(Chapter 19)
Supreme Court Friends, the Arrogant Contractor and a New Baby
For a stretch of years, until my children were grown, I had no life outside the house — my sole occupation was raising them, and that went on for the better part of a decade. I had no social world of my own. Whatever contact I had with people came through my husband. When we went out, we went out with his friends. That was partly the circumstances, but also because I hadn't yet come into myself — I didn't have the confidence to build a circle of my own.
I didn't have that confidence in front of my husband. He had known me without friends, without a social life, and it would have taken courage to change and tell him: I am not the same person you married. To tell him simply: you met me when I was young and now I have grown. I was always sociable by nature, but the demands of family life had made it impossible to keep up with other women. Many women were in that situation.
There was also our significant age difference, and what happened was that as he began to slow down and wind down, I was coming back to life. That was the natural order of things: Telemachos was beginning to look for the quiet of retirement while I, having gotten through the first great chapter of raising children, felt that my own time was finally starting. I grew into myself and began taking initiative. Where he had once placed me in his social circle, I built one of my own and brought him into it — naturally, without any pressure, offering him a new kind of companionship. In the decade after the children were grown, I started going out, making acquaintances. Mostly through church. One woman would introduce me to another and my circle began to widen.
I had sociability in me. Because the education I had longed for had been taken from me, I always felt drawn to people with culture and standing — I was born for those circles and I always sought out people who had something I didn't, a certain social position, a certain education, and the moment I found that something more, I would connect. Not out of snobbery, but out of a hunger to learn — because I always believed that you only grow, you only fill your own gaps, by surrounding yourself with people who are better than you.
When my children were small I had no complaint about having no free time, because I didn't have enough free time even to feel lonely. But as they grew, naturally, I began to go out — and the first place I went back to was church. I didn't go to church to make connections; I went because the church was a place of peace, a place to breathe. But like it or not, you come into contact with people, because the word 'church' — ekklesia — means assembly, a gathering of people.
In the early years my husband didn't attend the liturgy. But when he retired he gradually began to come with me. He wanted to be at church on Sundays. I went from the early morning — I liked to hear the whole service, not just arrive for the final blessing. He would follow a little later, arriving roughly midway through. But he did like passing through the church on Sundays.
When he was younger we had his social circle — people from work and family as well. You can't overlook your relatives; whatever they're like, you tolerate them. For us the family was always sacred. Crooked or lame, they are your people — whereas friends you choose, and if they don't suit you, you can say goodbye.
He also had one very good friend, Sotiris, from gymnasium. They weren't from the same village — they had met when they went to gymnasium in the nearest central town, where all the surrounding villages sent their students. Later, when both came to Athens, their paths diverged: Sotiris enrolled at the Athens University of Economics, while Telemachos, for various reasons, joined the gendarmerie. For a number of years they lost track of each other, until they met again in Xanthi, where Telemachos was posted and Sotiris was doing his military service. One day they ran into each other by chance in the street. 'Well, Telemachos!' 'Well, Sotiris!' They embraced and never lost touch again after that. My husband always had someone.
So when I had grown into myself and my children had grown up, I found myself at a point in life where I was very content. I enjoyed my circle of friends and my husband enjoyed it too, because I never pushed anything on him that he didn't want. We mostly saw women friends — not necessarily couples or families — and my husband came along. The period when I brought him into that circle was remarkable. I'll tell you one thing that happened right here in this house: I set a table for people from the Supreme Court. I had the former President of the Supreme Court in my home.
I met him at the church of Agios Spyridonas, where he used to come to worship — he was a devout Christian. I used to go there with my choirmaster to study Byzantine music. And it turned out that for some years the President of the Supreme Court was also studying Byzantine music. One day I asked him: 'Do you perhaps know Manthos T., the public prosecutor?' 'Manthos!' he said. 'A wonderful young man! How do you know him?' 'Manthos,' I told him, 'is a family friend — our parents have been friends since before we were born.' 'I'll see him at the Supreme Court and give him your regards!'
There was a young woman named Lina, who'd later become Manthos' wife. I had held Lina as a baby and rocked her to sleep. I knew her because her parents were also from Kalymnos and we lived in the same neighborhood. Back when my mother took me to learn dressmaking to pull me out of school, she took me to Lina's mother, kyria Thalia [Mrs Thalia].
At that time Lina's mother was still unmarried. But her brother was studying law and had a fellow student from Rhodes. Eventually kyria Thalia the dressmaker married that friend of her brother's — his name was Lefteris. When the islands were reunited with Greece and needed to be staffed with professionals — doctors, lawyers, notaries — Lefteris asked to go to his home island of Rhodes and become a notary there. They had two children.
We had a piece of land in Rhodes that belonged to my father, and when we went to see to it we stayed at Thalia's house. That's when I held little Lina in my arms and played with her. But when the girls were grown, Lefteris sent them to Athens to study. Both of them got into the Law School.
When the girls came to Athens, their father found a place a little further down from here. He found the apartment and came to see me — I was married by then, with a husband and children. I introduced him to my husband and said: 'This is kyrios Lefteris from Rhodes, a notary. He has brought his daughters to study.' He explained that he had brought them here because the university was nearby, and he also said: 'I've brought them here so you can keep an eye on them.' I was surprised — 'How am I supposed to keep an eye on grown girls?' He simply meant that if they needed anything, they would have someone to turn to, they could knock on my door.
The younger daughter, Lina, followed a legal path and became a judge. She spent her early years on the bench in Patras. But whenever she came to Athens for any reason, she would always come to visit me. One day when Lina came to see me, she noticed that a short way down from my building an old bakery had been demolished and a new apartment block was going up in its place. She thought she had a little money saved and perhaps with her father's help she could buy an apartment in Athens. So she went upstairs and asked for whoever was in charge. She told him she was interested in one of the apartments, from the plans.
But the contractor, looking at this small young woman, spoke to her with contempt. She explained that she was a district judge and so on, but he laughed — he roared with laughter — and said, 'Ha! And I'm a Supreme Court Justice.' Dripping with sarcasm.
She kept talking to him: 'But… I am interested in buying one.' In the end he told her: 'Off you go, sweetheart — bring your mother and we'll talk.'
She didn't look the part because she looked so young. She came to my house in tears and told me: 'Kyria Sevasti, [Mrs Sevasti] what happened to me! Could you please come with me and say that you are my aunt?'
'We're going right now,' I said.
'Listen,' I told him, 'what exactly do you need, sir? Shall we bring a birth certificate to show you how old this young woman is? Or her university degree to convince you? I am sorry,' I told him, 'but you mocked and sneered at a woman who is currently a serving member of the judiciary. Now then — I am her aunt. What is it you want?' And I finished with: 'Come to an agreement with this young woman, who has both the will and the means to buy an apartment in your building. Will you sell to her or not?'
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' he began, 'it's my fault entirely, I apologize both to you and to the young lady. She didn't register to me — I took her for a high-school girl and I was joking around. That's why I told her to bring her mother.'
I told him: 'And how would her mother come? This young woman is from Rhodes — her parents are in Rhodes. She makes her own decisions. She is a district judge, sir. Is she not capable of making decisions about her own life?'
The contracts were signed on the spot, and you should have seen the accommodations he made for her afterward. He agreed to her payment terms and every single modification she requested for the apartment. He was delighted — everything was still on paper, and he had managed to sell his very first apartment to someone of that standing in the judiciary.
She bought her apartment, and it was around that time that she met Manthos, who also served in the legal system. They were married at Agios Dionysios the Areopagite, and they lived in that apartment for many years. It was there that she brought her first child into the world — the child who is now a distinguished doctor with a postgraduate degree and her own clinic near Alexandras Avenue, little Thalitsa. They brought Thalitsa to this house of mine for about three and a half years, because Lina used to leave for the courts early in the morning and I looked after the little one. My own children were all grown but none had married yet and had children of their own, so I didn't yet have my grandmotherly duties. My husband was either at work or at the coffeehouse, and I had a great deal of time.
One morning Lina came and asked me: 'Please — I have a very early court session and I have nowhere to leave the child. Could I bring Thalitsa for you to keep until midday?' I told her: 'Lina, what are you even asking? Bring her here with her stroller and everything that comes with her.' The little girl would stay with me until midday, until her mother came to collect her. I made Lina a proposition: 'Whenever this happens, bring her — don't hesitate.' And that's exactly what she did.
But before long I had gotten so fond of the child that I was asking for her every day. I loved that little girl because she was so gentle and so bright. She was a treasure. Once she began to understand the world around her, she started asking questions — endless questions. Always asking. If I answered one, she went straight on to another — why this, why that — until finally I'd tell her: 'Well, I don't have any more answers for you!'
It was plain that this child was going to become something extraordinary. And she had grown so attached to me that she didn't want to leave. When her mother came in the afternoon to take her home, she would cry and say: 'We'll stay with Kyria Sevasti.' And I had such a wonderful time with her — I would take her with me when I went to visit my mother, and she made my mother happy too.
Our whole lives, my mother and I and the other women — we raised children together. Our friends' children were our own.
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