Silent From Within

By Costa G. Lagoudakis

Matt is a young man whose life is riddled with pain and injustice. Diagnosed with a hearing disability at an early age, he embarks on a turbulent journey to face many challenges. Not due to his impairment but the circumstances caused by the mistakes of others.

He analyses the people in his life by struggling to make sense of the way they b

• Language: English
• Publisher: STERGIOU BOOKS LIMITED
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9789609363181

Costa G. Lagoudakis

Costa G. Lagoudakis (Konstantinos Grigoriou Lagoudakis) was born and raised in Athens, Greece, where he still resides today. He studied at the Athens University of Economics and Business. He enjoys writing fiction stories, where the reader can also identify with the everyday reality woven with just the right amount of fantasy. As the saying goes, "reality sometimes sounds stranger than fiction". His interest focuses on non-actual stories about the human psyche, relationships, and how actions have consequences. That's why he has chosen a different style of psychodramatic expression in his narration, emphasising and analysing the psychological profile of the characters of the book. His particular style is also characteristic in his first book Silent From Within. He persists in wondering about the difficulties of human relationships.

Book preview

PART ONE

Matt is a young man whose life is riddled with pain and injustice. Diagnosed with a hearing disability at an early age, he embarks on a turbulent journey on which he will face many challenges, not only due to his impairment but also because of the circumstances leading to them, caused by the mistakes of others.

Matt analyses the people in his life by struggling to make sense out of the way they behave, to understand the complex relationships between the members of his family while at the same time trying to overcome the practical difficulties that hamper his life.

His only faithful supporter, his mother, stands up to every difficulty that comes along and faces life with courage and strength, and so Matt turns to her since she is the only person in whom he can confide.

Matt’s silence was the critical factor for his journey. The silence of the sounds he cannot hear. The silence of the sounds he longs to listen to. But primarily, the silence from within. The words that were meant to be said but were never spoken.

CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST BUSINESS VENTURE BEGINS

Suddenly, my father hit me with his elbow straight to the kidney, and I tried to hold on to the bench to retain my balance and avoid hitting the ground. This image has not only impressed in my mind, but it’s still haunting me after so many years. Even now, when patrons at the bar want to give me a friendly pat on my back, this scene comes to mind. I shirk away, just as if I were going to feel the blow again.

By writing down the story of my life, my deepest intention is to put the events in order so that whoever reads them will understand why they took place and, at the same time, also help me realise the reason they did. Consequently, I hope to learn why for all those years I was an impassive listener, instead of trying to do what I had to, to stand up for myself and my mother, who as of course, the only person who had stood by me since the day I was born until the end of those ten rough and crucial years.

As the story unfolds, the reader will realise that life often does not turn out to be as we expect. Nevertheless, I must admit that there lies a hidden opportunity to learn something positive in your life in every misfortune, which holds true in my case.

Besides, everyone has their ups and downs in life, and I also have my fair share of life’s joys and sorrows. After all, each of us walks on our path of life based on what we have experienced from our family or our social environment and through these experiences, you hope that you will be able to confront all challenges in life.

Going back ten years ago, there was a time during which we literally had nothing to eat because we had sold the mini-market we owned and lived off for many years, and the only income came from my father’s work as a builder. But after a while, he also experienced difficulty working correctly, although he worked from his early twenties until his early forties. His body was no longer flexible since he had put on so much weight. And then my mother had an idea… She found out that a street bar was for sale and it was located downtown, so she started working out in her mind the option of my father running the business, as a better choice, instead of continuing the construction work. So, the whole family embraced the idea of buying the place, but since we didn’t have any cash, my mother thought of taking out a loan in my name, putting herself up as the guarantor.

My parents had only ten years to go before retirement age, so my mom also thought about making me the bar owner so that I ended up having something of my own. The inner reason was that mom wanted me to become a more active part of the whole process through dealing with the public services and the food providers. Thus, I could mix with the crowd as much as possible and see myself as an equal to those people and communicate with them on an equal footing with no barriers. I am saying this because I have been suffering from a hearing impairment since I was tiny, and my mother did not want her son to feel inferior to others or pity myself when they said things like, Poor little fellow, he can’t do any job.

But now, let’s return to the loan issue. Mom and I went to the bank, and everything went well, without requiring any guarantor, and that happened because the amount of money we took out was less than $9,000. My mother and I were happy because the bank approved the loan, marking a new chapter in our life. When the time came to get the money from the bank, mom, dad, and I arranged a meeting with the bar owner and gave it to him, sealing the sale with a handshake. We had made up our minds to make this business venture work out and become a successful one at that, that’s why we all got to work, and we started renovating the place by painting the entire indoor area and polishing the surface of the bar. Of course, we all put in a hand in that, mom, dad, my sister Gabriella, my brother Ryan, and me. Gabriella and Ryan, my two siblings, were not living with us anymore. They had left home long before. They were married, and they had two children each. They had come to help and wish us a good start with our new venture.

You see, the mini-market we once owned was in the red, thanks to dad, so our first goal in buying the street bar was to pay off all our previous debts. That’s why when the street bar was ready, mom asked dad in our presence if he was going to get into debt again. Dad answered that he wouldn’t, but he looked down at the floor the moment he said that, avoiding her eyes. Mom said that we would manage to pay off all our debts and that this would be our last chance. She hoped that we would have a better life with all her heart and that after this we could move ahead and everything would be fine. But let’s take things from the beginning.

CHAPTER 2

THE EARLY YEARS

Iwould like you to note that my mother is diabetic, and her disease was caused by her profound sadness because of the problem I had been diagnosed with at the age of two. Since then, she’s been doing the best she could. The trouble began when I failed to react to various noises. My mother realised that something was wrong with me due to her previous experience with my older sister and brother. My sister Gabriella is ten years older, while my brother Ryan is seven years older than me. So, mom noticed that I wasn’t reacting the way my siblings were.

Nevertheless, my mother insisted that something serious was going on with me, but she talked in vain since nobody paid any attention to what she was saying. She then started taking me to doctors and several hospitals, where they told her not to worry about anything and that it was too early to diagnose anything before I turned two. So, when I reached the age of two, the doctors diagnosed that I was suffering from a sensorineural hearing loss in both ears and that it was time for me to stick a pair of significant hearing aids in my ears. It was the late seventies at the time.

The torment began when I started having intensive elocution and speech therapy sessions because my mom wanted me to make up for the first two years I had lost by being inactive and impassive. After three years of intensive lessons, alongside a child psychologist and a speech therapist, I learned as best I could how to talk, how to distinguish the pronunciation of double consonants and of course, how to articulate a word or a whole phrase correctly.

This progress of mine I owe to my mother, who wanted the best for me. At that period, young mothers sent their children to institutions because they knew that if they kept them at home, moms would go through a stressful and challenging time, and they would have to show much patience. But my mother decided to keep me at home against all odds, no matter what. During those years, my mother became very anxious because she had to manage three jobs, selling child insurance programs and saucepans and, of course, handling her main job as a seamstress to be able to pay for my sessions. My mother’s job, that is to say, sewing, she learned at the age of twelve, and through the years, she became pretty renowned in the neighbourhood for her skills. That’s why she was preferred by the folk singers who lived in our city. She had been sewing their outfits, and of course, her fee was proportional to the work required for each piece of clothing. Because of her success, my mom had managed by the age of twenty to buy two small plots of land.

After a while, mom met my father during a gathering. He had been invited by her cousin’s husband, Ben, his colleague at work. Ben was a craftsman, and when my dad was discharged from the army, he started working as an unskilled labourer. Dad was as poor as a church mouse, coming from his village with nothing in his name or any baggage. I remember Ben telling us that during breaks, dad used to eat only bread and butter. Dad was fragile, weighing only 120 pounds, just like his siblings because, at home, they used to eat only onion soup and boiled potatoes. And when my dad’s brother Howard asked his mom: Why do we always eat onions and potatoes and dad eats hares and rabbits and deer? Ain’t we equal to him? And his mom replied: Quit talkin’, just fill your mouth. That was enough for the boys to leave the village and move to the big town to seek a better future.

Before leaving, their life was hard, their father used to go from village to village, and when he was at home, he used to invite his fellow villagers to come over and eat and drink their fill with him. At the same time, his children would only look furtively and secretly at what the villagers guzzled down without being allowed to even get a taste of it. Their mother would cook all the time, and she obediently executed her husband’s orders. This family had 3 boys and 2 girls. Every time the mother was in labour, the father was never at home because simply, he was at the village square prattling away with others. Whenever she gave birth to a child, he would return home, order her to get out of bed, bring water from the river, and start cooking because he would invite the whole village to celebrate with him. Totally absurd! She had just given birth to a child, she was breastfeeding, and her husband hadn’t even asked her if she was all right, but he would order her instead to cook for strangers! Those times were very hard, and the father of the house demanded that his children address him as the master. The master was always faultless, and he was never wrong. He was right about everything, with no one raising an objection to him. That’s why the two younger boys had left home at the age of twelve. The firstborn son, (my father), had been obliged by his father at six to graze the cattle all year round. That’s why during those years, we’re talking about the fifties, people used to have many children, and parents obliged them to do a lot of manual labour. To continue, once a month, my father used to go downtown for two days to buy supplies for everyone, to visit his family and afterwards, dad would go to the bar where all the men used to gather to chitter-chatter. I remember my father telling us, full of pride, that men were real men in those days, and he had started smoking and drinking by the age of twelve. And one day, I asked him in wonder:

Weren’t there children at your age or at least a little older to play with, to laugh with and have a good time for the sake of holding on to the last remnants of your childhood innocence? And you instead preferred to go to the bar? And the answer dad gave me was the following:

There was no need to play with other children. I was a man, and I had to associate with other men (that is to say, the village’s adults and the old men), play cards with men, tell stories to each other, smoke and drink. I’ve always liked listening to the old men’s stories when they were playing cards. Got it, I replied.

But if one thinks these words over, they will realise that when a child mingles with adults playing cards, drinking and smoking, he risks getting the wrong messages. Because the adult world is different from a child’s world. And the child isn’t in a position to distinguish between right and wrong in what the adult says; the only thing the child does is listen to them attentively and devoutly, taking the adult’s words for granted, even when there isn’t any truth in them at all. And these adults, almost all of them, who often go to bars, are cunning, sly, hot-tempered, hotheaded, and have other unremarkable features… That, I’m going to come back to and analyse later on. Any reasonable person would understand that they are no good.

Anyway, when my dad came of age, his parents agreed to arrange a marriage for him with a fat neighbour. Still, he didn’t tell them up front that he didn’t want her, and when evening came, my dad wrote a letter to his mom that he was leaving town to try and locate his brother Robert who was in the capital city and that he didn’t want to marry the neighbour. So, he left home at night on foot, carrying only a clothes bundle on his back and nothing else. Dad had learned the paths by heart through the years since there weren’t lights to see where he was going and the night was pitch dark. At daybreak, he saw that he had arrived at the village where an uncle of his lived.

Dad went to meet him at his food store because the store selling bread and cold cuts were already open at that time of day. When his uncle saw my dad, he was surprised because it was very early in the morning. He asked my dad why he had come, and dad replied that his father had sent him to tell his uncle to give him some bread and some salami to eat and also some money so that my dad could go to the big village to buy a horse. But his uncle didn’t believe a word my father said to him; nevertheless, he gave him some food and some money to last him until he reached his destination. Dad left, heading for the big town, bought a ticket to the city where his brother lived and called him to tell him he was coming to see him. My dad’s brother was surprised, but he couldn’t return my dad’s call because, in that small village, there was no phone or post office.

Only in the big city could you find these amenities. So, he just followed my dad’s instructions, to meet him at the railway station when dad arrived. And that’s what happened. My Uncle Robert got to the railway station, waited for my dad there and finally they met. As soon as my uncle saw my dad, he realised something was amiss. Uncle Robert asked him if something was wrong and the real reason dad had come all this way to the city.

My dad didn’t tell him that their parents had arranged a marriage for him to some woman; dad only said that he wanted to see him and that he had decided to join the army to do his military service so that afterwards he could join him at work. My uncle didn’t object and went along with his brother’s decision, but at the same time, Uncle Robert thought whether that was the real reason or whether something else had happened. Anyway, Uncle Robert and dad left for my uncle’s house, which had only one bedroom, a small kitchen and a tiny loo. It was situated at the back of the house, which Cousin Ben’s parents owned on our mom’s side of the family. Mom was living with her parents and her siblings on the other side of the city.

CHAPTER 3

THE FIRST SIGNS OF TROUBLE

At that time, it wasn’t easy for young people living in the countryside to find a proper job with good pay. My Uncle Robert was working at a cattle slaughterhouse where he arranged and sorted the pieces of meat from the entrails. Uncle Robert hung the pieces of meat on big hooks, and he put the entrails into big baskets.

He was pretty lucky to work there, where there was meat because whenever he was hungry, he could take home the remains of the meat that wasn’t for sale and was useless, like the heads, the innards, the guts which he would fry and eat. In the evenings, Uncle Robert worked at a restaurant, cooking meat on a coal grill. Uncle Robert worked hard day and night under challenging and unhealthy working conditions. Everyone had to do their best to secure a job when they first settled in the city. My dad completed his military service, and when he was dismissed, he returned to his brother’s house to try and find a job as well.

Meanwhile, their other brother, Howard, also left the village when he turned fifteen, came to town, and found a job as a deckhand on ships. When the time came for him to do his military service, my Uncle Howard also went to Robert’s home just like dad had done. The three brothers all lived together under the same roof. While dad was already working as a bricklayer at a big construction company where Cousin Ben was working, Howard landed himself a job where Robert was working. However, the three brothers earned very little money, and their meals were frugal because all the money they put aside was sent to their mom, so things were tough.

On the other hand, during this particular time, mom was living with her parents. She was working as a seamstress at home, and things were getting better and better for them. Both her parents worked, and they had put aside quite a lot of money. It is essential to add here that my mom was very proud of the sewing machine she had bought when she obtained her diploma because it was the best sewing machine on the market. With her hard work, mom put aside plenty of money, and she managed, as I said before, to buy two plots of land. Mind you, they were not anywhere ample or nearby a river or a lake.

On the contrary, they were at a distance from any type of scenery that would raise prices for anyone wishing to buy. Anyhow, my mom didn’t mind the lower price. She was delighted with the fact that she could get by, little by little, through long and hard days of sometimes dog-tiring work. Whenever mom could, she would go out but only when there was a large group of girls, since it was rare to see a boy keep company with a girl. In those years, things were strict, and you had to adhere to the moral rules of society. For instance, girls had to be home by eight p.m. They had to be accompanied by other girls. They threw parties where they danced the Charleston, the Twist, the Bossanova and other fashionable dances. And when the party was over, boys and girls had to leave separately.

It was at one of these parties where my mom was invited by her cousin, Charlotte. Ben and his wife, Charlotte, had asked my dad to join them because they were colleagues. The party was fun, with soft drinks and dancing and they were all having a good time. My dad liked my mom, and dad said so to Ben. Ben told his wife, and Charlotte told mom, and mom said that dad ought to ask her to dance. The two became better acquainted at the parties that followed, organised by Charlotte until dad proposed. Mom answered passively, and she asked him whether they would face everything together in life, and dad answered Yes. Dad also let mom know that he intended to visit her house to formally ask her hand in marriage. To make a long story short, dad and mom got married, and they lived in a rented house which was above Cousin Ben’s and had