6 - Unrequited Loves

They both had opportunities to pursue different romantic paths, albeit within the limits of the rather puritanical environments they were brought up. They exchanged glances and smiles, and their hearts raced for others, before for each other in that school. Even in an era still dominated by old-fashioned and outdated values, in the backward regions of Europe, at the cusp between youth and maturity, when beauty and the power and vigour of body and mind peaks, love lurks around every corner, undaunted by any restrictions of oppressing family and social environments and the prevailing culture in their milieu. The phrase of Sophocles, which we were not taught in school for similar reasons, sounds like a cliché: “Eros, invincible in battle…"

Lampouras was a kind, young mathematician who was also employed in Katsikopoulos' establishment. He timidly courted Mother on the margins of their work and family lives, before Father came to the fore. “What a nice young gentleman!” Mother exclaimed several times with a touch of nostalgia, whereas Father, after mentions of his name in his presence usually smiled condescendingly, perhaps sardonically. Death did not reciprocate the kindness and grace of that young man. He was tragically killed, before he had the chance to enjoy the delicacies of youth and love, crushed by an elevator in a block of apartments, after having opened its door and fallen into the pit before the car had reached his floor level. Without tasting Mother’s love who liked him. A dance with her at a Christmas party, immortalized in a photo, was sole remainder and reminder of their brief and hapless affair. But he was deeply engraved in her memory of Mother –and that of Father, too: Lampouras, the young, noble mathematician.

On Father’s side, before my parent’s lives eventually converged into the same path not without a few stumbles and setbacks along the way, a certain Mary appeared. She was the daughter of a personage renowned in the old neighbourhood and legendary in the family annals, a widow aptly named Charikleia, a close friend of grandmother’s and frequent visitor in her house and, later, flat for coffee and gossip. Mary was a kind and beautiful girl, I heard, and, once she was envisaged as Father’s favourable match, if not his aspiring wife. Father, as far as I understood from Mother's take of their affair, ‘fancied Mary a lot and fell head over heels in love with her.’ Unfortunately for him, well before the first buds of a love began to blossom and any engagement discussions, Charikleia vetoed any notion of this happening. Rather instinctively and without communicating her reasoning to the primarily interested parties, Father and Mary, she dismissed outright any possibility of her daughter marrying him, as that seemed to be implicit from the onset in their brief affair. She possessed an irrefutable intuition (mainly thanks to her maternal instinct and a rationale supported by various observable signs and clues) over the prospects in store of her daughter’s life with a problematic character. Unmistaken indications, such as Father’s behaviour in Charikleia's presence or rumours and gossip that might have reached her ears from acquaintances and mutual friends, as these always made the rounds of the neighbourhood and beyond. Her ruling out of Mary sharing a future with Father was categorical and indisputable. In retrospect, Charikleia's intuition about her daughter's future beside Father might as well have proved correct (who knows?), and as such is claimed by Mother's accounts of Father’s unrequited love. Many a time, in the years after their marriage and my birth, with no little bitterness, Mother contemplated her unfulfilled, even wasted life, and perhaps an unjust destiny. If only there was one ‘Charikleia’ for her, she used to point out, who would have given sound and persuasive advice in time, without munching the words about Father and his idiosyncrasy.

Katsikopoulos expressed similar concerns, to put it mildly, about a ‘vocal’ Father and his ‘difficult’, ‘temperamental’ and easily combustible character, and his stubbornness and intransigence, in conversations with Mr. Yiannis: “Mr. Economou, I see your daughter standing at the bus stop and chatting playfully with this Ibrişimci gentleman – they seem too friendly and uncomfortably close for my eyes...  Not just smiling innocently, but flirting too... I suggest you keep an eye on your daughter’s contact with him. He has been hard to deal with, raising his voice in board meetings, being awkward in his relations with several members of our staff...” Perhaps, he even went as far as to brand Father ‘weird and cranky.’  Nevertheless, being fair to Father, in those school board meetings under the tutelage of an arguably ‘wretched’ character like that of Katsikopoulos, I am sure he would have boldly defended his own and other colleagues’ corner. His core beliefs and principles were virtually unshakeable and his arguments indomitable even by well-intentioned and even persuasive reasoning; they were defended with arrogance and stubbornness, at the forefront always of the immense egocentrism that distinguished his personality. His overall attitude in the presence of others was amply assisted by a piercingly loud, and often uncontrollable voice –a handy tool in his toolbox for imposing ideas and opinions and crushing counter-arguments. The frictions and conflicts with Katsikopoulos and possibly other colleagues, whom might have implicitly or slavishly aligned themselves with the views of their boss, would be part of an almost daily order in School's life.

In any case, I do not know what background discussions took place between Mr Yiannis and Mother precisely, but Katsikopoulos' intervention did not appear to have greatly influenced the progress of their affair. All this behaviour, the ‘spirit’ and the ‘dynamism’ and self-confidence of Father, amongst other commendable attributes, must have exerted an irresistible attraction to Mother and charmed her. Many years later, Brother, when discussing Mother’s lifetime subservience to most of Father’s whims, correctly pointed out that “Mother, as the feebler and weaker personality she was nurtured into by her father, was naturally looking for a dynamic and domineering figure in her life.” Surely those trivial episodes did not foreshadow the future and duration of what turned out to be an extremely long and arduous coexistence.

The early end of Lampouras, Charikleia's blocking Mary’s and Father’s affair, the inconsequential effects Katsikopoulos’ criticism had over grandfather’s stance on his daughter’s plans, the ingenuousness and plasticity of young Mother's soul, partly, perhaps, due to the natural giddiness and recklessness associated with a first love, have now sealed my parents' fate en route to marriage and setting up a family. The love of Lampouras, a bud that did not blossom but pruned by his tragically premature death, remained a fond memory. Charikleia and her daughter moved to Athens, where Mary married a watchmaker -whom Father mentioned on occasions, with a tone of mixed disappointment and contempt, likely due to a secretly harboured jealousy, an unfulfilled romance, and an unrequited desire. I am convinced that Mary and Father sincerely fell in love with each other, and, perhaps, both were temporarily hurt as things turned out, and were dictated (rather forced) to follow divergent paths. Any relationship that could have hypothetically thrived, had been erased by the geographical distance, after Mary’s departure and her settling permanently in Athens. The emotions from that period, however strong, dissolved into the oblivion of an increasingly distant past. Their communication became more sporadic. A fleeting love that did not manage to fully materialise into life camaraderie had long since faded, and in the end only a distant memory remained, and reduced to the occasional greetings exchanged over the phone between two aging people. In later years, they were calling each to exchange wishes on their name day on the same day in the Orthodox calendar. Until a recent August and an Athenian heat wave, when Father’s call for wishes was not answered. Mary, Father learned, died of a heat stroke. “It was the fault of that trader idiot, her son, who filled their apartment with boxes and blocked ventilation grills,” Father remarked. And Ι saw his eyes watering as he announced Mary’s death, sixty years after his first and arguably greatest love. For some reason, mine were, too.