The coat Irini wears is a shiny, silvery old leather jacket, torn and covered with ink stains. Kosmas has a kind of retro air, too: he always has on a red scarf; you’d think it was attached to his neck, like the gold necklace in Gwendolyn’s story. He’s as jittery as a marionette, hands and feet in constant motion. He might leap out of his chair unexpectedly, for instance, and shout, “Why can’t we sell the idea of revolution the same way they sell shoes? Why can’t we make revolution irresistible, like a really stylish winter coat? Don’t you want to bet that if we did, all those spoiled rich kids I went to school with would be falling all over themselves to get a revolution of their own?” Kosmas went to high school at the American College of Greece. He must’ve been one of those kids plagued by inner dilemmas: I may be rich, but I feel poor. It’s more or less how I felt as the daughter of an oil company executive.
Kosmas and Irini are the digital brains of Exit, and of our activities more generally. They’re the best hackers I’ve ever met. They can bring the Ministry of Finance to its knees in half an hour, though if you saw them waiting for the bus you’d think they were just two college kids like all the rest, headed to class with textbooks under their arms, whose biggest worry is whether they might get a pimple on their chin.
“Okay, we need to put our heads together here.” I pull my glasses down to the tip of my nose, mostly because I know they get a kick out of my schoolmarm routine. “Speaking of ruins, Irini, we might want to think about the Attic Highway — we haven’t done anything on that front.”
“The Attic Highway can wait. We’ve got over a month for that. What we really need to talk about is the metro.” Irini blinks her eyes a few times, and I can’t help but admire her perfectly arched eyebrows, her jet-black lashes, which tremble so suggestively. Then again, perhaps it’s just a matter of age. I see in Irini what Diana once saw in me: possibilities.
“What’s wrong, Maria? Are you daydreaming?” It bothers Irini if my mind wanders even for a minute. Kids of her generation always want things to operate according to schedule: now it’s time to space out, now it’s time to work.
“I met the daughter of a childhood friend of mine this afternoon. I guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic. .”
Anna-Maria leaps up into my lap. Cats can tell when humans have become cats, too, when they’ve slipped into a furry pouch of regression. She sinks her claws into my sweater; a single prick and I’m back to my normal self. I clap to get everyone’s attention.
“Okay, people, let’s get to work! Who has the final text for the metro?”
Irini clears her throat. It’s her day. There are times when certain people shine, take the lead, while others would rather just disappear into their chairs, like me right now. Irini starts to read: “They presented it to us immaculate, marble, smelling of disinfectant, like an airport bathroom. Cold white fluorescent lighting. Private security guards. The Athens Metro is a moving walkway that transports us home after hours of low-paying, back-breaking work. It feels like the inside of a bank, exudes an air of industriousness and order. Music and food are prohibited. Human activity of any sort is avoided. In Europe people at least make themselves at home in their metro, they sing, they sleep in its warmth — after all, no European government cares enough to actually solve the problem of homelessness. We take it a step further: we hide our homeless, we kick them out of the station at Omonia. They mar the Europeanized image of prosperity we’re hoping might attract the business of multinational corporations. Sweep the dirt under the rug! Was the new metro designed for people so exhausted they’ve become zombies? Is this the new Athens we’re so proud of? This imitation of Brussels? Say no to this asphyxiating state ‘security’! Say no to the Olympic spirit being promoted by multinational corporations! Say no to the paternalistic aesthetic regulation of our city’s working class! Bring your guitars and your sandwiches. Come help us give the Athens Metro the color and life we all deserve.”
“Doesn’t it sound a little too hippie at the end?”
“Maria, you’re impossible! It’s already been printed! You’re always wanting to make changes!”
“What I certainly don’t want, Kosmas, is for them to pass our movement off as just another wave of inveterate nostalgia. For them to dismiss it as utopian thinking and all that crap.”
“You want our generation at the demonstration? You’ll have it! I guarantee you, our whole department will be there.”
“Kids whose most cherished dream is to get a job at a private television station are going to come down and occupy the metro?”
“Don’t you want them to?”
“I want young people, not bearded hypocrites from the Communist Youth.”
“Don’t be prejudiced, Maria!” Kayo says, draining the last of his wine.
I throw him a disparaging glance and stand up from the table. Whatever claws I once had are gone.
I use the tongs to agitate the photograph of Irini in the basin of developer. Her features are fluid, our little phantom of liberty. Her eyes are shining, her long hair is braided into Princess Leia buns on either side of her head, which is at a slight tilt, neck bare, inviting a kiss or a bite. Underneath we’ll print a line from Alice Walker, Resistance is the secret of joy.
All the darkroom equipment, the red light, the quiet swish of the liquid in the basin do nothing to alter the way that space echoes within me. The moment I open the door I experience a visceral sense of vertigo, a fear of falling and breaking my arm, even though there’s no stool anymore, and no salt, and I no longer believe in proverbs. When I slip into this room and close the door, something African comes and colonizes Exarheia Square. Something that brings me back to the days of crickets and caves and dismembered dolls. “What on earth do you do in there for hours on end?” Kayo sometimes asks. “I breathe in chemicals,” I answer. “I punish myself for being a racist.”
Now he opens the door just a smidge.
“Close the door, Kayo, are you crazy? You’ll ruin the photographs!”
He steals into the room and hugs me. His body is still warm from the sheets. Doesn’t he ever tire of this game of incomplete conquest? A hug, a kiss or two on the neck, then each of us to our own bed. It only exacerbates the feeling that’s been bothering me since afternoon, of having suddenly been thrown back into childhood. A six-year-old girl came and dusted off certain forgotten regions inside me: self-sacrifice, trust, admiration, disappointment, boundless love.
“Want to come and sleep in my bed tonight?”
I don’t reply. Kayo goes out of the darkroom, and I follow.
“Don’t you think it’s time you found a place of your own?”
He’s picking at the leftover potato salad, and freezes with the fork in midair. I stand on tiptoe and eat the bite off his fork.
“You really want me to leave? You’re that upset?”
“You said our living together was a temporary solution. It’s been three years.”
I enjoy crushing his dignity from time to time. Maybe the cold potato in my mouth is to blame. Or the memory of Antigone’s fake braid. Or of Anna’s high-handedness: give me Apostolos, give me your drawing, pee here, smoke this cigarette, sing whatever song I tell you to. It seems fairly obvious that I’m trying to act as Anna would, to usurp her place. You just say whatever comes into your head and everyone else takes you at your word.
“I think you should leave, Kayo. Find a place to live already. Take your life into your own hands.”
Merde. I’m a sadist.