Christos Ikonomou: Something Will Happen, You'll See

SHE’S WASHING LETTUCE. With twenty euros to get her through the week and bills piled on the kitchen counter. But it’s Friday night, her favorite night of the week, and Ellie Drakou is at the sink washing lettuce which she likes because it has such a tender white heart. She pulls off each leaf individually and runs water over it and washes it carefully and strokes it and breaks off any rotten edges or pieces with those strange tiny brown holes that lettuce gets and then gently shakes off the water and lays the leaf in the basin.

She loves washing lettuce. Pulling off those big green leaves and washing each one individually. And as she gets closer to the center she reaches those tender leaves that are less green, the ones that glisten like they’re untouched by time. It’s as if she’s slowly and carefully and excitedly unwrapping a gift that someone else wrapped in layers of green paper. Then she gets to the heart of the lettuce and her own heart sweetens at the sight of those small tender leaves, those white crispy leaves — the heart of a head of lettuce, a tiny miracle, a well-kept secret, guarded from time and the wear of time. She likes to think that no matter what happened yesterday, no matter how much money she may have lost, no matter what happens tomorrow and for the rest of her days, no matter how many Sotirises pass through her life like conquering soldiers or hunted migrants, the heart of the lettuce, the innermost heart of the lettuce, those tiny leaves now quivering in her wet hands will remain forever white and tender and alive, as if they’re the only things in this world that don’t die, that won’t ever die.

It rained, then stopped. Soon it will rain again. She looks out the window. Everything to the west is red — wind, sky, clouds. Tonight it’ll rain blood, Ellie says and shivers. And her eyes move from the window back to the heart of the lettuce that seems to be throbbing in her hands — but it’s not the lettuce that’s throbbing, only her hands trembling — and what she sees sinks inside of her like the smile of a person who’s out of work, a person who’s just been fired.

• • •

Lettuce, says Ellie. The whole secret of life hiding in a head of lettuce. Am I right?

• • •

She was the only one who fed the pig. For the past ten months or even a year. Every other day, sometimes every day. A euro or two euros or sometimes five. Occasionally she forgot. She forgot when she’d been working overtime and came home so tired she couldn’t even speak. But Sotiris never forgot. He would bring the pig in from the kitchen — it was big and heavy and pink with a slit in its back for coins and a hole in its snout for bills — and shake it in front of Ellie’s face.

Grrts grrts. The pig is hungry. It’s starving, Ellie. Grrts grrts. Come on Ellie, feed the pig. Don’t you feel sorry for the poor thing? Grrts grrts.

And Ellie would laugh. No matter how exhausted she was she always laughed. And she would open her wallet and take out a euro or two and slip the coin into the hole and on Friday nights she would take a five-euro bill out of her wallet and twist it into a tight roll and push it through the pig’s snout.

There must have been about eight hundred in there. Eight or maybe nine at the very most.

Why don’t you ever feed it, she sometimes asked. Why don’t you feed it every now and then, why do you just wait for me to?

Wheatie. That’s what she called him sometimes, wheatie instead of sweetie, because everything about him was the color of wheat. Wheat-colored skin, wheat-colored hair, even his eyes were the color of wheat. Wheat or semolina. I want to eat you with a spoon. You’ll just lie there as still as can be and I’ll eat you one spoonful at a time all night long. And in the morning you’ll be whole and I’ll eat you up all over again.

Like wheat. Like semolina.

Whatever you say, he told her, I won’t spoil your fun.

He came over with the pig in his hands.

It won’t eat my money, he said. You’ve spoiled it. It’s a gourmet pig it won’t eat just anything. It won’t eat dirty money.

He worked at a gas station on Thebes Street and his hands were always grimy. The tops of his fingernails were like black half-moons. Black half-moons, little black scythes.

• • •

She washes the last leaf and puts it in the basin and sets the basin aside for later. Later she might fix a salad with lots of dill and onion and throw in some cold rice and a little tuna from the jar a girl at work brought her, a jar of tuna from Alonissos which she’s been eating for a month now in tiny little bites one flake at a time — Sotiris didn’t like it, he thought it was too fishy.

The bills are piled on the kitchen counter. On the very top is the phone bill, which is ten days overdue and yesterday or the day before they cut off her line.

She opens the fridge to see if there’s something sweet she can eat. Her hands are trembling again. Low blood sugar for sure. Chocolates. She still remembers those chocolates someone once brought her from France. See what it’s like when you’ve got a good man, Sotiris said. See. Everyone remembers to bring you something. They ate one each night. Only one because it wasn’t a very big box. The brand was named after some queen or princess who had lived a long long time ago in England and once begged her husband the king to abolish the taxes he’d levied on the poor and he agreed on the condition that the queen ride her horse naked through the city streets and she also agreed on the condition that everyone lock themselves in their houses so no one would see and she rode the horse naked through the streets hiding her nakedness with her long long hair and everyone stayed locked in their houses except for a single man who supposedly dared to sneak a peek at her and was immediately struck blind.

Ellie had told that story to Sotiris two or three times, and she’d told it many more to herself, and each time she tried to imagine what the queen looked like and if she had blonde hair or black and why the queen cared about poor people and if she had ridden the horse the way men do or if she sat sidesaddle and what she was thinking as she passed naked through the empty streets and if it was day or night and how slowly she rode — and now, as she stands in front of the empty fridge with the cold hitting her face, Ellie remembers those summer evenings in bed remembers unwrapping the chocolate and holding it between two fingers and licking it a little before putting it in her mouth and when she put it in her mouth she didn’t bite it but let it melt on her tongue, didn’t bite didn’t chew but let the chocolate slowly melt in her mouth and the sweet and bitter taste would coat her mouth and run down her throat and into her heart.

• • •

Chains, Ellie says and closes the door of the fridge and rubs her arms which are covered in gooseflesh. I should put snow chains on my mind to keep it from slipping back to the past.

• • •

In the bathroom she looks again at the word scrawled in orange lipstick on the mirror. THORRY . It was one of their jokes, their secret phrases. They’d stolen it from a movie they saw on TV, about a clumsy guy with a lisp who was always eating chocolate and apologizing to everyone. Thorry, he kept saying, excthuse me.

Thorry, Sotiris would say to Ellie. A woman like you should have found a rich guy to be with. Then you wouldn’t have to work the way you do. You would just travel and shop and go to the hair salon. Rome for the weekend Paris on Monday holidays in New York. But then I had to come along. Thorry.