by Lena Manta
“Of course! Even though, from what people say, Angelos left some letter for his mother. The important thing is that Mrs. Flerianos found Melissanthi, and Melissanthi did what was asked of her . . . she was probably forced to. Of course nobody expected such an outcome.”
“That must be why his mother was unhinged. And Melissanthi?”
“Melissanthi was devastated, naturally.”
“But you were there to comfort her.”
“And I’ll accept Angelos’s child as my own.”
The last sentence found Christos unprepared. His eyelids began to tremble while the blood rushed to his head and dyed his whole face red. He jumped up as if he’d had an electric shock. “Apostolos!” he shouted.
“You’re the only one who will ever know all of this. I have complete trust in you, which is why I’ve revealed it to you. The child who’ll be born tonight is Angelos’s, but it will grow up with my name.”
“Are you crazy? Things like that don’t happen!”
“The fact that I’m here, beside my wife who’s giving birth, shows quite obviously that everything can happen. I couldn’t offer the joy of motherhood to the only woman I’ve loved in my life; the least I can do is to embrace the child as my own.”
Christos suddenly sat down beside Apostolos, exhausted. “It’s a great burden you’ve placed on me tonight, my friend,” he said softly.
“I know, but I know you can bear it, otherwise I’d never have told you. I needed to talk to someone and you are the only one, for decades, who has stood beside me through good times and bad.”
“I imagine that Melissanthi is aware that you know everything.”
“She wanted to tell me the truth right after Angelos’s suicide, but I didn’t let her, just as I didn’t let her tell me the truth about the child.”
“Why?”
“Because it would be easier to go on if I pretended I didn’t know. If we’d reached the point of talking about all this, afterward she wouldn’t have been able to stay with me, and I didn’t want to lose her. Of course she wanted to leave when she found out she was pregnant, but I didn’t let her.”
“You are a man to be admired.”
“I’m to be pitied, Christos, but I don’t regret any of it. Melissanthi is my whole life. If I had let her leave, it would have been like committing suicide.”
“In the end this woman leaves her mark on whoever she passes.”
“Yes,” Apostolos agreed. “I completely understand why Angelos blew his brains out when he lost her. I believe I’d do the same.”
“So what happens now?”
“Now? I told you: the child is mine, it will have my name and be my legal heir. So I will have made my Melissanthi secure.”
At that moment the nurse came out smiling and announced to them that Mrs. Fatouras had given birth to a very healthy little boy.
The child’s arrival was like a brilliantly shining sun that lit up Melissanthi and Apostolos’s life. The infant held his father’s heart in his microscopic hands. Indeed Apostolos seemed to have lost interest in everything else. His entire world was transported to the baby’s room. He sat beside him for hours on end, watching him as he slept. When Melissanthi nursed him, Apostolos watched in ecstasy; when she bathed him, he was always there and insisted on drying the tiny body with reverence.
Apostolos’s circle of friends greeted the news that old Fatouras had acquired an heir with a slightly skeptical attitude. But they put their cynicism aside when they saw how much the child had changed him, how much it had given him new life. Full of pride, Apostolos showed off the baby, taking him for walks in his stroller, and later he took him to the factory, despite Melissanthi’s protests that a place where they made cigarettes wasn’t the best place for a small child. Her husband had truly changed—Melissanthi saw it herself. His stooped shoulders had straightened, his face had regained some of its former brightness, his disposition seemed younger, and his laughter, loud and clear, was heard much more frequently in the house, almost always provoked by some accomplishment of the child.
The couple baptized their son before he was a year old. Apostolos wanted to give him a neutral name or perhaps name him after Melissanthi’s father. But Melissanthi was insistent: the child would take the name of the man who had embraced him and vowed to bring him up with love.
Whenever little Apostolos smiled at her, Melissanthi was almost in pain. She saw Angelos come to life in front of her eyes. The child’s blue eyes and some of his expressions were exactly those of his father. Fortunately everything else was just like his mother and so they’d avoided certain comments that Melissanthi trembled to think of. Every day she thanked God for what He had given her and begged Him to forgive the sins she’d committed. Every day she was more afraid, as if she was waiting for lightning to strike from above and burn her. She blamed herself not only for Angelos’s suicide, but for Apostolos’s attitude, as if it were she who had obliged him to do what he did, as if she had suggested that he accept her actions and the result.
Little Apostolos grew up surrounded by love. The only thing that concerned his parents were his frequent colds, which were usually accompanied by a dry cough that no doctor could diagnose. In the end, they concluded that the boy had some allergy. At school it was apparent that he’d inherited his father’s mathematical brain, capable and very clever. When he announced that he wanted to be an architect when he grew up, Melissanthi put her hand to her mouth to stop herself crying out, and Apostolos shivered, but being the cooler headed of the two, he praised the child for his lofty ambitions and assured him that he’d have every help in his studies.
That afternoon the three of them had gone for a drive to Kifissia to eat ice cream. Little Apostolos was playing with some children a little way off. When Melissanthi saw her son fall, she imagined he’d tripped and waited for him to get up by himself. It was a rule with her not to go running in a panic at every small accident the child had, as she saw other mothers doing. He was a boy; she must learn to contain herself for his own good. She wanted him to be a true, strong man. But her heart stopped when she saw the child lying motionless on the ground, and the other children gathered around him shouting in fear. Without breathing, she ran to where he was and knelt beside him. She lifted his head and shouted his name loudly, but his pale face remained motionless, his eyes closed. Melissanthi howled his name again with all her strength, but the person who answered her was her husband.
“Get up, Melissanthi, and leave him to me. We must take him to a hospital.”
Afterward she remembered very little of that trip, which seemed the longest of her life. Apostolos drove like a madman, his hand pressed on the horn of the car so most of the other cars pulled over, their drivers staring curiously at the woman crying loudly with a child in her arms. At the hospital she had the feeling that everything was happening very slowly. Voices were distorted when they reached her ears. She saw people around her as if in a warped mirror and felt as if her legs were made of rubber. She leaned against the wall to support herself. Beside her was Apostolos, and she could hear him breathing heavily. The minutes that passed from the moment the doors closed behind her son until she saw a doctor approaching seemed like hours.
“Mrs. Fatouras, I’m sorry . . .” he said, and his voice was calm.
Melissanthi looked at him, unable to understand. Why was the doctor sorry? When would she see the child? She heard Apostolos beside her take a deep breath.
“What happened, Doctor?” he asked.
“We don’t know yet. His heart just stopped . . .”
Speechless, Melissanthi shook her head as if it was a way to refute what she’d just heard.
“What do you mean when you say his heart stopped?” she finally said. “But he’ll get better, won’t he?” she asked, her voice pleading, even for a lie, and making the doctor uneasy.
“Mrs. Fatouras,” he said, “you must be strong. Your son . . . didn’t make it. He was already dead when you brought him in. I don’t know what to
say . . . I’m truly sorry. When a child dies, we feel powerless too.”
Melissanthi finally understood. She let herself slide to the floor, as her soul slid into an abyss of despair. She was taken to the doctor’s office to recover. There, she saw the doctor standing above her and remembered everything. Even in her bewilderment, she noticed that her husband’s face looked unnaturally dark.
The following days passed without her living them. The autopsy showed that the child had a genetic weakness of the aorta, which had resulted in an aneurism. No doctor could have diagnosed it. The news of the boy’s death exploded like a bomb. Apostolos and Melissanthi’s house filled with people. Everyone gathered there to share their condolences with the tragic parents, and all were shocked by the sight of the two of them. Dry eyed, Melissanthi sat in an armchair as if she didn’t understand what was going on around her, and it was quite clear that Apostolos had to make an enormous effort to stand up.
At the funeral everyone cried except Melissanthi. With her body completely rigid, she didn’t accept the support of anyone’s arm. She followed her child to his final resting place all alone while directly behind her walked Apostolos, supported by Christos and Nitsa. They came back home with heavy rain pounding the streets mercilessly, as if nature itself was venting its anger. The house filled with people again, but nobody spoke. Rather, a strange silence prevailed. The only thing that could be heard was the sound of coffee cups carefully set down on their saucers, and just as often, the sound of a cigarette lighter being lit. No one had any desire to speak at such a moment.
“Melissanthi is not well,” Apostolos whispered to Christos after the other guests had tactfully left.
“Are you well?” his friend asked him, his face full of anxiety. “Why don’t you go and lie down for a little while, and I’ll send the doctor to you?”
“I’m all right,” Apostolos replied, although his appearance belied him. “But Melissanthi . . . she hasn’t shed a tear since the first moment.”
A little later, with great effort, Apostolos went and sat beside his wife. “Melissanthi . . .” he began, not knowing how to go on.
His wife looked at him, her face empty of any emotion. Her voice came out strangely, colorlessly, and she began to speak as if she was delirious. “I shouldn’t have kept the child, Apostolos—it didn’t belong to me, that’s why God took him. You never allowed me to speak about it and I respected that, but it was my mistake. I married you knowing you were my opportunity to leave the village, and I was stupid. What had my village done to me that I never wanted to see it again? I never said I didn’t love you, but now I know that I didn’t love you in the way every woman should love her husband. Angelos was my real love, but I didn’t have the right—you knew it. Don’t deny it! I shouldn’t have listened to his mother. I should have been strong, I should have told you the truth, I should have left with him, but again I hid myself behind you. I justified myself by saying I didn’t want to harm you, but I was lying. I did worse because I deceived you behind your back. I accepted your self-sacrifice in accepting his child. Again, I didn’t have the courage to take the child and leave, to go back to the village I should never have left. It suited me that you didn’t want to discuss it. I took your generosity and made it into a shield to hide behind—in the end I was a coward all my life. I couldn’t bear the village life and I became a hostage. I couldn’t bear a great love and I hid. I took the man who loved me and drove him to suicide . . . and for all this, my child paid with his life.”
She wanted to say more and would have, had she not been interrupted by the heavy thud Apostolos’s body made as he fell to the carpet. Christos and Nitsa ran to him, but Melissanthi knew it was too late.
“He’s gone too,” she said dully.
While Christos was loosening her husband’s tie and trying to bring him around, Melissanthi quite coolly called an ambulance.
Two days later, no one could believe it as they gathered at the same cemetery to bid farewell to Apostolos Fatouras, just as they had to his son. They all asked how this woman, who had buried both her husband and her son within two days, could bear to stand up. They didn’t know how to offer her sympathy. No comforting words rose to their lips; they didn’t even dare to approach her. Only Christos and his wife walked beside her, weeping, while she, once again, remained dry eyed and erect. After the ceremony ended she asked to be left alone by the graves, where the two, the younger and the elder Apostolos, each rested side by side.
They all respected her wishes, although Christos withdrew to a discreet distance so as to keep an eye on her.
“I lost both of you,” Melissanthi whispered.
Christos couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw her lips opening and closing. Then she collapsed on the two graves and began weeping loudly, rolling on the ground and howling like a wounded animal. He was almost happy to see her finally burst out. He’d begun to fear for the state of her mind. Thunder struck and heavy rain began to fall, but even then he didn’t move from his place. Melissanthi seemed oblivious to what was happening around her. Her weeping became a dirge and the dirge, a lament. He left her alone to vent her grief a little while longer, then approached her, knelt down, and took her in his arms.
“That’s enough, Melissanthi,” he said softly. “Let’s go . . . they’re together now.”
As if she’d suddenly lost all her strength, Melissanthi allowed him to pick her up and carry her away. They had gone some distance when she managed to free herself from his arms and started running in the opposite direction. Christos started running after her, his heart in his mouth. When he caught up with her, he understood. Melissanthi was standing next to Angelos’s tomb, staring at his photograph.
“Why?” she shouted, her voice breaking. “Why did you take him? Why did you envy me and my happiness and take my child? He was mine! He was the only thing I had from you! Why?”
Fresh sobs racked her body, then she fell in a heap on the marble. With her fists she kept hitting the tombstone repeating why? like a needle stuck on a record. Christos approached her again and put his arms around her shoulders.
“Melissanthi, this isn’t necessary!” he said. “Our little one will have his two fathers to protect him in Paradise. Come, my girl. Let’s go!”
She let him lift her up. Soaked and muddy, the two of them reached the car where Nitsa was waiting. She looked in surprise at the awful state they were in, but one glance from her husband, and she knew not to ask any questions. At Melissanthi’s house they changed her clothes and persuaded her to take a tranquilizer and lie down. The two of them stayed near her all night, stroking her hair as she wept and moaned, even in her sleep.
The next morning, the sun showed no intention of shining, so the lights were switched on early. Melissanthi woke to find Nitsa sleeping beside her and Christos in an armchair nearby. She despised herself again. She could never manage to judge people or situations correctly. She had never valued these two as she should have, and they had been her only support in the last few days. She had seen Christos as aged and heavy and found Nitsa boring and stupid. As she lay on her bed, her whole life began to pass in front of her eyes. Her mistakes and her superficiality rose up in front of her like giants with hard, merciless faces. She had always only been interested in the obvious. She had never sought the deep, fundamental things. She got up as quietly as she could, but Christos opened his eyes as soon as she moved. She signaled to him not to disturb Nitsa and they managed to leave the room without making any noise. In the living room she ordered some coffee from one of the servants.
“How do you feel?” Christos asked once she’d had her first sip.
“Empty. Christos, I want to thank you for all you’ve done. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
“That’s what friends are for, Melissanthi.”
“I imagine you heard a lot of things from me, words that must have shocked you.”
“I didn’t hear anything I didn’t already know.”
Melissan
thi looked at him in surprise and Christos smiled at her.
“The evening you were giving birth, while we were waiting, Apostolos told me everything about you and Angelos.”
“I still don’t fully understand why he didn’t just send me away.”
“Because he loved you. He thought that because he didn’t offer you everything you wanted from a husband . . .”
“Christos, I’m sure that you know a lot more. Tell me about Apostolos. Why did he change so much after the first years of our marriage? Why did he stop even sleeping in the same bed with me?”
“Because he had a problem with his heart.”
“His heart?”
“Yes. The doctor who was treating him had told him to be careful . . . you know what I mean. You were a young woman full of desires and accustomed to something else.”
“So why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he explain it to me, instead of making me feel so much rejection without knowing the cause of it?
“I told him it was a mistake to keep it from you.”
“And I . . . my God! We made so many mistakes! Instead of trying to figure out why my husband had changed, I turned to the first man who—”
“Melissanthi, I know you loved Angelos. Apostolos knew it too. He knew it wasn’t just a question of flesh but of the heart. That’s why he behaved as he did. He loved you very much.”
Melissanthi hid her face in her hands.
“Apostolos told me the day before your son’s funeral that if something happened to him, he had left a letter for you in his office.”
Christos’s words made her jump like a spring from her chair. She ran to her husband’s office and came back a minute later holding an envelope. She gave it to Christos.
“You read it to me,” she urged him and sat down.
Christos looked at her hesitantly.
“I don’t have any secrets from you, Christos,” she reassured him. “Read it for me, please.”
With unsteady hands, Christos opened the envelope, and in a voice that trembled slightly, he read what his friend had written.
