(Chapter 17)
Books and Screwdrivers
The children were born and grew up in Koukaki, with few things of their own in that house. There was so much empty floor space that they didn't just play chase — they roller-skated and rode bicycles inside. Sliding doors were in fashion then and we usually left them open.
The children didn't fight much among themselves. Especially once the baby grew a little, the two boys became inseparable — they were hardly ever apart and almost never disagreed. The younger one, Giorgos, was a better student than the older one, Tassos, but Tassos was his hero. He followed him faithfully, as though they were unconsciously replaying the family story — that absolute devotion that grandfather Stefanos had for his brother, my father. They wanted to be one person, inseparable.
Tassos was a good child, quiet, but school didn't come naturally to him — his mind worked differently, more practically. The problem was that he had a stutter; he couldn't get through a whole word. But as he grew older it went away, he shed it. Was it anxiety? I don't know — we never looked into it. When do you find the time, with three children, to go searching for doctors to find out why one of them stutters? There were others in the family who had the same thing and I put it down to the genes. In those days we didn't know about dyslexia or learning difficulties — we just said, well, that child isn't cut out for books.
But it reached the point where even little Giorgakis, who had no problem of his own, started doing the same thing. Giorgos loved Tassos so much that he copied even his difficulties — as though he wanted to share his brother's burden, he began to stutter too. I scolded him, told him: 'What on earth are you doing?' Then if Tassos didn't study, Giorgos didn't study. If Tassos studied, Giorgos studied.
I had a hard time with Tassos. That child is extraordinarily intelligent — at his work he's an ace, at the trade he learned he's flawless, there's no one better. But when he was at school, we would study together the evening before, and while he knew everything at home, the dread of school would lock his mind shut. He would freeze and couldn't get anything out. In the morning, getting ready for school, his mind would go completely blank — as though we had never studied at all.
The teacher would call on him to recite a lesson, he would freeze, start to stutter, the teacher would sit him back down and give him a poor grade. The teacher called me in once to reprimand me, but I gave him something to think about. 'Listen,' I told him, 'this child has a problem. The child always leaves the house prepared. But by the time he gets to school, he has forgotten everything. Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why? Have you thought about it? Have you ever asked yourself whether your own behavior might be affecting him negatively?'
The child used to come to me in tears because they shouted at him, dressed him down in front of the whole class. The teacher had even struck him once — in those days teachers handed out slaps and didn't think twice about it.
'Have you noticed that the child stutters? Have you ever tried to help him? Not at all. You simply berate him, and if there's anything in his mind at that moment — it's gone, everything goes blank.'
I said all of this to the teacher in one of the later years of elementary school. I don't think he listened, and I don't think the situation improved. But with great difficulty, Tassos finished elementary school. Because in those days they gave exams every year to pass to the next grade, and I drilled him through it with enormous effort. It broke my chest. But he managed to pass every year and get into gymnasium.
He even managed to pass the entrance exams for a well-known gymnasium in the center of Athens that was considered a model school at the time. It was an old building, almost ramshackle, with a door that had fallen off its hinges and was hanging loose. One day the headmaster said: 'Which child can fix this door?' 'Me, me, sir!' said Tassos. He had a screwdriver in his pocket, as always. Out it came, he went over, tightened the screws, and fixed it. Where theory defeated him, his hands and his practical mind worked miracles. That boy was born with a screwdriver in his hand.
But in gymnasium the work was harder still, and as he grew and progressed, the problems multiplied. Which is why he asked to transfer to a technical school — and eventually did.
Giorgos, then, was a much stronger student. Later, when Giorgos started elementary school, Tassos would slip out of his own line and stand in Giorgos's line and follow him into his classroom — and the little one loved it. Later, when they would pull Tassos out of Giorgos's classroom, the little one would follow, stand in Tassos's line, and walk into the class of the older children. When they finally separated Giorgos from Tassos's classroom, Giorgos would cry. The teacher called me in and said: 'What are we going to do about this situation with your children?'
I had an idea, because we had Uncle Stefanos — my father's brother. He was devoted both to the family and to God, like a monk without the habit. He fulfilled his duties as a Christian and he also helped our family — especially after I was the first to leave home and I had three children. That was also part of why I had come back to Athens — with so many children I needed help. But it wasn't only my mother who helped me; she could offer very little, since she still had a large family of her own to look after. We had Uncle Stefanos, who took the children to school, brought them back, and was deeply happy in all of it. He considered them his own grandchildren. And us — he considered us his own children.
So I said to the teacher: 'We could arrange something with this grandfather who comes to collect the children. Let him stay in Giorgos's classroom for at least a week, sitting next to him at the desk, until the little one gets used to the idea that this is his class and this is where he belongs.' The teacher agreed. The better to keep Giorgos from pushing the doors open and slipping out, it was best to have his grandfather right there inside the classroom.
Outside school, Giorgos was a quiet child, but there too he followed Tassos everywhere. It was an unspoken alliance. Giorgos only felt safe alongside Tassos's boldness — because Tassos wasn't exactly wild, he was fearless. He did things that carried serious risk; danger meant nothing to him. Every time we went to the countryside, he would go climbing on the rocks. When the children went on walks, he would leap from branch to branch like a monkey. The other children would tell me: 'Your son doesn't walk — he jumps from tree to tree.' Giorgos loved being close to his brother; they thought they were looking out for each other, but in reality they were both getting into mischief together and collecting plenty of thrashings.
As for my daughter, who was the oldest, she was the quietest of the three and never gave me or her father a moment's trouble. She loved reading and would go off on her own to study, which I wholeheartedly approved of. When she started elementary school, I tried to help her with her lessons for exactly fifteen days and then she sent me away — she didn't need me. She wanted to study alone, and she became the top student. She told me she didn't want me sitting beside her and pressuring her, since she managed perfectly well on her own. And the truth is that when I sat with her I wasn't calm — I had two other small children pulling me this way and that, I never had a moment's rest, and I might have lost my patience and gotten short with her.
Their father, on the other hand, didn't have much direct involvement with the children, especially when he was working. Yet all three of them adored him — the moment he walked through the door, wherever they were, they all came running to him. The boys especially: when he sat down to eat, one would sit on one knee and the other on the other and they'd eat his food right off his plate. I waged a constant battle over that.
Telemachos was a very serious man, and somewhat stern. I can say that he loved his children — but without showing it openly. He was the kind of father of that era: his presence was our security, not his words. He didn't know how to play with them — perhaps he felt it would diminish his authority — but his eyes were always on them. He had left everything to me, both guidance and upbringing, perhaps because he had complete confidence in my judgment when it came to raising them, or perhaps because he felt I understood their inner lives better than he did. In any case, everything had fallen on me.
