Scorpionfish

by Natalie Bakopoulos

  My grandfather held me back. Stay here, he said.

  It’s amazing she broke no bones, the doctor said.

  I remember my father relaying this to my grandmother. Only the big cut on her forehead, a smaller slash on her cheek. A scar that still remained. Stitches, a few tests, and that was it.

  Why was she laughing, I asked. I did not know she was drunk. How could I.

  Again. Why was she laughing.

  Why.

  To make your father know she was okay, my grandmother said to me. That’s all. So we would know she was okay.

  Is she okay?

  She’s okay, loulouthi mou. She’s okay.

  Just an accident, my little mouse, my mother said, home from the hospital. Mama’s okay.

  Like a rag doll, my father said.

  It’s the first moment of real terror I remember, and for years afterward I’d have nightmares of severed limbs, cuts, bodies bleeding, my father’s fear-stricken face, the same one I saw last summer, when my mother was stung by a scorpion fish while swimming. How much does she drink. I would go into a panic and my father would count to five again while I inhaled and again when I exhaled, until I calmed down. He did it with my mother, too, when her moments of such intense anxiety caused her to fling open our back door for a deep gulp of air.

  Rarely in our minds are our parents the young adults who brought us into the world, or the vulnerable, aged adults who left us behind. They stay for us in middle age, which might explain why it’s so hard to accept the fact that we ourselves are middle-aged. We have become the age of our parents, the pain of our youth crystallizing into something hard and physical. Bodily. But for all I know, I have created that dress, the vibrant yellow, its intricate red embroidery; I have created the blue one too.

  But not the moment. The moment was real. And the music is even truer: I can remember two songs very clearly, both pop songs from the ’70s or maybe ’80s, the same artist, the lithe blonde my mother pointed out to me on the island many many years later, the one who’d briefly married Kazantzidis. She wore a spectacular green dress, and the crowd seemed to part as she walked through with her entourage.

  That feeling of invulnerability disappeared quickly, and I spent the rest of the day vaguely agitated. I did several loads of laundry, slightly calmed by the swishing of the washer, the quiet task of hanging up clothes to dry in the sun. Later, I called Nefeli to come over for dinner, but she didn’t pick up.

  8

  The Captain

  I had not been spying on Aris and Mira that day. I knew Aris had been waiting for Mira, but I didn’t realize he was still there. After my shower, though, after making myself some pasta and salad, I walked out to the front balcony, which got the evening sun, and saw them saying goodbye in the street. They were not speaking, only looking at each other. Then Mira turned and walked away. She disappeared around the corner and Aris got into his car. He sat in the car a long time after she had walked away, and the whole image was one I wasn’t able to shake. I had no right to be either jealous or angry. If I had imagined anything between us I had imagined either incorrectly, or inadvisably.

  Aris was a good-enough guy, and I have always admired his father. When I had asked Katerina if she knew who Aris had been with before, she said Eva had left another man for Aris, and Aris, as she understood it, had left someone as well. “But listen, he’s not like other politicians.” I don’t know what she based this on. I grew up around these men and this I know for sure: no politician is totally clean, and everything is a political act.

  That night, I called my father’s friend Minas. Was he acting out of character? My father was a passionate man, and it’s true he became a little unhinged from time to time. This was no secret.

  “Getting old is terrible,” Minas replied. Then he told me not to worry, that he thought my father might be spending time with Nefeli, who had a small cottage up in the hills, not far from his village. Nefeli often worked there, and my father kept some bees on her land.

  I felt calmed by this, and thanked him. I told him I’d be coming to the island that weekend for a christening, my friend Dimos’s first child, at fifty-two. I was relieved he didn’t ask if Katerina and the kids were coming. They weren’t.

  “I’ll see you then,” Minas said.

  I took a walk. A soccer match had just let out and I turned the other direction, toward Exarcheia. The other night on the balcony, Mira said men will never understand the experience of feeling threatened simply by the presence of men. She had walked by the soccer stadium on our street as a match was letting out, a losing one for the home team, and the testosterone, she said, had terrified her. She’d learned early on how to carry herself, how to deal with the masculine bravado that always felt a little bit dangerous. I already see it in Ifigenia, a way of holding herself. It frightens me. Katerina told me that a boy in her class had asked her to dance and she looked at him sharply and asked, “Why are you sweating.”

  Tonight, jazz and old rebetika came from the various cafés. An American couple walked ahead of me. The woman marveled at the nightlife; the man wondered if the area was safe. “What crisis?” he repeated, with performed perplexity. What crisis.

  I wanted to grab him by his ill-fitting T-shirt; I had to clench my fists. What sort of person does not know that in times of crisis the bar business booms? I had to chime in. These people sit with the same two-euro coffee for hours, I told him. He responded that that was a bad business model. I gave up. His wife looked at me, as if hoping for more conversation, as if she might invite me to sit with them for a drink. All these Americans came here, wanting to know about the crisis, the refugees—from me, a real Greek!—and though I’m sure they were genuine, the idea of this disaster tourism really pissed me off. Years ago, this couple would have stayed in Plaka, and now here they were, in some overpriced, rented apartment, wandering to see for themselves whether it was safe, collecting tragedies and signs of blight as if this might make their trip more authentic. I remember Mira saying that people flocked to Athens because it felt edgy and only mildly dangerous, the safest dangerous place in the world.

  I kept walking, passing three young cops on the corner. One looked into my eyes and nodded politely. I was too old to provoke authority, even when wearing a hood. I was no longer of the Molotov demographic, and with my lighter hair and eyes I was also not, to them, an immigrant. Another band of cops stood on the next corner. They recognized me and said, “Good evening, Captain.”

  On the way home, on Mavromichali, I stopped at a taverna my father had loved. An old haunt of the left. A small stroller was parked out front, and two bicycles. The guys working there had surely been born in the 1990s; they’d told me they considered themselves apolitical, which to me seemed very political. On a small shelf in the corner I noticed two of Aris’s father’s books and a few poetry anthologies. I looked at the display of photos on the back wall, near the bathroom. Sure enough, smack in the middle was a black-and-white photo of my father and Aris’s father, their arms around each other. I showed the waiters, who politely feigned interest. My young and laughing father soothed me a bit. I ordered some keftedakia and fries with my beer.

  I was looking forward to seeing Dimos that weekend. He’d just arrived in Athens from New York, where he’d lived for twenty years, though his parents still lived on the island, where we’d become friends. Dimos was a historian. We had all thought he’d go into politics, but he preferred to bury himself in archives and libraries and books.

  The last time I’d seen him the twins had been three or four. I had been excited for his visit—the fog of having two small children made me crave adult company. Those days, I was rarely home for more than a few days at a time, so I suggested he stop by for a drink in the evening. I shopped for interesting new craft beers, set out pistachios and olives and graviera from the island.

  This was a mistake. I don’t know why I didn’t suggest a nearby café. Somehow, I wanted him to see my full life, the chaos of children, the bustle of fam
ily. Maybe it was an act of aggression. I don’t know. The twins had been in the other room, jumping from the couch to the floor, onto the cushions. Katerina was in the kitchen with Eva, who was fresh from a breakup, drinking wine and discussing the awfulness of men. Katerina’s wistfulness for her pre-parent life showed only in her vicarious living through Eva’s dramas, which she approached like projects for work.

  But the chaos did not annoy me then; I remember feeling happy for a house alive. Fatherhood no longer felt so foreign. I heard Nikos shriek from the other room, and Ifigenia cry, and then both of them shrieking again. They were not shrieks of serious distress. I looked to Dimos to laugh—I had thought he might find it amusing, at least, if not charming—but he only looked uncomfortable. Irritated that we’d not have the sort of deep conversations we’d been having all our lives. He was adorable with the children, don’t get me wrong, holding them up in the air, to their delight, but I knew then that our friendship would strain. Years earlier, when I’d invited him to the christening, he’d scoffed and couldn’t believe I’d given in.

  And now.

  In those early years I had felt almost pleasure at the sight and sound of unruly children in restaurants, in airplanes, in enclosed spaces where the children weren’t supposed to be unruly, even in Greece, where children were everywhere but adults still somewhat resembled adults. Adults behaving badly sometimes, but nevertheless. A relief, maybe, an admission to a club I had previously resisted joining, a closed society of new parents who looked over with compassion and pride and relief that the screaming child was not theirs, not this time. Sometimes in those earlier years I barely noticed it.

  I’m not sure when the shift happened, but I’ve become intolerant to noise. Even children shouting with joy on a beach, or a mother calling out to her daughters, can drive me crazy. Ifigenia comes home and practices the violin and anger rises inside me, and Nikos with his loud scratchy voice, his belligerence, makes me lose my cool. Katerina’s banging around in the kitchen makes me want to explode. At sea, even in moments of distress and chaos, there are always so many moments of deep, deep quiet, and I know Katerina could sometimes tell when at home I would rather have been elsewhere. Was it possible to love someone deeply and truly but not want to be in their presence? I don’t mean the kids are driving me crazy. Something darker. How many duties as a father had I been spared simply for my comfort? Katerina knew that to keep me close she would have to do everything herself. And I suppose that was no longer worth it.

  9

  Mira

  I wasn’t planning on visiting Fady and Dimitra that evening—while in the States, sometimes weeks would pass without my seeing friends—but after Fady learned the story of what had happened at the pharmacy the day before, he said, “Either you come here or we come there.”

  When I arrived, I allowed him to delicately remove the bandage from my cheek so he could inspect the stitches, but Dimitra demanded we do so discreetly in the entryway; she didn’t want to upset the kids. Fady tipped my cheek up to the pale hall light, grudgingly praising the work. “There will be no scar,” he said.

  “Ha,” I said. I hadn’t told them I’d seen Aris again. But when Fady returned from the bathroom with a new bandage and a bit of antibiotic ointment, Dimitra had to reapply it because his hands were shaking. He told us he had a commission he needed to finish and disappeared to his workshop.

  In the kitchen, Rami was doing Leila’s math problems and Leila was, according to her, making slime. Some sort of internet thing, Rami told me, giving me his usual shy half hug. The two of them sat together, across from one another at the table. Leila had straightened her hair and it hung like a glossy curtain down her back, and with her caramel-colored eyes she looked disconcertingly like a young Nefeli. Rami concentrated the same way I used to, head cradled in hand, deep in thought. I used to fall asleep that way.

  Rami paged through his old book, showing me drawings I hadn’t yet seen, about a young boy in school in Damascus. Toward the back of the sketchbook he’d drawn some stark, pastoral landscapes, nearly dystopic, nary a human in sight. But I found it harder to engage him than normal, for whatever reason. Usually we had an easy rapport.

  Something in the apartment felt strange, something that went beyond what had happened to me the previous day, something I sensed Fady and Dimitra were withholding. Finally, as if staying in the house would force her to address whatever it was I was feeling, Dimitra slipped her arm in mine and suggested we go out. She forced a smile. Fady was working, the children content.

  We walked to a place on Strefi Hill—almost impossible to get a table for dinner but at that time of day, there were free places. It reminded me of Thanassis’s taverna on the island: the multicolored pastel chairs, the stillness, the metal pitcher and small tumblers of water between us. The waiter, a bearded ponytail guy, a lovable anarchist, liked us, and the times I’d come in with Rami they’d spoken a mix of English and Greek. They talked about soccer, and I was surprised at the way Rami already had such strong opinions on the Greek teams and beyond. Our waiter was an Olympiacos fan, and Rami AEK, and when Rami made a joke about “gavros”—the little fish—I didn’t even understand he was belittling the waiter’s team, but the waiter laughed.

  Dimitra and I ordered some baked chickpeas and some bread and split a small carafe of white wine. She asked me if I wanted to talk about Aris and I told her I didn’t. We talked instead about Rami: his love for Leila and hers for him; the way Fady felt as though he had a son; the way Dimitra was overcome with the will to protect him, to raise him here in Athens, knowing of course his family waited more than two thousand kilometers away. “It would take twenty-four hours to drive there,” she said. “I checked.”

  She told me he was curious that I had left Greece as a child and had now returned, and she wasn’t sure if he understood—“No, he understands, I mean, accepts”—that the country he had loved and left would never be the same.

  Dimitra reached over the table to touch my cheek. Discussions of politics, even in the home, made Rami nervous, she said, and she and Fady had begun to censor what they talked about, and when. He walked around with worry beads, like an old man, and told Dimitra he was a nihilist. “He knows what a nihilist is?” I asked. She shrugged and laughed. She showed me some pictures from the weekend. They’d gone to her parents’ home, in Oropos. Leila and Rami were barefoot but in sweaters, facing the calm sea, the large island of Evia.

  Rami’s hands were both on his head, elbows out, and Leila’s head, ever so slightly, was turned to him. In another photo, Rami was holding something in his hand and Leila was bent over to look, and in another they stretched their arms over their heads in a yoga sun salutation, performing for the camera.

  It was the first time since Rami’s arrival that he’d been in the sea, but Dimitra said he was okay, running through the sand and collecting tiny crabs. Then he and Leila sat at the large table on the balcony for hours, drawing while the adults talked. She said they were working on something together. Rami was an easygoing kid, usually difficult to rattle, and we wondered what experiences remained at the forefront of his imagination and what things he had buried deep. I asked if Rami had said anything else about what had happened the other day outside the pharmacy. Her brow furrowed, she tied her pretty curls back at the nape of her neck. We both knew Rami had seen far worse. The year anniversary of Rami’s arrival would come in August, and Dimitra worried it would cause some resurgence of trauma, painful memories. We were all trying to keep those at bay, knowing of course that our attempts were in vain. Try as you might, you could not protect someone from grief.

  The waiter brought a small bowl of olives, some fried feta with sesame seeds and honey. “Our treat,” he told us.

  Dimitra smiled, thanked him, though she seemed distracted. Her jaw tensed. I thought it had to do with our discussion of Rami, whose impermanence deeply troubled her. Or maybe she wanted to tell me something else about Aris, though what else was there to tell. But I was wrong. “W
e have to talk about Nefeli,” she said.

  The other day, she and Nefeli had gone out to get some wine while Fady finished dinner, and she’d seen Nefeli slip a bottle opener into her pocket. A few days later, the two were shopping for Leila’s birthday. This time it was pajamas from a shop in Syntagma, an American chain. Nefeli had wrapped a pair of pajama pants around her arm and pulled down her sleeve. When Dimitra relayed this to Fady, he told Dimitra that he’d gone to Nefeli’s apartment a few weeks earlier and the place had looked like a department store. He glimpsed a room full of clothing laid out on a bed. Her bathroom was filled with toilet paper and shampoo. Packages of T-shirts on the dining table. Makeup, pens. When he asked her what it was she was nonchalant, said it was for something she was working on, and walked him out.

  Dimitra was now sure the flannel shirts Nefeli had given Leila for her birthday, the T-shirts for Rami, had all been stolen. She stopped eating, looked down at her food, rubbed her temples. “I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

  I remembered that Nefeli had come by the squat with a bag of things recently—socks and flip-flops, notebooks and nail polish—that the girls went nuts for. Rami let one of the little girls paint his nails blue.

  Dimitra sighed. “I did tell her we needed those things.”

  “Maybe she’s just hoarding,” I said. But we all knew that was unlikely. Nefeli hated to spend money. I wasn’t sure if she was truly feeling destitute or if her theft was some sort of political act.

  “I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do,” Dimitra said, popping an olive into her mouth.

  Added to the litany of issues we were dealing with that year—strikes, neo-Nazis, the various facets of the vague, all-encompassing “crisis”—Nefeli’s petty shoplifting seemed low on the list. But something about this news unsettled me, as it had clearly unsettled Dimitra. I thought of Nefeli’s strange outbursts the day we’d gone to the beach, her recent combativeness each time we’d met for coffee. I knew when she was planning a show she’d often go through manic phases, and once she’d finished, she’d slip into a depression until the artistic well began to fill again. A familiar pattern to be sure.