Jeffrey Siger - Sons of Sparta

“Are you talking about the Orestes who asked me to marry him before I met you?”

Andreas opened his eyes. “I never heard about that.”

“There was never any reason to tell you. It was all before we met. Which Orestes are you talking about?”

Andreas told her.

Lila lifted her hand and patted him on his back. “Yep, same one.”

“You’re just saying that to wind me up and get me to talk.”

“Why would I do that? You said you’d tell me everything when you woke up. I can wait.”

Andreas stared into the dark for a moment, sat up, and turned on the light. “But I can’t. Tell me about him.”

Lila didn’t budge or open her eyes. “What do you want to know?”

“Start with the good parts.”

“There weren’t any. He was an arrogant political opportunist, looking for a socially prominent wife to complement his career.”

“With money?”

“For him that wasn’t as important as social standing.”

“That explains why he kept trying to hook me up with the women at the next table.”

Lila opened her eyes. “What women?”

“An assortment of hotties.”

“And?”

“And nothing. They were there when I got there. No doubt provided by Orestes as company for his guests.”

“That’s a nice way to put it.”

“He kept trying to pair me up with them. Now I understand why.”

“Please share.”

“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘A husband who cheats on his wife becomes her pimp’?”

“No.”

“It means that a man who cheats on his wife gets other men to thinking it’s okay to take a shot at her.”

Lila laughed.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“If you’re suggesting Orestes was trying to get you to cheat on me, I can assure you it wouldn’t be for the hope of my later having sex with him. Perhaps to get back at me for turning him down. Or even to blackmail you with threats of telling me if you had gone with one of those…what did you call them…‘hotties.’ But sex, no.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He’s gay.”

“What?”

“Okay, maybe bisexual, but definitely gay. I can’t believe you didn’t pick up on that.”

“But he wanted to marry you.”

“Darling, we were never lovers, and he never admitted to being gay, but the relationship he was interested in with me had nothing to do with the bedroom.”

“Bastard.”

“Him or me?”

“Tough choice.”

“Who else was with him?”

Andreas named five men.

“Ah, a night on the town with his family’s longtime financial backers. Their families financed his family’s rise to power and, once achieved, Orestes’ family used its influence to make them all wildly greater fortunes.”

“Last night he was trying to convince them he still had the juice. He made it seem like he’d pressured me into helping them get what they wanted.”

“Funny how things turn out. The man who wanted to marry me to complement his image is now looking to my husband to save it.”

“Not sure he sees it that way. Besides, even if I wanted to-which I don’t-I doubt there’s much I can do. That Crete natural gas project is too big. Once it gets rolling no one is going to want to stop it or even slow it down, no matter what I turn up.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic.”

“It comes from sleep deprivation.”

She slid her hand across the sheets, up onto his bare belly. “Well, if you can’t sleep…”

Having just admitted to spending most of his night surrounded by “hotties,” saying no to Lila might lead to the evening’s second attempt on his life.

Thirty minutes later a thoroughly spent and exhausted Andreas fell asleep. Smiling and very much alive.

Kouros watched as his mother lifted the small, twisted shortbread biscuits out of their box and carefully arranged them on a plate. She always served koulourakia that way, even when alone. Any suggestion that it would be simpler to put the box on the table drew an immediate lecture on manners. She followed the same sort of ordered procedure in preparing her morning coffee: always strong, sweet, and Greek. If you dared call it Turkish, or worse still, said, “Instant is fine,” you risked losing your welcome guest status in keria Kouros’ home. Tradition meant more to his mother than prayer, and when she moved from the Mani to Athens as a young bride, she carried with her the teachings of her mother much the same as a priest would the lessons of his Bible.

“We are Nyklian,” she regularly reminded her son. “Direct descendants of Spartan heroes from the colony of Nikli at Tripoli who came to the Mani more than eight centuries ago, bringing with them order to its wild ways. We are Mani royalty.”

In school, Kouros learned that Nyklians also brought with them a feudal, warrior mentality that drove them into ferocious feuds with neighboring Nyklian clans over control of the little available land, and to treat those they considered beneath their class as no better than donkeys. The Mani was a place of chronic anarchy, where the powerful ruled by reason of their force, and a woman’s role was to bear male children, called “guns,” to carry on the fight. But it was not a closed class structure, for a gifted fighter from the lower class could rise to be Nyklian and a Nyklian boy could properly marry a girl from the lower class. But for a Nyklian girl to marry beneath her class brought immediate disgrace to her family. They were ways reminiscent of the Dark Ages, but in the Mani they persisted well into the nineteenth century, and in some cases, beyond.

Kouros often wondered whether hooking up with a boy beneath her Nyklian class was the sin his slain Great-aunt Calliope had committed in her father’s eyes.

His mother placed a cup of coffee on the kitchen table in front of him and another by the chair next to his. She sat down, picked up her coffee, and took a tentative sip. She put down the cup. She’d not said a word all morning, but gone about her routine as if in her own kitchen rather than alone with her son in the house of her now-deceased brother-in-law.

Last night they’d gone directly to the church to join their family sitting with Uncle’s body. Despite the late hour, the family sat surrounded by well-wishers, mourners, wailers, shriekers, and even a few tourists drawn in by all the commotion. Mangas did not say a word to Kouros about the circumstances of his father’s death. He’d acted as if it were a forbidden topic. Kouros hoped that meant his cousin’s anger had passed, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

Calliope had insisted they stay with her at Uncle’s home, and Kouros insisted she come back with them for at least a few hours of sleep before the funeral. She did but he doubted she’d slept. He’d heard her leaving the house at sunup to resume her vigil next to her father’s body.

His mother finished her coffee, stood up, and went up to her bedroom. Kouros took that as her way of letting him know it was time to get dressed for the funeral. The funeral wasn’t until eleven, but he knew she wanted to be at the church by nine.

He noticed she’d left her coffee cup and the empty plate on the kitchen table. That wasn’t like her, any more than being so quiet and withdrawn. He picked up the cups and plate, washed them and the coffeepot, and put the box of biscuits away. He hoped she was okay. This was a tough funeral for her. All of her husband’s brothers were now gone. She and Uncle’s sister were the only two left of their generation. The grave must seem much closer to her today, he thought. Then again, every day brings each of us closer to our own.

“ Whoa ,” said Kouros shaking his head and talking to himself. “This somber mood shit is contagious.”