I gather tomatoes, cucumber, feta, and a cutting board. I reach around her for the oil and vinegar and grab the mustard from the refrigerator door to make a dressing.
“Do you know what I was thinking of today, while you were at Nestor’s? The silkworms.” She makes a sheepish grimace at me.
“Oh, no.”
“See, these are the dangers of bugging me with family history.” She spills the beaten eggs into the skillet and points the spoon at me. “I remember a story we’d both rather forget.”
“No,” I say, “your conscience is clean. The silkworms are my own personal embarrassment.”
One summer, my enthusiasm for the aunts’ stories reached a peak and I convinced Aliki that we should try to raise silkworms as they had done during the war. For our mothers and their siblings, the raising of silkworm cocoons had been an exotic project of tremendous success: They ran a thriving business selling succeeding generations of cocoons through the basement windows to children who handed their coins down through the grate. Everything about this story was perfect—all that a child could dream of. There was the allure of the cocoons themselves, the mystery of the faraway land the silkworms came from, the game of keeping a store, and the transformation of the mundane basement into a magic room where worms turned into hollow balls of thread. And on top of all that, I had visions of the silkworms funding a steady stream of comic books and candy from the neighborhood kiosk. Aliki and I would be set for the summer.
We set up our operation in the cluttered basement of Thalia’s apartment building, the same one Aliki lives in now. Mario, the superintendent, indulged us by moving a box or two out of the way. We found an old window, its casement cracked, and lined it with cloth and newspaper. Laying it flat, we spread it with mulberry leaves from the trees around Plateia Olgas and nestled thirty or forty silkworms among the leaves. At first, the project captivated both of us. But after a few days, I had to beg Aliki to keep me company. She would much rather stroll around Plateia Olgas and flirt with the boys.
I ended up spending most of the time alone, holding on to the idea that my version of my mother’s game could measure up. I sat among the broken chairs, old toasters, and disused toys and watched the worms devour the leaves. Later, I stared as they spun the silk around and around themselves, wanting, by then, to abandon the whole thing but too burdened by shame, self-pity, and even responsibility to give myself a break.
“What a miserable summer,” I say.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Aliki says. “You were little.”
She tips half of the cooked omelet onto my plate and sets a basket of bread on the table. I toss the salad with the dressing. We both smile at the ease with which we occupy each other’s space.
“I can’t even remember who gave us the worms,” I say, “whom I should thank for my spectacular failure.”
“Nestor did. You asked him.”
“Huh.”
I have no recollection of this at all, but it fits. He was giving me or getting for me little objects like those he had collected as a boy.
Aliki refills her wineglass and breaks off a piece of bread, which she uses like a knife to push the food onto her fork. After a bite of omelet, she pops the bread into her mouth.
“This is that Drimopoulos bread, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Drimakopoulos,” Aliki corrects me. “Try buying anything else if you are part of the Notaris family. The aunts are convinced they can tell.”
“Mamá always talked about an Italian bakery they went to when they were kids—Marinelli’s. She gave the free cocoons to the little boy. He was the son of the baker.”
Aliki pushes her lower lip out in uninterested doubt.
“All I know is that Drimakopoulos’s bakery has been there since forever, and, if the aunts are coming, that’s where I go to buy bread.”
Aliki mops the egg and oil from her plate with one last swipe of bread.
“Let’s go sit,” she says, bringing her glass and the wine bottle to the living room. She curls up on the couch, tucking her feet under her. I ease into the cushions at the other end.
“When’s Nikos getting home?”
Aliki shrugs. “These things go late during Carnival.” After a moment, she asks, “Do you know about the Bourbouli dances?”
I shake my head and she proceeds to explain a series of three dances, the first of which takes place tomorrow night. The Bourbouli dances are the heart of Carnival, she says, with all the rules inverted in the true Carnival spirit. The men wear as close as they can to black tie, but the women are disguised with masks and black dominos, robes that hide them from head to toe. They are the ones who troll for dance partners, never revealing their identity. Many affairs have been conducted in public at the Bourboulis, and many marriages have been broken up because of flirtations discovered once Carnival has concluded.
“Sounds great,” I say. “A good night for divorce lawyers.”
“It’s a lark.” She waves a hand dismissively.
“Are you going?”
“No. Someone has to stay home with Demetra.” The old Aliki would be bright-eyed at the opportunity to make some mischief.
“Wait. Is Nikos going?”
She nods.
“Without you?”
“At the Bourbouli dances, you don’t really go with someone. That’s the point. Lose someone, find someone.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Don’t judge me, Paki.”
“I’m not. I honestly want to know.”
She twists toward me on the couch.
“I used to be okay with it. We’d both go and”—she waves a hand—“participate. Now I kind of let Nikos do his thing as long as he stops once Carnival’s over. But it’s starting to get to me.” She gives a breezy laugh. “It’s no fun unless you’re getting your fair share.”
“Really?”
Her thoughts have drifted.
“Is it still fun if you’re both cheating?”
“Listen to you, all moral.”
“No, I’m really asking, Aliki. I want to know.”
She looks at me for a long time, and I remember that look from countless conversations over summer after summer, Aliki’s hazel eyes never flinching, always clear.
“Yes, it is,” she says, knowing she’s surprised me. But then she adds, “As long as you know each of you is doing exactly the same thing and feels exactly the same way about it.” She laughs.
“Ah.”
“That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Paki, don’t let me complicate it for you. You should go. The Bourboulis are the heart of Carnival.”
“I’ll think about it.”
What I’m thinking is that I can keep an eye on Nikos.
When we pour out the last of the wine, he’s still not back from his dinner.
“Paki, go to bed. You’re half asleep.”
“You sure?”
I’ve been trying to conceal my yawns, wanting to keep her company.
“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m used to it.”
I don’t know what to tell her, but she smiles ruefully and shoos me away. I leave her in the living room nursing her half-empty glass and head off to bed, remembering all those hours I sat alone in that musty basement, waiting for cocoons.
10
Clio
October 1940
By parental decree, Clio, Sophia, Thalia, and Nestor walked to school together. With Clio in the lead, they were to stay in a group and take the same route each day for safety. Talk of the coming war was everywhere now. Two months before, on August 15, Mussolini had sunk a cruiser full of pilgrims headed for the church of Agia Maria on the island of Tinos. The government had done nothing, but everybody—every adult—knew it was just a matter of time before they did. Clio suspected that those sacks of food in her family’s basement were replicated in basements all over the city.
She was supposed to keep this suspicion
from her younger siblings, so she led them every day down Korinthou and then Maizonos, past a row of shops that sold, in order, meat, milk and eggs, bread, pastries, and wine. In the afternoon, the shops were open and full of customers, and the pastry shop was crowded with the children’s schoolmates. But the Notaris children stopped at Marinelli’s bakery instead. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they bought a karveli, a round loaf of steaming hot bread, which Clio tore into chunks, keeping the moist core for herself. Nestor always scraped his crust clean, mashing the bread into a doughy ball that he sucked and chewed on all the way home.
Marinelli was an Italian, whose Greek rose and fell, rather than shooting out straight like the speech of a native. When he cooed at his little boy, who helped him after school, and even when he argued with his mother, his voice sounded gentle and kind. The old woman sat on a low stool at the end of the counter, from which she could see all the customers. She was always looking for a thief and muttering things in Italian to her son. Even with everyone talking of war, Clio could not understand why anyone would bother to steal bread.
Until Marinelli spoke, no one would have known he was not Greek. As the shared expression went among Greeks and Italians: Una fatsa, una ratsa, the Italian faccia and razza spoken with a Greek accent to say their similar faces made them one ratsa, one race. Marinelli certainly had the fatsa of a Greek man: dark eyes and skin and hair; long, straight nose; long earlobes.
“Kalispéra, Clio mou,” he said to her. “Good afternoon.”
“Kalispéra.”
“Here they are,” he said, reaching into the glass case below the counter. “Your special raisin rolls.”
It was Friday, so, in addition to their usual karveli, the children bought four of Marinelli’s sweet rolls with egg and raisins as their regular treat for the end of the week. The raisins came from their own family farm, considered the best for generations. The large, squat Notaris warehouses by the docks were piled high with boxes of golden and black fruit, much of which was shipped to Brindisi across the Adriatic and from there into all of Europe. No other merchant in Patras could match Notaris volume and quality.
Marinelli slid the rolls into four small paper bags and handed them to Clio.
“Marco,” he called to the room behind him, “vieni qui.”
Marco came trotting into the shop, a skinny little boy just two years younger than Nestor, with dark curly hair very much like his. Clio went around to the end of the counter, not the old woman’s end, and called for Marco to come and take her money. She tousled his curls and handed him twelve drachmas.
“Thank you, Miss Clio,” he said in Greek like hers. “Come see my drawing.”
He motioned Clio over to his grandmother’s spot and took from the old woman a notebook whose pages she had been turning in her lap.
“Buon giorno,” Clio said to the old woman. She never spoke to Clio, seemingly unable to use the girl’s language and unwilling to share her own.
Marco had drawn a harbor with two ships, one blue, one orange, at the dock. They both flew the Greek flag from their mast.
“Nice job,” Clio said. “É molto bello.”
“See you tomorrow?”
“È possibile, Marco.”
She liked the fact that each of them spoke in the other one’s language. Her parents were making all of them take Italian lessons along with their French, on the logic that Greek children of a certain class should speak the fine languages of Europe. Clio agreed, wanting to be taken for a native someday in Paris, Rome, even Vienna. But what if war came? Were they supposed to sweet-talk the foreign invaders in their own tongue?
She led her brother and sisters outside and stopped on the sidewalk, doling out the rolls. Nestor took his roll apart, pulling the spiral like a long snake out of the bag and into his mouth as they all walked home.
Clio was the last one in the door of the house. After a quick glance in the walnut-framed mirror, she joined the others, crowding around their father in the hall at the bottom of the atrium. She wondered if he had gotten news about the war. She wouldn’t ask aloud, so as not to alarm the younger ones.
“Look,” said Thalia, using the hushed voice she adopted for the things she held to be the most wonderful, like a rainbow, or a butterfly, or a slice of honey-drizzled walnut cake.
Nestor held a small box in his open palm. It was a velvet cuff-link box from their father’s dresser, and the lid was up, revealing three white objects, oblong in shape, with short fibers sticking up from them. They shimmered slightly, almost blue, in the broadcast light from above.
“They look like grubs with hair,” Sophia said.
“They are not grubs!” Nestor cried.
“They’re cocoons,” said Thalia, in the voice. “For silkworms.”
“Aren’t those Chinese?” Clio asked.
“Europe has them too,” her father said. “These came from Italy. I had them brought over with the wine shipment.”
Una fatsa, una ratsa, her father agreed with everybody else, but he liked his raisins Greek and his wine Italian.
“What do we do with them?” Nestor asked.
Their father explained that he had a box of silkworms in the basement for them. The children could raise the worms so they could see the process of metamorphosis from start to finish. Clio wondered how you determined the end to a cycle that was never done.
The children set the silkworms up in four shallow trays packed with mulberry leaves and spent hours in the basement, waiting for the worms to stop chomping on the leaves and begin winding their silk thread around themselves. Clio suspected this was her father’s way to offer Nestor something in place of the hikes and camping he did with the Scouts. But she went along with it, and on the day the worms finally did enclose themselves in their fuzzy white cases, she couldn’t resist picking one up and holding it in her palm. She was surprised at how light it was. She expected something more substantial from these creatures, heavy with all their stages of development at once.
At Marinelli’s that Monday, Clio greeted the man and called to Marco, who was sitting on his grandmother’s low stool, holding a thick slice of bread. He blew at the steam and then held his palm flat over the bread to test the heat.
“Vieni qui,” she said. She reached into the book bag she had slung off her shoulders and gently unwrapped a small cloth bundle from the bag.
“I have something for you,” she said, speaking in a hush.
“What is it?” He whispered so softly that she could hardly hear him. He was practically holding his breath.
“There.”
“Ohhh,” he sighed, and Clio checked his face.
“Do you know what it is?”
He shook his head.
“It’s a silkworm cocoon.”
He still didn’t seem to understand, so she explained it all to him.
“I’m going outside,” Sophia said, her hip cocked, the back of her hand propped against it. She turned on her heel, with Thalia following her out the door.
“Look, Papà,” Marco cried, and ran behind the counter to show Marinelli.
“Marco, say thank you to Clio,” said Marinelli.
“Thank you,” came the boy’s voice from behind the glass case. He darted around to the front again, holding a special raisin roll out on a piece of wax paper. “Here, Clio. For you.”
She smiled. “You don’t have to do that.”
“It’s all right, Miss Clio,” said Marinelli. “One gift for another.”
“Grazie,” she said, and gave Marco a hug.
Nestor was tugging her jacket.
“What about us?”
Clio knew she couldn’t ask for something for him and the girls. If she did, Marinelli would feel obliged to treat all of them and would probably give a raisin roll to each child. One roll as a trade would be fine, but four was too much for a simple silk moth cocoon that cost the children nothing. She shook Nestor off.
“Mr. Marinelli, could we have our usual karveli, please?”
“What’d you do that for?” cried Nestor. “He would have given us some for free.”
“That’s the point. Keep walking.”
Out on the sidewalk, Sophia wanted to know what Clio had. Clio showed her and then had to show the others as well.
“It’s from Marco.”
“We get some,” said Nestor.
“Don’t whine, Nestor,” she said, tearing off a piece and handing it to him.
“Besides,” he said with a mouthful of roll, “they’re Notaris raisins in there anyhow.”
Clio didn’t bother to remind him that Marinelli had paid for the raisins so they were his now.
After dinner, Clio followed her mother into her parents’ bedroom.
“Can I sit while you get ready?”
“Of course.”
Clio perched on the edge of the bed and watched her mother come and go from her wardrobe to the walnut vanity. Urania draped a dark-green silk gown over the dress stand in the corner and sat at the little cushioned stool before the tri-fold mirrors. Green was her mother’s color, to go with the auburn of her hair. Urania dusted her cheeks with powder and cocked her head to the left and right as she sprayed perfume from a square-cut bottle. She held the bottle in one hand and squeezed the bulb of the cord-covered atomizer with the other as a faint rose scent drifted into the air.
“Why do you leave the dress for last?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
Urania stepped into the dress, pulled it up, and asked Clio to button the back for her. Then she held her topaz choker to her neck and motioned for Clio to clip it fast.
“There.”
Looking at her mother’s reflected image, Clio thought she knew why Urania saved the dress for last. Without the dress, her mother could test how she looked. The dress would never be more than a complement; it would never be the source of her beauty. If Clio watched her mother enough, she might gain that kind of confidence.
The Clover House Page 16
