Why I Killed My Best Friend (13 page)

“What's all this about the earthquake? What do you think, Maria?”

“I don't know. I've never seen Anna so scared.”

“Scared? Just scared? Hopeless is how I'd describe it. Terrified. What did she say to you? Is she going back with you when you leave?”

“We haven't talked about it yet.”

“It'll be a shame if she doesn't. She'll have to repeat a whole year of school.”

Anna in middle school while I'm already in high school? Impossible!

“How about the two of us make a deal? Can you persuade her to go back? You're the only person Anna ever listens to—”

Me? Anna listens to me?

“—and when the two of you graduate, I'll bring you both here to Paris. The two of you can live here with me, all expenses paid. What did Anna say you two wanted to study? Psychology?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

“Well? What do you say to our deal?”

He shakes my hand again, even more forcefully, and again my knuckles crack. Anna's father tells me to speak to him in the singular and call him by his first name, Stamatis. The world is suddenly simpler. Free studies in Paris. A warm croissant across the street from the house, Stamatis's treat. Art school. Boys like Raoul and Michel. A human shield in support of the Arabs. Pizza on the floor. Beer in the morning, as if we're characters in an avant-garde French film. And my best friend Anna by my side.

Speak of the devil—here she is, wild-eyed, pushing through the revolving door.

“If you ever do that again, I'll never speak to you!”

She's not talking to me, but to her father. She doesn't just love him, she adores him, and wants him all to herself.

Her anger at me, too, doesn't let up all day. We walk through Buttes-Chaumont Park as if we were racing, Anna deliberately keeping a few steps ahead.

“Anna, I would've woken you up if I thought it would matter so much.”

“You should've known.”

“But
why
does it matter?”

Anna can't explain it to me, she just shrugs her shoulders. She's perfectly willing to share her only sandwich during recess, but her dad is a different story.

“I'll forgive you, but only if we switch boys tonight.”

“Are you crazy? You like Raoul.”

“I like Michel more. I hadn't realized he was so smart.”

“Take both of them if you want, I couldn't care less!”

“No, that's not how it works. Since you wanted to share my father, you have to share Raoul, too.”

“How do you know Raoul won't mind?”

“Oh, he won't. We're in Paris, remember? People here aren't bourgeois.”

The four of us meet at a café in Les Halles. Anna leans over and whispers in Raoul's ear, and he turns and winks at me. They're depraved. And in the name of liberation, or just in order to make a statement, they're making me do things I don't want to do. We go to the movies, it's something by Wim Wenders, I sit on the aisle, Raoul next to me, then Anna and then Michel. I'm worried that the poor guy has no idea what's going on, that he won't know what hit him. But soon enough, in the darkness of the theater, I see him and Anna kissing and feel Raoul's breath on my neck. I lean my head on his shoulder, try to relax and just let whatever's going to happen happen. I see Michel's hand on Anna's knees, pulling her skirt up and groping around. Now I'm the one who doesn't know what hit me.

I'm worried that Anna has a vagina and I don't.

I now avoid Stamatis systematically. Shielding myself from view behind Anna's back, I just throw him a quick hello or goodbye when we pass in the hall.

“Hold on, where are you going? Go and get Anna, I want to tell you guys a joke.”

Anna comes down the stairs, sighing. “What do you want, Dad?”

“Don't get all worked up, I just heard this great joke I wanted to share.”

Stamatis gets a tea bag from the kitchen. “Okay, so this is an American missile,” he says. “When the Russians see it they want
one just like it. They ask the Americans how much it costs. Ten million dollars, the Americans say.” Stamatis tears off the tab where the brand name is. “What if we take off this piece? Then how much? the Russians ask. Seven million dollars, the Americans say, but without that piece the missile won't launch.” Stamatis pulls off the little string, too. “And without that piece, how much is it then?” Finally he rips open the tea bag, dumping the leaves, which supposedly represent the fuel, onto a saucer. “Now the missile is dirt cheap, but what use is it without any fuel? the Americans ask.” Stamatis stands the empty bag on the table, lights one edge with his lighter and starts a countdown, from ten to one, in Russian. The tea bag slowly rises toward the ceiling, then falls gently back down to the table—a soft pile of ash.

I clap enthusiastically.

Anna glares at him through slitted eyes. “It's insulting to the Russians, Dad!”

“Since when are you Russian?”

Anna heaves a sigh, takes the stairs two at a time and shuts herself in her room. I run after her.

“Leave me alone, merde!” she says, her head under a pillow.

“Anna, why don't you come home? Isn't it time we were both back in Athens?”

“I don't know.”

“How about we go across the street for a hot chocolate and maybe you'll figure it out?” We wrap scarves around our necks and clomp down the stairs.

“I supposedly came here to bring you home,” I say to her, stirring my hot chocolate.

“I don't know.”

“You're completely impossible, but I can't live without you.”

We're sitting in the window with the latest issue of
Actuel
, on Michel's recommendation. Anna shoots daggers at an old man
reading
Le Figaro
across the way, then turns to me with a huge grin, as if what I said has just sunk in.

“Really? You really can't live without me?”

She adores hyperbole. She swings from one emotion to the next as if all flipping a switch in her brain: rage, tenderness, jealousy, love. Whereas I need time to collect my thoughts, to swallow my anger. This time Anna has gone too far. I don't like the way she tells me who to kiss and for how long. I wonder: do I really want her to come back to Athens? Or am I only doing it for the free studies Stamatis promised?

“Can you live without me?” I throw the question back at her.

“I don't think so.”

“Well?”

“Okay, fine, I'll come.”

We hug. But instead of relief, what I feel is unease.

Michel and Anna kiss. Raoul opens cans of beer with his teeth and flips through Bourdieu's
La Distinction
. I'm sitting in Stamatis's armchair, fingernails sunk into the worn velvet. I don't want to read, I don't want to be kissed. I don't want to drink beer, either. I want to cry. I jump to my feet, throw open the front door and slam it behind me.

The air outside is freezing and I've left the house with no coat. I need to find an Ikeja, whatever Ikeja still has room for me. By now I've learned how to pack a suitcase properly, I won't try to bring eggs or other breakables, I won't ask bus drivers irrelevant questions. I'll board a train, slide my suitcase onto the rack above my seat and watch as one landscape gives way to the next. As the trees whip past into the distance behind me, my thoughts, too, will fly out of my head one by one—
zzzmmm, zzzmmm
—until my mind is entirely empty—
sssssshhhh
—and I'll be nothing more than a girl on a train.

It's cold, absurdly cold. So I tweak the story slightly: a boy comes into the train car and wraps a blanket with red flowers on it around my shoulders. It's my baby blanket, and I'm sorry to have been defeated by my own limitations, but I needed someone to come and cover me with something. The boy's eyes are as liquid as Raoul's, he has Michel's bicycle with him, and he metes out attention with an eyedropper, like Angelos—just enough for me to fall in love without his lifting a finger—and because I don't like the story I've invented, I duck into the metro station and huddle in its relative warmth, shake my head so that every last thought will leave, curl into a ball on the tiled floor and start to cry. No one talks to me, no one asks me what's wrong. We're in Paris, after all, and—how did Anna put it?—people here aren't bourgeois.

“Where were you?” Anna asks. She's at the sink washing dishes and doesn't even turn to look at me.

“I wanted to be alone.”

“You should say something first, so people don't worry.”

“What's the sense in talking it over when the whole point is that you want to be alone?”

“You're a member of society, not a wolf. Besides, even wolves travel in packs.”

“You're right, I'm not a wolf.
You're
the wolf.”

“Excuse me?”

“You tear everyone else to pieces. You want everything for yourself!”

Anna turns off the tap and puts her hands on her waist. Her eyes are spitting fire, her one white eyebrow is raised. The dimple in her cheek deepens.

“What you're talking about is called communalism, it's called liberty. It's everything we've been fighting for, merde!” Right, like
she's been out digging trenches. Like she only just put down the shovel this instant.

“You only say those things when it suits you, Anna.”

“Try me. Ask for something, anything.”

“I don't play those games.”

But Anna does. She looks around frantically—for what? A rope to hang herself with, to show me how much she'll sacrifice for my sake? A weapon to use in the next revolution? She grabs a back issue of
Actuel
and holds it up to my face, pointing to a phrase by Foucault:
Our action, on the contrary, isn't concerned with the soul or the man behind the convict, but it seeks to obliterate the deep division that lies between innocence and guilt
.

“Fine. And?”

She sweeps all of Stamatis's books off the table onto the floor. They aren't even hers.

“Merde, merde! Look at you, lecturing me in ethics!”

“Me?”

“Are you trying to provoke a crisis of conscience? What do I have to do to convince you? Go out into the street and beg?” She grabs her coat and rushes for the stairs. I run after her. She dashes across the street without even checking for cars, takes the stairs down into the metro station two at a time, sits on the ground and starts to sing a song by Françoise Hardy: “
Que sont devenus tous mes amis, et la maison où j' ai vecu
?” Someone tosses her a half franc, someone else a handful of centimes. It's all on purpose, of course. She chose her song wisely, it's a sentimental one. Eventually she collects five francs. I'm standing across from her the whole time, leaning against the wall. What is she trying to prove?

“So you'll understand what communalism means, I'll treat you to
chocolat à l'ancienne
,” she says. She opens her arms and I fall into her embrace. Two poor little beggars of love.

Because at the end of the day, Anna loves me. She's willing to lay herself bare for me.

Roman cleans Stamatis's apartment twice a week. I watch her as she scrubs the toilet. She's a plump African woman of indeterminate age, and she doesn't look the least bit like me. But maybe the similarity lies in Africa, our mutual starting point, or in the deep sighs she's always heaving.

“Where are you from, Roman?”

“Kenya, Nairobi.”

“Do you like it here?”

“It's fine, I have a job.”

“Do you know the saying, when a ripe fruit sees an honest person, it falls?”

“No, mademoiselle.”

“Don't call me mademoiselle, I'm not a mademoiselle.”

“Of course you are,” Anna calls, running down the stairs. “We're all ladies.” It's something Antigone says.

“Do you know how to make puff puffs?”

Roman laughs. “How do you know about puff puffs?”

I tell her about Gwendolyn, Unto Punto, and the house in Ikeja. But it's like I'm talking about someone else, not myself. My memories have faded. They feel like an Antonioni film: devoid of realism, and devoid of emotion, too.

Anna grabs me by the hand, pulls me out of the apartment.

“I'm guessing you need something sweet.”

We duck into a patisserie and she orders a dozen chouquettes, little hollow balls of warm dough sprinkled with crystallized sugar. We polish them off in five minutes.

“When we come back to Paris to study, I'll buy you chouquettes every day,” she says, her mouth full.

“I decided to study art, did I tell you?”

“What, so you can paint nonsense on black backgrounds?”

“No, I'll improve, you'll see.”