5

Mother and Son

“Such a perfect son,” said Rea. “I knew I didn’t have to remind you to stop by the cobbler’s. How did they come out?”

Kosmas changed into his slippers and stepped into the musty living room. He kissed his mother’s powdered forehead, nodded to Dimitris Pavlidis, the retired journalist who often came to their house for tea, and joined them at the dining-room table. “I’m so sorry, Mother,” he said. “I completely forgot the shoes.”

“You forgot?”

“I’ll get your shoes tomorrow.”

“But you’ve never forgotten my errands.”

Dimitris, who was rolling candy foils into a ball on the shiny silver tablecloth, said with a slight stutter, “It’s not a big deal. Tomorrow’s another day.”

Kosmas glanced at Dimitris’s thick yellow fingernails. Half of the index claw had separated from the rest, popping up like a wire fence barb. A simple fungicide would cure the condition, but Dimitris refused to go to the doctor.

“For somebody else it wouldn’t be a big deal,” said Rea, “but it’s not like my Kosmas to forget an errand.”

Dimitris stood and held out a trembling hand. “Give me the ticket and I’ll go get them right now.”

“Please, Mr. Dimitris,” said Kosmas, “the shoes can wait until tomorrow.”

Rea removed a limp yellow leaf from the African violet serving as the table’s centerpiece and dropped it onto the bed of cookie crumbs on her plate. “Have a seat, Dimitraki. He’ll do it.”

Dimitris tilted his head back and held up his hand in a gesture of refusal. “I’ll have your shoes in twenty minutes, Ritsa.” He took the cobbler’s ticket from Kosmas, grabbed the canvas briefcase he still carried, even though he had retired from his politics beat at the Tribune over twenty years ago, and was out the door.

As soon as he had gone, Rea looked at the shopping bag still in Kosmas’s hand. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Never mind.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you. You know how much I was looking forward to my new shoes.”

She limped into their tiny box-like kitchen and turned on the wall-mounted television to a rerun episode of The Foreign Bridegroom, a soap opera about a Muslim girl in love with the son of a Christian shipowner. Neither she nor Kosmas had missed an episode during its first broadcast. She poured Kosmas’s tea and turned up the volume so that they could listen while she chopped onions, threw them into the pan with olive oil, cut a cauliflower into large pieces, sliced a red pepper into thin rounds, and julienned a carrot.

Kosmas drank his tea at the two-seater linoleum table under which his legs hardly fit. How dare she snap at him? He took her shopping, to tea with friends, to the beauty parlor. He never argued about the visits to the dead, as his father had. Every Saturday he led Rea arm in arm up the cemetery’s central path and kicked the round cypress cones out of her way so that she wouldn’t trip. He enthroned her on a folding stool beside the family plot, in the shade of the cypress trees and laurel bushes, and then he scrubbed the tombstone with soap and water, and polished the inlaid photographs of his father, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, a few great-uncles, aunts, and distant cousins. All the while, she had nothing to do but tend the censor, pray, and watch. But it wasn’t just the cemetery visits: he brought her footrest whenever he saw that her feet were aching, called the doctor at the first indication of indisposition, and only saw his friends at night, after he had put her to bed. Furthermore, he said that her cooking—not his grandmother’s—was the best in Pera.

Rea took a casserole dish from the oven and served Kosmas a piece of the cheese pie that she had warmed as a snack. Kosmas picked at it with his fork. “Mother,” he said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while. You know that we sell cheese pies in the Lily. Uncle Mustafa bakes them every morning. They’re not as good as yours, but I really have no desire to eat cheese pie of any kind after work. You understand it has nothing to do with you, don’t you?”

Rea looked at him like a scolded puppy. “But that cheese pie was your favorite when you were a boy.”

“I’m forty-one.”

“You’ve changed,” she said, shaking a wooden spatula at him. “Something’s changed you.” She turned to the window and stared at the pink hydrangeas bowing in the rain that had just begun again. “Were you out with someone?”

“No.” Kosmas flattened himself against the wall so that she could open the refrigerator door and take out the previous day’s lentil and bulgur soup.

Rea set the pot on the stove, lit the gas burner beneath it, and loaded a tray with three sets of her mother’s silverware and three water glasses. “You were out with a woman this afternoon,” she said, turning down the flame on the cauliflower mixture. “She must have been Ottoman. Otherwise you’d tell me.”

“You didn’t mind when the Greek guy married the Turkish girl on A Foreign Bridegroom,” said Kosmas.

“That’s a soap opera!”

Rea stepped past Kosmas into the living room, collapsed into an armchair by the barred window, and rubbed her knees. “They always ache when it rains. And these bars! Whoever thought of putting bars on the inside of a window? You can’t get even a breath of fresh air.”

Kosmas leaned against the kitchen doorjamb, staring at her. “I’m not complaining to the landlord again. There’s no point. He won’t change them.”

Rea took a bundled-cane crucifix from the doily-covered corner shelf that served as the household iconostasis. She crossed herself and kissed the crucifix. “On the black Tuesday night of the pogrom—”

“Not this again.”

“—we were at our cottage on the island. It’s always on a Tuesday that these things happen, just like in 1453.”

“Mama, please. What do your shoes have to do with black Tuesdays and pogroms and the fall of Constantinople?”

“When the mob arrived by ferry, my mother and I hid in a shed behind the house. My father and brothers took refuge in the fig trees. The thugs threw the bell of Saint Nicholas into the sea and killed the monk who used to make these crucifixes. They tried to burn our house, too, but the fire extinguished itself. My mother said it was because of the crucifix. She’d fixed it to the inside of the door before we hid in the shed.”

Kosmas crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve heard this a thousand times.”

“And you need to hear it again so you understand why it would kill me if you married an Ottoman. When my family returned to the City, my mother and I wore headscarves. We communicated with hand motions. If we spoke Greek, people would know we were Rum. If we spoke Turkish, they’d know from our accents. So we didn’t speak at all, like animals. If you marry an Ottoman, your whole life will be like that. You’ll forget your religion and your language because your wife won’t share them. Where will that leave your children?”

Kosmas pulled a chair from the dining table, sat, and lowered his head to Rea’s eye level. “I had coffee with Mr. Fanis, Mama, not with a woman.”

“Whatever for?”

“I wanted a little fashion advice, that’s all. He’s a nice dresser.”

“But I buy your clothes for you.”

Kosmas leaned back, balancing the chair on its rear legs.

“You’re going to ruin my furniture,” said Rea. “I’ve told you a thousand times not to do that.”

The chair’s front legs crunched onto the wood floor.

Rea struggled to her feet, replaced the crucifix in the iconostasis, and hobbled over to the chipped walnut sideboard. She opened a drawer, shuffled through a pile of unframed black-and-white photographs, and set one in front of Kosmas. “This was taken in Halki when I was sixteen. The one pouring lemonade is Aliki when she still had teeth. Kalypso—cutting the cake—lived at the top of the cul-de-sac off Ağa Hamamı Street.”

“And?”

“She was engaged to Fanis.”

“I thought he didn’t marry until he was in his forties.”

“He didn’t.” Rea eased herself into her armchair and looked out the barred window, toward the little park across the street.

“And the girl in the picture?”

“You know what they did to girls during the pogrom.” She puckered her face and drew her hand backward in an expression of disgust. “Kalypso was one of those. Her family decided to emigrate the following day, but she didn’t want to go. Even after what they’d done to her, she didn’t want to leave the City. Fanis didn’t go to her afterwards. It was such a difficult time, so I try not to judge. But I think about Kalypso now and then, and I wonder . . .”

Kosmas stared at the fuzzy mold on the wall behind the television set. The previous week he had thought it was just dirt, but now it was forming rusty continents. He’d have to call a specialist.

“Are you listening?” Rea snapped.

“Of course I am. What happened to her?”

Rea grabbed her embroidery hoop from the side table and pulled out the needle. “Never mind. I’m just saying that you ought to know what sort of man Fanis is. If he’s giving you romantic advice, you certainly don’t want that from him. Everybody knows what a libertine he was. He even made a mistress of one of the French nuns living up his street.”

A rattling and then a hissing came from the kitchen, but Kosmas was too angry to pay any attention. “And what makes you think my meeting with Fanis had anything to do with a woman?” he said, convinced that his mother couldn’t have guessed his attraction to Daphne. “Rita Tereza and I didn’t even exchange phone numbers.”

There was more hissing, louder this time, accompanied by the faint odor of burned food. “The soup!” said Kosmas. He bolted to the kitchen and removed the pot of boiled-over, bottom-burned lentil and bulgur from the stove.