(Part 3)
There is only one photograph of all three of Maria's children. Sevasti, the oldest, is around eleven; Eleni a year younger; and Nikolas, a baby, ten years behind them both. The photograph was taken at the Kalligeris studio on Stadiou Street, made specifically to send back to Kalymnos so that grandmother Sevasti could see all her grandchildren. They never needed another photograph, and they never took one.
You would expect all of Maria's children to have survived, born as they were in Athens hospitals, not like the old days when medicine was something that happened to other people. But Maria lost a baby — the most beautiful of all of them. A girl, third in line, named Katerina. The godmother had liked the name and had said: "Since you've already given your first two daughters the names of their grandmothers, let me choose the name for your third girl."
Godparents carried real weight in those days, because they gave the Christmas gifts and, more importantly, the Easter candle — along with shoes and dresses for school and presents for special occasions. There was no reason for parents to hurt their feelings. If godparents wanted to choose a name, their wish had to be honored. The godmother baptized the baby Katerina at six months old. She dressed her beautifully, took her to church, and gave her Holy Communion as tradition demands in Greece. But when the baby came home that same night, she died.
People said the baby had been struck by the evil eye — the influence of Satan, working through envious people, capable of bringing every misfortune down on a person. The Greek Orthodox Church even has a specific prayer to dispel it. Katerina had been a particularly beautiful baby, with an angelic little face that everyone admired. It would be no surprise if envy had killed her. No other reason was given for her death. Only the evil eye of jealousy could bring about such a tragic end. The baby was simply small and defenseless. Even the blue eye charm on her white dress hadn't been able to save her — she had been destined to die. At least she died after her baptism, and had therefore secured her place in heaven.
Perhaps Maria asked the godmother why she had chosen the name Katerina, perhaps she didn't. For parents, once the ancestors' names had been honored, any name after that was simply a name dedicated to a saint who would be the person's protector for the rest of their life. Many people, even those without the money to spare for an extra baby's gifts, wanted to become godparents for their own reasons — perhaps to honor an old man who had no descendants to carry his name, or to honor a brother or friend who had died young and childless. So many wars in this country had left so many names floating without bodies that these questions were sometimes beside the point.
Saint Catherine — wise and beautiful — had faced her torturers with courage and died in glory, betrothed to Jesus. Pure and redeemed. Exactly as one might wish a baby to die. Or even as a mother might wish her baby to die, if fate gave her no other choice. In the end, Katerina's death brought, by an unexpected turn, a certain relief to the family — a break from raising girls one after another, and a chance to try again. For a boy this time.
No family was ashamed of its daughters, but no family felt complete without a son. An heir to the father's name, a successor to the family business, someone who could go on making decisions for the people around him.
"Your first child should be a girl, so she can help you with the housework," the wise grandmothers of the island would advise. "She'll help you raise the ones that come after." The ones that came after could be boys or girls. But since older sisters had to be married off before their brothers, it wasn't wise for a family to have too many girls. A son had the duty to defend the honor and fate of his sisters, to find each of them a good husband, and to ensure their well-being in a new household. But what if one of them wasn't quite presentable enough, or was simply a little odd?
Poor little Katerina would no longer have to live in fear of not being beautiful enough, but her death by the evil eye breathed a different fear into the older sisters. Sevasti, at least — who had inherited her mother's beauty — decided to become sufficiently devout and to go to church often. With enough prayer, no evil eye would touch her. She wanted to befriend the priests, to become so pious that she might witness miracles herself.
The church mattered enormously to Sevasti. There was no rational argument against being faithful. The church allowed Sevasti to read books, to have a rich social life, to reassure herself that she was following the rules of society, and to have plenty of people on her side. Which relative would ever reproach her for leaving the house to attend the Sunday girls' catechism? Sevasti wanted to be saved, and she was not about to give up that salvation.
Sevasti had become devout in the first place because of her uncle. Uncle Stefanos — the enlightened brother of her father, who had spent his life praying for his nieces and nephews — was her mentor, her model in all things spiritual. "She could have been born from your uncle," Maria would often say to her firstborn daughter. "She's the spitting image," she'd add, noting the absence of anything in common between them. The other two children, Eleni and Nikolas, took more after their mother — not in looks, but in temperament. Maria wasn't particularly troubled by divine rules, as long as they left her in peace. She would follow them up to a point, but without personal conviction. Maria had never really known what personal desire meant. She was satisfied to have paid her human debt — to raise children.
"When I die, all of this is for you," Uncle Stefanos would tell little Sevasti. "All of this" meant books of saints' lives, sacred texts, leaflets from local churches filled with prayers and blessings. Most were written in katharevousa — the archaizing form of modern Greek, a language that had shaped the minds of all those who believed salvation would come through the values of the Greek Orthodox tradition. And so Sevasti, though she never had the chance to go as far as she wanted in formal education, always spoke in the manner of ecclesiastical texts, reaching for ornate words and sayings from ancient philosophers and saints.
When Uncle Stefanos died, Sevasti took all of it — and among his things she found a notebook of his personal reflections. His thoughts as he read the Bible. "My uncle was a holy man," she would say often, and she never shared his secrets. But she was determined to be more educated than he had been. After elementary school, she would go to high school.
Her first cousin, Andreas Kalymnios, was a philologist. A high school teacher of language and literature. He had gone to university, studied both ancient and modern Greek, and become an expert in grammar and all the major texts from antiquity to the present. Andreas taught at an all-boys high school near Sevasti's home for as long as the Dodecanese remained under Italian rule. When it became clear that Greece was preparing to bring the islands back in, he went quickly home — to his family and his beloved Kalymnos.
Sevasti's plan was to use the church and cousin Andreas to educate herself. It was her plan and her hope. Because as the first daughter of the family, she was expected to help with the housework, raise the younger children, and marry as soon as possible. She refused none of this. But her parents refused her request to go to high school. Elementary school was more than enough for a homemaker and mother.
Elementary school ran for six years, but children who intended to continue to high school could sit entrance exams at the end of fourth grade and go straight to first-year high school instead of fifth grade. Sevasti was only nine years old when she begged to sit the exams, but her father, thinking her still too young, told her he would allow her to finish through sixth grade, and that was his final concession.
The summer after she finished sixth grade, Maria took Sevasti by the hand and led her to a dressmaker — a Mrs Thalia. Thalia was a childhood friend of Maria's from Kalymnos, and an exceptional seamstress. She had studied in Paris. She had lived in France and learned her trade there. A true scientist of the needle, one might say.
"Thalia, I've brought you my daughter to teach her the craft," Maria asked as a favor. Thalia had no room for apprentices. "Maria, I don't have room for apprentices in my place — but for you, I can make an exception." Maria had told Sevasti that kyria Thalia was a smart, educated woman. The reason she had gone to Paris was that her brother was studying there to become a lawyer. The siblings had shared a small apartment, and her dressmaking had been what paid for his studies. Now this man was a lawyer in Athens, and the devoted siblings still shared a room.
Sevasti glanced around. It was a very small room, with no space for even an extra chair. She said nothing, of course. She respected the lawyer and understood that this compatriot might one day introduce her into some useful circle; and this woman was clearly refined and deserving of respect. She kept her head down.
But Thalia noticed that the girl had her head down and was making no eye contact at all. "But let's see — what does the girl herself want?" She came closer and asked an unexpected question: "Do you want to be a seamstress?"
Little Sevasti didn't raise her head. She didn't dare say no. But she didn't want to say yes either. She was ashamed to say no in front of her mother, but not so ashamed that she would let her education slip away from her that easily. She made a small sound instead — clicking her tongue against her teeth, the sound that means no.
Thalia turned to Maria. "This is where our arrangement falls apart. Even if she stayed with me a hundred years, she'd never learn the trade." Maria was mortified, deeply shamed by her daughter. Before the silence could settle, Thalia turned to Sevasti: "What is it you want, little one?"
"I want to go to school, but they won't let me."
"You want to go to school?" Now it was the seamstress's turn to be surprised. Perhaps she had expected the girl to want to be a singer, or to sell flowers. "No, kyria Maria — this is a crime. I can't take in someone who wants to go to school. If the child wants to learn, you mustn't stop her."
Maria could not change Thalia's mind. She was humiliated. She took Sevasti by the hand and they walked home in absolute silence.
When the father heard the whole story, his rage was volcanic — shouting and threats. Sevasti had been meant to become a seamstress, and it was not Thalia's place to decide the family's future. The daughter's defiance brought shame on the household. The mother was blamed too, for being incapable of controlling the girl. And so a beating followed, as was common enough in those days.
I don't believe Sevasti ever forgot that beating, however ordinary it was for the time. Nor do I believe it changed anything in her mind. Whatever happened in that room, her thoughts were fixed on September — because in September she would have a second chance to sit the high school entrance exams. The law gave her that.
Sevasti knew that her first cousin was a high school teacher. He was educated; he would understand. Cousin Andreas often stopped by her father's shop and drank ouzo with his uncle. But Sevasti didn't know where to find him — she had never been to his home. Still, Sevasti had always cultivated a wide circle of acquaintances, and she made a point of doing favors for them. So when she remembered that one of the girls from the neighborhood was related to Andreas's family, she asked her to take her to him, and the girl agreed.
"What a surprise!" Andreas hadn't expected to see his young cousin — alone, with only one friend, several neighborhoods from home. "Andreas, I need to talk to you. My father won't let me sit the exams for high school. He wants me to become a seamstress." She told him about the beating too. "Leave it with me," he said.
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