Widows

by Ariel Dorfman

  As soon as we saw her come back from the market that day, we knew the time had come. It was a matter of noticing how she stopped at the edge of the patio, like a stranger troubling us for some water or delivering a letter with bad news. Fidelia told us later that she’d wanted to intervene, distract Mama’s attention with some kind of foolishness, but before she could do it Alexis shook his head no, it wouldn’t work, and it was better not to get up or do anything, if he couldn’t change her intentions what was I going to accomplish? No one in the world was going to stop her now, only the sudden blessing of Papa’s appearance, that kind of miracle, and the only thing left was to keep on, like all the women, working as if we didn’t know what she was going to say, as if we could erase her words before they were pronounced or put off for a few more centuries what was happening right in front of our eyes, Alexandra and Grandma face to face, Grandma and Mama tangled up in one another like shipwrecks in a storm, without being able later to rein in what one of them had let loose who knows how, because Alexandra believed, and she shot it out just like that, all at once, right there at home, on the patio, at the door of the house, the house that belonged to all of us, in front of the whole family and in front of Fidelia and in front of Alexis who shouldn’t have had to witness the spats of women, Alexandra said it just like that, without talking it over in private as some of us might have hoped, the way it’s always been done between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in a family like ours, and she gave no warning, it just jumped out of her mouth like a black, drunken spider that had been languishing between her teeth all these weeks, said she believed that they, that we, and I could foresee the discussion and the silence and the recriminations again and again for days and weeks, maybe months, everything that was going to start right now and no one could stop it, she believed that Grandma—

  “We’re killing our own men, Grandma,” Alexandra said. “You’re killing them.”

  And she pronounced the word Grandma as one pronounces the words old woman. Like that.

  We all thought, now, yes, here it comes. But Grandma didn’t even look at Alexandra. She kept on grinding wheat in the stone mortar, pulling out the stone with a catlike quickness and letting it slide back in, moving her hands peacefully in the process. Is that so? And how much did you get for the milk, girl? More than last week? Give Alexis the money, please. Let’s see if soon we don’t have enough for another trip to the capital, we’re not going to keep selling goats, maybe now that scoundrel of a judge would hear us out.

  But Mama wasn’t ready for a truce. We all could tell she wouldn’t accept this or any absolution. She wanted to thrash things out right now, not later, when the rest of us women wouldn’t be here and Alexis gone. Alexandra raised her voice so that there wouldn’t be another chance for useless reconciliation. Our own men, Grandma, a mistake was being made, a mistake that the whole community would end up paying for, and the family too, and what’s more, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.

  Grandma set about examining the money my brother had collected. She counted it ever so slowly. We watched each coin fall from one palm to the other. Then she asked Alexis if he’d be good enough to note the amount and place the money in the box on top of the table. Did he know which box she meant? Gently reminding us, making Alexandra remember that beside the box stood the photos of the men of the family, our men, and among them the one of Papa, of Dimitriou.

  Alexis wasn’t sure. We could tell by the way he blinked his eyes. This was Alexandra’s job. It was Mama who kept accounts, who knew how to get the best prices at the market, was famous for how fast she could multiply and subtract; better than me, Father Gabriel would say, moving his head with sadness and admiration; if your mother had only been able to stay in school. Grandma placed the coins in his hand and closed his fingers around them and repeated, Go ahead, Alexis, that his Mama wouldn’t have time today for that, there was a lot to talk about, and right away, as if Alexis were already headed into the house, she said to Alexandra that tomatoes never went up, it was impossible to figure how the sellers who came all the way from Alabakis could keep their prices so low, now there’s a real conspiracy all right if the authorities were so eager to find one. Then we watched her going over the wheat with her expert, malicious eyes, her look a sieve that caught what wasn’t quite fine enough.

  Is that what Alexandra Orphanaxos thought? The menace in Grandma’s voice was all the sharper because her tone stayed the same. She spat it out smoothly, almost the way she casually noted the sickness of the neighbors’ baby or the lack of decent tea lately. Is that what she thought? And not only Alexandra Orphanaxos, wife of her oldest son, Dimitriou, but other women of Longa as well, with and without men, were they saying that? And perhaps in this family more than one thought the same thing? Someone else here agreed with Alexandra and walked around muttering privately what she wouldn’t dare admit in public? Was that so?

  And she swept her gaze back and forth over us all. It pierced each one of us, including me, she looked at Fidelia with distrust, even knowing she could always count on her granddaughter, that whenever anyone opposed her she could always be sure I’d be there, she was accusing even me of plotting behind her back. I had heard my aunts whispering what Mama had just announced out loud, but none of us answered. We went about our business as quietly as before, as if this had nothing to do with us. We were waiting for Alexandra to speak. Mama had opened the door, it was she who’d have to find a way to shut it.

  But what Mama did was to speak to Alexis. He shouldn’t take the money in yet, she’d do it later. This had to do with his father, it was right that he be present, he was a man now or had to pretend he was in times like these, God knows.

  Alexis stood in the doorway, stopped there, at the threshold, waiting, not minding either one. He folded his arms like Papa would have and didn’t say a word, leaning against the wall. He was a quiet boy, so this didn’t surprise us. But he had been quieter than usual, had hardly opened his mouth since they let him go that night. We saw him appear between the two soldiers. It was past midnight when they finally kept their promise and took him out of the jail so he could attend the funeral, and since then he wouldn’t talk, didn’t say a thing. He put his shoulder under the coffin that we were already supporting, and started walking up the hill, without even looking at the lieutenant or the two soldiers, and didn’t let out a syllable, not then or later, and none of us asked any questions either, not even Alexandra, not even Fidelia. We preferred not to know what had happened to him. We didn’t want him to answer the questions we’d never ask.

  Then I raised my eyes for as long as it takes a pigeon to fly over, and he was looking at me sitting among the other women spinning, and I was glad for that glancing visit of his coffee-colored eyes the same as mine and I smiled as I had when they brought him back that night, so he’d know I was there nearby, but the rest didn’t break their rhythm for even a second. I had to go on with the work like the rest, just as the hill had to be climbed with great-grandfather’s body. We concentrated on our spinning, almost imagining Alexandra and Grandma to be elsewhere, in some foreign country where snow was falling instead of the sun burning down so hard.

  There was a moment of calm. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted us to get up and make some lunch, or collect honey or wood for the fire or look after Serguei the baby, or I wished we were little kids again with Papa coming back from the country, one of us on each shoulder. I wanted to shut my eyes, to see if when I opened them up I could find Papa’s face peeking out from behind the tree, like one of those bearded archangels in church, Papa rising up with big wings on his shoulders and laughing at them both, his mother and his wife, I’m going to spank you two, let them learn from my little love Fidelia not to make trouble, isn’t that so my peach? I prayed that God would hear me, I promised him I’d never make any trouble if Papa would appear right now, take me away and bring him back, prayed that he would answer me with a father so that Mama’d have someone to lean on, so there’d be someone, there�
�d be someone.

  Then Grandma spoke.

  Killing them? A mistake? Hadn’t the family managed to bury Karoulos Mylonas, her father, after that Gheorghakis denied it, after this new one, this so-called captain, counseled by that devil of a lieutenant, did the same? Hadn’t they felt the satisfaction of fulfilling God’s laws so the old man might rest in peace, with rites administered by a real priest? Hadn’t they rescued him from the godless, pagan earth of the military, who only paid lip service to Christ, those soldiers your own husband Dimitriou always hated? She, she and her family, she had brought it about. With the help of everyone here, with the help of Hilda, her only living sister, with the help of her three daughters, with her own daughters-in-law, among them Alexandra, and even Fidelia, and Alexis, what about Alexis, she had managed to bend the hand and the will of that officer and his band of cutthroats. It was clear that this one was even more spineless than Gheorghakis, that he hadn’t dared use force against a just cause and a defenseless woman. And did she know why? Because the whole population approved of what she’d done, the other women were ashamed of their own cowardice. Or could it be that Alexandra, not carrying the same blood in her veins, was incapable of understanding the importance of what she was accomplishing?

  Maybe before coming out with such accusations again she ought to consider a few facts. The man they’d all buried this past Monday was Dimitriou’s grandfather, father of these two creatures. Had she thought about that? Dimitriou wouldn’t even have been born if the man they’d buried hadn’t received Dimitriou’s parents, her and her husband, offering them a place in this very house when there wasn’t any work and Michael fell sick and had no father or mother himself, received them with open arms, even though there wasn’t food in the pot for the ones already here. And if she didn’t believe it she could ask Hilda, here present. That was the winter Dimitriou was born. And even if Alexandra had forgotten that act of kindness and all the other standards of parenthood, at least she ought to have the decency and the courtesy to watch her tongue, regardless of what she thought. She wasn’t asking her to respect Dimitriou’s mother, but Dimitriou himself, for whom she’d surely have to take the same action, and then they’d need to stick together, the whole family, whenever that day came.

  There was a lull. Until then, Mama had chosen to stay out there, frozen at the edge of the tree’s shadow, the sunlight falling across her shoulders and long hair, casting a terrible whitish glow over her as she punished herself with the heat, always at a distance, always apart. Suddenly, as though something had melted, she came to sit next to Grandma.

  “Mama,” said Alexandra, and that word said everything, “that’s what I’m talking about, Mama, I don’t want anything to happen to Dimitriou.”

  The anger vanished from her voice. In those two or three seconds some mysterious hidden angel had drained and dried out the swamp building up in her throat all this time. Grandma’s words had been enough. They left no room for blind passions. Or maybe it was simply that for the first time in months she’d said what she feared, had had the courage to put Papa there, where we could all see him, to speak of her fear and relieve it because it was the same fear we all felt. That was Mama, just like Alexis and I could remember her, quiet and gentle and a little melancholy as she went on weaving because she didn’t believe in too much happiness, just rocking herself alone. It was the Alexandra of an earlier time, bathed in the light rising out of two children about to be born, fixing breakfast for Dimitriou and the other men in the light of dawn, waiting for our men a little before sundown, a basket of fruit rocking in the wind. Her rage had burnt itself out and in its place she had that strange peace of rivers when they flow into a rough sea.

  Grandma saw that. She stopped grinding the wheat and in the way she held the stone in the air she’d responded. She didn’t want anything to happen to Dimitriou either, but there are some things, too many things we simply can’t control, girl.

  “Dimitriou’s alive, Mama,” said Alexandra. “I know he’s alive. I know it in here.”

  Grandma looked at her, we all looked at her hand on her heart. Grandma made a gesture as if to catch it, a cluster of grapes about to fall, but checked herself. She looked at Alexandra’s hand as if some crows were carrying it off in the wind, she raised the stone and let it slide back toward the wheat.

  “It’s what we all want,” said Grandma. “God knows.”

  “They’re letting some prisoners go,” said Hilda, suddenly. “Dimitriou could be one of them.”

  “And Serguei,” said Cristina, looking at us, looking at Yanina. Grandma spoke up hoarsely, scornfully. Rumors like those had been circulating for months and none of the men who’d been taken away had ever appeared, not one. All that was left was to see that they had a decent funeral, a piece of ground to lie down in, a piece of sacred ground, and hope that the rest were alive and would return soon, to be patient until Alexis was bigger and could ask for explanations as a man. And if that captain was seen in the taverns promising that pretty soon some women would get a surprise, a big surprise, a surprise that was going to please some women, fine, that was the captain’s business, that was that traitor of an orderly’s business. There was no point in fooling ourselves. Now we had to collect our energies for another purpose. We had to get them to give us Michael Angelos’s body. She had proved it was possible, she’d shown all those cowardly milkless women that faith is rewarded. There was the cross with her father’s name. There on the hill was proof.

  “Grandma,” said Alexandra. “Grandma, enough death. Grandma, enough of this talk of death all day, nothing but the graveyard and death. Grandma, they’re going to kill Dimitriou. They’re going to kill him if we don’t do something.”

  For a long time, nobody said a word. Fidelia went on spinning with a steady hand, I went on eyeing my hands as if they were some other girl’s. I was thinking of Papa, wishing Grandma would just ask Mama once and for all, that someone would ask her what she had heard at the market, how could she be sure Papa was alive, how could she be sure he was going to be killed. But the only thing that happened was that little Serguei began to cry, on time as always, hungry as always. No one got up to look at him, not even Yanina, who waited with the rest of us while the silence became worse with the baby’s cries, the silence that kept asking and asking the questions about Papa and all the men, and all of a sudden my own voice surprised me flying out of my insides like a bird escaping. It was strange that I couldn’t hear the mad pounding of my heart in my voice, it felt like it was trying to jump out of me, strange that no one could hear Papa’s presence, Papa’s absence, covering everything, beating in my voice.

  “Mama,” Fidelia said, still working, not raising her eyes to Alexandra. “Mama, isn’t it time to tell us what happened today? Did you hear anything at the market, Mama?”

  She came over to me and took my hands off the loom and held them between hers. When she answered she did it slowly, with difficulty, each word hurting her, not wanting to say what she had to.

  “There’s someone else who’s claiming the body, Fidelia,” Mama whispered. “That’s what’s happening. They’re never going to give us that body.”

  “Someone else?” Grandma stopped suddenly and the wheat fell and we saw the mortar roll at her feet. She didn’t make the least attempt to pick anything up. “What did you say? Someone else?”

  The dropping of the mortar and the spilled wheat seemed a prearranged signal: we all stopped working for the first time since Alexandra had arrived, waiting for the answer. But it wasn’t she who spoke.

  It was my brother.

  Without moving from his place by the door, with his arms still folded, but no longer leaning against the wall, he said the first words we’d heard him say since they’d put him in jail.