by Sam Wiebe
“Did you get the money?” Papou asked.
“Sure, Papou, sure I did. Five hundred. I’ll give it to Yiayia later,” Manolis said. He actually only had a hundred dollars for Yiayia, from his job as a personal trainer. That would keep the lights on. Papou would worry if he thought Manolis wasn’t rich, so the boy lied frequently. In the old days, nobody would dare have lied to Papou, especially not about money.
Once, Papou had been the man, and West Broadway had been Greektown. If you owned a restaurant and wanted your windows intact and the soft drink truck to deliver on time, you gave Papou a few dollars and everything would be all right. It wasn’t just a racket, either. Papou once punched a Hell’s Angel so hard the man started convulsing at Papou’s feet, and it was just for saying something dirty to Rhodanthi Kostoulas, who wasn’t even a favorite waitress of Papou’s. And he kept the Chinese gangs, all the ξένοι gangs, off the block too. Ξένοι, the Greeks called everyone else, as if Greeks weren’t foreigners in Canada.
But now there was no more Greektown. Kits was Yuppietown, and there were more vegetarian restaurants than souvlaki joints. Manolis had tried, years ago, as a big and muscular sixteen-year-old, to collect, but at his very first stop the staff just laughed at him. The restaurant was going to be shut down the following week, and the building torn down and replaced with a new condominium complex in six months. Ευχαριστώ, μαλάκας! Some protection!
Yiayia came out into the living room and called Manolis to set the table and bring out the food. There was a knock on the door and Papou shuffled over to answer it—it was his old friend Stelyo, who had a truck and a bread route. Other people trickled in—cousins Nikki and Popi, Vasso and the baby, even Rhodanthi. She came with her face all painted, and had even plucked the hairs on the mole atop her lip, Manolis noticed. She’d always had a crush on Papou, that one.
In the old days, Papou’s apartment had been busy like this every night. Three chickens, or a leg of lamb. Guests brought pastries and wine. It had been a long time; Manolis remembered when Stelyo had brown hair, and Popi was thin, when Mikey and Greek Mikey were both in the closet but not the same one. They all still loved Manolis’s grandfather, but not enough to come around regularly now that the old man was powerless. Nobody but Manolis lived anywhere near West Broadway anymore. They all passed the baby around—her name was Georgia, after Papou—giggling and tickling her chin, making ritual spitting noises to keep away vaskania, the evil eye. Can’t admire or love anything too much if you’re a Greek, or it’ll be taken away. That was the lesson the Turks had taught the family in the nineteenth century, and the German occupiers in the twentieth.
Papou spoke in Greek, which Manolis mostly understood, but Papou was talking about people Manolis didn’t know, and places he had never been. Manolis had baby Georgia on his lap, and that occupied him. He’d held all sorts of babies, but never one for so long, and never one without the constant direction and critique of three or four of his aunts.
Stelyo leaned over and said, “Eh, you know how to work this?” He had in his hand an iPod Touch. Vintage 2008. “My boy Vangelis put my old rebetiko records on it, but it’s all Chinese to me.”
“Sure, it’s like a phone. It’s easy.”
“No,” Stelyo said. “It’s not.” He shook his head.
“Like a smartphone. You press the screen. No real buttons.”
Manolis found the list of songs and chose, randomly, “Ένας μάγκας στο Βοτανικό.” “A Manga in Votaniko.” A manga—one of those swaggering men who affected limps and wore thick mustaches and pointy shoes, who patronized the hashish dens of Athens. Hustlers and ne’er-do-wells. Papou had told Manolis all about the manges, hinted that he had been one of them. “They’re like pimps without whores,” he’d told an eight-year-old Manolis, “though sometimes their girlfriends are whores,” and somehow that conversation had ended with Yiayia slapping Manolis for letting his grandfather’s words into his young ears.
The iPod had an internal speaker, and the volume was loud enough for mostly deaf Stelyo to enjoy, but it sent the baby crying, and the family yelling. Then Papou slammed his palm against the table and stood up. He wasn’t angry though. He snatched the baby from Manolis’s lap and shuffled away from the table, his legs finding some old rhythm. Papou started to dance the zeibekiko, his free arm outstretched, fingers snapping, his knees bending like he was a man forty years younger. The women began clapping along to the rhythm of the song. Greek Mikey flung a five-dollar bill at Papou’s feet, and the old man bent low and swung to snatch it. Georgia howled, and finally Vasso clambered to her feet and rescued the baby. Papou staggered like a sailor on deck, like a happy drunk, and winked when everyone grew afraid, but then his face turned ashen and he took to one knee. Yiayia got to him first, her meaty hands on his thin shoulders.
“Tέλειωσα,” Papou said. I am finished.
Yiayia snorted and helped him to his feet. The table cheered.
“Bravo!” Stelyo exclaimed, and like a criminal he snatched the iPod Touch out of Manolis’s hand and shoved it back in his pocket.
“Enough playing,” Yiayia said. When she spoke, people really listened. Imagine a classically trained contralto dedicated to telling people to be quiet and clean their plates. “George has something important to say.”
Papou hadn’t had anything important to say in a long while. He read the papers, he walked around the block, he even learned to use Skype and talked to the relatives he wasn’t feuding with back in Greece twice a year, on Christmas and Easter. But his world got smaller as Greektown did, and he’d had little to say since Manolis was a kid.
“When I was a boy,” Papou started, “I had four first cousins from my mother’s favorite brother,” and he named them: Manolis, Michalis, Vasso, and Nikos. Names repeat in Greek families. This is how the story went: When the Nazis came, and brought with them violence and hunger, the cousins made their choices. Nikos was a Red and joined the Communist underground, and little George helped by sneaking him food and information. Michalis joined the National Republican Greek League, which kept things in the family reasonably harmonious until the civil war. Only after the Germans left were the brothers at each other’s throats. Vasso had a baby while her husband was off in the mountains as part of a Trotskyist guerrilla group. During her pregnancy, when Vasso was questioned by the local Nazi captain, she patted his arm and explained her swollen belly with the words she knew—“Guter Soldat”—and a smile missing three teeth from malnutrition.
“But Manolis . . .” Papou did not look at Manolis when he spoke. Big Manolis, Papou’s cousin, had decided to provide for the family by joining the Security Batallions, the Nazi collaborators who were mostly just out for whatever they could steal from their neighbors. Vasso turned down the spoils Big Manolis brought to her, spit in his face, and refused his protection. “Manolis became one of them. It’s been war between us since then.”
“Is that why they’re not in the family pictures, Papou?” Manolis asked.
Yiayia held up two fingers and made a clipping motion. “We cut them out.”
Rhodanthi spoke up: “Yes, cut them out! What are you going to do about the Nazis we have now, Uncle?” Papou was not her uncle. “The new ones, from Greece?”
“Easy, easy,” said Vasso, dangling the baby over her lap. “We just got her to stop crying. Don’t shout.”
Greek Mikey said something fast in Greek, and Mikey repeated it in English: “Greeks are like dogs sometimes, always seeing each other on the street, sniffing asses, and ignoring everything else. Ever see a dog look at a bus, like he knows how to read the sign on the side? There’s a whole world out there, and we have police now, and the college kids will rally or do something. Don’t worry about it. Take it easy, Papou.”
“Don’t worry about Nazis?” Rhodanthi said, still loud. Then to Papou: “Uncle, you have a responsibility.”
Popi said, “It’s not about Nazis, really. Is it? How could anyone even join the Nazis anymore.” She l
ooked to Papou, but he was done for the night, staring at his glass, into the gray fog of ouzo and water. Yiayia had moved on as well, to and from the kitchen with a pair of trays—one of small glasses, the other of bowls of rice pudding.
“They’re here,” Rhodanthi said. “They’re in Parliament in Greece, in the police force, in New York, now they’re coming here. Why does Canada even let them come over from Greece, I want to know! Let them starve with everyone else over there. They come to the store, they’re looking to recruit . . .”
Papou exhaled deeply. “I read the papers. Χρυσή Αυγή opens a chapter in Montreal, no one cares. Now Vancouver? My own cousin was a Nazi, I . . .” He paused, looked over to Yiayia, then to the baby, then his eyes lost focus. “I never talk to my cousin again. Tέλειωσα.”
* * *
It had taken a couple of weeks of nightly walks, but the manga was used to the snickering. It was the other Greeks who most often guffawed, pointed at him from across the street, yelled, “Hey, nice hat!” or simply nudged one another and muttered, “Mαλάκας,” as he passed.
The normal white people in the neighborhood, with their tight old-man sweaters, all-weather scarves, and arms covered in tattoos, didn’t matter at all. They were just in the neighborhood to raise the rents, and to annoy waiters with obnoxious questions—Where do you get your beef? and Are you people really like that movie about the wedding? Their women were like titless little boys; like hippies from old TV shows, except that they didn’t believe in free love.
The manga knew they didn’t matter, because when he walked down West Broadway, normal white people lowered their eyes, suddenly very interested in their smartphones. Occasionally, one would sneak a picture or a quick video of the manga in his big hat, with one sleeve of his long jacket hanging from his shoulder, the practiced limp that ostentatiously suggested a hidden weapon or stamping along to music in a hashish den.
The manga was a modern man, his sartorial choices aside. His thoughts were still his own, even if everything else belonged to the past, to another continent. He even thought of himself as “the manga” when taking his nightly promenade down the streets. The outfit—a costume, really—helped. The fedora, the striped pants and pointed pimp shoes, the mustache he waxed and twirled at either end. Greektown was all but a memory, so it was easy to search West Broadway—Ουέστ Μπροντουέι, as they used to say with their accent—from end to end. The people knew who he was, yet nobody dared snicker at his suit. They stared, but nobody would tell him where the Nazis were, or even if they’d ever shown up for a meal.
Finally, Stelyo’s son Vangelis spotted them while eating dinner out, and snuck a picture with his phone. Minutes later the photo showed up in the manga’s Twitter feed. Now his walk tonight had a purpose, a destination.
The manga eased his large frame through the door of the Dionysus Diner. “Diner” was a stretch, really. Dionysus was a lunch counter with three four-tops up against the wall. There weren’t even mirrors lining that far wall; the place felt like a furnished alleyway. The daily specials were written on the backs of white paper plates with black markers, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t very busy. It had opened after the decline of Papou’s business, after Greektown was nothing more than a parade one day each June.
There was a girl behind the counter. Rhodanthi, who worked there, had taken the night off, but the manga had come by often enough even when she wasn’t working. The girl’s name tag read, Anita. Too embarrassed to be called “Athena” by the ξένοι, eh? the manga tsked. This waitress normally frowned and turned her head when he walked into the Dionysus Diner. This time she smiled.
“Hey, Χαλιαμπάλιας,” Anita said. The manga had no idea why the last name of an old Greek soccer star was an insult, but it was something their parents used to shout at one another. Usually the girl’s eyes were brown and half-dead, like a cow’s. Tonight they burned with glee. She was with the Nazis now, happy her family had an edge on Papou after all these years.
From one of the four-tops, a man said, “Haliabalas! Shitty baller. Welcome to the 1970s! Nobody says that no more. Vancouver’s like a time warp.” The guy’s accent was thick. If immigrants still arrived via boat, he’d have been fresh off of one.
He stood up. A young guy—maybe just out of his teens. Muscular, like an underwear model with a broad chest and flat stomach. The manga was simply large—a Volkswagen Beetle with arms and legs. The kid wore a black T-shirt with an odd symbol on it—a white swastika on a blue field, like the canton on the Greek flag. Χρυσή Αυγή. Golden Dawn.
The kid said, in Greek, “Get the fuck out of here, mafia. You dress like a rebetiko album cover. A Greek preying on Greeks? Who do you think you are?”
The manga laughed. “How much is she paying you?” he said, tilting his head over to the girl. The few customers at the lunch counter looked up from their coffees, interested. The four-top at the back emptied out. Two other young men, both wearing the same black T-shirts, took up positions right behind him.
“You’re the one who’s going to pay, μαλάκας,” said the first one. These men were new in town. They weren’t backing down. The manga realized that, and he was afraid.
But he was afraid only inside. The manga was outside, with his coat slung over one arm. There was a reason for that, now and then. The arm is quicker that way. The manga’s knife was in his hand and slicing up into the first man’s nose before anyone knew what was happening. It was like a blood-filled balloon popped in midair. Everyone started shouting, but the first man’s shriek stood out. The manga kicked him in the crotch to make him stop.
The guy on the left flew at the manga and ran face-first into the coat the manga has just shrugged off his shoulder. The third man followed the first to the floor, kneeling and clutching at his comrade. The first man’s hands were up at his face, blood pouring out from between his fingers. The manga glanced down and decided to take the third man’s ear off, then spun and plunged his knife into the flailing second man, piercing his own long coat. He finished with a kick to the second man’s head.
“I’ll call the police!” Anita shouted from behind the counter. The manga briefly considered throwing his knife at her, but instead just covered the ground to the countertop in two steps, leaned over it, and smacked her hard across the face.
“Money! Four hundred dollars,” he said. “And you owe me a new coat.”
As Anita was falling to the floor, he said to her, more calmly, “I see another Nazi in this place, it burns down.”
It was a very late night for the manga, and for his Papou. There were calls for the old man to make, and even a two a.m. meeting with a few of the friendlier police officers from the old days. Self-defense, sure. It was three on one. And the fascist with the stomach wound had been carrying a pistol. Not on him, but in a knapsack under the booth. The one with his EU passport in it.
All three of the men were named Nikos. They were being stitched up. The one guy might even be able to use headphones again one day. It would be easy for the police to get them back to YVR, so long as Anita insisted that she had seen nothing at all, not even the manga, and that the bruise from her face came from slipping on a spilled egg in the kitchen earlier during her shift. Another phone call, from Papou to her parents’ home, made sure she would.
* * *
As the sky lightened Papou slept finally, his snoring audible from the living room. Yiayia came out with a plate of scrambled eggs, made the way Manolis never liked them—with olive oil instead of a pat of butter and a splash of milk. It was the first time in his living memory that his grandmother served food without a smile.
“Why you take Papou’s old clothes, eh?” she asked. “Don’t you have money for your own?”
“The Nazis, Yiayia.”
Yiayia clucked her tongue. “The Nazis.”
“Papou hates Nazis. You hate Nazis.”
“You don’t know what Papou thinks of the Nazis,” Yiayia said. “Half his family was Naz
is. Papou waves whatever flag someone gives him. Nazi, Communist, Canada. That’s what’s good for business.”
“But he never talked to Big Manolis again,” Manolis said. “Because he was a Nazi collaborator. Manolis’s sister turned down his food, she—”
“Shut up,” Yiayia said. Manolis flinched as if smacked. Yiayia hated shut up. She used to scold Manolis when he was young, telling him never to tell Mikey or Popi to shut up. When you say shut up, your face ends with a frown; it’s the devil in you, she’d say. When you say, “Be quiet, please,” your face ends with a smile.
“Oh, baby-mou,” she said. “Yiayia’s sorry. Big Manolis wasn’t a Nazi; he was just pretending.”
“Then why’d you cut him out of the picture? Why did Papou never speak to him again?”
“During the war, he went to his sister’s with food and money. She’d just had her baby, little Toula. Beautiful baby. And Manolis gave Toula so many kisses and held her and told her of all the good things he could bring her, and then she died.”
“But that wasn’t his fault . . .”
“Manolis, he said all these beautiful things, then forgot to spit. Vasso was so angry, she sent him away.” Yiayia crossed herself three times. “Then the baby got sick, got sick and died. The devil took Toula away; it was the vaskania. Manolis had given her the evil eye and killed a little girl. All he had to do is spit, and he wouldn’t. He said it wasn’t modern. He liked to be modern, not messing with goats and olives like everyone else. It’s like he didn’t want to be Greek.”
“Come on, Yiayia, it was war. She was probably starving, sick and weak. The evil eye?”
“Vasso’s husband was a Communist. Everyone in the village knew it. She was too ashamed to go to the priest and have him make the prayers to save Toula.”
“You know that’s not how it works,” Manolis said.
“In Greece, that is how it works. Vasso wanted to be modern too.” Yiayia looked over Manolis’s borrowed clothes again. “It’s good you’re not modern.”