Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  Why, oh why, did she poke fun in front of him, of those who suddenly discovered nature and left their law firms and advertising agencies in favor of hillside farms and the hoe? She again derided herself for the thoughtlessness with which she rejected, mocked, judged everyone and everything without ever considering what prompted people to sever their ties with their past.

  She would be oblique, Attica is saturated now, Athens is

  finished, the future has left downtown Kolonaki and moved to the mountainous north, to Roumeli, twenty thousand square meters are waiting for us somewhere there to get into action, you choose what suits you, whether oyster mushrooms, grape tomatoes or asparagus, they were all a great success at the vegetable stands, they would make him a man to be reckoned with. He could even become involved with local soccer, setting up games for amateur competition in the Fourth Division, she remembered how the boys in primary school were transfixed by the amateur groups of Panachaiki, Ikarus and Thunderbolt and derided herself a third time for being sarcastic with Fotis’s soccer-loving comrades and the other soccer fan of Panathinaikos whom she used to entertain in her home and whom she had forbidden to infect her son with his soccer mania.

  She had declared everything lacking, she doused the orphan’s mind with disdain about this, that and the other thing and this was the result, a Linus without a part to play.

  The house needs to become a home and for it to become a home, the walls require certain family photographs. She had never before framed progenitors and descendants, never put an album together, she didn’t favor reminiscing while rifling or rifling while reminiscing as a pastime. She mistrusted every sort of immortalization, poses bothered her, the politicians’ warm handshakes in front of the reporters, the philanthropic tycoons’ next to people at death’s door from bombs, epidemics and famines, the models’ with the electric fans twirling their hair and their silks.

  She didn’t change her mind about the few of her own family, inside the shoebox she brought down from the loft where it’d been exiled among the spiderwebs and mouse droppings. In front of the lens, one, two together, three and five and fifteen at weddings and meals, she knew their lives, their trespasses, and their miseries inside out; none of the smiles could be justified.

  Nevertheless, she singled out three, one the father-in-law, one the husband, one the dog, she emptied three frames from Plisetskaya, Makarova and Baryshnikov, a canceled delivery, and in ten minutes, grandfather, father and dog went over and stood on Linus’s desk.

  Did she have self-adhesive bandages and iodine in case she needed them later? Gauze? Aspirin? Viv Koleva checked the medicine cabinet and elsewhere too, she had what she needed to clean and bandage minor cuts and wounds, there was a full bottle of shampoo, two intact bottles with bubble bath. What else? There were food and poems in the house.

  Sunday went by with no phone calls or TV. In the evening, eleven sharp, she went out to the balcony, leant on the rail and looking alternately down and heavenward, she reviewed scattered verses that were still in her mind. To starry feasts and moonlit revelries, let the white sheets wear the dreams, oh, this exile within our own clothing that is fraying, this house can no longer carry me, I can no longer bear carrying it on my hack.

  When she saw her son arrive, she finished her recitation with, an ash-gray hat, empty, with no head. The gray shapka, she said out loud and shivered, the curly blond hair, the shoelace, she added.

  She went back in. Her chest hurt. She started a massage, soft circular motions which within a minute turned to scratching and punching. The poetry collections got their share, too, of shoves and kicks, books and picture frames ended under her bed.

  They didn’t so much as say good evening. She didn’t dare come out of her room and he made his way to his, after having his shower as usual, mumbling out loud about the fucking stale bread.

  She woke up sweating with her left arm numb.

  She’d gone to bed having wrapped and tied around her upper arm the lace which was hidden under a long sleeve, just in case, she’d put on a winter nightie.

  She couldn’t afford to lose it, to misplace it somewhere in the generalized chaos of herself, a mind at times shapeless and distracted, at others in overdrive, combining a thousand thoughts, examining a thousand possibilities, and a body sometimes insensate and others overexcited, the hands spinning propellers inside drawers and chests, the feet spasmodically pirouetting along the length and width of the stage of those days.

  Above all, she could under no circumstances afford for Linus to see the shoelace, if he came into the night to wake her up for some emergency, if they lost control and fought, if she left for work and he searched the house for money, for old letters from unknown aunts, for fatherly traces and all the ancient and twisted things that haunted his terrible head.

  Her own head hurt. Did she or didn’t she have a nightmare? She surely did. A nightmare to end all nightmares. She had been called to the morgue to identify her body. Cause of death indeterminate.

  Formalities, a cold room, cold lighting, metal table and on it, covered entirely by a creaseless sheet, herself, naked and dead. She uncovered and observed that self from head to toe. She was not convinced by the selfsame face, the hair with the inch of gray, the selfsame stretch marks on the breasts, the sunken belly button, the chubby fingers and short nails.

  The positive identification came about by means of the chapped heels and the callus on her pinkie toe. I am the dead one, she confirmed to the man in charge, I haven’t taken good care of myself for some time, I need to start doing it again, she promised, embarrassed.

  Getting up was a Herculean task. Monday will have no meaning, the days aren’t doing me any good, she thought.

  She showered without undoing the shoelace from her arm,

  put on a long sleeved chemise, did not even go near her son’s door to eavesdrop, he must be in, she could see the boots abandoned in the hall.

  Was he still asleep, she wondered. Could he have heard the water running in the bathroom and was not getting up on purpose, so that they wouldn’t have another frontal collision, either with insinuations or silently? For weeks now, maybe for months, maybe even for years, each spied the other’s every sound and competed in the sports of stubborn silence, threatening gesture, murderous look and the banging of doors.

  One hour later, after she spent everything she had on her at the first open bookstore she came across, books of poetry worth twenty-two thousand and seven hundred and thirty drachmas, she went into the Tutu and, while the coffee was brewing, she called the sign-maker, suggested the name Salome , he counter suggested Let’s Dance , she agreed, she could pick up the new sign within a week. Drinking her coffee and munching on a packet of crackers opened days ago, she jotted the rest of what she absolutely needed to get done in the day, she made arrangements over the phone, she apologized on a couple of occasions for not being able to personally play Santa Claus because of something unexpected, called a radio-taxi, gave the driver two parcels and the delivery addresses, got that done, opened the packet with the beach towels, the print was a failure, Travolta looked like an ape, she priced him at four hundred and hung one behind her so she didn’t have to look at him, besides, even the American presidents have their flag standing upright behind their chair.

  As no passersby were lured in by the shop’s attractions, not a single soul, she decided she’d read some poems, short and convenient, ten lines are perfectly capable of keeping you occupied for ten hours, just as long as you put your mind to it. She changed her mind, she’d give all the books to Linus, intact. So she checked the deadlines for the bimonthly tax payment to her fund and for the utilities, put the sum of money aside, went

  on to balance her accounts, prepared the accountants envelope, she dug out of a small closet the four ballerinas with the broken legs, casualties from last Christmas, the time had come for her to fulfill her orthopedic duties.

  She would expertly stick the broken off limbs back together and would sell them half pric
e, maybe give them away to the down-and-out sods that stood gawking at her shop window from time to time, it was through such things that she kept her good name in the neighborhood.

  A relatively simple task for her capable hands, still, it took her nearly an hour, at first she felt kind of sad holding on to the sole of a misfortunate invalid ballerina, then she didn’t feel all that comfortable pawing calves and lifting short tulle skirts.

  Meanwhile, since morning, just as soon as she’d opened the store shutters, the radio was playing in low volume its nonstop stream of jejune commercials and summer hits, live yogurts and pop anthems, air-conditioners and soppy ballads.

  She was enduring it for the sake of the news bulletins, let her hear the glad tidings that two and three and a million and three Russians had been arrested and, along with them, their shoes and hats had also been arrested, their mass-produced shapkas, and both the people and their clothing had confessed to everything and the avalanche of coincidences toppled down and her home was pronounced innocent again.

  No mention of the subject, at least there were no new victims or assaults. Unless they hadn’t been reported, Viv contemplated, by Jove, for a woman it would be the stations of the cross, starting with the stripping by the attacker and on to the stripping of the police statement, then answering to women cops, medical examiners and assorted assistants, what exactly the monster did to her, confessing to her father or her husband what went down, shutting herself up in the house to avoid the neighbors’ looks, turning a deaf ear to the underhand comments about the way she dressed.

  What might the victims have worn? They wouldn’t be dressed in the regional costumes of the islands or in prudish school uniforms, they would be making their way through the night in the minuscule and transparent fabrics that leave the thighs bare and show the nipples pointed.

  She wouldn’t be having these lowly thoughts, would not be looking for excuses high and low, if it wasn’t for her son’s shoelace wrapped around her arm, black and long and flat.

  At half past three, when she got back home, she found Linus laid out on the living room couch, throwing in the air and catching his green frog. He turned his shaved head, his eyes met hers for a few numbered seconds, long enough for Viv to promptly lift first the one arm with the plastic bags, saying, poems, then the other with the netting bag, presenting two kilos of tomatoes.

  They shared a salad and an omelette, but it was impossible for them to speak, it was as if each was beseeching the other to muster the courage to start a conversation on anything at all, from the sweet onions of Thebes to the thirty-seven degrees Celsius, even the canaries of the Cypriot across the street, waxing triumphant despite the afternoon’s unbearable heat.

  Were there, really, that many chances that they would in time have quiet conversations about small things and insignificant subjects, onions, birds and suchlike?

  This suddenly seemed to Viv direly necessary, in fact, absolutely vital, it ought to be included in their future.

  As soon as they’d finished eating, mother and son separated again, each to their appointed planet, until eight when Viv pummelled his door with her fists hollering, why don’t you listen to some songs, what young person nowadays doesn’t listen to music?

  Linus came out about fifteen minutes later, ready for an outing, he bent down in the hallway to put on his boots.

  There, his mother grabbed him again, shook him, yelled at him again, you need at all costs to go into the sea for a swim,

  you need to breathe some sea air, get in the waves, get some salt on your skin.

  He threw her off him, not paying attention to the beaches she was listing at the top of her lungs, ordering him, you must go at all costs for a swim in the sea, are you listening to me, I want you to go and cool yourself, I want you to go for a swim in the sea, if only the once, tomorrow wouldn’t be too soon.

  Wednesday noon at the shop.

  Linus Kolevas was standing on the sidewalk looking at the bric-a-brac in the window as if waiting for an invitation by the owner to step in her house of commerce.

  With her elbows sunk in the tresses and beads on her small desk and her head in her palms, Viv scrutinized him, a bold, ugly skull, a pallid face, a ghost in a midsummer’s noonday. He was wearing black jeans and a T-shirt.

  Yesterday, Tuesday, in the back pages of the newspaper, a single column about the case, with a delay of all those days, a blue shirt had been found in a bush thicket twenty feet away, maybe belonging to the perpetrator or maybe not, the DNA test results were not yet in.

  One look inside Linus’s wardrobe ascertained that the dark green, the gray and the brown flannel were in their places and out of the other three in various blues the darkest one, acquired two years ago, was missing, the son didn’t wear it often, at all events, he preferred T-shirts. The blue shirt was to be found neither in the washing nor stuffed in some drawer or traveling bag.

  The night was taken up with that, the color of the fabric and that of the dark were one and the same, and so was the one phrase she kept repeating over and over, as if the needle was stuck, just till dawn, just till dawn. How much the

  weight and how deep the shadows, how much forbearance till dawn.

  Linus, absent till now, a wreck outside the shop, loitering on the sidewalk like a beggar.

  She tortured him a fair bit by making him wait, eventually, after checking that the edge of the shoelace wasn’t hanging out of her left sleeve, she raised her right hand and invited him in, well, well, here’s Bruce Willis, she sprinkled him with the pointless and facile comment, though she did offer him an orange juice as well.

  He drank it down like a thirsty dog whose bowl had been left empty for days and had been filled just in the nick of time before he collapsed.

  Here, wipe yourself down, she said and handed him some tissues for the drops of the refreshment and sweat spilling from his face and neck down on the glass top of the small desk.

  From up close, in the perfect light of day, sitting across from her and newly quenched, he didn’t look dangerous, did not carry the aura, the mark of the killer, there has to be such a mark, visible without fail to their mothers.

  It was beyond her asking him straight out and she didn’t have the presence of mind to corner him indirectly, not yet anyway, her heart was skipping beats, an engine without fuel.

  Still, they needed to say something this time, they could at least try, though her offspring had taken after Fotis, he either didn’t get into conversations, or quit them halfway, of this Viv was positive, like a sudden storm in her head gathered all the vital conversations left inconclusive, her deceased husband getting up and walking away leaving questions unanswered, doubts unresolved, burning issues unfinished, his son was exactly the same.

  I’m gathering mementos from your dad in a little chest, she started gently. I’m saving them for your children, she added meaningfully and, given that Linus had no intention of waking

  up and showing some interest, she went on to describe the treasure, a wood carving of a bunch of grapes with three leaves, a wooden farmer woman with a bunch of wheat and a sickle, a Russian Red Army harmonica and some poetry books of that period, all with passages underlined and exclamation marks by your father’s hand.

  - Are these poems not fit for minors and is that why you haven’t given them to me all this time?

  - Would you have as much as glanced at them? The ones I got you the other day are still in their bags.

  - All poetry is repentance, is what he came up with after a few minutes of silence.

  It’s now or never, Viv thought, took a deep breath and forged ahead unstoppable.

  - I’ve been looking for the shapka, your grandfather’s ash- gray fur cap and I can’t find it. It belongs in the chest.

  The son unspeaking and unmoving.

  - So, then, where’s our shapka? Some weeks ago I’d seen it on your bed, her voice now clipped, decisive, a clear sign that she would brook no evasiveness.

  - No more mementos, I don
’t want to remember so much, my mind is sore with that business.

  That was his answer, while his eyes started brimming, his Adam’s apple started pounding like a drum, and his arms flailed like the wings of a shot bird.

  - Careful, you’ll damage things, she yelled at him, got up and pulled aside some porcelain things, everything in here is fragile, she pointed out to him.

  Now, why had she said that, since at times like this, she couldn’t care less about even the costliest miniatures, she inwardly chastised herself.

  There were prospective clients, too, checking out the antimosquito dancer-candles in the window. Thankfully they decided against them, even if they’d come in, even if they were

  willing to lay down a month’s wages, Viv would have said, we’re putting on the discount price tags right now, come back later for better prices.

  She focused again on her subject and resumed her questioning.

  - Where have you left it? Have you taken some things, some shirts, to another house? If you’re staying with some woman, you might as well tell me.

  He didn’t enlighten her so she asked the other thing, had he fallen in with any anarchists and is he in and out of any of those filthy dirty communes? Is there electricity? Is the bathroom clean?

  Viv Koleva might as well have been talking to a wall.

  - I know, she stammered suddenly. Like your father, you’re probably going off to drink. That’s just what I needed, she told herself with her voice turning falsetto, and kept on, for five years after he died, I didn’t even allow liqueurs in the house, and I only ever drank water in front of you. I was wrong to start up on the beers again, with your godmother and with whomever, and allow them to creep back in. Are the beers doing you in, my boy? Are you drinking? she asked, longing for him to confirm that he’d become a raging alcoholic.

  - He drank everything there was to drink.