Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

I dream that there’s been a huge cataclysmic storm and the whole world is flooded and Lena and I are swimming in a strange place. We’re swimming in a panic fighting for our lives and all around there’s not a single soul in sight no houses no cars only water — black thick dirty water that sticks to us like something alive and scared. As I swim I hear Lena beside me saying that the water actually is alive and it’s clinging to us because it wants to be saved from itself — that’s what she says, saved from itself. The water wants to be saved from the water — that’s the fine kind of dream I have. Then a huge tree appears before us with bare branches. I don’t know what kind of tree it is but it’s very big and there are lots of birds sitting in its branches — tiny red birds — and we see them flapping their wings in a panic but they can’t fly. We swim very close and Lena says we have to help the birds fly away because the water level keeps rising and they’re going to drown. But as soon as she grabs hold of one it vanishes and all that’s left in her hands is a pile of feathers that aren’t red but black. She grabs a second bird and then a third but the same thing happens — they vanish as soon as she touches them and she’s left with a handful of black feathers. Then I try to grab one and my hands fill with black feathers and the water around us is getting blacker and blacker and rising higher and higher and weighing me down grabbing me and pulling me down down down.

Wake up, says Lena. What were you muttering, she says and shakes me. You scared me. Wake up.

She’s leaning over me and in the dark her face is darker than the dark.

What were you dreaming? Why did you shout? What did you dream?

Nothing. Go to sleep.

What did you dream. Tell me.

Nothing. That it was raining. Go to sleep.

She falls back onto the mattress and sighs. Then there’s no sound, only the tick tock of the clock. The sheet has wrapped itself around my legs and it’s too tight but I don’t have the energy to push it off.

See, Lena says. It’s a good sign. See, you shouldn’t lose hope. See.

Then she leans toward me again and puts her hand on my neck and kisses me on the side of my head.

• • •

On Christmas Day the weather changes. Around noon the clouds come out and by three the sky is dark. Sonia calls to wish us a merry Christmas. They’re in Pelion with friends. It’s been raining since morning there, she says. Lots of rain, insane amounts of rain. I’ll fill up a bottle and bring it to you, she says and laughs. They’re all drunk, the whole stupid bunch of them. They’re staying in a hotel whose restaurant has organic meats, organic vegetables, organic forks and knives. Their room has a fireplace and a four-poster bed with a canopy and walls painted all kinds of crazy colors. How nice for you, Lena says, looking at me. Then she asks Sonia when they’re coming home, if they’ll get to see one another before Sonia and Vassilis leave for Paris. I wanted to ask you something, Lena says — her eyes on me the whole time. About what we were saying the other day. You remember. Yes. No. I’m fine. For sure. We’ll talk when you’re back.

When she hangs up, we take our drinks out onto the balcony. It’s going to rain. A tall cloud like a black wall is heading toward us from the direction of Salamina. It’s going to rain. Only the wind doesn’t smell like rain. It’s a strange wind. Blowing from the east, from the opposite direction of where the cloud is, but the cloud is still moving steadily toward us. As if it isn’t a cloud but something else. The power lines in the street hum, metal doors bang, car alarms shriek. Trees and TV antennas bend in the wind, which sweeps up leaves and plastic bags and scraps of paper. A star-shaped ornament pulls loose from a balcony and falls into the street and rolls like some strange wheel. The wind is fierce and blowing steadily toward the west as if the cloud is an enormous magnet put there to suck up everything in the world, to suck all the air out of the world.

Look over there, Lena says, grabbing my arm. What’s that about, she says, pointing to the cloud. What on earth. Look. Have you ever seen anything like it? What is it?

And then we see the rain. Distant black threads hanging from the cloud that seem to tie the earth to the sky.

It’s the end of the world, I say, and Lena laughs as if she can’t breathe and clings to me and licks up a droplet of wine that dripped from her glass onto her hand.

Maybe this really is how the world will end, I say. Then again, maybe not. Maybe the world won’t end, only the people. Maybe people will stop having dreams or sleeping or making love or drinking wine or kissing. Something like that. Maybe that’s how the end will come. Not from meteorites or nuclear weapons or melting ice caps. No explosions or earthquakes or typhoons. Not from outside but from within. That’s how it should be. Because we’re living in the world but not with the world. For centuries now we’ve stopped living with the world. So it wouldn’t be fair if the world had to end with us. It wouldn’t be fair.

The cloud is so big now that we can’t see the sea at all.

A fake fir tree gets blown off a balcony across the street and falls into the emptiness below, silently spinning. It’s the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

Actually, no, I say. The most frightening thing is work. Waiting to get paid on every fifteenth and thirtieth day of the month. Measuring your life in fifteen-day chunks. Knowing that if your bosses don’t feel like paying you once or twice or ten times in a row, ten fifteen-day chunks, there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Your whole life is in their hands. And there you are counting your life out in fifteens. That’s the most frightening thing.

I’m going inside, Lena says. I hate it when you talk like that. I don’t want to watch anymore. Let’s go inside.

But we don’t go anywhere. We stand there holding our drinks and silently watching the rain coming in from the west. We watch as that black curtain of rain slowly and silently closes in slowly and silently swallows up the shapes and colors and noises of the sunset to the west.

THIS MORNING MY father swallowed five tacks. Metal tacks — the big kind. As soon as he saw Petros coming through the door in handcuffs with a cop on either side he took the tacks out of his shirt pocket and swallowed them all at once. Like candies. He was sitting right next to me but I had no idea it was happening. I mean at some point I saw him fishing around in his pocket but how could I have imagined. I thought he had a pill in there or something. How could I have imagined. Because he hadn’t given any sign. Last night when he came home he was calm — no shouting no breaking plates no nothing. Calm. Like a beaten dog. Calm. Of course he didn’t sleep at all. He spent the whole night sitting in the dark in the kitchen. I got up twice and found him sitting there in the dark, staring out the window. One hand propped against his cheek the other messing around in the ashtray with his cigarette as if he were writing something in the ashes. Calm. Except for his foot tapping on the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. He was barefoot and I wanted to tell him to put on socks since the last thing we needed was for him to catch cold but I didn’t say anything. I just went back to bed and listened for a long time to his bare foot tapping on the floor.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

As if he was listening to some music no one else could hear.

• • •

In the morning at the courthouse he was still calm. Hunched over and silent but calm. Until Petros appeared in handcuffs with the cops pulling him along. Five tacks. I didn’t notice a thing. It all happened so fast in the blink of an eye as they say — like in a dream. He took the tacks from his pocket and swallowed them and it wasn’t easy but he forced them down. And then he clutched his neck and crumpled to the floor and turned blue all over and might have been trying to say something but all that came out was a hrrrrr hrrrr and he was shaking all over with his eyes wide open like a dog that’s been poisoned. Everyone ran over to him, people were shouting, they thought he’d had a heart attack or a stroke — all hell broke loose. Petros tried to run over, too, but the cops grabbed him and threw him down. You cocksuckers, he shouted at them. Let me go you motherfuckers that’s my father. But they just held him pinned down with their knees on his back. Like he was some kind of terrorist, like Koufodinas from November 17th. I don’t remember what happened next — I wasn’t really seeing things too clearly at that point. I was drenched in sweat, dizzy, trembling. All I remember is the ambulance coming to take him away. And then someone came and leaned over and gave me a good look and asked the guy next to me: