The house on the cliff

When we first came back from Corfu and before I was accustomed to our new life, the elevator became my hideaway. It was a box made of ornate wrought iron, slick dark wood, and highly polished brass, with doors that had to be completely closed before it would set off with a small judder. Up and down I would go from floor to floor, until the concierge ratted me out. After that I was allowed in the elevator only when accompanied by an adult - for my own safety. The concierge wasn’t unkind, he had two sons near my age, and all three of us attended the Peiramatikó school, two blocks away. The became my substitute for the gang of boys on Corfu, and we played together in the afternoons up at the top of Omírou Street, in the flagstoned landing with the oleanders. I missed the island in the winter, but I had my father, and overall it was a good life the three of us had in Athens. Of course there were days I never even laid eyes on him, he had so much work. Our arrangement was that if he hadn't come home before my bedtime, I could go to sleep in his bed. When he came back, he would pick me up and carry me, still asleep, to my room. When I woke up in my bed in the morning, he would already have left, but I would know that he had held me in his arms and kissed me goodnight. Often, I would have as well, some muddled memory of his warm embrace contrasting with the cool sheets. It was a good system. We had arrived at it ourselves. If he came home early, it was because he was going out that evening. After taking a bath, he would stand at the mirror with a towel around his waist and I would assist with his shaving. I would wipe the steam from the mirror and with the soft brush, whip up a foam of lather in the round wooden box with the shaving soap that came all the way from England. I would admire his skill with his father’s cut-throat razor, which he kept sharp on the leather strop that hung by the mirror. He had a pair of hairbrushes as well - old school gentlemen brushed their hair with a brush in each hand, both sides at once. He had the whole set, silver and ivory, with his father’s monogram, GIV. He took it with him to his final exile on that remote island, and he left it to Uncle Víctor in his will. He didn’t really need to shave twice a day, but always did if he was going out for the evening. The care he took to be well- groomed was one of the pillars of his life. His sister Eléni claimed it was a counterweight for all the times in his life - as a prisoner of war, for example, when even cursory cleanliness was impossible. Afterwards, I would select his tie. He retained a veto on the matter, but usually my choice was accepted, because I knew his taste well. The great majority of the ties in his extensive collection were never worn. They lived all together in a drawer he called The Museum, and they were gifts from clients, or supplicants, as he called them. He would deposit ties there without even looking at them, so it wasn’t for aesthetic reasons that they were never worn. Later, when I would go take my bath, the marble room was still steamy and warm, scented with shaving soap and Atkinson’s English Lavender.