‘Evlogitos o Theos imon, pantote
Nin ke ai ke is tous eonas ton eonon.
En irini tou Kyriou deithomen.’
For the first time in a decade the country was nominally at peace. Perhaps a million had died in the preceding ten years, during the occupation and civil war. Hundreds of villages had been burned down and thousands made homeless, but for Katerina and Dimitri this day marked a new beginning.
Chapter Thirty
ANTI-COMMUNIST FEELINGS STILL lingered in the government, but at least Katerina, Dimitri and little Theodoris could lead something like a normal life. Mass production of clothing in factories was beginning to take off and so, although Katerina occasionally made a bridal gown, she was happy to leave fashion behind and do something new. Together she and Dimitri set up a new business and called it ‘Soft Furnishings and Furniture for the Modern Age’. They took on a carpenter and made their own chairs and settees, which Katerina upholstered in some of the new, washable, synthetic fabrics.
In the following year, Katerina found herself pregnant again and when the baby was born they named her after Dimitri’s mother. Six months later both the children were baptised. They were to grow up surrounded by people who adored them.
The death of her husband had released Olga. Many years after Dimitri’s birth, a doctor had diagnosed that she had suffered from post-natal depression, and although her complete recovery from agoraphobia would take the rest of her life, at least she now occasionally visited Irini Street. She lavished even more attention on the children than most grandmothers. Theodoris and Olga both called in at Niki Street every day on their way home from school and were always spoiled with plates of Pavlina’s freshly made cake and biscuits. The old housekeeper was too frail to come to Irini Street now, but she baked for them until the day she died at the age of ninety-five. Her funeral was the first time that Theodoris and little Olga had ever seen adults cry. Pavlina had been part of all their lives.
The two children were also close to their other yiayia, Eugenia, and it had never been appropriate to explain that she was not really their grandmother. With both parents working hard all day, the elderly lady kept the household running and shipshape. Sometimes she went to stay for a few weeks at a time with Sofia or Maria (who by now had nine children between them) but she was always glad to return to the relative tranquillity of Irini Street.
On Sundays the whole family, with both grandmothers, would sometimes go to their favourite café, Assos, on the seafront. The children would have ice creams, which they were only allowed once a week, and the women would all eat miniature bougatsa.
Dimitri and Katerina’s business began to thrive. Apartment blocks were going up all over the city and thousands of families were moving to better homes. For the first time, many of them had bathrooms with running water and kitchens complete with modern appliances. This new lifestyle called for new kinds of interior furnishing and design, and they struggled to keep up with demand.
Just before Easter in 1962, Katerina received a letter from Athens. The handwriting was unfamiliar. It came from Artemis and announced the news of their mother’s death. For Katerina, almost the worst thing was that she could not cry. Her memory of Zenia had faded to extinction and her sister was a total stranger. Naturally, she sent her condolences and said she would come to the memorial service to be held forty days after Zenia’s death.
Sadly, she was unable to fulfil her promise. Only a fortnight later, Eugenia developed a chest infection and within a week pneumonia had claimed her life. The whole family struggled to come to terms with their unexpected bereavement and Katerina found there was no limit to the depth of her grief. It was a far greater blow than the death of her birth mother.
‘But she was only sixty-nine,’ wept young Olga, inconsolably. It was average for a woman at that time, but both children had assumed that she would live to be as old as Pavlina. The small house seemed empty without her presence and the loom, with a half-finished rug, stood idle in the corner. For many months Katerina and Dimitri could not bear to get rid of it, in spite of the fact that it took up half the room.
If there was ever going to be a right moment to move, perhaps this was it. The children were clamouring to leave Irini Street for somewhere more modern and with more space. It would have made their parents’ lives much easier, if they could be in a brand-new building in a flat directly above their business, but their sentimental attachment to the old cobbled street was too strong. For both Katerina and Dimitri their ties to Irini Street were deeper than their children could begin to understand.
They now rented out a shop in a nearby area where they displayed their goods, and continued to live in number 5 and have their workshop in the house next door. They loved the fact that their children could still play in the street, just as they themselves had done several decades before, without the danger of them being hit by a motorcar. These were now commonplace in the city, but it even infuriated Dimitri and Katerina when one of the young men in the street insisted on riding his motorised bike up and down.
The country had entered a period of economic boom. Greece was being reconstructed at last and businesses such as Katerina and Dimitri’s felt the benefit. ‘Soft Furnishings and Furniture for the Modern Age’ thrived.
In spite of this, the politics of the country remained uncertain. The right-wing government kept alive the notion that the Communists were still a serious threat, and early in 1967 they arrested a number of socialist leaders for supposed conspiracy to plot against the government. There was no evidence against them. Dimitri read of these developments each day with growing anxiety and he began to have recurring nightmares that he was on Makronisos once again. Katerina sometimes woke in the night, to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, shaking with fear.
‘They’re saying that there’s danger of civil war all over again,’ said Katerina, who had been listening to the radio all day long as she worked in the shop.
‘It’s a pack of lies,’ responded Dimitri dismissively. ‘Pure fabrication.’
Late that afternoon, Theodoris burst through the door. It was the year of his final school exams and he had stayed late for an extra class.
‘Dad! Mum!’ His voice was full of anxiety. ‘Have you seen all the soldiers? There are hundreds of them, down in Egnatia Street. What’s happening?’
On the pretext that they were saving the country from a Communist takeover, the army had staged a coup. The Colonels were now in charge.
This was not the first time in Katerina and Dimitri’s lives that there had been a military coup and they knew of the terror that such a situation could instil into daily life.
Both their children were keen students and always achieved top grades. Encouraged by his teachers, who had rarely taught such a bright pupil, Theodoris dreamed of studying Law. It would suit his ability to write, to debate and to retain huge amounts of information. Dimitri kept his opinion on his son’s choice of subject to himself. It was inevitable, he supposed, that there would be an occasional glimpse of his own father in the teenage boy.
In July, when exam results were posted up at school, Theodoris faced the biggest disappointment of his life. His grades were below even the average in his class. He rushed into the house and fled straight to his room.
From the backyard, where they had retreated to get some air, his parents could hear sobbing. They knew instinctively what had happened.
‘He’s such a clever boy and he worked so hard,’ Katerina said with disbelief. ‘How could they do that to him?’
‘I’m afraid they can do what they like, now,’ Dimitri replied. He was pale with sadness and rage.
Both of them knew that Theodoris’ exam results had been tampered with because of his father’s history. This was not uncommon. The stigma of Dimitri’s days in the prison camps now hung over his children too. Dimitri knew that his association with the Left would always linger, and had accepted when he returned from Giaros that he would never become a doctor. For a long while,
this seemed the only enduring punishment.
‘Do you think it will be the same for Olga?’ asked Katerina fearfully.
Dimitri could not answer. He felt his anger against the men now in charge of his country rising up inside him.
Everyone knew that, under the new regime, exam results were often altered by the police before being made public, and children of ‘undesirables’ were given lower marks while those candidates with ‘right-thinking’ parents were boosted. Whilst he kept a very low profile, and had not attended one political meeting since returning from his island exile, Dimitri realised that his past was his crime, and that his children would continue to suffer from it. The same discrimination was being practised against university professors themselves and those known to be on the Left were sacked. The professors who were rising to the top of their departments were those who were prepared to give lectures on patriotism and the National Revolution.
‘Even if he was given a place,’ said Katerina, ‘what kind of education would he get? They’ve sacked all the good Law professors for their views.’
Both of them knew there was a solution. Dimitri’s mother wanted to pay for the children’s university education, and could easily afford to send them overseas. The subject had been the source of endless discussion and had brought mother and son close to argument on many occasions.
‘I understand why you don’t want any of your father’s money, Dimitri,’ Olga said. ‘But there is no reason why your children shouldn’t benefit from it.’
Young Olga was now coming home from school with new textbooks that had been approved by the Junta.
‘Look, Dad,’ she said showing him the introduction. ‘Listen to this: “On 21 April officers seized the initiative to save the country from a renewed attempt to destroy it by the Communists.”’
‘It’s nonsense,’ said Dimitri. ‘Complete nonsense.’
That evening, when Dimitri and Katerina were alone, Katerina tackled the issue head-on.
‘What’s the point in their education if they are being fed all these lies, Dimitri?’
He knew where this conversation could go and it filled him with unease.
‘You were never able to complete your own education, but there is no reason not to give our children the best that we can . . .’
Still he remained silent.
‘And you know what happened to someone in Olga’s class last week?’
One of her friends, Anthoula, had told a joke about the Colonels. It had been repeated by another girl to her father, who happened to be an officer, and the very next day, Anthoula had been expelled.
‘Yes, I do,’ said Dimitri. ‘It was outrageous.’
‘We should give them a chance, even if it’s painful for us . . .’
She noticed the sadness in his eyes. Like her, Dimitri loved his children with his whole being, but this only made Katerina’s conviction that they should leave Thessaloniki all the stronger.
‘I know you are right,’ he said, looking up at her. ‘But I’d do anything in the world to keep them here.’
A few days later the Prime Minister, Georgios Papadopoulos, came to the city and spoke at the university. Dimitri and Katerina had the radio on in the shop and stopped to listen to the broadcast:
‘The university must become the church of the spiritual development of the nation. Teachers must guide the nation and the moral order must become once again the guiding thought, the framework of human life. We must return to the mentality which preceded the violation of the moral and social order.’
‘I can’t listen to that any more,’ Dimitri shouted. ‘It’s intolerable, propagandist rubbish!’
‘Ssh, Dimitri!’
Katerina reached up to the radio and turned the dial to find another frequency. She could never be sure of their customers’ views and it was dangerous to be so outspoken against the regime. Some repetitive military music now blared tunelessly from the speaker.
‘Can you turn it off completely, Katerina? I’d rather have silence than that.’
Occasionally memories of evenings with Elias listening to rebetika surged nostalgically over Dimitri. It grieved him that so much music had been banned. His children could not hear the singers they wanted to hear, or read the news they should be allowed to read. Plays, poetry and prose were all subject to censorship, and now, according to Papadopoulos, their thoughts were to be controlled. It was an oppressive regime.
When the shop closed at nine thirty, they returned to Irini Street in silence. Theodoris and Olga were in their bedrooms and Katerina went into the kitchen to prepare some food for them all. Dimitri followed her and sat down at the table. He watched her, deep in thought, slicing some bread.
‘Katerina,’ he said eventually. ‘I know you are right. We can tolerate these restrictions on our freedom, but it’s no future for our children. We must let them go.’
‘Do you mean it, Dimitri?’
‘Yes, I do. It’s selfish of me. Mother has plenty of money, so there is no reason why they shouldn’t go to university in another country. And she’s right, my hatred of my father has nothing to do with them.’
When she looked up, he saw that big glassy tears were rolling down her face.
Within a year, Theodoris had gone to London to study and not long afterwards Olga passed an exam that would take her to Boston University.
Not once did Dimitri and Katerina regret their decision. The atmosphere of repression intensified, with the Military Junta sending thousands of dissenters into exile.
‘I heard they’re taking people to Makronisos again,’ Katerina said, one day the following year. ‘It can’t be true, can it?’
‘Sadly, I’m afraid it is,’ he replied.
Extreme physical and psychological torture was now commonplace once again but there seemed little anyone could do. There was no press freedom and demonstrations were now banned, so there was not even any means of effective protest.
Every Sunday evening, Dimitri and Katerina wrote a letter to each of the children. Sometimes, she would send something she had embroidered or sewn, a blouse or handkerchief for Olga and sometimes a shirt or a cushion cover for Theodoris. They kept the tone of their letters light, fearing that anything political or critical of the regime would result in them not getting through.
Katerina would love to have sent them food, but Dimitri reassured her that there was probably enough for them to eat in Britain and America, and besides, the juices of her dolmadakia would be sure to escape from the box.
In November 1973, three days into a student strike, there was an uprising among students in Athens. Using an amateur radio, they broadcast their message to the people of Greece, urging them to fight for democracy. Students demonstrated in Thessaloniki to show their support, but were soon dispersed by the police and army.
‘Do you think Theodoris would have been there, in the middle of it all?’ pondered Katerina.
‘Quite probably,’ answered Dimitri.
In Athens mass demonstrations against the regime spread into the surrounding streets and three days after the beginning of the student strike, an army tank broke down the gates of the Athens Polytechnic, where the students had barricaded themselves in. During the struggle that followed a dozen people died and hundreds more were wounded.
It was the beginning of the end. As a consequence, Papadopoulos was overthrown, a year later the dictatorship came to an end and democratic government returned. The Communist Party was legalised for the first time since 1947 and invited to take part in the elections that were held in mid-November. Dimitri was jubilant when they won a handful of seats.
Theodoris and Olga came back for holidays that summer. They were doing well at university and both had plans for post-graduate degrees. There was no shortage of money to fund them. Theodoris moved to Oxford for a D. Phil. and Olga remained in Boston.
Thessaloniki seemed to be thriving and, though they were very proud that their children were doing well abroad, Dimitri and Katerina harboured an un
expressed desire that they should come back to Greece once their education was complete. Whenever they came home, they showed them the new building work that was helping transform the city and took them to see all the improvements that were being made to its infrastructure.
Theodoris was then offered a position by a large law firm in London and Olga became a houseman in a hospital in a wealthy Boston suburb and each step in their blossoming careers took them one further from home. The summer of 1978 would be the first one when neither of them would be able to visit. Perhaps this was fortuitous.
On the night of 20 June, a Tuesday, there was a full moon rising in the sky and the promise of a perfect sunset behind Mount Olympus. Above the Gulf there was a golden glow that would soon darken to a fiery red. The sea glittered with both the silvery light of the moon, and the flames of the sun.
On this beautiful night, people strolled arm in arm along the promenade, or sat at café tables gazing out towards the sea, intoxicated by nature’s spectacular light show. There was no need for conversation or music, sun and moon provided all the spectacle they could require.
At ten o’clock, the earth began to tremble. Thessaloniki was accustomed to the occasional small reminder of the earth’s instability but this time it did not stop.
Dimitri and Katerina were working late in their Irini Street workshop and everything began to rattle. A pair of shears slid across the cutting table and landed with a clatter on the floor, and Katerina’s sewing machine juddered across the floor on its stand. Windows rattled, chairs fell over and rolls of furniture fabric that had been leaning against the wall toppled like skittles. It was as if the ground beneath them was going to disappear.
‘Agapi mou,’ said Dimitri, grabbing Katerina’s hand, ‘this isn’t normal. We have to get out of here.’
They ran into the street and turned into the wide main road that ran east to west. They felt a little safer once they were outside, but there were new dangers and they watched in horror as a building ahead of them swayed and then collapsed. Their eyes and throats filled up with dust.