The Gold Letter

by Lena Manta

  “Why don’t you read the rest?” her husband asked when he saw her staring at the first page.

  “I already did,” his wife replied flatly.

  “So, are you going to tell me? What does Dorothea say?”

  “My family is fine, but the families we know . . . the news is not good.”

  “Don’t tell me! Who was harmed?” Fotis asked anxiously.

  “A lot of them. Enough to say that there’s scarcely a Greek house in the city that isn’t in mourning. Among them, she writes about the Kouyoumdzis family. Simeon and his father were in the store—remember? In the middle of Pera?”

  “Heavens, woman, of course I know the Kouyoumdzis store—it was the biggest and best! Go on! What happened?”

  “The older you get, the more surprised you are by things, husband. Be patient with me. I’m upset too. So, they rushed into the store, the cursed wretches, and trampled the old man. Then they beat Simeon!”

  “Are they alive?”

  “Neither of them,” Smaragda said sadly, and Fotis came to put his arms around her.

  “And Vassilis?”

  “From what my sister wrote, he and his brother are fine. Vassilis has three children now.”

  “Three children? That seems awfully fast.”

  “That’s how it is, my husband. Life doesn’t stop for a lost love. He found someone and was comforted. But there’s more. My brother-in-law found out that the entire Kouyoumdzis family has come to Athens.”

  Silence followed this announcement. Fotis moved away from his wife and sat down opposite her.

  “Where in Athens? Did she tell you?”

  “She doesn’t know any more. Fotis, what will we do?” Smaragda asked uneasily.

  “We? What do you mean? Vassilis is married. He has three children. And our daughter has four. Are we going to worry about old love stories now? Anyway, Athens is huge. Where would they even meet?”

  “It’s not only him that I’m afraid of. His shrew of a mother came too. Do you think she might start slandering us again?”

  “No, my sweetheart. She married her son off, so what reason would she have now? She was a wretched woman, but people change, my dear. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Our children are married and have their own lives.”

  Smaragda looked at him and nodded, smiling at the thought of their children. Nestor had recently married, and his wife, Yvonne, was expecting their first child. Chrysafenia, whose husband called her Chrysi, had made her a grandmother four times. Baby Smaragda, named for her grandmother, was her favorite. The next eldest, and the only boy in the family, was Stelios. Then came three-year-old Fotini, and Hecuba, who had already turned five. The Sekeris family lived in Kypseli, in a newly built palace that her son-in-law had designed. Pericles had turned out to be a very good husband and a hard worker. He could be a bit rigid, and sometimes rather abrupt, but his wife mostly knew how to soften him.

  Chrysafenia scolded her daughter, who was bothering the baby. From the beginning, Hecuba had been annoyed with the newest member of the family. Fotini was quite indifferent to her—she only liked ordering her around. Stelios was a boy, and she didn’t quarrel with him, but with the oldest one her mother could never let down her guard. Perhaps because Smaragda monopolized everyone’s attention with her sweetness, her beauty, and her habits. She was a calm baby and liked to smile at whoever bent over her cradle. And the more she smiled and enchanted her parents, the more jealous her older sister became. Pericles had made his own position clear: the largest share of his attention was reserved for his son. That, Hecuba could accept. But Smaragda? No.

  Chrysafenia got up and took the baby in her arms so as to save her from the hands of her sister. Right on time, Lizeta arrived for a visit. Pericles’s beloved sister-in-law, who’d become Chrysafenia’s friend as well, took care to pass by regularly and help the young mother, since her brother-in-law wouldn’t even hear of a nanny.

  “My children are going to be raised by their mother,” he declared, dismissing any objections. “I have taken care of everything they need, I’ve hired a woman to look after the house, but the children are their mother’s business.”

  Chrysafenia didn’t object to most of his ideas, although his tone often troubled her. She didn’t have to reproach him about other things, but she would tremble when Pericles got his mind set on something. Then, nobody could dissuade him. One of his fixations was the proper raising of the children.

  “Welcome!” she called out as she saw Lizeta coming into the living room. “God must have sent you.”

  “Are the little beasts tormenting you again?” asked Lizeta, laughing, but they both knew she meant the oldest one, and she turned first to her. “How’s my girl doing?”

  Hecuba looked carefully at her and then consented to approach and submit to her hug.

  “What did I bring for my sweetie?” Lizeta asked and pulled a pad of drawing paper and some colored pencils out of her bag, knowing Hecuba couldn’t resist them.

  She could spend hours drawing, and a brand-new drawing pad was a great incentive. Lizeta’s magic bag was full as always. It contained a little rag doll for Fotini and a lollipop for greedy Stelios. Complete calm reigned for the moment. The children were busy with the gifts, and their mother put Smaragda down in her bassinet.

  “May you live a thousand years, Lizeta!” she exclaimed. “They’ll drive me crazy. Shall we drink some tea? This cold is really settling in, I think.”

  “Well, it’s nearly Christmas, Chrysi.”

  The two women sat down to their tea while the children played quietly. They chatted about the holiday and the dinners they had to cook. After that, the conversation turned to fashion, and Lizeta had news.

  “I didn’t tell you! There’s a new jewelry shop on Ermou Street. A big one! The builders have been working day and night, and it’ll open next week in time for the holidays. They say a fellow countryman of yours is opening it with his brother. They came after the troubles in Constantinople. You must have heard what happened.”

  “Yes, my mother told me. Fortunately, my family is all right.”

  “They say these people weren’t so lucky. They lost the father and grandfather, and the sons packed up and came to Greece.”

  With every word Lizeta said, Chrysafenia’s head spun a little more.

  But the woman didn’t notice a thing. She went on: “His name is Vassilis Kouyoumdzis. Do you know him?”

  Stolen kisses in a candlelit staircase. Tears, and a letter made of gold still hidden in her wardrobe. Did she know him? As well as she knew her dreams.

  Chrysafenia Sekeris’s life felt like the pages of a calendar blown by the wind. She didn’t understand how the years had passed. She’d watched her family grow, she’d watched the old ones, like her grandmother in Constantinople, die, and she’d watched life itself continue. She told no one that she knew about Vassilis coming to Greece. She didn’t even discuss it with her mother, since Smaragda had kept the news from her. When she went down to Ermou Street, she saw his store from a distance and made sure not to pass in front of it. She didn’t want to risk meeting; she didn’t trust herself. Despite the years she had spent with Pericles, she hadn’t truly fallen in love with him. She respected her husband, honored him, but she’d realized very early on that her experience of marriage would not be like her mother’s.

  Pericles Sekeris’s love, if it existed at all, was possessive, absolute, and filled with great egotism. As long as everything was going his way, their life was good. He wasn’t violent, but he could be very unpleasant when someone disagreed with him, especially his wife. Everyone thought her lucky for having a husband who made a lot of money and who was charming, polite, and gallant. At home, though, he bossed everyone around, and it never crossed his mind that someone could disagree or have a better idea. Of course, his wife dressed in the latest fashions, and had nice jewelry and an appearance that matched his social position. His children went to the most expensive private schools, and only the best people came
to their parties. But Chrysafenia herself sought the company of Lizeta and her sister-in-law, Yvonne. Only with them did she let herself go and forget her anxieties. In the afternoons when they met at her house, they giggled like schoolgirls, sometimes even making fun of their husbands.

  Yvonne was Chrysafenia’s age, full of zest for life; she was also independent and very clever. She had met Nestor at the university, where she had also studied pharmacology, and with her dowry, the two of them had opened their pharmacy. She only had one child, Melpo, named after her late mother. Her mother-in-law chided her in a well-meaning way after Yvonne made it clear that, after Melpo’s difficult birth, she didn’t see herself having another child.

  “What are you waiting for?” Smaragda would say to her. “Are you such a coward? Have another one. I’ll raise it.”

  “Leave it, Mother!” the girl answered, laughing. “The raising is easy. The birth is what I won’t go through again. Not to mention the five months I was forced to lie in bed! May my daughter live a long life, but she nearly sent me unprepared into the other world! Besides, you have Chrysi’s children to comfort you.”

  “My daughter’s name is Chrysafenia! Chrysi is like the name of a disease!” the woman said. “Don’t listen to that arrogant son-in-law of mine who thought he’d baptize her again!”

  However much she tried to hide it, Smaragda could not warm up to her son-in-law. In fact, the more she got to know him, the greater her antipathy was. Fotis tried to soothe her worries, but the truth was, nobody wanted much to do with Pericles. Even Nestor, who had been close with him once, distanced himself after the wedding. Pericles’s arrogance annoyed him, and he didn’t like the way the man treated his family. He was more like a despot than a husband and father. What pleased him was his wife’s friendship with Chrysafenia, and he couldn’t imagine what a struggle his sister had gone through to hold on to that friendship. In the early years, Pericles had accepted Yvonne. But over the years, he began to drop hints that he was not in favor of her frequent visits. As the years passed and the friendship became stronger, the hints became complaints. He disapproved of Yvonne, believing she was a bad influence because she’d continued to work after her marriage instead of looking after her household. On top of that, she refused to have more children with her husband.

  “I don’t know what you see in her!” he’d fume as soon as he found out the two young women had met.

  “If you knew her better, Pericles, you’d be friends with her yourself,” Chrysafenia would answer calmly. “We’re the same age, we have a lot in common, and she’s my brother’s wife. Besides, her daughter plays well with ours.”

  She tried to keep her self-control each time, but finally Pericles issued yet another order.

  “Chrysi, you pretend you don’t understand, so you force me to tell you clearly and categorically: I forbid you to spend time with that woman!”

  “What you’re saying is impossible!”

  “What did you say?” he asked.

  “You heard me. Yvonne is my friend, my only friend, and I don’t intend to turn my back on her for no good reason.”

  “No reason? Did you know, my dear, that only the day before yesterday when they went to dinner at my mother’s house, your little brother and his wife didn’t hesitate to speak out against the regime. They’re going to get us all in trouble! I repeat: that friendship is over!”

  “And I told you that’s not happening!”

  Her husband stood up and came toward her with his lips drawn tight, a sign that he had begun to lose his self-control.

  “And you dare to go against your husband when he gave you a specific order?” he asked, his eyes narrowing threateningly.

  “I’m not a soldier to give orders to, nor am I a slave. I’ve accepted the lifestyle you want for me, I’ve given in to a lot of your strange requests, but enough is enough. This goes beyond anything. My sister-in-law has done nothing wrong except for not liking your beloved regime—and if you don’t know, neither do thousands of Greeks. She and I don’t even discuss politics, yet you continue to find reasons to dislike her. Tonight you’ve gone too far. I will continue to see Yvonne, where and when I wish, and you can do as you wish.”

  “Explain yourself, woman!”

  “I see no need. We understand each other very well after so many years of marriage. You can hit me if you like!”

  “Just a moment,” he interrupted her in surprise, “I’ve never touched you!”

  “If you had, you would have had another thing coming!” his wife answered angrily, unafraid. “But there are many ways of making life difficult for another person, and you, my dear husband, have tried them all. I did everything to please you, but I was never good enough, correct enough . . . what you wanted me to be enough. You didn’t like the way I spoke, so I changed it. You didn’t like my family, so you pushed them away. You scarcely let my mother enjoy her grandchildren because you’re afraid they might pick up her accent or ‘bad habits.’ On top of that, you won’t let anyone else look after the children, even while I go shopping. But I won’t accept anything else. I’m no longer the twenty-year-old girl who bowed her head. I’m who I am, whether you like it or not. If not, I’ll take the children and go back to my parents!” she finished, out of breath, but certain that she had won.

  Pericles blinked in surprise. The shocked expression on his face made her want to laugh, but she held her tongue.

  “Wait, Chrysi—” he tried to say.

  “My name is Chrysafenia! For God’s sake, every time I hear ‘Chrysi,’ I think I’m going to get jaundice.”

  “Now you’re going crazy, my dear. That’s what I’ve always called you, from our first date. Do you remember?” he asked, trying to soften her.

  “Do you remember?” she retorted. “Where is the sweet, tender man I thought I was marrying? You’ve turned into a tyrant, someone we’re afraid to speak to. And now you’re giving me orders? Enough, Pericles! Yvonne is and will remain my friend—do you hear me? I expect you to treat her with the respect that’s due to my brother’s wife. Just as I respect your relatives and friends and all the people you drag over here without even asking if I’m sick or if I’m in the mood to entertain your riffraff!”

  “I don’t even recognize you!” he shouted.

  “Let me introduce myself then. I’m your wife, not some lapdog for you to give orders to!”

  “These aren’t your words, though!” Pericles insisted. “That’s why I don’t approve of your friendship with Yvonne. She’s a bad influence on you and makes us quarrel.”

  “What about your new friends? You spend so much time hanging around with junta supporters, you’ve become just like them. You’re the boss, you give orders. Except that this is our house, not some rocky island where they sent the political prisoners! Enough. Tamam!” she concluded, using a word from her Constantinople dialect, which he had forbidden her to speak.

  She turned her back on him and left the room with her shoulders straight, leaving Pericles behind to wonder what hit him. It was true that his friends had changed over the last years, and when, a year earlier, the military dictatorship had taken over the country, his friends found themselves in high positions. Chrysafenia had never seemed to share his enthusiasm for the regime. She was a perfect hostess when they came over, but she didn’t want to have much to do with them, however much Pericles insisted. Politics didn’t interest her, but every form of violence repelled her, and privately she criticized his choices.

  After this, a clear victory on Chrysafenia’s part, Pericles took refuge in a strategic retreat. He had no desire to be a target of ridicule in his circle for having a marital crisis. In his wife’s face, he saw she was quite ready to carry out her threat and leave him. In a burst of honest self-criticism that night, he accepted the fact that Chrysafenia had been something beyond dutiful toward the family she had created. A capable housekeeper, a fine mother, and as a wife, she had she accepted her responsibilities without making any demands, even in their private m
oments. It was a successful marriage from every perspective, and there was no need to blow it up without serious cause. Besides, Yvonne, he had to admit, was also a good wife and mother. The two women’s meetings seldom took place beyond the four walls of his house, and his sister-in-law was almost always present too. So what was he afraid of?

  As a gesture of goodwill, and to persuade his wife to abandon her bad mood, he himself appeared at the women’s next gathering with a box of sweets in his hands. Yvonne opened her eyes wide.

  “Pericles! What’s this? You’ve brought us galaktoboureko?” she asked.

  “And not from any old sweet shop—from Kosmikon!”

  “You went all the way to Patission Street?” Chrysafenia said suspiciously.

  “Why not, my dear? I knew you were getting together today, and I thought I’d sweeten you up. And now I’m off to leave you in peace so you can talk.”

  He kissed the top of his wife’s head affectionately and disappeared.

  While they were enjoying their favorite delicately flavored sweets, Lizeta turned to Chrysafenia.

  “Whenever my husband brings something sweet home, it’s an attempt to pacify the beast he’s managed to wake. What did my brother-in-law do to you?”

  “Like you said, Lizeta. He woke the beast!”

  “It’s about time it woke up!” the woman replied. “You’ve indulged his bad habits, my girl. ‘Whatever Pericles says’ is no way to spend a life. And make sure you drag him away from the company he keeps, because it won’t turn out well for him.”