Carl, the dealer, who had been alternating with Cicero through the night nodded and assembled the cards to clear the table.
Matsoukas rose and walked to the corner where Cicero was asleep in an armchair. The dealer's small, spare body was bent in thin folds and his head hung limply to the side. In that phase of light he looked like a child. Matsoukas touched his shoulder gently. Cicero opened his eyes.
"Come on, old sport," Matsoukas said. "The night is over. I will walk you home."
He helped the dealer to his feet where he stood weaving slightly and blinking his eyes. The odor of whiskey rose like damp pungent mist from his flesh. He grunted and nodded.
"I'll lock up," Carl said. "You go ahead."
Cicero gestured his thanks and braced slightly against Matsoukas, they followed the others to the door.
The four men stood for a moment in the alley outside the rear exit of the music store. The first gray stirrings of dawn had muted the glitter of stars leaving only a colorless firmament that swept their faces with an eerie light.
"What a bloody hour this is," Fatsas shivered. "Like the whole earth is a graveyard." He raised the collar of his coat and shrugged his head down like a turtle drawing into its shell. He shuffled off wearily. Charilaos waved a quick farewell and started on his way.
Matsoukas and Cicero walked the length of the alley. A solitary cat foraging among the garbage cans sighted them and leaped out of sight.
"One of my relatives," Cicero said. "My sister in Kenosha."
"I see a certain family resemblance," Matsoukas said.
They passed a darkened car and saw the shadowed outline of two bodies writhing in the rear seat.
"Can't the poor devils find a bed?" Matsoukas asked sadly.
"What's the difference where they do it?" Cicero said. He shivered and huddled slightly against Matsoukas for warmth. "Let's get a drink someplace," he said.
"You're going to sleep," Matsoukas said sternly. "You are about dead on your feet."
"That is my normal condition," Cicero said grimly. "Cold and almost dead."
"Hush, man," Matsoukas said. "You carry on and on." He embraced his friend around the small bony frame of his shoulders.
They emerged from the alley onto a street of shabby rooming houses. Before the stone steps of one of the houses Cicero turned and gestured a grave and courteous dismissal. "Thank you for the convoy, my friend," he said. "I will be fine from here."
Matsoukas gave him a slight shove. "Right into bed, old sport," he said. "The last time I left you here you were up the street in a flash."
"You are a scourge," Cicero sighed. He started wearily up the steps with Matsoukas holding his arm.
On the second floor they entered a long dark hallway. Cicero was breathing in short quick gasps. He fumbled with his key before his door until Matsoukas took it and found the lock. The door swung open on a dingy, cluttered room with an unmade bed. An assortment of books and soiled clothing littered the chairs, the top of the old bureau, and the floor.
"Mt. Olympus," Cicero grinned crookedly. He began to pull off his clothing until, stripped to his underwear, he sat down on the edge of the bed. He grunted and pulled a book from beneath his buttocks. His thin bare legs were lean as sticks and covered with a sparse coating of lank hair. He motioned toward the bureau.
"Matsoukas, be a sport," he pleaded. "Bring the bottle from the top drawer. I need a nightcap."
Matsoukas sighed and went to the dresser. He opened the drawer and carried the pint he found back to the bed. Cicero uncorked the bottle eagerly and threw back his head to take a long fervent swallow of the whiskey. He breathed with renewed zest. He corked the bottle and started to slip it deftly beneath his pillow.
"No you don't!" Matsoukas snapped the bottle from his fingers. "The top drawer is close enough. Now get under the covers or I will crown you with it."
Cicero laughed and fell back across the bed, his body lying lightly upon the springs, his legs dangling over the edge. Matsoukas scooped him up easily and swung him into bed and then pulled the sheet and cover to his throat.
Cicero stared at the ceiling for a moment and then looked soddenly at Matsoukas.
"Why do you bother with me?" he asked.
"Because you are a man of rare soul," Matsoukas said. "A man I delight in calling my best friend."
Cicero shook his head slowly. "Friendship blinds you," he said. "If you could see me as clearly as I see myself, you would know what I am. A frail-bodied drunk with a groaning liver and a moaning heart. My veins are scurvy roads that run through the ruins of my body. I am a clown, a coward, a weakling, and a fool."
"No!" Matsoukas cried in heated protest.
"A wrecked ship that even in its prime was never seaworthy," Cicero said, "never worth a damn, never fit for floating except in a muddy gutter swollen with the vomit of swine."
"You are mad!" Matsoukas cried. "The booze has soaked your head." He snorted. "Just your hands alone, those marvelous fingers ... they alone give you a kind of grace denied ordinary men."
Cicero shook his head with a slight smile tickling the corners of his lips. "Tell me again," he said. "Tell me your weird visions again. I have heard them many times and yet I take a strange perverse delight in hearing you tell me again."
Matsoukas winked at his friend. "Laugh and sneer if you wish," he said. He motioned to the scattered books. "You cannot conceal the truth of what you are from me. I know you too well. You are ten times the scholar that I am. You could write essays and poems. The world would acclaim you." He paused and shook his head gravely. "If you had lived in the golden age," he said, "you might have been a Praxiteles fashioning marvelous figures from marble, gorgons and heroes, and warriors and poets."
He fell silent and for a moment they stared at one another. Resting in the cradle of the pillow the dealer's white cheeks glittered beneath the dark pits of his eyes. Matsoukas rose and straightened the covers once more around his throat.
"You care for me like my mother used to do," Cicero said with a soft mocking melancholia in his voice. "Tuck me in and hear my prayers." He closed his eyes and began to intone in a faint thin voice.
Now, dear God, I go to bed
And rest my little weary head.
When daylight comes please let me rise
To play once more beneath your skies.
He opened his eyes and stared with a strange burning sadness at Matsoukas. "The sun is only young once," he said. Then he closed his eyes again.
Matsoukas sat on the edge of the bed. He saw the outline of the dealer's fingers beneath the covers and he extended his own hand to shield them. He pressed gently and Cicero smiled slightly, his head slipping more deeply into the pillow. In a moment he was asleep, his breath coming in short uneven spasms.
Matsoukas rose quietly and looked down at his friend. "The sun is eternal," he said softly. Then a bone-piercing weariness crept the length of his body and he yearned suddenly for the warmth of his own bed.
He left the room and descended to the street. With his head bent to protect his weary eyes against the growing light he walked home quickly. He entered his building, and on the landing outside his door a baby's wail from a nearby flat cut sharply across the stillness. He put his fingers to his lips in a mute plea. He removed his shoes, swung the door open quietly, and walked in on stockinged feet. He paused in the parlor to peer down at Stavros and gently raised the blanket to the boy's throat.
He undressed outside the door of his bedroom. When he was naked he entered the room and walked on his toes to the bed. He pulled aside the covers and slipped stealthily beneath them trying not to waken Caliope who was snoring slightly. In the warmth of the bed he let his body relax and could have groaned with delight for the sheer sensual pleasure it provided him. He turned on his side and prodded with his rump until he found the curve of Caliope's buttocks. He pressed his body against hers, a touch without desire, seeking only the wellsprings of warmth.
He fell asleep and had a dream he w
as lying in a grave, an open grave of incredible depth, the sky above him reduced to a small square of light. Something stirred at the grave's edge and a voice called to him, a summons from a great distance that fell slowly toward him and finally reached him like a distant echo. He struggled to answer the summons and the voice burst again close to his head. His eyes tore open to Faith crouched beside the bed, her small wet mouth close to his ear, her breath warm upon his cheek. He fumbled one arm out to stroke her hair and with the other hand groped to find the bed beside him empty.
"We are all going to church, Papa," Faith said. "The Bishop will be there today. Mama wants to take Stavros. Will you come with us?"
He groaned. "Tell Mama I am coming," he tried to sound alert. "Tell her to wait for me, that I will carry him, and not to put him in that cursed buggy."
Faith left the room and he struggled to break free of his blankets. He tugged desperately and managed to prop himself on one elbow and swing one naked leg almost to the floor. His big bare foot dangled a few inches above the wood. For a moment he studied it somberly, feeling it disembodied, a part of him severed from the remainder of his body. It swayed slightly and his eyes followed the swaying and he counted the toes. When he came to six he was startled and began to count again and the foot kept swaying ...
He woke to a dreadful silence. His eyelids snapped open, his ears quivered, and he lay fervently still listening for some voice or movement around him.
"God curse me!" he cried and kicked off the covers and ran naked to the bedroom door. He stuck his head out into the hall.
"Caliope!" he shouted.
Even as his voice echoed through the deserted rooms, he understood she had scorned to send to wake him a second time. He had a fearful vision of her pushing the heavy reinforced buggy of Stavros through the streets, her mother and Faith and Hope grumbling and fretting at each corner as she made the lurching descents and straining ascents over the curbs.
He flung on his clothes in haste. He hurried down the stairs and ran the four blocks to the Orthodox church on Washtenaw, loping along with long easy strides, feeling the blood rise and tingle in his body.
When he reached the church a few young men lounged on the stone steps outside, smoking cigarettes, and waiting for the liturgy to finish. They giggled at the sight of Matsoukas, a fool so eager to get into church he had to run.
"Take it easy, pop," one youth with pustules the size of grapes called out smirkingly. "Jesus Christ won't let them finish without you."
Matsoukas considered pausing to slap his sassy mouth but could not spare the time. He pulled open the carved wooden door and entered the portico. Stavros' buggy was standing empty in the corner, the wide strong straps they used to bind him in hanging over the arms. Matsoukas started to enter the nave, the main part of the church, and the trustee behind the candle counter coughed to remind him he had neglected the amenities.
Matsoukas dropped a few small coins into the tray and the man smiled. Afterwards he lit a candle hastily, made his cross before the icon and entered the incense-misted church.
The congregation, under the great chandeliers which represented the stars in the sky and the Heavenly Light that God sends down, were clustered thickly in the benches at the front and sparsely in the rear. The old white-haired parish priest, Father Uranos, was standing in his vestments with folded hands gazing resignedly up at the imposing figure of Bishop Zenoitis on the platform of the great Episcopal Throne.
Bishop Zenoitis was a stately stout man with expressive hands. From his round face a pair of dark almond eyes stared upon the parishioners with a stabbing glitter. His trim beard, like the chin tuft of a handsome goat, was black and well-brushed and quivered as he spoke.
"What is this curse of modern life I speak of?" Bishop Zenoitis said loudly. "This abomination that ranks beside the tax collector, the bikini, the cinema, the television, as one of the foul plagues of our horrendous age ... what is this evil but..." His dark eyes curved across the benches with a blade of scorn. "... the life insurance policy!" he cried.
Matsoukas peered along the benches for a sight of his family. A number of men and women distracted momentarily from the Bishop's penetrating assault clamped their teeth at him in disapproval.
"Yes, the life insurance policy!" Bishop Zenoitis thundered. "Those loathsome certificates full of fine print that smear death with the grossest ribaldry, making widows secretly jubilant, impatient for death to call, 'Haul ho!' for the coffined remains of their husbands so they might claim the beneficiary!"
Matsoukas saw Caliope in a bench off the center aisle. He quickly circled the church, the only figure moving, walking up the center aisle. Caliope was sitting on the outside, Stavros braced stiffly against her body. The mother-in-law sat on the other side of him with Faith and Hope beside her.
Bishop Zenoitis paused and watched Matsoukas. He bent slightly forward, his teeth bared, speaking directly to the intruder.
"Did the wives of the warriors of 1821 receive insurance? Did those magnificent iron-beards rising to fight the murderous Turk pause first to make sure their insurance premiums were paid?"
Matsoukas touched Caliope's shoulder and she raised her head to rend him with a grim and condemning look. He slipped past her and motioned to the old dragon to move so he might sit beside Stavros. She gave him a silent snarl, false teeth flashing in a harness of withered gums, and reluctantly shifted her bony rump a few grudging inches. Matsoukas bumped the end of the footrest, knocking it from the rack to the floor. The noise resounded like a boom of cannon fire through the church. Faith and Hope giggled and the Bishop glared at them in a fierce rebuke. Matsoukas waved him a quick apology and sat down beside Stavros. A segment of his hard heavy thigh mashed the old lady's hip and she wrenched away with a harsh groan. He winked amiably at her and turned to his son.
Stavros stared at his father, small furrows forming above his brows. Then a quiver of warmth swept the cold circles of his face and he lurched toward him. Matsoukas cradled the boy's head in the hollow of his arm and shoulder. He blew lightly against the soft fine hair and when the boy stirred with pleasure, he kissed him gently on the tip of his ear.
"I exhort you, my fellow Christians!" Bishop Zenoitis cried. "Abandon life insurance! Return integrity to grief! Burn the cursed policies and when you lose your loved ones, weep in earnest! How much more sincerely will you be able to grieve when you are not expecting a check for ten or twenty or even fifty thousand dollars!"
He ended on a sharply severed word and looked up toward the dome of the church as if expecting a personal sign of God's approbation. When nothing materialized he uttered a long sigh. "Amen," he said. He made a desultory sign of the cross over the congregation and descended from the throne. Father Uranos followed him to stand before the Beautiful Gate, and the golden scrolls and crosses on their gilded vestments glittered richly in the light of the myriad candles.
The black-gowned and white-collared girls of the choir rose from their chairs in the loft. When they were absolutely still, the choirmaster lowered his fingers in a slow descent and then swept them swiftly upward. The girl's voices burst from their bosoms and throats in the hymn of hosanna.
Bishop Zenoitis entered the Sanctuary and turned to face the benches. The congregation rose. Matsoukas got to his feet and swung Stavros gently up in his arms, to perch him like a prince on the throne of his shoulder. Then Matsoukas' heart caught in a great wrenching of delight.
Directly across the aisle, no more than half a dozen feet away, was Anthoula. She was clad in a black full-skirted dress and dark jacket, both serving to mute the beautiful valleys and slopes of her body. Her cheek and a section of long lovely throat were visible, a coil of dark hair fallen loose beneath the soft-brimmed hat that rippled about her head.
And suddenly standing there with his son in his arms, he felt a fierce surge of heat through his body, desire so strong that he almost cried out. He had all he could do to refrain from putting Stavros down and leaping across the aisle to snat
ch up Anthoula in his arms, a maddened centaur abducting a Lapith bride.
With his eyes burning her, she stirred restlessly. She turned suddenly and looking past Caliope, found him. She stared at him and then at Stavros and Caliope, piecing together the family, and then back to him. A strangeness was in her face, wonder, and a glitter of fear. He did not understand how it had taken place but his disorder had transmitted itself to her core, a violent response in her blood to the turmoil in his veins. She looked back toward the Sanctuary but he saw the quiver that ran the length of her body and he was filled with a wild jubilation.
He felt Caliope staring at him and he tore his gaze from Anthoula. He concentrated with intensity upon the icon of St. Basil, gowned in a garland of virtue, censuring him for his lascivious soul. But within his body he felt himself reverberating as if his organs were drums and cymbals played upon by a trio of tympanists.
At the moment when the dissonance was at its shrillest, a new sound intruded, a weird scream that chilled the marrow of his bones. And in his arms Stavros seemed to break apart.
He caught the boy's body and held him tightly against the spasm that shattered his flesh. His eyes were small dark leaves caught in a fearful wind, his mouth open and strangely blue.
Matsoukas felt the whole of the church swaying toward them, a flashing pattern of darkness and light with the ripple of shaken coins. The Bishop's neck rose like the head of a startled crane. Father Uranos peered around the corner of a candelabra. The girls of the choir pressed toward the railing of the loft to hang with their white collars suspended over the abyss of the church. The hundreds of men and women twisted and stretched like a maze of roots torn loose from the trunk of the benches.
He pushed quickly into the aisle holding Stavros in his arms, feeling each frantic arc of the boy's ribs against his own chest. For an instant as he turned toward the rear of the church he saw Anthoula watching him, a shaken compassion in her cheeks.
A Dream of Kings Page 7