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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The New Year's Lottery

(Chapter 14)

The New Year's Lottery and the House in Menidi

The first years of our marriage were very hard — life was very hard. When we married, we weren't starving, but we had no money. We lived on his salary alone, and he was still in debt from his sister's wedding and from the cost of building the extra room for her. Money only came into Telemachos's hands when he managed to sell the apartment that had been his winnings from the lottery — a lottery he had won with two friends, the three of them splitting the prize equally.

The group that won the lottery were colleagues and friends from work. It happened at a taverna on New Year's Eve, where they had gone to eat. A lottery seller came in — the lottery of the Union of Journalists, which is now called the State Lottery. This lottery offered apartments as first prizes.

One evening when they went into a taverna, which had a festive atmosphere, in came a lottery seller — an old man, no one knew anything else about him. They looked for him afterward to thank him, wanting to give him something out of gratitude, but they never found him.

This old man was holding out his tickets and telling them: 'Come on, boys, take it — this is the last one and it's the lucky one.' They didn't want it, but he pressed them, telling them again that the last ticket was always the lucky one. They took it. The ticket cost twenty drachmas. The other two put in six and a half drachmas each, and Telemachos put in seven. He didn't say anything about putting in seven to get a larger share — they divided the winnings three ways. One of his friends kept the ticket and they simply wrote all their names on it. They wrote 'Dimitris' — I can't remember the other name — and 'Telemachos.'

On New Year's Eve the winning number was announced and, as every year, the draw took place at the Philological Society of Parnassos. Telemachos was somewhere else that evening, but the other two seemed to have a feeling about it and stood outside the Parnassos building, listening to the numbers come over the loudspeakers. When the winning numbers were called out, they announced that a particular number in a particular series had won an apartment in Omonia — a penthouse at 42 or 52 Didotou Street, I can't remember which. They went out of their minds with joy, looked at each other and said: 'Did you hear that right? Did you really hear that right? Let's find Telemachos! Let's find Telemachos!'

They searched everywhere and finally found him at his sister's house in Galatsi. It was New Year's Eve and he had finished his shift and dropped by there because it was on his way. His sister had a daybed in the second room and whenever he visited he would sit and rest there. The next day, on top of everything, was his name day — Saint Telemachos is celebrated on New Year's Day — and he had brought a small feast to his sister's house so they could celebrate together. He was very generous about things like that. Back in his family home in the village, both he and his mother Vasoula would celebrate on the same day, New Year's, and they would have a proper party. Even if there weren't enough chairs for everyone to sit down, everyone had to know it was his name day and there had to be a proper spread. After his sister married and had her own home, the celebration moved there and he would bring everything. They found him and said: 'What are you sitting here for? We won the lottery, we won the lottery!'

When they found him it was already Saturday evening and everything was closed. The next day, which was New Year's Day and his name day, was a Sunday, so everything was closed then too. They would have to wait until Monday. But they took him along right then and all three of them went to look at the building from the outside. It was a recently built apartment block — the Union of Journalists always took apartments in newly built buildings. They looked it over and waited for Monday to come so they could collect their winnings.

I didn't hear about it right away, which is the strange thing. The last time we had seen each other we had arranged to meet on New Year's morning, outside the Library on Akademias Street, to go to church together for his name day. I had left home early because the meeting was at eight in the morning. I took the bus into the center, we met with 'Happy New Year' and 'Many Years,' and yet he hadn't mentioned where we were going, which church. But he had noticed that the apartment building would fall under the parish of Zoodochos Pigi, and said: 'Let's go to Zoodochos Pigi — it's nearby.' On the way, he said: 'I have something good to tell you.' I asked: 'What?'

And he said: 'We won the lottery — me and two friends, Lambros and Dimitris.' Lambros was the other one's name; I knew them from when they used to come to the courtyard for his name day celebrations. 'We won an apartment on Didotou Street, number 52, and after church we'll go and see it.' And I said: 'All right.' He was thrilled, but I wasn't happy. I thought: 'Now his stock has gone up. He's a wealthy man with an apartment and a salary, while I... it's been nice knowing him.' He saw my face fall, and at some point said: 'You don't seem happy about it.'

And I answered: 'I am and I'm not. Now that you're the rich catch, will you still want me? You'll find other brides who have money too.' 'You're being foolish,' he said. 'You're being foolish. If I wanted money, before I ever met you there were plenty of very wealthy brides who were after me, with properties and money and everything you could imagine. If I'd wanted that, I could have chosen from any of them, couldn't I? Come on, pull yourself together — nothing has changed.' And we went and looked up at the building together.

The next day, when Monday finally came, all three of them went together to present the ticket to the Union. Their first request was that the Union buy it from them and give them cash. At that time, the Union valued the prize at one thousand English pounds. Everything was priced in pounds back then — but a pound was cheap, a pound was a hundred and twenty-five drachmas.

They said they couldn't give them money, because it would undermine public trust. 'No cash — we offer apartments. What you do with it is up to you, whether you rent it or sell it.' And so, having taken the keys and signed the contract with the Union, they initially decided to rent it out. But after a year, they sold it.

Telemachos had grown up in a village and loved the countryside deeply. His village in the Peloponnese had one of the finest natural landscapes around. One day, during a work posting, he passed through Menidi. He went along a road where poplars grew on both sides, meeting overhead like a cathedral arch, and he was completely captivated. It happened to be just when he had sold the apartment from the lottery winnings.

After he had married off his sister, he had made himself a promise: if he couldn't manage to build at least one room, he wouldn't marry. He didn't want to start life in rented rooms. At around the same time, a classmate and friend of mine had gotten engaged and we used to go out together as two couples — we had been out a few times, to the patisserie. She had rented a room for her married life, which Telemachos thoroughly disapproved of. He wanted the room to be his own. He said it and he meant it.

So when he sold the apartment and saw the road lined with poplars in Menidi, he set his mind on building a house. 'Athens will grow and the area will gain in value,' he said. He went straight to the real estate agents in the center of Athens and because he was always in uniform, they took him seriously. 'Captain,' they called him — that's what they called men in uniform. 'Captain, the people in Menidi don't sell plots, they sell acreage. It's outside the city plan. You won't find building lots where you saw that road.' 'Find me an acre anyway,' he said — and they did.

But the land wasn't accessible from the paved road because there was another piece of land in between that had to be acquired to get access. The railway line that ran toward Thessaloniki or Chalkida also crossed the same road. This strip of land, the access corridor, cost fifty pounds. We were almost ready to marry by then. So my mother went to Kalymnos on her own and sold three small pasture fields — three exposed, uncultivated fields where shepherds would come and graze their animals. She went to Vathi, which you could only reach by small boat from Kalymnos because there is a mountain between, and it sits at the back of the island. She went alone and found some shepherds in the fields and sold the land to them, asking fifty pounds. With those fifty pounds she came back to prepare me for the wedding — she wanted to give me money to buy some clothes, a piece of furniture.

I was the one who told him, the fool that I am. At some point he asked me why my mother had gone to Kalymnos and I told him. He said: 'Why don't you tell your mother to give me the fifty pounds so I can buy a piece of land I've found in Menidi and build us a room so we can get married?' He kept saying it over and over — that if he didn't have his own house, we wouldn't marry. 'As for furniture and clothes, we'll take care of those ourselves.'

I told my mother, who was a very simple soul. Because without a second thought, my husband would take the money and I wouldn't have so much as a scrap of paper with my name on it. She said she would speak to my father and give me an answer. My father was also a good-natured man, without a scheming bone in his body. 'Tell him to come and take the money,' he said. 'Since it's for a good purpose,' my mother added.

Telemachos took the money and set things in motion. He probably settled some debts along the way, and before long hired the same contractor who had built his sister's house to build in Menidi. But what he built in Menidi was a solid room — all stone.

He now had two acres to build on. The small strip of land he had bought gave access to the road so that materials could be brought in and work could begin. He built a tall house, constructed a wide platform — imagine, four steps up to the entrance. On the platform he built a long hallway and two rooms, one on each side.

That was now our home.

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