Childhood 15 - A Year in the 'Cold Trough': Good Friends for Life

Mrs. Lola and her husband Mr. Fotis G were, on the face of it, a good match. He was the ‘old school’ lawyer whose parents immigrated from Pontus, the shores of Black Sea in the aftermath of the Asia Minor Disaster. Of humble family origins, therefore, he nevertheless emerged from the ranks of his profession and exceled in some kind wheeling-dealings concerning land and property rights in the Chalkidiki peninsula, representing land-owners and their heirs in the region. A region of natural beauty, of course, where crystal clear sea waters, sandy beaches, pine forests descending to its shores, as well as its proximity to the city of Thessaloniki promised future wealth to its inhabitants given its huge potential for tourist development. Every square foot of land was worth thousands of drachmas, every acre millions. Through those ‘little Chalkidiki jobs’, as he used to call them, and via the ensuing marathon judicial processes, barely transparent to outsiders, for awarding property rights and settling claims, he was in position to commanded exorbitant fees. Additionally, he was presented with opportunities to purchase, in knock-down prices, premium plots with stunning beaches nearby, where the country's ‘heavy industry’ would duly exploit. He resold some of them with a handsome profit, in others he built his own villas.

"I will trample on the cunning and deceitful Chalkidiki men! I will squash them!", he would say with determination and contempt, on course of closing those lucrative business affairs, which, eventually, established him as a renowned and, most importantly, a wealthy lawyer. But, by definition, he was a parvenue -given his former humble origins. He possessed eloquence and rhetorical skills –useful tools in the persuasion of mostly illiterate clients and necessary conditions for success in his profession. His ways of speaking and tones of voice had eccentric and rather attractive to his listener feminine inflection, sufficient to create misconceptions and give rise to malicious gossip, amongst enemies and rivals. This aura of femininity from his mannerisms was conspicuous enough that auntie Litsa, a colleague who frequently pumped into him in court corridors, considered him gay and rather shamelessly branded him as ‘of that sort’ -without explicitly mentioning what this ‘sort’ meant and avoiding use the standard offensive slang word for that trait). Litsa’s derogatory remarks were often made in the presence of Mother, a close friend of Mrs. Lola’s husband, who made no effort to dismiss those claims. Mr. Fotis’ lawyer's skills and pomposity, perseverence and self-confidence, and an ego his professional success inflated, made his short stature inexplicably looked even shorter, but also diverted glances from his small bald head and his rather ugly face with a beaked nose.

The G’s occasionally invited our family and other guests to their main holiday home by the coast of the Sithonia peninsula. It was a huge villa complete with tennis and (yes!) basketball courts, neither of which, however, Mr. Fotis or Mrs. Lola, were physically capable or had the physique for making good use of. More frequently, it would be Mother and I who would be invited for afternoon coffee and cakes in their apartment on the top floor of a privately owned block, which Mr. Fotis, after another litigation bonanza, had built and owned in the ‘Forty Churches’ district, at a prominent position by the edge of a pine forest on the hills Seih Sou, which overlooks the city, its bay, and stunning sunsets behind the mountain range across. The two women, after a series of appointments in distant regions, eventually, in the twilight of their careers had been employed by schools in their home city. Their genuine friendship had been solidified, and Mother, who had volunteered to become godmother to several children of colleagues and relatives, had also presented the first child of the G’s, Nicos, to be christened. As both Nicos and I were shy by nature, we engaged timidly in unexciting games (compared with those with my close neighborhood friends) by the edge of the stream that separated the courtyard of their apartment building from the forest, and sometimes we ventured into the forest itself, under the watchful eyes of our mothers in the balcony where they used to drink their coffee. We never became close friends as our mothers would have wished.  

On the other hand, my sociable Mother reciprocated on a unique occasion (despite Father’s a priori negative dispositions against such home gatherings) by inviting the G’s to our humbler apartment, ‘for a pie with beer’ -her casual trademark treat. With great effort, and with the heart in her mouth, it must be said, because of Father’s unpredictability, his chronic reticence, objections and, on occasions, bad-tempered reactions, which often characterised his behaviour ahead of Mother’s friends visiting and disturbing his tranquillity. In the meantime, from the last meeting with the G’s, I had been transformed from the shy little boy, who was sitting at the very front row of the class under Mrs. Lola’s desk and nose, in that first year of primary school at the ‘Cold Trough’. In that ‘soiree’ of Mother's, I found myself rather by chance and unwittingly, as an awkward teenager and first-year university student, who was trying to cut off from the company of grown-ups.

Mrs. Lola sat next to Mr. Fotis, seemingly, as always, in awe of the great lawyer’s personality (as it was also the case with Mother next to Father’s presence at similar events). She remained silent for long periods of time, with a smile of acquiescence, in accord with everything that was said by him or others, barring a few banal soft-spoken comments.  She was characterised by an innate shyness, as I remembered her, in that first-year classroom. On the contrary, Mr. Fotis, was the usual talkative himself: sitting at the edge of the armchair with his waist straight, speaking with eloquence and grandiloquence, enunciating barrages of overemphasized words, stressing their importance with movements of hands and arms -as if he were speaking in court; reigning over the company, overshadowing even Father, and patronizing the party with his undeniable talent of captivating an audience. The quiet Mrs. Lola with her weak benevolent smile looked, as always, enchanted by his gravitas and listened silently, but attentively and with admiration, raising occasionally her eyebrows when he was stressing a point.

To my adolescent apprehension, at some instance I was awakened from my quiescence in the far corner of the living room I was sitting, and the boredom that usually overwhelms young people who found themselves reluctantly amongst a group of adults and their conversation, when Mr Fotis addressed and challenged me, as he would do a petrified witness in a court, to express my opinion on some political issues he was advocating. "Dear L, I would have liked you to participate in our interesting conversation... L, your opinions, please!", he exclaimed with a sobriety at odds with the intended laxity of Mother’s gathering for ‘a pie with beers’.

One of the main conversations that evening revolved around the the impressions the G’s had from a recent leisure trip to countries of the ‘existing socialism’. It goes without saying, given their acquired status at the top of the social ladder in Greece, their impressions from behind the Iron Curtain were negative and the overall picture he painted of life in those countries was bleak. As a student and an enthusiastic young communist, I had been involved in leftist activism from my early days in university, and was evolving into a respectable by comrades Marxist intellectual through intensive reading. And, when challenged by a personage adroit at debate, I proved adequate, if not equal to, with composure, solemnity and, in retrospect, undue self-admiration, to defend my ideological corner and views, which Mr. Fotis wanted for some reason to elicit. My bit was followed by a lively exchange of political arguments, for and against socialism, which, as is often the case, end inconclusively. All that was happening under an irrefutable smile of satisfaction, perhaps even pride, from Father. In hindsight, I later assumed, erroneously perhaps, that the unforeseen discussion with Mr. Fotis was pre-arranged under the guise of an interview, in the context of a possible match-making (I knew…) Mother and Mrs. Lola had been cooking for a while, between me and the G’s young daughter. A promising grand dowry, potentially on the table, was the main but, unfortunately, a sole attraction. Even that would have contradicted my socialist beliefs.  

The friendship between Mrs. Lola and Mother, which began in our time at the ‘Cold Trough’ survived for more than half a century, with mutual visits, outings and phone calls. Their contact became scarcer as their old age started getting the better of them and was eventually stopped by the aggravation of Mother's illness. Her best friend became a nebulous memory in her mind until she and their times together were completely erased, as did most of her past, whilst she was losing herself in the darkness of dementia. A few final lines were said at Mother's funeral, where her godchild Nikos with his sister, my would-be fiancé once upon a time, unexpectedly appeared to offer their condolences. It is one of Greek traditions, I learned afterwards, for a baptized child to attend the funeral of their godparent. Mrs. Lola could not make it. She still remembered Mother, her good friend, but the old legs could no longer hold her up. So many years had passed, since our ‘Cold Trough’ days, I came to realize, more than half a century, and all in a flash.