He and five or six others.
They sold us down the river, the others said. Don’t you get it, you fool? Our co-workers. Our comrades-in-arms. They sold us out.
That all happened in February. On the last Sunday of Carnival there was a big party in the federation offices. Everyone brought food from home and sweets and wine and beer. Three or four brought bouzoukia and guitars so there would be singing and dancing. They hung banners on the walls. Our struggle is bearing fruit. Never swerve from the road of class struggle. Strength in unity, victory in struggle, solidarity as our shield. Those were the kinds of banners they’d hung on the walls. He went right when it started and sat at a distance from the others and drank. He watched them eating pickles and hard-boiled eggs, cheese pies and spinach pies. They ate off of aluminum foil, drank wine out of Coke and Sprite bottles. They clinked plastic cups and laughed and clapped and danced the zeibekiko. He watched them with hatred and jealousy. He watched them without wanting to. As if he were a dead man who had been allowed to return for a brief while to the land of the living, to walk invisible among the living until he was pulled back again into death — a terrible punishment.
Later on, when he’d drunk a lot and his fear had faded, he got to his feet and started speaking loudly. He said things he’d been wanting to say for a while — for months, even years. He said things he’d thought about many times and other things he’d never thought until that instant. There were moments when he felt as if the voice that was speaking weren’t his, as if the person speaking weren’t him. At first they watched him with curiosity. Then they looked at him with pity. Some laughed. Others kept eating. Some pushed back their chairs and walked out. There were moments when his voice faded and his eyes burned and a knot rose in his throat. There were moments when he imagined himself sitting on the other side of the room and listening and shaking his head with pity. In the end someone shouted at him to shut up and get lost — throw out the apolitical bullies, the guy shouted, throw out the provocateurs. Someone grabbed him by the arm and told him to sit down. Get a hold of yourself and sit down. Now. He sat. And then he jumped back up to his feet and rushed forward and took tables chairs cups people with him as he fell and as he fell time stopped inside him and he seemed to be falling very slowly from the sky and could see the pattern on the floor as if it were the whole earth which from that height was so beautiful — mountains, fields, streams — that his heart swelled from all that beauty and he laughed and shouted with joy.
And then someone hit him hard on the head and he tumbled once and for all to the floor.
• • •
Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?
• • •
At the corner of Kondyli and Ephesus he stopped in front of the Anemone sweet shop and looked in the window at the huge chocolate eggs and chocolate bunny rabbits and tsourekia covered in dark chocolate and slivered almonds. His heart was trembling even more than his legs. He stood in front of the window and looked at the tsourekia and his mouth filled with saliva. As soon as he got the fifty euros from his daughter he could take something else off of the list — the cheese, for instance — and get a chocolate-covered tsoureki instead. The kid would be so happy, he was crazy about chocolate. Though even he was shaking now as he gazed longingly at the sweets glistening in the light of the shop window and they looked so fresh so delicious so airy and wonderful. The things that make a person happy, he thought. A tsoureki covered in chocolate.
He started walking down Kondyli again toward the bridge. The wind had picked up. Women in black were walking on the sidewalk leaning into the wind and holding the edges of their coats to keep the wind from blowing them open. He heard church bells ringing in deep, heavy mourning and it struck him as strange because he knew there wasn’t a church around there and for a moment, unconsciously, he stopped and looked up and started to cross himself — then immediately caught himself. He walked on with his head down staring at his boots which were covered with mud and dirt and looked like small black animals that had just emerged into the world from some burrow deep in the ground. He turned right on Antioch Street and then on Grevena and turned right again and looked at the building of the town hall which was tall and grey and he thought how small he would seem if someone looked at him from up there. He stopped in front of the Bank of Greece and took his ATM card out of his wallet and put it in the machine and pressed the buttons and closed his eyes for a few seconds and said something on the inside as if he were a man of faith who prayed every Good Thursday in front of an icon of the crucified Christ and then he opened his eyes and saw on the screen a tiny little person looking at him with hands raised — we’re sorry we can’t complete that transaction — and pulled his card from the machine and put it back in his wallet which was black and empty and then he turned and left.
He crossed the street and turned onto Tsaldari and held his breath as he walked in front of the kebab stand and turned left and stopped in front of the Galaxy Supermarket and looked at the people shopping or waiting in line to pay and he was suddenly gripped by dizziness and panic because it occurred to him that at ten when he met his daughter the supermarkets would already be closed so where would he buy the pasta and cheese and milk and the Kinder egg for the kid and he looked at the business hours posted in the supermarket window and saw that tonight it was closing at nine and his panic grew and he leaned against a parked car and told himself to calm down, said it three times like a prayer — calm down calm down calm down — then went and stood on the corner of the street where there was a bitter orange tree with no bitter oranges on it and he pulled off a dusty leaf and crushed it between his fingers and smelled his fingers to try and pull himself together but all they smelled like was dust and sweat and fear.
Then a sudden gust of wind blew and a black garbage bag leapt up from the sidewalk and wrapped itself around his legs and for a moment he froze as if there were a black snake on his legs and then he shook his legs and started to kick at the air to get the bag off and he kicked the air and shook his hands and legs and on the sidewalk across the street an old woman stopped and looked at him and shook her head sadly and crossed herself — Good Thursday evening and a north wind was blowing and the sky was the color of the kid’s eyes who had been sitting for hours now at the kitchen table with his hands together dreaming with open eyes of a table covered with food. And it wasn’t winter, it hadn’t snowed, so he couldn’t even go outside and break off an icicle hanging from the edge of the roof and lick it to trick his hunger into thinking it was being fed. It was spring, and it hadn’t snowed around there in ten years.
• • •
Sir, the girl said. Would you put the crown on our Jesus’s head?
• • •
When he got to the dock the digital clock on the stern of the ship said ten to nine and when he stubbed out his last cigarette the clock said ten past ten and his daughter was still nowhere to be seen. He stood up from the bench and circled the cars that were waiting in line to board the ship and then weaved between the cars looking at all the drivers and passengers. He scanned the people walking over the gangplank onto the ship and those few people leaning over the railing at the stern, to the right and left of the flagpole, looking down at the other people and at the cars and trucks.
At twenty-five past ten he asked someone wearing a white shirt with blue letters that read BLUE STAR 2 if he could go up onto the ferry.