“You may give what you want, Miste’ Steinberg, but for me same answer. But lemme ask you somethin’ and then maybe you undesten: You have kids?”
“No, sir I’m not married and that’s just fine with me.”
Old Philip puckered his grey eyebrows and his face took on a confounded expression. He lifted his right hand, rubbed the back of his neck and slowly turned to Steinberg’s lawyer, who was standing about three feet behind his client. “How about you, sir, do you got any kids?” The lawyer’s face took on a barricaded look and then it turned to perplexity, as he stammered “I…, yes, I have three.” His bewildered brown eyes met the old questioner and they seemed to be saying, “Please, sir, leave me out of this. I’m only here to answer questions about the real estate deal.”
“OK, then! You know what these three kids have cost you, how many sleepless nights you suffer, and many worries when they got sick. Until they grow up, what stress and how tired you are! But if someone offers you thousands of dollars, would you sell one?” Mr. Foster raised his right hand, parted his lips and tried to answer, but a passion possessed old Philip, his face reddened, he raised both hands and replied for him: “No, you would not! Because together with the tough times, the kids give you joy and pride. Many times you were tired, yes, but also thrilled when they grow up, and the more love and attention you give them, the more they grow and love you…! And they give you so much happiness, because you also take in that they are yours, part of you, your creation, your own child. Now, Miste’ Foster you ask, why I say this to you? Because the Olympic Flame is my child! I suffer the same way to bring it up, as my kids!”
Old Philip turned towards the real estate agent, and with a confused sense of confidence and relief which welled up in his throat and made speech difficult, he uttered, “Miste’ Steinberg…, you may not undesten this, but please, sir no more talk of how much money you pay, because there is no price so high for my child, a member of the family!”
Baffled and irritated, Steinberg knocked the ash from his cigar nervously and studied the old immigrant. Clearly, he had not expected this defiance and wondered, was old Philip sincere, did he merely want to get his goat, or was it a clever strategy of an old country fellow to get a lot more money? He made a contemptuous motion and after staring at the old gentleman for a few seconds longer he blurted: “Alright then, I’m prepared to offer fifty thousand dollars more, but that’s final. And believe me, this amount is much more than your neighbours received. Please don’t say another word now, sir. Think it over with your sons, and when you want to discuss it again, you have my card.” Then, Steinberg threw his cigar, and with quick, huffy steps, he gestured to Mr. Foster to follow him into the car.
III
Six months passed after the two unwelcomed guests left Philip’s house. He never heard from them, and hoped never to see them again. Old Philip was content, and never missed an opportunity, together with his wife, to count their blessings. They enjoyed good health, a united family, many friends, a lot of energy and money. Every Sunday Philip crossed himself and thanked the Lord for his good fortune, before going to bed, he prayed before the icons that hung in their bedroom for continued good health for all the members of his beloved family. He gave money to those involved with good deeds in St. George’s parish, as well as to the needy back in Greece.
Above all, Philip was happy because he had achieved his dearest dream, the dream of owning a restaurant. In Canada, he had become a man of consequence and he cherished his destiny, for he had something to bequeath his sons—they were the future.
But life’s road, like any thoroughfare around us, is never smooth and straight for long; it’s full of bumps, bypasses and detours, and fate has a way of playing havoc with peoples’ lives. Within six months, Philip’s blissful days vanished; he experienced a dark and difficult period of pain and grief. It was as if the black-winged fate rested on Philip’s shoulders, turned his world upside down, and displayed not one sign that the treacherous one had any intention of leaving. His older son Peter died instantly in a horrible, head-on collision with a drunk driver. Death struck Philip’s family three months later when his wife passed away peacefully in her sleep. And as if this was not already brutally unfair for the old gentleman, his second son Teddy was rushed to the hospital and was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The doctors gave him a fifty percent chance of survival.
Old age crept in and engulfed Philip. He could barely walk and his hands trembled. Within a year, he had thickened, coarsened, settled down into the enclosing flesh. The dreadful events broke him physically, dampened his spirits and deadened his hope. It was as if life’s window was closing its shutters in haste, and as much as he tried to recover his hold on reality, weariness overtook him and he couldn’t leave his room. Day in and day out, he lay motionless in bed and grieved within his soul; periodically, he buried his face in his pillow to choke his sobs and listened to the rain pelting the window panes and the roof in a monotonous sound, a despairingly monotonous sound.
Deep within his heart, always in mourning, old Philip’s memories were awakened; when he was alone, it was always the past that preoccupied him. As much as he tried, he couldn’t get away from it; his head buzzed with the rush of his thoughts, and they fled back to the hardships in Greece, working for others, from an early age, for paltry sums. He ploughed the red earth until his every fibre ached; pruned the olive, orange and lemon trees; weeded the maize; harvested the melons, tomatoes and beans from dawn to dusk. And the more he worked, the more his family fought hunger. The terror he endured from the war was especially vivid—he remembered, he sighed and his chest heaved.
Luckily, Philip escaped the old country’s dead-end, and at the age of twenty-six he started another quest in Canada. He recalled the early days in his new country, living in a basement apartment in Toronto’s Cabbagetown. How hard he worked! What a frugal life he lived! From seven in the morning he worked at a hamburger place in downtown Toronto until two in the afternoon and from four until eleven in the evening, he washed dishes at a nearby steakhouse. Every penny went to the bank, except for money for the rent, a measly sum for food and a monthly amount that went to his mother in Greece.
Frequently, he studied his bank balance, and the numbers became a dream and a wish; little by little they turned into a fixed idea to buy his own restaurant. Never losing sight of his dream, he continued to live meagrely, learning to cook and all the ins and outs of the restaurant business. Within five years he had saved seven thousand dollars, enough to purchase his own.
After searching for some time, Philip eventually found the Olympic Flame. During the first month, he gloated with excitement like the child being given his favourite toy. But a year later, he could hardly pay the bills; Philip’s dream turned into despair with the singular lament that he had bought a pig in a poke. He never lost his forbearance, because he couldn’t work for others anymore and returning to Greece after losing seven thousand dollars was not an option.
Unwaveringly, he hung on, worked sixteen-hour days, sometimes sleeping in the restaurant by lining up three chairs together, so that he wouldn’t sleep too comfy and not be able to wake up. The stained apron around his waist was always wet, more with his tears than the dishwater. The hopeless situation turned around when Philip married Olga, his dear wife, whose benevolence and resourcefulness brought Philip his first flush of success. She introduced new items on the menu, like the Greek baklava and other delicacies which she made herself, lowered the prices of all the menu’s items, and together, they rushed to the top of the hill and never looked down.
But now Olga, the woman who had lived in his soul, wasn’t here anymore; his older son had passed away suddenly and his younger son…? There was no one who was able to work the Olympic Flame. Within a short period, Philip’s life had convulsed, hurled him out of his comforts, and flung him in his bed.
He stared at the dusky icons hanging on the wall, one of them depicting the Virgin Mary, holding her infant son, and the other was t
he image of Christ. Philip questioned them: ‘why you so unjust to me? Why you crush me? Besides our health, did I pray for anything else? I worked hard and deprived myself; my kids had bread on the table, and I helped many others. But you demolished my dream. Why?’ But his resentment abated and he had to learn to bow to the inevitability, as the working of Providence, which sets the machinery of the world in action, and with which we can only cooperate by moving and setting other wheels in motion.
Heavy and ominous like a thundercloud, the fatal day came. The old man’s glance fell across the wooden bureau to his left; in its top drawer was Steinberg’s card. There was no other way. There was no other solution, it was a painful one, but he had to do it! He had to call him. As he mustered all his strength to turn his weak and painful limbs, he heard a light knock on the door, and then a soft voice, “Papou, it’s us Philip Junior and Paul, can we come in?”
“My little Philip, Paul, of course you can come in! Why you ask? Come!” The old man stretched both his thin, veined hands to embrace the youngsters, aged thirteen and eleven now. They approached his bed in hesitating, hushed steps, the kind of steps that denote illness in the house. “Welcome, my good grandkids, what a pleasant surprise! How nice, my two lads visit me!”
“Papou, we want to ask you something?”
“Ask me then, feel free! What is it?”
“Can we work in the Olympic Flame when we grow up, just like our Daddy and you and our uncle Teddy. Will you let us?”
Taken aback, the old man turned on them a glance of wonder with a tinge of triumph; then, he pulled them closer to him on the bed and hugged them tightly. Old Philip shut his eyes and kissed them on their heads repeatedly, and when he lifted his face with swimming eyes, a soft strip of light, which broke through the parted curtains, illuminated his features. And the old man’s glow was one more testimony to life’s untiring renewals, and nature’s secret of drawing hope from calamity.
The Missing Cross
Down on all fours, Penelope Lekas searched under the bed for little Pete’s missing baptismal cross. Dressed for midnight mass on Holy Thursday, the mother of three, a tall woman with fair features and auburn hair, lifted the rug beside the bed, and peeked behind the dresser. Nothing. Perplexed, Penelope could not understand where the eighteen karat gold cross had disappeared, a cross purchased in Greece by her son’s Godfather. She raised herself up and opened the cross’s little blue box again where it was kept in the top drawer of Pete’s dresser. Only the chain was there, not the cross itself; a mati, a blue stone, with a black eye in the centre to ward off the evil eye, malice and jealousy, was also there. But where was the cross?
Penelope pillowed her hands on the dresser and rested her head. A sense of unease compounded her bewilderment. She wondered about the timing of this complication, just as her entire family, including her eighty-year old mother were about to depart for the holy service in St. Irene, the Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto’s Greektown. What sort of a sign was this? Penelope believed deeply in God and all his saints, but she also accepted the influence of fate and the importance of warding off evil spirits. She called Pete upstairs.
“I know you were wearing your cross on Palm Sunday, dear, just five days ago,” she said in an apprehensive tone, “where is it now?” Eight-year-old Pete, whose suit was a bit tight on him, had rushed upstairs, flushed and speechless. “Well, young man, do I have to repeat myself?”
“I really don’t know, Mamma.” Penelope tilted her head up, placed her hand on her forehead, and closed her eyes momentarily. A dull pallor, betraying inner agitation, covered her face, and she heaved a sigh. She called to the younger daughter downstairs, “Eva, have you been meddling in Pete’s room?”
“I swear Mamma, I’ve not been in his room,” answered the little girl from downstairs. Eva worried Penelope; she found her a highly strung child who picked on her little brother relentlessly. She had mentioned to her mother Irene that little Eva was becoming a handful, whereas the oldest daughter Maria was an agreeable child and the perfect helper every day.
“No need to swear tonight; it’s Holy Thursday, child.” Then, Penelope took hold of her son’s hand and with the other, she switched off the light.
“Come along dear, there’s nothing we can do about this tonight; we’ll look for it tomorrow. Daylight may help.”
Descending the wooden stairs, Penelope noticed the two girls with their dear yiayia in the foyer. In their dark skirts, white tops and patent shoes, the two girls – ten-year-old Eva and Maria at twelve – were eye-catching; they looked like twins in their shoulder length chestnut hair, white hairpins and gold crosses. Their yiayia wore her dark suit, which accentuated her snow-white hair, but she did not look her eighty years. While Maria was standing beside her yiayia, Eva had snuggled into her grandmother’s embrace, perhaps seeking support, lest her mother asked further questions. But Penelope had only an accusatory look for her mother: there you go again, mother, defending Eva and encouraging her willful manner.
The old lady’s plaintive grey eyes imparted a plea: not tonight dear. There couldn’t possibly be an argument with her daughter tonight. She wondered why Penelope was so down on Eva. Perhaps it was time she spoke her mind to her daughter about the way she was treating the child; but it was Easter, the most sacred annual holiday, the old lady had fasted for almost forty days, and she had confessed last week in preparation for her holy communion.
In the silent strain, Penelope missed her husband Gus. Where…? Just as she was about to call him, they all heard, “Oh, no! Mahavolich hit the goal post!” It was Foster Hewitt’s dramatic play-by-play of a hockey game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Chicago Black Hawks. Penelope peeked in the den and noticed Gus, a tall strapping man in a dark suit and white shirt, kneeling with his ear glued to the radio. All three children rushed in and asked in one breathless voice, “What’s the score, Daddy? Who’s winning? Before Gus could answer, Penelope raised her right hand indicating an end to their questions. “Please, children put on your jackets; we’re already late. You’ll find out who won tomorrow.” There was a mixture of indignation and hopelessness in her voice. The children darted out of the room.
“Really, Gus. Given the late hour, is this game so important to you on this holy night? We’re all dressed and ready for church…”
“I’m ready too,” answered Gus with a tinge of embarrassment in his voice. He lowered his green eyes, switched off the radio, reached for his keys and dashed outside to start his blue Chevrolet.
A horribly dark evening greeted the entire family as they stepped onto the veranda. Not a soul walked on the drenched pavement and the road was empty. The wind had picked up and its gust had a spine-chilling effect. Flashes of lightening lit up Saint Clements Avenue, making bleak silhouettes of the trees lining the livid orange background. Large drops of rain came down rapidly. “This looks more like the beginning of January, rather than spring, mother.”
“Yes, it does, my dear,” the old lady answered, disheartened.
“Perhaps we should wait until this rainfall ends. What do you think?” An awful chill went through Penelope’s body. With her motherly instincts, she pulled the children close to her, their little bodies trembling.
“I don’t know, my child. It does appear treacherous for driving, but Gus would know best…”
“What would I know?” asked Gus as he quickly returned to assist Irene along the garden path and help her in the car.
“I was just wondering whether we should wait a little while for this…”
“No, this April shower will end soon. We’ll be fine.”
II
Serious and silent, everyone watched the weather apprehensively; the car’s wipers vigorously clearing the downpour on the front window. While the driving consumed Gus, yiayia sat glumly in the back seat with the three dispirited youngsters. Penelope sat beside her husband, tired, somewhat confused and distracted. A vague restlessness had taken possession of her, and she contemplated: Was it just
the bad weather which accounted for the morose passengers? Occasionally, she glanced stealthily at her husband and wondered whether she had been fair to him today, if not throughout this Holy Week. It wasn’t just her displeasure with his passion for the hockey game. Earlier when he came home from work and the sweet aroma of the buttered vanilla cookies wafted from her kitchen, infusing the entire house and the neighbours’ houses and beyond, Gus rushed in and headed towards the cookie tray in the dining room. “Mmm, mmm! What have you been up to today? The aroma is irresistible; I just have to taste one of these.” Gus licked his lips under the fringy dark mustache.
“Welcome,” said Penelope as she walked towards him. “I’m glad you find our cookies enticing, but you’ll have to wait for Easter Sunday to taste them.”
“Oh, is it the fasting practice, off the meat and dairy products?”
“Come on, Gus, two more days, you can handle it.”
“Can’t you just sneak a couple for me without your mother and the kids seeing them?” He slipped his large right hand around his wife’s waist.
“Clever idea, but you’ll have to wait like the rest of us.”
Now, Penelope had second thoughts about this incident. And the more she looked at her beloved husband driving so carefully, she thought about the cookies, and a lump ascended in her throat. This man had never denied her anything. He never opposed any of her wishes, nor did he restrict her individuality in any way. His love for her took the form of making her happy. In their fourteen years of marriage, she lived it daily. Would it have shaken their Orthodox faith if she had allowed her husband one cookie? And besides, the Christian practice of fasting, however beneficial, is not the aim of Christian life. Why all the fuss regarding the tasting of a cookie? And had she not taken a completely different stand with her mother regarding fasting? She recalled the moment earlier in the day when she had removed the last batch of cookies from the oven. “Ah, what a lovely golden colour, mother, I wish you’d try some of these cookies, they look so delicious, and please, please have something more substantial also, like cheese and eggs; you have fasted long enough and you had your communion yesterday.”
The Buses and Other Short Stories Page 9