Frank Georgalis – Writer

Tales of the unexpected Part II

The angryman: my father

The many errors that I have made are due to the fact that I have lived too long. I am in my sixties; that’s a lifetime. I find it indecent, vulgar and a curse that God would allow anyone to live this long. Why? Ask any silver haired man or woman, if she or he is honest will tell you, how awful it is for them to look themselves in the mirror and see their parents; old and wrinkled,  forget the pains and the aches, the constant constipation, the loss of some taste buds and the mouths without their own teeth. Most of the common people who are too reluctant to think too much on it, but if they were to reveal their thoughts, would say that’s a part of growing old. But I say that’s natural and I go one step beyond and say that nature is cruel and merciless. Nature doesn’t care about your opinions, she doesn’t give a damn about your wishes or whether you like her laws or not. You are compelled to accept her results, which to me are the penalty for living that long; I don’t and I won’t accept it. I have said that nature is merciless and cruel and if nature is connected to God then he is merciless and cruel and why should I worship something which is cruel and merciless? The answer from a normal person is that almost everybody worships God. Isn’t it normal for me to say and declare that one million fools don’t make one wise man? I have found a way of avenging myself. People who know how to avenge themselves turn and retaliate and that that’s revenge. I am certain you have heard that ‘You can’t fight mother nature,’ is wrong. You see, gravity is one of Mother Nature’s strong arms of punishing the long living. Gravity is nature’s way of telling us that everything must fall and stay here on earth. After a while everything changes colors, or droops, drops and sags, thus, in order for me to hide the gray hair, which is a sign of aging, and the young people look at aging with contempt, I simply dye my hair to escape their contemptuous glances. In order for me to hide some of the flesh that sags down from my face below my chin which is a sign of a gluttonous person– Mother Nature loves to ridicule the big eaters and to exploit them; any way, to hide my double chin I grew a beard. When I reach the point that the chin will become longer than my thinning beard, I will have a face-lift. If I can’t have a face-lift, I will find a way to lower my body. All theses creative ways of avenging myself are due to the fact that I was born and there was no doctor to receive me. I have come to a very regrettable conclusion and that is to avenge myself is revenge. Incidentally, revenge is encouraged in the Old Testament; ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. No matter what I do, the long time that I have spent here in this world it shows. It is like hiding the donkey but the ears are showing. Unfortunately the young, who are the majority of the living, cannot see the wisdom in the old, as if they think they have a monopoly in youth. They only see the gray hair and the sagging of the face and the wrinkles.

I said it’s God’s curse because if God had liked me, he would have taken me away when I was still able to turn the women’s heads which I immensely enjoyed, now as I entered a public place, they turn their backs to me and I suffer; that’s disgraceful, that’s a reducer of self esteem, that’s a slap on the face and that’s my curse from God for allowing myself to live this long. People who have never had their faces slapped will never be able to understand the feeling. Please tell me how many old people are there, who have passed the magic age of forty and have never had their faces slapped? There are a lot but they either don’t know it or they automatically turn the other cheek.

Going back to where I left off, I remember a little less than four years after my arrival, I was escorted into the living room by my aunt Dimitro, to welcome my brother who had joint our world a few hours earlier.

According to the neighborhood older ladies, who had attended my and my sister’s births and who attended all those deliveries of a new life in town, offering their services to the midwife and to the new mother, observing the entrance of the new comer, they eventually began to think that they possessed the talent of being able to foretell the new comer’s character, performance and the future station in life. They said that my brother at the time of his entering our world, presented himself as a serious minded person, without a tear in his eyes or sound from his lips, but a short cry that was induced by a doctor who received him, he shortly thereafter fell into silence.

The profound peace was broken the moment I was escorted in the room in which he was, when he set his eyes upon me, he began to scream, as if he had been overtaken with intense anger. Even though I was only four years old, I realized that he was furious seeing that I had come here first.

At that early point in his life the neighborhood ladies knew and talked among themselves that he was, to my father and mother, what the last born to Adam and Eve, Seth, who was going to embrace the Creator’s (Yahweh) wishes and I was, according to those old hens, the first born Cain, who embraced the wisdom of the serpent, the acknowledgment of good and evil, the free life, free spirit or commonly as known as ‘The devil may care’ attitude.

I discovered later in life that those unschooled old ladies, who thought that they were the foretellers of the new comers’ fate; their prognosis at the birth of my brother’s and mine, came to be true and correct, I turned out to be Cain and he Seth.

Coming in this world before my brother and my sister was not a privilege for there was no throne to take over; later on though, I felt that it turned out to be a great deal of   responsibility if not a great deal of liability.

On the European cost of Mediterranean, and on the eastern edge of the Ionian Sea, about twenty miles across from Ulysses’ home, the island of Ithaca, a fishing village called Astakos, lies like a small white giant, his back leaning on the mountain and his legs stretched out, encircling the blue bay. It was this town where I drew my first breath, shed my first tear, saw the sun, had my earliest impression of the world, created my first dream and it was there where I fell in love at the age of six with a gypsy girl who was nine.

Let me go back for a moment and tell you how opinionated I was from the beginning of my life, which made more people to dislike me than to like me. I shall talk about the Ulysses’ home, the island of Ithaca, which I visited on a school-day-trip when I was fourteen years old. Having read Homer’s book Odyssey and seeing the island in person, I realized the great difference between what Homer described and the physical look of the island. I realized then the island could no have been what homer described, if it were the island described in the book it had to have been connected to the main land at some point. The most logical point was the southeast point of the gulf of Astakos.

My first childhood associations are very shadowy with the exception of a few important events and some thoughts. The one thing I remember clearly that there was an old Turkish grave, not too far from my house.                                                                              I couldn’t understand then, how the man who was lying beneath the rumble of old stones, could stand being buried there and stretched out in the heat of the summer and the cold of the winter and in the rain through the day and through the dark nights.

When I was laying on my bed in some stormy nights, listening to the thunder and rain, my mind would go and lingered around the Turkish grave and wandered how the man in the grave felt, and I imagined that man would rise and come into the house all torn, wet and muddy fresh from the grave looking for revenge, then my eyes would fall upon the door and seeing it bolted and secured, knowing that it was solid and sound to hold him from coming in, I would fall asleep.

I remember my father being tall dark and handsome, not very talkative less particularly with me. I cannot recollect ever been hugged by him or even holding my hand when we walked, as he did with my brother and sister. At times I felt more alone than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him to see that he was alone.

What walks I had, I took alone down in the fields. What questions I had, I answered them alone. What stars I saw I observed and studied them alone. What meals I had, I ate in silence and with reverence, preventing my father from finding something wrong with my eating habits, which he would correct loudly for my sister and brother to hear it.  It seemed to me that none had taken the time to direct some attention towards me and point out some of the good within me.

“You must behave properly at all times. You are the one who must set a good example for your sister and brother to follow,”  my father would say sternly.

I’d only sit there and hang my head.

“You are sulky as a wet cat. You always lie about something,” my father would continue with the same grave voice. “A sulky disposition is, of all the bad tempers, is the worst. This is not a character that I can stand to watch being developed beneath my eyes without an effort to improve. You must try to improve and change for the better, not for you but for your brother and sister,” would conclude my father, with his eyes nailed at me.

“I don’t see what I have done so wrong,” I would reply tearfully.

“Do not hide behind a tear, boy!” would shout my father, so fiercely; I’d see my mother involuntarily putting out her trembling hands as if to interpose between us.

“Even if you were a donkey, as many times as I have whipped you, you should have kicked the bucket, by now.” I remember him saying that one time, while at the supper table. There he stopped and let out smile of absurdity directing his glance at my mother.

I laughed along with him and the rest because he said, for all intense and purposes, that I was stronger than a donkey.

“I will treat you like a donkey and you will obey like a dog,” said my father, turning his eyes away as if he didn’t wish to look at me one second longer. “You will obey me and you will obey your mother,” I remember my father saying, turning to me again.

“He is a good boy, he obeys me all the time,” interrupted my mother.

“Athena,” uttered my father calmly, “when I speak to him, you must keep quite. I am the man of the house and I know what’s best for all of you. You’re just a woman.”

“Elias,” replied my mother, timidly, “you are a better judge and you know best, better than I ever hoped to be, but I only said—“

“You only said something stupid. You are making matters worst for him,” he interrupted with a lot of fire in his eyes, “try not to do it again.”

My mother’s lips moved as if she had said, “yes, afendi (master),” but it wasn’t loud enough for anybody to hear.

Seeing my mother in my corner, although weaker than I was in the presence of my father, I could not any longer hold my tears back.

“You must obey me to the letter, you know what the consequences will be if you fail to obey me to the letter,” said my father, disregarding the stream of tears that ran down on my face.

I knew very well, perhaps I knew better than he thought. I knew deep in my heart, that even though I would pretend to obey him to the letter, I wasn’t about to be what he demanded; a roll model for my brother and sister. I knew that some day I would force him, as he was forcing me to be what he wanted me to be, to love me and to be proud of me; so I searched, hunted and seek to do it my way.  I tried since I was a young lad to be sensible, responsible and a good listener, and sometimes when my father had a dialogue with some one, other than my mother and I felt confident, comprehensive and interested and I would try to interject something of value, he would abruptly interrupt me and would throw a fierce look at my way and then I would begin to sob. That was a severe mental cruelty. My physical punishment however was painful but my mental punishment was more hurting. My physical punishment was mostly with his belt and around the legs. Once I would see him unbuckling his belt I would twine around him looking for a place to run or to hide and that would stop him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only for a moment that I would stop him.

He then would charge towards me and would catch me by the shoulders and beat me; as if he would have wished to beat me to death. Above all the noise that was made; between the belting, my moaning and his growling, I would hear my aunt Dimitro who was unmarried, a young woman and lived with us, running into the room and crying out and she would push him violently and he would stop as if he were glad that somebody came to my rescue and then he would leave and go out slamming the door behind him.

How well I recollect, after he was gone and my aunt would take me into her arms, trying to sooth my mental and body pains. I remember, after he was gone what unnatural stillness seemed to reign through out the whole house.

I remember when my pain and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel.

After each beating, I would sit in a corner and wait until dark and then I would go to bed. In bed, I lay wondering whether any more punishment was waiting for me the next morning. I would also be wandering fearfully what criminal act I had committed and    whether I would be taken into a prison or I would be given away to the gypsies, just to be rid of me.

PART III His beginning of troubles will be published next week