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Maro Douka: Η αρχαία σκουριά (Fool’s Gold)
Our heroine is called Myrsini, named after her grandmother. She comes from a fairy well-to-do family. Her father is a successful lawyer, while her Aunt Victoria runs her own factory. Myrsini is an only child and she was an accident, her mother being determined not to have children but against having an abortion. Her parents’ marriage is not a happy one and seemingly has never been happy. Both openly have affairs and, during the course of the book Xenia, her father’s latest all but moves in with their love child. This is pretty much taken for granted.
Myrsini is studying medecine at university. Though initially not directly involved in the left-wing movement – it is Greece in 1967 when things were not going well – she has a boyfriend, Paul, who is. Like virtually every relationship in this book, it is not a happy relationship. His manner irked me: as though he’d read it up in a book on
how to get an easy lay. And the hungry way he eyed my breasts, comparing them mentally, I’m sure, to some species of fruit. He prioritises his political activity and, as she will later discover he has other girlfriends. However, for a while she is devoted to him. on what she says is the last time they met – in fact it is not – he starts crying but not for her but because he has been expelled from his political group.
That night she is at home with her extended family and we meet a variety of people. Lucy, her mother’s friend had had her brother killed fighting for the partisans so has left-wing sympathies. Aunt Victoria sees the workers in her factory as shirkers and always demanding some right so she is very right-wing. The others have varying views, even the maid, Calliope, whose brother was killed by the partisans. So when the phone rings that night and the father is informed of the Greek colonels takeover, views are mixed.
Our heroine considers herself, like her father, to be a centrist. Her father had not taken sides in the civil war but, through connections, had avoided serving in the army and fled to France , initially planning t go alone but then going with Nathalie, whom he married. After the war, more connections helped him avoid military service and they returned with the young Myrsini.
Things are initially grim – tanks everywhere and mass arrests. Myrsini goes looking for Paul but does not know where he lives. She tracks down his mother but not him. They do bump into one another but he is not interested in talking to her. She later meets his long-term but now ex-girlfriend and learns more.
Myrsini is also getting fed up with her family and after a row with her mother moves out. She meets Fondas and he gets her to join the resistance. They write, print and distribute leaflets, which are distributed to other left-wing groups but also to the public. She becomes close to Stefanos and learns that his home had been raided several times by the police but each successive time less fiercely than the previous, not least because all the jails were full. He goes back home and tries to get his old job back, without success.
She had never thought of being arrested but when a close colleague, George, is arrested, they are frightened. They manage to hole up with the aforementioned Lucy. However they are betrayed and caught. She is tortured but first her father and then her uncle,a general, manage to get her out. She slowly recovers from her ill-treatment.
We are going to follow her political activity and her personal life, with perhaps more focus on the latter. She continues to hang around the fringes of the left. She visits her former colleague, George, in prison and they are seemingly in love. She has to be careful as they are watching her. She tries to get a factory job but without success. She gets very much involved in the polytechnic uprising and gets beaten but again her family help. She meets many former colleagues at a party to celebrate the release of George but feels distant from them. She soon realises the difference between a relationship with a prisoner and a relationship with a released prisoner.
But it is her personal and family life that is more of a focus. She ends up with four half-siblings, all with different mothers. It is safe to say that the vast majority of relationships in her extended family, whether boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife or parent/(adult) child are flawed, in many cases seriously flawed. She does no better holding on to boyfriends than her parents and other family members do in holding on to their partners.
As for her and her former colleagues, they seem all too often to struggle to cope with life outside the opposition movement. She does have her family to help when times are tough. Most of her colleagues come from relatively poor backgrounds and with parents who have long been involved in left-wing activity and are therefore watched by the security police. Many, like her, move on over time, not wanting to get involved again and naturally worried that they are being watched. Myrsini, for example, is summoned by the police and threatened. When she gets home she finds that her flat has been completely turned upside down.
The book ends with a somewhat corny episode. Myrsini meets a woman called Maro (the name of the author) and gives her some information about herself.
The key feature of this book is he difference between the revolutionary who has a rich and influential family behind her and those that do not. She may resent her family’s interference but, however much they annoy her, she does take advantage of their influence. The book also gives us an interesting background to the struggle against the junta as well as a highly colourful account of the Greek bourgeoisie who carry on their bohemian ways while others suffer.
Publishing history
First published in 1979 by Kedros
First English translation in 1991 by Kedros
Translated by Roderick Beaton