23c - The Old Neighborhood: The Microcosm of our Apartment Block (The Gloomy Lower Floors)

My grandparents lived the rest of their lives on the first floor, in a small one-bedroom apartment less privileged than those of their sons on the second floor; primarily because of the fewer hours of bright sunlight through the front balcony enjoyed by their sitting room, and even less by the interior. Father and my uncle, both men in their prime and heads of growing families, no doubt, were given and occupied the best cuts from the builder’s compensation for the plot of land the family relinquished.

The apartment building did not feature an elevator and the floors were joined by a U-turns staircase, with steps and landing made of what the builders called ‘mosaic’ -nothing more artistic than gravel in different shapes and colors within a mixture of refined cement. The glorious Greek summer sun did not shed much of its light in that staircase, especially on its turns from the mezzanine to the second floor. A faint sunlight managed to escape through a square opening of the rooftop into the blue of the sky above and through the windows of the small interior light-duct, but it looked tired and oppressive. This duct was like a rectangular deep well few meters wide, and from the windows at each landing one could see small white balconies of concrete walls hanging outside the main bedrooms. The layout was designed, as the architect might have reasoned, with the intention of guarantee precious afternoon siestas for the hard-working residents, uninterrupted by the intrusion of the bright Greek sun, especially in the summer afternoons, when both sunlight and heat can become unforgiving enemies. The residual rays of light that penetrated through the opening of the duct at the roof down to the lower floors were ultimately blocked by shutters firmly shut in the afternoons; with the sunlight thus attenuated, a darkness as thick as that of a dungeon and coolness even in August afternoons prevailed in the bedroom of Mother and Father.

But as one climbed to the two topmost floors and their penthouses, the diffused light intensity increased, until, at very top floor under the roof, a square patch of sky became visible, the sun from the windows was blinding in the relative darkness of the corridors and the staircase. At the rooftop, a place of longing and hiding and refuge of solitude in my childhood, only light, a light cloudless blue sky above and the freedom to gaze over and explore the skyline of Thessaloniki, through the forest of TV aerials on the rooftops, all the way to the waters of the bay of Thermaikos and the cranes of Thessaloniki’s port; a view in clear transparent days extended beyond the sea and across the bay to the peaks of Mount Olympus.