Christos Ikonomou - Something Will Happen, You'll See

What did this guy swallow? A screwdriver or something?

• • •

It’s been about a month now. I’m sure it started earlier but it’s been a month since I found out. When Petros got off work he would take the Cadet and park on Thebes Street and wait. He worked at Grekas’s warehouses behind Plato’s Academy and as soon as he got off work he would park the Cadet on Thebes Street and watch the cars go by. He would put on his hazards and smoke a cigarette and listen to one of the cassettes I had given him and roll down the window and watch the cars go by. When he caught sight of an expensive one — some convertible or huge jeep — he would start the engine and pull out and follow it. Piraeus Kastela Faliro however far they went. Glyfada Voula Ilioupoli, all those fancy suburbs down the coast. He followed the expensive cars because he wanted to see where the people driving them lived or worked. He would drive around for hours like an aimless curse. The night he told me about it he’d come home drunk and collapsed onto his bed with all his clothes on and lit a cigarette and sang a song by Robert Johnson — he didn’t know the words so he could only sing the tune — and then he said it’s strange to be poor, it’s so strange to be poor, you’re like one of those penguins they show on TV watching the ice melt all around them and they have no idea what to hold onto or how to keep themselves from going crazy and so they start attacking one another out of fear — that’s what it’s like, Petros said.

Then he stood up put his hands on his hips and started waddling through the room making strange noises and I got out of bed and switched on the light and said you’re wasted again you idiot if he wakes up and sees you like this he’ll kick you from here to tomorrow and Petros said leave me alone I’m doing my penguin routine and then he stopped and looked at me and said penguins are an endangered species you’re not allowed to hit them so if anyone dares raise a hand against me I’ll report him to the ecologists. When I turned off the light he stopped moving and lit a cigarette and looked out the window at the flickering lights of the ships down at the port and said that another Friday had come and gone and Grekas still hadn’t paid them their wages.

He owes us two months of back pay, he said. We all lined up at four in the afternoon outside the accounting office, waiting. Fifteen or twenty of us. They paid the first five or six and the rest of us went home empty-handed again. I was eighth in line. We shouted and swore but we can’t change the facts. Next week, he says. This old guy barba-Kostas who works the backhoe fainted when he heard. We ran over to try and help. There’s nothing in the world more — what’s the word. More humiliating than that. To not get paid for two months and to wait in line for your wages and when your turn comes they say sorry we ran out of money come back next week. It’s sick. A sickness. Soul-destroying. You should have seen us. We were just like penguins. Waiting in line inching forward and stretching our necks out to see what was happening in the office and if the next guy to go in was getting paid or not. We were just like penguins, really. And the whole time we were waiting there it wouldn’t have taken much for me to tear into the guy in front of me and I knew perfectly well that the guy behind me would have torn into me too. Because we all knew there wasn’t enough money to go around. It would have made your blood freeze to see us like that. Like penguins, I swear.

• • •

I leave the hospital on foot because I don’t have money for a cab but also because I feel like walking. Five tacks. The doctors say two of them are stuck in his esophagus and the others went down into his stomach. It’s not going to be an easy case. He’s over seventy and he’s got heart problems. They’re going to do something but they didn’t tell me what. They might not even know themselves. They might not even want to do anything — who knows. They sent me home to get his pills so they’ll know what he’s taking and I’m also supposed to bring his pajamas and slippers. They practically chased me out of the place and that makes me wonder, too.

It’s December and there’s a full moon and a clear sky and the breath comes out of my mouth like fog. Friday evening. They’re going to keep Petros in jail all weekend — they’ll bring him back to the courthouse on Monday. I called the lawyer from the hospital and he told me. It’s like the junta, he said. We’re living through another junta. They won’t let him out on bail because he’s a flight risk, they say. I never heard such a thing. Of course that brother of yours isn’t an easy one. He’s got guts, that’s for sure. What was he thinking? A young kid like that. At any rate on Monday we’ll get him out, no question. Patience, that’s all I can say. It’s only two days.

I turn left on Second Division, right on Heroes and end up out in front of the public theater where I think about taking a bus but keep on walking towards the port. Christmas. It’s nearly Christmas and there are big fake candles flickering on the utility poles and garlands hanging over the street with fir trees and Saint Vassilises and reindeer. Up there it’s Christmas but down here it’s Good Friday — the sidewalk spattered with spots that look like blood as if someone came this way who’d been shot or some wounded animal left a long trail of blood behind. Dried black blood.

Last night they caught him in Glyfada. Petros. They caught him down in Glyfada. He’d waited again at Thebes Street and followed a jeep with a woman inside who was by herself. When they got to Glyfada and the jeep pulled into a garage Petros got out of the Cadet and went and looked over the fence and saw the most beautiful house he’d ever seen in his life — a huge villa as big as a castle and a yard with grass and trees and strange lights and in the middle a Christmas tree that seemed to be made of ice. Then, before the woman could close the garage door, Petros slipped inside and refused to leave. He didn’t want to do anything didn’t want to bother anyone. He just wanted to spend the night out there in the yard and look at the house and the grass and that strange tree that seemed to be made of ice. That’s all he wanted.

But the woman and the house happened to belong to a judge, or a public prosecutor or something.

We heard it all from the lawyer — Petros didn’t even call.

• • •

On the corner of Georgiou and Resistance I have to wait for the light to change. The wind is fierce and a thick yellow frost coming from the port obscures the streetlights and the lights in shop windows. There seem to be even more stains on the sidewalk now, as if not just one wounded person but a whole army passed by.

The light turns red and I cross the street with my eyes on the asphalt.

He was yelling something about penguins, the lawyer said. It took them ages to calm him down. He was pretty wild, even tore one of the policemen’s shirts. Completely wasted.

• • •

I stuff pajamas shirts underwear and socks into an overnight bag. I put whatever medicine I can find in a plastic bag. I pour myself a tsipouro to get warm — my hands are wooden with cold, my legs still shaking from the walk. And then I do something I haven’t done in years: I stick the whole top half of my body into the hall closet and smell. When we were kids Petros and I used to do it all the time. In winter. We would sneak out into the hall at night and open the closet and slip inside to smell the clothes — ours, our father’s, our mother’s. Hers had a stronger smell than the rest. Walk on cotton so the cat won’t catch you, Petros would whisper. I have no idea where he learned that saying. Walk on cotton so the cat won’t catch you. We laughed so hard on those nights. And then we would go back to bed with the smell of the clothes lingering in our mouths and with that sweetness on our tongues we would fall asleep, arm in arm.