by Lena Manta
“I’m not so sure about that. The very fact that I put our mother in such a difficult position, leaving like a thief—I’d say that was a betrayal. Do you know that I only sent her two postcards during all the years I was away? Never mind the life I’ve led since the day I left! You’d think this house had turned us into something evil. We abandoned it without a second thought and remembered it only when we’d ruined our lives.”
The three of them hung their heads, feeling ashamed, until the sound of a car approaching attracted their attention. A car at this hour? each one thought.
“Somebody’s lost again,” Aspasia suggested.
They got up and walked toward the road. The moon was full and lit up the countryside like an enormous lamp. By its light they saw two women and a girl getting out of the car. The driver unloaded a few things, then got back into the car and drove away.
All three of them put their hands to their mouths to hold back their cries at the sight of Magdalini, Anna, and a child they didn’t recognize.
“Magdalini?” It was Melissanthi who dared to speak first.
Magdalini looked up to see her three sisters looking at her, frozen like statues in the moonlight. “Melissanthi? Aspasia? Polyxeni?” She said their names in disbelief, certain that the three visions in front of her would vanish at any moment.
But they didn’t. Instead, she saw the heads of her sisters nodding as they approached her. She touched their faces with awe, still unable to believe what she was seeing. She had covered endless miles without stopping. She’d paid a fortune to the driver to persuade him to bring her all the way to the foothills of Olympus, and she never expected that the first people she’d see would be her sisters. She lost herself in their arms, her heart swelling with unspoken joy. For a moment she was afraid she would faint from emotion, but their kisses, hugs, and laughter brought her to herself again. Magdalini managed to disentangle herself from their hands and to give her aunt a chance to meet them since Anna had never met either Melissanthi or Aspasia. Finally, it was Magdalini’s daughter who found herself in the foreground. “And this is little Theodora, though we call her Doris!” Magdalini introduced her proudly.
Polyxeni burst out laughing. “Now there are three Theodoras in the house! This could get complicated!”
Aspasia, who was now laughing as well, undertook to explain. “I have a daughter called Theodora too.”
“Speaking of Theodoras,” added Melissanthi, “the senior one will be thunderstruck by the return of her fourth daughter!”
They all ran toward the house. Melissanthi, Aspasia, and Polyxeni entered first. When they walked into the kitchen, still laughing, the eldest Theodora, who was serving plates of food to little Theodora and Vassiliki, looked at them in surprise.
“What’s wrong with you that you’re behaving like babies?” she asked. The three sisters stood in a row with their hands crossed behind their backs, just as they had done as children.
Theodora now looked a little uneasy. “Ah, you’ll upset me!” she sighed, half serious, half joking. “What have you done this time?”
“Mama, I swear, we haven’t done anything!” Polyxeni hurried to answer.
But her expression made her daughter giggle happily.
“Grandma, don’t believe her!” said Vassiliki. “All the time we were away, they were cooking something up.”
“Shhh, you!” Polyxeni scolded her affectionately.
“It’s true, Mother,” Melissanthi began seriously. “Your daughters have been returning one by one—aren’t you jealous?”
“What should I be jealous of, daughter? Are you crazy?”
Aspasia jumped in next. “Because we sisters have all been reunited with one another. Wouldn’t you like to be with your sister too?”
Theodora was confused for a moment, but suddenly her face brightened. She turned toward the door and Anna, who came in first, took her breath away. She stood still, as if she’d turned into stone, while her sister smiled at her. Grandmother Julia, with the agility of a girl, ran to embrace her daughter, weeping. Before the hugs had ended, Magdalini’s Theodora ran into the house and the tears turned to laughter, then back to tears again, when Magdalini finally came in.
Whoever passed by the house that evening would have thought there was a celebration going on, one that was interrupted, now and then, by a sob. Magdalini told her family about the terror she had lived through in Chicago. She also described what she had loved about America in general and what she hadn’t. The three youngest members of the family had their arms around each other, their faces now shining, now darkening at what they heard. At the end they fell asleep, tired, and their mothers put all three of them in the double bed.
Anna and Theodora had gone out into the fresh night air and no one thought of disturbing them. Seated side by side on the steps, they looked at the dark horizon in silence.
Anna’s voice was the first to break the silence. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
“What are you asking me to forgive you for?”
“For everything I was responsible for in your child’s life. Of course I didn’t want any of it to happen, and I couldn’t know that it would, but the result remains the same. I took her with me to have a better future and ruined her life.”
“You said it yourself, Anna. You couldn’t know.”
“Yes, but who was I to believe that I could do something better for her than her own mother could? How could I, with so much pride, argue that she would be better off in America?”
“There’s no point in your saying all that,” Theodora said, trying to calm her. “In the end, Magdalini herself wanted to go—you didn’t force her to. Nor did anyone put pressure on the other girls to leave. They wanted it themselves, and look what happened. One by one they turned their lives upside down, their souls destroyed by endless mistakes. Each one is carrying a cross; even now that they’ve returned to the security of the familiar, I don’t think they’ve managed to put that cross down for a moment and rest, to find peace.”
“They seem fine, but . . . Melissanthi, even when she smiles, you see from her expression that her soul is crying.”
“She’s the only one who lost everything. The others chased the same sun, and when they touched it, they got burned by its flame too. But they managed to hold on to something—a ray. They lost husbands and children, but each one returned with a daughter. That’s something! But Melissanthi is alone.”
“And you? How do you feel with your children around you again?”
“I don’t know, Anna. At first I was glad. The loneliness was painful all those years, and if I hadn’t had our mother, I don’t know if I could have managed. I might have drowned myself in the river. But now that I see them, now that I know what they’ve been through . . . It would have been better if I’d died lonely rather than see my children suffering so much.”
“I understand. But now they’ll make a new beginning. They’re still young. They can fix up their lives again.”
“Do you know something? Our mother said the same thing to me when I lost Gerasimos. She tried to persuade me to remarry many times, but like my daughters, I’d experienced the real thing. I couldn’t compromise with something less. At least they’ll always have one another, but I didn’t have you.”
Hesitantly, Anna reached out her hand and stroked Theodora’s hair. She was relieved to feel her sister’s body lean toward her and hurried to embrace her. “I lived a life far away from you,” she said to her in a low voice. “I’m afraid we two will have to get to know each other again from the beginning.”
“We’ve got plenty of time ahead of us!” Theodora said, and a look of peace spread across her face at last.
That summer was like a fairy tale. The house overflowed with life and children’s voices. Theodora seemed to have shed decades, as did Grandmother Julia. Three great-grandchildren surrounded her every day and she shared her attention with them equally, while at the same time her hands never stopped working. In a little whil
e winter would be coming and she wanted to make jackets for all of them. The housework was finished early each day with so many hands ready to work. At lunchtime, the big kitchen table—the same one that had hidden the secret trapdoor during the war—was only just big enough for them all. Theodora got out the large saucepans again and the baking dishes she had used back then, and the smell of the enormous loaves and pies she baked with her grandchildren’s help filled the house.
On Sundays they all put on their best clothes and went to Mr. Karavassilis’s shop, where they settled in at a table to order sweets and orange sodas. Everyone in the village was happy about the reunion of Theodora’s family. The whole village had watched her walk along her lonely path all those years and their respect for her was quite clear.
That Sunday, at the end of August, they were all together again, looking for a little shade under the big plane tree. A lot of people came to their table to chat—the news of the village was always full of interest—while the children in the square made a terrible noise with their shouting and their games. Doris, the youngest Theodora, had completely found herself; she’d already made friends with the children she would go to school with in the autumn. The two older girls, having quickly eaten their treats, sat with the other children their age under the plane tree and chatted, while keeping a watchful eye on the little one.
The big bus arrived spluttering at the square. When its doors opened, everyone looked to see who was getting off—on Sundays, few people came to the village. A short woman stepped down first and helped an old lady who followed her. Behind her were three girls and a black woman. This last arrival, in particular, attracted everyone’s attention. They’d never seen a person with different-colored skin before. Perhaps it was this distraction that kept them from realizing that the woman leading this little band of travelers was Julia.
Theodora felt her heart thumping before she even recognized her daughter. When she finally realized who this new arrival was, she raised her hand to her chest, while tears started streaming from her eyes.
Melissanthi was the first to notice. “Mama!” she shouted. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong with you?”
They all turned to her. Unable to speak, Theodora stood up and walked toward Julia, who was examining her bags to make sure they’d all been unloaded from the bus. She raised her eyes instinctively and saw her mother’s tears and her trembling lips.
For years in the village they talked about that meeting. No one remembered who first embraced who, but they recalled that their voices were full of joy and their scattered laughter reached the old plane tree. Lefteris’s son happened to be there. In the large back of his new truck, he loaded Julia and her mother-in-law, Evanthia, her daughters Hara, Theodora, and Evanthia, and her friend Faida, and all of their baggage. Grandmother Julia sat in the front seat beside him, and he took them to the house, which overflowed with grown-ups and children. There wasn’t enough room for them to all stay together, but it didn’t matter; that night, apart from the children, no one slept.
“I still can’t believe it,” Julia said for about the tenth time. “We’re all here, after so many years, and all determined to stay forever!”
“Who could have predicted it?” Grandmother Julia joined in. “Now I’ll be able to close my eyes peacefully,” she quietly added.
“It’s now, Mother, that you need to stay with us,” Theodora answered her. “We spent all those years by ourselves. Now that the children and grandchildren have arrived, it’s time for us to laugh, despite everything that’s happened.”
Grandmother Julia’s renovated house was perfect for the younger Julia and her family. With Faida’s help, they cleaned it and set themselves up there, but every day they went back to Theodora’s so they could all be together. The six youngest members of the family, from Julia’s daughter Hara down to Magdalini’s daughter Doris, were inseparable. The subjects of their conversations were inexhaustible and their excuses for laughter endless.
One evening Hara pointed out, “If you really think about it, we have a problem. There are not one, not two, not ten, but sixteen women living together here. Maybe a man had better come here soon to break up the monotony? But who would dare come into this women’s lair?”
“It reminds me of the Amazons!” Vassiliki shot out.
“That means there can’t be a male, even as an example!” said the older Theodora.
They all burst out laughing and only Grandmother Theodora had a little sadness in her expression. Neither her mother, nor herself, nor her daughters had managed to see the male children they’d given birth to grow into men. God had delivered his verdict. At least she had the comfort of knowing that her six granddaughters had made up their minds to stay in their mother’s village and make their home in the shadow of Olympus.
Every afternoon Grandmother Julia, the elder Theodora, Anna, and the elder Evanthia drank their coffee on the verandah and talked. One afternoon, Evanthia turned to Theodora and declared, “I want to ask your forgiveness.”
Theodora looked at her in surprise. “What do you want my forgiveness for?” she asked.
“Because really I don’t have the right to be here. I don’t deserve so much kindness, not from you, and not from your daughter after—”
Theodora cut her off. “I know what you’re going to say, but please don’t say it. All my children were destroyed and came back here to their roots to make a new beginning. You make sure you do the same and leave the past in peace!”
“You speak like that because you don’t know. It wouldn’t even cross your mind, what I did when . . .”
“No. The truth is that it wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but my daughter told me.”
“She did?”
“Yes.”
“And you accepted me in your home?” Evanthia was moved.
“Evanthia, we all make mistakes, but the moment comes when we pay for them. And you paid for yours, and very dearly. So I have nothing to forgive you for. Look at our children and grandchildren, and pray to God that they’ll finally find peace.”
Theodora touched Evanthia’s hand and the two of them turned to look at the river. The grandchildren were playing happily there, while their mothers watched them, sitting together on the bank.
“It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” Melissanthi said to her sisters. “We’re all gathered together again under the same roof, looking at the same river, and none of us can imagine our lives far from this corner of the earth. And yet this place used to suffocate us; we couldn’t wait to leave it.”
“The strangest thing,” said Julia, “is that, for some of us, our own children wanted us to return. What drove us out of the village drew them here like a magnet!”
“For me, it was as if God himself planted the idea of returning in my mind,” Magdalini said. “In this quiet place I feel I’m near Him. I feel as if He’s protecting me and remembering me.”
“You’re right,” Aspasia agreed. “We’re back here and all together after years, and I catch myself looking at the future with optimism. For the first time I hope my sins will be forgiven. It’s as if I’ve come into a large, peaceful church. What does it matter who or what made me come back?”
Polyxeni didn’t speak. Instead, she jumped up like a spring.
“What’s the matter?” Julia asked her.
“I’m going to get something,” she shouted and ran toward the house.
When she came back she was holding an old, dog-eared book.
“What’s that?” Aspasia asked.
“Don’t you remember it? It was Father’s Bible. He used to read to us from it.”
“You’re right,” Melissanthi said. “We didn’t understand much, but we liked to listen.”
“So, I found it last night and as I was leafing through it, my eye fell on a passage that he himself probably underlined. Listen. I’m sure we’ll all understand it now.”
Polyxeni opened the book to the page she had found and stood facing her sisters with the river flowing b
ehind her. The four older women had left the verandah and were coming closer to listen and the children had abandoned their games to sit beside their mothers.
With a strong, clear voice and a peaceful expression, Polyxeni began to read:
Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
James 5:19–20
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2016
Lena Manta was born in Istanbul, Turkey, to Greek parents. She moved to Greece at a very young age and now lives with her husband and two children on the outskirts of Athens. Although she studied to be a nursery school teacher, Lena instead directed her own puppet theater before writing articles for local newspapers and working as a director for a local radio station. Manta was proclaimed Author of the Year in both 2009 and 2011 by Greek Life & Style magazine. She has written thirteen books, all of them published by Psichogios Publications, including the bestselling The House by the River, which has sold almost 250,000 copies and is the first of her books to be translated into English. Hers is a voice to be reckoned with, and each new book is a tour de force in the Greek publishing world.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2016 Cornell Publicity
Gail Holst-Warhaft is a poet and translator and has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, prose writer, academic, and musician. Among her many publications are Road to Rembetika, Theodorakis: Myth and Politics in Modern Greek Music, The Collected Poems of Nikos Kavadias, Dangerous Voices: Women’s Laments and Greek Literature, The Cue for Passion: Grief and Its Political Uses, I Had Three Lives: Selected Poems of Mikis Theodorakis, and Penelope’s Confession. She has published translations of Aeschylus and several of Greece’s leading novelists and poets. Her poems and translations have appeared in journals in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her Kavadias translations won the Van der Bovenkamp award from Columbia University’s Translation Center, and her poem “Three Landscapes” won the Poetry Greece Award in 2001. The Fall of Athens, her most recent collection of poetry, essays, and stories about Greece, was published by Fomite Press (Vermont) in 2016.
