The Scapegoat (6 page)

On evenings when she was going out to the theater, Mother would take me into her room and lay her dresses on the bed so I could help her choose. We picked out earrings and necklaces. She sang and clapped and tickled me, pulled on satin gloves, spritzed herself with perfume. She always left in a rush. She would kiss the air around me, so as not to muss me with her lipstick. She left the other dresses on the bed and the jewelry boxes open. When she was gone I would try on her clothes, her jewelry, her pumps, posing in front of the three-paneled mirror. I was pretty.

Father worried that I would marry too young. But Mother would reply that
a woman’s marriage is her career—which is to say
,
the sooner the better
, she added, pinching my behind. When I told them I was going to become a stewardess, they didn’t show the enthusiasm I had expected, but didn’t object, either. Father, who had lost piles of money during the war, not to mention Mother’s entire dowry, said that it was a fine job, well remunerated.
And you’ll meet plenty of respectable gentlemen
, Mother said, smiling.

She was right, I did. I even came close to marrying one of them. His name was Jan, he was Swedish. He worked for his father’s company, and he was in line to be president. He was polite and obliging. He entertained me for three days in Stockholm, in December, just before Christmas. We ate reindeer with elderberry sauce. It smelled so awful I thought I would vomit. But the worst part was the darkness—a thick darkness that enveloped people and houses and everything else. It was only light for three
hours each day. And it was a weak, consumptive light that came out looking frightened and hid again soon after.

I made some excuse and left early. I wouldn’t have stayed another day for all the world. My soul shrank in that darkness, I thought I would die.

Later on I met Jack. He was twice as old as me, and twice as tall, too. I had met very few Americans in my life, but he certainly stood out. His eyes shone as if he had a fever. He laughed out loud, and he hugged me so tight he left a mark. He danced like a movie star. He loved life and let it show. He had friends everywhere. With him the day was a thousand hours long. There was time for everything.

He asked me to marry him. He kneeled in the middle of the street one day and kissed the toe of my shoe. Passersby were watching, but he didn’t care. He took the ring out of his pocket and said,
Will you marry me?
without any warning, without any wasted words. I said yes right away, and he kissed me so hard my lip split.
It’ll be like sugar, the two of us together
, he promised. He wasn’t one for words, he preferred actions.

After we were married he asked me if I knew any
good communists
he could talk to, if we had anyone in the family
who’s in the Party, any reds, a man I can trust
, someone who could arrange an interview with the rebel General. I laughed.
So that’s why you married me
, I teased.

I did in fact have a third cousin who was a rebel fighter. Jack insisted that we go visit him in jail. I still remembered Nikitas in shorts, stealing candies from me and shoving them all in his mouth at once. Stuffed, saliva running down his chin, and him laughing so hard he almost choked. The young man who came and stood before me now was as thin as a branch. His eyes had seen war, his hands had killed. I didn’t recognize him.
Nikitas
, I whispered. He was only a year older than me. A vein pulsed on his cheekbone. He saw me notice. If he could, he would have ripped it out then and there.

Jack asked me to tell Nikitas he was a reporter.
An American
, he added, since that usually opened doors. He would go wherever they told him to, would follow their instructions to the letter, as long as he could interview the General.

—Your husband is crazy, was Nikitas’s response. Or he’s pretending to be, he added, not even looking in Jack’s direction.

We left empty-handed. Jack had plenty of enemies at that point. He’d been making a stink to people in high places in the government, because the American aid packages weren’t being distributed to the families of communists in the villages.

—From a political perspective it’s not unjust, I heard him saying to someone over the phone. I understand your position, we don’t feed the hand that bites, or kills. But, my dear friend, they’re letting women and children go hungry.

Antrikos, our friend in Athens, warned me.

—You need to reel him in, he said. Two days ago, Jack met with the Minister of the Interior. They say Jack was shouting about the riots breaking out all over the country. He accused Rimaris of letting his men pick and choose where the American aid ended up. Sincerity isn’t a solution or a cure, Antrikos cautioned. There are certain things we just don’t say.

Jack should have known.

We could all see it: my husband was ambitious. He wanted to be the first and the only. If anyone ever said no, he simply didn’t listen. His stubbornness brooked no denial.

—A reporter’s job is to do the things others find impossible, he told his friends with a smile.

Antrikos disagreed.

The General was the trophy they were all chasing after. No one had ever met with him, no one had any idea where he was. An interview with the leader of the rebels in his hiding place would make an international splash. If Jack could pull it off, he would return crowned with laurels. Then maybe he would calm down. We’d go to America, have a family. He would work a desk
job at the radio station, he wouldn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone anymore.

—Don’t listen to him, Antrikos advised. When this is over, something else will come to take its place. The man can’t sit still, don’t you see?

That’s when I started to notice. At restaurants he always kept his back to the wall. He slept with a revolver under his pillow. He said it was part of the job. The truth was, he lived dangerously. That’s why he took pleasure in every moment. And I admired him for that.

I was a fool. I thought life owed us something. Disasters were for other people, that’s what I thought. I’d never been denied anything.

I got out all the crystal from my dowry. I wrapped each piece carefully in rags, then packed them in barrels, in layers of hay. I would take it all to America, even the porcelain tea set for my dolls. I would have a baby girl and we’d sip tea and pretend to be ladies together. Our departure date had been set.

Auf Wiedersehen
.

Jack had been up in Salonica for days. We’d fought, that’s what the papers wrote. But I had only stayed behind to pack for our journey. Our clothes, the radio from my dowry, the embroidered sheets. The furniture he’d brought back from the Middle East. The desk, the armchairs, the bed. I had a suit made for the flight, pear green, with a cream-colored hat and gloves and a bow at the back. New clothes for a new place. A new life.

It wasn’t a serious argument. We’d have settled things with a kiss. In bed, where all our fights got resolved. Jack just didn’t want to bring me with him. He was trying to protect me. I arrived, as we had agreed, a few days later, and was told that he’d gone missing.

I was the only one who didn’t worry. I was sure he’d return. It
was a foolish but unsinkable optimism. A childish stubbornness. People commented on it, I know. Everyone else was worried, you see.

—His mule of a wife comes and goes without a care in the world, people at the hotel whispered behind my back.

I asked them to heat water, so the bath would be ready when he came back. I left him a note and went out for a walk in the town, to buy ribbon for a hem.
Make sure to shave, honey, so your whiskers don’t tickle me. I miss you. Zouzou
.

That was his pet name for me, Zouzou. He would purse his lips and say it playfully.
Zouzou, will you pour me some whiskey? Zouzou, what did you do with my newspaper? Zouzou, want me to teach you to dance jazz?
He thought it was funny that I knew how to waltz but couldn’t dance jazz. He was a wonderful dancer. He could dance for hours on end. He would pull me onto the dance floor, hold me in his arms, and I’d let myself go.

—Listen to the rhythm, he would whisper in my ear. With this kind of music, all the dancing happens below the waist. You’re from the East, you know how it goes.

He would slip his hand under my skirt so casually that no one even noticed.

—He’s handsome, your husband, Antrikos’s wife said to me one afternoon when we were getting snacks ready in the kitchen.

I liked it when other people admired him. I didn’t even mind all the crazy things he did, the fire in his belly. I preferred him that way, it was better than him clinging to my skirts
. A husband should be the master of his house
, my mother said
. And a wife should know how to manage him
, she would continue, embroidering dishtowels for my dowry
. Marriage takes work, little miss
, she lectured me when I was a girl. She taught me the rules, her rules
. First, always be attentive. Second, learn how to pamper. Third, provide beauty in the home and in your dress. Fourth, housekeepers and maids
should be good, obedient, and fat
. If I asked why they should be fat, she would shake her head.
Because a fat woman knows how to cook, my dear. And she’ll never set a house on fire
, she would continue, though she never explained what she meant by that.
Five, tell the truth to the priest, not to your husband. Six, separate bedrooms save a woman’s sleep and her marriage, too. Seven, a husband should love and care for his children. Eight, your nightgowns should be even finer than your dresses. Nine, always be a lady, except in bed. Ten, marriage is a career. It takes persistence, endurance and dedication
.

Those are the things my mother taught me. If she could, she would have opened my little girl’s brain and shoved it all in. The first time she met Jack, she gave him her hand and smiled. That night she pumped me for information. Where he lived in America, who was paying him now that he was working in Greece, if he’d ever behaved improperly with me, since she’d heard that Americans have no manners. She wasn’t too keen on the fact that he didn’t speak French. How would she tell him everything she needed him to know?

Because my beanpole, as she called him, would be taking me far from the war. We would go to live in New York. The houses there didn’t have bullet holes, as they did in Athens. The shelves in the markets were full of canned vegetables and colorful candies. We would buy a car. I would meet important people. I would wear nylon slips. I would live well.

What mattered was that I leave as soon as I could. My passport had been issued. There was nothing standing in the way. Life had been kind to us.

ARIS TSIRIGOS, ENGLISH TEACHER TO MANOLIS GRIS

He was a good student. Diligent, conscientious. He took care with his homework. At recess he didn’t run around in the courtyard with the other kids, he just sat and watched. He liked difficult
words, the ones he thought would impress people. But he didn’t know how to use them properly. When I corrected his papers I always encouraged him to write more simply, but he kept going for the big words.

He tried hard to imitate an American accent. Language requires a good ear, it’s a kind of music. I tried to explain that to those hulking teenagers, but they paid no attention. Except for Gris. He tried, he studied. He worked hard. But he never excelled. He didn’t have a good ear. He couldn’t hear the words. A clean pronunciation, basic syntax—that’s as far as he got.

To be fair, he did improve. He was one of few students who actually improved over the years.
He works like the devil
, I once said at a faculty meeting, and my fellow teachers laughed. It had gotten to where I was no longer covering his papers with red ink. His English no longer had any mistakes. But his writing was still obviously that of a foreigner, someone who would never grasp the subtle resonances, the cadence of a phrase, the way an idiom can explain everything in just a few words.

He knew that speaking English would open doors for him. That’s why he improved. He didn’t make any embarrassing mistakes, but he also never expressed exactly what was in his mind with the precision of a native speaker. He simply didn’t have the vocabulary.

He always picked up his report card himself. I only saw his mother once: standing respectfully in the door of the teachers’ office, not wanting to disturb us, since we all seemed to be busy. She was waiting for someone to look her way, to muster the courage she needed to open her mouth. The headmaster had sent for her. She left her younger ones at the entrance to the school, she must have given them strict instructions, because they stood there stock still for a long time—the guard even commented on it, said he’d never seen such obedient children. Manolis Gris’s mother was wearing black,
a widow
, we all thought. Her clothes were ragged from use and from washing. The literature teacher whispered her
enthusiastic praise of the velvet braid on the hem and cuffs of the woman’s dress,
how lovely
, she whispered to the man next to her,
with one tiny detail, she’s made that dress fashionable
. But what most of us were really admiring was her hair. Glossy and as black as a winter night. She had gathered it into a bun, but little wisps escaped from the hairpins and fell unnoticed at the nape of her neck and at her temples. She must have come at a run. Some of us raised our hands almost imperceptibly. We would happily have reached out to touch that hair. We had frozen in our seats; bent over our papers, we stole glimpses at her. After all, we were the child’s teachers, responsible for his education.

Then I suddenly remembered that Gris had misbehaved, and realized that was why his widowed mother had come running, and why the headmaster had sent for her in the first place. When I entered the classroom for third period that morning, the upper jamb of the door was missing, as we later noted in the disciplinary proceedings. Holes gaped where the nails had been, and the piece of wood that had been pulled out was laid carefully to one side.