The Slap

by Christos Tsiolkas

  No Greek woman would admit to this, Manolis told himself, looking fondly at Sandra. Greek women are tigers when their children are successes, but they fall apart with failures. The room fell to silence. Stavros was looking down at the carpet. Was the man humiliated? To everyone’s surprise, Sandra let out a loud, honking laugh.

  ‘You don’t have to pity me. She’s fine, I’m proud of my Alexandra. It was difficult, for years, in and out of hospital. But she takes her medication now, we bought her a small flat in Elwood. She’s fine. Alexandra is happy. She paints now.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Stavros was smiling affectionately at his wife, nodding his head fiercely, boldly, a wide smile on his face. ‘You should see the icons she paints. They’re beautiful.’

  Tasia Maroudis, who had been quiet all afternoon, sighed deeply. ‘We all have our burdens.’ Her voice had not changed in all these years. Soft, almost inaudible, the call of a tiny, frightened bird.

  Sandra’s mouth set in a redoubtable iron grimace. ‘I tell you, she’s no burden.’

  ‘What are her paintings like?’

  They all turned to Athena. The girl blushed.

  Sandra answered her in English. ‘They are big canvases. She paints women, all different kinds of women—old women, young girls, fat women, thin women, but all painted in the style of old Orthodox icons. The colours are so rich, so strong, completely fantastical. ’ Sandra smiled down at the girl. ‘Do you like art?’

  ‘I want to be a painter.’

  Paraskevi massaged her granddaughter’s shoulder. ‘Don’t let your father hear you.’ She turned to her friends. ‘He says there is no money in art.’

  ‘There isn’t.’ Sandra shrugged. ‘But that’s not why Alexandra paints.’

  ‘Athena, go get that painting you did of your grandfather, the one hanging up in our room. Show it to everyone.’

  The girl scrambled to her feet, walked shyly across the room. She returned with a small canvas. She hesitated, then smiling shyly, she handed it to Manolis.

  He could not recognise his friend in the bushy white hair, the dark wrinkled skin of the portrait. Manolis knew nothing about art and was no judge of the painting. He felt nothing. He passed it to Thanassis.

  ‘It’s very good,’ Manolis told her.

  Athena blushed again. ‘It’s alright.’

  The painting was passed around the circle of old people, each of them making appropriately admiring remarks over it. It finally landed in Paraskevi’s hands. She wiped away her tears.

  ‘Thimio was so proud of Athena.’

  ‘Why not?’ Koula was smiling at the young girl. ‘She’s a wonderful young woman, of course he was proud of her.’

  Silently the girl took the portrait from her grandmother’s hands and left the room.

  Tasia leaned forward. ‘Did you hear about Vicky Annastiadis’s oldest boy?’

  Here we go, thought Manolis, more gossip. He recoiled from the sound of her breathless voice. She was timid, but she’d always been a bitch. He remembered now, how she’d gloat over misfortune. He turned to Thanassis to begin another conversation but his old friend had a quizzical look on his face.

  ‘What about him?’

  Tasia’s eyes were glinting as she turned to Thanassis. ‘He’s in prison.’

  ‘What for?’

  Tasia shrugged her shoulders. ‘He’s a thief. How and what and where I don’t know. But he was always trouble.’

  Thanassis snorted in anger. ‘You’re talking crap. Kosta was a good kid. He was tough. You could rely on him.’

  Tasia pursed her lips. ‘That may be, Arthur, but he’s still a thief.’ Koula tapped her fingers on the coffee table. ‘Touch wood that our kids are alright.’

  ‘That you know of.’

  She swung around furiously. ‘What do you mean by that, Thanassi? ’

  The old man laughed. ‘Nothing, my little doll, nothing. I just mean what do we really know about our children’s lives? What they tell us. But how much do they tell us?’

  Tasia started to speak and then quickly stopped herself. The words had been a muttered jumble, Manolis could not be sure he had heard any of them, but her malice was obvious, it suddenly lay heavy in the room. Manolis had not heard the words but he knew exactly what had remained unspoken. That’s why your wife left. It suddenly struck him that it had not been Thanassis who had been brave and walked away. It was Eleni who’d left, who’d had the balls to walk. Had she really left the children with him? Or had he promised to break her neck if she defied him? He would probably never know the whole story; Thanassis was too full of shame and bluster—the story would always be shaped to reflect honour on himself, no, not honour exactly. Manolis looked at his old friend, the thickening waistline, the shaking liver-spotted, wrinkled hands with the nicotine-stained fingers, the folds of fat at the back of his neck. Thanassis was an old man who wanted to believe that he was still a bull. Those days were gone. Lost in his thoughts, Manolis did not hear what his friend replied to Tasia but he saw the reaction: Athena’s shocked gasp, a thrilled grin at the edge of his own wife’s mouth. Koula had never liked Tasia.

  ‘You’re a blasphemer, Thanassi.’ Tasia crossed her arms and primly turned her knees away from the men.

  ‘Tasia,’ Thanassis roared with laughter, ‘you’re exactly like my wife. You and she are the kind who walk with God. Which is all I need to know about religion.’

  Tasia could not help herself. ‘Atheist,’ she spat out.

  Thanassis clapped his hands, a ferocious sound that silenced the conversation of the younger people in the kitchen.

  ‘Bravo, Tasia, bravo. I am an atheist and bloody proud of it. It’s this one life we have, my little gossip, this one life. Then we become dirt, we become flesh for the maggots to feed on. That’s it.’ He suddenly drew back, his face crumpled, he looked fearful, confused. He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and, without looking at her, mumbled an apology to Paraskevi.

  The old woman grinned. Her eyes were still moist. ‘Thimio used to say the same thing. Don’t worry about offending me, Thanassi. I don’t know what awaits us after death—all I know is I will never see my Thimio again.’

  Thanassis rose, chucked the cigarette to his lip. ‘I’m going for a smoke.’

  Manolis followed him, and, flashing a guilty look at his wife, so did Sotiris.

  The back verandah was as big as a room, with a fence of thick slats that rose chest-high. The sun had long set. The little children had played in the backyard all afternoon but with the coming of evening they had crowded into one of the spare bedrooms to watch a DVD.

  Thanassis lit his cigarette. Sotiris asked him for one.

  ‘You still smoke?’

  ‘Once or twice a year. Irini will nag at me all night.’

  ‘You’re lucky. You’ve got someone to look after you.’

  Thanassis inhaled deeply, he was looking out to the vegetable garden in the darkness. In the centre of the yard was a fine, sturdy lemon tree, now barren. But there would be plenty of fruit in spring. It was clearly a strong tree. Manolis followed his gaze. Thimios had always been good with the earth. He’d planted tomato vines when they lived together, and every year the tomatoes would be plentiful and plump.

  Manolis looked at the two old men, smoking silently on the verandah. Was it possible that the last time they had been together was at that filthy brothel in Victoria Street, so damn drunk that he remembered he could not get it up? He had ended up sucking on the whore’s tits, pulling his shameful half-erect cock to a pathetic small splatter of a climax. There had undoubtedly been dances, weddings, baptisms afterwards when they had met up, but it was that night that claimed any stake in his memory. He smiled to himself. They had been studs then, confident, virile, strong. They had been lads, palikaria. Now they were all dying. Maybe not ill yet, but death had begun, had started tightening its inexorable grip.

  ‘So, what’s it like being a bachelor, Arthur? You recommend it?’

  At first they thought Th
anassis wouldn’t answer. He was still peering out into the darkness of the yard. But he turned, his back against the fence, and smiled ruefully at Sotiris. ‘Lonely. It’s lonely.’ He sucked on his cigarette. ‘But I’ve got myself a Filipina girl. Antoinetta. She’s a nice girl.’

  Manolis was shocked. And jealous. You’re cruel, God, you’re cruel. I am destined to always be envious of this man.

  ‘How old is she?’ Sotiris looked dubious.

  ‘Forty-eight.’ Thanassis laughed out loud, delighting in his friend’s surprise and discomfort. ‘I don’t live with her, of course, my children would put me in a mental asylum.’ His voice was suddenly bitter. ‘Not because they care about my mental health—because they’d be worried she’d get some of my money.’ He scrubbed the end of his cigarette against the wood and threw it, high, with determined aim; it landed over the neighbour’s fence. ‘They don’t have to worry. She’s not in the will.’

  ‘How long have you known her?’ Manolis’s voice was a whisper.

  ‘Ten years. She’s a good woman, I tell you. She has two children herself. The boy is a man now. The girl turns eighteen this year. They’re good kids. Normal people, not fucking doctors or lawyers or cocksuckers like our spoilt children. Just normal, hard-working, good people. To tell you the truth, they’re the ones who deserve my money.’

  Sotiris put a warning hand on Thanassis’s shoulder. ‘Arthur, listen to me, you can’t deny your children your money. They’re your blood.’

  Thanassis pushed the old man’s hand away. ‘Do you think I don’t fucking know that?’ He groped for another cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He blew out the first puff of smoke and continued. ‘I’ve opened up an account for Antoinetta, I put money in there from time to time. My kids don’t know. No reason to find out when I go. Anyway, they’ll have my savings, they’ll have my house. They’re fine. Like all our kids, they’ll be fine. They haven’t had to work for any of it but they’ll be fine.’

  What can I say, thought Manolis? He screwed up his nose. The whiff of cigarette smoke was vile. What can I say? He’s right, isn’t he?

  Sotiris had finished his cigarette and was leaning over the verandah. He turned around and looked at them. ‘Arthur, you’re probably the only one of us left who still gets the opportunity to fuck. I wouldn’t complain if I were you.’

  The men broke out into laughter.

  Thanassis seemed suddenly sober. ‘How long has it been since I’ve been with you, you damn cocksuckers, you fucking pair of demons? How long? Why? Why did we drift apart?’

  ‘Life is like that.’

  ‘Why is life like that, Sotiri?’

  ‘It just is.’

  ‘That’s no answer.’

  ‘We just got lazy. We just got too comfortable and too lazy. That’s what happened.’

  Sotiris grinned. ‘That’s right, eh, Thanassi. Manoli was always the philosopher. He had a theory for everything.’

  Thanassis was smiling. ‘You’re right, Manoli. We got fat and lazy.’ He put his arm around his old friend. Manolis felt its weight, its solidity. Thanassis had not weakened yet. Soon, but not yet.

  ‘You were the philosopher. You and Dimitri Portokaliou. We couldn’t get you to shut up.’

  Thanassis’s arms felt tight around his neck. Manolis shrugged off his grip. His head felt thick. How could he forget Dimitri? How could memory play such a foul trick on him? There had been Thanassis, Sotiris and Thimios. There had also been Dimitri. At the coffee house, at the dances, at the weddings, the baptisms. At the brothel. There had been five of them that night. Of course there had been five. Dimitri and Manolis had come across the world on the same ship and had moved in together when they first arrived in Melbourne. Was it 1961, the bedroom they shared in Scotchmer Street, the middle-aged, widowed Polish landlady, not good-looking, buck-toothed, but a great body, blonde, a real blonde, they had both fucked her. Dimitri, short, funny Dimitri with two years of high school education, his smattering of French, his pencil-thin moustache that he groomed every morning and every evening. He ended up a mechanic; he’d been too slight for factory work, hadn’t a machine nearly crushed him at GMH? It had terrified all of them. Where the fuck was Dimitri tonight? The shiver passed through his body. He gripped onto the verandah. Black death had just passed through him.

  ‘Where is Dimitri? And Georgia? Where are they?’

  Sotiris and Thanassis looked at one another.

  Death was tightening its grip on them all. One by one, they were like rabbits trying to evade the hunter’s rifle. There was no dignity in being human. Not at the end.

  But Dimitri and Georgia Portokaliou were not dead. Thanassis answered him. ‘No one sees them anymore. You haven’t heard what happened to Yianni?’

  Manolis tried to remember. The son, the one child. It had been feared that Georgia would die in childbirth. She had lost so much blood. Was that right? Koula would remember. And could she not have children again?

  ‘No, what happened?’

  ‘He was shot. Ten years ago. In the middle of broad fucking daylight. Outside his own home in Box Hill. A bullet in the head and the young man was dead.’

  Manolis could not stop himself. He crossed himself three times. ‘Why?’

  Thanassis said nothing.

  ‘Drugs,’ answered Sotiris.

  ‘We don’t know that.’

  ‘What else could it be, Thanassi?’

  ‘Money. Sex. It could be anything.’

  Sotiris shook his head. ‘No. It was mafia, gangsters. It was organised. ’ He looked at Manolis. ‘You didn’t hear about it? It was in the papers.’

  ‘Maybe I was away. Maybe I was in Greece.’

  ‘Fuck it.’ Thanassis took another good aim and propelled another butt across the fence. ‘Whatever the damned reason, it’s a tragedy and one that no one deserves.’

  Lost in their thoughts, the men wandered back into the house. All that Manolis could remember of Dimitri’s Yianni—Little Johnny, didn’t they all call him that?—was that he seemed always to have a smudge of dirt on his cheeks and hands; that boy loved to climb, he had been fast and agile. Hadn’t Ecttora once kicked a footy with such force that it had landed on the Italian’s roof? Hadn’t Little Johnny scrambled up the side of the house, swung himself over the eaves and climbed fearlessly up the steep, sloping tiles to grab the football which had miraculously come to rest on the one flat stretch of roof on the old house? Signora Uccello had come out screaming, first in fury, then in terror that Yianni might impale himself on her roof. Hadn’t that set off a cacophany of wails as more mothers came out to see what was happening? His own heart had stopped too. And wasn’t his own son open-mouthed, breathless, as he watched his friend reach the ball? The boy had grabbed the ball triumphantly in one hand and beamed down to his mate below. Hector! I got it. Hadn’t Ecttora then let out a desperate breath? Hadn’t he done the same? Hadn’t Signora Uccello started to swear at Yianni in Italian as he slid off the roof? Hadn’t Georgia come running up to her son, hadn’t she held him tight and then released him to bring her hand sharply across his face? The shocked boy had stared at his mother, his lip had started to bleed, and then he had dropped the footy and begun to howl. Manolis remembered Ecttora running behind him, cowering in fear. Don’t be scared, my boy, he had told him, you’re not in trouble. It had been an extraordinary feeling, his young son gripping tight to his trouser leg, finding sanctuary in his height and solidity and strength, protection from the hysterical wrath of the terrified women. So long ago, when he towered over his son. So long ago, little Johnny Portokaliou with smudges of dirt on his cheeks and a triumphant grin on his face. Now dead, long eaten by the slugs and maggots. That was evidence of God’s incomprehensible, monstrous cruelty. That he, Manolis, was alive, and that Little Johnny was dead.

  ‘Uncle?’

  How long had he been staring at Athena’s face, but looking through her into the past? How long had she been waiting for an answer from him? He came to, realised that the whole r
oom had stopped talking, that everyone was looking at him. He was sitting in the chair, next to Thanassis as before.

  ‘For God’s sake, answer the girl,’ his wife said impatiently. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said quietly to the girl, pulling at his collar. He savagely loosened his tie and breathed in deeply. Still confused, flustered, he looked at the girl. ‘What did you ask me?’

  ‘Would you like a drink, Uncle?’

  ‘Another whisky.’

  ‘Manoli?’ Koula’s voice was a warning. He ignored it. He really craved a beer. Stupid useless rituals, all for the benefit of their malicious God.