Nicolai's Daughters (16 page)

They ate and talked to Nicky. Theodora asked Andreas about the shop, but he said, “You know it never changes from one day to the next.” After dinner, she washed the dishes while Andreas watched the news and Nicky played beside her on the floor. Later, she bathed her son, got him into his pyjamas and brought him to his father for a goodnight kiss. Andreas turned his head to the side to kiss Nicky, moving both her and his son so he could keep his eyes on the screen. Theodora teased him and stood for a moment in front of his view. “Come on,” he said.

When she heard Nicky's deep, abandoned breathing, she shut the bedroom door and went down to the living room, where she found Andreas lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. She leaned against the archway, her hands working in a dollop of hand cream. “How about a massage?” she asked. “Or one of my back rubs?”

“Why do I always have to hear my mother's complaints?” He sat up and swung his legs around. His face was worn, his eyes vacant.

“Why do you listen?” She told herself she'd try to understand him. Why was she making things worse?

“The boy was dirty, he didn't have his hat, you wear high heels, they're not appropriate when you're meeting her, you know that. She is old-fashioned. She has her ways. Good or bad.”

“So her big complaint has to do with my shoes?” She threw her hands up. “If only the problems of the world were this small.”

“Don't make light of this.” He rubbed his temple.

“It's silly, don't you think?” She sighed. How could she stay mad at him? He couldn't stand up to his mother either. She went over to him. He turned away.

“Elena would begrudge my very breath if we allowed it,” she said. “You know.”

“You're exaggerating. She's old. She's always helped us. Can't you just try?”

Theodora inhaled. What do you mean, helped us? Since when? Theodora wanted to say. Elena hadn't helped her one bit. She stood above him with her arms crossed. But his watery eyes and his defeated back, the sideways pleading grin made her sit down beside him. She shook her head. She had to be strong for both of them. “I'll try.”

He stretched out and laid his head down on her lap. He rolled over to his right side, held onto her thighs as if afraid to fall. He fell asleep holding onto her. Even when she couldn't feel her legs, she didn't move.

1986

Nicolai laid his jacket on top of the pebbles, then sat down. The small stones poked at his backside. He shifted, but it was no use. He had thought this stretch of beach had more sand. Or at least that's how he remembered it whenever he thought of the place. Water gurgled onto the shore. The sea raised its caps. Seagulls bounded, shrieking and fighting over scraps of fish. Nicolai listened to the short, quick scratches Dimitria made against the canvas.

“Where do you get your ideas?” he asked.

“The images come when my hand starts its work. My father told me this would happen but I didn't believe him. He was right, of course.” She sat in a rickety chair low to the ground, the canvas propped up in the pebbles. Her hair was pushed inside a scarf. As she drew, her bare feet moved back and forth until her heels were buried. “When our fathers are alive, we don't appreciate them.”

This answer, like all the others, started in one place and wound around to another. He tried to focus. “My father is a hard man.” Nicolai gazed at the shoreline across the way. The trees looked brittle, the land dried out.

The rocks under her chair grated as she moved.

He could feel her stare, but his eyes were fixed on the sea.

“We can't possibly understand what they went through.” She tapped the canvas lightly with her pencil as if to get his attention.

“Does that give him an excuse?” He stood up, kicking up pebbles and sand. Why was everyone so keen to defend his father? His mother. His sisters. And now Dimitria. His father could have talked himself into forgetting about the war, gotten on with his life.

“You don't know how you would have reacted,” Dimitria said.

“I'll never be that kind of father. I'm sure of that.” He had left rather than take the chance that his anger and grief would hurt Alexia. He'd done that much.

He picked up his jacket. A gust came up and blew sand back towards Dimitria. “I should go,” he said.

“Okay,” she said.

“I'll see you around.”

Nicolai's mother asked him where he was going. “A coffee with Dimitria.”

“You're going out with her again? I have work to do here. You could help me.”

Each day his mother made lists of things she needed done. He washed the outside walls of the house, watered the vegetable patch at the back and painted the chipped cement stairs at the front door. Some of these chores kept him home for a few days. He checked off all the things on her list. Still, she added more. “I need some fresh air,” he said finally. “I'm going for a drive.” He was glad he'd kept the rental car. It gave him the means to escape the claustrophobic confines of his father's house.

“Have you spoken to your daughter lately?” She stood with her hands on her hips blocking the back door.

“I called her last week. She didn't believe it was me.” He laughed. “She threw the phone down, accused me of not being her father.”

“Ah, this is a sign,” she said. “She needs you.”

He wanted to tell his mother that he could barely take care of himself, let alone Alexia, that at least here, he had distractions that didn't remind him of his old life, of the world that had fallen apart when Sara died. Achilles. Dimitria. When he was talking to Dimitria or having a coffee with Achilles or watering his mother's vegetable patch there were times when he didn't think of Sara. Was he feeling better? Would he forget her altogether? He would never allow that to happen. Never.

His mother grabbed him by his arms as if she meant to shake him. Instead, she took hold of his chin, pulled him down so she looked him in the eye. “No child is better off without her father.”

“She's in school,” he said. “Mavis and Stuart are her godparents. They love her like she's theirs.” He kissed the top of his mother's head. “Don't worry so much. Everything is under control.” In fact, Stuart had told him the same thing when he called his office a few days ago. “We're fine. Alexia is doing well. Nothing to worry about.”

Nicolai drove down the deserted strip of land by the water's edge where Dimitria sketched most days and Achilles had taken him a few weeks before. Achilles had grand plans for a boardwalk with restaurants and bars. Nicolai had listened politely. He didn't encourage him or ask too many questions. A big project was not what he needed. He wasn't sure what he needed, but he knew he didn't want anything to complicate his life.

He saw Dimitria up ahead walking on the side of the road, her easel under one arm, a box under the other. The back of her shawl was pulled tightly around her, the tips flung over her shoulder and waving in the breeze. He drove up behind her slowly until finally she turned. He rolled down his window.

“How about a ride somewhere?”

She stowed her things in the back seat and jumped in beside him. “Aigio is not so far,” she said. There was that eager smile again. Was this a good idea? He glanced over at her and grinned. These doubts were not his, they were his mother's. Dimitria was his cousin and a friend. Where was the harm?

“I have done all the talking,” she said. They sat across from one another in an outdoor café, the ocean crashing against the rocks below them. “You must be bored.”

“Not in the slightest.” He gulped his coffee.

“How is your daughter?” She placed her hand on his.

“She is well. It is good for her to be with her godparents right now.” He pulled his hand away.

“You must miss her.”

“Yes.”

She stared at him. He suspected she was waiting for him to say more, but what could he say? It was true that he missed Alexia, but he was relieved as well. He needed time to sort things out before he could go back and be the father she deserved. “We should go,” he said, and threw some bills on the table. He pushed his chair back.

She looked up at him and didn't move.

“I can't explain it right now,” he said.

He dropped Dimitria off at the same place he picked her up. They made no plans. Still, whenever he could, he'd show up, always in the same spot, and she'd be there waiting for him. They'd go to some other village for lunch or a coffee. Their meetings were a secret: that much was understood even though neither one of them said it.

When his mother asked him where he'd been, his answer was always the same: “Just out exploring. There's a lot to see.”

“Have you been to Kalavryta
?”
Dimitria asked when they couldn't decide where to go one afternoon. They sat in the car by the beach. She faced him. His fingers drummed the steering wheel.

“No, my father wouldn't let me go when I was a kid. He wouldn't sign the consent form at school. According to him, this was not a place for anyone to visit.”

“Let's go.” She stopped the relentless patter he made with his fingers by cupping her hand over his. “Stop. I thought you'd outgrown that old habit of yours. You used to do it when you were a child.”

“You remember that?”

“It made me crazy,” she said.

He started the car. “Old habits are hard to break.”

At the memorial on top of the hill in Kalavryta, they stopped at the crosses. They murmured prayers. This is what Greeks do. He remembered explaining this to Sara in Vancouver the first time she saw him cross himself and whisper under his breath when they passed a cemetery. “But why?” she asked.

“I was raised this way,” he said. “You watch your parents, you do what they do.”

“But you don't know any of the people buried here,” Sara said.

“I know it's strange. It's our way to honour them,” he said. “We show more respect for the dead than we do for the living.”

Nicolai stared at the name on the cross, strokes of black angry lines. He thought of his grandfather, who had died here. He wished he could have known him. Maybe if he had lived, his own father would have been better to him, played basketball with him, listened to him and supported him like the other fathers supported their sons. Nicolai was about ten years old the first time he came running into the house late after a game. He wanted to tell his father how many baskets he'd made, how he saved the game. His father sat at the kitchen table. His belt lay on the table beside him. No words were said. With a look, his father directed him and Nicolai leaned over the chair. He didn't cry out.

“It wasn't your fault,” he whispered now, gazing at his grandfather's name on the plaque. “You died. How could you stop him? Maybe my father just never liked me. Who's to know?”

“Pardon?” Dimitria said, lacing her arm in his.

He stepped back and took in the scattering of tiny crosses. Someone had tried to plant grass on the grounds, but it grew only in ragged patches here and there. The names blurred. “It's hard to imagine such tragedy.”

“Especially since we didn't live it.”

“But we've never escaped. I see that now.”

“You speak about your father again,” she said.

He shrugged. “Not really.”

“When you're ready.” She tightened her grip around his arm.

He stroked her hand. “I know.”

They entered the Kalavryta museum. In the first cavernous room there was old farm equipment, mannequins dressed in period clothing, bullet casings, guns too old to be used again. There were glass cases, but most of them were empty. A sign indicated they were still in the process of setting up the display. Three televisions sat one on top of the other in the corner, their screens blank.

A woman about his mother's age dressed in black with a kerchief over her head greeted them. “We are still adding to the museum,” she said. She pointed to the televisions. “These will show the survivor testimonials. We have government money for students to conduct the interviews this summer.”

Nicolai nodded.

“Do you have family here?” she asked.

“My grandfather was Nicolai Sarinopoulos,” Nicolai said.

She stood back slightly and looked at him intently. “A picture of him will be in the next room,” she said finally, then turned and went back into her office.

Nicolai and Dimitria entered a room that looked as if it had once been a gymnasium. At one end was a set of double wooden doors bolted by long metal bars, meant never to be used again. Even with its bright lights, the room felt creepy to Nicolai. He tried not to imagine the basketballs being thrown, the cheers from the low bleachers against the wall. Now, hundreds of pictures lined the walls. The faces stared at him.

“There's Achilles's grandfather,” Dimitria said.

Nicolai stood close beside her, their shoulders touching.

Nicolai startled at the touch of a hand on his back. He turned and saw the woman who had greeted them.

“How is he?” she said.

“Who?”

“We were just children then. Your father and me. You have his eyes,” she went on. “I've never forgotten him. He was my best friend.”

“Why didn't you mention it before?” His father had a best friend? He couldn't imagine it.

“I wasn't sure I should,” the woman said. “How is he?”

Nicolai shrugged. It was too much of a coincidence, like a dream, or a plot out of one of Sara's novels. “He's an angry man,” he blurted.

She nodded, as if she'd expected as much. She turned her back to Nicolai and gazed up at the pictures. “You young people don't understand what they did to us. I was here in this gymnasium that day, with all the other children. Four hundred and ninety-eight died in our village. The Germans killed others. Twenty-six other villages in our province were burned and the people murdered.”

Nicolai touched her arm. She stared at him as if she wasn't sure who he was.

“Your father tried to save us,” the woman said. “He thought he'd convinced the Germans. He was such a charmer; he could make anyone do anything. He got food for us when the soldiers first occupied the village. Everyone liked him because he was a generous boy, would do anything for a friend or his family. Is he still like this?”

Nicolai shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

“This surprises me. Maybe he blames himself? But it wasn't his fault. His mother tried to tell him to… Ah, what is the point of these old stories?” She jammed her hands into the pockets of her skirt and turned away.

“How did he try to help?” Nicolai asked, putting out a hand as if to hold her back. He'd known her for five minutes and she'd already become the most important person in his world. He didn't even know her name.

“I've said too much,” she said. “You should ask him. It's his story to tell.”

“I'm just trying to understand.”

She turned to face him. “The mothers had a sense. They wanted to protect their sons. All mothers are the same.”

“So what did he do?”

The woman shook her head. “Speak to your father. He was a good boy. I know they couldn't beat that out of him.”

Nicolai stared at her. “I'm sorry, I didn't get your name.”

“It's not important.”

“Look, I know he must have done something that's made him the way he is. What did he do?”

“At least listen before you pass judgment,” Dimitria said.

He shrugged off Dimitria's hand. “You've never lived with him,” Nicolai said, the words like slivers in his throat.

“The Germans asked the young boys their age. No one knew why at first.”

“And?” Nicolai said.

“He wanted to help us,” the woman said. “He was like that. He didn't know what would happen. None of us did. Even the night before it happened, he told me that everything would be all right.” She stared up at the wall of pictures. “He wasn't even scared when they separated us into two groups. He thought he understood. The deaths of his father, my father, my brother and the other men hit him very hard.”

Nicolai scanned the faces in the photographs, then the information under each picture. “They were all over thirteen years old.” Nicolai said. His father was sixteen then.