Her life was never one glance, one reading, every now and then she would let herself pass through the abyss, dive into the depths with composure and remain calm, light the candle of the soul from the candlestick of the other world and let the hand of the archangel comb her hair. The illusions and chimeras had now disintegrated. Nothing awaited her at this age when time flowed much faster, and it was comforting that she had retained her love for music and books. The poem by Zacharias Papantoniou "The Cypress" had been memorized by the whole neighborhood. And how much, truly, it suited her when they heard her recite:
"E.ἶmy name isthe treeyou ἀfollow τor gramor τoras a prayerorς
thewhen ἀit is snowing ἀπthe orkindred spirit.
Εἶyes or spear ofyou blushed inthe αἷbut theorwest
MsI guard τthe Avisible
ἀπ᾿ τorν arefusal andI τorn eiirony.
Εἶyes, yesIas a celebrationὑs itῦ landscape ofthe However,ῦthe robe
pyou δὑto finish ἀcomaor his ordeal.
Εἶmy name isthe bell towerthe Fthe tothe This makes it a perfect choice for people with diabetes and for those who want to lose weight or follow a balanced diet.ῦ pain
MsI ya τIas a soulὑas much asyou ethey have a purposethe
means theyouς Thewords
MsI This makes it a perfect choice for people with diabetes and for those who want to lose weight or follow a balanced diet.youς aspirinoyouς or "My silence."
Now, as everything around her, past and present, revealed its true value, realizing the futility of earthly things and situations, certain that the value of life lies in the absence of pain and not in wealth or glory, she maintained a warm, human smile, faithful to “whatever one has in the bag of one’s heart nourishes one in the end.” She knew well that youth has the prospect of life and only life and old age death. Certainly, that distant youth did not lead her to the life she dreamed of, but at least she managed to live.
Well-brought up and an only child, Callirroe was unfortunate. Her soul, her heart, her thoughts, she owed everything to the landscapes of her childhood. In these landscapes she had gathered almost all the pieces of the puzzle that she would later call "my journey". She did not try to erase anything she had experienced, since she could not change the slightest bit of the past, nor did she ever believe that by looking a little more closely at herself, as she was advised, it would be possible to regain her lost unity with life. She lived all her years in the same place, always carrying the same burden, the same pain, but as time passed, she gave even in those bitter moments when everything around her had been shattered in the war, warmth and love in practice. It was she who did not let her heart harden. She didn't talk much; her lips had learned that silence sometimes heals more than words. In her house, which smelled of yeasted bread and mint, tired people found refuge, children who had forgotten what laughter meant, and she, little by little, rebuilt faith in humanity.
In the mornings she tended the pots on the windowsill, speaking softly to them with the certainty that they were listening. She watered the carnations in the flowerbeds carefully, caressing the wilted flowers before cutting them, as if apologizing to them. And when autumn came, she would show off the yellow chrysanthemums in the gazebo as one would show off a child who had been raised properly. The air around her, with such kind words, became sweet as syrup. She believed that people were like flowers; some bloomed in the sun and others needed a little shade to survive, like her begonias, hydrangeas, and ferns.
She had a special love for jasmine. Her father had planted it, just before he left for the front in Asia Minor. Under the window of her chamber, "may your sleep be fragrant, only daughter," he had told her. He was turning eight when she last saw him. He never returned. And since then, every time the jasmine bloomed, Callirroe would stand still in the yard for a while, breathing deeply, as if searching for not one, but many answers in its fragrance. She would climb as high as she could, hugging the window on its left side, and from there the staircase. It spread its scent more at night; and in those hours of silence, it seemed to her that she heard her father's footsteps on the cobblestones, she thought he was looking at her from afar, speechless, with his hands stained with dirt and blood.
The vine - old too - had been planted by her mother. It stretched out in the back yard on the dry stone wall. It cast shade on the paved area in the summer, the birds would gather, and when August arrived, it was loaded with grapes; large, golden berries, the whole neighborhood would eat. Even when it blows, a whisper can be heard among the leaves, it sounds like words of prayer, passersby hear it, they understand something from the old sayings, from the written and the unwritten. Sometimes, Callirroe would sit with her knitting under the vine. The leaves trembled slowly above her head, and when the sun passed through the cracks, a golden dust enveloped her, and whenever the thread wound around her fingers, as if someone else were holding it, her heart beat faster in her chest. On the other end of the thread, she felt her mother.
Images, sounds, touch, tastes, hearing, everything had the same mission, as if to have the right to remind you of the old days where you least expected it. They were used to hearing her sing softly, seeking solace sometimes in the depths of memory and sometimes in the bowels of futility not with bitterness, but with that sweet admission that what has passed, has passed. "Life," she said, "is not about asking what it owes you, but about telling it thank you for what you have endured."
Kallirroi kept many pages open, and they said that an almond tree that was next to the execution ground in Kefalia, would fly auroras all year round, and it was as if Giorgis, the unjustly murdered man, was returning, wearing his colorful shirt, riddled with bullets, but unbroken, he tells you, unbroken. In her dream, she hugged the almond tree that there, in its roots, held the story of Giorgis and the others. "Unbroken, everything that was loved, remains unbroken," she whispered, and she seemed to be speaking not only about him, but about their entire generation, which stood tall and unyielding in the war. In the evenings, when it blew, the wind passed through the branches, making the leaves tremble, and it was as if they were saying their names too, an eternal memorial to the heroes.
She had arrived at the cemetery last of all. All the world's complaints were dancing inside her. She barely managed to see his hands as the undertaker shoveled the lime as they were accustomed to. A hawk had passed in front of her, tearing through the mournful air, and in her pain, she believed it was the soul of Giorgis. As the dusk slowly faded the outlines, Callirroi silently swore to keep his memory alive, and she knew well that the new struggle was a difficult, lonely, but also necessary path, a joy and sorrow. And with this thought, she allowed a new strength to bloom within her, the strength to endure, to remember, to resist, keeping a passage open between the living and the others, whom she did not consider dead, those who accompanied her invisible, but always present, to live for those who were not caught up in the caravan of oblivion.
Forty-eight years had passed since then, and Callirroi had not ceased to spell out his name with every twinkling of a star, with every flutter of a hawk. They said that when the last bullet found him in the heart, a kestrel flew as if it had come out of the pocket where he kept his handkerchief folded into a triangle, and it was very beautiful, and immediately went and perched on the whitewashed chimney of his ruined ancestral home in Mesochoria near the house of Papa Vora. It was as if it had never been absent, sitting in the same place, a haunted, vigilant guardian. The entire village had ceased to wonder; they now considered it a sign, a sacred part of the place, like the windmills and the stone fountains. When they asked Callirroe about this, she would answer "there is light there, on the border between the lime and the sky, light, the one that souls hold on to when they don't lose their way."
For forty-eight years, Callirroi tried to save a name, his own, monologue: "My George, in a beautiful body stands a great soul and virtue dwells in a knowledgeable head" as his beauty and wisdom were in the middle leaves of the heart with the precious ones. It is that sometimes, because of a memory, you think the world becomes sweeter, more bearable. Her fingers had become like funeral wax and the wedding ring from the secret engagements - days of Occupation - having become one with the flesh, it was impossible to remove.
For forty-eight years he kept his image intact and with it the passions and reasons that accompanied it. Giorgis, with the dark blue single-breasted jacket, which fell somewhat loose on his shoulders – but who hadn't been left skin and bones from hunger and hardship back then – Giorgis with the round silver glasses, who hadn't left a mountain trail untrodden, from Selena to Limnakaro, Katharo and Dikti to join the resistance.
Forty-eight years have passed since that sad day. It was November 5, 43, when conspirators recruited by Sergeant Schubert for the "Hunters' Corps", led by Georgios Tzoulias, executed Giorgis and five other men in Tzermiadon, after first brutally abusing them in the worst possible way. Kallirroi never cried or mourned in public. It was a time when there was no shortage of dead people, they were in abundance, few houses were not dressed in black and no matter what neighborhood you passed by, you would hear obituaries.
It was enough for her to welcome him, always in her thoughts, smiling, to secretly open the door to the body, to get lost again in his arms even if it was a dream, and then, as they sat at the table, she let her fingers run over the map, marking the hidden paths, the peaks that lifted the snows and secrets, and then talking about sabotage, guerrillas, about the freedom that weighed down her large, but still weak wings. And she kept repeating to herself: "I'm a coward, Giorgi, I'm afraid of the signs of the sky, the wild beasts that eat our bread and with their magic scatter excess evil, excess death too, I judge Giorgi, it would have been better if no one had been born..." In her heart, Giorgi was not dead. He lived there, between the past and the present, there in the small everyday moments; in the sunlight that shone on the Lasithi mountains, in the chirping of birds, in the fading of the stars at night.
At forty, Giorgi, along with the wedding dress that he had not had time to finish or wear, put in a small suitcase that was not his, his single-breasted blue jacket, his blood-stained handkerchief folded into a triangle, a dry almond branch, his broken glasses and a photograph, the only one he had given her. He, overjoyed. All there, to remind her that struggle and betrayal do not fade with time. All there, because he believed that something more had to remain from those events, something more had to be said, even with his thoughts. The holes that the bullets had made before they were planted in his chest were visible on the jacket...
When the north wind blew, Callirroe would go out into the yard, untie her hair, raise her hands - you could say she was touching the stool of heaven - and whisper: "I never gave you up. Not to enemies. Not to oblivion, George. The old woman and the betrayal, the cause of your murder, even though your blood has a shame and a sin..."
And her mind would regularly wander, searching for the nonexistent shadow of George and would return, involuntarily, to their engagement a few days before the declaration of war. And she wanted to feel his whisper behind her, his breath familiar on her neck, and she never had to turn her eyes to recognize the voice, that voice was within her, deep, rooted, like roots in the soil. At such moments she seemed to be waiting for a movement, a sign, a sound.
So yesterday, while the north wind was blowing furiously, lifting as high as the roofs, whatever yellowed leaves it found in its path, Callirroi went out onto the porch, stood against the wind and, as if speaking to someone who was hidden nearby: “Someday, tomorrow, at an unknown time, such a wind will take me away… and who knows? Maybe in your own, unknown places we will meet again, Giorgis.” She said it without hesitation and with confidence, as if she knew that her voice could reach where restless souls wait.
She was approaching eighty. She was crawling along the street, walking so slowly that you had time to notice all the details about her, the cotton face, the hunched shoulders, the weak legs, the cane with the black silver handle, her stately pleated green skirt a little further back, the fabric buttons on her jacket, the watch and the gold cross. Every now and then she would stop, to straighten her body as much as she could, to take a breath, to exchange a greeting, to kiss the children with a candy or to raise her hand in a vague nod.
Everyone knew her. From the past. They said she had been beautiful, you could still see it - not only in the framed photo in her room, but in the way she stood, the way she looked others in the eyes, the clarity of her voice. She didn't talk much, but what she said always had meaning, her words made sense. She often went through the underworld, she preferred the hours when she had peace. Where exactly she went, no one knew. They talked about the cemetery, she had her reasons, and if anyone asked her, she would smile faintly and say: "Where they love me I go." And she would turn the corner, without any further explanation.
As lost as she was in the days when she was not accepted, so focused on the life that remained to her. In her life, full of chimeras that she had passed along with what she had dreamed, which may have been forever unrealizable, but in her half-extinguished gaze, the heart still dizzy from first love, seemed to be turning back again, all the early dreams, and it was consolation and ultimate hope, not madness.
And while she herself was passing the time, sometimes on the glass saucer with the spoon dessert and the seven-leavened rusk, and sometimes with the rose liqueur that she made herself, or with a red apple, he mercilessly devoured her. But isn't that how time is? It doesn't know how to turn back. What matters is that for her they weren't just habits. They were small occasions against oblivion, a way to give continuity to what was lost, without obituaries anymore. A rite of memory. A daily resistance in the courtyard of Haros, even though she saw in her loneliness with unbearable clarity, other dead people of hers, her father and mother, parading along with Giorgis. Even if the visions succeeded each other, even if they all became keys to unlock words, images, causes and motives.
That afternoon, only the newly arrived teacher noticed Callirroe when she passed the courtyard of the church of Saint Nicholas, in front of the commercial store of Mohianos and the dressmaker's shop of Finokalia. The sun was already setting behind the mountains, leaving the first streaks of autumn, shadows between the tiles and the parched walls, between the tombs and the trees, between the folds of Callirroe's long skirt. Something was pushing her to follow her with her eyes. Perhaps it was this sad light, which fell on her skirt and made her look like a woman from an ancient tragedy, perhaps her step, so determined in its weakness; perhaps again her somewhat otherworldly gaze.
She stopped at Tsarsi, near the former mansion of Landezou. A few meters below, next to the barber's door, amidst the abandonment and dust, a rosebush was blooming. It had taken root blindly, without care, without water, and yet it had spread branches and leaves all the way to the roof, a laden rose. And as if it held within itself everything that should have been forgotten, but was not, it was there, a memory that blooms stubbornly, even when everything around it withers. Callirroe reached out, touched a rose. For a moment she believed she heard a familiar voice. As if she owed her old girlfriend a memorial service, she pushed open the door, and went inside. The place had remained as it was when Melitini left, with the mirror cracked, the scissors in their place, a lock of hair forgotten in the comb, the bottle of alcohol on the shelf, the suction cups next to it, the jar that kept the leeches next to it, and over there, still open, the falsetto. At the sight of her, his gaze lingered for a moment longer, he froze completely.
Melitini had tried to end her life with her, when on New Year's Day of '44, she gave birth to a girl, the fruit of love with a German officer, "who may not have looked like the others, who was painful, who did not want war, but was a German" - that's how she said it herself, and very early on she understood that the place would not accommodate her. Her parents had died in '41. Callirroi was found not only to save her from that abduction she went to do, but also to really help her. She stood by her without judging her and without asking anything. Immediately in the following days she made sure to move first to Kera, then to Krasi, from there to Gouves, Karteros and then to Heraklion, recommended from house to house to be safe. She remembered how she had shared with her the fear, the silence but also the certainty of love. She had left at night, with the baby in her swaddling clothes, but even when she arrived in Heraklion, she didn't stay long. The following year, she took the ship to Piraeus, went to a city that, as they said, after the last Allied bombings, devastated from end to end, seemed to be holding its breath. Every encounter, every glance, was a game of identities, bad memories and fear, as happened almost everywhere in Greece. After wandering around for a while, she found a house somewhere and a happy elderly couple near the Holy Trinity, who kept her with them. It is not excluded that these people also gave her the name of their daughter, who perhaps after the bombings had not declared her loss at the registry office so as not to be deprived of the meager food that the ration offered.
Details about how she arrived in a village in Serres at the end of the civil war, Callirroi did not know. In the one and only letter she had received, Melitini referred to the difficulties she had gone through, which were many, but she praised the kindness of the people who embraced her with so much love without asking for anything in return and praised their patience and kindness. In that same letter, she emphasized her surprise at the photograph of a girl, "she looked a lot like Martha, that interpreter, whom you had given your body to stay with" so she wrote, but she had not asked, for fear of getting involved in greater adventures - she had seen the photograph framed, on the sideboard of the dining room, in this house in Piraeus. But she wrote much more about the long trip to Australia.
Thus, Callirroi learned, what happened in 1957, when the Spanish ship "Begonia" docked in Melbourne carrying those famous nine hundred brides, each with a worn suitcase and dreams of a better life; among them was Melitini with her daughter, whom she presented as a niece orphaned by the war, with a different name and surname. Callirroi had not spoken about her friend's adventure. She kept her mouth shut until the newly arrived teacher arrived. Now she was sitting in the chair again, and it seemed as if she was waiting for a hand to touch her shoulder, a voice to tell her something.
The door opened a second time, almost silently, despite the weight of rust on the hinges. The newcomer crossed the threshold hesitantly. Callirroe in the chair, her hands resting on her knees, her eyes still fixed on the falchion, a falchion open like a wound.
The teacher, upset, did not speak, she delayed the moment by holding her breath. However, Callirroe's voice came as if answering a question that had not been asked: "With her, Melitini went to cut the thread of her life. New Year's Day of '44. In here..."
The newcomer felt a chill. It wasn't fear, something deeper, perhaps respect. She didn't come any closer; she remained silent, in the shadow cast by the rose bush through the threshold. Callirroi again didn't turn to look at her. She didn't need to. "I loved her. She was my best friend. The barber's daughter. Quiet, innocent, she didn't know fear or traps. She loved a German, during the Occupation. An officer, different from the others, he shared his bread with the children, secretly. He didn't abandon her, the unfortunate man was killed, he was killed. No more words are needed." She stopped for a moment. Her fingers rubbed her knees, unconsciously. "He only sent me one letter and one photograph. Only one..." the voice trailed off. The teacher had now come somewhat closer. She was looking at the falsetto. The chair. The cracked mirror. Callirroi.
"I never saw her again. Neither she nor the child. Only this letter, a photo of her, and a weight on my soul."
When she left the dilapidated barbershop, she didn't look back. Dragging the shadows, she crossed the threshold. Without further words, she left room for silence and continued towards Anyfadiano. An uphill route for her age, but perhaps she hadn't been accustomed to a lifetime of uphills? Her breathing seemed to synchronize with the rhythms of the earth, with the secrets that the old neighborhoods held, with the shadows that played on the facades of the houses. Every step a memory that echoed; the sound of the bell, the laughter of her childhood, the voices lost in the war, her first love and the despair that followed it.
She stopped for a moment at the stone fountain in Panagia, greeted Haziraina and the Chlouverianes, filled her handfuls with water, let it drip onto the ground. Then she looked at the sky. It hadn't gotten dark yet. Her eyes were blurry. She gently stroked them as if she were caressing them, as if with this slight but tender touch she could see or discover something, another meaning perhaps. She continued, outside the alley of Spanakis, Stergios came to her mind, she cut a basil branch, smelled it, he was also in the Resistance, she went out to Papadis's portego and from there to Kokolakis, measuring her stamina and will, she was about to reach the far neighborhood. Every corner spoke to her, reminding her that life, even with all its burden, is worth continuing.
They said that since she was little she had the gift – she “knew” about the evil and the deadly that was about to happen, her hands smelled of incense, her veins flew like snakes, forming letters, and when she looked at her wrinkled fist – as if it were a mirror – she saw faces saying goodbye to her. When her mother died, she had felt it, she had seen it from the evening. And when they caught Giorgis, where she was sitting on the terrace sewing her wedding dress, without emitting a sound, she understood something, she felt over the beating of her own heart, first the warmth from his body that had become fragile like glass and immediately his blood warmer. She stood up, almost losing her balance, she staggered back and forth. She felt a foreign presence inside her stealing everything beautiful from her. She packed the sewing supplies in the box and dressed in black, eight days before he was executed, she was so sure. She knew that marriage was not meant to happen.
And when everything around her seemed to fall silent and only the mournful sound of the bell could be heard, the soul, for some reason, wanted not to stop dreaming.
If you approached her, at the seam of the cardigan, you would smell dozens of Sundays - of those old ones - green soap, a festive table, baubles, apple, cinnamon and cloves.
If you looked into her eyes, you would see, along with the seas she never traveled, the shipwrecks she had sunk to their bottom.
And yet she remained standing. It didn't matter that she walked slowly, as if she were measuring the road backwards, not from the present to the future, but from the end to the beginning. And as she approached the end of her life, each step was a return.
It had been years since she had gone up to her old neighborhood, to her mother's ancestral home. Her hands trembled as she turned the iron key, not so much from the weight of age, but from that other weight, the weight of those who didn't have time to catch a word. The door opened and closed behind her with a dull creak, almost reluctantly. She stood still for a moment, one hand on the archway and the other on her cane, needing support to keep from falling. She walked slowly towards the window. She opened it with difficulty, feeling the air come in like a stranger, like someone who didn't know if she still had a chance of being welcomed.
Her gaze wandered around the space. Once upon a time, her life had flourished there. Conversations, arguments, evening meetings, plans and dreams that spoke of freedom. Now, every object had become a witness to a long silence. The room was silent, with the heavy smell of the closing door pressing on her chest. Every corner seemed to have held Giorgi's breath. The clock on the radio stopped. Only the dust, as old as the memories, insisted on being there – covering everything in a delicate, almost reverent way. No matter how forty-eight years had passed, the embrace of separation had not faded. His voice still echoed in her ears. It was time. He had not come to dig wounds. He had come to close them. If only he could. He had come not to remember, but to reconcile and say goodbye.
In the second movement, he opened the old suitcase. He touched the folded jacket, the scarf. He took the photograph, brought it to his lips. He bowed to it like icons, his eyes filled with salt. Two or three breaths, he sighed deeper, with more complaint, he turned the photograph over from the back. The ink had faded. He was reading - but he wasn't sure if he was reading or if he was remembering: "My dear, I have nothing else to keep me company, only the thought of you, every day, every night, in every moment. And if I don't make it, you stay, if there is a place elsewhere, don't forget me and there I will wait for your sake." The voice broke, small syllables, a glass that cracked abruptly. The look at the photograph had not changed. The same sun in his eyes, the same promise.
She closed her eyes. The cold wind blew in stronger. This north wind. The same one. Like then. And how strange, an almond blossom came out of nowhere and after swirling around for a while, it sat like an ivory pin on her chest. And then, the hawk, a kestrel, opposite the collapsed wall, calm, motionless, looking at her as if it had been waiting for her for years.
Callirroe smiled, without complaint. She tilted her head to her shoulder, a thick fog enveloped her, her eyelids were heavy. In the silence, a distant sound of water. The light around her changed, softer, warmer. Thoughts scattered, like leaves that dry up. Only one thought remained floating; and it was none other than the peace of belonging where you no longer have to wait. For a moment, she thought she heard someone calling her by her name, "My Callirroe," but she didn't know if it was a voice or a memory...
The newly arrived teacher found her in the morning, lying on the wooden divan chest that held her unused dowry. Her wedding dress, yellowed by the weather, with the threads hanging down like she had left them in the war, was spread out in a blanket on her shoulders. She was holding the photograph of Giorgis in her hand, her gaze somewhat sad, directed elsewhere. The light was slanting through the narrow window, piercing the small particles of dust. The first rays of the sun formed thin lines in the air, illuminating niches and small things, and you could tell they were fragments of forgotten stories that were briefly awakened before being lost again in the eternity of a strange silence.
However, her time had not yet come...
The ondas had been left empty since the German Occupation, when another teacher, Martha was called, about forty years old, had come from Alexandria with that old suitcase, an interpreter for the Germans for many, a liaison for the Resistance for those who really knew it well.
"It still smelled, along with the confinement, of loneliness, dry sage, but also something else, more subtle, a cool breath here and there. The stones on the walls had memorized, along with the wild voices of a foreign language, words and vows of love, and secrets. And the mirror on the wardrobe door still held the dim reflection of someone caressing Callirroe's hair and praising her, while in the distance there was another shadow, a shadow also holding a suitcase. I felt that something inside me had moved. I didn't feel fear. I felt familiarity. As if I wasn't arriving there for the first time, but returning..." this is how the newly arrived, appointed teacher in the village would describe it, who was also to stay in the Kallirroi village, "even if temporarily, until something else is found," as he had begged her to do.
So, the next day, after Callirroe had recovered, he not only gave her the space to make herself comfortable, but he also told her the middle and end of her story, and when some instinctive voice had made the teacher's heart beat like old clocks and a disturbance took hold of her, her mind ran straight to her mother.
The first night, a shadow seemed to wander the room, searching for, what? She didn't know. But she, too, wandered, searching for a sign that she was worth staying or a good excuse to leave.
It was that first night, when she left her own suitcase on the sofa chest, that she noticed the other one, the old one, dusty, with a ribbon on the handle. She brought it to the table, bent down and blew the dust off. She opened it slowly. She felt as if she was stealing something from the past. She held the photograph up to the light. She read those few words. Although the letters were faded, the words had the same power. She spelled them three times. She understood the pain they were inflicting on Kallirroi, she was shaken, but she did not cry. She did not feel any sadness either. A calling, though? As if someone else, from the depths of time, was whispering to her, "you can choose."
Carefully placing the photo inside the suitcase, he noticed that on the inside, on the lining, there was a pinned note. In almost childish letters, "take me with you, mom."
The moonlight fell strangely, the same gaze that seeks to touch something hidden. The night seemed to follow her breath, a breathless breath that passed by changing everything it touched. She approached the narrow window hesitantly. She didn't know why, but she felt that everything there was looking at her in and out. Not with hostility. Not with curiosity. Perhaps with some anxiety, as someone waits for a truth to be revealed. And as the lights flickered, a nightingale emerged from the dense foliage of the ivy, and like a whisper that took shape, it glided up to the skylight. She approached carefully, as if she were passing into another world. Her breath made the air tremble. She didn't know why, but she felt that the light itself was watching her; that the objects around her - the embroidered curtain, the vases, the old oil lamp, the lamp, the wall, the picture frames - were all watching her, not threateningly, nor with curiosity, but with the anxiety of those awaiting a revelation.
At one point, a flash touched her face. A shiver ran through her from her nails to her head. Her eyes, two amber flames, were reflected in the glass; she felt that her eyes searched for something, a trace, a name perhaps that she had once known, and there, where only a minute had slipped by the disorder of time, that window seemed to remember.
She stopped, her thoughts a tangle of silver and black threads. She turned her eyes to the suitcase with kindness. “The touch, the touch,” she thought as the first thing that came to her mind was touch. Previously, on its frayed surface, she had noticed some deep scratches. “It seems like this suitcase is also aging along with Callirroe,” she mused and fell exhausted to sleep.
In the suitcase, a blue jacket, a scarf, an almond branch, a pair of glasses, a photograph, a wedding dress and a childhood note. She had held them all in her hands, they did not belong to her, but they were asking for her, she felt it. She examined the almond branch and it was as if she had experienced the moment when the spring of life met the winter of a long absence.
A clap of thunder had announced the coming of the rain. Of one thing she was certain. Callirroi's ondas was not just a chamber. It was a bridge of memory, pain, nostalgia and open accounts with the past and she had been called by a strange game of Fate, to live in a charged space, which asked her to get involved, to listen, perhaps even to continue something. This note with the children's letters, this "take me with you mom" was not only addressed literally to some person from another era. "A call to the future, an offer of a truth that must not be left behind" she closed her eyelids heavily.
Under the wings of death, the thought of Callirroe had begun the same journey.
He remembered...
October 8, 1943, a night with freezing air, Giorgis was panting in the cold. He smelled of smoke and dirt. It was time to speak. She had covered his mouth with her hand, "you don't need to say anything, if you're going to die, kiss me first" he hugged her but didn't kiss her.
On October 28, 1943, Giorgis, in his last meeting with Martha, said that he felt a burning sensation in his palm, not necessarily pain, but something else inexplicable. And Martha, however, had said that from their first handshake, but more so in the one that was to be the last, it was as if a part of his life was passing through her, like an intimacy that he was unable to interpret.
November 4, 1943, Giorgis, dressed as a groom, slowly descended the stone steps. His eyes were full of bats. He knew, maybe that's why he dressed as a groom, so that Callirroi could keep his image.
Two women, Callirroe, on the threshold of eternity, feeling the anguish of the young soul, as if she were waiting for this hand to unlock her exit from the vanities of the world, and the teacher who had not slept, but had decided to confront this past, to become its partaker herself, to unite the silences, to give voice to the forgotten, to become the link between trauma and catharsis... The memory of her mother made her eyes water. Her lips murmured her name, "Anna" sounded like a plea. Her heart tightened.
By dawn, the rain had washed everything away. As if there was nothing left to hide, the new sunrise rose on the horizon.
In the days that followed, the suitcase was opened and closed dozens of times; a suitcase would become the occasion for the unspeakable to find a voice. As she touched the engraved marks, the red lining, and tried to understand what story, what truth it was asking to be told, she always left that childhood note last, and there were moments when she felt like a great river was changing course from the ends of the sky to the earth to meet her, to speak to her about episodes that had been lost, about hugs that had not themselves defined the end, about words that remained hidden in the folds of a wedding dress or in the corner of a photograph. The teacher observed, feeling that she herself had now entered a space where time did not flow like outside, but in circles.
New Year's Eve. It had started snowing early. In every flake that falls, in every silent moment, in every roof that turns white, a promise is born. Somehow, some hearts can find a way to see the world again with different eyes and life from the beginning, somehow, the new year is nothing more than a blank page open and available, because the most beautiful things are those of the heart that has not thrown anything into the well of oblivion. Somehow, the world becomes childlike again, fragile and ready to be rewritten.
New Year's Eve. A beautiful, well-groomed woman, around fifty, steps steadily off the intercity bus that has just arrived from Heraklion, on the Lassithi Plateau. She is wearing a camel coat. Her brown leather boots leave marks on the first layer of snow. A thick scarf wraps around her neck, leaving only her face visible. She holds a small suitcase in one hand and a box of sweets in the other.
A few meters further, at the end of the street, Kallirroi stands in front of Siki's closed tailor shop. The wooden shutters and the heavy door show signs of wear and tear. The tailor shop is not just a space either; no, it is also a mirror of memory, since it was there that Giorgis had his jacket sewn, and it was there that she had bought the necessary materials for her wedding dress. A sneak peek inside, every shelf, every ball of fabric, every spool of thread, every needle remembers...
A second glance at the street has already captured the elegant woman approaching. It only took a brief glance for her to understand the kinship with the teacher. In the next, she was surprised, the physiognomy seemed somewhat more familiar to her. A strange feeling of mixed familiarity and embarrassment nested within her, as if another memory with a different name was suddenly awakening, but she had the same eyes, the same melancholy intensity, as if a familiar shadow that had been left behind for years was now coming back.
A little later, the teacher was lost in her mother's arms with tears of joy. There, as they embraced, her gaze fell on Martha's old suitcase. Even though it was worn out, there was no need to take a second look, the color, the size, but more so the ribbon that was tied around the handle. A breath betrayed her, not heavy, but sharp, quick, a gasp and time had begun to gather inward, until only she was left obeying the dictates of the moment.
A little girl of thirteen, her father missing at the front, her mother, a cultured woman, leaving, "for the good of our homeland, for freedom, my Anna," her last words, just before the iron door of the Girls' School closed. "Take me with you, Mom," that little phrase, now, so many years later, not as a memory, but an alien present. A knot that had not been untied. She felt a truth revealing itself with the simplicity of the undeniable. Martha's suitcase was here, and she, her daughter, had just bent over her memory and its marks. "Martha's suitcase, my mother's," came out of Anna's lips breathlessly.
"Martha" the very word sounded painful. Martha. Had she been lost during the Occupation? On the streets or in the mountains, no one knew for sure. Some said she had been executed on some secret mission; others that she had been killed somewhere on the border, back then during the Civil War. Nothing certain. Only that last phrase: "For the good of our homeland. For freedom"—words that inspire awe, but most often leave orphans behind.
Callirroe opened her arms, held them both, hiding her sobs. She didn't need to ask anything. The snow was falling thicker now. Every conversation part of a revelation. Martha's suitcase wasn't just luggage. It was the unspeakable that was returning. A secret legacy that changed hands. Martha's suitcase, all that was left of a life cut in two. An old suitcase, a childhood note and something else, a letter closed in the recess of the double bottom. Not necessarily what Anna wanted. But what she needed. Bending over, she caressed the frayed suitcase. She touched the ribbon, she once wore it in her well-combed hair. She found the note, she cried. And the letter! She was shaken, feeling as if her mother had never left; that she had simply been waiting, for so many years, for the right moment, here to find her again.
On New Year's Eve, as the snow softly covered the tiles, cobblestones and roofs and the shadows thickened around, three women - Callirroi, Anna and her daughter - sat at the festive table, and among them were familiar shadows, the faces who had not had time to say their last goodbye. On the other hand, after forty-eight years, the same table set with the same woven tablecloth, the same clay plates, the same mugs, the same silver jug, all with small details where memory has a right, details, the ones that make the simple seem sacred. Among them, apples, quinces, almonds, walnuts and a king's pie.
That New Year came full of emotion, as if it wanted to cover up old wounds. An invisible clock struck twelve times in the darkness. Each strike seemed to signify not so much the coming of a new year as a new roll call of names.
That New Year's Eve, the newly arrived teacher leaned next to her mother. At such moments, emotion writes and is written. The room was lit only by the flames of the fireplace and the candles flickering on the table. In her hands, the teacher held the letter. The paper was thin, almost transparent, Martha's letters, calligraphic, in ink, with a certainty that left no doubt that she believed what she was writing. Anna watched with moist eyes, perhaps seeing Martha's face through her daughter's face. The teacher's voice trembled: "If you ever find yourself holding this suitcase, if you ever happen to carry the burdens, dreams and struggles of those who came before you, remember, my child, that what we leave behind is not lost; it only changes place and time sometimes, just as snow, which melts and becomes water, flows, travels, can reach from a tiled roof to the sea, but the moment comes when it becomes sky again. So are people and their struggles. In the cycle of life, everything returns in other ways. May the wind of peace blow in your own years. Do not be afraid if you have to walk in difficult times; every era tests its people. And if the time comes for you to fight for freedom, do not hesitate for a moment. Do it with faith, with pride, with my wish, for our homeland, for humanity, for the truth. Do not hold on to anything that weighs you down. Memories, wounds, mistakes, all have their reason, but they are not meant to be carried around forever. Keep only love. This is the only thing worth saving, the only thing that remains when everything else ends. Do it with my wish, for our Greece. I kiss you. Your mother, Martha Verbini"
As the words flowed through the air, Martha's voice seemed to echo now, in the space. After so many decades, as if it had returned like breath, like a look that embraced all three of them, Martha's surname was heard for the first time in that being. One letter, unexpectedly, brought to light lost relationships, wounds and continuities, and as the heartbeat slowed to fade in the silence and memories came back to life, every name that was heard was a challenge.
Clearly upset, Callirroe opened Erotokritos. Within its pages, she searched for Melitina's letter. She put on her presbyopic glasses, bent over the folded envelope. "Po-ly-mni-a Ver-bi-ni" she read syllabically, with trembling lips...
"Me too, that's what they call me, my name is Polymnia, my dad called me Poly, but my mother's family was called Verbini..." the newly arrived teacher said, shocked.
"Yes, Polymnia Verbini, my aunt, sister of my mother, Martha, the one who was killed in the last bombing of Piraeus, in the Home Economics School..." Anna added with difficulty, and without hiding the knot that was choking her, "perhaps we didn't find ourselves here tonight by chance..."
It's that memory knows who we are before we do, and comes to remind us of it, the moment we are truly ready to listen.
It's just that, for some memories, we never find the right words.
It is that, sometimes, it returns to open new chapters.
It is he who weaves with invisible silken threads the faces that have been lost, to bring them back when you least expect it.
She always finds her way, even if she has to return with an old suitcase in her hand.
It's that memory, sometimes, asks for nothing more; only to be heard.
Kallirroi, calmly took two steps, then sat down on the chair in front of the window, near the fireplace. Holding in her hands the half-sewn wedding dress, more of a shroud now, she fell asleep, and dreamed that she was young and that she was waiting for Giorgis, like then, like in the past, like always. Instead of him, two women with dark eyes, very pale, Martha and Melitini came and shook her hand, "the time has come, friend."
Callirroe stood up in the dream, put on her wedding dress...
In the morning, light filtered through the embroidered curtain. One ceremony had just ended; another was just beginning.
The air smelled of melting wax and roses.
They say that when the north wind blows, women's voices are heard whispering names and that the air is filled with the scent of old dreams.
Perhaps they are always women; the invisible weavers of time. With their fingers they move silently over white threads, they pass the shuttles with the colored bobbins through the warp of life, they weave stories back and forth through time, the footsteps of the loom are heard, they stay awake on the back of the night, to partake of light, tomorrow in the time of love. They ask for nothing, only that something remains standing in oblivion, a smile, a song, a warm look, a touch, a photograph, a tear, a word.
And perhaps then, on that New Year's Eve, Callirroe admitted that her whole life had been a libation; not with wine and honey, but with tears and love. A libation to the people who had been lost and yet insisted on returning through signs, through objects, through the small details that unite souls. The old suitcase was nothing but the sacred vessel of the libation; within it were kept the heavy drips of time, the voices that were not lost, the promises that were not revoked. Just as in antiquity they emptied the clay cup towards the earth to validate their bond with the Divine, so too she, Callirroe, with her touch on the suitcase, sealed the continuity of her generation, offering to the light what she kept and what she loved. Because memory, like wine, is not lost in such a libation; it is transformed into a bond, into a secret bridge between the worlds. Callirrhoe, the priestess of an invisible ceremony; where women dedicate the libation to the sun, and instead of a tear, they hold the thread of the continuity of life and the thread unfurls to the sky, reminding us that nothing true is lost.
Every time someone opens an old suitcase, those women return. They breathe in the folded clothes, the faded letters, the frayed lining and the photographs with crumpled margins. They are the voices that whisper that nothing is wasted, as long as there is someone to remember, as long as a secret tension draws you to leaf through the notebook of a melancholy whose label reads in capital letters "LIFE IS A JOURNEY."
We learn again to look back, not with sadness, but with gratitude. To hold on to what illuminates from yesterday, the love that persists, the faith that does not fade, the hope that is reborn, the humanity that unites us. Because, in the end, these women are none other than ourselves, when we decide to move forward against oblivion, because the old suitcase we carry does not only have objects and memories, but also dreams, and what we learn and feel.
You cry...
"That's why I, and tomorrow, will belong to yesterday, to yesterday..." a flutter and a whisper in the night that broke.
Tomorrow, in the name of love
Life of Diktao
Corfu, November 6, 2025
photo Tama66, https://pixabay.com
