The Secret Sister by Fotini Tsalikoglou, Mary Kritoeff

 
    E ight hours and thirty-five minutes. And then? Where will I end up, Amalia? In a place our mother was afraid to love; and yet, that is where Menelaos was born, and that is where Erasmia and the other Frosso grew up. How can I end up alone in a foreign land? And why now, after all these years? An inscrutable and dark journey. At the most difficult moment. I’m afraid, Amalia. Sunday, January 20, 2013, eleven in the morning.
    Just before takeoff. New York to Athens. Seat 3A, a window seat. The seat next to me is empty. It’s you who’s sitting in it, Amalia. No stranger will disturb you. You’re strapped in now, just like me. On the screen, our trajectory. The flying beast—a little dot traveling across the sky. I’m sitting in its belly. And so are you. Why make this journey to a land she never sought out? She’d trick me with all kinds of ruses and hide the truth. She’d drag me off to museums. She’d show me pediments, funerary steles,
kouroi
and
korai
statues. “Look,” she’d say to me, “open your eyes and look, or you’ll be lost.” I was seven years old. She’d lend me her eyes. But, at a certain point, it became clear—clear as day—that she was revolted by her country. She changed her name. Nothing reminiscent of Greece. Lale Andersen. The mutant mother.
    â€œNone of you are to call me Frosso ever again. From this day onwards, my name is Lale.”
    Every trip is a search for something. Aside from what you say, that which is evident, there’s something more. Like a passionate and impossible love. Without it you’re incomplete. A piece that’s missing and makes you say: “Now is the time to find it.” And yet, there couldn’t be a more inopportune time for me to find anything in this country. Or not? Could it be that at the very moment this country is giving in to the unthinkable and everything seems to be collapsing—could it be that now is the right time? “Look or you’ll be lost.” How can I look if I don’t take my body, my arms, my eyes, my mind over there? You’re with me in my luggage, Amalia, together with a photograph, an empty notebook and a guidebook to Athens. It’ll be my first time there. What am I looking for, who will tell me? A poet spent an entire afternoon searching for the other tiger, the one he needed to finish his poem. Otherwise he couldn’t write.
    â€œDon’t think so much, Jonathan, you lose yourself in your thoughts, and I, I lose you,” you used to tell me.
    To lose myself and to love you, to lose myself so as to love you, Amalia. You’re my soul! In a few moments, JFK will be far away, and the skyscrapers, the park, the quays, the river, the ocean will all become postcards, pictures from a paper amusement park, shimmering in the light of day until the sky swallows them up.
    How will I survive being so far away?
    Â 
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    â€œ
You’re naked, you’ll catch cold. Bundle up. Is that how you’re coming to the park? It’s December. Look at how warmly I’m dressed. Run and get your anorak.
”
 
    Stop telling me what to do.
    â€œ
See, now you have a nosebleed, you’ll—
”
    Oh, but so do you, Amalia. Your nose is bleeding—you and me both.
    â€œ
Damn it, I got it all over my T-shirt! Jeeesus, look at this mess. A handkerchief, Jonathan! Tie it tightly round my arm.
”
 
    A handkerchief?
    â€œ
It stops the bleeding. Grandma says so, remember? Anthoula, quickly, get a hankie. Come on, let’s get a move on.
”
    Anthoula, Grandma, we’re going. If she asks, tell her we’re in the park. We won’t be long.
    â€œ
You poor thing, still hoping she’ll ask . . . She doesn’t give a damn . . . She’s one messed up woman.
”
    She’s not a woman, Amalia! She’s our mama!
    â€œ
She’s still a woman
.”
    Oh, just shut