The Clover House

by Henriette Lazaridis Power

  I sit for a while. I am not much of a smoker anymore, but I wish now that I had the comfort of a cigarette. I imagine the arguments my mother and her sisters must have had as she prepared to see her Bersagliere. Thalia might have tried to keep Nestor out of it, and my mother—what would my mother have done? Nestor was her ally, but somewhere along the way she blamed him for what went wrong. I can’t piece together what he did, and I don’t even know what it was that went wrong. A little boy of ten or twelve back then—what could he possibly have done to be deemed complicit?

  I walk inland down the little roads until I find a taverna that is open this time of year. I eat a beef kefte and some fries smelling of olive oil; I drink some wine. A young waiter is standing by the kitchen door, smoking, and I smile and bum a cigarette, my first in weeks. I drink two coffees while I smoke, sitting and thinking about all that I have learned and imagined.

  The truth is that what Sophia said isn’t news to me. I have known it my entire life, but, like those secret shames we don’t admit, I could never acknowledge even to myself the fact that my mother didn’t take care of me. Besides, as a child, how could I understand neglect when it came in the form of liberties and extravagances? It was only later, when adolescence made me an expert on the ego, that I could see my mother’s gestures as what they were: gifts for herself. I thought her permissiveness was a blessing, when in fact it was inattention dressed up as a treat. That time in Kythira when Aliki and I were drunk and skinny-dipping, it was Thalia who scolded us about the risks of what we’d done, while my mother got herself ready for her day at the beach.

  What sticks in my mind the most from all of this is the image of two old women snapped out of a rare argument to confess that they couldn’t stand my mother because of how she treated me. What surprises me even more than that revelation is the feeling it calls up in me. Not just gratitude, not guilt either, but sadness. It’s not my fault that my mother’s sisters distanced themselves from her, but it’s because of me. And I’m saddened to think that I have inadvertently caused my mother pain. I could say that she deserved it, but that suggests a universe in which events are tidily paired: crime and punishment, and—less often, it seems—kindness and reward. But that’s not how it is at all, I’m convinced. Just from what I’ve read and heard and guessed at during these past ten days, I know that there are few perfect matches, or pairs, in our lives. Only connections and compromises that bind some of us together but pull some of us apart.

  It’s nearly eight o’clock when I finally make it back to Aliki’s apartment building, physically exhausted and emotionally spent. As soon as she hears my voice through the intercom, she buzzes me in, and the long buzz has a peremptory, strident quality I haven’t noticed before. I step out of the elevator to find Aliki, Thalia, and Sophia crowding around the frosted glass door.

  “Where were you?” Aliki says.

  “I went walking.”

  They bundle me into the house and close the door behind me quickly, as if I’m some form of contraband. I look around at them. Three worried faces, and Nikos behind them with his head tilted, half scolding and half bemused.

  “I’m sorry, everyone. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

  Thalia barges through the others and grips me in a tight hug.

  “We knew how upset you were,” she says.

  “And when you didn’t come to the memorial …,” Sophia adds.

  “Oh, ghamóto,” I say—fuck—and catch the frisson of shock, irritation, and amusement that sweeps across their faces. “Oh, no.” I fall heavily into the low chair beside the telephone table. Aliki stoops over me.

  “I was worried about the asshole from the other night,” she says. “I was afraid he’d done something.”

  “I should have called.”

  “You should have come to the memorial is what you should have done,” she snaps.

  “Theies, I’m sorry I wasn’t at the church. It’s not that I didn’t want to go—”

  “Where were you, Paki mou?” Thalia asks. I have never seen her like this. While the others have calmed down now that they can see I am safe and sound, Thalia is still racked with worry. Her face is creased, her shoulders are squeezed near her ears, and she’s wringing her hands, actually wringing them.

  “I went to the Bozaïtika.”

  “All the way there!”

  “It’s not that far. I found the taverna,” I add brightly.

  “We said too much,” Thalia says, refusing to be drawn into other thoughts. “We shouldn’t have let you hear any of it.”

  “Now someone has to tell me what is actually going on,” Aliki says.

  “We told you, Aliki mou,” Thalia says. “Your aunt and I had an argument, and Calliope became upset.”

  I sit up.

  “I was upset because you wouldn’t tell me what I need to know.” As I say it, I realize I’m hiding what upset me most.

  “This again?” Aliki goes into the kitchen and starts emptying the dishwasher, banging the pots and dishes into the cupboards.

  “Yes, Aliki. This again.” I go after her. “There’s something they’re not telling me. About the farm and my mother and some Italian. Something they’re not telling us.”

  Aliki wheels around and smacks her dish towel onto the counter.

  “Don’t lump me in with you, because I don’t really care, Calliope. Today was about something that happened now, not sixty years ago. Your uncle’s memorial service. We prayed for a sweet man who just died, and you weren’t there to be a part of it. You were too busy digging through things that don’t matter anymore.”

  “But they do matter, Aliki. They’ve mattered all our lives.”

  “I’m not going to listen to this anymore.”

  She brushes past me but I stay with her.

  “Why do you keep pushing this away? Are you afraid of what you’ll find?”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t paint me as the coward, Paki. Ask yourself which is the braver thing: to live your life every day or to lug some mysterious past around with you as an excuse not to.”

  I stop still, and Aliki realizes what she has said. There is a moment here when she could offer an apology. We both know it. And we both wait for it—she, as if it’s not her decision to make. One fact runs through my head, and I sense that Aliki knows what it is, the counterargument that confirms the cruelty of her words: My mother isn’t here. Why wasn’t she worried about me, like the rest of them? I don’t say it, because that’s part of the burden she doesn’t want me to lug around. But Aliki doesn’t say her apology either.

  We stare at each other for a few seconds more, and then I snap out of it. It’s too late for me to change course now. I go back into the living room and find Nikos stooped over the aunts. He is holding each woman by the hand, and their heads are bowed—in prayer or in contrition, I can’t tell.

  “How many more arguments do we need to have before you’ll tell me?” I ask. “Just tell me.”

  I don’t know if it’s the weariness in my voice or something Nikos said that makes the aunts sit down on the couch, side by side, and look at each other. Sophia begins.

  “It was almost exactly sixty years ago. In ’42. The night of the last Bourbouli. The Italians didn’t allow Carnival celebrations during the occupation, but the prominent families held parties in their homes. It was all right as long as people stayed overnight and no one defied the curfew. Your mother’s Bersagliere, Giorgio, showed up at our party. Something happened. He caused a disturbance and our father took him over to the officers’ club so his own people could deal with him. The next day, the Italians came to the house to talk to Babá. They knew about the farm because we had helped them when Vlachos was arrested back in the spring. And of course the Notaris raisin business was well known anyway. So they commandeered them. The farm and the business.”

  Sophia pauses, giving me time to absorb this.

  “You have no idea what it was like for us because of that. Didn’t you ever wonder why we didn’t hav
e the farm anymore, or why Nestor became a schoolteacher instead of following his father into the business, or why we lost the nice house on Korinthou? It was because of this, what your mother did. Our father was forced to work as a simple employee under an Italian who knew nothing about the business. Every day, he dragged himself to the warehouse and had to answer to this Italian fool. Until the Germans took over and he had to work for them, earning even less than the Italians had paid him. But do you know what might have been the worst?” Thalia takes her sister’s hand, and Sophia seems emboldened by her grasp. “The worst was that he had to watch his own countrymen betray him.” Now Sophia is glaring at me, and her voice is shaking. Thalia caresses her hand but makes no move to silence her. “When the Germans left, the business should have been restored to us. But instead of thinking about restoration, we Greeks were at one another’s throats. For five years we killed one another and stole from one another. How’s that for national unity after a war?”

  “I know, Sophia,” I say. “I know the civil war was a terrible time. But you can’t blame my mother for the fact that PASOK didn’t give the business back.”

  “I’m doing no such thing. And it wasn’t a civil war,” Sophia scoffs. “It was a guerrilla war, because communists were attacking the government of Greece.”

  “We’re supposed to call it the civil war now, Sophia,” Thalia says.

  “Just because Papandreou decreed it twenty years ago? No, thank you. You can’t change history just by calling it something else.”

  I remember this Michalis that Thalia said Sophia loved and wouldn’t marry. Is this why her hatred of the left runs so strong?

  “So, yes, it was a terrible time, Calliope. Ask the parents whose children were taken away to Bulgaria and Romania to be turned into baby communists. Ask the people whose husbands and boyfriends had their throats slit with the lids of tin cans.”

  “Sophia.”

  Sophia pulls her hand from Thalia’s and smooths her hair into its bun. “I’m fine.”

  “But Papóu wasn’t hurt,” I say.

  “Not like that,” Thalia says gently. “But in 1949, the communists gave the business to someone on their side, and we never got it back. Your grandfather never recovered.”

  Sophia starts to say something and catches herself before beginning again in a steady monotone.

  “From 1940 to 1949, we had war and famine and death. During all that time, our family could have had some security and wealth. But instead we had nothing. Your mother couldn’t go to the School of the Arts. Nestor became a schoolteacher, always at the whim of the local government. Your grandfather went from owning an international business to working as a warehouse clerk. We lost a business and a farm that would have protected all of us for years. Your mother is my sister and I will always love her, but she was the one who brought this pain into our lives.”

  Sophia is finished. In the brief silence, I can see that she is utterly drained.

  “Sophia, I understand all this now, but you can’t blame my mother, can you?”

  “She angered the enemy. During a war.”

  “We told her not to see him,” Thalia says.

  “Theies, read the letter she wrote to him. She wasn’t the only one involved. It was Nestor too. That’s what he wanted me to understand.”

  “What letter?” Aliki says. She has come into the room and is leaning against the wall, hugging herself.

  I pull the page from my mother’s letter out of my pocket and hand it to her. The aunts follow the paper with their eyes, and I can see that its presence in the room has rattled them.

  “Nestor did something,” I go on. “He made it so your father found them out.”

  “Calliope, you don’t have to defend your mother,” Sophia starts.

  “I’m not trying to defend her. I’m trying to tell you what happened.”

  Sophia laughs. “Sixty years ago and you’re telling us what happened?”

  “We kept telling her to stop,” Thalia says, “and she wouldn’t.”

  I don’t know what to say. It’s as if they can’t even hear me. This all seems ridiculous—a chain of events linked now by the memories of wounded and perhaps resentful old women.

  “She was a teenager, for Christ’s sake. She was in love.”

  “A very expensive love, it turned out,” says Sophia.

  I know she’s right, but I can’t listen anymore.

  “I need to go,” I say, pushing myself to my feet.

  “Cousin,” Nikos says. He pulls me into the dining room. “You just got here. Give the old ladies some peace of mind. Stick around.”

  “Do you hear what they’re saying, Nikos? God knows I know my mother is trouble, but this is ridiculous.”

  “If you’re going, then go talk to your mother.”

  “Why?” I know I sound petulant, but I don’t care.

  “Ask her about that machine-gun cartridge. I think she knows more than she’s telling.”

  “Nikos, I don’t want more mysteries. I want solutions.”

  “Just try. Ask her. It might help.”

  I look at Nikos’s round face and his round eyes. I laugh, once again surprised by his patience and kindness.

  “Sometimes he has good ideas, Paki,” Aliki says. “Why not try?”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll go. Can I have the letter, Aliki?”

  She places the letter into my outstretched hand. She holds my hand for a second in both of hers and looks at me.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nod.

  I turn to the aunts and tell them that there’s no need to worry.

  “Thank you for telling me what happened,” I say. “Thank you.”

  I start walking to my mother’s apartment. As I walk, I picture myself stepping through her door, handing her my coat, sitting in front of the giant walnut mirror. But I can’t think of how to begin. Should I ask her why she didn’t join the others in wondering where I’d gone tonight? Or why she never told me the truth about the loss of the family’s wealth? Or do I really start with a question about that cartridge, which seems so irrelevant now to what I’ve learned?

  She buzzes me in and stands silently in the apartment door when I step out of the elevator. She’s still dressed in what she must have worn to the memorial service—a wool skirt and a trim sweater—but she has slippers on her stockinged feet. She watches as I take off my coat and toss it on a little chair. On any other day, she would pick it up to hang it or would scold me for being so careless with my clothes.

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me,” I say. “Or worried,” I add, in spite of myself.

  “Calliope.” She sighs. “Do you want me to make a fuss over you? You’re thirty-five years old, for goodness’ sake. What you do with your private life is no concern of mine.”

  “What? You think I’ve been with some guy, don’t you?”

  “No. I asked Thalia to let me know when you turned up. She just called.”

  “Make up your mind. You are concerned or you’re not?”

  “Calliope, stop it. I’m your mother. Of course I’m concerned.”

  I realize that she assumed I would come to her sisters and not to her when I was back from wherever I’d gone. I wonder how that feels, to be your daughter’s second choice. But then I remind myself that I know how it feels to be your mother’s.

  “Thalia said Sophia told you a long story tonight,” she says.

  “Yes.”

  She goes into the kitchen and fills a glass of water from the tap. She drinks almost all of it down and turns to face me, leaning against the sink. She seems younger, in a strange way, as if the knowledge that the truth is out has restored her energy. Or maybe she is simply mustering her strength to deny whatever it is I’m going to say.

  “Well.” She is waiting.

  My face heats up and I can feel my pulse beat faster. I am afraid. Afraid to ask a question that might heap more unpleasant truths onto what I have already learned, afraid to arouse my mother’s
wrath or to summon the kind of anguish that can overwhelm her and me both. I look at her and see that her face is relaxing. She thinks I’m going to back down.

  “Okay, Mamá. Tell me about that cartridge.”

  “What cartridge?” She says the word as though she doesn’t really know what it means.

  “The bullet thing. In the box. You said it must be from Yannis and his hunting, but Nikos says it’s from an Italian gun.”

  “So maybe Yannis had an Italian gun.”

  “An Italian machine gun. A Breda, I think. From the war. Nikos says the only way to get the cartridge from a Breda is to pull it from the ammunition clip. Who had this cartridge, Mamá? And who gave it to Nestor?”

  She turns back to the sink and drinks more of the water. She runs the tap and fills the glass again, drinks again.

  “Mamá! Are you trying to drown yourself or something?”

  There’s a long silence and she remains with her back to me. I realize that I am holding my breath. When I take in air again, I do it quietly, like sipping something that will burn my lips. Finally my mother turns around, and I see that any youth I spotted in her moments ago is gone.

  “That is what your uncle and I argued about in the hospital.”

  “The cartridge?” I can’t help but sound surprised. I picture the two of them arguing over possession of it, but surely that can’t be the case.

  “In a way, yes.”

  My mother sits down at the kitchen table, her hands in her lap.

  “Your uncle Nestor and I share a great shame. He wanted to tell you his part in it, but I didn’t. Not because I wanted to preserve my own honor. But because I wanted to preserve his. You don’t believe me, Calliope, but it’s true.”

  She must see the doubt in my face, but she goes on.

  “War has a funny way of making people behave the opposite of what you think, Calliope. It confuses things.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything shameful. You had no power.”

  “Why on earth would you think powerlessness exempts you from shame? Even the occupied can behave in shameful ways, Calliope. That’s one of the things an occupation does to you: turns an honorable person into a cheat, turns an innocent into a guilty soul.”