The House on Paradise Street (27 page)

We found Tig lying on a trolley in A and E, looking tiny and frail, a drip inserted in her hand. A girl in a hippy skirt and floppy hair was standing alongside her – presumably Lena.

“Mum, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to worry you and my phone got lost. They said my arm’s broken. It really hurts.”

I kissed Tig gently and stroked her cheek. “What about your head? What happened?”

“I slipped when the police were chasing us and hit a car. My head was bleeding. There’s a big bump on the back.” She was trying to be brave, just as she used to when she fell over as a young child and fought her tears. I wondered if I would be able to remain calm; after everything that had happened, this felt like too much. Leaving Tig with Orestes and Lena, who both looked unperturbed by the situation, I went in search of someone who could give me some information. Eventually, a harassed-looking doctor appeared, his skin blotchy under the neon lights.

“We’re going to keep her in overnight. We need to do a cranial X-ray and she may need an operation on her arm. The ulna and the radius have multiple fractures and may need plates. You’ll have to speak to the surgeon tomorrow.”

While Tig was being wheeled around between different departments for X-rays and scans, Orestes sat with me and we talked. He was probably trying to distract me when he asked me how I was getting on with my trawl through Nikitas’ office and whether I had uncovered anything interesting about his research. My thoughts went to Danae, and as if wanting to add to my misery, I couldn’t resist asking Orestes his opinion.

“Do you think
Babas
was involved with her?”

He laughed. “No. Definitely not!”

“Why are you so sure?” I became even more suspicious. Perhaps Orestes was covering for his father.

“First, because I met her at almost the same time he did, a couple of years ago, and I tried to ask her out. She made it clear she wasn’t interested in either of us, and she said she hated older men coming on to her. It was always happening at the newspaper and it had really put her off. Anyway, she was knocked up, and about to get married to another wanker journalist. And after that she was obsessed with the baby –
Babas
told me she was really annoying because she was always late with her work and used the kid as an excuse. He definitely wasn’t involved with her.”

“She’s married and has a child?” I almost smiled. I couldn’t believe how much I had misunderstood the woman on the basis of a lipstick she must have just forgotten at Nikitas’ office. It was another reminder of how hard it is to arrive at “the truth”. So much gets lost, hidden and misinterpreted along the way.

“One less thing to torture yourself with, eh, Mondy?” Orestes must have sensed my train of thought and I felt stupid for having been so suspicious. He laughed again and put his arm around me. “We seem to be making a bad habit of visiting hospitals together. This had better stop.”

I don’t know what time it was when a technician showed me the X-rays of Tig’s skull and explained it was not fractured as they had feared. Orestes kissed me goodnight and left, while a junior doctor put a couple of sutures on the cut, having shaved a portion of the hair. Afterwards, an overly zealous nurse wound bandages all over her head and her right arm. It was the darkest moment before dawn creeps in when Tig was wheeled into a ward. I pulled the flowery curtains round her bed and slumped into an armchair. Tig went straight to sleep and gradually my knees stopped trembling. I watched the drip steadily releasing clear liquid into the plastic tube in Tig’s vein and wept from relief and exhaustion. All around were the unfamiliar sounds of a hospital at night: patients coughing, nurses bringing
medication
on rattling trolleys and the rubbery squeaks of swing doors. Lorries puffed like dragons as they arrived to unload medical supplies in the street below. The view from the window showed the grounds of the British School – the first place I had stayed in Athens as a student.

As it got light, I went in search of a bathroom and passed a room that had been transformed into a shrine. Inside, a regulation metal-framed bed was surrounded by icons, oil lamps, flowers and the photograph of a saint – an old fellow with a white beard and a benevolent expression, who had apparently worked miraculous cures when he was prayed to. Outside the door was a large icon strung with dozens of votive offerings. Each silver rectangle was stamped with the relief image of a torso, a limb, a baby, a heart – whatever fitted the prayer of the supplicant – and was attached to the icon by a ribbon. They looked endearingly innocent. How could any god resist such pretty, shiny entreaties? I entered the room and stood still and exhausted, ready to light any number of candles if that would help.

* * *

The surgeon, Mr Sadellakis, was a middle-aged Cretan with sleek black hair and eyes that looked as though they winked their way through life’s conspiracies. She required surgery, he confirmed. A plate would be inserted into Tig’s arm or it wouldn’t mend properly. He was reassuring about the injuries and had a gallant air. By the end of the visit I adored the man and had a strong desire to hug him, but, instead, I shook his hand and thanked him.

“Your daughter will soon be back at school and her arm will be even stronger than before.” Addressing Tig, he said:

“And
Despinis
Antigone, once we’ve operated, you’ll make the airport security bleep whenever you pass through.” Tig grimaced, and then smiled.

“You’ll let me know what the expenses will be,” I said, knowing about the unofficial “little envelope” required in state hospitals. Two thousand euros would cover everything, including the anaesthetist, he explained genially, putting his hand on my shoulder. He would ensure that the operation was given top priority. It should be possible to go ahead today. He opened his diary and mumbled, “Let’s see, Wednesday, December 10th…” As he said the date, I remembered with horror that Johnny was due to arrive that afternoon. I had promised to collect him at the airport.

As soon as the surgeon left, I rang Orestes in the hope that he could go in my place but his mobile was switched off. My next attempt was Antigone; she might be old, but she could take a taxi to the airport. However, Dora’s phone didn’t answer and I left a message explaining the problem without being too alarmist about Tig. After half an hour I had heard nothing, so I rang Alexandra.

“My poor little Mondy,” she cooed soothingly. That made me cry and I hid the tears from Tig by looking at the people playing tennis in the British School.

“Of course I’ll go to meet our old friend,” said Alexandra. “It will be my pleasure. And on the way I’ll come to see Tig. Don’t worry, everything will be all right. What can I bring? Food? Clothes for you?”

I was unable to answer.

“Don’t cry, Mondouly. Our little Antigone is going to be fine.” It was the first time Aunt Alexandra had used my daughter’s name.

“Can you bring a votive offering so I can say a prayer for Tig’s arm?” There was a pause as Alexandra wondered whether I was joking – I wasn’t sure myself. I turned in time to catch Tig’s eye as she furrowed her brow in puzzlement.

“There’s a saint’s room here,” I explained. “A nurse told me the icon really works.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she replied dubiously. She soon turned up however, en route to the airport, with a package of Chryssa’s little cheese pies, some grapes, and miraculously, a gleaming tin oblong stamped with the imprint of an arm.

No sooner had I got off the phone with Alexandra than two policemen appeared in Tig’s ward.

“
Kyria
Perifanis?” asked the taller, gum-chewing one. He had acne-scarred cheeks and arms that he held away from his torso like someone emulating a body-builder. “We need to take a statement from your daughter. We have reason to believe that she was involved with an attack on a police bus yesterday.” Tig said nothing, eyeing them in disgust.

“My daughter is injured and about to have an operation. She is a child.”

“She may be a child, but she is old enough to throw Molotov cocktails at the police. Someone could have been killed. We have reason to believe that she was with Orestes Perifanis, who has been arrested this morning. If your daughter can’t speak at the moment, maybe you could answer a few questions about him.” I was so shocked I could barely take in what he was saying. I noticed his pistol – stuffed in a leather holster and wedged against the beginnings of a paunch.

“Arrested?” I said. “What happened?”

They wouldn’t give much away and insisted that I confirm Orestes’ age, address and university department. I refused to name any of his friends and they left, sullenly wishing Tig “Get well soon.”

Before I had time to ask Tig for her version of events, a nurse came with some pills for her (sniffing scandal, I sensed) and Yiorgia, Orestes’ mother rang.

“They’ve detained him in the central station on Alexandra Avenue.” She used her professional tone, though when I told her about the police visit, she sounded more like a frantic mother.

“Oh, my God! I hope you didn’t say anything. You must always say you need a lawyer present – use my name. They’re saying he’s an anarchist leader, the idiots, and that his friends are part of a terrorist cell. The only evidence they have against Orestes is a film of him organising kids to sell cobblestones at 3 euros each for people to throw at the police! Can you believe it?” From the window I could see the two policemen leaning against their patrol car in the sunshine, smoking and drinking coffee from paper cups. On the wall of the British School behind them, someone had sprayed red graffiti: “A bullet shot our democracy.”

The distant parts of my life are coming ever closer, so that I now remember more about my father and brother than I do about Igor and our decades together in Moscow. My mother’s kitchen at Paradise Street and the smells of Aspasia’s cooking are clearer to me than all the Russian tastes that dominated my adult life. When I heard Mod’s message asking me to meet Johnny at the airport I was surprised, but it made sense to go and see the man I had once loved (I must forget about the hate). He has been in my mind so much recently. Circles are closing. Now, after all these years, I realise that Johnny is just another human like me, reaching the end of his road. “
Anthropos eínai
” [he’s human], as they say. What do I expect? Perfection? An angel? Of course we make mistakes, have regrets, let people down, take the wrong road. That is our humanity. It is in our nature to be flawed. People who believe they can be something more end up despots or disappointed. Or plunge to their fate like Icarus. Worst of all, they become ridiculous.

The taxi to the airport went too fast, and I arrived dizzy and disoriented, just before the first people from the London flight emerged. It occurred to me that I might not recognise Johnny. The image I had was from over sixty years ago – a blondish, freckled young man. But it would have been ridiculous to make a sign like the drivers: “Mr Fell.” I stepped back from the throng so I would have time to take a good look before I approached him, but when he appeared through the sliding doors I knew him immediately. Naturally he was old. But he still walked leaning forward, as though he was too tall, though he now had a stick. As I made to go over towards him, I noticed an elderly woman approaching him, holding out her hands in a gesture of welcome. I stopped in shock, squinting over, trying to get a better look. Johnny kissed the woman on both cheeks and she placed her hand on his jacket sleeve. My feet were rooted to the airport floor, my heart hammering and my ears ringing.

As they moved past me, my mother’s diamond roses from Constantinople sparkled at Alexandra’s ears. She was dressed in her Sunday best and her perfume was so strong it almost gave me a headache

“What a lovely surprise.” Johnny’s voice was just the same – those elongated vowels we used to mimic as children. “And still so elegant after all this time.” He was always chivalrous. I looked at the ground, not wanting to meet his eyes or to confront Alexandra. What would I say? “I’m here too?” Alexandra had not seen me since the last time Johnny was in Greece as part of an occupying force – she would not imagine that the unremarkable old woman within spitting distance was her sister. I looked down in angry bewilderment and noticed that Johnny’s trousers were thin at the knees but that his shoes shone.

“After the war I took over my father’s business, so clothes have been my business.” Alexandra put on her finest English accent. I remembered it from our childhood lessons; it had always annoyed me.

“I’ve loved clothes since I was young. But, you know, I’m a believer in Plato’s theory that simplicity is the foundation stone of style and grace.” I felt sick. Why had Mod meddled in our lives and brought Johnny back to Greece?

As they went towards the exit, I plodded after them, wondering what to do. They made their way to the taxi queue and I lurked behind, watching them talking and laughing. My sister was flirting like a girl.

“You shouldn’t be staying in a hotel. At least come back to Paradise Street first. Come and see your old home in Mets. It’s hardly changed.”

I joined the line a few places behind them and, in the muddle of different people hiring taxis, I got into the one after my sister and Johnny.

“Please follow the taxi in front,” I said, and the young driver laughed.

“Spying are we?” he said. “I don’t want to get into trouble with the police.” He laughed some more. “Do you know where we’re going, Granny?” I could hardly speak by then. I was sweating and felt weak.

The taxis took ages to get back into Athens as many roads were closed.

“You never know what might hit you,” said the driver. “They’re still smashing things up and burning them. Young people have gone crazy and you can see they’re enjoying it.” We ended up in Paradise Street – Alexandra had evidently worked her ways on Johnny. I asked the driver to park some way behind them and peered out of the window. I watched as they emerged from the car. Johnny took a case from the boot and followed Alexandra up the steps to the house.
My
house – taken by my sister.
My
friend – usurped by her, too. All through my life, she had taken what was mine. She even took my son. That was hard to digest, as they say. It makes your stomach hurt.

I paid the young taxi driver, who continued joking:

“Don’t get yourself into trouble now, Granny. This game isn’t suitable for a lady of your age.” I edged along the pavement, avoiding the low branches, until I was outside number 17. The door was still green. They had gone inside so I was left quite alone. Almost by instinct, I sat on the second step – it had been my favourite as a child. I let my fingers rest on the faint ridges in the stone that I remembered from when I used to wait for the ice man. Once, Markos had found a tortoise on Ardittos hill, under the pine trees, and carried it home. We had put it on the highest step and watched it work its way down to the pavement with surprising ease, though its shell had clunked and it had left a green slick of excrement in its wake. I sat there, thinking about these distant things and longing for my brother. He would have known what to do. A cat slunk past on the other side of the road, looking suspiciously like Misha, and yowled before continuing on its way.

My body was hurting all over and the giddiness was getting worse, so I lay my head down on the step. The fantasies of revenge I had nurtured for my sister when we were younger flooded back. I wanted to hurt her, to make her suffer for everything I had been through. After some time in that position, I heard a voice.

“
Kyria
, are you unwell?” I opened my eyes and took in the black sails of a priest’s robe. It seemed like a dream, but then the door opened and I heard a cry. I recognised Chryssa. She sat down next to me, saying my name and asking me questions. Then I heard my sister.

“Antigone?” She sounded horrified. I looked up and our eyes locked in instant recognition, though it had been so many decades since we had last met. Our mutual loathing acted on me like a dose of smelling salts.

“We must phone for an ambulance. She needs a doctor.” Alexandra was trying to take charge of the situation before it got out of hand. I suspected she didn’t want Johnny to see what was going on.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, probably not very convincingly. Raising my head slightly, I saw Alexandra, Chryssa, Johnny and the priest staring down at me.

“I would like to go upstairs to my bedroom, please. Chryssa, will you help me?” I tried to sound dignified, imagining that things would still be as they were and that I would be in the room that looked out at the pines and cypresses of Ardittos.

“But you must come into my house on the ground floor.” Alexandra spoke as though this was an entirely normal event, presumably for Johnny’s benefit.

“Antigone, it’s really you,” said Johnny, as though I might be someone else. “Look at us – we’re old!” That sounded so funny that, instead of weeping, I began to laugh. And that was how Mod found us when she arrived back from the hospital. I must have looked like a mad woman.

“Shit.” Mod sounded exhausted and looked awful. Her hair was uncombed, her clothes crumpled. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s a sort of family gathering. I was just coming in. May I come with you?”

Mod smiled faintly. “All right. I’m only here to have a shower and change my clothes. Then I must rush back to the hospital. They’re operating on Tig’s arm. I want to be there when she wakes up.” She turned to greet Johnny.

“I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there to meet you at the airport. I hope everything went smoothly.” The English people shook hands on our doorstep, making polite comments as though they were at a tea party rather than in the middle of a family drama.

“Such a good girl, our
Mondouly
,” said my sister patronisingly, addressing Johnny. “She has almost become a Greek, you know. Better than a Greek. She speaks the language so well. And she’s such a good mother.” Alexandra glanced at me.

The priest hurried off, saying he would call at a more convenient time and Chryssa and Mod helped me up the stairs, step by step. Alexandra disappeared, but Johnny followed, lingering in the doorway as I was put on a bed. Chryssa fetched me a glass of cool water and gradually I felt my strength returning.

“Goodbye, my dear.” It was Johnny. He placed his hand on my forehead. “I’ll leave you in peace and come to see you tomorrow.”

* * *

I slept the night alone in Mod’s apartment. In my home. Before she left for the hospital, she gave me a nightdress and toothbrush.

“Make yourself at home,” she said and smiled at the irony. She put me in the spare room, which contained my parents’ old bed. It was white cast-iron with brass decoration and creaked every time I moved. Chryssa cared for me, bringing me a plate of soup and sitting on the bed while I ate. We talked for a long time, telling stories of the years and decades that had disappeared. Politics meant nothing to her, she said.

“For us, the ‘little people’, it doesn’t make much difference who is in power. It’s always the little people that suffer.” She said that Alexandra had been good to her – she couldn’t complain, and it wasn’t her business what anyone voted. It was the politicians, not the voters, who were to blame for Greece’s problems. I told her I was still trying to locate my brother’s remains and that Alexandra was refusing to say what had happened.

“I know where he is,” she said. “Spiros made an enquiry and they found the grave in the Protestant Cemetery. That was over twenty years ago.” So at last, it was dear Chryssa who told me where my brother was. After that I felt a wonderful calmness and fell asleep like a child.

In the morning I woke with the first light and went to the kitchen to find coffee and sugar. Then my grandson, Orestes, walked in. He looked bewilderingly like Markos, in spite of his long hair and the beads and baubles that today’s youth decorate themselves with. He was unshaven, with dark shadows under his eyes, but he had the gleeful expression of victory on his face that I remembered from my brother. He had just been released from the police cells. His mother had sorted everything out, he said. “As usual.”

I didn’t say he was lucky to have a mother like that and he continued, saying that there would be a trial.

“But I should be OK. I’ll be luckier than you were… How many years were you put away for?” Orestes kissed me on both cheeks. I wanted to embrace him, but I held back. There’s nothing worse than an over-emotional old woman forcing herself on the young.

Instead, I asked him to explain what was going on in Athens. Why was the city tumbling into this chaos?

“What happened to make you all so angry?”

He smiled at my question and said, “If anyone can understand, it’s you. The oppression of the weak by the strong isn’t only the poor by the rich or the Left by the Right. It’s the young by the old.”

“And so it has always been.”

“Yes. But things can’t go on as they are. We’re being strangled by a system that we didn’t choose and we don’t like.” He told me that children are treated “like robots” at school. Teenagers are being suffocated by the amount of parrot-style learning they must do to pass their final school exams. Families without the money were having to spend everything they had and more on private lessons.

“We’re exhausted and disillusioned before we’re even adults,” he said. “And now we’ve reached breaking point. The system has to change.”

I told my grandson his anger reminded me of my Uncle Diamantis, who had been lucky to escape execution as a
Kapetánios
in ELAS. He had remained in prison until the early ’60s, and as soon as the Junta came to power in 1967, he had been arrested and taken to Makronisos. And there, on that dreadful island, it began all over again. Torture and the terrible pressure to sign the declaration of repentance. Just the same as in the 1940s and ’50s. He wasn’t released until the Colonels fell in 1974, by which time he was broken. Within a few months of going home, he died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-five.

As we were speaking, Orestes made coffee and put
koulourákia
on a plate. He seemed less like a revolutionary and more like a good boy, who would become a sensible family man, with his house in order. We sat together companionably and, as the coffee warmed the blood in my veins, I told him my plan.

“There’s nobody else I can ask for help.”

I hadn’t been on the back of a motorbike for decades, but Orestes let me sit side-saddle as girls used to do. The air was chilly, and I felt the warmth from his body as I put my arms around his waist. It only took a couple of minutes to reach the cemetery. A man was polishing a hearse, but otherwise there were few people around. We walked through the gates and turned right, alongside a series of offices and rooms, just as Chryssa had described. Just before a small café that was shut, we came across the ossuary. I had never noticed it in the old days – the only ossuary I knew was the tiny construction in the
graveyard
at Perivoli, where my father’s forebears had always been deposited, some years after their burial. The place in which we found Chryssa after the massacre. This one looked more like one of the filing rooms in the Moscow broadcasting centre, with rows of metal shelving running from one end to another. Only, instead of files or tapes, there were thousands of boxes, each large enough to be filled by a dismantled human skeleton. There was a sickly smell of incense, oil lamps and rooms that have been closed too long, even though the door was open.

“Chryssa said he’s right at the back.” I peered at the stacks of iron containers, each marked with a number and name, and some decorated by mourners with photographs of the deceased, candles and plastic flowers. A
snooty-faced
military man was wreathed with artificial roses, into which someone had stuck a cigarette. Elsewhere, an ELAS comrade had fresh lilies next to his small coffer, squeezed onto the utilitarian shelf. Whatever side you fought on, you ended up as neighbours in the ossuary. We continued into the darkest part of the room. Orestes looked closely, reading names and dates, which got older and more illegible.