Ancestry 21 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: A Distant Grandfather and the Village

Grandfather Yiannis retired shortly before a few months before I was born. As a child and, later, as a high school teenager, my encounters with grandfather were casual and our relationship, until the end, remained fragmented and weak. Only few words were exchanged between us whenever Mother and I descended to the village –exchanges minimalistic and inconsequential. The few typical greetings of "How is it going, L?" on grandfather’s part were answered by an expressionless monosyllabic: "OK..." or “Good.” This was due, on the one hand, to an immense and unbearable shyness -especially unbearable for the child in me. Unforseen then, this shyness would torment my soul and being throughout life, quite often raising insurmountable obstacles to expressing myself spontaneously and articulating thoughts and wishes, presenting myself socially. On the other hand, it was due to the teachery, the pedantic and paternalistic style of grandfather that created an emotional distance between him and the people around, typical of that between a teacher and his students; in short, a barrier of a psychospiritual nature. The relatively long physical distance of the village from our home in Thessaloniki that we had to negotiate with the scarce transport means of the time, a couple of hours by bus through the busy city centre and its rugged industrial western suburbs, did not help either. I do not remember grandfather visiting, let alone staying overnight at home, likely because he was feeling unwelcome by Father, while Father himself only grudgingly gave us lifts in his car. A few hours of travel and stay in the village were unworthy of him, his rest on Sunday afternoons hardly negotiable.

The figures of one hand suffice to recount the memories of walks in the company of grandfather Yiannis, when we might have held hands silently, as is the case with two timid guys separated by two generations. The handful of walks I remember took place in Sunday mornings along the old promenade, continued around the White Tower landmark and finished in the small central park with the birch trees stretching from the YMCA building towards the sea, with its rudimentary zoo of pheasants and a sad unkempt bear that could be smelt from afar. They ended in the afternoons, with a couple of spins on the wooden horse carousel for my entertainment, before our farewells and my safe delivery to Mother (the sacred duty of grandparents entrusted with the care of a child). Often, at around noon, I was offered some sort of snack, a ham & cheese toast and orangeade, whilst grandfather enjoyed a glass of ouzo with small plate of mezedes; in the café of Exarchakos, where an endless row of tables under the green awnings bisected the park from the YMCA building all the way to the Royal Theatre, separating two broad paved pathways that buzzed with Thessalonian families on the Sunday mornings and afternoons of Spring and Autumn, and cool Summer evenings. All those scattered fragments of memory from the distant childhood, faint and tangled impressions as they were, in a chronological disorder, were squeezed into the depths of the mind, even crushed into oblivion by the incessant passage of time, by other impressions of greater gravity and intensity and importance. Nostalgia, however, this grand Homeric word which is used to describe a unique passion in human existence, the distinct bittersweet feeling that tends to overwhelm us from time to time, more often -it is true- as we approach the end of the road, this nostalgia reappears as a kind of an unhealed wound in the soul, while the mind flutters from one distant memory to another, it becomes a tide of sadness difficult to overcome. Instead, it flares up undiminished, if not strengthened, with the years. The effect onto our souls is disproportionately intense relative to the magnitude of the causes: the fragments of memory, the trivial events of a distant past, the weight of time elapsed without us noticing.

I was too young a child then. I do not remember a single occasion where grandfather stopped by my childhood flat in the old Thessaloniki neighbourhood, despite his regular visits to the city centre. I attributed this to the notorious discretion and caution which characterised the Economou family and a usually unfounded dread of becoming a burden to others, while this mental burden-in-itself described earlier, was something inexplicable by the circumstances that could potentially raise it. Of course, he would have never come uninvited! And I do not remember his daughter inviting him. Father certainly never did. However, either invited or uninvited, either welcome or unwelcome, it was not hard for even a child to sense that grandfather did not show up to our doorstep primarily because of some kind of innate fear and timidity in the company of an imposing, unyielding and domineering Father. Over-and-above the said discretion, the well-established sensitivity of grandfather's race would be affected inordinately by inevitable micro-clashes, because of the rigid spirit and ideas, the incessant, impulsive, and categorical, almost aggressive points of view that separated Father from the rest of a party (any party); with arguments contradicting that of his interlocutor, and often himself—from one statement to another, even from one sentence to the next. In short, it was always difficult with Father in the presence of other people and, first and foremost, in the company of Mother’s family. The contradictions and arguments of Father, from politics to family matters, which his peers and friends often found intolerable and rejected in kind, to an elderly man like grandfather would have seemed avoidable and unnecessary. If those were eventually erupted, they would become unbearable and a call for taking flight. Father’s piercing loud voice, which could reach thunderous peaks in intensity, sometimes unpredictably, was a factor not to be ignored either.

On his part, during his rare visits to Magnesia, he usually presented himself and confronted the Economou family through a standard catalogue of ironic and derogatory, supposedly "humorous", comments, a behaviour which, although seemingly was disguising good intentions -harmless atnd innocent to the close family members who knew him and usually ignored them with indifference or a feigned smile, the same behaviour in relatively unfamiliar or, even worse, sensitive circles of people gave sufficient ground for misunderstandings, and sometimes even fiery reactions and quarrels. Father projected himself, at least in the village of Magnesia, as an intellectual, a university graduate, a presumably cosmopolitan bourgeois, detached from his own family humble origins –as opposed to the bunch of inferior peasants around him. (Mother was often called a "little peasant" or mocked about her short height she “sadly” inherited from her father, amongst alternatively serious or ironic remarks. That I remember. The "serious" part of such characterizations weighed heavier to Mother’s psyche and pride. Although they were seemingly and initially expressed as constituents of some innocent teasing, they could potentially lead to unnecessary irritation and escalation. Deep down, though, he often meant his derogatory remarks; he might have even derived pleasure from the reactions they caused.)

I am sure those kinds of sarcasms of Father were not greatly appreciated by grandfather. He never followed up or responded to contentious conversations, especially about economic and political issues, but usually retired discreetly to his room, in his own space, in his sofa by the old radio. Nevertheless, secretly in his mind he must have had cultivated some respect, even perhaps admiration, for his educated, cultured, certainly assertive and courageous and son-in-law, characteristics not featured amongst all members, bar one, of the Economou family.

After my brother's birth, he used to call us on Sunday afternoons, sounding tipsy after several glasses of ouzo in the café on his way home for lunch. His tipsiness was evident even to an uninitiated child by his characteristic overture in the old-school teacher’s archaising form of Greek. Whenever it was me who picked up the phone he used to say: "Which estimable gentleman do I have the honour to speak to?" "I'm L, grandpa..." was my short answer. Then reverting to more colloquial Greek: "How are we doing, Ore L? How is it going? How things?" -"Well, I'm OK..." -"Where is your mother, Ore?" -"Here she is... Mom!" The conversations ended abruptly, rather awkwardly for me, the sober one.

Like Father, neither did I honour my grandparents sufficiently with frequent visits and my presence in their home as a child, even less so as a teenager. We usually visited on sunny Sunday mornings with Mother after catching a morning bus that waited for us behind the Bey Hamam. Less often we were accompanied by Father, the undisputed and proud driver of the first and second FIATs of the family. Along the main road of the village, I was always struck and at the same time slightly embarrassed by the strange, fixed -to our car and the passengers inside, gazes of the villagers -passers-by or sitting in the café or balconies of their houses. And they kept staring with prying eyes at us until we moved outside their field of vision. We were clearly the faces of strangers; they had to clarify in their minds or amongst themselves our descent, our identity, most importantly the household of the village we intended to visit. For Father, of course, those persistent and indiscrete gazes of the villagers of Magnesia following our trajectory, focusing into anything alien to faces and objects of their daily routine and intimacy, which I still perceive today when I drive through its streets, fed back his notions of "peasantry" and the cultural backwardness that this concept implies.

During those visits, the conversations we exchanged privately with grandfather were few and inconsequential to have left any significant imprint in memory. We are both naturally laconic, which of course goes hand in hand with the natural shyness and timidity and introspectiveness that characterizes some people. Grandfather’s speech was often categorical and imposing (due to the wealth of his vocabulary rather than the tone of his voice) and his arguments could hardly be objected to or even questioned by his close environment in the family and the village, at least by the women of his household: Mrs. Vasiliki, the aunts, Mother. Only aunt Aliki, whenever she ascended to the village from Athens, I did notice on occasions that she used to become a source and target of confrontation and criticism and found herself the midst of fierce domestic arguments (being also the cause of those), either over property matters or the thornier subject of the rehabilitation of the two still unmarried sisters. There were shouts and quarrels in the kitchen, and the otherwise exemplary environment in a house of peach and calm was perturbed. In those incidents, when Mr. Yiannis' vocal intensity slightly rose above average and his opinions and speech became more emphatic, hardly anyone was taking Aliki’s side of the argument. But I remember her standing imperiously, a lone figure in the centre of the kitchen condescending, expressing fearlessly scathing views with equivalent intensity, which a defensive grandfather tried to answer with the headmaster’s pomp from his seat at the head of the table, barely lifting his head from the plate of food in front of him. All the while Mrs. Vasiliki, always a bystander, a neutral or without opining, watched silently from the divan against the wall. The other sisters were moving restlessly in and out of the kitchen and, in conversations between them, at every opportunity, they whispered venomous remarks behind her back: aunt Aliki had already been blacklisted as the obstinate and wayward of the family, because more of her intransigent and occasionally offensive style, than the integrity of her character. She was Mr. Yiannis’ least favourite daughter, yet grandfather barely favoured and approved of any of the rest. Maybe, just Mother.

Ancestry 20 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Family Traits

Yiannis imposed on his family a peculiar culture from the elevated position of respect and prestige that the veteran teacher and headmaster commanded· mostly unintentionally, sometimes deliberately, however, not through intimidation or psychological compulsion. He rarely yelled to his wife and daughters, let alone quarrelled with them. This kind of latent nurturing, aided perhaps by some untraceable genetic heritage, instilled in the personality of the three daughters, who stayed with the family well into adulthood, certain common traits and a distinct temperament. In family gatherings, the following statements were often voiced: "This is how we, the Economou’s, are…” or “The Economou’s are not up to such things..." And nothing would be attempted to changing the underlying attitudes.

Main characteristic of this "Economou" temperament was the excessive sensitivity to external stimuli, such as words or actions from actors outside the family nucleus, which through a labyrinthine thought process and over-analysis, further compounded by adding unnecessary gravity to sayings and events, otherwise trivial and transient for the common sense, that is through an anti-dialectical isolation of words or actions detached from their context or ignoring any correlation with other events, often led to misinterpretations, misunderstandings, resentment, distress, sulking, bad-temperedness, anger. It led to a temporary insularity from the outside environment, disproportionate and asymmetrical reactions vis-à-vis their cause, often an acute feeling of embarrassment and shame and some psychological turbulence of the like.

The Economou family was collectively or individually obsessed by being under the scrutiny from the “eyes of the external world” and “the gaze of society”, by “what the world would say or how would judge us”, by how every action would be seen by the world, how each phrase said would be understood and interpreted. Such fears were often counter balanced by pretence and duplicity. This emotional hypersensitivity over an underlying deep-rooted sense of pessimism and negative predisposition to the denouement of complex life situations was self-fuelled by an innate family introversion and the code of conduct this adopted: whereby, one sister would talk with the other and analyse ad nauseum the one and same situation from every possible point of view, direct or oblique or inverted, through a perpetual cycle of in-house gossiping and, later in life, via endless phone calls and back and forth visits. Unsurprisingly, such much ado about nothing would prove ineffective and fruitless· considerably more than necessary amounts of cognitive power was wasted even in the rare cases when the analysis and discussions were aimed at something of substance. Thankfully, such mental tensions and exertions and the associated distress faded quickly without serious repercussions to the mental well-being and family tranquillity, before they emerge anew from another spark or under a different pretext.

Family introversion, on the other hand, an obscure yet powerful centre of gravity towards which the three sisters converged, might have been partly bred by Mr. Yiannis’ past or it might have subconsciously fostered by him, or it could merely be formed because of life itself in a small village community, culturally inferior to the city where I grew up. Or, perhaps, it was due to limited innate capabilities and the scanty intercourse with the outside world – via work, studies, politics, or raising children. The two of the sisters did not have any children. A logical result would be the inadequacy to face up and overcome the obstacles that life regularly erects in front of us, beyond the trivial everyday questions with obvious answers· the indecision in the face of existential dilemmas that seek choices, good or bad, and taking responsibility for the possible consequences. The horizons of their lives remained low for the best part of their youth, reduced into reliving the everydayness, the torturous repetition of its trivial and colourless components: household chores, shopping from the grocery across the street or the village markets, the coffee drinking and coffee reading sessions with the neighbours, the telephone calls to sisters and relatives away, and so on.

Why am I writing all this about grandfather’s family? With maturity and the reflections of my  consciousness, in the dialogues with it along the road to knowing-myself, I discovered that I inherited, partly due to the impressions imprinted in my conscience and left indelible traces on a malleable child soul, whilst growing up with Mother and her family, partly due to grandfather’s household modus operandi and the prevailing intra-family mentality, as expressed by Mother and to lesser extent by my grandfather and aunts, and, as always, partly due to an indeterminate genetic footprint: the much higher than average emotional sensitivity, the pessimism and negativity displayed ahead of life crises or after major decisions with uncertain or several possible outcomes, the meticulous planning always based on the worst possible scenario, the propensity to abdicate a heavy burden of responsibility in the face of misfortunes involving myself and others.

Such traits inevitably determined several of my personal choices along the way. Yet, despite the bonds that heredity binds us to our ancestors and the inherently reactionary attitude to life situations I inherited, during an apparently autonomous and "radical" development of my personality, which would eventually be detached from the family roots and traditions, I managed to at least expand my horizons, in as much as geography and time allowed. Being conscious of the reality I experience each time, and of the End that human fate inevitably has in store for us, I tried constantly to trouble the stagnant waters of everyday routine and free myself from the shackles of these traits I inherited and brough up with, no matter how difficult it had been. But admittedly it has been and still is a cumbersome burden.

Ancestry 19 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: A Discordant Speech

It would be the last notable episode in the life of Yiannis’ young family. Other than death or birth, that is. Since then, in the triviality of everydayness at home, of work at school, and the shrinking with age social circle of Mr. Yiannis, his intercourse with politics and public life was strictly regulated, despite the political turbulence and struggles outside those microenvironments. Mr. Yiannis retained a core of progressive beliefs -in the broadest of senses, in discourse almost exclusively with himself and within the family boundaries. These beliefs were surrounded by a veil of opacity: he did not want to divulge the more "militant" past of his, having learnt his lessons. In the school, where he was headmaster, he confined the education of pupils and management of junior teachers, his communication with guardians over the progress of the children and the operation of school, within boundaries delimited by government mandates and directives without the subtlest deviation and initiatives, coming across as incorruptible by revolutionary or potentially "subversive" dogmas. Yet, there were still a few fires raging in Greece's political landscape, despite the meticulous suppression of such dogmas on this side of the Iron Curtain.

Once, I read a hand-written transcript of one of his speeches during a school celebration of anniversary of the "Struggle for Independence" of 1821, duty bound to deliver as a headmaster on such occasions. It included some political content, rather unconventionally for the given level of politicization of the audience he was addressing, although superficial and non-controversial from a political activist’s point of view. As far as I knew him, he would not have given credence in most of the content of such speeches in a previous life. Then again, he must have deemed necessary to introduce some stereotypical phrases eulogizing the ruling ideology of the era, especially when celebrating national anniversaries. It was all presented in front of priests, the local authorities, army officers, and other prominent members of the local community. A few standard phrases always gratifying to such ears had to be delivered, in the interests of the emerging nationalism and the political establishment of post-war Greece.  English translation. 

“The Greeks of '21 commenced the national struggle for independence on strong foundations... They were descendants of the ancient Greeks and conscious of their democratic rights of freedom and independence. The heroes of '21 are also heirs of the Orthodox Christian faith. The national struggle was inspired by Christianity for love among people, for justice among people, for equality... The Cyprus issue remains unresolved... Let us hope that the new political democratic leadership of Greece, the one that emerged from the elections of the 16^th of February, under the inspired guidance of the veteran political leader Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, and the support of the free and democratic peoples of the world, will find a solution to the Cyprus issue that would be based on self-determination and democratic principles. And now, friends, as I do not want to become tiresome, I would like to invite you to cheer for the Nation, for the 25^th of March, and our new constitutional King of the Greeks, Constantine: Long live the nation!! Long live the 25^th of March 25!! Long live our King!!”English translation. 

His ideological-and political metamorphosis, from the initial stage of him embracing leftist dogmas at the end of the German Occupation and the beginning of the Civil War to the adoption of sterile nationalistic stereotypes and a whole-hearted acceptance of the political status quo, was concluded upon retirement. His political digressions had reached a blind alley, and a historical cycle, after the post-war normalization and the establishment of a Western-style bourgeois democracy, had closed. His alignment with the dominant nationalistic dogma consolidated in post-war Greece, now tied for good to the chariot of America and the Western hegemony, an alignment even symbolic, even for the eyes of the simple world the people of the working-class districts of western Thessaloniki who did not dig much into politics and ideology, was completed.

What I read one afternoon in the faded folder with a collection of several naïve pedantic speeches did not correspond to the image I had formed of my grandfather, from the accounts of his daughters and the legends surrounding his family history and name. The young teacher-intellectual, the bearer of progressive, almost revolutionary ideas and opinions, through to the end of the war, might have been disguising a compliant individual in his core of existence. He was the son of a priest after all, and certain things may leave indelible imprints on one’s personality. Or, perhaps, I was carried away by my own beliefs (and corresponding prejudices, of course!) of that time and molded that image of grandfather into my own ideological patterns. After all, in the individual’s mind, such views either constantly change in form and essence in a dialectic relationship with the environment, or, in the absence of substance, they make up a colorful patchwork, often a patchwork of vivid contrasts, that coexist side by side or in succession of each other, chosen and expressed by the individual in accordance with the external circumstances.