Among the Lemon Trees

by Nadia Marks

  Philía

  (φιλíα philía)

  is ‘mental’ love. It means affectionate regard or friendship in both ancient and modern Greek. This type of love has give and take. It is a dispassionate virtuous love, a concept developed by Aristotle. It includes loyalty to friends, family and community, and requires virtue, equality and familiarity.

  2

  Kyria Ismini was overjoyed to have a full house again and be reunited with her girls. Ourania’s friend Thalia had also returned to her studies at the Academy, although the other two lodgers remained at home. Three years was long enough for them to practise the dressmaking skills they’d picked up, and they had accumulated enough customers on their island to keep them going without having to continue further with their apprenticeship. This meant that one of the bedrooms was now free, and after some discussion it was agreed that due to Ourania’s new status as a betrothed woman, she should be the one to occupy it. Kyria Ismini, Calliope and Thalia all agreed that Ourania now needed access to some privacy. A place that she and Michalis could go to to be alone; but Ourania was adamant that she should continue sleeping with her sister.

  ‘What if you wake up in the night and need help to get out of bed?’ she told Calliope while all three women were trying to convince her that this was the right thing to do.

  ‘I’m more than capable of helping her,’ protested Thalia.

  ‘You have to have a place where you and Michalis can spend some time together without all of us breathing down your necks,’ Calliope insisted.

  ‘You are a couple now,’ Kyria Ismini said, patting her left hand and her aravona. ‘You have to get to know each other in more ways than one. You will be married soon. An engagement is like a trial marriage. When I got engaged to Demetris he moved into my parents’ house until were married.’

  ‘We’re not getting married just yet!’ Ourania objected. ‘Besides, if we want to be together we can go in the garden, the orchard is big enough, we managed fine before the war.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Kyria Ismini argued. ‘Before the war you weren’t engaged; now you are allowed . . . expected, to spend some time alone.’

  ‘I can be alone with Michalis anywhere,’ she persisted. ‘That doesn’t mean I have to sleep alone, too!’

  According to local custom, once a couple was engaged they were permitted to indulge in a certain amount of carnal relations. Intercourse, however, was strictly reserved for the wedding night, although cases of ‘premature births’ were fairly frequent among newlyweds in those days. The reason for these seven-monthlies, as the babies were euphemistically called, was blamed on the delicate state of the bride’s health or other external factors such as hard work or excessive heat, cold, or spicy food.

  In the end it was decided that the three girls would all sleep in the same room but keep the other one as their communal parlour where they could go to study, or contemplate, or where Ourania and Michalis could go if they wanted some privacy. Kyria Ismini gave them whatever spare furniture she had: an old sofa and some chairs, which the girls covered in brightly coloured rugs and cushions turning the room into a cosy, cheerful, sunny place. For the first time since they met, Ourania and Michalis had somewhere they could actually sit on their own with the door shut. Michalis was over the moon. He felt at liberty to hold his sweetheart in his arms and kiss her without fear of being misconstrued. Ourania too was very pleased with the arrangement. Even if nothing compared to the thrill she felt from Alexis’s touch, she cherished Michalis’s love and enjoyed his kisses and caresses.

  Ourania was as happy with Michalis as she would ever be with any man who wasn’t Alexis; she had concluded that a long time ago. If she couldn’t have Alexis, then Michalis was the right man for her; he was decent and kind, he loved her and she loved him back, and when their studies were complete they would return to the island together and set up their school. The sisters’ dream had now become his too.

  A number of the students they knew before the war had also returned to the Academy and they were able to pick up their friendships from where they had left off. But the reunions were not always joyful; several of the young men had not been as lucky as Michalis. One friend had lost an arm, another his left eye, and two young men in Ourania’s year never made it back. They’d been killed in action. One way or another they’d all been tested, but not crushed; their young spirits continued to look ahead.

  Calliope flourished in Mytilini; the student life seemed to suit her well, and her feisty spirit won her much popularity. Life at the Academy was good, and Kyria Ismini’s house was a home from home. The landlady soon returned to her role as mother hen, happy to have her girls back, and delighted to have a man about the place. Although Michalis never moved in, he spent most of his free time at the house and took his meals with them.

  ‘I used to say that I only ever wanted daughters,’ Kyria Ismini told the girls. ‘But if I’d had a son like Michalis I would never have said that.’

  The scars of war were starting to heal slowly and the first academic year passed with little worries. Food was still scarce but they’d all learned to do with much less and the produce from Kyria Ismini’s garden continued to provide them with many essentials. For the summer break Ourania and Calliope went home to the island, and Michalis joined them for a few weeks.

  ‘I think you should get married,’ Chrisoula told her daughter when she first arrived. ‘I don’t see the point of waiting, we can do it this summer. It will be more decent if you were blessed and finally married; people are starting to talk.’

  Ourania was incensed.

  ‘When have you ever known me to care about what people say?’ she told her mother, trying to keep her anger at bay.

  ‘This way you can live as man and wife,’ her mother continued. ‘Don’t you think that would be best?’

  ‘What I think would be best,’ Ourania bellowed, ‘is for everyone to mind their own business! Michalis and I will get married when we are good and ready and that will be when we finish our studies.’

  Chrisoula didn’t raise the subject again; she knew not to argue with her eldest daughter.

  That summer Ourania spent a great deal of time showing Michalis around her island. They explored the countryside on bicycles, they visited the town, they went grape picking, and hiking, they swam in the lagoon and watched the August full moon rise from the sea. She wanted to show Michalis everything that she loved, apart of course from the secret places that belonged only to her and Alexis. They were not for sharing.

  ‘I love your home, Ourania mou, and I will be really happy living here with you,’ he told her as they sat on the rocks watching the sun set.

  ‘I too will be happy, Michalis,’ she said and reached for his hand. ‘We can do great things together, I know it. You, me and Calliope, we will be a great team.’

  The next day she took him to see the old schoolhouse, and the plot of land next to it that belonged to her grandfather and for which he had given his permission to build the new school.

  ‘It will be our legacy,’ she said excitedly. ‘We can start planning straight away. By the time we finish our studies, the building will be complete.’

  That summer was blissful; at last the war was behind them and they could now start making plans and look to their future. But by the time they had returned to Lesbos for the new academic year, and before they or anyone else in Greece had time to enjoy peace like the rest of the world, the country was plunged into the misery of another conflict, this time a bitter civil war. No sooner had the Greeks laid down their arms against the Nazis than they picked them up again to fight each other.

  Ourania knew that Michalis had strong political principles and she respected his opinion, sharing his views about what they considered the oppression and colonization of their country by the western powers. But when he told her that he wanted to join the partisans in the struggle against fascism, which had taken hold of Greece at the end of the Second World War, it was with a heavy heart she accep
ted his decision.

  ‘It’s just one more thing we have to do for our country, for our liberty,’ he said, holding her tight in his arms. ‘We have come this far, we fought so hard, we must complete the task.’

  She said nothing; she knew she couldn’t prevent him from going. The country was divided now between those who wanted an independent socialist state and those who embraced western capitalist values. A full-scale guerrilla war had already begun, and within weeks Michalis, along with many of his friends, had joined ELAS, the Greek Communist Partisan Army, and all of them were willing to start fighting again for their beliefs.

  All through the civil war Ourania remained with Calliope on Lesbos until the end of their studies. The struggle lasted three long years, during which the only news she ever received from Michalis came through messages passed secretly to her from other members of ELAS. At the beginning, once in a while, a hurriedly written note would be smuggled to her, but eventually they too stopped and the only news she got was word that Michalis was still alive.

  She waited patiently; Ourania had learned to be stoic about life and what it threw at her.

  The fighting took place primarily on the mainland and in the mountainous interior of the country, leaving most of the smaller islands relatively unaffected. In Lesbos things remained reasonably calm, and the Academy continued more or less normally. Finally Ourania graduated, gaining her diploma with distinction, but since she was a year ahead of Calliope she stayed with her until she completed her studies too, by which time the struggle had also come to an end.

  The girls returned home and proudly unrolled their diplomas to show off their qualifications. No one in the family had ever attained such level of education before, and Chrisoula and Andrikos were as proud as they could be of their daughters’ achievements.

  ‘You see! In the end it paid off,’ Chrisoula told her husband. ‘I knew those two could do it! I wish I had their opportunities . . . or their brains!’

  ‘Times were different then,’ Andrikos replied.

  ‘My father didn’t even want me to go to the elementary school,’ Chrisoula said and let out a sigh.

  The priest and the teacher had always been the most respected and educated people in the island’s community and to have not just one but two of them in one family was an inestimable honour. By the time the sisters returned to the island the new school was almost finished. In no time they could start making arrangements for the lessons to commence. But Ourania would not hear of it until Michalis returned too.

  ‘We said we would do this together,’ she told Calliope. ‘I must honour that agreement, we can’t begin without him, it would not be right.’ Of course Calliope agreed.

  When the hostilities ended and it was clear that the communists were defeated, many of the remaining fighters fled the country into neighbouring Albania; Ourania was confident that the reason Michalis had not yet returned was that he too had gone there. She was certain that he would eventually come back unexpectedly to surprise her as before. But a year went by with no sign or word from him. Finally, one day, instead of Michalis, a friend from the Academy, a member of ELAS, turned up to see her.

  ‘Andreas!’ Ourania cried out at the sight of him, her face turning deathly pale. It took her a good while before she could bring herself to ask what brought him to the island. She made him coffee and they both sat silently on the sofa not daring to speak.

  ‘We were together when he was wounded,’ Andreas said at last, his voice trembling with emotion. ‘He made me promise that if he didn’t make it, I should come and find you and give you the news myself.’

  Michalis’s death hit Ourania hard. She mourned publicly and privately for him, everyone did. His goodness and generosity of spirit had touched all those who knew him. But gradually, even in grief, Ourania picked herself up, and recovered her will to continue. She threw herself with fervour into the task of getting the school project underway. Her passion for teaching and education was going to be her life from now on and she owed it to Michalis to make of it the best job she could.

  Over the years Calliope and Ourania created miracles in the small village school. They were known to everyone and loved by many of their pupils. They evoked respect and admiration, if perhaps a little pity too, for everyone thought it unfair that destiny had not smiled favourably at the marvellous Levanti sisters. But Calliope and Ourania were content with their life and considered themselves privileged in the work they were doing and lucky to have each other; they took what had been granted to them with grace, and thanked God for it.

  3

  Greece, the Aegean, 1999

  This time it was her aunt who did most of the talking. Once again Anna listened and wondered how she could have got to the age she was, with no idea about who the closest people in her life really were, or what they had gone through.

  It’s often the case, she thought, that we tend to project what we want to see in people or what we perceive as being the truth about who they are. For her, all through her life her father was the adoring dad who married the woman of his dreams and took care of everyone; her mother was the lucky girl who was swept off her feet by the gallant soldier she fell in love with to live happily ever after, spreading love to her children. And Anna had assumed her Thia Ourania was the caring tragic maiden aunt who had never been loved or ever experienced a great passion. How wrong could she have been!

  ‘Did you know him, Papa?’ she asked, looking at her father through her tears. ‘Did you ever know Michalis?’

  ‘No, Anna mou, I didn’t, but I knew all about him. Ourania told me.’

  ‘When did the two of you see each other again?’ she asked, wiping her eyes.

  ‘If I have any regrets in my life,’ Alexis said and looked away from both of them, ‘they are that I didn’t come back to the island earlier. I just couldn’t, you see. I couldn’t do it.’

  Knowing how he had felt when he had found out Ourania was going to marry Michalis, Alexis didn’t want to see her with him and had assumed she would feel the same if he came back to the island with Rosaria.

  ‘I didn’t know how Ourania would feel and I couldn’t risk putting her, or me, through the pain of that. I wanted Ourania to be content, but I couldn’t bear to see her with another man; I know I had no right, and I felt I was a hypocrite. I kept trying to reason with myself: if I was with Rosaria and happy, why couldn’t Ourania be married? But it was no good. I couldn’t help it. Then, when I found out that Michalis was killed, I didn’t want to flaunt my happiness, I didn’t want to hurt her.’

  ‘But you see, Anna,’ Ourania interrupted, ‘what Alexis didn’t realize was that my feelings were different to his. Somehow, all I ever wanted was for him to be all right. He was the one who had to leave, I was the one who didn’t follow him, and he was the one who spent all those years wandering alone. Of course I still loved him, I always did, but I accepted our fate.’

  When Alexis eventually returned to the island it was for his mother’s funeral, when he already had three young sons and Anna was on the way.

  ‘I never even said goodbye to her,’ he said, his voice breaking up with emotion. ‘She died without my seeing her again, not once in all those years.’ Tears were now rolling down his cheeks. This was only the second time in her life Anna had ever seen her father cry; the first was when her mother died, and the sight of him made her weep.

  ‘Oh Lexi,’ Ourania whispered, and reaching across she cupped his face with her hand and gently wiped away a tear. At that moment Alexis turned his face towards her with a look that Anna had never seen before. Was it the sound of his childhood name resonating like a forgotten melody in his ears that provoked it, or was it the touch of Ourania’s hand on his face? She couldn’t tell, but all Anna knew was that she had never seen her father look more content or more at peace than he did then.

  ‘She knew you loved her and she never judged you,’ his cousin told him. ‘She knew you had to leave, and that you’d been through a lot. She understood.’
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  Anna’s grandmother died a few months before she was born. When Alexis got the news that his mother was gravely ill he went back to the island by himself, encouraged by his pregnant wife, who stayed behind with her three boys. The journey was long, and the boatride from Piraeus treacherous. Reaching those islands during winter could be very hazardous and by the time he arrived his mother had died. It took everyone, and especially Ourania, to help him get through his grief. Finally, after so many years, Alexis was able lay his ghost to rest and discover that his fears about returning home had been unfounded.

  Ourania, remarkable woman that she was, showed no hard feelings or reservations about his life or his happiness, only contentment to see him again. Their connection went further back than their desire for each other; the familial love they had felt since birth had never vanished. They were able to pick up from where they’d left off, filling in the missing parts of the picture that had been their life since separation. When he left, Ourania urged Alexis to return to the island again and bring his family along.

  ‘When I first met you, Annoula mou, you were not even two years old,’ Ourania said, reaching for her niece’s hand. ‘I loved you from the moment I laid eyes on you! You were just like your father. The same fiery eyes, the same smile . . . I felt you could have been the child I never had.’

  ‘Did you like my mother?’ Anna asked, trying to imagine how she might have felt, how it might have been for her when she first met Rosaria.

  ‘I did Anna, I liked her very much. She had suffered enough through her life. We all did, but she suffered more, yet she had courage and integrity. She loved the island. Remember how she learned to speak Greek?’ Ourania gave a little laugh. ‘She learned it so well with hardly an accent! She became one of us.’