“Water. .”
Antigone dabs some water on her lips. I’m afraid I might faint. It’s only the second time I’ve been inside a hospital, the first was after Mom’s thyroid operation. Hospitals terrify me, and back then I swore to myself that if anyone ever tried to make me visit a sick person again I would emigrate to Africa. But this isn’t just any sick person. It’s Anna. She needs me. She’s not strong anymore.
“I’ll never forget. .” Anna says, still without sound.
“Shhh,” I say.
“. . you’re the best friend in the world.”
I hug her tightly. Outside the rain is falling hard. The woman in the other bed turns up the volume with the remote control. The music from the show envelops the room but we don’t make fun, don’t pinch one another, don’t make faces.
Tomorrow this might strike us as funny, we might say, “Einmal ist keinmal.” But what if we actually get into trouble for real? What if we start to watch soap operas, to cry, to not have abortions? What if we get tired of being kids and want to be women?
I can’t even think about it.
Antigone gives me Yiorgos Ioannou’s latest book for my birthday, Of Adolescents and Others. Adults just love to remind you that you’re not one of them yet. “From now on we get to celebrate your birthday and the Greek National Resistance together!” she says, popping a bottle of champagne. There’s no picnic this year. These days nature disgusts Anna, and she doesn’t like to walk, either. She’s gotten listless and lethargic.
“Yeah, except that I was actually born in November, whereas they just chose the 25th as a symbolic date for the resistance.”
This year the government has declared November 25th 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!”