A Faded Photograph

The first apartment that I lived in after coming to Corfu was located in a very old building - one of Kontokali's oldest, I'm sure. Not that it looked all that different from the newer buildings that surrounded it, but there were a few telltale signs of its age. The staircase leading to the door was obviously hand-hewn (I am told that it has been designated as antique architecture and is therefore protected against demolition); the doors leading inside the apartment were obviously made decades ago, as the style is seen only on very old buildings in the Venetian Quarter of Corfu Town; and there was a well located in the garden at the foot of the stairs, indicating that the building was in use long before city water had come to the village. Other signs of the buildings longevity were two-foot thick walls, a covered-over window in the bathroom where the outside wall of the adjacent building now stood, and creaky wooden floors (something not now seen since building codes prescribe pre-stress concrete framing as protection against earthquakes). I once asked my friend Takis, who was also my landlord, about the building's history, and he told me that as far as he knew, it was about two hundred fifty years old. He also told me that it was once the village bakery, and that his father had been the baker. The apartment itself was very, very hot in summertime, and I often joked that the old bakery was still giving back the heat generated so long ago from the ovens.

The day I moved into the apartment was not the first time I'd seen the building. Nor was it the first time I'd slept there. On my very first visit to Corfu, I'd stayed in one of the building's other apartments for about ten days. That was in the early nineties. At that time, Takis' mother, Aphrodite, lived in the apartment that I eventually occupied. On that first visit, Takis warned me about his mother, telling me that she was both senile and quite xoxotropos (phonetic spelling), meaning cantankerous. "You might hear her talking to herself," he warned. "Pay no attention to her."

By the time that I moved into the apartment that was once Kontokali's bakery, and later Takis' mother's apartment, Aphrodite had passed away at the age of ninety-three. Little remained to remind me of her presence, or of her times, except a large, antique credenza that was obviously too heavy and too fragile to move down the narrow staircase. Arriving in Greece with little more than my clothes, I was happy to have such a unique piece of furniture to use, and I polished the wood to a sheen not seen in decades.

I also painted the place from floor to ceiling, repaired cracked stucco, installed shelves and cabinets, replaced clouded glass, and made other cosmetic improvements. As the months passed, the venerable building became my home. Then one day I found an old faded photograph wedged behind one of the drawers of the credenza. The photo was of a middle-aged woman dressed from head to toe in black and standing at the foot of the very staircase that led to my apartment. The distant background in the photo also revealed that the building that now stood across the road had not existed at the time, and the view extended all the way to the sea. With a magnifying glass, I examined the face of the woman quite closely, and I soon became convinced that the face in the photo was a familiar on - a face not unlike that of my friend and landlord. I showed the photo to Takis, thinking that he might like to have it as a keepsake, but he only commented that the photo was of his mother, Aphrodite, and that it had probably been taken just after the war. He did not seem particularly interested in having the old photo, so I put it inside a book to keep it safe from moisture and dirt, and in time forgot about it altogether.

Some time later, I came upon the photo again. Feeling that it was a shame to hide it away, and also that such a venerable house deserved at least some acknowledgement of past inhabitants, I made a scan of the photo then restored it digitally as best I could, meaning to hang it above the doorway as a remembrance. The result of my effort was beyond all expectation and revealed details not seen in the original picture. Cast against the still-standing whitewashed staircase was not only Aphrodite's shadow, but a second one as well. I scrutinized the photo, trying to determine the source of the second shadow, but there was no one else in the picture to account for the second image. The phantom remained an anomaly.

Until, some time later, Takis and I got into a discussion about his boyhood in Kontokali, and about his family history. Aphrodite, I was told, had had a twin sister who had died as a child. On hearing such a revelation I at once thought about the faded photograph and about the mysterious second shadow.

I certainly do not profess to understand how such things happen, nor am I prepared to dismiss possibilities I cannot refute. I do know that the spirit of such ancient places reverberates still through the deeds and personalities of those long gone. As a result of seeing what I undeniably saw in the photograph, I have now come to see the cultural history of this village in the face of each villager. I suppose this is what today we call heredity. As for the second shadow, we do not now, nor may we ever, have an explanation for that.

Author's Note: When this article was first published on the Happy Holidays Corfu Forum in 2006, I received several emails asking me why I had not published the photograph for all to see. I replied to the sender that I had not published the photo because I thought that the image would detract from the mystery, and that I thought it better for the reader to use his imagination and to exercise a leap of faith. Here, for the first time, is a rendition of that photo, though I have purposely rendered it in silhouette and further altered it as a transparency. Sorry to those who cannot exercise that leap of faith, I still think that some things are better left to speculation and that a little mystery is sometimes better than solid proof. Let me know what you think about this article. Email me