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Costas Taktsis: Το τρίτο στεφάνι (The Third Wedding)

Taktsis wrote this, his only novel primarily when he was in Australia. He tried to get it published but failed, so published it himself. It has gone on to become a modern Greek classic.

Our narrator is Nina and she starts as she means to go on – expressing her views quite forcibly. In this case it is a diatribe against her adult daughter Maria . No, really I can’t, I can’t stand her another moment! Dear God, why did you send me such a burden to bear? What have I done to deserve such punishment? How long must I put up with her, see her horrid face, hear her voice, how long, Oh Lord, how long? . They still live together. Maria is the daughter of Fotis, Nina’s long-since deceased and not much loved first husband. Nina is currently married to Theodore, her third husband. Maria is not married and Nina has thought about finding her a husband but cannot imagine who would want to marry her.

Nina’s first boyfiend was Aryiris. He wanted to become a doctor and she does not seem to mind when he cuts up dead animals. However not only do her parents oppose any possibility of marriage but forbid her from seeing him again. She later learns that he is gay.

She married Fotis as much because her family were against him. He was a dashing naval officer, often away sea. They married. On their wedding night it seems that Maria was conceived. (Everyone is entitled to make one mistake in his life. But is that any reason why I have to pay for that one stupid mistake for ever?<) It was a hot night and Fotis decided to go and sleep on the terrace after having sex with Nina, who has fallen asleep. She wakes up and goes to look for Fotis who is indeed on the terrace. He is having sex with Dino, Nina’s brother. Not surprisingly she is furious. Apparently her parents knew Dino was gay – he had been caught more than once at school. Nina blames her mother as she doted on her son. Nina wants to end the marriage but a compromise is reached. Fotis is often away at sea. He sends her money regularly. However he falls ill and has to leave the navy. His illness gets worse and he eventually dies.

All this might seem deadly serious and, of course it is but Taktsis treats it with a mixture of seriousness and mocking derision. Nina, for example says of herself It’s my nature to be patient and restrained, especially with people I don’t like.. However, she is anything but patient and restrained.

The book is not told in chronological order so we pick up the story in bits and pieces. We learn that after Fotis’ death, she struggles financially. Her father is retired but both parents are ill and she has too look after them but also the monster, as she describes her daughter. She borrows money from relatives. Her mother had a dressmaking business but has had to give that up because of eyesight problems. Then Antoni turns up, a distant relative of her mother. He is twenty years older than her and hardly every woman’s dreams but seems to be a good man. Once they marry he proves to be very generous.

But he too gets ill and money is not so readily available not least because he turns to religion. Nina’s mother had an assistant dress maker called Erasmia. She is still around and encourages Antoni in all sorts of charitable and religious works. Erasmia will perhaps be the most mocked person in this book after Maria. She regularly appears, often not alone, encouraging Antoni to spend and setting herself up as a religious guru. One day she brings Hecuba whom Nina takes to, not least because she criticises Erasmia. We know early on that Nina will end up marrying Theodore, Hecuba’s son but before we get there we are going to learn Hecuba’s complicated life story. She has a happy marriage but when a relative comes to stay with them, whom Hecuba is helping and Hecuba falls ill, her husband runs off with the relative, taking her children and denying her any alimony by forging documents. Frosso, the said relative, is perhaps the third most mocked woman in this book. Hecuba struggles for a long time with this. Her relationship with her daughter Eleni is only marginally better than Nina’s with Maria. Indeed Eleni may vie with her stepmother for the amount of condemnation she receives.

However bad Nina and her nearest and probably not very dearest do in life, Hecuba’s family outshines them. As Nina’s mother spoilt Din, Nina’s brother so Hecuba dotes on Dimitris, her eldest son, at least so their respective sisters claim. Both Dino and Dimitris do not fare well in life – crime, prison, drugs, unsuitable relationships, and even becoming a communist-it is all there and both mothers struggle, though, in the case of Nina she struggles as Dino’s sister, particularly once her parents die. However Hecuba has three children to Nina’s one and a far more wayward husband, so she struggles more.

One character says of Hecuba: Hecuba Longos, the woman who never says die! You’re like Greece, you are. A little bit crazy, but you’ve a heart of gold.

We have been jumping about chronologically. knowing that Nina is going to marry Ttheodore though on more than one occasion she considers him after Antoni dies but rejects him. ]However what we do get is the war. Antoni’s business is not doing well, Then Italy invades. The Greek army is able to hold the Italians backWe all knew Hitler would come to the rescue of the spaghetti-mongers soon or later says Nina and. of course they do. Antoni dies soon after but has left Nina a lot of money he got from a dubious government contract and, unlike most Greeks, she survives without too much difficulty. However, though there is a war, the family issues of the two women continue – a cousin is arrested by the Germans, Dimitris is still dealingd drugs and so on. Even after the war, there is the civil war and things do not get much better after that is concluded.

And yes, Nina does finally marry Theodore as we knew she was going to do. Theodore may not be exactly anyone’s idea of Prince Charming; in fact, now that I’d got to know him better I could see that poor old Hecuba was right: he was a bit selfish, obstinate and narrow-minded. The book ends with an odd look to the future: But if “anything happens to him, and the clergymen decide, like I saw in the newspapers, to allow a fourth wedding, then I may very well take a fourth husband yet.”

This is a very complicated, somewhat but not too chaotic and often slyly humorous novel. Taktsis mocks virtually all of his characters, even his two heroines. Both women have marriages that are far from perfect and children that are even worse. Indeed the children are thoroughly flawed (the husband is, of course to blame). Most of the main characters die, often under difficult circumstances. While he he may have a somewhat if muted respect for his two heroines, he clearly does not like the majority of his characters. Having said that the reader can enjoy seeing who will mess up next and why and pity their luckless children, parents and spouses.

Publishing history

First published in 1962 (self-published)
First English translation in 1967 by Alan Ross
Translated by Leslie Finer (Alan Ross), John Chioles (Hermes, Penguin)