(Chapter 12)
Previously: Telemachos arranged the engagement and wedding of his sister Eleni, because he could not marry until she was settled.
A Sunday in the Courtyard and the First Date
"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. Of course I was young too, and he had no way of knowing how I would feel about such a proposal — but the main problem was how he could possibly start conversations, make approaches to my father or my mother, while his sister was still a single woman living under our roof.
The rule was absolute: until he married her off, he couldn't marry either.
And don't imagine that his older brother having married earlier was the normal order of things — that simply had to happen because there was both an opportunity and money involved, since nobody had money in those days. Word spread through all the villages of the Peloponnese that Telemachos's brother had received a dowry of forty thousand drachmas. At the time, that was a significant sum, and it made him both rich and talked about. It came about because Aristi's uncle had sent the money from America for his nieces, so they could marry young and quickly.
Aristi was a very sought-after bride with a dowry like that, but she had one thing working against her for marriage — she had been born with an enormous purple birthmark covering half her face. She always arranged her hair from the left side to cover it, but it was hard not to look, and so it wasn't easy for anyone to marry her. But this family accepted her and Pagousos married her. Perhaps in those days something could have been done about her skin, but who thought about such things? Children grew up the way they were born — people didn't even deal with health problems, let alone anything cosmetic. She was still the same when she died. We never once discussed it.
Now, back to our story. After Eleni's engagement, she and her fiancé took to each other well, she was happy with the arrangement, and one day she simply got up and left. She locked the room where she had been living and went to stay with her fiancé at his mother's house, since the house being built on her dowry plot in Galatsi wasn't ready yet. Telemachos had taken full responsibility for both the wedding and the house — he built two rooms, put up a wall around the property, looked after everything for her. But beyond all these arrangements, Eleni had a deep bond with Telemachos and loved him very much. He was her rock, and she would have given her life for him. And he had a soft spot for her too — he was genuinely fond of her.
Now, both Aristi and I stayed well out of their family affairs and property matters. Whatever my father-in-law decided to do, he did, and no one said a word. When my husband said he was giving up his inheritance to take Aristi's dowry and marry off Eleni, it didn't concern me — I never even asked what he would have gotten. Those were men's business. Which is why I tell you that both women who married into that family were sensible, decent, and kept the peace. In other families, it goes the other way.
The upshot was that when Eleni left and vacated the room, Telemachos didn't clear it out. He left it furnished, and whenever he wasn't on duty he would come there to change out of his uniform into his civilian clothes. He slept at the station and could have stayed there in civilian clothes too if he'd wanted, but he kept paying rent on the room. This raised no suspicions in me or my father — if he was paying rent, why should my father care? But later I understood why he kept that room.
I understood on a Sunday in 1949. Ever since the Dodecanese had become Greek, my mother would take one daughter or the other — always with my little brother, because he was the youngest and she didn't trust leaving him behind — to visit Kalymnos. That summer it was my sister's turn, and she left me with my father and my uncle to look after them.
Every Sunday my father and uncle would go to a café in Plaka — a Kalymnian café, where they would meet fellow islanders and talk. It was summer and the courtyard was completely empty: one neighbor had gone to Markopoulo, and the other took her children to the sea every weekend. I was left alone in the yard with no one around, not a soul, nowhere to go and nothing to do.
My father had left me a little money, so I went and bought a popsicle. I sat outside, in front of the courtyard gate, and ate it slowly and enjoyed it. When it was finished, I had nothing to do, so I said to myself, I'll go and see Eleni, who lived a little way down the street where she was now with her fiancé. I set off. They were in their courtyard and when they saw me their faces lit up. Telemachos was there too, in uniform, having come to have Sunday lunch with them.
They asked me: 'What brings you here?' I said: 'I was on my own and didn't know what to do with myself, so I thought I'd come see what Eleni was up to.' Everyone was very glad to see me, and I think they even made me a coffee. When we'd finished, Telemachos said: 'Shall we go for a walk?' — meaning the three of us, me and Eleni, since Eleni's fiancé had to go work the taxi. And Eleni said: 'Take us somewhere!' Telemachos wanted to take us to a movie, in the center of Athens. As an officer he wouldn't need to pay for his own ticket, but he would pay for ours.
I had been to the cinema once before in my life — with this exact same group, as it happened. The previous Carnival, before Eleni got engaged, my mother had said to my father: 'Shouldn't we invite the children to come and eat with us?' She had a soft spot for Eleni and wanted to look out for her, and by 'the children' she meant both Telemachos and Eleni. My father had also come to respect Telemachos for the way he treated his sister, so he said: 'We should invite them.' The affection my parents showed those two was genuine — not calculating — because I was still so young that even they didn't know what might come of it. After the Carnival meal, Telemachos had taken us to the cinema as a way of showing his gratitude.
Now Telemachos said: 'I'll go for a moment and change, get out of my uniform and into something for the cinema.' And I said: 'If we're going out, I'll go and change too — I'm wearing an old skirt and an old blouse. I'll put on my good dress!' He left first, and I followed maybe ten or fifteen minutes later. When I came outside, a little way down the street, there he was, sitting and waiting, and I realized he had been waiting the whole time.
'You still haven't left?' I asked him.
'I ran into someone I know and got held up,' he said. In the end, we found ourselves walking together down the same street toward the same house.
On the way he said: 'What would you say to the two of us going for a walk — just us?'
'But what about Eleni?' I asked. 'Eleni is expecting us.'
'Leave Eleni to me,' he said. 'That's my business.'
'I don't know,' I told him. 'It's not that I don't trust us to go for a walk together. But it seems wrong — we said we'd all go together and now you're suggesting just the two of us. I don't know.'
'Please,' he said. 'I couldn't arrange it any other way. I want it to be just the two of us,' he said, with feeling.
'I'm thinking of your sister,' I told him.
'I told you I'll handle my sister,' he said.
'Well, if that's what you want,' I said, 'let's go.' Because I had begun to understand his interest, and the invitation had started to intrigue me.
Telemachos was a very handsome man — a man whose whole bearing announced his strength. These were qualities that were missing in my family. My father was a good man, but he lacked both that commanding presence and the tenderness toward his children. In those days people had children without really knowing why they were having them. So this man was not indifferent to me.
I wrestled with myself inside, because I kept thinking about his sister, but it wasn't that I didn't want to go. I also didn't want to offend him. I was a spirited girl — I had proved that since childhood — and I wasn't afraid, because I knew he was a decent man. So what would happen if I went out with him? Would he eat me alive? We would simply find somewhere to sit. I told him: 'Since you're taking responsibility for your sister, all right.'"
