— Could you bring me my binoculars? he asked.
Elena sat him down in his chair on the veranda. A gorgeous day, the old man thought, closing his eyes.
How could I have imagined, he wondered. Back when I was so anxious all the time, when I thought work was everything. When I spent my days strategizing. When I confused unimportant things for important ones.
Grandpa Dinopoulos raised the binoculars to his eyes. On sunny days when he could sit and daydream outside on the balcony, this was his morning entertainment: watching the passersby and his neighbors, the activity on the street and in the apartments across the way, whenever a curtain parted. He turned his gaze to the tables on the sidewalk outside Terkenlis, the sweet shop on the corner. That’s where Elena bought his favorite tsourekia covered in white chocolate. She brought them home still warm in the box, and he liked to touch them with his hands, stick a finger in the frosting and bring it to his mouth. Buying a whole tsoureki for a few fingerfuls of frosting struck Elena as a waste, but then there weren’t many pleasures left to the old man. The manhandled sweet would end up at the Georgian housekeeper’s apartment, where she gave it to her kids and neighbors.
Grandpa Dinopoulos watched the morning customers at the tables set out on the corner of Agia Sophia Street and Ermou. Middle-aged couples, a few extremely old women, some university students. Evthalia and her girlfriends had taken a spot at the corner table. He recognized her from her knitted suit; she’d always liked bright colors. This one was a roof-tile red that caught the eye, particularly as she was surrounded by her friends’ gray, sky-blue, and salmon-colored jackets. Evthalia was lecturing them, he could tell by the way her head bobbed, and the rest were listening, most likely agreeing.
Grandpa Dinopoulos put down the binoculars with a sigh. How could he possibly have imagined, over half a century earlier when work was his whole life, that the sight of a suit in roof-tile red would be enough to make his day?
1948 AND BEYOND: “WITH EVERYTHING THEY’RE DOING, THEY MIGHT MAKE ME HAVE AN OPINION”
MARGARET TALAS, MOTHER OF JACK TALAS
Each child is born with its character already in place. Teachers and missionaries like to think they tame souls. What do they know? They’re all men, and most of them childless. They think character is something you can shape, that punishments or encouraging words actually make a difference.
Bullshit, darling.
As soon as you take your child in your arms you know. From how it cries and nurses and sleeps. You know how much it’s going to put you through from that very first moment. Jack is a perfect example: he was as stubborn and hardheaded as they come.
— What a beautiful baby, my mother-in-law crowed. He sleeps like an angel.
But when he was less than a month old I saw what his anger looked like: face blue from screaming, legs so stiff he looked like a dry branch. He didn’t know how to talk, so he shrieked until we figured out what he wanted. In all the years that followed he didn’t change a bit. If he set his mind on something, we all had to get out of the way.
My other boy, Mike, wasn’t like that. He went along with whatever his older brother wanted, he didn’t like to fight. They slept in the same room, shared clothes and toys. Mike used to grind his teeth in his sleep, I could hear it at night, and Jack would twist and turn so that in the morning his sheets would be tangled into a ball.
Jack excelled at everything. He was the best student in his class, and had a shelf full of sports trophies. People loved him, but they were jealous, too. At school and in the neighborhood, Jack’s reputation made things hard for Mike. Everyone compared them. It wasn’t fair, but that’s how people are, darling. Jack just laughed, and Mike learned to grit his teeth and bear it.
The day Jack told us he was going to be a radio reporter, we were sitting right here on the sofa, listening to the radio, as a matter of fact. I scolded him for not taking off his shoes, but he was in a hurry to tell us what was going to happen—that’s how he said it, since the decision had been made and there was no changing his mind.
We had intended for him to be a lawyer, a well-paying, respectable profession. But he went his own way without consulting anyone. He’d already signed a contract to go overseas as a foreign correspondent. Instead of being upset, his father was proud. Mike became a lawyer in his place.
Jack left for the Middle East, the other end of the earth. While I was ironing his shirt collars, he came and hugged me. Don’t worry, Mommy, he said, I’ll be fine. And he was. His letters were always upbeat, full of jokes. Even when his plane crashed. Anyone else would have begged to come back home, but he insisted on finishing his assignment. He had a journalism fellowship waiting for him at Harvard, he would rest on his laurels later.
It’s my fault. I often think that, darling.
I never taught him what danger meant. My child hadn’t learned to fear. Of course at other times I say that they’re born with their character already formed. You could turn the whole world upside down, but you couldn’t change him.
I went to the country that killed him. Jack’s widow welcomed me. A good girl, I could see why he’d chosen her. She was made for happiness.
— Take off those widow’s weeds, child, I counseled. They won’t do you any good.
She insisted on wearing black. I told her to at least go sleeveless. To dress nicely, not in nun’s habits. She was a polite girl, and didn’t want to upset me by objecting too strongly. I talked to her mother and made myself understood: I would be bringing Zouzou to America. We would figure out her visa. I saw no reason for her to stay behind in that wild place.
Stench and filth, darling. That’s all I remember of Greece. Miserable people, hungry children. You had to find the proper person to take care of the least little thing. If you found him, the job got done in seconds flat. If you didn’t, door after door just shut in your face.
Before Jack went there, I didn’t know a thing about Greece. When he wrote to tell me about his latest assignment, I looked for it on the map. Such a tiny place, it was hard to find. Mike helped me, moved my finger over from Asia to Greece, a tiny splotch. It’s a country with a lot of history, he told me.
— If it mattered, we’d know about it. I bet they know who we are.
Then I saw that photograph in the newspaper. A man on horseback with a rope of severed heads hanging from his saddle. Only communists do things like that.
— That’s not a communist, Mother, Mike corrected me.
I didn’t listen. It worried me that my son was breathing their air, drinking their water, lying down to sleep on their beds.
Greece. Such a small country, and making such a big stink. Mike said that we should know more about them, they were important. But can you give me one real reason why?
Greeks: proud as punch of themselves, for no reason.
Greece: a country full of corpses and graves.
A place where the dead rule the living.
We’re not like that, darling. Our decisions are made in politician’s offices, not over open coffins.
That’s life.
They think they have a monopoly on pain. They wear their black head scarves, show their wounds like badges of honor. It’s all theater. Pure theater.
I asked for respect. A closed coffin, a service read in our language, far from those bearded priests in their cassocks.
As for them, the clock is ticking backwards.