Diana drives me home that night. My parents are on Aegina for the weekend — this year they’re renting the Room of Sighs, as I call it after Angelos and my big disappointment in love. Aegina reminds them of Ikeja, they dream of buying property there. Diana wants to come up and see the big monochromes I’ve been painting. She examines them eagerly, then examines my chest even more eagerly. “Maria, they’re wonderful!” Is she referring to my paintings or my breasts? I couldn’t care less. By now I’ve started to put up a conscious fight “for even better days,” as Papandreou’s slogan would have it. I guess I’m a cynical utopianist, too.
If any members of the administration saw me slathering paint on my monochromes like an overzealous housepainter, they’d surely use me as a negative example in their austerity slogans. Look at Papamavrou, consuming more than she produces, gobbling up five kilos of paint at a single sitting, then letting the water run for hours, supposedly to clean her brushes. The epitome of the thoughtless and unscrupulous Greek citizen.
But there’s good and bad waste. Instead of destroying the remote control with my nails, I let my hands guide my way to more creative acts — sometimes on paper, sometimes on Diana’s body.
“Just don’t tell me you’re a lesbian now!” She’s shrieking straight into my ear and looks as if she might start crying at any moment. We’re sitting at the bar at Pieros’s, shouting over the music. It’s fitting, really: Depeche Mode, “Don’t You Want Me.”
“I’m not a lesbian, Anna. Stop making generalizations, please.”
“Are you crazy? Completely crazy? Do you want to destroy your life?”
“Are you implying that anyone with sexual preferences different from yours is destroying her life? You’ve been forming some really progressive ideas in Paris, haven’t you? So much for your Touche pas á mon pote.”
Both of us are pretty drunk, and we’ve taken some of those pills that are doing the rounds. We more or less let loose on one another. The others rush to pull us apart, though we manage to get some nasty scratching in first. Anna pinches me hard on the forearm and I slap her with the back of my hand.
“I’ll have to put you two in handcuffs,” Diana tries to joke.
“Wouldn’t you like that, you filthy, second-rate artist!” Anna shouts.
“Look who’s talking! All you are is a spoiled, vulgar little girl who lives to exploit her friends. That’s exactly what you are!”
Anna takes a step back. She’s sobbing, spittle dribbling down her chin. For the first time in her life she’s ugly, frightening.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. Maria is my best friend! She’s. . she’s. .”
I’m shaking all over.
Anna turns on her heel and leaves the bar at a run.
“If you go after her, we’re through,” Diana says.
But I’m already headed for the door.
“You deserve whatever you get!” Diana shouts at my back as I go.
We’re nineteen, but you’d think we were nine. Lying on our backs on the beach, Anna and I are digging holes in the sand with our heels, chattering away, moving from one topic to the next as if we’d never been apart, as if our friendship had never wavered. She tells me about Urlich, a German of Iranian descent, and then about some bass player who’s always high and pays absolutely no attention to her. I tell her about the rector and his wife.
“Oh, Maria, will you introduce me to them?” she asks.
“Maybe, we’ll see.”
I’m afraid she’ll charm them, like she charms everyone. But I can’t just live in fear, can I? Besides, Anna doesn’t just take, she gives, too. Thanks to her irrepressible sociability, we strike up a conversation with Christophoros one night on the stairs outside Pieros’s bar. Christophoros is a bit older than us, he just finished his masters in chemistry. He talks about practical things, and uses verbs that indicate action and energy: I went, I pulled, I carried. He has a biting sense of humor and a slight hunch that makes you think his embrace must be warm and capacious. Up until now I’ve treated my relationships like stairs, one leading to the next. I wonder if Christophoros might be a landing, a place where I can at last pause and look out at the world.
•
Diana won’t speak to me anymore, so I unlearn my role as audience member. But she did plant her seed: the rector and his wife invite me to dinner one warm evening in September. “Bring a few friends,” they say. I bring Christophoros and Anna. Anna doesn’t waste any time: before they serve the coq au vin and salad with chèvre, she’s got her drawings spread out on the dining room table. Abstract expressionism, intense experimentation with color. Now I understand why she brought me that de Kooning poster.
“Well, if a painting isn’t showing a story from the Bible, or some familiar scene, we all might as well be Australian aboriginals,” Christophoros says, scratching his head.
Anna makes a face.
The rector opens a bottle of wine. “I like people who admit their ignorance,” he says.
“Who accept the relativity of knowledge, you mean,” Christophoros corrects him, and the two of them laugh. Our hosts have taken a shine to Christophoros. He doesn’t know anything about contemporary art, but he has a kind of natural charm. Anna has something to offer them, too: memories of their beloved France. They talk about Guy Debord and Nicos Poulantzas, about Cornelius Castoriades, about her father, Stamatis. Anna still hasn’t quite figured out whose side she’s on, whose ideas she believes in. Names and theories get mixed up together in her speech like a huge salad, with so many flavors that you can’t be quite sure what you’re eating. Is she an orthodox Communist? Is she with the situationists and against party politics? Would she align herself with Orgapolis, a new branch of the Marxist-Leninist UCFML?
“What do you think of all this?” the rector asks me.
“All I want is to keep my distance from the logic of parties and power.” I might have added: I’ve had more encounters and run-ins with power than I’d like, I’ve lived it in my skin, with Anna’s pinches.
“You can’t do that — you’ll end up an apolitical being,” Anna says. For the time being I cross the situationists and Orgapolis off the list.
“Watch out, Anna,” I reply, “you sound like any other cog in the party machine.”
“You have to critique the system, to not give it a moment’s peace.”
“But you’re speaking the language of the system itself! It’s as if you’re conceding that there is no other language.” I attack the coq au vin with my knife and a piece of skin slips off my plate.
Perhaps I’m a romantic anarchist after all.
The rector’s wife and I are clearing the table.
“What you guys were saying earlier,” she murmurs, “it doesn’t really hold anymore.”
“What doesn’t hold?”
“Politics is dead. I don’t say that with any sense of nostalgia. Everyone just goes to work, comes home exhausted at night, doesn’t want to know anything.”
“Not everyone.”
“Everyone!”
“What did you think of Anna’s work?” I ask her, to change the subject. It makes me sad when people reject the possibility of a revolution in our day.
“Her technique is good, but she has no vision of her own. You, on the other hand, have vision, but could care less about technique.”
“Should I take that as a compliment?”
“It’s the truth, Maria. Take some art lessons, don’t let yourself get lazy. And take the entrance exams for the school.”