A Red Suitcase in Vonitsa

A Red Suitcase in Vonitsa

It was one of those days when the midday shadows feel thick and heavy across the narrow alleys of the Mediterranean. The eucalyptus trees still held out somehow, breathing their scent into the summer air. Heat, splashing water, diving bodies, ice creams, bicycles, shouting voices. And yet, around the houses, the sun lay dozing—languid, unbothered—as though it had spilled lazily from one lane into the next. Perhaps it had just come off a shift serving iced coffees in the high season. Who could blame such exhaustion?

And the cicadas—what of them? A full symphony orchestra, calls and responses without end. If you cannot hear cicadas in Greek summer, I assure you: something is deeply wrong. Cicadas and crickets. Without them there is no summer, and without summer there is nothing at all.

But by night, the air would soften, turning sweet—perhaps even carrying, from corner to corner, the whispers of Venetian ghosts. What unspoken loves were woven in the shadow of that castle? And this sea—how many times has it not gathered countless bodies into its arms? Little dolphins slip through its narrow passage and arrive to summer in the Ambracian Gulf. And there is that lighthouse, too, standing in welcome. Climb it, and it offers you, with disarming generosity, a view so rare it feels almost unreal.

They say that even now, in certain alleys at night, Venetian knights drag their heavy armor step by step, making their desperate way toward the sea. They wait there until dawn, straining for a beloved figure to rise from the waves. In vain. At the first light of day, the ghosts dissolve—along with the unspoken loves that have stitched themselves into the air of this place across the centuries.

And then there were the uprisings—the crowds, furious, casting down kings, their crowns tumbling from the castle walls. These secrets are known only to the cats of this small, graphic village by the sea. They stand upon the low rooftops and keep watch. Nothing escapes them. And from meow to meow, all this has traveled—even here, to the Pagasetic Gulf. It is true: cats are the finest network of intelligence and communication. Couriers of messages, silent and unseen. Who would ever suspect those innocent whiskers brushing past you in the street?

But no—this story did not arrive that way. It came from much farther off. Though now that I think of it, there are castles there too—just not Venetian. No. From the land of lords and knights who drink tea, there comes a red, round suitcase. A suitcase that no longer exists, yet continues to travel. A suitcase spoken of in Vonitsa, in Marousi, in Newcastle, in the corridors of Harvard, in Gothenburg—and in Volos. A suitcase that became the cornerstone of a scandal no one ever quite understood.

And since we are speaking of suitcases, cats, dolphins, turtles, and all the other creatures that gather up their little bundles and come away on holiday to the small yet imaginative corner of the Ambracian Gulf, it is time to turn our attention to a certain young lady. A young lady—well, more or less. Now she is a woman in full. Back then, she was a witty young lady.

You see, Elena was never to be taken lightly. No. She appeared a small and quiet child; the grown-ups may have thought they could bend her to their will, but as my grandmother used to say in Rizomylos Village, “the tail is yet to come”. And that quiet little girl grew up and took her revenge on the nightmares of all our childhoods. She simply doesn’t know it yet. Let that remain between us, until she finds out.

Now, you may well ask how this small, wondrous creature found her way to the Ambracian Gulf and made landfall in Vonitsa. A fair question. Do not be confused—Elena has nothing to do with the Venetian occupation, nor with the dethronement of King Otto during Grivas’s uprising. No. Elena employed the oldest of all ancient tricks for her arrival in that historic and beautiful place. She came with her grandfather and grandmother. And, as it happens, another network of intelligence was activated: that of the grandparents. There was a plan—strategy, even inspiration behind it. Well done my dear, well done.

So then: Grandfather Yannis—tall, and fond of his tsipouro drinking—had a friend. Uncle Thymios. And before you knew it, Thymios said, “Come on now, come stay with me, let the little one enjoys the sea, clear your minds from all that concrete of Athens.” It did not take much for the plan to take root. And so, they loaded up arm floaties, swimsuits, crossword puzzles, towels, and whatever else one might need—and Elena set foot in Vonitsa.

Ah—and before we go any further, a word of warning regarding the chapter titled “Grandmother Eleni”.

Grandmother Eleni was not a woman you could get a handle on. Widely known as “Grandmother Grumble”. Even the air you had breathed before exhaling it might seem foul to her. I’m telling you, if she caught you in the coils of her tongue, she could twist you around so thoroughly you’d walk away feeling as though you’d taken ten beatings—without a hand ever being raised. In any case, she belonged to that category of women who carried, as if lit from within, a great glowing sign in neon visible from miles away: DO NOT GET INVOLVED.

Elena, however, paid no mind to any of this. She splashed about in the Ambracian Gulf, devoured her ice creams, and was treated by Thymios and his wife in their wide courtyard, beneath the grapevine trellis. There she tasted sea urchin salad for the first time—and was utterly enchanted. As if she would ever bother herself with her grandmother’s grumbling—jealous of Thymios’s wife, forever commenting on her tsipouro-loving husband. No, she bwas focused on having fun time. Meanwhile, Yannis himself was having the time of his life. Laughter spilled endlessly into the yard, evenings closed with slices of watermelon, and nights wandered through narrow alleys. These were, without question, the absolute holidays of childhood.

Between ourselves, Elena had already grasped the cats’ network of intelligence—but she had not paid much attention to her grandmother’s murmuring.

And so the first week of holidays passed pleasantly in Thymios’s hospitable home. Then came the second—and here we must all gather ourselves for a long, collective sigh. For during that second week, it had been arranged that Elena’s mother would arrive in Vonitsa. The daughter of Grandmother Eleni.

Before long, they all made their way to the port to receive her. And there she was, descending—Madame Mother—balanced on platform shoes, crowned with an extravagant hat, and carrying a red suitcase. A red suitcase, round and brand new. Down she came from the boat, Dimitra, with the air of a diva actress who had just arrived from Hollywood to this humble corner of Vonitsa. She regarded the town from a certain height—one might say with faint condescension. Even the castle’s knights could hardly bear it—but it was midday, and they were under strict curfew. No mobile phones either, to send a quick message and escape—altogether a tragic situation.

Be that as it may, the diva from Marousi stepped onto the port. Elena was eating her ice cream, distracted by a flock of seagulls. But Grandmother Eleni was already bristling. She glanced at the suitcase, then anxiously around—lest anyone should see—and began her commentary. Her blood pressure rose. She huffed and puffed. The diva, for her part, noticed nothing at all.

But once they reached the house, she was met with a full-throated scolding from her mother. Yannis and Thymios, with admirable discretion, withdrew to the courtyard with their small plates; Thymios’s wife busied herself shaking tablecloths elsewhere; and Elena followed Thymios—because she knew very well that this particular grandfather came with excellent meze.

“You’ve made fools of us! Where do you think you’re going, dressed like a film star with that hat and that suitcase? This is Vonitsa! How much did you pay for it? Ahhh! You act as if you were raised by some flamboyant woman.”

But in real, no one paid attention to these words fired in the air.

The second week unfolded as follows: Grandmother Eleni shifted the full weight of her grumbling onto the red suitcase, while everyone else continued their holidays as before. That suitcase—never once noticed by anyone in Vonitsa—became, within the family, the most discussed object for years. Did it rain in Brachami? “Well, ever since she came to Vonitsa with that red suitcase…” The electricity bill arrived? The red suitcase again.

Yet Elena, who only wished for a quiet, pleasant holiday, began in her turn to resent it. They had so thoroughly worn her down with that red suitcase that, growing older, she would remember only two things from Vonitsa: sea urchin salad—and the red suitcase.

Now try explaining to her that the cats saw everything, recorded it, passed it down from generation to generation, from place to place—and that somewhere along the line, a ginger tomcat named Kokofikos miswrote a single detail of the story. And so, for a time, people came to believe that Elena had arrived in Vonitsa “inside” the red suitcase. Such misunderstandings, improbable as they seem, are enough to alter the course of history. Fortunately, the dolphins of the Ambracian Gulf corrected the record quite recently.

And just as no one sees the ghosts of the knights—save for the cats—so too no one in Vonitsa knew anything of that red suitcase. No one, that is, except Thymios, who swore to Yannis he would never mention, not even at the village’s coffehouse, the antics of his friend’s wife—nor a word about the red suitcase.