“Please eat something. You look like you might faint.”
“So how is the little devil?”
“Actually he’s been a great help. And he hasn’t had any of those spells.” I tried to explain how Theo had said he’d keep Takis in Heraklion. But Takis had Chrysoula’s strong will; there was no doubting that. And now I didn’t really know what to do about him. I didn’t add that although I’d been angry that he followed me, it had been good to have his company these past months. I also didn’t mention that Takis had punched Theo so there wasn’t much chance of him going back there.
“If only that doctor in Heraklion had worked out something for him,” Stelios said. “If only I hadn’t been . . .” He trailed off.
I stood there, growing annoyed to think that putting Takis away somewhere would have been Stelios’s answer. “Well, to be fair,” I said, “Takis did stand up for you back in that mountain village.”
“Yes, I know. And I’m grateful, though little good it did me in the long run. But he does have courage, that’s for sure. It’s just that we keep coming back to the beginning with him and here we are once again. I don’t dislike him, but are we going to have responsibility for him forever?” He moved away from the window, saying over his shoulder that he’d just had an idea for a new puppet and had better get on with it.
As I walked home, I wondered whether Takis could possibly stay there on the island and run the school after Stelios and I had gone. It didn’t seem likely since his own reading skills were even poorer than mine. I’d begun to teach him months ago, but I still had to go over everything with him first before he could work with the children. And when peacetime came, maybe the Ministry of Education in Athens would send a real teacher again. So what would become of Takis if he stayed?
When I got back to the schoolhouse, Takis told me how some houses near the center of the village had converted their front rooms into shops that sold tamata. These were miniature body parts: symbolic hearts, limbs or anything else afflicted. They were made of metal, usually tin or silver but sometimes even gold. “If your foot hurts, you buy a foot tama, give it to the icon of the Virgin and, presto, your foot’s okay! Isn’t it funny?” Also for sale were miniature houses, cars, boats and other items that visitors could present to the icon in hopes that she might be moved to arrange the real thing for them. “Maybe she could give me a new head. I could use one.”
I did later see a whole rack of miniature heads—male, female, adults, children—in front of one of the houses. But I would have settled for freedom for Stelios. I doubted there was a tama for that. The irony was that many of the visitors were victims of one side or another of the civil fighting. If the icon could heal the nation’s warriors, couldn’t it heal the nation itself? Much of the fighting was over, but the bitterness it spawned lived on. There was no tama for that either.
The next day a poster went up in the plateia advertising a Karagiozis performance on Sunday before the church procession. After the performance, the icon was to be carried on a platform around the village, accompanied by a band, the priest, acolytes and local dignitaries. Takis was puzzled by the poster and said that no one had asked him to give a Karagoizis performance.
“It’s Stelios,” I said. “It’s something he’s been told to do.”
Takis looked startled. “He’s going to be here in the village?” I nodded. “But we have his puppets. And we need them for classes. And anyway . . .” He looked down at his shoes. “I’m the puppet master now.”
“He’s making his own.”
“What? Out of bark? Ha. We’re not in Mother’s basement. He needs the real things. But I should be the one giving the performance, not him.”
“As I say, he has to.”
“I’ll go see him.”
I said nothing, but the thought of the two of them together for the first time in all these months alarmed me.
“You don’t want me to, do you?” Takis asked. “Does he even know I’m here?”
“He knows. Oh, go if you want.”
What was the point of trying to keep them away from each other? They were going to have to work something out and maybe it was better if I stayed away. Takis gathered all the puppets, including the ones with swastikas he’d thrown to one side months before, put them into a suitcase and left for the camp.
I paced around the schoolhouse trying to imagine what they would say to each other after all this time. After about forty-five minutes, I could stand it no longer and started the walk to the camp.
As soon as I arrived I could see how things were going. Takis was standing there holding the puppets in his arms and shaking his head with impatience, saying, “What doctor?”
“The one who gave you an injection in Heraklion to calm you down,” Stelios said. “The day I was kidnapped.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“He knew of a place for boys with problems, so Aliki and I, I mean, well, we thought . . .”
“You thought, Stelios,” I said from behind Takis, who turned around, surprised to see me. “And Theo thought so too.”
But why was Stelios telling Takis this? Just to be mean to make Takis feel how precarious his life with us had been? And still was?
“I don’t understand,” Takis said. “A place? Where? Why?”
A series of coughs tore through Stelios so he couldn’t speak for a few minutes. Takis turned to me. I told him that Theo had said that there was a doctor who might be able to help him. There was a kind of hospital for boys with problems. But then everything had changed because Stelios disappeared.
“Help me? How? Like that place in Kifissia? That woman with the . . . tubes?”
“No, of course not. We were only going to talk to this doctor.”
“You didn’t say anything to me.”
“We were going to, Takis. Believe me, we wouldn’t have made any decisions without you.”
“You thought I was crazy,” Takis said, his eyes wide.
“You were talking to fish!” Stelios blurted out between bouts of coughing. “And trees!”
“No, you don’t understand,” he said, shaking his head. “They were talking to me. It’s not the same. For me, they were real. I don’t know how to explain it. You hear a voice that’s yourself but comes from outside yourself. And it’s as clear as either of your voices here and now.”
I thought of my laments, how they too came both from me and from outside me. And I understood a bit of what Takis was saying. But my laments grew out of my feeling for the dead somehow, though I’d never understood how it happened or why I seemed to end up in the room with the amber light. I’d never thought to question it since it was like an unasked-for gift. But was my gift really another kind of madness, akin to his? Did it matter? It certainly didn’t to the dead, nor to their living relatives, who’ve been comforted by laments all these centuries.
“But what if the voices wanted you to hurt someone, Takis?” Stelios asked. “Or yourself? I mean, you could have drowned that day in the Heraklion harbor.”
“They never told me to hurt anyone. And I’m better now, I think. Making the puppets talk for me, that helped.” He paused and then said in a choked voice, “But I’d be better off drowned than in a place like that one in Kifissia.”
He tossed the suitcase of puppets on the ground and walked away.
“Why did you tell him that?” I asked Stelios. “It was unkind.”
“I know. I know it was.”
“Then why?”
“I’m sorry. I was thinking about what we’ll do with him when I get out of here. When we leave the island.”
A flush of anger passed through me, maybe because I’d been wondering the same thing but didn’t want to admit it. “He even brought you the puppets,” I said, though that had nothing to do with it.
“I know. I know. Could you pass them to me?”
I picked up the suitcase and brushed the dust off as I passed it to Stelios. He opened it and turned them over in his hands.
“I’ve had these so long, almost my whole life. Except for the ones I’ve made.”
“But you gave them to Takis.”
“I think we could say he’s given them back.”
A guard said our time was up. Just as I was leaving the camp, I saw Takis sitting there on a rock, waiting.
“He hates me,” he said as I came up to him. “I helped him on Crete, but he still hates me.”
He stood and walked with me in silence. “I don’t think he does,” I said. “But do you hate him?”
Takis didn’t say anything at first. “Well, not exactly. I mean, yes, sometimes. The trees, they used to warn me about him—how he would take you away from me. They said they were my only friends.”
“Maybe they were right.” He said nothing and we walked on in silence. Then I was the one who had to stop and sit on a boulder by the side of the road. I thought that maybe the truth was that Stelios and Takis actually liked each other but would never understand that as long as I was around. A wave of sadness washed through me and for just a moment I thought of throwing myself in that quarry lake back behind the camp. It was then that Takis said maybe he should drown himself so Stelios and I would be rid of him.
“I was just thinking of doing the same thing with myself.”
“Oh, no,” he said, alarmed. “You can’t leave me. You can’t ever leave me.” His tone was so desperate that it frightened me.
“It’s you who have to leave. You need a life of your own.”
He began walking in a wide circle around me. He was passing behind me when he said, “A life without you and Stelios, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“Well, if you really want to be a teacher, you’ll go to school and you’ll meet other people who want that too. Maybe there’ll be someone you like more than others. I think that’s how it’s supposed to work.”
“What do you want?” He stopped in front of me.
“I want Stelios to be free. I want you to have your own life, and I want . . . well, I want to have a place, a place in the world. Everyone else seems to have one except the three of us. A place to go to and stay without moving all the time. But I’m not sure where that would be.”
His eyes widened. “We could do it, Aliki. We could go back to our village, couldn’t we? And live in your father’s house? Why don’t we, you and me?”
“And leave Stelios here by himself? Absolutely not. And anyway, are you sure you’d want to go back? Don’t you remember what happened there? What happened that night?”
I stood up and went on walking. I’d just been standing up for him with Stelios, but now I felt myself turning against him. What was wrong with me? I was letting the two of them pull me back and forth and I’d had about enough of it. I’d gone only a few steps when I realized he wasn’t following me. When I looked back at him all the color had gone out of his face. He was staring at me with this bleached expression. Then he caught up with me.
“No,” he said. “No, I don’t remember. I try to. I try to get to it, but I can’t. I just remember going outside the house. It was a clear night and the stars were all out. Then the soldiers were there. But there must be more.” He paused and then his voice hardened. “But I’ll bet that’s why you and Stelios want to put me away, isn’t it? You two remember what I can’t.”
“That’s not how it is, Takis.”
“How is it then?”
He practically snarled the question at me and I flushed with anger. We were just by the abandoned village, where I stopped walking and faced him.
“Now listen, Takis, it’s time to grow up and understand a few things.” I could feel something inside me beginning to tear. But like Stelios, once I’d started, I had to go on. “Stelios and I will be starting a family one day and while you’ll always be welcome wherever we are, well, we have to be on our own because, you might as well know, we’re . . . married.”
He didn’t say anything but just stood there, still looking at me. “But . . . but . . .” he sputtered, “that means you can’t marry me.”
I couldn’t speak for a moment. He couldn’t be serious, I thought, but looking at his face, his astonished expression, I could see that he was.
“Of course I can’t marry you. Even if I were free. You’re still a boy, Takis, and . . . I can’t . . . I mean . . .” I walked back to him and tried to put a hand on his shoulder. He gave me a push. So I turned and walked on. Then he ran up behind me and gave me another push, harder this time.
“Stop that!” I said over my shoulder as firmly as I could. But the astonishment in his face had turned to anger and it frightened me. I realized I was trembling and I didn’t want him to see that so I moved along faster. We passed the abandoned village where the hot wind was rolling dried brushweed through the plateia. I didn’t want to look back, but his footsteps continued. We walked on without speaking until we came back into town and arrived at the schoolhouse.
Our students were inside, some throwing paper planes, others waiting. Takis caught up with me but didn’t look directly at me. I reminded him that we’d have to teach without the puppets for a while. He went ahead of me into the classroom and began to draw a simple Karagiozis on the blackboard, as a baker with a stack of pies.
I handed out paper and pencils as Takis started reviewing numbers. He was going too fast for the students, whacking the blackboard with his stick as he called on students to spell out the corresponding word for each numeral. I shook my head at him, but he still wouldn’t meet my gaze. He went on hitting the blackboard until finally the end of the stick, a couple of inches, snapped off and flew at a boy sitting in front, hitting him in the eye. At first the boy was too startled to grasp what had happened, but then he cried out and ran from the room, covering his eye with his hand.
Takis stood still in front of the blackboard with everyone staring at him. “It was an accident,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
I went after the boy to see if he was all right, but he’d disappeared. When I came back, Takis was gone too. The other children stared at me without speaking. I didn’t think I could go on with the lesson. A feeling of foreboding had come over me, so much so that my limbs felt like stone and my mouth dried out.
Shortly after I sent the children home, a few mothers appeared at the door, including the one of the boy who’d been hurt. I remembered her from the day when she’d first brought her son. She’d been pleasant enough then, a small woman with a worried face and hair in a tight bun. But now she was furious.
“My Andonis, his eye will be blind!” she said.
“Oh, I hope not,” I said. “But it was an accident.” My voice sounded small to me, not much above a whisper. Why couldn’t I speak? I took a deep breath and tried to push words out until, almost shouting, I said, “It could happen to anyone.”
“It happened to my son,” she said. Her face had grown red. “Takis should be locked up.”
The others joined in, calling out, “Something’s wrong with him.”
“Snooping around all the time.”
“Stealing secrets. Talking to himself.”
“He should be put away.”
“It was an accident,” I repeated, but my voice cracked. “I’m so sorry. How can we help your Andonis?”
“Help him? Takis almost killed him!”
“Get Takis out of here,” another woman called out. “He’s not to be around children.”
I just stood there, thinking that she was no doubt right and nothing I could say was going to help. I went inside and closed the door behind me. There was a lot of angry conversation outside, but after a while, everyone left. I sat on one of the student desks and tried to clear my mind. But all I could do was remember Yannoula saying, Don’t tell Takis. At the time I thought she didn’t
want me to tell him that she was dying. Now I knew better.
He didn’t come back that night. The next day when my legs seemed to be working again, I walked through the village looking for him among the strangers who’d come to the island for the celebration. Most were gathered in the center of the village where some of the detainees were doing a last-minute sweeping of the street that led from the church, past the plateia next to it, and on through the village. The visitors were on crutches or in wheelchairs, a few even on stretchers. With nurses or relatives to get them from one place to another, they bought tamata from the local housewives, who’d also rented them rooms. Takis wasn’t anywhere, but I went into the church where the sick and wounded knelt—those able to—in front of the icon of the Virgin. Her pinched face was all that was visible. The rest of her had been covered by heavy silver plating probably made from melted-down tamata, the gifts of years of pilgrimages. With a Byzantine frown, she glared out of her silver wrap as if she’d had a headache for centuries.
I circled the village, avoiding any of the women who’d been outside the school the night before. But there was no Takis. I wondered if he’d possibly gone back to the camp, but when I got there, a solitary guard said everyone was in town for the church procession. When I got back to the plateia beside the church, I saw that Stelios had started his Karagiozis performance in the dark shade of some ilex trees, where he was using candles to make shadows on the screen. It was the first time I’d seen him outside the camp since we’d come to the island. I stood off to the side so I could watch him working behind the screen, making the children laugh and call out to the puppets. The boy who’d been hit by the end of Takis’s stick, Andonis, was in the audience. With a bandage over his eye, he was standing with his mother. They hadn’t noticed me.
I looked back at Stelios, who was trying to make use of his terrible cough as if the sultan was hacking and coughing in evil glee. But how graceful Stelios was, I thought, in spite of everything. Though gaunt and ill, he expertly controlled the puppets on their poles. Even the slightest movements of his hands caused them to react and brought forth laughter from both children and adults on the other side of the screen. I remembered how we’d stayed awake at night while he told me stories he’d told himself in the mountains, or stories we’d read together of Achilles and Hector and Priam. He would have had another kind of life entirely but for the events of the times. But here he was now, doing his best at what he knew best, telling a story that made children laugh.
My Last Lament Page 30