September 2012
onestory.gr
68 Charis Gantzoudis ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
He was sitting stil on the armchair. His gaze was lost. He was
breathing heavily. For the last six months, he was covered in
silence. His body felt numb. He was half in size, as if the
armchair was sucking him in day by day. The slightest move
caused pain. The only moves he al owed himself to do, was
raising his hand and grabbing the lighter from the smal table.
He lit one cigarette after another. Elpida, his wife, emptied his
ashtray every now and then. Depression was what the doctor
had said.
April 2011. His boss cal ed him into his office to announce to
him that he was fired. For a year, the factory’s turnover had
been more than halved. So Christophoros was sacrificed in the
name of the financial crisis and the cutbacks. It was not even
out of the blue. For a while now the workers were leaving one
after another. He shouldn’t even be complaining. His boss had
kept him until the end. And not unfairly. He was working there
for almost twenty years and was one of the hardest working
employees, but as said: crisis, cutbacks. .
But Christophoros hadn’t given up without a fight. He begged,
fell on his knees, he didn’t even hesitate to cry in front of him,
but the only thing he achieved, was to get his boss’ sympathy,
but not to keep his job. When he got home, he wouldn’t talk to
anyone. Elpida tried without any success to understand what
was going on. From this day on he didn’t talk to anybody. He
locked himself up in his room and the only thing he asked
from his wife were his cigarettes. Not even his son managed to
get him out of the hole he had fal en into. Christophoros
avoided looking at him. He felt embarrassed. There was
nothing he could offer him anymore. Al these years he was
working fifteen hours a day so his family could have
everything. But a little while before his forty eighth birthday,
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everything changed. He couldn’t cover the house expanses,
nor pay for his twelve year old son’s extracurricular activities.
The bank notifications for the delay in the payment of the
mortgage loan were coming in one after another and Elpida
hid them in the kitchen cupboard so he wouldn’t see them. Not
that he hadn’t noticed. One day when he heard the bell, he
asked his wife who it had been and she said it was the mailman
who gave her some flayers of cosmetic products, he looked her
in the eyes and said that if the house would go into
foreclosure, he would commit suicide.
Elpida tried unsuccessful y to fix his mood by inviting friends
over, in pretext of events, like birthdays or anniversaries, that
no one ever remembered before. Christophoros was living in
his own world. His mind surrendered to thoughts of despair.
“What wil I do now?”. ” I am lost”. ”There no way I wil find a
job at this age”. “I ruined my wife and son’s life”.
This last thought tortured him most. The fact that he couldn’t
offer what he had to to the people most important to him,
crushed him. Every now and then he had an ironic smiles on
his lips, when he remembered the words he had said to his
wife when her father was giving her away as a bride in the
church: “from this day on you wil be my princess”. He
couldn’t forgive himself that his princess had turned into
Cinderella, having to clean rich people’s houses so they could
at least have everything that was essential.
One day Elpida entered his room. She said she would take the
child to the doctor because he felt a discomfort in the stomach.
She asked him if he’d like to accompany them. She was hoping
to get him out of the house for a while. Besides, it was a good
opportunity for the three of them to go for a strol . The
weather was so good, that a strol after the visit to the doctor
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would be perfect. It would do good to al of them and mostly to
their son who had total y lost the connection with his father.
Many nights, he asked his mother why Christophoros was
acting like this and she reassured him that it was a phase that
would go away and that his father just needed a little more
time to conform to the new ways. But Christophoros didn’t
seem wil ing to return to his son and wife anytime soon. Yes,
to return, because even if he hadn’t left physical y, his soul
was closed in a black box of despair which the psychologist
confirmed: “Depression”. Once more, her tries didn’t have any
result. He didn’t even turn to look at her. His gaze didn’t move
from the window he was looking at for hours as if hypnotized.
A few hours later Elpida entered his room once again. She was
holding a tissue in her hands. Her eyes were swol en from
crying. For a few minutes there was complete silence. Only
their breaths were stretching out across the ceiling. The
silence was interrupted by the woman, trying to clear her
throat, stating that she would start talking.
“Our child has a kidney problem. He wil need a transplant”
she said with a voice as stable as she could keep it, instantly
stood up from the bed and quickly left the room. She went into
the kitchen and burst into tears. He fol owed her.
“What did you say?”.
“What the doctor told me” she answered, while wiping her
eyes.
“But how? What happened?” he wondered and went on: “and
what can we do now?”
“I wil do everything I can to save our child. You can go back to
your armchair” she replied strictly and stood up to leave the
kitchen. He stopped her. He looked her deep in the eyes and
she understood that this was his request of forgiveness for his
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behaviour. They hugged tightly and both of them burst into
tears.
“I want to ask you for forgiveness” he told his son whist sitting
at the edge of his bed. “I missed so many moments with you al
this time. But from now on, I promise, we will make up for the
lost time”.
“I have something serious don’t I dad?” he took him by
surprise “I saw it in mom’s eyes when she came out of the
doctor’s office”.
“Whatever it is, you wil surpass it. And now you wil have us
both by your side”. Father and son hugged and wouldn’t let go
of each other. They had both missed this connection so much.
Elpida, through al the pain because of the child’s condition,
was standing in the doorstep, flaunting.
One year later, al three of them took a walk in the park, fil ed
with happiness. Christophoros’s and Elpida’s son had a
successful transplant and was absolutely healthy. Elpida,
thanked God day and night that she had come out of this
adventure stronger and final y had the two men of her life
healthy and strong next to her. Christophoros’s son’s health
problems and the fear of losing him woke him up from the
slumber he had been in and made him see the important
things in life and also the strength his son showed, taught him
to never give up.
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