Between Piraeus and Naples

My mother’s sin-3

Plans for our future were made and checked every evening around the hearth. My older brother had to learn my father’s trade in order to take his place as the head of the family. I intended, or at least I wanted, to leave home to work and so on. But before this we ought to finish our education, to finish primary school. Because our mother used to say that an uneducated person is like an un-carved log.

Our economic difficulties came to a head, when a drought occurred in the country and the cost of foodstuff rose. But mother, instead of despairing about our situation, increased our numbers with another, unrelated, little girl, who, after lengthy efforts, she had managed to adopt.

This event changed our monotonous and austere family life and introduced anew a sufficient amount of liveliness.

The adoption was soon celebrated. My mother wore her best clothes for the first time since Annió had died and she led us to the church, clean and combed, as if we were going to take the Holy Communion. When the service was over, we all stood in front of the icon of Christ and there, in the middle of the people that were present and in front of the little girl’s natural parents, my mother received her adopted daughter from the hands of the priest, having first promised in the hearing of everybody that she would love and bring up the little girl as if she was her own flesh and blood.

Her entry to our house was somewhat impressive and in a way triumphant. The village elder and my mother and the girl led the way and we followed. Our relatives and the relatives of our new sister followed as far as the gate to our yard. Outside this gate, the village elder lifted the little girl high in his arms and showed her for a few moments to the people present. Then he asked in a loud voice:

“Which of you is a relative, family or parent of this child more than Despinió Michaliéssa, and her relatives?”

The father of the little girl was pale and he stared sadly ahead of him. His wife was crying and leaning on his shoulder. My mother was shaking from fear in case she would hear a voice call out “I” and so thwart her happiness. But nobody answered. Then the parents of the little girl kissed her for the last time and left with their relatives, while our relatives, along with the elder, went indoors where they enjoyed our hospitality.

From that moment on our mother started to lavish our adopted sister with such good care, more than we had been able to obtain at her age, and in much happier times. While I, after some time, was wandering nostalgically abroad, and while my other brothers were suffering hardship and sleeping in the workshops of their masters, the adopted girl was reigning in our house as if it belonged solely to her.

The small wages of my brothers which they gave to our mother were not enough to support her. But, instead of spending it on her own comfort, she put it towards a dowry for her adopted daughter and continued working for her upkeep. I was absent, far away, very far away, and for a long time I was ignorant of what was going on in our home. Before I managed to return, the adopted little girl had been raised, grown up, got engaged and married, as if she truly were a member of our family.

Her wedding, which seems to have been hurried on purpose, was a real joy to my brothers. My unfortunate brothers breathed a sigh of relief since they were free from their added burden. And they were right because that girl, apart from the fact that she had never felt any sisterly love towards them, in the end had also proved ungrateful towards the woman who had brought her up with such affection and in a way that few real daughters have known.

So my brothers had every reason to be pleased and to believe that our mother had been taught enough by that lesson. But they had a big surprise, when, a few days after the wedding, they saw her entering our house tenderly holding in her arms a second little girl, this time in swaddling clothes!

“The poor thing,” said my mother, leaning affectionately towards the little child’s face. “It wasn’t enough that she had lost her father before she was born, but her mother died as well and left her destitute!”

And in a way happy from this unlucky coincidence, she was showing off her prize triumphantly in front of my brothers who were speechless with surprise.

The sons’ respect was very deep and our mother’s authority was very great, but my poor brothers were so disheartened that they didn’t hesitate to justifiably point out to their mother that it would be a good idea to abandon her intention. But they could not persuade her. Then they clearly showed their displeasure and refused her the management of their purses. All in vain.

“Don’t give me anything,” said my mother, “I will work to bring her up like I brought you up. When my Yioryís comes from abroad he will give her a dowry and pay for her marriage. What do you think? My boy promised me: ‘Mother, I will provide for both you and the adopted child.’ Yes! That’s what he told me, God bless him!”

I was Yioryís. And I had truly given her this promise, but much, much earlier.

It was during the time that our mother was working to feed our first adopted sister as well as us. I accompanied her during my school holidays, playing near her while she was digging or weeding. One day she stopped working and we were returning from the fields to escape the unbearable heat, which was almost causing my mother to faint. On the way we were caught in a very heavy shower, one of those, which often seemed to happen after we had experienced a heat wave, or scorcher as the locals call it. We were not very far at all from the village, but we had to cross a torrent that was overflowing as it violently rushed downwards. My mother wanted to lift me on to her shoulders, but I refused to accept her offer.

“You are weak because earlier you nearly fainted,” I said to her. “You will drop me in the river.”

And I lifted up my clothes and ran into the current before she could try to get hold of me.

I had trusted my own strength or rather that I could do it. But before I thought to retreat, my feet lost their footing, and I was thrown over and carried away by the torrent like a walnut shell.

A heart-rending cry of terror is all that I remember of what happened next. It was the voice of my mother who threw herself into the current to save me.

How I didn’t cause her to drown along with me is a miracle, because that torrent had a bad name. And when people said “the river took him,” it was understood that he had drowned in that torrent.

And yet my mother, despite having nearly fainted from exhaustion and weighed down by provincial clothes, capable of drowning the most competent swimmer, didn’t hesitate to expose her life to danger. She was determined to save me despite the fact that I was that child of hers whom she had in the past offered to God in exchange for her daughter.

When she arrived home and lifted me down from her shoulders, I was still confused. Therefore, instead of finding that the reason for what had occurred was my improvidence, I attributed it to my mother’s work.

“Don’t work any more, mother,” I said to her, while she was dressing me in dry clothes.

“Well, who will feed us my child if I don’t work?” she asked sighing.

“I will, mother! I will!” I answered with childish pomposity.

“And our adopted child?”

“I will too!”

My mother smiled involuntarily due to my impressive stand which I took uttering this promise. Afterwards she interrupted the conversation saying:

“Well, feed yourself first and then we’ll see.”

Not long afterwards, I was leaving to go abroad.

Mother, of course, didn’t take any notice of that promise at all. But I had always remembered it and that her self-denial had given me a second chance for life, which I owed her. So I had that promise in my heart and as I grew, so it seemed to become more important and I felt more obliged to repay her.

“Don’t cry, mother,” I said to her as I was leaving. “I am going to make money. Don’t worry! From now on I will feed you and your adopted child. Do you hear me? I don’t want you to work any more.”

I did not yet know that a ten-year-old child is not even able to feed himself let alone his mother too. And I could not imagine how so many terrible adventures would await me, and how much bitterness I was still going to cause my mother, while I was in those foreign lands, from where I hoped to relieve her. For many years, I had not managed to help her or even send her a letter. For many years she was often lying in wait on the roads asking passers-by if they had seen me anywhere. Sometimes they told her that I had suffered hardships in Constantinople and had even become a Turk. Let them swallow their tongues, the ones who spread such rumours!” my mother retorted. “The person they are talking about cannot be my child!” But in a little while she locked herself away, terrified, in front of our icons and crying she prayed to God to enlighten me, to return to the faith of my fathers. Sometimes they even told her that I had been shipwrecked on the shores of Cyprus and that I was begging on the roads dressed in rags. “May fire burn them,” she shouted. “They say that out of jealousy. My child must have made his fortune and gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre.” But after a short time she went out into the streets, questioning passing beggars, then going to a place where she had heard that someone had been shipwrecked, with the sad hope of discovering that this person was her own son; and if this person was not her son, she intended to give him her savings, believing that I would have received the same amount of money from other people abroad.

And yet, whenever something concerned her adopted daughter, she forgot all this and intimidated my brothers by saying that when I returned from abroad I would put them to shame through my generosity, and I would give our adopted sister a dowry and marry her off with pomp and ceremony. “Eh? Well, what do you think? My child has promised me! Let him have my blessing!”

Luckily, all the bad news was not true. And when, after a long absence, I returned home, I was in a position to keep my promise to my mother, who had been content to live frugally. But regarding her adopted child, she didn’t find me so eager to help as she had hoped. On the contrary, as soon as I had arrived home I expressed my objection towards my adopted sister’s upkeep, which was a great surprise to my mother.

It’s true that I wasn’t actually against my mother’s weakness. For her inclination towards little girls was consistent with my feelings and desires. And I didn’t desire anything more than to find a sister in my house upon my return whose happy face and sympathetic ways would exile the melancholy from my heart caused by my isolation, and would erase from my memory the hardships which I had suffered abroad. In exchange for this, I would have been eager to tell her of the wonderful things about the foreign countries, of my travels and my feats, and I would have been eager to buy her whatever she liked; to have taken her to dances and fairs; to have given her a dowry; and, finally, to have danced at her wedding.