Leaving the last houses of the town behind, just before he turns onto the road for Seven Threshing Floors, he stops at Mute’s Spring to fill his canteen. He sticks his head under the flow and lets the water carve his skin, countless blades slicing into the nape of his neck, into his temples and ears.
Hey there, Lazaros. Whatcha doin, poor devil, he soon hears a voice asking him.
What do you think I’m doing, Lazaros says out loud, without looking around. I’m waiting to sober up so I can get pissed again.
From the low wall where he’s sitting, by the spring, he can see the ruined castle at the top of the hill and the Church of the Butchered Virgin, which tonight, in the half dark, shines white like a seashell that ancient waves carried to the top of the black rock. As he sits there with crossed legs and rolls a cigarette – the last cigarette of the waning night, first of the dawning day – he looks at the hazy outline up there and feels two cold hands creeping over his back and gripping him by the shoulders – you know, Petrakis, they say in the old days that filthy dog Canum Hoca sat up there in the castle, cutting his tobacco with a scimitar on an icon of the Virgin Mary. That’s why they call her the Butchered Virgin. To this day, if you look close you can still see the marks on the wood. There are wounds like that all over this island, Petrakis. Saracens, Franks, Venetians, Turks, pirates, Italians, Germans – wounds from so many knives. But the deepest ones, the ones that hurt the most, are the ones we made ourselves. A brother’s knife cuts twice as deep as a stranger’s. And we’re still at it today.
He smokes his cigarette, then stubs it out on the edge of the low wall, takes a last look at the church, and rises to his feet. He puts the canteen in the right pocket of his vest – the other one is already occupied by a flask of tsikoudia – picks up his flashlight and walking stick and sets off down the dirt road, eyes trained on the soil, speaking to Petros, whom he imagines walking with him now, beside him – because he’d like that so much, he’d like more than anything in the world to have his son beside him tonight, and it’s no small thing to hear a human voice in the darkness, it’s a comfort, a great comfort, even if the voice is only your own.
Wounds from so many knives, my boy. So many. Once we were divided into right and left, now we have foreigners and rats. A handful of people on a handful of soil, doing our best to exterminate one another. Here we are in the twenty-first century, still hunting each other down. This place is crumbling, everything’s in ruins, but here we still are, knife to knife, wound after wound. We foreigners on one side, rats on the other. So now our evil is added to theirs, added to the pile. And you know what’s to blame, Petrakis? The fact that we never really loved this place. Never. People talk about pride. Sure, I’m proud to be a Greek. But what good is pride, really? Pride is a tree with rotten roots: if the wind blows, it falls. What we need is love. You have to love your land, feel for it, that’s what matters. And since we never truly loved this place, soon enough we came to truly hate it. That’s precisely what happened. There may be such a thing as false love, but there’s no such thing as false hate. Which is why we now hate this place to death. Most of all the young folk, the kids, the new generation they’re always talking about. Not you, Petros. Not you, my boy, you don’t have a drop of hatred in your whole body. I’m talking about the others, not you. Petros, Petrakis, my brave boy, my light.. I mean the others, not you.
Lazaros walks with his eyes trained on the ground and as he moves, they, too, move over the ground.
The other day at the taverna someone was saying how when you’re young, you plan for the future, and when you’re old, you’re nostalgic for the past. So the whole joy of life disappears, the joy of the here and now. Feeling nostalgic for the past, planning for the future. Planning for the past, feeling nostalgic for the future. Today gets caught in a vise between tomorrow and yesterday, and it writhes and dies. You listening? I sure hope you’re listening.
Talk fueled by wine, tsikoudia, ouzo. But Lazaros likes listening to talk like that. His mind is a sponge, it absorbs everything. That’s why he drinks. To keep the sponge moist, so it can absorb even better, even more. So nothing goes wasted. And whatever it soaks up, he later squeezes back out into his son’s sponge, which of course is still small and shapeless, the pores haven’t yet opened wide. But they will, in time. That’s what love is. Someone else might say, I love my child, I don’t care about myself, everything I do I do for my child. I want to see my kid succeed in the world, so I can be proud of him. That’s nonsense. If you don’t love yourself, how are you going to love your child? If you don’t love what you are, how can you love what you’re not? This is old news, Christ has been saying it for two thousand years, but people can’t get it through their thick skulls. Christ didn’t say, love your neighbor instead of yourself. He said, love your neighbor as yourself. And he was right. If you don’t love yourself, there’s no way you’ll ever love anyone at all – not even your own child. If you don’t have ambitions of your own, how can you have ambitions for your kids? If you don’t accomplish anything in your life, how do you expect your kids to accomplish anything in theirs? Poor bastard, poor fool. Of course you might ask what I’ve accomplished, talking the big talk. But I’ve done a thing or two. Just the fact that I was father and mother to that boy all these years, it’s no small thing. And the fact that I came with nothing to this snake pit and within a few years managed to stand on my own two feet – doesn’t that count for something? Besides, even if I hadn’t done anything at all, I still wouldn’t be like them. Because I’ve got knowledge, see? I know who I am and where I stand and how to raise my child. I’ve got eyes and ears. I’ve got eyes and ears all over.
I’m not someone who has the mouth of a lion and the heart of a fly. No, I’ve got the heart of a lion and the mouth of a fly.
There’s a big difference.
See?
* * *
Lazaros walks with his eyes trained on the ground, feeling other eyes on him – like a fiend from a fairy tale, tonight the darkness has sprouted a thousand staring eyes – and when he reaches the straightaway where the Doors begin, the narrow stretch of land that joins Inner to Outer Island, Lower to Upper Part, Big to Little Handcuff, he steps off the road and goes to stand at the very edge of that awful cliff and looks down at the sea spreading to the right and left, looks at the waves tipped with white like frothy eyebrows over the water’s countless blind eyes, and far off in the distance, the flickering lights from other islands, which send silent signs again tonight – hazy, mysterious messages.
Peeetrooos!
Petraaaakiiis!
He makes his hands into a cone and shouts. He shouts with all the strength in his body, shouts until his voice drowns out the whine of the north wind that seems to carry other, strange voices from far away, moans, howls from mouths that seem hardly human. He shouts until he feels his chest burn, the veins in his neck swelling, the blood becoming one with his phlegm and sticking in his throat like a rock.
He bends over and coughs, his whole body shaking, coughing so hard he starts to sweat. A wild, cutting cough, the wheezing bark of an asthmatic dog.
He wipes his mouth with his sleeve, takes deep breaths. He waits. He looks ahead, gaze blurred, unseeing, and waits.
And then he straightens up and cups his hands around his mouth again.
Peeetrooos!
Petraaaaakiiis!
Can you hear me?
* * *
So last summer, two old ladies come into the restaurant, tourists. Petros goes over to take their order, they open the menu and start in on a whole slew of questions, what’s this, what’s that. I’m sitting off to one side watching him and I can see he’s starting to get all worked up. I mean, it’s one of his first days on the job and he still hasn’t gotten used to the idea, he’s all grumbling and resentment. I don’t say anything, I figure I’ll wait and see what happens. So the old ladies order, I don’t know, a salad and a tzatz
iki, then turn to the main courses. I see them examine the menu, whisper to one another, look back at the menu, whisper some more, then they ask the kid something and he leans over to look, too, and one of the ladies points up at the light fixture on the ceiling. And the kid turns bright red and says, no, no, no lamp, laaamb, laaamb, you know, baaa, baaa. The old ladies start laughing and say, OK, OK, and Petros picks up the menus and comes over all in a huff and asks me who wrote the English menu.
Sifis, I say, from Miramare next door. Why?
Tell that blockhead, he says, that the animal that goes baaa, baaa is spelled with a b in English, not a p. Those old bats thought we were going to serve them a plate of roast lamp with potatoes. We look like fools.
Lazaros the Bow remembers the whole scene all over again as he looks down at the lights of the port from up in Agioupes – he remembers how his son flushed bright red that afternoon and how he’d tried to keep from laughing, flaring his nostrils, until both of them suddenly burst into laughter at once – just imagine, roast lamp with potatoes – and threw their arms around one another’s shoulders, laughing under the grape arbor, and Lazaros remembers how he hugged his son, couldn’t get his fill, felt his own unshaven cheek grazing his child’s soft neck, and the hair stood up on his arms as he squeezed the kid’s bony ribs – how strange it is, to have the hair to stand up on your arms as you touch flesh that came from your flesh – and he remembers them later, telling the others in the kitchen the story about the old ladies, and they all laughed together, laughed until they cried, just imagine, lamp with potatoes, Lazaros remembers it all tonight and smiles and feels like laughing the way he did that afternoon last summer, laughing until he cries.
He remembers it all again tonight, Lazaros the Bow. He remembers another night, too, a few months later, when Drakakis came in with a pack of whores in miniskirts up to their navels and Lazaros seated them at the best table and served them a spotted grouper that weighed seven and a half kilos, as big as a baby, and watched as the plates of crayfish kept coming, and scallops and sea figs, and he poured more and more champagne and wine – bring it on, Drakakis kept saying, fish should be eaten fresh, and money spent fresh, too – and then near dawn Lazaros sat down at the table, and called Petros over, too, this here is my son, and this is Mr. Haris Drakakis, the shipowner. Petros sat down beside him and looked at the blondes cackling like geese and Drakakis pulled some cigars out of his pocket and handed one to each of them, cigars as big as stovepipes, and poured them some wine and they all clinked glasses and Lazaros told his son to tell the story about the old ladies and the lamp and Drakakis laughed so hard he almost fell off his chair, then grabbed Petros by the shoulders and told him to keep talking, keep the laughter coming. Lazaros watched his son talk, the cigar perched between two of Petros’s fingers, and watched Drakakis laugh, chewing on his own cigar with drooping lids, and Lazaros wondered what it would be like to have money, lots of money, to be a kid not even thirty years old and have more money than the next guy will make in thirty lives put together, to own half an island, to have new women every week, a new car every month, a new yacht every year. Money, piles of money. To hop on your yacht and sail off to Mykonos for an afternoon swim, then to Santorini for dinner. A week later Drakakis came back to the taverna and wanted Petros to tell some more stories so they could laugh. The week after that he called him to the yacht, and they started hanging out a lot, until two or three months later he offered him a job as a driver for the Piraeus offices, a thousand for his first month’s salary, all expenses paid. Petros didn’t want to go – he doesn’t want a driver, he wants a clown, he told his father. But Lazaros pressured him into it, he wasn’t about to let an opportunity like that go wasted.
You’re going, he said. Others in your position would kill for a job like that. This is the Drakakises we’re dealing with, they own the whole island. We’re talking buckets of money, this isn’t just small fry. You can’t turn him down. Whenever he comes to the taverna his bill is ten times the size of anyone else’s. But that’s not the issue. The issue is, a wide road is opening before you. A road paved with money. You’re going. I won’t let my son end up a taverna owner. You’re going.
There’s something else, too, Petros said. The guy wants me –
There’s nothing else, Lazaros said. You’re going. You have to go. Not for me, but for yourself. For your own good.
You’re going.
You’re going, end of story.
* * *
Money. The alpha and the omega. Where everything begins and where everything ends. All the rest is small print. And whoever won’t admit it is a fool or a liar. That’s why poor people are eternally cursed. Because they don’t hate money, only those who have it. They hate money not because it exists, but because it isn’t theirs. That’s why they’re cursed forever, that’s why they’ll never gain any power. Because what they want isn’t to stop being poor, but to be rich.
Lazaros walks with his eyes trained on the ground and as he moves, they too move over the ground. He walks with his head bent, feeling other eyes watching him – once again the night is full of eyes, so many eyes, countless eyes – and when he reaches the crossroads at Daidala he stops to catch his breath, take a swig of tsikoudia, and smoke a cigarette.
Money. Ever since Petros was a kid, when he was old enough to understand, he’d tried to teach him to love money. Love money, don’t be afraid of it. Money is a part of you, just remember that. Like your heart, like your arms and legs, that’s how money is, too. A part of you. Can you live without a heart? If you had to choose whether or not to have arms, what would you choose? That’s how money is, too. Like your heart, your arms, your legs. You have to have money. Are you listening? You can’t live without money. There’s no point in living.
Love money. Care for it. Love it the way you love your arms and your legs, your eyes, your ears. Don’t listen to those idiots who say it doesn’t matter whether or not you have money. It’s like saying that having two arms is the same as having one arm or none at all. Don’t listen to those people. Love money. Love it, don’t be afraid of it. Whoever hates money hates himself. And whoever hates himself hates the whole world. That hatred is something poor people cultivate. It’s what a blind man feels for a man who can see, a paralyzed man for one who can walk.
And remember that while poor people may hate rich people, they hate themselves most of all, for not being rich.
Love money. Don’t worship it, and don’t be afraid of it, either. But love it.
It’s one of those rare loves that actually reaps rewards.
* * *
Peeetrooos!
Petraaaakis!
Lazaros walks with his eyes trained on the ground and as he moves, they too move over the ground. He walks with his flashlight on, watching his shadow stretch long and thin like a rope tying him to the night he left behind, and to the darkness that awaits him.
As he arrives above Magou Beach, he kneels at the edge of the road and puts his ear to the hard pavement, waiting to hear something. Not something, someone. Not someone, Petros. If he went into the Dragon Cave that night and if the cave stretches, as they say, whole kilometers beneath the island, and if the island is, as they say, hollow in places, then at some point, somehow, he’ll hear him. Surely, at some point he’ll hear him.
Surely.
Peeetrooos!
Petraaaakis!
Where are you?
His mouth loves his son’s name.
He stands up again and lights a cigarette, looking at the dark sea across the way, at the gorge, at Black Cave that gapes like a howling mouth in the face of the rock. That’s where Komitis’s twins went last year and hanged themselves – first the boy and then his sister, a month later. Twenty years old, what could they know of pain and suffering? And the father’s suffering, who thought about that? Poor Komitis. The poor bastard came here without a penny to his name all the way from the other end
of Greece, Drama, Xanthi, somewhere up there. At first he opened up a little hole of a shop down at the port and fixed broken cell phones, computers, TVs. Then he patented a GPS app to track sheep and goats and sold it to some Jews and made tons of money. Serious money. And just when he was giving thanks to God and thinking now he could put his feet up for a while, that awful thing befell him – and he was left carrying two coffins on his back for the rest of his life. That poor Komitis. Did anyone bother to consider his pain?
Kids. People raise them these days as if they’re the center of the world. They fall all over them the instant they come into the world, cuddle them, kiss them, slobber on them, suck them in as if they’re trying to fill some hole inside – mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers. That’s why you see kids growing up as they do, stunted, ugly little runts. Sallow, weak, wimpy, faint-hearted kids, whose parents have been sucking up all their strength and blood since the day they were born – or even earlier, when they were still in the womb. And so they grow up empty, and eventually the time comes for them to have kids of their own and smother them and suck them dry, too, suck out their souls and strength and blood. Family. Soul-sucking vampires. Vampires who give birth to vampires who will give birth to even more vampires when their turn comes. A country of vampires, that’s where we’re living these days. Vampires.
Lazaros smokes his cigarette, looking at the sea, and remembers again tonight. He remembers how the day after May Day one of Drakakis’s goons came to the restaurant, a sissy with tattoos and plucked eyebrows, and asked him where Petros was.
You’re asking me? Isn’t he with you guys?
Good Will Come From the Sea Page 9