• • •
I leave the hospital on foot because I don’t have money for a cab but also because I feel like walking. Five tacks. The doctors say two of them are stuck in his esophagus and the others went down into his stomach. It’s not going to be an easy case. He’s over seventy and he’s got heart problems. They’re going to do something but they didn’t tell me what. They might not even know themselves. They might not even want to do anything — who knows. They sent me home to get his pills so they’ll know what he’s taking and I’m also supposed to bring his pajamas and slippers. They practically chased me out of the place and that makes me wonder, too.
It’s December and there’s a full moon and a clear sky and the breath comes out of my mouth like fog. Friday evening. They’re going to keep Petros in jail all weekend — they’ll bring him back to the courthouse on Monday. I called the lawyer from the hospital and he told me. It’s like the junta, he said. We’re living through another junta. They won’t let him out on bail because he’s a flight risk, they say. I never heard such a thing. Of course that brother of yours isn’t an easy one. He’s got guts, that’s for sure. What was he thinking? A young kid like that. At any rate on Monday we’ll get him out, no question. Patience, that’s all I can say. It’s only two days.
I turn left on Second Division, right on Heroes and end up out in front of the public theater where I think about taking a bus but keep on walking towards the port. Christmas. It’s nearly Christmas and there are big fake candles flickering on the utility poles and garlands hanging over the street with fir trees and Saint Vassilises and reindeer. Up there it’s Christmas but down here it’s Good Friday — the sidewalk spattered with spots that look like blood as if someone came this way who’d been shot or some wounded animal left a long trail of blood behind. Dried black blood.
Last night they caught him in Glyfada. Petros. They caught him down in Glyfada. He’d waited again at Thebes Street and followed a jeep with a woman inside who was by herself. When they got to Glyfada and the jeep pulled into a garage Petros got out of the Cadet and went and looked over the fence and saw the most beautiful house he’d ever seen in his life — a huge villa as big as a castle and a yard with grass and trees and strange lights and in the middle a Christmas tree that seemed to be made of ice. Then, before the woman could close the garage door, Petros slipped inside and refused to leave. He didn’t want to do anything didn’t want to bother anyone. He just wanted to spend the night out there in the yard and look at the house and the grass and that strange tree that seemed to be made of ice. That’s all he wanted.
But the woman and the house happened to belong to a judge, or a public prosecutor or something.
We heard it all from the lawyer — Petros didn’t even call.
• • •
On the corner of Georgiou and Resistance I have to wait for the light to change. The wind is fierce and a thick yellow frost coming from the port obscures the streetlights and the lights in shop windows. There seem to be even more stains on the sidewalk now, as if not just one wounded person but a whole army passed by.
The light turns red and I cross the street with my eyes on the asphalt.
He was yelling something about penguins, the lawyer said. It took them ages to calm him down. He was pretty wild, even tore one of the policemen’s shirts. Completely wasted.
• • •
I stuff pajamas shirts underwear and socks into an overnight bag. I put whatever medicine I can find in a plastic bag. I pour myself a tsipouro to get warm — my hands are wooden with cold, my legs still shaking from the walk. And then I do something I haven’t done in years: I stick the whole top half of my body into the hall closet and smell. When we were kids Petros and I used to do it all the time. In winter. We would sneak out into the hall at night and open the closet and slip inside to smell the clothes — ours, our father’s, our mother’s. Hers had a stronger smell than the rest. Walk on cotton so the cat won’t catch you, Petros would whisper. I have no idea where he learned that saying. Walk on cotton so the cat won’t catch you. We laughed so hard on those nights. And then we would go back to bed with the smell of the clothes lingering in our mouths and with that sweetness on our tongues we would fall asleep, arm in arm.
Things are different now. Other times, another house, other clothes — even the smell in the closet is gone. It seems to me that everything has lost its smell. Or maybe it’s just me who lost those smells, who knows.
The heat is off and there’s cold air coming in around the kitchen window. I stuff paper napkins into the cracks and push them down hard. Then I see the box of tacks sitting on the kitchen table.
I pour out another tsipouro and then open the box, take out a tack and put it in my mouth. It tastes bitter.
It’s December and there’s a full moon and a clear sky full of stars. I remember Petros telling me once that somewhere way back when, in Peru or maybe Mexico, people believed that humans were born from stars. Rich people had descended from a golden star and poor people from a bronze one. That’s why they can’t ever be equal. Because they were born into different worlds.
It really is strange, to be poor.
The wind is still whistling through the cracks. I look at the stars which from here all look the same — exactly the same, not gold and not bronze either. The tack feels cold in my mouth.
It must be cold where Petros is tonight.
Piece By Piece They’re Taking My World Away
THE WAVES FELL on the shore like shipwrecked men, broken-spirited, disheartened and weak, one after another, with clipped moans, small sighs, one after another. The squall had begun to die down in mid-afternoon and now the sun was shaping a huge burning hourglass over the calm waters which were full of seaweed and branches and pinecones and tin cans and plastic bags and broken fishcrates — thin bleached sticks like the bones of fish that had been eaten by bigger fish. But in the distance past the mouth of the bay the clouds had started to turn red again and to sink low over the sea, growing and growing until they once more snuffed out the horizon.
It was past seven but the machines were still at work — a hum rose from deep in the mountain’s guts, disturbing the tranquility of the landscape. Eminent domain.
Look at that, he told her, pointing to the hourglass. If I had a boat I would take you to where the water becomes fire and you’d grab them both in your hands and hold them, the water and the fire too. Both together. Water and fire. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Niki shooed a fly from her knee and threw her head back and looked upside-down at the cloud of dust rising between the blackened slopes of the mountain.
But you don’t have a boat, she said. You don’t even have an oar. You don’t have anything.
He didn’t reply. Eminent domain. He kept his arm stretched out — hand in a ball, index finger pointing — and let his mind wander to heroic thoughts. He imagined he was a warrior leading a troop of other warriors, pointing to the object of some daring mission, an enemy stronghold they had to conquer at all costs.