Grandpa’s presence in my childhood was fleeting; in Brother’s life non-existent. He left their little apartment and Eudoxia in the early 70s, at the beginning of his battle with neurasthenia and, perhaps, a type of mental illness, which, as with more ailments of the brain was poorly understood by the psychiatric community of the time. It was even more incomprehensible to family members. My cousin, in one of our chats about the past we shared, alleged that grandpa’s illness was based on a depression triggered by chemicals in the candies he sold for a living (and some of which he, inevitably, consumed) as a peddler during the German Occupation; a professional might have discarded such theories as scientifically unfounded, if not absurd.
Grandpa had, like many of his generation, a
difficult life in a turbulent century at the historical crossroads of the
Balkans. During his mental crises, mind and soul and, inevitably, body were shaken.
My parents meticulously kept grandpa out of his grandchildren’s sight. Few of
these crises did I witness, most of them I heard discussed: his head and hands shook
violently, and on occasions they culminated in verbal and physical assaults
against his poor wife: he would shout at her, pushed her away, and sometimes raised
his hand to hit her. The aftermath of one of those crises, left his sons no
other choice but to introduce him to a psychiatric clinic, where he remained to
be haphazardly treated lengthy periods. I occasionally accompanied Father on
his fortnight Sunday visits for a quick chat, by the entrance and the car park
in front of the clinic, where we delivered a bag with the homecooked food Eudoxia
had prepared. In the very first visits, boxes of cigarettes were also packed in
with food and fruits. In my last vague memory of the old man, he met us in the
courtyard in his red-silk pajamas. His white hair was combed back, exposing a
broad forehead akin to thinkers, his pallor face was expressionless. Father was
standing behind me, with his hand on my shoulder nudged me greet him with a
handshake. I was too shy to say anything, I was just smiling. Grandfather
tenderly pinched my cheek with his index, and said: "Well, well, little
L... ! How fast is this boy growing up!’
He was taken out of the clinic on the eve of
the 1974 World Cup. Treatment with psychiatric drugs apparently had a tangible effect
and somehow tempered the mental outbreaks. In the last image in my mind of grandpa,
he was sitting quietly, in a blue kimono over his red-silk pajamas,
expressionless and silent, his immovable body fixed in our only armchair at the
corner of the sitting-room, staring at the black-and-white TV broadcast of a
match of that World Cup in West Germany. He was an ardent football fan. From his
youth, a member of sports clubs and associations, social outlets for meeting friends
and colleagues. His love for football was passed on to Father and by extension
to me, as often is the case with lifestyles and hobbies from one family generation
to the next; so much so that my interest in the game I thus inherited by
association grew with time, and became a passion in various stages of life. The
same evening, after the end of the televised broadcast, grandpa went down to
the apartment and assaulted grandmother. Her cries were heard through the flights
of stairs to our floor and apartment. Father and uncle and daughters-in-law
rushed downstairs and saw grandma sitting on her stool next to the hallway
phone, with her head between her hands, crying. He was slapped for no apparent
reason, after another unpredictable mental outbreak. The same night, grandma was
taken upstairs to sleep with us, my uncle, ever the peacemaker, after he
managed to calm things down, kept grandpa company downstairs. Next morning he
was transported back to the clinic. Since that episode, forty years ago after Dimitra,
the matchmaker, introduced them, the old couple was separated for the rest of
their lives.
Months later from that incident, on another bright
Sunday afternoon, the phone next to our TV in the living-room, where we watched
the world cup match with grandpa, rang. I was on my own -my parents and Brother
were next door to Uncle's in one of the lunch parties my aunt used to organize
on Sundays, for family and friends to enjoy her exquisite dishes. I picked up the
phone casually:
"What's your name, my boy?"
"L..."
"Is your dad there?"
"No, he's next door at my uncle’s."
"I'm a nurse and I'm calling
from the clinic. Tell your dad that grandpa died. Will you, my boy?"
"Yes."
"OK, goodbye now."
"Bye."
It was the first time I heard the word ‘died’ with
specific reference to a family member or an acquaintance. I was shaken and my
heart start beating fast; I gasped. I ran down the corridor to Uncle’s
apartment opposite. My cousin opened the door for me, my brother, one year her
junior, standing beside her – they were panting themselves after a running game
in the hall. The meal was over and everyone was sitting in the living-room that
formed an L-shape with the dining room where we had our lunch. The women,
including grandma, were drinking coffee and chatting, Father was smoking and
talking with his brother, in anticipation of his unpreventable afternoon
siesta. I stood on the threshold of the open glass door of the living room and
in a voice broken by the shock I said: ‘A lady called from the clinic to say
that grandpa died...’ The luxuriant meal, the lively conversation, the
panting of excited children from playing were the antithesis of death.
There was no surprise, only silence that lasted
a few seconds. I remember no panic or hysteric reactions, just some mumbling
amongst the adults, then uncle speaking nonchalantly on the phone, first with
the clinic, then with a funeral director, the women in the hall him listening to
him attentively and Father unable to constrain himself from furnishing instructions
and orders. Brother and my cousin had been ushered beforehand into my cousin’s
room with a few toys behind a closed door, conveniently distanced from the
events unfolding.
I returned to our apartment and my room, sat at
my little oak desk, and immersed myself in memories and reflections. The
memories of my grandpa in my few years of life with him present were counted on
the fingers of one hand: the Turkish delights and the dark chocolate he brought
in the early years, especially for me, it was claimed –the privileged first grandchild,
the football match we watched one evening, myself sitting between him and
Father on the stands of Kaftazoglio Stadium under the floodlights, the visits to
the clinic with Father in his first FIAT, visits admittedly unpleasant and
which I tried to evade. And our very last time together: grandpa silent with a
vacant expression in front of the TV, in the evening of the dreadful episode
with grandma, which marked the beginning of the final stretch of his journey, of
an unremarkable, yet struggling life: from fleeing his hometown Melnik, to the
house in the alley he owned and shared with his mother and two of his siblings,
its sale for a pittance to a black marketeer to finance his brother’s hospitalization
in the sanatorium, the repugnant rented dwelling in Toumpa where they moved with
Eudoxia and his two boys, the judicial intervention that allowed them to
repossess their home, the exchange of the plot for three apartments in the
block of our alley, the unhappy end in a bleak psychiatric clinic ward.
He did not and, possibly, could not have left
much behind for his children and grandchildren, either memories or belongings:
two apartments from the exchange, a pitiful state pension for grandma, a
handful of Elizabeth's gold sovereigns still in a pouch to remind me of his
struggles. However, he made the most of his being, within his range of limited
abilities and few skills, and from the even fewer opportunities life presented
to him, in the face of asymmetric adversities along and against the movement of
the tectonic plates of history. It might and could not have been much better.
The nurse's ‘your grandpa died’ still echoed in my ears, words mingled with
those few faded memories that swirled in my mind; my soul was weighed down by
the loss of one who was only a small-part actor in my life memories. I cried alone
in the room for grandpa, for a first and last time. He was the first of close
family members to die, at an age when I could barely grasp the meaning death. I
was deemed too young a child to attend his funeral.
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