The Secret Sister (7 page)

“
Fourteen years, Jonathan. January 2013. You're traveling to our land of origin.
”
 

Amalia, you shouldn't have . . .

“
There's no such thing as should or shouldn't have, Jonathan. Who are we to say? Who are we to change it? The destiny of the world is more important than our own.
”
 

Once or twice a week I would visit Grandma. She was growing old with a quiet dignity. Her health was good and her mind was in fine form for her age. At first, you'd come along too, but then you stopped visiting. I would go alone.

“
Grandma wanted you there alone, Jonathan, my presence prevented her from speaking.
”
 

Eight years went by. Menelaos's diner was sold to an Italian. Its name was changed from “Ellinis” to “Bella Napoli.” Once a month you played piano there and sang. Your friends would come along, Michael, too. Music won you over. You kept practicing and playing the piano. And I would sit and read for hours on end and look for a job to justify my existence. We were too old to go roller skating or ice skating, too old to feed the squirrels in the park and play hide and seek with them, too old to ask: “Mama, where do you drift off to, why won't you speak to us?” The colorful crowd was always there, in the streets, on the avenues, despite the unbearable winter cold and the stifling summer heat, the crowd was unfailingly there. Noisy and detached from our story, the crowd flooded our city, which could never embrace us in its silence. We were growing up with this unchanged crowd. It was in its company that we ushered in the new millennium. At Times Square, the universe was ablaze, thousands of fireworks embroidering the sky, “Happy New Millennium,” “Happy 2000.” We put on paper hats, we blew on party horns and waved American flags, we burrowed into the pandemonium. The sky was turning red. I saw you with Michael, he had his arm around you.

“
He was just a friend, Jonathan, nothing more, you glared at him like he was a thief.
”
 

No stranger could ever make you happy, Amalia.

“
You needn't have worried. Happiness and I never got along that well, Jonathan.
”
 

My head grew heavy. I couldn't take any more celebrations. I went home hoping no one was there. But she was there. Alone. Drinking. She offered me a glass of champagne.

“Happy New Year, son!” she said.

“Happy New Year, Miss Andersen!” I downed the drink with one gulp and went to bed.

It was January 1st, 2000. I went to visit Grandma.

In a clean room, a TV set, a table, an armchair, soon she'd turn eighty-five, there was no room or need for anything more. Every two hours a nurse made a cursory check—blood pressure cuff, oxygen tank, serum IV at the ready, urine sample cups. The dining room was on the lower floor, there was a young volunteer who'd wheel her down there, “She's absolutely fine,” the head nurse assured me. In a corner on the windowsill, among the skyscrapers, a little plastic plant pot with a flower that looked like a cyclamen stood out like a sore thumb, no doubt a gift from Anthoula, no one else came to see her. “She's almost completely silent all day long,” the volunteer said, and when I asked him, “And how about at night?” he didn't reply. I stroked her hair like you would have. She was sitting in the armchair, I couldn't tell if she was sleeping. I adjusted a lock of her white hair which fell limply to the side. She half opened her eyes and gave a faint smile.

“Amalia, is that you?” she said.

“It's not Amalia, it's Jonathan, Grandma.”

“Frosso?”

“It's Jonathan, Grandma.”

I didn't stay. Next day, the exact same thing. As soon as she saw me, she sat up in bed, and when I touched her hair, with lifeless eyes and an almost nonexistent voice, she said:

“Amalia, is that you?”

“Yes, Grandma, it's Amalia, didn't you recognize me?”

With something that looked like a smile on her lips, she whispered:

“But of course I recognize you, what a thing to ask, come and sit next to me,
canım
.”
10
 

“I put on your eyes and I caressed her, Amalia.”

“
But, Jonathan, you told the truth.
”

The turbulence persists, growing heavier. The flight attendant takes the glass of red wine that has just spilled over the white napkin that was spread on my lap. When Grandpa ate, he would always tie a white napkin around his neck. Do you remember, Amalia? Grandma also had a white napkin tied around her neck, the volunteer had just finished feeding her.

“She didn't make a mess at all,” he said to me. “We did really well.”

A few days went by and I went back to see her. It was as if there was someone else in her place. The young volunteer was waiting for me.

“She's restless,” he said, “very restless.” And then added: “She's been waiting for you.”

“Whom?” I asked anxiously. “Whom has she been waiting for?”

“You, of course. Aren't you her grandson?”

“Yes, I am,” and I asked him to step outside for a bit.

Grandma Erasmia lay there with her eyes wide open, without looking at me, and she opened her mouth and words, meanings, her broken-down regained train of thought began to pour out like the sea.

“I don't like skyscrapers, they make our souls dizzy, I never got used to them, did you know that?”

“Yes, Grandma.”

“I'd look at the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers and all these tall buildings and I'd close my eyes, and then I'd see stone houses and dovecotes and carved churches.”

“Calm down, Grandma, stop thinking now, stop remembering.”

“How easy it is to leave, easier than one might imagine . . . I'm ready now, I'm ready,
şimdi bu akşam
.”
11

“What are you talking about, Grandma? You're going to be fine, we'll go back home, Mama's waiting for you, and so is Amalia, they couldn't come today, Amalia wasn't feeling well, they're getting the house all spruced up, they're expecting you. From the moment you left, Demosthenes has lost his appetite and won't come out from under the bed, can you believe it? Everyone can't wait for you to come home!”

“Yes, yes,
evet
,
12
I know,
biliyorum kalbim
,
13
Menelaos, Frosso and Little Frosso, Amalia, Seraphim and Sakis. But they're also waiting for me: Isidoros, Avraam, Katina, Anastasia, Aglaia, Nikitas, Cemal, Hassan, Spyros. Hills covered in orange groves, fairy caves, it smells of lavender and lemon, it'll be so bright, white and red together. The sun setting in the sky, not a scorching fire.” She was gasping for breath. “Tall buildings and skyscrapers make me dizzy, you know they do, tell me that yes, you know.”

“Yes, Grandma, I know.”

“Fatma, Şehrazat, Bulent, Özgur, Onur, Tarik, Nazlı, they all want to come and see me, and Mehmet with his oud from Talas.”

“No, Grandma, no, catch your breath,” but there was no taming her tongue as she tried to get all the names in, “no,” I pressed my hand to her lips, “no,” I wet her lips with some water, “no . . . no . . . ” A torrent of names came gushing out, it would have swallowed us both up if I had let it, we would have drowned, Amalia.

A crazy child thought its mother was many mothers in one. It screamed that she had two heads. The mean one would try to eat the child, while the other was tender and compassionate. The child sang while it was being slaughtered, singing to the blood it was losing.

She suddenly stopped, exhausted . . .
Oh my God
. . .
it'll happen now
, I said to myself, and I've never been with someone at the end, I don't know how strong I am, how much I can take, how fearful I might be . . . I know nothing about myself, Amalia . . . I am here . . . but I'd like to run far away, somewhere else, to another country . . . to leave her here alone to settle her accounts with God . . .

She held onto me . . . She grabbed my arm tightly by the wrist—where did she find so much strength in that skinny body?

“Don't go,” she said, forcefully. “No one else will want to help me. Stay. Sit by me. I'm scared. Don't listen to what I was saying earlier, when I pretended to be brave. There's nobody more scared on this earth than me. D'you hear me?”

“But why?”

“Because once I wished someone dead, a loved one, my most loved. I wished for it.”

“Grandma, we've all wished that, there isn't a person alive who hasn't wished someone they loved dead.”

“But with me it's different,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because she actually died, she drowned . . . I took her place. What I dreamed came true. My daughter (love her as much as you can!), my daughter is protecting me. Let her drink, my boy, she drowns in booze and it calms her soul, my daughter's hiding from me so that I don't see her and have horrible images awaken inside me, she doesn't come to see me so as not to make me remember, it's out of kindness that she hides from me, she was only a little girl and I would hug her and she'd avoid me, it was out of kindness that she didn't want me to love her, to keep me from being sad, to make me see her as a stranger and not as my daughter and my sister both, as living and dead both, my daughter became hardhearted for my sake, it was I, it was I, well, not I, but our story, Jonathan . . . Who are we to set out to change our history? My daughter hard-hearted? Don't you ever say that again about your mother, hardness often hides kindness, we're only a toy in the hands of history, that's what we are, a toy, an insignificant little toy,
başka dünya yok
,
14
my daughter's just like her, my daughter's punishing me, have they forgiven me? Who can tell me? I didn't want to stay in Greece, I wanted to get out of there, after my sister left with Menelaos, how was I supposed to stay on in Podarades? How could I suffer a second uprooting? Soon after, the war would break out, in a war people are divided. Friends, neighbors, relatives. Nikitas would be with the good guys, Costas would be with the bad guys, they'd change their names, their clothes, their smell, their voices, the good guys would become bad guys, the bad guys would deceive us using foreign kindnesses, there'd be that smell of burning again, everything would go back to the fire, again I'd see red across the sky and I wouldn't be able to tell if it was a beautiful sunset or a fire and roofs of houses being torched, I wanted to leave, to leave. What's true, what's a lie, what's a beautiful sunset and what's a fire that burns and destroys? I'm afraid, Jonathan. The story will never stop repeating itself. That's how people are made; it's human nature not to be able to prevent repetition. That's what ‘human being' means: that which cannot prevent repetition. Even more than death, Jonathan, what I fear is repetition. So does your mother. She's learned to dread repetition too. Terror, I'm to blame, I'm to blame, fear, I'm to blame, I'm to blame, fear, I'm to blame, I'm to blame, fear, fear, fear . . . ”

“
I'm not surprised, Jonathan, given everything you've told me.
”
 

I stayed with her till the end. Grandma became lost in her delirium, mumbling words from a first language which she believed had been forgotten.
Annem seni çok özledim, başka dünya yok, kalbim sizin için yandı
.
15

Death, Amalia, isn't that death? To lose yourself in your delirium?

“
A good death, Jonathan.
”

Inside us, Grandma continues . . .

“
. . . to exist.
”
 

I can see her, Amalia, I can see Little Frosso on her honeymoon, she's onboard the ocean liner “New Greece,” carrying immigrants across the Atlantic, a newlywed, with Menelaos and her bundle with her belongings, she's said goodbye to her sister, six days later on the ship I run into her . . .

“
It's no use, Jonathan, quiet down, you can't live the death of another.
”

I can't stop, Amalia. My memory has gone off the rails. I can see the scene unfolding before my eyes: “New Greece,” 3rd class deck, June 1940.

“Menelaos, I'll just leave you for a moment, to get a drink of water, I'm thirsty, the way they have us cooped up in here, we're like prisoners in this stuffy hold, we're not travelers, this is anything but a honeymoon, I never imagined our voyage would be like this, Menelaos, I didn't . . . I'm only a little girl, Menelaos, I'm not made for goodbyes, only that one time, with the rowboat, but I had Erasmia by my side, now I don't have her, I don't want this new land, Menelaos, I want New Ionia and my sister and the flowers in little earthenware pots, I watered them every morning, I don't want to go, Menelaos, look at how the sailors and the stewards are eyeing me, and our fellow travelers with their damaged eyes, the lice in their hair, I used to wash my hair every day, Menelaos, my hair smelled of jasmine and lavender just like my sister's, by the time we arrive there the lice will have ravaged my hair, it smells like vomit on deck, everyone's throwing up, and they look at me suspiciously, ‘Who the hell are you, missy?' ‘I'm Frosso, Menelaos's wife, we're going to America,' ‘You can kid yourself all you want, missy, you're not going to America, you're going to Hell!' burning coal, I remember the fires, can you remember when you're five years old, Menelaos? I say yes, you can remember, smells outlast time, when everything has gone, all that's left are smells, there's two in particular, the smell of something burned by fire and the smell of the saltiness of the sea, it is with these two smells that I will now take my leave, to become one with them, goodbye, Menelaos, look after Erasmia for me, this is as much as I could do,
göstereyim sana, maşallah
. . . ”
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