Layers

2The beginnings

2

The beginnings

Athens Airport, April 1972

When he opened his pack of Assos cigarettes and realised that there were only two left and no kiosk nearby to get any, Dinos decided that waiting for the flight to arrive had now become unbearable. He looked around him standing as he had been in the middle of the arrivals lounge for any staff nearby that could have an earful of his thoughts about Greek airline services. For lack of a better option as no staff were in sight, he headed towards the canteen, while wondering if he could swallow any liquid at all. The knot in his throat would show no signs of unclenching.

‘Still waiting for the London flight, sir?’ the young bright-eyed waitress asked him, while handing him his extra-sweet, extra-strong Greek coffee. At least she had not double-checked that he had indeed ordered it ‘extra sweet’, like most male waiters, who exercised the little power they had by making him feel uncomfortable that, despite being a man of a certain standing, he did not choose to have his coffee bitter, as though bitterness was a brand of masculinity.

‘Yes, I am, unfortunately. I usually have my coffee at Syntagma Square, sitting comfortably at a white-clothed table, but instead I’m still here, hopping from one foot to another, wondering why we are given no information about this flight being so late.’

‘Do not worry, sir. Olympic Airways flights are always late’, the girl smiled wryly.

‘That makes me feel better, thank you. I’m not a frequent flyer, you see, so I don’t know. All I know is this weather: cloud all over, no visibility at all. Do planes manage to land in such weather?’

‘I know, it’s dull weather for April. But for planes? They can handle much worse.’

It was an unusually cloudy day for mid-April in Athens mirroring the mood his early morning exchange with Leonora had left him in, just before he set off for the long drive from Thessaloniki to Athens.

‘Do you seriously believe that this woman is going to give you her baby, just like that?’ she had asked him.

Her sarcasm always got to him straight away. ‘Have I not shown you the documents, Leonora?’ he had mumbled under his breath. ‘Eleni Hatzis, officially my baby … And yours’, he had added hastily.

‘I will have to see it to believe it. I’m afraid she may turn out to be just after your money in the end.’

He had refrained from slamming the door behind him, swallowing down the ‘f**k off’ bubbling on the surface of his tongue. This moment in time was too perilous for letting his rage loose. Things were fragile, they could go either way.

‘Just get yourself ready for the baby’s arrival, Leonora, will you? I’d better go now, since you are trying so hard to wind me up.’

Leonora was more right of course than he would ever want to admit. The baby was not yet legally theirs. Antonopoulos, his long-term solicitor and his compatriot from the Peloponnese had made it clear to him. ‘No adoption can have legal standing nowadays before the baby is four months old, Dinos. The law gives the birth mother this length of time as a minimum to sort her head out. Bide your time, Dinos’, he added. ‘You are already the baby’s father legally, we have made sure of that. It’s just a matter of time before your wife can adopt her as well.’ But how much more time could he bide? After giving birth in early February, Nefeli had looked after the baby in London for nearly six weeks. Any more than that and the transfer would have become impossible.

Nefeli did not say as much, but he knew she was disappointed that he had not gone over to visit her in London after she gave birth. Her romantic dreams about the two of them and the baby together as a unit seemed to have got rekindled. She could not see that this was just a fantasy, it could never be. He was a married man, to start with. Then again, the baby needed the right home to grow up in. She was part of his family and all its intricate but honourable history of landowning.

He sat down now on a nearby bench, letting out a sigh of relief. It made a difference to come across somebody kind like the waitress in the canteen, especially if this somebody happened to be a young woman with bright eyes and smile. He made sure he tipped the girl well. Her eyes looked even brighter when she saw the note that he discreetly placed in her hand.

Sipping his coffee slowly, he found himself engrossed in his thoughts. How will Mother react when she sees her granddaughter, he wondered. He had deliberately chosen to give the baby her name to appease her. Yet he had not avoided her critical gaze, the ‘you are just like your father’ words coming out of her mouth yet again. It was hard to be in the same room with her for more than a few minutes without losing his temper.

He lit his penultimate cigarette and inhaled deeply. When his parents separated, after his father ran off with his girlfriend, both of them fighting for the Communist Party in the civil war, Dinos was forced to accompany his heartbroken mother and his younger sister to their relatives in the north of Greece. A true scandal it was those days to be an aristocrat, a landowner, and to side with the lefties, let alone to leave your wife and children for a loose unmarried woman wearing trousers as though she was a man, his mother still repeated nowadays, a good twenty years later. He was barely seventeen when they left the village heading north, and yet he had to fend for himself and for his mother and sister. And now Nefeli thought that he was going to fend for her too.

The thunder burst not far from the window. To his surprise, the knot in his throat loosened as the rain started hitting the ground. He could almost smell the earth, the thirsty, dry soil meeting the water. Only he was not near fragrant spring blossoms on the farm of his childhood before his parents’ marriage fell apart, but in a barren field in the middle of nowhere, meant to receive his new baby packed in a metal bird coming down from the waterlogged sky.

He had had enough. He got up, stabbing the cigarette decidedly on the shiny silver upright floor ashtray next to his seat, and walked in search of the nearest information desk. How funny to be so worried that the plane had crashed. For all he knew, Nefeli and the baby, his baby, might not even be on it. He brushed this thought away, almost like a fly sitting on his crisp white collar. It could not be. Nefeli was like an open book whose pages he had access to.

Nefeli was handed to him, almost like a Christmas present, on a December day just past his thirty-sixth birthday, two years ago. Theo, Nefeli’s godfather, one of his credit buyers, had brought her over to his office.

‘Here is my favourite goddaughter,’ he told him, ‘a truly special girl. Not very good at typing, but a quick learner and a true beauty too.’

Nefeli became his secretary and she turned out to be better at it than he thought she would be. It was then that the idea came to him that he could get her pregnant and keep the baby. From catching her gaze when she thought he wasn’t looking, he knew that she would not be hard to persuade to sleep with him. He was a handsome man, women were after him.

‘Olympic Airways flight number 7375 from London has now landed’, a loudspeaker announced just as he was about to reach the information desk.

He jumped up. She is here; they are here.