The older children get, the worse they treat their parents. I do it, too.
It was a pretty wild scene in the schoolyard. The cleaning lady and the biology teacher, a fat little ball of a woman, were standing there, rattling on about the shocking indifference of parents and teachers, who haven’t stepped forward to nip this in the bud. The cleaning lady told the teacher what she’d found at the sit-in, she was hoping word would get around, most of all to those oblivious parents. She’d picked three pairs of panties off the floor of the girls’ bathroom, which meant that some girls had gone off with their parts uncovered. She’d found condoms and torn porn magazines. She mentioned cigarette butts, too, she apparently had no idea people were smoking pot, she couldn’t tell the kids were all sky high, for her the problem was nicotine. She shook her head, God will burn us for this, he’ll burn us all.
Some angry neighbors called the principal to inform him that kids had been drinking beer in the schoolyard the previous night, they could hear cans popping from their balconies. Those who lived in top-floor apartments had found a new pastime: sitting on their verandas, watching everything we did. Skateboarding, guitar-playing, basketball, singing. They found us fascinating, even better than the Turkish soaps on TV.
— They organized a concert, Evelina told me.
— Who did?
— The younger kids. It’s tonight. To go out with a bang. That was their condition for ending the occupation early. They say they’ve got a band. I’m sure it’s some awful cover band, she added dismissively. They’re bringing backup, too, seniors from some private school in Athens.
In other words, Spiros didn’t accept unconditional defeat.
Evelina weaved her way down the aisle between the lined-up desks.
— Come on, she called back at me. We’re going to Grandpa’s. We’ve already lost the whole day, I guess I can study later.
Like most girls, Evelina is totally unpredictable. She’s practically manic-depressive. Some people can’t stand it, but I kind of like it. With her I never get bored. The more I want her, the more I tease her. The more I tease her, the smaller the chances that we’ll ever actually hook up.
Child, you’re courting disaster, Grandma would say if she saw me this way.
I trailed after Evelina like a stray dog. I gave her ass a good look and decided it was more or less a perfect fit for my palms. It lifts gently and sways as she walks. As if there were a wind, 3 or 4 on the Beaufort scale.
— We’re not staying for more than an hour, she declared.
— That’s 3600 seconds.
— What?
The elastic band on her thong was red. Tomato red.
— I broke the time down into smaller units, so it would last longer.
— Show-off! she cried, and picked up the pace.
I caught up with her and pulled the elastic band. It snapped back against her skin.
— Are you a complete moron? What are you doing?
— Playing.
— I’ll show you what to play with, she said, pressing the buzzer for her grandfather’s apartment. But words apparently didn’t suffice: she spun around and flicked me with her finger, right where she meant.
Elena was waiting for us at the door to the apartment.
— Sorry we didn’t call ahead, Evelina apologized. There’s a sit-in at school and we thought we’d come here instead.
— Your grandfather will be happy. He saw you coming with his binoculars.
Evelina told me the other day that her grandfather has a soft spot for Elena. He’s pretty harsh with his family, though. He banned all bad-tempered people from his home, he says he has no use for grumpy faces.
— Grandma was always griping about something, Evelina whispered, so when she died, he told us all to leave our problems at the door. Of course he only remembers that rule when it suits him.
Grandpa Dinopoulos was sitting in his armchair. Elena had opened the curtains wide and sunlight streamed in through the windows, warming the old man’s bald spot. Life wasn’t too bad up there, in one of the prized penthouses on the square. The realest of real estate, as Grandma Evthalia sometimes says, who values nice things and nice places as much as Mom does. Up there you need sunglasses all day, even inside, she likes to say. The only nicer apartments to be found are the penthouses along the waterfront, where you feel like you’re living on the deck of a ship. You wake up and see the sea, but you’re stepping on solid ground.
Grandma’s house is on Prasakaki Street, just north of Agia Sophia. It used to have a view of the sea, too — if you pressed up against the balcony railing and twisted your head just right. Now it looks into the bedrooms across the way. Dad calls it seventh heaven, because it’s on the seventh floor. But to this day Mom can’t stay in that apartment for longer than an hour. The walls start to close in on her. She says it all the time, but she can’t understand that I feel exactly the same way about our house. Our house has no oxygen. Sometimes I can’t breathe, just sitting there in the living room.
— Welcome, the old man says. Elena, do we have anything to treat the kids to?
Evelina looked at him in surprise. In all those years her grandfather hadn’t treated her to so much as a glass of water. Elena brought us orangeade and slices of tsoureki.
The old man was one of the ones who’d been keeping tabs on the sit-in, which gave us something to talk about. He knew more than we did about what was happening in the schoolyard. We spent seven minutes on boring observations. Then I lost patience and got to the point.
— Mr. Dinopoulos, would you mind if I recorded our conversation? I asked as I searched the menu on my cell phone. I knew it had a function for digital recording, I’d just never needed it until now.
— I want to see Evthalia.
Evelina started to say something. I put my hand on her knee to stop her, pushing the button to start the recording.
— Really, young man, did you think I’d talk to you without some kind of exchange? At my age I enjoy the ultimate luxury of being beholden to no one. Though I don’t mind making other people beholden to me, he added slyly.
— That’s precisely what I’m counting on.
— Pretty big for your britches, aren’t you? Just like her.
— Who?
— Evthalia. She always had to have the last word.
I smiled. That was Grandma, all right.
— Well? Will you bring her to see me? he insisted.
— I accept your terms.
The old Methuselah smiled. He leaned his head back on his armchair and squinted against the light.
— Bring that thing closer, he ordered. If we’re going to do this, let’s do it right. I don’t want her complaining afterward that I tricked you. If she decides to give me a piece of her mind, not even God himself can save me.
THROUGH OTHER EYES
On the first day of the occupation, the first-years tossed a plastic bottle over the schoolyard wall. It was a half-empty bottle of water — not a big deal, you might say. It would burst on the sidewalk outside and that would be that. But this bottle happened to fall on the head of a passerby, a tourist, a German philhellene of the old breed, one of those who think the ancient Greeks invented the universe. The bottle smacked him right in the middle of his bald spot. It took the dazed German a few minutes to figure out what had happened. And when he did, he made a beeline for the school, enraged.
The German tourist was not mentally prepared for the sight of a sit-in at a public educational institution. He was obviously suffering from culture shock. And his English, while good, got him nowhere in terms of comprehending the situation. The students were all talking at once, the desks had been dragged into messy rows by the entrance. The German had an open mind, or so he liked to think, but the disorder before him was more than he could understand. It was incomprehensible to him that adult teachers had allowed a bunch of crazed teenagers to occupy a public space. It was even more incomprehensible that the policemen he’d seen right down the street were making no move to intervene. The students’ lack of fear made an impression on him. They acted without any consideration for what the consequences might be. They had no idea what punishment even meant.