Why I Killed My Best Friend (17 page)

“Yeah, except that I was actually born in November, whereas they just chose the 25
^th
as a symbolic date for the resistance.”

This year the government has declared November 25
^th
an official holiday in honor of armed resistance against the Axis occupation, because on that day in 1942 a group of Greek partisans blew up a bridge in the village of Gorgopotamos. I worry that Antigone is happier about that anniversary than about my birthday. Anna, meanwhile, isn't happy about anything anymore. She pokes at the fire like a modern-day Cinderella weighed down with worries. She broke up with Angelos, she quit smoking, started again, quit again, then finally started up for good and is reading a book of poetry by Yiannis Patilis called
Non-smoker in a Land of Smokers
. She has a deep need for symbolic gestures and symbolic speech.

“Did you hear that Evangelos Papanoutsos died?” she says to me.

“And?”

“I thought you might give it some more thought, about studying psychology.”

“Anna, I've made up my mind. I want to study art.”

“Fine, I get it.”

“We'll still go to campus together every morning. And spend our evenings together. We'll eat our chouquettes. What more do you want?”

“I want to not be alone for even a second.”

Antigone folds Anna in her arms and strokes her hair, which is long enough now to be pulled back into a short ponytail. Antigone calls her “my little girl.”

You'd think it was Anna's birthday, not mine.

Five

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

She's driving an old Porsche. The seats are deep, our bodies reclined at an unusual angle. The smell of the fake croissants from that café is still clinging to our clothes. When we reach Kifisias Avenue, she points out the buildings her husband designed. Precisely what I expected: tinted glass and marble columns, with hideous public art outside.

“Did you choose those sculptures?”

“Yeah, aren't they awful?”

“The worst I've ever seen. Why did you pick them?”

“It's my only way of fighting the system, Maria.”

“Are you kidding? By throwing money and opportunities at talentless artists?”

“You want to know exactly what I do?” She shifts into fifth and the Porsche darts down the avenue, passing on the left and right, weaving between cars. We're flying. Her face hardens and I get a glimpse of the old Anna. The wind musses her hair and she laughs a guttural laugh—laughs, then coughs. “I shape the image of our
company's taste. A bronze statue holding a cell phone—can you think of anything more kitsch than that?”

“Did you ever think of the people who have to see that shitty sculpture every day on their way to work?”

“That's why I put it there. To make them furious. When they get mad enough, when they can't stand the idiocy and the terrible taste a second longer, when they're sunk up to their chins in shit, they'll finally go and smash that statue with crowbars. All you can do is push things to the limit, cross your arms and wait.”

“And build office complexes out of glass? Greenhouses for the workers?”

“As Malouhos says, glass buildings are the easiest to break.”

“Wait, you mean your husband's in on it, too? He builds and sells for the good of the revolution?”

“Malouhos is a genius!”

She's lost it. She still wants to save the world, but in a way only a crazy person could think up. We're back on our magic carpet, flying at a thousand kilometers an hour. Instead of a table on wheels, it's a Porsche. Instead of the songs of Françoise Hardy, the wedding march for the marriage of two lunatics.

The house in Ekali looks as if it hasn't been touched since the '70s, though of course that's the style now. It's full of shag rugs and shiny leather couches without a single scratch on them—the opposite of Irini's jacket. Orange stools with dull metal legs, straight from the junk shop. Futuristic white floor lamps. In the kitchen, stainless steel cabinets and recessed lighting. In a heavy gold frame with a red velvet border, the poster from the house in Plaka: the kid peeing on the crown. They've hung it in the dining room.

“We take that down whenever we have royalist investors to dinner,” Anna says with restrained pride.

The table is completely white, with leather stools.

“What happens if you spill sauce on it?”

“We don't eat sauces, remember? We eat healthy, lots of salads. Old habits die hard.”

“How is Antigone these days?”

She lights a cigarette. She blows the smoke as far from her as she can, squinting her eyes. There's no white eyebrow anymore to give that old dramatic effect. But her face is white, an expressionless mask.

“Antigone died.”

“What? I hadn't heard! When? How?”

“I don't want to talk about it. Can I fix you a drink?”

“Anna, what's wrong with you? I'm asking because I loved her!”

“You loved her! Everyone loved her. But did
she
love anyone? Now
there's
the rub.”

She tosses her boots onto one of the rugs. The shag is thick, but the thud still echoes through the minimalist house.

The sun is setting and Anna is fixing a second round of martinis when we hear a key fumbling in the lock. Daphne bursts into the house, raising a ruckus with her roller skates. After her comes a pregnant woman with beads of sweat on her forehead.

“Daphne, didn't I tell you not to tire Svetlana out? She has a baby in her tummy!”

Daphne keeps on skating as if she hasn't heard, until she practically runs right into me. “Oh, it's my teacher! Are you friends with my mother again? Come here, I want to show you something!”

The little girl pulls me by the hand. We clamber upstairs and she takes me straight to her room. She's even messier than I am, there are things scattered everywhere: pieces from board games, stuffed animals, clothes, hair bands, broken pastels, lumps of plasticine.

“This is my cave!” she says, pulling me down to peer into the space between her bed and her desk. She's padded it with a blanket
and put her teddy bears in there, and a tea set in one corner. Directly opposite is a heap of sweaters, piled into a woolen barricade.

“With all this thunder and lighting, we have to keep warm, see?”

“I see.”

“Do you want some tea?”

Anna finds us in her daughter's cave. We're sitting cross-legged, sipping non-existent tea from cups the size of thimbles.

“Come on out,” she says to me. “You're a grown-up now.”

Well, not so grown up. Not too big for a child's cave.

Anna insists on my staying to meet Malouhos.

“Yes, yes!” Daphne says, hanging from my forearm.

“Another time.”

“How about another martini?”

“Anna, really! We've already had two.”

“You mean you can't count to three?”

She's giving me the evil eye. I remember that look well. All those years of psychoanalysis didn't do a thing for her. When Anna wants something, there's no messing with her.

“Okay, fine, one for the road.”

Their refrigerator has an ice maker. From across the room, with the shaker in her hand, Anna looks like some carefree housewife from a commercial. Self-sufficient, charming, a barefoot woman in jeans who's discovered the meaning of life in the circular movement of a cocktail shaker. And the olive, too: it sinks and rises back to the surface, hovering there in a region of transparent meaning. That's it, I'm drunk.

Anna goes upstairs to put Daphne to bed and for a little while I'm enveloped in the solitude of their vast living room. The space throbs around me like a huge, white, sanitized heart. I rest my cheeks in my palms, start to make plans: I'll go away, I'll disappear
and cover my tracks so she won't ever find me. I'll quit my job. I'll go to live in some other country, as far from here as possible. Anna was always a harmful presence in my life, I have to free myself from her influence. She can't come and go whenever she pleases, completely destroy me, shake me up the way she shook up our drinks.

She comes down the stairs like a Hollywood star, hips swaying, cigarette clinging to her lips. She has an incredible mouth, there's no doubt about that. But it borders on brazen, too, as if she's constantly offering herself to anyone and everyone who comes along. She's changed into a robe. She points at the logo of a horse embroidered on the chest.

“See? That makes all the difference.”

My plan to run away makes me more tolerant than I might otherwise be. “If you say so,” I respond. But that just annoys her. She wants me to disagree so she can convince me bit by bit.

“You think I've lost it, don't you?”

“You're eccentric, you always were.”

“I'm exploiting capital, Maria. It's what I always do. It's what I know how to do best. I can live without any money at all. Do you doubt me on that?”

She picks up an empty crystal vase from the coffee table.

“Look at this. Such a simple design, yet so expensive! Just look what money can buy. Where did the materials come from? How was it made? By whom? How different are those people's lives from your own?”

She opens her hands in a theatrical gesture, and the vase drops to the floor and breaks into a thousand pieces. A shard of glass sticks into her calf. She picks it out, licks a finger and wipes away the blood, casting an uneasy glance my way. She apparently still remembers my fear of blood. Though ever since I figured out the reason behind that fear, it's not so bad. Just a brief spike in my pulse, that's all.

I drain the last of my martini, sink my teeth into the olive. “I don't understand.”

“What's to understand? I enjoyed that. It's been too long since I broke something.”

“So you married him?” We're on our fourth martini and by now I can say whatever comes into my head.

“Stop it, Maria!”

“I mean, in a church?”

She curses theatrically and brings over a photograph album. “Here, if you really need proof. We got married at city hall in the sixth arrondissement. What kind of question is that, if we got married in a church?” As she bends to show me, her robe falls open. She's got on a matching nightgown underneath.

The album opens to a page that sends shivers down my spine. Is that her father? No, but it looks like him. The same blondish beard and untamed hair. He's younger than Stamatis and there's a kind of Olympian calm in his gaze. A compass of a man—you could use him to guide your way.

“What do you think?”

“Malouhos? I've got to admit, he's attractive . . .”

Anna at his side, equally attractive, with a fake white fur and pregnant belly. If I'm calculating correctly, the photograph must have been taken just seven or eight months after that thing happened to us, after we parted ways for good. She's beautifully made up for the ceremony, but if you know her well, you can see the fear in her eyes. The lack of confidence. Perhaps the lack of options, too.

“What about his life before you?”

“Two marriages. Three children. He'll never leave me, though.”

Of course he'll never leave. If anyone leaves, it'll be her.

•

A warm handshake. A bow. Thick, wild eyebrows. And a funny first name: Aristomenis. He's part ancient Greek, part tired architect in designer jeans. Usually I abhor guys like him. But he has something about him, something to do with his not trying at all: he's just himself, and lets you be yourself, too. He seems modest, quiet. And he smokes a pipe, like Stamatis. He and Anna give one another a quick kiss, he musses her hair, asks after Daphne. They're a real couple, like my parents. Bound together by so many things.

“I've heard so much about you, Maria. Anna has worn my ear out with stories. I'll tell you over dinner. You'll stay and eat with us, right?”

“I was just getting ready to leave.” My head is spinning from the martinis, my mind aching with memories. You can't just dig a hole, Aunt Amalia. It turns out it's not that easy.

“Where are you going to go, out here in the middle of nowhere? Stay and eat, I made stuffed tomatoes this weekend, with the first tomatoes from our garden. And they're better as leftovers. Afterward I'll drop you wherever you need to go.”

“No, I don't want to put you out . . .”

“I've got a business drink later, I'll be going downtown anyhow.”

I ask where the bathroom is. They point to a door under the stairs. I pee for hours, wash my hands. As I'm drying them on the hand towel I catch sight of something familiar in the mirror. A spattering of yellow. Lots of black. Snakes with crowns on their heads, pirogues, women in long skirts with flaming hems. She's framed my painting, my very first painting!