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The Gray Light of a New Dawn
The gray light of a new dawn was just beginning at Puthena Village, but the dreams of Aphrodite Thromos were not yet complete. In her bed she lay underneath her heavy quilt, still and flat on her back. Her mouth was wide open and her eyes darted back and forth beneath closed lids. Though her heart was now weak, the ageless child within remained ready to frolic through fields of heather. Sadly, Hellenic meadows and boundless Ionian horizons were no longer reachable for her now frail and decrepit body.
These dreams were the remembrances of a lifetime spent on the Island of Corfu, or as the Greeks called it, Kerkyra. Such visions were but wicked contrivances when cast in the chromium light of the present tense. Aphrodite was too old to wish for miracles; she was cheating death every day through no effort of her own. But in sleep, the ravages of time held no sinister power over her declining influence. It was almost as if the unremitting years had actually been dreams, and the reality was that she was still a young girl in her father’s simple house.
Yet even as she lay enfolded by charitable delusions, an alarm sounded inside her head. The moment was unstable, turbulent, filled with impending catastrophe. Somebody was trying to beat down the door to her private convictions and treasured recollections. Until now, that portal had always remained blocked, a world within, wholly unknowable.
“Open up! Let me in!” cried the voice.
The intruder continued to yell and clap his fist upon her locked door, and even in fitful sleep she realized the untimely nature of this summons.
“Go away!” she called.
Her life had been one of well-defined connections. Church, family, and friends were the foundation upon which Greek traditions rested. These customs offered comfort, safety, and a sense of familiarity. Well into her ninth decade, she had little capacity to absorb the changes taking place in Greek culture, and even less influence to hold them back.
Recalling her happy life as a girl in Puthena Village―long before money had come pouring into the economy from Northern Europe―the progression of seasons had determined the rhythms of their lives. In summertime, gleeful games of hide-and-seek took place between the houses, shops, and cafés in Puthena Village. In autumn, when it was time to slaughter the largest of their pigs, her father cut out the bladder, dried it in the warm September sunshine, scored it, and then sewed it into a durable though imperfect ball for the children’s play. When the rains came in winter, her older brothers went off to school in Corfu Town, but the girls stayed home to help with chores.
As an adolescent, Aphrodite cultivated the charms in keeping with her namesake. So demurely she flirted with village boys, but when the time came for her to marry, it was her father who chose her husband, Constantine Thromos, a cosmopolitan man from Corfu Town. He was twelve years older than she, and on the day of their wedding they still had not so much as held hands. But her dowry was made, and she graciously accepted the union which tradition ordained.
In the beginning their life together was a happy one, as they absorbed themselves in the tasks of homemaking. Eighteen months after their marriage their first child, Kostas, was born. Tassoula followed shortly, and then came Modestos. But soon after the birth of their third child the romance unaccountably went out of their relationship. Absorbed in business, Constantine spent many hours away from home, and as the weight of childbearing reformed his wife’s figure in mid-life, he’d made her sleep in a separate room. Even into old age she carried anger and spite for his cruel omission, and later his absence.
Still another great issue remained without closure in her life. She had never been able to free herself from the torment of her firstborn son’s death. Still a boy, Kostas had been a hero during the resistance effort against the Axis Powers, but the Nazis had learned of his undercover activities and killed him.
Her grief was silent and suffocating. It burrowed into her intestine like a worm for a long stay. Conversely, Constantine wept for a solid month, and then he cried no more. Over time he grew dour and became withdrawn. Finally, he was unable to maintain the life they had made together in Puthena Village, and in absolute despair he abandoned not only his family, but his homeland as well, and she was left to raise her thirteen-year-old daughter Tassoula, and her ten-year-old son Modestos, alone.
At first money and promises arrived from Italy, and then all communication from her expatriate husband abruptly ceased. She never knew what had become of him. Where he’d gone, if he were alive or dead; and she had spent half her eighty-seven years wearing the widow’s black dress and veil.
Now, as the light of day broke with candor upon Puthena Village, her eyes flew open. The images of her dream glowed like morning embers, though her body shivered at the remembrance of the intrusive voice at her door. She sniffed at the musty air that had gathered slowly in her rooms during forty years of mourning. Her evening candle had not gone out; it burned still in front of her altar, seven saintly icons facing east. In the weak light of her salon, she could barely distinguish the photographs of her family, but even as the meddlesome knocking grew more urgent, she recalled the day Kostas had left home for the war.
“Open the door now! Let me in!” Again the terrible summons.
Struggling to stand on her arthritic feet, she pulled on her shawl over rumpled, colorless bedclothes and dutifully placed her sheer black veil on top of her thin, disheveled, gray hair, then found her cane and moved stiffly and slowly toward the door. Her hips always ached now, and she wanted to curse her feebleness, but not in front of Jesus.
Reaching the threshold of her sanctuary, she walked onto her balcony. The intense light blinded her for a moment. Searching door to door for the mischief-maker, she saw only the familiar sights of the dhomatia’s patio garden: the stairway; the vines and flowers; the garden wall. As her weakened eyes reluctantly adjusted to the light of a new day, she caught a fleeting glimpse of the presumptuous visitor retreating down the alleyway that led toward the church. His shadow grew shorter and shorter as it moved away on the cobblestones.
Probably a drunk or a derelict, lost and floundering out of control, she thought. Since he’s headed in the direction of the church, let the priest deal with him. Redemption is Father Dimitri’s mysterious domain.
She went back inside her apartment to wash her face. Her toilette was a once-a-day affair at most. With the same comb and silver-handled brush she had been using for twenty-five years, she arranged her hair as best she could, though nowadays her efforts usually fell flat, along with the many loose strands she could not keep pinned up. No use hovering over a ruin, she thought. Besides, her mirror had clouded. Or was it her vision that was dark?
In her kitchen, she lit a propane burner with one practiced movement and made herself strong black coffee. She sweetened the thick brew with a generous portion of sugar then cut a slice of bread from the loaf on her board. She dipped the entire piece in olive oil but ate only half. Most of her life she’d eaten eggs for breakfast, but lately her appetite had waned.
“Hearty food is for younger people,” she declared. “Those with purpose and a strong will!” She decided to cook stifada for her son Modestos, who would soon be coming to visit her.
