“He’s drunk again!” the boy thought bitterly as he stood motionless next to the ancient staircase. The interspersed voices continued for a while. Then silence. A door was slammed shut and his father, pulling up his trousers, appeared at the top of the stairs. He stood there for while, lit a cigarette, and slowly, deliberately, started descending the steps like a man with cramp in his legs. A strong smell of wine permeated the air as if someone had opened a barrel of spirit.
With an expression of disgust Sarantos retired to a dark niche in order not to be seen and fixed his eyes on his father’s outline. Mitsos, tall, light-complexioned, heavily built, somewhat unwieldy at forty three, mercurial and changeable, had deep wrinkles furrowing his brow with prominent veins standing out on his temples and a hooked nose. The scattered red blemishes around his eyes, a result of his alcohol consumption, crooked and tobacco-stained teeth set in a wide sensual mouth that was fleshy, like that of a woman, were witness to the kind of life he led. But his portrait, without a description of his eyes, would be incomplete. Mitsos had the heartless eyes of a man indifferent to those who loved him; they were light blue with a penetrating chill that reflected his inner coldness. His cold gaze betrayed an intense flow of energy that made known his desires and commands. He was a person who was difficult to stand up to and it was easier said than done to refuse to carry out his orders. Was it fear, was it respect or the timidity of the weaker in the presence of a stronger party, or all together, Sarantos did not know. What he did know was that he feared his father and was unable to confront him without aggravating the situation, whether he approached him gently or by raising his small stature in defiance to demand the obvious.
When Sarantos heard the iron garden door closing he ran up the steps and stood under the eve of the open bedroom door with the broken lock that however much his father took to slamming it shut the wooden door would always open again, exposing the interior of the room. His mother was standing next to the edge of the bed fixing her petticoat trying at the same time to tie the belt cord of her dressing gown with which she had tried to cover herself, without success. She turned round and looked at her first-born son. Her expression was one of weariness and despondence; her face was drawn, pale, her full lips trembling, something she tried to hide by biting them when she saw the young boy. Her eyes were wide open and there was a tear on the edge of her long lashes that she clumsily tried to wipe away. The gentle expression of her brown eyes fixed itself on Sarantos’ figure. Her look had the inner light that in some people is bestowed as a gift; a light that despite all the conflicts, disappointments and travails, there are those who in a strange manner manage to keep it going as if this inner flame was kept permanently alight by their soul.
The woman’s look validated the common expression that the eye is the window of the soul and Eleni’s soul was her children, a great source of motivating power that gave her the strength to be patient and to endure; to put up with her drunken husband whose unbridled sexuality tortured her and had become an unbearable yoke. She was unable to struggle against him to resist his constant sexual attacks. His mind, made irrational by wine, didn’t respond to her pleading. “Please, no, the children…!” Nor was he put off by her weak hands’ efforts to restrain him. In his condition her efforts to bring him to his senses, to shame him, were in vain. And yet she had married this man because she had fallen madly in love with him causing a huge rift with her teacher-father and her relatives who couldn’t fathom how the educated only-daughter could find common ground with the rough farmer, even with his, then, masculine good looks. Eleni had carefully hidden her worries from everyone so that she would not hear them say “We told you so, but you knew better”. Her pride had forced her to justify her choice and not to give the others the right to pressure her to take a decision that was, for her, not an option. She didn’t want to be the “town divorcee with three children”, an easy and permanent target for the gossips frequenting the cafés and other gathering places.
From the moment she failed to exercise iron discipline to prevent her companion from taking a second drink after the first one, and after the second, a third, a fourth, and so on, she had to pay for her inability to make a stand against him. Things did not change for her as the years went by. The situation remained the same, with the additional element of an explosion of extreme aggressiveness by her husband whenever she had even the slightest objection to his pressing sexual passion. Thus she swallowed her humiliation, again and again as she was turned into a sexual object, without her consent, without her willing involvement, wounded, feeling cheap and humiliated that the father of her children chose to completely ignore her own desires, her own beliefs, in order to satisfy his insatiable physical appetite. In order to overcome her embarrassment now Eleni started to compulsively clean non-existent dust from the icon of the Virgin Mary in the wall niche. Sarantos felt swamped by a wave of pity. He felt tenderness, a sensation of warmth for his mother Eleni interwoven with love and affection, raising the temperature of every molecule in his body, just as it did when he burned with frustration and anger whenever he overheard the conflicts taking place behind the closed bedroom door. Mother and son looked at one another without saying a word to break the silence in the room, and Sarantos was so wound up by the tension of the anger that fed his desire to do something, anything, to drive out the sadness from his mother’s eyes that his nails, clenched tight in his fists, bloodied his palms without his feeling anything as if this same silence with its pervading presence had contained the rhythm of his outburst. As his mother stood motionless the slanted rays of light that came in from the window made her face appear radiant, and she was so beautiful, despite her sadness and the shame in her eyes, that Sarantos froze in admiration and also in empathy. How could this woman with the angelic profile endure from the time that the boy could remember himself, this unpleasant situation, not reacting, not leaving his father, to find peace and tranquility? These unanswered questions constantly tormented his thoughts and only resulted in causing him permanent agony and stress.
His mother approached him, took his hand, lifting it to her face and pressing it gently against her still wet cheeks to wipe away her tears. Then she embraced him and stroked his unruly hair. They both sat down without speaking on the disordered bed, holding each other’s hand, looking at the objects around them, the mirror, the side table, the table under the window and the glass of water; objects to which the midday light’s play gave a magic dimension as its rays gently touched them. The smooth passing of day’s bright light into the evening’s shadows imbued them with a sensation of an illusion that the gloom of night would hide their secrets, thrusting them into obscure corners, invisible to everyone, corners that nobody would see or discover. They both daydreamed that they were gradually leaving themselves behind to go to another place where something else was waiting for them. The place to which they went was empty and bare, but it was their place of truth, it was their reality - a field of silence, uncultivated, profound, deeper still than their dream of escape which in the end didn’t offer them a way out but acted to strengthen their fortitude and bond.
The companionship of mother and son was able to lift them clear of the impasse, albeit temporarily, and to mitigate the harsh impressions on the person experiencing them and the person who was often the witness. They stood up, still clasping each others’ hand, perfectly synchronized, and squeezed together they descended the staircase to go into the kitchen. Huddled next to the lit fireplace Sarantos two young sisters looked at them with the wisdom of the whole world in their childish eyes. Their mother placed a kiss on each of their foreheads and, late now, started to lay the table. In order to change the mood Sarantos asked his mother “What happened with the school matter, Mother? I want to go to high school. Will you tell him to let me attend? I don’t want to spend my whole life working in the fields!”
His mother looked at him and said “You know your father and how stubborn he is. I promise you though that I’ll do what I can to change his mind. Decisions in this house, Sarantos, are not up to me, but I will try.”
Eleni then filled bowls with steaming hot lentil soup, took some olives out