A Room in Athens

by Frances Karlen Santamaria

  As in Italy, no one in Greece thinks of masking a direct stare. People constantly ogle one another in what Americans or North Europeans would consider the rudest way. They stare as openly as small children, sometimes superciliously, or appraisingly, or ridiculing; sometimes they are merely curious. I didn’t like it, but I was beginning to get used to it. Sometimes I stared back. But tonight I was mostly puzzled. Did I look that strange? Why were they so interested in my pregnancy? Nowhere else in Europe had I gotten quite such a reaction. I remembered the makeshift maternity clothes the girls wore and something Miss Elleadou had said about a pregnant woman’s friends having to shop for her. I realized then that a Greek woman’s pregnancy is truly a confinement, and she probably never leaves her home. With my odd American maternity clothes and nine-month pregnancy, I must have been a strange sight indeed, walking with my husband, both of us unconcerned and casual. My appearance had evoked a rustle of whispering on my right, and I reached for Arno’s hand.

  The music had stopped as the dancers took a break. More and more people noticed me and began to whisper and stare.

  “What’s wrong?” Arno asked as my grip on his hand tightened.

  “They’re all staring at me, and besides I can’t stand up much longer. Let’s go.” And I followed him blindly out of the crowd, both proud and angry.

  We strolled back to the harbor, happy that we had seen the dancers, but unaccountably the incident at the square had dampened my mood. The city was brightly lit; from tavernas came music, and sailors walked up and down streets. From the square we could hear the orchestra take up again. As we neared the waterfront where we had left the car, the tavernas began to look tougher, the buildings poorer. We drove past the warehouses and back to Athens. On its hill, the Acropolis was lit up; in Athens, the streets were jammed, the traffic careening without comprehensible rules or order.

  Later that evening, Arno disappeared into our bedroom, lay on the bed for an hour, smoking. When he came out, he said, “I think I may have an idea for a novel.” We talked for awhile, and he sat down and began to type. It was as casual as that. An hour later, he had his first chapter sketched out and handed it to me to read.

  That night I dreamt of ewes and lambing. I awoke at seven the next morning, uncomfortable with the first contractions of my labor.

  Chapter II

  Birth

  TWO O’CLOCK THAT MORNING FOUND US BACK AT THE CLINIC FOR THE THIRD TIME in a day. A sleepy Marina let us in, and Madame Kladaki entered her office from her home upstairs. The contractions had been coming about every five minutes for many hours. I had been up since seven the previous morning and I was tired. Despite my panting bell-curves, the contractions were becoming decidedly unpleasant.

  After the examination, Madame Kladaki spoke to us in the waiting room. It looked lonely in the half-dark, and reminded me of the first night we had come looking for Madame. Was it only a week before?

  “Madame,” she said slowly, “you are still not ready, and this could go on for some days yet. You must try to sleep. Would you like to stay here overnight?”

  I could feel the unlit rooms around me. A sense of uneasiness troubled me as I considered it. What could I say to anyone? What would I tell Marina? In what tongue? The lights would go out and I would be alone in Athens. The long stretches of speechless time would seem as desolate as those bleak Sunday afternoons in November of my childhood: litter blew, the wind was raw, and no one was about. Like a child groping for a larger hand, I thought of the little apartment; there was warmth there, light; we could talk, joke, have coffee together. “No,” I said. “I’ll go with my husband.”

  “Madame,” she said kindly, and I realized I had gotten her out of bed for nothing. “Go to sleep between your contractions. You must. You will need all your strength for your childbirth. Come back tomorrow morning.”

  I sat back and began to feel sleepy and warm as she talked on rapidly to Arno. He, too, was beginning to look tired.

  “Monsieur, look,” I heard her say. “See how relaxed she is now. She is not having pain. Go home and rest, then. Bonne nuit.”

  We drove back home. But as soon as we got in the door, I felt the tensing of contractions. It was as if Madame Kladaki’s presence had soothed me and now I was away from her spell. Once again, the discomfort was veering toward pain. I tried to pant myself over the contractions. Arno became impatient. “It’s in your mind,” he said. “You were fine fifteen minutes ago at the clinic. Try to relax and sleep.”

  He went to bed. I, too, tried to sleep, but couldn’t. I got up and walked around the rooms. At dawn I was too exhausted to pant well anymore. I had been doing it too long. Almost twenty-four hours, every five or seven minutes apart. As the first gray light filtered down the airshaft I thrashed on the couch in the living room, trying to control what were by now no longer contractions, but real pains. It was like being torn apart. Fortunately, they didn’t last long at a time. But there, rolling and biting my hand, I knew I had lost control. I had worn myself out on the small stuff. (I later discovered that just as there were three stages of labor, there are supposed to be three kinds of breathing, too.) Now, when I needed control to pant myself over these stronger waves, I had no reserves. I tried each time and failed. Tears came. For a few moments I slept and woke. Arno’s voice came sleepily from the bedroom.

  “Relax. Try to sleep. She said you were okay.”

  Then silence. Heavy breathing as he fell asleep again. I would try, then felt angry. Again I caught a moment’s sleep, was awakened when the next wave started. Pain. Pant. Sleep again, and wake in a flash of fear as the pain gathered. Pain. Pant.

  Perhaps I should have stayed at the clinic. The room looked gray and dirty in the semi-light of the shaft. Now I began to feel afraid as each successive contraction started its inevitable curve. Easy. Gentle at first. Then gathering force. Then full strength. I was caught. The more I feared, the more tense I became, the worse the pain. I rolled around and gritted my teeth.

  Finally, it was day. A cool, rainy morning, the kind we both loved. I barely saw busy Athens as we drove to the clinic. Arno seemed to be watching me from behind a pane of glass. He took a seat in the waiting room convinced that we would once again be sent home. Instead, I was told I was to go from the examining table directly to the delivery room. We waited for three new infants to be wheeled out of the delivery room, which was also the nursery, and into Madame Kladaki’s office.

  A girl, in tears, sat and watched me. She said in English, “I am so tired. I have been up all night, too.” Then she sat back, drawing in her breath with a wince and passing her hand over her already disheveled hair. I remembered having seen her in the waiting room during the past week, a neat, well-dressed, attractive girl. Now she looked like some other version of herself. “They told us we would not have pain,” she said. “But I can’t do the breathing right. I don’t know why. Miss Elleadou said I will have my baby this afternoon, after you.”

  With those words, it was real for the first time. The baby. At the other end of this, whatever was coming. I had wanted it for five years with a passionate yearning. I had had it in fantasy more than once. Now it was real.

  Three squalling, black-haired infants were wheeled past us.

  For the first time, I thought briefly, “What do you do with a baby?” I saw Arno staring at the tiny cribs.

  Then Madame Kladaki called me into the delivery room. Miss Elleadou had come. She greeted us. “Monsieur,” she said, “you can come in later. But first there is labor and the breaking of waters. I hope your wife had much sleep. You saw the film of a birth, yes? Did you not?” Arno shook his head. “Oh! Well, I forgot, then. But you can come anyway, later.” I had only a moment to think how familiar that response was getting: the door closed on him, and I was alone with the two women in their white coats.

  Madame Kladaki smiled radiantly on me. Between the end of one great contraction and the start of another, I realized that when I left this room, I would never again be the same
. A mother. No longer just myself.

  They asked me to get on a table. While they were examining me I saw, across the large, light room, the delivery table, which would soon change my life. It looked strange with its odd angles and slopes and stirrups. It looked a little ominous, a little obscene. A fantasy machine. Like children’s ideas of elaborate torture equipment. I had no fear of it. I just wanted to get on with it all. Embrace the equestrian slab, go through the ancient ritual guided by the two Greek women—and know the glory on the other side.

  I already felt I knew the baby through my dreams. He was a curly-haired boy. Dark, like his father. On his first day of life he had asked me to distinguish for him the difference between hot and cold, light and dark. And I had groaned, laughing. In another dream I had known him by his tiny heels which were like two great pearls inside of me.

  I had read of natural birth when I was thirteen, babysitting for a cousin. I had since read many rapturous accounts: women who had Bach playing in the delivery room, whose babies had come with a burst of sunlight through a window. They all agreed it was the hardest work they ever had to do, but the thrill of the crowning, the marvel of the birth—glory, glory, glory. Now it was to be mine.

  My dearest friend45 had had a boy, my godson (a natural birth), shortly before we left America. Her husband’s excited voice on the phone giving me the news: “I saw her right after—she was dripping sweat, looked as though she’d just come through seventeen rounds with Sonny Liston.46 And all she wanted in the world was a cheeseburger, said she was starved.” I remember her own description. “Kid, it was like trying to shit a watermelon. That’s the only way I can put it. If I could make it sound nicer, I would. After a month you forget. Besides, you have the baby.” Well, it must have been Shirl’s outlook, I thought. She was frail, too, and I was so much stronger and wider-hipped than she. For myself, I was committed to sunlight, Bach, and poetry, with my husband there to share the joy.

  Miss Elleadou was telling me to pant. She flapped her hand up and down, faster and faster. I couldn’t keep up. And the sensation took its subtle turn from contraction—the tightening of a winch—to pain, at the moment when I broke stride. She pushed me on with her pumping hand.

  “Faster, Madame, faster.”

  Finally, I began to pant like an animal, through my open mouth. It felt better, more natural, and I could just about keep up. Miss Elleadou looked at me with surprise.

  “It’s easier for me,” I explained.

  “Oh, no, Madame, you are not doing it right. You must close your mouth.”

  I appealed to Madame Kladaki. She said something sharp and quick to her assistant in Greek.

  “You may breathe your way, Madame,” said Miss Elleadou, but she looked piqued.

  Madame Kladaki probed, and there was a sudden rush of warmth and wetness. The water had broken; the baby would not be long now. Someone was sent to get my nightgown from Arno. They helped me to change between the pains, which came now every minute or so apart. When Madame Kladaki asked me to, I walked across the room to the delivery table.

  Both altar and offering; the feeling is one of the greatest submission. There are no choices; there is only one way. Yield. Render up. Rend. Be rent.

  They put the sterile leggings on me. Now there were several nurses, too. Madame was giving orders rapidly, almost angrily. The nurses ran, bit their lips. Yet whenever she turned her crisp, black head and faced me, she smiled and spoke in the slow, careful French.

  Miss Elleadou moved in close and began to give me instructions. To the rhythm of that flailing hand I panted bell-curve after bell-curve. The pains—call them contractions—grew stronger and stronger, closer and closer together, until there was almost no respite between. They put my legs into the stirrups. I was no longer clear-headed.

  “Your husband is here,” said Miss Elleadou.

  “Votre mari, Madame,” smiled Madame Kladaki.

  I looked up. He was coming toward me, smiling at me, a little wanly. He had been given a white coat to put on. He stood beside me. They handed him an oxygen mask and told him to hold it to my face when Miss Elleadou gave the word. I was beginning to want desperately to bear down. The urge was overpowering. But Miss Elleadou was saying, “No, don’t do it.” When I felt the urge, she said, I was to gasp the oxygen and then blow out slowly, as though blowing at a candle, as I had practiced. I was to bend the flame with a slow, steady stream of air, not to put it out. It was like trying to hold back a flood. My body was bearing down, and here was I, small and way up here, the something in my head giving orders to stop a flood, hold back an avalanche. Arno held the mask up and I grasped it and tried to blow slowly, remembering the candle. And Miss Elleadou was saying, “No, no, no Madame. That is not quite right. You don’t want to blow it out. Slowly.” Again the tremor, the upheaval. All I wanted was to go with the tremendous force that was sweeping downward and saying push, push, push.

  Arno gave me the mask. It was all getting out of focus. Sweat was pouring down my face. His starched jacket and comforting warmth were against my side. Then I felt the slight tremor in his hand as it held the mask. His eyes, watching me, were intense and concerned; they had gone very gray and his face was pale. The next time, his hand was trembling more. Because we had not seen the film Miss Elleadou had promised but failed to show, neither of us had any idea of what to expect.

  “Do you mind if I leave?”

  “No, no. Go.” I couldn’t worry about him too. It was well that he went.

  The details slip me now; what happened, when. Suddenly, a bar appeared over my head. Once last week, Miss Elleadou had called Marina into the examining room and asked her to show us how the bar was used. Marina had looked at Arno and giggled; finally, with embarrassment, she had hopped on the table and grabbed the metal bar and chinned herself until her head appeared over it. It had looked awkward and difficult, and she had been sweating. Like a trick in gym. Now, Miss Elleadou was telling me to grab the bar. The great pressure came again. I gathered through the cloud forming in my head that I was to chin myself, and now I was to help the bearing-down pressure. I grasped the bar and tried to pull myself up. It was awkward but the best I could do.

  “No, no, Madame. Hold your elbows this way.” I was chinning. The pressure inside me was terrific—fifty pounds, I remembered reading somewhere. My legs, held in the stirrups, were swaying. “Madame, hold your knees still.”

  “I can’t. It’s not me—it’s those things, those stirrups.”

  Over and over again. With each wave I was given a breath of oxygen, told to pull up, chin, bear down. Watch your elbows point right and don’t let your knees move. It was like being in dancing school again. It all seemed inappropriate. I didn’t care if I wasn’t graceful right then. Why should Miss Elleadou? What was all this, anyway? I’d never heard of it.

  “Madame!” There was an edge in the voice. “You are not doing it right!”

  I could barely see as the sweat rolled over my eyes. My hair was wet. Sonny Liston and the seventeen rounds Billy had said. Madame Kladaki, still giving orders, was down there. Miss Elleadou was up here by my head like a mosquito.

  Suddenly, Madame Kladaki said softly, yet with great excitement, “Madame, la tête de votre bébé!”47

  The crowning! At last. How much I had read of this moment. When you can see your baby’s head. They held a mirror up so that I could look.

  “Est ce que la tête?” I asked.

  “Ah, oui, Madame.”48

  I stared and stared. It was no recognizable head. Just some folded wrinkled skin with a bit of fuzz on it still deep inside, an inch wide, maybe two inches long. How could that be a head? What was wrong? What was the matter with me? Why was nothing turning out? Why wasn’t I thrilled, happy? I had willingly sent my husband away, and I didn’t even care. I was glad to be alone here. I heard a low groan and knew it was my own. And then another. The first break in the silence, the only time I had had to make a sound.

  Now the work began in earnest. Miss
Elleadou giving her instructions and correcting, Madame talking to me in French. The chinning went on and on. I felt half-conscious, going through the paces whenever Miss Elleadou gave the word; chinning up, trying to avoid Miss Elleadou’s irritation by remembering to think of elbows and knees. Wave after wave of earthquake hit me, pushed. As I was up there hanging on the bar I was told now to bear down hard and harder still. My teeth were bared, eyes screwed up in an agony of effort. My head must have looked like the skinned heads of the little lambs that were in so many store windows. I had left the human world. There were people around me, strangers, but I was no longer of them. Shirl was right. It was a watermelon and it was tearing me apart, and in another moment my flesh would rip. Vanity in extremis—face ugly and contorted, look awful; glad Arno gone.

  It would be soon, Madame said. Another few times up on the bar. I registered her as she watched my head become inhuman for the fifteenth time. The greatest pressure I had known was upon me. My teeth bared again. And then, suddenly, I knew that the child was being born. I didn’t know what language I heard it in. I know Madame was telling me to look. My senses half-out, I saw it—dimly—pulled into life, gray and purple like a cabbage; a collapsed balloon of an infant, hardly recognizable as human. “Garçon,” I heard. “Boy.” “You have a boy, Madame.”

  Within seconds I saw Madame Kladaki cut the cord and heard him cry. It was over. That was mostly all I could think. I knew that I was glad, but I could feel nothing. I watched with a kind of distant curiosity as he was bathed. From the table I could see that already he had become remarkably pink and fleshlike. His tiny legs waved, and at the end of his legs his feet looked enormous. I remembered how I had joked with Arno as we drove, about having a large pair of feet in my chest. He lay quiet, whimpering only occasionally as he was dressed and drops put in his eyes. Someone had to learn the solitary word “Boy” and run to tell my husband.