Matsoukas started past the old lady in the doorway who stared venomously at him. Her mouth opened and a final low and sibilant curse spit at him. He reached out slyly as if he were going to sneak a pinch at the nipple of her mailed breast. She grunted and swung her arms like war clubs to defend her imperiled bosom. Matsoukas roared with laughter and walked briskly down the long shadowed hall.
He passed the bedroom where Faith and Hope had been playing in a litter of half-dressed dolls. From the floor he picked up a pair of paint-chipped toy telephones. He carried them to the arched entrance of the parlor.
His son, Stavros, was awkwardly slouched in a corner of the high-barred bed, his back to his father, his face inclined toward the dark square of the high center window. One small slim-boned foot was clad in a cotton stocking, the other foot was bare, a glistening whiteness to the toes. His neck was thin and frail, and a strip of pale flesh separated the dark curly nape of his hair from the brown cotton of his shirt. One hand was hinged upon the other, a crayon dangling from the crevice formed by his palm and fingers.
Matsoukas went to stretch his arms over the bars, gathered the boy gently into the nest of his hands, and kissed his hair and throat. Stavros stirred and moved his head in tight small jerks. Matsoukas felt the child's tremor of recognition sweep his own flesh.
He was handsome, soft-haired, with a fine small nose and tiny shapely ears and cherubic lips. But the watery eyes, the strangely limned eyes, the pupils like black buttons in a broken shell, gave his face a wound of dullness.
His elbows fluttered from his side. His hands flailed the air pulling his body forward. His fingers, bent in the shape of a claw, caught the pad of paper fallen against the bars and dragged it closer before losing it. A thin shrill wail split his lips.
"I can see what you have been doing!" Matsoukas cried and raised the pad to stare jubilantly at the chaotic scrawls. "Good! Good!" He kissed the boy again and fondled his hair.
He put one of the toy telephones into the bed at the boy's ankles. He held the other phone and knelt, resting his cheek against the bars. He put the phone to his ear and mouth and waited.
Stavros stared at him for a moment and then tore his gaze toward the phone. He looked at it for a long time and then fluttered his fingers over his knees toward it. He caught it once and lost it.
"Good! Good!" Matsoukas nodded furiously.
Stavros managed to brace the phone between his knees. He swayed awkwardly forward, bending almost double, until his mouth came close to the receiver. His lips quivered and sucked for air.
"Hello! Hello!" Matsoukas spoke loudly into his phone. "This is Mr. Poupouloupis! Who am I talking to? Who am I talking to if you please?"
The boy's mouth opened, his teeth glittered, and breath came in a tuneless hissing from between his tensed lips.
"Mr. Stavros!" Matsoukas cried. "Just the gentleman I wanted to talk to. I have good news for you, Mr. Stavros. One hundred twenty-three more dollars goes into our bank!" He whistled in exultation. "One hundred twenty-three more dollars for our flight! Do you hear, Mr. Stavros?"
The boy strained again toward the phone, his body bent tight as a bow, a vein wriggling like a small dark worm in the paleness of his temple.
"We will celebrate, my son!" Matsoukas cried softly. "Mr. Poupouloupis has brought you ice cream!" He grinned in rampant pleasure and rubbed his stomach with a moan of joy.
He saw the boy strangely alert in that moment, the wistfulness of a huge delight trembling just beneath his flesh. Stavros moved then, falling to the side, his hands clawing between the bars of the bed, his fingers plunging toward his father.
With a soft torn cry Matsoukas rose and swept the boy from the bed. He held him tightly while the boy's fingers groped over the fabric of the suit, caressing the wool, seeking to curl beneath the cloth.
"Ice cream!" Matsoukas said. "Ice cream!" He began to rock the boy back and forth in rhythm to the words. "Ice cream! Ice cream!"
The shades flapped suddenly at the windows and he felt the beat of his own pulse. Shadows pressed around the frames and he heard the wild and demonic cry of the wind. The light began to fail and the blackness sprang to close around them.
"Ice cream!" he cried. "Ice cream for my son!" He held the boy bound in his arms and began to dance, his feet shuffling and gliding in a strange and dismembered movement. In the corner the lamplight wavered and the room hung suspended between shades of darkness and light.
He danced around the rim of darkness, between the whipping tails of shadow, and in the glass of the windows grotesque reflections twirled and mimicked his steps. He danced on, the rhythm growing wilder, the walls and the floors shifting with his whirling, the light growing brighter, moonless midnight receding. Then he was free, broken away into the arch of the sky, dancing beyond the myriads of fixed stars, ascending toward the core of a blazing sun.
And in his arms, riding the crest of the flight, Stavros fluttered his frail shoulders and like a new-winged bird strained to burst his fetters and spring aloft.
Later that night with the children sleeping and the asthmatic snores of the old lady rumbling through the flat, Matsoukas followed Caliope into their bedroom and closed and locked the door.
He stripped off his clothes and stood completely naked. He flexed his muscles, looking down at the hard washboard of his belly. Satisfied there was no trace of fat yet apparent, he swung his hands to the floor and kicked his feet to the ceiling. He hung there, swaying slightly, the hair along his chest and legs gaining a sudden sharpened vigor.
"I see you, bull-balls!" Matsoukas cried at his dangling organ and scrotum. "Exercise to make you lithe and flexible, put tone into your marrow!"
"You are a crazy sonofabitch," Caliope said. She had taken off her dress and sat on the edge of the bed in her slip, drawing off her stockings that were a maze of runs. He knew the movement of his naked body excited her and she could not help watching his gyrations.
"We are preparing, my friend and I," he said hoarsely. "You should be preparing as well."
"That's all you're good for," she said resentfully. She stood up and drew her black slip over her head. The flesh at her thighs and around her waist bulged against the ruptures of the worn girdle. "The stud," she said with a mocking laugh, and twisted her arms behind to unclasp her brassiere. As her heavy, dark-nippled breasts sagged free, she moaned and kneaded them gently with her fingers. "I need a new brassiere," she said. "The elastic on this one kills me."
"I will buy you two brassieres tomorrow," Matsoukas said.
"Yes, you will buy me two," Caliope said with a sharp grunt. "And maybe even a new dress and a new hat for Easter."
"I will buy you all these things!" he said. The blood had begun to move in his arms and a thin film of sweat spread across his shoulders and ran in trickles to his hairy armpits.
"I don't mind for myself anymore," she said. "But if my mother didn't buy the children the clothing they need, they would be in rags, and if she didn't pay most of the rent we would be in the street."
"Business is getting better," he said. "Expanded opportunities for me are in the stars." He drew a long deep breath. "We will repay your blessed mother so she can hide bigger piles of money under her mattress."
She stared at him for a moment with bitterness and wonder. Then she sighed and turned her back to him. She caught her fingers in the waist of her girdle and pulled it slowly down across her hips, a ripple of reddened flesh puffing in its wake. When it fell to her ankles she stepped out of it.
He watched her in that arc of his vision and her body seemed strangely distorted. She was slovenly and untidy, snail-like flakings of flesh marring her once solid hips and waist, her strong and firm buttocks grown to pouched and flabby folds. Yet her nakedness was desirable and he recalled with a mounting excitement the years of passion they had indulged, the wild humping journeys they had made.
With a buoyant cry he swung his feet back to the floor. He stood up breathing deeply, pleased at the racing of th
e blood through his limbs. He walked on bare feet to where she bent separating the clothing she had removed. He slipped his arm around her waist and caressed the nipple of her breast.
She twisted out of his grasp. Her lips were dry and hard.
"I'm tired," she said.
"I will refresh you," he said with a wink.
He reached for her again and she moved quickly back, her breasts jumping slightly toward him. With a smile of elation he moved forward and caught her. He stroked her shoulder and the hollow of her throat. She held herself taut and as he bent to kiss her breast she pushed him away.
"I want you, my darling," he said, and the scents of her body rose to tingle in his nose, something sour and moist with the tang of a dill pickle.
"I don't want you!" She struggled to break free. He felt her nails across the surface of his flesh and he tensed, waiting for them to pierce his skin. But they probed as if first seeking his veins before they stabbed him. He tried to pull her closer and she twisted from side to side denying him her sullen mouth. He stroked her arms with the balls of his thumbs, ran his fingers over her elbows down her wrists and then vaulted to the arched hills of her hips. He felt her suddenly go limp.
"Get it over with," she said.
"I don't want to get it over with," he protested.
"What the hell do you want?" she said savagely. "Do you want me a virgin again the way I was when you married me? Do you want me to bleed and cry once more for the wonder of love? That was three kids and four miscarriages ago. You can go to hell!"
He stepped back, releasing her, and studied her with a slight frown.
"What a Madonna you are," he said in a soft mocking voice. "You can freeze a man's cock with a few saintly words from your delicate mouth."
She watched him for a moment, breathing hard, the checked pattern of the girdle still visibly stitched across her belly.
"I wasn't always like that," she said. "Ten years with you has made me what I am."
"Don't give me all the credit, old dear," he smiled. "I see much of your mother's incomparable nature in you."
"You resent her because without her we would starve!"
He pointed to the folds of flesh around her waist. "You hardly seem to be wasting away," he smirked.
For a moment she seemed on the verge of cursing him and then she paused. A slight teasing smile, a parody of passion, glittered around her mouth. She made a small thrusting movement with her belly.
He leaped to pull her fiercely against his body. She offered him her mouth and he saw her red tongue glistening like a dagger between her lips. For an instant she appeared to yield and then in a swift rancorous movement she drove downward with her fingers. He felt an explosion of pain at his loins.
He let loose a tight anguished cry and grabbed for his stinging crotch. She twisted away from him, laughing hoarsely, her breasts swinging vengefully free.
"My passionate Greek God!" she hissed. "My Adonis who loves to canter up a spread-eagled pair of legs!"
"You harlot!" he cried. He was torn between pain and delight at her spirited violence. He could not endure her inertia and scorn.
"Someday I will fix you good!" she said. "Ill catch your big balls asleep and convert you from a stud into a gelding!"
"You would die without me to dip you!" he said. He took a menacing step toward her.
She retreated to the bed, shaking her head, climbing on it to kneel warily, half-teasing and partly in fear. The sight of her naked and trembling filled him with a wild horn of desire. He grabbed for her with a cry and jerked his hand aside just in time to evade the sharp bite of her teeth. He caught her thighs between his palms and roughly swung her big strong body down on the mattress. "Got you now!" he cried. "Now you'll get a pounding that will tame you!"
"Goddam you, let me go!" She struggled and kicked in fury, her hair fallen wild across her cheeks, her teeth bared in a snarl.
He held her down, forcing his face into the hollow of her throat, her body thrashing beneath him. For a few wild moments they struggled while he made her feel the urgent weight of his flesh. "Let me go," she said more quietly and he felt the wound of her anger healing. "You bastard, let me go."
He released her and she made no effort to rise. He bent and kissed her, mouth nuzzling and nipping at the taste of despair, his hands deftly herding the swells and folds of her body. Her arms tightened around his neck, her fingers pinched in a frenzied urgency at his flesh.
"You bastard," she cried softly, "O you bastard." But all fury and scorn were gone from her voice and a strange tender sorrow in its place. For an instant their faces were close and he watched her eyes, watched each tremor that swept the ridges of her cheeks until like thin sheer layers of crust the bitterness and hate were peeled away. He cried out wordlessly then at what appeared in her eyes, for one fleeting moment retrieved from the debris of the years, the warm shaken glitter of love.
Long after she had fallen asleep, snoring in a weary drawing of breath, he lay awake staring at the reflections of light within the frame of the window. The shrill laughter of a woman erupted from the street below, and a man joined her with a growl of mirth. Then a moment of silence broken by the lonely sound of a ship baying from the harbor of the river. A drunk stumbled noisily past, a tuneless melody rising garbled from his throat. The sound was lost in a rumble that stirred the air. It grew in volume until it burst outside the window and the elevated rocked by, framed glittering squares of light with a few heads like small black balls.
When it was quiet again a shimmer of moonlight breaking from the mooring of a cloud rippled over the sill, illuminating a worn patch of rug, the dresser, his clothes flung across a chair. Moonlight reached the bed, swept the blanketed swell of their bodies, a brief plume in which he saw Caliope's face through a veil of mist.
He thought of the moonlight threading the bars of Stavros' bed and he rose. He walked naked to the parlor, following the faint trail of moonlight to his son's bed.
The boy lay on his side, his legs drawn toward his stomach, his hands curled around his knees. His head was flung back on the pillow, his mouth was open and each breath wracked his body.
Matsoukas placed his fingers against the boy's throat, tracing the uneven fluttering of breath through the moist thin canal. He squatted on the floor and leaned his head gently against the bars.
"We will go there soon, you and I," he whispered. "You will lie naked in the sun on a high rock above the sea. The sun will make you well, will burn away your weakness with its healing fire. Soon, my son, soon."
His voice rose slightly and Stavros stirred in his sleep. Jubilantly it seemed to Matsoukas as if he had heard and understood for there was a radiance on his face, a light across his cheeks, a kind of joy that his body could not contain.
CHAPTER FIVE
Matsoukas walked brusquely beneath the sign that read, Athen an Lu ch, Eve ybo y We come, pausing only an instant to examine fitfully the dilapidated exterior of the lunchroom. The perimeter of wood around the window revealing a maze of cracks. The lettering on the glass ragged and with half the letters chipped away. He shook his head and entered the doorway. The interior fully matched the exterior decorations. The battered pie case, the dented and tarnished coffee urns, the worn counter, the tables with faded and stained cloths cast a pall of wretchedness from wall to wall.
"Where are all the bloody customers?" Matsoukas asked loudly. "Has the city been evacuated? Is there no sign of life?"
Javaras, the owner of the lunchroom, came slowly from the kitchen. He was a tall thin man in his late fifties with a dark and mournful face. He smelled of rancid cheese, coffee grounds, stale bread, and disaster. He walked staring uneasily at the floor as if expecting it to collapse with his next step.
"The place is a graveyard," Javaras said grimly. "Who are we fooling? When the prospective buyer gets here this afternoon the only way we will sell is to subdivide it into cemetery lots."
"Success in any endeavor is a benefit to be won, old sport,"
Matsoukas said. "Do not throw in your stained towel. We may yet turn this enterprise of your enslavement into the instrument of our liberation."
Uncle Louie, the chef, came to stand in the doorway from the kitchen. He was a shriveled and bowlegged grasshopper of a man with a high grease-riddled chef's cap perched crookedly on his head and a face like an embalmer's model.
"I am ashamed of both of you!" Matsoukas cried. "I expected to find the place gleaming with high polish and both of you quivering with anticipation. In less than two hours the redoubtable broker, Aristotle, will be here with the buyer we are both after. We should be bristling with confidence and instead your demeanors suggest a wake."
"We are out of eggs," Uncle Louie said in a grieved voice. "Apollo won't go after a dozen."
From the kitchen the shrill voice of Apollo responded, his shaggy head visible through the chute opening above his sink. "I am a dishwasher!" he cried. "Not a rutting errand boy!"
Javaras ignored them both. "What happened at the Union Hall?" he asked Matsoukas.
"Complete victory!" Matsoukas said gleefully. "I told my friend, Local 77 Vice President Orchowski that all afternoon today, coffee, sweetrolls, and ham sandwiches are free in the Athenian Lunch. The men who enter will pay and you will carefully give each one the little white cash register receipts. These receipts will be turned in to Orchowski and you will reimburse the Union Recreation Fund for the amount of their total. In return Orchowski promises to keep this place packed all afternoon." He turned toward Uncle Louie. "Did you bake the ham?"
Uncle Louie nodded. "A twenty-two pounder all set," he said. "Just in time too. The meatman severed our credit this morning."
"And sweetrolls?" Matsoukas asked.
"Two hundred and twenty-five along with thirty loaves of bread," Javaras said. "Only two days old and I got them all at a good discount." He paused. "I just filled both five gallon urns with fresh coffee."
"We better get some eggs," Uncle Louie said.
"Go lay some!" Apollo cried from the kitchen.
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