"I'll call you."
"You still don't have a phone? I can understand you not wanting a TV, but a phone?"
"Don't get me started. I've been waiting two years for one. And I need one. The way that your buddies have screwed me, if anything were to happen to me, the neighbors would find me from the stench."
I looked at him in silence. What could I say? But he read my look and was annoyed because he didn't like to be pitied. He made a joke of it.
"Look at me," he said. "Investigating former leftists. If I were a businessman, at least I could say that I was expanding my activities."
Outside, a raging wind blew and the drizzle had turned into sleet. The wind had blown over the lemon plant. I stooped to pick it up. Only ten days before we'd been under a sweltering heat, and now we were shivering with the cold. God-awful weather.
CHAPTER 28
Flexible = 1. able to be bent easily without breaking, pliable. 2. adaptable or variable. 3. able to be persuaded easily, tractable. Interesting word. Now, which sense best suited Ghikas, and which one best suited me? Ghikas was fairly easy. He bent easily when it came to the minister and Delopoulos, or when he was dealing with the media. And in the end, he'd have us all bending to their wishes. Me, I was more in the adaptable and variable category.
It was almost seven-thirty by the time I got home. The TV was on full blast, but Adriani wasn't in the living room; she was preparing something in the kitchen. She'd often do that. When she had something to do in the kitchen, she'd turn up the sound so that she could at least hear her soap and not miss what was happening. I lay on the bed and breathed a sigh of relief. The pressures of the day together with three hours behind the wheel had left me exhausted. I lay down to relax a bit, using my chest as a lectern for Liddell & Scott.
Soon it was five to nine, but I wasn't in the mood to listen to the news. What they had to say about Kolakoglou I already knew, and what I knew about Pylarinos they didn't know, so I could have a night off. The only thing I'd eaten all day was half a croissant, and I was absolutely famished. I got up to see what Adriani was preparing in the kitchen. As I went through the living room, I saw her in her armchair, watching the news.
The kitchen table was adorned with a dish of stuffed tomatoes. I immediately got the message. It was Adriani's way of telling me it was time to make up. This had stayed with us since our very first quarrel. We were newlyweds then and not speaking to each other was something we'd taken to heart. But we kept it up to test each other's limits. Until, one day, Adriani made me stuffed tomatoes. She knew that I had a particular weakness for them, but she'd never made them for me before. As soon as I'd seen them, I'd melted. "They're great, better even than my mother's!" I told her. It was a lie. My mother's were much tastier, but on the one hand I was looking for an opportunity to speak to her, and, on the other, we'd only been married for six months and I hadn't had my hands around her for a whole three days. It had been the same ever since. Whenever she wanted us to make up, she made me stuffed tomatoes. I told her how tasty they were, and it broke the ice. Except that now I didn't have to lie about it. She really did make them better than my mother.
"This time, you've outdone yourself. They're great," I told her.
She turned from the TV and smiled at me. "Did you eat?" I asked.
"I just took a mouthful to try them, but I was waiting for you to come and eat."
She switched off the TV and followed me into the kitchen. She served me, put one tomato on her own plate, and sat down facing me. In the light, I could see that her eyes were all red and swollen.
"What's wrong?" I asked her, concerned.
"Nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing! You've been crying!"
"I got upset last night. I heard those two idiots on the news, then I saw you leaving all agitated, and I realized it was something serious. And this morning I woke up racked with worry."
"There's no need to worry. They did put me on the spot, that's all, but then they were forced to backpedal."
She didn't seem reassured by what I said. She kept on looking at me distraught till she finally blurted out the secret. "Katerina's not coming home for Christmas. She called today to tell me."
?„ «WY•
"She wants to study over the break"
"And she made up her mind, just like that? The last time I spoke to her on the phone, she was certainly coming."
"She made out a work program, she said, and saw that she won't have time to finish everything before June if she takes a holiday now"
I lost my appetite on the spot. I pushed my plate away. If I'd eaten the stuffed tomato, it would have sat on my stomach. Adriani made an effort to smile.
"I'll tell you something," she said with difficulty, "but I want you to promise me that you won't breathe a word to her. She's staying there on account of Panos."
"Panos?"
"Yes. He has to hand in an assignment after the break, and she's staying with him to keep him company. She promised me that she would definitely come for Easter."
As soon as I was over the initial shock, I thought of that hulk with his T-shirts and gym shoes, and I began to fume.
"What kind of assignment can a student greengrocer be doing? Investigating how apples fall from apple trees or the best way to prune nettles?"
"He's not a greengrocer. The boy's studying to be an agriculturalist."
"And is he such a blockhead that he needs someone beside him to hold his hand?" If I'd been able to get my hands on him at that moment, I'd have given it to him, though he'd probably have made mincemeat of me with all those muscles of his.
"I know it's hard for us to swallow, but when you love someone, you want to be with them. There comes a time when parents have to take a back seat."
Usually, whenever she trots out that kind of armchair philosophy that she's picked up from one of her soaps, I hit the roof. But now I couldn't bear to start shouting at her, because I knew how much she was suffering.
"Do you want to go and spend Christmas up there with her?"
I don't know how it came to me, maybe because I saw the tears in her eyes again. She wasn't expecting it, and for a moment I saw her eyes shine through the tears. But then she immediately resumed her severe expression, more to restrain herself than me.
"And leave you on your own at Christmas? Out of the question!"
"Forget about me. This Karayoryi business has become so complicated that it's touch and go whether we'll even be able to eat together on Christmas Day. And I'll be up to the ears in it. And you'll be sitting alone at home with a heavy heart."
"It'll cost a pile of money and there's no reason for it."
"How much will it cost? The train ticket, Katerina's present that we were going to get anyway, and something for your expenses each day. Eighty thousand would be more than enough."
What I had left in the bank, together with my Christmas bonus, would just about enable me to cover her expenses and Katerina's allowance for January. Of course, I'd be left without a penny, but what the hell, I'd get by somehow. Now that I was making it easy for her, Adriani began to waver.
"Do you think I should go?" she asked me hesitantly, as though afraid that if she showed how happy she was, I'd change my mind.
"Just think how thrilled Katerina will be. She may want to please that bulldog of hers, but she won't like it at all that she's leaving us on our own.
Of course, I was doing it for Adriani and for Katerina. At least they would have a good time over Christmas. But there was something else that made me feel good about it: that I was turning the tables on that shirker. He'd succeeded in keeping Katerina in Thessaloniki, but now that Adriani was going to go up there, he wouldn't just have her as his personal handmaid. Not to mention that he wouldn't be able to get her on her own, because he'd have to drag his prospective mother-in-law along too. Adriani threw her arms around my neck and her lips stuck to my cheek like a lollipop.