The Scapegoat

by Sophia Nikolaidou

  It was certainly what Evthalia would have advised, if he’d had an opportunity to discuss the case with her. He saw her every so often in the neighborhood. She reminded him of the girl in that famous painting, her beauty all corners, hidden miracles in her cheekbones—what a pity he’d never be able to tell her. She just would have given him a sardonic look and walked off, ponytail swinging in rebuke. She had been admitted to the literature department at the university, and still wore girlish ankle socks. She didn’t hesitate to correct his quotations of Cicero whenever he tried in vain to impress her. She respected the proper order of words in a sentence. His mother didn’t like her, though; in her opinion, Evthalia was an obstinate girl who talked too much and couldn’t even boil water, much less cook a proper meal.

  If the lawyer’s mother and the student found themselves side by side at the grocer’s, the younger woman never ceded her place as she should have. His mother complained that the girl had no manners, she was a wild creature. And since he had no desire to argue with his mother, he’d made up his mind not to bring any unpleasantness down on his head for Evthalia’s sake.

  And so he married Froso. It was an arranged marriage. She was a good, sensible, respectful girl. She could darn socks and cook. There was nothing missing from Froso’s dowry, not even a needle. She was obedient in bed, fulfilled her wifely duties convincingly. As for flowing conversation, that’s what his friends were for.

  Evthalia, on the other hand, was an untamable beast, and he needed to secure his career, he didn’t have time to waste on winning a girl over or strategizing about his love life. At times, though, he still thought of how it might have been. Particularly when he saw her in her green pleated dress, her white ankle socks, and her ponytail, walking home from the university hugging her Cicero to her chest. He found Homer less exciting—Homer was a poet, all empty words—but the sight of the girl clutching her Cicero could keep him dreaming for days. That was enough for him. And it was something no one could take from him.

  Meanwhile, Froso learned to cook papoutsakia the way his mother did. She wrote his name on the prayer paper in the evening, for his health, and took care of his laundry. As far as his mother was concerned, that more than sufficed for a successful marriage—and in the end, he came around to her opinion. Evthalia was the moon. You don’t take the moon down from the sky and marry it. You admire it from afar. That would have to be enough.

  What had gotten into him, why was he thinking about all that? He needed to focus on other things right now, things that couldn’t wait. Perhaps it was because he had caught a glimpse of Evthalia’s ponytail from afar. And he knew she had her Cicero class today. De oratore.

  Oh, if only.

  SCHOOL YEAR 2010–2011

  “THE ONLY DIPLOMA WORTH EARNING IS YOUR DOCUMENTATION OF INSANITY”

  MINAS

  Souk makes no sense. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he barely eats. His pants always look like they’re about to fall off, his stomach is actually concave, I’ve never seen another belly that doesn’t stick out at least a little bit.

  Evelina says his whole body is an appendage. That it’s just there to hold up his head. It’s more or less what everyone says who doesn’t like him, including the other teachers. They can’t criticize his knowledge of the material, so they start out saying how well-read he is, only to end up saying he’s not cut out for high school. He’d do great at a research institute, or the university, but here, it’s not about how smart you are, you need other skills. They’ve mastered the art of the backhanded compliment. Yes, of course, but.

  None of the other teachers came to Fani Dokou’s concert. If they had, they’d have been stunned. Souk was way up front, all in black, as usual. And next to him stood Dokou’s son—I knew it was him, I’d seen him in photographs. He’s about my age and plays in a band at his school in Athens. He has a pierced eyebrow and a tattoo on the back of his neck. My mother would have a heart attack.

  Anyhow. Souk looked like his usual somber self, only he was standing there with his arm around Fani Dokou’s kid like it was no big deal. Souk, who never touches anyone. The tenderest thing he’s ever done in class is say five nice words in a row. But there he was, all tight with Fani Dokou’s son. You could tell how much fun he was having by the look of them from behind. Souk’s back speaks volumes—like when he’s writing on the board, he doesn’t have to turn around for you to know what look he’s got on his face. At the concert, it was obvious he was having a good time.

  —Look who’s here, Evelina said, giggling, as she body-checked me from the side. She came over and stood right next to me, waving to some big dolt who was making eyes at her from across the crowd.

  —I came with a friend, she said.

  —I can see.

  She raised her cell phone to take a picture, but there wasn’t time. Just then the lights dimmed and Dokou started singing a folk song that everyone in the audience knew, about a jealous husband who murders his wife. The drums fell silent, the keyboard hushed. Her voice rose up from deep inside, she held the high notes, then plowed on, filling the stage, filling the whole square with sound. She lifted us up and swept us away with her. The crowd was a pulsing sea creature. Cameras flashed, cheers rang out.

  —My mom used to sing that as a lullaby, Evelina whispered in my ear, her hands raw from clapping.

  My mom sang it on road trips. It was so sad, but it always put her in a good mood.

  —That song goes out to someone I love dearly. For you, Marinos, Fani Dokou said, pointing right at Souk.

  Respect.

  Maybe Souk has a body after all?

  Fani Dokou hadn’t given a concert in Thessaloniki in over a decade. She left in her twenties and never looked back. But Thessalonians never forget their own, particularly when someone makes a name for herself in Athens. And now Dokou is an internationally recognized ethnic singer, with concerts in Portugal and Oslo, recording sessions in Paris, tours in Israel. She popularized Greek folk songs, reworked them, added electronic touches. And in the process, she achieved the impossible: she made music that both Mom and I like.

  —She’s good, Evelina agreed.

  That didn’t seem strong enough to her, so she added,

  —A goddess.

  For real. The light around her wasn’t that fake, plastic light, all smoke and cameras and kilowatt hours. Her sweat shone. She was on fire up there on the stage. Mom always talked about her concerts, the flowing skirts that fell around her like veils, the bracelets all the way up to her elbows, the bells at her ankles. Any other woman who dared to wear what she wore would just look ridiculous, but Fani Dokou pulled it off.

  The concert ended, the floodlights flickered off. Most people pushed as fast as they could toward the exit.

  —Should I walk you home?

  Evelina hesitated.

  —My friend was going to walk me, but his house is in the opposite direction. Wait a minute, I’ll let him know.

  We walked without talking, half an arm’s length apart.

  —Are you really not going to take your exams? she asked.

  —Can we really not use that word today? It’s Saturday, and I hear it enough during the week.

  —Okay, category change. Let’s turn to affairs of the heart, Evelina said, doing her best impression of a talk show hostess. Do you think they’re a couple?

  —Who?

  —Souk and Dokou. I wish I’d gotten a shot of them with my phone. I could’ve put it up on Facebook.

  —They were at university together, ages ago.

  —You know everything, don’t you? she commented.

  —Yes.

  —Modest as always.

  —Just acknowledging the facts.

  She laughed. When Evelina laughs, her whole face changes. She turns into a normal person. At school she’s always got a smile plastered on her face, like a good, obedient student, pretending to be social. You never see her alone during break, the others always cluster around her. In class she rarely asks ques
tions, she’s too full of certainties. She hates philosophy but still quotes philosophers left and right in her essays. That’s how people are who believe in the absolute: they need a guru to show them the way.

  But now, walking up Iktinou Street, Evelina had left her shield and spear behind. She reminded me of how she was in grade school, a little girl in sweat pants and braces. She used to steal candy bars from my bag, and she once ruined my shirt from pulling it too much during a game of tag. She was always trying to engineer trades. She would grab my Scooby Doo erasers and give me chewed-up straws in return.

  We were almost at Agia Sophia. Her shoulder brushed my sleeve, her hair tickled my nose. She smelled like a garden.

  —Want to go in? I suggested.

  —Are we allowed?

  —This late at night, everything’s allowed.

  I hopped over the low wall around the churchyard and held out my hand.

  —I bet what we’re doing is against the law, she said gleefully.

  I didn’t tell her I jump this wall every day, to look at the sky from inside the churchyard. From in there the stars are dizzying. The way they leap out at you all at once, you can almost hear it, like a wave crashing. If you close your eyes, you can even pretend that the coastline of Halkidiki has beamed itself into the city center. Of course you’re brought back to reality by the honking of cars and the stink of exhaust. But even car exhaust smells different, better, around Agia Sophia. If you’ve grown up with that smell in your lungs, the countryside throws you for a loop. Grandma might be right when she says Agia Sophia is the heart of the city. If you drew a circle around the city with a compass, this is definitely where you’d plant the foot.

  Evelina spread her bag out on the grass and sat down.

  —I wouldn’t recommend that, I warned. Stray dogs shit there.

  —How much of a jerk are you?

  —Why? Because I’m trying to keep your pants clean?

  —Now the thing I’m going to remember about being here is dog shit. What are you doing?

  —Bringing you to someplace better.

  I put my jacket on a fragment of marble, the one with the rosettes and the piece of gum stuck to the bottom.

  —Is this part of a column? An ancient one?

  —Probably. Move over so I can sit, too.

  Spotlights flooded the place.

  —It’s like moonlight, Evelina said. All that’s missing is Byron and the moon-drenched maid.

  She leaned her head on my shoulder and launched into the folk song Dokou had started the concert with. She doesn’t have a great voice, and she knows it. Which means she usually doesn’t sing. But she’s got soul. She’s got a fire inside, you can tell. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned up the volume. She was living it. Her forehead glistened. What I was smelling wasn’t her perfume, it was her skin. It made me dizzy.

  I bent down and kissed her. Don’t ask why, I don’t know. She turned toward me and stuck in her tongue. Hot saliva and a sweet taste of Evelina and bubble gum.

  Somewhere dogs were barking.

  —Turns out you’re brand-name, she said.

  I didn’t have a ready response, so I just shut up.

  I had no choice in the matter. One French kiss and she had me on standby.

  Grandpa Dinopoulos, born in 1922, was twenty-six years old during Gris’s trial and is eighty-nine now. He lives in a penthouse apartment on Ermou. From his veranda he can see Agia Sophia if he twists his head. The apartment was bought with his wife’s inheritance. She was younger than him and everyone assumed she would outlive him, but she set off before him along the eternal road, as Grandma Evthalia says.

  Statistics suggest that most widowers wither away, but Grandpa Dinopoulos, a widower for the past twenty years, is living proof to the contrary. He wakes up at six every morning, drinks a Greek coffee with lots of sugar, dunks his koulouri in the froth, and sets out on his walk through the apartment. His doctor has forbidden him to walk outside, since he’s unsteady on his feet and sometimes has dizzy spells.

  He wears a vest and pocket watch over his pajamas. He does the rounds of the entire apartment three times. Kitchen, living room, dining room, office, bedroom. When he’s done, he goes out onto the balcony to get some sun and feel the breeze on his face.

  Now that his wife is dead, Elena, from Georgia, takes care of him. Her legs support the old man and the apartment, too. She’s his nurse, his cleaning lady, his cook. All his relatives worship the ground she walks on.

  Grandpa Dinopoulos doesn’t eat much. He spends his mornings reading in his office and pores over the newspaper with a magnifying glass every evening, seated in his favorite armchair. He has opinions about everything and likes to share them with others, though these days he rarely has the opportunity. He’s a walking library and a living museum. He knows everything we read about in books, only he knows it first hand. He has the equanimity of a person who’s lived through a world war, a civil war, and plenty of political changeovers. Nothing phases him. He believes people can withstand pretty much anything.

  He hasn’t practiced law in years, but continues to advise his son, who inherited his law practice, along with a Rolodex full of clients. In the beginning his son wasn’t bothered by the father’s interventions, he was glad for the help. But Jesus Christ, he was nearing retirement age himself. It didn’t look good for him to still be accepting advice from his father.

  Evelina and her grandfather aren’t on the best of terms. No matter how much her mother sang her praises, it took the old man ten years to reconcile himself to the fact that his law practice would eventually fall into a woman’s hands. Only last year did Grandpa Dinopoulos finally write a card to his granddaughter in a trembling hand congratulating her on coming first in her class, and expressing his wishes that she continue to thrive and prosper and accomplish good works—even if he personally doubted how much a woman could achieve.

  Evelina explained all that to me, more or less, when I asked if she would take me to see her grandfather. At first she didn’t want to, he talked too much and it bored her. Besides, there was the principle of the thing, since she thought it irresponsible of Soukiouroglou to assign me a research project so close to the date of the exams that would determine our future.

  —What’s his deal, she said, wasting your time on something so pointless?

  Evelina is as stubborn as Mom. She thinks her opinion is superior, tries to push her ideas on others, doesn’t listen to anyone. It took me seven text messages and half an hour of close tracking on Facebook to bring her around, and she almost drove me crazy with her LOLs and OMGs in the meantime.

  Evelina is like a lion. The lion is king of the desert, and can pretty much do whatever it wants. That’s Evelina. She absolutely never backs down until she gets her way. If you try to stop her she’ll tear you to shreds. I can say under oath: if there’s ever a nuclear disaster and only one human being survives, it’ll be her. Handling her takes skill and subtlety, not brute force. We’re talking hours of conversation and negotiation.

  In the end, though, she did arrange a meeting, and even came with me. Elena opened the door. We’d come during the old man’s afternoon walk, and we watched as he dragged his feet through the rooms, braking at every turn, then gathering speed and racing down the hall.

  —Advanced Parkinson’s, Evelina whispered in my ear. It takes a while for the engine to warm up. But when he gets going, there’s no catching him. If he stops, he’ll fall, so he always touches the walls to steady himself, even though it embarrasses him.

  The old man was approaching the living room. Elena ran over, wedged her body under his, and eased him into his armchair.

  —What a wreck of a human I’ve become, the old man commented.

  He had on striped pajamas, mustard and red, like the ones people wear in movies. His big bald head had a strip of hair around the edge, and the veins on his hands bulged. But what I noticed most were his eyes. A person’s eyes don’t age. Mom learned that from one of her documentarie
s, that the eyes are the only part of the human body that doesn’t age. I checked with Grandma’s, too.

  —Well? he said, obviously thrilled at suddenly having an audience.

  —Grandpa, this is my friend from school, Minas Georgiou. He’s writing a research paper about Manolis Gris. He wants to ask you some questions.

  —I see, said her grandfather.

  Evelina kicked my shin.

  —Say something, she hissed.

  —Mr. Dinopoulos, I’d be interested in interviewing you about the events of the trial. I would want to record our conversation, to make sure I get everything right. Of course you can check the final text. It’s a student paper about the Gris trial. I’ll be presenting it at our school at the end of the quarter. And if you’d like to attend, you would be the guest of honor.

  As I spoke, the old man pulled a magnifying glass out of his vest pocket and started examining me through it.

  —You remind me of someone, was his response.

  Now it was my turn to kick Evelina.

  —Grandpa, she coaxed.

  —I’d be very interested in recording your opinion of the events, I plowed on. You’re the only person involved in the case who never made a public statement.

  —What’s done is done. Water under the bridge, last year’s sour grapes, the old man said, seeming bored.

  —That’s not true, as you know better than anyone, I tried to challenge him. What matters is that justice be served.