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Zyranna Zateli:Και με το φως του λύκου επανέρχοντα ( ( At Twilight They Return)

Christoforos is the patriarch of a large Greek family in a remote part of Greece. One thing that this family does well is breed. Christoforos marries three times. His children breed, particularly Theagenis who is renamed Hesychios ( it means quiet,silent). He is a handsome young man and all the young women fall for him. He is very fertile so they soon produce a child. “He has a blade between his legs is one comment. Sadly the unfortunate mother soon dies so the child is added to Christoforos’ ever-growing household. Christoforos accepts them but tells his son that if he is to continue to produce children he must find a wife to help with taking care of them. Find yourself a decent woman with a big heart who’ll forgive you for all your past and help you raise those children.

He soon meets Febronia, widow of a cobbler and mother of three children. Quite a few of the wives who join the household bring children from one or more previous marriages. Febronia is fourteen years older than Hesychios but that does not seem to be a problem. She continues to produce children till she is fifty-four, when she calls a halt. Of course Febronia is not the only woman in the household to produce children during this period. The household, which, fortunately, is very well-off, is soon swarming with children of all ages. The burden on the women, not necessarily the mothers, is immense. One woman, herself not married and the step-daughter of Christoforos, Cletia by name, complains that she spends her whole life looking after other peoples’ children, even though in most cases, she is related to these children. We will learn more of her later.

The book is divided into ten tales. These are quite long tales – not surprising given the many characters. They tend to focus on one or two main characters but will feature a large cast, both the various relatives of our family but also a few extraneous characters who appear as visitors, neighbours and potential or actual spouses of Christoforos’ extended family. The stories often start in a seemingly conventional manner but can veer off into magic realism and/or fairy tale/myth. Things go wrong, there is often violence which can be by humans but also by the elements or animals. Sometimes things work out,sometimes they do not. People die, particularly but not only family members from disease, accidents, the weather and, of course, violence, not necessarily from humans.

Take Cletia, for example,. She gets her own story. She falls in love with a stranger and that becomes an issue. Her stepfather, Christoforos – both her parents are dead by now – is not enthusiastic but not opposed. By now Cletia has been partially promoted from looking after babies to running the inn owned by the family and meets her intended that way. Christoforos struggles with her – God didn’t see fit to give me daughters or stepdaughters,“he gave me enigmas. Inevitably this story does not turn out well,with a terrible earthquake and other disasters.

Then there are the two Julias. They are aunt and niece but Julia Niece seems to be closer to her Aunt Julia than her mother. paritally because of the shared name but also because her mother, Febronia, has other children to look after while Aunt Julia does not have children of her own. Neither Julia fares well in this bookj.

The first story is about Hesychios and his charm and winning ways with the opposite sex. However it is also about a family tradition. When they reach twelve, every boy has to slaughter a lamb or kid. Not surprisingly, they are not very enthusiastic about this. Many do it, albeit with great difficulty and are traumatised by it. There are one or two devious waylays out of doing it that some of the boys manage to take advantage of. However Hesychios has not found a loophole and there he is with a large knife, dressed in the special clothes made for the boy, in front of all of his male relatives – the girls and women have to stay inside. Naturally things do not go smoothly. There were some twelve-year-olds who completely lost their senses that morning and some who never found them again. In other cases, boys wronged by nature, somewhat retarded in mind, with strange manners and gait, or excessively naive and moonstruck never looked back after this act, and no one dared make fun of them ever again.

Of course with so many children, things can go wrong and we have deaths from various diseases and natural disasters. Some of the children leave never to be heard of again. Some behave badly. Some encounter strange people and strange phenomena. Many. of course, just die in the normal course of events. If someone loses a spouse, another one will often be along sooner or later, usually bringing children from a previous relationship.

Animals play key roles in fairy stories/myths and they play small but significant roles here, particularly hares, snakes and wolves though other animals make an appearance.

Christoforos is the patriarch and, on the whole, he treats his family well and shows concern for them as well as for others whom he has dealings with. We all know that relatives can be a joy but also they can be difficult and, in this case, where there is not only an unusually large amount of relatives, most of them live together, causing an additional burden. Accordingly, we have arguments, disagreements, people leaving, sometimes permanently and all the many other problems that can and do occur among relatives.For the reader keeping track of who is who, with names changing and two characters sharing the same name can be complicated. However

There are ten stories within this novel, all closely linked and all involving our extended family so we do get to know the key characters and their foibles and we can more or less deal with those making brief appearances with their own foibles and needs.Zateli
clearly must have spent a long time a long time mapping out the relationships and then determining who is going to make an appearance when but she has done it well as I found this a most enjoyable albeit complicated work which, given its length, kept me entertained for several days.

Publishing history

First published in 12013 by Kastaniotis
First English translation in 2016 by Yale University Press,
Translated by David Connolly