What’s going to happen with you assholes here every night, he said. Don’t you guys have homes?
The admiral raised his head and looked at him. He blinked his eyes like a frightened animal.
Bring us another half kilo. And whatever the guys are drinking. And something else to snack on.
Satanas tossed the bone on the table and sniffed and leaned heavily on the admiral’s chair.
What sort of snack would the gentlemen care for? He asked. We’ve got shrimp testicles stuffed with wild rice and crocodile saganaki with four kinds of cheese. Or perhaps you’d prefer something sweet? I prepared a special ice cream today with kangaroo milk and syrup from wild berries.
He looked at us and then at the admiral who had bowed his head again. He grabbed the admiral under the armpits and abruptly lifted him out of the chair.
Take him home, he said to Vayios. Get going. Get lost. Beat it already.
At the door he called to us and we turned around.
And listen. You’ll have to invite me sometime to that estate for one of those parties, okay? I want to swim in that pool, too. Here’s to you, Pavlakos, invisible bank robber. I’m expecting an invitation, you hear? Look at these guys. Just look at these guys, wanting villas and pools. He’s a real number, that one. You all are.
• • •
Yesterday morning we found Mao’s cat hanging from the mulberry tree in front of his house. They’d tied her up by her hind legs and thrown salt in her eyes. She was covered in blood. She’d clawed out her own eyes. By the time we found her the blood had dried on the sidewalk and flies had eaten half her head. The place stank.
We all stood around in a circle and looked without speaking. Only the deafmute tried to say something with his hands but no one was paying attention so he left.
Michalis untied the cat from the branch and wrapped her in newspaper and went to throw her in the field behind the church of Osia Xeni.
When the crowd dispersed Michalis’s mother brought a bucket and mop and started scrubbing the blood off the sidewalk. She kept murmuring to herself and wiping her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket.
Poor Mao, she said. What did those awful people do to you. My strong young man. Poor Mao.
And a Kinder Egg For the Kid
HUNGER WOKE HIM. He’d had a pain in his belly all night. He had his son with him, too. His son was sleeping beside him in the bed with his mouth open and his fingers gripping the edge of the blanket as if he had fallen asleep afraid that someone might try to take the blanket away. He turned over slowly and propped himself on his elbow and looked down at his son. The kid looked nothing like him. Nothing at all. For starters, the boy was blond. Not blond blond but still blond. And he was very beautiful, with a narrow face and eyes the color of the sky when a north wind is blowing. He had a little mole under his right eye. In the dark the blond fuzz by his ear shone as if all night someone had been stroking him right there with fingers covered in gold dust. The kid was so beautiful that it hurt his heart to look at him. And yet he couldn’t get his fill of looking, he looked and forgot his hunger. When he grows up. When he grows up he’ll look at me and ask why I had to be his father why he had to grow up in a place like this and sleep in a bed like this. Why. Why.
He closed his eyes. That pain again. He felt a movement in his belly as if there were something alive in there.
Dad?
The kid was awake and looking at him with blurry eyes.
Dad we have to eat something. Our stomachs are growling.
The kid lifted his head off the pillow and something white glistened at the corner of his mouth. Milk. Only it wasn’t milk. It was dried spit.
Go back to sleep. It’s still early. He stroked the kid’s hair, forced a smile. I’m going out now. Are you listening? I don’t want you to be scared. I’m going out now for a little while. And when you wake up the table will be set and we’ll eat and eat until Easter Monday. Okay? High five.
The kid closed his eyes and licked his lips and said I’m hungry and squeezed his eyes tightly shut and didn’t say anything else.
• • •
Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?
• • •
He’d been walking since noon and now it was evening and he was still walking. Nikaia Neapoli Korydallos Nikaia Neapoli Korydallos — tracing circles like a caged animal like that wolf he’d seen once when he was a kid running around and around in its cage at the zoo and that night he’d stayed up crying thinking of that wolf that was just skin and bones with its dirty matted fur running around in its cage with a crazed look in its eyes. And he’d asked his father who said the wolf was running because wolves are born to run and if you shut a wolf up in a cage it’s as bad as killing it. And he’d asked his father if he could do something, if he could unlock the cage and let the wolf out and his father looked him in the eye for a long time — it was the only time he remembered his father giving him that kind of look — and then started to say something but in the end he didn’t.
He’d cried for many nights over that wolf. Many nights and plenty of afternoons too.
Thursday before Easter and a poisoned wind was blowing, the trees thrashed in the wind as if some huge invisible hand were shaking them. He walked and his mind was on the kid who must have woken up hours ago and would be sitting at the kitchen table with his hands folded together dreaming with open eyes of a table spread with food. He was walking to kill time, until ten when he was going to meet his daughter at the port. She was headed down from Thessaloniki to take the boat to Rhodes to spend Easter with her mother. He hadn’t seen his daughter in two years and tonight he would be seeing her and was planning on asking her for money. Fifty euros. Fifty euros would be plenty. Pasta a little cheese bread milk. Beer. A bottle of ketchup which the kid liked. And a chocolate egg, one of those Kinder ones — a treat for Easter. Fifty euros would be plenty. He thought about how his daughter would look at him when he asked her for money and what she would say to him and what she would say to her mother when she got to Rhodes. I can’t believe it, mom. He asked me for fifty euros he said he doesn’t have any money at all says they don’t have money for food.
He walked and felt his face reddening with shame and felt the hunger and the shame gnawing at his guts like starving rats.
Fifty euros, he said — and a woman passing beside him looked at him in fear.
Fifty euros would be plenty.
With fifty euros we’ll have a fine Easter.
• • •
Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?
• • •
Eighty-five people lost their jobs when the Roter factory in Renti closed. Women and men. Young people and old people and contract laborers from the Greek Manpower Employment Organization. At first he ran around like everyone else — to government ministries, political parties, protests, demonstrations. Slogans, banners, raised fists, voices hoarse from shouting. Rage, fear, anxiety. The worst were the words, the rumors, the lies. First they raised your hopes and then they cut the legs out from under you, beat you, destroyed you. That was the worst. The words, the lies. At some point he got tired and lost hope and started to look for other work. Then people heard they were going to be transferred to the surrounding municipalities for part-time employment. And he was happy and hopeful again and told the kid not to worry, everything was going to be fine, have faith in your father. Weeks passed. And then he found out that the positions had already been assigned.
The positions have been assigned, they told him. The municipalities had been parceled out by party. The communists got Kokkinia, New Democracy got Korydallos and Keratsini, the right-wingers went all over. Everyone landed somewhere. Except for him and five or six others who hadn’t known. Who didn’t get there in time. Who weren’t red or green or blue. It all happened quietly, simply, beautifully. And he never heard a thing.