Kyrie Eleison
2020 - Editions Tangentielles
Γύρισα.
Here, in the country where people have children to become their ball and chain, to have someone who will cry at their funeral.
I will not cry.
The women’s piercing screams engulf me like wild waves.
Open coffin of closed coffin?
Religious wedding or civil wedding?
This time, at least, they can’t tell me και στα δικά σου.
I was eight years old last time I heard that one and it gave birth to my marriage nausea. What an execration…
All around me everyone is miserable. Lousy people who take advantage of any social event - whichever it might be - to exist around other καημένους like them. The sometimes almost euphoric cries and screams reflect the twisted bliss. They shine in what seems to be as much of an eucharist as a penance. We are on the right path for the catharsis. I do well recognise the descendants of the great Greek playwrights.
Are we of the same blood?
I am seeing my family after so long and yet I have a lump in my throat, I do not feel assured. I was torn away from my well-being to come back here, in the country where all bad memories crush the good ones. I am like a bullet that you throw where it suits you. In France I am Greek and in Greece I am French. My home is nowhere, it is everywhere, it is where I decide it to be. But for the moment, I have to be content with what I have.
Earlier, when I found myself on the house’s doorstep, time suddenly stopped. The walls, burning with stories, seemed yellow and necrotic. The house that protected the ruins of my childhood was now foreign to me. It lost its spark the moment Papou lost his. And the whole family with it. Ruins. Diseases. Spoils. Death. I want to make it mine as much as I want to get away from it.
Why do we get attached to things that make us suffer?
There were six of us in this house and now only my mum and yaya remain. The only one I have left. It is precisely the reason I had to return so suddenly.
Lost in my thoughts, I come to my senses, back to reality. I am at the altar. What the hell am I doing here?
Open coffin.
She had never been very elegant. With her muddy smile I feel as if she is mocking me. She knows. “Πάλι για χάρη μου σε σύρανε εδώ, τη πάτησες”.
She had started to rot from the inside long before she died. Liar, manipulator, she reigned with glory over the kingdom of this cacochymous family. A family I am desperately trying to get away from. A family who will always manage to drag me back to remind me that I am the bastard of the French bitch that my father had picked.
Victory to the rickety bimbo.
A voice echoes on my right.
“Είναι πολύ όμορφη, δεν είναι;”
Όχι…you’ve dressed her as if she worked at Συγγρού.
“Πόσο μεγάλωσες… Με θυμάσαι;”
“Όχι…”
Of course, they all know me and I, no one.
Mom disembarks. Maybe there is a god, or she simply saw my disarray. That’s more like it. She glances at me. Mischievous smile, sparkle in her eyes.
And then she opens her mouth.
Thirty years in this country and she still does not know the language. She does not master simple rules like “η μαμά - ο μπαμπάς, της μαμάς - του μπαμπά” and can tell you “κλάσε καλά την πόρτα” with the utmost seriousness. It results in quite surreal conversations.
I am a little sad to have grown up, because as we grow older we start seeing our parents not as parents but as man and woman. Man and woman with their imperfections. While I never had any special respect for my father, my mother held a much higher place in my esteem. But my mother is a woman. I am also a woman. A woman no longer able to project herself through her mother. And yet it is because she is a woman that I come to respect her while seeing her flaws, her glaring flaws. And who are we without them? Plastic.
From a distance it looks as if she is chatting with ease. Too much ease for a funeral. I had told her she did not need to come, but she didn't want to leave me alone with these scavengers. I am glad she didn't listen to me. We can easily lose touch. Yes, because existing amongst them is quite the art, learnt through time and patience.
I am observing them. The women are lamenting and the men are going around in circles like shepherd dogs protecting the flock. My father just lost his mother, but he’s saving his ugly sadness for tonight. Hysteria, that is for the women. For the moment, he is the star, the man of the hour. Head down, crocodile tears, small embroidered handkerchief. He is being hugged, he is being kissed. “Αχ η μαμά σου, η μανούλα σου, αχ… τι θα γίνεις;”
I stifle my laughter in a cough. I can't believe what I'm hearing, but I can't say I’m amazed. Τι άλλο θ'ακούσω; Maybe she will adopt him, a 43-year-old child, so he doesn't starve? I hope he finally gets into cooking.
A woman throws herself in my arms. “Θα περάσει, θα περάσει, μην κλαίς. Σ’αγαπούσε πολύ η γιαγιά σου, το ξέρεις ; Σ’αγαπούσε πολύ. Αχ, τι θα κάνουμε χωρίς εκείνη ; Παναγιά μου !”
Παναγιά μου, you don’t say… Was it my lack of expression that inspired her need to console me? The little I knew my grandmother unfortunately did not give me the desire to forge any sort of relationship with her.
The priest appears out of nowhere like a Κύριε Ελέησον. They are good at that. In stark silence, everyone takes their seat, immediate family in the front, the rest manage on their own to have a good view. This is siege warfare. All of this, just to have a drop of holy water and a whiff of incense before their time. The scent of incense diffuses through the church like candle flames. At the end of the songs and prayers, a final kiss is placed on the forehead of the deceased, a final farewell. I refrain. Να πας στο καλό.
Κύριε ελέησον
Χριστέ ελέησον
Κύριε ελέησον
Kyrie eleison
Christe eleison
Kyrie eleison
Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy
Closed coffin.
I catch my breath. As much as I can in the midst of this fog.
The soul is finally separated from the body and it is high time to bury the latter hoping that the soul does not decide to prowl among us for much longer.
Κύριε Ελέησον.
Carrying the coffin to the cemetery, that is a job for the wardrobe men of the family ; their moment of glory, where they will prove their virility. My father gets up first to lead the procession. Three on each side, first attempt. I feel like this will turn sour. Between the strangled cries of the public and the moans of these six poor men, we are straddling tragedy and comedy. It must be that last baklava she swallowed. Word is it was the whole ταψί.
After a harmonious cannon of grunts, the men finally manage to put the coffin on their shoulders. Everyone follows them, their handkerchiefs stuck to their noses. We are walking in the pace of the six Atlases who seem to melt under the sun. I am sure they envy the weary lady lounging and wallowing in her bed. We’re hanging on to their steps, we’re looking at their feet as if to try to make them walk faster. A journey of fifty meters through a cemetery can take forever. Summer funerals under the fiery sun are the most trying ; even mourning becomes less unbearable.
In front of the tomb, their white shirts are as yellow with sweat as the dead woman's skin. With his dislocated shoulder and his blocked back, my father is crying as he watches the coffin disappear into the ditch. Is it grief or pain?
Images spin like reels in my head. In the first one, he falls on his knees begging God for mercy, or else he faints. In another one he throws himself into the pit and refuses to come out. The truth is much less frantic. With a blank stare, he lets a chrysanthemum slip from his fingers, as if he doesn't have the strength to hold it anymore. This flower he had chosen with the greatest care ; a last gift to his mother. We all had the same one. No blueberries, no poppies. Just χρυσάνθεμα. Like brides and grooms of death, each throws them on the coffin. My turn has arrived, I do the same with bitterness. I liked it, I felt good holding it, σαν μικρή νεράιδα. What if I got married after all, with a bouquet of chrysanthemums? I could add blueberries and poppies to it. Marriage, death, it is for eternity. These flowers are perfectly fit for the occasion.
The dead is buried, soil and flowers are covering the coffin. The funeral service is over. However, the end of the funeral service marks the beginning of what we all know better as coffee and koliva. Cemeteries here are like holiday resorts for devotees. We have all we need to pray, be blessed, be buried and to finish in style, eat and drink.
I’m given a cup of koliva. Πως θα το φάω αυτό; Μοιάζει με μασημένο φαϊ. It's a poultice of boiled wheat. I always feel like I'm eating what the body will look like in a few years. Mum must be thinking of the same thing. I look up. She was already making faces at me. I realize she is not the only one. A little one is trying to get my attention. I turn to him. He smiles at me, then looks down at my cup. I look at it too. He looks up and smiles at me again. I smile at him too. I glance at the cup. He does the same until our eyes cross again. I know what he wants, but I am enjoying this game. We continue our little routine, but his despair quickly leads him to the end.
“Θα το φάς αυτό;”
“Εε… όχι…”
“Να το πάρω;”
“Θα μπουκώσεις”
“Τι;”
“Πάρτο, πάρτο.”
His face lights up.
Around us people are eating, talking, crying, laughing. My father is not moving from his chair because of his blocked μέση. It doesn't seem to be bothering him; he is eating like a big baby with his yayas and aunts.
At the next table, a young boy is giving me the eye. Απίστευτο. They never waste their time, these people. Holy Mediterranean temperament.
In the back table, four old women gossip about the family with constant sneers and every now and then, twist up in laughter.
“Γειά σου.”
I turn around. Him again.
“Γειά…”
“Eίσαι της οικογενείας;”
“Ναι, γιατί;”
“Ω εντάξει…”
He is disappointed that I am also family. His plan falls into the blue expanse.
We are leaving. Suitably, this avoids any further annoyance.
As we are walking out of the cemetery, I notice men digging up a coffin.
“Uh… mum?”
She laughs.
“After three or four years the bodies are dug up to put the bones elsewhere. But you already know that! Since we’re still paying the box for yaya… I mean my yaya. When they dug her up your yaya even found a finger in her purse. "
“Fun… So we continue to pay rent even when we are in the grave”
"Except that it's your children who pay”
She frowns while letting a smirk appear on her face.
We continue to walk in silence to the car.
"Don't tell me we're going to have to come back."
"When?"
“To dig up yaya”
"Ah… I can tell your father that you’d love to be here”
I give her a killer look. This term here may not be quite appropriate.
In the car, on the way home, I see my life go by, but it is not in repercussion to this mortuary morning, it is mum who can’t drive.
Κύριε ελέησον.