Americana Thanos Kalamidas Americana V y r o n a s C h r o n i C l e s “He left us with silence, not shame, a silence that held the weight of love and the cost of a country broken by shadows. In that quiet, we found both peace and war, whispered in the language of ashes and olive trees.” Thanos Kalamidas Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Americana Americana Thanos Kalamidas Vyronas Chronicles Thanos Kalamidas An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Americana s he stepped off the bus with a lurch , the soles of her shoes catching on the cracked pavement. The driver shouted something coarse and im- patient behind her, but eliza hale didn’t turn back. her hand brushed the hot metal of the stop sign pole, steadying herself. athens in June, they’d said, would be warm, blooming, carefree. But this was Vyronas, and the sky was jaundiced, the sun shuttered behind a film of dust and smog. even the light seemed to hesitate. she adjusted the strap of her canvas bag, brown and faded, with a single broken zipper and stood still until the bus rattled away, kicking up a gust of ex- haust that smelled of engine oil and disappointment. Thanos Kalamidas eliza was sixty-seven. her linen dress, a dull rust colour, clung at the back. it had belonged to her sis- ter, ruth, who had died of stomach cancer two years prior. she had not planned to come to Greece. not until ruth died. not until she found the letter, the one nikolas had folded away into the spine of a forgotten book, The Lives of the Saints , its margins covered in nikolas’ spidery annotations. Words she couldn’t read, written in a script that had never be- longed to her. she had carried two photographs and a name she’d spoken aloud for four decades: nikolas Charalam- bous. her husband. her mystery. her grief. he had come to her in 1946, fresh out of a displaced persons’ camp in naples, carrying the odour of sea salt and wool, with his left wrist bent slightly, as if it had once been broken and set wrong. he didn’t talk about the war. or Greece. or his family. There had been a name, Maria, spoken once, almost accidental- ly, in the middle of a dream. and now she was here, in Vyronas. The air smelled of bread crust, frying onions, and rusted balconies. she passed a child kicking a stick down a cracked sidewalk. The boy looked up; he had a milk mous- tache and wild hair and stared through her. Americana she reached a períptero, a kiosk half-covered in faded magazines and cigarette packs. The man inside wore a white undershirt stained with sweat. “Charalambous?” she said, softly, awkwardly, pro- nouncing it like Sharalamboss . “nikolas? his cousin. Maria?” The man raised an eyebrow, then pointed lazily with his chin. “Maria. school. Blue gate. you’ll know.” The street narrowed as she walked. The buildings leaned in on her, shutters cracked like old bones, laundry hanging stiff in the still air. Vyronas felt held in suspension, like a breath not yet released. Wom- en stood at windows, behind lace curtains, watching. always watching. a poster peeled from the side of a phone pole. it showed a man’s face in monochrome, with red let- tering beneath. Εξόριστος. Αντιφασίστας. exiled. an- ti-fascist. a silence deeper than quiet settled here. There were no radios playing. Just birds, crows maybe, pecking at the corners of the past. Thanos Kalamidas Then she saw it. The blue gate, chipped and hanging slightly ajar, with ivy twisting from its frame like veins. The house behind it was low, sunken, as if trying to hide from view. a lemon tree stood in the yard. she hesitated. The gate opened before she could knock. “Είστε η γυναίκα του Νικόλα,” the woman said. “ You are Nikolas’ wife.” eliza didn’t understand the words, but the tone struck deep. Maria was short and solid, with silver hair swept into a bun that looked like it had been done in the dark. her eyes were cloudy, but piercing. she wore black. everyone here wore black. They sat in a courtyard, where an old wooden table wobbled on uneven stone. The shade of the lemon tree played patterns on the tablecloth. Maria poured them both coffee, bitter, thick. she pushed a plate of halva toward eliza. neither of them touched it. “he was quiet,” Maria said, switching to broken english. “even when he was a boy. afraid of thunder. afraid of... the world.” Americana she lit a cigarette, then another for eliza, who took it despite not having smoked in years. “he hated our uncle,” Maria said. “General stavros. you know this name?” eliza shook her head. Maria’s mouth twisted. “no. Why would he tell? stavros beat the boys to make them soldiers. Made nikolas clean his boots with spit. Told him dreaming was a sin.” “i didn’t know... he never spoke of family. or home.” “he never could. They broke that in him.” There was the sound of an engine sputtering on a far street. Then silence again. Maria reached into a drawer inside the doorway and returned with a crumpled photograph. Black- and-white, frayed. Three boys and a girl. a goat in the background. one of the boys, ten, maybe eleven, had nikolas’ eyes. “he collected stones,” Maria said. “From the dry riverbed. Pressed them to his ears. said they made music.” Thanos Kalamidas eliza blinked, her voice catching. “he told me the desert in new Mexico... hummed. Maybe he was remembering the stones.” Maria stared into the distance, smoke curling from her cigarette like incense. “you don’t forget a man like that,” she said. “even when he leaves.” “i don’t think he left,” eliza said suddenly, surpris- ing even herself. “not really. i think he fled.” Maria looked at her. “Then you must understand this place is not just family. it is a... graveyard of names. he left before the Colonels came. others were not so lucky.” eliza leaned forward. “The posters. The men in them?” “My brother. My cousin. The schoolteacher. They took them. To Makronisos, to Gyaros, or to the pris- on in Koridallos. They say ‘communist’ like it is a dis- ease.” “But were they...?” Americana “it doesn’t matter. What matters is they did not sa- lute the right way. or they remembered too much.” Maria stood suddenly and walked toward the lem- on tree. her fingers brushed its leaves. “stavros. he stayed. Became a Colonel. he lives up the hill. has guards now. But we all know. We all re- member.” a window creaked open across the courtyard. a boy’s voice, singing something half-melody, half- chant drifted out. Maria smiled faintly. “My grandson. he sings to the ghosts.” eliza felt something shift in her. something niko- las had carried all his life, silent and unyielding. she had seen it in the way he would sometimes walk the length of their hallway at night, barefoot, pausing at each door like a man counting graves. Maria poured another coffee. This time, eliza drank it. later, as the shadows stretched longer and the courtyard cooled, Maria brought out a letter. Faded ink, edges crumbling. Thanos Kalamidas “he wrote this before he left. i never answered.” eliza reached for it. The lines were in Greek, inde- cipherable, but the rhythm was unmistakably him. The clipped phrasing. The caution. “i wanted to write,” Maria said, “but my father burned the envelope. said traitors deserve silence.” “Did he read it?” “no,” she said. “But he knew the handwriting.” They sat for a long time, the dusk folding around them like a shawl. “i thought i would find a street he walked,” eliza whispered. “a chair he once sat in.” Maria nodded. “he did. here. Under this tree.” eliza smiled. “Then i have found it.” * * * * * * * The night in Vyronas did not fall gently. it thick- ened. The walls bled shadow, and the vines turned to wire in the half-light. a dull tremor of unease hung Americana in the heat, as if the city was holding its breath. some- where a dog barked, then another, then silence again. inside the dim kitchen, eliza held the letter as if it might crumble into dust between her fingers. Maria lit a kerosene lamp. The flickering flame ren- dered her face in motion, lines deepening, softening. she took the letter from eliza, her hands shaking slightly, and began to read aloud in Greek. eliza listened not for meaning, but for rhythm, for tone, every breath and pause like a footstep on an old floorboard. Maria stopped, translated slowly. “i am writing you, Maria, not to ask forgiveness, but to remember. you were the last voice i heard in the house before i fled, the one who said nothing but looked at me like a brother, not a coward. i am sorry. For not speaking. For not fighting. But i would not spill blood for a flag that spat on the names of our mothers.” eliza exhaled. she had always known he carried something vast and unspoken. not shame, no, some- thing sharper. like guilt with no source. like a violin string tuned too tightly. Maria continued. Thanos Kalamidas “They will come for stavros, or they will not. But when they do, tell him: it is not fear that kept me away. it is love for a life without him.” “he wrote this in 1946,” Maria said. “The night be- fore he left.” “But stavros,” eliza asked. “he was still in ...pow- er?” Maria’s mouth curled bitterly. “he grew in it. a Col- onel. Then a shadow. now an old man with men and guns around him. We never speak his name above a whisper.” The air shifted. someone passed outside. Just the gravel crunch of feet, then gone. “Does he know i’m here?” eliza asked. Maria nodded slowly. “i sent a boy. i thought... maybe he would agree to see you. For nikolas. For the blood.” “But i... why?” “To finish it.” a silence fell between them, heavy and binding. Americana Maria stood. “Come. he sent word. We go now. Before he changes his mind.” eliza’s heart stuttered. her breath hitched. and yet... yes. This was why she had come. not for clo- sure. For confrontation. They climbed the hill on foot, through alleys that twisted like regrets. Children watched from behind broken fences. a woman pulled laundry off a line, her eyes narrowed. Vyronas was alive, but it did not forgive. The house was too clean. Whitewashed. The garden trimmed with military precision. a soldier opened the gate without smiling. another followed them in- side. Colonel stavros sat in a courtyard of marble and lemon trees. The same kind of trees. The same scent. he wore a suit too crisp for comfort. his hands rest- ed on a cane he didn’t seem to need. he did not rise. “eliza hale,” he said. “From america. The wife.” “yes.” Thanos Kalamidas “you came to find my nephew,” he said, voice like gravel soaked in wine. “But the man you married was never a Charalambous. not truly. he left us. left his country. his name.” “he left you,” she said, surprising herself. he grunted. “Maria tells me you read his letter.” Maria stood still beside her, eyes cast downward. “he defied us,” stavros said. “not just me. Us. Greece. he could have been something. a com- mander. But he followed his books. his silence. he shamed us.” eliza stepped forward. “he saved me.” a pause. “he saved me from a war i didn’t understand. From a country that looked at foreign names like poison. he gave me his silences, yes, but in them was peace. you don’t understand that, do you?” stavros stared. “he was weak.” “no,” she said, voice trembling. “he was kind.” his hand twitched on the cane. Americana Maria spoke then, her voice steady, sharp. “you were the coward, stavros. you sent boys to die in your place. you wore medals made of the mouths you silenced. My brother. our cousin. The teachers. Do you remember Makronisos?” “i served my country.” “no. you fed on it.” silence again. The soldier behind them shifted his weight. eliza stepped forward, lifting the letter. “This is his last word to you,” she said, handing it over. stavros looked at it. read. line by line. When he finished, his lips parted, then closed. he looked suddenly old. small. he reached for a lighter. Click. Flame. he set the letter on fire. held it until it burned his fingers, then dropped the ash to the stone. “no more ghosts,” he said. But they were already there. Thanos Kalamidas * * * * * * * They returned down the hill in silence. Back in Maria’s courtyard, the lamps flickered. somewhere, someone wept softly into the walls. That night, there was a fire. stavros’ house burned. People said it was faulty wiring. others said justice. no one saw the boy who ran into the night. Maria did not speak of it again. But she planted a new tree in the yard. an olive tree. eliza returned to new Mexico two weeks later. But sometimes, in the thin heat of evening, when the cicadas sang and the wind carried the desert’s hum, she would swear she heard nikolas’ voice. Whispering. in Greek. THE END Americana Americana Vyronas Chronicles Thanos Kalamidas Ovi eBook Publishing 2025 Ovi magazine Design: Thanos Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C All the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Thanos Kalamidas Thanos Kalamidas Americana V y r o n a s C h r o n i C l e s “He left us with silence, not shame, a silence that held the weight of love and the cost of a country broken by shadows. In that quiet, we found both peace and war, whispered in the language of ashes and olive trees.” Thanos Kalamidas , a multipublished writer, cartoonist and illustrator; born and grew up in a picturesque neighbourhood on the moun- tainside of Hymettus in Athens, Greece. Then his life took him to Berlin, Germany and to London, UK for studies. After a brief stay in Yorkshire he moved his life to Paris, France while working in Tokyo, Japan and in Cape Town, South Africa. In the last 25 years he became a permanent Scandinavian resident and recently, in his glorious sixth de- cade, he moved to a scenic village in the Växjö area.