Chronis looks out the window, doesn’t see any birds and is glad.
Tap tap tap.
The scorpion is glued to the side of the tank, drumming the glass with its pincers.
Tap tap tap.
Chronis maneuvers his wheelchair – or, rather, his mobility device – his mobiiility deviiice, stress on the biii-ing and the ice, goes back to the desk, makes yet another coin of bread, and throws it into the tank.
The scorpion waits.
Chronis waits.
The girl’s waiting, too, he hears a voice meow.
You shut your mouth, and keep your nose out of other people’s business, Chronis says. Why don’t you go catch a mouse or two, all those canaries are giving you jaundice.
* * *
The world is constructed in such a way as to deprive each of us of the possibility of doing any personal good. No, that’s not right. Let’s take it from the top. Ready? OK. The world is constructed in such a way as to relieve each of us of the responsibility of doing any personal good. We’re all free to do bad in a thousand ways, but good is always someone else’s affair. In our societies, the state has a monopoly on good. In order for a society to function in even the most basic way, the state has to have a monopoly on violence – but even more crucial is for the state to have a monopoly on good. Does that seem like too much? A bit of an exaggeration? Yet it’s the truth. No, that’s not right. Yet that’s how truth works. Just as power is synonymous with its own corruption – because power doesn’t in fact corrupt, nor can it be corrupted, as any random fool on TV or the internet might say, but rather, power is synonymous with its own corruption, which is to say power equals corruption – and in the same way, truth is synonymous with its own transgression. Which means that in order to see the whole truth, you need to transgress it. In order to see truth in its entirety you have to get some distance, just as in order to see all of Earth, you have to travel thousands of kilometers into space.
Sir, sir.
Yes?
Well, sir, as Nietzsche said, I profit from a philosopher only to the extent that he can provide an example. So, can you give us an example?
Young man, I’m afraid I’m no philosopher. And Nietzsche was fit to be tied.
Fine, whatever. Just give us an example.
What kind of example?
Of what you were just saying. Good and the state and stuff.
And stuff.
What you were saying. Give us an example so we’ll understand better.
OK. It’s simple. Take the girl. The old geezer locks her in the room every night. What am I supposed to do about that? What’s the good I’m supposed to do? I should tell the cops. Or the girl’s teacher at school. Or Babajim, or some other priest. In each of those cases I’d be transferring onto individuals in positions of authority my own responsibility to enact good. That would be the ultimate moral failure. The other solution would be for me to take the situation into my own hands. To impose good directly. Yet imposition is itself tantamount to power. If I use violence to force the old man – and how else could I force him – to stop locking the girl in the room, I would be imposing my will, my power, on another person. Violence is the most extreme form of power, and murder is the most extreme form of violence. Therefore the destruction of life is the most extreme form of power. Inasmuch as –
Sir, sir, I have a question. Who’s that Babajim you mentioned?
Come on, haven’t you been paying any attention at all? Have I been talking to the air this whole time? He’s the local priest, at the church of Saint Marina.
Why do you call him Babajim?
Because his name is Dimitris, and he can down a barrel of ouzo in a single sitting. Papa-Dimitris, Papa-Jim, Babajim.
Oh, after Babajim ouzo, huh? Fuck, that’s a good one. You may not look it, but you’re a pretty chill guy, sir. OK, we’re listening.
As I was saying, murder is the most violent form of power. But listen up. As we all know, any tragedy represents a conflict between two truths. In our situation here, we’re dealing with one truth, that the destruction of a human life is the most brutal form of power, and another, competing truth, that life itself is the most brutal, most extreme form of power, because no human being comes into the world of his own volition. No one asked you or me if we wanted to be born. We’re born, we grow up and live because others made that decision on our behalf. Therefore the greatest act of resistance an anti-authoritarian could commit is to end his life, and to end his life of his own volition, since life itself is the most violent form of power. Consequently, the only true anti-authoritarian isn’t just a dead anti-authoritarian, but one who died by suicide. And yet the destruction of life, as we’ve already established, is also the most violent form of power. Therefore the true anti-authoritarian, who’s realized that resistance to power is an ontological act and that he bears no relation to those ignorant fools who think resistance means painting an A in a circle on a wall or throwing Molotov cocktails at the cops or smashing shop windows and banks – our fine, upstanding anti-authoritarian isn’t the victim of a tragedy, or even the protagonist of the greatest tragedy unfolding every hour and every minute in the universe, but rather is an embodiment of tragedy, an embodied tragedy. Because in order to abolish the most brutal form of power, life, he has to exercise the most brutal form of power, the destruction of life. Quod erat demonstrandum. Or something like that.
Sir, sir.
What is it now?
Sorry, but you lost us. Can you start over from the beginning?
Of course I lost you. The Greek family and the Greek school system are twin wombs of evil. You were born from one and reborn in the other. How on earth could you possibly understand? Now go out and smash a shop window or two, smoke a joint, knock back a few beers to the health of the revolution and the memory of Alexis Grigoropoulos. Just make sure you’re not late getting home, because your mother is making pork chops with fried potatoes and they’ll get cold. Yeah, don’t be late getting back home sweet home, because mommy made a nice little dinner and you don’t want it to get cold.
You’re going to do it, though, aren’t you, sir? You’ll do it in the end, whatever you say. We know you will.
What?
You know what. You’ll do it in the end. You’re a good person. And alone. And kind of crazy. Those three go together.
A good person? What does that mean? And who cares? What matters isn’t whether you’re good, but whether you love.
A good person is someone who does good, who does the right thing. A good person is someone who’s stopped wondering why he has to do good. That’s what a good person is. See, sir? We know a thing or two. We’re not just dumb bricks. There’s more to us than just smashing windows, then running home and eating our nice little pork chops and fried potatoes. We know a thing or two ourselves.
Tap tap tap.
Chronis rolls his wheelchair in reverse and goes over to the desk again. He breaks off a piece of bread and dips it in the wine and rolls another little coin and tosses it into the tank. This time the scorpion doesn’t wait at all but rushes toward the bread before it even lands on the broken rooftile.
Tap tap tap, Chronis taps his finger against the glass.
Take, eat; this is my body, Chronis says.
Drink of it, all of you, this is my blood.
Amen.
* * *
Night is falling. Night has fallen. Any minute now the procession will pass by. Listen to the bells. It’s coming. Or maybe not? The procession is later than usual this year. And the girl – she’s late, too, very late coming out of the old man’s room.
Chronis maneuvers the wheelchair like a captain on open waters – reverse, hold there, ninety to the left, wheel to center, straight ahead calmly, hold, ninety to the right, wheel to center, straight on from there – then goes out into the hallway, stops outside the closed door, l
eans over and puts his ear to the keyhole. Between the tolling of the bells he can hear his mother snoring – he did a good job again tonight with his special caipillinha cocktail, she knocked it back and is sleeping the good sleep, I should’ve been a bartender after all, hush over there, don’t raise a scare, don’t knock on the door, what’s that pounding for, mommy dearest is sleeping, nani nani nani nani, and if she’s hurt it’ll make her well, hush dear mother in your walnut shell, in your pearly clothes, the tiniest belle, hush dear child, where are you going, I’m going to the farmer, for cheese to grate by the kitchen gate, and pinches and kisses all the way home – Chronis leaves his mother, goes into the kitchen and takes the knife from the drawer, then wheels back into the hallway, stops in front of the mirror, puts the knife in his mouth, and bites down on the blade – watch out, don’t get carried away, don’t get too cocky, this knife is your goal – and he sees his hair mussed in the mirror, sticking up like a squad of soldiers whom a siren startled from sleep, oh Hamlet, poor Hamlet, it was the wrong question, the wrong place, the wrong time, it’s not to be or not to be, it’s how to be, and if you were here now that’s what you’d be asking, if you were here now, on this island, in this country that isn’t a ghost but a figment of the imagination – because to be a ghost means you were once alive, and this country never lived at all, it never existed, it was all a lie, a fairytale with a crooked beginning and completely warped ending, oh poor Hamlet, you think Denmark is a prison – but if you were here now, poor Hamlet, you’d know what a prison really is, if you were standing in front of this mirror, you’d agree that fathers and mirrors should be hated to an equal degree because they alone have the ability to make people multiply.
Or something like that.
Teeth clenching the knife, Chronis pushes the wheelchair forward – a maestro in the chair but his cock won’t crow – and when he reaches the front door he opens it and looks both ways up and down the street. He has to hurry. He has to cross the street quickly, the procession will be there any minute. He has to hurry, the procession is almost there. Listen to the churchbells. Dtin dtan dtin dtan, the bells toll. Hey, man, who died? A wounded cat. Who wounded it? I did, and I brought it to the doctor and he gave it fat, and the cat told him, I won’t eat that. And he gave it stew and it said, thank you. He has to hurry. He has to hurry. He takes the knife from his mouth and licks his lips. Salt and blood. Salt and rust. For months he’s had the same taste in his mouth – salt from the sea, the rust of blood. Naturalism, someone might say. Cheap words, out of cheap mouths, out of cheap minds. Out of cheap hearts. Naturalism, sure. Come live here for a while and then we’ll talk. Come live here, not as a tourist in August, not camping in Echo Bay, not as a bartender for three months in tourist season or as an army conscript for six, not for cocaine and joints and drinks and dancing, or bonfires at night, guitars and singing on the beach, orgies in the moonlight, empty conversations with empty friends and empty girls about the empty revolution – come here in November when the sirocco whips up the sand and listen to the gulls screeching like rabid dogs, come when the west wind blows at forty knots, sweeping into the harbor like a wild beast and crushing everything in its path, come see the lightning on March nights, flashing white in the sky like ghosts over the masts of boats, come when it’s raining on silent yellow evenings and walk through the town, through the narrow streets, see the little houses, the little shops, the little people, come then, and you’ll figure out fast enough how easy it is, if you live here, to become a little person yourself.
Come and live here for a while, and you’ll learn to wonder and doubt. And I don’t mean you’ll remember, or relearn. You’ll learn. You’ll learn to see and to believe. You’ll learn to believe in things you can’t see. And then you’ll see the things you believe in. Come live here. Here where we came to live, on this island, in the middle of this sea, we have to write the world all over again from the beginning. Not my life or your life, just life – that’s what we have to write again from the beginning. We have to write the earth, the sea, darkness and light, language and silence, sleep, dreams, passion, death, love. The city is a trap and a trap means safety. The terror of the sea is stronger than the pain of that trap, the pain of a heart attack, the pain of kidney stones. Come and look terror straight in the eye – because that terror may redeem us. Come and learn to love fear, because that’s the only way you’ll stop being afraid. Kill the ancient man you have inside. He who fears the gods fears all things, says Plutarch, earth and sea, air and sky, darkness and light, sound and silence, and a dream. Kill him. He’s not your father, you’re not his son. You’re strangers. You’re a foreigner, a guard in someone else’s house. And a useless guard at that, whose veins run with bile, not blood – I’m not well, so the whole world can go to hell. Only when you come to believe that this house isn’t yours, will this house become yours.
Tap tap tap. The scorpion is writhing in the tank. Tap tap tap. It ate the flesh and drank the blood, and now it wants another coin, more flesh, more blood. The scorpion is hungry, the scorpion is thirsty, it strikes its pincers on the rocks, strikes the glass with its tail, strikes and strikes. Tap tap tap.
Don’t be scared, Chronis says to the scorpion. Don’t be scared.
Kill the German, Chronis hears his father saying. Not me, the German. You hear? The German’s the one to kill. Don’t count days. Don’t count kilometers. All you need to count is how many Germans you kill. You hear me? Chronis? That’s my boy, Chronis, my brave boy. But what happened to you? Why are you in that wheelchair, Chronis?
It’s not a wheelchair, Chronis says. It’s a mobility device. Stress on the biii-ing and the ice. Mo biiii lity dev iiiice.
Chronis looks around. He looks between the leaves of the mulberry tree and under the iron table in the yard, where the wasps have made a nest again, looks past the flagless flagpole in the corner, next to the pots of basil, rosemary, mint, looks here, looks there – see, pal, what too much tragedy can do to a person, too much pity, too much fear – and then his gaze falls on a yellow bug with crushed legs struggling over the cement in the yard – see, pal, the kind of insignificant things a man notices at the height of panic – and then he raises the hand that’s holding the knife and slashes it through the air with brusque, nimble movements.
Beware, old mole, Chronis yells. Beware of my sharp and supple sword, lest it dice you like an onion. O father, unnerved father, beware, lest you find yourself splayed on the ground, vomiting up your soul, your murdered blood spurting into the air as I watch with closed eyes and the black spatter refreshes me. Get lost. Crawl back into your hole, you old rat. You’re no king and I’m no prince and my mother isn’t going to drink poisoned wine. Sure, it’s true, I mixed her a pretty killer cocktail tonight. Caipillinha number two. It’s a stiff one, with those Seroxat 30 mg pills. It’s really something. And the mother will drink and the child dare not, yet.
Chronis, son, what are you talking about? Have you gone mad?
No, Dad, but I have gone bad. Bad as in curdled, like spoiled milk. In this house time just refuses to pass. There’s nothing on TV, the internet is always on the fritz, so what can I do but read and read, like there’s no tomorrow. I went to town on Sophocles, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare. They’re a tough crowd, that’s for sure. Anyhow, what’s new with you? What’s happening up there? You guys must have a lot on your plate these days, huh?
Chronis, is that a knife you’re carrying? Where are you going with that knife?
To hell, and with a handbasket, too. To gather greens for the Easter feast. We’ll make kokoretsi out of wild asparagus. We’ll eat till we burst, pop. I bet you guys up there don’t roast lamb, do you? Makes sense, why would the chief want to see his little brothers roasting on the spit? Well, I should get going. I have to hurry, the procession will be passing by any minute.
Chronis rolls his wheelchair forward and opens the garden gate. A wind has picked up and from up there on the hill he can see the l
ights flickering down at the harbor and further off the lighthouse at Fonias that goes on and off twice every ten seconds. He stops and times it just to make sure. Good, it’s still going, two in ten. Some things in this world are still running on time. That’s something, at least. It’s a comfort, for sure. Two in ten. Yep. Two in ten.
Chronis?
Pop?
Chronis, I said.
Pop, I said.
Why are your eyes like that, Chronis? Son? Chronakis. Your eyes are so dark and red, and as big as a cow’s. What’s wrong, my boy?
It’s nothing, dad. Though you’re right, I’m going for the bull’s-eye view, trying to take livestock of the situation. And you know what I see? I see the best minds of my generation destroyed. Not by LSD but by LSJ. Short for life-sucking joblessness. They overdosed on LSJ. Get it, Dad? LSJ, a little patent of my own. You like it? It’s a neologism. Or maybe a neoplasm. Words are cancer down here on this island, they corrode my brain a little bit every day, my tongue, my heart. A psychic edema where I’d prefer some psychedelica. But seriously, Dad, they’ve all lost their minds. They burned out, overdosed, they’re ruined. I try my best to be a good listener over the phone but the wind drowns them out. A north wind or a west wind, it makes no difference, any kind of wind just carries their voices away. Remember Anna, Dad? Remember how you used to sit on the balcony in summer and close your eyes and listen to her practicing and the sound was like a lullaby rocking you to sleep? Remember that? Well, Anna sold the piano, the only time she plays these days is at Hantoumis’s patisseries, a euro per trill, she wears a jacket and a bow tie and a little name tag, because Chopin sweetens the baklava, profiteroles taste better with Beethoven. And Aris, LSJ fucked him up, too, they canned everyone from the furniture factory, then hired them back off the books as day laborers, no benefits, but at least he had some money coming in, except the other day he got into a fight with another guy about who was going to assemble a dining room table, the other guy said he should get the job because he’d been there longer, and one thing led to another and before you know it Aris pulls a screwdriver out of his back pocket and starts chasing him around in the street, so now Aris lost even that daily wage, because the boss said, I don’t want thugs in my shop, and of course he’s right because a screwdriver is for screwing things together, not for ripping people’s guts out, and in the difficult times our nation is currently experiencing we all have to keep calm and optimistic, present a united front, we’ve got business plans to pursue, and balance sheets and operating costs and inelastic expenses, and while wages can be made as elastic as rubber bands, stretched as thin as ice, as butter over too much bread, expenses can’t, people may lie but numbers always tell the truth, and besides, chasing people around in the streets with screwdrivers certainly isn’t going to help, what kind of crap is that, anyhow, where on earth is this country headed, what are we, living in a jungle or something? Remember Rita, Dad? Well, the dentist fired her six months ago and she’s been poring over the help wanted ads ever since, calling around every day, and the last time we talked she says to me, listen to this, I call this one number and a Nigerian guy answers and tells me he’s a stripper for bachelorette parties in the northern suburbs and says, I’ll give you twenty euros for every gig you book, and asks what I did before, and I say dental assistant and he says cool, fine, so you know how to deal with phone calls and bookings, come on, he says, don’t think twice, there’s money in it, and potential, too. And you know what Rita says to me, Dad? She says, man, you know what I want? You know what I want more than anything? I want this whole country to disappear off the map. To shrink to a tiny tiny tiny speck and then to fucking vanish off the map, to just cease to exist. That’s what I want, that’s it. For this whore of a country to disappear off the map forever. Dad. Are you listening? Are you still there, Dad, or are you gone?
Good Will Come From the Sea Page 7
