My first day at elementary school, in mid September 1969, proved to be a rather disagreeable experience: I had never been with so many children together before, and I felt like a fish out of water. However, the other pupils seemed to have no problem at all. As soon as I realized that I was going to be glued to a desk for hours, away from my friends and my games in the street, I decided to play truant in the very first break. I approached a girl and told her to come home with me. She was worried that a teacher might see us (so what?), but I finally persuaded her. “If the bell rings, we are finished!” she kept murmuring all the way home and I couldn't understand why she was so afraid. When we arrived, the girl left at once and I lied to my mother that classes had been dismissed. However, after an hour or so, a boy from the sixth class showed up and took me back to school.
A few days later, when I returned from school, I noticed there was something different about our house: Until the previous day, we had been living at 30 Nereid st., in the north of Glyfada. However, all the numbers in our street had just changed and from then on we would be living at number 13. I knew the superstition about the unlucky number, I felt a little uneasy, but I refused to regard that as a sign of fate.
Anyway, I soon got used to the school routine. I particularly singled out Fotis Armaos, a boy in my class, whom I liked a lot: He was a tall, blond, nice kid and an excellent student. Two or three times I ran to him and hugged him, but he found it strange and tried to avoid me. Once he shouted at me: “Leave me alone! I'm Captain Kirk! Captain Kirk!” I preferred to keep a distance ever since.
Nevertheless, I am sure that the feeling of being targeted got stronger and stronger ever since I started school. For some strange reason, it was not easy for me to get into groups of children and play with them. In fact, they didn't show any willingness to include me in their games. Once, I spent the whole break watching a group of girls playing skipping-rope. More and more girls joined the game, I kept on asking them to let me play too, but they didn't even deign to answer. Only when I went to the teacher and complained, did they finally let me play -just for a few seconds; then, the bell rang.
The first friend I got at school was Duchess, a very beautiful girl with voluminous black hair falling to her shoulders. I had not at all noticed her worn out clothes and shoes, nor did I care about her complete incapability of learning. Three months had already passed, but she could not write a word, not even the alphabet. All the other children avoided her -and me as well.
One day, another classmate approached and talked to me during the break: it was Louise Hoidas, a short, chubby, curly-haired girl, who suggested I should get rid of Duchess and join her large party. She explained that the other children didn't want to play with me because of Duchess and that if I left her, I would find lots of friends. Soon I became the object of a funny tug-of-war: Louise was pulling my right sleeve and Duchess the left one, until I decided to follow Louise.
Some days later, Louise didn't want my company anymore, although we still sat together, at the same desk. As about Duchess, she was never seen at school again. I didn't manage to find any other friends during the rest of the year, so I spent most of the breaks wandering alone in the school-yard; and more often than not, I bumped upon those nasty African girls who never lost a chance of making fun of me.
I am not at all sure whether the teacher liked me or not. Once, Louise and I were talking continuously during the lesson; at a moment, we both laughed at a picture of a crab in our reading-book. The teacher was annoyed, she yelled at both of us but whacked my palms four times with her wooden ruler. It hurt a lot, a lot more than I had expected; I burst into tears and didn't stop crying for the rest of the lesson. For the next five days, that painful experience kept coming into my mind again and again, filling me with fear and agony.
Despite the above mishaps, I managed to pass the class with full marks. As I was walking up Hymettus Avenue together with my mother, both feeling happy about my success, a red-haired boy suddenly darted out of a yard, pointed a finger at me and shouted maliciously:
“You, shit!”
“Isn't he a fool, mum!” I said loudly and kept on walking, as if nothing had happened.
Just for a moment it occurred to me that the incident might have been a bad omen for my future, but I dismissed the thought immediately.
* * *
That summer, my grandma Jane, my father's mother, came from Cefallonia and stayed with us for two months, because she wanted to see some doctors in Athens. One day mum grumbled to dad over the wine that grandma drank all the time (for she was too fond of the bottle), and then she went on an errand. When she got back, my father told her that in the meantime he had asked his mother to leave and return to the island as soon as possible. So, the very next day the old woman packed up and got ready to set off.
“Are you leaving, grandma?” I wondered, as I saw her in our veranda with her luggage in hand.
“Yes, I'm leaving because your dad sends me away!” she replied.
“But why?”
“It seems that he doesn't want me here,” she answered frigidly.
A few days later, my father signed up as a captain on a merchant ship. Soon mum received a letter from him, commanding her to send her mother off too, otherwise he would never return home. My mother obeyed at once. However, grandma Alice didn't have her own house, so she ended up in an old people's home in Athens. A month later, she had a stroke and died. “Because of too much happiness,” said mum bitterly.
On the day of the funeral, the coffin with the dead body inside was left on the big table of the sitting room, according to the custom. The lid of the coffin stood by the front door, as a sign of mourning. From dawn till dusk relatives and neighbours came along to pay their respects to the dead woman. As about me, I showed a paradox frivolity all day, playing with Gregory in the yard and stealing flowers from the wreaths. It is not that I didn't care about grandma Alice; she was a quiet woman, who never bothered anybody. Yet, it was impossible for me to feel sorry for her loss, as if I refused to accept the reality of death.
In general, my mother has always been the model of self-sacrifice, constantly occupying herself with the house-hold chores and the increasing demands of my father and his family: From the very first day of their marriage, my father's relatives (usually his parents or his six sisters) used to land on our house and stay for months each time, even when my dad travelled abroad because of his job. While they were here, my grandpas demanded to be taken to a different doctor every day; as about my aunts, they came just for fun and tourism. They were all obsessed with Athens, the capital of Greece, maybe because they had all grown up in an isolated mountainous village of Cefallonia.
Note: After the above dramatic event, the long-lasting visits of my father's family became even more frequent.