The kid will end up just like his grandfather, Vayios says. Mark my words, Vayios is never wrong. That’s how all commies are. Assholes every one.
Commie or not he’s a better man than us, says Michalis. You know there are people who won’t go to bed until they see Mao come and sit out on those steps? There are people who stay up every night until they see him coming outside. I’ve heard with my own ears plenty of folk say that they sleep easier at night since Mao started keeping watch. Not just one or two. Lots.
The admiral gets up and goes over to the window. He’s a retired navy man, that’s why we call him the admiral. Even his wife calls him that. Sometimes when we’re out late at Satanas’s place she calls on the phone and doesn’t ask for Dimitris or even Pavlakos. She asks for the admiral. Is the admiral there? she says.
He wipes the windowpane with his hand and looks out. He’s gotten so thin lately, his clothes are swimming on him. And now in the half-dark his face is as yellow as the leaves on the mulberry tree in winter. The other day he told Vayios that ever since he had to retire he doesn’t even recognize himself. He’s withered away. It’s not right for them to retire men so young, he said. Vayios swore. The rest of us are being ground down by our fucking jobs, you jerk, and you’ve got it tough just sitting around, huh? Get lost, you good-for-nothing. You spoiled asshole. Things got pretty ugly between the two of them that day.
Just think about it a minute, Michalis says. We’re about a hundred families around here, right? Some aren’t on speaking terms and others wouldn’t even recognize one another in the street. Even in this building there are people I only see on Christmas and Easter. And yet each night we’re all on tenterhooks to see whether Mao will go out onto those steps or not. Just the other afternoon my mother had her incense out and was going through the house waving it around and at some point I see her going onto the balcony and waving that thing down toward the street. What are you blessing out there mom I ask. The cats? No she says it’s for Mao. So god will be good to that young man who protects us at night. You see what I mean? And just think, she hasn’t spoken to Mao’s mother in years. But it’s a comfort to know that someone is sitting up while you’re sleeping. A great comfort. It’s a big thing to be able to sleep easily at night. And I’ll tell you something else. If there were a Mao in every neighborhood in this city we’d all be better off. Don’t laugh. If there were a Mao in every neighborhood keeping watch at night the world would be a better place. I’d bet on it. Don’t laugh. That’s what real democracy is. When poor people don’t wait for the rich to come and save them but take the situation into their own hands. Because that’s how the trouble starts: with us thinking that the rich will ever help the poor. It just doesn’t happen. We live in two separate worlds. They’re over there and we’re over here. We have to take the situation into our own hands. And that’s exactly what Mao’s doing. What do you think man’s greatest enemy is? Death? Money? Not at all. It’s fear. That’s our worst enemy. Fear. Fear.
Something’s happening, says the admiral. It’s that Mirafiori again. Something’s up.
We crowd in front of the window to watch. The yellow Mirafiori is coming down the street with its headlights off and its exhaust pipe growling. The cat lying in Mao’s arms lifts her head. When it gets close to Mao the car slows down. Mao stands up and the driver steps on the gas and skids away. Mao runs out into the middle of the road and looks at the car which is all the way down turning left onto Cyprus Street. Then he sits back down. He waits. He looks around. He leans forward and seems to be whispering something into the cat’s ear and the cat is listening with her tail up in the air and slightly bent like a question mark. Then Mao takes a swig from the bottle and lights a cigarette and when he exhales the smoke rises out from inside of him thick and yellow as if he’d smoked the whole cigarette in one go.
That’s the second time tonight, says Michalis. They came by earlier, too.
How many were in the car? I saw two.
Three. There was another in the back seat.
Things are going to get messy for us with those guys, Vayios says as he walks away from the window. Mark my words. Vayios is never wrong.
• • •
The rain has stopped but raindrops are still trickling down the windowpane and through the half-open window you can hear water running in the street next to the sidewalk like a little stream. The admiral searches for music on the radio and finds some old rembetika but a few minutes later we hear the jingle for the communist station and Vayios says get lost you faggots and goes over and turns the dial.
What’s happening?
Nothing.
What’s he doing?
Nothing. Playing with the cat.
What’s her name again? Julius?
Augustus.
Yeah, that’s it. Guys, I told you but you didn’t listen. The kid’s going to end up just like his shithead grandfather. If he lives that long. Which I doubt. I figure he’s gotten mixed up in drugs. All that about his sister and the guys from Korydallos, I’d take it with a grain of salt. Michalis can say what he wants. Did you ever meet a commie you could make any sense of?
I don’t know about you, but I remember seventy-eight like it was yesterday, Michalis says. The first time Logothetis was elected mayor, our first commie mayor, not too long after the junta fell. You remember what happened that night? All the guys from the party gathered outside the church of Osia Xeni and shouted as if there was a war on. I was still in grade school but I remember like it was happening now. I remember our mothers coming out into the street and calling us home and locking us up in our houses and all the neighbors being scared shitless. It’s all over the commies are going to kill us tonight. They’ll break into our houses and slaughter us all. That night we cried until the tears ran dry. You wouldn’t believe how terrified we were. The women cried the kids cried the old ladies had fallen on all fours and were crossing themselves and repenting. Total panic, man. And I remember my father rest his soul and two or three others took kitchen knives and kept watch all night at the door to the building. Panic. And we’re talking about seventy-eight, right? Not the fifties or even sixties. This was seventy-eight.
That’s how it goes, Vayios says. The commies were out of control back then. They thought they were going to turn Kokkinia into another Stalingrad. Now those pests are in Parliament and we pay their salaries on top of it all. It makes me sick. Screw your democracy you fucking frauds. Man, it really makes me sick, those faggots. It makes me sick just looking at them. Especially the ones who sold out and got into the game. Who go around in ties and fancy cars and sit in front of the TV at night with one hand on the remote and the other on their dick dreaming of the revolution. I’ve got the biggest beef with those assholes. Lefties, sure, you know what that means. There’s only one lefty thing on their body, and that’s their left nut. The assholes.