6-The Teacher-piec

6 The Teacher

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lobalization,” his teacher had said during their last meeting. And he had wondered, “Globalization?! What in the world does it mean?” “It means that we will all become one, whites will marry blacks, Jews will marry Germans, cockroaches will mate with octopi and I’ll end up with Kiki!”

He was trying to spot Kiki among the crowd that had gathered on the pier to meet the boat arriving at Poros. He was coming home from his last trip. “Home at last!” Mimis was a nautical engineer and after thirty years of travelling by sea, he had decided that it was time to retire. He would start receiving his pension and planned on opening a small boiler sales and repair shop that would service the island homes. He and Kiki had come up with the plan over the phone a few days ago, while he was still in Africa. But where was Kiki now to help him with his luggages? He wanted to give her a hug and celebrate his return home for good. They may not have been most compatible couple, but his long time absences only made the heart grow fonder, and every time he returned it was her warm bosom that he always thought of as his true harbor.

He had brought her presents and other little things that she had requested for herself and the children, but she was nowhere to be seen. He piled his boxes and suitcases into Kostas’s cab all by himself. Kostas was the only one on hand to welcome him home. They had known each other since they were boys, having grown up on the island together.

His sister-in-law Roula was at home to greet him when he got there. She had been recently widowed and had come to live with her sister to help out with the children. He scooped his two children into his arms and held them tight. He embraced Roula as well, whose bosom was as warm as his wife’s. The children hung off him as he tore open the boxes to give them the toys he had brought them, while asking Roula: “Where’s Kiki?”

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“Mimis, Kiki went to Athens to visit a gynecologist there,” Roula said.

“Just like that, out of the blue? I spoke to her yesterday and she didn’t mention anything to me.”

“Kourtis the gynecologist came to the island . . .”

“The son of Kourtis who owned the pharmacy?”

“Yes, that’s him Mimis.”

“And he’s my teacher Kourtis’s nephew right?”

“Yes Mimis, exactly,” Roula said nervously. “Kiki had been having some trouble while you were gone and she went to see him to get his opinion. As you know, there’s no other gynecologist on the island.”

“Kiki’s been having gynecological problems while I was gone? How’s that possible?” Miki asked, furrowing his brow. “Why didn’t she say anything to me? We spoke just yesterday . . .”

“I know Mimis but you can’t talk to men about things like this, and especially not over the phone. Don’t you understand?”

“Alright, she went to see the doctor and where is she now?”

“Last night she was in pain again and experienced some bleeding. She went to see Kourtis early in the morning and he told her to go to Athens immediately so that he could examine her in his clinic. She caught the eight o’clock Flying Dolphin boat to Piraeus this morning and didn’t have time to let you know. Sit down and I’ll make you some coffee. She should be calling any minute now. I’m anxious to hear how things went too,” Roula said kindly, trying to get him to show that he had understood.

Roula was younger and prettier than her sister. He had chosen Kiki because she was the wilder of the two and knew how to swear! Mimis had just graduated from the Naval Academy 249

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when he first saw her on the road with her friends as they were on their way back from the beach. As Mimis was driving by on his motorbike he reached out and undid her bikini top. Kiki suddenly found herself topless in front of everyone, who broke out in cheers and spontaneous applause.

“Go to hell you rookie bastard,” she yelled.

“We’ll go there together,” he answered back, celebrating his prank.

And they did. A little while later he went to her parents and asked for her hand in marriage. Her mother didn’t like him, but her father appreciated Mimis’s Navy job because he knew that he would have a steady income and future because of it. And so he agreed. Kiki was coy at first but she didn’t want to end up an old maid either. She knew that he would be away at sea most of the time anyway and so she said yes.

“Why hasn’t she called yet?” Mimis asked glancing at his watch.

At that moment the phone rang. Roula answered and then passed him the receiver.

“It’s for you Mimis,” she said.

As soon as he put the phone up to his ear he heard the excited voice of one of his old classmates shouting: “Hey Mimis, my man, It’s me, Vangelis the shipping tycoon, remember me?”

Vangelis the “tycoon” was one of his former classmates who, after leaving the Navy, had invested some of his wife’s money in a business that rented out a small number of yachts. That’s how he had earned the nickname “tycoon.” He lived in Kastela all year long and had taken it upon himself to round up all the boys from their class of the Naval Academy each year, usually in summer, for a reunion.

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“You’ve got to come to the Skouna tavern tonight—no excuses. Lots of people are going to be there. Kourtis and Argyriou the gym teacher said they’d show up.”

These kinds of reunions happened frequently. For some reason, the experiences that they had shared during their youth, at the Naval Academy of Poros, had created a strong bond between them and they saw each other more like brothers.

Those who didn’t run into each other in the course of working on the ships never missed a night of wine and merriment at the tavern. If it was mentioned that “Kourtis would be there,” even more of them showed up. Kourtis had been their math teacher but he had bonded with most of the boys outside of class as well, because as they said, he taught them to live. For this reason his students still called him “Teacher” even until now, or “Bobby,” which was his first name. Back then he was young and intelligent with a thirst for knowledge; he was a man of philosophy whose lesson extended far beyond the school subject that he was teaching. Just imagine that although the military Junta was governing the country then, he dared to slip other books into the math textbook and sneak them into the classroom undetected. He introduced them to Kazantzakis, Cavafy and Kavvadias. Mimis agreed with most of what he taught them, but he had observed him carefully from the beginning and he saw something in him—some small aspects of his personality that he considered to be strange. Most of his classmates swore by his advice and he too had gone to ask his opinion at crucial junctures in his life, even after having graduated. When he was thinking about leaving the Navy and going to work as an engineer for commercial ships, he sought him out. He called him up and asked him if they could meet up.

Kourtis responded by saying: “Come by the racetrack on Wednesday afternoon.”

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“The race track? What are we going to do there?” Mimis had asked.

“What do you think people do at the racetrack Mimis? I go and bet on a horse or two, it adds a little spice to my life.”

That wasn’t all. As a school boy he had heard rumors that the headmaster wanted to fire him because he played poker with the dock workers and kept company with some women—English tourists—who would end up staying all winter on Poros. Mimis would think, “just a second there, buddy. You teach us these supposedly profound life lessons every morning, and then you’re off to gamble at the race track and the poker table?” Those were the doubts he had about the Teacher, but would never miss a reunion nonetheless.

So even today, he confirmed that he would be present at the gathering even though he had come in late and Kiki was still not back yet nor had she called. Both he and Roula were starting to get worried. She wasn’t answering on her mobile phone and the doctor wasn’t picking up at his office either. He went down to the tavern to say a quick hello but wanted to get home early. Mimis mentioned in passing to his friends that his wife had gone to visit the Teacher’s nephew but that she wasn’t back yet and was worried.

“Weren’t you the one who was always off at sea?” the Teacher asked him.

“Yeah sure, I’m a sailor, where else would I have been?”

Mimis said. “That’s why Kiki married me in the first place.”

“Then listen up, it was Kazantzakis who said that ‘a woman who sleeps alone brings shame on all mankind’.”

“So now you tell me Teacher, after I’ve given up the sea!”

Mimis responded.

He continued as if he hadn’t heard Mimis’s quip.

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“You’d better watch out because my nephew the doctor is quite a rascal,” the Teacher said suspiciously. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

What could he say to that? He got up and ran out. They badgered the police and everybody else they could think of, but Kiki did not appear not even the next day, or the next week, or the next month. Why? Because she had abandoned her husband and children to run off with the gynecologist.

The thing that bothered him the most was the timing of Kiki’s betrayal. He didn’t waste any time before falling into the next available pair of arms, that of his sister-in-law. She gave in without making much of a fuss and was pleased even more than him. She was jealous of her sister and had always liked Mimis.

If the truth be told, this wasn’t the first time he had strayed from Kiki and was unfaithful. Every summer when he returned from the ship for vacation, Kiki—who was particularly social and outgoing—would gather all her friends from Athens to Poros and invite them to stay in their home. He in turn, the young and handsome sailor, would show them Poros’s beauties as well as some of his own. As if he could pass up an opportunity like that! Once, his mother-in-law, who didn’t like him, caught him in the act just as he was planting a kiss on a pretty blonde.

Mimis didn’t let it go by without defending himself. He cleared his name only as sailors know how. A few days later he took the kids swimming along with the old bag. She was in the sea when his son came running up to him saying, “Dada, come quick! Grandma’s drowning!” He ran into the sea and instead of pulling her out, he dealt her a blow to the head that sent her right back under. When he saw that she had stopped moving, he started to shout for help and everyone came running to save her but, to no avail. Nobody could bring her round and

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the poor old woman suffered from asthma to boot! That was Mimis’s way.

* *

*

At the next class outing, Mimis sat across from the Teacher who asked him at some point: “So what was the story with your wife and the doctor, Mimis?”

He bit his lip at first, but then decided that he had to get even with this smart-ass. The Teacher was married now and lived the quiet life of retirement, outside of Tripolis, tending to his father-in-law’s olive grove. The best man at his wedding had been one of his former students. The boy had never been strong academically but was a great football player. The Teacher was a huge football fan.

“Teacher, I have a parrot that I brought back from Africa.

Do you know what I taught him to say? That line that you used to quote from a poem by Cavafy: “another city will be found, better than this one.”

“Mimis, that’s not the exact meaning of the poem, you have to read the before and after . . . It’s about a person who’s looking for happiness in all the wrong places,” the Teacher corrected him.

“Don’t start lecturing me on happiness now Teacher! What is happiness anyway? Wasn’t it you who told us that ‘happiness is living all of life’s sorrows,’ just as Kazantzakis says in Asceticism?

Well that’s what I’m doing!”

Mimis’s father, who was born and bred on Poros, had enrolled him in the Naval Academy when he was thirteen years old. Around that time he had started to blow off school for friends and motorbikes. His obsession with motorbikes was the reason that his father decided to send him to a boarding 254

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school so that he could become a nautical engineer. According to Mimis, he was the greatest martyr of all time for enduring it.

He didn’t see it as a school, but as a prison. He thought about running away; he planned to swim across to the Peloponnese and disappear. There was nowhere he could go on the island without someone he knew recognizing him. His second plan was to be so unruly that they’d kick him out themselves. His mother intervened by saying, “listen up kiddo, you had better behave because if you don’t, your father’s going to load you straight onto a commercial fishing boat as a deck hand.” He wasn’t sure if that would be worse than what he was currently living, but his mother’s tone scared him into submission. He crouched into a corner and decided to submit to his fate. He dreamed of wearing a Navy uniform and travelling to foreign countries and cities. He would find other ports as well as new people, who were quite different from the harsh brass hats that were giving him a hard time now.

Everyone outside of the Navy Academy called Mimis “rice pilaf,” even when he left school for a day, because that was mostly what they ate in the dreary dining hall, day in, day out.

Well sometimes they did get some oven-baked cod or over boiled potatoes. The punishing army drills had knocked the stuffing out of him, leaving him humiliated beyond belief. The school may have tried to enforce military-style discipline but the boys were young—thirteen to sixteen years old—and many of them found it difficult to cope. For no apparent reason, they might find themselves measuring the running track with a matchstick, or jumping like a kangaroo, or walking like a duck.

It was absolutely mortifying. Mimis could remember hellish nights when, after the boys were already in their pyjamas, they would have them hold out their pillows like shields. Then they would shout “one, two, three, down,” which was an order for them to jump three times then sink into a low squat, and then 255

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the sequence was repeated, for as long as they could possibly keep going.

To make matters worse they had assigned authority to the older students who took great pleasure in torturing the new recruits, or “fresh fish” as they were called. Other than making sure that they had a good time themselves, the older boys cruelly singled out the weaker kids and picked on them to the point where they sometimes even left the Academy. If one of the younger recruits got on their bad side they assigned punishment, which usually meant doing hard manual labor three times a day. The tasks were usually scrubbing pots in the mess hall, cleaning the school and mainly cleaning the “John”—there was no getting out of that. It was not uncommon for the older boys to occasionally choose a victim whom they would terrify in a manner befitting the victim’s character and sometimes even at night when he was trying to sleep. They would back him into a corner and beat him to a pulp. In terms of harshness, the beatings dealt out by navy boys surpassed even that which would be dealt by the most wicked warship officer or captain. It far surpassed the logic and substance of military regulation. Squealing, betrayal and cunning tricks were part and parcel of most of the older students’ behavior, of those had been assigned authority. These horror stories would spread throughout the school to the other students, who constantly experienced fear and panic, and remained stiffly alert at all times. One drill followed another: parade drill, deck call drill, drill with a weapon, without a weapon, there was no end to the ordeal. And when they were getting ready to get on-board a ship as part of their training, the suffering of being in uniform began. They had to wash and iron their clothes, crease their pants, and press their pea jackets. Their sword belts had to be buffed and their hats starched, their shoes polished until they shone.

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This situation exceeded the limits of military training and education. The thirteen year old boys felt that they were being tormented and had terrible nightmares while they slept. And yet the Teacher, Bobby, whom everyone adored, had not said one word about it; he had not done a thing to put an end to this wickedness.

However Mimis had conceived a way of dealing with this from the very beginning. It had to do with some of the younger students who had banded together to form a clique. Or perhaps it was really the Teacher who had formed this clique from a select group of students whom he had chosen in accordance with his own inclinations—students to whom he gave preferential treatment and responsibilities. One of the most significant privileges, for those chosen few, was that he gathered them at the house which he had rented on the island during the Sundays that they were on leave, and permitted them to smoke.

Smoking was strictly forbidden both in the Academy and outside it. Anyone caught smoking was automatically given the manual labor punishment or even expelled. Despite the harsh rule, most of the students smoked. Even the older students smoked, despite the fact that one of their duties was to punish anyone caught smoking. That is how the Teacher’s little group of students—who called him Bobby—during their Sunday discussions, felt special and privileged. They felt invincible, going so far as to say that Bobby offered them smokes himself.

Whatever plans they talked about or concocted during these meetings was never known. There may have been some covert dalliances with girls, because some of the boys returned to school looking awfully pleased. Bobby bent the rules for them and this is why they loved him.

Mimis himself never smoked, but then again he wasn’t the Teacher’s first or even second pick. Once, when one of his select group of students was caught smoking and brought before the 257

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teacher’s board, Bobby advocated the toughest punishment.

The other students reacted, asking him, “why were you the one demanding that he receive the strictest punishment?” His reply was unbelievable.

“I fought for the boy to be allowed to come before the Teacher’s council and I fought for him to be given the chance to defend himself before the final ruling and punishment was assigned. Meaning, we can’t teach you about what’s fair and democratic as well as about the rights of each person, and then make decisions that don’t follow the same ethic. What I did was stand up for your rights. After having convinced the other teachers of this, the boy came in to testify and said: “I don’t have anything to say about what I did.” That’s all the numbskull had to say, the first time we let a student defend himself! Now do you understand?”

They understood but they didn’t forgive him for it. He was telling this story to Roula, with whom he had started a new life.

She listened attentively, “tsk tsking” in moments of indignance and saying “oh oh oh” when what she heard unsettled her. It had been some time since Mimis had started his boiler repair and sales business but he wasn’t very busy. Poros didn’t have much cold weather so the boilers were not in need of repair that often, not to mention that the older houses didn’t even have boilers. In moments like these, he would come down with an awful case of “cabin fever.” This was a condition—a kind of boredom—that befell sailors trapped in the steel cabin of the ship’s belly on the fourth day of their journey after having left the port. But “cabin fever” on dry land had a somewhat opposite effect; it made one want to leave. This arose from the feeling that only sailors made sense and people on dry land were boring and tedious.

Roula, who had learned to read his moods, understood this and one day she said to him, “why don’t you sell our parrot?”

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“Why would I sell the African parrot who knows how to recite Cavafy? Do you know how much that bird is worth?”

“That’s why you should sell it, because he’s worth something.

People ask you for him all the time in any case.”

“And then what? I’ll be left without a parrot,” Mimis said dejectedly.

“Get another parrot,” Roula said simply.

She was a smart woman who had a way of convincing him to do things. She was especially persuasive when she said, “Ithaca has already given you the beautiful journey . . . but it doesn’t have anything more to give.”

“Where’d you hear that?” he asked her one day.

“In one of the books you have of Cavafy’s poetry,” Roula said. “Even though I’m not very fond of him and “his sort,” I still like what he has to say. Wasn’t Kazantzakis an atheist too?”

“That’s what they say. He probably had his own God, as the Teacher used to say.”

“Well that’s nice! What a great teacher you had! He picked out such lovely books for you children to read at home, written by homosexuals and atheists!”

* *

*

The fact was that Roula had toiled long and hard to finish high school. She wanted to be either a hairdresser or a beautician. She had heard “Ithaca” recited by some bimbo on a gossipy afternoon television talk show, and it had struck her as noteworthy. Mimis loved her because of the fact that she wasn’t as hysterical as Kiki had been. She had a mild-mannered temperament combined with a naturally sweet and polite demeanor. She didn’t talk much, but when she was upset she ate a lot of sweets. That was all—no shouting matches or angry scenes. Her habit resulted in her being a bit plump, but no one 259

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would say she was fat. She was cute, fleshy and round, normally shy, but a volcano in bed. She dressed in an attractive, simple way, always stylish, with lipstick and eye shadow to complete her look. Her hair was brown and her hairstyle was a bit old-fashioned with the ends flipping out above her shoulders like Jackie Kennedy’s. Her skin was smooth, translucent and very pale because she never sat out in the sun and she wore big, round sunglasses all year long. What she said got through to Mimis and he thought about it. The next day he went online and found the shop where he had bought his parrot in Cape Town, South Africa. Once he confirmed his order to have another parrot sent to him, he sold the one he had which knew how to recite Cavafy.

Mimis arranged for his new parrot’s transport to Greece through friends and colleagues who sailed to Africa often.

When he went to go pick up his new parrot they gave him an additional box from the same sender. He opened it up and what did he see? Three scorpions, a spider, a few beetles and a snake in a plastic box. They were all definitely alive, quite frisky, and obviously hungry.

He sent a message to the dealer asking him, “what are these things that you’ve sent me?” The dealer replied that he sent along a few other creatures as samples. He suggested that Mimis sell them to pet shops or whoever else was interested. Roula was excited by the idea because there weren’t many people in this kind of business. Mimis found buyers right away for the rare and original creatures. That wasn’t all; he began receiving orders for other animals, including parrots and other birds, as well as snakes and spiders. He managed to set up a little business that considerably improved their financial situation. After a while the African merchant sent him a catalogue with larger animals for sale. There was everything from pythons and monkeys to lions and elephants, which he could sell directly to circuses and 260

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amusement parks. He managed that as well. He sold a lion and monkeys and a tiger, he even discussed the potential sale of an elephant! He travelled around Greece, catalogue in hand, taking orders. He even sold an enormous python to a cabaret show because a dancer wanted it wrapped around her neck while she did her striptease number.

The first thing he bought with his profits was a Rolex watch for Roula. He gave it to her, reciting a line by the poet. “Roula, my dear, ‘for some people there comes a day when they must say either a big YES or a big NO’.”

Roula immediately responded with, “let’s see when you’ll say ‘Yes’ to me in front of the priest!” He had been with Roula all these years without marrying her, as if she was his wife since she took care of the children. He bought her a car and they fixed up the house by installing a fireplace and a pergola out back. They were able to help out the children financially, who had grown up in the meantime.

* *

*

He wasn’t sure whether the things that the Teacher had taught him were very useful, since from the very first day that Mimis set foot on a ship as a young sailor, they handed him a mop and had him swab the deck for hours on end. It took him a long time before he finally got a good look at an engine room and held a flashlight in his hand. A flashlight is a necessary tool for any mechanic and for him it was his scepter. He used it to examine the level of water in the bilge, the pressure dials and valves, as well as the bolts in the dark recesses of the engine room. It’s what he threw and smashed when he was angry. He had learned to live in the dark of the engine room, many levels below the sunlight, in temperatures of forty five degrees Celsius or even hotter, drenched in sweat and smudged black with coal.

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The rhythmic humming of the engines calmed him and when he couldn’t hear it he would wake up abruptly, fearing that something was wrong. He had learned to use his time in the hot cavern for musing and nostalgic thoughts, he would dream of his wife and whisper sweet, hot erotic secrets that only sailors can say out loud, into her imaginary ear. He held onto her scent, the smell of the house and the warmth of the living room during festive moments with the children, nostalgia . . . It was the nostalgic longing that could drive one mad on long trips. To see another ship with a Greek flag made him feel crazy with joy.

Ships have only two places that mattered to him; the stern which symbolized farewells, departures, and wishes for a safe journey; and the bow, which reminded him of the harbor and the joy of homecoming. And then everything changed. The bread, the water, his woman—they all tasted differently. Just imagine how humans have entrusted their riches, their children, even their gods to the thin shell of a boat’s hull.

“How do you come up with all the wonderful things that you say?” Roula would ask who liked it when he spoke sweet words of love to her in sailor talk.

“It’s all Kazantzakis’s and the Teacher’s fault,” he’d tell her.

The sea was his catalyst, and moments would come when his “other self ” would awaken—that part of him that was created out of his experiences as a young sailor. This medley of ideas, writings, and thoughts would churn in his mind, going round and round in a way that made it impossible for him to arrive at any logic.

“I was kicked, beaten to a pulp, and stepped on like a worm. They took every ounce of pride and dignity away from me. They moulded me into a machine of war, a faceless tin soldier. They made me give up every comfort that I carried with me—God, my country, my mother, my family, the truth, my value system—not so I could carve out new 262

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responsibilities for myself, but so that I could carry out their orders. “Salute cadet, salute sir, salute commander, salute, salute, salute . . . Clarinet—ATTENTION—About face—Forward MARCH—Incline RIGHT—HALT—never look them in the eyes—never tell them who you are—what you want—if you’re hungry—if you’re in pain . . . Kneel, bend over, bend further, deeper, as deeply as you can . . . The deeper, the better!” I just couldn’t take it anymore, Roula. On the first voyage I saw the Naval Officer rubbing and polishing a sharp knife on his uniform. When we got to Morocco I went out a bought one too, just like in the Kavvadias poem. It’s a good thing I read it because, “since I have no one I hate enough to kill in this world/ I’m sometimes afraid I’ll turn the blade on myself.”

“Every time you go out with your old classmates you come home different,” Roula told him as she took away his glass of whisky.

“You know what the Teacher said to me? I’ll tell you Roula,” Mimis said as he reached out and got his drink back. “‘What is our duty?’ asked the old curmudgeon. Then he said: ‘If you’re a wolf you eat, and if you’re a lamb you get eaten! God is the biggest wolf; he eats lambs and tigers alike, whole!’”

“Did he say this to you recently?”

“Yeah, when I saw him the other night during our gathering at the tavern and he even invited me out to his house in Tripoli.

He said I should come down and we could do a little betting on football. You know what that reminded me of? A time when we were in the middle of the Red Sea and our ship hit a Chinese container late at night. The force of the collision threw me out of my bunk and I ran up on deck to see what was happening.

I saw the bow going up in flames because of the fuel tanks up front. We all grabbed the hoses to put out the fire. The Chinese ship drifted away but we saw three or four of our Filipino sailors, who had been out front, becoming trapped by the fire.

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They didn’t know where to go. We doused them with water but the water only pushed the fire towards them. “Jump into the sea,” ‘an officer yelled out. Having no choice, they jumped.

Someone started yelling, “Sharks! They’re going to be eaten alive by the sharks!” We all flew to the railing and pointed the spotlight to see what was happening while tossing them life preservers. The unlucky men who had jumped off the port side began to scream in terror because sharks had already started to circle around them in the water. The men on the starboard side weren’t in danger yet. We got word to the captain to stop the ship so that we could lower the lifeboat and save them. The Captain said: “Impossible. I have to keep on course because there’s damage to the boat and the water has started leaking in.” We yelled back that the men were about to get mauled by sharks. “I called the coastguard to come pick them up,” said the second in command. “What can we do? Let the boat sink to save four Filipinos?” I looked down at the water. One of the men was already being ripped apart by the savage shark. I ran up to the bridge to find the Captain. “Captain, have mercy, by the grace of God,” I said, shaking him. “Those men are going to be devoured by the sharks! One already has been, nobody’s going to survive . . . stop so we can lower the lifeboat.” And do you know what his response was? “God protects me when everyone else drowns and only I survive. God protects me even when everyone else survives and I’m the only one to drown.” The Teacher had quoted the same line to us at school. I remembered it being from the Last Temptation. Enough was enough . . . I told him that Kazantzakis wasn’t for sailors. I told the Teacher the same thing, the last time I saw him.”

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* *

*

Mimis had been tormented by his doubts about the Teacher for years now. These thoughts were now becoming even more intense as Roula added to fuel to the fire with her questions; she could see that something was eating away at him.

“You shouldn’t let things like these make you become bitter,” she told him, stroking his salt-toughened arms. “Nothing should poison our lives.”

Over the days that she was saying such things to him, Mimis appeared one morning clutching in his hand a paper that had been delivered from court by the bailiff.

“That’s all we needed, Kiki has finally woken up,” Mimis said, waving the piece of paper in front of her. “Your lovely sister has filed a law suit demanding half of my assets. She claims that since she was married to me for so long she has a right to a fifty percent share.”

Roula wiped off her hands on her apron and snatched the piece of paper from his hand. She read it over before throwing it on the table and saying loudly and angrily: “I was the one you kept you on dry land, I made you what you are, I took care of her children like they were my own after she abandoned them and now that fool thinks she’s going to throw us out onto the street? Where is she? Is she on Poros?”

“She’s here from what I know,” Mimis answered.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to straighten her out once and for all,” she told Mimis confidently.

He had never seen Roula so upset before. He had never seen her break into a sweat and wipe her forehead. He had never seen her eyes wet with tears, because she had never cried in front of him before. He had never seen her hands shake out of anger and frustration. He hadn’t seen anything yet . . . After

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taking a few deep breaths, her chest rising and falling rapidly, she approached Mimis, looked into his eyes and said: “Remember that I said that I won’t allow anything to poison our relationship? Make sure you do the same. Leave Kiki to me,” she said decisively, putting her hand over her heart.

A few days later, Mimis was getting ready to leave for a short trip. He was going to Patras and Pyrgos to show a few shops some specimens of parrots, fish and lizards to see if they wanted to order from him, as well as a few snakes and a monkey at a circus in Tripolis.

“I’ve been thinking Roula, since I’m going to be in Tripolis anyway, I might pay the Teacher a visit. He lives there now and he’s invited me so many times. I gave him a call and he asked me to stay over but I’ll be back the next day.”

“When are you leaving?” Roula asked, bringing no objection to his plan.

“I was thinking of leaving this afternoon so that I can get to Patras tonight, sleep there, and after finishing my work there in the morning, go to Pyrgos. From there, I would head up to Tripolis to spend the night at the Teacher’s house and have a glass of wine with him. The next day I’ll visit the circus to do whatever I have to do there and come home.”

Roula looked at him for a moment without saying anything as if she was contemplating something. Then she said: “You should go but don’t let him get to you again, that’s all.”

“I feel sorry for him, Roula. He’s retired and helpless and he doesn’t have any children of his own. He tells us that we’re his children.”

“Alright,” Roula said.

Mimis went down to the basement where he kept a few spare cages, baskets and special glass and plastic containers with a few snakes, lizards and other creatures. In a beautiful, large 266

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cage he had an African Grey parrot that he had also trained to recite Cavafy. “As if you’ve been ready for a while and are brave Mimis,” the parrot said, making him laugh. He repeated the line a few times, as he always did when he saw him.

He prepared the cages with some of the creatures that he was taking with him: lizards, two red scorpions, a spider, a potable aquarium with a few fish and a big basket that contained the snake—an African mamba. Lately his customers had been requesting more dangerous and aggressive creatures, which is why he was taking these specimens along with him.

He kept them under double locks and was careful about who he sold them to. Since they were what the customers wanted, why not bring them with him. The more dangerous the species, the bigger their adrenaline rush they said; why should it matter to him? Mimis raised the price accordingly. At that moment Roula came halfway down the stairs and paused. The light that filtered through the door into the dark basement illuminated half her face, transforming its round sweetness into something cruel and hard.

“Before you go, I would like for us to finish a task,” she said coldly.

“What task? Mimis asked.

She approached him and pointed at the clear plastic container that held the spider.

“Put that in here,” she ordered, holding out a small square cardboard box.

“What do you want the spider for Roula?” Mimis asked.

“Isn’t it a Black Widow?” she asked dryly.

“No, I sold the Black Widow. This one’s even worse, an Australian spider that a customer traded in. He didn’t want it anymore because it was too deadly. Do you see these two fangs? They can slice right through your fingernail if it bites you. It has a neurotoxic poison that paralyzes the body’s central 267

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nervous system,” Mimis said proudly, as if he were showing her a precious gem. “Just look at her,” he said holding the box up.

“She can kill a man in ten minutes flat. The poison causes the glands to go crazy, destroying the body’s cells!”

“Good. Put it in the box. I’m going to turn your ex-wife into your dead ex-wife,” Roula said like a real shrew.

Mimis carefully picked up the spider, with a touch of revulsion, and put it in the box.

“Didn’t I tell you that I wouldn’t let anything poison us?”

Roula asked sternly. “Now come with me,” she said firmly as she pulled him out of the basement.

They got into her car and drove down to the port from their home in Askeli. They parked the car next to the school and walked the rest of the way to the town square where the city hall was located. It was four o’clock in the afternoon at the beginning of summer. The shops were closed and everyone was taking their afternoon siesta. Carrying the box containing the spider, the couple walked down an alley and came out onto the square, then they climbed up a narrow pedestrian street with broad cobblestone steps. They quietly approached an old house where Kiki, Roula’s sister, lived. It was Kourtis the doctor’s house and Kiki was asleep in the ground floor bedroom that looked onto the street. Roula was well aware of all this already.

She stood on her tiptoes and peered through the gaps of the shuttered window. She saw Kiki sleeping alone on the bed. She already knew that she would be alone. She had gone to see the lawyer who was working on the case to take their money and the house.

Roula took the box and tipped the spider through a gap in the shutters, letting it fall into the room. She turned and nodded her head that it was time to go. They hurried away down the same steps they had climbed just moments before. They were

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almost running by the time they got to their car. They made it home without anyone noticing a thing.

“Now get in your car and go,” she told Mimis.

Mimis loaded his things into the car without speaking. He took the boxes containing all the creatures, the aquarium and the snake basket and got ready to leave. “As if you’ve been ready for a while and are brave Mimis,” the parrot repeated once more.

He kissed Roula goodbye, got into his car and departed.

Mimis finished up his business pretty quickly. He gave Roula a call when he got to Pyrgos the next day.

“Make sure you’re back by Sunday because we have a funeral to attend,” Roula said, without going into detail.

He reached the Teacher’s house around dusk. It wasn’t what he expected at all. It was a very old village farmhouse with whitewashed stone walls and a wooden roof that was sagging under the weight of its shingles. His host was waiting for him in the open doorway, smiling. As the Teacher led him inside, Mimis noticed how small and spare it was. There was only one room which served as both a living room and bedroom. The wooden furniture was very old. There was a chest of drawers with a marble top which a television set sat on, a bed with a metal frame and a table with four wooden chairs around it.

A bare light bulb hung down from the ceiling by an electric wire. Some old photographs of his peasant ancestors hung on the walls, there was a fireplace and a little mirror with, “Good Morning” written across it. Around the fireplace, wooden boards balanced on bricks served as shelves, on which stacks of books were piled. Across from the fireplace, on the opposite side of the room was a small, low door that led to the kitchen.

A second bed was also pushed against this wall along with a little table, a refrigerator, a built-in oven, a woodstove, and a stone sink.

The Teacher welcomed him and showed him the house.

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“This is where I practice my own Asceticism,” he said, smiling. “Now go bring in your things. I made up your bed in the kitchen because I sleep in the other room.”

“Isn’t your wife here, Teacher?” Mimis asked him.

“My wife’s in Athens. She teaches at a high school there and hasn’t retired yet. She comes to see me on the weekends.

I live here to take care of the olive grove and the animals that my father-in-law left us. This is all hers, I don’t have anything.

I’m just a clump of mud, as Kazantzakis would say,” he said, laughing.

They had a pleasant evening together. His host grilled him lamb chops and poured him some lovely red wine. He laid out olives, sliced tomatoes, onions, and a fresh loaf of buckwheat bread. Mimis shared his news and took him out to the car to see the exotic creatures that he imported. The Teacher was impressed by the African snake.

“It’s one of the most lethal snakes in the world,” Mimis said proudly, showing off the mamba. “The venom released in a single bite is strong enough to kill between twenty and forty people! It’s very aggressive and can stand straight up, even up to a full meter tall. It’s fast too; it can move at speeds of up to twenty kilometers an hour.”

“Take a look at the animals,” the Teacher said, “and believe me—you too were once like that too.”

As usual he went off on his own tangent. But this time, Mimis wanted to corner him.

“Teacher, I was wondering if you could tell me . . .” he interrupted as some point, “ . . . when you were teaching at the Academy, why didn’t you do anything when we complained about being beaten at school? We were only thirteen years old and they humiliated and terrified us.”

“Me?” he asked, surprised. “I . . . lived outside the Academy and didn’t know what went on while I was off the premises.”

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“You didn’t know what went on?” Mimis asked in disbelief.

“How could you not? The whole place was buzzing with the news. We came to class bruised and so exhausted from our manual punishments that we would fall asleep on our desks.

There were boys who ran away and never came back and you mean to tell me that you didn’t know what was happening in that hellhole?”

“No, I didn’t know that the older students would beat you. Besides you all honored your code of silence and no one reported any abuse. It was a military school after all, it was bound to have a few hazing rituals. The rules that applied there are different from the rules of real life!”

The Teacher saw that Mimis didn’t believe what he was telling him and thought he was making excuses, but there was nothing else he could say. After staring at his wine glass for a few minutes he suddenly said: “Listen up, Mimis. You’re a grown man, don’t dwell on what happened to you when you were a thirteen year old boy. It’s doesn’t do you any good to go around saying that you were beaten. You know what the poet says? “If you can’t make your life what you wish it to be/ than at least try/ not to disgrace it.”

The Teacher had found an easy way out. If he was ever in a tight spot and couldn’t find anything else to say, he would come up with the wise words of someone else, a saying, or a line of poetry and would end up giving another life lesson.

He overlooked his own life and his own actions, conveniently forgetting his mistakes and vices; he slithered around the issues he didn’t want to face, like a snake. Mimis remembered that he had told them that the mind “had to be agile and quick,” mimicking the movement of a snake with his hand as he spoke.

He had said, “don’t punch a knife because you’ll hurt your hand.” He was just as loathsome and dangerous as a real snake.

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know if it would cure you, or kill you. “Oh god, where’s my little Moroccan dagger now so that I can stab him in the heart and be done with it?” Mimis thought. “I loved him up until now because the others loved him but I can’t stand watching him play dumb. No, it has to stop! I didn’t know who to kill with my little African dagger but now I do. I hate him. He deserves to have his heart ripped out of his chest, if only just to see if it’s filled with blood or oil like the kind he squeezes out of the olives. I need to see if it works like a human heart or like a ship’s engine instead—humming and thumping inside of his chest!”

“Do you want a little more wine, Mimis?” the Teacher asked, after seeing that Mimis’s head was tottering from fatigue.

“No, I’d better go to bed, Teacher” Mimis said, getting up abruptly.

He pushed away the chairs and took a few of the plates and glasses into the kitchen. He fell fast asleep, without taking off his clothes or saying goodnight. He was thinking of snakes and he even dreamt about them. He stepped on their bodies and they wrapped themselves around his arms and neck and everywhere. They had shiny eyes, poisonous forked tongues and sharp fangs, but they spoke to him. They spoke in human tongue, like the parrot. The same thing, over and over . . . but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. Roula suddenly appeared among them, holding some of them in her hands like an Egyptian goddess. She whispered the words softly in the hiss of a snake, and then he understood.

“Don’t let others poison you . . .”

He woke up from his nightmare, his eyes wide with fear. He knew that phrase—his mistress had said it to him. He looked around in the dark, trying to figure out where he was. His head hurt from drinking too much wine. He looked down at his watch. It was past three in the morning. He slowly got up and

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gently pushed open the door, which separated his room from the Teacher’s. He saw him sleeping motionlessly on the bed.

“Snake,” he whispered with hatred, through clenched lips. He looked around once more, standing there in his socks before softly stepping outside into the garden through the kitchen door. He went over to his car and took the basket that held the African mamba out of the back seat. He brought it into the kitchen and set it down in front of the door that led to the other room. He silently pushed the basket into the room where the Teacher was asleep. He grabbed a long-handled wooden spoon from the kitchen and opened the lid of the basket. Then he quickly shut the door.

He wouldn’t have to wait long. The snake’s neurotoxin would cause paralysis and asphyxiation within ten minutes of its injection into the bloodstream. The nervous system shuts down and the heart stops beating.

He sat in a chair and rested his head on his hands while he waited.

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