The Secret Sister (6 page)

“I can't breathe, Menelaos, I can't breathe, my mama's telling me something, can you hear, my ears are stuffed up, she's telling me something, she's giving me something, what is it, it's a handkerchief, a handkerchief with flowers, take it for me, my hands, I can't feel my hands, take the handkerchief, I tell you, my ears are cold, I'm freezing, I'm going up on deck, I'm going to the bridge, I can't take it in here.” She's three levels below deck and she goes up the stairs. Eyes look at her hatefully and others just sadly, gazes of all kinds follow her, yet her own eyes are nowhere, but lo, here's her mama now, following her to the bridge, giving her the hankie, she doesn't need Menelaos, she needs her mama.

“Be careful you don't catch cold, girl.”

“Don't you worry, Mama.”

“Frosso, my little one, it's cold there, they tell me, it's no laughing matter, everything is laughless there.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“There are no dovecotes there or churches carved into the rocks, but Menelaos loves you.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You must love him too.”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Don't cause him more worries, he's got enough on his mind. And take care of your voice. Keep singing, my little Frosso, you have a voice from God, remember, ‘a golden loom and an ivory comb / and the body of an angel,'
 
you were five years old and everybody adored your voice.”

And then her mama went back to her own affairs and little Frosso saw the eyes of strangers, the lice, the filth, the deck covered in vomit, the bodies crammed together like orphan animals, she saw the chimney spewing out smoke, and then she could see nothing else, only the blackness of the smoke that enveloped her . . . and she flung herself from the bridge with the handkerchief tied tightly around her hair. It was the seventh day of the voyage, in ten days Menelaos would arrive in a foreign land, alone, with a bundle that was much lighter. He kept a dress of hers as a souvenir, the rest he gave away, and then he took the ship back to Greece.

A story ran on inside us. Children can endure all kinds of stories. They're saving their strength for what is to come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sakis left. With a phone call and a “we didn't manage it, maybe next time, you live in a wonderful city, it's a shame Frosso and I didn't get together, we will next time, either here or there.” He left and went back over there and there was no next time.

Grandpa didn't live much longer after Sakis left. He died in February 1996.

“I want to talk to you, but make sure you're alone, without your sister, you're a man now, you'll understand.” It was a Saturday, the fourth day without Menelaos. “It's something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time.”

Not a man, Grandma, no, let me not be a man for a little longer, let me not understand, I'm only sixteen years old, Grandma, I haven't been with a woman yet and at school I struggle with the forbidden words and now the house smells different, it smells of vodka not whiskey, because vodka has no smell and it won't betray you.

But I smelled it, in the bathroom, and in her bedroom, and in the kitchen, and in the elevator, I smelled it and I knew that our mother was drinking and running away again. And Grandma Erasmia insisted on talking to me and she locked the kitchen door in case you or Mama walked in and overheard us, “Only you,” she said, and I, who wished to have no secrets from you, Amalia, was forced to say:

“All right, I'll keep it a secret.”

“Your sister is young, I don't want her to know.”

“I promise,” I said, “I promise I'll keep it to myself,” even though I knew that keeping it to myself smelled of loneliness and death, and that nothing has yet to exist in this world, Amalia, that I would want to keep to myself.

“We'd better go outside. Let's take a walk.”

She unlocked the door. She took me by the hand. We went to the park. Next to the lake, we sat on a bench. A metal plaque stuck to its back said: “In memory of Tom Singer, beloved husband and father.” At our feet was the lake and its ducks, squirrels were scampering across the grass. It was a sunny day, horse-drawn carriages, joggers, cyclists went by, a saxophone was playing, it was delightful.

“I had your mother when I was almost forty,” she began, as she sat next to me, speaking in a calm and determined tone. “I'd been trying for over ten years, absolutely nothing, ‘It's not God's will,' I'd tell myself. ‘And Frosso up there probably doesn't want it.' My daughter was to take her name. The child I would have would be a girl, no question. No doubt in my mind about that. And she would take her name. In ten years, I'd dreamed of my sister three times.

“‘Don't do this to me,' she'd said, ‘don't bring me back to life. I'm fine here.'

“But once again I didn't listen to her, Jonathan. Once again, I only thought of myself. Like I had back then, like I have always. With the daughter I'd have, I'd bring her back to life, do you get what I'm saying, Jonathan, tell me, do you get what I'm saying? Not only would she have her name, but she'd also have her beauty and her grace, her eyes, her hair. Oh, Jonathan, you can't imagine Frosso's face, yes, she looked exactly like your mother, exactly the same. I'm going to Hell, Jonathan, and if there is no Hell, it'll be made to exist just for me. I disobeyed my sister a second time, when she left with Menelaos and it was as if my homeland and my home had burned down a second time, because how would my life be without her, without my little Frosso, and yet at the same time jealousy was gnawing at me, here she was, going off to a new land, with a husband, a handsome strong husband, she was off to a new continent, her eyes would see such marvels, she'd be leaving behind this war that was about to break out and everything that would come in its wake, she wouldn't know the hunger, the savagery, the fear, the bombs exploding next to us, the conquering army in our neighborhood and in our home, she wouldn't live through the Occupation, and—the time has come for me to reveal it to you, Jonathan, my beloved grandson—as soon as little Frosso left, it was as if this sharp pain made me see everything that would happen to our country, I don't know how or why, I saw before me death approaching, I'm not afraid of my words, Jonathan, no one about to die is afraid of revelations, and mark my words, I won't be around for much longer, so anyway, on that first night, when I was left alone in the empty house, I got on my knees to say my prayers, as we always did with little Frosso, ‘God of our homeland, rest the souls of all those who were not fortunate enough to come here with us, Mama and Papa and all those who were lost in the scorched land.' But my lips, as if of their own accord, whispered something else that night: ‘God of our homeland, make something happen, please, make something—anything—happen, some inconceivable and unrestricted and unlimited something is what I'm asking for. Make something happen so that I leave here and go and live in America, just get me out of here.' And God answered my prayer, Jonathan, and that's why I'm going to Hell, unless it was the Devil who heard me, which makes my god the Devil, and what can I say . . . What can I say . . . What more can I say . . . The Devil-God answered my prayer, my little Frosso was out of my life, and as if that wasn't enough, I won't just let her be, even when she tells me she's fine, I want to bring her back, as if then my sins would be blotted out and forgotten, through a young girl, my daughter, whom I will name after her. And that's what I did, Jonathan, and twelve years later the new Frosso was born, my daughter. Your mama, Jonathan, your beautiful, accursed mama, your dead mama, Jonathan. One day, when she had become a young girl, she put on a miniskirt that barely covered her underwear, the whole house shone with youth and innocence, she put on her first pair of tights, black silk, that she'd bought from the Saks boutique, and a blouse which was open at the chest, it was March and spring was awakening in the Big Apple, your mother was thirteen years old and her chest had begun to awaken and not fit into her old clothes, and I saw Menelaos, your grandpa, in the dining room, I saw the gleam in his eye as he stood before his daughter so resplendent, ‘Frosso,' he said, and as God, as the Devil's my witness, as either of the two is my witness, or both of them in one, I caught in the air that the name ‘Frosso' didn't refer to his daughter, but to his dead first wife, my sister, and that his voice was filled with lust and sexual yearning, Jonathan, a father for his daughter, Jonathan, and we'll all burn together, Jonathan, it was the same voice that I had heard twenty-six years earlier on Ergasias Street in New Ionia, telling my sister: ‘Frosso, I'm going to make you my wife.' He felt it too and it upset him no end, and from then on he began to work late more and more and to stay at home less and less. He was growing old fast, I knew I wouldn't have him for much longer. And your mother, who knew nothing, it was as if she knew everything. When we went to Athens, she didn't even want to hear about coming with us. ‘I'll stay here.' She was the same age Amalia is now. When we came back, it was as if years had gone by, even though we'd only been away barely a month. You had to be told all these things.”

“Let's go home, Grandma, the sun's gone down, let's go home.”

“
My sweet Jonathan!
”

It was you I was thinking of, Amalia, the whole time Grandma was talking, I kept thinking how you must never find out.

“
How naïve can you be, Jonathan? Did it never occur to you that there were no secrets? We all knew. We all pretended not to know what we knew.”

But I . . . Amalia, I . . . I . . .

“
You?
”

I love you, Amalia.

“
You're attracted to death, why don't you relax in your seat, you still have a few more hours of traveling ahead of you, look at how calmly your fellow passengers are enjoying their flight, there, there now, just shut out my memory.
”

Everything was changing, Amalia. Grandpa was no longer with us. We were growing up, we graduated high school, you were studying music at college and I was trying to find myself, making plans I never went through with. At home, Bellino had given his place to Demosthenes, whom you had found as a newborn one day near the river. Unlike Bellino, he would sit at your feet for hours, purring. The white couch was worn; dust and damp covered the old stains. The smell of alcohol had faded. Mother hadn't stopped drinking, she'd just switched from whiskey to vodka.

One day, Grandma moved out.
She
did it: Lale Andersen. Without asking us, without thinking it over, she just decided that Grandma wouldn't be living with us anymore. Her new address was the Serenity nursing home in Upper Manhattan.

“They'll take better care of her there,” she told us.

Anthoula also left. We didn't need her anymore, she said, and sent her off to some relatives of hers in Astoria. She didn't care what we thought. One evening, just like that, without warning, when we came home, Grandma was gone.

“Starting today, your grandma doesn't live here anymore,” she announced.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

You went straight to the piano and began to play.

“
I couldn't bear to listen, Jonathan, I just couldn't bear it.
”
 

“Why did you do it, Mama?”

“She's protected there. Here everything's . . . everything's . . . open, open windows, drafts, noises. She'll have peace and quiet there.”

You started playing louder, Amalia, banging on the keys ferociously. Demosthenes cowered in a corner.

“
I couldn't bear to listen, Jonathan. I just couldn't bear it.
”

I felt the anger welling up inside me.

“Whatever you feel like doing,” I threw in her face, “whatever harebrained idea you get into your head, who are you to decide about our lives, who the hell are you?”

And it all came pouring out of me at once. I asked her about our father. For the first time.

“Who is he? Forget the lies you've been feeding us all these years and just tell us.”

“What does it matter?”

“How dare you? Who are you to decide what matters?”

She began mumbling something.

“He's a stranger, I didn't want it to go any further, an unknown father leaves no traces. I didn't want any traces.”

“Was he indigent? Homeless? At the Blue Mountain there was a man who called me his son, was it him?”

“I don't know.”

“Was it the same stranger with Amalia?”

“Yes.”

“Is she my full sister? Same mother, same father?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you just die?”

That was when you stopped playing, Amalia, your fingers, which had been running wildly over the keys, stopped in midair. “I'm leaving,” you said, but you didn't, you stayed there, looking down at the piano keys as if you had kept on playing.

“Why don't you just die?”

She looked at me without moving. Like a statue. As if gazing at me from afar. She bowed her head, touched her chin, and I remembered the funerary stele at the museum.

“Why don't you just die?”

She began speaking gibberish. I couldn't understand what she was saying.

“
No, Jonathan, it's not true, don't play hide and seek with your memory. Mama answered you, she didn't speak gibberish at all, she said:

“
‘I can't die because dead people don't die, I can't die because I'm already dead, from the moment I took the place of a dead woman. My family saw to my death before I was even born.'

“
That was what our mother said, Jonathan. And it was then that I stopped playing, I stood up and left the room, remember?
”
 

It's been a long time, Amalia.