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.