When he reached the portico, one of the trustees motioned to a door at the side and then ran to open it. Matsoukas carried Stavros into a secretary's office containing desk, chair, and couch. He placed the boy down carefully on the pillows of the couch, holding the heaving body under the reins of his hands. The boy's harsh and terrible gasps went on, his flesh a cracked shell over the bones of his face.
The trustee stood at the foot of the couch, watching intently, until a silent savage warning look from Matsoukas drove him to the door. As he went out, Caliope entered, carrying a small woolen blanket. She was breathing rapidly and several strands of her dark hair had fallen loose and cut her cheeks like knives. While Matsoukas tried to hold the boy's head immobile she inserted the wadded corner of a towel into his mouth to hold down his tongue.
Now in the full eruption of the spasm, the sweat strung long tendrils of beads around the boy's face and throat. His nostrils flared and beneath his clothing his shoulders thrashed like the broken wings of some small crippled bird. Once when the boy's agony seemed too much for his body to sustain, Matsoukas cried out savagely. Through the closed door floated the hymns and chants of the service.
The door opened and a doctor entered carrying his black bag. Caliope moved aside to let him approach the couch but for a long moment Matsoukas would not release his son. Only when Caliope tugged urgently at his shoulder did he lean back. Even as the doctor bent to examine Stavros, the peak of the seizure passed. The boy's face grew strangely and suddenly calm.
When the doctor turned to get something from his bag, Stavros looked up at Matsoukas with a sharp burning brightness, a lucidity and awareness beyond his usual grasp. In that momentary bounty for all the anguish, Matsoukas bent and kissed the boy's cold lips.
"How often do these seizures come?" the doctor asked.
"Last year he had six," Caliope said slowly.
"This year?"
She was silent a moment. "They come more often now," she said.
"How often?"
She looked at Matsoukas. He sat watching the boy.
"I think the last one was ... I think about three weeks ago." She looked again at Matsoukas for confirmation, but he did not move.
The doctor started to speak and then faltered. He turned away closing his bag with a loud snap.
"Don't move him for a while," he said. "Let him rest and sleep right there for a few hours."
After the doctor left they sat silently watching the boy. He had drifted instantly into sleep, his breathing coming in short and even rhythm. The services had ended and the rustle of people, the low rumble of voices, came from the other side of the door.
"You go home with the girls," Matsoukas said. "When he wakes I will carry him home. You take the buggy."
Caliope walked to the door and turned.
"Mama can take the girls home," she said quietly. "I can wait with you."
He did not answer. After a moment of silence she opened the door and went out.
He sat beside Stavros for a long time. The last voices faded from the portico and the church grew quiet. He pulled the blanket to the boy's throat and bent once to peer closely at his face. He placed the tip of his fingers upon the boy's chest and felt the faint flutter of his heart.
He heard a hesitant knock upon the door. After a moment it opened slightly and then slowly opened wider. The old priest, Father Uranos, entered. He had changed from his vestments and was dressed in a dark suit. His white collar gleamed around the thin frail bones of his throat. He stood uncertainly inside the door.
"How is the boy?" he asked.
"He is asleep," Matsoukas said. "He will be all right."
The priest walked softly to the couch and looked down upon the sleeping boy. He bent forward slightly.
"Don't touch him," Matsoukas said.
The priest straightened up and looked at Matsoukas. A strange melancholia swept his cheeks. He looked again at Stavros.
"Eternity is a great ring of light," he said quietly. "There is no suffering there. Suffering belongs to life."
"Death is darkness," Matsoukas said.
The priest walked slowly to the door. He hesitated with his hand upon the knob.
"I will pray for your son," he said.
Matsoukas did not answer. The priest left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Matsoukas sat for another few moments. Then unable to remain still any longer he rose and walked from the office leaving the door open. He passed through the portico and entered the church. He stood inhaling the last wisps of incense that lingered in the air.
He saw the church now as he had never seen it before, shadowed and emptied of people, a stage with the players gone and the dynamis of hymn and candle snuffed out.
He walked along the center aisle, the carpeting muffling his steps until he came to stand before the Sanctuary. The portals on either side were decorated by icons of the saints. Small oil lamps hung before each icon, double-wicked lamps burning the twin flames of the two natures of Christ, the human and the divine.
He pondered the desiccated arms, the austere faces, the inanimate hands of the figures in the icons. Flesh had been eaten from them by endless fast and prayer. When they finally died they could not have offered much of a repast for the maggots, the little flesh remaining on their bones expiring in frail puffs.
Within the Sanctuary stood the great altar table of marble. On the top of the table were the gospel-book, the candlesticks, and the ark for the sacrament of communion. Behind the altar loomed the crucifix, the large wooden cross on which a carved life-sized body of Christ was nailed. Above his head on the cross were the first letters for the words, "Jesus Nazarene, King of Jews," the inscription with which the soldiers mocked him on Golgotha.
He squatted on the floor before the entrance to the Sanctuary. He sat quietly staring toward the high white altar. The full firmament of the church, icons, crosses, candles, incense, and crucifix whirled about his head. He admitted them slowly and gravely into his soul. As the waning wax of the candle turns pliant, he felt his heart yielding.
"Are you really here?" he asked, and his words flew in soft echoes across the silent church. He bent forward slightly and listened. But the myriad angels did not waver, their fluted wings remained immobile, the heads of the saints masked within the shadows did not stir.
"Some say you are dead," he said, "that all this is mask and charade. I will tell you what I think has happened. Heaven has become for you a shadowed cavern of emptiness and longing. When Job asked, 'Why died I not from the womb?' you could still answer. But our earth is not the same as the earth on which Job lived."
The blue shades of the afternoon suddenly darkened. He looked up to the windows in the dome and saw them obscured under the passage of a dusking cloud. Shadows swept like suppliants across the empty pews.
"Once you could apportion heaven and hell," he said, "but that is true no longer. Error and chance rule the world. Your glory has departed."
He rose restlessly to his feet. He had a sense of floating toward stark hills wild with tangled shrubs and crevices, a peak on which a great mournful eagle perched.
"And they fill the churches and temples and pray to you," he said. "They light candles and beseech you to make the blind see, the crippled walk, the dead resurrected. They do not mark the trail of your blood."
A sound from the rear of the church drew him up tensely fearing that Stavros might have wakened. He started quickly down the aisle. At the doors to the portico he paused to look back a moment toward the Sanctuary. Then he raised his hand and slowly made the sign of the cross over the darkened church.
"Man have mercy on you," he said softly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Silent office before noon. Matsoukas waiting expectantly for clients. Anticipating an interruption momentarily he sat at his desk and carefully copied onto a tablet of clean white pages the ode "Olympia 2" of Pindar, savoring the swift strong beat of the measures.
Beside the high gods they who ha
d joy in keeping faith
lead a life without tears. The rest look on a blank face of evil.
He recited the lines aloud as he dusted the frames and glass of his photographs, and declaimed the words ringingly as he admired his sculpture.
... winds sweep from the Ocean across the island of the Blessed.
Gold flowers to flame on land in the glory of trees ...
He paused before the window and looked uneasily down at the door of the bakery. He had been unable to catch a glimpse of Anthoula during the entire morning and he feared she might be ill.
Since the hour in church several days before when he had felt her responding to his desire, he had been frantic in calculating how to approach her. But the cursed racks and counters of the bakery, like a medieval moat, and the hawk eye of old lady Barboonis, held him straining at bay.
To finance a trip to the bakery he turned his pockets inside out and from the deep core of lint and grains of tobacco mined a scatter of nickels and pennies. Ransacking the office he uncovered an additional dime in the rear of his desk drawer, lost beneath a sheaf of circulars and clippings of past performances from the Racing Form. A more exhaustive search failed to produce a penny more. To aggravate the situation he felt the ravages of hunger assaulting his belly and a thirst in his throat that could not be appeased with water.
He washed his hands and briskly brushed his hair. He retied his necktie to conceal an eggstain that blemished one of the loops. He opened the door of the office preparing to post the small printed sign which read,
EMERGENCY CALL BACK IN 15 MINUTES
when he heard footsteps in the hall behind him.
He whipped the sign back into his pocket and turned eagerly around. A woman emerged from the shadows and with her a boy of about twelve or thirteen.
"Mr. Matsoukas?" she asked. She was in her late forties or early fifties, weary-cheeked with a tight and tired mouth. A faint and shredded remnant of youthful loveliness lingered only about her dark eyes.
"Yes, indeed," he smiled warmly. "Please come in."
She turned to the boy who stared at Matsoukas with hostility and fear. "You wait here," she said. She gestured toward him. "My son, Tony," she said.
Matsoukas smiled a greeting, but the boy did not smile or speak. The woman entered the office and Matsoukas closed the door. She wore a worn cloth coat, frayed at the collar and the sleeves, heavy cotton stockings and flat-heeled black shoes.
"My name is Mrs. Cournos," she said. She looked toward the closed door and lowered her voice. "I came to you because Mrs. Ganas, a neighbor of mine, told me how you cured her son of bed wetting after the doctors could do nothing."
"Sit down, Mrs. Cournos," Matsoukas said.
She moved restlessly to a chair. "I am a waitress at the Cavalcade restaurant," she said, "and I have to hurry back." He saw her tighten slightly as she noticed the statuette of Aphrodite on his desk. She looked back to Matsoukas. "It's about my son," she said softly. "His father... my husband, left us about seven years ago. I have a smaller daughter as well."
"I am sorry," Matsoukas said.
She shook her head, rejecting his solicitude. "I won't lie to you," she said. "I wasn't unhappy that he left even though it is a struggle to make ends meet. He beat me and beat the children. But now, for the first time, I miss him... I miss him because the boy has reached an age where he needs a man to talk with, to counsel him about... about life."
"I understand," Matsoukas said gently.
"I have tried to talk to him," she said helplessly. "But it needs a man to tell him these things. He has some knowledge from the streets, from the bad boys who curse and swear, but I think it is all mixed up." She paused and her voice fell to a barely audible whisper of distress. "The other night I walked into the bathroom, the lock on the door is broken, and he ... he ..." She stopped with a shame and wretchedness mantling her cheeks.
"Masturbation is common at his age," Matsoukas smiled to reassure her. "You want me to talk to him, to tell him these things about sex and life?"
She nodded silently.
"Then I will talk to him," Matsoukas said. "Don't worry. You go back to work and I will send him along when we are through."
She stood up, started slowly to the door, stopped and looked back at him. The pale tip of her tongue came out to lick her lips. "How much... ?" she asked slowly. "How much will you charge?"
"A very small fee," Matsoukas shrugged. "This is no massive problem. A dollar or so."
She fumbled at the clasp of her purse.
"No need to pay me now," he said. "I will send you a statement on the first of next month."
He walked past her and opened the door. The boy stood where they had left him, his face pale in the shadows.
"This is Mr. Matsoukas," his mother said. "He will talk to you. Listen to him."
The boy barely nodded a frightened assent. His mother walked by, hesitated, and then slowly put out her hand to touch his arm in a kind of consolation. She looked back at Matsoukas in a trembling appeal and then turned and walked down the hall.
The boy looked once after his mother and Matsoukas saw him tense to cry out.
"What grade are you in school, Tony?" Matsoukas asked.
The boy turned back to him. He was slightly built with handsome dark eyes and straight black hair that fell in a lopsided bang across his forehead. He licked his lips in the same nervous gesture as his mother. Matsoukas swung the door open wider and motioned him to enter.
"Seventh," the boy said and slowly entered the office. Inside the door he stopped and licked his lips again. "Are you a doctor?" he asked and a whisper of terror lurked just beneath the words.
"Not a regular doctor," Matsoukas said. "A doctor of life."
He returned to the desk and busied himself with some papers. He made out he was reading a letter and studied the boy with slitted eyes. Tony shifted restlessly from one leg to the other, watching him, waiting. After several moments in which Matsoukas did not move or speak Tony began examining the office. His eyes found the naked Aphrodite and flared with panic as he tore his gaze away. He looked at Matsoukas and then sneaked another trembling look at the statuette. Matsoukas rustled the papers as a warning. When he looked up Tony was intently studying the silver-buckled belt on the corner of the desk.
"Hellenic Championship of Pittsburgh, 1947-1948," Matsoukas said. "I was twenty-seven then. I won that belt wrestling the mighty Zahundos, a steelworker built like a blast furnace. You ever heard of Zahundos?"
Tony shook his head.
"You are too young," Matsoukas said. "I tell you, boy, he was a terror. Nearly broke my back before I pinned him for the deciding fall. We wrestled for almost three hours. The match had an hour time limit but neither of us had been able to pin the other and our blood was up. We wouldn't stop or accept a draw and they extended the time. I tell you that was a match to see."
The boy listened with his eyes intent on the belt.
"Do you wrestle?" Matsoukas asked.
The boy shook his head.
"You've got the build of a good wrestler," Matsoukas said somberly. "Not enough weight or muscle yet but you look fast on your feet and have good arms."
A tremor of pleasure glistened across the pale cheeks.
"Tell you what," Matsoukas said casually. "I'm going to teach you a few holds. None of that grunt and groan nonsense you see on television but some of the real stuff."
"You will?" the boy said and there was wonder and delight quivering just below the dark surface of his eyes.
"You come here and meet me tomorrow morning, Saturday," Matsoukas said, "and we'll go over to the Y.M.C.A. gym. I'll show you five or six good holds that will keep the bullies at bay. Bring along shorts and gym shoes."
"Is that why my mother brought me here?" the boy stared at him in disbelief.
"Of course," Matsoukas said brusquely. "What did you think? When you want lessons, you come to a champion."
The boy picked up the heavy belt with a slow careful
reverence. He looked apprehensively at Matsoukas as if he should have asked permission first.
"That's all right," Matsoukas said. "Someday you may win one like it. I told you that you move like a wrestler. You walk with a fine loose swing to your body, a natural grace. Very few boys have it at your age."
Tony looked at Matsoukas thunderstruck. "I have it?"
Matsoukas made a gesture of impatience. "Would I tell you you had it if you didn't have it?" He looked at the small clock on his desk. "You had best get back to the restaurant," he said.
Tony nodded. "Saturday morning?" he asked again as if he could not believe it.
"Saturday morning," Matsoukas said.
Tony turned excitedly toward the door. When he put his hand on the knob, Matsoukas spoke again.
"Wait a minute," he said. "There are a few warming-up exercises. I'll show you one or two now so you can practice them for Saturday."
He motioned to Tony to stand across from him. He came from behind the desk.
"This is a good one," he said. Tony watched him intently. "You stand with feet apart and hands pressed, like this, against your thighs. You hold your hips steady and then you rotate your entire upper body in a circle, first to the right and then to the left, getting all the movement from back, sides, and front of the waist. You try it."
Tony began to rotate his body holding himself stiffly.
"Keep your feet apart," Matsoukas said. "Relax." He nodded with pleasure. "You're getting it. That's fine."
Tony smiled with a flashing glitter of teeth and began to rotate faster.
"Easy, easy!" Matsoukas cried. "You don't want to overdo it!"
Tony stopped, breathing hoarsely, grinning furiously.
"The next exercise we do on the floor," Matsoukas said. "We begin flat on the back, legs extended, arms at the sides ..." He paused. "You should be wearing a supporter for this one. All the wrestlers and gymnasts wear them."
Tony looked at him uncertainly.
"They call them jockstraps," Matsoukas said. "Hold's a man's organ and testicles so they won't get wrenched or bumped. That's important."
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