Confessions

by Loren Edizel

  After the Second World War had effectively flattened everyone to the same level of humiliation and deprivation, the relations between Greece and Turkey improved to the point where Greeks could now visit Turkey on a visa and vice versa. Vassilis and Theodora wept tears of joy when they got their travelling papers. The children, already grown up, refused to follow them and chose to remain in Athens. Vassilis Cacoyannis wrote a letter to Leon Dimarco, in Fraghochiotica (Anatolian Greek written in the Latin alphabet as was the custom in Izmir) advising him he was going to visit beloved Smyrna for a fortnight and would like to pass by his house in Bayraklı for a cafethdaki (a small coffee) one day to say hello and pick up a few things of sentimental value. No response came back from Dimarco, which worried Theodora, but did not dampen Vassilis’s hopes: he simply blamed it on the ineffective postal service. Thirty years had passed; a young family man who had rowed his caique away from Izmir in distress was now a sixty-year-old, returning. He sprinted up the boarding steps of the cruise ship anchored in Piraeus, imagining the warm welcome he would receive from Dimarco and all his Levantine friends across the sea at the port of Izmir. He hoped some of his Turkish friends would also show up. There would be tears, hugs, and slaps on the back. There would be dinners of levreki and raki preceded by innumerable mézés, tasted in joyous drunkenness. He would hold his wife by the waist when they reached their house in Bayraklı, lest she faint on the steps. Dimarco would say “Buyurun, buyurun, to your house (welcome); forgive any small changes we have had to make over the years, but you’ll find it intact, beautiful as you left it. We are keeping it for you safely until the laws change and you can once again repossess the house in which your great-grandfather was born.” Something like that, he would say. Dimarco was a good friend, his childhood companion, and the one whose family he had rescued from bankruptcy. Their bond was deep, similar to the bond between brothers. He relished these thoughts as he showed Theodora to their cabin. “Can you imagine Dora, after thirty years we will once again sleep in our own bed,” he giggled. Theodora whose forehead was terminally creased from worrying about everything since their night on the caique did not dare deflate his excitement, but behind her creased brow, thoughts were advancing at a rather different pace, in the manner of worms eating their way through a fruit: deliberately, digesting one small morsel at a time. Her husband’s jolly prattle was beginning to annoy her. “Settle down Vassilis, you are giving me a headache,” she sighed, hoping he would go up and make friends on the deck as quickly as possible.

  They had managed to accumulate a nest egg after so many years of deprivation and hard work thanks to her hands and forearms whose entire mechanisms were finally ravaged by arthritis. She had done all she could. Now all she needed was peace. She wanted to remove her new gum-pinching dentures and relax. It had not been her idea to take this voyage into the past, certainly not after their letter had remained unanswered by Dimarco. She feared reviving sleeping ghosts. But her husband, after all those terrifying dreams about the ceramic vase in the bedroom, had to go back and search for the package he had left behind. Dora never refused him anything; she couldn’t. She no longer had the strength for it. “Well, my gold, I will leave you to rest and go up to see what’s going on upstairs on the deck, then,” he said finally. She managed a regretful and understanding pout as she nodded him away. He took his panama hat and closed the door behind him. “His cheerfulness will kill me one of these days,” she muttered to herself as she removed the clip-on earrings tormenting her earlobes, the hard leather sandals pressing on her bunions and finally the dentures, as her cheeks collapsed around flattened lips. She lay down on the bed with a sigh.

  When the ship blew its long horn of arrival into the port of Izmir, Vassilis became frantic with excitement. He started running up to the deck hoping to see the city, then down to the room to tell his nauseated wife of developments: “Dora, Dora, I’m afraid we will weep like a children when we step on the ground. I will kiss it. I will. I will kiss the soil of my Smyrna, my mother. Dora, why do you look so cross all the time? Are you not excited about going back home, to the place where you were born? Get up woman, get up, come to the deck with me! I could see the Yamanlar Mountains so clearly. I think I saw palm trees on the Quay. They didn’t have those before. Oh, sweet God, we’re home!”

  Dora finally arose from the bed and left the room with her earrings, bunion-squeezing sandals and dentures in place, and some lipstick on her mouth after having teased her hair where it had flattened on the pillow. She clutched her purse and followed him upstairs into the blinding afternoon. Husband and wife stood side by side ready to wave to their friends as the white ship docked.

  There were no crowds of welcome in the port of Izmir. Not for the Cacoyannis couple, in any case. They looked and looked and found no familiar faces or smiles. They went through passport control, claimed their luggage, and got out once more into the bright sunny afternoon. “Let’s wait a little while, they may have been delayed,” Vassilis said as he put his arm around his wife, his eyes darting about in mounting panic.

  “They won’t come. I knew it when no response came. And you’ve made us spend all that money to travel all the way here for nothing.” Her plaintive voice started rising; her eyes were already beginning to water.

  “Stop crying! Stop it. I’m sure there is an explanation for all this. We will go to a hotel and drive to the house tomorrow to see what’s going on; that’s all. Maybe he died, maybe he didn’t get my letter. I’ll get a taxi right now.” He left his wife alone to wipe her tears and hailed a taxi that would take them to the Izmir Hotel.

  Leon Dimarco checked his watch and took a sip of the coffee that his wife had just prepared for him, sitting on the terrace of his Bayraklı mansion. His demeanour seemed nonchalant, that of a man with no particular interests and a propensity for laziness, betrayed solely by the sudden darting movements of his green eyes hidden under his thick eyebrows. Suspenders held his beige linen pants over the white athletic undershirt that was sticking out of the large waist untidily. He had arisen from his afternoon nap and would go back to his office after finishing his Turkish coffee. His wife joined him on the terrace. Her busty frame was squeezed into a sleeveless tight-waisted yellow summer dress with pleats. “Why are you wringing your hands again?” he grumbled, giving her a sidelong glance. He thought she looked like a giant chick in that dress, hiding her voluptuous curves. Her tanned face was handsome and young. His desire was awakened at the thought of her hidden body, giving him second thoughts about returning to the office.

  “They must have arrived by now.” She grasped the back of a chair and remained there looking intently at his balding head before pulling it out to sit down.

  “Don’t start with that again!” He straightened his body and looked straight into her eyes. “I’m off to the office.”

  “What if they come?”

  “They won’t come today.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How about you go visit your sister in Şakran, eh? Go for a couple of weeks; it’ll be a good rest for you.”

  He rose slowly and took his straw hat that lay on the marble-top table. His short-sleeved rayon summer shirt was hanging from the back of a chair. “Help me with this, will you?” he asked, picking it up.

  “But, let’s say they show up this afternoon…” she began as she helped him into one sleeve, “what am I to say?”

  His thick eyebrows moved up into his forehead. The large green eyes were glaring at her, surrounded by bloodshot whites. “Don’t answer the door! Hide in your room until I come. Go visit somebody and don’t be home. Simple.”

  Meryem effectively hid in her room and told the kids to stay away from the door, instructing the cleaning lady to say: “They’ve gone away for a holiday.” The Cacoyannis couple did not come that day, which meant they would probably arrive the next. Leon Dimarco awoke in a bad mood the following morning. He left the house before his wife could even ask him
what to do about the Greeks. She had never met them, being much younger than her husband. She was born a few years before the fire. Leon, after the tragedy of 1922, had been too busy in the reconstruction of the city to look for a wife. Or so he said. The rumour was that he had a few mistresses he kept at different ends of Izmir, whom he visited at his leisure. The count was half a dozen or more, depending on who told the stories. Meryem was one such mistress who had risen to the respectable “wife” title because she was young enough to give him children and very pretty, besides. She brushed off the rumours, which she found rather ridiculous, certain that she was the only one. He was too homely to seduce so many women, she thought. She herself had married him for that reason, and for his money, of course.

  He liked to boast he had amassed his fortune by the sweat of his brow, working day and night. There was great need for construction after the city was destroyed, and he was the hardest working guy around. It was true, that part. What she knew was a lie was that he had built his fortune from scratch. That’s where the Greeks came in, the couple who were going to knock on the door and ask for what was theirs.

  Meryem saw the taxi stop in front of the house. An older couple came out. Vassilis Cacoyannis had a greying moustache and thinning hair. The wife looked devastatingly old. Older than the husband, or more tired, in any case. Meryem went to the door, her insides trembling, wanting to throw up. She waited for the doorbell to ring, and opened it soon after. Vassilis offered a shy smile, removing his panama hat. “Am I at the house of Leon Dimarco?”

  “Yes….”

  “Is he at home?”

  “No, he’s at work. Can I help?”

  “I am an old friend of his. Vassilis Cacoyannis, from Greece. I used to live in this house before. Are you his daughter?”

  “His wife,” she corrected, crossing her arms.

  “My apologies.” He took Dora’s arm, “Let me present my wife Theodora to you.”

  Meryem uncrossed her arms and extended her hand for handshakes with noticeable hesitation. She tried to smile; instead, something like a grimace spread over her lips.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Meryem. I’m sorry my husband is not here to greet you himself.”

  Vassilis shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “I wrote a letter to him about six weeks ago, advising him of our visit. Did he not receive it?”

  “Oh my goodness!” exclaimed Meryem, able to elicit surprised shock, “I don’t suppose he did! He would have mentioned it otherwise, for certain. The mail service is horrendous lately. Do you think it may have gotten lost?”

  “Thank goodness,” Vassilis giggled nervously, stealing glances at his wife. “We were quite anxious when we didn’t get word. Well, we were just passing by to say hello.”

  “How clumsy of me to keep you at the door! Come in please, we will have coffee on the terrace.”

  She removed her body from the doorway and reluctantly bade them to come in.

  “When did you arrive?” her voice echoed around the vestibule as she led them toward the terrace. “Where are you staying?” she continued without waiting for a reply.

  “Yesterday. At the Izmir Palace. Very nice. We’re very pleased to be back after thirty years. The place has changed so much!”

  “I figure,” she replied and showed them to their seats around the marble table. Husband and wife were still looking around for signs of their old life and possessions as they sat down.

  “Make yourselves comfortable. How would you like your coffee?”

  “Medium sweet,” he replied for both of them.

  Meryem nodded and rushed toward the kitchen, leaving the strangers to themselves.

  She could have asked the maid to prepare the coffee, but she wanted to be away from her guests, kill time. She began to drop spoonfuls of the dark powder into the cezve.

  Dora whispered to her husband, “My piano’s gone.”

  “They probably had no use for it.” He whispered back. “I wonder if she will give us a tour of the house.”

  “It’ll be awkward.”

  “It’s the least they can do. They took over our house, after all, didn’t they?”

  “Well, we couldn’t have stayed, could we? Someone else would have squatted in it and God knows what they would have done.”

  “I know. Still, we all know this is my house, even if we pretend it’s theirs.”

  “Shhh. She might hear you.”

  “Do you think they got the letter and are pretending they didn’t? She thought of the postal service thing a bit too quickly. She could have just said no.”

  “She looks awfully young for Leon, doesn’t she?”

  Vassilis did not respond. He looked at the sea extending to the horizon. A few boats here and there, a lot of ships. The beginnings of an industrial stink in the air.

  He got up and walked into the living room. The ceiling moulds were intact, and the designs still there. They have kept it well, he thought. The antique furniture from his grandparents was rearranged differently, but all the pieces were there. This alone was worth a fortune, he thought. Leon was a simple clerk at a bank. What did he do to be able to hold on to the house and the wealth, he wondered, becoming fretful. Meryem was advancing toward the terrace with a tray holding cups of Turkish coffee, a jar of homemade fig preserves, small spoons and glass bowls. He hurried back out holding the French doors open for her.

  As they sat sipping their coffee in polite unease, Vassilis ventured, “We had a large vase, with aquamarine designs on it, before we left. Do you still have it? It was a wedding gift. We used to keep it in our bedroom.”

  Meryem looked perplexed. “I have never seen such an object. It must have broken before we got married. I really don’t know anything about it, I’m afraid.” She nodded looking genuinely regretful.

  “It was not that valuable; just a sentimental attachment for us. So what does Leon do these days? Is he still in the banking business?”

  “I’ve never heard of his being in the banking business. For the last twenty years or so he has been in the construction business — office buildings, apartment buildings. Things like that.”

  Husband and wife nodded, looking at each other briefly.

  They finished their coffee, swallowed the small fig preserves and drank their water rather quickly. Dora asked to use the bathroom. They inquired when Leon would be home and were gone.

  “They were asking about some blue vase in the bedroom. Do you know anything about it?” She did not wait for Leon to reply. “He said it had sentimental value. They asked when you would be home. They could come any moment.”

  Leon gave her the look she knew well. She sat still, waiting for instructions.

  “Give me a rakı, will you?”

  She brought it to him, and they sat on the terrace overlooking the bay, watching seagulls swoop down for sardines around a fishing boat nearby.

  Leon knew about the vase, and the key inside. For years he had tried the key in every keyhole he could find in the house. What was he to do now, thirty years later? It had not occurred to him that Vassilis might one day come back to claim what used to be his. And why should he care? What was he supposed to do about it? It wasn’t his fault Vassilis had to escape. He actually lost his own home in the fire. Mind you, his was a creaking old dump prone to bedbug infestations, but who would know now? He, Leon Dimarco, former itchy bank teller, was one of the richest, most respected men in Izmir; he had all he ever wanted. He built his fortune with his bare hands. And the key. Maybe he could propose giving him something, something to make him go away, a couple of thousands of American dollars, or a trip to the Canaries, someplace exotic. Vassilis could not claim anything from him legally. Why should he bother giving him anything? He would not even open the door. He would just let him knock and knock. Eventually the man would go back to Athens, and he would get on with his life
in peace. He took another sip of his rakı to help him relax. And another.

  “Meryem!” he called out. “Meryem!” His wife, who had disappeared into the dark house while he was thinking these thoughts, reappeared at the terrace door, her face drawn with anxiety. “Pour me another one.” He extended his empty gold-rimmed rakı glass. Meryem wanted everything with a gold rim. If she could find a gold-rimmed toilet, she would have him install it.

  “Don’t you think it’s better if you don’t? Your blood pressure….”

  He gave her the look again. She disappeared into the darkness with the tall glass. When she returned, she simply left the full glass with ice cubes clinking together with a small plate of teneke cheese cut in slices.

  My house, he thought with finality. This is my house. He took a few more sips. The sun was beginning to set in the horizon, scattering golden bracelets over the gently rolling sea.

  “Meryem, come!” He shouted. He waited a little to see if she would show up. “Meryem!”

  “Coming!” she called from a distance, sounding somewhat vexed.

  She arrived at the terrace, panting. “What is it?”

  “Sit with me, let’s watch the sunset together. Remember how you always touched your wedding ring and made a wish during our honeymoon?”

  She plunked herself into the chair.

  “Give me your hand, let’s make a wish.”

  She gave him her limp hand, not hiding her irritation at being interrupted in whatever she was doing back inside the house. They sat quietly, waiting for the sun to set, holding hands, supposedly making wishes. She was thinking of the casserole she had left on the stove, impatient for the sun to be done setting. He, on the other hand, was unable to make a happy wish; nothing came to his mind except asking for Vassilis and his wife to leave and never come back, which he knew was not a good wish to make. He took another sip and the sun finally left the scene, letting Meryem rush back to the kitchen. Leon took a few more sips, finishing his second glass of rakı. He felt relaxed and dazed, almost happy. Night had fallen, and the Cacoyannis couple had not come back, he thought, contented.