The house on the cliff

Even though he was a public figure, few knew much of his past, because he never talked about the old days, and because the history of the war in this country and of what happened afterwards, was so traumatic as to erase what had come before. To my generation, but also the one just before mine, the Balkan Wars, the Great Schism, the disaster in Asia Minor, were events so distant as to have no bearing on our lives. When it came to my father, for the final years of his life, only gossip remained, mainly that his wife, the famous beauty, had left him for his enormously wealthy shipowner cousin. There was also a rumour of some mysterious scandal, hushed up without his suffering any consequences, due to his position and famous name. It took some effort on my part to glean even this much of his story. KONSTANTÍNOS’ STORY Konstantínos Georgíou Velissáris Athens 1900 - Folégandros 1969 He had been through a lot; a witness and participant since early childhood in historical events that shaped Greece in our century. In the First Balkan War, at the age of fourteen, he and his twin sister, along with their heavily pregnant mother and the young governess who had just succeeded the formidable deceased Morgy, found themselves isolated by the tides of war in the fortified Tower among the tangerine groves of the family estate in Kámpos on the island of Chíos. Cut off by scattered enemy action, surrounded by battle, they remained isolated for three terrible days, with gunfire outside the walls and suffering within, as their mother went into premature labour and gave birth. That same night, before the liberating Greek forces could reach them, she bled to death.