5 - When They Met

The first steps of my parents’ working lives brought them together, under the same professional roof of an independent secondary school, run by a certain Katsikopoulos. It was located between Nea Magnesia, Mother’s village, and the western outskirts of the noisy city, in the ‘Eleftheria-Neo Kordelio’ district, surrounded by polluted and shabby industrial sites with factories and workshops, and, insofar as I can recall, in a perennial state of urban degradation. It seems odd a businessman to have had an educational establishment of note set-up in a predominantly working-class and underprivileged part of the city, but by then social strata had not yet been entrenched in clearly class-distinct districts. The urban and industrial development after the Civil War had been rapid and disorderly and, during the following decades, resulted into a more rigid class segregation, before that was dissolved by the de-industrialisation of the once industrious city -and the country overall.

Katsikopoulos the headteacher, owner, and uncompromising and unapologetic boss of the eponymous, rather provincial education establishment, was, for many who got to know and work for him, an unsympathetic and avaricious, as much as miserly, businessman. Perhaps, the word badass would suffice to describe him. It was claimed that he was a gambler, frequenting semi-illicit underground dens to exercise his gambling addiction, a vice that often goes together with avarice and greed. The Father described him several times as a ‘scoundrel’, encompassing in a word his first boss’ not just flawed but, as also seen by many, abhorrent personality. Katsikopoulos, although he must have obtained some sort of university education, all he was interested in was to make a quick buck in the education trade, whilst exploiting the brains of young university graduates, who were desperately looking for their first job to kick-start their careers, and were willing to accept anything that came their way, regardless of a pitiful wage on offer and poor employment conditions. For most graduates, like Father, a quick career start was an imperative, whilst waiting for an appointment in the public education system or public sector in general, and, for that matter, a job for life.  

It was rumoured that the businessman in question hired Mother so that he can establish a link with Mr Yiannis, who, as the principal of a nearby populous primary school, could recommend and supply, albeit unsuspectedly, for the cunning Katsikopoulos ample clientele. That was evidenced by Father's rather biased opinion of Katsikopoulos, with whom he fell out not long into his tenure at his school. Anyway, he could never have got along with his first boss! (It is parenthetically worth noting that Father did not get along with most of his superiors, largely due to a rebellious spirit, excessive obstinacy and intransigence, and no more than his know-all attitude. However, there had been grounds for most of derogatory claims about Katsikopoulos’ personality, as that was painted by Father, even if one accepts more benign versions of the opprobrium by his former employees-including Mother.)

Some love, an eros perhaps, of indeterminate complexity and intensity, commencing, as is often the case with a glance and a smile and few forgettable words, at the forefront of an implicit physical attraction (a necessary condition of many a love), must have occurred and blossomed in the daily life of that school. That falling in love preceded their marriage I firmly believe, although I never witnessed any clear public demonstrations of it, not even subtle manifestations of an underlying primordial love, in as much as that love was weakened by years of friction, habit, work, chores, and raising a family. Neither have there been testimonies of a probable ‘love at a first sight’ and stories by third party witnesses from their first encounters and dates. One is tempted to accept that the prevailing social norms and mores of the times did not allow for overt public courtships, and overcoming such barriers required character traits, like impulsiveness and spontaneity, which were not intrinsic elements of either of my parents’ personalities. Yet, faint dribs and drabs of this love had been timidly appearing in photographs of the two together from excursions or balls, mementos and nostalgic stories from their youth. Despite the mundane, stale and frequently rancorous marital relationship that followed (of which I was the unfortunate eyewitness!), and bore no evidence of love and affection, this perhaps unsubstantiated belief, that once, for a little while, there was love, brings to me, the fruit of their marriage, a bit of comfort.

Incidentally or coincidentally, it was at the same school and around the same time that, Nikos A, one of Father’s best friends since his university years and for decades into their maturity, met and indeed fell in love with Kiki, a young, witty and brazen philologist from a family of artists; only to marry a few months later with Father being Nikos’ chosen best man. But Nikos’ and Kiki’s romance was openly demonstrated and witnessed on several occasions, no less than their harmonious married life. Ever since, the two couples followed parallel and, one might say, symmetrical paths. And, along the way, as much as my family lived well, theirs lived an arguably better, fuller, more illustrious and prosperous life. It might have been because it was built on the solid foundations of a deep, unshakable love. But I am fast-forwarding my story...

Camus wrote that not being loved in one's life is unfortunate, but not to love is misery. I recognized this in the lives of previous generations. The character and power of such love, if it existed in some shape or form, eventually and rather sadly, remained a secret between the two souls who gave birth to me. After all, love, this spiritual-psychical-biochemical synthesis of countless sensations and emotions, currents that meet at the innumerable nodes of the soul and mind and then flow away in a process of constant movement, progression and regression, stands out for its uniqueness, peculiarity, and subjectivity. It characterizes exclusively two universally unique consciousnesses that connect, and its whole is hidden inside and at best between them, like a well-kept secret. It is related to the era, space and culture of the society that surrounds these two beings. Only the number of works of art, which expressed love over the centuries of human civilisation, can be compared with the number of variations of love that somehow affected the respective artists. Written in a simpler way: love, and its sensations, can be as diverse as the billions of people who were fortunate enough to love and fall in love. And its precise nature becomes exclusive knowledge of the two people who experience it. It largely remains their occult secret, and, over its course, only few samples are manifested to the outside world: smiles, looks, touches, dances and songs, artistic creations. The latter, as a legacy for future generations to realise its existence and the full extent of its importance, to be moved by its greatness and the emotional and sensual peaks it can reach.