The Secret Sister (2 page)

Don't stop talking to me, Amalia.

The voice is lost, all I catch is the word “crumbs” and the phrase “the bones of truth.” The noise drowns out the rest.

The engines sound like something just before an explosion. The elderly woman is still praying. What would she think if I suddenly went up to her and said: “It's no use, my dear lady, however many signs of the cross you make, nothing will change. The sky is self-sufficient; a cloudless flight does not obey entreaties.”

Instead of screaming to her face that “fear, Madam, is a prison, and in any case you can't exorcise it,” I leave her in peace. My mind goes back again to my fearless mother.

At the last moment, certain complications put an end to her reckless plans. No doctor would take the risk of a home birth. And so I wasn't born at number 380 Riverside Drive, but at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital on 59th Street. Shortly after I left her insides to come out into the light, she wrapped me up in a blanket as dainty as lace and, hardly giving them time to cut the umbilical cord and wash off the blood, she rushed me home. She almost kidnapped me. The chauffeur was waiting in the courtyard. “Hurry, we're late!” she shouted at him. It was Sunday. It took us only twenty minutes to get from Midtown Manhattan to the Upper West Side. Our house anxiously awaited my arrival. The silk sheets on her bed, the soap, the smell of cleanliness, sandalwood and lemon. Outside there was the smell of the river. On the first night of my life I slept without fear, she never left my side, her breast had milk, plenty of milk, it's as if I can still taste its tartness on my tongue. There are times when I despise milk and all dairy, big avenues and long journeys. There are times when I hate orphan boys and their bitches of mothers, their missing fathers and this entire city. There are times when I can't stand a city that never sleeps. The Big Apple. Its incessant hum which, if you let your guard down, will hypnotize you and then good luck finding yourself again, among the crowds moving along the streets like a river, amid the aroma of exotic foods and charred meat in the streets, amid the museums and the cathedrals. And yet, this is my city. This is where I was born. This is where I learned to love you, Amalia, the long river and the ocean. The skyscrapers made me woozy. I'd avoid looking up at them. Is the only way to avoid constant motion sickness to become an ocean yourself?

The sky is strongly reminiscent of the sea. We're flying at thirty-six thousand feet. Why this sudden journey? It only took me a minute to decide on it. I left in a hurry. Like a burglar who disappears when he hears suspicious noise and leaves the loot behind so he won't get arrested. I left to get away. I left in the middle of everything. My whole life. As if that too had been stolen. Like someone who's been guilty for a long time, I dreaded being locked up. Is the Argyriou family to blame for all this, Amalia? Our family? Is that who makes me feel like a thief? Makes me want to save myself? Hush, don't say anything, don't say “all families are like that.”

“
And yet, Jonathan, it's true. No one can be saved from their family
.”

In a few hours I had my tickets and my luggage ready. I, who hate moving around; I, who, if I had the straps, would tie myself down to the bed at night, in case, like a sleepwalker, I get up and disappear; I, who, if I could, would keep myself like a heavy statue on solid ground—here I am now strapped in an airplane seat, preparing for the sudden turbulence of a transatlantic flight. I left everything behind and got up and left.

“
There was no other way, Jonathan. You know that.
”

The lights will go out, are going out, have gone out. The engines are growling. The monster is rising up into the sky. In its belly, I sit dreaming. The noise drives me crazy, like a bomb ready to explode inside me, I cover my ears. Unexpectedly, the face of a madman enters my head. Who can control the mind's workings? December 1993. Our respectable Catholic school has organized a Christmas party at the Blue Mountain charity. Do you remember, Amalia? “Sensitization visits” they called them, to the indigent homeless. The foundation had its own history. It was set up with money donated by the Rockefeller family, in memory of one of their sons who had died on a trip to New Guinea, a horrible death though the exact circumstances were unknown.

The airplane has taken off. A smiling young woman with golden tiger eyes is serving fruit juice; I'm in Business Class, I paid a pretty penny for this trip.

Horrible deaths sometimes lie behind donations and charitable foundations. I didn't want to go to Blue Mountain. I had a bad feeling that day. I held my school bag tightly to my chest, as if carrying it to my side would cause all the misfortunes in the world to rain down on me. Walking beside me, without a care in the world, you were humming a tune. We all had the same plaid schoolbags; our school was ordered and respectable. It was Christmas and all we disciplined pupils, like the Magi bearing gifts, were to offer food and money to the most destitute of people. But for some reason, I didn't want to be there.
Let's go somewhere else, Amalia, come on, let's go while there's still time. Let's go to the docks, let's go down to Battery Park, let's get on a boat, let's take the Staten Island ferry, let's soak up some rays, let's see how the Statue of Liberty looks from the water. Let's get out of here, Amalia.
I didn't tell you anything. We stayed at the party. The residents of the shelter all stood together, wearing clean clothes and hesitant smiles, looking at us as awkwardly as we looked at them. We offered them the food and sweets. Our teacher gave them an envelope with nine hundred dollars. “God bless you,” came to our ears from every corner and then we all sang: “
Have a holly, jolly Christmas; / It's the best time of the year . . . / . . . And when you walk down the street / Say hello to friends you know / And everyone you meet
.” Your voice stood out. Your divine voice, as Grandma used to say. And so the party was about to come to an end in such a lovely way, compassionately, generously, with a pleasant tune coming from the record player and the day gloriously ending. A sense of relief. Nothing bad had happened. I had been wrong to worry. That tightness in my chest had gone—and then it happened. A dark-skinned man, in his fifties, with a crazed look, a tense smile and rotten teeth, came up to me and, before anyone could restrain him, he grabbed my wrist with the strength of a prehistoric animal and held my hand captive in his own. I tried to pull away, terrified and repulsed, trying to take back my stolen hand, and then he whispered, but loud enough to be heard by everyone, and certainly by Amalia: “Son, you, you, my son, you are my boy.” I was struggling with the beast, I don't know for how long. At some point I freed my hand. My plaid schoolbag fell to the ground. “Time to go,” said Miss Jones. She said it blithely, as if nothing had happened or in order to pretend nothing had happened. My heart was a lump of dry earth, one breath and it would fall apart. I bent down and picked up my bag, I held it tightly as if it was my earthen heart. And then Christo­pher my schoolmate's voice was heard:

“Ma'am, that dark gentleman, that man who grabbed Jonathan, did you notice, ma'am, that he looked just like Jonathan, that he was his spitting image?”

And nobody spoke, except for you, Amalia, your eyes spoke and said:

“Are you crazy? That's nonsense. That madman looked nothing like my brother!”

“
Yes, that's exactly what I had said then, Jonathan. It was a lie.
”

And then the visit was over. You stayed on at school for your music class and I went home alone. They were waiting for me and the table was set. It was dinnertime. I sat down in my seat, and when they asked me “What happened in school today?” I replied, “I met my father. I saw him today for the first time.”

Menelaos was thunderstruck, Grandma went to the kitchen to get some water, and Mama kept on eating her meal: roasted lamb with potatoes. Then Anthoula brought peeled oranges that smelled of cinnamon and spearmint.

“Open your mouth, sweet child. Eat. Oranges are full of power and health.”

I was keeping my mouth obstinately shut. When my sister isn't here, what do I need power and health for? I want her to be here, to play the piano. To sing “The Northern Star” again. Have you ever heard such a beautiful voice? It's like the song of the mermaids.

“
You're exaggerating, Jonathan. If that were the case, then I'd . . .
”

Be quiet.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The airplane is now flying at thirty thousand feet.

“What would you like to drink?” the flight attendant asks me solicitously.

When you grow up without a father, you make others want to take care of you. They might even think more highly of you. They sense you're emitting an invisible fortitude, as if you've taken on the strength of the absent one.

“It's the blood talking,” said Anthoula one day while you were singing. What did she mean?

Amalia, what does “It's the blood talking” mean?

“
Why are you asking me?
You should have asked others, back then.
”
 

There's no time. People die, and you have to make sure you learn, while they're alive, all the unintelligible words they've uttered, the allusive remarks, the censored thoughts. There's no time. You have to make sure you clear up the shadows before they swallow you up and then you turn into a shadowman, like so many others. Anthoula's gone, Grandpa, Grandma, they're all gone. I never found out what she meant by: “It's the blood talking.”

“
That's why people travel, Jonathan
.”

What do you mean, Amalia?

“
That sometimes we come home to learn about all these things, before—
”

Go on, why did you stop?

“
Jonathan, the journey is yours.
”

You're with me.

“
You're traveling to Greece alone.
”

You're with me.

“
Alone. Don't kid yourself. How could I be with you? Are you forgetting, or are you pretending to forget?
”

Be quiet.

A humming noise . . . The sky, an ocean that gives out no light, and a quilt of dark clouds inviting us to unfamiliar and therefore dangerous dreams. Sixty-four minutes have passed and still no turbulence. “Captain Watson and his crew would like to welcome you onboard . . . ” A man across the aisle wedges a pillow under his head and prepares to sleep. “The duration of our flight is eight hours and thirty-five minutes. Expected time of arrival in Athens is 9 o'clock local time . . . ” My fellow traveler hasn't touched his tray of juice, nuts and snacks. Satiated business class passengers, Menelaos Argyriou was never one of you. His family lived with hunger, but never feared it. They grew attached to their homeland, perhaps because from the very start they missed it, it was never a given, it never gave them a sense of safety and security. They traveled far away with their minds focused on the wound. They never felt closer to their homeland than when they were far away.

We were born and raised “far away.”

“
I know, Jonathan. New York, our city, never hurt us. Never frightened us. How lucky we were, Jonathan, to have grown up here and not over there.
”

“Over there” was a dot on the map. Green and dark grey and blue. In the Eastern Mediterranean, at the southernmost tip of the Balkan Peninsula, with seas and thousands of islands, with a dry and rocky soil, with foreign-sounding mountains, lakes and rivers—Olympus, Smolikas, Voras, Tymphi, Vardousia, Volvi, Vegoritida, Kerkini, Strymonas, Arachthos, Alfios.

The soft blanket is wrapped around the body of my unknown fellow traveler, who is now preparing to sink into a luxurious sleep. What does he have in common with Menelaos Argyriou? Wrapped in a filthy blanket covered in lice and vomit, on the ship's third class deck, he sailed to America to start the story of a new life from the beginning. It was the second time. He was now leaving behind more things that he would have to pretend to forget. Not only his land and orchard, but Little Frosso with her unworn red dress. Little Frosso never made it to America. Her journey was interrupted halfway there, on the seventh day. Her body arched, bent over and sank. She never made it here and so it was as if she never left there.

“
From the time we were born, inside us we have confused here with there, now with then, before with after.
”
 

Our family walked a tightrope between oblivion and truth. That's how we grew up. Like so many other families since the beginning of time, the things it had to forget were more than those it could bear to remember.

“
Years later, when she chose her new name, the name Frosso was banned. And along with it the word ‘Greece'.
”

Her eyes stopped looking at us.

“
Her breath smelled bad when she came near me. I wanted to run away.
”

Her voice broke.

“
You wake up in the morning and the whole world has changed.
”

She would get angry at anyone who called her Frosso. Tipsy from drinking, more and more every day.

“
And you, Jonathan, struggling to make heads or tails of it all. Even just a little bit. Otherwise you can't live. But the heads might bite and the tails might sting.
”
 

In eight hours, everything will be different. I'll begin to understand everything that escapes me now.

“
Trapped in a dream. But if you don't take a risk, how will you be saved?
”
 

On the Holy Rock of the Acropolis—in a few hours I'll be there. As I look at the amber color of the Marbles, will I be able to see your eyes? Or will I just hear your voice whispering once more: “You're alone here, a stranger in a strange land”?