Violeta returned each afternoon to a cold house. Her last name now carried a stigma, there wasn’t a person left who didn’t know whose sister she was. She heard them whispering behind her back. Her pride became a suit of armor — but when she got home and took it off, she would collapse in a heap.
For a while she kept setting the table as their mother had taught them, with a tablecloth, a jug of water, forks and knives laid out on the napkins. But Evgnosia no longer sat with her to eat. And so bit by bit the tablecloth was forgotten, the napkins went unwashed, old food stuck to the fabric; Violeta didn’t have the patience to scrub at the stains. Soon enough she just came home and ate bread and cheese in bed, not even bothering to shake the crumbs from the sheets.
Evgnosia was spirited off, the old women in the neighborhood said. An evil shadow stood at her side, she was touched by the angel of death. Eventually she stopped talking: no matter how hard Violeta tried to insist, not a word would cross her sister’s lips. She wasted away from crying and lack of food. The neighborhood women still knocked on the door, but Evgnosia no longer got up to answer. She spent her days in a chair. She no longer even went to the cemetery. She just sat and stared at the flaking whitewash on the wall, and combed her hair, not with a proper comb, but with an ivory hair clip. She wore the same nightgown day and night. She stopped washing.
Violeta tried to feed her. Gently at first, and then not so gently anymore. She stirred the soup with a spoon, told stories to coax her older sister. Once, tired of sweeping up fallen hair, she tried to take the clip away and Evgnosia bit her hand, hard enough that it bled. Violeta had been raised with caresses. Her family scolded her, even punished her, but no one had ever raised a hand against her. They suckled her on milk and honey, as her mother used to sing as a lullaby.
At some point the younger sister recalled that the clip had been their mother’s. In fact, she had been wearing it on the day they fled from the old house, in Trabzon. Its teeth had broken long ago, but their mother kept it in a drawer for years, she couldn’t bear to throw it away. In those days women rarely threw things away, mattresses and pots and pans passed from generation to generation. Who knows what Kyra-Maria was thinking in holding on to that broken comb. She ran a tight ship, took care of her belongings, didn’t waste. She turned old rags into cloth bags for storing hilopites and trahanas. She saved leftover bits of thread in case they came in handy somewhere. Spoiled fruit became compotes and spoon sweets. The lentils Violeta turned her nose up at got passed off on the third day as lentil rice. We don’t throw anything out, was the law of the household.
Violeta didn’t want them to take Evgnosia to the asylum. But the older sister stubbornly refused to open her mouth. It was as if someone had sealed it shut with a trowel and mud.
At night, when Evgnosia closed her eyes, Violeta’s stayed open. She felt as if the walls were closing in. There was only one solution, and she knew it. She signed the paper.
Evgnosia was shut up in Lembeti a year after her mother’s death. Manolis, in solitary confinement, never heard the news.
The outside world was far away. If you were to ask him what life was like before the event, he’d have forgotten.
SCHOOL YEAR 2010–2011: “GET YOUR HANDS OFF OUR BRAINS”
MINAS
Evelina started crying during Latin class. We were doing grammar exercises, which is her forte. A boring subject, just like our teacher. Grandma says classical philologists know their letters, which is more than you can say for the rest of those backward literature teachers. So what? Sure, they know all about the optative and the supine, but if they have to talk about something besides the lesson plan, they throw up their hands in despair.
Dad says most teachers haven’t read a book since they were at university. As soon as their diploma is in its frame, they abandon learning altogether. They teach everything and study nothing. For their kind, that’s not a contradiction, he says, just to annoy Grandma. And it works.
Grandma is aware of their shortcomings, but she still supports her fellow educators. Teachers can be ignorant know-it-alls, but they also tackle a challenge no parent dares attempt: to walk into a classroom full of raging adolescents and keep them glued to their seats for forty minutes straight. Grandma’s claws come out if she thinks someone’s attacking her crew.
At any rate, Evelina was sobbing, actually sobbing. The Latin teacher just nodded. It’s that time of year, she said. Every year after Christmas the seniors break down. They suddenly hear time ticking backwards, and the sound of the second hand can drive you crazy if you know you’re not on top of your game. Tears, shouting, nerves, it’s all part of the program, as anyone who teaches the senior class knows.
But Evelina isn’t the type to cry. Not in front of other people, anyway. Nothing even happened, the Latin teacher just told us to write out the abstract supine of vixit. It didn’t matter what the exercise was, she could’ve said “Good morning” and Evelina would have burst into tears. Before she even got a word down on the paper, it was soaked. Her back shook, and you could hear the sobs all the way in the very last row.
That’s where I sit. No one bothers me there, and I can stretch out my legs. I can stare at her bra strap all I want. She wears brightly colored bras, cherry red, or purple with little butterflies. Her skin is the color of a peach, it makes you want to take a bite right out of her. Right there, on the curve of her shoulder.
The girl next to her gave her a hug, and the Latin teacher paused her lesson. She had a speech ready for the situation. Blah blah blah, composure. Blah blah blah, I’m confident you’ll all do well.
Evelina sniffled, the teacher handed her a tissue and then wrote the future passive infinitive of vidit on the board. We had lots to get through and she wasn’t going to waste any more time on nonsense.
During break the other girls crowded around her. Evelina couldn’t explain what had happened. She shook her hair out, lion-style. For the first time, I noticed her foot tapping. It’s cram school, she said, four hours every day, not even a donkey could work that hard, much less a human being. And those practice exams every Sunday, the alarm clock ringing in her ear, it was too much, all she dreamed of anymore was for the fucking exams to be over so she could sleep. The other girls nodded, what the fuck, they all knew exactly what she meant.
I know what’s wrong. In two months she’ll be eighteen. You can’t be eighteen years old and always do everything right. It can’t last. Grandma says it, too, but Mom gets mad and shuts her up with a look. She thinks it won’t occur to me on my own if I don’t hear it from Grandma.
Souk was on recess duty. He’d heard what happened, but he didn’t run over to offer consolation, or to see Evelina’s puffy eyes from up close. It might have bothered her that he didn’t, but I respect it. Souk doesn’t turn other people’s lives into theater. He talked to her in class, but only to quiz her on something. World War II might not be the best way of making conversation, but Souk doesn’t know how to talk to you when things get personal. He never shows you he cares, doesn’t waste his breath on sweet talk, never reaches out a hand.