Excerpt
Zigzag through the Bitter Orange Trees
by Ersi Sotiropoulos
Lia was woken by the rain, and propped herself up on her elbows. The windows were curtainless, and the spectacle of water beating fiercely against the panes suddenly brought back the flavor of a long-lost morning. Love me, love me tender… Who’d said that? It was a song. One morning when she and some other girls had played hooky and gone to the seaside. June—no. May, because it was still chilly. Walking under a cloudy sky they’d met three fishermen and pretended they were American kids. “Fishes, fishes, we want fishes,” Fifi had shouted, scampering barefoot along the beach. She’d taken off her school pinafore and hitched up her skirt around her waist, showing off her famous legs. Her nickname was the Octopus Diva. The fishermen were entranced, and gave her a basketful of red mullet. And after that? After that it started raining and they all got soaked. Love me tender, went the transistor, with a wailing note from a saxophone at the end of the refrain.There were six beds in the ward, but hers was the only occupied one. The last patient had been discharged the previous afternoon. It was so marvelous being left on her own, listening to the noise the water made as it roared down the gutter. Love me, love, sucker. But there was something else, too. Water in the fish soup—when was that? She couldn’t recall. A child bending his head over his plate as though they’d given him a scolding. Maybe he’s crying? Yes, he’s crying, tears dropping into the fish soup. But that’s not it, or not all of it. There’s rainwater in the fish soup, no doubt about it. A veranda with geraniums, and asset table. They’re spending the summer in the country, it’s late August. Her brother with his clean-shaven scalp. He takes a spoonful of soup and spits it back into the plate. Someone smacks him. And then the rain starts. All the rest pick up their plates and run indoors. Her brother stays there, nailed to his chair, head bent over the fish soup. His narrow shoulders shake with his sobs, while the rain forms a thin trickle running down from hairline to nose, and dripping into the soup bowl.
And what else? What else? Go on, say it. Bodies emerging from a sleepless night and walking for a while side by side without a word spoken. Dawn has broken, and they sway slightly, realizing, in this first light, that the other body is not their own. Leaving a night’s lovemaking behind, both taking away their own share of skin. Bodies that advance without moving as it begins to rain. What’s been written into the skin cannot be erased, they’re thinking. The mornings pile up. How many such mornings exist in the course of a life? Three, four, maybe ten at most. Always the same. Trying to keep your skin in place. Walking in the rain out of sheer inertia.
The rain had eased up. Very soon the nurses would be doing their rounds. Today the Prize Student was on duty—a course-featured youth with a stupid short-sighted stare. And white clogs that echoed all the way down the corridor. But how can I know? How is it that I remember that scene, and no other: my brother hunched over his bowl and crying in the rain? I was inside. I was eating. I detested fish soup, but after what had happened I dared not protest. I could see his back, his heaving shoulders, and I could imagine, only too well, the fury and despair caged in that small body. Imagine it, not see it. I was sitting near the window. I could see the rain lashing the geraniums, the earth swelling, turning into mud. I could imagine that he was unhappy. I was capable of knowing this, not imagining it. I could have known. I didn’t want to know. Why not? I was a little kid, and scared. A lie. I was capable of knowing, but didn’t want to.
“What a terrible storm, good morning,” said the cleaning woman as she came in. She picked up the wastebasket to empty it, and looked around in a preoccupied way. The angry stomp of clogs could be heard approaching from the next ward.
“Idiota Furioso.”
“What?” asked the cleaning woman.
Nothing, nothing. She shook her head.
“Good morning, good morning, just as well it’s cooled off, right?”
Right, dummy. He was pushing the trolley in front of him; he left it beside the bed and, without looking at her, began to prepare the syringe, the butterfly needle, and the rubber tourniquet for taking a blood sample from her.
“Could you please ask someone else to do this?”
He stared at her from behind his thick glasses as though seeing an extraterrestial.
“I can do anything anyone else can,” he snarled impatiently.
“My arm bruised black and blue last time.”
“Let me do my job.” He bent over her, holding the rubber tourniquet, ready to tie it around her arm. “I know exactly where the vein is—“
“No!” she jumped out of bed and ran barefoot to the bathroom, dragging the I.V. drip with its stand behind her.
It was a small room, warm and damp, that smelled of something indefinable, not chlorine, not alcohol, but some out-of-date and forgotten odor, which had permeated the walls and was now evaporating, leaving its imprint behind. The steamy atmosphere of a Turkish bath. It was always nice to come in here and be on her own for a bit. Outside she head the loud tones of the nurse, who’d made for the physicians’ office and was lodging a complaint. Yap yap yap. Usually there were three bedpans on the tiled floor of the shower. Today one was missing. Must be some new bedridden patient. There was no soap or toilet paper, each patient supplied her own. “Nobody loves us, so hospitals are just the place for us,” she’d sometimes say when she had friends visit and wanted to amuse them. At first the laughs would be a little forced: some found her eccentric, while others suspected a serious problem with her health. Then she’d raise the stakes, bluff. She’d say how great it is when you’re ill, that a fever gives you the best high of all, and that the wildest sex happens right after surgery when you’re still dopey from the anesthetic. And that once, in the intensive-care unit, she’d seen a two-headed penis—“A two-headed penis! At last!” a woman gallery owner exclaimed at this, after which she abruptly lapsed into a catatonic silence.
Hmm. Her friends were beginning to get bored. Hmm. Hmm. Some hangers-on tagged along to begin with because they didn’t have anything better to do, and kept on because it was all free entertainment. But she didn’t really know how to bluff. She wasn’t a good poker player, that she did know. And her friends, one after the other, were beginning to slip away.
In the meantime—
Someone was knocking at the bathroom door.
Professor Kalotychos, very stiff and exasperated.
Come out of there.
You’re not a child.
All this is nonsense.