Secrets Under the Sun

by Nadia Marks

  They buried Katerina at the Greek Orthodox cemetery directly across the street from the Catholic graveyard where several generations of Linsers had been laid to rest and where Anita would also follow in time. The two friends would be separated by a road, but the birds which nest in the trees, the bees and butterflies that make their rounds gathering pollen from one cemetery to the other, would bring in their flight news from across the street.

  Standing by the graveside Eleni, Adonis and Marianna held tightly on to each other as the burial ritual continued. Eleni had only ever been to two Orthodox funerals before, the mothers of two old school friends. The only other death in her family had been her English mother-in-law. She vividly remembered how inappropriately calm she had found that funeral, and how she’d tried to hold back her tears like everyone else. She also recalled how eventually she’d had to hide behind a pillar to cry, afraid that her display of grief might be considered out of place.

  This Orthodox ritual, she decided as she stood under the dappled light coming through the cypress trees, possessed a primitive humility which allowed her tears and everyone else’s to fall without shame or inhibition. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the priest and his chanting, mingled with the sound of the cicadas, or perhaps it was the unguarded sorrow of the mourners dressed in black that added to her sadness and moved her so. Whatever it was, Eleni, Adonis and Marianna let their grief show and their tears flow without restraint for the woman they considered their mother.

  Anita stood all the while beside the priest, who as he neared the end of the service threw a handful of koliva onto the coffin. This mixture of boiled wheat, nuts and berries, symbolizing the circle of life, is a prerequisite for the completion of a burial. Anita reached for a handful as mourners started to gather by her side, each taking their turn. ‘May her memory be eternal,’ they chanted, casting flowers and soil into the grave.

  After the burial, everybody gathered together at the house for the customary refreshments. Along with the traditional olive and haloumi bread for the visitors, they had served red wine and brandy as well as coffee and cake, and for the first time there was no Katerina to see to everything. Eleni, Adonis and Marianna all rushed around to help Anita, who was well aware that from now on she would have to manage life alone.

  When the last of the mourners finally left, the three friends decided to leave Anita to rest and to take themselves to one of their favourite haunts in town.

  ‘I will see you all after I have slept a while,’ Anita told them, fatigue and emotion etched on her face. ‘There is still much I need to tell you.’

  The 1900 Bar was the place the three always met when they really wanted to relax or had something important to discuss. They had known Spiros, the owner, since high school, and he always made them feel as if they were in their own home; a feeling that was enhanced by the fact that the place had been built as a family house in 1900 – hence its name – and resembled their own house in numerous ways. It had the same high ceilings, decorative cornices and sweeping staircase leading to a top floor, now a restaurant, which originally would have been the saloni, as it was in the Linser home.

  Whenever Adonis visited from New York, alone or with Robert, he made a point of taking Katerina there for dinner, and on the occasions Anita felt like it, she would join them too. On hot summer nights they’d sit on the small balcony jutting out above the road, just big enough for a table and four chairs that competed for space with an impossibly luscious white bougainvillea, which looped and twisted itself round the railings trying to claim the entire balcony for itself. In winter months they would sit indoors under the high-ceilinged dining room, surrounded by art and Parisian posters from the 1930s, a log fire ablaze in one corner, enjoying Spiros’s mother’s home cooking. When he was feeling homesick in New York, Adonis would daydream about dinner in the 1900 Bar.

  ‘She was a lovely lady, your Katerina,’ Spiros told them when they walked in. ‘May her memory be eternal,’ he offered the customary condolence, and reached for his best single malt whisky. ‘Let’s drink to her memory,’ he said and poured the amber spirit into their glasses. ‘The town will miss her.’

  Out in the street the sun was still high in the sky, but sitting in the cool half-light of the bar, with the colourful art adorning the walls, surrounded by memorabilia all so familiar from their youth, Adonis, Eleni and Marianna breathed out a long slow collective sigh of release.

  They stayed in the 1900 Bar for a long time. They needed to ‘decompress’, as Adonis had put it.

  ‘I guess I was exhausted and emotional last night,’ he told the girls, picking up a newly filled glass of whisky. ‘Everything Mother told us made me feel like I couldn’t breathe.’

  The day’s tension had left them exhausted, so they sat in the easy comfort of the bar, drank whisky, ate pistachio nuts, exchanged happy memories of Katerina and then made their way home, hoping that Anita was up and ready to continue with her story.

  They found her sitting in the saloni, drinking brandy and looking at old photographs. Over the years Olga had neatly arranged and preserved in leather-bound albums any surviving family photos, which Anita had now spread out on the coffee table and was leafing through one by one.

  ‘Ah! There you all are,’ she called out when she heard them come in and, twisting around to look at them, picked up an album. ‘Come, let me show you.’ She shifted herself along the sofa to make space for Adonis while the other two perched on the arm of the divan to peer over her shoulders.

  ‘But perhaps we should eat first,’ she said again, looking up at the girls and pointing to the dining-room table, which had been laid for supper. ‘I have made us some soupa avgolemono – I thought we could all use some nourishment before I start talking again.’ She smiled, knowing that whenever there was a crisis in the family what they all always longed for was Katerina’s egg, lemon and rice soup for its healing and comforting qualities.

  They fetched the old soup terrine from the kitchen, placed it in the middle of the table, and taking their places they darted surprised glances at each other at the way Anita was assuming control again. The delicate lemony taste of the soup, creamy and frothy with a sprinkling of cinnamon on top, summoned up Katerina, as if she was sitting at the table with them urging them to eat, a smile on her face as she waited to hear their praise.

  They ate quietly together and after clearing up the dishes they brewed a pot of coffee and Anita brought the photo albums to the table.

  ‘When I started on this family story of ours, my children, I had no idea I would go into so much detail …’ She took a sip of her coffee and looked around the table. ‘But having begun I felt I had to go on, to give you the full picture before you could understand. We were five women, you see, living alone in a patriarchal society. But our household was different. Your grandmother was as strong as any man and united, we were even stronger.’

  13

  In Vienna, Sonia and Nicos stayed at first with Great-aunt Heidi on Grashofgasse. Heidi had become used to Sonia’s company and was delighted to have the young couple brightening up her life further, but they longed to have a little place to themselves. When a small studio apartment became vacant on the top floor of the same block they found the opportunity too good to refuse, meanwhile promising to visit her every day. She helped them to settle in, giving them whatever she could to furnish their little apartment. Steep stairs led to a low-ceilinged cosy attic room, which gave access to a roof terrace that they soon proceeded to transform into a mini garden with pots of basil, scented geraniums and fennel, bringing a little patch of Cyprus to their city lives. There was just enough space to add a small table and chairs for their morning coffee or evening beer in the summer months. Once in a while when the weather and her arthritis permitted, Great-aunt Heidi would join them for a glass of wine.

  ‘You, my Liebling, have been a godsend to me,’ she told Sonia. ‘You are the daughter I never had and this boy of yours completes my joy. All I want from you two now is a grandch
ild.’

  ‘But we are not even married yet,’ Sonia teased. ‘We are living in sin – how can we have a baby?’

  ‘Well, you should get married,’ the old lady would persist. ‘I will arrange everything.’ But Sonia and Nicos were far too busy having fun to want to start a family. Sonia had her teaching work at the Academy and Nicos, after the first few weeks of getting to know Vienna, enrolled into a language school to learn German.

  Larnaka, 2010

  Like Adonis earlier, Eleni was eager to learn something more about her father. He had been such a figure of mystery in her life; now that so many family secrets were emerging, she needed to hear more.

  ‘What was he like, Thia?’ she asked. ‘Did you like him?’

  ‘Nicos?’ Anita replied. ‘Well … I liked him well enough, Eleni mou, we all did, but he was irresponsible and in the end he was the undoing of my sister.’ Anita’s eyes misted over at the memory. Eleni sat up, curious to hear more.

  ‘It was your first Christmas, Eleni mou, you had just turned one, and your mama wanted you to spend it at home with all of us here in the house. The family kept quiet about it at the time, but now I can tell you that you were born before they got round to getting married … So we were also planning a small wedding celebration and we were all very excited. I hadn’t even seen you yet, only your grandmother Olga travelled to Vienna for your birth, so the rest of us were longing to meet you.’

  Once again the memories came tumbling out as Anita began to tell the story.

  Adonis was a year and a half by that Christmas and Sonia wanted the two cousins to spend the festive season together, but Nicos wanted to stay in Vienna.

  ‘It’s fun here,’ he argued, ‘and the Germans really know how to celebrate Christmas.’

  ‘And I,’ Sonia argued back, ‘want to see my family.’

  They returned three days before Christmas Day to a sun-drenched island, leaving behind the icy north and the festively decorated Viennese streets which made the city look like a Christmas postcard; but Sonia didn’t care – she yearned for home.

  The news of their arrival caused great excitement in the Linser household, and the women set about turning the house into their own Christmas card, even if outside the temperature was unseasonably warm. Olga enlisted Andreas the gardener’s help to erect a tree, the biggest she could find, and to bring down from the attic all the fine Christmas decorations so they could make the house sparkle for the little ones.

  ‘This is the first time both children will be here for Christmas,’ Olga said. ‘If this isn’t a cause for a special celebration, then I don’t know what is!’ She was busy fixing candles on the tree to be lit on Christmas Eve, an Austrian tradition she had inherited from her grandparents.

  Katerina was up a ladder hanging decorations around the room. ‘We must keep our wits about us with all those candles burning; the children could hurt themselves if we’re not careful,’ she said sternly. She disapproved of Olga’s insistence on the tradition – ‘Lighted candles on a tree,’ she’d muttered under her breath, ‘of all the ideas!’ – but she knew Olga was determined, so she kept her thoughts to herself and always stood guard by the tree until it was time to extinguish them and then she made sure to pinch out each and every one herself.

  Sonia arrived laden with gifts for everyone in the household. This was going to be the best Christmas they had ever spent together. Little Eleni could toddle about on the seafront with her cousin, and Sonia, basking in the warm sun, could feel the Austrian chill melt away, warming her bones. In the kitchen the seasonal aromas of spices were tantalizing as her mother and Katerina competed to produce their finest festive delicacies and treats for them.

  The preparations had already been started days before their arrival and the larder and fridge were well stocked. Olga had made a pile of melomakarona, Sonia’s favourite. When she was a little girl she would beg her mother to make them all year round.

  ‘They’re so delicious, why do we have to wait for Christmas to eat them?’ she would always complain.

  ‘When you are grown up you can learn to make them yourself,’ Olga would tell her. ‘Then you can have them whenever you want.’

  But it was Katerina who learned how to make them first and taught Sonia and Anita in turn. All three spent hours in the kitchen trying to perfect the art of baking melomakarona.

  The recipe stipulated that either flour or semolina could be used as ingredients for the biscuit mix, but use of the wrong amount of either, and the project would be doomed. When the right quantities of sugar and oil were used and the correct consistency achieved, the biscuits would turn out well and there was always much rejoicing when the girls got it right. They would then set about moulding spoonfuls into small oval shapes, then line them up on baking trays ready for the oven. Once the biscuits were set and crisp they would remove them from the oven and leave them out to cool before they could be dipped, one by one, taking care not to break them, into a pot of liquid honey spiced with cinnamon and cloves bubbling on the stove. If the biscuit mixture was successful, then the result would be piles of moist yet firm biscuits arranged on a pretty cake dish and sprinkled liberally with crushed walnuts. However, if the girls got the mixture wrong for whatever reason, then the whole thing was a dismal failure.

  ‘There was one time,’ Anita recalled with a chuckle, ‘when it went so disastrously and the biscuit mixture was so flaky that all the cookies crumbled into one big powdery heap! We had to eat it with a spoon.’

  So it was that the Christmas when Sonia, Nicos and Eleni came home from Vienna, the Linser house was occupied for the first time in the way that Grandfather Josef had intended it to be. The children’s laughter echoed around the rooms and the big table in the dining room was laid out with the best china and Linser-print tablecloths and napkins every evening.

  They all went, including Katerina, to Midnight Mass at the Catholic church where Padre Bernardino officiated on Christmas Eve, and when they returned they had a light supper, lit the candles on the tree and exchanged gifts. Although Olga preferred to serve the traditional feast on Christmas Eve, they couldn’t keep the little ones awake so late so she agreed to wait till the next day.

  Greek, Austrian and Italian dishes were all on the menu for the Christmas Day banquet. Both Katerina and Olga had been busy in the kitchen for days before they arrived.

  After lunch Sonia, Anita and Katerina took the children for a stroll on the promenade while Nicos and Costas, who had graced them with his presence as it was Christmas, collapsed in the saloni in a stupor of over-eating and drinking.

  The early-afternoon sun was beginning to turn chilly as the women and children walked along the seafront.

  ‘I feel rain coming on,’ Katerina told them, ‘maybe even snow in the mountains.’ She turned to the direction of the hills where dark clouds had gathered. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to get some rain at last.’

  ‘It can wait till we leave,’ Sonia said and picked up Eleni who refused to walk any further unless she was carried.

  ‘I think it will be sooner. Look,’ Katerina replied, pointing up at the palm trees along the promenade, swaying in the wind.

  ‘Compared to Vienna this is a light breeze,’ said Sonia. ‘Try walking along the Danube on a windy day!’

  ‘I can only imagine!’ Katerina replied and meant it. To her, Vienna seemed like a distant planet.

  ‘The fine weather held today, anyway,’ Sonia continued. ‘It wouldn’t have done those men any harm to come out with us for some fresh air, would it?’ She looked at her sister.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Anita replied, shrugging her shoulders. ‘I’d rather be with you two, and the children. Besides, they were both drunk!’

  ‘I know …’ Sonia said and hesitated a while. ‘Nicos seems to drink a lot. Sometimes I worry …’

  ‘Don’t all men drink a lot?’ Katerina added.

  ‘I don’t know, maybe they do,’ said Sonia, ‘but I don’t like it.’

  Welcoming
the New Year was as important as the Christmas festivities for the Linser family and they always liked to celebrate it with friends and neighbours till the early hours of New Year’s morning. This year Olga had invited quite a crowd, and as the custom dictated after midnight when the eating and drinking stopped, the green baize tables were set up and the card games commenced. Bottles of wine and liqueurs were passed around and the company was in good spirits. They never played for money, or if they did, it was for loose change only; it was a New Year tradition with both children and adults sitting down to play joyfully together.

  This time, however, one of the guests, Costas’s goumbaros Petros, held a different opinion on the subject of gambling.

  ‘Whoever heard of playing cards for no money?’ he announced loudly. ‘The only reason for playing is to win; and I never lose.’ He looked around the room. ‘Lady Luck is always on my side,’ he boasted. ‘Anyone dare take a gamble with me?’ He glanced over at Nicos and beckoned him to an empty seat for a game of poker.

  Seeing that her fiancé was ready to take up the challenge, Sonia quickly tried to dissuade him. She was all too aware that his inebriated condition left him in no state for gambling.

  ‘You’ll lose every last pound you have in your pocket, and more!’ she hissed at him.

  ‘Live and let live, woman,’ he told her and pushing past her, took his place at the card table opposite Petros.

  ‘Let’s see who Lady Luck is going to favour tonight,’ Nicos laughed at his opponent and rolled up his sleeves.

  The game was well underway when Katerina at last emerged from the kitchen, having put an end to her duties there. She pulled up a chair next to Sonia who was sitting by Nicos’s side, keeping an eye on him.