Well.
What do you mean, well?
If that isn’t a sign, what is?
My father is doing his evening exercises. He’s passed a length of red string between the toes of his left foot and keeps pulling it upwards with his hand, counting from one to seventy-seven. He pauses for a while, wiggles his toes like someone’s tickling him, then starts all over again. It’s a new trick, and I have to keep an eye on it all, because you can’t leave him alone with so much as a bit of thread, much less a whole ball of string.
It’s true, he says. When the French and the Germans go on about radon and becquerels, you stand there listening like idiots. When Yiannis the Baptized by Stroke opens his mouth, not one of you pays any attention. Doubting Thomases, every last one. Speaking of which, this afternoon I’d like you to gather all the illiterate fools in the town square and tell them that we put our finger on the heart of the matter, not in it. We get down to brass tacks, not on brass tacks. On, not in – and to, not on. Illiterate clods, the whole lot of them. And at church on Sunday, tell that drunken mess of a priest, Babajim, to get rid of the icon of the Holy Trinity that shows God with white hair and a beard, like a little old man with great-grandkids running around, because we Orthodox only paint what we’ve seen, and since we’ve never seen God, we shouldn’t paint him. And the icon of Saint Marina, the one that shows her holding the devil by his horns, he should put that one away, too, this isn’t Hollywood, there’s no need for us to go around showing devils and horns and all that, we only paint things that have substance, and the devil, evil itself, is unsubstantial. Mind you, unsubstantial, not nonexistent. Evil exists, but it doesn’t have substance, because only the things God created have substance, and God didn’t create devils, he created angels – even if some of them later decided to become devils. Tell him that. Enough already with the heathens and false theologizers, tell him that. Enough already. Enough is enough, ça suffit, rien ne va plus, ze maspik. Otherwise I might get it into my head to go down there one day and cart away those icons myself.
He sighs up at the ceiling, then starts counting again under his breath, pulling the string up and down.
Swiss, I say.
He looks at me sideways, wrinkling his left eyebrow, still counting.
The seismologists, I say. They’re not French and German. They’re Swiss and German.
What was I thinking? In seconds flat his face is bright red, he lets the string drop from his hand and starts kicking at the covers with his left foot, struggling to turn toward me. What was I thinking, opening my mouth? A rookie mistake, and a big one.
Is that how far we’ve sunk? His voice wavers, his mouth even more twisted than before. Have we sunk this far, that a slip of a girl like you would mock her sick father? Well, that’s as sure a sign as any. It’s a black day today, black as a jackdaw. In the morning the school bus plunges over a cliff, at night a daughter mocks her father. And hark, a great sign was seen in the heavens, of a daughter mocking her father. Other signs won’t be far behind. Soon enough you’ll see fish writhing on dry land like the eyelids of a man having a bad dream. And you’ll see living people fighting around the body of a dead one, who was young, handsome, and persecuted, like Christ. Any day now, so prepare yourself. All that’s coming, too, soon enough. And then you’ll believe me. But it’ll be too late, far too late.
He closes his eyes and falls back onto the pillow. He’s covered in sweat but won’t let me wipe him down, he shakes his head right and left, moans, hits himself like he does when it’s time for me to give him his Duphalac.
And then he sits up again in bed and grabs me by the arm and pulls me toward him.
Watch out, he whispers. Listen carefully, when you talk to the priest on Sunday about the icons, make sure there’s no one else around.
OK, I say. I’ll make sure.
That’s a good girl. I don’t want anyone to find out your father believes in God. Because these days when you say you believe in God, everyone looks at you as if you’ve said you invite little girls into your living room every night and give them candies and lollipops and dandle them on your knee. So be careful. Not for my sake but for yours. I don’t want Dawkins, Hitchens, and that other guy, the French one, what’s his name, Onfray, to see you in the street and to laugh and say, there goes the daughter of Yiannis, who believes in God. So be careful.
OK, I got it, I say.
And tonight he’ll wake me up again, shouting to me from his room, and he’ll tell me not to stay up all night staring out the window at the stars and the clouds, because I have an early morning tomorrow, I have work to do.
First thing in the morning, he’ll say, you’re going to go and take some money out of the bank and give it to that fool of a mayor to buy a new bus. And tell him that from now on I’ll ride with the kids to school – they won’t have anything to fear. Even if the wind is blowing at hurricane force, I’ll be with them on the bus, there won’t be anything to fear. Just look here, he’ll say, pulling up the sleeve of his pajamas. Look here, he’ll say, and flex his left arm, sticking his jaw out and clenching his teeth. Just look at that muscle, like a mouse under the skin. More rat than mouse, really. Nothing at all to fear. I’ll be there.
We have to save the children, he’ll tell me. The children have to be there when the end comes, the children have to see the end, they have to be there when the end comes.
The children, the end.
The end, he’ll say, whispering in the dark.
The end.
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Good Will Come From the Sea Page 15
