Back to Delphi

by Ioanna Karystiani

  Orders, deliveries, sales, distributions, she worked like a horse, fifty hours a day.

  There was no one at home to whom Linus could complain about the beige shirt, a good thing probably, because that kind of pain and certain other things that happen cannot be fitted into words, you need to go through them alone. One time there was something choking him up for weeks and he stammered it, you keep saying all the time that you have a headache, the grown-ups pretended not to understand, shooed him away and that was that, for them, because Linus’s choking inside got worse.

  Eventually he did speak about the beige shirt and the green blouse after that, and the even brighter colors that came next, to Buddy, the two of them started then their hour-long conversations without loud words and exclamations, complete understanding through the eyes and, to signal the end of the session, the muffled sound of the shovel.

  And what the heck is all that zdooping to the dog for? Viv had asked a couple of times, he made no answer. There was more that he didn’t tell her at the time and more would be added in the future which he wouldn’t tell her about either.

  He would watch her eat her eggs in a near panic straight from the frying pan, the boiled maize straight out of the Tupperware, bang her forehead with clenched fists, almost wallow in her guilt towards him, especially when she let some man into her life, always a wrong choice so she could expeditiously cast him off, so quick in her disappointment, so willing to be wrecked.

  Old Buddy was run over by a bitch in a BMW, April 1 of ’97, a cursed Tuesday. His mother was walking him because he was with a fever.

  The next day, Viv threw out the dog shampoo and dog food, soaped the upholstery of the sofa, washed the rug in his room and mopped the entire house five times to get rid of the dog smell.

  You gave yourself away, Linus thought as he watched her take the detergents and the bucket to the bathroom, you really didn’t love Buddy one bit. When the floor was dry, his mother closed the windows, stood in front of him and said, time to get over this abnormal dog worship, girls are a much better toy.

  In the last year, she kept making comments, on two occasions she’d even come right out and told him off, why did Margarita leave you, why were the night calls of that other one cut short all of a sudden and why, for three years now, has there been no mention of another woman’s name?

  On that particular day, though, Linus, gutted over the loss of brother-spaniel, didn’t talk back. At any other time he would have loved to contradict her, as if you really care what happened with those girls then, or just ask her, why are women so sure about everything, but it was impossible to open up to his mother, to trust her, to discuss anything with her calmly and normally and gratifyingly, his father hadn’t been able to, either, nobody measured up to her in talking, she closed the subjects without delay, in three clipped sentences, her mind moved on faster than the others’, she completed her husband’s phrases, her sister’s, her deliveryman’s, her accountant’s, the soccer fan’s, the gypsy violin lover’s, she was the first to locate the requisite words they needed, or confused them by interjecting her own, and she drew the final conclusion having arrived at the epilogue at top speed, while all the rest were still laboring on the introduction.

  Only that slut, his godmother, could stem her, she brought to the house heavy books or foreign newspapers to read a couple of paragraphs out loud, doing off-the-cuff translations about imperialism and cultural affairs, to show her off as halfliterate or completely uninformed and gain the upper hand.

  That slut, his godmother, who christened him Linus so the kids could make fun of him in high school, who, since the age of ten, when they had taken the dog out together on a couple

  of occasions, would point out in shop windows things she intended to buy, bloodred sheets for king-size beds.

  That slut his godmother who once, at her house, when he was about twelve, shot down in flames over the phone the young doctor who had cheated on her with an even younger nurse, his skillful assistant in surgery, and skillful cocksucker when their night shifts coincided.

  That slut his godmother who came on to men whether at the height of their prowess or half-dead and, for every man she cured, gave a heart condition to another three.

  That slut his godmother who, ever since he was fourteen, would corner him and pressingly ask, have you done it? How many have you tumbled in the sack? How many times have you done it in a row? Do, pray tell, give me reason to be proud of my spiritual offspring. You still haven’t done it? Why, when do you plan to? Jerking off is sweet, but now you need to get set and go right at them, no female’s too good for you, you’ll be doing each and every one of them a favor, by the time you go in the army you need to have lain waste two platoons of women in the battlefield.

  « Ve Vr

  In May and June of ’97 everyone at the school and the kids his age in the neighborhood had plunged headlong into kissing and fucking, the park benches turned into beds, the parks into whorehouses.

  For Linus Kolevas the previous month had been disastrous, Buddy and archbishop.

  A standard April afternoon, the pridefulness and self-assurance of spring generously dedicated to young and old.

  Every man with a quiet head and a relaxed attitude would take pleasure in the creation which sparkled, would admire the foliage of the trees that shimmered like silver hankies in the

  breeze, would relish, the clouds undulating like silk curtains and when the expected afternoon shower arrived, would feel lucky to be witnessing myriad Swarovski crystals raining down on everything with their festive, otherworldly shimmer.

  Linus Kolevas saw everything differently, the spring sun to him was a trap, the sky was unwinding barbed wire, the clouds were a shoal of huge, shiny dogfish and the thick raindrops were tons of scales that fell on the city in waves, dirtying the houses, the cars and the asphalt.

  He was walking and feeling as if he was slipping like when he waded in the shallows and stepped on flat slabs of rock covered with the slimy green cotton from the bottom of the sea.

  He started to run in the direction of his neighborhood, but the street ahead of him was becoming more and more narrow until it turned into a dark tunnel barely twenty inches across, with the building walls rising to his left and right, full of thorns that tore at his clothes and pierced his sides.

  It seemed like forever by the time he was turning his key in the door of the apartment block. When he finally got into the house, he went straight to his room, lay on the bed in his wet clothes, ran his palm against the wall, there were no thorns, turned on the lamp, checked his clothing, no holes anywhere or scales, lifted his T-shirt, not a scratch.

  He brought his knees to his chin and lay curled up with his heart beating so fast that the pulse, like heavy hammering, jumped from his chest to his knees, the pandemonium resounding in his temples, his palms, his heels.

  I have been struck by every version, every kind of fear, he thought and recapitulated, shovels and dirt, waves and leviathans, nights and blood.

  Outside, darkness had fallen. The tenth day in a row that he wouldn’t be setting foot at his school, ICS, Institute of Contemporary Studies, fuck them sideways and then some. And how to dare turn up, after that slime-bucket Elina had told

  her best friend who had told everyone else that she’d kidnapped the silent blond who was mourning his dog with the intention of seducing him in her car and the weirdo had thought she was an archbishop and spent two hours kissing her hand.

  The very next day, two sluts by the entrance stairs proffered one hand to be kissed and, with the other, made the sign of the cross over him, may the Lord bless thee, as he turned about and fled he could hear their nonsense, come back here, you, we’re just kidding, can’t you take a joke?

  Now night, nothing behind the windowpane but jet black.

  If only he was another. Somewhere else. With others.

  But can I become other? he wondered with a spasm first in his belly and a second in his eyes, which were torn up and burnt by
tears, sharp-edged and sizzling.

  His mother came back late, opened his door softly, Linus pretended to be asleep. He felt her standing still to listen to his breath, he obliged her by perfectly controlling the sound and frequency of his breathing.

  Viv, well trained in treading lightly, approached soundlessly, took off his shoes, threw a linen blanket over him and went out again, carefully closing the door.

  On his own again, he opened his eyes, fixed his gaze on the ceiling and kept on wondering when he would grow less afraid, when he would be rid of his chronic helplessness, when his head would stop hatching those millions of misery eggs.

  It was almost dawn when he came up with an answer. The best known wars are the deadliest. Nations that haven’t been through fire and brimstone get no glory. The meek are the clowns in the cowboys’ lasso. Nobody mourns for the whiners. Only violence has spunk, only evil works endlessly, unstoppable, that must be the way to get in sync with the way others behave, to get in the swing of the times, to get into the spirit of things. Those who are decent are few and far between,

  the beasts are plentiful, so there’s your solution, right there, if you want to be someone in order to exist in the crowd, he thought.

  Well, then, since I can’t be powerful, unfazed and unflinching in the face of fear, I can be evil, he determined and said it silently and in a whisper about a hundred times like a spell or a punishment. And, finally, as a lullaby, too, because at a quarter to seven in the morning, he didn’t hear his mother’s alarm clock nor did he register her coming again into his room to find him sleeping like the dead on his back, his socked feet sticking out of the blanket, his head thrown back on the pillow as if decapitated, his Adam’s apple hopping like a frog and his mouth crookedly open, ugly and dark-colored, trembling with every one of the few weak snores that swelled up from the depths of his chest.

  - Where are you, you little fuckers? were his first words when he woke up, past eleven, and looked for the barbells.

  He located them eventually on the balcony, in the plastic basket under the plastic chair, along with the torn net of a basket hoop, a holy box glove, a deflated ball and a child’s table- tennis racket, gifts all of them and mementos of his failure in sports.

  At eleven, thirteen and sixteen, his mother and godmother had coughed up for him to join three neighborhood gyms and sports teams, he went to each a couple of times and then quit, no more discipline, no more orders.

  He washed the two blue barbells in the bathroom, wiped them dry, hung them on his thin arms and started exercising full steam ahead, from today, from now, he was boarding a different train, the express to a Stallone-type body, to a build that would be proof to plenty of guys and girls that he could, retroactively and in one fell swoop, make a big splash, get a piece of the action and a share of the limelight.

  Next day he was stiff, his arms ached and burned but there

  was nothing else in his mind, I’m on a training schedule and I’m getting on, he told himself and that is what he said each successive morning through Easter week and the week after that, while the other one labored night and day with ballerinas inside red eggs and chocolate bunnies, musical boxes with Easter hymns, popular jingles and Fred Astaire tunes.

  In about fifteen days, he saw his muscles more defined and he could, with his mother out of the house, lift the heavy living room table high above his head.

  it it it

  First thing in the morning, in a manner of speaking, of Wednesday, June 18th, Linus Kolevas found on the kitchen table, next to the aluminum foil wrapped sandwich, a note, some cash and the notification from St. Anthony’s charnel house, that Viv hadn’t paid for the six months of storing his father’s bones and she was asking him to go take care of it, the deadline was expiring that day.

  - Screw you, mommy dear, he muttered and stuffed the note and the money in his pocket.

  On his way there, while he was paying and on the way back, the business with the shoveling started, which got him straight in the head, in twos at first, then by the dozen, then a nonstop avalanche. It had happened to him before, in the fifth grade and in high school, on the way to school some winter mornings, to suddenly see the whole suburb under attack by millions of thundering spades that struck the mountains, overrode the resistance of the hard earth, shoveling balls and crumbling knots of frozen mud, tons of it, a dark-colored flock of dirt tornados that fell resoundingly on rooftops, on cars and on the asphalt. People fled, looking for somewhere to hide so they wouldn’t be buried alive.

  It wasn’t real, he knew that already from the second time it

  had happened to him, but he, too, fled, regardless, so as to get a rise out of his lungs and his heartbeat, to air his head and save himself from his imagination, so adept at producing scenes of terror and devastation.

  Was that the same thing happening all over now? Did he have to close his eyes and walk with a stoop? Cover his ears to stop the rockets of zdooping from flying? Feel like it’s freezing cold in mid-June? Flick his collar to stop worms from getting in? Wish he had with him the fur cap from bloody Russia as a shield?

  Powerful arms weren’t enough, finally, to defeat the chaos in his mind, that’s where the enemy was.

  He got home in the early afternoon, breathless and stumbling, and lay on his back on the hall carpet. His head kept him pinned down, heavy as a rock, unmovable by even an inch.

  He only got up in the evening, as soon as his mother came in, to take the car keys from her, while she threw the question at him, where are you off to in such a hurry, is there someone new?

  He was going to leave without answering, except he felt like giving it a go.

  - Fm going to roam the streets like a madman.

  - If that’s the case, give those back.

  She pulled the keys out of his hands.

  - Then I’m going stumbling about in the streets.

  - You’re acting like a baby.

  - To carve up cars and put holes in tires.

  - You’re asking for a good hiding.

  - To beat up little kids.

  - You are as harmless as a hummingbird.

  - To swear at policemen.

  - Now, why do you say things like that?

  - To get on your nerves. I’ve been too quiet for too long.

  His mother was tired, in no mood for having her nerves

  tried. She stood for a bit, heavy and sweating, still except for her eyes, those were never quiet, never still in their orbs, they scanned endlessly to the left and right, up and down, every second her gaze was on something different, flighty, pecking at every inch of the small hall where everything, mirror, coat hanger, wall color, was exactly the same, unmoved and unchanged since day one.

  The son still there. Mother, look at me, in case you see that I’m on the road to nowhere, he wanted to say but changed his mind, her rotating gaze was true and tried and so was the other kind, steady and interrupted, sometimes looking straight at him for quite long, except he could see the line of her gaze was being interrupted, there were momentary lapses, as if she were seeing in him something else as well, as if she were facing him interpolated with this person and that, and the many and various things that preoccupied her.

  - Did you take care of the payment for the bones?

  Viv changed the subject, in her opinion, and did so in a motherly voice of caring for the affairs of the house, of putting things to order as was appropriate, so they could be over and done with.

  He didn’t answer her.

  Impatient to be done with this unpleasant reception at the end of the working day, she took out a handkerchief and daub- bing her neck and forehead she said, you please yourself, then.

  - It would please me to get you mad.

  - And why is that, pray tell?

  As she was asking the question she was jingling in the air and handing him back the car keys.

  - On the off chance you might cry.

  - Some other time, right now I need a shower.

  Sh
e left her bag on the table and making her way, finally, to her room, she turned and called out, bring me a bar of chocolate, and added, take a bill out of my wallet.

  Linus stuffed the v keys in his pocket, ran to his room and grabbed his backpack, put it on, went out, spotted the red Mitsubishi at sixty feet across the street. He sped along the lit up boulevards, Patission, Aristotle, Acharnon. He turned into the smaller, half-dark streets of less central suburbs. He would stop, get out, walk a bit, rummage through a construction site, take a piss, get back in, drive some more, finally he parked somewhere near the small park of Lykovrysi, steeped in darkness. He left the car, roamed around a bit, checked out the lanes, the trees, the branches. He sat on the ground and smoked a whole pack. He picked up a dry two-pronged pine needle, split it in two. He split a second one, then a third, he kept it up, fifty, one hundred times two equals two hundred single pine needles.

  It was almost midnight, twenty to twelve by the clock, when he emptied out his backpack, it wouldn’t do putting it off anymore.

  For the past ten, or was it more like twenty days, he’d been putting off from one day to the next. Let there be no new day with more of the same, getting constantly confused, getting chaotic and weighed down, building his muscles in the mornings and going out purposelessly roaming by himself at night, walking till he could no longer walk, in the wake of lively pretty girls without daring to make a proposition, even something as simple as, girl, you look great in white and, hey, gorgeous, yellow really is your color.

  Fallen on his face on the dirt, the tree branches, his cigarette butts and his things, he saw what time it was with a twinge of despair, twenty past twelve, Thursday was here, the bitch had already arrived, yet another day trailing a host of ills.

  He opened a second pack, one did go through these quickly, inexplicably quickly, and cigarette by cigarette till the twentieth and last one, he succeeded in putting together an inimitable monologue about the two-pronged cunts which at