ESCAPE (title of the Greek original: Η Δραπέτευση)
Translated by Vassilis C. Militsis
“As far as I’m concerned, I want everybody to leave… let none stay here!” said the doctor pulling carefully with a pair of forceps the tiny ball of earwax that clogged the patient’s ear.
The patient had not hurt at all. This doctor was far better that the other quack, who some months earlier had injured him with that buzzing device and nearly caused him greater damage.
“Let’s see what they’re going to do afterwards…” the doctor went on.
“This is no remedy… In this way we’re bleeding!” said the patient.
The doctor moved to his desk, and the patient stood up and followed him. “It didn’t hurt at all;” he added, “and I had thought of giving it all up… I had never had to wait so long at a doctor’s. I did well I hadn’t left, though.”
He had chosen the doctor’s name at random from a list given by a friend. Medicare rules had changed lately, and the new procedures threw him into confusion. The doctor bent over his computer and pretended not to have heard him.
“You know something?” said the doctor after a while. “For the first time I was scared today! Two of my patients talked about weapons; guns and pistols! They want to buy revolvers, do you realize that?”
“Hem, are they preparing for an uprising?” asked the patient and then added: “My barber, you know, keeps jabbering of such things. He’s always sticking to his opinion: ‘what are we waiting for? … The people must arise!’ and reinforces his words with gestures and stops cutting my hair in the meantime. ‘We must surround them at gunpoint; then we’ll make ’em understand’…”
“No, they want to carry weapons only for self-defense; that’s where we’ve come to!” the doctor lifted his head. He gave him a paper to sign, and then put it on a pile of similar papers on his desk.
The patient was about to say something, but he was interrupted by the doctor.
“We haven’t been paid… you can’t imagine how much the government owes us… how can you trust a state that is not OK with you – a state that does not give a dime about you?” He drew a deep breath and added: “that’s why we’re bleeding of our young people… Our kids are leaving the country to seek better luck elsewhere, and still this isn’t all!” The conversation had gone back to the previous topic. The doctor was relatively young and he still had a lot to learn about a state with looted social treasuries. For the moment what counted was that his ears were cleaned and could hear much better. He said a courteous goodbye to the doctor and left. Although the time was already half past nine in the evening, a young woman was waiting in the lobby.
Issuing from the building he fell upon a knot of people who with downcast countenances moved about in front of Terzis’ confectionery. Someone shook a loudspeaker in his hand threateningly. On the pavement there were leaflets scattered all over. He bent down and picked up one: “TERZIS, WE HAVE NOT BEEN PAID FOR THIRTEEN MONTHS. PAY US OUR WAGES,” was written on it. Not more than a couple of clients stood behind the show case and looked on with indifference.
He took a shortcut through deserted alleys in order to catch the bus. The small shops on either side of the streets looked bleak as they had closed and barred for the night. They were supposed to make up the heart of the market. But what market? The shop owners who still kept their business merely vegetated. He had heard it first hand from a friend of his wife’s who kept a shop that stagnated in that area and because of her distress she was wasting away to the extent that she became unrecognizable. He could hear on the pavement slabs the clacking of his own shoes, which accentuated the absence of lively activity. As he reached the corner, he recalled a shop owner desperately begging the passers-by: “Please help us keep our business! Buy our Greek products!”
He got to the bus stop. Not a soul at this hour! Save some apparitions emerging out of the dark and looking at you fiercely with shining eyes, as though they were annoyed or merely grudged your existence.
On the bus he was thinking about what he had heard on the news bulletin: eighteen armed robberies were being perpetrated every twenty-four hours and a human being was being murdered – usually for a petty sum of money – every two days! What he failed to tell the doctor was that the same things were also happening in countries that had gone (or still are going) through a deep economic crisis. Experts especially ruled that such things were an expected consequence. For, certainly, one event gives rise to another, and there is a logical explanation and concatenation for everything that takes place; and after all, this grim situation they all were in could not be a calamity that struck suddenly one fine morning, though there were moments when he believed the opposite; especially when he was muddled and could not make any sense out of it all, he would stick to the idea that the evil had indeed fallen upon their heads out of the blue, and sometimes this obsession was transformed into a nightmare at night that tortured him.
As he was drifting in his thoughts, he forgot to push the stop button and he had to get off at the next stop. He did not say a word and began to descend the alleys of the upper part of the city. He sensed an odd peace and quiet all over. And then suddenly he felt light-headed and reeled. He stopped and felt his heart flutter. Some months ago his medical tests diagnosed a valve stenosis. The damage preexisted, it could be congenital, but now he obviously needed surgery, the doctor ruled. When he was told that he had to pay some thousands of euros for the operation, he replied in jest: “Let me first strike it rich!” Fortunately, he recovered quickly.
The light from the lamppost shone dimly on a dilapidated edifice. Half a dozen illegal immigrants had burrowed among its ruins and lived like moles. They popped in and out like ghosts. In daylight they went around the town gathering rags; no one knew what else they exactly did.
Dogs were barking unsettling the dreary stillness of the night. Further down the alleys branched off and one fork reached his neighborhood, where last week burglars broke into three houses. In one the occupants were sleeping during the burglary. Fortunately they were not molested. He walked by Sotiris’ minimarket; Sotiris’ father had been assaulted in full daylight in front of the bank. The hoodlum snatched the money right out of his pocket; obviously the victim had been targeted in advance. The funny thing was that the day before a chap beyond suspicion had been caught in his son’s shop filching whole cans of olive oil; he was hiding them in his great coat in full view of the cameras.
He was near his building now casting fearful glances around him. He was encircled by the hostile silence and on each street corner he saw (or imagined he saw) moving sinister shapes. In the entrance of the apartment house he met one of his next door neighbors.
“How are you doing?” he asked him panting as they were laboring up the stairs.
“We’re just all trying to make ends meet…” he replied glumly before walking into his flat.
He attributed his sullenness not only to the strain of the daily routine but also to his anxiety to pay off the mortgage on his flat – besides, a similar burden has also been weighing him down for years. Breathing a sigh he slipped into the flat and barred the door behind him.
His wife told him that their young son was asleep. She said he might seemingly have caught a cold. She was in the sitting room watching TV and listening to a reporter who was calculating the toll of the ‘holocaust’ that had taken place in the capital downtown; similar violent incidents had happened in their city, too. Even if you did not budge out of your home, he thought, they still went on terrifying you what with this and that – the common or unusual crimes.
However, he had planned his escape. The following day, early in the morning, the three of them were going to start out for his small house in the village where he had lived as a kid. For a short interval, which to him had seemed a century, he could not afford to fill up his car, but in the meantime he managed to save some money. Some days ago he was also paid the welfare benefit for his son. Fortunately, though they had been pestered by repeated checks and medical tests, the examining committee had not dared to cut it out, as the government had successively cut back on his salary without asking him.
Suddenly, despite all this gloom, he felt content with two things: first, he would never be obliged to send away his son to foreign countries as some friends did. His problem certainly was what would become of his son without his parents when inevitably they were gone one day; but he would never want to think of it. Then it was not a small thing, when he could afford it, to be able to escape to that peaceful corner – to his sanctuary, as he used to call it – far away from the murderous hubbub of the city, which tore itself in maniacal self-destruction. In his quiet village house he could have a respite of it all, even for a short break, without television and radio, which had grown an incubus to him. In no way was he minded to allow the media to disturb his family’s serenity with their horrendous tidings. Deep at heart he did not wish to share his wife’s fears that it was only a matter of time for terror and violence to spread beyond urban areas.
The little house stood proudly on the hill at the end of the village. In front of the house there was a declivity ending to a depression in the ground, lush green in spring, where a quantity of water collected that trickled to the low land further down and, in turn, spilled into the river. He used to go down there and pick snails after a rain pour. The house was just right: two little rooms and a small kitchen with a cooking stove – sufficient for cooking and heating the place. The house had also a small cellar where he kept his tools. Across the place there was a lush forested slope, from which blew a fragrant breeze that filled their lungs with oxygen as they were sitting in the yard in the shade of a lemon tree.
They would spend the Shrove Monday three-day-holiday there. In the morning he would go into the little planted garden with his son, where he had a lot to do: pick his spinach, the cabbages that survived the winter cold, and take care of the rest; he had to weed, to hoe and water the plants. This time he had in mind to dig at a certain point and plant his potatoes there and then go down to the depression and cut the poles to support his tomato plants with later on. As long as he was working, his son would usually stand next to him – though only sixteen, he grew taller than he was – and look at him moving his head right and left like a pendulum and talk away. Some of his words might be incomprehensible even to him.
He remembered the clerk’s behavior to his wife when she along with other parents that had the same problem had visited her office the last time; they had literally hung on her signature to get the welfare pittance for the kids’ speech therapy, which they were after all entitled to.
“What will you do with these children? Do you intend to make them professors?” she made a snide remark.
His wife felt her head and the whole world spin at that moment.
“Was there no one with the nerve to slap her on the face?” he burst out furiously when she had told him, her eyes brimming with tears.
At any rate, the boy enjoyed watching him – this he could full well understand – for as he spoke to him sweetly from time to time, the boy would clap his palms in front of his face and twisting his wrists he would utter small panting cries, while his upper body and shoulders convulsed heavily, which showed his contentment.
“OK with your ears?” asked his wife and he affirmed with a nod of his head. He ate his pasta hastily and retired to his room. He was thinking intently of the next day’s schedule and of what the weather was going to be like in the village. If it was fine, it would help his hyacinths and tulips to grow faster; last time he saw that they had shot little leaves. But now, most importantly, with his ears free of wax he could hear the melodious trill of the birds, which started their concert since dawn in the lush depression. Dwelling on these thoughts, which relieved somewhat the burden in his stomach, he fell asleep.
…The almond tree in his garden was in bloom and he barely could make out a sullen man standing next to it. He wondered who he might be, and turning wearily his back to him and saying “we are struggling…but we never win!” the man walked slowly through the garden gate. His voice, hoarse and sad, was the selfsame as his neighbor’s. He was trying hard to find out where he was. The sky was colorless and everything around him was grey as if powdered with ash. He was sprawling on the wooden bench near the flower bed, but it seemed that his little house had moved to the low land and stood there desolate and forlorn. As he was lying on his back and his glance was lost high in the sky, he noticed that on the sharp mountain peaks, soaring above him and linked together like a bunch of flowers, and particularly on the highest peak, a small round rock was teetering, which, you thought, at any moment it was going to break away and roll down crushing on you. And there! It did break away! As it was falling, it grew bigger and bigger until it exploded at a short distance like a meteorite and shook the ground. He started in fright, because he knew his family was in the little house. He wanted to join them and hide in the cellar together… He strove to shout, to stand up; yet he remained nailed to his seat, as though his will-power had forsaken him. His fright drenched him in cold sweat! Presently, huge boulders began to downpour whistling and making the earth shake. He panicked as he dreaded one of them finding its target! He made a superhuman effort to stand up, run away and escape from this nightmare… Alas, this time his legs did not obey as they had turned into lead. Suddenly, a bitter taste, real poison, flooded his mouth and a searing pain tore at his breastbone; from his innards he felt butterflies flutter out towards the sky, but the swarm of stones that now fell down inexorably like thick hail prevented them from getting away because they were tearing off their wings and crushing their tiny bodies… Then all went dim and gradually vanished like a picture on the movie screen.
Very early next morning his wife was talking to him: “Our son is burning with fever! We have to put off the trip!”
Receiving no answer, she bent over and looked at him carefully. He was sleeping on his right side. She thought that lately he had often had vivid dreams, some of which he shared with her in obvious anxiety.
She shook him gently at first and presently a little harder; then his arm fell lifeless over the bedside.
Tasos Kaloutsas was born in 1948 in Thessaloniki, where he lives. He is a graduate of the Philosophy Faculty of the Thessaloniki University. He taught at middle education state schools. He made his debut as a writer with the short story The Bargain (To kelepouri) in 1985. There followed The Club in 1990 and The New Car in 1995. In 2000 he was honored with the National Short Story Award for his book The Song of the Sirens. In 2011 he was also distinguished by the Athens Academy for his short story collection Her Most Beautiful Day. His works have been translated to various European languages. The present short story is included in his collection with the title The State of Terror.
Source: ΥΠΟ ΤΟ ΚΡΑΤΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΤΡΟΜΟΥ
Βιβλιοπωλείο Πολιτεία. Κωδ. Πολιτείας: 2760-3817
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