Escape from Kalymnos and the Lost Caïque

(Chapter 2)

Maria's father kept her close on the day the groom came to call. The house had the kitchen and the shop on the ground floor, with the rest of the rooms upstairs. Maria was asked to wait in the kitchen, which was separated from the shop by a wooden partition, not a wall. At a certain point, her father knocked on the partition with his hand and called out: "Maria, bring two sweets" — the customary thing to do when a customer came in — "and come through this way." In those days the only sweets were spoon sweets. Maria spooned the preserve onto two small plates, set out two glasses of water alongside them, and came in through one door and out through the other.

As Maria entered carrying the tray, her father said: "Maria, this gentleman here" — and gestured toward Giorgos — "is going to be your husband." Maria very nearly fainted. The tray very nearly fell from her hands. But she kept her head down and didn't turn to look. A moment later, in a fraction of a second, her father slapped his hand on the table and said: "Are we going to wait all day for you to say yes?" And Maria nodded.

It was a Tuesday. The wedding was on Sunday, because Giorgos had to leave. If the Italians caught him, they'd put him in prison for being Greek, so he had to go back the same way he'd come — in secret. In the space of one week, from Tuesday to Saturday, all the wedding preparations were made.

The wedding was magnificent, because Antonakis was a man of considerable standing in Kalymnian society at the time. He invited the whole of the island's aristocracy — his clients from the shop. After the splendid ceremony and the great celebration in the village square, a ferocious rain began. It was the 10th of February, 1929. The rain didn't stop for an entire week — relentless, torrential. The couple retreated upstairs and waited for it to pass, so that Giorgos could take the boat back to Greece alone, since Maria had no papers yet that would allow her to travel and start a new life. For the whole of that time they didn't leave the house once. Eight days after the wedding, one day after Giorgos had slipped off the island, the Italian commandant came to the village with an interpreter, asking for him. He knocked on the door looking for Giorgos, intending to arrest him. Maria's family explained that he had already gone. The commandant looked at Maria — the Greek's wife. "Then you'll be going too," he told her through the interpreter. "Come to the administrative office tomorrow and we'll prepare your papers."

Maria's family celebrated the news and began preparing their daughter's official passage to Greece. Forty days after the wedding, Maria boarded a ship for Greece — properly, legally, with everything in order. She even managed to have her mother-in-law, kyra-Eleni, travel with her as a guardian. Giorgos had told her: "Don't bring anything with you — no clothes, no silverware, no glassware. I'll get you everything new in Athens." Maria was an only daughter, nearly thirty years old, so the dowry she left behind was substantial, in both quantity and quality. Clothing and glassware, all of it first-rate, because like everything on the island, it had come from Italy. Fine porcelain, Bohemian crystal — all of it left behind.

When Giorgos returned to Athens a married man, his brother Stefanos moved out of their shared room. He put a bed in the shoe shop and began living there. He lived like a man of the world who had taken monastic vows — all he was missing was the cassock. He kept the fasts, never missed church, read religious texts, attended spiritual gatherings. He was a remarkable and cultivated soul.

The women and Giorgos all lived together in one room. Maria cooked the midday meal for everyone, the men worked together in the shop, and in the evenings they separated to sleep. Giorgos's mother only went back to her island after Maria had given birth and baptized their first child, a girl. The mother-in-law had helped so much that Maria's own mother made an unusual request: she asked that the first child not be given her name, but the name of the mother-in-law — Eleni. But this was unheard of. The custom on the island was that the first girl's name belonged to the mother's family, especially because that name "had not yet been heard" — meaning none of Maria's siblings had yet given the name to their own children. If there was one thing that kept Greeks on the straight and narrow, it was doing their duty and honoring tradition. And so the first daughter was named Sevasti, after Maria's mother. A tradition that held, even though every party involved would have been perfectly happy to break it.

Little Sevasti didn't meet her grandmother until she was fifteen. It was after the Second World War, when Maria decided she wanted to go back to her island — to find out who had survived and who had died. She hadn't seen her parents or her family since the day she'd been expelled from the island, even if she had left celebrating. She couldn't read or write, and neither could her parents. Occasionally a fellow islander would track them down to pass on news, but there was no direct contact.

Maria never let out so much as a sigh in front of her children. Nobody knows whether this woman ever felt joy, love, or grief. She never spoke about her family or her past. The house was always clean, the meals always cooked and ready, and she lived her life entirely for her three children. Sevasti, the oldest; Eleni, the second daughter, a year younger; and Nikolas, the last-born, ten years behind his sisters.

When the Second World War ended, Kalymnos passed into British hands. Maria reckoned that if the British found her out, it wouldn't be too serious a problem — she was Greek, an ally, expelled by the Italians. Still, she would be careful. She didn't talk much about her desires or her plans; she didn't see much point in expressing herself, or even, really, in having feelings. One day she intended to take her little boy, along with her eldest daughter who carried her mother's name, and go find them. She would leave the second daughter behind in Athens to look after the men.

There was, of course, no regular boat connecting Athens to Kalymnos at that time. Her goddaughter's godfather, however — Sevasti's godfather — was a man of means who had also come to Athens. He owned a caïque —a traditional wooden fishing boat— which in those days was no small thing. To own a caïque was to be a shipowner. He was a captain, and he ran what were known as "shadow routes." He also had a large house, a proper standalone villa with many rooms. He was a man of a different order. One day the godfather proposed to his goddaughter's family that he take the child — little Sevasti — under his protection on one of his runs and deliver her to the island. Maria and the boy would follow on a separate fishing boat. This was a mistake. Because his caïque took seventeen days to reach Kalymnos. Sevasti was on that boat with the godfather and his wife all those days, lost at sea. They kept putting in at various islands but couldn't go directly to Kalymnos. The engine would break down, and they'd scramble for the nearest island to fix it. They'd fix the engine, then wait for a wind to sail by. They drifted so far off course that even the sponge-diving boats — the official lifeline connecting the Aegean islands — couldn't locate them.

Maria would go down to Vouliagmeni and ask the fishermen on the boats whether they'd seen Karabetsos's caïque. No one had. After two weeks, everyone believed that Sevasti and the godfather had drowned. On the seventeenth day, after enormous hardship, they found their way and got word back to Athens. Maria immediately boarded another fishing boat to reach the island and find her daughter. It took her only nine days. Seventeen days and nine days — the school holidays were nearly over, and they barely had time to get back to Greece before anyone could suspect that these first dangerous, forbidden holidays on the island had ever happened.

Maria's father they did not find. He had died. Her younger brother was now married and had an only child. Old Sevasti, the grandmother, was still alive, and was able to lay eyes on the granddaughter who carried her name.

Little Sevasti was in a wretched state. Seventeen days of seasickness. Even though she was the youngest on board, the godmother had looked after her so carefully that she'd given her the only bed — the captain's bunk — and refused to let her sleep on the deck or on beaches the way the others did. Even so, she had managed to catch lice, lose weight, and fall ill enough that she felt she needed a hospital. But when they finally reached the island it was night, and the godmother took her straight to her own house to wait for the family to come and collect her. She spent the night there with another girl from the boat, a little older, also waiting for relatives.

The next morning, the godfather went out to let the rest of the family know she was there. As her godfather, he knew where the family lived — in those days there were no street names — and went directly. The fewer people who knew, the better. Because the British were no improvement on the Italians; in some ways they were worse. They followed their manuals to the letter, and if those manuals said prison, they wouldn't even entertain the argument that Maria had been expelled by the Italians. Once the news reached the right ears, Maria's younger brother — Sevasti's uncle — came to the godmother's house to collect his young relative.

It was early morning and Sevasti had only just woken up. When the uncle walked in, he found two girls. "Which one is my niece?" he asked. The godfather said: "Ha! You'll find her yourself — I'm not going to point her out." Sevasti was disheveled and sick, but she had taken her mother's features. The uncle took his time and looked more carefully. "That one," he said, and chose correctly. Sevasti was beautiful, like her mother.

Her mother never took off her headscarf except to wash her hair, but everyone could see her beauty through it. She was a woman who always wore her gold jewelry over her modest clothes, and a remarkable gold cross at her throat.

Sevasti had come home for the first time. A home she knew, like so many Greeks in the stories of their own lives, only from something close to legend. Though she felt deeply welcomed — this was the place where everything had begun — she understood that it was a place destined to send its people away and keep only their memory.

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Traps Made out of Love

 (Chapter 9)

The Doctor's Proposal and the Patisserie Bluff 

"Every evening during the Occupation, my father would listen to the station 'Free Greece' through this hidden radio he had found, together with his friend the doctor. Free Greece broadcast from Cairo every day. And every day the doctor would bring treats for me — 'for little Sevasti.' My father was an innocent man; he couldn't understand why the treats were always for me. The doctor wasn't going hungry — he had food at the hospital — and he had no other way to get close to me. We children didn't understand either, and we shared everything; even my mother would eat from the sweets. But he always sent all the good things for me.

Until one day my father said to him: 'Doctor, I have something to tell you. I would like us to become family.' 'I want that too,' the doctor answered, 'but with whom?' And my father said: 'With my niece on Kalymnos.' He had a niece — twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the time — the sister of Andreas, the cousin who had helped me. She had a substantial inheritance from her father. 'Go and meet her, take a look at her, and let's become family.'

And the doctor said: 'Thank you very much, kyrie Giorgos, and I very much want us to become family — but not with your niece.' 'Then with whom?' my father asked. 'With your daughter.' 'Which daughter of mine?' My father was taken aback. 'She's a child!'

'She's a child now, but she'll grow. In five or six years she'll be eighteen. I can wait.'

'Leave it for now, Doctor, let's wait and see,' my father told him. My father was startled and went and told my mother.

My sister, who was always an eavesdropper — imagine, even as a small child she didn't sleep on the floor with us but had her own bed, right next to our parents' — heard everything one night. But she said nothing to anyone, not even to me. We quarreled often though, because she always wanted my toys, and one evening when we had a dispute over a toy I didn't want to give her, she told me that if I gave it to her, she'd tell me something that concerned me. That got my curiosity going and I said: 'Take it — what do you have to tell me?'

When I gave her the toy she told me: 'You know that doctor who comes with Papa every evening — he doesn't come here for our father. He comes for you. He wants to make you his wife. He wants to marry you.' 'Me? But he's old!' I protested. 'He'll wait until you're grown up. Papa told Mama.'

At that moment I went out of my mind. I was in shock. 'What do you mean, his wife?' — I didn't understand what that meant then. I thought it was an abduction, that he wanted to steal me away. I didn't want to leave my family. I started crying and went to tell my mother. I asked her: 'Is this person who comes here coming to take me? What will happen to me? I don't want to leave!' 'Calm down, child,' my mother told me. 'It's nothing.' She tried to reassure me. 'He loves you more like a little girl.'

Whatever my mother said did nothing to settle my mind, and I started behaving abominably toward him. If I saw him coming down the street, I wouldn't go inside — or I'd leave the house and stay out until he was gone. If I was outside, I'd wait two or three hours if necessary. If I was already inside and hadn't managed to get out, I'd hide under a bed and not come out until he left. He noticed this, noticed it thoroughly, and told my father about it: 'What is this behavior?' he asked. 'Leave it,' they told him, 'the younger one whispered it to the older one and now she sees you as an enemy.' Nothing could calm me down — I had turned wild. They scolded me for it, because it was rude, especially toward an established doctor, but I told them I wanted him to leave and never come back. It took a long time, but eventually his pride was wounded and he stopped coming. He vanished.

Six years passed. During those six years I turned eighteen. When I was twelve he must have been thirty-five — young enough for marriage, though not for me; for a twenty-five-year-old or even a thirty-year-old he would have been perfect. He was in his prime as a man, but I was still a baby.

In any case, he had been counting the years, and one day out of nowhere, there he was in the courtyard — a little changed, with greyer hair. He was forty-one now, still young enough, but by then I had met your grandfather. The first time I saw your grandfather as a man — as someone I truly saw — I was only seventeen, but he spoke to me when I was eighteen, right after I finished school.

When the doctor came, I was already eighteen, possibly nineteen, since I had finished gymnasium about a year before. He walked in smiling and it happened that I was there. I had changed, of course — I was no longer the wild creature; I was a serious young woman. We welcomed him warmly and graciously, and I myself brought him a chair and he sat down. We looked after him, offered him refreshments, and until he left, he said nothing. Everyone was pleased to see him, because he was a respected man and people always remarked on how kyrie Giorgos kept such distinguished company. A specialist at a hospital.

When the time came for him to leave, I walked him to the door, and as he was going he said: 'I expect you've understood the purpose of my visit.'

And I said: 'Well, what if I have?'

And he said: 'I would like the two of us to meet privately.'

I agreed. We arranged to meet at Syntagma, at a patisserie called Prapas. We didn't have coffee bars then — only patisseries. Prapas and Flokas, those were the ones. We went there for sweets or ice cream, or we went to the cinema. We didn't drink coffee; we didn't know what a frappé was. I went out with your grandfather once a week and he'd take me for ice cream or to the movies. We didn't go to the theater; there were no clubs or anything of that sort. The cinema was the greatest form of entertainment — places like the Attikon, or the one in the Grande Bretagne, or the Asty. Coffee bars came much later, when I was already grown — that was your mother's era.

We went to Syntagma for sweets. He spoke about the past, and I apologized for my behavior. I told him that first of all I owed him an apology and needed to explain myself, and that was why I had agreed to come. I owed him an apology even if I hadn't done anything truly wrong. It had been an ugly moment. I was only twelve years old and knew nothing about marriage or building a family. I may have been a little savage, but what I had been told was also very hard to bear — it was as though a thunderbolt had fallen on my head. As a child, I couldn't understand that what I was doing was so very unkind.

I asked him: 'And now — what is it you want from me?'

And he said: 'I was forced to stay away because I couldn't bear it — the hiding, the getting under beds, not coming into the house. The years passed and, as you can see, I haven't married. But now you are a mature young woman, a citizen of the world, you've taken your place in society. If you say yes, we can be married within a week.'

'Thank you very much,' I told him, 'for the proposal you're making, but it's too late. I already have a relationship — a very serious one.'

And he said: 'You'll forget about that relationship; it's nothing important.'

'Nothing important? It's extremely important,' I told him. 'Because this relationship was imposed on me by no one — I made it myself. And the person I love, I chose on my own, I loved on my own. It isn't easy to let go of.'

'It's very easy,' he said. He wanted to know who the man was and what he did for a living, and the moment I told him he said: 'I can offer you a much better life.'

'I'm not interested in a grand life,' I told him. 'I'm interested in what my heart tells me. I'm used to living simply. I've been raised to live without much.'

He pressed on, I pressed back, and in the end I was forced to tell a lie. It was a lie because your grandfather and I had not been intimate, but I told him: 'But what are you asking now... Apart from my heart, I've also given him my body. It's done.' Because I expected that to be the end of it. But the answer he gave me... What did I expect — he was a doctor.

'Let me tell you something,' he said. 'If you think that a woman's morality is measured by a small piece of tissue called virginity, you're mistaken. I don't attach any importance to such things. What I value is a woman's moral character, her principles, her integrity. That is what counts for me. Virginity is of no interest to me.'

'Well, good for you!' I thought, and also realized that it was impossible to outmaneuver someone like him, and that I had made a mistake with my answer, because he would now go away with the impression that I was, as they used to say, ruined. 'I've really stepped in it,' I thought.

I turned to him and said: 'I lied to you. Forgive me — I thought that this way I'd put you off. It didn't work. But know that nothing has happened; I'm untouched.' And he got angry and raised his voice: 'Why did you do that? You tried to fool me — me, a man of science — you, a little girl, you tried to test me? For that very reason I now demand that you test yourself, abandon this feeling, and come back to me.'

'No,' I told him. 'Doctor' — I didn't know how else to address him, I always called him 'Doctor' — 'please don't insist. This is the first and last time we go out. We're done. Go and build your life,' I told him. 'You're still young, you're at a good age to find the right woman and build your life. Forget about me.'

He left and we never saw him again. Two years went by; I was ready to marry your grandfather. At some point I was walking somewhere and I felt a tap on my back. It was him. He said: 'You see how fate works? Meeting again, even by accident.'

We didn't sit down anywhere — right there on the spot he said: 'I hold to my proposal. Have you perhaps changed your mind?'

'No,' I answered. 'We're done, we said that.'

I told your grandfather and he was furious — he asked me who this man was and whether he needed to go find him. I told him to calm down and that I could handle it myself. I asked him to stay where he was and keep his pistols for another occasion.

Many years later, through the Kalymnos Association, I heard about the doctor's life — that he had married and that he died at a ripe old age.

A large age difference was very common then — a gap of twenty years was considered perfectly normal. A man was expected to be older than his wife — or rather, was supposed to be. An exception were your grandfather's parents, because when your great-grandfather married your great-grandmother, she was five years older than him. So when his sons married younger women, he said just one thing: 'At last — I don't care what kind of women my sons have married, but they married younger women!' He was glad of it, which shows he must have had some grievance. Your great-grandmother Vasoula was so much older that she only managed to have three children before she stopped having her period. In those days women's periods stopped early — they didn't remain fertile long because their nutrition was poor. But it was also partly because your great-grandfather had gone to America for a while, and only when he came back did he have his third and last child.

People didn't know how to use contraception and simply had as many children as God gave them, which is why my grandmother Sevasti had twelve children and the mother of your grandfather had the same. But children died — they didn't survive. Every year they produced a child, and whichever one lived... Children died without anyone knowing why. Born healthy, and then at a few months, at a year, at two years, they died for nothing. There were no medical means then — no way to understand what was happening, no way to help.

So, as I was saying, an age gap like the fifteen years between me and your grandfather, or even the twenty with the doctor, raised no eyebrows. Even so, I was young, just not young enough for anyone to protest. When the doctor proposed to my father, my father told him his daughter was too young and couldn't give an answer then — but he didn't turn him away either. He didn't say: 'You're too old — what are you thinking?' He simply said: 'She's a child and I can't say anything yet. Let's wait a little.'

I was twelve years old and not all that far from marriageable age. For example, if a young girl happened to fall pregnant at sixteen, her parents would try to marry her off — either to the father of the child or to someone else. Today things are more open; even if a girl becomes pregnant, parents accept it and raise the child themselves; she doesn't have to be married off.

Do you see my nails? They're very beautiful because I go to a shop that opened near me — a Bulgarian woman runs it, very good at her work. I mention it because she told me she's only forty and already a grandmother to a three-year-old girl. She's married to a Greek now and they live here, but she has a daughter of twenty-five, whom she had when she was fifteen in Bulgaria. That daughter gave her a granddaughter. It happened because this woman had a very strict father who wouldn't let her terminate the pregnancy and actually married her off to someone else — not to the father of the child. That is exactly what happened in Greece too.

Even though I was so young and these men couldn't possibly know the depth of my character, they were drawn by my youth and my looks. That's why the doctor was so persistent. Your grandfather, because of his work, had traveled all over Greece and had had girlfriends, but the moment he saw me, his eye locked onto me. He knew I was a child, but that didn't stop him. He told me later that he had known I would grow into a beautiful woman.

And he watched me too, without my knowing it. He kept track of my progress because, by coincidence, two girls who were daughters of his relatives were classmates of mine at school. One was the daughter of his first cousin and the other was the daughter of his best man. He visited both houses and asked after me."

"You have to tell me about Grandfather."

"What is there to tell about your grandfather?"

"Tell me how the two of you finally got together."

"That is a different story. And it didn't begin the way you think."

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Land, Wheels, and the Dowry Negotiations

 (Chapter 11)

Previously: Telemachos appears in the courtyard for the first time, looking for a room for his sister — and meets Sevasti.

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. A woman — even a barely-hatched young woman — has the instinct to know when someone is looking at her, and exactly what kind of look it is.

I paid him no particular attention, because I saw a man in uniform with a mustache — it never crossed my mind there could be any future in it. He said: 'Thank you, Miss.' I tore a page from my notebook, brought them a pen — one of the old ink pens — from the room I used for studying, and he drew up the agreement himself. My father could read and write too; he had needed only one more year to finish gymnasium. But he left that task to the man in uniform. I stood over him and watched him write, and I remember thinking with a kind of wonder: this man knows his letters. He had beautiful handwriting and impeccable spelling. I was a very strong student — I caught things on the fly — and I would have spotted any mistakes easily.

After they said their goodbyes and he paid the deposit to my father, he made arrangements and brought his sister. He went to Monastiraki and bought her a daybed, a mattress, a wardrobe for her clothes, a small table, two chairs, and a gas burner for cooking. Simple things. It was I who showed him the room, because my father had said: 'Open it up so the gentleman can see it.' But I was embarrassed because the wash basin was still sitting in the middle of the floor with all the water in it, and I said: 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't have time to clear it away.' He said: 'Not at all, Miss.' That same day I gathered my things and took them back to our family room, and he found it ready the next morning.

The day after, he brought the furniture and set it up, and the day after that he brought his sister. When he brought her, he introduced her to my parents and said: 'This is my sister' — but I wasn't there to see it, I was at school. They told me afterward that he had said to her: 'From now on, anything you need, you ask kyria Maria [Mrs Maria]. Don't let me come by unexpectedly and find you wandering the neighborhood — I'll send you back to the village on the same ticket you came on.' He meant she was to stay in the house. Any help she needed, she was to ask kyria Maria. If she wanted company, if she wanted fresh air or to clear her head, she was to go to kyria Maria. This was to keep her from drifting around the neighborhood — to protect her name and her honor.

She was thirty-seven or thirty-eight, a spinster by then, because finding a husband in the village hadn't been easy for her. She was also proud — she was the only daughter in the family. She had learned to work with her hands; she had an embroidery machine and did embroidery for girls who were getting married, so she held her head up in front of people. Her family considered her someone of standing, because she did household work rather than field work like the other village women. It was her mother who went out to the fields in the morning, and who still carried water for her only daughter when she came home.

My mother took a liking to her, felt sorry for her. Being here alone, she often cried; she didn't take to Athens. My mother must have felt a kinship with her, because she herself had left her family behind and come here without knowing a soul, and she knew how hard that was. We sometimes helped her get ready. My sister and I would do her hair together, because when she was looking for a husband she went on introduction visits — meeting the family, the whole custom. She had a sweet face, well turned out, but as I told you she was a country girl, getting on in years, and finding a groom wasn't easy.

But Telemachos had to marry off his sister before he could marry himself — it was his obligation. When he came to see that doing so under these circumstances would be an uphill battle, he thought it through and found a solution.

He went down to the village and called a family council. He spoke directly to Aristi, his brother's wife: 'I have come for the following reason. If Aristi is willing to give the money her uncle sent her from America as a dowry, so that I can buy something in Athens in Eleni's name and get her properly married, then good. But if she won't give that money, I will send Eleni back and you will have her on your backs for the rest of your lives. In exchange for that money, I am signing over to my sister-in-law whatever share of the family property belongs to me. Everything I stand to inherit — she takes it. Do we have a deal, Aristi?'

Aristi was young then and didn't understand the full weight of things, so when she heard that her husband's sister would be sent back and they'd have her for the rest of their lives, she agreed. 'All right, Telemachos, all right,' she said. That same moment, my father-in-law put the best of the properties in her name, as replacement for the money she gave. Taking that money and coming back to Athens, Telemachos searched and found a plot of land in Galatsi — in those days Galatsi was all market gardens growing flowers. He found a sizable plot, six hundred square meters, with a single room on it, brick-built, the kind they called plinthokisto. He bought this plot in his sister's name, and with that deed in hand, he found a groom.

Telemachos wasn't worried about walking away from his inheritance. Those properties were down in the Peloponnese and he had no intention of ever going back. He had his salary in Athens. He kept his word too — even when his father died and a will was found afterward. In the will, his father had left him a small piece of land with some olive trees, because someone had advised him to leave something to both sons so they wouldn't contest it. Telemachos neither accepted it nor did anything else. That piece of land is still sitting there today, outside the village.

Telemachos's family was close-knit, and still is. The women who married into it, Aristi and I, played their part as well. Aristi was an angel. She may not have been educated, but she grew and matured into a very sharp woman who kept the family on an even keel. As for our mother-in-law — from what I learned from others, since I never had the chance to know her properly — she was a remarkable person. Hard-working, always out in the fields, she didn't fuss much about the house as long as there was work to be done outside. She had said: 'Whoever my children bring home as a bride is welcome. As far as I'm concerned, she will be my own child.'

Aristi was the first to marry into the family, and as they told me, because she was from a different village, the wedding took place at her village church, and afterward she had to come to the groom's house as a bride. My mother-in-law waited for her at the door holding the key, which she then handed to her, saying: 'Welcome, my daughter. You are now the lady of this house and its mistress. You will be in charge from this day forward. I will be out in the fields in the morning. If you want to set a plate of food in front of me when I come back, I'll sit down and eat it.'

Aristi told me all this after we became sisters through marriage, because I hadn't had the chance to know our mother-in-law, and she shared these moments with me to show me what kind of woman she was. By the time Telemachos brought me into the family, our mother-in-law had been left paralyzed and had lost her mind, and it was as though I never truly met her.

Aristi had a very wealthy uncle in America who supported his nieces. Even after she had given her dowry money to Telemachos, he sent her more money. Telemachos then made sure the new money was used to buy her a property of her own.

With the dowry money he also bought a plot of land for his sister. Because the marriage arrangement was made simply but decisively: the prospective groom's first interest was in the land being offered as dowry. When he saw it, he said to Telemachos: 'Can we do something — sell the land and buy a taxi for me instead?' 'No,' said Telemachos. 'Land will never lose its value; it is something real and solid. A taxi is just wheels, and the money put into it can disappear any day. If you accept under these conditions, then fine.' He didn't want his sister to lose her dowry. And the groom said: 'All right.' The engagement was celebrated in our courtyard on the feast day of Saint Eleni. The groom arrived with flowers and it was made official.

Not long after, Telemachos found a contractor, talked him into giving him some flexibility, and built a room behind the existing one, making two rooms in total. He put in a toilet too, outside the rooms. One room became the bedroom, and the other served as kitchen and sitting room. And with the house finished, the wedding could take place.

I was witness to all of this, and lived through every part of it, because Eleni was there in the courtyard. During the two years she lived with us, I was going to school, of course. Sometimes when I finished school I would find Telemachos walking ahead of me and we would walk together for a while. It never once crossed my mind that our meetings might not be accidental — that they were for my benefit. I addressed him in the formal register, called him 'sir,' and he called me 'Miss.'

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. And of course I was young, and he had no way of knowing how I would feel about such a proposal. But the main problem was how he could possibly have conversations, make overtures to my father or my mother, while his sister was still an unmarried woman living under their roof.

Until he married her off, he couldn't marry either. And don't imagine that his brother having married Aristi earlier was the normal course of things — that happened for a different reason entirely.

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