“Nestor left me a message,” I say to Aliki, shouting over the music. As I explain it to her, it all sounds like something out of a Victorian novel. I keep remembering the way my mother peered into everything and the way she focused on that little box with the feathers on the top. There’s something in there that she wants to see.
Demetra spots some friends from school on the opposite sidewalk and convinces us to dart across the parade route in between bands so that she can talk to them. A cheer goes up as we negotiate the brief opening between a salsa band and a troupe of Morris dancers in their startling white. It is much cooler here on the shady side of the street, and I turn my collar up for warmth and my mind goes back to Nestor’s words. What seems important now was once insignificant and will become so again. True enough, I suppose. Very Zen, even. Or maybe it was an ashes-to-ashes thing. We all think we’re important, but we were babies once and we’ll be worthless again once we’re dead. But that last part doesn’t ring true. Nestor, more than anyone, believed that treasured objects held their value simply because someone had valued them once and because they were the repositories of our stories. The more I puzzle over his note, the more confusing it becomes.
“I’m freezing,” I say to Aliki. I need to do something before I make myself crazy.
“I’m cold too,” she says. “It’s nearly lunchtime, anyhow, Demetraki. Daddy’s eating at home today.”
I wonder whose idea this was: Nikos’s atonement for whatever he did at the Bourbouli, or Aliki’s punishment for it?
We leave the parade behind and head up to the apartment. Demetra collapses melodramatically on the couch before Aliki rouses her to put her coat away. She and I move quietly around the kitchen, getting together the lunch of chicken and stewed vegetables.
“Calliope,” Nikos says, as we are putting the food on the table. “Come help me choose the wine.”
I give him a wry smirk and follow him into the kitchen.
“Do it fast,” Aliki calls. “The chicken’s getting cold.”
“Very funny,” I say to him when we are out of earshot.
He rests his hands on the counter behind him and looks at me for a moment. I can’t read the expression on his face. I have a flash of worry that he is about to tell me bad news—about my mother? Jonah? Has Jonah called here?
“I saw you, cousin, at the Bourbouli.”
His measured tone tells me exactly where and how. My face suddenly burns astoundingly hot.
“It wasn’t me,” I say, fooling no one.
He smiles sadly.
“Look,” he says, “I told you before. I don’t have a problem with infidelities of a certain sort. Especially during Carnival. But I don’t know if you are made of the same stuff, Calliope.”
“You don’t know me that well, Nikos.”
“Better than you think.”
He turns and fishes a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator, holding it up for me to see and then beginning to uncork it.
“He’s a handsome man, I’d say,” Nikos continues.
“Nikos, stop.”
He sets the corkscrew down. “What I really want to tell you is to watch yourself. These little infidelities aren’t as easy as they seem. Trust me.”
“What makes you think I have to be faithful to anyone?”
He gives me an almost sad look, and I realize that of course Aliki has confided in him.
I sit through lunch in a state of nearly unbearable tension. It is unusual for Nikos to return home for the meal, so Aliki is drawing it out, taking time between the chicken and the salad and the vegetables. Nikos sips his wine slowly, appraisingly, and I wonder if he, too, is slowing the meal down—to torture me. When Aliki sighs and pushes her chair back, I jump up to help clear the table and load the dishwasher.
“Listen,” I say to Aliki as I wipe my hands with the dish towel, “I really need to get some stuff done at Nestor’s. If I don’t speed up, I’m going to have to change my flight.”
“Want me to come and help?”
“No. It’s better if I just slog ahead. No distractions.”
I hate lying to her, but I am desperate to be alone.
“If you say so.”
“I’ll call you from there when I’m done. I’m going to stop by my mother’s. I have some questions for her.”
“There’s another dance tonight,” Nikos says. I look at him. “But it’s not a Bourbouli.”
I nod thoughtfully, feigning regret.
“See you later,” I say, grabbing Nestor’s key and my jacket and heading out the door.
My uncle was a saver, a hoarder, and an archivist, even a tinkerer. But he was never a puzzler. Now here I am, back at his house, hanging everything on some scrap of paper or a receipt or a button. I go to the desk and pull out the drawers one by one. Bills, phone books, stacks of stationery, and, in the center drawer, the foolscap Nestor wrote his will on. I riffle through those papers in case I’ve missed something, but all I see is my own English writing, recording lists of boxes. Nothing here. I let out a long, frustrated groan.
I begin to flip through photographs, sorting out any image in which I can’t recognize the all-ages versions of the people. It’s almost six o’clock when I come across a picture of a young man carrying a basket of what look like apples—the same young man I saw in the photographs my mother seemed so eager to have. He is tall and lean, and his hair is dark and straight, cut in that short-back-and-sides style of the war years that gives men a look of rugged grace. It’s like Marcus’s haircut that night we toasted his new job—a night that seems like years ago now.
The young man’s eyes are mischievous. He seems to be at the farm, or a farm. I wonder who took the photograph. Who is he smiling at with such a lazy joy? I think about my mother’s reaction to the pictures I gave her, and I convince myself that this young man’s eyes hold the answer to that question. I prop the photo up on a bookcase and keep on sifting through the collection, every now and then glancing over at that smiling face.
There is a rap on the front door and I see right away that it is my mother for the third time, coming like a troll in some fairy story. Her small, erect shape is a blurred shadow on the frosted glass.
I swing the heavy door open and stand on the sill.
“You’re persistent.”
“Good afternoon, Calliope,” she says.
“What are you doing here, Mamá? Didn’t we say enough yesterday?”
“Calliope,” she whispers loudly, glancing over her shoulder. “Let me in, for God’s sake.”
I let her in and stand back while she walks through the foyer like someone who has never been to the house before—slowly, as if not wanting to disturb the air.
“Let me guess,” I say. “Constantopoulos called you.”
“Who?”
“The lawyer, Mamá.”
“Yes, I understand you’ve opened your uncle’s letter.”
“I have. Why didn’t you just tell me it was there? We could have gone together. I might have even let you read it first.”
She snorts.
“Why don’t you trust me, Mother? I have no reason to keep you from your brother’s memory. But what I don’t understand is why you seem to feel I shouldn’t be here. It’s what he wanted. Don’t be mad at me, be mad at him.”
“Oh, I am mad at him, Calliope. I am furious at him.”
We stare at each other for a moment. Her face reddens uncharacteristically.
“I’m sorry it’s all like this, Mamá. Maybe you can help me.”
She gives me a wary look. I sigh, exasperated.
“Fine,” she says.
To start things off easy, I bring her the photograph of the young man.
“Who is this?”
She gives the photo a quick glance.
“I don’t know.”
She moves toward a stack of papers on a low table.
“Are you sure?” I ask, bringing the photo closer. She peers at the image, then sighs dismissively.
“One of the refugees. At the farm.”
“Like in those other pictures I gave you?”
“Yes.” She shrugs and turns back to the papers, riffling through them casually.
“How long were they there?”
“A few months. I don’t know.”
“That’s a long time. Who were they?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where were they from, what did they do? Who were they?”
She walks over to the other side of the room, where I have set the war-years pile.
“They came from Patras, Calliope, because their houses were destroyed during the bombings.”
As she talks, her hands continue their restless movement over the boxes, nudging them aside to read Nestor’s labels on the tops, lifting the lids. I think about that box from yesterday, with the feathers in it. That’s what she’s looking for. But I can play this game, pretending neither of us knows what’s going on. And, besides, it’s the refugees I want to hear about now.
“When did they come?” I ask.
“When? After the first day of the war. The planes came over from Italy, started dropping bombs, and the teachers sent us all home while the bombs were falling into the streets.”
“They didn’t send you to a shelter?”
“Nobody had a shelter. Nobody thought about shelter.”
“So these people just showed up one day because they were bombed out. What were they like?”
“Again with this question,” she mutters.
“Well, I want to know. And maybe it will help. What was his name?”
She bangs her hands on the lid of a box.
“It won’t help anything. Why do you care so much about these refugees? They showed up one day, we took them in, and they left. They were poor people with no homes and we helped them. Isn’t that enough?”
Her face is trembling and her jaw is set. If I didn’t know her any better, I would think she was about to cry.
“I think,” I say slowly, “you were in love with him.”
My mother bursts out laughing. “In love with him? With the refugee?”
Her emphasis on the last word makes it clear that my suggestion of a class-crossing romance is preposterous. She is offended, but I can also see that she is relieved at my mistake. I decide to push, using her laughter and my own smile as cover for a harder question.
“You must have been in love with someone then, Mamá.”
Instantly, her mood changes; whatever opening I had closes shut.
“You’re in here all day, finding things you don’t know the meaning of and that you will never understand, and you are getting everything wrong.” She slaps the box and picks up her coat from the chair where she has draped it. “You’ve gotten everything wrong.”
“I’ve already asked you: Help me.”
She turns around. The guarded look is back, without the smile.
The phone rings, and my first thought is that it could be Constantopoulos with another message from Nestor.
“Help you do what?” my mother asks.
“Help me get the story right.”
“No,” she says. “It’s not your story. It’s not anyone’s story. It’s my life.”
She catches herself, and I know she has admitted too much.
I signal her to wait and I go to the study to pick up the phone.
“Neh?”
“Callie.” The voice is hushed, almost somber, and it takes me a second to recognize Stelios. My breath catches.
“Stelios, how did you get this number?” I cup my hand over the mouthpiece.
“Your cousin.” He pauses. “Callie, I need to see you.”
“Why?”
“Where are you?”
“In my uncle’s house, Stelios, and you can’t come here.”
“Callie, I can look it up. Nestor Notaris. He’ll be in the book.”
“Stelios, don’t.”
“Calliope!” my mother calls.
“Wait,” I tell her.
“Who is that?” Stelios asks.
“My mother is here,” I whisper into the phone.
“Get rid of her,” he says, and his voice sounds like sex.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t tell me that was all you wanted last night.”
It wasn’t. The thought of letting Stelios in now and clearing space among the boxes makes every inch of my skin flush with warmth.
“It was,” I say. “I’m sorry. What would my fiancé say?”
“What would you say?”
“And what would Anna say? Are you forgetting her?”
“What would you say?”
Nothing, for a while. My mother clears her throat. I can hear Stelios breathing. I curl myself around the phone, and into this space that seems to hold his breath and body and lips, I answer slowly.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The name of the street where your uncle lives.”
“Ellinos Stratiotou,” I tell him. “Number forty-two.”
The line clicks off and I place the black handset down in the cradle of the phone as if it were made of glass. When I turn around, conscious that my cheeks are burning, my mother is still holding her coat in her hand. I have a moment’s fear that she has just removed it and is planning to stay.
“Meeting someone?” she asks.
I think of lies I could tell her, like a teenager whose mother is actually paying attention.
“Yes,” I say.
“Remember what I told you yesterday,” she says.
“It’s too late for advice, Mamá.”
I take her coat and hold it out for her. She looks at me for a moment before stretching her arm into the sleeve. As soon as I have closed the door behind her, I go to the kitchen to open the bottle of wine I have spotted in one of the cupboards. I pour a large glass and drink it quickly, then walk around the house, alternately knowing I should never have told Stelios the address and waiting to see his silhouette against the streetlit glass of the door. When I do finally see a shadow in the glass, I open the door and draw him in, already loosening his belt while he shrugs off his jacket and undoes the buttons of my shirt.
We don’t wait for the clothes to come off. We stop long enough for me to put the condom on him and then keep going. Our skin squeaks and chafes and our bones press into the floor, against the furniture, into the walls. The sex is hard, nearly violent, and it is fun. When he makes me come, I tug so hard at his hair that he cries out, brings his head up, and bites a fold of skin by my navel.
Afterward, we don’t say much as we straighten the dining room chairs and stand the coatrack back up. We each take an end of the hall rug and set it back into place.
“Must have been a burglary in here,” he says, trying to make me laugh.
“We can’t leave any sign, Stelios. If we do, they’ll know.”
“In this mess?” He gestures at the boxes.
He dusts his hands off on his pants while he stoops to dig his shirt out of a corner of the living room. I am putting on mine but he starts to do the job for me, kissing once between my breasts for each button.
“When do we get to do this again?”
I laugh. “No, Stelios. This is over now. There’s no again.”
“Come on, Callie. What’s the harm?”
“Anna. There’s the harm.”
“You don’t get it.” He laughs. “We’re not that way, Anna and I. It’s just not that serious.”
“I’d rather hear that from Anna, if you don’t mind—which isn’t going to happen, because no one is going to find out about what we did.”
“In which case,” he says, talking over me, “the only one who matters is Jonah, and you haven’t said a word about him the whole time I’ve been here.”
“We weren’t exactly having a conversation, Stelios.”
Of course he’s right. And when I finally get him to go, I sit on the chair in the hall and think about what he and I did and what that means
for me and Jonah. I have to tell him. And when I tell him, we’ll both realize that it was over as soon as he proposed to me, and he will write me an email telling me goodbye. My mother will have been right. When I return to Boston, my things will be in boxes, just like Nestor’s things, stacked in a corner of the room so that I hardly need to set my foot in the apartment to get the hell out of his life.
I stay in Nestor’s house until the hunger in my stomach becomes too painful to ignore. The kitchen clock says it is ten thirty-five. I toss back the last of the wine, rinse the glass, switch off the lights, and leave.
13
Clio
November 1940
Clio and Sophia were in the kitchen of the farm, boiling sugar beets in a giant pot to make a thick syrup. The smell from the pot was bitter and sharp, and Clio hated to think that they were reduced to putting this mess into their coffee and cakes as a substitute for sugar. Never mind that she and her sister now had to help in the kitchen, since there were so many more chores to do. She gave the pole-handled spoon to Sophia and went to chop some more beets for the next batch before Irini could come in and scold her for being lazy.
She heard a man clearing his throat and turned to see a tall figure in the doorway. From the shape of his shadow against the sunny farmyard, she could see that he was wearing a suit and that he held a fedora by his side.
Clio gripped the chopping knife tightly. This time, at least, she would be able to do more than scream and run away, as she had last summer.
“Please,” he said, taking one step into the kitchen. “I’ve come from the city. I’m looking for somewhere to stay.”
That was why the Notaris family was at the farm. The Italians might be losing the war up north in Epirus and Albania, but down here they could terrorize the Greeks from the air. Patras’s harbor was easy pickings for them, so close to Brindisi just across the sea, so they continued to pound it with bombing raids that hit the rest of the city as well. Though only ten kilometers away from the harbor, the farm was beyond the zone that the Italians aimed for. Their bombers seemed almost too lazy to bother with the countryside, though they must have known that many had escaped there.
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