THE MEETING

THE MEETING

Old officers, parents and close friends attended the ceremony after we completed our courses at the Military Academy. The visitors came in while the waiters were walking around arranging the crystal glasses, green, pink, yellow...

We stood in a circle.

“Yes, I know! You were happy and had some joy. Especially the attacks, for example! Oh, it must be great! It’s like a holiday for all armies that go to war! Is it true? You officers, shouting ‘Long Live the Motherland!’ and dying with a smile on your faces...” said Anestis’s sister with a smile on her face.

I squeezed the glass of wine and waited for a warm hand...

I had no parents and I did not know whether I had anyone close. I only knew and loved Doctor Papaianis. He took care of me. One time when I asked him if he knew my parents he gave me a dried “No”. Later, after thinking about it for a while, he said: “I knew your father when he was a soldier on the opposite side...” I never asked him again.

Years passed. When I reached adulthood I wanted to search the world and learn more about people... There were certain things that I could not erase from my mind… and that was that.

The ceremony ended... That day I also received a decoration that shone brightly on my chest. When Dr. Papaianis saw me he came to me and gave me a kiss.

He then took me by my arm and we both walked away in silence...

“You are a good man Odisei but…” Dr. Papaianis began to say and went silent as if listening to my heart beating. I felt good inside and was full of joy. We sat next to a table. He was silent. He took out and lit a cigarette from which he voraciously took a puff of smoke. The doctor sank into deep thought. Something was bothering him;

he looked at me and opened his mouth to speak but then he closed it again.

I noticed painful scars revealing on his face.

I could not restrain myself.

“Doctor, if you have something to tell me? Then tell me!” I said as I was looking into his eyes. Then I noticed a haze of a man’s tear.

“Your parents would have been very happy and proud to have seen you here today…” he said to me and went silent again. For a moment I felt empty in my chest. I felt like my joy and happiness were just pumped out… He never said a thing about my parents for twenty years. He pushed me only to learn, to finish school and now, now that that day has come, he tells me: “Odisei, now you have accomplished that…?”

He smiled, got up to toast me with a glass of cognac… which he drank down to the last drop.

The doctor then said: “The years are like cars strung on a moving train, if you stop and look at the edge of the tunnel of life you will only see how they disappear… I waited a long time for this. You are a good and educated young man and do you know how long we have been friends?”

The doctor paused, looked me in the eye and took a long puff of smoke from his cigarette.

But before I had a chance to respond he said: “Since the war... Since the war… Odisei… when you were just a small child.”

He paused for a moment, looked away and said: “I don’t know when you were born but I wrote down the date when I delivered you to the home. I believe you would want to know everything now… you have been asking me a long time. But forgive me if I can’t answer all your questions...”

I was restlessly adjusting my elbows on top of the white tablecloth. I felt petrified and every word that came out of the doctor’s mouth felt like a blow to my heart as he began to slowly tell me things.

“It was a July night,” he said, “and the sky was shaking. Heavy smoke was mixing with dust making it impossible to see. The tangled paths were beaten down by exploding artillery shells and the scorched earth echoed like a flaming volcano.

There was no moon, or stars... The beauty that nature gave us that summer day was taken away by man. I found you in that black smoke. And when I put my hand down to pick you up, you let out a loud cry; that of a frightened child. But I picked you up and calmed you down. I was tired that night but I managed to feed you some tea while the soldiers were making fun of me. One of the soldiers named you Odisei. He had tears in his eyes when he caressed you and said: ‘If I am still alive, I will be the godfather at your wedding.’ But later I found out that he had been killed. When the shooting stopped you were sleeping curled up in my coat. Before I went to sleep I heard a loud burst of machine gun fire that also woke you up. The next day we learned that the guards had killed a distraught woman. She was running towards the village. Before she was shot she yelled out: ‘Oh! No! No! I am not a soldier...’

“The soldiers killed the woman... and I will be a soldier. Will I too be a killer…?” I thought to myself and asked: “Doctor, was this woman my mother?”

The doctor bit his lower lip and said: “I do not know Odisei... All I know is that she was a refugee. This is what the soldiers told me. She bit her lip from fear, closed her eyes and ran for cover on the ground seeking a place to hide.

The village was deserted, people had fled. Where they have fled in the world I do not know, the village today is deserted. You can inquire.

I had waited a long time for him to tell me this, when he said: “You were born from these people, Odisei. Look, Odisei, fate seems best to be played with people... I with you remember the war much

better. Yes, my child. But, Odisei, if your think you want to search for them, then go. It is only best that you start the trace back from the village...

We parted in tears.

“Goodbye, doctor!” I said.

“Have a pleasant journey, Odisei and don’t forget me...” he said.

We traveled a day and a half before we arrived at the village.

The roads were difficult to travel. They were eroded with huge channels running through them. They were littered with large stones everywhere. We had to walk through huge gaps and over barriers. Many of the buildings in the countryside were in ruins, burned down and leveled to the ground. The larger stones were bare and sticking out from the ground like joints through dried skin. The church was in the centre of the village. It was not burned down but its walls were swollen. When we went inside, Anastis took pictures of the icons. I stood in front of a wall icon on which the top part had peeled off and looked like a burned body. Under the upper layer the figure was still the same.

At the bottom of the icon, under the paint, there were visible letters of a different kind of alphabet. I called Anestis to have a look. I asked him: “What kind of letters are these?” He raised his shoulders letting me know that he did not know… but then there was this guilty look on his face. When we peeled off the layered paint we saw the entire row of letters.

Touching them, Anestis said: “Odisei, this is the Slavic alphabet…” He then pointed his camera to take a picture. He took a picture of the peeled part of the icon and said: “For keeps…”

The next day we crossed over the border and traveled along a wet asphalt road. One morning several days later Anestis said: “It’s been a few days that we have been strangers with one another”. I did not reply.

“Did you not hear me… Odisei?” he asked.

“I have been thinking of the icon, Anestis,” I said. “I have been thinking about the people who left this country… this soil. Anestis, did you notice how thick the top layer of paint was? Yet underneath it the original painting on the wall was clean. Is it not the same with man? The doctor told me that I am one of them. And who are they? …he told me nothing...”

It was May 9th. Anestis and I were enjoying our excursion and the beauty of nature. That morning the rise of dawn was a lazy affair. It descended like a belt over the frothing Vardar, showering nature with its silvery rays.

We drove the car like a bat out of hell and we arrived in front of the city.

Anestis suddenly stopped and we both looked to the right side of the road at a monument of “Mother” standing there looking sad. There were a lot of people around and they were all laying flowers. I stared at the picture and did not know what to make of it. I was moved. I did not know whether this was love or sorrow for my mother, but it instinctively hit me hard in the heart. I went and collected some flowers and, like everyone else, passed in front of the “Mother” monument and placed them beside it.

The figure was leaning slightly forward, as if moving. Its silhouette was clearly outlined on the canopy...

The face did not express pain, had no bitter tears in the eyes, showed no despair, but was full of strict greatness and dignity. “Mother” stood proudly for her children for whom she dedicated her life, and in her hands she held a large braid of laurel and oak leaves, a symbol of eternal glory.

It was a sunny day that day and the figure on the monument was illuminated looking as if it was made of gold in my watery eyes. I wanted to pay tribute to my mother.

A middle-aged man came close to me and asked: “Are you a tourist?”

“Yes, Greek tourists!” answered Anestis. Then the man began to speak in Greek, pretty bad Greek. He said:

“It is rare that a traveler would stop beside her. It is even rarer that someone would stop and look at the “Mother” figure and think of their past, even for a moment, of the difficult times… of the war... My son and I come here once a year. I am originally from Lerin Region but war, like a broom, has swept us all… young and old.”

“These are the people…” I thought to myself.

The man smiled sadly and asked: “Have you gentlemen been traveling a long time?”

“Yes, yes sir!” answered Anestis.

I went closer to the man and in a friendly tone of voice asked him: “Where are you from?”

The man slowly and calmly turned towards me and said:

“Oh dear young man, my torment is long and I don’t want to bother you with it…”

“I gave him a cigarette and noticed that he was staring at me intently. I looked back into his mournful and restless eyes.

“What’s your name, young man?” he asked.

“Odisei…” I answered.

“It is nice to meet you… Odisei... Do you have parents?” he asked.

“No!” I replied sharply.

“No? Did they die of old age… or sickness?” he asked.

“No, no...” I replied.

“I too, Odisei, bear the same pain… please sit down, I will explain to you… Today is a holiday…. I don’t have to go to work,” he said.

The fair-haired young man who was with the middle aged man sat beside me. Anestis jumped up and took several pictures of us.

“I was a soldier when I left my wife at home with our two children, this one,” pointing to the boy, “was a young child. But now there is no trace of my wife or of my little Iovanche…”

“Does your son speak Greek?” asked Anestis.

“No he doesn’t. It’s better that he doesn’t… I don’t want him to know and feel guilty or of being at fault for what I am about to tell you,” the man replied.

“The people fleeing with him were telling him: ‘You are at fault for what happened to your mother and your brother’. He cried for what happened but mostly for his brother.

The refugees were fleeing like a flooded dry river which suddenly lost its trough… its course...” said the man as he suddenly became very emotional, rubbed his face and continued.

“They were running like a hungry herd looking for a pasture... His mother returned from the village square to look for food and said to this small one: ‘Go with the people, I will catch up with you...’ But then a shell fell and exploded and the people scattered in every direction leaving the children alone… and like children they all fled and got lost. They were expected to hold hands and remain together but their fear separated them… Little Iovanche hid somewhere but this one ran looking for him in the crowd.

His mother finally caught up with him and when she found out that the little one was not with him, she figured the boy was still somewhere in the village. She kissed this one and then ran back to look for the other one. The villagers were yelling at her telling her

not to go back but she could not ignore the mother’s pain, so she ran back.”

I broke into tears… I could not hold back any more… I grabbed both of them and squeezed them in my arms with all my might. I lost the ability to speak… I could say nothing...

I felt like an explosion took place inside of me and everything from my twenty years was about to spill out... But then I thought: “Do I obey destiny by being mute?”

I listened to his troubled words.

“It looks like you too are a tortured soul... you are not a blessed child...” he said.

“I untied the handkerchief in which I kept the ring, the ring which the doctor gave me when we parted and told me to ‘keep it’...”

After seeing it I watched the man stretch out his arm and push it against his chest...

“Oh! My... Elena...” he yelled out, gathered his strength, stretched out his arms and yelled out: “Iovanche? Iovanche it is you! You are my son... You are my son...”

I was stunned, unable to control myself... My brother too was stunned and unable to control himself…

Anestis too began to weep.

My father, with all his pain looked at the figure of the “Mother” and painfully said:

“Thank you for bringing us together… for making this meeting possible…”