SUMMARY, by Nora Carranza
Kosta Alexopoulos is a Greek, born in Smyrna, in Asia
Minor, he lives in Camden, England, with his wife Anna and their son Adoni.
They are all expatriated, the family had to abandon their
country, and, after thirty-five years, Kosta remembers the facts that obliged
them to move out from Greece and reflects about their life, and he mostly concentrates
in his relationship with Adoni.
When Kosta was a baby, his parents had to go with him
to a French refugee ship: the Turks were burning Smyrna, killing as many
persons as they could.
Later on, there was another war in Athens, the Germans
killed Kosta’s mother, and he decided to chop off his mother fingers in order
to exchange the big rings she had on her hand. Not the moment for feelings,
there was hunger time.
The Germans also killed Kosta’s father.
With the country destroyed and no nice future to come,
Greek men looked for wives and set out to New York or England, hoping they
would open a restaurant, make money and eventually go back to Greece.
Therefore, after many years working, Kosta opened his
own restaurant in Caledonian Road, a place totally different from the sunny and
noisy places he loved, where he would never go back: he thinks “you are made
for one soil, but life send you to another, and then you can’t budge”.
The three members of the family work at the
restaurant: Anna, Kosta and Adoni.
Adoni doesn’t meet at all the connotation of his name.
As a matter of fact, Adoni was born in Athens, in 1944, in Melianos' family,
neighbours of Anna’s family. The real boy’s father died in Poland; the mother
died giving him birth.
The baby was taken in by Anna’s family, and she
proposed Kosta adopting him when they married. Kosta accepted, imagining that
later the true son he desired would arrive, but he didn’t know Anna was not fertile.
The years passed by, and the couple never find the
moment to explain Adoni his origins. There was always an excuse to postpone
that essential explanation. They even began to cheat themselves that the boy
was their real son.
Kosta considers that Adoni didn’t grow in a satisfactory
way, because he wasn’t good at school, reserved, he didn’t look for girls,
didn’t go out at night, didn’t have his own wishes or opinions.
When Adoni was eighteen, he started working at the
restaurant. He was efficient in that job, he worked hard, although he moved
like a great bear between the tables and didn’t show any charm. When Kosta
introduced Adoni to the customers, they look surprised at that absurd name.
Kosta always plays the role of a proud Greek
restaurant owner; always pretends he was Zorba the Greek.
They have a life of routine and permanent work, they
live on top of the restaurant, no entertainments, holidays or comfort, their only
dedication was their business, each one their duties.
Anna wasn’t a beautiful woman either, she put on
weight and seemed a huge milk pastry when lying on bed. But she does properly
all what’s needed for the work, a “great work horse” in Kosta’s opinion.
Kosta expected one day Adoni will be like the son he
would have liked, and he moved between deception and acceptance, between hope
and guilt. Sometimes he wept.
Moreover, Kosta started to be paranoid, imagining
Adoni could discover by himself he had no real parents.
Surprisingly, when Adoni was already thirty-three, he
started to go out at night, awakening happy expectations on his father that he
would finally meet girls! But what he really did was going to the library and
visiting a group of old expatriate Greeks, facts that make grow the fear of his
father that he was playing the detective.
When summer arrived, Adoni asked, for the first time
in his life, to go on holidays. He was thirty-five….
And he had decided to visit Greece, a very terrifying
idea for Kosta, who had to accept to let him go and find out where he came
from. Anna felt less worried, considering they would go through it all, that life
and routine would continue as always.
The fortnight finished, Kosta went to the airport, and
when he met Adoni, tried to find out every evidence that he already knew, he
waited his son to say it, to let it out. Instead, Adoni commented about Athens,
full of tourists and no decent meal to be found in the city centre.
Arrived at the restaurant, the family work the whole
day as every day until the night, when the frightening moment arrived. Adoni
explained, his face hardened to stone, that he found an old man, Elias, who
knew the past of the families. That man revealed Adoni his true surname was
Melianos, not Alexopoulos, his real father died in the war and his real mother
died when Adoni was born.
Elias told another unexpected news: Kosta’s parents
were killed by the Turks, and their neighbours, the Alexopoulos, were the ones
that took Kosta to the refugee ship.
As Kosta had once said: We are born in confusion, and
that’s how we live.
We always think about the destruction, the dead people, the hunger, and other terrible sufferings. But we don’t frequently think about the orphan little babies, or children, deprived of their parents, who grow with other families or in public institutions. Besides, wars produce expats who must abandon their countries, to live abroad feeling the loss of their homeland.
QUESTIONS
-What do you think of anthropophagy? Would you do
/accept it in case of extreme necessity? Do you know cases about it?
-Who was Adonis in the Greek Mythology?
-After a war between two countries, according to your
opinion, when or how can them stop their mutual rancour?
-When, or why, would emigrants go back to their native
country? Do you know people who have gone back?
-What do you know about the Greco-Turkish war
(1919-1922)? And about the great fire of Smyrna?
-For adopted children, what is the best moment to tell
them they are adopted?
-If you were an adopted child, would you like to know
who were your biological parents and why you were given to adoption?
-Why do you think the narrator has made Adoni bashful,
silent, secretive and “chaste and sober as a monk”?
-“We Greek are like that”: do you have an adjective to
define different nations?
-From your point of view, is it a good idea to
encourage your children to look for a partner? What is the best way to
encourage them?
-What kind of club do you imagine “Neo Elleniko” can
be?
-What is the reference to “King Oedipus asking fool
questions”?
-Have you read Zorba the Greek or seen the
film?
-Hasn’t Kosta to be happy because he didn’t chop off
his mother’s fingers? Why do you imagine he’s angry?
VOCABULARY
barter, snap-shots, pile, beads, budge, lopping off, (was) none the wiser, kid, stunted, swop, podgy, snigger, drooping, blancmange, winds, dolt, skewering, qualms, gave her notice, mousy, worked it out, forestalled, nightingale, fogies, lollop, Customs, spit it out, nudging at his lips, cue, tilting