The House on Paradise Street (25 page)

“Out with the Devil, out with him.” He repeated the phrase over and over, making the spitting motions and looking pointedly at Storm. Needless to say, the prison’s priest was no lover of communists and we never enjoyed his visits. He pressed us to repent of our political sins and renounce the Party: “Sign the statement,” he’d say, “and go home to your families like good Christian Greek women. Stop wasting your time with godless criminals. You are lost children who can be saved by Christ and by yourselves.”

When Nikitas’ towel was removed and he was covered from head to toe in olive oil, he became uneasy and then angry. I watched in dismay from the required distance as Father Philippos grabbed my screaming child around the midriff and made for the font. His grey beard was scratching the seven-month-old’s back. As he made to plunge Nikitas into the water, the baby started to slip from his grip. Dora and I lurched forward, but we were too far away to help. I glimpsed Storm’s face as she registered the danger and dived for him. Afterwards, we realised it was a movement like she had made so many times to escape bullets on the mountains. She caught my son just as his arms slithered from the priest’s hands and godmother and child landed together on the tiled floor. A small pause followed, as Nikitas stopped crying in surprise. Then his voice reverberated around the prison walls – lungfuls of air forced into screams. On and on. We established that he was not hurt, but the chapel was filled with noise. Dora’s children started crying and there was muttering from the hundreds of prisoners, who were crammed into the chapel and pressing around the entrance.

It took some time before Father Philippos regained enough composure to continue, and then he didn’t have the heart to put Nikitas all the way under the water. Instead, he gave a hurried version of the rite, dipping my son in three times up to his waist. He handed the baby back to Storm.

“Silly old goat,” she whispered, as we dressed Nikitas in beautiful blue woollen shorts and jacket, knitted by
Kyria
Tina. Of course, we had no
boubouniéres
to hand out – where would you get sugared almonds? But there were flowers left over from Good Friday, the only day of the year when visitors were allowed give them to prisoners, to decorate Christ’s bier: clove-scented carnations, white calla lilies, and some roses that had dropped their red petals everywhere and left smears all over the tiles.

It was only a few hours later that they announced there would be executions the next morning. Storm and three other women were among those to be taken to Goudi, along with a group of men from the neighbouring part of the prison.

Storm said, “We didn’t enter this fight to live, but to die.” Her face was grey, but she wouldn’t admit that this was more than any other battle.

“Death will take us all, so it’s the same whether it’s now or later. The important thing is how you live and how you die.” The other women were equally brave, like early Christians going to their deaths, charged up with faith. They tried to comfort the rest of us but it was hard to stay calm. They also wrote letters for their families and prepared themselves. Dora and I helped Storm wash and fix her clothes, and I brushed her hair, braiding it into a thick rope. Dora cleaned her shoes, wiping away the dust that got everywhere and making them shine. It was important to go to your death in a dignified way, looking as good as possible and with your head held high. When the call went for us to return to our cells and dormitories, the girls on death row went away singing and even after they were locked into their tiny dungeons, they continued. We could hear their voices all through the night, singing until they were hoarse.

They sang the dance of Zalongo, remembering the women of Souli, who had sung and danced along the edge of the cliffs, choosing death and honour over slavery under the Turks. As Ali Pasha’s troops came to capture them, the mothers threw their children off the cliff and then danced themselves over the edge, leaving the soldiers looking down at their bodies on the rocks below.

As dawn came, the singing grew louder and we realised that the prisoners had come into the courtyard. We got out of bed, leaving the children sleeping, and climbed up to the windows, so we could see our friends for the last time.

“Go to the good, Storm! Farewell! Take a good bullet!” Dora’s voice was steady.

I called to the godmother my son would never know, “Goodbye, friends! Goodbye, my
koumbára
.” Storm waved and kept on singing, pulling her three comrades into a dance. The guards let them go and the four women danced the
syrtós
hand-in-hand around the palm tree, like the women of Souli. The sun came up, bringing rosy threads to the sky.

As they were finally led away, Storm shouted, “Death is nothing. Better one hour of free life.”

“Don’t give in. Don’t sign the statement,” called Evanthia, one of the other condemned prisoners. “Don’t lose your honour, don’t betray the Party.”

After they had left, we slowly climbed down from the windows, unable to talk, but loath to go back to bed. We heard the lorry set off along Alexandra Avenue and turn right onto Mesogeia Avenue. Then the sound of crows taking to the skies with a harsh “kra, kra”. The birds had learned that if the prison lorries turned up towards Goudi they were bringing food. When the execution was over, the crows would fly down and peck warm flesh from the bodies before they were gathered up and taken away. We returned to our bunks in silence. I watched my child as he slept in the narrow bed we shared. His face was still and peaceful, and his belly rose and fell like a measure of time passing. If it had not been for him, I would probably have been in that lorry too.

“Kra, kra, kra.” On and on they called in the distance.

Several hours later Evanthia returned. We were in the yard doing our chores quietly, when she walked in like a phantom. She could not speak, and remained silent for several days. But we learned that minutes before she had gone in front of the firing squad, her execution had been suspended on a point of law. The others were all dead. When she found her voice, she said that the twelve men and four women had sung all the way to Goudi. “They danced like brides and grooms” on the earth where they knew they would fall.
Farewell poor world, Farewell sweet life.

“Kra, kra, kra.”

When the telephone rang I was sitting at my desk, staring at dust particles floating in the sunlight. I found myself doing that too much during those days. It was morning, and there were the sounds of delivery men banging their van doors down in the street. Morena was bumping the roaring vacuum cleaner around our apartment. I had shut myself up in my study, partially closed the shutters to keep the sun from dazzling me. I was wondering what might help me tackle the heaps of paper on the desk. One pile consisted of some dull research into how much Greece had suffered financially from hosting the 2004 Olympic Games. I was late with the translation and couldn’t face doing it, a state of mind which also applied to another pile, concerning Nikitas’ and my finances. There were some semi-intelligible papers concerning the widow’s pension. I knew they would require an inordinate amount of traipsing from one public office to another. As it was, the phone rang.

“
Nai
?” – Yes – I answered in the usual Greek manner, the monosyllable meaning “What do you want?”

“Please could I speak to
Kyria
Perifanis?” The male voice was slow and formal, the Greek spoken with a strong English accent.

“This is she,” I replied in Greek, and then tried continuing in English. “Can I help you?”

“Ah. Hello. This is Johnny Fell.”

“Oh, how wonderful.” I could hardly believe it.

“I received your letter. I am very sorry to hear of your husband’s death. I never knew him, but his mother’s family were very kind to me. There are many fond memories.”

A few moments of conversation indicated that Antigone’s old friend was not only alive but very much
compos mentis
. Rashly, I asked if I could visit him. There was a lengthy pause.

“I don’t think I can tell you very much. I’m ninety-one, after all.”

I ignored the attempted brush-off. “Please. Just to talk. It would mean so much to me.”

I found a cheap flight to England, arranged for Tig to stay with Alexandra, and two days later, got up before dawn and took the metro to Eleftherios Venizelos Airport. It sped along the middle of the new motorway, carving through the remnants of olive groves and vineyards. Fresh grass was sprouting lime-green shoots and the first rays of the sun illuminated huge billboards that rose from the fields – adverts for bank loans, mobile phones and tourism:
Live your myth in Greece.

At Gatwick, I hired a car and followed the instructions given by the dull female voice on the satnav. With the two-hour time difference, it was still before midday when I arrived at Claywell, a small village not far from Brighton, tucked under the Downs. I nosed along a narrow lane, until I came to a crossroads and my irritating guide announced, “You have now reached your destination.” Corner House was an L-shaped cottage with terracotta roof tiles and the bare tangles of Virginia creeper and roses on the walls. There was a smell of manure and burning leaves in the chill air and the machine-gun “tat-tat-tat” of magpies. Within seconds of knocking, the door was opened by a stout, middle-aged woman in an apron.

“Mrs Perifanis? Mr Fell is expecting you. Please come in.” I followed her through a dim hallway to a spacious, low-ceilinged room lined with books. An elderly dog sprawled on the sofa and eyed me without interest, as his master rose from an armchair by the fire.

“I hope you found the place easily.” His voice was measured, placing a distance between us. Tall and thin, with inquisitive, pale eyes, John Fell looked younger than I had imagined. He was surprisingly upright for someone over 90, well turned-out in a tweed jacket and silk tie.

“What can we offer you? Betty could make coffee. Or would you prefer a drink? Whisky? Sherry? Lunch will be later.” I hadn’t drunk sherry since university, when it was sometimes offered at tutorials, but it seemed to fit the strange occasion.

“Again, please let me express my condolences, Mrs Perifanis.”

I asked him to call me Maud, and he repeated the name.

“I had an aunt called Maud. A fine woman. She lived to be over a hundred.”

“I always thought it a name for an ancient aunt,” I said. “In Greece I’m usually Mond or Mondy, which I think I prefer.”

He gave a non-committal smile and asked a few courteous questions, before telling me something of himself. He had spent most of his life teaching classics in a boys’ boarding school, and in the 1960s, had written a book based on his research into inscriptions, called
Epigraphy in Ancient Athens
. It had done “modestly well”, he said, and had been reprinted. He turned out to have known my grandfather, Desmond (“a notable scholar”), though they were never friends. Johnny had retired in the ’80s, but continued writing occasional articles for learned journals until recently.

There was a brief pause, broken only by the snoring of the hairy dog on the sofa.

“I suppose you know your husband contacted me?”

“Nikitas?” I said stupidly, in shock.

“He traced me from the letters, as you did. He said he was writing something about his mother.”

“What did he want?”

“There are some papers he thought might be useful. I knew the Perifanis family when I was a student. I never went back after the war, but I often think of them and of Greece. It was such a beautiful place. The purity of the landscape, the light so clear that it brings distant mountains leaping right up to you. And the people – so lively and hospitable. Villagers would give you their food and their bed without asking anything in return. Men like eagles, fiercely handsome…”

“What sort of papers?” I interrupted.

“Some letters. Nothing much.”

“Why did you never go back to Greece?” I asked, changing tack.

“Things come to an end. Then I was busy with my work.” It didn’t sound very convincing. “It would have been hard to go back after all I saw,” he added in a low voice. I asked him if he had ever married and he waved his hand, dismissing the idea. “My life didn’t take that direction.”

We ate lunch in a burgundy-walled dining room that looked out over a garden with fruit trees and beyond that, a field of Friesian cows. Betty brought in a stew and then apple tart. It presented a picture of an England I thought had disappeared with the Greece of Johnny’s memories and it awoke some dormant nostalgia in me for my own country. I was reminded of my grandparents – their ease and comfort, the old books, their measured words (at least on my grandfather’s part) and the things they left unsaid. Coffee was served back in the drawing room, in small cups with dark rock sugar like my grandmother used to have. I told Johnny something of recent events and I could see he was intrigued by the story of Antigone’s return and of the animosity that still existed between the sisters. He looked sad when I told him about the quarrel over Markos’ bones and pointed to a framed picture of an ancient column with a teenage boy leaning against it. The loose-limbed stance and distant gaze reminded me of Orestes and I realised it was Markos.

“So young…” Johnny said, looking at the picture with me and shaking his head. “Such a terrible waste.” Moving to his desk, the old man pulled out some letters he said were from Antigone. They were still neatly in their envelopes, tied together with a grey ribbon like a present.

“I was going to give them to Nikitas, so you should have them.” I held the small bundle in my hands and stopped myself making the instinctive reaction of sniffing them.

“It was a tragedy, what happened to her,” he continued. “It shouldn’t have been like that.”

“Would you consider coming to Athens?” I asked, before I left. He didn’t look as startled as I had imagined. “It will be Nikitas’ forty-day memorial soon. It would be a great honour. And significant for everyone involved.” His expression told me he understood something of what I was getting at, though he shook his head.

“My travelling days are over. But I promise to think about it, my dear. I never thought I would see Greece again. And I certainly never imagined I would see my old friends.”

* * *

On the plane back, I read Antigone’s letters. The immediacy of this connection to her youth was deeply touching – offering a whole new perspective on a person I only knew as an elderly, buttoned-up victim of war and political movements. On these pages, I found an optimistic girl from a happy, privileged family, who had little to fear. The letters written before the war were in a laborious hand and filled with minor but charming misuses of English. The early ones were signed,
Yours Sincerely, Antigone Perifanis
, with a flourish beneath the signature.

A number of letters from Antigone to Johnny were sent from Averoff Prison, on official paper and obviously written with the censor in mind. Her tone veers between cool detachment and affectionate gratitude that Johnny was writing to her and even sending occasional parcels from England. She mentions a correspondence with an English woman, Jennifer Benton, who wrote to her under the auspices of the League for Democracy in Greece, an organisation set up in post-war Britain, which tried to help those mistreated and imprisoned by the new regime in Greece.

Sometimes Antigone opened up to Johnny, despite her mixed feelings about him, and she mentioned Nikitas as an infant. By the time the plane started its descent and the familiar landscape around Athens came into view, I was crying.

As I lay in bed that night, unable to sleep, my mind kept worrying away at everything I had read – both the pages of memoir Antigone had given me and the letters. There appeared to be gaps in the story. In particular, I had suspicions about
Kapetan
Eagle and whether he really was Nikitas’ father. Antigone did not appear to want to talk about him or to tell me more about their relationship or whether there were any relations left on that side of the family. I began to wonder whether perhaps Johnny might have been responsible for Antigone’s pregnancy; an irony, if true, given Nikitas’ increasingly jaundiced view of the British. I returned to Johnny’s letters when I got home and was intrigued by the continued intimacy between the pair, despite their supposed differences after the war.

* * *

The next time I saw Antigone was at Dora’s house.

“I would love to know about Nikitas’ father,” I said, after we had sat down and Dora went to prepare coffee. I didn’t ask her if she loved him.

“Nikitas could be proud of him. He was a good man,” Antigone said unconvincingly.
Kapetan
Eagle was actually called Haris (short for Haralambos) Papaharalambopoulos, she explained. (No wonder he opted for a short
nom de guerre;
I felt a moment’s relief that Nikitas, and consequently Tig and I, had not inherited that unwieldy surname.)

I only felt more confused as Antigone spoke of the
Kapetánios
. The description she gave of her involvement before her arrest with the well-known partisan contradicted everything she had described of the strict moral code in the mountains. It was well known that even the slightest flirtation was forbidden. Full-blown love affairs were treated as treason against the communist principles of comradeship, and sexual relations and marriage (not to mention pregnancy) were utterly incompatible with the practical requirements of guerrilla lifestyle. That side of life was required to be sidelined until after the fight was won.

“Why didn’t you get married?” I asked.

“That was impossible. Haris was on the run and I went to Athens. And it wasn’t long before he was dead.”

When Dora came back into the room, I tried tackling her.

“You must have known Nikitas’ father, Dora. I know so little about him – his character, what sort of man he was.” Dora flashed a worried glance at Antigone.

“He must have been a wonderful person,” I continued disingenuously, as Dora stalled.

“
Kapetan
Eagle,” prompted Antigone. “Dora, tell Moody about Haris.” It was as though she could hardly be bothered to keep up the pretence. Before I left, I asked the two old comrades whether the name Wasp meant anything to them.

“No!” they both declared without hesitating.