The House on Paradise Street (9 page)

I remember waiting in the room while he listened to Danae’s answer, wondering what she was saying, until he shouted, “Exactly! Wherever you look in the world and pick a troubled place with civil war or terrorism, you’ll often find the English had something to do with it. India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland – and that’s before we even look at Africa.”

I picked up the whisky bottle from the desk and took a sip. It made me shudder, but then warmed my stomach and helped my breath go back to normal. I knew I shouldn’t fill my mind with petty complaints at this point – Nikitas’ obsessions and varied friendships were part of who he was. But I couldn’t help feeling hurt. Why had he needed to keep these things from me? It was as if his death was the culmination of a collection of secrets, and possibly betrayals. I had never clung to him or nagged to know the details of his life, but I had always assumed I was honoured with the truth. Now I was beginning to wonder.

I sat down in the chair and began flicking through a pad of lined notepaper filled with jottings in Nikitas’ handwriting. The uppermost page had only one word written in large capital letters: ΣΦΗΚΑ (
Sfíκa
– WASP). It had been underlined several times, but meant nothing to me. On the other side of the desk was a large manila envelope marked with the initials J.F. Its bulging contents were held in by a thick rubber band, which I removed. I pulled out several letters, all addressed to Antigone Perifanis, Nikitas’ mother. He had not told me anything about this material and I wondered where it could have come from.

As far as I could see, the letters were all sent from England by someone called John Fell, whose sharp, italic script scratched across the pages in black ink. I opened the first one, dated September, 1938. It was written on fragile, pale blue paper from Wadham College, Oxford and signed Johnny.

The tone was jovial and friendly. The writer recommended several English poets, including a number from the “Great War”. I flicked through the envelopes, some of which were dated 1946 and later, and mainly sent from England. Several were addressed to Antigone at Averoff Prison and were stamped by the Greek censor. I opened them. The man evidently cared for Antigone, but despite the endearments, I could not gauge their relationship. It was not clear whether this was a lover. And if not, who was he? There were many practical details: “Shall I send more of the soap?” “Were the pencils the right ones?” But there were times when he became more thoughtful.

I decided to read one more letter before stopping. It was dated 1947.

I tried scanning some more pages to find another reference to Wasp, but with no luck. I replaced everything inside the envelope and put it in my bag.

Nikitas’ office was almost as messy when I left as when I arrived, but my mind had come alive. The curiosity aroused by these letters dispersed some of the pain that was engulfing me. I was intrigued by the sense of Nikitas’ mother as a young woman, and longed to know more of her life. As I walked along Panepistimiou (University Avenue), I started to make a plan. It was as if I had been offered some sort of way through the horrible chaos of mourning. By the time I passed the Parliament building, I had decided that I would do my own research into Nikitas’ history. This would give me some answers, but it could also be my memorial to my husband. With luck, it might even provide an explanation for my daughter. Tig would need to know at some point; it was her history too.

I turned off Amalia Avenue, with its traffic fumes, tram terminus and peanut barrows, and walked into the muffled green of the National Garden. Formerly the Royal Garden, the park was planted by Greece’s first Queen, Amalia, in the 1830s and its rows of spindly palms look as though they date back to then. Signs warn of the danger of things falling from the ageing trees. Old men and tired migrants sat slumped on benches and a couple of late-season tourists in shorts trudged by, looking like incongruous birds left behind after the flock migrated. I slowed down, thinking I would have to speak with Antigone. She was the only person who could help me understand more about Nikitas’ origins. Now that I was no longer able to speak with Nikitas or ask him questions, it would be a kind of communication. I would try to find his answers as well as my own.

When I got home I wrote a short letter on the off-chance that John Fell was still alive and still lived at the address given on some of the letters from the 1940s: Corner House, Claywell, Sussex. There seemed little more chance of it reaching its target than a shipwrecked sailor’s message in a bottle. That night, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, and for the first time since Nikitas died, I didn’t wake until morning.

Dora’s home is not as I remembered it. Her father’s solid house with its garden is all gone, along with the
handmade
lace curtains, and passing schoolgirls in pinafores. Now there is a four-storey block in which Dora has an apartment on the first floor. Most of the other buildings have changed too. Our neighbours include a large family from Senegal, two Ukrainian prostitutes, and several Albanian households. From the balcony I see Muslim men walking along the road to prayers. Dora says a shop has been converted to a temporary mosque. The smells are not of Greece but of other, unfamiliar places in exile.

After I arrived I became unwell and was unable to go out for several days. I saw dreams where Nikitas became a giant cat that sat on my bed and sometimes I woke to the noise of cats fighting in the street. I went to check whether it could possibly be Misha, before I remembered where I was and what had happened. Dora made chicken soup with egg and lemon for me and took the bus to the cemetery twice to search for Misha. She also made three trips to her brother to take him food and clean his apartment. Dora is better than a saint because she is noisy and still shouts with a voice too big for her tiny frame and tells terrible jokes even after all these years.

I wanted to call Mod (I must check my daughter-in-law’s name) to talk to somebody about Nikitas, but I was paralysed. I kept thinking about the one time I saw my son as an adult – something I never told anyone about. Another burden of guilt. It happened over twenty years ago, in the 1980s, so I suppose he was about forty. He had written. He said he was travelling to Moscow for work and would like to see me. I replied, giving a time to meet outside the hotel where he was staying – the Rossiya. When the day arrived I set off from home and I don’t think I have ever been so afraid – not even in the war. I can admit that now. I walked down through Red Square and from some way off, I saw him. I suppose I would not have recognised him but for a photo in a newspaper that Dora had sent me. He was smoking and stamping his feet in the snow, his breath puffing out plumes of tobacco into the freezing air. He wore a fur hat with earflaps hanging down. I cannot explain why I hid behind a parked car. There are no good excuses. I just stayed there for some time, taking sidelong looks so he wouldn’t notice me, knowing that there was nothing I could do to make up for so many decades. Yet I wanted to watch my son, to take in every detail. I knew it was too late to become a mother. After about an hour, my jaw was shuddering and my feet numb despite the lined boots I wore. I watched as he looked around him and into the distance for a last time and walked through the revolving doors into the hotel. I waited a moment before turning to go, aware that there was still the opportunity to change this story. When I arrived home, I didn’t tell Igor about Nikitas’ letter or about what happened. I wondered whether my son might turn up at our apartment, as he knew the address, but he obviously decided against it. Who would want a mother who let you down all over again? That night in bed, I heard my mother’s voice: “Antigone, you deserve your fate. You have brought all this on yourself.” And it’s true.

Yiannis Ritsos wrote that. A comrade during the war, he also knew about being locked up for your beliefs.

* * *

When I eventually called Mod she sounded pleased.

“Antigone!” She called me by my name and used the intimate form of address as though I were a friend or relation. She said, “I’ve been trying to ring you. Where have you been?” I could tell she was surprised I was in Athens, which was strangely gratifying, as though I was part of her life. I told her about Dora and her house in Patissia and how I had been unwell. She said, “I would really like to see you. I would like to talk.” She invited me to go to Paradise Street, but I suggested we meet in a café. I was not yet ready to face all the ghosts, let alone my sister. I said, “Somewhere simple. Somewhere I can find easily,” and she suggested a little place on Anapafseos. I remembered it as a shady, sloping road full of marble monument workers, whose name made you picture the peaceful rest that could be found at its summit in the First Cemetery. And when I arrived, that was what it still was, though motorbikes streaked up and down more than in my day.

I arrived early at Cafe 13 and a woman who must have been as old as me, gestured at a dozen empty tables from which I could take my pick. Mod had said that the place was quiet. I sat towards the back of a room that reeked of bleach and contained only two elderly men, who gawked at me as though I were an intruder. I stared back at them, not intimidated. Mod arrived exactly on time and my impression was of a slim body and a cloud of curling, almost red hair – the woman I had seen at the funeral. Her face was gaunt – you could tell she was grieving – but her eyes were beady with curiosity as she approached. I stood up and offered my hand but she moved in close and kissed me, holding onto my hand and examining me. She appeared to be looking for some kind of answer. She said, “You have Nikitas’ eyes, but I can also see my daughter’s mouth and chin. We named her after you, but I call her Tig.” I was never one for small talk so I liked her directness, though it was quite overwhelming being turned into the matriarch of a family I didn’t know. We both sat down and I offered her a cigarette, which she refused. I lit one myself, taking my time so as to pull myself together, drawing the blessed smoke in deep.

My daughter-in-law said she wanted to find out more about my son. She would like to talk to me and write some things down.

“Research,” she said.

I said, “Perhaps I’m not the best person to help you. After all, I last knew Nikitas when he was three.”

I could see the thought pass across her face: “Aah, a difficult old woman.” And perhaps I am, but I had nothing to prove. Why should I open myself up to a stranger in this way? She said, “But you could tell me about yourself and explain what happened, why you left him. I need to understand more. You could do it for my daughter – your
granddaughter
.”

I did not answer, but sipped my coffee, pondering. Then I asked her how her name was spelled, which made her laugh and her whole face altered and became quite beautiful and lively. I saw for the first time what my son might have seen in this woman.

Mod tried a new approach. She said, “I wanted to ask you about John Fell. Who was he?”

“A family friend. Dead and gone, I should imagine.” I wanted to say: “What’s it to you, my girl?” What did she want, my curious daughter-in-law, with her insistent ways? What kind of interrogation was this? She told me she had found a letter to me from England and looked at me closely as I answered. I turned the questioning back and asked her what the letter had said. And where did she find it? Mod paused, as though we were talking about her private correspondence, not mine. Then she said, “It was from before the war – you must have been a schoolgirl. And it was sent from Oxford.” Mod had that terrier-like tendency I’ve seen in other English people, including Johnny. Once they’ve picked up a bone they won’t drop it. That’s their strength and their weakness; they didn’t hold onto their colonies all that time without having strong teeth and a belief that whatever anyone else says, the bone is theirs.

I told her briefly that Johnny had been a student of classics before the war, and that he came to Greece two years running to study inscriptions on the tombs in Keramikos. He taught English to me and my siblings. Then, to my surprise, Mod suggested we visit Nikitas’ grave and we left the café as a group of mourners were pushing through the door like a herd of sheep. At the entrance to the First Cemetery, she bought two bunches of anemones from a flower stall and gave me one. The earth over the grave was still raw and there was no stone yet, but we sat for a few minutes on a wall, looking at the scene. She spoke very softly, not looking at me.

“I loved him, your son.” I could not come up with the right answer (“I’m pleased”, “so did I”, “what difference does that make?”) and remained silent. I was never one for the quick retort or the easy chat – I’ve left that to others, like Natalya or Dora. My answers come to me later, when I’m alone.

As we walked back in silence along the paths, I spotted a cat hiding under a shrub. I bent down, saying Misha’s name, trying to coax him out with Russian endearments.

“Kssss, kssss,” I called. I saw Mod looking at me as though I was mad but she said nothing.

“Kssss, kssss. Mishinka, come here.” Eventually a skinny tabby bearing no resemblance to Misha got up and slunk off and I couldn’t face explaining the whole story. Mod’s expression revealed how disturbing she found my behaviour, but I didn’t mind. I have nothing to prove. Still, when she kissed me goodbye and helped me into a taxi, she appeared disappointed. And who can blame her? I have made a habit of letting people down.

It took almost an hour to get back to Patissia, as the centre had been blocked off for a demonstration. We got stuck in traffic and, crawling along, I had plentiful opportunity to reflect on my mistakes. Why was I keeping my distance from the English girl? What was my problem with talking about the past? I would soon be gone anyway, so why not tell some stories? Now that I had my very own family I should make the most of them – I had to admit I was curious to meet my grandchildren, my own flesh and blood.

Several Somali children were playing on Dora’s front steps when I arrived and they laughed at me as I made my way into the hall. The lift eventually arrived with one of the Ukrainian women carrying a shopping bag and I greeted her in Russian. She answered dully, as though everyone spoke Russian in Athens. Dora was out and I sat at her kitchen table with a new pad of lined paper. In front of me I placed a lock of hair, a button and a photograph. They would help bring the memories. I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone about my past – perhaps my silence has been kept too long to break it – but I decided to write down my own version of events. Perhaps my granddaughter will read it one day. I will start at the beginning, as one should.

* * *

My childhood

When I was a child, my parents appeared like demi-gods. They towered above us and their past was our family mythology. I would ask them over and over to tell me their stories– so different from one another. My father, Petros, was born in 1897, in Perivoli, a village near Lamia, right in the middle of Greece. His father had been a tailor, but died when Petros was four and his mother took her only son to Athens. They rented a room in Kalithea and the young widow set up as a seamstress. Petros left school at twelve but he was ambitious and helped his mother expand her business. They brought in one employee, then another and Petros got hold of fashion magazines so they could copy the latest ideas from France. They moved to a larger workshop, eventually acquiring an atelier in Psyrri, where smart Athenian ladies came to be measured up and to choose fabrics and patterns. My father was too young to fight in the Balkan Wars and managed to avoid being called up during the First World War. Instead, he continued his own battle to make Perifanis a name in the city. By 1920, he had succeeded. He was rich enough to buy a car and a house where they had a cook and a maid. By this time, my paternal grandmother was dressing in silks and furs, and helped oversee a workforce of eight seamstresses.

The story of how my parents met was my favourite part of the legend. I heard it countless times and still recall how my father described his first sight of my mother. In October 1922, when Petros was 25, a beautiful young woman walked into the atelier. She asked, in educated Greek, whether he needed a secretary, adding that she had plenty of experience. Petros did not know she was lying, and that Maria had only arrived in Greece the previous month. He too lied – that he had just been about to advertise for someone to help with the accounts. Petros already knew what he wanted.

My mother was among the first wave of refugees from Smyrna. For us children, there was a sort of glamour in the enormity of the disaster. We heard about mythological scenes of destruction: the city flaming in the night sky, rampaging Turkish soldiers spearing babies on bayonets, bodies floating in the water. It was as though their screams reverberated through our childhood. For my mother, however, “Catastrophe” was a word that followed her around like an ugly dog. With a combination of luck and determination, she managed to get onto a crowded boat in Smyrna’s harbour with her mother and younger brother. Her father had been taken away – like many thousands of adult male Greeks, he just disappeared.

They arrived in Athens with a few bundles and no money, joining a deluge of uprooted people with nowhere to go. Some were given tents on the empty slopes of Hymettus, others camped by the Hephaestus Temple at Thisio. Maria and her family were taken to the Municipal Theatre in Kotzia Square, where each family was allowed to occupy a box, rigging up blankets for a little privacy. It was a beautiful place – designed by the famous German architect, Ziller – but that was little comfort to its devastated occupants. Maria’s mother, Sylvia, cried all day. And my grandmother was not even Greek, so she did not have the debatable satisfaction of arriving in her fatherland. She had been born into an English family in Smyrna. They had lived in a villa and owned a business exporting dried fruits. Her parents had warned her about marrying a Greek and she had never even learned his language properly – everyone she conversed with in Smyrna knew French, English and Turkish as a matter of course. Then in 1922, on account of her Greek surname, she had been sent away from the only country she ever knew. When I was young my grandmother still lamented those painful times. She’d say, ‘We were like beggars. We had lost everything and knew nobody’.”