Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  Viv Koleva weighed the many people and things that had passed through her life and was left with nothing. She had nobody to share a coffee or a phone call with, nobody’s hand to hold.

  The only one who picked up the phone was the old Theopiste, past ninety, sick and close to death and more fearless than ever three days before she died. Wishes for bearing up, swearwords at bloody life and an observation, the news turned out the most world historic event for Alonaki ever: two

  of its renowned offspring who had been distinguished, the first as general secretary in some ministry during the junta, the second as something or other in Strasburg, took second place, Linus became the number one name in the vicinity. So, Alonaki, out of bounds as well, even as a mental stroll along the map.

  Highly accomplished at one time in cover-up operations, unsuccessful as a rule but, nonetheless, an integral part of her routine, Viv all at once gave up her attempts to review the past with the intention of bedimming it, everything had better be up front, everything crystal clear.

  At such times, retrospectively she did assess correctly a thing her son had said, you’re taught love and positive feelings while you’re young, or something to that effect—he had tossed that at her during the fight over the shoes.

  She now saw him in the brief visitations behind the glass, giving him counterfeit regards which he wasn’t buying. He was listening to her expressionless, quiet, amenable, asking for nothing.

  The times were gone when he would slip out the door setting her on edge, I’m going out ripping out windshield wipers, breaking things, going to beat somebody and get beaten up, and she would answer, on your way back get me some cigarettes, take money from my wallet, and take a jumper, it’s getting chilly out.

  Every time, after the prison, she’d spend three hours wondering, did he maybe cry over his victims? Does he get red eyes at night from crying? Do his eyelids get puffy? Will he be crying for all the rest of his life? And what if he didn’t cry? What if he never does?

  That seemed wrong to her, it made her feel confused.

  With the cunning of guilt and the inertia of despair, she who loathed sentiment and never prayed to Mary and the saints for miracles, bowed and prayed for even a single tear to roll down her son’s cheek, the first, the difficult one, for the

  machine to get started, so then it could accelerate to the voluble wracking and sobbing.

  She, herself, didn’t cry even once, not in front of third parties, nor, most importantly, by herself, because grieving washes one clean and, at its summit, offers relief, solace even. In her case it wouldn’t work, she’d made her mind up that events had pronounced her guilty for a lifetime. Nevertheless, the amount of sweating she did, at odd moments and on completely unexpected occasions, seemed to her at times unnatural, her body would be soaked out of the blue, as if, instead of by the eyes, tears were being shed by the arms, the breasts, the palms, as if even the backs of her knees were crying at the joints.

  With one thing and another August passed, and September too, summer was at last finished with its blinding turquoise and canary yellows advertising tanned flesh. The bathing suit for the much desired swim in the sea-slash-pool of Siloam was stashed away.

  October came in its faint gray and went out in its dark one, out in the streets long sleeves and thick jackets appeared, it was getting nippy, the weather was changing, if that mattered in any way.

  She started with the easier stuff.

  First, she got rid of the red Mitsubishi, so she didn’t have to fantasize about her son driving around casing the dark woodlets, so it didn’t remind her of her own sprees to secluded telephone booths to call the police. For weeks, she couldn’t even turn on the ignition, she had it towed to a dealer’s yard. She scored a beat-up old Fiat, from now on she would be saving with a vengeance.

  The house was next. The four-bedroom at Kato Patissia, its mortgage paid off four years ago, was sold on the last week of

  November for nineteen million drachmas, that was the best price it would fetch, on account of the age of the apartment block, the real estate man appraised.

  Viv Koleva needed to rid the neighborhood of her good self but also to get away from the icy stares of one and all since, in such cases, no one remains uninformed, the whole suburb was abuzz, the news stormed every house and shop in the area with vivid descriptions, both real and imaginary, some folks relished embellishing upon the abhorrent details.

  Rented housing again, in Ano Kypseli, second story, three small rooms, fifty square feet if that, why did she need more, who and how many would be coming in and out of her home for the rest of her years, she agreed with the real estate agent without even seeing the apartment. She saw it on the day she brought her things over, decimated by a merciless elimination, several pieces of furniture, paintings, lamps and carpets were sold off for a pittance to a gypsy who filled up his truck, got as a bonus all of Linus’s clothing plus a number of oddities from the cupboards, hibiscus and mango teas, last year’s offerings by the Highbrow, all untouched, plus two wooden boxes with Fotis’s implements, plus a bagful of novels, after she’d fist turned them over and shaken them in case some historic document was slumbering in their pages.

  Three sheets fell out with Linus’s childhood paintings, Chinese dogs with slanted eyes, convict dogs with a ball and chain, acrobat dogs in a circus. It had been a mistake of hers not dragging him to some visual arts school, anywhere at all, they were all over town, so he could learn to express his feelings on paper, using paint instead of words.

  She went into her new home with the bare necessities like a thief, at night, with a rush of winter stars glimmering at her through the window and the moon stalking her from behind the folds of the curtain, new though cheap, it was the first thing Viv put up to isolate her from the world outside.

  At the doorbell she stuck a piece of paper with her maiden name, the notorious Koleva would be too much of an affront.

  Viv seriously contemplated reverting to her unknown maiden name on her police ID but she didn’t pursue it. She remained in the bonds of a common surname with her son and it wasn’t an act of support, but of complicity.

  On the first night at the small apartment she slept with most of the boxes around her still unopened, herself a sealed box in a storeroom, the thoughts packets in her mind and parcels pressing down on her chest.

  What might have happened had she not snitched on her son? Would they have put some poor Russian sod behind bars? Should she have been clear to him about it, I know, here’s the black shoelace, stop already? How could she have said that since, prior to his confession, she hadn’t been one hundred percent sure? What if he did away with her as well? Might that not have been the best scenario, so she would be spared all this hell? If she hadn’t turned him over to the police and Linus had kept on unhindered, would that have been a new victim per week? Would she sit by keeping his score? How could her conscience bear that? Should she have taken him by force to a doctor in the know, plied him with chemicals, bound him up, locked him up inside himself? Should she have swallowed three bottles of pills herself to get things over and done with? And what if, afterwards, he went completely berserk? Should she have killed him with her own hands? Would that have been better for him since, that way, his actions wouldn’t have come to light? Would she even be capable of it, she wondered. How? Suffocating him with his pillow? Slipping him rat poison? But what’s this madness she is pondering and why after the event, when it’s no longer possible?

  In yesterday’s visit, at the beginning and at the end, he had told her word by word, so that not a single syllable was lost, Mother, all your life, you have found ways to be at ease with

  your conscience. He was looking at her over the glass, a distance of twenty inches and yet she felt that Linus, blurred and disembodied, was millions of light-years away. Maybe through her whole life she’d been looking at him from very far though he was next to her, a bird watcher with her eye on the binoculars watching a strange bird grow wings but unabl
e, finally, to take to the blue sky.

  When at last she fell asleep, she dreamt of her child sitting bunched up under the shelter of a red mushroom which dripped poison on him, drop by drop. Either Linus was of normal size and the mushroom as big as a beach umbrella or the mushroom was normal and Linus was as small as a beetle.

  Both in sleep and wakefulness, Viv Koleva had lost perspective on the proportions of things, real sizes were waging war at her, actual images misled her, correct responses were beyond her. The next day, in the afternoon, on her way to an appointment through an ad to sell off her few bits of gold and silver, she saw one, or rather, one hundred flocks of locusts, she had never seen so many thousands of tiny black dots darkening, piercing, nibbling at the sky while heading maniacally her way as if by arrangement, to crush over her in waves.

  Are the Pharaoh’s seven plagues coming alive? she pondered. They were starlings. Wonderful little birds in a heavenly corps de ballet, each one a wish for a Merry Christmas, a prayer for an abundant crop. Her thoughts, though, trained invariably on ill.

  Later that evening, the estate agent clinched a luxurious office space close to the inner city, at fourteen million, he’d also find a tenant for her, the rental would go in the bank and Viv Koleva wouldn’t touch a cent, a sum would be collecting for her son, in case anything happened to her.

  By December 15, with lightning speed and to the great joy of the realtor, the Tutu sold as well, after she finally cleared the bloody debt to the tax office which had tripled in the mean-

  time, she invested every last remaining penny in yet another office, same area, same sacred cause.

  The ballerinas moved in temporarily with her, housemates in the three-bedroom, twenty-six cardboard boxes piled one on top of the other.

  She paid for contracts, commissions, property taxes, settled with accountants and with the state, and counted her change.

  During those days of the endless to and fro she again had for company a small lemon in her pocket, from the same lemon tree of her childhood years, her mother had sent a humble basket with edibles, olives, lemons and oranges from their orchard. They’d exchanged a couple of words over the telephone, the daughter, thank you, the mother, I light a candle every day to Mother Mary to have pity on us.

  Xenia called every so often, unbeknownst to her husband, she would start with a question about Greece, the seventy-one dead from the crash of the Ukrainian Yakovlev, and would go on, always in a dolorous tone, asking for information about the property buying, about the overall health of her sister and nephew and about the extent to which he had benefited from the two photo albums she’d sent him, without dedication, it goes without saying, the first one of polar bears, the second of Indian tribes of Northern Canada. Viv was reserved, she’d say two and three times, kiss the babies for me, and always hung up on the same pretext, the pot on the stove. She had made her mind up that she would go the length, or rather the depth of the fall, without allies, everything on her back, all on her own, and, she did, finally, prefer it this way.

  The holidays were already drawing close, the first of many seasons that would follow with her son in prison and herself doing time as a murderer’s mother.

  At times, she would forget herself, a single being among the crowd of the main streets, looking at the glass buildings prideful over their size and their smeared glass panes, watching the

  traffic-jammed trucks, trolleys and cars honking, stampedes of outraged elephants in the Athenian jungle.

  A new week was dawning. The Monday wind dusted, the Tuesday rain washed down and the Wednesday sun polished the city, a sparkling day does no harm, it cleans out the mind, it provides a semblance of order to the unfinished items of business that seem to multiply like rabbits and never come to an end.

  Once back home, she dealt with the merchandise. She needed to get rid of it so it wouldn’t take up space in her narrow house and her narrow life. She called a small production factory and three gift shop owners from the old days, offered it at half price, they weren’t all that amenable, finally they said yes, she made the year’s rent and her cheap cigarettes, she’d changed brands and her throat was scratched.

  She also opened Picasso’s two cardboard boxes to see how the artist had fared, spread the twenty Elizabeths around the room, the place turned into Buckingham, her hovel filled with velvet and tiaras. When they’d been delivered, she had taped on one of the boxes the card of the English old lady. Mrs. Judy? She called her up, thankfully the nice lady hadn’t a clue about the interim developments, she was enthusiastic and moved, the monarchy holding up splendidly, the Windsors undying, by New Year’s Eve, she had scored five hundred thousand, untaxed what’s more. New orders for another fifty pieces, Viv would arrange it even without a shop, a peddler with a flowering trade on the side under the auspices of Tier Majesty.

  The Elizabeths paid for half the cost of the trial.

  - Where did you disappear to? Why have you made yourself so scarce?

  Phone call to Rhoda. She did pick up this time and said what she did halting, dry coughing and sighing. She was racing to vacate her surgery, pass her patients on to other cardiologists, mandatory leave from Athens, a whole lot of formalities to be gone through in order to establish herself elsewhere. She was babysitting her mother, the two of them were leaving for Serres up north, so the aunts could lend a hand, the old woman had grown unmanageable, she kept crying, kept getting lost in the streets of Munich, as she said, no longer remembered who she was, where she lived, her old age was turning vicious.

  This was Highbrow’s wreck, she even made reference to parallel dramas, precious sorrow, infertile labors, fertile despair and on and on with the diamond studded talk and the gold-and-ivory bullshit.

  - Aren’t you coming as witness to your godson’s trial? There’s nobody else.

  - I’ll be up north.

  - So, come down. It’s a half hour flight.

  - With all this stuff, I’m on antidepressants.

  - Your mother’s lost her marbles, why are you taking them?

  - I’m losing mine, too.

  - Rhoda, does my cry for help have to be in a voice that would split the heavens asunder?

  The useless friend, silent.

  - Have you no compassion for your godson?

  The useless one answered with snivelling and mewling.

  That same afternoon at Yukaris’s office, Viv was informed that her son did not want his godmother as witness to his trial, her especially, not on any count, he wanted no one, he demanded from his lawyer and his mother to not drag unwilling relatives or acquaintances by force, his exact words, don’t put up a fight, it’s not worth it, I’m not worth it.

  - Is that all he said?

  In essence only that, Yukaris served a coffee to his weary client and mentioned that Linus opened his mouth and said things out of rhyme and reason, that when swallows return next March and find their nests taken up by sparrows, they build them up inside, he knew this from his grandfather in the village, who took pride in the empty swallow nest on the eaves of the outdoor toilet.

  That was the extent of the grandfather’s help to his grandson at a time like this, the memory of an outhouse story, a village shithole, thought Viv and glanced hopelessly at the lawyer. As in every meeting, they boarded on the five-minute trip around questions such as, how can a human being do something so horrific, how can some people spiral downwards, when does the crucial switch fall in their mind and if there might be an adequate and indisputable explanation, which there isn’t, we read through all the paperwork in the files and get the wiser by 50%, then we go on to trial and only 30% of the truth comes out.

  Then, by necessity, Yukaris and Viv turned more practical, they set the facts down.

  At the lawyer’s office two volunteers had turned up, proud Cretans, brothers and sworn friends of Fotis, putting themselves at their disposal, they would with all their heart put a good word in at the court for the Kolevas family, and they’d help out a bit with the costs of th
e court, too, they had left an envelope for Viv.

  We looked for her, the store’s no longer there, we found you through your colleagues by asking who had taken on the young man’s case, they had told the surprised penal lawyer, this was not something he would have expected.

  - I don’t require anyone’s financial assistance, what we did, we’ll pay ourselves, was Viv’s first reaction.

  However, when Yukaris called the willing Cretans in her presence, first the older one, Manousos, and then Michalis, his

  client, she did, finally, speak to the latter, declined the money, thanked him and submitted to his insistent request for a meeting after all these years.

  The outcome was that the two brothers painted for free the two offices to be rented, filled in with silicone the cracks in the kitchen bench and basin at her house, got the collapsed balcony grilles unstuck and straightened them out, polished the Cretan chair that had been their wedding gift, changed the rubber tubing in the faucets and several broken tiles in the bathroom, they were jacks of all trades.

  One afternoon, while having a cigarette at the narrow balcony, the three were watching an old man who’d taken his dog for a walk, an aged collie. Every neighborhood has one of those, said Viv, and the Cretans thought about it and they agreed, they’d worked all the neighborhoods of Athens and everywhere a grandfather with a collie could be found.

  By the third drag they were close again, had shed the old coldness and the old resentments.

  Manousos and Michalis with their blue eyes aflame, like pieces of cotton doused with blue alcohol and set alight, rolled out again the nostalgia for the red brotherhood and the times when they all brimmed with tears at the sound of the revolutionary songs, along with their lost companion, Fotis kept turning up in their talk, he patched the holes that threatened every time a stray reference was made to sons, they had three apiece, a half a dozen good in school and at basketball and at Cretan folk dancing.