Signs of a Struggle

by Tony Kaplan

I call him on his phone. I tell him I will accompany the body to Athens. He hears in my voice that I will not take no for an answer. He tells me he will arrange this. The plane will take her body tomorrow.

  I walk. I need to clear my head, regain my equanimity, my oneness with the world. I head off around the point, this time heading up, to get to the summit of the headland. It’s only three or four hundred metres up, and the path, if you can call it that (probably furrowed by the hooves of goats over the centuries), is forgiving, although the gravel is loose in places and I shall have to be careful when I descend. The air is rich with wild oregano and the tang of the sea. As I ascend, the breeze picks up and is bracing. I need that. I stride purposefully and can feel my mood lightening as the muscles in my thighs begin to strain. Then I am in a gully and the wind is above me, all around is silence and wilderness. I breathe the air in deep... and let it out slowly. I detect that animals have used this place for shelter and defaecation, but the smell of dried animal dung is liberating. This is not the world of people. This is ‘away from it all’. Peace. I close my eyes.

  Something rustles in the bush near me. I jump and think ‘snake’. I scan for something slithering, but what I see is a mouse nervously emerging onto a rock from out under a grey bush. It sees me and scuttles away. My tranquillity having been disturbed, I proceed to the summit, clambering up the last part, up a natural sculpture of sandstone rock. I survey the land and sea below me. The village to my left is, I see, only two rows of buildings. Between gusts, I hear the sound of a tractor and in a field behind the village I see one farmer ploughing more or less straight lines first this way, then that. Further along, land has been cleared and levelled for what will probably be a hotel for all the tourists who will invade when the new road reaches the village. The sea, far out beyond the reach of the bay’s promontory, is specked with tufts of white surf. Right below me is a cove and an isolated homestead. Is that Agapi’s house? On the beach I see two small figures. Could that be Agapi and Eleni? Perhaps I will go and see.

  As I descend, the oppression of my grief rises to meet me, like a fog responding to inverted pressure. I get down onto the beach and see Agapi and her daughter playing at the waters’ edge and wonder if I should disturb their good humour with my darkening mood. But then Agapi looks up and sees me. She comes towards me and I plod down the sand to meet her. She walks straight up to me and enfolds me in her arms. “I am so sorry,” she whispers. I put my arms around her and feel between us, her soft breasts yielding. I hold her tight. “I’m so sorry,” she says again hoarsely, the closeness of her tears brings tears to my eyes. I sob. She holds me closer. I don’t want to let go of her. Eleni comes up the beach to us. She looks at us, worried by our distress and our intimacy. I let go of Agapi and we stand apart, I, with her hands in mine.

  “Come,” Agapi says, “I will take you to my mother. She will know to help with your… sad feeling.” She pats her heart. “The old people, they know what it is sad; they sad many times in their life. They know also from their parents,” she says, her voice now more certain. We walk to her house hand in hand. Her hand in mine feels comfortable. A good fit. No suggestiveness, no promises, just there. Eleni skips behind us, reassured.

  “Ma-ma,” Agapi calls out as she opens the gate to her yard and we go to her front door, a door built for short people. This is an old house. Her mother is peeling vegetables at the sink. “Mama,” Agapi says and holds my hand in hers out for her mother to see. She talks to her mother in a gentle tone which captures my sadness, I see in her mother’s expressions she understands that I am bereft and in need of restoration. She nods and purses her lips, then goes to a shelf and takes down a jar with some sort of grain and pours this into a pot, covers it with water and puts it on the flame. “This is kolyva, boil-ed wheat,” Agapi tells me, “It is…” she shows me, with her hand, something connecting, “Life and Death.” Her mother sprinkles in a herb which looks like wild parsley. “I don’t know what is that,” Agapi says, frowning. “Is good,” she says, “From the old peoples. Maybe, I think, it forgive all the sins.” Her mother goes to the window and opens it wide, then takes a cloth and covers the mirror on the wall. “Must let out the soul of the dead person. You must not think of yourself, only of the one who is gone,” she commentates, nodding, pleased with herself for understanding these rituals which she has known since childhood. In which she must have participated when her husband died, I think, feeling a bit guilty for the pleasure of her soft hand in mine. “The mnemosyno,” she says, “Is what we do.”

  Her mother puts a pot of coffee on the stove to heat up, sets on a plate the same sweet biscuits Yiannis and Soulla offered me and takes down a dusty bottle of brandy from a high shelf. The brandy is not often used it seems. “Nai,” she says to herself. Then she gets a glass and fills it with water and comes to me and takes my hand (Agapi relinquishes it to her mother’s ministrations) and she leads me outside. The wind has risen and howls in sympathy. The old woman looks at me through her wrinkles, looks right into me, then, with alacrity, pours the water out at my feet and smashes the glass on the stony ground. She begins to sing a lament as sad as any I’ve heard. Her voice is thin and strained and evokes from the melody all the tragedy of existence. Agapi joins in the chorus, her voice mellifluous and tuneful. Then silence, as the dirge ends and the wind is respectfully and eerily silent.

  “Endaxi,” Agapi’s mother says, turns and leads me inside. She pours the coffee and the metaxa. We knock back the brandy, the old lady shouts, “Sti zoi!” “To life!” Agapi translates. We drink our coffee and eat our biscuits, then, when it has boiled for a good twenty minutes, we all eat from the pot of wheat and herbs to bring us close to the dead and to bring them to us.

  The mother gives me further instructions. Agapi tells me I must grow my beard and not eat any meat for forty days, then I must return on the Psychosavato (which is, it seems, All Souls Day in Greece) in the Spring: “When the soul of your friend will be freed from the Underworld.” Agapi looks at me gravely and takes my hand. “You will come back in the Springtime. Yes?”

  I hold her gaze. Her eyes are luminous, a deep green. Deep enough for the drowning.

  32

  Five a.m. First light. Two men load the coffin on the twin engine plane which will fly us to the capital. The one man, the shorter one, is sombre, the other man is business-like, brisk – he does not want to be infected by the tragedies of people he doesn’t know. I have packed a spare shirt, underpants, my laptop and my toothbrush into a small bag. I don’t intend to stay in Athens long – just as long as it needs for me to see that Lucy is treated with respect; that she will be taken care of. I need more time to say goodbye. I have left my razor behind. I shall grow my beard as directed by Agapi’s mother – then my grief will be there for the local people to see; they will be able to share my grief if they are moved to.

  In the plane I sit staring straight ahead. The coffin with Lucy’s body is on the floor at the back. I had to step over it to get to my seat. Her body is so close. I do not look back.

  When we land in Athens, a police van is on the tarmac and the coffin is transferred with minimal perturbation. I am allowed to sit in the back of the van on a side bench. An expressionless police woman sits with me. The body is transported to the mortuary, a grimy building in a narrow cul de sac near Syntagma Square. They wheel the coffin through thick plastic curtains into the neon beyond. I am allowed to go no further. The officer in charge is respectful, but firm on this.

  Suddenly she is gone. The finality sucks something out of me, as if I am stuck in a gasp. I feel cold, a sense of derealisation, as if I am watching myself in a movie about a man who has lost his love and with this, his future has suddenly and irrevocably shifted.

  I go off and find a hotel and check in. I get a cup of coffee sent up to my room and phone the Australian Embassy, where eventually I get put through to a cheery sounding woman, whose voice drops when she hears what I tell her. We arrange to meet at eleven. Of course, they will
do what is necessary. I pass on the information from Irini about Lucy’s relatives.

  I look out at the street below. People going about their business, unaware of my misfortune. The people on the pavements divide into those who bustle and those who move with practiced slothfulness. Athens. Where my father was born, where no doubt some of his family still live. Poor Lucy, no family to be with her, no one to collect her body. If I died, who would come for me? There is only Irini. Like Lucy, I have lost the trace of my family.

  I wonder if I have family still living in Athens. I remember my father had a sister. If she is still alive, she would be in her sixties, or even older – she was his older sister I seem to remember. I doubt whether either of his parents are alive, although it is possible. Suddenly – perhaps it is the surge of my grief – I want to connect to the family I have never met. I want them to know me. I want to find out about my father – what he was like as a child, as a student, as a son or brother – to bring him close, to understand why I have never met this family in Greece, why my father left, why there was the rift, the casting off, the rupture that ruined my mother. I want restitution for my losses.

  The Receptionist of my pension is very helpful. I give her my father’s surname, Xanakis and she sets about making calls as if finding my long-lost Greek relatives is the most important duty of her day. She will help to reclaim me for Greece. She finds three Xanakises listed – Spiros Xanakis, Fotini Xanakis (both at the same address – probably married) and Anastasia Xanakis – am I making it up, or do I remember my father joking about having a sister called Stacey? It could be her. The Receptionist calls her number. No reply. She tries the other numbers – no reply from either of them too. I tell the Receptionist my father’s full name and when he left Athens, she agrees to call the numbers again and make the necessary enquiries. I thank her and go to meet the woman from the Australian Embassy.

  Who is as tall and athletic as the stereotype will allow, another version of handsome. I explain that we can’t find Lucy’s passport. “It doesn’t matter,” the official says, “We know she was in the EU. As long as she was positively identified…” (I nod)… “that’s good enough. We have to deal with these kinds of situations sometimes. It’s tragic.” She is, I feel, over-solicitous, the sympathetic tilt of her head exaggerated and wrong on her muscular neck and body. But I am happy to have someone who will now take care of the practical details of, what the lady from the Embassy terms the “disposal of the body”. She cannot be buried in Greece legally, she tells me. Once the autopsy is completed, the “deceased” will have to be transported back to Australia, paid for by the Embassy, so I have no need to worry (with a light touching of my arm to console me). As I hand over the paper on which I have written the details I know of Lucy (mostly from Irini), I feel a lightening, a letting go – and with it, another surge of grief. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” the woman from the embassy says, as she sees me welling up. I fight back my tears and grit my teeth.

  “You’ll make sure they do the autopsy properly?” I ask the official sternly. “They may try to cover up that she was killed. She didn’t commit suicide.”

  “Of course we will. We’ll get the report and have one of our doctors back home check it over. No worries. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” she reassures me.

  But will they? One thing is for certain: even if it takes me forever, the person or people who did that to Lucy, who took such beauty from the world, will not escape justice. I will make them pay.

  I get back to the hotel in a grim mood. But as I enter, the Receptionist beams at me and comes out from behind her counter to announce that she has found my aunt, because it turns out that my memory served me well – Anastasia is my father’s sister, a spinster who lives by herself just the other side of the new stadium – in Pangrati - on Markou Massourou, a beautiful street, the Receptionist tells me with breathless enthusiasm. She too has a relative who lives on that very street! It is not far, but I will need a taxi which she can call for me. My aunt has said I can visit, but that I should come before three p.m. which is when she has her sleep. “She is retired lady, who has certain illnesses,” the Receptionist tells me as if confidentially – it seems she had a long conversation with my aunt (as I must now think of this phantom of a Greek lady). “She speak very nice. Educated,” the Receptionist pronounces reverently and nods, as if letting me in on a secret.

  The taxi takes me to a neighbourhood which is more old-Greece than new, although I notice some trendy coffee bars and galleries too. Markou Massourou is a steep tree-lined street, with three and four storied buildings clamouring for space, the upper stories visible above the flowering bougainvillea. The smell of jasmine is piercing and fresh. My aunt’s home is older than its neighbours, the paint on its outer wall flaking decorously, the newer yellow revealing its earlier progenitor, a pale cornflower blue, like a lady come down in the world, her dress torn, her slip showing. The house has evidently been sub-divided, and I have been told to ring the bell marked 36C.

  I hesitate before stabbing the black button tentatively, then I press again more vigorously – if she is old, she is probably deaf. I hear beyond the green door muttering and complaining (at my impatience?), then a vent in the door at eye level opens, curious dark eyes glare at me, the vent closes, there is the clatter of locks and bolts being undone and finally the door opens, and then suddenly there she is. The portal to my Greek heritage.

  My aunt is, to my surprise, tall. She must be nearly six foot, as tall as me at least. With a proudly thrusting breast and a square jaw - a woman of substance. Her hair, pulled back off her face, is still black but with streaks of silver. Prodigious nose, generous lips pursed in expectation of judgement. Her ears are large but well-shaped. Her eyes are like mine. Like my father’s. It is startling. She is my family, clearly my father’s sister - my aunt.

  She examines my face and evidently satisfied, she ushers me into the dark hallway and closes the door behind me, first glancing at the street outside, to see to whom she will have to explain my arrival, who of her neighbours will be curious. Then she navigates the stairs to her apartment. I see now she is using two walking sticks and her progress is slow and uneven. It did not take her long to answer the door – she must have been waiting for me. (Perhaps the Receptionist at my hotel let her know I was on the way. I must remember to thank her for that consideration.)

  My aunt’s apartment is as cluttered as a second-hand furniture shop in Bethnel Green and as eclectically appointed. The bookcase is overflowing and on a venerable table in the centre is a display cabinet with the outcome of an encounter between a taxidermist and a fox, the animal’s teeth bared in an ironic grimace. My aunt clears a space for me on a sumptuously stuffed couch. The room is pervaded by the smell of cooked onions and camphor. There is a small yellow bird in a cage against the far wall. It tweets, flusters, tweets again and then goes silent. My aunt sits herself down in a well-worn armchair in the light and breeze of the French doors to the balcony on which I glimpse a forest of pot-plants. She retains her sticks. Her knuckles reveal disfiguring arthritis, which I suddenly worry may be a family affliction that my father died too young to reveal. My aunt is nodding her head contemplatively.

  “So,” she says, “You are Petros’s boy.” Her voice is steeped in brandy and cigarettes.

  “Yes, Petros Xanakis was my father,” I say.

  “Milate Ellinika? You speak Greek?”

  “No, I’m afraid not,” I apologize.

  “Mmm,” she says, weighing me up. “What do you know of us - your Greek family? What did he tell you?”

  I explain that my father told my sister and I next to nothing about his family, or why he left Greece.

  “You have a sister? Petros had a daughter?”

  I tell her about Irini.

  “Irina was our grandmother,” she says. “Wait,” she says and gets up with effort and goes to the heavy, dark-wooded sideboard. I see her reflected in its facetted mirrors. She rifles in a drawer and comes bac
k armed with a bunch of photographs, places them on the table and sorts through them until she finds what she is looking for. She hands me the yellowed photograph – two elderly people, the man grim-faced, the woman smiling gently. My aunt taps the face of the smiling woman. “Your great-grandmother, Irina,” she says curtly. I stare at the picture, looking for resemblance. The wide forehead of the man? – he must be my great-grandfather. The rounded cheeks of the woman? – my great-grandmother.

  I feel a cloud of sadness rising up to cover me like a blanket. Then I feel anger welling up. How come my father never showed me pictures of my Greek family? How come they, his family, did not try to contact us, especially after my father’s death, when they knew our address? My aunt, it seems, did not know about the existence of my sister – or is it that she has she forgotten? Or that she wasn’t interested?

  I get up uninvited and go to the table and examine the other photos of my family – the family I have not known, who have not known me.

  “Dhomas - you - you are named for your father’s great-uncle, a friend of Venezelos,” my aunt says, coming to stand at my side. Her tone has softened. She recognises my distress. She shuffles the photos. “Here,” she says, pointing to one of three middle-aged men in black suits. “The brothers. The one in the middle is your great-grandfather. The one on the right is Dhomas.” The black and white photograph is remarkably preserved, precise. Dhomas Xanakis, my namesake, looks back at me, his thin face condescending, learned. The eyes are unmistakably mine. My great-grandfather is severe. The youngest brother is almost cherubic, smiling ruefully. “Come, you sit down. I will tell you about our family.” She calls out a name peremptorily and a teenage girl appears out of what must be the kitchen, carrying a tray, with a teapot, biscuits and plates. The girl smiles shyly at me as she places the tray down. “The daughter of next-door,” my aunt says, “She helps me and I give her lessons.”