Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  As a kid, he spent a lot of hours at the ballerina shop, his

  mother had nowhere to leave him after school. He did his lessons behind a curtain and never moved an inch, he then went on to Mickey Mouse, picked through Lucky Luke , drew fortresses with Chinamen, handled some of godmother’s books brought by the half dozen to refine and educate the uncouth Sourpuss, novels of the sort that are read or, equally, left halfread for months and years.

  He didn’t show himself, he was embarrassed to be seen planted in the midst of all the pink dollies and at Christmas, when he had to help out because of the great crowd of clients, he kept the till, being good at arithmetic, he didn’t fancy being seen by the girls winding and packing the tulle-wrapped trinkets.

  Of course, he did hear their wheedling and cajoling, he knew about the massive orders to the importer, he knew well the hits among the stock, the white Odette and the black Odille, the swans of the pas de quatre, Prince Siegfried, the Sleeping Beauty, Clara with her gaudy costume, the Sylphs, in the blue tutus, the netting on their hair-buns which Viv loaded with extra beads, sequins and butterflies to bring the prices up and bolster her gains.

  He did not like ballet, did not like training ballerinas, did not like any kind of dancing, it was out of the question going to any of the dance school shows, where his mother showed up unfailingly to applaud with fake enthusiasm, give fake congratulations and pass her business card around.

  He’d pleaded with her countless times to change the sign Tutu , just make it Dance , pure and simple, or take it right off, everyone can see what you’re selling, at school the teasing was merciless, greetings to your mother’s tutu, and as for her, it was always, yes, later, next week for sure.

  While growing up, he remained unswerving in his disdain for dollies, pirouettes, curtsies and dance figures, including those of folk dancing and rock, that’s what he would say to

  Xenia, a working student who had opted for sharing an apartment with two fellow students and later, as a graduate, for living with graduate boyfriends. Whenever the young aunt came visiting, she would bring him two or three music tapes she had made herself, being equally a fan of the traditional countryside clarinet and the drummers pummeling their instruments as if possessed.

  Her visits were few and far between but for the while she was there, two hours or a whole evening, her time was devoted to the morose nephew, in mad earnest to let into her sister’s house a draft of jollity, to draw the boy’s thinking along a different route, full as she was of ideas for fun and progress, during exams you must combine study with the right music and the appropriate food, ancient Greek with Vangelis Papathanassiou and fish soup, mathematics with light pop and pasta, history with ballads and lots of french fries.

  One historic Halloween, his aunt and his godmother visited in tandem and turned him into the disputed trophy, Rhoda was jealous of Xenia’s attentions and started deriding her, kid, you talk too much and your advice is long like green beans, it’s like you take the seeds out of the words one by one to fill up the tub of your lecturing, only to get the young girl’s prompt answer, both green beans and yourself are out of season.

  When Xenia got married to her first one, her savior’s zeal visibly dropped, her visits grew rare, she mostly turned up on the phone and that, in a way, was a good thing. For Linus, to be alone in the house with a woman, his mother, was bleak, with two it was sheer disaster, with three, pure hell.

  Nor did he have any friends. How many kids had come to their apartment? Nine, all together at his birthday, fellow students from the first grade. Linus had wanted a chocolate cake, Viv ordered vanilla, Linus had wanted lots of bags of salty chips, she forbade them having laid out the clean carpets the day before, as there’d be parents coming in and out of the liv-

  ing room to bring and come get their kids, she finally brought out coconut tarts, which she herself approved as nutritional, the kids didn’t go for them much.

  It was the first party of his life. And his father finished it off by stumbling around drunk, crowning by force one kid after the other with his fur hat and singing the revolutionary songs his own father had taught him, Black crows with sharp talons upon the workers are falling.

  He didn’t want to have another party and he didn’t go to anyone else’s. Twice he brought Tolis home, lively and mischievous, he broke a lamp and wreaked havoc, Viv said he’s out. In the fifth grade, a Yannis would come every so often, sit for a couple of hours unspeaking, reading the Lord of the Rings , he carried the tomes with him. And Socrates, three visits, came only for Buddy, took him in his arms and they rolled around the floor delighted, his own parents didn’t want a dog.

  Linus knew the whole story of his fellow student, the fat kid of the class, who wanted a golden retriever above all else, but would sing for joy over any dog at all. He’d found for free a female griffon, then a young Labrador crossed with German shepherd but his father, mother, sister and grandmother were adamant, they didn’t fancy animals. Do you want to own the cocker half and half? he suggested on his third and last visit, because Buddy’s boss didn’t invite him again, he wouldn’t mind sharing his mother by halves with some orphan, his food and his pocket money by halves with some underprivileged kid, but not his dog, or, to be exact, his dog’s love.

  With Yannis or Socrates, whenever Viv stuck her head in the room, Linus would say, we’re being quiet, and sent her away with his eyes. His mother, overly busy all the time, overly fed up, looked on all kids like a middle-aged teacher who’s been burnt out by many years’ exposure to the students’ annihilating liveliness and wishes never again to have to lay eyes on any creature under twelve, not ever.

  In high school, Linus neither invited anyone nor went over, he had steeled himself for savage loneliness.

  Viv, periodically weighed down with her own stuff or completely focused on profits and expenses, rarely commented, for the sake of appearances and with the standard formulas, why don’t you go out and play some basketball, why don’t you invite someone over. He’d seen her sitting listening to Rhoda about how adolescents, in a group, have a nuclear energy and a radioactive libido that can cause successive explosions, with the shock wave slamming grown-ups against the wall like swatted flies. Probably his godmother, in amongst her many interests, medicine, politics, tourism, men, also cultivated an active interest in the automatic dicks of boys, you touch them and they rise up, you squeeze them and they take off, you grab them up in midair and you swallow them right down.

  He loathed her. He would have liked to tell on her but she was good for getting his mother out of a tight spot with a loan, and kept her company so they could get overwhelmed together by the stress of how best to manage their affairs, the Cyprus issue and their woebegone heads, so he didn’t have the guts to parade her dirty laundry out in the open. Someday, though, he would and he was going to keep on the lookout for that day, work up to it and he would settle with her, even if it took till the Second Coming.

  In the court-martialing of his adolescence, Linus didn’t manage to clash with anyone, Viv would just not oblige him, his relatives had labeled him an orphan and were unwilling to concede any further rights and his father had indebted him with a void, palpable and solid, which nobody else could fill, another could not play his part, good or bad there’s only one dad and if the fucker goes off and dies early, the mourning then grows along with the child, alive for as long as the memory lasts, the unbearable anger and the unbearable pain.

  Around him, the kids of his age wasted time in cafeterias,

  went apeshit in concerts, exchanged millions of kisses, used up condoms by the bucketful, studied for university, fought about offsides and penalties, went through the city on protest marches about this and that.

  Himself, at a distance from it all, faithful to his indictment of living, obsessed with the shovels. Untouched by small joys and positive events, excluding himself from the good and the beautiful, dutifully imprisoned in things unpleasant, seeking them out. Being sent a fabulous watch from
Canada and never wearing it once, instead taking it apart to the point of no return. Getting two As in Physical Chemistry and in the next exam knowing the answers but turning in a blank paper. Having the mini-market owner’s daughter giving him the eye and him turning sour and never stepping foot in the store again. Swimming in crystal clear waters and fearing that the crystal would shatter and cut him to shreds. Climbing a staircase and freezing halfway up for an hour, having forgotten the mechanism that makes the feet work, not knowing anymore how the knee bends, the sole lifts and touches down on the next step, three inches higher. Lying in bed and, just as he’s about to turn his bedside lamp off, getting suddenly short of breath, forgetting the mechanics of breathing, how you suck in the air and expel it, his mind short-circuiting and him asphyxiating for Lord knows how many minutes. Having his grandmother bless him over and over, may the Virgin Mother be by your side, and it not working.

  Linus was certain that from time to time, Viv was stewing in the same dark juice, turning her back on opportunities, organizing defeats, practicing her talent for frustration and long-term despondency. Mother and son filled with energy for misery.

  If only he had one . . . two . . . three siblings to help carry the heavy nothingness and the abundant loneliness, more kids should mean smaller portions of orphanhood for each. If only

  he had three . . . two . . . one brother or sister as his ally in fear when facing the outraged or worn-out or absentminded Viv, in the courage needed to stop looking back all the time, in the appetite required for the coming day, so that a new day might arrive without him sitting with arms folded, waiting for the sky to crash down on his head.

  / / /

  Damn it, another sunny day, again the sunlight drenching everything, summer with no reprieve.

  And the city full of girls called Amy, Lena, Aliki, Violet, Marina, Chryssa, Sylvia, what might be the names of two girls who get out in the heat wave, stroll this way and that, are still out in the streets at nighttime and at a late hour are crossing small parks by themselves, one in the suburb of Lykovrisi, the other on Strefi Hill, girls who have thin arms that can’t throw a punch, thin legs that can’t land a kick, whose hearts must skip a beat or two as they lose their bearings in the pitch-black alleys, few are unmindful of danger, few are unafraid of the dark.

  - Get me some kitchen gloves, thick scrubbing wire for the pots and, what am I telling you for, it’s all on paper on the table, it’s a bunch of things, I haven’t got the time myself, I have a delivery coming in today. Don’t you forget again, it’s not like you’re studying or anything, you didn’t even show up at the exams, I know all about it.

  Viv had had enough of getting angry and pressuring Linus about his courses at the school, she had queried him a couple of times specifically, he’d made vague answers or none at all, you do as you bloody well please, she’d finally say to him, though her expression indicated she was giving him a bit of time to rethink his choices, it was just that she just couldn’t modify her style and speak gently, her tongue had a will of its

  own. As she handed him the note and the money, she stood watching him button his shirt and thread the laces in his shoes, he was wearing the red-and-white ones.

  -1 threw away the other ones, he said straightaway without being asked.

  -Why?

  - Fungal infection.

  He let her see the reddening in the heels and in between the toes.

  - Fungus, already?

  -1 sweat.

  - Put some socks on.

  When his mother lifted her shoulders to indicate his eccentricity was beyond her, he stood in front of her and said, slap me.

  She picked up her bag in a flash, as if she hadn’t heard, as if she didn’t know what to do or was scared, and she fled.

  Linus took to the streets a while later after soaping the red marker off his feet and, strangely enough, cleaning the bathroom, making his bed and washing the morning coffee cups.

  Would he go to the supermarket to get the orders? He had the money and the list in his pocket, above him the sun zapping everything and around him the heat refugees, with bags and hats, guarding their eyes behind dark shades, looking dazedly for cool water in the kiosks or for some shade under the awnings of the shops, at 17 the silverware, at 29 the glassware, at 43 the frozen goods.

  The girls, one by one in the to and fro of work, in twos looking for a cafeteria to sit down in and dissect their love interests, in groups of four and five at the bus stops with the wrapped straw mats under their arm and the large bags in which could be seen the multicolored beach towels, made for nakedness and for lying on the beach.

  Should he also go to one of the city beaches: Varkiza, Vouliagmeni or Sounion? He went round and round the same

  streets of his neighbourhood till it was afternoon, went into ten coffee shops to use the toilet and get a drink of water, bought an ice cream, ate half of it, if that, at around seven, worn-out, he made a stop at a children’s playground.

  He shared a bench with a grandpa looking after two grandchildren, the kids were few, almost all of them fat, the children had started putting on a lot of weight, they slammed themselves on the seesaws which couldn’t lift under their weight, their bottoms barely fit in the swings, half of them broken.

  He went behind a bush and retched yellow-green bile, went back home without the shopping, locked himself in his room for two days, drank water out of a vase, Grandmother had sent him cheese and roses from the village and Viv had put a couple in his room, like big pink cabbages.

  His mother didn’t notice a thing, she thought her son must have been out and about while she was at the shop.

  - Where were you and how come you’re so beat-up, did you get into a fight and is that why you can’t be reasoned with, you forgot the shopping again, you ate out again, so all my efforts to feed you properly are in vain, you could at least have put the okra back in the fridge.

  For two evenings and three afternoons her phrases could be heard from the kitchen or outside his door, one per hour, or even a couple in succession, although she didn’t insist, she’d toss them out and then go about her business and would leave again or turn on the TV, so there’s some semblance of life in this house, she would say to herself out loud, the Greek and the Turkish prime ministers in Madrid, the pharmacists’ strike, concerts and ads, until everything and everyone was giving her a headache, she turned down the volume, I’m going to read, she would loudly declare, she would go to her room again to fondle her books, the Memoirs of the Eunuch of Abdul Hamid , with the book marker on page twenty-seven since last year, Umberto Eco on the mass media, page thirty-two since the

  year before last, some title by Ernesto Sabato on page sixty, Chapter IX, since time immemorial.

  Linus watched them creep from her bedside dresser to the kitchen table, to the small table in the hall, to the shop, to the car, always the same titles plus the new charters of wisdom which Rhoda dumped on her girlfriend in vain, the covers divided into two categories, on one side, high speculation, genocides and pogroms, on the other, female characters, alone, sometimes in a deserted square, sometimes on a dock, always in a wilderness of some sort. His mothers mottos, don’t lose my page number, and, let me read my book in peace.

  On the second night of his self-incarceration, the phone rang, after a while she called out, come over here, Rhoda wants you, he neither came over nor answered, but he could hear her for some time chatting away to her girlfriend about him, I’m at a loss with Linus, about her finances and her blunder with the tax declaration, next about the new car tires, then about the Glory of Byzantium at the Metropolitan Museum and the Highbrow’s triumphant visit to New York, and then about men, and he could make out some of what she said, there isn’t a single one worth giving the rest of my life to, telling him with all my heart, even asking, come on, you, get me old.

  His mom was a natural, she could both deliver a lecture and sum it up, always hit the final word on the head, make the strongest impression.

 
Detestable and trite women, the vile Highbrow and the vile Sourpuss, misery and company, he sealed his ears not to hear them infest the nooks and crannies of his mind, but he couldn’t save himself from the thousands of dry pine needles that appeared out of nowhere and started burning in front of his eyes so that all of him sizzled and smoked, a burning bush.

  He was thirty and in pain, in pain.

  He stayed in his bed for about two hours with the light off and the evening noisiness of the neighborhood invading the

  open window, TVs set outside, musical shows and hits and applause, small talk across balconies, irrepressible snickering on the terraces, children’s screams on the pavements.

  Past eleven he got up, dressed, put on shoes and on his way out he called to Viv sitting still at the balcony door airing herself with the TV program, don’t you pine, mother dear, I’ll do you the favor, I will get you old, even before your time.

  I’d say she’s getting it out of her system. Because when she was little, we never got a squeak out of her. As if she wasn’t in the house. As if she didn’t live with us. I look for her with my mind in those times long ago and I can’t find her. I almost don’t remember her.

  His grandmother’s words about his mother, one afternoon, over a month ago, after two hours of fire and brimstone, Viv’s lungs were trumpeting the paeans of wrath and her tongue was unfurling the papyrus of the maternal commandments, all aimed straight at him, isn’t it about time you cut out the adolescent atrocities, time for some sense to start gelling, to get some training, plan ahead, get on your feet as a man?

  Nowadays, he saw right through his mother’s yelling, her anger about her hollow power, her worry in case her words meant nothing to him, sometimes uncertainty, too, in case she’d chosen the wrong way to sound the alert, to open his eyes and, simultaneously, prove her affection. From time to time, she seemed to realize she was overdoing it, carried away by her love of criticism and her sharpness of vision when it came to others’ defects. Thus, she would make her feelings plainly known at the end, lighting a cigarette, taking two or three puffs and slowly spelling it out, I forbid you to doubt that I worship you.