(Chapter 10)
"When I was in seventh grade, in 1947, there were no apartment buildings — only rooms for rent. And not just for vacations, the way it is now; whole families would rent these rooms and live in them. Our courtyard had five rooms, but our family had the right to use the kitchen, which was an advantage. The others kept their cooking things along the side of the shared yard and brought them out when they needed them. Each family would claim a corner of the courtyard and set up a table to wash their dishes at the common water tap.
We moved to that house before my brother was born, in 1937. Another woman in the yard was pregnant at the same time as my mother and they had their babies together — ten days apart, both boys. They grew up side by side and became the closest of friends. My brother was called Nikolas and the other boy was called Filippos, and people called them Philip and Nathanael, like the apostles of Jesus who were great friends and strengthened each other in their faith.
One day, when they were three years old, they set off hand in hand, pulling each other along, walking toward the horizon. They lost their bearings and got lost. Their mothers went out of their minds with worry and searched everywhere, up and down every alley, until they finally made it to the police station and reported that two small children had gone missing. The boys had made it all the way to Vouliagmenis Avenue and were walking along the sidewalk one behind the other, crying, because they had realized they were lost.
An old man found them and said: 'Where are the two of you going?' They said: 'Home.' He said: 'And where is home?' They said: 'We don't know.' So he took them by the hand and walked them to the police station. In those days there weren't many stations, so they simply sent a child to our house to let us know the boys had been found. Those two were together their whole lives.
Filippos's mother lost her husband young — he died at forty-nine, leaving her with nothing, no income, nothing at all, only two small children and the one room she rented in our courtyard. I used to visit her even in recent years and she was always glad to see me, because she had a soft spot for me from the old days. I was the oldest child in the yard and because I was a go-getter, I ran errands for her, and I even helped her get a small pension. She didn't know the first thing about pensions — she was from a village near Markopoulo — but I was in high school by then and could help her with the paperwork.
She had to raise her children. She rented a second room in our courtyard, brought in two barrels — they had grapes from Markopoulo — and started selling wine. Everyone knew that the best wine in the neighborhood came from kyra-Marika [auntie Marika]. Then she bought a loom and started selling rag rugs, and my mother was her first and best customer. My mother would bring her scraps of fabric and she would weave them into rugs. When I got married I took one as part of my dowry, because rag rugs never go out of style. She raised her children on rugs and wine and the small pension I had gotten her. When the children were a little older, she moved everything into one room and left the second one empty, which meant it was available to rent.
In those days, rooms for rent were in very high demand in Athens, and there were no rental listings — everything went by word of mouth. My father managed the courtyard because the houses belonged to his older brother. But the older brother was now comfortable and had his own family well established, and he didn't mind that it took my father a while to find a tenant for the second room. One reason my father wasn't in any rush was that I was seventeen at the time and my sister was around fifteen. Young men came up from the provinces to study in Athens and were always looking for rooms, and whenever my father was approached by young men, he turned them down — he was afraid his daughters would get mixed up with them.
Your grandfather Telemachos was young too, but not twenty or twenty-seven — he was thirty. Well-built as he was, though, he looked older. He had gone back to the village around that time and brought his sister Eleni back with him — she was older, unmarried, because there were no eligible men left in the village. That was when he learned she was still unmarried; there had been no communication in all that time, and he'd had no news from his family for years.
Your grandfather was born in 1918. He left his village in the Peloponnese at eighteen to come to Athens. Someone talked him into joining the Gendarmerie, telling him they would provide free education. They also told him that if he joined, he would do his military service there and wouldn't have to go to the front if war broke out. The catch was that he hadn't finished high school in his village, which was a requirement for entry. He told them he had been home-tutored, sat the entrance exams at the Evangelical School, and passed.
The Evangelical School was the most celebrated school for the Greek Orthodox community of Smyrna. After the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the school was transplanted to Athens — they say they literally carried pieces of the buildings onto ships and reassembled the school in a neighborhood settled by prosperous Greeks from Turkey, which was called Nea Smyrni. The exams must have been serious.
When the Second World War broke out, Telemachos was sent to the border in Macedonia. Because he was in the Gendarmerie, he had a dual capacity — he patrolled cities and was also part of the military, which meant he could carry a weapon. Regular police forces existed in only four cities in Greece at the time: Athens, Piraeus, Corfu, and Patras. So the Gendarmerie took on policing duties in the cities during the war.
Your grandfather didn't want to go to war. He was devoted to his country, but he didn't want to risk his life, didn't want to kill people. He wouldn't have liked me saying that, though... He was proud of his country, loyal to Greece, and very brave — because whatever his country ordered him to do, he would do it with zeal and without a thought for himself, not for any party, but for Greece. He never got involved in politics, never argued over such things. In the end, I knew more about politics than he did.
And even though he managed to avoid the front lines during the Second World War, he couldn't avoid the Civil War. His job was to hunt down the communist bands, and I don't believe he ever forgave them for that. During the Battle of Makrigianni he was right here. He had reported for duty and the fighting caught him inside the building.
Imagine — someone had told his mother that her son had been killed in the Civil War, and they had held a funeral for him, and had already done a memorial service for him when he walked through the door. It was a mistake, but the old woman had believed it. Imagine her joy when he returned to the village alive and in the flesh. She went out of her mind with happiness — she thought she was seeing a ghost. And imagine your grandfather's shock when he found out they had held a memorial service for him while he was still alive.
So, having survived a war and his own funeral, when he finally came back to Athens, he brought his unmarried sister Eleni with him, hoping to find her a husband. She had pleasant features, but she was from the countryside, she was getting on in years, and she was heavy — and back then all of these things counted against you in terms of marriage. Your grandfather knew many people, though, and someone among them was bound to help him marry her off.
But first things first — he had to find her a room in Athens. Where he was posted as a gendarme, they weren't permitted to live off the premises because of the Civil War, so they slept in their station. He couldn't put her there. He had a cousin in Agia Paraskevi and he took Eleni there for a few days while he looked for somewhere closer to him.
At Makrigianni, where he was stationed, there was a headquarters, and right next door on Hatzichristou Street there was a barbershop. There were many houses on Hatzichristou Street back then — the state later expropriated them all to build the Acropolis Museum. The barber on Hatzichristou, a man called Theodosis, was a friend of your grandfather's. Directly across from our courtyard there was another barbershop, owned by a man called Michailidis — I can't remember his first name. Theodosis and Michailidis knew each other, being in the same trade. My father went to Michailidis for his haircuts, and the barber knew there was a vacant room in our courtyard.
One day when your grandfather stopped by to see his barber Theodosis, he said: 'Listen, I've brought my sister up from the village to find her a husband, but I've left her temporarily in Agia Paraskevi. Let me know if you hear of any rooms.' The barber said: 'I don't know of anything in Koukaki.' In those days Koukaki, the neighborhood right next to Makrigianni, was all private houses and old money — a much better address than even Kolonaki.
As for Theodosis, he told your grandfather he would look in Neos Kosmos. There were no telephones back then, so he paid a visit in person to his colleague at the barbershop in Neos Kosmos to ask around. The only telephones in the neighborhood were at the baker's and the grocer's. When something was needed, the grocer would send a boy and say 'Go to kyrie Giorgos's house' — imagine how few we were that everyone knew everyone's home by name.
Theodosis went and told Michailidis that your grandfather was a friend of his looking to rent a room, and the two of them went together to ask the owner. My father wasn't the owner — he was the manager — but everyone treated him as if he owned the place. 'Fine,' my father said, 'let this tenant come so we can see who he is.'
It was a Saturday afternoon. All that time I had been going to school — we had classes on Saturdays too. In that little empty room I had set up a small table where I could study in peace. Six of us were living in our courtyard room, and the house was filled with my father's things — he was making slippers at home by himself in those days. That particular Saturday, when I came home from school and we'd had lunch, I put a small pot of water on to heat and brought my wash basin into that room for my weekly bath — as I did every Saturday.
I had just finished bathing and hadn't yet had a chance to empty out the water when a whole delegation arrived at the door — Michailidis, Theodosis, a friend of Theodosis', and your grandfather in his uniform, since guards weren't permitted to wear civilian clothes off duty. I had just stepped out of the bath, my hair was wet. It was long then and I had gathered it into a ponytail, and I was wearing my black school apron. I had nothing else to put on — after my bath I just put my same clothes back on. My father did his usual checks and decided to trust your grandfather, because it never crossed his mind that I might get mixed up with him. He saw an older, serious man, a full-grown adult. He told him: 'All right, I'll give you the room for your sister.'
This room opened onto the kitchen, and my father called out: 'Sevastoulá' — out I came — 'bring a chair for the gentleman.' All the others were standing, all four of them looming over my father like the four horsemen. There was a window too, with half of them on the outside and the other half on the inside. The second chair was needed so the two parties could sit and sign the rental agreement.
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 — fresh from the bath, still damp. But a woman, even a barely-hatched young woman, has the instinct to know when someone is looking at her and exactly what that look means."
Back to Chapter Index: The Complete True Story
