Cartes Postales From Greece

by Victoria Hislop

Athanasia, whose name meant ‘immortality’, had grown up in the dust and noise of Athens. She loved her city and had little curiosity to see what lay outside it. This Sunday morning, however, her destination was a village in Arcadia beyond Kosmas, even higher up in the mountains. It was her father’s village, where she had been born twenty-eight years before.

  Grigoris Malavas had died when she was two years old, and she had no recollection of him. While she was growing up, he was rarely mentioned. There were no photographs, no evidence of his existence, just herself. She was the only thing left behind. When her mother had died the previous year and she was sorting out her apartment, she had noticed that the wardrobe contained nothing black, and there was nothing among her papers, not even a marriage certificate, wedding photo or a letter with their joint names.

  Athanasia had no memories of the village. Her mother had left after her father’s forty-day memorial and there had never been a question of returning, even to mark the one- or three-year anniversaries of his death. ‘His brother did what was necessary,’ was all that her mother had said, many years later. And that was how she knew there was an uncle. Though whether he was still alive, she did not know.

  And now that she was in her twenties, curious, independent and with unanswered questions (mostly unasked questions, in fact), she wanted to visit Arcadia, to see if everything that was written and said about it was true. To find out whether it really was the most beautiful place on earth.

  As she followed the winding road ever higher up the mountainside, it seemed that it was. She stopped to admire the valley below, and the view of Mount Parnonas. She inhaled deeply and her lungs almost burned with the purity of the cool, clean air.

  The landscape had inspired many paintings, but none had got close to the reality that she saw spread out below her.

  Ten or fifteen minutes passed as she drank in its beauty. There were pine trees, plane trees and, in the distance, cedars. The whole force of life was there, an explosion of nature. The trees were dense with foliage, green, yellow and gold, heavy with nuts and berries, their boughs weighed down by cheerful, feasting birds.

  Athanasia looked up and saw a waterfall cascading from a rockface to a riverbed hundreds of metres below. The powerful rush of water was the only sound. Beneath her feet lay some tiny, late-blooming wildflowers, delicate and star-shaped. She was careful where she trod.

  Time was passing. It was early afternoon but the sun was already dipping below the mountain and, with reluctance, she got back into the car. A few bends in the road later, she had to slam hard on the brakes. More than a hundred goats blocked her way. At the front there was a man, hissing and shouting at one of his beasts which had taken a detour up the side of the cliff. Following behind was a woman with shoulders wider than a man’s. She turned, and Athanasia felt the full power of her glare.

  ‘You, wait!’ said her stern look.

  In her right hand was a rod with which she goaded the animals and in her left she held a small creature by the hind legs. It looked like a rabbit. When Athanasia wound down the window, she could see it struggling feebly. She realised it was not a rabbit but a kid, its fur still matted with afterbirth, blood still oozing from its mother, who waddled in front, her new offspring already forgotten. There was no sentimentality in nature.

  Athanasia waited patiently for a lone, straggling goat to join the rest, and then drove on.

  A few kilometres later a village came into view, curls of woodsmoke rising above the whitewashed buildings perched on the summit. Stone walls caught the golden light of the sun, and she imagined the glow of warm fires inside.

  She parked under a vast plane tree in the main square. It was dominated by a massive church, whose lofty tower was the highest point in the village, and by force of habit she walked towards it, not to worship but to light a candle for her mother. Finding the door firmly locked, she crossed the square towards a row of cafés, each of which had a hundred chairs laid out on the cobbles. Their emptiness raised the question of why so many people seemed to be expected but none had come.

  The huge expanse of the square and the dominance of the church emphasised the deserted state of the village, and the cool air which had so cleansed her lungs an hour before now sent a shiver down her spine.

  In spite of the vast array of chairs in front of each one, there was only one café with an ‘Open’ sign.

  She entered, but her presence was not acknowledged by the two men who sat playing tavli. Neither even looked up. The warmth of an iron stove filled the room and she took a seat close to it and reached out with her hands, surveying the strange selection of objects that decorated the room. Eventually, she heard a final clack of the counters and the shutting of a lid, and then a man’s voice.

  ‘Ti theleis? What do you want?’

  Her mind had drifted. She was gazing at the chestnuts that were sitting on top of the fire, warming and splitting in the heat.

  ‘I would like a coffee please, glyko.’

  He silently prepared her sweetened coffee. His only other customer left the café.

  While she was waiting, Athanasia looked around her. The whole place seemed dusty. Random collections of miscellaneous objects crowded various cabinets and shelves. There was a 1950s radiogram, a camera, two hunting knives, some tattered magazines, a chipped coffee pot, a jar with some drachma coins and a framed black-and-white photo of three men. There was even an old revolver, rusty now, suspended from a hook. Every item had once had value or significance but now looked like meaningless junk. She found herself speculating about whether her father had frequented this very café, and whether any of these objects had been there during that time.

  ‘What brings you here?’

  ‘To Arcadia …?’ she asked.

  Their conversation was curtailed by the arrival of another man, with twin boys of around five years old. Before he spoke, the father was served with a tumbler of clear liquid. He drained it in one gulp before slamming the glass down and helping himself to another. The bottle had been left on the bar.

  Meanwhile, the boys, identically dressed in green nylon tracksuits, were in the corner, taunting a caged canary. One of them ran his father’s car keys up and down the bars of the cage, delighted by the tune he was making and enjoying the terror of the tiny bird inside. The other hopped from one leg to the other, rhythmically pushing the stand so that the cage rocked from side to side. Their father ignored the cacophony. With his sons occupying themselves, he could enjoy his drink.

  The broad, bearded owner put a coffee down in front of Athanasia. It was ten per cent liquid and ninety per cent the gritty sludge that lurks in every cup of Greek coffee. She drained the glass of water that he had placed beside it.

  After a few moments he returned and pulled out the chair next to her, sitting astride it as though mounted on a horse. He was skinning roasted chestnuts and threw a few down on the table, scattering the debris. She noticed a grub crawl out and winced with disgust. It seemed impossible that it had survived the heat.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  It was more of a confrontation than an enquiry.

  ‘My family – or my father, anyway – came from here.’

  The man carried on peeling chestnuts and putting them in his mouth, displaying not the slightest interest in her answer.

  ‘He died, so my mother left,’ she said. ‘I would like to visit his grave.’

  ‘What’s your family name, then?’

  ‘Malavas.’

  ‘I’m Malavas, too. Giannis. There are lots of us around here.’

  He carried on peeling and eating.

  ‘It doesn’t mean we’re close relations,’ he said gruffly, tiny fragments of chestnut spraying from his mouth as he spoke.

  ‘Where will I find the cemetery?’

  ‘Up the hill behind the square, keep walking, half a kilometre or so. Then you’ll see it on your left.’

  He lit a cigarette, stared at her until she felt uncomfortable, got up and strolled back to the bar.<
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  ‘At least you know he’ll be there,’ he said. ‘Once someone is buried in this village, that’s where they stay. Space is not at a premium here.’

  She put a euro on the table and left.

  She was glad to get out into the fresh air, away from the noise of the two unruly boys and the smoke the bar owner seemed deliberately to have breathed into her face.

  The village was dead, as before, but the landscape beyond it even more beautiful. The road to the cemetery was lined with old chestnut trees, their fallen fruit crunching beneath her feet. As she climbed, she looked out across the view. Into infinity stretched mountains and hills, in emerald and shades of gold, and the sky was cloudless.

  It was a fifteen-minute walk up to the cemetery but, when she reached it, the iron gates were wide open as if to welcome her. For such a small village, the graveyard seemed immense. The tombs were all in white marble, many with grand statues above them. They all had photographs, poetry and tributes. It was not unlike the First Cemetery of Athens. Just before her mother had died, a legendary and popular singer had passed away, and Athanasia had gone there with her to lay a flower on his grave. She had been amazed by its grandeur, so to find similar memorials with elaborate stonework in this remote region was a real surprise.

  The ‘village’ where the dead lived was considerably better kept than the one she had just walked from. It was neat, well ordered, weeded and swept. The older graves looked as if they were regularly cleaned – even those which housed people who had died more than fifty years before looked brand new. The standard faded silk or plastic flowers were nowhere to be seen. Every grave had fresh blooms, mostly carnations, roses and lilies, and she caught their sweet fragrance as she passed.

  The sense of those who had passed away being cared for and cherished was striking, as was the realisation that the dead outnumbered the living.

  Giannis Malavas was right. There were dozens of people with her family name and many with precisely her father’s name, though none of the dates matched the one on which she thought he had died. Even if it had a photograph, she would not be able to recognise it. Her mother had not kept a single picture of her late husband.

  Until dusk, she wandered up and down the avenues of graves. She was not sentimental about her father, a man she had never known, but many of the graves with photos, poetry and tributes to the deceased moved her. Half an hour into her tour of the cemetery, she was struck by the fact that every name was male. There were a few youths who had died tragically young, and several in middle age, but mostly they were septuagenarians or octogenarians, all of them men. Row after row after row.

  As the light faded, she knew she must leave. She had not found what she wanted, but she had a question. Where were the women? As she walked through the quiet streets back to the square, it seemed more relevant than ever. The women were missing both from the village of the dead and of the living.

  A few shops had opened now. She passed a butcher’s, where a man was steadily chopping; a bakery, where two men were carrying trays of loaves; and a small grocery, where the male owner was serving a skinny youth.

  It was well after seven when she turned the corner into the square. A battered car was parked there now. It was filthy, and she noticed a handwritten sign propped in its window: ‘Taxi’. It took her a few moments to realise that her Micra was no longer there. She blinked. She knew with absolute certainty that it had been underneath the plane tree, and now it was gone.

  Without hesitation, she went back into the café to ask the owner if he had seen anything. There were several other men in there now, mostly sitting at separate tables, and she felt their eyes on her as she entered. They were all about the age her father would have been now.

  She stood at the bar, waiting agitatedly for Giannis Malavas to appear. He seemed to have gone out, though all the customers had drinks in front of them.

  Finally, he emerged from the back of the café, but there was not the merest hint of recognition on his part, even though she had been there such a short time before.

  ‘My car has gone …’ she blurted out, expecting at least a little concern. ‘Is there a police station in the village?’

  The barman nodded.

  ‘Policeman’s over there,’ he said.

  It was the same man she had seen earlier, with the twin boys. He was still drinking.

  ‘But he is off duty.’

  His total indifference was alarming her.

  Perhaps she could get a friend to drive out from Athens to pick her up? Or maybe there would sooner or later be a bus to get her out of here? She was overwhelmed by the desire to leave.

  ‘Do you have a phone I could use?’

  ‘We’ve got our old payphone,’ he said, pointing to the corner. ‘But it doesn’t take euros.’

  The euro had come in just a couple of years before, but he had not bothered to adapt it.

  ‘So how …?’

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Can’t really help you,’ he said, turning his back on her.

  ‘A taxi?’ she asked, beginning to feel desperate now.

  ‘Not at this hour,’ said a man in the corner, whom she had not noticed before.

  Athanasia looked around at their impassive faces. The hostility was palpable, the air dense with smoke and silence.

  This is the population of paradise? she asked herself. She recalled the face of the only woman she had seen that day, realising that the shepherdess had been obliged to become like a man to survive. Perhaps all the others had left long ago. Just like her mother.

  Athanasia knew there was no choice. She had to get out as soon as she could.

  As the moon was rising, she began to run. Arcadia was no place for a woman.

  I could see how Eva’s story had evolved, and I greatly sympathised with its message. I wonder what will happen to her generation, who live day to day with the knowledge that so much is denied them.

  It’s quite likely that Eva and her friends will wake up in a few decades’ time, having missed the chance to fulfil their potential and having lost out on half a lifetime of opportunities. This sense of alienation is very, very strong in Greece. I could feel it in every town and city. Graffiti is the obvious expression of it, but disillusioned faces are the real human sign of it. There are millions of young people who cannot see a future in their own country. They feel as if it has turned against them. If they can, like Athanasia, they run. Perhaps Eva will do that, too, if she has the will.

  Around ten o’clock, the bar began to fill with a few other disenfranchised twenty- and thirty-somethings (maybe forty-somethings, too). All of them were well educated, opinionated, happy to practise their English, and several of them were gay (both men and women). Debate ranged from corruption to Cavafy, from capitalism to the crisis. We talked about gender and power and the dominance of the male ego in Greek society. Women are strong in Greece, but quite often members of the older generation still appear subservient to their husbands. Nobody disagreed. All of them had mothers who did all the shopping, cooking and cleaning, even if they had full-time jobs.

  Eva was busy keeping everyone supplied with drinks, but she joined the conversation every so often. The story she had told reflected her own experience, and I could sense that her anger was explosive and specifically directed towards the destruction that men have wreaked on her country. She laid the blame on corrupt male politicians who have led Greece for many decades. Given that women have not played a significant role in Greek politics up until now, there was not even a murmur of dissent.

  ‘The gods gave the Greeks this idyll,’ she said, putting down a tray of shot glasses, ‘but look what they have done with it …’

  Men and women all agreed. It’s a mess.

  ‘Stin iyeia mas! Cheers!’

  Twenty of us clinked glasses.

  We lived for the moment that night. It was pointless to do otherwise.

  The majority in the bar were unemployed but somehow still had money for alcohol, ciga
rettes and strong weed. One of them was a DJ, and at midnight started to play. The music was hypnotic and I soon lost myself in it.

  I have no idea what time we spilled out into the street. I dimly remember noticing that day was breaking and being aware that I could not drive. When they realised that I had nowhere to stay, all of them, without hesitation, offered me a sofa. I followed two bearded brothers who rented a small flat opposite the bar, and slept like a dead man until two in the afternoon. My hosts were still sleeping when I woke, so I left them a note and my email address in case I could ever return their hospitality in London.

  Before leaving town, I returned to the café, hoping that I might be able to get some coffee. Eva was there, as unsmiling as before. Her mood was the same as on the previous day, and her fury began to stir all kinds of darkness in me. Fascinating as I found her, there was an anger in her spirit that I found disturbing. She made me a strong, bitter coffee, I thanked her for a great evening and, as I left, I noticed she was furiously scribbling on a patch of wall, one of the few that still remained blank. Perhaps one day I will go back and read another of her stories. Part of me hopes that she will not still be there.

  I headed south again. I wanted to visit Kalamata. I had not been in the right frame of mind after my ‘stay’ at the airport, but a few weeks on I was ready. There is an archaeological museum there that I wanted to see.

  It’s best not to read too much about Kalamata: you would probably think twice about visiting. Books mention the port and the pimps and the prostitutes, and they refer to the exports of olives and raisins. The town may not be a place that is especially alluring for tourists, but it has a charm that people rushing through are likely to miss.

  A more complimentary description suggests that its name is derived from kalamatia, meaning ‘lovely eyes’. It could also be a reference to good luck, referring to the ‘mati’ – the eye that wards off evil. I admit that simply being there for some reason lifted my spirits.

  Kalamata has a dilapidated port, a main square about a kilometre from the sea with dozens of thriving cafés, an old quarter and even a castle. Nothing is exactly ‘picture-postcard’ pretty, but its authenticity makes up for this, and in mid-October there was a final burst of warmth before winter came.