31 - Our Family Friends: Unrivalled Sociability

There had always been people gatherings in the Akrivides’ Queen Olga's Avenue apartment. Friends of Billy and Maria, relatives and family friends and colleagues of Nikos and Kiki, a few amongst them distinguished in Salonika’s society, some members of the local political elite and bourgeoisie intelligentsia. They were hosted in their spacious salon with that impressive ceramic wall sculpture, creation of Kiki’s artist brother, against a wall above a four-seater sofa, flanked by tall Japanese vases and arm-chairs. Whilst keeping notions in proportion, a ‘drawing room’ emulating those of the Faubourg Saint-Germain society that we read so much in Proust’s writings would be a more apt term. Likewise, people also surrounded the Akrivides’ family in their exclusive space in the holiday camp of Skotina, under the shade of the poplars by their huge tent and later caravan, or in Nikos’ paternal home in his village in Pieria. People from different walks of life flocked around them: on New Year's Eve celebrations, on birthdays, on name days, in impromptu Saturday soirees with literary reciting or music intermezzos between conversations, wines and mezedes, on holidays and Sunday trips to Chalkidiki beaches on summer Sundays. All planned and coordinated by Nikos with his innate enthusiasm for pleasing friends and guests. It goes without saying that during my childhood, Mother and Father were amongst the first in their list of guests to be invited for their evening happenings. Old friendships and best men could not have been ignored by the gracious and generous couple. I had to be towed along and join despite my social awkwardness and a growing sense of inferiority when in their company.     

With their attention shifted away from house chores and such thankless tasks being usually delegated to cleaners, in the time interval between their social events most rooms remained in a state of disorder with clothes, toys, books, ornaments, gifts, scattered around. A state of house affairs that the ever so tidy Mother found distasteful and criticized vehemently after more casual visits; she had inherited a passion for order and cleanliness through her upbringing and a family tradition, which I found backward. For the Akrivides’, this domestic mess might have indicated and encouraged some sort of creativity and freedom in spirit and of thought, and a strong sense of initiative, especially for the two children.

The sociability of Billy’s family and Billy himself and the breadth and weight of the personalities in their social circle, exceeded by orders of magnitude those of my personal and family’s closed knit circle of relatives and friends, with which we felt comfortable interacting in daily life and convivial. Inevitably, and mainly – I would have liked to believe – because of an innate (that is of a genetic origin, rather than nurtured) introversion and a painful shyness, I used to withdrew timidly in the margins of those large group gatherings, always taciturn, without having much to say or contribute to the happenings, to the parties and group trips, when Billy was under the spotlight, ever the leader and coordinator of the children around him, later the seducer of girls.