Thinking of boxes, her eye fell on an empty pack of cigarettes on the arm of the wheelchair, next to the cat-shaped ashtray with a butt in it. Linus’s brand, he must have finished them while she was briefly combing her hair in their previous short visit. She stood up to throw it out along with her ciga-
rette butt but, one of those crazy things the night can put you up to, as soon as she touched it, she felt like speaking to it.
- Year before last I had an old girl, she bored me and I neglected her. I never said an extra word to her unless her blood pressure hit the roof. In one of those crises, while I was stroking her to calm her down until the pill took effect, she said something terrible to me, you don’t love me when I’m all right. It seems that some people can only give their best then, when the going gets tough. Me, I am like that. Why don’t you do the same. Be by his side, to soften the wildness in him, to make pretty smoke drawings on the ceiling. Keep him company there, in the stronghold of stench and ash. He struck and was wounded and will be wounded for every day of his life, with no cure, no redemption.
After saying this to the packet, she had an urge to kiss it. She hadn’t been able to kiss her own kid, she would kiss his cigarettes. She did, and she kissed the cigarette butt that had touched his bitter mouth and then she derided herself.
She turned off the lamp next to her, she had no intention tonight of moving to either the bed or the couch, she’d try to make it through the night on the carved chair, her base. She stood up, took the pillow from the seat and placed it behind her back. The pillow with the burgundy velvet and the four golden tassels, single remnant of her father-in-law’s craft, much traveled, from Corfu to the bachelor rooms of Fotis and his subsequent homes, was still there, something always persists in surviving, to connect and remind.
She got comfortable, she tuned in, too, to Tiger’s scratching sounds from next door who was again manhandling the useless keys, a common musical accompaniment to her nights in the apartment building and during her teas.
She had a sip, other folks wallow in anemones and sweet peas, us Kolevas in the ditch with the nettle and the devil’s weed. Somewhere, somehow, both he and I need to find a cor-
ner in life to fit in. We don’t ask for more, just a corner. Let those other folks turn their backs and walk away. Let them go on their way, let them get busy with putting on and off the mantles of conscience and reputation, let them vote governments in and vote them back out, let them change the laws, travel to Brussels for Christmas and playact at being European and go to their village for Easter, and playact at being true country folks, let them build palaces or mud-brick outhouses, let them not care about what they pay for the spaghetti and lobster or buy their cheese and salami on credit, let them all rejoice in May evenings, every night a wedding in the sky, the moon a silver dowry and the stars for bonbons, and let them wake up a different person a hundred times in their lifetime, we’ll always wake up the same and to the same, in the ditch, ditched.
A home requires infidelity. It needs you to pick up your bag and walk out. A piece of advice from Sabine, she brought her to mind with the incontestable necklaces upon her German neck, different ones in the morning and in the evening, the most impressive reserved for the moment of their checkout and good-byes, starfish and nautilus shells, seahorses and boats sinking into her shipwrecked bust.
If there’s one thing I’ve missed, it’s a boat and an open sea, Viv suddenly thought and sighed, though without complaint, the necklace’s pale blue finery did a good job of covering over that cut-and-dried I strangled a girl, Ma, of gently slipping her back into the cool waters of the sea. This was the feeling she ought to start with every day from now on. Because she would go on, there were days upon days to be had.
She had no way of knowing if there would be a second leave granted or if her son would be pardoned some day, she couldn’t form friendships or take up sports, nor did she have any say on the direction the world was heading in, the movements, like they say, and the leaders and the planetary chiefs could go where they pleased, she was off to one side, at her post, respon-
sible for the fate of only two, alone. So, then, tomorrow morning first thing, she’d pick up her bag and go. She would kneel, yes, she would, in front of the first pregnant woman she came across, would stroke and kiss her belly. A child would come out from there who might even, might well, love the sea breeze like Linus did who, as a child, at seven, at ten, stood stock-still in drafts, turned his head to the east, closed his eyes and with pleasure let the wind blow his shirt and blond hair.
At one such moment, she had called him, my little pony. She might as well wring her memory to unbury such things, she needed to, so as to give the lie from time to time to the notion that all the past was one frightful shadow, an informant who would be on her trails forevermore, policing her days and nights.
Tonight her mind would stay turned on like a rubber hose running all night, watering the ridges of a thirsty garden.
And tomorrow, after she had kissed a belly in the street— the pregnant belly is the sack with the most precious contents—Viv Koleva would follow the road down to the sea, maybe all the way out to Sounion, and would stand and face the little waves that would be pummelling against the shore like those dancers in the white skirts she’d seen on a documentary on NET television.
There, quiet on a rock, she would remember one by one all the good moments and she wouldn’t be able to have enough of the best one, when she and her son went at last back into the sea. Ah, those first minutes, when suddenly and mysteriously it was as if for the first time, the three hapless girls were erased from their minds, the poor neck of the third with the shoelace, her father who raised up her photograph at the trial and the lining that had come undone in her mother’s skirt.
It was an unexpected miracle in one fell swoop, what they felt would not happen to them again, like finding their full span and being taken over, if for two or three minutes, no more, by a joy, such a joy, as if they weren’t to blame for anything.
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About the Author
Ioanna Karystiani was born on the island of Crete, Greece, and now lives in Athens. Her literary debut came with the collection of short stories, I kyria Kataki (Ms. Kataki). She has since written three novels, including The jasmine Isle (Europa Editions, 2006) and Swell (Europa Editions, 2010).
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Table caption'
Ioanna Karystiani was born on the island of Crete, Greece, in the town of Chania and now lives in Athens. Her literary debut came with the collection of short stories,
I kyria Kataki (Ms. Kataki). Her novels include The Jasmine Isle (Europa Editions 2006) and Swell (Europa Editions 2010). She is the recipient of the Greek state prize for literature and the Athenian Academy prize for her first novel, and was awarded the Diavaso literature prize for The Jasmine Isle.
Konstantine Matsoukas was born in 1959 in Athens, Greece. He has lived in the USA and Australia, where he obtained a Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Sydney. His book, For Four Hands , which he co-wrote with poet Maria Topali, was published in fall 2009. He lives and works in Athens as a translator, freelance writer and literary critic.
Ioanna Karystiani
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Praise for Ioanna Karystiani s previous novels
“Swell is a poignant, moving novel about aging.”
—Kirkus
“ The Jasmine Isle is an exciting and colorful ride.
—Publishers Weekly
“The Jasmine Isle is grim yet gorgeous . . . Homeric intensity visited on intimate truths.”
—Kirkus
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