The house on the cliff

On weekends we would go to Kaissarianí to shoot skeet, and afterwards to Psarópoulos, on the seaside, with Daddy’s friends. I found their conversations dull but I liked the scent of their ouzo and the crunchy fried calamari tentacles that still tasted of the sea. If the nut seller came by, he would get me a long paper cone of pistachios, my favourite, and I always kept a few back for Loxándra, who loved them as much as I did. For special occasions, not very often, we saw the rest of the family. I remember particularly that on Christmas afternoon we would have family tea at Uncle Víctor’s house. It was on Kanári Street “between Kolonáki, Constitution Square, and the palace”, my uncle would say. It was a town house, not an apartment building, and typical of the Bavaro-Athenian neoclassical architectural style. There were two floors, with a raised entrance, and a half-basement for the kitchen and other service rooms. A small garden separated it from the street, with tall palm trees and a pair of bare-breasted sphinxes flanking the marble stairs to the front door. It had been built some 70 years before, by a wealthy Constantinople banker, who, on his marriage and retirement from business (the two frequently going together for that class in that time), had moved to the heart of the Kingdom to raise native-born Greek descendants. During the Occupation, in 1943, his granddaughter had sold it to a famous black marketeer for two sacks of cornmeal and a can of olive oil. Víctor’s father-in-law, who came from one of the Chíos merchant families long-settled in Britain, had bought it from that owner over a glass of single malt whisky in the bar of the Grand Palais hotel in Montreux, where that notorious gentleman resided in voluntary exile with his ill-gotten gains. Our visits to the house were a matter of holiday courtesy, but friendly enough for all that. It was only after I had left Greece that Víctor stopped speaking to Daddy. There was a great fir tree, cut fresh on Mt. Párnitha and redolent of the forest, set up in the tall entrance hall, and it was decorated with thousands of shining ornaments made of delicate glass and imported from England - in postwar Athens, there was an almost fairy tale quality to them, and they were so fragile as to break at the slightest touch. Our own artificial tree we decorated with walnuts covered in gold and silver foil saved up from cigarette packets and chocolates, with painted pinecones, acorns, and cypress fruit, and with paper chains. Uncle Víctor would light the candles, climbing up on a ladder, with two uniformed orderlies standing guard with buckets of water in case of accident. Aunt Éva would play the piano and conduct us in singing The Twelve Days of Christmas, leading in a trilling soprano. Daddy would try to catch my eye and make me laugh - we both found that kind of voice so ridiculous. She, for her part, would glare at him as his hoarse and tuneless bass bellow drowned out all other singing, to the children’s delight.