The Voyage of Their Life

by Diane Armstrong

  They sat down at a small round table in a coffee shop on a street of colonial buildings with wooden shutters and large verandahs. From a nearby table, Egyptian men surveyed Dorothea through half-closed eyes as they puffed thick clouds of aromatic smoke from the long bubbling shisha pipe they shared. After leaning forward to light her cigarette, Colonel Hershaw placed a cigarette in his long holder, sprawled back in his chair and inhaled. A street photographer squinted into his viewfinder and took their photo as they sat there, contentedly smoking, talking and watching the passers-by. When the photo was developed, the colonel presented it to her. On the back he wrote with a flourish, ‘To my ship-mate and indispensable aide. Always, Me.’

  Before returning to the Derna, Colonel Hershaw had some business to attend to. He steered Dorothea by the elbow along steamy pavements until they entered a shipping agent’s office where whirring ceiling fans stirred the soupy air. A handsome young man with smoothly combed brown hair and the urbanity Dorothea had always associated with English gentlemen introduced himself as John Brown. From the conversation he was having with Ogden Hershaw, she speculated that he was the ship’s agent in Port Said. While typing some letters for him, she noticed his admiring glances. Before they left, he handed her a large plump fruit with a smooth golden skin and strong perfume. ‘This is a mango. They’re juicy and luscious,’ he said looking into her eyes. ‘I’ll board the ship to find out whether you enjoyed it!’ She laughed, flattered at the attention. What an attractive man John Brown was. She was sorry that she would never see him again, but as she had already discovered, life was a series of chance meetings, delightful in themselves and leading nowhere, but holding out the promise of another thrilling encounter when you least expected it.

  6

  By the time Dorothea and Colonel Hershaw had returned to the ship, a new crowd had gathered on the wharf ready to board, to the dismay of those who had already become territorial about their favourite place on deck. They surveyed the interlopers with distaste. What a noisy, uncouth lot they were. Mostly Greeks and Italians and, judging by their appearance, mostly peasants. ‘It will be too crowded now and there won’t be any quiet corners left,’ Helle complained to Rita as they watched these men, women and children who swamped the ship like a tidal wave.

  Luckily for our peace of mind, we did not know that the captain had agreed to take on an additional fifty Yugoslav migrants from the El Shatt camp in Egypt. When they arrived in Port Said ready to board, the Australian consular official accompanying them discovered that there weren’t any berths. He was shocked to learn that despite the already overcrowded conditions on board the Derna, Captain Papalas had intended to accommodate them on stretchers to be pushed into every spare corner. The official referred the matter to a Lloyds surveyor who refused to allow the Yugoslavs to board on the grounds that the influx would dangerously overcrowd the ship.

  But even without the Yugoslavs, the Derna was pushed far beyond the limits of comfort and safety by the newcomers. There were women with sun-dried faces and dark shawls over their heads, children in their best clothes, faded and worn, and men in shorts or crumpled shirts. Among these shabby people, one couple stood out. Arm in arm, Ina and Rudolf Musto strolled onto the ship, the woman’s slim hips swaying in a slinky silk dress with a fox fur carelessly draped over one shoulder and a hat perched at a sultry angle on her smooth hair, the man in a wide-lapelled suit of finest wool, impeccably cut. They might have been Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks Jr boarding the Queen Mary as they swaggered onto the deck, heads held high, seemingly oblivious to its dilapidated state and the impoverished condition of its passengers.

  Slipping past the line of tired adults still waiting to be directed to their cabins, a little girl rushed on board with her older brother, followed by their two older sisters Mary and Betty. Impatient to explore their new surroundings, Vassiliki Fatseas and her brother Petro couldn’t stand still. They had never been on a ship before and they jumped around, pointed at everything, nudged each other and concocted plans in high-pitched whispers and giggles, while their two older companions attempted to quieten them down.

  The children had been in a state of constant excitement for the past few weeks, ever since the day when the whole Fatseas family had gathered at their parents’ white-washed home on the Greek island of Kythera, and all the adults had lamented and sobbed. Although Vassiliki and Petro didn’t know it at the time, the relatives had come to say goodbye to them. No one had been as broken-hearted as their ninety-one-year-old grandfather, who knew that he would never see them again.

  Vassiliki had no idea why they were all crying, but since this was obviously expected, she too had buried her face in her hands and made loud wailing noises. Assuming that she was distressed because of the imminent parting, the adults did not notice that every few minutes she looked up, eyes dancing with mischief, and then hid her face and resumed her wailing. Twelve-year-old Petro, however, did not have to pretend. He was genuinely sad at having to leave his parents, especially his adored grandfather. ‘You’re going to Australia,’ their grandmother had said and sighed, wiping her eyes. Vassiliki nodded, stealing a quick look at her brother, who had no more idea of where Australia was than she did. Distance was defined by the neighbouring villages and the time it took to reach them on foot. It took a whole day to lead the donkey laden with wheat to the flour mill in the next village, and their concept of distance didn’t extend beyond that. For all they knew, Australia was two villages away and they’d soon be back.

  Kythera floats in the Ionian sea between the Peloponnese and Crete, like an afterthought. Purko, where the Fatseas family lived, is one of the forty villages that lie scattered across this rugged landscape of misty moors and stony fields. Geography is destiny, and from time immemorial, Kythera’s strategic location between the Greek mainland and Crete attracted a succession of invaders.

  It had been a Minoan colony, Mycenean outpost, Phoenician trading post, Egyptian harbour, Roman and Byzantine port, a pirate stronghold, Venetian colony and a British outpost. Ruins of the colonisers’ graves, monasteries, schools and bridges still remain, but the rocks and sands of the island have long buried their footprints and covered them over with defiantly Ionian soil.

  If Vassiliki had known that it would be many years before she would return, she would have cried along with the others, because she loved the simple rhythm of her village life. Every day she and Petro would walk for two hours along rough goat tracks until they reached their school in Hora, the island’s capital, high above the aquamarine water of Kapsali Bay. On hot summer days, they would run down the steep path to the beach and swim in the warm water near the jagged outcrop that was said to have been the birthplace of Aphrodite. In winter, Petro loved hunting in the hills and shooting down sparrows with his catapult.

  Outside the kafenion, under the big-leafed almond tree, men hunched over small wooden tables sipped thick sweet coffee or their fiery tsipoura, the island’s rough potent moonshine, while they played backgammon and gossiped about their neighbours. The air was perfumed with thyme and oregano, and carpeted with wild flowers. After school, the children helped their mother pick tomatoes bursting out of their vermilion skins, luscious sun-warmed figs and sweet melons, while the juice ran down their chins.

  They rose at daybreak, drew water from the well and went to bed at sundown because for them, as for their ancestors, oil lamps were the only source of light, and oil was too precious to waste. They ate what they grew themselves and everything was done by hand. Their parents rose early to plough the fields and pick olives from gnarled silvery trees that had bent with the wind and watched generations come and go.

  Petro loved squashing the grapes that were taken to the still to make the tsipoura. No money changed hands. The still-owner kept some tsipoura and the miller kept some flour. The only way they earned money was by selling olive oil, if they had any left over. Their mother baked bread in her igloo-shaped oven once a month because wood was scarce. To make the bread last longe
r, they sliced and dried it into rusks they called paximali. Petro often had to scrape off the bluish mildew because the air in the village was so moist.

  Small black goats scrambled over the stony ground, their tinkling bells breaking the silence of the Ionian hillside. Bees buzzed among the clover, wild thyme and rosemary producing the fragrant honey that Vassiliki loved to spread on her paximali. After a day spent working outdoors, her older sisters would take out their crochet hooks and looms and their nimble fingers would fly over blankets, lacy curtains, donkey saddle bags, floor rugs, pillow cases and tablecloths for their prika or glory box, weaving their dreams into every stitch. Once a week, the women loaded their laundry onto the donkey’s back and trundled down to the big tubs by the creeks or rivers. Vassiliki and Petro were sent to fetch firewood for the copper boiler while the women piled hand-made lace, linen and underwear into a large cane basket and soaked it in a bleaching solution with fine white ash sifted from the wood fire.

  On Sundays bells pealed from the little white-washed Katafigali church above the olive groves summoning the villagers to pray in the dim candle-lit interior. Petro, who was the altar boy, would prepare the censer that he swung during the service, puffed up with pride at his important role as the aromatic smoke suffused the church. At Easter, the hairs on the back of his neck would stand up when the bells pealed and the priest announced to the congregation that Christ had risen. Then he would race outside with the other boys to let off home-made firecrackers, eat the eggs that had been dyed scarlet and inhale the miraculous aroma of the goat his mother always roasted for their annual feast.

  But the island that enabled its children to grow up so close to nature offered less and less to the adults who struggled to eke out a living from the small plots of stony soil. It provided a bare subsistence but no income. For many years now, Greek men had been leaving Kythera for America and Australia, intending to return home as soon as they’d made enough money to provide for their families.

  And now the Fatseas family was about to be split up once again. George, the eldest of the nine children, had already migrated to Australia with two of his brothers several years before, and had opened a restaurant in Mackay, the sugar cane region in Queensland’s tropical north. Now the four youngest siblings were going to join him. With a heavy heart, Vassiliki’s mother said goodbye to her children, wondering when she would see them again. Torn between her father and her children, she couldn’t bring herself to leave the frail old man.

  Vassiliki, Petro and their sisters Mary and Betty, who had never ventured further than to a neighbouring village, now set off to travel across the world. First by boat to Athens, then by train to Alexandria, where men wore long white robes and funny hard hats with tassels, women covered their faces with veils and spoke rapidly in a strange language they couldn’t understand. On the next train, Vassiliki craned her head out of the carriage staring at miles of sand where men galloped on strange animals with humps and spindly legs. It was like stepping into a fairy tale and she didn’t want to blink in case she missed anything.

  The moment they boarded the Derna, this irrepressible little girl started looking around for games to play. Those long gangways and open spaces were going to be good for hiding and chasing. She soon spotted another Greek family with two girls. The younger one, Mattie Travasaros, who was her age, looked shy but friendly. While the two girls surveyed each other, the adults complained about the heat and the long voyage ahead.

  Noticing that her daughter Mattie had wandered off with her new friend, Koula called her to come back at once. You needed eyes in the back of your head to watch those four children! Apart from her two daughters, Mattie and Katina, she was travelling with her teenage nephews, John and Stan, who considered themselves grown up and resented her efforts to control them. For a woman who had never left her island village before, travelling across the world with four children was a heroic enterprise, but anything was preferable to staying on in Kythera, neither maiden, wife nor widow.

  The past ten years had been relentlessly tough for Koula Travasaros. Like many of the island men, her husband had left Kythera in 1938 to make his fortune in Australia, when Mattie had been six months old and Katina was two. The prospect of marrying off his two daughters had weighed heavily on him. Greek men traditionally toasted each other with the words, ‘May you have male children and female goats’, because girls were a liability from the moment they were born. Their virginity had to be closely guarded or no one would marry them, and when the time came for them to marry, they had to be equipped with a handsome dowry before they went off to live with their in-laws. Girls brought nothing but worry and expenses.

  The life that Mattie was later to look back on as idyllic was in reality a struggle to survive, an unremitting contest with the rocky soil from which they had to wrest their food. Finding money to vary their diet with coffee or rice, or to buy a pair of shoes, involved complicated sums and months of saving. Mattie’s deft fingers learned to spin the wool from their sheep and goats on her mother’s spinning wheel. Sitting beside her on evenings when the fading light slanted through the wide-leafed fig trees, Mattie knitted sweaters and weaved blankets. There was no water or electricity in the flat-roofed whitewashed cottage her father had built with his own hands, so she fetched water from the well in the yard, and as soon as the sun went down they all went to bed.

  Some nights, Mattie’s sobs resounded through the house because her mother had hit her with a stick for some minor transgression. One of her biggest grievances was not being allowed to go swimming. ‘If the boys can go, why can’t I?’ she used to complain on sweltering summer days when the air tasted of sun-baked grit. But she knew why. Girls weren’t allowed to wear swimming costumes. Only harlots exposed their limbs to the lascivious gaze of men.

  Their village, Travasarianka, was deep in the valley, and when Mattie looked up she could see the hillside village of Klaradika, where the man she later married in Australia lived with his family. They met at the monastery of Myrtidiotisa every year on 15 August, when the villagers made their annual pilgrimage to celebrate the Ascension of the Virgin.

  The whole region buzzed with excitement as the women in their best dresses arrived on donkeys caparisoned in bright woven covers, bells and tassels for the occasion. At these gatherings, young men with blazing dark eyes stared at the marriageable girls who stole flirtatious glances back at them and giggled behind their hands.

  Koula, who was only twenty-seven when her husband left, never suspected that circumstances would prolong their separation for ten years. Her spirits rose whenever his letters reassured her that he would soon return with enough money for them all to live in comfort. But two years later, when war broke out, everything changed. After Mussolini’s ultimatum of October 1940 demanding Greek surrender, to which Prime Minister Metaxas replied with a proud and unequivocal ‘Ohi’ (‘no’), Kythera was invaded by Italy. After the Italian soldiers retreated, the Germans occupied the island.

  Food became scarce as the invaders commandeered the little that the villagers grew. Mattie’s aunt did their washing and John and his brother would run to the soldiers’ headquarters with the clean laundry in return for a little food. As no mail got through, Koula was completely cut off from her husband whose financial support she desperately needed. Through the long years of the war, she had no idea whether George was alive or dead. She felt like a wanderer lost in the desert without a compass or any hope of finding an oasis.

  Added to the daily struggle to feed and provide for herself and her little daughters, especially in winter when their dried figs and sacks of flour dwindled, Koula had a distressing personal problem. Taximeni, as the wives of absentee husbands were called, had to be even more modest and vigilant than single women, to ensure that they gave no grounds for gossip. She had to dress in sombre colours, keep her hair covered and lead a monastic existence.

  Talking to a man who wasn’t a close relative would be enough to provoke accusations of loose morals. And that would
mean ostracism for her and dishonour for her children, ruining their chances of making a good match. Perpetuating the vicious circle of oppression, those who had once been its victims became gleeful enforcers.

  For a hot-blooded, strong-minded young woman, being subjected to the gossip of women whose suspicious minds did more embroidery than their fingers was like living in a glass cage. Koula accepted the morality and standards of behaviour that had been inculcated into her, but the relentless suspicion, the continued absence of her husband and the uncertainty of her existence weighed more heavily on her than the exhausting physical labour from sunrise to sunset. If George were to abandon them or die, this bitter existence would remain her fate forever, because she would never know what had happened to him.

  Kythera was the first island on which the Allies set foot in Greece when English paratroopers landed at Kapsali in December 1944. For once there was something to celebrate. Bonfires blazed in every yard and fireworks lit up the sky. When the war finally ended in 1945, after the swastika had been pulled off the flagpole on the Acropolis, Koula received the first letter from her husband in six years.

  Mattie, who only knew her father from the framed photograph that stood on the mantelpiece, and from her mother’s oft-repeated stories, watched as her mother kissed the envelope over and over again. The following Sunday, her mother opened her cherished glory box, took out her best vezeles blanket, draped it around her shoulders and told the girls to hurry. Together they hastened along the sun-bleached stony path towards St Eirini’s Church. When the little whitewashed church was about a hundred metres away, to Mattie and Katina’s amazement their mother dropped to the ground and crawled the rest of the way on her knees. Oblivious to the pain and the blood that ran down her shins, she crawled along the church aisle until at last she came to the gilded icon of Christ.