Nicolai's Daughters by Stella Leventoyannis Harvey Page A

was under construction: rebar sticking up like a skeletal spine, workers climbing its back, trucks milling back and forth kicking up dust. Where was the recession she’d read about in the news back home? Surely the construction she saw in Athens and in the towns along the highway could not have reached this tiny place. She’d imagined Diakofto like the idyllic villages in the Greek travel ads: captured once and forever unchanged. She liked the sound of that. She smiled, and at the same time gulped down hard, then again. Where had they come from, these ridiculous tears? Get a grip, she told herself, staring out the window. She swallowed, opened her eyes wide, bent forward slightly and wiped them against her shoulder. I need some sleep. That’s all.
    Two rocky peaks loomed above the highway construction, blackened and disconnected. She hadn’t expected mountains. She’d intended to research this place before she came, but in the end, she did what she always did. She updated her colleagues, prepared a transition plan, met with her clients, wrote instructions about how and when to reach her, given the ten-hour time difference, and spent time cajoling Dan into believing the office would survive without her. Her personal agenda got lost somewhere in her professional obligations.
    She squinted up at the mountains.
    â€œThis is where our town gets its name,” Christina said, “ dia means through and kofto means to cut.” She met Alexia’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Many years ago, the mountain cut in two.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œNobody knows. An earthquake, maybe.” Christina shrugged. “An act of God. One minute it was a mountain like all the rest. Then, everything changed.”
    Christina turned and drove down what looked like the town’s main street. Cars, tractors and mopeds were double-parked with the street vendors’ miniature trucks, which were weighed down with fruit and vegetables, fish and meat, copper pots and pans. Men sat at small tables outside cafés. Women with shopping bags slung over their arms and lists gripped in their hands stood in line in darkened bakeries and butcher shops. Small groups of young people milled about on the sidewalk. Solon rolled down his window. Alexia could smell the sea but couldn’t see it. A copperware vendor shouted and women pushed at each other to gather around him. A donkey brayed.
    Solon yelled to someone sitting at the corner café opposite the railroad station. The man turned and waved. A car horn blasted.
    â€œ Ella ,” Solon shouted, then rolled his window up. “No one has any patience.”
    This was Greece, Alexia thought. Loud and in your face, just like her father. She relaxed a little. Her father had told her that there was always noise, people would stop to chat and gossip, that everyone knew everyone. It looked like he’d been right about that.
    The van crossed the railroad tracks and turned down a residential road. In the schoolyard, a teenager shot a basketball at a naked hoop. Modern houses with dull aluminum shutters lined the streets. In front of the houses, goats sniffed at the ground behind lopsided wire fencing, bleating their protests. Vegetable gardens ran alongside each house. Lilacs were in full bloom. The roads here, like the main road, were paved. “These houses are so new,” Alexia said.
    â€œYou wanted something old and falling down?” Christina eyed her in the rear-view mirror.
    â€œWe modern, too,” Maria said. “It is not only in America.”
    â€œIt’s just that my dad said things never change here.”
    â€œHe thinks everything stay like he left it,” Christina said. “Life changes here like it does for other people in other places. Those who leave forget.”
    Alexia had expected to spend her days poking around quaint ruins and meandering through cobbled streets. But viewed up close, it didn’t look at all like a