In any case, Titina Stavridi withdrew from our lives, to a distance of windows, or balconies.

Once indeed, I met her outside the grocer’s, when Titina said:

‘It is sad, Dionysi. You were the one. You were the one I always loved.’

So that I experienced a sensation of extreme horror, not to say terror, and ran all the way home with the paperful of sugar for which Kyria Smaragda had sent me.

But I could not escape Titina’s face. Its dreadful oblong loomed in memory and at open windows, at dusk especially, as the ripening dates fell from their palms, and a camel grunted past.

So much happened all at once I cannot remember when the Stavrides went away. For we, too, were going. Our Aunt Ourania had paused one evening in doing the accounts, and said it was time to give serious thought to education. So there we were. Packing. Fräulein Hoffman began to cry.

Once I did happen to remark:

‘Do you suppose the Stavrides have left already? One sees only shutters.’

‘That could be,’ said Aunt Ourania.

And Aunt Thalia added: the Stavrides were famous for moving on.

Anyway, it was unimportant. So many events and faces crowded into the next few years. For we had become Athenians. In the dry, white, merciless light, it was very soon recognized that I was a conscientious, though backward boy. Time was passing, moustaches growing. Often we children were put to shame by the clothes our Aunt Ourania would make us wear, for economy, and to contain our pride.

Most of the other boys had begun to think of going to brothels. Some of them had already been. Their moustaches helped them to it. But I, I mooned about the streets. Once I wrote on a wall with an end of chalk:

I LOVE I LOVE I LOVE

And then went off home. And lay on my empty bed. Listening. The nights were never stained with answers.

It was soon the years of the Catastrophe. We moved to the apartment at Patissia then. So as to have the wherewithal to help some of those poor people, our Aunt Ourania explained. For soon the refugees were pouring in from Anatolia. There were cousins sleeping on the tiled floors, and our Aunt Helen and Uncle Constantine in the maids’ bedroom; the girls from Lesbos had to be dismissed. Give, give, ordained Aunt Ourania, standing with her arms full of cast-off clothes. My youngest sister Myrto burst into tears. She broke open her money-box with a hammer, and began to spend the money on ices.

Oh, everything was happening at this time. Our eldest brother, who had given up all thought of becoming a film star, was in Cairo being a businessman. Our sister Phrosso had stopped falling in love. She was again in Alexandria, trying for one of several possible husbands. There were the many letters, which filled me with an intolerable longing for damp gardens and ficus leaves. Once I even wrote a poem, but I showed it to no one, and tore it up. It was sometimes sad at home, though Agni might sit down at the piano, and bash out Un baiser, un baiser, pas sur la bouche ... while the aunts were paying calls.