The Slap (46 page)

Aisha would not look at him.

‘You are going to the party next week.’

She turned to look at him in disbelief. There was a glimmer of an astonished, respectful smile. ‘I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’ He wanted to insist until she agreed. He was right. He had never been more right in his life. This time he could read the flashing fire in her eyes.

‘You are not my father.’

He wished he could slap her. So it all meant nothing, all those years of shared jokes, of affection, of defending her, of caring for her children, of assisting her and Hector with money and with time. Love and family meant nothing to her? Nothing mattered to her at this moment but her pride. Did she think she was being brave in disobeying him? She, Hector, the whole mad lot of them, they knew nothing of courage. Everything had been given to them, everything had been assumed as rightfully theirs. She even believed her defence of her friend was a matter of honour. One war, one bomb, one misfortune and she would fall apart. He meant nothing to her because like all of them she was truly selfish. She had no idea of the world and so believed her drama to be significant. The idiotic mad Muslims were right. Throw a bloody bomb in this café and disintegrate the whole lot of them. Her beauty, her sophistication, her education, none of it meant anything. She had no humility and no generosity. Monsters, they had bred monsters.

He threw a ten-dollar bill on the table, slurped back his coffee and stood. ‘Let’s go.’

She rushed to her feet. ‘Where are we going?’

‘Koula is at your house.’

He walked ahead of her, ordering his weak leg to outdistance her. He heard her rapid steps coming up behind him. She called out to him and he turned. She was standing by her car on High Street, the keys in her hand.

‘Tell Koula I go shopping.’ He could not bear to be with the women. He could not bear his wife’s scorn once she realised he had not succeeded. Old, old fool, to believe they cared for him, respected him, would listen to him.

‘I think you should come home with me.’

Go fuck yourself.

‘I go shopping.’

She beeped open the car.

‘Manoli, I am sorry.’

He turned his back to her and walked away. The words dropped easily from her lips but they meant nothing. Australians used the word like a chant. Sorry sorry sorry. She was not sorry. He thought she loved him, respected him. He’d nursed this hope for years. He wanted to strike himself for his vanity and foolishness. He had never asked anything of her before and she must know that he would never ask a thing of her again.
Sorry
. He spat out the word as if it were poison.

He thought she loved him. He was just a silly old man.

You’re lucky, Thimio, he whispered to the wind, to the shade of his friend, how much longer must I wait till death comes for me?

 

In the end he avoided the plaza, the shops in High Street. He was in no mood for gazing at things; his stomach turned in disgust at the thought of the senseless temptation of so many objects. He also wanted to avoid the faces of his neighbours, the groups of old Greek men and women who congregated at the mall as they once did as youths around the village square. He had left his damn village a lifetime ago, sailed across the globe to escape it, but the village had come with him. He turned off High Street and zigzagged the side streets to Merri Station. A young Mohammedan girl, her hair veiled, was standing outside the vestibule on the platform. She was still a child, a high school student. Her quick eyes were darting back and forth; she seemed nervous. He smiled at her. She should not be on the platform alone, this was not a time of good men. She dropped her eyes at his smile. She too had brought the village with her, wherever the Devil she was from. He passed her and glanced inside the vestibule. An older girl, also veiled, was locked in an embrace with a thin youth, his hair a shocking orange. She noticed his glance and drew apart from the boy, who looked up and stared, at first fearfully, then angrily at Manolis.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

The girl beside him giggled and leaned back into the embrace. The boy seemed so young, his freckled white face was smooth, had not quite shed the last vestige of infancy.

Manolis shook his head and walked away. They spoke to him with the language of evil. It was not their fault. This was not a time of good men.

The smaller girl watched him walk away and he just caught her hiss. ‘You shouldn’t swear at him. He’s no one, just an old man.’

She was right. He was no one, just an old man. Not a parent to avoid, an uncle to fear, an older brother to escape from. He grinned to himself. That boy had nearly pissed himself, he must have thought that Manolis was the girl’s father. He sat on the empty bench at the end of the platform. He could smell nicotine, the kids in the vestibule were smoking. He himself had not smoked for over twenty years but these were the only moments when he missed the habit. Waiting always made him feel like a cigarette.

 

He got off the train at North Richmond. He had no plan, all he knew was that he did not wish to be at home. He walked down Victoria Street. Every shopfront seemed to be an Asian restaurant, they owned this strip of Richmond. Once it had been the Greeks. He walked the narrow street but he was not seeing the young Asian teenagers, the Vietnamese women with their market trollies. He was in another time. He was walking past the butcher shop run by the guy from Samos, the fish and chip shop that belonged to the couple from Agrinnion, the coffee place where he and Thimios and Thanassis had spent so much of their young adult life. He sighed fondly. He was remembering the evening he’d gambled away all of his paypacket. When he got home, Koula had chased him out of the house and all the way to Bridge Road, calling him the foulest of men, an animal, a donkey, the most miserable of faggots. The neighbours had rushed out of their houses at the commotion and had stood at their gates cheering them on, the men supporting Manolis, the women encouraging Koula.

He stopped at a traffic light and a young Australian woman, a ring through her nose, wheeling a pram, was looking at him oddly, disconcerted. He nodded to her and she tentatively smiled back. He turned into a small street. There was the factory he once worked in, now an apartment block. There was the house in which Ecttora and Elisavet attended Greek school as children. It now had a Vote Green sticker plastered on its front door. He turned into Kent Street.

He stopped in front of Dimitri’s house. The homes around it had all been renovated, their facades looked clean, they looked unlived in, like houses in the movies. Dimitri and Georgia’s front garden was crowded with the tender stalks of young broad beans, the first thick leaves of spinach and silverbeet. It smelled of the approaching spring. Two torn plastic bags were tied around a thin stick to scare away the birds. A fig tree towered as high as the house. Manolis hesitated. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Surely this house, this garden, belonged to the past? If he were to push open the gate, would it be real in his hands? Would the door disappear as soon as he began knocking on it? It was impossible that they still lived here. They too must have joined the exodus out of the city, pushed far out to the ends of Melbourne’s seemingly endless arteries. He did push open the gate. The rusty iron frame scraped across the concrete. The squeal it made was real. He knocked on the door.

‘Who is it?’ An old woman’s voice, accented.

He called out his name, loudly, almost shouting. There was a pause and then the door flew open. It was Georgia. She was dressed in bereavement black, and her hair, cut short, was silver. But it was her. She stood there, blinking at him. He saw surprise flush in her eyes; she had recognised him. They were sharing the same thought, he was sure of it. Oh, how we have aged.

The kiss she offered was polite but warm. ‘Come in, my Manoli, come in.’

He had indeed stepped back in time. The house smelt of food, of the solid earth, of flesh and bodies. The dark, narrow hallway was cluttered with small cabinets and bureaus, and he had to squeeze up close to the wall to make it to the end. On the small hall table was an old-fashioned red dial-up phone.

A gruff voice called out from the bedroom at the end of the hall. Who is it? It was followed by a fit of pained coughing.

‘Dimitri, it’s Manoli. Our Manoli has come to visit us.’ Georgia pushed open the bedroom door.

He had not stepped back in time. Cruel time was joking with him. Dimitri, his pyjama top unbuttoned to the navel, was lying in bed. He was skeletal, the ribs pushing ruthlessly through the loose folds of the skin on his chest.

‘You haven’t forgotten Manoli, have you, my Dimitri?’

The old man in the bed seemed stunned by the intrusion. A plastic mask hung over the bedpost, attached to a thin gas bottle on the floor. The man started to cough again, his body seemed too frail for the spasms racking him. Georgia pushed past Manolis, took the mask and placed it over her husband’s nostrils and mouth.

Manolis walked over to the other side of the bed and took the man’s limp, cold hand. ‘Mitsio,’ he croaked, unable to stop his tears flooding. ‘Mitsio.’ He repeated his friend’s old nickname, unable to say more.

Georgia lifted the mask off Dimitri. His fear had vanished. He managed a small, weak laugh. ‘Friend,’ he whispered. ‘I hope you’ve come to finish me off.’

Georgia slapped his arm. ‘Don’t talk such foolishness.’

‘Why? Who would want this life? What good am I to anyone?’ His breaths were short, laboured, puncturing his sentences with staccato gasps.

Manolis looked across to Georgia. Her expression was determined, calm.

‘It’s the evil disease,’ she said softly. ‘It is in his lungs.’ She slowly bent down and pulled a folded-up wheelchair from under the bed. Expertly, rapidly, she assembled it. Very slowly, with his arms around Manolis’s neck, with his wife taking his legs, they moved Dimitri off the bed and onto the chair. Georgia hung the mask around her husband’s neck, and pointed to the oxygen bottle. Manolis lifted it into his arms. It was surprisingly light. He followed Georgia as she wheeled Dimitri out of the room. She led him through the lounge and kitchen and into a small, cluttered sunroom that overlooked the backyard. An icon of the Virgin and Child was in a corner, a lit wick floating in a saucer of oil before it. The tiny flame managed to throw a flicker of warm yellow light around the room. Georgia hitched the chair to rest, and indicated a sofa for Manolis to sit on.

‘I’ll make us a coffee,’ she announced, and walked back into the kitchen. Manolis, afraid that any words would be wrong, looked down at his shoes. He had not even brought them a gift, an offering, he had come to their house empty-handed. What an uncivilised animal he must seem. He was surprised by Dimitri’s hoarse, rasping laugh.

‘Come on,’ his eyes were twinkling, ‘stop with that fucking long, miserable face. I’m not dead yet.’

‘Of course you’re not, my Dimitri.’

‘What made you look us up?’

The question did not seem to contain any element of threat or resentment. Still, Manolis felt ashamed. ‘I went to Thimio Karamantzis’s funeral yesterday.’

Dimitri stared out ahead, to the cold grey garden outside. ‘I wanted to go.’ He took a long breath. ‘But, of course, how can I go anywhere?’

‘Of course, of course.’ Manolis struggled to find words. ‘I saw so many people from the past, and it made me ashamed of how long it had been since we had seen each other. Forgive me, forgive me, Dimitri.’ Sweet Jesus Christ, Sweet Saviour, Sweet Lord, Sweet Eternal Mother, do not let me cry.

Dimitri turned back to him, smiling. He placed his hand on Manolis’s knee. ‘You sound like a woman. What the fuck do you want my forgiveness for?’ He was wincing as he forced the words out, struggling for air. ‘I should ask your forgiveness for not coming to visit you and Koula. There, we’re even.’ With obvious effort, he stopped the beginning of a ragged cough. He banged his thin weak chest in fury at his pain. ‘Life went too fast and fucking death goes too slow.’ He smiled again. ‘But you look good, you look healthy. You were always an ox.’

‘I’m so sorry about Yianni, I only heard about him at the funeral.’ The words rushed out of him, almost incoherently. He just wanted them out, he just wanted them out of his body.

Dimitri’s smile waned. His face fell, his body slumped. Manolis wondered if he had ever seen anyone so exhausted.

‘God is a cocksucker.’

‘What are you saying?’ Georgia stepped into the room, balancing a tray. Manolis rushed to assist her but she motioned him back to his seat.

‘You know what I said.’

Georgia ignored him. She offered Manolis a coffee, and placed one in her husband’s hands. They began to shake and she steadied them.

‘God did not kill our son. It was those gangsters who did it.’

‘Then maybe God is also a gangster.’

Manolis was mortified. There was nothing—certainly not words—he could offer his friends. He sipped his coffee, choosing to remain silent. He was conscious that Georgia was looking at him and he looked up. She was nodding her head sympathetically.

‘We understand, Manoli, what is there to say? Fate chose us for misfortune. Fate blackened our hearts.’ She looked at her husband. ‘Fate has sickened him.’ Her words fell out of her mouth with astonishing lack of emotion, as if she was reciting a story memorised by heart, one she had tired of telling. She told him how Yianni had become involved with bad people, bad people who sold drugs. How they had led her son into that life. How they had shot him in the head outside his home, how his young children had found the body. She spoke about drugs, narcotics, gangsters, used the English word ‘dealers’, and they all sounded ridiculous coming from this old woman’s mouth. ‘He got in over his head,’ she finished, using someone else’s words. ‘He was destroyed by evil men.’