The House on Paradise Street (12 page)

“I didn’t do that much.” I heard her lighting up and exhaling smoke that sounded like exasperation. “He wanted me to find out more about the beginning of the Civil War. I’ve been going through the archives, especially at the Communist Party, and also what’s left of the police records. So much was burnt after the end of the Junta.”

“What about his personal story? I know he wanted to investigate that.”

“He told me I must never talk to anyone about that,” she said. “I’m really sorry, but I can’t discuss it. Not even with you.”

I was so surprised, I laughed. A horrible, distressed sound.

“He made me promise.” She was making it even worse.

What were these promises I didn’t know about?

“I could tell you what I’ve found out about the British interest in Greece in the 1940s,” she continued. “About
Tsortsil
” (I always used to find the Greek pronunciation of Churchill amusing). “That’s what I’ve been doing most work on recently.”

I didn’t want a history lesson from this woman. I was sure she would have learned all the best lines from Nikitas about how dreadful my
sympátriotes
– my fellow countrymen – were. “What about the Wasp?”

She paused. “I’m very sorry. Really. But I always keep my word.”

Later, I thought of sarcastic remarks I could have made about the mistaken idealism of youth, but I just said, “OK, I’ll call you again if I have some specific questions.” I put the phone down and banged my desk so loudly that Alexandra rang from below to ask if I was all right.

“How long will you be staying in Athens? Will you go back to Moscow?” She was full of personal questions, this English girl. And she had an unnerving way of turning to look at me while she was driving, and swerving in and out of the traffic like a Muscovite taxi driver. She may be quiet but she is not timid. The truth is her curiosity has helped me escape a prison of loneliness. I never thought I would, but I have come home. I once believed I had created a life in Russia, but it evaporated like breath on an icy day. I have so little to show for those decades – only a bolt hole on the tenth floor that I don’t care if I never see again. Not even my books. Ideals and dreams are all very well for the young, but at the end we yearn for the soil and roots from which we came. I realised this very late.

Her questions caught me off guard.

“I want to make sense of Nikitas’ life and I can only do that with your help. Will you tell me what happened to your brother? And Johnny? And what about Nikitas’ father? I hardly know anything. Who was this man Nikitas told me about –
Kapetan Aitos
? Did Captain Eagle have a family? Is there someone left?”

I told her that was all history. “Leave it,” I said. “You can’t bring back
Kapetan
Eagle and I have no idea about his family. Let the dead rest and get on with your life.”

Mod looked at me with frustration and opened all the car windows abruptly when I lit a cigarette. I don’t know what to tell her.

When I arrived back in Patissia, Dora was with the young daughter of one of the Ukrainian prostitutes.

“I’m just helping Sveta with her homework. There’s stuffed cabbage leaves in the kitchen. Help yourself while we finish.”

I wasn’t hungry and went straight to my bedroom, lying down on the narrow bed. It was covered with a lumpy, crocheted blanket that dug into my back and smelled of the village – sacks of wool in our store room, ready for spinning. Markos and I used to hide in there, underneath the main house in Perivoli. It was where I first smoked, aged ten. I had stolen some cigarettes from Uncle Diamantis, whose supplies from the Papastratos factory were endless. Markos watched me, as though admiring my daring, then took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and inhaled like a real old professional from the coffee shop.

* * *

When I think about the war I sometimes forget how proud we were in the beginning. That was when our tired old dictator, Metaxas, pronounced his famous “No!” to the Italians. No, they would not be allowed to come and trample all over Greece. Our defeat of Mussolini’s macaroni-eaters up in the snowy mountains of Albania was a triumph against all the odds. The names of Koritsa, Ayioi Saranta and Argyrokastro became famous across the world. They gave hope at a time when only the Greeks and the British were holding out against the fascists. But then the Germans joined in, bombarding Athens, flying in over the docks at Piraeus and across the city. A siren was set up near our house and when it started, we’d run next door to the Lambakis house which had a shelter in the basement. I always tried to take my dog, Irma, which annoyed
Kyria
and
Kyrios
Lambakis.

“Leave the dirty dog outside,”
Kyria
Katina said each time, and I refused to go in without her. My mother called Irma my “lady-in-waiting”, for her loyalty. I’d found her as a muddy, black puppy, roaming around on Ardittos hill several years earlier and though of uncertain ancestry, she had turned into a well-behaved highly intelligent dog. Whenever the siren rang Irma howled with fear, like a second warning. “A devil’s hound,”
Kyria
Katina said. But in the shelter Irma was quiet, keeping one eye on me and the other on
Kyria
Katina who whispered prayers. They always lit the oil lamp under the icon that
Kyrios
Kostas had hung for extra protection.

Gradually, our boys started returning from the Albanian front and my school became a reception station for the wounded. You’d see lines and lines of soldiers arriving on foot, having walked all the way. Their faces were blank with disappointment and shock. Many came without boots, their feet bound in cloths, with gangrene and frostbite. Some were ill, others had lost arms and legs. Uncle Diamantis returned missing a toe, and two fingers from his left hand. Although he’d been a political prisoner on Aegina before the war, they allowed him to fight for his country. After that he always walked with a limp and he never played his guitar again. But the worst thing for everybody was not the injuries, but the disillusionment and humiliation.

The Germans arrived in Athens in Holy Week of spring 1941. By then, there was nothing left of the British army stationed in Greece – they’d moved to Egypt, along with the Greek forces and a provisional Greek government. The Greeks stayed there, under the thumb of the English, until the Germans left. My father called us all inside and we sat in the drawing room with the shutters closed. Everyone had shut their windows as though in mourning and the entire city was quiet. The only noise was the tanks rumbling like a distant storm. It was one of the few times I saw my father weep. For him it was a dishonour; he was deeply ashamed. And he wasn’t the only one. Koryzis, our Prime Minister, shot himself. But shame was just the beginning. By the winter there was practically no food as the Nazis took away what we had. The English naval blockade meant that food was not getting through at all. It was better to let us starve than help the Germans. Even with money and ration cards, there was barely anything to buy. Our weekly crate of fruit and vegetables from the village could not be loaded on the train any more. It was the first time I ever felt hunger as something more than just the pleasant prelude to a meal. And we were among the lucky people. We tried to sell off things from the house, but money became almost worthless. You couldn’t eat it. Father had to lay off all but one of the seamstresses at his atelier – she did repairs in exchange for bread or beans.

People started dying of starvation. It became common to see them collapse on the street, but I still remember the first time I ever saw a dead person. It was my sixteenth birthday, in November 1941. A school friend and I were walking along Hermes Street, looking at what remained in the shop windows, checking for a bargain. I bought some wild greens from a woman who said she gathered them on Hymettus. Later, however, my mother said they were not edible and threw the lot away. It was just after the barrow with the greens that we saw the corpse. He looked about forty, dressed in a suit and hat – an educated type. His body lay curled on the pavement and I noticed the slightly yellow teeth protruding from his open mouth. After that, we got used to it. Every day we saw the carts and trucks filled with bodies. Our lives moved so quickly away from privilege. That’s what war teaches – the order we take for granted can just vanish like theatrical scenery. Our everyday existence is a fragile facade. Behind it lurks violence and chaos.

Soon, the only people flourishing were the black-marketeers. In our neighbourhood there was one man who profited from hunger – Dimitris Koftos, Alexandra’s future father-in-law, though we didn’t know that at the time. He had a grocer’s shop in Archimedes Street from before the war, but during the occupation he lived like a
pashà. Kyrios
Dimitris got fatter when everyone else was losing weight. He had big moustaches like a
nineteenth-century
brigand and tiny piggy eyes. Soon he was buying up houses from people who were forced to sell them to survive, and he acted like the local boss.

Everyone knew
Kyrios
Dimitris had links with the Germans and Italians. He closed his shop and stuffed his cellar with sacks and tins, and things that you couldn’t get – not just flour, beans and oil, but chocolate and sugar. And sometimes good bread – not the dreadful black German stuff with potato flour.
Kyrios
Dimitris only sold food if he knew you as he was frightened of getting caught. My mother used to send Alexandra over to get some
black-eyed
beans or lentils because she always came back with something extra in the bag – a few biscuits or some eggs. She was very pretty when she was young, with her blue eyes and light coloured, curled hair, and Spiros, the oldest of the three Koftos sons, had his eye on her. I can’t imagine why she let someone like him pay court to her. I’d have thrown the eggs back at his head.

The Koftos boys were handsome bullies. Even when we were small I remember Spiros kicking younger children or getting his brothers to hold a boy so he could punch him. During the occupation all three became informers, like their father. They went to Flocca’s café, where the Germans gathered, and where people sent anonymous letters denouncing their fellow Greeks. I once passed and saw Spiros talking to an officer. Who knows what he said and who was arrested or killed because of him – the prisons were full and there was news of executions almost every day. The Germans began using the
blóko
, rounding up all the men in certain areas and gathering them in the square. Then informers came in, wearing hoods, and pointed out who was left-wing or who belonged to the resistance or just someone they didn’t like. And those people were taken away as hostages, or shot without further ado. I know Spiros wore a hood at least once as he boasted about it on the street. It was a way of feeling powerful for weak people.

Just as when we were young children, Markos was usually by my side and we were always outside. Whereas Alexandra was a “home-cat”, we were street kids, “dirty dogs” like Irma. Markos looked innocent, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know what fear was and I became more daring with him. We got to know the Italian soldiers in Pangrati. They weren’t as bad as the Germans, though they were no saints – they were fascist oppressors too. Markos would swap cigarettes or an ornament from our house for bread, coming home triumphant with the prize inside his jacket. He looked so sweet, with his black, curly hair, big, brown eyes and short trousers, even the soldiers liked him, though when they couldn’t see him, he’d taunt them like the rest of us. We’d shout out “Air”, the Greek battle-cry, to remind them of their humiliation in Albania. Markos believed in resistance as much as I did. It was as clear as black and white. Anyone could see the fascists were wrong and resistance was right.

My school friends and I used to paint slogans in the street: “Down with the fascist occupiers!” or “Freedom or Death!” It was a risky enterprise and youth was no guarantee of safety if they caught you. One evening, I took Markos with me to keep watch while I painted AIR in tall red capitals on our school wall. On the way home Spiros stopped us in the street. He looked excited, his blue eyes were lit up and his hair was greased flat. He was tall and strong and he held onto the strap of my bag as though to stop me running away, which I might have done. I prayed he would not notice the tip of the paintbrush sticking out; inside was a small tin of red paint that could only have one purpose. I could hardly speak. I never doubted that, whatever his feelings for my sister, he would have reported me. It was Markos who kept his head and tried to distract Spiros by asking him questions.

“Did you see a German moved into our street?” Markos jumped around like a clown, making Spiros look in his direction and away from me. He was quick-witted like that. “He’s an officer, billeted with
Kyrios
and
Kyria
Panopoulos. They had to move out of their bedroom for him and now they’re sleeping on a sofa. But they’re hoping he’ll bring in some food.” Spiros looked impatient. He said, “Yes, yes”, and waved his hands as though wanting to swat a fly. There was something he had for Alexandra, he said. “Tell her to come to the shop in the morning.” He walked away and I had to sit down on the pavement to recover.

Alexandra came home the next day with a lump of meat wrapped in paper – an unbelievable luxury at a time when the ducks had gone from the Royal Garden and the numbers of cats and dogs on the streets was noticeably dwindling. We all stood around staring as though it was the first time we’d seen meat. Then Aspasia chopped it into tiny pieces and made a stew with beans. It wasn’t long after this time that Irma, my dog, disappeared. There was no evidence to suspect Spiros, but I had a strong feeling that he was connected. He was heartless enough to do that and nobody was fussy about the provenance of meat in those days.

During that first winter of the occupation my father fell ill with tuberculosis. I believe he couldn’t bear to see all his achievements melting away and that he felt he was nothing without his success. As the provider for his family, it pained him to see us hungry and he often gave us part of his rations, which made him even weaker. He became terribly thin. My mother barely ate, but seemed to survive on will power. She never mentioned her needs and discouraged us from talking about food: “Just ignore it,” she said, when we complained or dreamed up fantasy recipes. “You are stronger than hunger. God will provide.” She became increasingly devout during the war, spending hours at church, but she was always a practical person and one of the first things she did was set up a soup kitchen with some local women, to help the children of the parish. Those families who could contribute something did and for dozens of children it was the only food they got. Sometimes Alexandra and I helped ladle out the boiled macaroni or lentils, and cut the horrible bread made from lupine – the stuff they normally feed to pigs. And you’d see these little kids with swollen bellies from malnutrition, queuing up with their tins. Many were orphans who had recently lost their parents and their silence was the worst thing – they’d forgotten how to play or to make a noise. They looked like tiny old people.

Sometimes the English planes would fly over and we were happy even when they dropped their bombs – it was a sign that someone cared about us. But it was a black time for the Greeks. We felt we were being gradually exterminated.