Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

The nail on one of his toes was black.

You’re going to lose that nail, I say to him. It hurts a lot to have a toenail fall off.

I don’t know what got into me next, but I turned to him and said: Don’t give up, kid. You’ve got to have hope. If you fall down you have to pick yourself right back up again.

Okay, old man, he said. Whatever you say.

And he actually stood up with the violin in his arms and started to walk away. At the door to the building he stopped and said to me:

You want to hear something I read once, gramps? It’s not the fall that kills us but the sudden stop at the end. You get it? It’s the sudden stop that kills us.

I thought about it for a minute.

That’s a big thing you said, I finally tell him.

But he was already gone. I turned and saw him climbing the stairs inside the building with his head bent and then I couldn’t see him anymore.

I walked as far as the corner and waited. I can’t tell you how anxious I was. I kept thinking he was going to come out onto the balcony cradling the television and toss it into the street and then who knows what might happen with that woman. Because I was worried about her, too, even after all the curses she’d dumped down on him. I was thinking how young they were. Such young people, just kids, so where does all that hatred come from?

Then what happened? asked number three, who had practically put out the fire from stirring it so much. What happened next? Did he throw the stupid TV over the edge? Maybe he pushed his lady friend, too? She deserved it, that’s for sure.

Nothing happened, said number one. I waited there for a while but nothing happened. I didn’t even hear the woman’s voice again. Then I saw the light go out on the balcony and everything got quiet.

What kind of bullshit is this? number three shouted, hitting the barrel with the branch again. Come on, tell us what happened next. He can’t have done nothing. No way. What kind of man is he?

Yeah, he must have done something, said number five, who’d taken off his glasses and was cleaning them with his scarf. He can’t have just left it at that.

Nothing happened, I’m telling you. I waited there in the fog for about ten minutes and smoked a cigarette but nothing happened. Then I left but I didn’t go straight home. I was so shaken up that I couldn’t sit still. So I started walking down toward the port. On the way I thought about what the young guy had said about falling and the sudden stop. I had lots of ready answers in my head but none of them suited the situation. As I walked I watched the lights down at the port grow in the mist. At first they were beautiful. Then they got frightening.

• • •

A car with a broken exhaust pipe passed by on the street. The clattering startled them all.

Go fuck yourself, you asshole! shouted number three.

Then he turned to the man with the tsipouro.

Is that how things work in your village? Yiannis treats and Yiannis drinks? Pass that bottle around, you pig.

He grabbed the bottle and poured some tsipouro into his mouth without letting the rim of the bottle touch his lips. Then he handed it to the next guy. They each took a swig.

We could have done without that story, the man on the stool said to number one. What were you thinking? You crushed our morale, goddamn it.

Yeah, said number four. He’s right. He looked number one in the eye then looked away again. You crushed our morale. A real man would have done something. Instead of sitting there and whining over his broken violin. You didn’t handle the whole thing very well, either. You should’ve given him better advice.

Number one looked at each of them in turn but didn’t speak.

Number three stirred the fire with his branch and then threw it in the barrel.

Man, if I’d been there I’d have known what to do, he said. But what do you expect. The world is full of fairies these days. There aren’t many men left with real dicks between their legs.

He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and weighed it in his palm. He pressed a button and the blade sprang up, glinting in the firelight.

I know what I’d have done, he said.

Number one silently looked at each of the others with his milky eyes. He’d shrunk beside the barrel with his hands wrapped around his upper arms hiding his face in the collar of his coat. His shoulders were shaking.

What kind of people are you, he finally said.

For a while no one spoke. In the glow from the fire their faces seemed transformed, full of shadows that kept changing shape. Then someone, number three, took a step backward and tilted his head so that he was looking straight at the sky. It was gray and blurry like a TV screen with no signal. He looked at the sky with such concentration, almost motionless, as if he were trying to figure out how much the sky weighed or to calculate the distance between himself and the sky, which seemed to have sunk down so low that it was resting on the rooftops of the buildings.

This night just won’t end, he said. What time is it, anyway?

And then he said:

These days I keep on dreaming that I’m falling. That I’m tripping on something and falling. I wake up in terror and my heart is pounding so hard I feel like it might burst or come flying out my ears or something. It’s a terrible thing to be falling. Really. Terrible.

Now the others were looking up, too. They had all tilted their heads back and were staring up at the sky.

What’s worse, though? asked number one. An endless fall or a sudden stop?

You tell us. You seem to be the reader here.

I don’t know. The things I read don’t agree with the things I see. Or with the things I think. Nothing agrees with anything.

The fire went out. Someone went to get another pallet. It was the second to last. And there weren’t many boxes left, either.

They all huddled around the barrel. Even number two, who could feel a deep pain shooting up from his heels to the middle of his back, got up from his stool and stood with the others. They all crowded together with their hands stretched close to the fire. Very close to the fire. Their bodies were touching, their elbows and arms. They jostled and pushed against one another as if they wanted to work through their heavy winter clothing and touch one another’s skin. They came as close to one another as they could get. But instead of warmth they felt a shiver pass from one body to the next — they felt a cold current leaping unrestrained and breaking the circle of bodies, heedless of the fire burning so close to them, so close to their hands so close to their chests and faces.

• • •

Early in the morning, passing by on my way to work, I found them still standing in a circle around the barrel. By then others had come and were waiting on the sidewalk, old men, women, foreigners. But they were still gathered around the barrel, those five men with faces white from cold and exhaustion, watching silently as the fire slowly died in the freezing light of day.

IN MARCH during one of the blackouts Takis Vassalos and I are sitting at the Existence Ouzeri on the corner of American Ladies and Bythinia Streets across from a tiny triangle they call Plateia Irinis, Peace Square, which has a strange billboard in one corner advertising Immortal Cabinets and a statue in the middle of the American doctor Esther Lovejoy who apparently saved lots of lives in these parts after the population exchange of 1922.

Takis waits tables here every evening from five to midnight, five to one, five to whenever. During the day he works as a contract laborer for the municipality. He works two jobs because he has two kids. His wife Vasso died forty-nine days ago. She was driving down to Faliro and had a heart attack in the car and some stranger saw the whole thing and brought her to Metropolitan Hospital — she was still alive and fighting, wouldn’t give up — and that’s where the trouble started because it’s a private hospital and they refused to admit her if the guy didn’t pay and of course he objected — he was just some stranger passing by, what an absurd thing for them to expect of him — and while they were haggling Vasso died right there in that hospital corridor among strangers, far from Takis and her children and Takis says if he were a real man if he had a drop of self-respect he would go to that hospital with a grenade in each hand and blow the whole whorehouse sky high and take everyone with him, doctors nurses hospital directors, all those motherfuckers and a few more for good measure. If he were a real man if he still had integrity if he didn’t have two kids and debts to the banks and a mortgage on his house. If this if that my whole life these days is one big if, Takis says. How did they manage to convince me that I’m weak and washed up and can’t do anything anymore can’t react in some way — I don’t care about the money, Takis says, I don’t want money or revenge. What I care about is that there’s this huge injustice and I know I have to do something about it but at the same time I’m not sure who’s innocent and who’s guilty, if I knew then maybe things would be different, says Takis. See what I mean? Another if. If and if and if would make even a dissident diffident.