Christos Ikonomou: Something Will Happen, You'll See

Mao’s changed a lot since last year. Not that he ever had much give and take with anyone but now you can’t even get a full sentence out of him. Michalis Panigirakis whose father used to work in the graveyard and who knows about these things says Mao has the look of death in his eyes. He says Mao knows who hurt his sister and he’s saving up to buy a gun and hunt them down. He says Mao found some guys from Mani who can get him a good handgun for a thousand or so. Michalis says the guys from Korydallos sent Mao a message that if he dares make a move they’ll break into his house at night and tear his mother and little sister to shreds. And they’ll pin Mao down in the corner and make him watch.

That’s why Mao doesn’t sleep at night. He keeps watch outside the house in case the guys from Korydallos come around.

True or false that’s what Michalis says. But what precisely is going on in Mao’s head no one could say for sure. Because Mao doesn’t tell anyone anything. He doesn’t talk to anyone but the cats.

That whole business has been going on for a while. He’s got all the cats and dogs in the neighborhood coming around since he feeds them and pets them and talks to them. On Sundays he throws crumbs on the sidewalk for the pigeons and doves and sparrows. He’s got a cat with one bum leg that he calls Augustus. It’s a female not a male but that’s what he calls it, Augustus. He picked her out from the crowd and put a red string around her neck with a little bell. And his mother sees it all happening and it drives her nuts. Everyone agrees that something needs to be done because every day there’s some kind of ruckus in the neighborhood with all those dogs and cats but who would dare say anything to Mao about it. Because he was always kind of a loner but now he looks at you and your blood freezes. The other day he shaved his head and since he’s just skin and bones when he stares at you with those grim black eyes he looks just like one of those kids who starved to death during the occupation.

No one even dares call him Mao to his face anymore.

What’s up, Mao?

Fuck you all.

• • •

At night Mao doesn’t sleep. He sits on the steps outside the house and drinks and smokes and talks to Augustus the cat. It’s a great comfort in the middle of the night to hear his voice and the tinkling of the cat’s bell. A great comfort. Every so often he gets up and walks back and forth like a watchman. Down to Ikoniou Street and then back again to Kastamoni and Tzavelas. Back and forth all night every night. On October nights when it rains and all you can hear is the water running through the drain pipes and emptying into the grates on street corners. On December nights when the wind whistles through the electrical wires and the branches of the mulberry tree scratch the window like hands frozen with cold. In March when the nights are cool and you stick your head out the window and inhale the scent of the bitter orange trees and look up at the stars in the sky and the scattered clouds and wonder if something might happen after all — if something might happen so the world doesn’t vanish and all the people with it. Mao is there. All night every night. Until daybreak. No one knows how he can go to work on so little sleep.

It’s a great comfort. It’s a great comfort to know that someone is awake out there in the street. And if you open your eyes and your ears you’ll see and hear things you never notice during the day, in the yellow light of day. As if objects change with the hours. As if night has some secret plan, some magical power that can alter things and make them seem less wild less harsh — can offer some drop of comfort to the heart of a frightened person. As if god hasn’t abandoned the world entirely but decided to exist only at night. If you open your eyes and ears you’ll see and hear. The sudden swipe of the hand, the tsaf , the flame from the match lighting the cigarette. The smoke rising yellow from Mao’s mouth and scattering like frozen breath in the darkness. The tip of the cigarette glowing on and off like a firefly. The cat stretching on Mao’s lap so his fingers can get at all the best places. You’ll hear the tinkling of the bell and Mao’s voice murmuring who knows what. You’ll hear the sound of his bottle coming to rest on the steps beside him. The thud of his heels as he paces up and down the street.

A comfort. It’s a great comfort to know someone in the neighborhood is staying up at night. Of course the whole neighborhood feels sorry for Mao but at the same time since things happened the way they did it’s good that we have someone watching over us at night — even if that isn’t his purpose. There are about a hundred families living around here. And things have gotten pretty rough. Drugs in the school. Purse snatchers. Thieves. Down near Agios Nikolas three houses got broken into in a single week. One guy and his wife went to pick their kid up from school and when they got home there were three guys with knives in the house, there in broad daylight. Even the Pakistanis are out of control. The Pakistanis. Who never even used to meet your eye. Now they roam through the streets at night like gangs. The other day they grabbed a kid off his bike and took him down to the field by the church of Osia Xeni and hurt him bad. A little kid just ten years old.

Things have gotten pretty rough recently.

But we’re okay.

Around here we’re calmer at night.

Because we’ve got Mao.

• • •

In the evening the sky darkens and at around nine a quiet rain starts to fall that seeps all the way down to your bones. Just now we heard on the television about what happened last night on Kondyli Street. Two thugs went into a corner store and knifed a girl working there who was seven months pregnant. Kondyli is just a stone’s throw from here but we heard it first from the television. And it got us all worked up again. The admiral blames the police for everything. Vayios who works in construction driving a backhoe and has a cop for a brother blames the politicians: the leftists hate the police and gutted the force as soon as they could and the guys on the right sat and watched because they’re afraid of the left. Michalis says if we had a drop of dignity, if we were real men and not just useless bystanders we’d do what Mao does instead of sitting in front of the television and crying over our fate.

That’s what men do, says Michalis. Take the situation into their own hands. We’re just chickenshit.

He gets up and turns off the television and lights some candles and brings a bottle of tsipouro and some dried chick peas and raisins. We sit in the dark and look out the window. No matter how bad the fear and rage get you can’t help but give yourself over for a while to the sweetness of the rain. You listen to the tap tap tap of the raindrops on the windowsill and they seem to be dripping straight into your heart. And for a little while you forget your troubles. You forget what happened on Kondyli Street and forget that this is the first time it’s rained since October and who knows when it will rain again. You listen to the rain and let yourself forget. And if you crack the window open and put your head out and take a deep breath you can smell the wet earth and the scent of the bitter orange trees and the breeze that has a strange acrid smell to it again tonight. And if you look up you’ll see the rain falling yellow around the streetlight and if you look even higher you’ll see the clouds which have turned a dark yellow as if they’ve traveled over some burning land to get here.

It’s after eleven when Mao comes out of the building sits on the steps and sets his bottle and cigarettes down beside him. It’s tsikoudia says Michalis who’s seen Mao coming out of the Cretan’s shop lots of times over on Tsaldaris Street. Then Mao grabs the cat who’s sunk her claws into his shoulder and holds her in his arms and starts to pet her. He looks at the road glistening with rainwater and every so often looks up at the falling rain and the raindrops that are as yellow as an old man’s nicotine-drenched beard. And Vayios who’s lived here the longest tells us yet again how Mao’s grandfather Stavros the ship’s captain had a thing for cats too. One day someone brought him a fluffy white cat named Nabila but he was pretty old by then maybe eighty and his hearing wasn’t great and he called it Mantila. He was crazy about that cat, never let it out of his sight. One day a few years before he died that cat disappeared. So he goes out into the street in his pajamas with his cane and starts calling Mantila Mantila Mantila. And a neighbor hears him and thinks well the old man must have lost it or had a stroke or something, and she grabs a kitchen towel and goes down into the street and says, here you go barba-Stavros I brought you a kerchief. Now let’s go back inside so you don’t get hit by a truck or who knows what. And the old man is all upset because he thinks she’s making fun of him so he raises his cane and almost finishes the poor woman off. Beats her like you wouldn’t believe. They had a heck of a time calming him down, he had one foot in the grave but his blood still boiled. The old bugger. Vicious to the last. The older generation said he’d killed plenty of people during the civil war.