, so everything was closed then too. They would have to wait until Monday. But they took him along right then and all three of them went to look at the building from the outside. It was a recently built apartment block — the Union of Journalists always took apartments in newly built buildings. They looked it over and waited for Monday to come so they could collect their winnings.
I didn't hear about it right away, which is the strange thing. The last time we had seen each other we had arranged to meet on New Year's morning, outside the Library on Akademias Street, to go to church together for his name day. I had left home early because the meeting was at eight in the morning. I took the bus into the center, we met with 'Happy New Year' and 'Many Years,' and yet he hadn't mentioned where we were going, which church. But he had noticed that the apartment building would fall under the parish of Zoodochos Pigi, and said: 'Let's go to Zoodochos Pigi — it's nearby.' On the way, he said: 'I have something good to tell you.' I asked: 'What?'
And he said: 'We won the lottery — me and two friends, Lambros and Dimitris.' Lambros was the other one's name; I knew them from when they used to come to the courtyard for his name day celebrations. 'We won an apartment on Didotou Street, number 52, and after church we'll go and see it.' And I said: 'All right.' He was thrilled, but I wasn't happy. I thought: 'Now his stock has gone up. He's a wealthy man with an apartment and a salary, while I... it's been nice knowing him.' He saw my face fall, and at some point said: 'You don't seem happy about it.'
And I answered: 'I am and I'm not. Now that you're the rich catch, will you still want me? You'll find other brides who have money too.' 'You're being foolish,' he said. 'You're being foolish. If I wanted money, before I ever met you there were plenty of very wealthy brides who were after me, with properties and money and everything you could imagine. If I'd wanted that, I could have chosen from any of them, couldn't I? Come on, pull yourself together — nothing has changed.' And we went and looked up at the building together.
The next day, when Monday finally came, all three of them went together to present the ticket to the Union. Their first request was that the Union buy it from them and give them cash. At that time, the Union valued the prize at one thousand English pounds. Everything was priced in pounds back then — but a pound was cheap, a pound was a hundred and twenty-five drachmas.
They said they couldn't give them money, because it would undermine public trust. 'No cash — we offer apartments. What you do with it is up to you, whether you rent it or sell it.' And so, having taken the keys and signed the contract with the Union, they initially decided to rent it out. But after a year, they sold it.
Telemachos had grown up in a village and loved the countryside deeply. His village in the Peloponnese had one of the finest natural landscapes around. One day, during a work posting, he passed through Menidi. He went along a road where poplars grew on both sides, meeting overhead like a cathedral arch, and he was completely captivated. It happened to be just when he had sold the apartment from the lottery winnings.
After he had married off his sister, he had made himself a promise: if he couldn't manage to build at least one room, he wouldn't marry. He didn't want to start life in rented rooms. At around the same time, a classmate and friend of mine had gotten engaged and we used to go out together as two couples — we had been out a few times, to the patisserie. She had rented a room for her married life, which Telemachos thoroughly disapproved of. He wanted the room to be his own. He said it and he meant it.
So when he sold the apartment and saw the road lined with poplars in Menidi, he set his mind on building a house. 'Athens will grow and the area will gain in value,' he said. He went straight to the real estate agents in the center of Athens and because he was always in uniform, they took him seriously. 'Captain,' they called him — that's what they called men in uniform. 'Captain, the people in Menidi don't sell plots, they sell acreage. It's outside the city plan. You won't find building lots where you saw that road.' 'Find me an acre anyway,' he said — and they did.
But the land wasn't accessible from the paved road because there was another piece of land in between that had to be acquired to get access. The railway line that ran toward Thessaloniki or Chalkida also crossed the same road. This strip of land, the access corridor, cost fifty pounds. We were almost ready to marry by then. So my mother went to Kalymnos on her own and sold three small pasture fields — three exposed, uncultivated fields where shepherds would come and graze their animals. She went to Vathi, which you could only reach by small boat from Kalymnos because there is a mountain between, and it sits at the back of the island. She went alone and found some shepherds in the fields and sold the land to them, asking fifty pounds. With those fifty pounds she came back to prepare me for the wedding — she wanted to give me money to buy some clothes, a piece of furniture.
I was the one who told him, the fool that I am. At some point he asked me why my mother had gone to Kalymnos and I told him. He said: 'Why don't you tell your mother to give me the fifty pounds so I can buy a piece of land I've found in Menidi and build us a room so we can get married?' He kept saying it over and over — that if he didn't have his own house, we wouldn't marry. 'As for furniture and clothes, we'll take care of those ourselves.'
I told my mother, who was a very simple soul. Because without a second thought, my husband would take the money and I wouldn't have so much as a scrap of paper with my name on it. She said she would speak to my father and give me an answer. My father was also a good-natured man, without a scheming bone in his body. 'Tell him to come and take the money,' he said. 'Since it's for a good purpose,' my mother added.
Telemachos took the money and set things in motion. He probably settled some debts along the way, and before long hired the same contractor who had built his sister's house to build in Menidi. But what he built in Menidi was a solid room — all stone.
He now had two acres to build on. The small strip of land he had bought gave access to the road so that materials could be brought in and work could begin. He built a tall house, constructed a wide platform — imagine, four steps up to the entrance. On the platform he built a long hallway and two rooms, one on each side.
That was now our home.
