Christos Ikonomou: Something Will Happen, You'll See

By now the hourglass was gone, the sea was darkening, a breeze had picked up. They sat for a long time under the olive tree listening to its leaves shudder in the wind. The stars trembled between the branches of the tree and he stared at them for a long time silently trying to think of what the stars looked like trying to think up something heroic, something romantic to say about the stars but in the end he gave up because they were only stars — they were only stars and nothing more.

• • •

Should I bring you a jacket or something? he asked.

Chuckwalla.

What’s that?

Bulgarian. It means love brings luck. Chuckwalla. Isn’t it nice? Say it: chuckwalla.

He gave her a quizzical look and Niki laughed and rubbed her forearms which were covered in gooseflesh.

I’ve been trying to remember since morning, she said. I’ve been trying to remember since when we were loading our things onto the truck and now I finally did. Chuckwalla. Turns out you were right, alcohol is an aid to memory. Wasn’t it you who told me that? Anyway. Whoever said it was right. I feel like singing. There’s no one to sing for us. No one to sing songs about us, the ones who are leaving now. Like the songs they used to sing in the old days. I know, you’ll say a lot has changed since then. And you’d be right, too. Back then a guy could sing at the station in Munich you left me and now what’s he going to sing, at the station in Kyustendil you left me? It just doesn’t sound right. Besides, who knows if there’s even a station up there. Are there trains in Kyustendil? Did you even ask? You didn’t, did you. That’s why no one is going to sing songs about us, the ones who are leaving now. But it’s fine, I’m sure they’ll say something on TV. That’s something, at least. At some point they’ll say something on TV for sure. About all the people who are leaving. I’m sure. Of course they will. That’s something, isn’t it? Better than nothing. Pour us another drink. I want to drink to the health of progress and development and eminent domain. To the health of the European Union and the free movement of people and products. Cheers to that.

He got up from the cement and stood in front of her.

Let’s go inside, he said. Let’s go in and lie down, okay? It’s too windy out here, it’s not a good idea for us to sleep outside. Come on. Get up, let’s go in. Get up. We’ve got a big day ahead of us tomorrow.

Niki didn’t look his way. She was staring at the clouds that were getting bigger and blacker and blocking out every part of the horizon. A lightning flash carved across the sky. It looked like an enormous uprooted tree.

You don’t remember, Niki said.

What? What don’t I remember?

The chuckwalla. That documentary we saw. About the lizards. You don’t remember. There are these lizards in Mexico that when they get scared they hide in their nests and puff up their lungs with air so they’re as big as balls and no one can get them out no matter how hard they try. They’re called chuckwallas and I’m so jealous of them. I wish I could do that. The chuckwalla of Salamina.

He reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. Niki took a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks and held her breath until her face turned red and her eyes filled with tears and got blurry and she started to see little black flecks flitting before her eyes like tiny insects hovering over something that’s died.

Then she let her breath out in a gust and, panting, let her red face drop to her chest.

Piece by piece they’re taking my world away, she said.

• • •

Late at night she saw headlights coming along the coast road. She was curled up in her chair, trembling from the cold, but her jacket was in her suitcase and she didn’t want to go inside to get it, she didn’t want to wake him. She knew he would wake up on his own at some point during the night. She was sure to hear him shouting, on this last night in the house he would wake up shouting again from some dream. For sure. Eminent domain.

The truck turned left and started up the dirt road, growling up the hill, then stopped in front of the gate. The driver’s side and passenger’s side doors opened at exactly the same moment. The men stepped out and glanced into the yard. She couldn’t tell if they saw her sitting there — but if they did, they showed no sign of it. They took something out of the truck and then came over to the wall and started to loosen the stones and load them onto the bed of the truck.

She curled up even tighter in her chair and wrapped her arms around her bare legs and in the darkness saw her skin filling with countless tiny goosebumps, countless blind eyes. Eminent domain.

She watched as the men walked back and forth through the beams of the truck’s headlights. They would work a stone loose from the wall and carry it to the bed of the truck and then come back for another. They worked calmly, without rushing, without fear. One of them said something and they both laughed and the laugh seemed to echo between the trees and the shadows of trees and Niki saw new eyes, blind eyes, sprouting from her skin.

And then, when they left, when the truck rolled back down the dirt road and went out onto the main road and disappeared, raising a cloud of red dust, Niki lifted her head and saw all the stars in the sky without really looking at any one of them — the stars are the sky’s eyes, what a fairytale, the sky has no eyes it’s blind blind blind — and she reached a hand toward the stars like a beggar and held her arm stretched out like that for a long time and when it got tired she lowered her arm and with it her gaze and she stared at the low stone wall, at the terrible gap those loosened stones had left in the wall.

Piece by piece they’re taking my world away.