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Elias Venezis:Γαλήνη (Serenity)
Note that the English translation calls him Ilias Venezis, not Elias.
At the end of World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the Greeks sent an army to protect the many Greeks who lived in Western Anatolia and where their ancestors had lived for hundreds of years. They were opposed by the Turkish army led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk .The Greeks initially had some success but were then beaten back by the Turks and virtually the entire Greek population was driven out of Anatolia, most of them resettling in Greece, often, as in this book, in less than ideal places
We open in Anavyssos, now a resort town but then a desolate area near Cape Sounion, with no road connecting it to the rest of the world.
We open with two men digging in the salt flats, They are looking for a statue that an entrepreneur has said is buried there and he will pay them handsomely if they find it. Technically it belongs to the Greek government but the entrepreneur, known only as Green is a successful smuggler.
While they are digging, they suddenly see a crowd of people arriving. They are a new group of refugees who have been given the land. On arrival one of them says it’s a barren place like this whole country. This place will be our tomb.
They are hot, tired, thirsty (the nearby well was dry). The diggers are not the only ones to have seen them. In the nearby hills live a group of Arvanites (Albanian-speaking Greeks. The next day the Arvanites confront them and warn them away. They tell them it is impossible to grow crops and they will die of thirst as there is no well. They also threaten to attack them, destroy their crops and kill their animals. They will later sabotage them.
We follow a few of the refugees. The sixty year old Dr Dimitris Venis is devoted to his wife Irini. she is from an aristocratic family – her father was the British consul – but the family had fallen on hard times. Irini still had her pretensions and had not adapted to the new reality.. She is helped by a woman called Eleni who still looks up to her.
Eleni’s husband, Fotis, finds an old Byzantine chapel and claims it. While digging he finds a buried wall. When Green hears about it, he offers a large sum of money for three months use of it. Fotis declines, to his wife’s annoyance. Fotis will come to regret his decision.
They do find fresh water and set to work, though it is not easy Dr Venis wants to grow roses but obviously, most of them grow food crops. However many of the crops are washed away when there is heavy rain and flash floods, aided by the Arvanites.
Another group, from the Turkish area of Anatolia , arrives further along the coast but the two groups a keep apart. This group keep away from the sea as they were from the mountainous area of Anatolia and are somewhat frightened by the sea. The original group had been expecting those that had been held by the Turks to be released but are disappointed when only one turns up and not in good health. He will later recount the travails he and others suffered both in prison and on their journey to Greece.
Eventually things develop. Fotis, now a widower will marry one of the Turks, Vaso, a widow with a young child. Her husband was recruited by the Ottomans and never returned. She is also afraid of the sea and refuses to eat seafood.
Fotis is adventurous and decided to set sail for Aegina, about four hors away, both to see the place where he and others lived but also because he can do some profitable trading. There are surprises for all of them.
While the older generation more or less adapt, Irini excepted. The younger generation do not, wondering what they will do with their lives in this still barren place. However when a road roller turn up to build a road, there is more optimism, though, as we shall find out, the road roller plays an unexpected role.
This is a Greek novel and we associate tragedy with the Greeks. Just as we are wondering where this novel is going, tragedy strikes.
Venezis makes great use of the word serenity. He uses it to describe the scene several times but we know, behind the seeming serenity, there are problems, conflict, disaster and, finally tragedy. However Venezis tells an excellent story of a group of refugees, settling in a barren land and struggling with the land and its few inhabitants but also struggling with their emotional baggage, their turbulent past and coping with an alien and often unfriendly environment.
I have recently read one other book on a similar theme: athieu Belez’s Attaquer la terre et le soleil [Attacking the Earth and the Sun] about French colonists being sent to Algeria but, like our refugees, facing many problems.
Publishing history
First published in 1939 by Pyrsos
First English translation in 2019 by Aiora
Translated by Joshua Barley