Giannos: A Short Story

By George Kyros

Giannos tells us the real story of real people. He narrates the struggle migrants faced, attempting to come to the USA in the eighteenth century to escape poverty from rural Greece.

Our hero, the nine-year-old Giannos, was given by his parents to a childless couple to be their adopted son. Instead of the boy becoming a loved son, he is exploited. He is forced to polish shoes at the public square of a big city and surrender his earnings to his adopted father until he is fifteen years old.

Attempting to migrate to the USA, he ends up in Central America. His frugal lifestyle and his ambition to make big money is realized when he finally leaves Central America and arrives in the United States. His entrepreneurial mind and dedication to hard work pays off. He becomes a successful commodity importer and becomes wealthy. Yet he never forgets how it feels to be desperate. He becomes a philanthropist and distinguishes himself in his society until the end of his life.

Giannos never marries. Poverty during his childhood convinced him that marriage is not for him. Instead, he wants to have a lot of money to satisfy his manhood in the company of beautiful ladies.

Giannos believes that our future is pre-ordained by destiny. He is king to the people around him and is generous with his money to his society at large. Finally, he dies in the company of a woman who, without either of them knowing it, is his illegitimate child!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543422061

George Kyros

The author of Giannos was born in Greece. He served in the Greek army for two wears, then came to the U.S.A where he earned his advanced education. Until his retirement, he was an Industrial Chemist and a Packaging Engineer. Presently, he lives in a suburb of Chicago with his wife.

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Copyright © 2017 by George Kyros.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/08/2017

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Country Boy

Chapter 2: The Indentured Laborer

Chapter 3: The Adventurer

Chapter 4: The Businessman

Chapter 5: The Benevolent Man

To the dearest person in my life,

my wife Adrienne, who took the time

to point out inconsistencies in my writing.

INTRODUCTION

The news that America, a new continent with unlimited resources and opportunities for daring adventurers, began to spread throughout Europe at about 1540. In reality though, it became folklore at the start of the eighteenth century, when the United States of America broke away from England and became a free nation. This event triggered an influx of Europeans and, to a lesser extent, people from other continents to rush to the USA to exercise their freedom and improve the condition of their life. These daring folks were the people who built the railroad system, worked in the vast coal mines, and labored in the iron ore mines and the steel mills across the country. These were the men who built the colossal industry that made this nation a powerful and respected democracy. These ambitious men, forced by poverty and hardship at home, abandoned what they valued dear and precious in their homelands and ventured overseas to improve their living conditions. Giannos, the hero of the story you are about to read, was one of them.

But really, who was he?

Giannos was like the five bachelors who shared the second floor of a bungalow house in Chicago. Someone converted the three-bedroom apartment into a five-bedroom dwelling by renovating the living room and the kitchen into bedrooms. Here, in this congested living space, each of these five immigrants rented a room that was furnished with only a single bed. Poverty, in the places of their birth, forced them to seek their fortunes in faraway places. In America, they worked hard to make their dream come true. Yet they didn’t buy a house nor find the right woman to get married to and start a family with. Perhaps they couldn’t find that nice Greek girl of their dream. Instead, they lived in accordance to their customs and ethics that they learned back home. They just worked hard from Monday through Saturday and attended mass on Sunday.

Giannos was like a man who lived close to the place of my first employment. This man only knew how to work and how to hoard money. He worked eighteen hours a day, from Monday through Saturday. His recreation was attending church on Sunday and taking part at social events after the liturgy. He only slept five hours a day in a hotel room next to his business establishment. Having a family was the furthest thought in his mind. He did not have free time to look for a wife and raise a family. His objective was to make money. He stashed most of his earnings from his business in his bank account or bought vacant patches of land in the city. His life was evolved around returning to his shop, making more money, and watching his bank account and his land investment grow bigger. He had gone to the other extreme biting the poverty he knew as a boy.

Giannos was like that graceful Spaniard who became my best friend after I graduated college. This friend of mine made a sizable fortune by importing commodities to the USA from other countries. His aim in life was to be rich to satisfy his everlasting desire for wealth. When he became wealthy, he realized that he was too old to be a father. The last part of my story mirrors his life.

Giannos was a dignified, kind, gentile, just, loving, and generous man. He believed that things are preordained for all of us. He never agonized when bad fortune brought adversities. He met life with courage, valor, and chivalry and encouraged others to follow his example. He was convinced that happiness was intertwined with money and in the company of attractive women. As a child, he lived in extreme poverty, and that early experience made him detest the idea of being a husband. He spent his early childhood in squalor among seven other siblings in an isolated Greek community, far away from modern living. He witnessed the hardship of his parents trying to raise eight children in a two-room farmhouse, with only enough food to stay alive.

Whatever your expectations are for reading a novel, the short story of Giannos will enchant your imagination and broaden your knowledge of the world around you. It will not bore you with trivial details and, certainly, will not offend your sensitivity with foul language. It is written in a clear and simple narrative style and focuses on a man with a novel belief about destiny and his relations with women.

The story of Giannos is compiled from the life stories of actual people. It is not the creation of the author’s imagination. Only the names of the characters have been changed to avoid serendipitous incidents.

CHAPTER ONE

The Country Boy

It was early in the afternoon on a Sunday when I received a stressful call from a family member telling me that my most dear Mr. Giannos Tinker was ill in the hospital, with fractures on both of his hips that could not be operated on. I was told that in addition to being confined in his hospital bed, his health was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Putting aside things that I was planning to do this afternoon, I made myself presentable to pay him a visit. I drove the short distance to the hospital without delay, parked in a parking for visitors only spot, walked into the hospital, and approached the charming receptionist behind the desk in the lobby. She politely and with a broad smile on her aged face gave me all the information I needed for my visit. She also handed me a tag with my name on it, which I attached to the left-hand lapel of my jacket. I entered the elevator, ascended to the fourth floor and found the room where Giannos was hospitalized. I did not knock at the door, for I was careful not to wake him up, should he be asleep.

There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. The empty bed was neatly set with clean white linen and topped with a thin gray blanket. Two fluffy white pillows were placed side by side near the headboard. On the other bed, there was Giannos lying on his back, covered up to his chest with identical bedding. His arms were spread apart in nearly opposite directions. An IV was feeding a clear fluid in his bloodstream through a shining needle inserted in one of the veins in one of his arms. His eyes were closed at that moment, and I could see that his breathing was rhythmical and regularly spaced. His fingers were still, and his facial expression looked serene and very peaceful. A round red patch as large as a silver dollar was stuck on the skin of his left arm just below his shoulder. His general appearance was as I expected to find him, except for his body weight and the color of his skin. The muscles in his arms and the fullness of his face gave me the impression that he had lost half of his original weight. Equally frightening, though, was the bluish-yellow hue of his skin, the dryness of his lips, and his closed eyes that were sunk deep in their sockets.

I stood there aghast, looking at the man who was extremely attentive to his health in the past. As far back as our friendship goes, I remember him conducting a clean and just life. He never abused himself in any way. He swam the length of an Olympic pool several times every other day, ate healthy food, consumed alcoholic beverages with modesty, and his lungs never experienced the direct sensation of smoke from burning tobacco. I never saw him touching a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe. Yet aging caught up with him for the last three years, and the last time I saw him, he was walking with the aid of a cane.

Giannos was graceful in his conduct and never took advantage of the fact that he was a wealthy man. To his adopted family and his church, he was generous with his money and his personal support. He was a firm believer that education and hard-work were the two essential elements for a successful life, and harboring that conviction, he did his part to see that the child of his adopted family received a first-class education in the field of his choice and inclination.

Presently, a nurse walked in the room. She greeted me Good afternoon! in a chirpy and polite voice, approached the bed of the ill man, whispered something in his ear, uncovered him to his waist, placed her stethoscope on his chest, moved it to several spots, and listened to his heart and lungs attentively for a few seconds. She took a pencil with a plastic daisy attached to one of its ends out of her pocket, scribbled something on the chart that was hanging by the side of his bed, and walked away without saying anything else to me or to him. At this moment, he opened his eyes, took a random look around the room, and noticed that I was standing there; and from the expression on his face, I gathered that he recognized me right away. He rolled his eyes left and right, took several deep breaths, and said in a gurgling voice that barely escaped his dehydrated and trembling lips, Oh, my dear friend! How nice it is to see you again. And in that instance, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath again, and before I had a chance to say something in response to his statement, he articulated with much effort, How is your father? I assume you see him often, don’t you?

His question revealed that he was out of reality, for my father was dead for several years now. He then went on to ask me several times about how many children I had. My answer did not register in his mind either. Every time he temporarily came back to an actual reality of being (the effect of some painkiller they were feeding him in his bloodstream, I guess), he asked me the same question one more time. Thinking of nothing to say, I reached over and took his cold hand in mine. Instantly, I noticed that the human touch comforted him. His body relaxed considerably. I couldn’t have done anything else to alleviate his discomfort or boost his hopes for a better tomorrow. So I stood there holding his hand. After a while, I felt his grip getting loose, and I let his hand rest on his clean bed cover once again. It appeared that he temporarily dozed off, and I decided not to disturb his peaceful slumber with my presence any longer. I tiptoed toward the exit of his room, intending to return home. At the threshold, I came face-to-face with Percy, his longtime girlfriend, who was there to spend the rest of the day and evening with him. We just exchanged quick greetings, and she rushed to his bedside. She said something to him, grabbed his hands, bent over his face, and kissed him tenderly on both cheeks. Momentarily, I took a last look at the scene and walked out of the hospital. I found my car and went home with an untold number of thoughts about a man I sincerely admired and greatly respected as a person for his kindness and his wisdom.

*     *     *

It was the year before when Mr. Giannos Tinker celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday in the company of some of his selected friends and acquaintances. Percy was there too. She hosted the dinner gathering and officiated the serving of food and beverages. We all dined on a luscious dinner with plenty of imported wine from France, listened to the pen strokes of Segovia’s guitar that Giannos enjoyed most, and awakened memories from the good old days we all spent with him. Percy was in the middle of everything. She was making sure that food and beverages were plentiful and that everyone had a good time.

Giannos never got married, and to the best of everyone’s knowledge, the man never had children, legitimate or otherwise. His goal in life was to have fun with carefully selected women while making money. When I met him, he and another man were the owners of an importing company. They were bringing olive oil, olives, and figs from Greece; citric acid from Spain; and raw coffee from Colombia and Brazil to the USA. But as time went on, the luster and the vigor of his youth had faded away. He lost the drive and the ambition to conduct business as usual, and as time went on, he sold the share of his business to his partner. Most of the money he realized from the transaction, he invested in the stock market. Finally, he found comfort in the company of Percy, an attractive young widow with a child.

During his eighty-fifth birthday, Giannos, among his friends and under the euphoria of a little wine, candidly spoke about his past and told us things about his life nobody knew before. He sounded like he was making a confession. Probably he felt the need to relieve his consciousness from some of the memories he kept private all his life, for he had just gone through a terminal ailment, which left him without much hope for a complete recovery.

I was only nine years old at the time, he said with a meditative expression on his face and a noticeable melancholy in the tone of his voice. Seating comfortably in his plush chair, he began his story that he and his elder sister, who was three years older than him, were entrusted by their parents to attend to the family’s herd of 152 goats for that day. He told us about that late afternoon when the sun was about to kiss good night to the land and all its dependents that kept warm all day with its rays. The sun was hanging over the western mountain range like a big fireball, and its gold light had already taken a deeper tone and made the trees look a shade greener and darker. On the mountains and the plains that stretched in all directions, the purple shadows seemed to glow richly as they were projected in the opposite direction from the sunlight. The view had an extraordinary charm, and all things appeared to be in harmony with one another. The air was almost solemnly still, and the expanse in front of the boy, with its garden-like outline, its valley teaming with human life among the undulating rolling hills, lay there in splendid harmony and unexplained grace. His sister, who complained all day that her pig rawhide moccasins were uncomfortable, had taken them off her feet and walked barefoot on the path in front of them.

The boy never knew the feeling of wearing foot covers and, as far as he could remember, never owned any shoes or socks. He, like the rest of the boys in his village, walked barefoot regardless of weather. Granted, the prevailing climate was mild all year round, but there were occasional chilly and rainy days during the winter months. Besides, the fields and the slopes they walked on were full of sharp stones, thistle, and other seasonal vegetation that were thorny by nature. Presently, at the end of the path, he and his sister sat under a big willow tree by a gurgling brook and settled down to eat the handful of salty Kalamata olives and the hunk of stale bread they still had in their leather knapsack. Their goats had already begun to drift toward their pound where they were to spend the night. Their faithful shepherd dog had satisfied its hunger with its portion of the bread allotted her for the night. The olives with the bread, washed down with the refreshing clean water from the brook, felt good in the stomach of the children. Everything predicted a peaceful and pleasant evening ahead of them. After their snack, the dusk fell upon God’s creation, and the forest began to be bathed in darkness. They saw bats darting in the air above their heads picking flying nocturnal insects, and they heard owls calling their mates. It was time for them to round up the heard, secure it in the pound, and go home to join the rest of the family for the evening. His sister opened the gate of the pound, positioned herself next to it, and carefully counted the goats as they entered their evening confines. When the goat counting was over and the children were satisfied that all their animals were secured inside the pound, they closed the gate, and under the light of a full moon, they took the narrow path back home.

Walking one behind the other, his sister noticed that Giannos was unusually quiet this evening. His nine-year-old mind was overwhelmed with what he saw earlier in the afternoon. He didn’t tell his sister about seeing their dog stuck tail to tail with another dog. He felt bad seeing their dedicated shepherd dog being dragged around by what appeared to be her tail by that bigger and huskier male. He threw rocks at them and threatened the other dog with his shepherd crook hoping to convince him to let his dog go. Instead, he received a warning growl and a display of a set of sharp teeth from the big brut. He also received a sad look from his dog, so he let them be stuck together just like that and walked away.

His sister broke their silence and asked her brother to tell her what was bothering his mind. With a great reluctance, he narrated the event and added that he felt sorry for their dedicated bitch. When his sister heard the cause for her brother’s mental anguish, she giggled under her breath and told him that this was the way dogs make babies. Giannos thought about it for a while and recalled his father telling him that nothing good comes easy. There is a sacrifice to be made for every good thing you get, their father told him once. His young mind was not mature or informed enough to understand the biology of the propagation of animals. He knew nothing about conception, gestation, and birth, and certainly, he knew nothing about the sexual behavior of animals in general. This experience was new to him. He had to wait for later in his life to learn about these things. Presently, the explanation he received from his elder sister was tumbling in his mind like a coconut shell bouncing left and right in the rapids of some rocky waterway. It was beyond his comprehension to make sense of what she told him. Yet he trusted her explanation for its face value. She was his big sister who knew more things, many more things, than he will ever imagine. She was his trusted friend and companion, and she took the place of their mother when mother was not around. He had nothing in common with his other six siblings, for they were much younger than him. Anyway, Giannos and his sister silently walked the rest of the narrow path until they arrived at their house.

When they opened the outside gate to enter the confines of their farmhouse, they noticed a horse they never saw before secured on one of the posts inside the corral. The animal lifted his head, took a brief look at the children, and returned to crunching its oats from a bucket in front of it. Thinking of nothing else other than some relative or an ordinary visitor paying homage to the family, the two children entered their kitchen and greeted their mother good evening. Their father and the visitor were in the other room of the house. The children took off their coats, hung them on pegs protruding from one of the walls, approached the fireplace, and placed their little feet close to the fire to warm them up a little. The rest of their six siblings were already congregated around the fireplace to stay warm, for the northerly wind was unseasonably chilly today. Moments later, all of them sat on low profile rectangular stools, around their dinner table, to eat their traditional dinners. Their mother placed a single aluminum bowl and a wooden spoon in front of each child, scooped several spoonsful of warm oatmeal from a copper kettle into each bowl, and before the dinner commenced, Giannos recited the traditional Thank you Lord prayer. Since two of his youngest siblings were too little to feed themselves, the mother, using the same spoon, delivered portions of their oatmeal to their open mouths while overseeing the eating process of the rest of her six children.

The father and the other man, whom they never saw before, were still in the other room of the house. They already had their dinner, and from the looks of their hand motions, Giannos thought that they were debating a serious subject. He thought that the stranger was a butcher from some faraway city, haggling the price for a goat that his father was selling him. Giannos could only observe the scene through the partially opened door, but he couldn’t hear what they were talking about. The noise, his siblings and the dinging his mother was making with