by Nadia Marks
That day, suffering from a mild hangover, turned out to be the most pivotal day of her entire life. Prompted by the previous day’s conversation with her aunt, Anna decided to also ask her father some questions about the past. What followed was completely unexpected. Once he opened up, Alexis spoke to his daughter for three whole days. He spoke of things she could never have imagined, or believed. He began to talk as never before. The words poured out of him, unleashing a torrent of events that took place in Greece, Italy and England long before Anna or any of her siblings were born. They talked sitting under the vine, walking in the garden, over dinner, late into the night, and then again the next day over breakfast, lunch, dinner and in between.
Alexis spoke of people Anna had never met, including her grandparents, and then about his childhood and early youth. He told her the reason he had to abruptly leave the island at the tender age of seventeen was in order to protect his family’s honour, and about his painful years in exile; he spoke of love, and longing, of secrets and passions, of cruelty, war and courage. Over those three days Anna’s father took her by the hand and led her on a sometimes painful and other times joyful voyage. He talked to her of things that had never been spoken of before, things that changed her world and her understanding of who she was and where she came from forever.
Part Two
Love on a Greek island, 1936
‘I will love you for ever,’ he said.
‘I would die rather than stop loving you,’ she said back.
They lay perfectly still in each other’s arms, hearts beating in unison. They dared not move lest the spell be broken. Guided by their young bodies, as natural as breathing, they made love for the first time, a gentle, sweet love, slow and tender.
Outside the cave they could hear the sea’s steady murmur against the shore, promising them sensual pleasures yet to come. But dawn was approaching and they had to part before the sun, like the previous night’s moon, would unwittingly become a lover’s traitor. Ourania reached across and took Alexis’s face in her hands, giving him a final lingering kiss.
‘I must go,’ she whispered. ‘In an hour my father will be awake.’
‘I will keep watch while you go,’ Alexis replied without showing any signs of letting her go.
‘I must run,’ she said again softly, but this time she got up to leave.
Agápe
( agápe)
means love in a ‘spiritual’ sense. In the term s’agapo (Σ›αγαπώ), which means ‘I love you’ in ancient Greek, it often refers to a general affection or deeper sense of ‘true unconditional love’. This love is selfless; it gives and expects nothing in return.
1
The twin brothers Andrikos and Costandis Levanti married their sweethearts on the same day, in the same church, in the early spring of 1919, when the almond trees were in full bloom and the island was covered in a carpet of wild flowers. Their blushing brides were young and virginal in their traditional white lace wedding dresses handed down by their mothers. Both carried bouquets of wild flowers and orange blossom. The brothers, also dressed in the customary male wedding attire, walked tall and proud as peacocks next to their brides.
Some mornings in early spring on the island the chill lingers in the air and you could be fooled into thinking there’d been a sudden snowfall in the night. The delicate white almond blossom flowers tend to blow off the trees with the slightest gust of wind and pile up on the hill slopes masquerading as snowflakes. It was on such a morning that the wedding procession snaked up through the groves to the little church of Agios Panteleimon.
Leading the procession was the village priest, old Father Euthimios, followed by four young bridesmaids each carrying a giant white candle, flame trembling in the morning breeze. The prepubescent girls, dressed, like the bride, all in white, in the tradition of a Greek Orthodox wedding, were the dutiful custodians of the candles which they had to keep alight till they reached the church. Behind the girls and in front of the couples followed the musicians who, with their traditional instruments – a fiddle, a lute and a drum – accompanied the wedding procession on its way.
The line of people that followed was longer than anyone had ever seen before or since. The marriage ceremony was to be performed by Father Euthimios, who had known all four since their baptism in that same church, which according to his memory seemed only just a few years ago. The little church overflowed with guests, and everyone strained to get a glimpse of the priest bless the stefana garlands and place them on the couples’ heads. The blessing of these delicate white crowns made of satin and pearls joined together by a white ribbon is a central moment and one of the pivotal points in the sacrament of marriage, symbolizing the couple’s unity.
The wedding celebrations lasted three whole days and three whole nights; guests came from villages all over the island and for many years to come people talked about the double weddings of Andrikos and Chrisoula, Costandis and Aphrodite. There was much dancing and feasting to be had over those three days, and since the second day of the celebrations fell on a full moon many a love match was to be hatched too. Apparently, the story goes, nine months later the island saw something of a baby boom.
Andrikos and Costandis, like their father and grandfathers before them, were fishermen – the main occupation of the inhabitants on the island and most of its neighbours. The brothers learned their trade from their father, who took his sons from a very early age out to sea with him. By the time the boys finished elementary school, around the age of twelve, they accompanied their father full time. Working in numbers was in their favour, allowing them to triple the amount of fish their competitors caught. With his sons on board, the family business thrived and then when their father became ill the boys took over from him.
The brothers married well, both brides coming with generous dowries and happy dispositions. Not long after the wedding night, Aphrodite was the first to break the good news to the family that she was with child. Chrisoula was soon to follow. Alexis Levantis, named after his paternal grandfather, was born almost nine months to the day after his parents’ marriage, and made his young father the happiest man in the village. What more could a man wish but to be blessed with a son? A few months later Chrisoula had a daughter. A raven-haired, dark-eyed little beauty of a baby girl called Ourania, who made her mother’s heart fill with joy and her father’s with disappointment.
‘Next belly-full will be a boy,’ Chrisoula had said, shrugging her shoulders as she cradled her baby lovingly to her bosom. As it turned out, Chrisoula’s next belly-full was also a girl, and so was the next one and the one after that. In fact, Chrisoula went on to have five daughters without managing to produce one son and heir for Andrikos, while Aphrodite, after her initial success, never managed to produce any more babies at all.
‘One boy is worth ten girls,’ Costandis would boast good-naturedly to his brother.
‘Girls will look after me in my old age,’ Andrikos would retaliate.
In truth, after the initial disappointments, everyone settled down to what they all called God’s will.
‘We have no control over what children God grants us,’ Andrikos would say in way of justification for his failure to plant a male seed in his wife’s belly. ‘If God wanted me to have a son he would have given me one.’
In the meantime, young Alexis, or Lexi, as Ourania chose to call him, was growing up in a sea of love, pampered and adored by all his family, especially by his five female cousins. He was the rooster in the hen-coop, and even though there were plenty of boy cousins elsewhere in the family Alexis was the favourite.
His favourite was Ourania. Not only because he thought she was the prettiest of all the girls but also because he thought she was feisty and strong-minded and played as well as any boy.
Alexis and Ourania, being the closest in age, always had a strong bond between them and had loved each other for as long as they could remember. At first it was through games and toys, no dolls and girlish stuff for Ourania. Hide an
d seek in the orchards with Alexis was her preference, fights with sticks and pretend swords and guns. It was all laughter and play, but then it changed. Neither of them could say exactly when it happened, but it was probably around the age of eleven or twelve when they both seemed to be struck simultaneously by a new feeling. No one noticed at first, and they carried on as before, spending every minute they could together. Games, laughter, play, but now the playing had changed, it was more physical, and they seemed to be drawn together by a magnet. When they touched now, it felt different; it was thrilling. They would steal away from the other kids to be together, to feel the delight of being alone.
Everyone was used to them being close, so it seemed quite natural until the time came when Ourania started to menstruate; then everything changed. She was forbidden to be in the company of boys, and even with Alexis she was expected to be chaperoned. She tried to rebel, as was her nature, but it did her no good. The two cousins still longed to be together as always, even if they knew that what they felt for each other would be considered inappropriate. Love on a small island, under the watchful eye of everyone, was a difficult thing but, as they say, where there is a will, there is always a way. Ourania’s and Alexis’s way was now going to be that of secrecy.
2
Unlike their parents and grandparents before them, who all left school as soon as they could, or never went to school at all, Alexis, Ourania and her favourite sister Calliope, just one year younger than herself, decided they wanted to continue their education beyond the free-school age of twelve. Ourania was particularly fond of learning and by the time she was ten she had already made up her mind that she wanted to become a teacher herself.
The village had only the one-teacher-for-all school which was adequate enough for the first six elementary years, but any child wanting to continue with secondary education had to travel to Limny, the biggest town on the island.
At first there was much debate and discussion about whether the girls should be allowed to follow the path of academia, or whether they should stay at home to learn the customary craft of housekeeping, preparing themselves for marriage. For Alexis, of course, there would be no debate; he was a boy. But Ourania was adamant and Calliope, who adored her sister, was determined to follow suit. Chrisoula, too, was in favour of her daughters getting an education, something she had wanted for herself but was never allowed. The village schoolteacher, who considered the two sisters her prize pupils, was also in favour.
‘It’s only once in a while I find a girl as clever and willing as your Ourania,’ she told the girl’s parents. ‘She has a good brain in that pretty head of hers and a thirst for knowledge. The younger one, too; she’s as bright as a little pearl that one. It would be a sin not to allow them to go further.’
The teacher’s words struck a chord with Chrisoula, who was determined to give her girls the opportunities she never had.
‘We can afford it, Andrikos,’ she said to her husband, ‘the other girls have no interest in learning, they’ll stay here and help me, but these two have been blessed with brains and we can’t stand in their way. We don’t have sons, but God has granted us two daughters as clever as any boy!’
Bursting with pride, Andrikos nodded in agreement. It was true, his two older girls were bright sparks and they seemed to absorb knowledge like those magnificent sponges he fished out of the Aegean and sold in the markets at such high prices. But he was troubled with the prospect of letting his daughters out of his sight, and worried what the rest of the village would think.
‘How can we let them go to town on their own without a chaperone?’ he asked his wife. ‘What would people say about us?’
Nobody at that time thought that education was a quality a man looked for when searching for a bride. What was expected from a daughter was to stay close to home, be modest and obedient, and learn to be a good wife and mother; too much knowledge was undesirable. Marriage was the only priority. But luckily for the sisters, their mother was on their side and their father was an amicable man who was willing to listen.
Since she could see no other way round it, Chrisoula decided that Alexis would have to be the girls’ protector.
‘Your nephew is like a brother to our daughters,’ she told her husband. ‘He is not like other boys, he’ll look after our girls and if people’s tongues start wagging, then shame on them!’ Andrikos loved his brother’s son as if he was his own and knew that the boy would give his right arm to protect his cousins. His trust was implicit.
The journey took over an hour on a bus that stopped in the village square every day except Sundays to pick up its passengers.
Time-keeping never played an important role in the life of the island, except when it came to catching the bus. It always arrived at exactly six twenty-five each morning, returning at four in the afternoon with precisely fifteen minutes for embarking and disembarking, no matter what. This anomaly regarding punctuality was all down to Philipos, the bus driver, who having been given a timetable when he first started the job, was determined to keep to it religiously. Everyone knew that if they wanted to go anywhere by bus they had no option but to abide by Philipos’s rules, because very few people had cars in those days and their journey by the only other form of transportation – a donkey – would not be as speedy or as comfortable.
Philipos, who had been driving his bus for over twenty years, had a big belly, a kind heart, and a big, soft spot for the young cousins. Ourania reminded him of his own daughter and he felt personally responsible for their safe return home each evening.
‘If she was my daughter I wouldn’t let her out of the house,’ he’d mutter to himself. ‘Education! What does a girl need that for?’
O Aetos, The Eagle, as Philipos named his bus, was his pride and joy and he took almost as much care of it as of his own house. At the top of the steps inside the entrance of the vehicle he had placed a doormat, insisting on clean footwear from all his passengers before entering. On the dashboard he had erected a little shrine to the Holy Virgin to provide protection and guarantee a safe journey. A small icon of the Panayia, the All-Holy Mother of God, stood on the right-hand side of the driving wheel surrounded by bright-coloured plastic flowers, while an artificial electric candle was wired up to stay alight at all times in front of the shrine. From the rear-view mirror, just to be on the safe side, he’d also hung a selection of other good-luck trinkets. Amongst them was a crucifix as well as a big blue glass evil-eye stone, a pagan symbol to ward off envious spirits. On the front bonnet of his bus, Philipos had commissioned a local artist to paint a picture of the bus’s namesake in full flight, with the name underneath, inscribed in beautiful calligraphy, which by the end of the day would be hardly visible under many layers of dust. Each night on his return to his own village, Philipos would wash and polish his bus and only then, when The Eagle was spick and span, the colours of the bird gleaming bright again and the bus ready for another day’s journey, would he consider coming into the house to wash himself, eat dinner with his family and rest.
Alexis and Ourania started high school at the same time, and Calliope, thirteen months younger, the following academic year. School started early so in the winter months they would leave their homes before sunrise and arrive back after nightfall. If the weather was bad, permission was granted to any children waiting for a bus to stay in the schoolhouse until its arrival, but in the summer the cousins would take advantage of the free time and run to the beach.
The two cousins couldn’t believe their luck; the switch to the new school came about the time when Ourania had reached puberty and the veto on boys had already started. If one was to try and pinpoint the moment the two fell truly in love it would probably be around that time. Although Ourania and Alexis already knew that their feelings for each other had altered, and that something else had taken hold, it wasn’t until that first school year, before Calliope joined them, that these feelings became clearer.
They also understood that this was a completely forbidden love,
and must be kept secret. No matter how much Ourania tried to fantasize when she lay in bed at night that love would conquer all, or Alexis told himself that Ourania was not his sister, they both knew all too well the rules of their land and that there was no way they would ever be allowed to marry. The Greek Orthodox Church and the law have never allowed marriage between first cousins and union between them is considered a sin, a social disgrace.
Unlike other children, the two cousins didn’t particularly look forward to Sundays and holidays, they much preferred school days. They always made sure they were the first to arrive and board the bus, making their way to the very back of the vehicle. Alexis sat next to the window and Ourania next to him, taking care to place their two bulky satchels, which not only contained heavy books but also their food for the day, by her side, thus ensuring nobody else could sit with them. Later on, when Calliope started school, she would always take the seat in front of them. For the hour or so that the journey took to reach the town they were blissfully happy. At the beginning they were the only two children from their village to go to town, so for the duration of the journey they savoured their proximity, taking care not to draw too much attention to themselves or let anyone see that their feet under the seat were always entwined.
The early sexual awakenings that Alexis and Ourania experienced were as innocent and chaste as their young years. Ourania, especially, was happy to just sit as close as possible to her beloved, feel his warmth, and listen to his voice. Alexis, aged thirteen, already had his full influx of testosterone, with a voice as deep as his father’s, a smudge of hair growth on his upper lip promising a budding moustache, and the physique of a young athlete. He was growing up to be as handsome as Ourania was beautiful. But even if his hormones were telling him what to do about his love for his cousin, he wasn’t going to listen, unless Ourania gave him a sign.
