Based on true events – a story in sequels

In the previous: Moving to Menidi, far from her family in Athens, plunges Sevasti into melancholy. The melancholy worsens after the birth of her first child.

Do you ask the sick person if he wants medicine?

The first day my mother left our house in Menidi, I had this big adventure with the baby crying, not knowing what was wrong and what to do. Fortunately, a good woman appeared, knocked on my door and helped me. When Telemachus returned from work, he found her there and learned about our day. The night passed, we slept and the next day he said to me: “Prepare your things, let’s go to your mother” and we stayed with my mother until the baby was eight months old. Summer came and we had to baptize her, so we went back to Menidi. Another four months passed and we celebrated her first birthday there. But it seems that by that moment he had made his decisions.

My husband didn't open his papers, he didn't say anything and he always confronted me with fait accomplis. But it seems he was suffering too. During the months I spent pregnant in Athens and then, when the child was born, he had to go up and down constantly for me, the baby and the house. At some point, he conceived the idea that we needed to move to a new house, in the city. Because when it was just the two of us, I didn't mind not having electricity or water. The situation was convenient, either we had an oil lamp or I went to get water somewhere with a jug. As for the clothes, my mother would take them, wash them, iron them and return them to me. But now, with a child, electricity and water had become an imperative necessity and with clothes it was not easy at all.

When we celebrated the baby's first birthday, he had already bought a house, all by himself, right next to my mother's house, in Agios Panteleimonas Ilissos, in Skala. He hadn't told me anything. After the birthday celebration was over, he said to me: "Do you want to go to Athens?"

"What should we do there?" I ask him. "Should we walk?"

"No, let's stay!" he tells me.

"Do you know," I said to him, "what kind of question are you asking me? Do you, blind man, want to see your light? What are you asking me? After you saw for yourself how difficult life is here!"

 "And where do you want us to stay?" he asked me again...

 "What do you want me to answer?" I say. "We need to be close to my mother to get help."

"Get ready," he tells me, "because that's where we'll stay."

"Where;"

"In Agios Panteleimonas, in Skalakia," he tells me.

But this was my neighborhood! No further description was needed, I knew exactly which house it was. “And why didn’t you tell me anything?” I asked him.

He said to me, "Hey, I had to pack things up, do a lot of work to make this happen. Let me surprise you! Now we just have to find a day to move our things."

And one day, a Sunday, we closed the house in Menidi and brought everything, since there weren't many things, to Neos Kosmos. We left the house in Menidi behind to have it as a summer cottage, to go with friends in the summer. And that's how we did it until we sold it, after the children grew up a bit.

My three children were two years apart. We lived in that house in Neos Kosmos for four years and my first son was born there. But when I was pregnant with my second son, we realized that this house was small, it couldn't fit all of us. It had a hallway and two rooms, that was it. I didn't have a living room there, only bedrooms in that house. But I was used to it, I liked being close to my family. I liked that my church, Agios Panteleimonas, was across the street from the house and nothing blocked the view of it from the window. I could go outside and be right in the church square. Every evening, Grandma Maria would come and take the children to play outside the church yard.

So when my husband said we were moving again to a bigger house, I was hesitant. I didn't want to go anywhere else because I was living a comfortable life. I said, "Where are we going?" and he said, "If you stay here, you'll be cramped for the rest of your life, with no space. In such a small space, we can't bring furniture." And I said, "Even if we don't have furniture, don't we always celebrate your birthday? Don't we always celebrate? I don't want to leave here."

But one Monday, I went shopping at the market that was held every Monday right in front of my house. There I met the young man of Agios Panteleimonos, who was called Mr. Pantelis, like the Saint. I said to him: “Hello, how are you?” I was smiling and had my eldest daughter by the hand because I always took her with me. My mother stayed at home with my youngest child, the little boy. I had a rounded belly because I was expecting another baby.

I went to church then, but I couldn't do it regularly because there were no diapers back then. When I did go, my daughter would pee and wet the floor and I felt ashamed. I used to put little diapers on the kids, but they didn't last very long. Of course, these nylon panties had come out for kids to wear over the diapers, but they were uncomfortable for the poor little kids. They didn't like them, they would get wet. Finally, imagine, because I couldn't keep up with my son anymore, I ended up leaving him naked inside the house, even if it was winter. I would say, "He'll do it and then I'll clean it up."

So, that day, I see Mr. Pantelis and I say to him: “How are you?” He says to me: “I’m looking to buy a house.” And I decided to tease him and jokingly say: “I’m selling mine!” Our house had been built on his father’s property, he was born on this plot. He, the churchwarden across the street from our house, was walking around our house looking for something to buy. But I didn’t know that, so I said it jokingly.

He took it seriously. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “Not at all,” I said. He said, “I want to buy it so I can go back to my father’s land, where I was born, to go back to my house.” I said to myself, “Wait a minute, this is a great opportunity because no matter how much money I tell him, he’ll take it.” So I said, “I’m serious. We’re selling it for one hundred and fifty thousand drachmas.” I knew the prices and how much houses were worth, and that for our standard of living, that was a lot of money.

“So much!” he said. “Yes,” I said, “because the house is ready and anyone can just walk in.” And that was true. But I told him to come at noon to talk to my husband about it. “I will come,” he said, “I will definitely come because I am very interested.” And he did come, but Telemachus had already come earlier because I had left some space. Mr. Pantelis asked me, “When should I come?” and I knew that my husband would be back around 2:00 p.m., so I told him to come at 3:00 p.m.

When my husband arrived, I said to him, "Shall I tell you the news? I sold the house!"

"Well, you're not suffering," he said to me. "Shut up," he said to me, "but what are you saying? You didn't want to leave the house and now you're telling me that you sold it?"

"I went and sold the house and sold it for a good price," I told him. "Don't talk at all," I told him.

"How much did you sell it for?"

"One hundred and fifty thousand."

"Hey, you're not suffering!"

And I told him: "Get ready because Mr. Pantelis is coming now to discuss it, and don't lower the price even a thousand. If you lower the price, we won't sell it. Keep what I said."

Mr. Pantelis came and said to him: “So and so your wife told me… Is it true?” And my husband said to him: “Yes, we are selling it”. “But for 150.000 drachmas…” he said with a complaint in his voice. “That’s how much I’m selling it. If you want to take it, take it, otherwise I’m not selling it!” We didn’t tell him that we wanted to move for the sake of the children. Mr. Pantelis wasn’t worried about the space, however, since he himself had three grown children and they would fit in our house. He was so eager to take the house that he accepted it, even though Telemachus wouldn’t budge on the price. They even prepared a preliminary agreement and he provided him with a down payment.

He was in a hurry to move into our house, since he was renting and wanted a house of his own. The only condition my husband set was that we be allowed a two-month deadline to find another house and move in. It was for the months of July and August. Then they went to a notary, drew up the contract and Mr. Pantelis handed over all the money. So, we started looking for a house. In the end, however, we didn't make a profit. We ended up paying more to move into this house, for one reason or another we kept giving money.

All we found at that time was a house in Koukaki for one hundred and eighty thousand, without being finished, it had many shortcomings. It was simply arranged into rooms, it was plastered, but it had no internal frames, it only had external ones. So at least it was locked and had a door. And the seller neither went below one hundred and eighty thousand, nor did he want to do any work.

Telemachus thought of it because he saw how much I liked the light that came in from all the windows when we saw it, how much I liked the view of Faliro and the Acropolis, he finally accepted it. To accept it, he took out a loan from the bank. That's why until the end of his life he didn't want to hear about banks. Because the bank is the biggest usurer and the official thief. Then he took out a loan of sixty thousand I think and I don't know how much it ended up being when he paid it off, because there's interest on interest and the money keeps growing. Not to mention that the bank mortgages your house, which means that if you can't pay, they take it.

We did a lot of work because we were under pressure from our buyer to move in less than two months. “Mr. Pantelis,” I said, “you don’t understand that I have three babies, two of them infants, one more on the way—and we found a house, but we found it unfinished. Give us a little more time to fix it up so we can move in. Don’t put a knife to my throat either. You have a house, for better or worse, you’re not going to end up on the street. Do us a favor, I don’t want to be on the street, I want to have a place to live.” He was a good man, he gave us another month, but not a day more.

Turning to my husband, I said: "If you don't put a floor in the house first, I won't go in, I don't care if it's wood or mosaic." All the houses I had lived in had concrete floors. And I had seen that it's very difficult when you have a family to do floor-related work, while you can do other things, of course.

And so it happened. Telemachus rushed and found the mosaic and installed it. It is an excellent mosaic because he knew a craftsman from Menidi who was well-known in the market, they called him "the king of mosaics". The craftsman came and asked me if I wanted a room with a real wooden floor. I told him: "No, no, I have babies and they pee and wood is not easy to clean. Not to mention that it wears out, it absorbs all the moisture. Install all the mosaic so I can mop it."

As for the designs, he chose whatever he wanted, he didn't even ask me, but I trusted him because he had done an excellent job in Menidi. He did all this alone, without other workers and very quickly. When the owner who lived on the first floor saw how nice it was, he got jealous, called him and did his own house too. He did the basement and the upper floor. The entire building now has mosaic. He even did the stairs, the common areas and the yard, even the sidewalk. We were the only house with mosaic on the sidewalk.

But then, the electricity company made holes in the sidewalk, the water company made holes, the telephone company - and they destroyed it. Shortly after we moved to Koukaki, in November of '59, my youngest son was born here. By that time, the house was now furnished and I was calm.

I knew that we would live our lives here.

(goes on)

photos fietzfotos, https://pixabay.com