Ancestry 23 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Old Age Closure

Books he did not read and these were scarce in the house. He only read newspapers. He spent most of his afternoons and evenings in the spacious and bright living room, which he appropriated and made it his bedroom. Standing against the blind wall there was an antique heavy mahogany bureau, the most notable piece of furniture in the house, an oil stove heater between the two windows at the opposite corner, two arm-chairs, a small coffee table and a two-seater couch, however, big enough to serve as the main bed for his diminutive body that had shrank further by old age. There, lying in his red cotton pajamas, he read the daily press for hours -to the last word of the last article.

Which newspapers he chose to read during his retirement years reflected ephemeral political beliefs or, rather, fluctuating inclinations and sympathies, which could change swiftly and unpredictably in Greece's volatile political landscape. In choosing his daily broad sheets, he was also influenced by opinions formed by neighbors, fellow ouzo drinkers in the village café he frequented, former colleagues, as well the most eminent members of the “Association of Large Families” he encountered in its office in the city, and by whoever happened to comment on the headlines. The political orientation of the newspaper one read and its editor mattered in Greece, and what grandfather displayed and read in public places hinted as to his political stance and views. Given his cautious psyche and a tumultuous past on the “wrong side of the fence” -so to speak, which many villagers of similar age would certainly recall, he was fully aware of potential whispering and gossip around Mr. Yiannis present and past, amongst the café patrons and others in the community.

The editions of the newspapers he was buying changed, therefore, in tandem with the party in power, the leader’s charisma and eloquence, and transformations incurring in his political consciousness. They started from few progressive publications, such as the Αυγή [The Dawn] of leftist orientation in the pre-dictatorship era, carefully bought by an anonymous kiosk in the busy Venizelou Street and camouflaged by mainstream "right-wing" or conservative newspapers, such as Μακεδονία [Macedonia]; they ended in conventionally right-wing and to “reactionary” or “far-right” editions– from the point of view of my communist youth. As the neophyte and radical and "revolutionary" leftist of my school and university years, "far-right" papers, such as Βραδυνή [The Nightly] or Ελληνικός Βορράς [The Hellenic North], even more moderate right-wing ones such as Μακεδονία, triggered an instinctive inner reaction, even repulsion, as much as any hardcore conservative standpoint would have caused. Seen grandfather reading such papers, derided and repudiated outright by my party, initially brought an unpleasant surprise and confusion, having heard so much about his past, gallant and ‘heroic’ in my eyes, and his treatment by advocates of political persuasions of whom he had as of late in his life became an ardent supporter and voter, before culminating into a permanent disappointment, even contempt. The post-civil war fears had long been abated, the dictatorship had been a nightmare of the past, and the mere fact that he had retired should have provided, in a sense, additional security in openly manifesting political beliefs, and more freedom to express his thoughts in public. What worse could happen in the remaining of his years? But of the wind of freedom of expression that blew after the dictatorship, good use he did not make. To the political fervor of his youth, he never returned, while his political thinking was gradually taken hold by the disease of old age: a sclerotic conservatism. Time always does its dirty job, in body and spirit.

Next to his couch-cum-bed there was a small table with the old radio that he had bought as soon as he returned from exile. When tired of reading the papers, before bedtime at night, during the seven years of the Junta of the Colonels before a TV was installed on the large bureau, he used to tune in broadcasts in Greek by stations such as Deutsche Welle or the BBC World Service, even in stations behind the "Iron Curtain" -from Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Much he could not have made from the narrative of these broadcasts in some Slavonic language. But listening to them exerted an inexplicable attraction and fascination, and whenever I was present at these radio broadcasts he enjoyed translating Pan-Slavic words such as слобода (freedom) or работа (work) or леб (bread), keywords fitting the construction of socialism in Eastern Europe. The socialist ideals of his youth had not yet been completely corroded. “Blood hardly turns into water” -as they say, and the ideas and opinions that the mind forms and embraces in youth are brought back on the surface, sometimes instinctively, as a spontaneous reaction to a political situation or a historical phenomenon before us, sometimes as ossified prejudices and ideological dogmas, sometimes as merely established and tested ways we have accepted for analyzing and dealing with sociopolitical and historical events. For grandfather, it might have been a crude or oblique way to propagate to a young soul some of the "progressive" ideals that he embraced in his youth. Lest we forget, the first post-junta years was a time that the USSR and the "actually existing socialism" still fascinated many in Greece on either side of the political spectrum. If grandfather subconsciously had such an aim at instilling into my conscience such ideals, then he contributed into it -with just a few Slavic words.

With the transition to democracy concluded, he gradually abandoned the traditional left. For a period, he was enchanted by Panhellenic Socialist Movement, its leader Papandreou and his progressive demagogy. When Papandreou withdrew his support for the re-election of Karamanlis as a Head of State, that esteemed statesman par excellence of post-war Greece and political idol of many (including grandfather) since the collapse of the junta, he turned his voter’s back to PASOK and metamorphosed into a right-winger. His political transformation from pro-EAM, pro-communist after the German Occupation, to a reactionary version of the right (repugnant in my eyes) was complete. Incredulous and disappointing as it was for my youthful enthusiasm at the time, in a period of left-wing activism in my life, I later realized that such mutations, especially in post-regime Greece, even amongst educated and deeply politicized people, were reasonable and occurred naturally. They moved in trajectories and in dialectical contradictions with the transformations and vacillations of political power, the ever-greater chasms between words and praxis, leading to contradictions, regressions, U-turns, and so-on. Besides, the whole political scene was then – and in Greece, it almost permanently is – in a state of flux, and grandfather, as well many retirees like grandfather, let themselves being seduced by populism or mesmerized by a charismatic personality which led generally vague and shallow, devoid of vision and concrete objectives, ephemeral political currents. Or, they resigned themselves to passive observers of historical developments, as they were unfolding and presented skewed and distorted by compliant media, whilst their political causes were formulated and conducted by distant decision-making centres. At least they, the common folk, were aware of the negligible influence they exerted on these developments.

The principal method that prevailed in Greece's political scene, with its strong economic and technological dependence on foreign centers, was that of "wait-and-see" or “play-it-by-ear” that of forgetting and quickly disengaging from usually extravagant pre-election promises. A political class mired by cronyism, in an economy that offered little room for maneuvering and radical change, a class without vision and with their main post-election goal the distribution of power amongst its main actors, a class primarily serving its own interests and those of its backers. It would not take long to alienate or disorientate the thinking of many ordinary citizens, and to wrap them in illusions. Grandfather was amongst them, despite his background, knowledge and culture.

Ancestry 22 - Yiannis & Vasiliki: Days in Retirement

Grandfather’s daily routine had several memorable, but, for an outsider, rather unremarkable features. It consisted of those everyday routine acts, which, despite a prima facie insignificance, obtain an untold importance in the microcosm of a family in a Greek village. This apparently inflated significance could be traced to his out of the ordinary personality, which dominated his immediate environment, the women of the household and those of the village community who dealt with him daily.

In the mornings, from early dawn, without exception, crouched in a sleeveless shirt, or sometimes without it, in summer or winter, in hot or cold weather, with a bar of soap and cold water from a tap under the acacia tree of the backyard, he used to wash his white bald head and face, which, in the process of rubbing, temporarily turned from white to pinkish. Spyros, the eldest son of Leonidas -Vasiliki’s firs cousin, who along with his brother managed the neighbouring grocery store their father established, he often watched in amazement from his terrace. One afternoon, while we were having coffee under the vine of the back yard with our relatives and neighbours, but with grandfather absent, Spyros commented: "I think the old man will suffer a sudden death one winter morning washing bare chested under this cold water…" His prophecy did not materialize; grandfather “departed” for the other world neither suddenly, nor indeed prematurely, nor did the least his death was precipitated by a cold morning wash in a frosty winter day. After the morning routine of washing and the regular shaving of his face and bald skull, Vasiliki would prepare and serve his breakfast: from milk, brought in a tin churn by the milkman of the village, and bread from Vasilis’ bakery across the street, chunks of which he used to dip into the milk bowl. A cup of Turkish coffee followed. Breakfast, as with all meals, he enjoyed sitting, serenely and quietly, at the head of the large kitchen table next to the divan by a wall decorated with a kilim. A woodburning stove was warming his being in the cold winter mornings.  

After retirement, once or twice a week, he would put on his old gray suit worn out from his years dressed in it as a headmaster and inspector of primary schools, and he would scurry to the school and the Church, where, after greeting the early morning patrons of the café opposite the Village Hall building, he would board the bus to Thessaloniki. Once retired, he put himself forward as the sole candidate for the vacant role of the president of the regional “Association of Large Families.” His own family was classified as ‘large’ by the letter of the Greek law, too, thanks to his four daughters and a prematurely lost son. Having devoted most of his working life as a teacher in the poor western suburbs of the city (of Ampelokipi, of Menemeni, Eleftheria, Kordelio, and Dendropotamos with its large Roma community -a muddy slum those days) and having made his name in the area as teacher and headmaster, he was naturally the most suitable candidate to process benefit claims for the poor multi-child families in a dire need of welfare support. He would certainly have sought the presidency himself, so that he continued with some sort of engagement in public affairs, as many retired civil servants, especially teachers and professors, do to remain active and anchor themselves for as long as possible in the chariot of public life. Clubs and associations are often one of the last strongholds of resistance against marginalization and exclusion from active society that old age inevitably brings about.

To this end, in the first years after retirement, he occupied a small office in the west of the city, near the Port and the Courts, whence he voluntarily served families with many children and handled their applications for welfare benefits. Greece's chronic demographic problem, due to the wars, several waves of post-war immigration, and low birth rates, meant that the few families with three or more children could benefit from meagre state benefits and perks, for they had several mouths to feed in general conditions of social poverty and an inadequate welfare system mired by bureaucracy. Family income in many countries is, perversely, in inverse correlation with family fertility. Nevertheless, a few bright minds of our sclerotic systems of governance saw (and still do) an incentive for young families to procreate in the pitiful cash-benefits they hand out. Unsurprisingly, such measures proved (and still do) ineffectual.

Therefore, most of Mr. Yiannis' clientele belonged to the lower, even lumpenproletariat strata of the city, and came from working class and deprived suburbs, including, of course, the populous Roma community. A poor and uneducated people, whose ruthlessness in stealing and other petty crimes, went hand in hand with their benevolence and naivety, and who, I was told, were treated with patience and dignity by their grandfather. His youthful idealism about social justice and equal opportunities, which did he, neither as a teacher nor as retiree, forsake, should have contributed to a vague personal contentment, even if, for the rest of his family, it seemed a thankless pastime and an old age peculiarity. For himself, after all, it broke the burdens of a retirement routine and the social marginalization and loneliness that accompanies it, a predicament aggravated at older age.

 Auntie Litsa, with her talent of impersonating characters, recounted during one of my sleepover evenings at grandfather’s, an hilarious incident, one of several in her repertoire of anecdotes about grandfather:  The restless father of a Gypsy family, who had to wait a bit little longer outside the door of the office of the “Association of Large Families”, as soon as he saw grandfather emerging from the end of the dark corridor leading to his office, got up from the visitor’s bench outside, opened his arms in exasperation, and ill-naturedly said: "Where have been, Boss? We’ve been waiting for ages for your letter? You been out for a long shit?" Grandfather replied calmly, but frowning and in a customary pompous manner: "Too many words, I can do without..." The Gypsy father, unconscious of the coarseness and impudence in his behaviour, perhaps self-justifying by a genuine irritation for a long wait, perhaps said as the crude joke expected by an uneducated and rough person, followed Mr. Yiannis, leading his large family, in a sulking demeanour; simply because of the long wait or by grandfather not acknowledging his humorous disposition. They followed him as a flock follows its shepherd, lined themselves up in front of his small desk, the Gypsy father, arms folded with machismo in front of his chest over his pot-belly, a baby in the arms of his young wife, two small kids hanging from her lush flowery dress. Their case was handled in few minutes, without words exchanged, without thanks, without smiles -only a final: "There is your certificate, sir!" from grandfather, with the conscientiousness and meticulousness that has always characterised him –and the Economou family in general.

Housework involved the cleaning and tidying up of the two terraces, the flower bed at the front, and the concrete courtyard at the back of the house and the large garden beyond (then comprising improvised vegetable patches, a few scattered fruit trees -an apricot tree and a couple of fig trees, the vine with its inedible sour grapes in front of great-grandparents’ house and the chicken coop, the acacia tree above the fountain near the door of the fence), that is, meaningless and purposeless daily sweeping, the feeding of the poultry, the watering of flower beds and pots, all these innumerable chores of everyday life in the village, done unconsciously, and are neither listed nor recounted at the end of one’s life, although for the women of a backward village in Greece time spent on those chores occupied large parts of their existence. These chores were delegated and carried out uncomplainingly, but instead with zeal and meticulousness, by the two unmarried daughters. They bestowed to Mr Yiannis’ household, as is always the case with routine activities, an illusion of stability. Grandmother Vasiliki, for as long as her crooked limping legs (one lame with a hip worn out by arthritis, the other supporting much of the weight of a body ravaged by age) could carry her around the premises, although a rather mediocre cook, she was almost exclusively occupied by the cooking and cleaning of the kitchen at the end of the meals.

Grandfather's contribution to what we call "domestic chores” was the hoeing around the trees of bahçe, the apricot and the fig trees and the few rows of tomatoes he had planted. Towards the end of autumn, he would arrange for firewood to be delivered. A truck would unload and lay out in the back yard, the logs in a heap. During the winter months he would regularly chop them, a few at a time, before they fuelled the fires in the wood stoves in the kitchen and the small living room. In those activities, especially arranging the logs in rows on the wall under a shed, I participated with my childish enthusiasm and a natural eagerness for adult chores. Just as much as I helped chopping the logs with an axe: initially under the supervision of grandfather and his rudimentary guidance and, finally, as I was growing up autonomously, despite the deep worries of getting hurt by the women of the house. Upgrading of the house, its façade and terraces, and the bahçe, the fencing of the courtyard, the building of a new toilet next to the steps of the terrace from behind, a critical amendment so that grandfather would not have to walk a long distance for his night urination, he entrusted them to local builders under his discreet supervision and guidance.

His ate his late afternoon lunch in silence and solitude, sitting alone at the head of the table. Exceptions would have been some weekday afternoons when, before coming home on his way back from the “Association” or a street market, he would stop by the café on the turn for some ouzo with mezedes. If he was told I was visiting, he would bring pieces of roast chicken and other treats from a rotisserie next to his café. He would enter the house tipsy, wearing one of his rare smiles and his cheeks slightly flushed from excitement or the cold weather, the parchment paper in which they were wrapped emitted an unforgettable mouth-watering smell that stirred the senses and enhanced my afternoon appetite after hours of playing. Then, his inner being liberated by the earlier ouzo-drinking session, he would raise his voice and began to deliver instructions and orders around him: "Bring the bread, Litsa!" "Why is there no yoghurt in the fridge?” "You, Domna, should set about learning a few useful things, get some education, because I can’t see you making any progress whatsoever in life! Society demands educated people today and you’re ill-prepared to face it..." Or, he would tease Vasiliki and her lame right leg, the subtle limp in her youth whose arthritis worsened and made it in later years conspicuous: "I will take you to a hospital and I’ll ask the surgeon to cut chop my leg and transplant it to you..." Or, in the formal, plural form of the second-person pronoun: "When I first saw you in your youth, my dear lady, I thought you wanted to tease me with your walking!" Poor Vasiliki, I thought. For his daughter, nevertheless, he had a point.