Free The Secret Sister by Fotini Tsalikoglou, Mary Kritoeff

Erasmia by my side, now I don’t have her, I don’t want this new land, Menelaos, I want New Ionia and my sister and the flowers in little earthenware pots, I watered them every morning, I don’t want to go, Menelaos, look at how the sailors and the stewards are eyeing me, and our fellow travelers with their damaged eyes, the lice in their hair, I used to wash my hair every day, Menelaos, my hair smelled of jasmine and lavender just like my sister’s, by the time we arrive there the lice will have ravaged my hair, it smells like vomit on deck, everyone’s throwing up, and they look at me suspiciously, ‘Who the hell are you, missy?’ ‘I’m Frosso, Menelaos’s wife, we’re going to America,’ ‘You can kid yourself all you want, missy, you’re not going to America, you’re going to Hell!’ burning coal, I remember the fires, can you remember when you’re five years old, Menelaos? I say yes, you can remember, smells outlast time, when everything has gone, all that’s left are smells, there’s two in particular, the smell of something burned by fire and the smell of the saltiness of the sea, it is with these two smells that I will now take my leave, to become one with them, goodbye, Menelaos, look after Erasmia for me, this is as much as I could do,
göstereyim sana, maşallah
. . . ” 16  
    Â 
    The flight attendant asks me if I have a foreign passport and she gives me a form to fill out for Customs.
    Where will I be landing soon, Amalia? There used to be an island, in the South Pacific, in the Coral Sea, between Australia and the French territory of New Caledonia. On nautical charts it was called Sample Island. During a reconnaissance expedition, the cartographers never found it. Returning from their sea voyage, which lasted twenty-five days, they said, “That’s odd, this island is nowhere to be found.” Where will I be landing soon, Amalia? Does our country exist? The country I never visited and which only now have you allowed me to travel to? The country where Menelaos and Anthoula were born, the country that welcomed Erasmia and the other Frosso, the country our mother never knew—does it exist?
    The paper Frosso gives me a faint smile. She’s twenty-three years old. I hold her in my hands with tender care. Seventy years separate me from the time this photograph was taken, just before she jumped over the side into the frozen waters of the Atlantic. “God seals the hand of every man, that all men may know His work.” The pilot tells us where we’re flying over, it’s night outside. With a magical depth gauge used to measure unexplored oceans, I dream of a voyage to the ocean floor. I’m equipped with scuba gear and a high resolution underwater camera. I swim, I sink, and at some point, inside a marine cave, I locate her body, nude, dressed in corals, seaweed, plankton, the skeletons of dead fish wrapped around her arms and legs, conches and seashells, a frozen liquid preventing decomposition, Frosso of 1940 is swimming on the bottom of the sea. I immortalize her with my camera. I know you won’t believe me. I need proof. I develop the photograph.
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Calm yourself, my dear Jonathan. Proof is only for daydreamers.
”
    Three hours and a bit to go. I’m the only passenger who hasn’t closed his eyes, not even for a moment, except in order to see a forbidden film. PG-rated. In the place where the island was supposed to be, cartographers found a huge depth of one thousand four hundred meters. Had the island sunk in there? Or did it never exist?
    Amalia, I’m feeling queasy . . . I never got used to the skyscrapers encircling us, I get vertigo when I look up at them from a window. An opening onto the void. I try to ignore the empty seat next to me.
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When will you stop pitying the Argyriou family, Jonathan?
”
    Don’t talk as if you have a different name,