High life
Mother
Taki
Spetsai Frying under an Attic sky day after day, surrounded by lotus eaters, might be considered fun by socialists, but it has had the oPposite effect on me. Although I was really looking forward to spending some time With my various children, I suddenly find Myself bored with their incessant questions: Daddy, why do you have hair on your chest and I don't?' Daddy why do you walk like a duck?"Daddy, why do you call everyone "shit"?' Fortunately, my son simply gurgles, like some inarticulate nobs I know, but even he seems to gurgle questioningly.
Unfortunately, I have come to admire women, mothers that is. By mothers I don't Mean any women who have given birth and that's all — the type that leave their babies ln a nurse's care in order to work at some high class boutique, nor the ones who leave them behind at home in order to write about women for some newspaper, although they don't need the money. In America most of the women writers are of that horrid species. No, I mean the kind of women no one writes about any longer, if in fact they ever did: the type that bears children, brings them up, feeds them and answers their idiotic questions day in day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, until the little darlings finally go off to school in order to become radicalised by their teachers. By the time the kiddies grow up to be good socialists they also think that their father exploited their mother, that she was idiotic to begin with for accepting exploitation, and that the world needs changing so that they will not have to go through the same agony of bringing up a baby.
Needless to say, my mother, who has had only two sexual experiences in her life, and had two children to show for them, was the kind of woman who brought me up as if she was poor. No nannies were allowed to change my brother or me, although there were nannies around. If one didn't have a German nanny during the late Thirties in Athens, one was thought to be as unchic as one would be if one had a German nanny today. Of course once the Germans came into Athens,, not exactly invited by the populace, but there in any case, having a German nanny became a matter of survival. My brother, who was blessed with blond hair, blue eyes, a bumbling manner, a shape that despite his seven years of age betrayed a love of beer, and whose character was teutonically bumptious, was a great favourite of the German officers who occupied our house. Harry used to sing `Ach du lieber Augustine' to them in perfect German in a high falsetto. They would play with his golden locks, give him sweets, pick him up, and then he would spoil it all by always wetting his pants while being given a ride on their epaulettes. I was small and black, looked as if I had always been fed on retsina and olives and was not a favourite with the Wehrmacht.
Ironically, I am the one who still defies the fighting abilities of the German army, while my Teutonic-looking brother has all but become a pinco-weirdo Commie. Because of his looks and our ability to speak German, my father had us deliver the underground Resistance paper he financed throughout the four years of occupation. The paper was pro-Allies and was called Greek Blood (Ellinikon A ima). My mother, as a German Field-Marshal's niece should, protested vigorously at having her children do the Allies' dirty work. But to no avail. Father wanted to be a hero. I shudder to think what would have happened if we had got caught.
Now, however, both my brother and I spend all our time being nice to my father, and have just about forgotten that our mother exists. I am sure my brother cares for Daddy for altruistic reasons. I simply try and be around him in case some loose change falls out. Yet we both forget that this man risked our lives by having us unwittingly work for Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt while my poor mother lost her youth answering our idiotic questions, teaching us German, and depriving herself of a lover so that she would always be near us in case we needed her. After one week with children I am retracting everything I have ever said about women, and will work harder than ever trying to keep feminism from spreading. I would rather the Gestapo had caught me when I was a delivery boy than ever have to bring up a child.
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