Good Will Come From the Sea

by Christos Ikonomou

  Haris sent me, said the sissy. We haven’t seen him in days. So we’re looking.

  How many days?

  I don’t know. Days.

  Did something happen? Was there some kind of fight?

  I don’t know. Haris sent me to ask.

  Petros’s cell phone was off. Lazaros tried to get a hold of Drakakis, but he wasn’t answering, either. The next morning he brought a case of wine to that drunkard Petihakis, the cop, and had him put out a call to his guys on the other islands. He went to the mayor, the bishop, the hospital director. He went down to the port and talked to all the fishermen and taxi drivers. The most he could unearth, from the gull cop everyone called Listen Up, was that Drakakis came to the island the previous weekend on someone else’s yacht and brought a whole crew with him, a dozen or so people.

  Was my son with them?

  Forget it, chief. No use stirring the fire.

  Just tell me, man.

  Listen up, just let it go.

  Tell me.

  OK, well, once the whole lot of them were pretty sloshed that psycho Drakakis came out and grabbed your kid and tied him to the railing and brought over a pair of scissors to cut his hair. Then the other guys came out, too, and a pack of whores who were along for the ride, and, hand to God, they started filling a bunch of condoms with piss and water and chucking them at his head. So humiliating, you couldn’t hardly believe it. The poor kid pleaded and shouted, but what’s he supposed to do, one guy against that crowd. When they finally let him go, he took off like a shot and jumped into a boat. I hope the devil destroys that asshole Drakakis’s family. He and his goons drove that kid mad.

  Lazaros listened with his eyes closed.

  Are you sure? They saw him getting into the boat?

  Listen up, Lazaros, don’t get mixed up in this. Those guys are no good.

  Where was he headed?

  How should I know. Out to sea.

  Why didn’t you say anything all this time?

  For Christ’s sake, listen up. You think I know what you should do with your kid?

  The next day he took the fast boat to Piraeus. He went to the company offices, but they wouldn’t even let him in the door – they didn’t know anything about Petros, and said Drakakis was out of the country and they didn’t know when he’d be back. He shouted, he cursed, they practically kicked him out into the street. Petros had told him he was staying temporarily with some friends in Kastela. He didn’t have an address, or any idea who the friends might be, so he hiked up there on foot and started wandering through the streets, searching blind, asking people on balconies and in shops if they knew a young guy who looked like this and this, tall, skinny, with black hair down to his shoulders. He was ashamed of how they looked at him, wished the earth would open up and swallow him whole, but he didn’t know what else to do. When he got back home, he dropped everything else and spent his days wandering all over the island, from one end to the other. He took the car down every road, from Echo Bay to Pities, from Futility Point to Boatbreak, back and forth, dawn to nightfall, one hand on the wheel, his phone in the other. Petros’s cell was dead, Drakakis had vanished, Petihakis the cop could care less – leave it to me, I’ve taken action, I’ll be in touch. In Tourtouras people said they’d seen a guy who looked like Petros at the old campground, down on the beach, where those stoners from Athens had gathered. He went down and spied on them with binoculars, but didn’t see his son. Someone in Hosti had seen a boat abandoned in Fidoussa across the way. He talked Charonis into taking him in his fishing boat, but they didn’t find anything. Barbarian Isle, Moray Bay, Murderess, beach by beach they searched all of those tiny, barren islands off the coast, but it was all wasted effort. Some people said they thought they’d seen a boat dragged up onto shore at Galley Slave, others that they’d seen a man crossing Orphan’s Stream alone, across the way on Outer Island. He didn’t know what to believe, or who to believe. Everyone he asked seemed to have a gleam of cruel joy in their eyes. And then, in Fones, he heard from some rats who worked at the desalinization plant in Meskinia that someone had been hanging around up at the big cave, the Dragon Cave, for the past few days. They’d caught sight of the guy a couple of times as they were coming back on the little ferry from across the way, and they signaled to him with a mirror, just for kicks, but he ran off and hid in the cave.

  What did he look like? Lazaros asked. What’s he like? Young, old, what?

  Must have been young. And tall, skinny.

  And his hair? Black, long?

  No, real short, like a crew cut.

  And you saw him with your own eyes?

  You think we saw him with yours?

  The very next day he drove to Mougkros and climbed down, rock by rock, all the way to the cave. Outside he saw the remains of a fire, cigarette butts, trash. He went in and shouted, but didn’t know how far to keep going – some say the cave stretches all the way to the slopes of Mount War, in the middle of the island, and others say it goes even further, to Outer Island. He went back the next day and the day after that. The fourth day he thought about taking supplies with him – flashlight, food, water – and searching every inch of the cave, no matter how deep it went or how long it took. And he would’ve, if he weren’t afraid Petros might show up in the meantime – and then what would happen? If he went in, Petros was sure to appear.

  For sure.

  And then what would happen?

  Think about it for a minute. No, think about it. Think what would happen if the rats found out you went into the cave to find Petros, and in the meantime Petros showed up and now he has to go into the cave to find you. Just think what a party they’d throw, that’s all I’m saying. You’d be the top news item on Rat TV. Who cares about you – but what did the kid do to deserve that kind of ridicule?

  They’d even make up folk songs about it.

  As sure as I’m seeing you here.

  They’d even make up folk songs, those bastards, those snakes.

  * * *

  Lazaros walks with his eyes trained on the ground and as he moves, they, too, move over the ground. He walks and thinks how if this were all a fairy tale, a chilling tale like the ones old people tell on summer nights, a night like tonight, for instance, out in the yard with the grill fired up – because old people still tell tales on this island, only these days they tell them to one another, since there are no more kids to listen, these days kids want to be scared by other things, and that’s progress, that’s freedom, that’s equality and democracy, to be free even as a child to choose what kind of fear suits you best – if it were all nothing but a story full of goblins and liver-eating vampires, billy goats that laugh and speak with human tongues, soldiers’ ghosts crying out and fires that flare up and die down all on their own on the first nights of August, across from Slave Isle – if this were all a fairytale, he’d be carrying white pebbles in his pockets to toss behind him so he could find his way back out, if it were a fairy tale, if all this were a fairy tale, if only it were a fairy tale.

  Because fairy tales have happy endings. Fairy tales always end well. Right? Right. They lived well and we live even better. Of course. That’s how the story goes.

  Lazaros is using his flashlight now that the moon has disappeared and as he walks he says, imagine, the way things are headed, soon enough anyone who goes out in search of a lost child will have a sponsor, you can quote me on that, and I wish that’s how it was already, I wish I had on a red Vodafone cap, or a shirt from Cosmote or Jumbo, I wish I had a sponsor to bring out a crowd and turn the whole island upside down, and pay for fishing boats and helicopters that would search for Petros day and night, because then we’d find him for sure, if I had a sponsor backing me we’d probably have found him already.

  What can one father do on his own?

  How many caves can he enter, how many gorges can he climb down, how many deserted beaches can he
comb?

  Lazaros mutters to himself as he walks, louder and louder, trying to trick himself into thinking he isn’t alone, to trick the darkness into thinking he isn’t alone, because the truth is he’s scared tonight, it’s the first time he’s done the rounds of the island on foot – at first he took the truck, but that didn’t seem like the best way to get the job done – and now he’s even more afraid because he sees the chapel of Christ our Lord glistening white before him, the one with the old well beside it where they say the island’s sprites hide, babies who died before they were baptized, with sharp teeth and curly hair, black wings, flushed cheeks, and nails as long and yellow as a blackbird’s beak.

  As he arrives outside the chapel, he stands and pulls the flask of tsikoudia out of his vest pocket and takes a long swig, to wash down the fear. Then he kneels and pulls his black-handled knife – which, as everyone knows, can ward off evil things – out of its sheath and uses it to trace a circle in the soil around his feet. He pulls out the pistol with his left hand and, kneeling there inside the circle, holding the knife in one hand and the pistol in the other, he leans back, takes a deep breath, and with his eyes closed raises his head to a sky punctured by a thousand stars.

  Peeetroooos!

  Petraaaakis!

  Dooo youououou heeeaaaar meee?

  He shouts again and again, with all the strength in his body, drawing out the ouououou like a wolf, feeling a shiver climbing up from his legs to his heart, praying that when he stops howling he’ll hear not the screeches of sprites but the voice of his son, praying for Christ our Lord to bring him a miracle, tonight, or tomorrow, praying for an end to this agony, praying to see his son again, to clutch his son’s body to his own, to stroke that long hair, those unshaven cheeks, the soft fuzz on his spine.

  Peeetrooos!

  Peeetrooos!

  With his eyes shut he holds his breath, hoping to hear something. Nothing. Even the sprites are quiet tonight. He falls to the ground and presses his ear to the soil. He waits. He counts to fifty and then to a hundred, and as he counts, all he hears is a voice inside him saying the same words again and again, like a riddle.

  If you lose your father they call you an orphan.

  If you lose your wife they call you a widower.

  If you lose your child, what do they call you?

  What do they call you?

  What?

  * * *

  What do they call you if you lose your child, what do they call you, what do they call you, what, what, what do they call you, what, Lazaros the Bow mutters to himself as he walks – Lazaros, Lazaros, as bent as a bow yourself, you poor, abandoned creature – and as he passes over the rushing stream of Kardiokaftis he sees a tiny light flickering on the other side and for an instant his chest swells, Petros, Petrakis, and he starts to raise the flashlight into the air, Petros, Petrakis, but then his hand falls again like a dry leaf, it’s only Peroulakis, the cop, who’s out there again tonight guarding the fields of that mafioso Varipatis, a cop by day who guards watermelons at night, at least in summer, in winter he guards oranges, three hundred a month all year round, what am I supposed to do, with the mess those traitor politicians landed us in, three hundred is nothing to sneeze at, three hundred pays for milk and diapers, though it’s tough staying up all night like a vampire, tough pretending that night is just another day, but I’d rather guard melons than hash, if you know what I mean, there’s a lot of bad shit going on down here, you might not see it, Lazaros, because you’re a measured man, a family man, God bless, but there are plenty of guys over in Little Athens who are worse than Albanians, give them an eye and they’ll ask for the eyebrow, too, and sure, I don’t like how they call you guys foreigners either, but you get what I’m saying, and of course those bastard mongrels down at the campground get up to stuff you wouldn’t believe, how did this country get so rough, man, I mean, on the nights when I sit up here all alone I think about all kinds of things, I say to myself, how did we end up like this, how did we sour on one another so much, how can it be that on a tiny island like this we can’t live together, just a drop of a place and we’re at one another’s throats, you call us rats and we call you foreigners, and then I wonder if we were always like this, if the fact that we could cheat one another, steal from one another is what kept us together all these years, if it was the lying and cheating and fake money, if that’s the only reason we put up with one another, that’s the sort of stuff I think about when I sit here late into the night and my soul hurts, because I don’t know what’s worse, to love your country because you’re ripping it off or to hate it because you can’t do that anymore, and I think how now that the money is gone we have to find something else to keep us together, but I can’t think of what, I can’t see that there’s anything left, there’s just nothing, nothing, nothing – Lazaros moves forward with the flashlight switched off in his hand, which hangs at his side as dry as a carob pod, and his head echoes with the words of Peroulakis who guards melons and oranges for three hundred a month, and he increases his speed, trying to put that place behind him faster, so Peroulakis won’t see him and call him over and start in on the same crybaby routine, empty words, cheap words, a welter of empty talk, a whole load of their cheaplish, as Charonis calls it – because words matter, of course, but what matters more is who’s speaking – and with the flashlight switched off Lazaros walks and thinks again of all the people he’s run into on these nights when he drags himself from one side of the island to the other, Peroulakis who guards Varipatis’s fields, Chryssi who wanders barefoot over the deserted beaches and talks to the stars, Gouigouis whose grandkids kicked him out of his house so they could turn it into a bed and breakfast, Comeandgo, Asimoyiannis, old lady Pandora, Sifounios who rides his horse in red cowboy boots – people like ghosts, or ghosts like people, ghosts who are more afraid of people than people are of ghosts.

  When he comes to the forest of Nohia, he turns the flashlight on again and looks from a distance at the solid pines the north wind has bent, their trunks hanging just a half meter above the ground, and from far off they look like warriors who’ve been shot right in the chest, only instead of falling in a heap to the ground, they stayed suspended in the air with their arms spread wide, as if condemned to remain there for all eternity, frozen, hanging in the air, neither upright nor fallen – and then he starts walking again and enters the forest, looking up at the trees, going deeper into the forest, and as he points his hand here and there the light from the flashlight looks to him like a bird that woke startled by the light, and is fluttering between dark branches, looking for a way out, trying to fly far off, to escape, but it’s all a lie, a lie, a lie, because now the forest looks like Salamander’s head after he got fired and all his hair fell out in a single night, even his eyebrows and lashes, that’s what the forest looks like now, Salamander’s head, plucked bare, with a few scattered trees here and there, pine trees, arbutus, oaks and holly oaks – they ruined the place again this winter, turning the trees into logs for fireplaces and wood stoves. Lazaros moves through the devastated forest and wishes he could hear all the old sounds, the yellowhammer’s complaining cheep cheep, the harsh chik chik of the wren, the tiou tiou of the corn bunting, the crazy trills of the crested lark, the turtledove’s tur tur tur, and above all, above all, the blackbird’s sweet call – if consolation had a voice, it would be a blackbird’s voice beyond all doubt – Lazaros goes deeper into the forest, looking up, eyes and ears wide open, but he hears nothing at all, only the leaves crunching like gristle beneath his boots, his own wheezing breath, the beating of his heart.

  And when he comes out the other side, where the ascent for Second Coming begins, he turns right and goes and stands at the edge of the gorge and looks at the lake spreading before him. He looks silently at the black water that glows as if it’s swallowed a bit of light from the moon, at the reeds that echo with the croaking of frogs, at the mud that looks reddish in the dark, as if the soil
has been kneaded with blood.

  Peeetrooos!

  Petraaakiiis!

  Lazaros, eyes closed, shouts into this wasteland, again and again, shouts until the twin dogs of worry and fear begin once more to nip mercilessly at his chest, shouts until his lungs give way, shouts knowing that the cruel north wind will take his voice, toy with it for a while, and then break its neck, suffocate it slowly, sweetly, sleepily.

  But Lazaros keeps shouting – that’s how much his mouth loves the name of his son.

  Peeetrooos!

  Petraaaakis!

  And then, exhausted, coughing and wheezing like an old asthmatic dog, he drops to his knees and puts his ear to the hard earth, eyes closed, and waits to hear something. Not something, someone. Not someone, Petros. If he 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. If, if, if, sounds like a lot of ifs, you’ll say. And I’ll answer you right back that ifs like that are what made humans human, that ifs are still what makes the world turn. If you believe only what you hear, there’s no way you’ll hear the things you believe. And then you’ll ask, what do I, a taverna owner, know about any of that, come on, Lazaros, you’ll say, enough with the folk wisdom, go and grab us a cold beer, and I’ll say that if the deaf weren’t too deaf to hear the guy telling them they’re deaf, there would be fewer deaf people in the world. Now take a swig of that beer.

  Where’s your smartaleck stuff now?

  That shut you up, huh?

  Since you’re deaf, how are you supposed to speak?

  All ifs are good, there’s just one that scares me.

  If you lose your father they call you an orphan. If you lose your wife they call you a widower. If you lose your child, what do they call you?