Good Will Come From the Sea

by Christos Ikonomou

  Chronis, he hears his dad saying. Where are you going with that knife?

  Chronis looks at the knife, then grips it tightly in his hand and shivers. It’s already May, but it’s freezing again tonight. Thirty degrees in the daytime, fifteen at night. Or twelve. Or ten. Hot, then cold. Expansion, contraction. Constant distortion. How much can the body stand, or the heart, the mind?

  Crick crack, Chronis is expanding.

  Crick crack, Chronis is contracting.

  Crick crack, the chasm in Chronis spreads.

  Well, Dad, Chronis says, I thought I’d run across the street and see what’s going on, something’s not right tonight. I’ll park in front of the stairs and go up and see what’s happening in that room. He hasn’t done this sort of thing before, hasn’t had her in there for so many hours. The old man, I mean. It’s the first time he’s locked her in there for so long. You don’t know her. If you saw her you’d understand. Like a doll. Soft blond fuzz. A body that glows like a candle in church. If you saw her you’d understand. The old geezer sure did. And ever since, he’s been trying to turn that candle into a rubber band. I don’t know if you get my meaning. If you can fathom the unfathomable, hear the unheard of, comprehend the incomprehensible. Anyhow, I’m going to climb up and see what’s going on. Because the procession will be here any minute now. I’m going to pull myself up the stairs like a worm, get myself into that room and see what’s going on. What’s taking so long. I have to go and see. Rubber-band-girl to worm-man, over. Rubber-band-girl to worm-man, over. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Who’s going to drive you home tonight? Chronis with all his might. And his is nothing to sniff at, that’s for sure. His might, that is. His you-know-what, too, if you catch my drift. It’s a big one, but fallen in action. But don’t worry, we’ll get it back up. Oh, yes. We’ll raise the dead there, too. Resurrections all around. Science can work wonders these days. Pumps, rings, injections. Have you heard of Alprostadil? It’s a miracle drug. Viagra for cripples. Sorry, I mean people with special needs. Sorry, I mean people with special abilities. We’ll have him fighting on the front lines again in no time, all the former cripples carrying the banner of a new Greece. We’ll raise the dead there, too, no doubt about it. We’ll pump the bastard up, no question. No question. Sorry, Dad, I got carried away. Let myself just float down the river a while. What can we do, it’s all part of life.

  Chronis?

  Dad?

  I wish I could die twice. I wish I could take you in my arms and lift you up, even if I had to die a second time. I wouldn’t care. Just to see you stand on your feet again. I’d die twice over to see that, or three times, even. To be able to squeeze your hands, son, to hold you in my arms and lift you to your feet. Nothing else, just that. Then I’d gladly die again. Just that.

  Beat it, old man. Beat it or I’ll beat you. Get thee behind me, pops. Enough with the lamentation, or you’ll die not twice but a hundred and thrice. Come on, Dad, don’t cry. Let’s sing some marching songs together, or recite some heroic poems about a worm-man advancing toward his fate with open eyes and sealed lips, I walk through the snow, burning up, and in the fire I freeze, a cloud gathers above, sign of winter, as I stand here imprisoned obeying the words within, fire is fire, my heart is broke, but I have some glue, that’s how the final acts in life are written, let’s get drunk on an immortal cocktail of postmodernism and multiculturalism, post-structuralism and intertextuality, one shot Alexandrou, one shot Cobain, another of Archilochus, a Carnation jingle and a little Nietzsche, a Xanax and a dash of Grigorios Nissis, mix some Plutarch with a bit of Borges, some Ehrenburg with Vamvakaris, some reader response with psychotropic response and of course some government response to the plight of the unemployed – I should’ve been a bartender after all, Chronis says, and puts the knife in his mouth and rolls the wheelchair into the street, not looking back, let the dead bury the dead – Chronis moves forward, not looking back, not hearing his father’s death rattle behind him, or his mother’s snoring, or the rattling of the scorpion who by now has stopped tapping the glass with its black tail and instead is thrusting it into a tawny body as unfeeling as a shadow, again and again, manically, frenziedly the scorpion stings its own pallid body, a body sated on flesh and blood.

  Rubber-band-girl to worm-man, over.

  Rubber-band-girl to worm-man.

  Over.

  Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

  Chronis quickly crosses the street and stops beneath the fig tree where the other day someone spread too much potash and dried it out, probably killed it. He stops, out of breath, and looks at the dry branches rising into the crucified sky, branches like fingers that never had a chance to become fists but petrified there in an ambiguous, tribiguous, tripartite gesture, dry fingers rising into the sky seeking revenge, forgiveness, relief.

  Ethics comes from ethos, and ethos means abode, dwelling place, Chronis says, staring at the branches, struggling to see the stars through the branches. That’s what the gloomster from Messkirch said, but let’s not rush to kill him just yet. If ethos is an abode, then a change of abode entails a change of ethos. Take the island. The island messes with everything. You came to live here, so now you have to change your moral code. No, that’s not right. Now that you live here, the island’s ethics will change you. The place will change you. The dark horse from Ephesus put it differently, that a man’s character is his fate, and Mr. Gloom and Doom from Elsinore said an awful sickness can only be awfully healed, and the gloomy guy from Röcken said knowledge kills action. Knowledge blunts the knife.

  Or something like that.

  Chronis looks down the street. There’s been a change to the route, the procession won’t be passing by any minute, or anytime soon. Change in the program, the procession won’t be coming at all. And the bells. Either I’ve gone deaf or the bells have lost their voice. A change of moral code, change of place. The island messes with everything.

  Rubber-band-girl to worm-man.

  Rubber-band-girl to worm-man.

  Nah, don’t listen to any of those pussies, a woman doesn’t have three holes, the old geezer says at the coffee house. A woman has as many holes as you make. You can shove it in her nostril if you want, and give her brain a good mix. But you’ve got to start on the nostrils when they’re young if you want to knock any sense into them.

  Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.

  He pivots his chair, pulls up in front of the stairs, and looks up at the room. Lights off, curtains drawn. Courage, man. Courage, Chronis. Courage, my boy. Blessed be those with crippled legs who refuse to let their hearts be crippled, too. But what a tragedy. The church has no room for real Christians. And those capable of changing the world aren’t of this world, don’t belong here. Be brave, Chronis. Take courage. Don’t listen to the other foreigners – good will come from the sea not in a rowboat or on a ship, but in a floating wheelchair. Make your hair into sails, your hands into oars – row, row, even if the wind pushes you backwards. Be brave, Chronis. Don’t let the sweat dry. Don’t let your heart dry up, either. Don’t let your hand dry up, or the knife. Courage. Courage. Our life and our death are with our neighbor. Choose one of the two, so the two become one. Courage, Chronis. Be brave. Don’t let Chronis dry up.

  Chronis reaches out a hand and grabs hold of the handrail beside the stairs. Green, hard, rough, it scrapes his skin. You can do this. Be brave, Chronis. Never trust the artist, trust the tale. You can do this. Courage.

  He puts the knife in his mouth and bites the blade and grips the handrail with both hands, grips the green metal as tightly as he can, and with all the strength in his half a body he leans forward and slips out of the wheelchair. He falls face-down against the edge of a step, but doesn’t feel the pain. He feels no pain at all. He’s already sweating. One, two, three, twenty. Twenty steps. A challenge, a trial like no other. Saint Chronis of the Staircase. Saint Chronis the Paraplegic. The Holy Servant of the Wheelchair. Twenty steps. Courage. Hold
onto that metal in your hand, that steel in your mouth. Hold onto the sweat that will drip drops of blood on the cement.

  He grips the handrail between his hands and the blade between his teeth and starts to pull himself up the stairs. It’s good, it’s good. It’s good he’s carrying only half a body, he can’t feel the other half at all. He’s climbing. Not crawling, climbing. Step by step, no matter how long it takes, how much he sweats, how much pain still awaits.

  I’m coming, Chronis whispers, staring straight at the sky which stares back at him with its two billion eyes.

  I’m coming, he whispers and feels his blood sweetening where the steel bites his tongue.

  I’m coming, Chronis says.

  I’m coming.

  Our island is expanding. Last year, after the series of earthquakes started up, Germans and Swiss came from the University of Hamburg and the Swiss Institute of Technology and installed seismographs and special GPS machines up on the mountain, in Doors and around the lakes and apparently discovered that the island, which is hollow, is moving in three different directions at a speed of 70 millimeters a year: toward the northwest, the northeast and the southeast. They also discovered that it isn’t moving only horizontally but vertically as well – in Doors, along the edge of the largest plate, the activity of the magma under the surface is pushing the land up about three centimeters a year. They even found that there had been about two hundred earthquakes in a single year, most under four on the Richter scale, and that large quantities of radon are escaping from the trench that opened last winter, over in Mougkros, and that the island is ringed by three underground volcanoes in addition to Kamenes – two between Moray Bay and Murderess and one behind Barbarian Isle.

  Today my father is all mixed up again. That’s how it’s been going these days, one day he’s pretty bad, the next he’s even worse. He woke me up before dawn to tell me to go into town and buy a radon meter. A radon meter, sure. Fine, I said, but why go all the way into town? Anna has stuff like that at the mini-market, I’ll bring you one when I go for cigarettes. I mean, I shouldn’t say stuff like that, because he realizes I’m making fun of him and he gets upset and looks at me with eyes brimming with tears, but sometimes my frustration gets the better of me. He says we need to measure the radon levels in the house and take the necessary steps to protect ourselves, the situation has gotten dangerous – we’re talking radon here, it’s no laughing matter. Twenty thousand people die every year in America from radon poisoning, and just as many in Europe.

  He woke me up at six to tell me this. We fought, we shouted, I tried being harsh, I tried being gentle, but it was all wasted effort.

  Bring me some clothes so I can get dressed and I’ll go myself, he says. I want my striped shirt and khaki shots. No way I’m wearing long pants, it’s too hot.

  Shots, I say, and give him a good look. You want to wear shots.

  Definitely, he says. The khaki ones, with the big pockets.

  At some point I thought I about calling Pothitos, but I thought better of it, what could I say and how could he help? Ioanna, dear, I’m a neurologist – as for matters of radon and other radioactive materials you’ll have to call over to the research foundation, or the Committee on Nuclear Energy. That’s what he’ll say, for sure, and I’ll just laugh. And my father will hear from his room and bow his head and get all teary again.

  Eventually, with this and that, I managed to calm him down. I told him I’d only take him into town if he took his pills first, and fortunately he swallowed them without any fuss and fortunately they did their job and fortunately now he’s asleep.

  But not for long. Not for long, I know.

  Soon enough he’ll jump up again and grab me by the arm and tell me not to go out tonight. Don’t leave, he’ll say. I don’t want to have to wander around in the middle of nowhere shouting your name. Ioanna, Ioanna, where are you? I’m telling you, if you go out, I’ll die. Tonight, I mean it.

  Cross my heart, look.

  If you leave, tonight is the night I’ll die.

  Good Will Come from the Sea

  Peeetrooos!

  Petraaaakiiis!

  Where are you?

  Lazaros the Bow drops his walking stick and flashlight and falls to his knees and presses his ear to the dry earth. He holds his breath, closes his eyes, and struggles to hear something, the twin dogs of fear and worry nipping wildly at his chest. Eyes shut, holding his breath, he waits to hear something. Not something, someone. Not someone, Petros. If Petros went into the Dragon Cave that night and if the cave stretches, as they say, whole kilometers beneath the island, and if the island is, as they say, hollow in places, then at some point he’ll surely be able to hear him.

  Surely, at some point he’ll hear him.

  Surely, there’s no other way.

  He kneels there for a while, almost entirely still, whispering the same word over and over like a prayer, whispering the prayer of the one and only word.

  Petros. Petros. Petros.

  Then, rising to his feet, stumbling heavily, he braces himself on the walking stick, hunched over, his other hand gripping the flashlight, which he aims at the sky like a mad warrior from some fairy tale who got it in his mind that tonight is the night to spear the moon with his sword.

  He leans back with his eyes closed and breathes in deeply through his nose, then shouts at the top of his lungs, with all the strength he has left.

  Peeetrooos!

  Petraaaaakis!

  His mouth loves his son’s name.

  * * *

  The moon has cycled through five colors tonight. It rose bright red out of the sea, off in the distance behind Inner Island, then faded to orange, then went yellow over the peak of Polemos, Mount War, then silver over Outer Island, and finally, around midnight, when it started to whiten like a blind man’s eye, Lazaros the Bow splashed his face with cold water to sober up and, as every night, pulled on his leather Meindl Taiga hunting boots, waterproof and weighing less than a kilo, made of breathable GORE-TEX fabric and soft, comfortable memory foam, with Air-Active inserts and Multigriff natural rubber soles, then his durable Deerhunter waterproof hunting pants and two-tone Beretta vest with the hidden pockets and shell pouches in front, and then strapped his hunting knife, a double-edged KA-BAR – which, as everyone knows, can ward off evil things – tightly to his leg, and slung his pistol – which, as everyone knows, can ward off evil people – crosswise under his arm, and feeling strong and capable, as if he were wearing a full suit of armor, he takes the flashlight and the walking stick – also durable, carved from abelitsia, curved and knotted – and hurriedly leaves the house, before dawn on All Souls’ Day, June seventh, with the whitewashed houses of the town glistening in the moonlight, tumbling from the castle at the top of the hill all the way down to the sea, like the frothing waters of the rushing Hiona in winter.

  Tonight Lazaros decided to go a different way. He’ll follow the moonlight, head west, to Outer Island, hugging the coastline all the way to Second Coming, then circle the lake and come back through Murderer’s Gorge, and before he reaches Beast’s Hole turn north and head toward Mougkros. He’s never taken this route by foot before but figures he should get to the Dragon Cave by dawn, in time to see the sun rising out of the sea – he wants to be sure he’s there in time to see daybreak from up above the cave, because that sort of thing is a sign, it’s a good sign to see a day dawn, and besides, sunlight brings a ray of hope – no matter how much darkness you’re carrying with you, inside of you, sunlight always offers a ray of hope – and as that kook Charonis said the other day at the taverna, we should believe in the sun not only because we see it, but because it’s what lets us see everything else.

  It’s no small thing, running a taverna. There’s no end to what you can learn. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open. And all the time, too, not just to check on orders, bills, customers, waiters. So nothing esc
apes you, so you notice everything, hear everything people say between the pear and the cheese, as they say. Or the Heineken and moussakas, the ouzo and sardines.