—I should’ve given him his blue sweater before they took him away, she said in a calm, steady voice. The light blue one he loved so much.
Everyone was looking for his papers. Driver’s license, identification card, passport. They couldn’t find them anywhere.
—I know where they are, I said. I found them in a second. No one could have guessed that Alkis kept his ID tucked into the Book of Revelation, his passport in À la recherche du temps perdu, and his driver’s license in an empty cat food can.
—Thank you so much, said one of the officers. He couldn’t have been buried without these.
—Will there be a service, even though he committed suicide? I asked.
—We’ll take care of that, the officer replied.
Alkis’s apartment, which he had always kept so clean, was filthy. The kitchen was strewn with the broken shards of dirty dishes. The floor was covered with pasta that was several days old. You couldn’t walk without slipping in grease. It smelled unbearably foul. Only when I saw that kitchen, which I remembered as glisteningly clean, was I finally able to cry.
I went into his bedroom and closed the door. The room was a mess. The same old sheets on the bed, white with purple flowers. We’d made love so many times on those sheets, we’d fought, we’d laughed. Now they were buried under a mountain of pills that spilled onto the floor. You could hardly see carpet. There were glasses everywhere, half filled with brandy. Blood on the sheets. Dirty clothes piled haphazardly on the floor. He who had always been so clean. On the bed, the hollow where his body had been just a half-hour before. I lay down in that hollow. It was still warm. I fell asleep. I could faintly hear the officers conducting their investigations; they even unscrewed the pipes in the bathroom—“You think there are drugs?” I heard one of them ask. Alkiviadis’s aunt was in there, too, brushing her cheeks with rouge.
Suddenly I remembered how Alkis used to keep notes about his affairs with the boys: With so-and-so we went first out for a drink, and afterward I threw him out fast…
I didn’t want anyone to find those notes. I went straight to his Bible. Fortunately he’d only written on one page, but it was big and thick, and covered in details. I chewed it up and swallowed it bit by bit. I almost choked. The police had cut off the water. I went into the kitchen to make coffee with bottled water. Now all the relatives were crying—and it was so funny—I ground the beans—Alkis always bought whole beans— and the machine made a deafening noise. Everyone was staring at me.
—Just a dizzy spell, I told them.
Alkiviadis’s mother looked at me.
—We’ll be taking Caesar home with us, she said. We can let him out in the yard.
I thought again about how Caesar hadn’t had any claws since the procedure Alkiviadis had performed. How would he defend himself against the other cats in the neighborhood, not to mention a dog? If Alkiviadis had known back then that he was going to kill himself, would he have removed the cat’s claws? That question will always torment me, even more than his suicide.
I lay down again in the hollow on the bed where his body had been only a short while before and began to chant out loud, like a liturgy:
—May you be cursed where you’re going, too, for all of eternity.
May you be cursed and condemned to live in a hell without boys.
I fell asleep. I dreamed of my dog Lyn, who had been poisoned the previous year on the island.
Lyn was the only dog I ever really adored. I’d had dogs ever since I was little, but Lyn was the only one I loved completely, absolutely. She was small, fragile, kind of stupid. But that lack of intelligence may have been what made me love her the way I did. She was so defenseless. I always wondered what she would do if some cat attacked her, since she didn’t know how to fight. She was so beautiful, with her golden fur! She was always a little frightened, always clinging to my legs. And she adored me, too. Our relationship was like that of a mother and daughter, when the daughter refuses to grow up and the mother steadfastly offers an ambiguous love, a complicity, in order to keep her daughter close.
Lyn had a blue ball that played “The Blue Danube” when she chewed on it. She never did, though, because she didn’t want to ruin it. She always took it with her when we went to the beach. She was very proud of that ball. She never went in the water. She sat on my towel, and I would put a little hat on her, with green and purple flowers. Lyn was the baby Alkis had never given me. He often told me how much he hated children, mostly on the days when I could’ve gotten pregnant, when I would beg him, “Alkis, please, give me a child,” and he would say to me, “I detest children,” and take all the necessary precautions so I wouldn’t get pregnant. After my swim Lyn would wait patiently until it was time for us to go home. She never expressed her desires, the way other dogs do. I always had to guess what she wanted. I suppose it amused her. And she was capricious, even with her food. She would circle her bowl several times, look at me slyly, run into the yard and come back with a cicada in her mouth, then pick at her food as if she couldn’t stand the sight of it. Sometimes she wouldn’t eat at all.
But one morning, out in the yard, she ate a pellet of rat poison that was hidden inside a lump of freshly ground meat. Lyn was crazy about ground meat. That happened on a Monday afternoon at twenty-five past four. From when she swallowed the poison until the moment she died, the next morning, exactly at nine—I remember the time, because as she was dying in my arms the bells in the island’s bell tower rang exactly nine times—the blood slowly emptied out of her body, and it seemed as if the sky were raining blood, as if the whole island had been flooded with blood and had turned bright red, lashed by some unearthly rain. Instead of urine, blood flowed from her constantly, until it flooded my room. But she was on her best behavior, right to the very end. Lyn never whimpered, never cried. Perhaps she wasn’t in pain, I don’t know. Though deep down I knew she was in terrible pain, because she’d be stricken by spasm and her eyes would fill with panic. I wanted to believe that she wasn’t in pain, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to bear it, but really I knew that she was suffering indescribably. She was so well behaved that in the beginning, so as not to soil the room, she would jump down and go to the newspaper I had spread out for her on the floor, and when she had finished she would jump back onto the bed and curl up in my arms. Later that night when the real hemorrhaging began, when the newspaper was completely soaked and she was no longer strong enough to reach it, she just let her blood spill out everywhere. Dark purple rivulets of blood ran across the floor, my bedroom smelled like a slaughterhouse. Between each of these discharges I would hug her, lift her carefully and lay her down on the bed, where she would cuddle against my neck. “Lyn,” I would say, “Lyn.” My sheets, too, became soaked with blood. I looked at the moon. It was a full moon, blood-red, huge and threatening.
Her death, or rather her murder, lasted all night long. With poison you don’t die right away the way Alkis did when he took the pills he used to put dogs to sleep. He died instantaneously. The poison Lyn ate tears up the intestines, but doesn’t affect the heart or any of the other organs right away. Whereas Alkis, the veterinarian, knew exactly what he was doing. With the pills he took you die for sure, and instantaneously. How much I hated him for that! Why did Lyn, who wanted to live, have to suffer, and not Alkis, who wanted to die? How much I hated him, in my dream, as I lay in the hollow on his bed, which was still warm from his body.
It took Lyn twelve hours to die. Alkis died within minutes.
Something that still bothers me even now, just like the thought of Alkis’s cat Caesar—who, if he’d had his claws, could have protected himself if he ever got out of the house—is this: if Lyn had eaten her food on the day she died, the afternoon of Monday, August 30th, would she have eaten the poison, too? Or would she have been full and not even have touched the meat?
In the morning, as the end drew near, I hugged her with all my strength. I was crying.
—Lyn, the place you’re going won’t b
e so bad. In paradise you’ll have other dogs to play with. Everyone says paradise is a nice place. Just don’t be afraid of the big dogs, and make sure to eat well. There are green hills there, and fresh, sweet-smelling earth to dig holes in, and you love doing that. And I bet there’s no sea, the sea you hate.
Lyn died in my arms on Tuesday morning, exactly at nine. I buried her in the yard, put a pretty piece of marble and a wooden cross on the grave, and planted red bougainvillea around it.
Then I lay down in the hollow on my bed, which was still warm from her body, and began to chant out loud, like a liturgy:
—May you be blessed, where you’re going, for all of eternity.
May you be blessed, may you live in a paradise full of trees and fresh earth, greenery, and lots of dogs.
Later, I took a bucket and mop and cleaned up the blood.
20.
—Alkis, you never gave me anything. You’ve only taken. In death as in life.
Even now that you’re dead, you still eat away at me, more and more, insatiably.
I’m stupid, I let you do it. But you’re stupid, too. You don’t realize that by eating me you’re poisoning yourself, and that even in hell, poison can still give you stomach cramps and nausea.
What first attracted me to you, when I met you and fell in love, is what repels me now: your deep, metaphysical indifference to everything and everyone—most of all to yourself, to the universe, and to God.
That’s why you killed yourself. Because you couldn’t fear a God you don’t believe in, but who exists, whether you like it or not. And for God, there’s no hubris worse than suicide. He created you, and only he has the right to decide when to call you back to his side.
The only person you were ever interested in was yourself. Whenever you treated anyone else with love, it was only so you could collect interest on that debt later. You never acted with any real generosity. Kindness is easy, as you know perfectly well. Because with kindness, you’re not really giving anything.
I’m talking about giving your soul to your fellow human beings—and not just to the ones you love. I’m talking about compassion. Compassion means “to suffer with”: to suffer because someone else is suffering, to endure with the other, or in place of the other. You have no idea what that even means. It was all foreign to you while you were alive, and must be even more so now that you’re dead. Wherever you are, I hope you’re listening. Now that you’re dead I can finally speak my mind, because I’m not afraid of you anymore.
You always functioned as a mirror for others; you changed according to what each person wanted from you. But you always came up short, your whole life. After all, we can never really know other people’s true intentions or desires, which even they can’t know for sure. And with your suicide you blew it again, because you were so quickly forgotten. It’s human nature to forget, especially the unpleasant things.
There isn’t a single flower on your grave anymore. Only dust and ants.
I think a lot about your cat Caesar, much more than I think about you. Since you must have known you would kill yourself one day, why did you pull out his claws, when you knew that without his claws he wouldn’t be able to defend himself? That thought haunts me more than any other, much more than the thought of your suicide, which was your own affair, after all, something you chose. But the cat wanted his nails, he didn’t choose to have them removed, you chose for him—and I can never forgive you for that, do you hear me? Never.
For as long as we lived together, I was always the one who gave. You took and took and took, though you always told me you loved me. That’s why I stopped loving you, long before you died. But you never even realized, because you never paid attention to anyone but yourself. Alkis, I stopped loving you because I was tired. And I got tired because you never really paid any attention to me. I was only your mirror. You never gave me anything. But since you never paid any attention to me, you never understood how tired I was.
You were always telling me, “I give to you, I give you everything.” But you never gave me anything. I can’t remember a single thing you’ve ever given me, other than exhaustion—and that exhaustion came in perfect doses, just enough so I wouldn’t be completely destroyed, and would stay with you for exactly as long as you needed me.
Alkis, I still love you, a little. For fleeting moments. But most of the time I hate you. As much as you hated me while you were alive, maybe even more.
Alkis, the marble of your gravestone is cold. I press my cheek against it and listen to make sure you’re not still alive. I haven’t stopped being afraid of you. I’m even more afraid of you now that you’re dead than I was when you were alive, because now you can sneak in anywhere, invisibly.
Alkis, don’t ever hurt me again. You’ll end up getting poisoned, just like before.
part two
21.
God says:
Man has places in his heart that don’t yet exist. Pain permeates them, and brings them into existence.
22.
The game starts again from the beginning. The end is always another beginning.
This nightmare of eternity in time, this is our fate.
23.
Eros is diabolical: it constantly withholds what it promises, and constantly promises what it intends to withhold.
24.
This small thing, a movement, something particular but not significant, which nevertheless changes everything, and creates the Singular.
25.
This hour, at the end of the day. Silence.
26.
What can I say? And why should I say anything? I’ll never speak again, I’ll sew up my mouth with a golden needle and golden thread.
My tongue sticks in my throat, and slowly I swallow it.
My soul has moved, I can’t find it anymore.
I don’t care.
27.
Joy is the same thing as pain, the same thing as death.
But death, is it joy?
28.
Moments of hopelessness should always be transformed into creation.
But why?
And for whom?
Essentially, creation is always boring, since it’s an eternal lie—otherwise it can never become Art. And the lie is boring, too, since it has no real effect.
29.
To forget is the great secret of strong people.
To remember, to rehash, is the worst of human weaknesses, one for which others always pay.
Though of course you, too, always pay.
30.
My God, so distant and close:
—If I come to hate you, it will mean I have finally begun to believe in You.
31.
Lord, who have built our way to the skies, who have transformed destruction into salvation, listen…
32.
And God speaks:
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life:
No one comes to God the Father except through me, because I am God the Father.
33.
The end has arrived.
But not even that can release me.
Because there is no End.
Amen.
part three
34.
His eyes were purple, warm, friendly. He was so handsome that his good looks kept you from seeing how pleasant and agreeable he was. His name was Alkiviadis. I met him one Saturday at Aunt Louisa’s. She owned a huge estate in Ekali, just north of Athens, where she lived with her twenty-seven dogs, lots of canaries, a parrot, fish, children, grandchildren, and her husband Mil-tos. Aunt Louisa had built an earthly paradise around her. Though really it was Aunt Louisa who gave that taste of paradise to her surroundings. I went to see them every Saturday. As soon as I opened the gate a crowd of dogs, large and small, would come running to greet me, and I’d hear the chattering of birds from the house, and Aunt Louisa would rush outside, smiling, her arms flung wide, lapdogs yapping at her skirts. An infinite happiness would wash over me. It was a virgin house, a house that h
ad never been touched by anything bad; as soon as you set foot on the property you felt as if you’d been doused with some cool, magic elixir.
It wasn’t just chance that I met Alkiviadis there.
That Saturday we sat, as always, in the living room. How well I remember Alkiviadis, in a large armchair to my right, stroking the little white dog in his lap.
—He’s a veterinarian, Aunt Louisa told me proudly. The best. We all just adore him. He’s the son of a close friend. You’ve never met him before because he doesn’t usually come on Saturdays.
—Today I was lucky. Alkiviadis smiled at me.
Me too, I thought, then blushed as if I’d said it out loud.
Aunt Louisa and Uncle Miltos went outside to feed the German shepherds.
Alkis and I were alone. But there wasn’t a single awkward moment between us. He smoked an entire cigarette before either of us said a word, though we were both smiling—perhaps because we could hear Aunt Louisa yelling, “Miltos! Wolf ate all of Valdis’s food!”
As we sat there silently grinning, I suddenly thought, It’s as if we’re in our own home. I blushed again, embarrassed. The thought was absurd; Alkis and I had barely even spoken.
—I like coming here, Alkis said. I leave feeling so invigorated. I can’t explain it, it’s like…
—I know, I said, and laughed. I know.
He stood up.
—Let’s go upstairs to see the birds. If your aunt keeps on collecting them at this rate, before long the house will be a jungle. You know, he continued, you have beautiful eyes.
We were separated by a large pink cage. Our eyes met through the fluttering wings of canaries. There were dozens of cages in the room, and the chattering of the birds was deafening. The walls were lined with aquariums where fish swam in silent circles among seaweed and rocks. The parrot kept screeching, “Down with the right!”
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