She took the car keys, didn’t know where to go, she drove around at random, found herself in the vicinity of the airport and fell on a hundred soldiers in camouflage gear, about to fly out to Cyprus. In groups, they were smoking, unwrapping sandwiches, softly singing, cracking jokes. Why couldn’t her son be among them, the army edifies and smoothes out the rough edges.
She turned about and encountered another group, a dozen girls around twelve, lithe and porcelainlike, a team of synchronized swimmers, traveling to some competition. Why not have a daughter instead of a son, and she wouldn’t even have to be like one of these heavenly creatures, she could be fat and awkward, girls are less trouble for a mother.
She went back home posthaste, the living room seemed arctic to her, she was shivering, she sank into the immortal couch, the stench assailed her from the perfect dinner that had been rotting on the table since the day before yesterday, in the immortal platter.
At midnight, she called Rhoda, with the surgery and the house calls and the rest of her activities, the Highbrow never went to bed before two. What could she say to her? The vileness and terrors that filled her mind? How do you utter such things? She whined about having had a fight and about her godson having given no signs of life for three days now. You didn’t happen to talk? But we don’t call each other up anymore, Rhoda started, cool to the point of insensitive, as every woman would be who does not have and does not wish to have children, she suggested not keeping him anymore, a grown-up man, so close to her skirts, to give him space and time to roam and act the barn rooster, come to terms with himself, and, at all events, to run out of the money he’d taken.
Good thinking, Viv put the phone down and went straight into a dead sleep, that was the only way to cut short the mind’s milling about. At dawn, she had a one-minute dream which was inundated by the smell of rock melon, she got up saying out loud, as if delivering a speech to an audience, that to veer off course so unexpectedly, so dismally, was out of the question for the grandson of a martyred communist and son of a guileless and honest craftsman.
She cleaned up the sour food, put the house in order, wrote a note about where the Mitsubishi was parked, and left it with the keys on the hall table, just let Linus come back and he could have them and go wherever he liked with her blessings.
A good thing she took a taxi or she would have missed that fascinating cabdriver who cheered her up with his drama, in his first youth he boarded a tanker for a year, came off and got onto a freighter truck for two years, came off and burrowed into the taxi and ever since, one and a half million kilometers in thirty-four years, his whole life was taking place within two square meters.
The day was sparkling, the bouquet of the miniature red
roses she bought off the Indian vendor looked just perfect in the ballerina vase, the music boxes added the Tchaikovsky, she put up the lids of all twelve, there was her symphonic orchestra, the concert began and the shop took off.
Around eleven, the fugitive called, are you all right? he asked her, where did you disappear off to? she asked in turn, he said “bye” and hung up, at the very least she’d heard his voice, fine.
Having had her spirits restored, she sold a client who came in looking for something fancy as a courting gift to a belly-dancer, a gaudy bra with silver bells on it, left over from old stock, gave him a discount as well. Next was a sixty-five-year-old Englishwoman with a walking stick, barely managing her rounds of the shops in search of a Queen Elizabeth doll.
She had brought three over from London, given them to neighbors, now some other acquaintances were keen, the long velvet royal blue gown, embroidered with pearls, on a dresser or a cabinet always made a winsome display.
During the midday break, Viv did some accounting, since the Queen of England was popular, she decided to look into it, even though it had nothing whatsoever to do with dancing, she might be able to get a small production line going with some cottage industry somewhere.
In the afternoon business slowed down to nothing, her mind started to stray towards the seventeen-year-old blond daughter of the minimarket owner, the newlywed, white-blond baker’s wife and the equally golden-haired Moldavian girl who made sandwiches at the corner fast-food place, she checked herself, there was no reason for her to poison her life with farfetched and paranoid scenarios, it was established fact, our guy was a veteran.
She found the phone number of a sign-maker and asked how much a sign would cost, say sixty inches by fifteen.
She closed a little early, shopped royally for the house, filled
the fridge with bacon, chocolate spreads, peanut butter, sweets and ice cream for when Linus showed up, it wouldn’t do for him to come back unexpectedly, say, tonight, and not find all manner of treats.
But it seemed that the son who railed against money, calling it unconscionable but, in practice, had no issue with pocketing a handful of bills, was keeping track this time round and making his money last. Was he sleeping in a hotel? In which city? How much was he paying for a room? Single or double bed? Who with? Was some woman putting him up? Was he secretly frequenting her home and had now taken to sleeping there? And till when?
He came back after five days which weren’t easy for Viv, who went through her ups and downs, especially when she was rifling the papers, thankfully no new incidents but no news either about the perpetrator’s arrest, that’s the police for you, instead of apprehending that unknown public menace, so she could get a reprieve from her mind’s torment, they’d apprehended an ounce of cigarette butts at the locale of the assault.
It was past eleven when he unlocked the door and came in, his scalp shorn to the skin, a piece of burlap on his shoulders, like some Somalian or Nigerian border fugitive, his clothes stinking, extremely thin, with a piece of string holding up his trousers in place of a belt. He looked finished, old, and apparently the color of the eyes does also age, their once vibrant black had degenerated to the gray of mold.
He looked at her for a while with a weary expression, left on a chair his cell phone and five of the six paper bills and dragged himself off to his room.
In a bit, the zdoop and ghup sounds were piercing the walls, more and more rapid and sharp, a regular pneumatic drill of wretchedness.
Next morning, as soon as Viv heard her son heading to the bathroom, she lay in wait and when he came out, she took hold of him firmly by the arms, immobilized him and looked him straight in the eyes, all at once pleading and challenging him to talk.
No need to form the questions, they were self-evident, why were you keening for three hours last night, why wouldn’t you open the door, where were you all these days, what did you live on, how come you spent no money, why did you shave your head, who’s giving you trouble, what have you done?
Linus evaded all the questions and, closing his eyes, whispered.
- Mother, say exactly and directly what is on your mind.
Viv was taken aback. How could she utter exactly and directly what was eating her alive? If she was wrong, which she was 99% sure she was, having been duped by coincidences to do with the infamous shoelace, the remaining 1 %, far from negligible, was shattering, Linus would never forgive her for suspecting him of something so barbaric, they weren’t in a stupid TV serial, for him to just fluff up his bowtie, burst out laughing, pinch her cheek and scold her, why, you, silly little woman, best you went to a doctor, have some sedatives prescribed.
So she didn’t speak. She went to the kitchen and spread out on the table everything she had in the fridge, eat, she called out in a booming voice, the whole apartment building must have heard.
Forget the shop and forget the business, Viv Koleva decided she wasn’t going anywhere, in order to tie up her son in the house as well, he was bound at some point to break down and confess the nature of his trouble, some rival, maybe some woman’s jealous husband, must have cornered him, some cheap twit must have insulted him for not getting it up, he might have been proselytized by some sect for the featherbrained, surely
something out of all these, which for solitary and spoiled single sons would be the end-all, but for experienced adults is not quite to keel over and die for.
So, then, at home and later, if the kid had to go anywhere, she would drive him or, if he just wanted to get some fresh air, she would join him.
When it’s all said and done, difficult children do need a helicopter mom, rushing to their side for emergency assistance and constantly hovering close by.
Then, she reconsidered the spoiled part. The truth was her hands didn’t often touch her child, not when he was young and not when he grew up and her lips didn’t kiss his hair much and her eyes didn’t enfold him tenderly and her voice didn’t come out in stories and gentle words.
The spoiling was done via her wallet and the deep fryer, a generous allowance and lots of french fries, till he finished high school the deep fryer was working overtime
The morning passed with Linus dramatically quiet in his room and Viv on guard in the living room, indulging in an orgy of businesslike efficiency, phone calls to two seamstresses, to a fabric warehouse, to the little shop-in-a-hole that sold trimmings, tresses and pearl beads and to a self-taught Pakistani Picasso who said yes to everything, he would take twenty plastic little heads, would attach gray hair and paint on the features of the English queen, he already had in his folio a successful Charlie Chaplin, a Mao Tse-tung and a Kissinger in figurine, bust and Halloween mask, respectively.
It was dusk when Linus washed, dressed and in the middle of the living room said out loud to himself, I keep imagining I’m someone else, someone I don’t want to be.
In the hallway he read the note, threw it along with the keys to the Mitsubishi to his mother and opened the door, the yellow light from the corridor fell all at once on his bald pate.
Viv moved towards him.
- Don’t you need some money? Shall I make you some french fries?
He pushed her out of the way and was gone.
Late that night, the two curtains of the balcony door paid the price.
Viv pulled them down forcefully, pulling and unhinging the curtain rod, an elegant handcrafted piece of Fotis. She took the large scissors and for two hours, with jaws so tight she almost pulverized her own teeth, she cut up the voile fabric into strips half an inch wide.
Past 3 A.M., knee-deep in a mire of white rags, she put the scissors aside, lifted her head, looked outside and concentrated on the moon’s imperceptible march across the dark.
She didn’t have the strength to get up. Or the will. She held her breath and closed her nostrils and her eyes to dive into the deep, till she reached the bottom of the night.
JL JL JL /
The dark extracts a high interest from daytime anxieties, those who’ve had a rude shock are likely to lose their bearings and get way out of line.
At midnight the next day, driving the Mitsubishi around neighborhoods with fenced or unfenced woodlets.
Viv Koleva was driving slowly, with one eye on the parked cars, up and down the narrow streets, watching her driving and the other, more lively, eye scanning the few pedestrians, couples and solitary men. No woman was out on her own.
Twice she went over to the hill of Strefi and the wooded parks of several adjoining suburbs, then back again. Large areas, a multitude of streets, several all-night places. She slowed down in front of cantinas and coffee shops in case she made out her son, she looked for him, she rounded three clumps and scoured his playground, to no avail.
She crossed paths with police cars seven times, the cops were probably out patrolling for pretty much the same reasons as she was.
If they are careful and smart they’ll single out my car, she thought, if they stop me I’ll say I couldn’t sleep, chronic insomnia and a love affair gone sour, she put on a tape, a gift from Rhoda from the two months she was besotted with a gorgeous gypsy whom she’d saved from a heart attack, and whose family had inundated her with tapes and kilim rugs. At times like these, she wasn’t interested in any song, there was no space in her ears for the lovelorn words and notes, as they were jam-packed with a stream of questions broadcast by her brain at breakneck speed.
She changed her course, different suburb, all-night kiosk, purchase of a pay phone card. Then, the next suburb down in the direction of the sea, back and forth in main streets and side streets, a park, a walking distance of three hundred feet to a phone booth that stood alone, no all-night shop or a park bench nearby, she wasn’t a fool to be overheard by anyone, nor, certainly, to call from her home and have her number and address traced.
- I can’t tell you my name, she said to the policeman that picked up when she dialed the number for emergencies. She mentioned the reason for the phone call, waited for a bit, the first line she was put through to was wrong, the second was right, to someone who was dry coughing as if he’d swallowed on the wrong side.
She stated that she occasionally worked in bars, here and there, she didn’t name which ones. She stammered she had something like a relationship with a foreigner, gave no name, was afraid of him and of getting involved with the police, she had no intention of fronting up at the police station. Her man was an adventurer, out at nights, into drinking, into women, he had a soft spot for blondes, then he would go back to her with gifts of
fur coats. The night in question he was out, came in at dawn, if they look for me you’ll say I was with you the whole time, he ordered. She hoped it wasn’t him. Am I in danger? she asked.
The officer asked her to meet him immediately, anywhere she chose. It can’t happen, she repeated.
There were two coincidences. The passion for blondes and the guy’s absence on the night of July 13. Probably the foreign nationality as well, no Greek had been spoken at the incidents.
- What else do you have? Viv asked in a shaky voice.
- You tell us. I’m not on the case. I am merely taking notes. His age?
- Thirty-eight.
- Hair?
- Blond, non-Greek.
- A lot of it and curly, by any chance?
- No. Starting to go bald. Are you looking for blond hair, lots of it and curly?
Of course he didn’t verify it, he moved on to the rest of the questions.
- Does he work out? Does he wear sports shoes?
- The black shoelace that the papers wrote about was that from sports shoes for certain?
- Flat and long. Does your man have shoes like that?
-No.
- Fine. Furs you said. Russian?
-1 cannot say.
- Does he own one of those Russian hats like Gorbachev and Yeltsin?
-No.
No? She put down the receiver with her heart thundering away and the blood shrieking in her veins. No? She made herself scarce before any police car turned up, in case they’d already traced the booth. No? Flat long lace, rich blond hair and now a Russian hat, the cherry.
Was all this the veteran’s or his successor’s?
When did she get home already? When did she look through wardrobes, drawers, cupboards, to locate the shapka, the damn communist cap of her poor father-in-law? She didn’t find it. She found yellowing books with poetry by Ritsos and Rotas in a plastic store bag. She took them down, dusted them and threw herself into reading, certain that there were no verses there about rapists and no splatter poems either.
She needed to escape from the abysmal, the worst reality in which a person can find themselves, and if novels are not recommended for people with a lot on their hands and on their mind, poems are just the ticket, they can be read quickly, the words do not rile, their speech the opposite of Viv’s and the way they spoke at her home, even the bitterest things are said considerately, and the somewhat unintelligible bits also have their place, nothing at all like the helter-skelter and the crossed communication of two people who could not even synchronize their “good morning.”
The rotten half-lemons shining like small suns , the mountains, lower yourselves, ridges, move back , the slaves have me as their beacon,
the disenfranchised as their flag , the let me kiss your smile one last time, while I still have lips , the sunflowers that run, dance, gesticulate with cyclical fires , and the cut up the bread in even potions so that the sun rises , landed her safely on the Sunday dawn.
She slept for three hours and woke up with ideas.
She washed, did her hair, made a double espresso, set up the slim tomes in prominent places, the small living room table, the shelf next to the couch, Linus’s small desk, so he would bump, upon his return, into the labors of devotion to the good of humanity.
A new beginning, this was what was required for both, as a mother, she ought to support the venture, a 180-degree turn
which would draw on verses of noble thoughts. Come tomorrow, she’d go into a bookstore and fetch down a whole bookshelf of the stuff.
Quarrels, bitterness, suspicions and evidence would be bygone, the past would no longer be an issue, and let the police numbskulls chase after Russians
Vivian Koleva even imagined her son as one of the zealots of the Communist Party, leading extended strikes and militant protests in front of the Parliament, and derided herself for the previous years of belittling his grandfather and father as suckers, the major one and the minor one respectively. From now on she would shut up and pay any price to see her son advocating for fundraisers and spending day and night selling buttons and putting up bill posters with the sickle and hammer, it would be a reprieve for her peace of mind.
Would you like us to become grape tomato growers? That, too, was an attractive proposition which she could put to him, enough already with the bloody ballerinas, she could close shop and sell the apartment, more than willing to fund an exodus to Evia Island, to the prefectures north of Attica, Fokis or Magnesia, to rent or purchase fertile lands and take up innovative and lucrative farming projects. They, too, could milk the infamous European Union funding programs which for a long time so many with acumen had been feasting on, she would set up the business for him within a five-year period and then she would discreetly retire and Linus, with a 4x4, would manage the fields and the bank accounts.
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