Something Will Happen, You'll See

by Christos Ikonomou

  Copyright © 2010, Christos Ikonomou and Polis Publishers

  Originally published as Kάτι θα γίνει, θα δεις by Polis Publishers in 2010

  English language translation © Karen Emmerich, 2016

  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Archipelago Books

  232 3rd Street #A111

  Brooklyn, NY 11215

  www.​archipelagobooks.​org

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Oikonomou, Chråestos, 1970– author. | Emmerich, Karen, translator.

  Title: Something will happen, you’ll see / by Christos Ikonomou; translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich.

  Description: 1st Archipelago Books edition, 2016. | Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015035558

  Classification: LCC PA5638.25.137 A2 2016 | DDC 889.3/4—dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.​loc.​gov/​2015035558

  Distributed by Penguin Random House

  www.​penguinrandomhouse.​com

  Cover art by Joseph Beuys

  This publication was made possible with support from the Onassis Foundation, Lannan Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-914671-36-7

  v3.1

  To Julia

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Come on Ellie, Feed the Pig

  The Tin Soldier

  Mao

  And a Kinder Egg for the Kid

  Placard and Broomstick

  The Blood of the Onion

  Something Will Happen, You’ll See

  The Things They Carried

  Charcoal Mustache

  Foreign. Exotic

  For Poor People

  The Union of Bodies

  Go Out and Burn Them

  People are Streinz

  Penguins Outside the Accounting Office

  Piece By Piece They’re Taking My World Away

  Come on Ellie, Feed the Pig

  SHE’S WASHING LETTUCE. With twenty euros to get her through the week and bills piled on the kitchen counter. But it’s Friday night, her favorite night of the week, and Ellie Drakou is at the sink washing lettuce which she likes because it has such a tender white heart. She pulls off each leaf individually and runs water over it and washes it carefully and strokes it and breaks off any rotten edges or pieces with those strange tiny brown holes that lettuce gets and then gently shakes off the water and lays the leaf in the basin.

  She loves washing lettuce. Pulling off those big green leaves and washing each one individually. And as she gets closer to the center she reaches those tender leaves that are less green, the ones that glisten like they’re untouched by time. It’s as if she’s slowly and carefully and excitedly unwrapping a gift that someone else wrapped in layers of green paper. Then she gets to the heart of the lettuce and her own heart sweetens at the sight of those small tender leaves, those white crispy leaves – the heart of a head of lettuce, a tiny miracle, a well-kept secret, guarded from time and the wear of time. She likes to think that no matter what happened yesterday, no matter how much money she may have lost, no matter what happens tomorrow and for the rest of her days, no matter how many Sotirises pass through her life like conquering soldiers or hunted migrants, the heart of the lettuce, the innermost heart of the lettuce, those tiny leaves now quivering in her wet hands will remain forever white and tender and alive, as if they’re the only things in this world that don’t die, that won’t ever die.

  It rained, then stopped. Soon it will rain again. She looks out the window. Everything to the west is red – wind, sky, clouds. Tonight it’ll rain blood, Ellie says and shivers. And her eyes move from the window back to the heart of the lettuce that seems to be throbbing in her hands – but it’s not the lettuce that’s throbbing, only her hands trembling – and what she sees sinks inside of her like the smile of a person who’s out of work, a person who’s just been fired.

  • • •

  Lettuce, says Ellie. The whole secret of life hiding in a head of lettuce. Am I right?

  • • •

  She was the only one who fed the pig. For the past ten months or even a year. Every other day, sometimes every day. A euro or two euros or sometimes five. Occasionally she forgot. She forgot when she’d been working overtime and came home so tired she couldn’t even speak. But Sotiris never forgot. He would bring the pig in from the kitchen – it was big and heavy and pink with a slit in its back for coins and a hole in its snout for bills – and shake it in front of Ellie’s face.

  Grrts grrts. The pig is hungry. It’s starving, Ellie. Grrts grrts. Come on Ellie, feed the pig. Don’t you feel sorry for the poor thing? Grrts grrts.

  And Ellie would laugh. No matter how exhausted she was she always laughed. And she would open her wallet and take out a euro or two and slip the coin into the hole and on Friday nights she would take a five-euro bill out of her wallet and twist it into a tight roll and push it through the pig’s snout.

  There must have been about eight hundred in there. Eight or maybe nine at the very most.

  Why don’t you ever feed it, she sometimes asked. Why don’t you feed it every now and then, why do you just wait for me to?

  Wheatie. That’s what she called him sometimes, wheatie instead of sweetie, because everything about him was the color of wheat. Wheat-colored skin, wheat-colored hair, even his eyes were the color of wheat. Wheat or semolina. I want to eat you with a spoon. You’ll just lie there as still as can be and I’ll eat you one spoonful at a time all night long. And in the morning you’ll be whole and I’ll eat you up all over again.

  Like wheat. Like semolina.

  Whatever you say, he told her, I won’t spoil your fun.

  He came over with the pig in his hands.

  It won’t eat my money, he said. You’ve spoiled it. It’s a gourmet pig it won’t eat just anything. It won’t eat dirty money.

  He worked at a gas station on Thebes Street and his hands were always grimy. The tops of his fingernails were like black half-moons. Black half-moons, little black scythes.

  • • •

  She washes the last leaf and puts it in the basin and sets the basin aside for later. Later she might fix a salad with lots of dill and onion and throw in some cold rice and a little tuna from the jar a girl at work brought her, a jar of tuna from Alonissos which she’s been eating for a month now in tiny little bites one flake at a time – Sotiris didn’t like it, he thought it was too fishy.

  The bills are piled on the kitchen counter. On the very top is the phone bill, which is ten days overdue and yesterday or the day before they cut off her line.

  She opens the fridge to see if there’s something sweet she can eat. Her hands are trembling again. Low blood sugar for sure. Chocolates. She still remembers those chocolates someone once brought her from France. See what it’s like when you’ve got a good man, Sotiris said. See. Everyone remembers to bring you something. They ate one each night. Only one because it wasn’t a very big box. The brand was named after some queen or princess who had lived a long long time ago in England and once begged her husband the king to abolish the taxes he’d levied on the poor and he agreed on the condition that the queen ride her horse naked through the city streets and she also agreed on the condition that everyone lock themselves in their ho
uses so no one would see and she rode the horse naked through the streets hiding her nakedness with her long long hair and everyone stayed locked in their houses except for a single man who supposedly dared to sneak a peek at her and was immediately struck blind.

  Ellie had told that story to Sotiris two or three times, and she’d told it many more to herself, and each time she tried to imagine what the queen looked like and if she had blonde hair or black and why the queen cared about poor people and if she had ridden the horse the way men do or if she sat sidesaddle and what she was thinking as she passed naked through the empty streets and if it was day or night and how slowly she rode – and now, as she stands in front of the empty fridge with the cold hitting her face, Ellie remembers those summer evenings in bed remembers unwrapping the chocolate and holding it between two fingers and licking it a little before putting it in her mouth and when she put it in her mouth she didn’t bite it but let it melt on her tongue, didn’t bite didn’t chew but let the chocolate slowly melt in her mouth and the sweet and bitter taste would coat her mouth and run down her throat and into her heart.

  • • •

  Chains, Ellie says and closes the door of the fridge and rubs her arms which are covered in gooseflesh. I should put snow chains on my mind to keep it from slipping back to the past.

  • • •

  In the bathroom she looks again at the word scrawled in orange lipstick on the mirror. THORRY. It was one of their jokes, their secret phrases. They’d stolen it from a movie they saw on TV, about a clumsy guy with a lisp who was always eating chocolate and apologizing to everyone. Thorry, he kept saying, excthuse me.

  Thorry, Sotiris would say to Ellie. A woman like you should have found a rich guy to be with. Then you wouldn’t have to work the way you do. You would just travel and shop and go to the hair salon. Rome for the weekend Paris on Monday holidays in New York. But then I had to come along. Thorry.

  THORRY is what Sotiris had scrawled last night on the bathroom mirror with her orange lipstick.

  • • •

  She turns on the cold tap and holds her breath and steps into the bathtub under the water tensing her whole body so she won’t scream. The water falls hard on her skin like blades slicing her to pieces – but Ellie tells herself she can stand it and tries to ignore the pain and blinks and sees images passing in front of her eyes like ghosts born of the running water and her running brain sees faces and landscapes and mornings and nights passing in front of her eyes sees images from another life another era when there were no factories no overtime no punching a clock no unpaid bills or pigs that needed feeding or men who ran off like thieves in the night.

  Under the icy water the color of her skin changes, the pallid color seems to fall from her skin like old whitewash chipping off a wall. Her breasts harden and rise like a fox’s snout in the bushes. Ellie strokes her chest and feels panicked blood coursing through her body and she rubs her petrified belly and wiggles her toes and watches drops of water fall on her peeling toenails.

  My toenails, says Ellie. The southernmost border of my body. Where my body ends, where Ellie ends, where the nation of Ellie ends.

  Not much of a border. It might as well be a strainer, I might as well hang a sign that says come on in make yourselves at home.

  The Unguarded Democracy of Ellie.

  • • •

  In the bedroom she puts on her old lilac bathrobe and lights a cigarette then pads barefoot into the kitchen and thinks about unplugging the telephone but the line’s been cut so there would be no point.

  She pours a glass of wine – dark red Cretan wine almost black like old blood – and as she pours it into the glass she sees her hands shaking and thinks how she really needs to eat something sweet, that’s the problem for sure, low blood sugar.

  She smokes and drinks and when she’s through with her cigarette she goes back into the bedroom and opens the closet and pulls all his clothes off the hangers and tosses them in a big ball onto the unmade bed. Shirts, pants, a cheap fake fur coat, an old suit. She pulls out all the drawers and empties them onto the bed. Underwear, socks, a twisted tie. A belt with a broken buckle. An insole for a size 45 shoe. A long yellow shoelace. At the top of the pile she puts his shoes and slippers.

  On the way to the bathroom she stops in the kitchen to light another cigarette and refill her glass. Then she goes into the bathroom which is the most difficult part of the house because it’s where people leave the most complicated traces. She opens the medicine cabinet and tosses his razors onto the floor and his cologne and comb and nail clipper. A bottle of rubbing alcohol. His scissors.

  And that little brush she’d bought for him so he could scrub the grime from under his nails after work.

  In the living room she sweeps up whatever she finds in her path. Sports papers and car magazines and lighters and empty cigarette packs and old photographs. His things. All his things, scattered through the apartment like crumbs.

  In the cupboard under the sink she finds green trash bags that cinch with a yellow plastic ribbon. She bags up Sotiris’s clothes and all the rest of his things and drags the bags over to the balcony door. Outside it’s stopped raining but drops of water are still dripping from the balcony railing and Ellie stands and watches them – just look at that, Ellie says, tonight even the metal bars are crying.

  She lights a cigarette and a cough climbs up her throat so that she can’t breathe.

  For the money, Ellie says. All that for a handful of money.

  She opens the door, coughing, and goes out onto the balcony. She grabs a garbage bag from inside and throws it over the railing into the street. She hears the thump but doesn’t look down. She throws another bag and then another. The drivers on the street slow down and raise their heads. One man out walking his dog stops and looks up. Garbage bags are falling from the sky at the corner of Cyprus and Ionia Streets in Nikaia – garbage bags are falling from the third floor like suicidal women in green dresses, like cowardly sinners on the night when the end of the world will come.

  The man bends down and hefts his dog into his arms and runs off without looking back.

  Just think, he even took the pig, Ellie says. The pig.

  • • •

  Ellie goes back into the kitchen. Her hands are still shaking, they’re shaking even more now. It’s low blood sugar for sure. She opens drawers and cupboards and lines up semolina and sugar and honey and almonds and cinnamon on the counter. She’ll make halva. A nice semolina halva with almonds and plenty of cinnamon. It’s low blood sugar for sure.

  She puts the almonds on to boil and tries to remember the recipe, how the proportions go. One two three four. A cup of oil two cups of semolina three of sugar four of water.

  Eight hundred euros. Nine hundred at most.

  She multiplies the amounts by three – three six nine twelve – and gets to work. She puts the sugar and the water on to boil with two spoonfuls of honey and some orange peel. She pours the oil in another pot with the semolina and cooks it over a low flame stirring constantly, so the semolina will brown slowly and not burn and she’d have to start all over. As soon as the semolina is the proper color, she takes the orange peel out of the other pot and pours the syrup over the semolina which hisses and spits and it surprises Ellie who stirs even more quickly now, quick strong movements until the semolina absorbs the syrup and the halva starts to stick together and peel away from the pot.

  She takes the pot off the flame, tosses in the almonds, stirs the mixture well, then takes a break to smoke a cigarette.

  The lettuce in the basin is dry. The heart of the lettuce looks white in the dim light. Small and tender and white. Ellie reaches out and gently touches the heart of the lettuce and strokes it gently.

  Outside it’s getting dark. Black birds sit rustling their wings on the electrical wires like notes on the staff of some strange music, some music written to be played on the last night of the world.

  • • •

  She pats down the halva and sm
ooths the golden surface with the wooden spatula and lights another cigarette. The smell of halva spreads through the house and for a moment disguises the smell of Friday and the smell of loneliness and the smell of the malicious poverty slowly and silently and confidently gnawing at Ellie’s dreams and strength and life – and those of anyone who lives to work, who is born and lives and dies for work. For a handful of bills.

  Malicious vulgar poverty. It too has become a creature of the house. A creature of the house, a pet rat.

  • • •

  She spreads her best tablecloth on the kitchen table and empties the halva directly on top of it. She starts kneading it and shaping it with slow careful motions until it starts to look like a person. With her hands she forms the legs and neck and head. She uses a fingernail to carve the eyes and nose and a big smiling mouth. The hair should be long and loose, but she has less luck there. She lets it go, though, since she doesn’t want to start over.

  It doesn’t matter, Ellie says. Too much hair would be hard to digest.

  When she finishes she lifts the tablecloth carefully by the corners and carries it into the bedroom and lays it out on the bed. She tosses the covers onto the floor and brings the bottle of wine in from the kitchen along with her glass and cigarettes.

  She sits on the bed with her knees up and settles in and pulls the tablecloth close.

  All for a handful of money, Ellie says. Eight or nine hundred at most.

  I don’t get it, says Ellie. If poor people do things like that to other poor people what on earth are rich people supposed to do to us.

  Christ, I just don’t get it.

  I’m Ellie Drakou.

  I don’t understand.

  Outside the rain has stopped but drops of water are still dripping from the balcony railing. Look at that, Ellie says, how strange, tonight even the metal bars are crying.

  Then she takes a little silver spoon from the pocket of her old lilac bathrobe and sits up straighter on the bed and wraps the bathrobe tighter and starts to eat the semolina man – chewing slowly in the dark and listening to the darkness growing outside as with sharp tiny bites she slowly eats this most recent of men to have passed through her life through her unguarded borders like a conquering soldier or a hunted migrant.