Once We Were Here Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Cosmos

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5712-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-5713-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  The dedication for this book is shared between four people:

  For Michael John Lechner, keeper of secrets, sharer of experiences, my best friend, the best brother.

  For Margaret Kelly Cosmos Ryan, an indomitable mountain of strength, the most beautiful person I know, an ageless treasure of this world.

  For Elizabeth Helen Cosmos, who gave me everything, and made me anything that I am today, I’m so proud to even be a small part of you.

  And for my Papou, who I never met,

  but who gave me these stories,

  that were his stories …

  This is for you.

  CONTENTS

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  PART I

  1

  2

  3

  PART II

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART III

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART IV

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  July 27th, 2014

  I’M HAUNTED BY MY HISTORY.

  My life has always been a life of stories, ever since I can remember, ever since I was very young and growing up on my grandfather’s lap where he would tell me the great stories of his people, the stories of powerful and flawed gods and the daring deeds of the heroes they favored in faraway lands, and I think perhaps that’s why I’ve always loved the morning and the rising sun, because when I’m alone in the stillness of the dawn the stories feel less distant, and when the mist rises above the concrete of my neighborhood and the dew is still fresh and speckled on the flowers that my wife plants outside our house it seems like the light that’s about to come will touch everywhere, not just the places that I’ve been or that I know, but everywhere, and for a brief moment before the day begins the idea of real means something else entirely, and it’s during those moments that I have no doubt why we’re alive.

  My life has been a life of stories, as all our lives are, and I study mine often, crossing and re-crossing the intersecting lines, trying to make sense of who I am through history and blood, the only way that I know how. And it was a story that came from high above, and fell slowly at my feet, on an ordinary day, late in an ordinary summer, that would lead me to finally realize, as I held the greatest history of my life in my hands, and slowly rubbed my thumb across the old and worn surface of it, perhaps something that I’ve known and felt all along—

  I didn’t know who I was.

  I’ve spent the hottest and most important days of my summers at Papou’s cottage on Lake Michigan since before I can remember, and that summer was no different. As soon as we pulled into the driveway and the car stopped, our two boys jumped out and ran into the house, David struggling to keep up with William, his big brother determined every year to be the first inside and the first to the beach and the first in the water and the first to do everything else. Stephanie and I unloaded the car and made our way behind them, arms full of bags of groceries and toys for the beach, and when we walked in I saw Yia Yia smiling and waiting for us.

  “Papou took the boys down to the beach.”

  “Already?”

  “They didn’t want to wait. It’s a great age, isn’t it?” she said as I went forward and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “They’re growing so fast.”

  “Every week, it seems,” Stephanie answered, smiling as she gave my grandmother a kiss, too. “I’ve had to buy new shoes for William twice already this year. He keeps growing out of everything.”

  “He’s going to be tall. That’s good. Men should be tall.”

  I looked out the window to see my two boys hurrying with Papou down the long, winding staircase that leads to the beach, the tall marram grass lining the path all the way to the lake. Papou was more than ninety years old now, but he was still spry, active, healthy, able to keep up with his great-grandchildren. It’s remarkable when you think about it, but I never did because he was Papou—he’d always been a giant, and I could never imagine him slowing down.

  “What’s wrong, Andrew?” Yia Yia asked, watching as I stared out the window. “You know I can always tell when there’s something on your mind, right?”

  “I found something, while I was packing this morning,” I said, as I turned back to her. “It fell out of the boxes that you and Papou moved into the attic last summer.”

  “What did you find, Andreas?” she asked, using the Greek form of my name, more intimate, more personal.

  I took the creased photograph out of my pocket and slowly handed it to her. It was in black and white, a soldier standing next to a woman, and while I recognized Yia Yia, the man in the uniform next to her wasn’t Papou. He was taller, his nose was different, and so were his eyes.

  She looked down at the picture for a long time, silently studying the faces without speaking, and I was surprised to see tears come to her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Yia Yia? What is it?”

  “Nothing. It’s just something from a long time ago.”

  “Something that you’d forgotten?”

  “No, Andreas,” she said, as she looked up, and I saw that she was smiling sadly. “It’s not something I could ever forget.”

  “I don’t understand—I thought you and Papou left before the war began. That’s what you always told me.”

  “That’s what we told everyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was too hard for us to talk about it,” she said simply.

  “What happened?” I took her hand in mine so that she knew I didn’t want to cause her any pain. “I’m sorry, Yia Yia, but I’m curious … why don’t you want to talk about it? Did you have a brother?”

  “Don’t be sorry, Andreas. It’s a part of us, and so it’s a part of you, too. Which means that it’s your story as much as it’s ours.” And she looked at me as she spoke, into my eyes, as if she was searching for something, and finding it inside me gave her strength. “Maybe it’s time you learned about who your Papou really was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The door opened and my boys come back in, followed by my grandfather, and Stephanie came out from the back so that the whole family was in the living room wh
en Papou saw the picture that his wife was holding. Yia Yia handed it to him and he took it, looked down at the worn image, rubbing his thumb gently across it, remembering a time long past.

  “I’ll take the boys on a walk down to the pier,” Yia Yia said, looking at me. “They’ve always enjoyed that.” My boys smiled and yelled with excitement as they scrambled to get themselves ready: they know that a walk to the pier always means a stop for ice cream at the Dairy Treat, which they’d been waiting for all summer.

  “I’ll go with them, too,” Stephanie said.

  “Of course,” Yia Yia nodded to her, in love with the woman that I’m in love with.

  “Grandma, you don’t have to leave.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She saw the look on my face and she smiled to try to make me feel better. I’ve seen my grandmother smile many times, but this time it wasn’t a look that I could read—there was sadness, and there was hope, but there was something else, too.

  “I think maybe this is a story best told between men,” she said as she stood on her toes to kiss my forehead. “It’s time that you knew. It’s time that you learned about your family. I’ll see you when we get back, Andreas-mou.”

  I watched in silence as the boys came back in their swimming suits and left with Yia Yia and Stephanie and then, when they were gone, Papou finally turned to me—

  “It’s something that’s hard for your Yia Yia to talk about, you see.”

  “Because it was during the war? What happened? Did you fight?”

  “Yes. We fought.”

  “Where?”

  “Let’s go outside, Andreas. It’s such a beautiful day.”

  We walked outside together and sat on the chairs on the patio, facing out towards the water in front of us—when the wind’s up the waves get large enough that the whole lake is dotted with surfers, but today it’s calm, the water has the look and color of smooth glass, and it’s beautiful. In the distance my wife and my grandmother walk with my boys down towards the pier and I can’t help but smile, seeing them there together, my boys out in front, kicking up water as they run through the surf. Then I turn back to my grandfather, and when I look at him I see an unfamiliar look in his eyes, and at first I think he’s just trying to remember the story that he’s about to tell me, but then I see that it’s not his memory that he’s searching for at all, but his strength.

  “I’ll tell you this story once, Andreas. Your grandfather’s story. And then when you’ve heard it, it will be yours, and yours alone. To do with it what you will. Do you understand?”

  “No, Papou. I don’t think I do.”

  “You will. Trust me, Andreas. You will. Now, where to begin …”

  He closed his eyes, thinking back to a time long past. I can see the emotion in wrinkled and worn lines on his face, then after a moment he opened his eyes, looking directly into mine, as he took a large, deep breath full of purpose—

  “The story begins on a beautiful day, in a beautiful city, in the most beautiful country in the world …”

  PART I

  “Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli. This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece.”

  —Benito Mussolini, speaking to Count Ciano

  1

  October 28th, 1940

  THE TOWN OF AGRIA SITS BELOW a large bluff, nestled against the radiant azure waters of the Aegean Sea, not far from the great eastern port of Volos. It’s a fishing village, and everything about it is dedicated to the water and maritime life, as so many of the Hellenic cities and islands are and have been since before anyone can remember. Alexei’s father was a fisherman, as his father was before that, and his father before him, so Alexei learned to cast a fishing net when he was very young, before he was even six years old, and his sun-tanned arms were strong enough to pull in a full haul of marides or lavraki before his thirteenth birthday. He was a boy who grew up slowly beside the sea, in a corner of the world where everything was carefully crafted out of beauty and full of an ancient history as storied and rich as time itself.

  It was a few months past Alexei’s eighteenth birthday, and though he’d been fishing with his father for some years by then, he’d recently been trying to make as many excuses as he could to take their boat out alone. When he was younger, Alexei’s father seemed as large as Zeus to his son, a great bear of a man, a god amongst all the other ordinary fathers that Alexei knew in their town, and someone not destined to suffer the same fate as other mortals. Iannis was only five foot nine, three inches shorter than how tall his son stood now, but there was once a time when Alexei thought he’d never reach his father’s height. It wasn’t until years later that he realized that sometimes it’s how a man lives his life that makes him seem taller. Iannis had left Greece and travelled the world at nineteen, going to college in Paris before returning home to fight in the Great War, taking a bullet in the leg fighting with the Greek Army against the Bulgarians when they invaded Thrace in 1918. Alexei used to ask his father many times for stories from the war, expecting feats of daring and heroism, tales to rival those of Homer and Aeschylus, but all he used to say to his son was—

  “We won, Alexandros. That’s all you need to know.”

  Iannis’ response became a mantra, the same word always following the same word, each syllable pronounced exactly the same way. It wasn’t until Alexei was older that it occurred to him what he might have been asking his father to relive. But what Alexei did know is that in the last few years Iannis’ leg started bothering him more and more, to the point where Alexei saw his father, the Greek god, the man he’d thought of as Zeus, someone to rival Achilles himself in the eyes of a young boy, start walking with a slight limp that had become more noticeable with each passing year. He would never admit it, a proud and stubborn man, but a son who spent so many mornings on a boat with his father could see the toll the work was beginning to take on him. But it was as it should be. Old men are meant to slow down, and young men are meant to take up for them, and Alexei was happy to do his part. So Alexei learned to make excuses to wake up early and go out on the boat alone, telling Iannis that he needed to practice by himself, without a father there telling a son everything that he was doing wrong, anything Alexei could think of to keep him at home at least a few more days a week instead of out on the sea where he’d been since he was a boy.

  And it was on one such morning, when Alexei had taken the boat out alone, that the entire world changed.

  That fall had been particularly good for fishing, in a way that some falls are and it’s impossible to explain, and Alexei had already filled three nets before the sun was high enough in the sky to signal that it was midday.

  That summer he’d started diving for sponges, too.

  He’d found a cove up the coast to the north of Agria where they were still plentiful because no other fishermen had found it yet, and after he collected them he could sell the sponges for 50 drachmae apiece in the agora. Alexei enjoyed the days when he could strip off his clothes and dive into the ocean, going as far down as his lungs would allow, which day after day was getting progressively deeper and longer. He’d gather the sponges off the rocks and load them into a special sack that he’d woven just for the task, then come bursting back up to the surface, and it became his favorite part of the day when he’d climb back onto the boat and allow himself to lay still for a few moments as the hot Mediterranean sun would bake the leftover salt onto his skin. It felt like youth to him, and like freedom. He was an adventurer alone on the open sea, the hero of his own story, the same as all the other heroes he’d grown up with. Achilles, Odysseus, Alexander … the men he thought about when he lay in his bed at night. The great men whose stories they still told. These moments alone with himself and his dreams were innocence before Alexei ever really knew what innocence was, and certainly long before he knew how easily it could be taken.

  But the coming fall would be sure to change that forever.

&nbs
p; As Alexei came back to shore, his nets full with fish, which would make his father happy, and with a sackful of fresh sponges, he looked into the distance and saw a figure on the beach, standing next to the small and narrow dock and waving his arms wildly, calling out his name:

  “Alexei! Alexei!” the words carried across the water.

  Constantinos had been Alexei’s best friend since before either of them could remember. They were both born on the exact same night, within hours of each other during the greatest storm anyone in Agria could recall. It lasted for six hours and killed ten people, and after the storm had finally passed each of their families found that they’d been blessed with two healthy baby boys, and their mothers had decided for them that their histories were certainly already irrevocably intertwined, that fate had already chosen them to be best friends, and so far their mothers had proven to be right. The local priest said any newborns that were able to survive that storm were destined for greatness, and while Costa and Alexei didn’t care for any of the stories from their mothers or the priest, they’d both been obsessed since they were very young with finding out who was born first, and thus older, something that they knew they’d never be able to prove—Costa’s father had died before he was born, and his mother had gotten cancer when he was six years old, leaving him an orphan—so they couldn’t ask them about his birth, but it had become a point between them to try to speculate and unravel the mystery that they knew could never be unraveled.

  “What’s wrong, Costa?” Alexei called back to him.

  “It’s the Italians,” he said, spitting the word out of his mouth like poison. “It’s Mussolini.”

  “What about him?”

  Alexei pulled the boat up to the shore and Costa grabbed hold of the wooden side, helping Alexei tie it off against the dock, something they’d done so many times together that it seemed as familiar to the son of a fisherman and his friend as tying the laces of a shoe.

  “He called Metaxas and offered him an ultimatum. It’s been all over the radio since it happened.”