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Alki Zei: Η αρραβωνιαστικιά του Αχιλλέα (Achilles’ Fiancée
Daphne. Banos who, throughout this book is known by her code name Eleni is is on a horror train with various others. This is not a real horror train but a film set, in Paris. Eeleni and several other Greeks – former colleagues of Eleni in the struggle against the Germans and right-wing Greeks are in exile in Paris, working without work permits. We will follow the filming during the course of the film. while following the story of Eleni and her comrades-in-arms.
Her mind goes back to another, fateful train journey, in fact her first train journey. She was sixteen. Earlier she had been encouraged by a by who lived in the neighbouring building to meet him in the downstairs laundry room . She was expecting to get her first kiss. Instead he asked to join his political group, She accepted. So now when she meets a young man on the train she introduces herself as Eleni. He is Achilles. like him. Achilles is certainly not his real name, but it suits him. I’ll never call him by any other name.”. Soon Achilles is introducing her to everyone as his fiancée though she is not(at least not yet). Of course she does become his fiancée and, later, his wife, though she barely sees him as he is always fighting the good fight elsewhere. He will appear for a day or two and then disappear for a while. She does have occasional flings – a Swiss artist, another comrade – but generally remains loyal to Achilles.There is no other man and there never will be. However much time goes by.
For much io the novel we follow Eleni and her comrades, fighting the Germans, the royalists and the junta. Each time they think it will get better and they can go home but it does not.
It does not go well for the comrades. At one point with the arrival of the junta, Eleni is trying to find somewhere to spend the night but no-one will take her in because there are frequent night searches and anyone harbouring a person not on the official register is shot. She is caught by a policeman and sent to prison. Her cellmate apparently strangled her husband with a clothes line but will not speak.
She finds out that many of her former schoolfriends and comrades are there, The women resist the torture. One woman will later make a film abroad, showing the marks of her torture. One man, however, is scared and betrays them. Many of them are shot. The authorities do not realise that Eleni had been an activist , only that she is Achilles’ fiancée and she is released.
Zei’s husband went to Tashkent, then in the Soviet Union and so does Eleni but she will come back. She prefers Rome but ends up in Paris. She will end up living there with her twelve year old daughter who tells her – in May 1968 – All of your crowd has lost its revolutionary spirit. .
Life is not easy in Tashkent. Achilles is often absent fighting the good fight and many of the Greek exiles spend a lot of time arguing over what they did and did not do. They are restricted in their movements. Eleni does give birth to her daughter and that keeps her partially occupied but she is not happy there. Achilles doesn’t know that my greatest hardship is to lie down beside him without talking about all the disturbing things that are about to change our lives. It’s not in any way the fault of socialism, to be sure, that you can’t talk to your husband in bed. For Achilles if Stalin says it and/or the Party says it, it is right and there is no further discussion. She does not agree but there is no point in arguing with him. Achilles only reads Party-approved non-fiction.Apart from his Marxist hooks, Achilles has read only one novel: Boris Polevoy’s The True Man, about a hero in the war, a pilot who was badly wounded. Both his legs were cut off but he continued, with his wooden legs.
Eventually they do go to Moscow which does have its advantages though it is bitterly cold.
As we know she gets back to Western Europe and, like Zei, lives in Paris with her daughter. She is tired of being Achilles’ fiancée and is even considering getting a divorce though, given that Achilles is in prison and is to be tried, she accepts that that would not look good. However she is determined to be her own woman, Eleni or Daphne and not simplyAchilles’ fiancée. which she remains even after they have been married for many years.
The train film continues throughout the book. They shoot and reshoot and, by the end, only Eleni and Eugenios are left of the Greeks. This is clearly a symbol of their struggle – going on and on doing the same thing and still feeling that they are not quite getting it right.
This book is clearly at least in part autobiographical. While it is certainly interesting to follow the struggle against tyranny, it is by no means the first Greek novel have read on this subject. As it is at least in part autobiographical, Zei gives us all the deatails, some of which, frankly, lesss than interesting as we follow the lives oif many Greek revolutionaries and their many comings and goings, their disputes and their many problems, including imprisonment, torture, exile and, all too often death, sometimes at the hands of the opposition and sometimes from various ailments.
Publishing history
First published in1987 by Kedros
First English translation in 1991 by Kedros
Translated by Gail Holst-Warhaft