Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

Dad we have to eat something. Our stomachs are growling.

The kid lifted his head off the pillow and something white glistened at the corner of his mouth. Milk. Only it wasn’t milk. It was dried spit.

Go back to sleep. It’s still early. He stroked the kid’s hair, forced a smile. I’m going out now. Are you listening? I don’t want you to be scared. I’m going out now for a little while. And when you wake up the table will be set and we’ll eat and eat until Easter Monday. Okay? High five.

The kid closed his eyes and licked his lips and said I’m hungry and squeezed his eyes tightly shut and didn’t say anything else.

• • •

Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?

• • •

He’d been walking since noon and now it was evening and he was still walking. Nikaia Neapoli Korydallos Nikaia Neapoli Korydallos — tracing circles like a caged animal like that wolf he’d seen once when he was a kid running around and around in its cage at the zoo and that night he’d stayed up crying thinking of that wolf that was just skin and bones with its dirty matted fur running around in its cage with a crazed look in its eyes. And he’d asked his father who said the wolf was running because wolves are born to run and if you shut a wolf up in a cage it’s as bad as killing it. And he’d asked his father if he could do something, if he could unlock the cage and let the wolf out and his father looked him in the eye for a long time — it was the only time he remembered his father giving him that kind of look — and then started to say something but in the end he didn’t.

He’d cried for many nights over that wolf. Many nights and plenty of afternoons too.

Thursday before Easter and a poisoned wind was blowing, the trees thrashed in the wind as if some huge invisible hand were shaking them. He walked and his mind was on the kid who must have woken up hours ago and would be sitting at the kitchen table with his hands folded together dreaming with open eyes of a table spread with food. He was walking to kill time, until ten when he was going to meet his daughter at the port. She was headed down from Thessaloniki to take the boat to Rhodes to spend Easter with her mother. He hadn’t seen his daughter in two years and tonight he would be seeing her and was planning on asking her for money. Fifty euros. Fifty euros would be plenty. Pasta a little cheese bread milk. Beer. A bottle of ketchup which the kid liked. And a chocolate egg, one of those Kinder ones — a treat for Easter. Fifty euros would be plenty. He thought about how his daughter would look at him when he asked her for money and what she would say to him and what she would say to her mother when she got to Rhodes. I can’t believe it, mom. He asked me for fifty euros he said he doesn’t have any money at all says they don’t have money for food.

He walked and felt his face reddening with shame and felt the hunger and the shame gnawing at his guts like starving rats.

Fifty euros, he said — and a woman passing beside him looked at him in fear.

Fifty euros would be plenty.

With fifty euros we’ll have a fine Easter.

• • •

Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?

• • •

Eighty-five people lost their jobs when the Roter factory in Renti closed. Women and men. Young people and old people and contract laborers from the Greek Manpower Employment Organization. At first he ran around like everyone else — to government ministries, political parties, protests, demonstrations. Slogans, banners, raised fists, voices hoarse from shouting. Rage, fear, anxiety. The worst were the words, the rumors, the lies. First they raised your hopes and then they cut the legs out from under you, beat you, destroyed you. That was the worst. The words, the lies. At some point he got tired and lost hope and started to look for other work. Then people heard they were going to be transferred to the surrounding municipalities for part-time employment. And he was happy and hopeful again and told the kid not to worry, everything was going to be fine, have faith in your father. Weeks passed. And then he found out that the positions had already been assigned.

The positions have been assigned, they told him. The municipalities had been parceled out by party. The communists got Kokkinia, New Democracy got Korydallos and Keratsini, the right-wingers went all over. Everyone landed somewhere. Except for him and five or six others who hadn’t known. Who didn’t get there in time. Who weren’t red or green or blue. It all happened quietly, simply, beautifully. And he never heard a thing.

He and five or six others.

They sold us down the river, the others said. Don’t you get it, you fool? Our co-workers. Our comrades-in-arms. They sold us out.

That all happened in February. On the last Sunday of Carnival there was a big party in the federation offices. Everyone brought food from home and sweets and wine and beer. Three or four brought bouzoukia and guitars so there would be singing and dancing. They hung banners on the walls. Our struggle is bearing fruit. Never swerve from the road of class struggle. Strength in unity, victory in struggle, solidarity as our shield . Those were the kinds of banners they’d hung on the walls. He went right when it started and sat at a distance from the others and drank. He watched them eating pickles and hard-boiled eggs, cheese pies and spinach pies. They ate off of aluminum foil, drank wine out of Coke and Sprite bottles. They clinked plastic cups and laughed and clapped and danced the zeibekiko. He watched them with hatred and jealousy. He watched them without wanting to. As if he were a dead man who had been allowed to return for a brief while to the land of the living, to walk invisible among the living until he was pulled back again into death — a terrible punishment.

Later on, when he’d drunk a lot and his fear had faded, he got to his feet and started speaking loudly. He said things he’d been wanting to say for a while — for months, even years. He said things he’d thought about many times and other things he’d never thought until that instant. There were moments when he felt as if the voice that was speaking weren’t his, as if the person speaking weren’t him. At first they watched him with curiosity. Then they looked at him with pity. Some laughed. Others kept eating. Some pushed back their chairs and walked out. There were moments when his voice faded and his eyes burned and a knot rose in his throat. There were moments when he imagined himself sitting on the other side of the room and listening and shaking his head with pity. In the end someone shouted at him to shut up and get lost — throw out the apolitical bullies, the guy shouted, throw out the provocateurs. Someone grabbed him by the arm and told him to sit down. Get a hold of yourself and sit down. Now. He sat. And then he jumped back up to his feet and rushed forward and took tables chairs cups people with him as he fell and as he fell time stopped inside him and he seemed to be falling very slowly from the sky and could see the pattern on the floor as if it were the whole earth which from that height was so beautiful — mountains, fields, streams — that his heart swelled from all that beauty and he laughed and shouted with joy.

And then someone hit him hard on the head and he tumbled once and for all to the floor.

• • •

Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?

• • •

At the corner of Kondyli and Ephesus he stopped in front of the Anemone sweet shop and looked in the window at the huge chocolate eggs and chocolate bunny rabbits and tsourekia covered in dark chocolate and slivered almonds. His heart was trembling even more than his legs. He stood in front of the window and looked at the tsourekia and his mouth filled with saliva. As soon as he got the fifty euros from his daughter he could take something else off of the list — the cheese, for instance — and get a chocolate-covered tsoureki instead. The kid would be so happy, he was crazy about chocolate. Though even he was shaking now as he gazed longingly at the sweets glistening in the light of the shop window and they looked so fresh so delicious so airy and wonderful. The things that make a person happy, he thought. A tsoureki covered in chocolate.