Between Piraeus and Naples

My mother’s sin-2

My mother knew this and began, even in the church, to show a sad indifference to everything except Annió. She wouldn’t speak to anybody any more, only to Annió and the saints when she was praying.

One day I approached her unnoticed while crying as she was kneeling in front of the icon of the Saviour.

“Take away from me whoever you want,” she said, “but please leave me the girl. I see that this is going to happen. You have remembered my sin and decided to take my child in order to punish me. Thank you, Lord.”

After a few moments of heavy silence, during which her tears could be heard dripping onto the marble floor, she sighed from the depth of her heart, hesitating a little and afterwards she added:

“I brought two children of mine to your feet… let me have the girl!”

When I heard these words, a cold shock ran through my body and my ears began to buzz. I couldn’t hear any more. At that moment I saw that my mother, wracked by terrible agony, fell motionless onto the floor. Instead of running to help her, I took the opportunity to flee the church, running like mad and screaming as if Death itself was about to capture me.

My teeth were chattering from fear and I ran, and still I kept running. And without realising it I suddenly found myself far away from the church. I then stopped in order to catch my breath, and slowly I found the courage to turn round to look behind me. No one was chasing me.

So I started to recover myself little by little, and I started to think…

I called to mind all my love and affection for my mother. I tried to think if I had ever done anything wrong to her, perhaps unjustly, but I couldn’t. On the contrary, I realised that since this sister of ours had been born, not only was I not loved, when to be loved was all I wished for, but I was more and more ignored. Then I remembered my father and I understood why he used to call me his “wronged little one,” and I was so saddened that I started to cry. “Oh,” I cried, “my mother doesn’t love me and doesn’t want me! I will never, never go to the church any more!” And I followed the road back to our house feeling very sad and very desperate.

My mother wasn’t long in following me together with my sick sister. Because the priest, who had been shaken by my cries, went into the church and when he saw my sick sister, he advised my mother to take her away from the church.

“God is great my daughter,” he said, “and His grace reaches throughout the whole world. If it is for your child to get well, God will heal her even in your house.”

My mother was very unhappy to hear these words, because they were typical of the language which priests usually used to dismiss those who were about to die, so that they would not die in the church and thereby desecrate the holiness of the place.

So when I saw my mother again she was even more upset! But she behaved, mainly towards me, with more sweetness and kindness. She took me in her arms, caressed me, and kissed me tenderly and repeatedly. You would think that she was trying to appease me.

However that night I was neither able to eat nor sleep. I was laying on the mattress with my eyes closed but I carefully directed my ears to every movement made by my mother, who, as always, stayed awake near my sister’s pillow.

Perhaps it was around midnight when my mother began to pace up and down in the room. I thought she was making the bed in order to sleep but I was mistaken, because soon she sat down and started to wail in a low voice.

It was the lament for our father. Before Annió had become ill my mother used to chant it very often, but since Annió had become ill, it was the first time I heard it.

This lament was composed upon my father’s death at my mother’s request by a sunburnt, ragged gypsy, who was known in our area for his ability to compose songs.

It seems to me that I still see the gypsy’s black and dirty hair, his small fiery eyes, his open shirt and his hairy chest.

The gypsy sat inside our yard, surrounded by copper vessels that he had collected in order to tin them. And with his head leaning on his shoulder he accompanied his mournful dirge with the plaintive sounds of his three-stringed lyre.

My mother, standing upright in front of him, holding Annió in her arms would listen carefully while shedding tears.

I was holding on tightly to my mother’s dress and hiding my face in its folds because it seemed to me, the sweeter the sounds, the more fearful the expression of this wild singer.

When my mother learnt by heart her mournful lesson, she untied the end of her headscarf and gave the gypsy two Turkish coins – at that time we still had plenty of them. Afterwards she offered him bread and wine, and whatever snack she had in the house. While the gypsy was eating downstairs, my mother was upstairs repeating the dirge to herself in order to engrave it in her memory. And it seems that she found it very beautiful because when the gypsy was going away she ran after him and gave him a pair of my father’s baggy trousers.

“God forgive your husband’s soul, young lady!” the gypsy minstrel replied astounded, and he loaded his copper vessels and went out of our yard.

So, it was this dirge that my mother was chanting that night.

I was listening and letting my tears flow gently but I didn’t dare move. Suddenly I smelt beautiful incense!

“Oh,” I said, “our poor Annió has died!” And I jumped out of my bed.

I then found myself in front of a strange scene.

My sick sister was breathing heavily, as always. Near her was placed a man’s suit in the order in which it is worn. On the right stood a stool covered with a black cloth on which there was a vessel full of water, and on either side there were two tall lighted candles. My mother was kneeling and burning incense in front of these objects and, at the same time was looking at the surface of the water.

It seems I became paler from my fear, because when she saw me she hurried to calm me:

“Don’t be afraid, my child,” she said to me in a mysterious way. “They are your father’s clothes. Come and beg him as well to come to cure our Annió.”

And she asked me to kneel near her.

“Come father – take me – in order for Annió to become well!” I cried out interrupted by my sobbing.

And I gave my mother a plaintive glance in order to show her that I knew she had asked for me to die instead of my sister. I stupidly didn’t believe that in this way I had increased her despair tenfold! And I believe she forgave me. At that time I was very young and unable to understand her heart.

After a few moments of deep silence, she passed the incense over the objects again and once more focused all of her attention on the water, which was in the wide vessel on the stool.

Suddenly a small moth, flying in a circular motion over the vessel touched the water with its wings and disturbed the surface slightly.

My mother bent over piously and made the sign of the cross, just as she had done in front of the Sacraments in the church.

“Make the sign of the cross my child!” she whispered, deeply moved and not daring to raise her eyes.

I obeyed automatically.

When that small moth disappeared to the far end of the room, my mother breathed with relief, got up cheerful and happy, and “The soul of your father passed by!” she said, still watching the flight of the moth with tenderness and adoration. Then she drank from the water, and she also gave me some to drink.

Then it came to my mind that sometimes she made us drink from this vessel as soon as we woke. And I remembered that whenever my mother did this, everything that day was lively and very happy, as if she had enjoyed a great but secret happiness.

After my mother gave me the water to drink, she approached Annió’s bed with the vessel in her hands.

Annió was not asleep, but neither was she fully awake. Her eyelids were half closed; her eyes, as much as were visible, emitted a strange glow through the middle of their thick and dark eyelashes.

My mother lifted Annió’s thin body with care, while with one hand she supported her back, with the other she offered the vessel to Annió’s dry lips.

“Come on, my darling” she said, “drink a little of this water for your health.”

My sister didn’t open her eyes, but it seems that she had heard my mother’s voice and had understood the words. A sweet and sympathetic smile spread across Annió’s lips. Then she took a few sips from the water that was indeed intended to cure her. But as soon as she drunk it and opened her eyes and tried to breathe, a light sigh left Annió’s lips and she fell heavily against my mother’s forearm.

Our poor Annió! She has been released from her torments!

Many people had criticised my mother that while women unrelated to her were wailing loudly over the passing of my father, she alone was weeping a lot, but in silence. Perhaps the unhappy woman was doing it out of fear of being misunderstood, perhaps of violating the boundaries of decency appropriate for young women. Because, as I said, our mother was widowed very young.

When Annió died, she was not very much older. But now she didn’t think at all what the people would say for her heartbreaking lamentations.

The whole neighbourhood came to comfort her. But her grief was great, it was inconsolable… “She will lose her mind,” whispered those who saw her crying and lamenting among the tombs of our sister and our father. “She will leave the children abandoned to the four winds,” said those meeting us in the street, “abandoned and neglected!”

And it needed time, advice and reproach from the church in order for my mother to pull herself together, and to remember her living children and resume her domestic duties.

It was then that she noticed how the long sickness of our sister had affected us.

Our finances had been depleted, spent on doctors and medicines. Many bed covers and rugs that my mother had made with her own hands, she had sold for paltry amounts, or she had given them as payments to the fortune tellers and witches. Other things had been stolen from us by them and their kind, who had taken advantage of the lack of supervision which had prevailed in our house. In addition, our food supplies were exhausted and we didn’t know how we would survive.

However, this, instead of intimidating our mother, on the contrary caused her to have twice the energy she had had before Annió had become sick.

She moderated, or generally speaking, she concealed her bereavement, overcame the timidity of her age and of her s*x, and taking the mattock in her own hands started to work for others, as if she had never known a comfortable and independent way of life.

For a long time she fed us by the sweat of her brow. The wages were small and our needs great, but she didn’t allow any one of us to relieve her suffering by working as well.