Sophia Nikolaidou - The Scapegoat

— Look who’s here, Evelina said, giggling, as she body-checked me from the side. She came over and stood right next to me, waving to some big dolt who was making eyes at her from across the crowd.

— I came with a friend, she said.

— I can see.

She raised her cell phone to take a picture, but there wasn’t time. Just then the lights dimmed and Dokou started singing a folk song that everyone in the audience knew, about a jealous husband who murders his wife. The drums fell silent, the keyboard hushed. Her voice rose up from deep inside, she held the high notes, then plowed on, filling the stage, filling the whole square with sound. She lifted us up and swept us away with her. The crowd was a pulsing sea creature. Cameras flashed, cheers rang out.

— My mom used to sing that as a lullaby, Evelina whispered in my ear, her hands raw from clapping.

My mom sang it on road trips. It was so sad, but it always put her in a good mood.

— That song goes out to someone I love dearly. For you, Marinos, Fani Dokou said, pointing right at Souk.

Respect.

Maybe Souk has a body after all?

Fani Dokou hadn’t given a concert in Thessaloniki in over a decade. She left in her twenties and never looked back. But Thessalonians never forget their own, particularly when someone makes a name for herself in Athens. And now Dokou is an internationally recognized ethnic singer, with concerts in Portugal and Oslo, recording sessions in Paris, tours in Israel. She popularized Greek folk songs, reworked them, added electronic touches. And in the process, she achieved the impossible: she made music that both Mom and I like.

— She’s good, Evelina agreed.

That didn’t seem strong enough to her, so she added,

— A goddess.

For real. The light around her wasn’t that fake, plastic light, all smoke and cameras and kilowatt hours. Her sweat shone. She was on fire up there on the stage. Mom always talked about her concerts, the flowing skirts that fell around her like veils, the bracelets all the way up to her elbows, the bells at her ankles. Any other woman who dared to wear what she wore would just look ridiculous, but Fani Dokou pulled it off.

The concert ended, the floodlights flickered off. Most people pushed as fast as they could toward the exit.

— Should I walk you home?

Evelina hesitated.

— My friend was going to walk me, but his house is in the opposite direction. Wait a minute, I’ll let him know.

We walked without talking, half an arm’s length apart.

— Are you really not going to take your exams? she asked.

— Can we really not use that word today? It’s Saturday, and I hear it enough during the week.

— Okay, category change. Let’s turn to affairs of the heart, Evelina said, doing her best impression of a talk show hostess. Do you think they’re a couple?

— Who?

— Souk and Dokou. I wish I’d gotten a shot of them with my phone. I could’ve put it up on Facebook.

— They were at university together, ages ago.

— You know everything, don’t you? she commented.

— Yes.

— Modest as always.

— Just acknowledging the facts.

She laughed. When Evelina laughs, her whole face changes. She turns into a normal person. At school she’s always got a smile plastered on her face, like a good, obedient student, pretending to be social. You never see her alone during break, the others always cluster around her. In class she rarely asks questions, she’s too full of certainties. She hates philosophy but still quotes philosophers left and right in her essays. That’s how people are who believe in the absolute: they need a guru to show them the way.

But now, walking up Iktinou Street, Evelina had left her shield and spear behind. She reminded me of how she was in grade school, a little girl in sweat pants and braces. She used to steal candy bars from my bag, and she once ruined my shirt from pulling it too much during a game of tag. She was always trying to engineer trades. She would grab my Scooby Doo erasers and give me chewed-up straws in return.

We were almost at Agia Sophia. Her shoulder brushed my sleeve, her hair tickled my nose. She smelled like a garden.

— Want to go in? I suggested.

— Are we allowed?

— This late at night, everything’s allowed.

I hopped over the low wall around the churchyard and held out my hand.

— I bet what we’re doing is against the law, she said gleefully.

I didn’t tell her I jump this wall every day, to look at the sky from inside the churchyard. From in there the stars are dizzying. The way they leap out at you all at once, you can almost hear it, like a wave crashing. If you close your eyes, you can even pretend that the coastline of Halkidiki has beamed itself into the city center. Of course you’re brought back to reality by the honking of cars and the stink of exhaust. But even car exhaust smells different, better, around Agia Sophia. If you’ve grown up with that smell in your lungs, the countryside throws you for a loop. Grandma might be right when she says Agia Sophia is the heart of the city. If you drew a circle around the city with a compass, this is definitely where you’d plant the foot.

Evelina spread her bag out on the grass and sat down.

— I wouldn’t recommend that, I warned. Stray dogs shit there.

— How much of a jerk are you?

— Why? Because I’m trying to keep your pants clean?

— Now the thing I’m going to remember about being here is dog shit. What are you doing?

— Bringing you to someplace better.

I put my jacket on a fragment of marble, the one with the rosettes and the piece of gum stuck to the bottom.

— Is this part of a column? An ancient one?

— Probably. Move over so I can sit, too.

Spotlights flooded the place.

— It’s like moonlight, Evelina said. All that’s missing is Byron and the moon-drenched maid.

She leaned her head on my shoulder and launched into the folk song Dokou had started the concert with. She doesn’t have a great voice, and she knows it. Which means she usually doesn’t sing. But she’s got soul. She’s got a fire inside, you can tell. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned up the volume. She was living it. Her forehead glistened. What I was smelling wasn’t her perfume, it was her skin. It made me dizzy.

I bent down and kissed her. Don’t ask why, I don’t know. She turned toward me and stuck in her tongue. Hot saliva and a sweet taste of Evelina and bubble gum.

Somewhere dogs were barking.

— Turns out you’re brand-name, she said.

I didn’t have a ready response, so I just shut up.

I had no choice in the matter. One French kiss and she had me on standby.

Grandpa Dinopoulos, born in 1922, was twenty-six years old during Gris’s trial and is eighty-nine now. He lives in a penthouse apartment on Ermou. From his veranda he can see Agia Sophia if he twists his head. The apartment was bought with his wife’s inheritance. She was younger than him and everyone assumed she would outlive him, but she set off before him along the eternal road , as Grandma Evthalia says.

Statistics suggest that most widowers wither away, but Grandpa Dinopoulos, a widower for the past twenty years, is living proof to the contrary. He wakes up at six every morning, drinks a Greek coffee with lots of sugar, dunks his koulouri in the froth, and sets out on his walk through the apartment. His doctor has forbidden him to walk outside, since he’s unsteady on his feet and sometimes has dizzy spells.

He wears a vest and pocket watch over his pajamas. He does the rounds of the entire apartment three times. Kitchen, living room, dining room, office, bedroom. When he’s done, he goes out onto the balcony to get some sun and feel the breeze on his face.