The Scapegoat (27 page)

EVERY GIRL HAS HER TRUMP CARD DIAMONDS TO SPEND, STYLE IN SPADES BUT IT’S EVELINA’S SMARTS THAT CAPTURE MY HEART

Evthalia knew Minas had written it, but it just made her smile. It was a desecration, to be sure, illegal, improper, a peacock move, as Tasos would call it. But she found it sweet, her grandson’s version of a moonlit serenade: Evelina’s house looked down onto that wall, so she would see it even before she left the apartment in the morning. The exams were fast approaching, and spray-painting a slogan was better than the hysterics all the others were experiencing. And perhaps, she thought, it was time for the child to burn a few feathers. She just hoped he wouldn’t get too hurt. Because her grandson could be a lumbering oaf sometimes.
He’s a boy
, Teta said dismissively,
he has no sense of tactics, he just jumps into the fire with no armor on
.

Evthalia may have guarded her own feelings and kept herself far from the dust storms of love, but she still felt compassion for the suffering of others. Perhaps because she herself had once felt that pain. She knew very well that the body is an armory packed with gunpowder, ready to explode at the strike of a match. And so she watched as Minas fell flat on his face, hoping he’d pick himself back up again with no more than a few bruises.

Once, when he was rushing out to meet his young lady, with his shoelaces untied and his pants magically hanging below his hips, Evthalia thought she heard a thump—the thump of his
heart suddenly kicking against his ribs. She knew that sound, she recognized it. It was how her own heart had pounded, coming home from class, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she would see him with his lawyer’s briefcase and his wide smile, and he would ask her something about Cicero.

De oratore
. Even today, if you woke her from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, she’d still be able to recite that text from start to finish.

WHEN ELEPHANTS DANCE

The situation in Greece had reached full boil. Meanwhile, all of Europe was on fire, Spain, Italy, Brussels. New words peppered the speech of the grocer and the guy at the kiosk; the prime minister made statement after statement.

Evthalia couldn’t stand to watch.
Get lost, you shit-eating dog
, she’d shout at the television screen, then go out onto the balcony for a cigarette. Her hands trembled and the lighter wouldn’t stay still. It wasn’t so much the cutbacks to pensions that upset her as the blatant dishonesty unfolding in full view: sacrifices of all kinds being thrown out the window, workers’ rights suddenly vanishing with no hope of return. And meanwhile the scandals in the administration broke one after the next. The country was immune to shock, nothing surprised anyone anymore, not the kickbacks or the obvious lies. What left them speechless was the lack of foresight in how the situation was being dealt with: laws were written on the spot, amendments put to a vote in the midnight hours.

—This city smells of gunpowder, Tasos kept saying.

He watched as shop after shop lowered its shutters; the main artery of Vassilisis Olgas Avenue was deserted, Agia Theodora Street a wasteland. Empty shelves, signs in shop windows, advertising fliers in unused piles. Filth and abandonment. Tasos
walked through the streets with his head down, since there were no window displays to look at anymore, only a long line of
FOR RENT
signs.

And then there was that entourage of talking heads on TV: men in suits with their Ph.Ds. and their academic papers, unionists who’d made a career out of demonstrations, guys who were all talk and no action, rabble-rousers with other people’s money and votes in their pockets, demagogues and dynasty politicians.

—You’re the one who voted for them, Evthalia accused, though she knew it was no time to bickering, to weigh all the mistakes that had been made over the years, from the ancient to the current-day, and try to determine which had tipped the scales. All together they had brought the country down.

Tasos tried not to take sides on the issue of foreigners coming in to help them clean up their act—a blessing or a scourge, depending on what side of the political spectrum you were on. There were endless statements and articles, commentary from all sides, pretty words to disguise dirty deeds. Meanwhile, off stage, behind the cameras, hard bargains were being driven: I’ll give you this if you give me that.

That’s how it had always been, from the creation of the world. Someone was always making the decisions, while others were left holding the bag. In the Garden of Eden, God was boss. In the European Union it was the Central Bank.

Minas heard it all, since these days the television was always on in the house. His father even managed to put his favorite on the front page of the paper: the caption
WHEN ELEPHANTS DANCE
beneath a cartoon showing all-powerful presidents, unfazed prime ministers, bankers and industrialists, all with elephant trunks—
give them elephant trunks and thick legs
, Tasos had told the cartoonist,
like the trunks of palm trees, but make sure you can still tell who’s who
—and in the cartoon these huge pachyderms were prancing around with the country under their feet,
raising a cloud of dust, with citizens like tiny ants, so small you couldn’t make out any faces, they were all just smushed ants. The economists all had theories of their own, and most sounded logical enough—the only thing was, they all contradicted one another, so people quickly gave up trying to understand. The biggest problem wasn’t their specialized vocabulary, which every hairdresser and kiosk guy now parroted all day at work—it was that their theories were only theories, empty words that shed light on things for an instant, with a flash, but fizzled just as quickly. So the wise simply kept their mouths shut, particularly the intellectuals, who watched the developments from their homes, discussed the situation with friends, but refrained from making predictions. The few who did mostly just stated the obvious. And so the TV stations and the blogs shouted,
Where are the intellectuals to come and save us?

Tasos didn’t believe in national saviors. He believed in hardworking people. In people who knew how to divide wheat between two donkeys, who understood what was at stake, who saw solutions to problems and had the endurance and fortitude to work toward them. Intellectuals and academics were all fine and well, some were even willing to put their hands in the fire, and they certainly knew how to dress up their ideas in pretty words. But
just because you write about cancer, doesn’t mean you know how to treat it
, he commented to Evthalia.
We need a doctor here. A surgeon who knows what he’s doing
.

She agreed, in part. But she also believed a little theorizing never hurt.
Theories offer a frame
, she reminded him,
without a theory, you’re just shooting into the air
. Sure, a hatchet would do the job, and a scalpel would be even better, but you still had to know where to cut.
Injustice has become an institution
, Tasos said, shaking his head,
perhaps the only institution that actually functions in this fucking country. Enough already with the violence. Institutionalized injustice is a form of violence, too
, he would shout, and Evthalia knew he was right. So they would launch into one of
their endless conversations, about representational democracy and rhetoric and philosophy. And when the comb finally reached the knot, Tasos would run out of quotes to borrow, and she would, too. The conversation would end abruptly and they’d turn back to the television. It was somehow less painful to speak to the screen.

MINAS

Minas felt all-powerful. Indefatigable. Triumphant. That was how Evelina made him feel. He swallowed entire pages, memorized the exceptions that proved the rule, read and took notes the way his grandmother had taught him.

He listened, watched, and didn’t speak. Only once, walking past the television as some panel of experts ran on about the national good and how much was at stake now that the situation had become so critical, did he let out a
pfff
. When his mother asked him to move over so he wouldn’t be blocking her view, he nodded but stayed right where he was.

—Sure, we have to save the nation, he said in a voice dripping with irony, quoting the phrase they kept throwing around on the screen. I’m so sick of hearing that. It’s just what they said when they threw Gris to the dogs. Fifty years of the same stupidity. From people who are perfectly willing to watch as other people sacrifice everything. We’ve hit bottom, great, we got it. But it’s the same old shit all over again. Ideas above lives, the country above its people. As if that could solve the problem. Who do they think they’re kidding?

He has his
Dictionary of Irregular Verbs
under his arm. For now, all he cared about was his exams and Evelina, studying and making his next move. And the time had come for both those things. Enough with the flirting and kisses.

—Why aren’t we going to Agia Sophia tonight?

She wasn’t asking, she was teasing. Her eyelashes fluttered.

—Because I said so, Minas responded.

—Oh, really? And what are you, the man?

Minas grabbed her around the waist and lifted her into the air. He carried her all the way to the statue of Venizelos. It was late spring and the grass smelled sweet, even here, a few steps from the cars on the street. There was a padlock on the fence around the ancient agora, the museum had been closed for months, there was no money at the ministry to pay a guard. They hopped the fence. Minas pulled her by the hand to the little theater, then backstage. Darkness, stones, everything deserted.

Evelina was used to cosmopolitan coffee shops, trendy bars, fancy restaurants. The law students she went out with, all top students with a family practice waiting for them, took her home at night in their cars, faithful protectors of female virtue. She sampled their kisses and then hopped out of their cars, leaving them with the sense that they’d been used, which was strange, since she was the girl—but perhaps it was her smile, or the look on her face, like a lion or tiger taking pity on a herbivore.

Minas took off his T-shirt and spread it out on a low wall. Evelina lay down on top of it, the shirt with the poem by Catullus on it protecting her back
—Odi et amo
, that’s the kind of thing Minas wore, and he would recite the lines in the back alleys around Navarino Square, and she would shout,
Show-off, pretending to know Latin!
A soft spring breeze was blowing, and brought smells to their noses, lifting up soil, and the hairs stood up on the nape of her neck as he fumbled with the button on her jeans and finally managed to pull them off, together with her underwear, in a movement that seemed planned but was actually just luck. He bent down and paid homage to her belly-button, licked its hollow as if seeking water. With anyone else the girl would have pulled away, but with him she liked it. When he lifted her legs onto his shoulders as if it were the most natural thing—which in fact
it was, as Evelina only at that moment understood—she didn’t close her eyes. He didn’t, either.

Her back counted the stones beneath it.

—Jesus, the sky smells like pussy! Minas shouted.

Evelina laughed, her nipples hard and cold, and only then did Minas realize that he hadn’t even touched her, just rushed straight there like a glutton. And now there was no way he was coming out.

Evelina thought about all the stupid pickup lines she’d heard, and all the dirty talk and insistent I-love-yous designed to coax a girl right into bed, but Minas’s words made her dizzy. As did his body—particularly from the waist down.

And because she was a girl who respected words but judged according to actions, and who didn’t like to leave anything half done, she pulled him toward her again and squeezed her calves against his back. Minas felt her legs, reached out his hands and grabbed her ankles, wrapped them around his neck and surged forward.

—Fuck it, I like you, he said.

Evelina bit his ear.

—I bet we’ll do great on our exams, she whispered.

—Those are not the words I want to hear while I’m fucking you.

—Oh! I thought you were done, she teased.

She flicked her eyelashes against his chest.

—When I’m done, you’ll know, he said, and gave her a hickey, where it would show.

The night before the Panhellenic Exams, Evelina went out. Her mother started to say something but her husband gestured from the sofa, so she buttoned her lip again. Evelina took the stairs, high heels clacking—she was too impatient to wait for the elevator. She found Minas waiting for her in the churchyard. The bitter
orange trees smelled wonderful, spring got under everyone’s skin, made the stray dogs go wild. Minas had been dying to see her but didn’t say anything, just let her decide. Finally she sent him a text:
Downstairs in 5
. She didn’t need to explain and didn’t need to ask twice, he just ran down the stairs to meet her.

They kissed before they even looked at one another.

—Where are we going? he asked.

Evelina shrugged. They didn’t have much time, she wanted to go over her notes one last time, she knew that would calm her down. But Minas would calm her even more, with his talent for turning everything into a joke, particularly the things everyone else took so seriously.

—To the sea, he decided.

They headed toward the waterfront at a run, laughing like crazy people, two university hopefuls who should have been studying, or at least sitting with a book open on their laps, now that the seconds were ticking backwards.

Darkness. The sea, a diamond blue, stretched before them like freshly ironed fabric. The lights of the city shone like lanterns, and those in the distance like broken mirrors. Minas grabbed her from behind and wrapped his arms around her, and they walked like that together, or perhaps they were dancing. His breath was warm on her neck. And when he dropped her off at the door to her building, he said:

—Tomorrow. Tomorrow, together.

GRIS

Grandpa Dinopoulos had a habit of falling asleep in his armchair. Elena would fluff the pillows on his untouched bed, and dutifully changed the sheets, but he always greeted the dawn from his spot in the living room. During the early years of his marriage with Froso he would lie down and wrap his arms around
his wife, listen to her heart beating in the silence of the night. Then he would turn onto his stomach, burrow under the covers, and bury his face in the pillows. His sleep was a lonely affair. Froso would search out his feet in the night, tangle her legs in his. He, meanwhile, would be solving cases and resolving loose ends in his dreams, and sometimes he would leap out of bed to jot down some note to himself, and Froso would complain,
You never relax
.