The most hidden wound

Alexandra Bakonika | www.diastixo.gr | 9 February 2013 It is the new novel by the distinguished, prolific and groundbreaking author Vangelis Raptopoulos. The book is based on two very substantial and catalytic themes. The first is the intense and passionate love that runs through the novel from beginning to end, and the second is the reference to social unrest and uprisings, such as the Occupation, the December Riots, and the Civil War that followed. But also, as a kind of extension of the December Riots, 67 years on, the Indignant Movement, which we experienced in the summer of 2011 amidst the economic collapse and the well-known hardships our country was plunged into.The novel begins in 1976. The central character is Michalis, who also serves as the first-person, omniscient narrator. He is at the critical age of adolescence and falls passionately in love with his peer, the beautiful, vibrant and outgoing Niki. She urges him to expand his already experiential knowledge of the December Events, so as to impress her left-wing father, Mimi. From then on, Michalis’s unbridled interest in the December Events and the Civil War begins, an interest that continues unabated throughout the novel. However, the two teenagers part ways and meet again at the age of 22, in 1985, at a party – Michalis is now an actor and Niki a journalist – where they have their first sexual encounter. From 1985 to 2011, Niki, with her magical presence, will be the bone of contention between three men – Mimi, Averell and her husband, Aris, from whom she will eventually separate. She has affairs with all three at various times, something they are all aware of, and yet they strive frantically to win her for themselves, sidelining the others. The one who ultimately wins her is Michalis.Alongside the three men’s rivalry for Niki, the novel progresses and intertwines with the more hidden wound, namely the multifaceted deepening of Michalis’s knowledge of the December events and the Civil War. Building on this knowledge, he will proceed with the theatrical adaptation of Aristotelis Nikolaidis’s novel The Disappearance. Essentially, this theatrical adaptation, titled ‘Skeleton’, is embedded within the book and expands the plot. For Michalis, this title has a metaphorical meaning. A skeleton is that which remains deep and imperishable through time; it is our ideals, our unchanging values, both individual and collective. For Michalis, like Niki, has deep working-class roots in the refugee neighbourhood of Peristeri. Deep within Michalis lay the mythology of Peristeri, where honesty shone through, directness, and the inner need to be ‘xigimenos’—which means possessing a deep moral foundation, not in the narrow sense, but with a tendency to care about collective visions and one’s neighbour. The left-wing, working-class Peristeri has permeated the psyche of the two protagonists, which is why Niki writes in a newspaper article: ‘The first decade of the new century arrived somewhat early with the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008. In this new decade, much is changing. For the economic crash brings not only the collapse of consumerism, but also of individualism. It is an earthquake that brings to the fore, instead of the ‘I’, the ‘we’ and, above all, class differences.”With these convictions, the two protagonists will participate actively, with vigour, passion and self-sacrifice, in the Indignant movement, which is described in all its depth and breadth, just as it unfolded in the summer of 2011.For Michalis, the Indignados movement is a kind of continuation of the December Uprising, a period that has haunted him since his adolescence. Although he knows that today’s Western societies are disarmed by globalisation and the rapid development of technology, and although in the back of his mind he harbours the suspicion that popular uprisings resemble hysteria, yet, as an incorrigible romantic, he believes that the oppressed are duty-bound to fight for their rights.Particularly interesting is the section of the book where the author describes Michalis’s critical transition from childhood to adolescence, with all the intensity of its sexual awakening. The descriptions are bold and revealing, alluringly true to their sensuality. Equally bold are the erotic scenes that punctuate the book throughout.The novel captivates with its vivid expression, its lively characters, its intense lust, its plot that twists and turns with surprises and unexpected twists, and its social and existential reflection. Raptopoulos has once again successfully left his distinctive mark on this new novel.