by Nadia Marks
The only thing I know, Lexi mou, is that as much as it pains me to be apart from you, I cannot abandon Calliope now in pursuit of my own happiness and I could not live with myself or be happy. I know she has the rest of our family who will look after her, but she and I are so close, we have taken care of each other ever since we can remember and I cannot leave her now.
Calliope knows nothing of this. She would be furious with me if she knew I have sent you this letter. She still thinks I will be joining you soon, but I cannot do it. I will have to face her and tell of my decision. I can only do what my heart tells me. You know me better than anyone and I know you will understand why I’m doing this and you will forgive me.
When you are ready, please come back to us, my love. Although I would never ask you to forget me, I couldn’t bear that, we have to try and forget our passion and our desire for each other and the wish to live as man and wife, but try instead to live as cousins.
My heart is full of pain. It aches for you and me and for Calliope too, but I must choose willingly to stay by my sister’s side. I will finish my studies and become the teacher I have always wanted to be. This will be my life from now on. I will try and be happy, as you must do too. Maybe your mother is right. Perhaps this is God’s will.
Your beloved always,
Ourania
Alexis read and re-read the letter in disbelief. To begin with, Ourania’s words were incomprehensible. They were just a jumble of letters that made no sense to him at all. The more he read, the more grief-stricken he became. Tears rose to his eyes and streaked the blue ink on the paper. How could his Ourania do this to him, to them? He sat on his bed dumbfounded, holding his head in despair while Costandis and Georgios were drinking coffee downstairs and listening to the wireless.
Suddenly, in a moment of blind anger, Alexis grabbed the letter from his lap, screwed it up into a tight ball and threw it out of the window. An instant later he leapt off the bed and ran downstairs into the garden to rescue it. He smoothed it out, read it again, folded it neatly, and put it in his pocket. Then, trying to regain composure, he went into the bathroom, splashed his face with cold water, tucked his shirt in, grabbed his jacket and left the house for Agios Nicolaos. He left quietly, taking care not to alert Costandis and Georgios to his departure. He had no desire for discussion just yet. He needed to be alone with his thoughts. Besides, his two friends were still preoccupied with listening to the BBC news.
For days now Uncle Georgios had been glued to the wireless set. In the last few months the world events that were unfolding had given him a lot to worry about. Talk of a possible war with Germany was being discussed in hushed tones in the Greek community, inducing a sense of fear and uncertainty in the hearts of everyone.
In the silence of the empty church, Alexis started to calm down; he always found solace in prayer. For him it was a form of meditation and the church a place of contemplation. There, he could always put order in his thoughts. In the same way that Ourania had found her place of contemplation in their hideout on the beach, Alexis found it sitting on a wooden pew in a Greek Orthodox church in Cardiff, nearly two thousand miles away from his native home and the people he loved most in the world.
Ourania, he thought, had made her choice and he had no right to demand that she abandon it for his sake. He had no doubt that she loved him, but if she chose to renounce that love for the sake of Calliope then he must accept it. One thing was clear to Alexis: he loved Ourania with every cell of his youthful body but he loved her like a woman, and could never learn to love her, as she had asked of him to do, with a brotherly love. That would kill him. How could he return to the island and pretend otherwise? How could he endure living near her while she married someone else and bore someone else’s children? He would rather stay away than do that. At least then his love would remain in his heart forever.
When he’d finally put his thoughts and feelings in some kind of order Alexis got up to leave. Before walking out, he stood for a few moments in front of the icons, lit a candle for Agios Nicolaos and once again asked the saint to grant him courage and strength.
Alexis blinked as he came out of the church into the bright light. It was unusually sunny for the first day of September. He didn’t much like the grey northern days and felt sure he would never get used to them. He stood for a moment outside the church to light a cigarette and then started to make his way towards the harbour. The autumn sun beat down on his back and made a welcome change from the usual Welsh drizzle. It felt good, it gave him hope. He took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulders and stood looking at the ships lined up along the bay. The Doric gleamed in the sunlight. He stayed a while, gazing at the cranes and cargo nets that were unloading the vast vessel which had been his home for the best part of two years, and wondered what the future held for him. He and Costandis were due to leave for their return journey to Piraeus in a few days. He’d been ready to make it his last. He was looking forward to settling down, getting a job on land and starting a new life with Ourania. But now? He wondered with a heavy heart. Where should he go? What could he do? Was the sea going to be his future from now on?
Alexis had lived with such a clear vision about what he was going to do and where he was going for so long. Now that everything was blurred, he didn’t like it at all. It frightened him.
When he returned to the house, he was surprised to find his two friends still huddled over the wireless in a state of distress. The ashtray on the side table was piled up high with cigarette ends and the room was thick with smoke.
Seeing Alexis, Uncle Georgios leapt off his chair, causing it to fall with a crash, and started bellowing at the top of his voice, his face red as an over-ripe tomato. Alexis, startled at this uncharacteristic outburst from his friend, took a few steps back, assuming that perhaps he was the cause of Uncle Georgios’s distress.
‘That bastard Adolf Hitler!’ he raved. ‘He’s gone and done it now! He has sent troops into Poland!’ Georgios was pointing at the wireless and gesticulating madly. Alexis was confused. He looked from Costandis to Georgios with alarm, trying to fathom what was going on.
‘We are doomed!’ Georgios carried on shouting. ‘We’ll be at war before the month is out, mark my words!’
‘Perhaps not,’ Costandis suggested, trying to keep calm. ‘They might find a solution. No one wants a war!’
‘That’s what they said before.’ Georgios’s voice was somewhat calmer now. ‘I don’t trust those Germans.’
‘Let’s try and be hopeful, Uncle, you never know, they might be bluffing.’
Two days later, 3 September and the last Sunday before the boys were due to depart, Uncle Georgios prepared a full English breakfast for them. It was the only English culinary delight they both enjoyed, and despite feeling anxious and worried about the pending events, Georgios felt a sense of occasion which he wanted to mark with a loving gesture towards his ‘surrogate’ sons.
‘You never know when the three of us might be able to sit down and eat like this again,’ he said, piling eggs, bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread on all their plates. ‘You’ll soon be gone, back to Piraeus, and who knows what will happen next?’
The three sat eating at the kitchen table with the wireless blaring at full volume in the next room. They’d been told that the Prime Minister would be making an announcement to the nation and all morning the radio presenters had been drawing the listeners’ attention to his coming speech and urging people to stay tuned to their sets.
After breakfast the three friends took their Turkish coffee – a fresh supply was brought from Greece for Uncle Georgios with each voyage – to the living room. Like the rest of the British nation, they gathered around the wireless waiting for the news. Finally, at 11.15 a.m., the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, spoke to the British people from the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street: ‘This morning,’ he began, ‘the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o’clock
that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’ Then, unable to disguise the emotion from his voice, the British Prime Minister spoke the dreaded words that nobody wanted to hear. ‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’
Since Uncle Georgios’s intuition had been almost spot on, give or take a couple of weeks, that Sunday breakfast turned out to be the last one the three of them would be having together for a very, very long time.
9
Lesbos, 1939
In September, just a month before war was declared in Greece, Ourania travelled to the island of Lesbos, where she could attend the Academy and start her teacher’s training. To her great joy she’d managed to win the scholarship she’d been dreaming of and had worked so hard to get. Calliope, too, hoped to join her the following academic year and encouraged her sister to go ahead, promising she’d soon be following. Both girls had decided that teaching was the path they would follow and together they planned eventually to open a much-needed school in their village.
During that first year, life for Ourania seemed to carry on more or less the same as before. The developments of the war which were affecting the mainland and especially Athens hadn’t quite reached the islands and although she was anxious about being away from home, it was decided that since the Academy was still open it was safe enough for her to remain where she was and continue with her studies. Most days the students were able to attend classes and everyone was hopeful that things would soon calm down.
When she first arrived on Lesbos, Ourania had expected to feel isolated and lonely away from her family and especially from her beloved Calliope, but the world events that were taking place created such an atmosphere of excitement and comradeship amongst the students, she didn’t have much time to think about her own circumstances. She took a room in a house owned by a widow called Kyria Ismini, who was making ends meet by taking in lodgers. She was a distant relative of Ourania’s Auntie Aphrodite and the house had come highly recommended as a respectable place for her to take up lodgings. The widow only ever took in girls, since her biggest regret in life was that she never had any of her own. Her husband had been killed in the 1918 war between Greece and Turkey and she’d been left alone and childless.
Although rather small, the house was pleasant, light and airy and was surrounded by a beautiful fruit orchard which made up for only having three bedrooms. Ourania would often take her books and sit under the cool shade of the trees to study.
Since there were four girls living in the house and only three bedrooms, one of which was allocated to Kyria Ismini herself, the girls were expected to double up. Ourania, who had always shared not only her room but her bed with Calliope too, welcomed the company and was content with the arrangement. Her room-mate was a girl called Thalia, also a student at the Academy and studying mathematics.
Thalia’s family home, although on the island, was in a remote village too far for her to make the daily journey into the town. Her father was a wealthy farmer and could afford the fees for his daughter’s education, even if he couldn’t see the point of it.
‘My father thinks I will stay a spinster and that I’m throwing my youth away,’ Thalia had told Ourania when they first met. ‘He thinks all this education will put off any man wanting to marry me.’
‘I know,’ Ourania sighed, ‘my mother thinks the same. She was keen at first, but then she started trying to marry me off.’
‘All I can say is that although my parents are not educated and can’t understand why I would want to be, they still let me do it. For that I will always be grateful.’
The other two girls lodging with Kyria Ismini were sisters from a small island nearby, doing their apprenticeship with a seamstress and hoping to open their own dressmaking shop in their village. They all liked each other well enough, especially Ourania and Thalia, who were both united by their thirst for learning and determination to be educated. The other two were shy, simple girls in awe of their brainy housemates. They spoke only when they were spoken to, finished each other’s sentences and provided a constant source of amusement to Ourania and Thalia.
Kyria Ismini enjoyed having the girls around. Even if she fancied they were the daughters she never had, she demanded a strictly regimented rota in keeping the place clean, and the girls obliged without too much complaint. They were all used to pulling their weight in their own homes.
During her first year away from home Ourania’s education went much further than her academic studies. If in matters of the heart she was more knowledgeable than most girls of her own age, her life experiences were limited to those of the close-knit community of her island. In contrast to her birthplace, Lesbos was one of the largest Greek islands. Kyria Ismini’s house was situated a short bus ride outside Mytilini, the capital, which was a buzzing, busy port with shops, markets, restaurants and tavernas, the likes of which Ourania had never seen before. Far from being overwhelmed by the size and strangeness of the place, she had an appetite for change and was more than ready to embrace it. Although she had dreamt and longed for adventure, Ourania never thought she’d be doing it alone, always imagining that Alexis would be by her side. But she was a resilient young woman and although her love for Alexis never faltered, she was determined to make things work and not allow herself to wallow in regret or self-pity. Besides, Calliope had taught her a lot about strength and bravery.
The feeling of solidarity and camaraderie that was prevalent amongst the student population in Mytilini had spread to the rest of the island; people, young and old, felt united and would gather day or night in bars and cafes, to listen to the wireless and discuss the war situation. This rallying together helped Ourania and acted as a buffer to any feelings of alienation she might have otherwise felt, alone in the strange city, and it enabled her to settle into her new life sooner than she imagined.
There was a large circle of friends at the Academy with whom the girls spent most of their free time. In particular, Ourania had formed a close friendship with a young man called Michalis who was one academic year ahead of her and also studying to be a teacher. If Michalis hadn’t fallen head over heels in love with Ourania the minute he saw her it was doubtful that she would have noticed him. She didn’t even know he existed until he pulled up a chair next to her in the students’ common room and began to talk.
In appearance Michalis was the antithesis of Alexis. Whereas the latter was tall and athletic, with a head of thick black hair, Michalis was rather short, slight, bespectacled, and at twenty-two had already started to go thin on top. Alexis’s brown-eyed gaze could ignite a fire in Ourania’s heart, hot enough to burn a hole in her silk chemise, whereas Michalis’s eyes peered at her from behind his glasses. His physical appearance had never provoked a second look from any girl, yet the instant Michalis started to talk, the moment he engaged anyone in conversation, his less-than-impressive physical attributes would fade into insignificance. His conversation was captivating and his voice resonated with passion as he spoke. Once you got to know him he appeared to be as handsome and as attractive as the best of them. At least that’s what Ourania thought.
An active member of the newly formed communist resistance group at the Academy, Michalis was respected by many of his fellow students who shared the same liberal political views. Before the war, he had been, along with the rest of his family, a member of the socialist party, who opposed the dictatorial rule of Prime Minister Metaxas. Now the changed political climate that had seized Europe had given his ideals a new focus. Ourania felt secure in his company, she thought he was wise and clever and she liked nothing better than to sit and talk with him. She wasn’t in love with Michalis, but she liked him more than she could say.
‘We have to resist, Ourania, we have to resist with all our might,’ he said to her one night as they sat under the stars in Kyria Ismini’s orchard after they’d all shared some food together and eve
ryone else had gone to bed. The home-grown vegetables that Kyria Ismini grew in her garden were essential since food had now started to be in short supply. The widow had always grown just a few tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs for her own use, but now with more mouths to feed she had to increase both her repertoire and production. The landlady was a sociable soul and always welcomed company and any friends her girls brought home with them. That evening Michalis had joined them for dinner. They had all shared a pot of fasiolia beans that the sisters had cooked, and after the meal they sat talking together for a while until one by one they went off to bed, leaving Michalis and Ourania, with Kyria Ismini’s permission, to continue the conversation.
‘We cannot allow fascism to spread its evil tentacles,’ he was saying with passion. ‘If he’d been allowed, Metaxas would have willingly taken us into the abyss.’
‘Couldn’t he see that Mussolini is a monster?’ Ourania asked with horror.
‘No! He’s no better than him. He is a megalomaniac, a fascist sympathizer. If it wasn’t for Churchill and those of us who care, we would now be allied with the enemy! Can you imagine that, Ourania? The Greek people doomed and disgraced because of one man’s madness?’
No one had ever spoken so expansively to Ourania about such things before. Politics was not a subject discussed at length in her family; her parents were simple uneducated people who didn’t know much about such matters, and Michalis made her think, made her question things. He wasn’t much older than her, Ourania thought, yet he seemed to know so much. Her heart welled up with a strange emotion, a fondness for this myopic, unathletic but cerebral young man who spoke beautifully, with empathy and passion and made everyone sit up and listen.
