by Lena Manta
“I can’t bear any more,” Vassilis whispered, his eyes damp.
Simeon stood up and took him by the shoulders. “Don’t be afraid, son. That’s the way these things are. When you were being born, I also thought I’d lose your mother. Women are amazing, Vassilis!”
He wanted to tell him something more, but an especially penetrating cry interrupted him. The three of them froze, looking at each other, faces pale with fear. Just then, the wail of a baby echoed through the house, and the men broke into broad smiles. Simeon embraced his son, laughing.
“Congratulations, my son!”
Roza came running in with tears in her eyes.
“Congratulations, my son! It’s a boy!”
“And Lefkothea? Is she all right?” asked Vassilis.
“Fine! There were a few rough patches, but that’s what the first birth is always like.”
The husband started toward his wife and son, but his mother stopped him.
“Wait, boy. Don’t be in such a hurry! We’ll wash the baby and get your wife ready, and then you’ll see her.” She turned to her husband, whose eyes were also damp. She approached him, and he embraced her tightly.
“Congratulations, wife!” he said, and Roza looked at him in surprise. She couldn’t remember her husband ever embracing her like that before, and she smiled at him through her tears.
From the first moment, the baby changed a lot of things in the Kouyoumdzis household. It was like a fresh breeze blew through and caressed the rooms. It even affected the grandfather, who gave his blessing with satisfaction to the new generation that had come and presented Lefkothea with a beautifully engraved gold bracelet. Nobody knew what had a greater impact on him, the birth of Simeon the younger or his wife’s words; in any case, his behavior improved noticeably.
The second good thing that happened, in addition to the baby, was an excellent prospect for Penelope. Lykourgos Meletoglou, a wealthy raisin merchant, asked for her hand. Penelope, who had met him at the parties of their friends, accepted with pleasure, although her parents had some doubts. The groom had made it clear that, after the wedding, he would take her to Patras, in Greece, where his business had its headquarters.
September 1955 found Vassilis’s family complete. Lefkothea had borne him two more sons, Loukas and Damianos, although they had lived through the loss of a newborn daughter from diphtheria. The household was plunged into mourning, and the couple particularly took a long time to recover from their loss.
Penelope had married and was living in Patras. They learned her news from the long letters she wrote, and Simeon and Roza had gone twice to visit her when her daughters were born, staying for two months each time. They returned happy and told the rest of the family about what they had seen and what a good time they’d had.
Roza had changed a great deal. Happy with her grandchildren, she had recovered the glow of her youth. She no longer pursed her lips, and she smiled more frequently. She had become very close to Lefkothea, and nothing about their relationship resembled the ugly moments of their early days. In the afternoons, with the children playing at their feet, they drank coffee and chatted like two good friends, while beside them, Grandmother Penelope giggled like a schoolgirl. During those hours, their grandfather stayed in his room reading the newspaper, not wanting to listen to women’s conversations. Only in the mornings now did he go down to the shop, mostly just to take a walk, since his eyes were failing and his hands had lost the suppleness they’d once had. Besides, Simeon and Vassilis were more than capable of managing the business. Young Aristos didn’t want to join them, so he’d studied economics and was working in a shipping office.
That morning in 1955, Roza noticed that the men of the family were distracted. They drank their coffee mechanically and smoked, each deep in his own thoughts. She looked at them, one by one, and realized it wasn’t the first day she’d seen them like this. She was annoyed with herself for not having realized sooner. But little Simeon, who they called Simos so as not to confuse him with his grandfather, had come down with mumps, and his little brothers had caught it too. The whole household had been in turmoil for weeks. Now, however, Roza was worried. She looked at her daughter-in-law; Lefkothea had made the same unpleasant observation.
“Tell me,” Roza began, “has something happened to make you two look as if you were in mourning?”
The men exchanged a furtive look, upsetting her further.
“Simeon, I’m speaking to you!” she said to him shrilly. “What’s happening?”
“It’s not the time, woman,” he said and lowered his head.
“Vassilis, dear,” said Lefkothea shyly, looking at him with pleading eyes. “If something bad is happening, I think we should know about it too.”
“I have nothing to tell you. Nothing has happened, but there are a lot of things we don’t like lately in the city,” he answered her. “Mama, don’t be angry with Papa; we’re not hiding anything on purpose. We just don’t know ourselves.”
“Why don’t you tell us about it so we can understand, son? What’s going on that you don’t like?” his mother asked, more gently this time.
“I’ll tell you myself,” Simeon cut in. “For days, the city has been full of riffraff. They hang around in the alleys, and their faces are angry. They look at us strangely and keep passing the shop like they’re studying it.”
“Holy Virgin!” Roza said softly and saw her mother-in-law covertly crossing herself.
“We asked one or two of them where they were from, and they named some villages in the wilds of Anatolia. We don’t see any women, only men,” Simeon went on.
“And what do you think it is? What do they want around here?” Roza asked, her mouth dry.
“We don’t know! Haven’t we been telling you that all this time?” Simeon responded without hiding the tension he felt. “Yesterday, a really good customer of ours, a Turk, came in to shop for his wife, and as he was paying us, he bent forward and told us to be careful because something bad was going to happen. However much I insisted, he wouldn’t tell me anything more.”
“And there’s another thing,” Vassilis interjected. “For some time now, the newspapers have been especially furious with us Greeks.”
“What have we done to them, the cursed wretches?” Roza objected.
“They say we’re responsible for the Turks’ poverty: we make fortunes, and they starve! They talk about Cyprus.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an island, Mama! They say it’s theirs.”
“Then let them have it and good riddance! Why are we Greeks to blame? Did anyone tell them it was ours?”
“They’re looking for an excuse. There’s a leader in Cyprus—an archbishop. His name is Makarios, and the Turks hate him.”
“Vassilis, I don’t understand. What does any of this have to do with us?”
“Roza,” Simeon began, “don’t make yourself dizzy. Just pay attention to me, and I’ll tell you what has to happen. We don’t know anything for certain, but there are a lot of signs that we can’t overlook. So, I don’t want any of you to go out today, and until we see what’s happening, Vassilis will stay with you. Father and I will go to the shop,” he concluded determinedly, and when he saw his oldest son ready to object, he didn’t allow it.
“Vassilis, we already agreed: You’ll stay with the women and protect them. We’ll keep the shop open so as not to give them a target. If the slightest thing happens, you know what to do. And you, Aristos, be careful. When you get out of work, come straight home, OK?”
Everyone was silent, shaking their heads as Simeon and his elderly father got up to leave. Roza followed them to the door and made the sign of the cross.
“Good luck on your way, my husband,” she said to him, struggling to speak. “Be careful! If you see anything bad, you come straight home too! Do you hear?”
Without another word, Simeon hugged her and left a tender kiss on her head before he hurried off. Roza stood there, unable to move. In all the y
ears of her marriage, she didn’t remember her husband ever having said good-bye to her with a kiss before he went to work. She made another cross behind him and behind Aristos and repeated the gesture almost at the same time as her mother-in-law. They closed the door and gathered around Vassilis.
“Now, tell us what to do,” his mother said as soon as she had recovered her composure.
“I want you all to gather your gold jewelry and whatever coins we have in the house.”
They all rushed to obey and brought the boxes with their jewelry and gold. Vassilis took a pillow from the couch, emptied it, and put all their valuables inside. Then, with his wife’s help, he carried water, bread, and a few blankets to the basement. Lefkothea watched her husband in surprise as he took some planks from the wall and an empty space appeared. It was just large enough for five people to squeeze into, one beside the other.
“Vassilis, tell me the truth,” Lefkothea said nervously. “Are we in danger?”
“I don’t know, dear. By God, I don’t know. We didn’t say it upstairs, but we found some writing on the walls of our shop. It’s on all the Greek shops. As if they had marked us.”
“Did you wipe it off?”
“Of course we did. But that’s not the point. They know which stores are Greek and which are Turkish. My father told me to get this hiding place ready for whatever might happen.”
“Vassilis, I’m afraid. The children, my pasha!”
“Aren’t I here? Would I let anyone hurt you?”
He knew that protecting them might be out of his hands, but the women mustn’t suspect that. They came upstairs and found Roza and his grandmother collecting the silver.
“What are you doing?” he asked as he saw his mother open the large stove. She put the silver inside and piled a few half-burned pieces of wood, left over from last winter, on top.
“I’m hiding it, my sweet. Who knows what might happen. It was my dowry!”
Vassilis smiled and hugged her affectionately. Difficult hours and days might be ahead.
As it happened, they didn’t have to wait. Everything broke out in the next few hours. A few yards away from them, in Taksim Square, students began to demonstrate. Soon, the townspeople joined in, along with policemen in civilian clothes. Something had begun much earlier, though.
Three days before, the wife of the Turkish consul in Thessaloniki, Greece, had been photographed outside the house that Kemal Ataturk was thought to have been born in. A bomb had gone off, breaking a few windows of Ataturk’s house, and the Istanbul Express produced a special edition with a photograph on the front page. Except the photo had been horribly doctored—it showed the house of the Turkish leader catastrophically damaged. The article blamed the Greeks, and was accompanied by nationalist symbols and slogans. Interestingly enough, the edition circulated almost an hour before the bomb, planted by a Turkish usher, even went off. Meaningless details.
Constantinople responded with a demonstration that soon escalated. Trucks full of axes, shovels, clubs, crowbars, and cans of gasoline were waiting to arm the enraged citizens who poured out, uncontrollable and unrestrained, into the streets to spread death and destruction. The first stop was the Seven Hills Café, which they leveled. Next, they split up. Some charged ahead, breaking the doors and shutters of stores belonging to Greeks and other minorities. Behind them, others entered the shops and threw the merchandise into the streets. Finally, the last group destroyed or looted what remained. A river of hate flowed, drowning Constantinople and the Greeks. Howls could be heard, and they trampled anyone who went out into the streets. They broke into the houses and threw furniture out the windows, snatching whatever they found. Some brave people came out to shout that they were Turkish citizens; they wanted to protect their families, but their fate was the same as that of their property. The mob could not be controlled.
Vassilis heard the voices from a long way off. He ran to the open window and leaned out, then pulled back, white in the face. Wild shouts were approaching. There was a coherence and predictability to the sounds. First, he heard the angry voices cursing. He could make out “Greeks, tonight you’ll die!” and “Today, your property; tomorrow, your heads!” After that came fearful sounds of doors giving way, then furniture being smashed, then howling. He froze, and his brain froze too. It was his mother who brought him to his senses. She tugged at his sleeve.
“Vassilis, what’s happening outside?” she asked. “What are those voices?”
When her son didn’t answer, she shook him with all her strength. As if he had suddenly woken up, the young man looked at her and around the room. Lefkothea was standing with her three sons clutched tightly to her in fear, and beside her, their great-grandmother was trembling. They were his responsibility; he had no right to falter at such an urgent moment. His voice came out angrily: “Women, downstairs, quickly!”
He grabbed his oldest son by the arm and took his grandmother with the other. Lefkothea ran down the stairs, clutching little Damianos. Vassilis pulled aside the boards and helped the women get into their suffocating hiding place. With one hand, he replaced the boards; with the other, he held Simos, who was hiding his face in his father’s neck.
“Don’t make a sound!” he ordered them unnecessarily. Nobody could breathe from fear.
A few minutes later, they heard their front door give way and footsteps overhead. They stiffened beside one another. The voices reached their ears, and their blood froze when they heard what the intruders were saying. Wood broke, glass smashed, and amid the noise, the mob howled like jackals tearing flesh from a carcass. Time stopped. Vassilis didn’t know how long they stayed in their hiding place. An hour, a day, an eternity? It stunk—his three small children had soiled themselves in fear. They were suffocating, but he didn’t dare push the boards aside until long after the house had quieted down. He turned to his wife.
“Lefkothea, take Simos, and I’ll go and see what’s happening,” he whispered to her, about to hand over their son to her already full arms.
“Don’t, Vassilis!” she said, terrified.
“They left, my dear. Don’t you hear the silence?”
He gave her the child and slowly pushed the boards aside. Nobody had come down into the basement. He climbed the stairs slowly and felt his strength abandoning him. Nothing remained to remind him of the beautiful house he’d known. All the furniture had been thrown into the street, and what they couldn’t lift, they’d smashed to pieces. There wasn’t a pane of glass intact, and many of the windows had been torn from their frames. The stairway leading to the bedrooms had been partially destroyed by axes.
Timidly, he put his head out of a window and was stunned by the horrible scene. The street was hidden beneath furniture, rugs, and other household goods. A small fire was burning inside the store opposite. From time to time, a stifled sob came from some victim. In the darkness that had begun to fall, he could make out the body of a man, but it was impossible for him to be alive because of the unnatural angle of his head. Covered in sweat now, he withdrew into the house and went to free the women and children.
“What if they come back, Vassilis?” asked Lefkothea, breathless.
“When fire spreads, it doesn’t turn back. It seeks more food for its fury,” he told her, his throat dry. He looked at the faces he loved and tried to prepare them.
“I don’t want to frighten you, but there’s nothing left in the house,” he said to the three women. “I don’t know what they did upstairs, but downstairs they threw everything out or smashed it.”
With slow steps they emerged from the basement, and the first sobs came from his grandmother when she saw her house in ruins. Roza looked at Vassilis, and he could tell her thoughts had turned to the other members of the family.
“I’ll go and see what happened at the shop,” he said, but she objected vehemently.
“You won’t take one step!” she ordered him, and her hand squeezed his arm with such strength that it hurt. “Your father and grandfather know better than y
ou do how to protect themselves!”
“Yes, my treasure,” pleaded his grandmother now. “We don’t want to be worried about you. Stay here, and we’ll see what’s to be done. The others will come.”
Lefkothea confined herself to looking at him so intently that it was if she said everything. Then she said, “I have to go upstairs to clean up the children and give them a little something sweet to recover.”
“I doubt we’ll find anything sweet,” her mother-in-law said, “but let’s go upstairs to see what’s happened and I’ll help you change them.”
Fortunately, the upper floor was untouched. It seemed as if the intruders didn’t have time; their fury, unsatisfied, had drawn them onward to the next house. When they came downstairs, having put the children to bed, they found Vassilis trying to put the front door back on its hinges. They helped him put it in position and then returned to the empty living room. Only the heavy stove remained undisturbed, its treasures hidden in its belly. Roza looked at it with a wry smile. Her silver had been saved.
For the next two hours, they did what they could to make the place habitable. They were frightened when they realized someone was trying to enter the house. Vassilis ran to the door, prepared for the worst, but he found his brother carrying their father on his shoulders. Simeon was deathly pale from a wound over his brow that was bleeding heavily despite the fact that Aristos had bound it tightly with his handkerchief.
