The House on Paradise Street

by Sofka Zinovieff

  News of what our brothers and sisters were doing filtered back to our closed community. We learned of the battles up in the mountains, of Vitsi and Grammos, of our newly formed Democratic Army that was fighting the National Army (armed and aided by the British). It was desperately hard for our boys and girls even to survive, let alone win a battle in the intense cold, without proper supplies and with so many weapons having been handed over at Varkiza. Then the villages that supported our side were cleared, their inhabitants taken to the towns “to protect them from the bandits”.

  When the English ran out of money and left in 1947, the Americans took over. They brought food and built bridges, but the Marshall Plan was not about charity, it was about control. Now American planes swept across the skies and “Greek bandits” became useful guinea pigs for testing new weapons. Napalm was tried out in Greece long before it was used in Vietnam. Stories came back to Averoff of a liquid fire that rained down and stuck to everything it touched. Whole hillsides were charred and the trees have never grown back. Bodies flamed like torches. When a new prisoner arrived, we would learn more details. Little Penelope was eighteen when she came, having lost an ear during a napalm attack. She said, “It just fizzled and dropped off.” Penelope had been captured during a raid on a field hospital, where she was being treated for her injuries. She told us how the Democratic Army required her to shout through a bullhorn across the mountains to the boys from the National Army. Her voice was loud and carried well (what my mother called a “shepherdess voice”) and a girl’s high tones carried better than a man’s. They also hoped it would distract the enemy.

  “Brother soldiers! Listen to us. We’re fighting for justice and freedom. Don’t fight us. Come with us. We can’t come to you, because they’ll kill us…” Unsurprisingly, the National Army had proper megaphones and shouted back threats and abuse.

  We wanted to support our brothers and sisters, but the truth was we couldn’t. We organised celebrations to mark forbidden anniversaries like the Bolshevik revolution and the founding of our own resistance movement, or to commemorate one of the German mass executions. We read stories and poems, and ate food carefully saved for the occasion. We whispered revolutionary songs and even performed our own silent dance – the secret steps of partisans returning from battle, who could not afford to be heard by the enemy.

  By far the worst aspect of being in prison was the pressure to sign the statement of repentance. We were hauled before the officials at regular periods and asked whether we had decided to make the correct decision yet. It was like the Inquisition – we were required to confess to our sin, and as enemies of the family and the state, to make a confession and beg forgiveness. Everyone knew that the results of signing were remarkable – a death sentence would be quashed and you could even be released from prison. It was also a passport to getting a job. Public sector work was closed to anyone who did not have the correct papers and these were unobtainable if you did not denounce the communists. You had to pass through a “loyalty board” that viewed any link to the Party or to our resistance fighters as “treasonous insurrection against the integrity of the country”.

  The guards tried to get us to sign by promising extra milk for our children. The interrogators veered between brutal threats (“Sign the bloody paper or you’ll never leave here alive, you Bulgarian bitch”) and wheedling promises (“Sign and become Greek. We’ll help you and your son. You’ll start a new life”). But for us, signing was the worst possible betrayal, not only of what we had fought for, but of our comrades and of ourselves. Those who signed were expelled from the Party and carried the stigma for life. I knew that. The choice was between Scylla and Charybdis, only we do not all have the luck of Odysseus. The monsters always get you in the end. My time to choose came three years after I had been imprisoned, when the Civil War ended. I have never tried to excuse myself for what I did. I know that each person must take responsibility for his actions and accept the consequences. How do you choose between your honour and your child?

  By 1949, the last remaining andártes who had not been captured or killed in battle, escaped over the border to Albania. They made their way to Poland, Romania or wherever they could find a welcoming home. The prisons were fuller than ever and the island camps on Makronisos and Youra were used to torture and “reform” anyone who had dared to dream of a better and fairer country. Many died because they didn’t “sign the bloody paper”. Their deaths hang from me like weights. We knew that our dream was over. But even the more pessimistic didn’t imagine two decades of right-wing oppression, followed by the Colonels’ seven-year dictatorship. They rolled out many of the same tricks all over again and the same old prisoners were re-arrested, tortured and exiled. After the Junta fell in 1974, the monarchy was finally voted out of existence by the Greek people – at last they’d seen some sense, my compatriots. At that point, many of my old colleagues returned home. But for me, it was too late.

  It was in the depressing climate of defeat and pessimism that an announcement was made in Averoff: all children over two years of age were to be taken away. Some went to prisoners’ families, some were fostered, but most went to Queen Frederika’s Children’s Villages. A Paidopoli was worse than prison because they pretended to be something else. In effect, they were centres for brain-washing young minds – “political education,” it was called. The children were taught that their mother was the Queen and their father King Paul. They sang songs thanking their new mother for saving them from the terrorists and bandits who had betrayed their country. Frederika was born in Germany – a keen member of the Nazi organisation, the League of German Girls, when she was growing up. Her brothers fought in the Wehrmacht. Now, married into the Greek royal family, she was gathering up our Greek children and turning them against their own parents.

  I did not have long to decide. It was during this agonising time that my mother came to visit. She looked withered and exhausted, though her will power was undiminished and she lived on for many years. She said, “Do the right thing, Antigone. Save yourself and your child. I will take your son so he is not brought up an orphan. Sign the declaration. They will let you go and you will leave the country.” She spoke as though she had learned the words by heart. Her eyes were dull. I watched her through the bars. Agreements had been made, arrangements put in place. I could be free, but humiliated. I could give my son a family, but I must leave him behind. She said, “Your son will live with me. I am his grandmother. I will care for him. You won’t have another chance. Give your child some hope.” She could never have understood the extent to which this choice tore me apart.

  It was only when nurses in white aprons and stiff headdresses came to take the children that I made my decision. Nikitas was a sturdy boy of three-and-a-half, full of curiosity. His legs were strong and brown and covered in grazes from running around the palm tree with the other children and playing hide and seek behind the chapel. In the evenings, he sat in my arms and I read from tiny books I had written and illustrated for him, or sang him songs as he dropped off to sleep. I could not let him be turned into a little Nazi.

  The repentance was normally a public ritual of humiliation with witnesses:

  “I renounce EAM, ELAS, EPON – all the organisations in which I was a member, because they were treasonous.”

  I, the undersigned Antigone Perifanis, father Petros, mother Maria, born in Athens in the year 1924, state that I was misguided into the National Liberation Front by deceptive words without being aware of its anti-national activities and its treasonous and destructive actions against my Fatherland. I renounce the organisation as the enemy of my Fatherland, on whose side I stand…

  But the newspapers did not publish my declaration. It was filed away in secret, to fester like a septic wound.

  The deal was proposed by Spiros, who was already powerful enough to promise that “no one need know”. The authorities would be content with one less “bandit”, even if it was not broadcast to the world, and I would be able to leave Greece
and be welcomed by a communist country. One thing I can say for Spiros is that he kept his word and my shame was not uncovered. He organised for my transfer to Makronisos, along with the arrangement about where I would “escape”. I didn’t even tell Dora the truth, though as a mother, she might have understood my dilemma. Spiros knew as well as I that if my comrades had found out about my betrayal of the Party, I would not have been helped out of Greece or given a job on the radio in Moscow. Who knows what would have become of me. Some say my name means “unbending” – anti (against) and gony (bend or corner) – and flexibility has never been my strength. But a mother can go against her nature for her child.

  I tried to empty my mind when Nikitas was taken away. I didn’t want to disgrace myself by crying out or collapsing. Our three years locked up together now appeared as a bizarre Eden from which we were now being cast out. I didn’t try to explain to him. I just said, “You are going to see your grandmother.” I picked him up and kissed him goodbye without too much fuss, so it seemed as though he was going for the afternoon. And I never saw him again. I had been a curse on my family, as Alexandra said. I had brought them grief, I had been to blame for my brother’s death, and now I was forsaking my son.

  My departure from Greece is clouded in my mind. It was almost too much to remember. The “escape” went smoothly and I managed to join the last survivors of our Democratic Army without anyone suspecting me as a traitor. We left the country through Albania – a sorry collection of worn out souls. From there we departed by ship, lying sick and defeated in the hold as we passed through the Dardanelles and across the Black Sea. From the Crimea, our journey to Tashkent continued by train. The only things of value I had with me were a lock of hair from my son, a few photographs and the grey button from my brother’s jacket, sewn onto my shirt for safe-keeping.

  Later, I learned that Alexandra and Spiros had formally adopted my son. In my anguish I sent my sister a “black letter”, burnt with a match round the edges and smudged with ash:

  I, the undersigned Antigone Perifanis, father Petros, mother Maria, born in Athens in the year 1924, declare that I have left my Fatherland and the family who have deceived me and acted as my enemies. I never want to see them again.

  23

  The ugly city burns beautifully

  MAUD

  Johnny rang a few days after my return to Athens.

  “I have decided to come. It is probably the foolishness of an old man, but it will be my last journey. Euripides was right to say, ‘The life so short, the craft so long to learn.’ Perhaps it’s not too late to see my old friends…”

  “I hope you will stay with us,” I said, but he declined.

  “I have already booked a room at the Grande Bretagne. For old times’ sake. I hear that Athens is somewhat different to the place I knew.” He would stay for a week, he said, arriving two days before Nikitas’ memorial.

  That night was a Saturday and Tig came home very late, again ignoring my attempts to set a reasonable “curfew” (“none of my friends have to be back by midnight”). I rang her mobile several times, leaving messages that got higher in pitch each time: “Tig darling, where are you? Call me.” “Tig, it’s late. You must come home now.” “Why aren’t you answering your phone?” She eventually countered with a text: “Home soon. Don’t worry.” But I did worry. I worried about her going to Exarchia with Orestes and his friends, and about what went on there. The area has an arty, alternative ambience and is brimming with student cafés and myriad small publishing houses. However, it is also the playground for anarchists, junkies and people who think fun is setting fire to rubbish bins and throwing Molotov cocktails at the police. Most nights a bizarre game of cat and mouse is played out between the police and young people in the narrow streets. It wasn’t what I had envisaged for my daughter when she was younger.

  It was after 2am when I finally heard the click of the door and then whispering. I got out of bed, ready to scold, but when I saw Tig and Orestes I stopped. Tig had evidently been crying – her eyes were swollen and there were streaks of black eyeliner down her face.

  “What happened?”

  Orestes spoke first. “They killed a boy. The fucking police, they shot him. It happened around the corner from the bar where we were.” He slapped his hand against the door in frustration.

  “He was a school kid, about my age.” Tig was angry as well as upset. “The pigs murdered him. People saw them pass the boy and his friends in their car. They parked and went back on foot. One of the police fired at the boy and then they left. They left him to bleed to death while his friends tried to get help.” Her voice was hoarse. “What kind of a country allows the state to murder children?”

  “You can imagine what happened when the news got out.” Orestes’ eyes sparked with fury. “We all gathered at Tzavella Street where it happened. There was blood on the ground. People sent text messages to their friends, so hundreds, maybe thousands, arrived. It was like a war against the police. Not just the usual thing, but an army of young people fighting, setting things on fire. It was chaos. Tomorrow there’s going to be a protest march. The police need to be punished.”

  The next morning the pair of them set off for the march. They returned some hours later, coughing from the tear gas fired by riot police, but enthused by what was happening. Soon, the whole country would be ablaze in reaction to the murder, they said. The police had to realise they couldn’t just murder a schoolboy; they hadn’t even apologised. Tig went up to Orestes’ terrace to help him make a banner with a quote from Bakunin: The passion for destruction is a creative passion.

  In the evening, news reports said that Greek youth had taken to the streets in almost every major city. The kids were angry and grief-stricken. They were saying they had had enough. Enough of the endless pressure of school lessons learned by rote and regurgitated for exams, the expensive cramming classes every weekday evening, the chaotic universities, the prospect of unemployment or badly paid jobs. The complaints went on and on. In the meantime, young men, as anonymous as soldiers in their uniform of jeans and hoods, were smashing shop windows, throwing home-made petrol bombs and overturning cars. Immigrants joined in for the hell of it. The centre of Athens became a war zone and the police and politicians seemed to have gone into hiding. Even the Prime Minister had disappeared. From the terrace, I saw plumes of smoke rising across the city.

  The next day was a Monday and the whole country was in shock. School was out of the question and a large protest gathering was planned, which I agreed to attend with Tig. I didn’t approve of children being shot either. We walked to Constitution Square past the Zappeion and through the National Garden, where some emerald-coloured parakeets with scarlet beaks stared down at us from the branches of the trees – incongruous escapees, who had made themselves at home. I recalled Antigone’s awful experiences in this place, when she had searched in the dark to identify her brother’s body in the ad hoc morgue. It was hard to picture those horrors in a park that was one more orderly and pleasant and along whose well-kept paths animated young people were making their way to the centre.

  An enormous crowd of protestors had gathered in Syntagma, most of whom were teenagers and students. Whole classes of thirteen and fourteen-year-olds had come along, some with their teachers, others with parents. Rows of armed riot police stood in the paved area in Amalia Street and in front of the rosy sandstone Parliament building. They were like ancient warriors on a carving, though, instead of elegant bronze helmets and shields, they had white crash helmets and Plexiglas shields, and their faces were hidden by gas masks.

  “Cops, pigs, murderers!” The crowds chanted, fuelled by rage. They held banners and large photographs of the dead boy. Fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos was no drop-out or drug addict, but a middle-class kid from the northern suburbs. He had gone for a Saturday night outing with friends and possibly shouted at a passing police car. He had now been elevated from anonymous schoolboy to Alexis, teenage martyr, a curly-haired portrait of in
nocence destroyed. Behind me, I heard a teenage boy giving an interview to one of the many journalists who were reporting and filming the scene.

  “It’s not just Alexis’ death. The whole system needs changing.” He was shouting, his voice breaking.

  To my right, a group of school kids were shouting at the lines of police.

  “One, two, three, Na!” They were making the moúntza sign, thrusting their splayed hands in the gesture most likely to offend. Some long-haired girls walked up to the faceless figures and unsmilingly handed them red roses and carnations. The flowers were not taken and fell in front of the sinister, automaton-like figures, whose bodies were tensed, ready to attack like pit-bulls straining on their chains. Other, more daring teenagers sprayed cans of red paint at the lines of the enemy, leaving blood-like patches on the khaki uniforms and shields. As the crowd pushed closer, the police sprayed jets of tear gas at the protestors, thrusting their knees and wielding their truncheons. Tig and I were standing some way back, but I quickly felt my eyes sting and a bitter taste fill my throat. Coughing and trying to wipe away the tears, we pulled our clothes over our noses and edged backwards, trying to distance ourselves. It was clear that things could quickly turn dangerous; there were people on both sides who would welcome some violent action.

  “Cops, pigs, murderers! Cops, pigs, murderers!” The crowd’s shouting got louder. Some boys pulled a kiosk’s refrigerator onto the road, prised the back off and started throwing the cans and plastic bottles of fizzy drinks at the police. They were joined by a sandy-coloured dog that barked at the lines of uniformed men. Later, we noticed his yellow, leonine face appearing on television and in newspaper reports, always on the side of the protestors, rushing fearlessly into clouds of tear gas, his tail flying as he leaped out of the way of baton charges. “Riot Dog” had no owner – he was one of Athens’ many street dogs – but he became a celebrity, soon getting his own Facebook page.