"And what do you expect me to do, woman? Sit and watch that brainless copper? If he were working under me, I'd have him sent to the storeroom to count bullets! Or should I wait for the second half with that old hen who plays the prosecutor and after six hundred episodes still can't decide whether she wants to do her husband?"
"Naturally," she replied scornfully. "You're just a slob, and you can't stand anything that's even faintly glamorous." She turned and stormed out. But she'd succeeded in rankling me because I had no idea what "glamorous" meant, or where she'd got it from to dangle before me like that.
I went over to the shelf and took down the Oxford English-Greek Learner's Dictionary, the only English dictionary I had. I'd bought it in '77 when I was in the drugs squad and we had to interrogate some foreigners who'd gone to India, supposedly in search of a guru, and had come back with saris, a load of trinkets, and half a kilo of heroin hidden up their arses like a suppository. It was then that I'd decided to learn half a dozen words in English for fear that some pasty-faced redhead might hit on me and come out with the odd "fuck you!" and I wouldn't know if she was cursing me or asking me for a cheese pie.
I searched for glamurous but found nothing. So I looked under glamourus and again nothing. The damned English write it using o and ou just to make life difficult. So: glamorous = possessing glamour, alluring and fascinating; beautiful and smart. Glamorous film stars. So that's what she'd meant-that I don't like what's alluring and fascinating or, by inference, film stars who are alluring and fascinating, because I'm a ragamuffin. It's taken you thirty years to graduate from biscuits to croissants and she calls you a ragamuffin because you can't stomach her stupid soap stars.
I put up the shutters and went to watch the television. It had already turned nine, and I wanted to listen to the news in case they said anything about the Albanians. Half the news was taken up with political issues, the situation in Bosnia, two junkies who'd overdosed and an eighty-year-old who'd raped and murdered his seventy-yearold sister-in-law. Just as I was feeling a sense of relief that we'd been left out, the newscaster put on a grievous expression. His face darkened, his hands rose slightly from the desk in a show of despair at the upset he was going to cause the viewers, and he gave forth a sigh that was barely perceptible. The words emerged disjointed, one by one, like the last customers out of a cafe just before it closes who scatter into the street. He always had that handkerchief in his jacket pocket. I kept expecting him to take it out and wipe away his tears, but he'd never done it. He should have kept it up his sleeve for when the ratings fell.
"And in other crime, ladies and gentlemen," he said, "in the brutal murder of the two Albanians, there have been no further developments."
Yanna Karayoryi appeared right on cue. She was holding the microphone and wearing the same attire that she'd been wearing that morning. It was hardly surprising, as she was speaking in the corridor with her back to my office.
"The police have no new evidence concerning the murders, other than the arrest of an Albanian, who is being held at Athens Security Headquarters. According to a statement made by the head of homicide, Inspector Costas Haritos, the interrogation of the Albanian is continuing. The police suspect that the couple had a child, who has not yet been found."
Furious, I lunged to grab hold of her on the screen. But she disappeared, and in her place appeared the chubby woman who'd identified him. She began spouting into the microphone about the Albanian and about how she had notified us. It was the third straight evening that they'd shown the same scene. With the woman saying exactly the same things, wearing the same eye-catching blouse and the same skirt hitched up at the back, not at all glamorous. And how would I explain to the chief the next day that this was a fabrication on Karayoryi's part and that everything was under control?
"Now, who's glued to the screen?" I heard Adriani's gloating voice from the kitchen.
"I have some news," she said, just as I'd put the fork with the moussaka to my mouth.
"What news?"
"Katerina phoned today," she said, smiling.
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I wanted to tell you over supper, to give you an appetite."
Rubbish. She kept it from me on purpose to get back at me for not watching TV with her. She knew what a soft spot I had for our daughter.
"She's coming for Christmas, after all," she said with a satisfied grin.
Katerina was studying law in Thessaloniki. She was breezing through her second year. Her aim when she finished was to become a public prosecutor. Deep down, I only hoped I wouldn't have retired, so I'd be able to send her plenty of defendants. And then I'd sit in the courtroom and feel a father's pride as she read the charge, questioned the witnesses, and addressed the court.
"I must send her some money for the airfare."
"Don't bother-she said that she'd take the coach, with Panos," Adriani said.
Of course, I'd forgotten about that hulk. Or rather, I was trying not to remember him. He wasn't a bad kid underneath; he was studying to be an agriculturist. It bothered me, though, that he was muscular, the athletic type, always in a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. The ones we had like that on the force were all dimwits. But it wasn't his fault; he was one of that fifties generation. Not the first post-war generation, but the one of today. I call them the fifties generation because their vocabulary extends to no more than fifty words. And if you exclude "fuck," "creep," and "asshole," you're left with a net taxable income of forty-seven, as the revenue people would say. I remember the period between '71 and '73, the events at the Polytechnic, the student demonstrations, the sit-ins at the universities, the slogan "Food, Freedom, Education," and I recall how they'd send us to keep them under control or even to break them up. Confrontations, chases through the streets, broken limbs, with them swearing at us and with us cursing them. How could we have known then that all the fighting was just so that we would arrive today at those fifty words? We might as well have all gone home, because it simply wasn't worth the effort.
"Do you have the money for the airfare, or did you intend to borrow it?" It sounded like an innocent question, but I could see the cunning in her eyes.
"No, I have it," I replied. "I've put a bit aside from the back pay we got."
"As you're not going to need it for the fare, why don't you give it to me so I can buy those boots I was telling you about?" She tried for a seductive smile, but it only gave her away.
"We'll see." I'd give it to her, but I left it open on purpose to rankle her and get a bit of my own back. The first stage of family life is the joy of living together. The second is children. The third and longest stage is getting your own back at every opportunity. When you get to that stage, you know that you're secure and nothing is going to change. Your kids are off on their own, and you come home each evening knowing that waiting for you is your wife, your meal, and those little opportunities to get your own back.
"Oh, come on, Costas. I haven't got any boots for going out in!"
"We'll see!" I said sharply, putting an end to the conversation.
In bed, she cuddled up to me. She put her arm around my waist and began kissing me on my ear and neck. I lay there motionless. She brought her leg up to my knee and began rhythmically sliding it up and down from my shin to my penis.
"How much do you need for the boots?" I said.
"I saw a really lovely pair, but they're a bit expensive. Thirty-five thousand drachmas. But they'll last me for years."