Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  No matter what she brought forth out of the pits of her mind, it was evidence of her retrospective conviction, now that the crime was a done thing.

  Wordless images from her wedding in the church of St. Zoni, five of her relatives, five of his colleagues, her father’s outraged gaze, her mother’s disappointment, Xenia in tune with the others’ overcast mood on such a sunny day as this, the benumbed friends’ awkward attempts to support the couple with funny faces and gestures of courage and the best woman, Rhoda, enthusiastic, moved and self-critical, against everyone’s expectations, she wouldn’t have the guts to get knocked up and tie the knot with a carpenter.

  There was no wedding feast, they’d eat each other alive, how to raise a toast, what to wish, how to pretend.

  On the first night of the wedding, the kitchenette at his rented bachelor’s flat was thick with cigarette smoke, the best woman had already enlisted the pregnant bride to the smokers’ club and the bridegroom was a full-timer as well, half a pack since he was thirteen, a whole one since fifteen when, in the evenings, after school, at the shop of an acquaintance of his mother, he started getting the knack of cross-beamed oak floor paneling, a pack and a half since seventeen when he’d come to Athens and encountered Swedish wood doorframes and cypress French windows, two since the day his sweetheart announced the state of things to the Peloponnese homeland and her old man had told her she could go hang herself.

  It was almost dawn when they peeled off the formal clothes that reeked of cigarettes and, leaving them on the floor, trampled them on their way to the bed, to nestle in Siberia and fuck themselves blind upon the snow.

  They drew added inspiration, too, from the gray fur cap, the shapka , a memento from Russia, hanging on the back of the bedroom door.

  The day after that they started making some plans, why delay, the new bridegroom was exempt from military service on account of being an orphan. Fotis’s savings, sparse as they were, were the kickoff fund for a small shop, he would also take out a small loan, he’d start a business of his own, to be sure, she would help too, she would study and she would bear a child on top of everything.

  They consulted as many clueless friends as they could find, were showered by brilliant ideas, open a cheese pie shop, an underwear shop, a flower shop, they trekked around half the city, answered ads and got involved with crooks, finally they came across the Dream Corner, a semi-underground hole downtown, going at a very accessible price with all the stock, toys and knickknacks. He wasn’t into it, she, with her rising belly, was in earnest, anything that’s going, she cut him short, this is no time for dillydallying.

  This is just the first step, when we’re able to we’ll set up your shop, she promised, we’re not getting rid of your hammer, your chisel or your jigsaw, she sweet-talked. She had their best woman backing her up, too, an unremitting third presence in their midst, who was looking forward to tasting the adventure of a small family business.

  Fotis Kolevas vacillated from the carpentry shop to the gift shop, the opening was at the beginning of September, the construction workers all came and bought picture frames decorated with little hearts, the neighbors weren’t to be seen, evidently they didn’t need any picture frames.

  The dud decision was a blow to the marriage, they celebrated their first fight, in financial terms they were now short on joy and rich in troubles.

  November, as soon as winter muffled the city with rotting

  clouds and threw up its muck on the streets, the baby was born, more fragrant than myrrh, more angelic than all the cherubs of heaven and so smiley that it seemed unnatural, coming from such a long-faced couple.

  And his hair was gold. The renowned golden mane of Mrs. Stavroula had skipped a generation, that of her daughters, and reappeared as her bequest to the grandchild.

  Viv breast-fed her son for three months and during those hours, with the baby’s little face so close to hers, she was contriving ways and means to scrape some money together.

  The little shop came into its own with ballerinas from porcelain, clay and papier-mache, was rechristened to Tutu, from the ballet dancers’ short skirts, both ideas of Rhoda the theatergoer, mothers had started enrolling their girls in dance schools en mass so they could turn out to be the next Margot Fonteyn or Maya Plisetskaya. In the afternoons, Viv went from school to school hawking her stock and the mothers, grandmothers, aunts and godmothers found out about the shop and bought Carmen and Degas’s little ballerina for the birthdays and name days of the young girls. Her till was greatly remunerated, choked with bills and a grand moment it was when she sent her father the check with the four digits.

  Fotis was generally embarrassed, he felt uncomfortable in the exclusively female universe, he did not do the rounds to attract a new clientele, did not manage to attractively set out the shelves and store windows, did not know how to pick up the starched tutus and delicate limbs without pulling them apart, did not, unlike Viv, who had been tutored by Rhoda, have handy a couple of good lines about the London Royal Ballet and the Bolshoi. So he took on the transport, the packaging, the bank and the liquor store and he started to drink. To drink and to remind Viv of a drunk in Alonaki who started out by beating his mother-in-law, went on to the wife and in the end, left his ten-year-old boy a cripple. At home, so her husband

  would sleep and leave her be, she did away with the baby’s rattle, then she took down the musical Tweety that was attached to the baby’s crib and later took the horn off the kid’s tricycle so that it wouldn’t go off in the middle of the living room.

  Nobody heard her voice, either, as a child, she never bothered anyone, that she remembered fully well.

  “Be quiet” became an order to the little boy, the two words he heard most often from his mom. His dad, too, on the grounds that she needed to find her peace and quiet so she could take up studying again, though she never did open her textbooks and hadn’t been to the university for many terms.

  The three fellow students of the former group of five put in one appearance, at the christening. And his name before God was neither Spyros nor Sotiris, neither of the grandfathers' names, but Linus on account of the boy’s day of birth, November 5, feast day of Episteme, Galaktion and Linus. Rhoda was the godmother, to her pride and joy. Linus was also one of Apollo’s singers, and the artistic name would usher the couple whom she’d married into The Sound of Music.

  The construction workers were more effective in their support even though their comrade had withdrawn from the common struggles, or, to be precise, had been withdrawn by his wife who was slowly turning his head and curbing his red flights of political fancy. Come back down to earth, will you? she would often say, here’s the landing strip, our home, your friends are daydreamers from outer space. Those cloud-tread- ers, according to Viv, in order to give Fotis a breather, sometimes booked him as helper for fitting door and window frames on constructions away from Athens, so he could get some fresh air. Whenever he came along, they got into trouble. They came to the house once every three months to see the boy and make their presence felt but, with such different lives now, the visits kept going from bad to worse. They would eat the peanuts, drink the whiskey, talk about workers’ accidents and

  insurance and then get started on the jokes, one after the other in rapid succession, a bunch of guys maniacally picking on the Pope and Brezhnev and Tito because they couldn’t find anything else to keep them close.

  Viv would invariably run to the toilet to throw up, the apartment was tiny, the wall thin, they could all hear her and they no longer asked if she was expecting a second child, already she’d made it plain, in the very words, I’m not making the same mistake twice.

  The first one, at all events, like every child, had turned things upside down. Its needs, its expenses, its future, were all gaining momentum together and required a quick mind so that the tulle kept shifting from the shelves. The young mother moved accordingly.

  In two years they’d paid off the store loan, in three they’d bought a little car,
in four they’d moved to a new place, still a rental but in a four-bedroom, they’d found out the ins and outs of loans, porcelain couples in tango poses were entering the Tutu, black and white swans from Swan hake , framed images of Nureyev, miniature ballerinas on tiptoe, pyrographic engravings of Zorbas dancing, attracting a stream of clients, the ladies were asking for one item, Viv convinced them to get two and three, to order for the special occasions, leave a deposit and your address and Fotis will deliver, Fotis, go deliver.

  - I’ll go Viv, I’m going anyway, only don’t order me, you remind me of the colonels.

  Really? Is that what she reminded him of? She would make no answer but she inwardly considered military discipline a compensatory award for the disgrace of poverty, everyone was awarded where she came from, in her family, in thousands of homes everywhere, one pair of shoes every three years, one pair of trousers every five, a jacket every ten, this year one of the daughters will have a skirt made, next year the other one, Mother will adjust the old one, Mother at the war of the pot

  with insufficient ammunition, the daily bread never enough, the plates never full.

  It was unfair of her husband to make her feel bad for steering Tutu successfully.

  - We’re doing swell because you don’t get weak-kneed at the prospect of installment payments, she flattered Fotis one night, as she counted off bills, I wouldn’t have made it on my own.

  He answered her, after some consideration, I don’t want gratitude from you, just like I don’t want pity.

  He was one hundred percent sure that he had bowed to making her life choices his own, Viv was convinced that she had made concessions in order to fall in step with her husband’s potential for the daily struggles and so they felt inwardly at peace, there were moments when they admired themselves for their adaptability and self-sacrifice in the name of a harmonious coexistence, they never ever went at each other in front of the boy.

  The Peloponnese wasn’t apprised of the new state of affairs. In fact, her old man had to bow before his son-in-law for begetting a son where he hadn’t been able to, and afterwards, they sort of found some common ground in anti-Americanism.

  Sotiropoulos disdained the sound of the word “America” because when he’d come back from the army he hadn’t found any of his age group in Alonaki and surrounds, four had left as migrants to Chicago and Detroit and, immediately, another two or three who’d just left the army with him also made their papers. The American melting pot was sucking in the best men to labor and sweat for the sake of strangers’ fortunes, reason enough for the father-in-law’s curses and teeth-gnashing.

  - Your old man’s all right, after all, Fotis had told her, if only I had mine around, as well, was the part he hadn’t voiced.

  Not that it would have made any difference if he had.

  Recently, whenever lie referred to his father, in moments when he needed to say something about him and say it out loud, so that he could really feel it, relish it, that the dead man used to speak in a quiet singsong, his every word a spoonful of holy communion and a hymn wrapped in one, or that he was keeping him at the top of everyone who crowded his thoughts, always in his white shirt, like a small mountain chapel, Viv no longer shared in his longing, her indifference burnt him like hot oil from the frying pan, her silence scorched him.

  Twice he had suggested going to Corfu for a few days, so he could take the kid for a walk on the cobblestone streets of the old town and shout him the local treats. Next year, was her response to both the first and the second request.

  Now, their interchanges were short and tight, in between the silences which dominated, as Fotis, after being dumbfounded, had now made a habit of lulling himself in the jelly of protracted silence.

  At least without in-laws in Athens and with her parents all mellowed out, grandparents, now, sending eggs and chooks for the boy’s soup and wine for their son-in-law, they were saved the additional tension which usually goes with the presence of an extended family, they could rest at ease, mutely, each in their private world.

  They lived in the house like snails and made a snail of their boy, as well, who under the threats of, don’t let me hear you whimper, not a sound out of you, and, I’ve told you once to be quiet, withdrew to solitary games, blocks, puzzles and broken figurines, leftovers from the shop.

  Meanwhile, the orgasms in Siberia also grew few and far between, Viv considered that normally she should be able to remember by heart her husband’s heels, his toenails, the direction of the hairs on the inner thigh, but, in truth, if he wasn’t right in front of her in the flesh and naked, she wouldn’t have been able to recognize his thighs or his arms.

  She sometimes searched on his head, the thick, raven black, shiny locks of renown that had imprinted themselves on her mind and saw that they were thinning at top speed, ever less lustrous, ever less inviting to touch and to gaze upon.

  - Stop thinking all the time, you only do it as a put-down to me, he would surprise her out of the blue, as she’d take up ironing in the small kitchen where there wasn’t space for him or clean up with a vengeance, in that same space. When she cleared the table, she wiped the leftovers from the dishes so meticulously that they looked practically washed. She’d run them under the tap once so they wouldn’t smell, place them inside the rinsed salad bowl, rinse the cutlery and place it like an upright bouquet in the likewise rinsed jar where she’d stirred the oil and vinegar, next came the water and wine glasses, one inside the other and all together in the thoroughly prepped baking tray, to wait for her in the sink till next morning.

  Fotis was unfailingly already in front of the TV with a drink in hand, absorbed in a movie which, chances were, did not actually interest him. She never did interrupt, he would say, I’m in the middle of watching something, she was positive that if she asked what, he wouldn’t be able to make an answer.

  He’d become the kind of viewer who lived for hours across from every manner of show without absorbing a single thing, just as if he hadn’t been informed of the invention of the tube or of its existence in their home. Once he’d turned towards her suddenly to say, let me like you, please, let me like you.

  While Rhoda, Dora, Eleftheria and Martha had virtually graduated and were setting sail for their traineeship before embarking on their specializations, cardiology, microbiology, microbiology and neurology, respectively, Viv, with the takings from the shop as her only asset, was rapidly orbiting her old haunt, depression, and her old skill, undermining life, except now she had a kid. Two enormous eyes watching her all day

  asking for help and explanations, why is Dad sad, why does he cuss and throw up on his clothes?

  Rhoda was overseeing, analyzing and concluding that the new Fotis who had emerged revealed the root of evil, the junta was to blame for everything, the right wing in power and the cruelty of society were the reasons he’d become his wife’s helper, the home’s fifth wheel.

  Once, the interested party heard this though he wasn’t meant to, and although drunk he didn’t strike out at them, he’d never raised his hand, he only struck them with a withering gaze and then finished them off with the well aimed saying, a bitch-whore needs her snitch.

  That same night, blind drunk by then, he grabbed Viv while he was stumbling about, and yelled, we’ve carved our life out of worm-eaten wood. He screwed her by force, calling her names, while she stroked his back to calm him down and get him to quit his yelling, so the boy wouldn’t hear.

  In the morning, five-year-old Linus refused his milk and bread, looked his mother in the eye insistently, picked up his small kindergarten pack and left for the school bus, unwashed and disheveled, banging the door shut.

  Fotis was snoring. From that day on, her marriage sounded to Viv’s ears like a death rattle. He didn’t fight the drink, she made no effort to reclaim him, they exhausted in a flash all the good things of a common life and hurtled into the senseless recycling of time, the mounting towards finality. With one stop. The purchase of the cocker spaniel, which morning and ni
ght took the father and son out for big walks and then brought them back with their ears drooping like dumb pups.

  The woman had fully taken on herself the shop’s maintenance and various responsibilities. It could be no other way since the one bottle became two, the two became three, with Rhoda coming around in the middle of the night for a cardiogram, or to babysit while Viv ran to the hospital to collect her

  husband whom, she was notified, they’d picked up off the pavement, after he’d consumed more wine and/or whiskey than he could possibly handle.

  Viv did not wonder how things had come to this, she was perfectly aware of all the intervening stages. And if, even after ten years with him, she couldn’t seriously answer what positive feature the man had possessed, really, for her to be with him, she knew what negative thing he did not possess: pretense. Always heartwarmingly true, proud of the small, and too small himself, in the end, for anything more than that.

  Fotis died and left her mourning, guilty, lonely and indebted for an exorbitant amount in unpaid installments and taxes, which he had liquefied.

  Her sack was heavy. But so was Linus’s, it was no negligible weight to be orphaned at eight.

  The violent gust tore off thatched roofs, fences and sheds, sent flying hats, umbrellas, plastic bags, seaweed, empty Styrofoam cups and children’s buoys, puffed up the paper tablecloths around the oil-and-vinegar stands, blew on the dry dunes and blinded the bathers, the waiters and the clients at the restaurant who left off their calamari and tomato salads because they were doused with sand.

  Viv Koleva and Harry Margaritis had just had a dip, their first swim together in Marathon, and had been sitting at the tavern for a small bite, some wine and the first attempt at a serious discussion of the possibility of living together.

  Harry had come into her life about three years after Fotis’s death, at a period when the shop was raking it in big from nuptial gifts. The twelve-year-olds of recent years who had, with their mothers’ prompting, dreamt of careers as prima ballerinas, at twenty-two and twenty-five were working in beauty