The House by the River Read online

  Gerasimos sat up and looked at his wife in surprise. “What’s got into you tonight, woman? And how am I going to enroll them now in school? Melissanthi is nine already, and Julia’s seven.”

  “It doesn’t matter, let them be older. It’s better than being stunted all their lives.”

  “But there aren’t any other girls at the school.”

  “All the better! Maybe the others will follow our example and send their girls to learn how to read and write. The world’s changing, Gerasimos. What our parents did is one thing, and what we do is another. You’ve never done what other people do. Why start now?”

  “But what will the village say?”

  “Since when have you cared about what the village says? Aren’t you the least bit ashamed to act concerned about their opinion now? I never expected that of you.”

  “We really stirred up a mess in our heads tonight! We started with my father and look where we ended up. Anyway, school started two months ago. Leave it. We’ll start them next year.”

  “They’ll go this year. And you’ll go tomorrow to talk to the teacher. Unless you’d rather I went instead.”

  “Have some sense, woman!”

  “Am I crazy because I want my children to be educated? For them to become human beings?”

  “And all the women who didn’t go to school before now, what are they?”

  “Stunted, like me. We can’t even read a newspaper or write a letter! It’s a wonderful thing to know how to do these things. But I know why you don’t want us educated. You’re afraid of us.”

  “I know I’ll regret that I asked this, but what do we men have to be afraid of, woman, from you females?”

  “That once we’re educated we’ll be equal to you, and that you can’t bear. They told you wrong, husband, we’re not stupid. We’re more intelligent than you are, but you want to keep us down so that you’ll look better!”

  “Enough of this. Your head’s just spinning in circles tonight. Where did you hear all this nonsense you’re babbling about?”

  “Why must I have heard it somewhere else? Can’t these be my own thoughts? And if you don’t do what I said, and do it tomorrow, you and I are going to have a problem.”

  “I say we talk about it tomorrow. I’m half-dead. Can’t you see that and have some pity for me?”

  “You don’t need my pity.”

  “For God’s sake, woman, I buried my father today. Let me recover and we’ll see.”

  “There’s no need for us to see anything, and don’t put on that air of the bereaved son with me, because I know you. Nor does your father’s death have anything to do with what we’ve been discussing.”

  “Are we going to talk about this much longer? My eyes are closing.”

  “Until you promise me you’ll go to see the teacher tomorrow, there’ll be no sleep for you or me tonight.”

  “How did I get myself into this trouble?”

  “Promise me what I asked and the trouble will disappear this very moment. It’s in your hands.”

  “OK, fine.”

  “You promise?”

  “I swear to you! Can I go to sleep now?”

  “Sleep, my dear! Who’s stopping you?”

  Gerasimos threw her an angry glance, but Theodora just smiled innocently at him. She kissed him on his forehead and lay back down. Gerasimos went to say something but immediately stopped himself. He too lay down, blowing out the lamp.

  The next day Gerasimos went to see the schoolteacher. As soon as it was discovered that their daughters were going to school, a lot of the villagers came to the house to find out how it had happened. Theodora credited her husband, “who was always ahead of his time with new ideas.” Aunt Tasso smiled. She’d never married—but she understood men. “They never change their minds!” she’d always said. “But they’re easily turned around by any woman who has a mind of her own.”

  In the end it turned out that Theodora was right: a lot of the village women followed Gerasimos and Theodora’s example and sent their daughters to school. When Aspasia turned six, she followed Melissanthi and Julia, but from the beginning it appeared that, unlike her older sisters who were excellent students, she had no aptitude for learning. But she had other talents. Aspasia loved to sing and her clear voice could often be heard in the house. At school they always chose her to sing some suitable song for the festivals.

  Black clouds thickened dangerously over Greece, and rumors of a coming war with the Italians were spreading the summer that the ship Elli was torpedoed. Gerasimos brought newspapers to the house, frowning more deeply every day. In front of their children, Theodora and her husband didn’t speak about it. But as soon as they were alone in bed, she sat beside him and waited for him to tell her the news. Along with her children, Theodora had learned to read a little; she could make out the headlines in newspapers, but she found it tiring, trying to sound out, word by word, the articles about impending war, so she gave up. Instead, she relied on her husband to tell her what it said in the papers and all the news that the men heard on the radio in the local coffee house.

  Aunt Tasso, on the other hand, sat silently in her chair, her eyes fixed on the fire. She was getting old now, but she could see well enough to knit. She could hear her nephew and his wife talking on the other side of the door to their room and tears trickled down her cheeks. She had lived through another war and she had prayed it would be the last, but as things appeared, it wouldn’t be.

  The mobilization for war, when it came, took all the young men away from their homes. So the reins they’d held passed to the hands of the women, who now had their own work to do as well as the men’s. Like all the other women, Theodora said good-bye to her husband with tears in her eyes. Every time one of his letters reached her hands, she made Melissanthi read it aloud to everyone and then she took it with her to bed. In the lamplight, she read it syllable by syllable, again and again until she’d learned it by heart and then she slept with it under her pillow. In the morning Gerasimos’s letter would be placed among the household icons so that the Virgin would keep him in her mind. Once a week she had Melissanthi, whose handwriting was beautiful, write him the family news and at the end, in the uneven letters she had learned to form, she wrote, “I love you. Be careful!” Then she kissed the letter and put it in an envelope.

  She didn’t dare tell him that since he’d left home, Aunt Tasso had died peacefully in her sleep and that they had found her the next morning with a smile on her face. It wasn’t the sort of news to tell a man who was fighting on the front amidst the snow, cold, and hunger. Let him come home safely first; then there would be time to weep for the woman who had raised him with so much love and tenderness.

  News of the Greek army’s victories reached even the distant villages at the foot of Mount Olympus, and everyone celebrated. Theodora wondered to herself if any of those who were rejoicing ever thought about the cost of each one of those victories, what a toll of blood the country had paid. She wondered at everyone’s optimism and kept her fears to herself. Hitler would never leave an ally to be destroyed. How long would it be, then, before he sent his own army in, and how long would the Greeks last when they were attacked by two enemies who outnumbered them and were better armed?

  Although Gerasimos was careful about what he wrote to his family so as not to upset them, the news from the front didn’t remain hidden. Young men fought with all their strength, but the hospitals filled with more and more wounded and hundreds of men whose limbs were lost to frostbite. Hunger cost more lives. Even if the Italians were an enemy they could face, Theodora doubted the same would be true of the Germans.

  As it turned out, she was right. However much the spirit of the country remained eager to fight and win, the nation’s body—its sons—lay mutilated and wounded in the hospitals. The occupation began, and everyone knew it wouldn’t be easy. The successes of the occupiers were more or less known; other countries had already fallen and experienced firsthand this “civilized” German rule.

>   Gerasimos came home a shadow of himself, but at least he was still healthy. When the occupying German troops entered their village, everyone clenched their teeth and lowered their eyes. It wasn’t only to hide their intense fury from the strutting victors, but because all the villagers, some more than others, were ashamed that they hadn’t managed to cast the occupiers all into the sea. But they knew this wasn’t the end, that the game would be lost or won in faraway Egypt. If they hadn’t, perhaps they would have committed suicide en masse. But they knew. They found out, with some delay, that not everything was lost, however much the German propaganda tried to persuade them of the opposite.

  The occupation showed its hard face at once, but as expected, the cities had the worst of it. The news from Athens was tragic. The losses were terrible, and starvation took its toll. Adults, but more often children, died in the streets, and to add to it, reports of the torture carried out by the Gestapo in their prisons made even the most composed Greeks turn pale. The Resistance may have been proud of whatever blows they inflicted on the occupier, but they were punished with mass executions of innocent people. History would have to expend a lot of ink writing about heroism, but in the end it didn’t need to. Blood and gold came to take its place, in quantities appropriate to so much self-sacrifice, so much strength, so much pride.

  A year had passed since the flag with the swastika on it was first raised above their village. Spring advanced and colored the fields bright green. In Gerasimos’s house by the river, Theodora had hidden a few vegetables that would save the family from hunger. They planted vegetables in the garden as they’d always done, but it wasn’t certain that they would be able to put them in their mouths. Like birds of prey, men of the occupying army passed through, collecting what they needed to sustain them, indifferent to the hunger of the occupied. “Looting raids” Gerasimos called them, and Theodora agreed, clenching her teeth each time. But she couldn’t do anything except think up a thousand and one ways of securing some food for her children. She blessed her father-in-law, who had built a secret cellar, completely invisible to the unobservant eye. The house appeared to be built on a flat rock beside the river, but the old man, for some unknown reason, had used dynamite to open a big hole underneath the spot where the house would stand, capable of holding three people below the kitchen.

  There, Theodora also hid a goat and two hens that she managed, with a thousand torments, to save one day when Germans arrived suddenly at the house. She was digging in the garden, with her two younger daughters playing nearby, when Julia came running, with Arapis the dog behind her, and warned her.

  “Mama!” the child howled. “Germans are coming! I was playing with Arapis farther down there and I saw them.”

  “Oh dear! There go the goat and the chickens!”

  At that moment she remembered the secret cellar. It was dangerous, but she didn’t have any other choice. She took the animals down through the hole with Julia, telling her she could do whatever she thought was necessary to keep them from making any noise that would give them away. Then she snatched little Magdalini in her arms and went back to her garden and waited, while six-year-old Polyxeni clung to her dress.

  Four men got down from the jeep and approached Theodora, who pretended to be watering the vegetables. She looked at them with confidence.

  “What do you want?” she asked abruptly, and was taken aback when she heard the German answer in Greek.

  “Madam, we want a little food for our army, which is suffering.”

  Theodora smiled ironically before she answered him. “I’m sorry, my people are suffering too, but you should have realized we are a poor country. Anyway, there’s nothing for you to take—you took it all the last time.”

  “So what are you watering?”

  “Tomatoes. But as you see they’re not ripe yet. Do you want to eat them green?”

  “And in the house?”

  “I have nothing in the house.”

  “Please allow me to verify that personally.”

  He passed her and went ahead, but Theodora ran and reached the kitchen before him. She silently asked the Virgin to forgive her for what she did next. Still holding Magdalini, she pinched her hard and trod with all her strength on Arapis’s tail. The child and the dog protested with all their strength. Magdalini was famous in the family for her deafening cries, and Theodora relied on this to cover any sound coming from the hiding place. Frightened and prompted by sisterly solidarity, Polyxeni started to cry as well, further masking any noise.

  Pandemonium now reigned in the kitchen, with the two children wailing pitifully and the dog howling for its ill-treated tail. The Germans wore uncomfortable grimaces and their chief, having glanced hastily around the kitchen, went on to the other rooms. Theodora had nothing to fear there. Still, she could hardly breathe until they left, the dust trailing behind their vehicles. She kissed Magdalini, who had finally calmed down, and lifted her dress to see that she had a big bruise on her leg where she’d been pinched.

  “What did I do? I’m like a crazy person.” she said to herself, and stroked the tearstained face of her daughter.

  Then she remembered Julia, who was waiting, shut in the dark hole, and she ran to pull her out. Julia had tied the goat’s mouth shut with one of her ribbons while she held the chickens’ beaks together with her hands. Mother and daughter began to laugh.

  That night passed in general high spirits for Gerasimos’s family as Theodora described to her husband how their animals were saved. Not even little Magdalini cried, despite remembering the unjust pinch she’d experienced. Even Arapis forgot the injustice he had sustained but, like the intelligent dog he was, he avoided his mistress and her shoes from then on.

  When the children were asleep, Theodora took her usual place beside her husband in front of the fire. He looked at her sadly.

  “What’s the matter, Gerasimos?” she asked.

  “I saw Ilias yesterday. We fought together in Albania.”

  “I know. How is he?”

  “I don’t know, wife, but if I were in his place, I don’t think I could bear it. Once he was a six-foot-tall, strapping fellow. And now he’s stuck in a chair with the legs of his pants empty, an amputee.”

  “The important thing is that he survived and returned to his wife and children.”

  “Is that the only important thing? That this woman loved him when he stood up and now she’ll live with him, nursing him like a child? She’ll lie down in bed with half a man—doesn’t that mean anything? How will she see him as her husband again?”

  “Gerasimos, do you hear what you’re saying? That the wives of all those who were crippled by the war love their husbands less now? When I met you, I loved you because you were like the sun. You were a daring lad, but later . . . Look, no matter what life brings us, I love you. I’d love you if you had a hand missing or a leg or both of them at once.”

  “No, Theodora. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to live with missing pieces. I’d prefer death a thousand times!”

  The nail Gerasimos trod on a few months later was from the fence surrounding their house. It had been destroyed by a sudden storm, and he decided to mend it the very next day. He began removing the broken pieces, but out of carelessness, he stepped on one that had a rusty nail sticking out of it, which pierced the sole of his foot. He cursed from the pain, but he paid no attention to the wound until, instead of closing, it began to turn black and his leg began to swell. He didn’t say a word to anyone and tried to treat his painful limb by himself. He began to limp, but simply told his wife that his old, worn-out shoes didn’t protect his feet from stones, so they were hurting.

  It was the fever that finally confined him to his bed, and when Theodora saw the state of his foot, she panicked and called the doctor. When she saw the doctor’s frown, she understood that things were very serious. When all of his efforts to counteract the infection failed and he told them he would have to cut off the leg, Theodora knew that she’d lost her husband. Gerasi
mos would never allow the leg to be amputated. Whatever she said to him, she couldn’t persuade him. However much she pleaded, he didn’t accept it.

  “This time, wife, your nagging won’t have any result,” he said, smiling.

  “You think this is a time for jokes? The doctor made it clear. You’ll die if they don’t cut it off!”

  “I understood. But you know that I’ll die even if they do cut it off. Do you remember that conversation we had a few months ago, when I saw Ilias with his legs gone?”

  “But it’s not the same. You won’t be a cripple. You’ll have a wooden leg and you’ll walk with a cane like so many other people.”

  “Stop it, Theodora! Even when I just think about it I go crazy!”

  “Gerasimos, I beg you! Think about me. Think about our children. We need you.”

  “I can’t, wife. I don’t want to live as a cripple. Don’t pester me when I’ve already made my decision.”

  “But it’s mad! You can be saved and you choose death.”

  “I choose for my body to die but not my soul. If I live as a cripple, my soul’s finished. I’ll never be the same. I’ll never be the man you loved!”

  Theodora bent her head and let the tears flow. Gerasimos stroked her hair and looked at her with eyes that burned with fever.

  “You once said to me—just to see if you remember all the things you said—that it was foolish to keep words inside you that should be expressed at that moment, remember?”

  Theodora nodded her head in agreement and he continued.

  “But we’ve said them all, haven’t we? You know how much I’ve loved you, how happy I’ve been living beside you, that I’ve never regretted for a moment going against everyone and marrying you. There are no secrets between us, and no hidden feelings. So I don’t want you to cry. You’re a strong woman; make our daughters strong like you!”

  As the dirt, little by little, covered Gerasimos’s wooden casket, Theodora thought she was living a nightmare. As she stood beside the hole that gaped in the earth like a hungry mouth, with her five daughters crying pitifully beside her and the rain falling like a heavy veil, she let her life pass before her. A bright sun illuminated all the previous years. But now it seemed that there was only fog in front of her.