All I know is that from then on I never walked on that side of the street, where the blood had run. The stain was there for whoever had eyes to see. Sofoula was upset about her dress, it was good fabric and a fine design. She bought a piece of wide ribbon and covered up the flaw. If you looked closely, you could see where it had been mended. But it was on the side, so as long as she was sitting down it was fine.
Time passed. People forget, the priest told me. A harsh thing to say, but we all know it’s true. Time is the great healer, it heals all wounds, is what the old folks say, it turns blood into water. You don’t feel, don’t hurt, don’t care. Your soul burns and all that’s left is ash.
My mother-in-law would always shake her head and say, This too shall pass. But Nikiforos didn’t think that way. If he got a thing in his head, it would stick there like a rusty nail and eat away at everything else.
After that night when the district attorney came to the house Nikiforos lost his sleep. He would twist and turn in bed like a lamb on a spit. He talked in his sleep, let out little cries. I pretended I was asleep, but just lay there praying. And some point he would get up and go and doze in the armchair in his office. He would spend the whole night there, at attention, stiff as a bayonet.
The Emmanuel Gris affair, that was the man’s name. Emmanuel Gris.
He was accused of murder. He went to prison.
He lost twelve years of his life. I lost my marriage.
MAGDA KARAGIANNIDOU, NURSE AT THE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL OF STAVROUPOLI, COMMONLY KNOWN AS LEMBETI
After thirty years here I know each stone like the back of my hand. When they first sent me here I was a girl in braids, new to the job. Before that they had me at the Ippokrateio old folks’ home. I fed them, emptied their bedpans, took them out to walk in the yard. Then one of the other nurses had a fling with a doctor and they managed to get me transferred out.
— You’re going over to the crazies, they told me. It’ll be tra-la-li tra-la-lo all day long. It’s easy work, they’ve been shut up in there for years and nobody gives a damn anymore, you could tie them up and no one would be the wiser.
At the Ippokrateio I was always bothered by how dark it was in the hallways. Outside the sunlight was as loud as thunder, but its rays stopped at the door. As soon as I went inside I would flip the switch. You might say it was an insignificant detail. People were dying and what I cared about was the light. Until they sent me to Lembeti and I learned my lesson. I saw the worst and it knocked some sense into me.
— They’re not really sick, is what other people said. Sickness means pain. They don’t hurt.
I don’t blame them, it’s something I probably said myself at some point. For most people sickness means cancer. And maybe they’re right.
As long as they get their pills, they’re quiet. Every so often new doctors arrive with degrees from places like Paris who think you can cure with words. For them words are cheap and they’ll spend as many as they need. They’re against medication, that’s the first thing they tell you. But by the end of their first night shift, their fancy theories have all flown out the window.
Like the guy whose belt kept coming loose, and he was always adjusting it. He’d come to put us in order, or so he thought. With his fancy degree and his conferences in Europe and all the big words he knew. By now we’ve learned not to stand in their way. But behind their backs, we take bets on how long they’ll last.
He was on duty one Friday night. I couldn’t tell you why, but Fridays are the worst. Something gets into people, they blow their fuses. If you’ve spent any time at a funny farm you know.
The first hours passed quietly enough, so the doctor relaxed. He settled into a chair, stretched out his legs, even closed his eyes. A ten-minute nap, the sweetest sleep there is. But just then, a gypsy woman burst into his office with a baby in her arms, raising gods and demons, demanding morphine. None of it seemed to disturb the baby’s sleep. At first our doctor tried to reason with her. He wasn’t going to sign off on anything illegal. The gypsy woman lost it, she didn’t have time for conversations and haggling, she threw the baby at him as if it were a sack and made a beeline for the medicine cabinet. The doctor grabbed the baby in the air, its eyes snapped open like a doll’s and it started to scream, terrified at finding itself in this stranger’s embrace. Soon enough the poor man was covered in tears and snot, and he was totally disgusted, but didn’t know where to put it down.
A few hours earlier he’d been lecturing us about minorities, but when he found himself with a gypsy bastard in his arms, he forgot all his fine words fast enough. He literally kicked the woman out of the place, with the help of the guard, who pretended to be shocked by the whole scene but was secretly enjoying it.
The supervisor had scheduled him to examine a patient in the lecture hall the next day. Our young doctor showed up with dark circles under his eyes. He was clearly in bad shape, but he kept it under control. There was a kid there, too, a high school kid whose father had called from the paper to ask if he could observe. He sat in a corner taking notes. Strange kid. He seemed more interested in the doctor than in the patient. If I were his mother, I wouldn’t have been proud.
I’d have been worried.
I’m not sure how long Evgnosia lived at Lembeti. She was already here when I came. I learned about her case from the older staff members. The hospital was Evgnosia’s home. She didn’t wander around unkempt like the others did. She used to comb her hair with an ivory hair clip. It might seem strange that they let her keep it, but she bit three nurses who tried to take it away. She cried and hit herself and in the end they felt sorry for her and gave it back. She used to carry it around wherever she went. The teeth were broken, but she’d stand there running it through her hair two hundred times in a row. She had pretty hair, as black as a stormy sea. But it had started to fall out, and I would pick up whole handfuls of it in the corridors. The cleaning ladies complained and asked us to cut it, what does a crazy woman want with hair like that, they said. Downy fuzz grew back on her forehead, thinner than before. In the end all that was left was a few tufts here and there. So she would use her broken hair clip on them, and then pat down her hair with her palm. She cleaned her face with her own spit, like a cat, couldn’t stand to get water on her face, cried if I asked her to go and wash. She took her pills, stood in the corner, and never let out a peep. It was easy to forget she was there.
In all those years I only heard her voice once. It was raining, a real heavy storm, torrents of water rushed through the streets, a dirty river as high as your knees. The rain snuck in through closed windows, locked doors. The walls were covered in damp. The whole city had taken shelter indoors.
Evgnosia was pressed up against the window, staring out. It was the only time I ever saw her actually looking at anything. Don’t ask me what it was, though. All you could see through the window was sheets of water, the skies had opened. She started to say something, but what came out wasn’t words. She hadn’t spoken in years. No one else even noticed, because just then the plaster in the entrance fell — I’m telling you, there was that much water — and we had to go and check the damage. The guard shook his head. I’ve been saying it for years, he said, if the place isn’t kept up, these things are going to happen.
When we came back, her eyes were blank again. Whatever it was, was gone. There are no miracles in this line of work.
I’ve been taking care of their medications for thirty years. I take them out to walk in the yard. But never Evgnosia. Her chart said it wasn’t allowed, they kept her in the basement with the dangerous ones. Someone signed off on that, took the shame on himself and forgot all about it.