Free The House on Paradise Street by Sofka Zinovieff Page A

northern European cities. In Athens, I was able to drop the careful anthropologist’s persona I nurtured in the all-observing island community. I’d go out with friends I’d kept in touch with from the language school. Phivos, the youngest and most handsome of the teachers, took me to drink and dance at the noisy bars that were just reaching the height of their fashion in the late ’80s and that kept going until dawn. I enjoyed his good-natured warmth; his parents were justified in naming him after Phoebus, god of the sun. After our excesses, I’d stay in bed all morning and spend lazy days reading English newspapers and magazines, which were unobtainable on the island. Though my flirtation with Phivos was fun, it was Nikitas I thought more about, especially during my solitary winter evenings typing up notes and struggling over genealogical diagrams: matrilateral cross-cousins, patrilineal inheritance, agnatic lineage, affinal and consanguineous relations, spiritual kinship. I wasn’t unhappy; it was interesting trying to transform messy reality into orderly columns and codes. But it was easy to find myself back in the cemetery, pressing against Nikitas, feeling his chin rough against my cheek.

Fly in the milk
     
    A NTIGONE
     
    I thought of calling back Nikitas’ wife – no, his widow. My nýfi [bride, daughter-in-law]. Strange to use that word for the first time at this point in my life. But I couldn’t manage it. I knew she lived at Paradise Street with Alexandra, but I threw a black stone behind me when I left; I could not go back, begging to be let in by a sister who had disowned me. However, I could count on Dora. Ever since we were able to make international phone calls from home, I have spoken to her once a year and she has filled me in on who is left at the meetings, on her children and grandchildren. She had just heard the news when I rang and was very upset. She said, “May God forgive him.” She was always a good communist Christian. “I loved him very much.”
    I told her my plan and she spoke as though we had last seen each other the previous month.
    “I’ll be waiting at the airport. You can stay as long as you like.”
    I packed a small bag (I am perfectly capable of living with one change of clothes) and took four old notebooks, the lock of my son’s hair, wrapped in paper, and a couple of precious photographs I like to keep near me. The journey passed slowly. I was squeezed between the window and a large Muscovite who drank whisky from the moment he boarded the plane. His eyes were mostly squeezed shut and I had to shove him back into place when he leaned against me. As we approached, I looked down to see Greece for the first time in fifty-nine years. The colours were more subdued than I remembered, the sea greyer. There was a strange orange glow. Perhaps I had remembered it wrong.
    I wondered whether I would recognise Dora, but there she was, tinier than ever, wrinkled, but basically the same as when we had said goodbye. She opened her skinny arms to me and though I am taller, I felt like a child going to its mother. We stood there a while, embracing, each taking a look at the old woman that stood before her. Passengers hurried past, some making disapproving noises that we were blocking the way, but we didn’t care. That is one thing about having lived a communal existence – you learn to make your own space and to fight for it.
    It was midday by the time we thought to check our watches, and the funeral was due to take place at one, so Dora hurried me out to get a taxi. As we waited in line, she looked at my luggage on the trolley and came in closer to examine a bag sitting on top.
    “What have you got in there?” The bag was shuddering. I carefully unzipped the opening a fraction to reveal a mass of fur that was breathing heavily and hissing.
    “Misha,” I said. “I promised a friend to look after him. What could I do? There was nobody I could leave him with.” I had given Misha a