The admiral reaches over grabs the bottle and fills the glasses. His hands are shaking. He drinks his down in one swallow and refills his glass and drains it again.
That’s nothing, he says. In seventy-one with the political situation they sent us over to Norfolk in America to pick up the Nafkratousa. It was a huge ship the biggest in the fleet. You could fit a whole city on that thing. We stayed over there for about two months and it wasn’t easy. Every time we went out things got crazy. I still remember how those black guys went after us. They threw trash down on us from apartment buildings. The war in Vietnam was going strong and when they saw us in uniform they lost it. As if we were to blame for all the slaughter going on over there. We poor fools couldn’t have pointed to Vietnam on a map. One night I remember we ran into a navy guy at a bar an American marine who’d just come back from Vietnam and I remember his hands were wrapped in gauze. We started talking and he told us that one night his unit walked straight into a booby trap and everyone was killed except for him and one or two others. And ever since then he couldn’t get over it he kept chewing his nails all the way down to the flesh. Out of fear, see. That’s why they’d put that gauze on him. And he wasn’t some puny thing, he was a big strong guy two meters tall. I still remember him. We bought him beer and whiskey and he wouldn’t let us leave. He begged us to sneak him onto the ship and take him with us to Greece. Can you believe it, a man two meters tall acting like a little kid. I still remember him. Anyway. It’s all just stories now. But ever since I was a kid I had a thing for America. I always said I would find some way to go and live there forever. And my father rest in peace who’d traveled all over in the navy used to say America isn’t for the likes of us. In Europe people think being poor is a matter of bad luck. In America poverty is shameful. Can you bear to be poor and have to feel ashamed of it too? So just sit tight and don’t dream those kinds of dreams.
Vayios looks at Michalis and then at the admiral.
Man, where does that fit in? he asks. How did we get from old barba-Stavros’s cat to Vietnam? You lost me.
It’s something else I’m getting at, says the admiral. In hindsight sitting here thinking it all over I realize my father sold me a bill of goods. I sure didn’t get very far here, either. Aren’t I poor and ashamed here, too? Thirty-five years on the job and where did I end up? With a family of four living in a tiny hole of an apartment. It took me two years going from politician to politician to find my son a job and now they say they’re already going to let him go. He broke his back carrying spare parts for eight hundred euros a month and now they want to fire him because Mrs. Toyota isn’t doing too well this year. Instead of five hundred million she only made four hundred and ninety. A real blow for the company, you know? So now here I am running around again begging every slimebag I know to find my son another job. You remember me telling you how that guy Panayiotakos found him the job at the spare parts place? We were together in the navy, he was my first mate on the Panther. If you gave him a ship the incompetent fool would run it into the rocks and now there he is in parliament. Anyway. When he found work for the kid I went to his office down by the public theater to thank him. He happened to be wearing a real strong cologne and when we shook hands the smell stayed on my mine. And guys you won’t believe it. It’s been how many years since then and every so often I still catch a whiff of that scent on my hand. I mean for god’s sake. There are times when I can smell my hand and it makes me want to vomit. Like my soul stinks something awful. Right now for instance. Right now I can smell it.
He brings his hand up to his nose and sniffs it then stretches it out towards Michalis.
See for yourself. See how it smells. How the hell does that happen, can you tell me?
Enough already, says Vayios. Sitting there crying over your lot. Cologne and bullshit. How much was your bonus when you retired? And how much are your checks every month? Do us a favor, man. You’re one to talk, retired at fifty and now you sit around scratching your balls and getting paid for it too. Let’s change the subject because otherwise things are going to get ugly. Michalis, we kicked this bottle. Are you going to bring another or should I leave?
Michalis brings some more tsipouro fills the glasses and sits back down. Vayios leans over and lights his cigarette from a candle and exhales out the corner of his mouth. He takes the cellophane off the pack and crumples it and tosses it into the ashtray glancing sideways at Pavlakos who’s turned his head and is staring out the window.
On the subject of money, says Michalis. Last year when my father died Iraklis came by here one night. You know Iraklis, who lives on the corner. Lakis.
The guy with the beard, you mean. Who has a stall at the market.
That guy. He came pretty late after you guys had left. So he comes over with a flask of whisky and we sit in the bedroom because the women were in here mourning with my mother. So we’re drinking pretty hard and at some point the guy starts crying and talking to me about my father and what a good person he was and how much he loved him and how my father was like a brother to him and stuff like that. And there he is crying and hugging me and I don’t know what to do. At some point he turns to me and asks how much the funeral is going to cost. And I tell him. And he says, listen Michalis since your father was like a brother to me and you guys here aren’t doing so well I want to pay for the funeral. I’ll give you the money. So my soul will be clean as they say. I’ll give you the money. I can see the guy’s blind drunk with tears streaming down his face so I say come on Lakis what’s all this? I mean thanks and all but that’s not how things work. You think I’d let you pay for my own father’s funeral? I couldn’t do that. To make a long story short the guy won’t take no for an answer. And I say to myself this asshole is pulling my chain because I know him well and I know he’s a dirty jew as cheap as they come. But guys, he actually gets up and says wait I’ll be back and in ten minutes he’s back with an envelope full of hundred-euro bills. I’m telling you, it was bursting with hundreds. And he calls my mother in and tells her too and the poor woman is so dazed she starts shouting and crying and bending down to kiss his hands. She actually kissed his hands. Because we’d been doing the rounds asking for loans from cousins and uncles. To make a long story short the next morning I go over to that cheat Kioseoglou and pull out the cash for the coffin and the flowers and all the rest. Then around noon or so Iraklis calls me up and tells me what happened. Listen man, he says, I messed up, that money was my wife’s who had it to pay some bills and the kids’ schools and shit like that. And he keeps crying and saying he’s sorry over and over. And I was frozen there with the receiver in my hand. I almost fainted.
So what did you do? the admiral asks. Did you give it back?
Of course. What else could I do. I ran around to all my relatives and came up with the money and gave it back to him. And just think, the coward didn’t even come and get it himself. He sent his daughter. The coward.
Are you kidding? says Vayios. That much of a fag? And you never said anything to us all this time?
Say what? Like it would change anything? It just came up now in conversation. For a while I didn’t even tell my mother. And the poor woman came to me after the funeral and asked me where Iraklis was and why he hadn’t been there and she sang that scumbag’s praises. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. When he handed me that envelope I swear to god it was like a weight dropped from my shoulders. I was in pretty bad shape but I said to myself look at that, god finally took pity on us for once. And then that shame. A shame like you wouldn’t believe. Me running around an hour before the funeral begging for five hundred euros from one guy and five hundred from another. I was so ashamed. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. The worst shame of my life. Then again what comes around goes around. I’m sure you’ve heard what happened with his son.