Cleaner He stoops and wipes the surface of the small washroom cabinet: he opens the small door places two rolls of toilet paper in it, two bars of soap on the side of the sink, wipes the bowl, lucky here the bowls aren’t like the filthy ones in the army where he spent two years before emigrating to Canada; he empties the small basket with its few leftovers, luckily enough the toilet paper is discarded in the bowl…he now has one last chore: to mop the floor of the 28th floor before he’ll go down one and so on until he reaches the main floor late in the afternoon in this much-needed job he got into this foreign land especially for one who isn’t fluent in the new language, as in his case, and who although a university graduate this is the only job he could land in his early days in Canada where having a degree from another Faraway University makes not a single difference in the great scheme of things
LAMENT FOR THE YOUTH STEFANOS MESSALAS Hades was ploughing, ploughing the earth that fears Him, His rows but gravesites, His seed only poison. Hades was ploughing with His black ox which blew hard at each stroke of the merciless goad. Where the ploughshare passed, it felled the trees, uprooted homes and wrecked the world, and you, young lad, what sought you on His path? In your mother’s embraces, in your father’s too, you were raised with kisses, and concern looked after you. Oh, youth, why do you not remain with us? You thought to sleep inside the earth was sweet, you did not know, oh child, a grave needs company, that in it you are destitute, an orphan. You will not find your father’s bones arrayed where you’ll descend, but you’ll lie down in loneliness. Oh, child, why do you want to leave? But that young stripling heard us while a thousand worlds and golden dreams around him seemed to shine. He smiled back sweetly as if to say “the grave, my father isn’t loneliness but rather life and love.” Hades was ploughing, ploughing, and didn’t rest, but day and night His ploughshare worked, it took the sprouts and hid them in the soil and soundlessly, alone, He passed and furrowed. Oh, father and mother, he is gone, the grave is covered, bid farewell to your child on his last voyage with your last kiss and bitter tears. He’ll sail as if he were a bird, and I wish I were with him, to see my daughter in Hade’s abode.
Reality The ship entered the αρεα of the thick fog. A bell echoes desperately at prow: the route is full of innumerable dangers now. On the bridge, however, the sleepless and bewildered captain watches and drives the ship safely. The captain … his eyes, his glance. Yes, indeed, his glance is everything, like now that his glance, straight, strong, mercilessly pierces through the thick layers of grey pleats of fog and inside the dark paths of the human psyche, into the dark sanctuary of Fate, it calms the wildest and roughest seas, it enters and stands like a guard into the hovel of the poor fisherman, it saunters tenderly around the anchors, the sleeping baby, the spread nets and finally, it comes, settles and serenely rests, next to the quiet light of the lamp. Certainly, the captain’s profession isn’t captain. He has different choices, different longings, and specialties. Different things attract him and in different things he’s involved. Yet, when the ship is in danger, they all run to him, who although they don’t see him as a man, they allot to him and he accepts the responsibility of many souls. He, who has no joy but knows of it, who isn’t free, yet yearns for freedom and struggles while he hopes. Let it be known: if the Fates never visited his baby cradle, Fates, Witches and pure Fairies would come next to his deathbed. The figurehead of the ship knows all this and loves him. She’s, his lover. This wild and hot girl with her undone black hair, fiery red lips and the light-blue belt goes and finds him secretly every night and they make love ‘together’ and chit-chat erotically for hours. One moonlit night: “Don’t forget me”, she says to him, “because I’ll die” One day when he was in a thick forest, rain caught up with him. He sheltered himself in the tree hollow and waited. The rain intensified. Among all the rain he noticed a few tree trunks burned by the fires of wayfarers and many pinecones scattered around the soil. Another time, a summer noon, he stood by a water well. Further away was a tower. A girl came, like Rebeckah to get some water. She puts the pitcher down, goes close to him, uncovers her voluptuous breasts and says, “Don’t touch them, they are roses and drop their petals; only caress them” Then again, “No, do as you wish with them, they are yours, my sweet man, I gift them to you.” This woman, who he fell in love with passionately, one night as the winds were blowing, he waited for her and he saw her going down to the harbour. She ran and cried along the deserted quay. She had tied her raincoat around her waist with a leather strap and the strong wind sometimes glued it on her body and other times it whipped her apron wildly and took away along with her voice, her long hair too.
Jester As though going through the pages of a porno-magazine we arrived at the house of the jester. With his back against the wall he contemplated on how short life was and how everyone was justified right after their death. In a moment of paroxysm he grew wings and said, ‘I know how to make you laugh’, something we never doubted. After all the king never doubted his creativity, for this he hired him, however we always doubted the king and the stains on our pants were witnesses of infidelity, until finally He stood up, the Übermensch and smiling at the jester He hugged him saying: ‘my brother, you are my chosen one.’
That was a strange kind of animal. I didn’t think it was a pig, too slender and bony, and too big and fleshy to be any kind of bird I knew. My turn came, and I sank the gourd and extracted it with the stock, which I drank and found to be dull but palatable. As the liquid diminished, Urquía took the charred carcass and tore it apart, giving a piece to each man. I couldn’t see clearly, for she had her back tome, but when she gave Conopoima, who sat beside me, his piece, my stomach lurched. It was a little hand with fingers curled up by the heat. Stories of cannibalism came to my mind. Was it a child we were eating? Conopoima took the hand and with his teeth peeled the fingers of their flesh, nails and all, leaving the tiny bones bare. I didn’t have time to do anything but gape before she favoured me with the head. It was the head of a monkey with a horrible grin on its face. I am sure it was deference to give me the head, but, by all the saints in heaven, how could I eat it? And how could I not eat it? I looked around, swallowing the contents of my stomach a couple of times as they rose, insisting on being expelled. I saw the men relishing here a hand, there a leg, foot and all, picking out of their mouths the tiny bones of the toes or a nail, or just spitting them out. They stared at my inaction, their conversation slowly dying. I looked at the gourd and turned it over to avoid the monkey’s almost human face. Then I cracked a smile and held the head with one finger while I sipped the small amount of liquid left. A cold sweat broke out on me as I fought the need to retch. I forced myself to swallow and appear content. Guacaipuro’s eyes gleamed. They were testing me again. I deliberately tore a piece of skin from the scalp so that everyone had time to see, and put it in my mouth and chewed. Swallowing proved more difficult, but Baruta’s disappointed expression gave me the push I needed, and I forced it down. Once, twice, three times. I managed to pick enough meat out of the head to expose a patch
the ship’s rail while Brother Berach bathed his fevered face. Hrafen climbed aboard in a fury of curses. First, he picked up the bucket of water Berach had been using and dumped the contents on the two monks. Then he grabbed the protesting Berach by the back of his tunic, swung him around, and flung him against the rail. The old man lay unmoving on the deck. Brother Keallach had taken a few moments from the hot job of caulking to come on deck to relieve himself over the side. On seeing what was happening between Hrafen and the two elderly Brothers, he bounded to the prow to face the bully. Though he shook with anger at such an unwarranted attack, he held himself in check while the Norseman continued his tirade. When Hrafen bellowed that the two old thralls must have been responsible for the ram’s escape in the first place, Keallach, who had seen how the animal bolted the moment it was released from its pen on board ship, could neither speak nor understand the Norse tongue. As it was, the two men stood glaring at one another. The Norseman picked up the empty bucket and flung it with all his might toward the open sea. Then he stomped off to the far end of the knarr. Finten, Rordan, Ailan and Lorcan came on deck, along with Atall their guard, to see what was going on. But Kyrri was sufficiently deaf that he had not been disturbed by the ruckus on deck. He just carried on caulking and did not come up until he noticed his helpers were gone. Father Finten knelt in a slowly forming puddle of blood to hold the old man, now limp in his arms. Brother Berach’s neck hung at an odd angle, blood trickling from his open mouth. Rordan and Ailan crossed themselves and dropped to their knees in silent shock, tears streaming from their eyes. Keallach stood glaring at the bully, holding his own anger. Brother Lorcan did not kneel. He looked at Keallach, turned to follow his gaze toward the killer and slowly, deliberately walked toward him. By the time they thought to hold him back, it was too late. Hrafen picked him up with both hands around his throat, shook him violently and heaved him over the side.
Aphrodite II Aphrodite laughed at my wonder when I constructed my dwelling from the top down with a courtyard in the clouds and a roof in the soil’s breath opposite all other matters of nature: corporeal beasts lowered their heads in the watering trough merciless light reflected in their innocent eyes as in the upper level of a fence almost painted the color of guilt before the first absolution was invented heat from the hearth warmed my heart ceiling and basement left in midair air-conditioned floor the robin’s chirp just an illusion and here I was meant to discover justice and beg the sun for a shred of logic
AND PERHAPS what we never understood was the only thing left to us. Because who could ever win the night or the dream, and inside the house one with the other were simply heirlooms, and each of us will plainly die in the disturbed evening, unnaturally lit by the torches. We were always unprepared. And this was our harvest.
Manolis Aligizakis 