What’s wrong with you, he said to himself. You know that could never happen.
Who would give a steelworker’s name to a planet or an asteroid or even a meteorite.
Then he remembered what he’d said to the doctors. Please, do something, save him, please. Do something. What a fool he’d made of himself. Instead of grabbing those assholes by the scruffs of their necks and pummeling them, instead of turning the whole place upside down, he’d sat there and cried and pleaded and scribbled on packs of cigarettes. And the jerks had made a fool of him, too. We’re doing everything we can. It’s a challenge for us just to keep your friend alive, they told him. Sure. A real challenge. Then again why would they show you any respect. Money. That was the real issue. Money. They didn’t think you could come up with the cash. If you’d waved it in their faces they would have done something. They would have found some way to save him. You should have given them twenty-four thousand euros. One for each volt. Twenty-four thousand, sure, you don’t even have twenty-four in your pocket. Worthless fool. Lying coward.
It was unfair, though.
He thought how unfair it was that the only words he had found to say to the doctors seemed to have come straight out of some series on TV. Then it occurred to him that now that he’d started to talk the way people talk on TV he might start to think like them too and that thought terrified him, it froze his heart — and then he stood up tall and gripped the broomstick in his hand and walked faster and consoled himself with the thought that no one on any TV series would ever do what he was doing today.
Then again he couldn’t be sure. Because it’s a proven fact that people on TV have great imaginations.
• • •
He walked down Attaleia to Papadiamantis turned right walked past Philippou and when he got to the corner of Papadiamantis and Palamas he stopped. The entrance to the building site was blocked by a chain-link fence. He looked at the wires hanging overhead and wondered which one had killed Petros, which was the wire with the twenty-four thousand volts. Then he stood with his back to the entrance and held the placard in the air with both arms. He stood between sacks of cement and barrels of lime between stacked crates and steel and piles of bricks. Across from him was a row of apartment buildings that stretched from one corner of the street to the other, an unbreachable rampart. He knew that the contractor, Petros’s boss, lived in one of those buildings, and he held his placard up high so it would show. The street was deserted, there wasn’t a soul on any of the balconies. He held the placard high and waited. Someone would come for sure. Someone would notice him, someone from the neighborhood would come down the street and stop and ask him what was going on why he was standing there holding a broomstick with that piece of cardboard on it and Yiannis would explain to him and the other guy would say yes, he’d heard about the man who’d been electrocuted the other day but he didn’t know he had died and he would shake his head and tell Yiannis to take courage what can you do in this life what can you say that’s how life is and the hardest part is for those who are left behind and he would ask how old Yiannis’s friend had been and if he’d had a wife and kids and siblings and if his mother and father were still alive — and in a half-hour at most the whole neighborhood would have heard that a guy with a hat and a sign was standing in front of the building site and people would come out onto their balconies to see and would speculate and gossip, what kind of weirdo is he maybe a thief or a pederast waiting to swipe some kid? Go inside and call the police.
• • •
He wouldn’t tell them his real name. He would make up some other name, more suited to the circumstance, a nice heroic name.
My name is Achilles. Achilles Palaiologos.
Or Alexander. Or Thrasyvoulos. Alexander the Great Thrasyvoulos Nikiforidis.
• • •
Someone would come and ask him about the placard and all the rest. For sure. Maybe some kid or old woman in black who knew a thing or two about death. Or maybe some drunk. Easter Monday was a holiday and on holidays people are different, they soften and open up and care about others about their fellow man.
Someone would come for sure.
Even if only out of pity.
It was Easter Monday, Christ had risen twice.
Someone would come.
And that someone might even bring him a piece of cold lamb to eat, a little wine or a red egg.
• • •
At three a car turned the corner. The man at the wheel slowed down and looked at Yiannis with his mouth hanging open, the way drivers on the highway stare at traffic accidents.
Then he stepped on the gas and left.
• • •
A piece of tape came loose from the cardboard and dangled in the air like a yellow tongue. He turned the placard on its side and stuck the tape back on, pressing it firmly with his thumb. It was shoddy work. If only he’d written something surely someone would have paid attention someone would have stopped out of curiosity to ask him what it was all about. It would have been better than nothing. But he couldn’t write anything. All the things he had inside, everything he was feeling, were like these fish he’d seen once on TV, strange fish that live deep down in a lake in Asia somewhere and when you take them out of the water and the sun hits them they rot right away and dissolve and disappear.
He couldn’t write anything on the cardboard.
There are certain things it’s hard to pull out from inside. Very hard. Impossible.
It’s like asking someone to cry from only one eye.
• • •
At four he saw a woman in the building across the street sneaking peeks at him from behind a curtain. When she saw him looking back at her the woman made a face as if she’d just discovered a stain on the carpet and yanked the curtain closed.
At five he wondered if there’s life after death and if Petros might be watching him now from somewhere, if he could see him standing there at the entrance to the building site with his hat on and the sign in his hands, and if with the wisdom of the dead Petros could possibly read all the things that Yiannis should have written on the cardboard.
Around five-thirty he thought: Petros died and nothing in the world can change that. Petros died and that won’t change anything in the world. How does a person face that. How.
The most frightening thing isn’t death but memories.
• • •
By evening it had started to rain.
One of the pieces of cardboard fell loose from the others and dropped to the ground and immediately shriveled up and turned black as if some kind of toxic fluid or poison had dripped on it.
He raised his collar and pulled his hat down low on his forehead and walked up and down for a little while to get warm looking at the deserted street, at the houses with lighted windows that seemed to be just as empty as the ones with no lights, looking at the black wires hanging overhead that emitted a constant hum as if they were relaying messages from a strange world to some other world. He circled the block then came back to his spot and stood there stiff as a rod holding the broomstick in both hands.