A Tree Grows Under the Acropolis

 (Chapter 8)

"Do you remember any other particular incident from the Occupation? Something that made an impression on you?"

The Blackout Trench and the Doctor's Radio 

Of course I remember, because I was the firstborn and wherever my father needed to go, he'd take me with him. Some evenings we'd go to a house in what's now called Dafni — Katsiipodi, it was called then — to a family whose father was like a brother to mine. They had two sons, Grigoris and Pavlos. Strong boys, both of them. They too had come from Russia during the revolution against the Tsar.

On the feast of Saint Gregory, the older one — Grigoris, or Grisas as we called him — was celebrating his name day and invited my father to a gathering. So he took me along and we went. These people had their own house, and the younger son Pavlos was very fond of music and played piano at the time. Of course, gatherings were forbidden, and there was a blackout during that period, which meant the windows were covered with sheets of blue paper so no light could be seen from outside. This was to prevent us from being bombed.

During the Occupation, the Allied forces came more and more frequently to bomb important targets like Hassani, even though Athens was considered an unfortified city. They bombed the airport and the port of Piraeus. We didn't learn the results of these bombings, whether anyone was killed or not, because there were no mass media. The press was controlled by the Germans, newspapers were censored, and information was tightly rationed. We only heard the planes approaching and the sound of the sirens indicating that Allied aircraft were coming. The Acropolis, though, was never bombed — not by the Germans, not by the Allies. They respected the monument. I never heard of any bomb falling there.

We sat and ate. There were only a few people in the house — my father and me, this family, and perhaps two others. There was no formal limit on the number of people, but everything was conducted with great caution. Then the time came to leave and it was already late. We said our goodbyes and stepped outside. When we came out, it was pitch dark — we couldn't see where we were putting our feet, nothing, no lights in the streets, none from the houses either. We went from the warmth and light inside the house straight into absolute darkness.

In those days the streets of Athens had been dug up and turned into trenches. Every time we heard the sirens and the enemy approached — even though the Italians and Germans weren't bombing Athens — people were frightened and threw themselves into these ditches, which were called shelters. As we were walking, we didn't see one of these trenches, and when my father lifted his foot and took a step, he fell straight into it and hit hard. He was holding my hand and pulled me down with him and I fell on top of him. It was a considerable depth, but I didn't get hurt — I was a child and my body was rubber. But my father couldn't get out; he had taken a bad fall and I couldn't help him. He was groaning, calling for help: "Help! Help!" We weren't supposed to be outside at that hour, of course, but he was calling out in the hope that someone in the neighborhood would hear and come out. I managed somehow, being a child, to climb out of the trench, but I couldn't pull him up. And rather than a door opening and someone coming out to help — nothing. Everyone was afraid.

Then an Italian soldier in uniform stopped, accompanied by a Greek girl. In those days, many Greek girls got to know Italian soldiers, married them, and left for Italy.

One of them is the sister of a friend of mine. She married an Italian, lived there, had children, built her family. Not long ago she came back to visit her sister who lives in Halandri. We attended a memorial service together — my friend Anna, her sister Aliki, and me. Many girls were in a situation like Aliki's. At the time, of course, girls who took up with Italians were condemned for it.

But to tell you the truth — when I started traveling for the first time after your grandfather died, I went on a church excursion and we traveled through Italy, starting from Venice, and I fell completely in love with that country. I loved it so much, I loved the land and the people so much, that I said I could live there. What can I say — I was only fourteen during the Occupation. If I'd been eighteen, I would certainly have married an Italian.

During that time, naturally, girls had no idea what Italians or Italy were really like. Many of them were simply hungry, and if they had an Italian companion, the problem of starvation was solved — because the Italians had food in abundance: cornbread, army rations, pasta, which they gave to their girlfriends, who then shared it with their families and friends. While there were many such stories involving Italians, very few girls got involved with Germans, because the Germans were considered a cold people, not easy to approach. And their commanding officers didn't permit it either. The Italians, on the other hand, were a warm people, a people of love. If anything, it was the Italian soldiers who did the pursuing. As for me, I was a scrawny, skinny little thing — who among the Italians would have given me a second look?

I saw a girl approaching — one of ours. Our eyes had adjusted to the dark by then and we could make out faces and everything. She came up and said: "What's happening?" and I told her: "We'd gone out to celebrate a name day for a nephew of my father's, we came out of the house into the dark and didn't see the trench. My father fell in and I fell on top of him but managed to get out. He's hurt and can't get up." She spoke to the Italian, explained what had happened, but he had already sprung into action — he was already half down in the trench and pulling him up. Once he had got my father out, he put him on his back.

From that spot to our house, all the way until he laid him down in bed, my father was carried on the Italian's back. The girl and I followed behind. I will never forget that. When we got there, my mother took over, and my father stayed in bed for two months — that's how badly he'd been hurt. I don't know if anything was broken, but he was in pain all over his body. And if something had broken, it would have mended on its own, because — where would we have gone? There were no doctors, no hospitals to speak of. We did the old remedies: poultices, rubs, whatever my mother knew for the pain. She thanked them, but after that we lost them — we never saw them again, never found out what became of the girl or the Italian. But that incident left an indelible mark on me and I will never forget it, as one of the most significant chapters of my life. Even though I was only a child, it made a tremendous impression on me.

And when all of it was over and the front collapsed, when the German flag came down from the Acropolis and the Greek government returned from Cairo, the celebrations lasted a full week. What went on in Syntagma Square — joy and festivities, I can't even begin to describe it. And by then I was no longer a girl. I was growing up, and boys had started to notice me in the street. I had come into myself as a young woman — I was seventeen, a girl on the verge of becoming a woman, and it was my turn. I remember that wherever I walked, boys would whistle and flirt. Walking from my house to the Third Girls' Gymnasium on Tsami Karatassou Street, I remember passing the boys from the Sixth Boys' Gymnasium on Falirouand Petmezas, and all the boys would be posted there waiting for the girls of the Third Gymnasium to walk by.

Many romances developed this way, despite the fact that schools were separated by sex. If boys saw you on the street and made eyes at you and you responded, they'd find a way — they'd wait somewhere to talk to you and things would progress easily from there. As they say: when both the bride and groom are willing, who cares what the in-laws think.

I lived through that phase too, walking those streets — but I had no interest in any of it. I didn't respond to a single whistle, a single teasing remark, because I had other things on my mind. I was devoted to studying. I wanted that competition to continue — the worthy competition — I wanted to keep the approval and affection of my teachers. These things filled my soul, and nothing else interested me. I didn't reciprocate, didn't even seek out social contact or friendships.

As for my sister, she had a different life. She became a seamstress and stayed home. Despite our poverty, my father bought her a Singer sewing machine — the kind you operate with a foot pedal — which was a good machine, and she began to sew. He bought it in installments with easy payment terms, and so my sister started taking in sewing for households in the neighborhood and became a skilled dressmaker.

I did have one dear friend, though, whom I still remember — a truly close friend, who lived comfortably because her family was well off. They had money and lived in a nice standalone house. The family was just the mother and two daughters, because their father had died, and the mother worked as manager at a well-known jewelry shop. The shop's owner had been godfather at her wedding and helped them financially.

The younger daughter, Chrysoula, was my classmate. She wasn't a strong student. Her house was further down on my route and many times when I set out for school, we'd run into each other at the corner and walk together. And on the way back, we'd walk together again and part at the corner. At some point she said to me herself: "Would you like me to come to your house sometimes so we can study together?" — because she needed my help. She had books, she had everything. I, on the other hand, had no books — only the papers and notes I kept in class. We had no money for books and I learned everything from the lessons themselves. "Come and we'll study," I said. And so she started coming to my house with her books. After school we'd part at the corner — she'd go home and eat whatever you could ever wish for, the full works, and then she'd come to mine. Meanwhile, we ate feta cheese and bread every single day, bread with salted herring as the saying goes, and if we wanted something a little more special, we'd make a salad.

I had no social circle for flirting, but plenty found their way to me all the same. There were people who asked me out — not schoolmates from the gymnasium, but older. I met people at friends' homes: university students training to be doctors, engineering students at the Polytechnic, law students. Despite the many proposals I received from people I met at those gatherings, I accepted none of them.

Especially that one medical student from Kalymnos. All the young people I knew were from Kalymnos, come to Athens to study. My brother's godmother — whose husband was a prominent doctor — had several rooms in Neos Kosmos that she rented out to students from the provinces. Through my brother's godmother I happened to meet many of these young people. One of them, Aristeidis, was a student at the Polytechnic, and since both my friend Chrysoula and I had trouble with mathematics, we'd go there for help. We'd say: "Let's go to Aunt Frosso" — meaning my brother's godmother — "so Aristeidis can work through the problem with us." This young man had made me a proposal, and we'd gone out one afternoon so he could speak to me privately — to ask if I wanted to be in a relationship while he finished his studies at the Polytechnic, and so forth. I said no.

I didn't like that particular person, and I didn't like the other one either, the medical student from Kalymnos I mentioned. That medical student, on the other hand, was deeply, helplessly in love with me. He went to my mother and proposed marriage, and my mother told him: "What can I do? She's young, she's still in school, and you're still a student yourself. What are you asking me to arrange? Finish your studies first, let her finish school too, and then you can discuss it again." But he didn't hear any of it. He went so far as to stage a hunger strike for fifteen days because I wouldn't give him the time of day. In any case, let's leave all of that — it means nothing to me now. These things have no bearing on our lives.

But what I wanted to tell you about was the Occupation, and a friend of my father's who used to come by — a man who had a radio that hadn't been confiscated and sealed. Because they had seized radios and you couldn't listen to whatever you wanted. I was still just a girl, I was twelve when I met him and this man was thirty-two. There was a twenty-year gap between us, or perhaps even more — he might have been thirty-four. He was an established doctor, a gastroenterologist at a hospital. And so every day, this man would come for my father — every single day he did this — and the two of them would go to his home to listen to that radio.

A radio in those days was a rare thing, a luxury. If anyone found out that your radio hadn't been sealed, they might have shot you. You'd go before a tribunal — the occupation court. In any case, he had hidden it well, and my father was careful; after the news he'd come straight home.

The doctor's house was a good distance from ours — a grand, elegant home — and he lived alone, being unmarried. Inside he had a piano. He had no parents, but he had siblings: some lived in France, some in Athens. There was an age difference between him and my father, but as it turned out, it wasn't really my father he was so fond of, or thought of as a close friend. It was me he had set his sights on.

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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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Rooms for Rent

 (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."

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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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