"I don't have one," the boy said with dismay darkening his cheeks.
"No problem," Matsoukas said. "They're inexpensive and we can pick one up on Saturday. You should have one. I had an accident when I was about your age. A friend of mine was teaching me to wrestle. I wasn't wearing a supporter and hurt myself right in the testicles."
"You did?"
"Right!" Matsoukas said. "Hurt like hell! The blessed organs are sensitive at that age, at your age. Do you know why?"
The boy shook his head slowly.
"Because that's the age when a boy's body begins to change into the body of a young man. The voice deepens, there is muscle coming to the arms, hair sprouts under the armpits, around the penis. It's a wonderful time."
Tony watched him, listening gravely, an uneasy distress returning to his cheeks and around his mouth.
"I'll never forget my father," Matsoukas said softly, "talking to me about the time I was your age. He took me aside one day and he told me, boy, I have seen you snickering and giggling with your cronies when you look at the cow and the bull. It's time you knew what life was really about." Matsoukas paused somberly. "Of course, that was in the old country. Over here boys your age already know all about this business of life."
He walked casually to the desk and sat on the edge, crossing his arms, his head bent in studied recall.
"We walked in the fields," he said, "and my father told me about men and women. That maybe once, long ago, when the earth was very young, they were one. Somehow they were separated into the sexes we know today. But men and women spend their lives trying to find that part of them which they lost. That is why men look at women and why women look at men. When they find someone they long to touch, to embrace, then love is born." He paused to look sternly at the boy. "It has nothing to do with the stories you hear from friends, the smirks and leers, the crude drawings by morons on the toilet walls. It has to do with the most beautiful thing on earth, with love." The boy watched him in a strange breathless suspension. "With love the man feels his body coming alive," Matsoukas said. "He savors the moon and relishes the sun. He yearns to put his penis into the woman's nest, that sacred opening between her legs. In this way they are joined together in a kind of holy and mighty union. The grandest thing in the world, my father said, it shows you have found that which you had lost."
He moved from the side of the desk and laughed softly.
"I wondered how the man did this, when he did this," he said. "My father answered that all that knowledge would come in due time. A man does this when he marries, then he releases a seed inside of the woman, a seed of love. The woman nourishes this seed with her own blood and from it a baby is created and born. The way all of us are conceived. Poets and generals, beggars and kings. Simple stuff to you, boy, but all new to me."
Tony stared at him, his cheeks pale, his breath surging in small agitated movements from between his lips.
"And my father said to me," Matsoukas went on, "that all this marvel has its beginning at the age when the penis begins to stir. There are strange sensations, strange hot burnings. A boy becomes conscious of his organ in a way he has never been before, wants to touch it, pull at it, rub it."
The boy tensed. For a fleeting moment the harried panic and fear returned to his eyes. Matsoukas turned away and spoke quietly and casually.
"I confessed to my father that I had done this a number of times," he said, "had pulled at it and rubbed it until it stiffened and spurted off. You know what he told me then?" Matsoukas stared toward the paintings of the patriarchs on the wall. "Go ahead and do it, he said to me, do it a few times to see what it's like. Your grandfathers did it and I did it when I was your age. When you grow older you won't feel the need to do it anymore. But try it and understand that it's part of this wonderful second birth. It shows a boy that his body is gaining strength, that in a few years he will be bursting with power. It's like the clouds of childhood clearing away and the sun of manhood sweeping across the earth."
He paused again and slapped his leg in sudden exasperation. "Why do I waste time rehashing all this stuff for a bright boy like you?" he said. "You understand all this already, don't you?"
The boy could not meet his eyes and for a moment stared at the floor. Then he looked back at Matsoukas. He nodded slowly in a grave and quiet response.
"That's fine," Matsoukas said. "Now you better run along because I have a busy afternoon. See you tomorrow morning."
"Tomorrow morning," the boy said, and excitement flashed once more in his face, and a strange relief lightening the tight shadow of his cheeks. He turned and started quickly from the office. He opened the door and almost ran headlong into Cicero who stood startled in the doorway, a large brown paper bag clutched in his arms. The boy stumbled around him to continue down the hall.
"What a delightful surprise!" Matsoukas cried. "Come in, my friend!"
"Your clients are getting younger," Cicero grinned. "Is this one a bed wetter or isn't he weaned yet?"
"He wants to be a dealer," Matsoukas said. "I suggested he apprentice as a blacksmith."
Cicero laughed and entered the office. With a roguish raising of his brows he indicated the bag he held in his arms. He deposited it carefully on the desk while Matsoukas held his breath in anticipation.
"A loaf of lagana!" Cicero brought it out of the bag.
"Wonderful!"
"A pound of feta!" Cicero said.
"Delightful!"
"And then..." Cicero paused suspensefully. "Wine!" he drew out a bottle of glistening retsina. "Two!" he followed the first with a second bottle setting them side by side so that the lustrous sheen of Aphrodite's lovely buttocks was reflected in the glass. He waved Matsoukas sternly to control himself. "And three!"
"Magnificent!" Matsoukas cried.
"We are not yet through," Cicero said. From his pocket he drew out a small thin metal box decorated with painted flowers.
"Schimmelpennincks!" Matsoukas released a long ardent sigh. He jumped toward the little dealer, who stood grinning at his pleasure, and hugged him in affection, taking care not to exert too much pressure on the small brittle frame. Then both men sprang quickly into action. Matsoukas drew a glittering corkscrew from the desk drawer. Cicero brought a pair of tumblers from the basin.
"Hurry, man!" the dealer said. "I am always three drinks behind the world and trying like hell to catch up!"
In a moment Matsoukas had deftly drawn the cork from the first bottle and filled each tumbler to the brim with wine. He raised his glass and sniffed the resiny aroma with his nostrils flaring.
"I drink to you, dear friend!" Matsoukas cried. "Your generosity, warmth, and soul are unequaled on this earth."
Cicero grinned and raised his own glass. "To the incomparable Matsoukas," he said. "A warrior poet with a spirit like a white-plumed helmet!"
By the first shadow of twilight they had finished the bread and the cheese, had emptied two bottles of wine, and were halfway through the last bottle. The wine had warmed them, relaxed their limbs, and swirled a meditative mist about their heads. Cicero was knotted like a pretzel in the chair behind the desk, while Matsoukas sprawled in one of the armchairs reserved for clients. He held his glass of wine in one hand, a delicate Schimmelpenninck in the other, contemplating the fine trail of smoke which rose from the ash.
"I tell you, old sport," Matsoukas said and he felt the words floating up his throat like bubbles to pop lightly at his lips, "there is only one way for eagles like us to survive. We must think like men of action and act like men of thought."
"That doesn't sound unreasonable," Cicero said, and his head wobbled slightly on his neck.
"I am against the machine," Matsoukas said. "The bloody machine has taken us from the land and bound us in these rotting cities."
"Right!" Cicero nodded with vigor and then reached up with a grimace to steady his head. "Can't even get a pack of smokes anymore without pushing the buttons on a damn vending machine."
Matsoukas som
berly poured a fair measure of the remaining wine into his glass. Cicero stared with concern at the amount left in the bottle.
"I yearn often for the village festivals of Hellas," Matsoukas said. "The laughter of the girls running with their hair loose in the wind. The pitchers of cool wine when you come in hot and sweated from the fields." He paused sadly. "I tell you, dear friend, the city is a coffin where we no longer hear the nightingale's song."
Cicero raised his head and motioned Matsoukas gravely to silence. His lips pursed and he frowned in an effort to concentrate and then arched his arms and flapped them gently. "Whoop-ho!" he cried softly. "Whoop-hoop-hoop-hoop-ho!"
"What is that abominable sound?" Matsoukas asked sternly.
"A nightingale."
"Sounds more like a constipated hen," Matsoukas said reprovingly. "It is nothing we should jest about. We are living men, you and I, in a world of timid shadows."
Cicero studied the distance between his empty glass and the bottle.
"You have told me before," he said. "No flood, no hurricane, no fusillade of shot or shell can lay us low." He leaned forward in the chair to claim the last wine in the bottle perilously close to Matsoukas. "In the lines of your immortal poet," Cicero cried, "we are eagles soaring skyward!"
He had shifted his body too far and the swivel of the chair slipped on the broken bearing. The seat snapped forward like a catapult and with incredible swiftness Cicero was hurled off and disappeared under the desk.
Matsoukas stared in shock at the empty chair. Then he leaped up and ran around the desk. He bent down and tenderly raised the crumpled little dealer in his arms. He tried to stand him on his feet but Cicero's knees buckled and he would have fallen except for Matsoukas holding him. He struggled to regain his breath, his mouth opening and closing without uttering a sound.
"Are you all right, my friend?" Matsoukas cried. "Does anything feel broken?"
Cicero looked at Matsoukas with his ears quivering. Then he bent in what appeared to be a spasm of pain. His narrow shoulders trembled and he held his belly.
"Hold on, dear friend!" Matsoukas cried. "I will go for a doctor! Hold on!" He turned to leap for the door but Cicero managed to grab his arm. He saw tears in Cicero's eyes and a weird gurgling erupting at his lips.
"You are laughing!" Matsoukas said shocked. "You have gone mad!"
For a full minute Cicero continued to laugh wildly, his body wracked by fits of mirth, while Matsoukas watched him in dismay. When it seemed the dealer was finally about to compose himself, he caught sight of the swivel chair perched crookedly to the side and whirled off into another shrill spasm. Matsoukas led him to one of the armchairs and Cicero sat there holding his aching sides. He took a few deep draughts of breath.
"Hysteria," Matsoukas said consolingly. "The shock of the fall. Stay calm and it will pass."
"Matsoukas," Cicero said and paused and shook his head and whistled through his trembling lips. He looked at the chair behind the desk and began to shake again.
"Compose yourself, man!" Matsoukas cried. "What is so bloody funny?"
Slowly the little dealer grew calmer. He sat studying Matsoukas with a strange perceptive light in his eyes.
"Matsoukas," he said finally. "Matsoukas, do you know that if I were not your friend, I would not believe you or this place existed?"
"What do you mean?" Matsoukas asked with a shade of indignation.
Cicero drew out his handkerchief and slowly wiped his eyes and then blew his nose.
"Do you know why I love you, Matsoukas?" he said. "It is because in an absurd world you make absurd sense." He rose slowly and with a grimace tested one leg, bending the knee gingerly.
"Are you all right?" Matsoukas asked anxiously.
Cicero waved aside his concern. "I watch you, Matsoukas," he said. "I feel admiration and terror as well as love. I ask myself what will happen to you, what is your destiny?"
"Send a messenger to consult the oracle at Delphi," Matsoukas laughed.
"The old scourges were pestilence, the desert, and the wilderness," Cicero said. "Today they are fear, boredom, hopelessness, and despair. But you move serenely unmarked through them all. Your heels are run down, your cuffs shabby, your collar frayed, and yet you move with the vigor of a man born to set his situation right."
"Listen, old sport," Matsoukas said gently. "You have a plausible exterior and at the cardtable a prophetic soul, but at the moment you are unbalanced by shock and retsina."
"You have never learned to accept boundaries," Cicero said. "The boundaries in which human action and human judgment are enclosed. You give life the offering of an undivided heart."
"I am seriously concerned for you," Matsoukas said. "That was a nasty fall. I promise to fix that cursed chair."
Cicero moved a few steps weakly and braced himself against a corner of the desk. When Matsoukas started to aid him he waved him away.
"Stay where you are," he said with a wink. "I sway slightly like a ship riding low in the water but I do not sink. I have even survived your damn torpedo."
"You talk of mysteries," Matsoukas said. "The greatest mystery to me is what keeps you afloat when you are four-fifths submerged."
Cicero laughed and walked unsteadily to the window. He leaned his hands upon the sill, staring down for a moment into the darkness. When he turned to confront Matsoukas, a shadow crossed his thin pale face and his eyes seemed veiled suddenly in pools of darkness.
"Matsoukas," he said, and he released the word with a curious gentleness, "I will tell you what I think. You are a man chosen by the gods for eternal disaster, endless catastrophe. But you take every act of theirs prepared for your punishment, the blows they select to wound you, and you turn them into a kind of triumph... you are never defeated and you remain free. And how they must burn with anger and frenzy and how they must plot to bring you down." A glitter of fear scaled his cheeks. "It terrifies me to associate with you, to help you, to aid you. I love you, my friend, but you scare the hell out of me." His voice gained a measure of strength. "Yet in this moment I give up my wretched neutrality. I am joining your battle. I cast my lot with you."
"Splendid!" Matsoukas cried. "Now that we have joined forces, we are an army!"
"I am not joking," Cicero said earnestly. "I am not fooling." He straightened his small narrow shoulders, holding his head erect, opening his eyes against the heavy-lidded tug of the wine. "I have twelve hundred dollars saved in the bank," he said gravely. "I want you to use this money to go with your son to Greece."
Matsoukas heard the words followed by a sudden roaring in his ears. For a moment they whirled off in a disordered wind and then they burned back across his body.
"You drunken twit!" he roared. "You joke about something like that! You bloody fool!"
Cicero watched him calmly. Matsoukas fell silent. A great wave of trembling swept his body. He realized slowly in the way Cicero looked at him, the way he waited, that the words had been sincere.
"Then you are mad!" Matsoukas said angrily. "Why should I take your savings for our journey? I have been saving for more than a year. I have a fair amount put aside. A good poker night or a solid parlay will send us aloft!"
"Listen to me, Matsoukas," Cicero said sternly. "If you are going to go at all, you must go now. Now! And the only way you can go now is on my money." He waved down Matsoukas furiously. "Will you let me finish? I tell you I have it planned. I have been considering it for months but I was frightened, unsure. Tonight when I took off like a rocket, it cleared my head. I don't need the damn money. I have been saving it and spending it for years. If anything happens to me one of my harpy sisters, the dragon in Kenosha, or the shark in Battle Creek will share it. I want you to have it on condition you prepare to leave at once. Get your son ready for the trip.
"Cicero, in the name of God," Matsoukas began.
"Will you let me finish?" Cicero cried. "Now listen. In the morning after I finish dealing I will meet you in the Olympia bar around 9:30. We will go to th
e bank together and draw out the money. Make your reservations and we will pick them up. I'll even go with you to the airport. I want to make sure nothing happens to you before you get on that bloody plane."
He moved suddenly toward the door, pulling down the sleeves of his shirt and coat.
"My friend..." Matsoukas said, and his voice wavered and a strange weakness flowed through his limbs.
"Yes, friend," Cicero said quietly. "And of all the things on this dark and unfathomable earth, I treasure your friendship most." With a final sardonic wink he left the office and closed the door. For an instant his spare frail body was outlined against the glass. Then he was gone and Matsoukas heard his steps receding down the stairs.
He sat without moving for a long time. The sharp and jagged edges of the office began to soften and dissolve. He let his face drop slowly against his cupped hands. He closed himself into the nest of his palms, alone with the quickened beating of his heart.
Home, he thought, home. Stavros and I are going home.
He rose to his feet and a great shout burst from his throat to pound against the walls. He could not bear to stand still and paced around the small office. He cried out again, a wild cry of exultation. As the echoes of his voice faded, Akragas answered with a wild banging against the radiator downstairs.
He roared in delight and stamped with scorn upon the floor. He circled the office again, and stopping before the window snapped the shade to the top. Above the roofs of the buildings the sky loomed dark and huge, the timeless curve of the night containing the nickering stations of the stars.
He saw his face reflected in the glass, the trunk of his body a solid mass. He raised his arms and held them out at his shoulders. They spanned the wide frame of the window like great wings trembling to spring aloft and cleave passage through the dark void of the night. For a moment he felt himself suspended on the precipice of the earth, full of incredible strength and vigor. Then he remembered his son. I will go and tell Stavros, he thought. I will go and prepare my son.
A movement in the alley below caught his eye. Anthoula had emerged from the kitchen of the bakery, her white frock glistening in the darkness, the square of light from the warm kitchen bathing her in a kind of mist.
A Dream of Kings Page 9