Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

He limps away from the door and limps along the wall. His foot has swollen inside his boot, his palms are shriveled, sweat is dripping into his eyes. And though he no longer hears any barking he knows that the dog is also walking along on the other side of the wall. And when he gets back to the gate Leben is already there and jumps up onto its hind legs with its front paws on the bars and starts barking again and biting the air. Foam like white blood drips from its mouth and there’s a crazed look in its dark eyes.

He looks at the dog. He looks at the sharp green glass on top of the wall. And above that the sky spreading itself endlessly out in the pitiless light of August.

I have something to say, he says.

But there’s no one there to listen.

• • •

He gets into the Nissan and rolls down the window and looks at the dog that’s stopped barking and is staring at him with its mouth hanging open and its ears pricked. It’s laughing at him. It’s watching him and laughing. It’s clear as day, the dog is laughing. A laughing Belgian sheepdog. Belgian shitdog. Belgian shit-eating dog.

He lights a cigarette and leans his head back. His foot is numb and has started to swell inside his boot. He can feel the pieces of broken glass on the top of his head but he doesn’t want to touch them.

He’ll wait. He’ll wait. Something will happen. At some point the dog will get tired and go off somewhere. It’ll get hungry, or thirsty, or go to sleep. And as soon as that happens, he’ll let himself into the house. And then he’ll do something.

He’ll wait. He’ll sit all night in the car and wait. He’ll wait for the whole night to pass. He’ll stay there all night and the next day and as many days as it takes. He’ll wait.

The swollen orange sun disappears behind the mountain. Night is falling. The glass on the top of the wall isn’t glittering anymore. A bird flies over the wall and vanishes as if the sky swallowed it up.

He’ll wait.

It’s still only the third of August.

MARCH EIGHTH, a day of wind and no sun. Through the kitchen window I watch as my father hangs clothes in the yard. He lifts them out of the basin shakes them out and clips them to the line with clothespins. Since Sunday after the memorial service and the hassle of relatives coming and going he’s set himself to washing all of my mother’s clothes — he won’t leave a single stitch unwashed. Skirts shirts nightgowns. Winter and summer clothes. He’s even washing her underwear. I thought he was doing it to kill time, to keep himself occupied, so he wouldn’t think, wouldn’t remember. But now I see him hang a cream-colored bra on the line and then a pair of panties with a little kitten on the front wearing a red bow — I see him standing there for a moment caressing that printed kitten with his thumb and I don’t know what to say.

If only the kitchen had no window so I wouldn’t have to see.

• • •

When I got there we drank coffee and smoked a cigarette. We didn’t say much. How things are going at work, if I’ll be able to get some vacation time around Easter — that sort of thing. Then I asked about the recycling. The blue bins the municipality set out in the neighborhood and the bags they distributed for people to collect aluminum cans and plastic containers. Oh, that, he said. Keratsini, riding the wave of progress. Mark my words, soon they’ll be recycling people, too. Why not? After all, don’t they already treat us like garbage? I wanted to bait him a bit more, see what he’d say about what happened the other day, but he pretended not to know what I was getting at, he didn’t even mention it. At some point he pulled a packet of stamped letters held together by a thick rubber band out of his coat pocket and laid them on the table.

I found these yesterday afternoon in the attic. I had no idea she had them hidden up there. I stayed up all night reading them. We were married forty-three years and she never said a word. Take a look if you like, it’s something to pass the time. They really threw me for a loop.

What kind of letters are they? I asked. Love letters?

He lowered his head and looked at me over his glasses.

No, he said. Nothing to do with love. All the love stuff I’ve put in the wash.

He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray, licked his finger and tapped a speck of ash off the table and flicked it into the ashtray, too.

If we’d gone to Germany we could have saved her, he said. You remember what the oncologist said. Put a hundred thousand in your pocket and go to Germany. Sure, a hundred thousand. As if he were talking about drachmas, not euros. He had no idea. And the banks haven’t caught on, either, have they? They should be giving out cancer loans. The way it’s mowing people down they’d be making money hand over fist.

What are you talking about, Dad? Have you lost it completely?

I know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s what to do that’s beyond me.

He stood up and emptied the ashtray into the trash, rinsed it and set it upside-down in the sink. Then he took the basin of wet clothes and the basket of clothespins and went outside.

• • •

I make more coffee then sit down and take the rubber band off the packet and spread the letters out before me. They’re mostly from the ’60s, but a few are even older. Letters my mother wrote to her parents in Crete. Letters from her brother Drakos to their father. Letters between the siblings — my mother was one of six. Other letters from friends and relatives. Most are difficult to read — the ink is faded in places or the paper has stains or little holes as if mice have been chewing on them. I choose one at random and try to make out what it says. As I read, I keep coming across little gems, unexpected turns of phrase of the sort people wrote back then in their letters, in the good old days when the postman brought actual mail and not just bills and ads and notices about unpaid bills.

November, 1963. My uncle Drakos writing to his family.

Piraeus 11/27/1963

Dear honored Father and cherished Mother and beloved siblings. I received your dear brief letter and was very happy that you are well as we are too. Well father thank you very much for the basket everything was very nice the greens had rotted so we threw them out and they are gone to the devil the myzithra was moldy but Lefteria cleaned off the bad part grace be to God we ate it already and wish there were more .

Well father how is the weather in Vatolakkos. We here grace be to God have had plenty of rain it’s been a harsh winter with lots of rain and everyone is sick with a cold Lefteria caught the Asian flu and didn’t go to work yesterday well father love and health that is what is most important in life .

Well father and mother we finally got jobs on the busses I’m a ticket collector and now that I’m full-time I don’t have to worry and everyday I thank the Virgin Mary for helping me I even get a day off every week and vacation .

Well father like all of Greece I was very upset about that great man of Democracy that man of freedom who was killed, all of Athens and Piraeus sigh with grief, every day on the bus all the people say what a pity and sigh these few things I write to you of that Sainted Man Kennedy .

I have good news also, I think we are headed for new elections. Well father you should know that the Center will win pay no heed to the newspapers that say Karamanlis has so much support those are photographs from 1961, they’re not real and you can be sure that THE CENTER WILL WIN .

Well father I ask you to please send some olive oil, here I have to buy it and it’s difficult I don’t have much money to spare it’s a shame for us in the capital to be asking like beggars for a little oil but if you can believe it I make 60 drachmas a day and spend 50 on food I work all day just to eat, this is all I write to you .