Let Me Explain You (25 page)

“Don't worry,” Stavros Stavros boasted, “when I get her to America, she'll have such a good time even the president will hear about it.”

“America.”

Stavros Stavros nodded. “No nosy old priests there. At least none to spy on me.”

“Tell me, Mavrakis”—the
pappas
leaned in, ouzo shining from the corners of his mouth—“what kinds of things would you keep from the priests?”

Stavros Stavros, unnerved, examined the mugs. They had browned over the years like the teeth of the men who drank from them; they could get only so clean. “Nothing,” he said.

“You have worries about this girl?”

Before Stavros Stavros could answer, a rustling came from the corner of the room. The men were waking. Soon they would demand sweet boiled coffee, toast. The
pappas
stood. “We'll talk again, Mavrakis. I'll have to ask around about your America.”

Stavros Stavros did not know how to tell the
pappas
that Dina was strange. OK, she was American. OK, maybe he didn't understand American girls. Sometimes they were nice, fun, happy to climb fences and talk about California, interested in his music, wanting to dance close for everyone to see. Other times they cried over nothing, got angry at their innocent fiancés, then demanded to go to disco. While Greek girls got fixed up, put on earrings, American girls didn't even shower regularly. When he told Dina he liked her hair to be nice for his friends, she went into the kitchen and sawed off large chunks with a meat cleaver. He watched her raid her grandmother's medicine cabinet.

“What are you looking for?”

“Medicine.”

“You're sick?”

She cackled. “Can't you tell?” She found some pills, swallowed them without water. Stavros Stavros felt something hard, like a drachma, going down his own throat.

It's not like he could back out of the marriage—it would be a disgrace to his family name. He just wanted Dina to know that, when they got to New York, party time was over. Not that he didn't like to have a good time, he liked to have a better time than any of his eleven brothers, but once they were married, they would need to go after things that mattered.

“Work, succeeding, a house, a business, children to carry on the Mavrakis name,” he said. “That's what matters.”

She smirked. “Why?”

Stavros Stavros was stunned. “What do you mean? What else is there?”

She didn't answer.

“What else matters?”

There was a pause. “I don't know.”

That, to him, proved two things. First, she was too young to know what was important. Second, he could show her what mattered. She'd love him even more for it.

“The only thing in the world that matters to me, to anybody,” he clarified, “is respect.”

She said nothing. He took that as a good sign.

“You'll see,” he told her. “It will be a good feeling when your family sees they were wrong. It will make up for all the bad feelings that you had on the way.”

The second time the
pappas
came to see Stavros Stavros, he was working behind Onus's counter. It was late, the place empty. Pools of light swam in puddles of drink. Stavros Stavros flipped the chairs upside down so that they could rest, because tomorrow morning meant another day of sweaty thighs, flatulence. He lined up a row of near-empty bottles. In their bellies waited drips of clear
tsikoudia
. His job was to catch them.

The
pappas
removed the wooden slat that closed the front door and entered without knocking. He caught Stavros Stavros with his middle finger deep in a bottle's mouth. “You practicing for your wedding night?” he asked.

Stavros Stavros let go of the bottle. It made a relieved popping sound.

“Better keep practicing. If you do it that way, Mavrakis, she might retaliate.”

Stavros Stavros wished he could laugh about it, but he knew the
pappas
could see the shame roasting his ears. He would make Dina hide behind a pomegranate tree whenever they passed the
pappas
or his father on the street, that was how prudish he was.

The
pappas
took off his hat and placed it on the counter, his thick damp black hair uncurling. Without the clerical garb, he looked like an uncle come to visit. “How about some of those fat green
elitses
Onus likes to keep to himself?”

Stavros Stavros dragged out a stool and climbed up. He reached behind the jarred tomatoes. The
pappas
did not request bread or cheese, he liked the purity of the fruit. The
pappas
bit into an olive, his three fingers wrapped around its slick body. “They cannot have olives like these in America.”

Stavros Stavros popped an olive into his mouth, pushed it to his cheek. He liked the way the juices squeezed out of the flesh. The
pappas
was right, this kind of ripe was pure Crete.

“What is it about America that makes you willing to give up your home?”

Stavros Stavros said, “Everything will be different there.”

“You will be a foreigner there. Do you know that? Are you ready for that?”

“I'm a foreigner here.”

The
pappas
tucked two olives into his cheeks. Without force, because he knew how young men resented a priest's opinion in moments like these, he suggested, “Why not stay in Greece for a year or two? That way, if you ever need it, help is nearby.”

“I can handle my wife, don't worry about that.”

“Of course you can,” the
pappas
answered, “all Greeks can handle their wives. Greeks were born for that. All I'm saying is that America will still be America. Whenever you want her, she will be waiting just on the other side of the water.”

“The whole point is to get off this island.”

“I know,” the
pappas
said. “That is what concerns me.”

Stavros Stavros said nothing.

“Have you thought about the possibility that you will get there and have to come back?”

“I won't be back, you can bank on that.”

The
pappas
touched Stavros Stavros's knuckles with his greasy fingers, but only for a moment. “You are marrying yourself into a kind of trouble you know nothing about.”

This, he never expected from the
pappas
. Until now, he had always treated Stavros Stavros with respect. He had never before seen him as a fool. “I know what I'm doing.”

The
pappas
plucked another olive. “I am going to counsel your parents about this engagement. I don't believe in it.”

He would do it, Stavros Stavros knew, and his parents would call it off. All of Stavros Stavros's plans would collapse. He took away the bowl just as the
pappas
was reaching for the last olive. It was an insult, more so than throwing a drink in the
pappa
s
's face, but he was done with being treated like a child by every backward villager. They stood in the silence of his disrespect.

The
pappas
held a pit between his front teeth and flicked it into an ashtray. “You are too stubborn to see what you're doing,” he said, “but you will learn. The rest of the world can be just as stubborn as a Greek.” He tucked his hat under his arm and pushed back the stool. “You will find out that when you get into the chicken feed, Stavro, you get pecked by chickens.”

The two-hour ceremony would have ended forty minutes earlier, except that the
pappas
stopped to pray for a herd of untamable
kri-kri
to bust through the wooden doors and interrupt the exchange of vows. Yannis Fafoutakis, best man, stood jolly at Stavros Stavros's side. “I'm jealous, Galopoula,” he whispered, breath buzzing like a wasp. “You're the first of us to get out of this termite hole.”

That night, the whole village watching, Stavros Stavros finally proved his manhood: on the dance floor. With the pomp of the traditional
syrtos
that suggested respite before battle, the resting of the soul, he rejected the
pappa
s
's interference, his mother's control, his father's weakness. When he felt like showing off, he showed off. During one of the counterclockwise dances, he vaguely felt Dina next to him, linked by nothing more than a white handkerchief. He saw her only through the haze of warm wine and public attention. Him, Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, in front of all of the bachelors, in front of all of his brothers. The way it should be. They had to wait for his every step, his every flourish, before they could move a foot. A toe, even, because any premature moves would trip the next person. The
pappas
, feigning intoxication, did not lead any dances, but Stavros Stavros did not care if he did not get the priest's blessing. The
pappas
refused to lie, even with his feet, but what did that matter when Stavros Stavros was leaving in just a few days?

Stavros Stavros was fat and full at the end of the night. He had ruled the village, his family, and it made him feel virile. All he needed now was to deflower a virgin.

Everyone knew it was a man's right to unmake a woman. Everyone knew it was their right to see proof of the unmaking. It was customary for the groom's parents to drape the white sheets of a newly consummated couple against the house, the copper crop visible from way down the road. In the history of the village, few women had ever failed to bleed (a cripple, a slut, a rape victim) and that was because women were pure, women were pious, women were chaste, and, when they weren't, women were shrewd enough to cover up their bloodlessness. Even their boyfriends, who panted themselves into premarital sex with their soon-to-be brides, were always satisfied when the warm rusty liquid bubbled up on the night of the wedding. Concerned with shame and self-preservation, these women knew to tuck pouches of sow's blood inside themselves. Dina, who hadn't been from the island in years, knew nothing and did nothing. She just lay there beneath her grunting, fat, full husband.

Stavros Stavros coached himself to keep going. The first time was always difficult for the woman, especially if the man was more shovel than man. Which he was tonight, especially. Then he realized the problem. He scrambled off the bed.

“There's no blood.”

Dina pulled her underwear up from her knees. “You said you wanted an American.”

Stavros Stavros yanked his shorts on. “Not this American,” he said. “No, no, no.” He couldn't believe this was happening. The night had been perfect, everything as it should be. Now, he was facing clean sheets. Stavros Stavros ripped them away. “You aren't going to sleep. You're going to help me figure this out.”

Dina spun and pulled the sheets free, too fast for him to anticipate. “There is nothing to figure out. You got what you got, just like I got what I got.”

His chest heaved. He wanted to shout, tell her what a
sixameni
she was—there had never been a dirtier bitch—but that would send his mother running. Here he was, waiting for their wedding night like it was something special, something needing patience and honor, and meanwhile Dina,
poutana
, had taken all those dirty pipes and swallowed all that dick-food. But he couldn't let that thought overwhelm him right now. Right now, he had to resolve this before anyone discovered their shameful secret. Stavros Stavros tore the sheets off Dina. He saw her, as he shut the door, at the bottom of the bed, a crumpled person.

In the dark hallway, he tripped over a potted plant, scattering dirt. He bit his cheek to keep from crying out. If anyone woke now, he would be a joke. Stavros Stavros Mavrakis, shoeless, pantsless, with a broken wife and a broken toe. His big toe complained that he was a fool, alone in his misery, but he was not going to stand here and be ridiculed by his family or his own foot. He limped to the porch, balled up the sheets beneath the stairs leading to the roof. Then he limped out to the chicken coop.