Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  Archeologists must be happy people, somehow, she had said at some other moment, they get passionate about a world that can no longer hurt them, she hadn’t omitted pointing that out, and, I’m thinking of buying you some books, Greek, foreign, I’ll get the best, doesn’t matter what it costs because, Linus, pay attention to me, that is the window I thought of opening for you, you do need a large window, wide open, a light in your life.

  - Are you dreaming of my future? Are you setting me up for a career? he had mocked, turning about at once and running

  away down the dirt road that led back to where they’d come

  >

  from.

  Despite the extra kilos, despite the heavy bag, overcoming, or short circuiting, her old cool demeanor, Viv had sprung after her son, had caught up with him, grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and was pushing him back up the hill, almost maniacally, heaving breathless words, listen here, you’ll see it all, just be a little patient, don’t close up like an oyster, open up your eyes, we still have the Stardium, we still have Carstalia, other things as well, your arms are all aflame for not putting any sunscreen on.

  She bundled him uphill, some foreigners were watching openmouthed. Viv had seen them but she didn’t care, her mental answer, call me anything you like, mad or not, you don’t know, if only you knew.

  Linus followed her through the rest like a prisoner who had no way of escaping.

  He even meekly circumnavigated, staying close to his mother, whenever her eye, always on the alert, caught sight of those foreign girls with the shorts, moving statues, lithe like

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  does, cool despite the heat, which she made sure they evaded by walking in the opposite direction in this place crammed with fictions, everywhere to the front and to the back, to the right and left, further up and further down, altars, temples, springs.

  At about two, sitting in the thin shade of an almond tree, in Linus’s pack the last cigarette, the butts of the expedition gathered in a tissue in Viv’s pocket, the plastic water bottles without a single drop, the archaeological guide booklets serving as fans, certain things were said, she precipitated it.

  - Don’t the statues mean anything to you?

  -No.

  - Doesn’t all this beauty make any difference to you?

  -No.

  - It makes a difference to everybody.

  - I beg to differ.

  - What did you think of the charioteer?

  - He’d do fine as your new paramour.

  - Can’t you at least respect the willfulness of the ancients, that they’re still commanding attention, after all these centuries? That’s worth something.

  - To you, for sure, that’s your latest ruse.

  -1 didn’t used to care about any of it either, Viv sighed after a few minutes of silence taken up with ingesting his insult, I’ve only ever gone up to the Parthenon two times total, the first as soon as I got into university, to save myself the embarrassment of not having been and the second with your father and you at four, I had put my broad-brimmed hat on you and ended up with sunstroke, if you remember. He didn’t. Silence again, more diffidence. What more could she possibly follow this with?

  She confessed that, some time ago, despite her anxiety about her mission, maybe even because of it, when she first saw the charioteer she was overawed, she was so moved that her bowels loosened and she started farting loudly and succes-

  IOANNA KARYSTIANI

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  sively, she blushed the deepest red out of her shame but there was no way she could control her body, the museum guard fled the small hallpost haste and a good thing it was that a guide in the next hall was taking her sweet time with about twenty Russian students.

  What she didn’t tell him was that she, a woman who had knelt before no god and had prayed to no saint, had then begged the charioteer, save me, you who made it through the destructive earthquake of 373 B.C., take pity on me and my son and when I bring him here to you, do your best to impress him, win him over.

  She was now thinking about that again, almost moved, after the million things that had transpired she was left with a sweet exhaustion, the pleasure that the day’s program had at any rate gotten somewhere, and, then, she did also like the midafternoon in the olive trees, the cypresses and the wild grass.

  She had her son by her side, nature and her child, the illusion of a lightning visit to Alonaki twenty-five, twenty, fifteen years ago, before their lives were derailed.

  Time for the postscript.

  - How can you not wonder about the ancients’ persistence to still be in our midst? It’s obvious, there’s something they are trying to divulge, more will be revealed, she intoned the last prefabricated statement, that one was wasted on him as well, the son uprooted a tall mallow and crushed it, grabbed a stone and threw it at another one, rose slowly, gave her his hand so she could get up as well, moved to take her heavy bag from her, she didn’t let him, he didn’t insist and walking in front, so you can keep me in check, he commented snidely, led his mother through the five hundred feet to the exit and their little car, through lines of people on their way in or out.

  - Nobody is looking at us, nobody expects to see me in a place like this, he reassured her with perfect conviction in his voice. Who would possibly get in their head what you got in

  yours, kidnap me and take me to an ancient army camp, he said to himself later, very softly, Viv was maneuvering out of the parking spot, she missed the pointed comment.

  Indeed, under the circumstances, the whole conception, a five-day excursion at Delphi, would only occur and ripen in Vivian Koleva’s mind.

  The small Fiat was dancing. Green, green, green and lo! a purple tree, mountains, mountains, mountains full of hairpin turns and here and there a country chapel, a sheep pen. Far in the distance the township of Itea, steaming as it lay by the sea, others would visit it, they wouldn’t themselves go down there.

  They parked near the small restaurant Cheronia, which Viv had spotted when she came for a reconnaissance of the wider region, it was set apart, had a vine-tree shading it and a homely cuisine of cooked vegetables, which were on her list for the sake of variety. She had selected the place for a good meal there for her son, a good serving of horizon and to finish telling him about the Sacred Wars, the battle of Cheronia in 338 B.C., Philip the Macedonian against the Locreans, which of course needed to happen on Friday, in the late afternoon, before the weekend crowds descended.

  They picked a table off to one side. A foursome at the other end, two pensioner couples, were picking at the apple slices of the dessert absorbed in two completely separate but simultaneous conversations, the seventy-year-old women in black were enumerating dead acquaintances and were scheduling in advance their preparations for All Souls’ Day that was coming up, the men of the same age, one with the socialist party, the other with the opposition, were weighing up which of the leading parties was less full of horseshit.

  As if by arrangement, or else telepathy, the old Cretan

  IOANNA KARYSTIANI

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  called with his daily improvised limerick. I voted Death for Prime Minister to get some peace of mind/ As all the rest have riddled me with naught hut debts and strife.

  Viv’s resounding “well done!” could easily have sent a whole squad of Special Operations policemen fleeing. Terrorized, the elderly man rang off, the cell phone was placed at the edge of the table and lay there on the paper tablecloth.

  Until the stuffed vine leaves and the meatballs arrived, which would aid and abate Viv in her serious and utterly decisive conversation, the woman repeatedly cooled her forehead and arms with bottled water, and attempted, as a start, to set the mood with a sprinkling of tales about unforgettable feasts, hoping to smooth the ground.

  This needs us to be relaxed and intimate, she thought, filled up the two beer glasses, licked the froth off hers and, before even starting her stories, she broke out of the blue into a weird
little laugh, syncopated like the code messages of old telegraphs or, even worse, like a school coach’s instructions during a phys ed demonstration.

  So she recalled the rare wedding banquets at Alonaki, the double souvlakia of the university days, and some birthday parties of his godmother, Rhoda, before she turned thirty-five, at a different apartment each year with a different decor and a different lover.

  Inwardly, she was deriding herself for her uncontrollable prattle and the artlessness of her ruse. Rather than paying attention to her, Linus every so often turned his head in the direction of the barks of the restaurant’s invisible dog, tied in the backyard. At one point, he picked up the bottle of water and emptied the rest of it on his hands.

  - Good boys don’t eat with dirty hands, right, Mom? He whispered, more as if reminding himself of old dictums of proper behavior.

  Her mood plummeted, five minutes ticked by with her

  - BACK TO DELPHI - 65 -

  unmoving and wordless. She became lively again, with some effort, at the sight of the dishes, they smell nice, she said to the twenty-year-old waiter, who deposited the order and left at top speed, his mind, too, on something else.

  First she put salt on Linus’s chips and salad, while he remained hidden behind the black shades.

  - There are no people around, take off the glasses and enjoy the nature around you, she inveigled him, truthfully wanting him not to miss the greenery, grand as it was, and rare in the life he led, but also because she wanted to see his eyes while telling him the things she meant to tell him.

  She started after the first forkfuls by chasing his gaze, which alternately descended to his plate and rose to her face, with an expression that feigned curiosity but couldn’t effectively hide some anxiety.

  - You must think I’m mad to have dragged you here, and Yukaris, too, though he didn’t say so to my face, but I could tell he thought I was out of context completely, that I’ve lost it. I haven’t. Your situation has been troubling me for years. I need to find you a redeeming interest.

  She paused for a bit, a redeeming interest. She intoned again the formal title of the subject at hand so she could pick up her thread, then, with an expression and in a tone that no third party could tell for certain were sarcastic or agonizingly earnest, she wondered: Economics? Biology? Mineral wealth? Poetry? Model crafting? Stamp collecting?

  Those were all out of the question, some due to circumstances, others on account of the cost, others yet because Linus had no such inclination, at least until his junior year in high school when he had collected his fair share of As, and all of them together because they didn’t provide the impetus needed to push him into a completely different world, solitary by necessity but intense, with triumphant enigmas, with mythic proportions and dimensions.

  IOANNA KARYSTIANI

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  - Archaeology requires and provides knowledge, imagina- tion, inspiration, adventure, it obliges a mind to take a reprieve from reality, to not go moldy inside four walls, she said with zest and disclosed that the idea came to her one night while she was watching a documentary on a national TV channel about the Incas.

  She bit into a slice of cucumber so that their meal could move along with naturalness.

  - The Acropolis, she exclaimed, swallowing. Eleusis, she pursued meaningfully. Vergina, Dodoni, Epidavros, Mycenae, Santorini, Knossos, she machine-gunned Linus with gusto, hoping, if not to ignite his zeal, at the very least to recommend her idea.

  For his part, having lost his appetite altogether, immobilized, his body more wooden than the chair, his face soaked in sweat, he was listening to her arguments laid out in proper order with no supernumerary rs, with the flourish and conviction of a teacher preparing her student for entry exams.

  The due honors were afforded to Evans, Kalokairinos, Schliemann, Andronikos, Sakelarakis, all top archaeologists, all well known, followed by dozens of excavation sites, descriptions of wondrous finds, museums worldwide, from New York to Bagdad and from Madrid to Berlin, each mentioned with a caption, whatever Viv managed to memorize in the recent months she had been applying herself to her program of enforced education.

  She finished off with something more accessible, more attractive, the movie blockbusters about illicit traders of antiquities and the cartoon series.

  All the while, they had no clue about the goings on around them, they didn’t see the pensioners leave, the Albanian adolescents who brought two truckloads of flowering zucchini, and they barely glanced at the enthusiastic group of youths in green tops, their waiter among them, who packed into a Toyota

  - BACK TO DELPHI - 67 -

  and screeched off in the direction of Athens, to make the European basketball semifinals. The restaurant owner stood staring at the road, even after the car was gone.

  It was nearly four, the oblique sun was now reaching Linus, drying the sweat that was running copiously but also shining into his eyes, which were half-closed and brimming with tears.

  - Study will be effective, Viv preempted, next time you choose where we go and you be my tour guide. She had even dreamt of the possibility of studies via correspondence, it’s not out of the question, one day it will be allowed, with a degree, too, awaiting in the future and, why not, with a book you’ll write about antiquities, which always has a captive and passionate audience among the Greeks, you’ll see yourself differently, others will too.

  - You will see me differently, Linus whispered and with shaking hands, put his glasses back on.

  The ashtray was filled with half-smoked cigarettes, three burning ones rested on its three recesses, still he lit a new one.

  His mother’s flow had been stemmed abruptly. Turned now to the view, every mountain an obstacle, every hill a hindrance, she was seeking a detour for an immediate return to the matter at hand and for a way to bring things again under control.

  - A redeeming interest, she summed up the entire project with the one emblematic phrase, so that, if something happens to me, you have a solid anchor to hang onto.

  She had him financially secured, two rents and the deposits in the Larmers’ Bank from her work, but if she was to take sick and die suddenly, there was no friend on the horizon and no one from the family was going to take Linus on board, clean clothes, some proper food every so often, visits, a chat over the phone, a go-between with Yukaris. Everyone in the immediate family had written him off and had inadvertently taken their distance from her, too, her mother didn’t figure in this, at sev-

  IOANNA KARYSTIANI

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  enty-five she was one step before the grave and, besides, Linus refused to see or talk to her, even once, he was adamant.

  What was there left? What would give him courage, a little dignity even? In her attempted coup d’etat at the valley of Delphi, Vivian Koleva was playing her trump card. Which meant that today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow she was going to make it plain to him, whether you fancy them or not, these here antiquities are the only proposition that can buoy someone with a life sentence.

  Tahini

  H er stride was still full and the past hadn't yet started getting wrapped in the cellophane of a weary mind’s forgetfulness. Vivian Koleva realized that she had started getting old all right, the day she put tahini in her life. The dour taste and ready-made snack of moneylessness on the table of the paternal home and later, a daily cheap foodstuff, in and out of feasting days, for almost all her elderly clients, the familiar jar in their kitchenettes always caught her eye.

  It was a rainy and cold Saturday afternoon, the first time she too bought at the supermarket the paste with the sad color and two hours later, as she dunked the bread slice spread with tahini in her tea, a birthday dinner for her fifty years, she brought to mind all of her past life.

  Certain episodes were missing, they’d erased themselves leaving small or somewhat larger gaps. Some she omitted, some she passed over hastily, in others she wasn’t in charge of the doses of reality, probably memory’s familiar ruse of
editing its notes when keeping track of derailed souls and derailed emotions.

  Starting point, her grandfather’s blurred image, the family provider, as he ritually emptied on the plastic tablecloth of the kitchen the paper bag with the few shopping items they could afford, usually two packets of spaghetti, rice by the ounce, lentils, sugar, coffee and invariably tahini which provided calories, was filling and also could be managed by old, toothless mouths.

  IOANNA KARYSTIANI

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  Each thought drew in another, with every soaked mouthful and swallow Viv Koleva ran through the years, events and faces that surrounded her in childhood, youth and her adult years later on.

  She’d been born on December 17 of 1955, first daughter of Sotiris and Stavroula Sotiropoulos, he forty-six, she twenty- two, disparate ages but well matched hands, for digging the fields, and well matched mouths, for sparse talk.

  The two-room house in the village didn’t resound with the liveliness of high spirits or quarrels, the communication was basic, you with the animals, me at the vineyard, you do the wood, I’ll see to the cabbages.

  The young Vivian, the name had been by decree of the godfather, it reminded him of an old fiancee from Patras, who ingested rat poison by mistake, was growing up unbeknownst to the adults, the men drafted in the many trials of poverty, the women, kith and kin, in black for three, five, ten years, or for life, for every one of the dead in the immediate or extended family, dedicated to the hereafter, with distinctions in mourning.

  She was only a wee thing and life had already struck her with the triteness of a meager day-to-day. It didn’t cross her mind to hanker after caresses, as children do, nor again was she in a hurry to grow up, she didn’t distinguish between large and small events, no matter what was going on around her, she dragged her little feet impassively round and round the house, like a loose dog, a pale and silent seven-year-old who had been prematurely afflicted with boredom.

  Nothing excited her curiosity, she wasn’t impressed when the shadow puppet theater came to the village, nor when a car stopped at the square and a tall stranger of a woman came out to have a drink of water, dressed in a man’s silk suit, she didn’t liven up at the noisy city of Patras either, when her godfather had taken her there, before he left for Germany as a factory worker, and bought her a red synthetic jumper.