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EARLIER IN THE DAY, the
sun had disappeared behind an overcast and the air had
become sultry and still. Far out to sea, a storm thundered
faintly as it moved toward them. Nikos took a sip from his
glass and gazed across his garden. Out over the cliffs of
Kerkyra, out at the ocean beyond. Out where the setting sun
would normally be. The thunder grumbled again, softly and
distantly, and Nikos smiled.
"It's going to rain," Demetrios
said gloomily, his head down. He seemed to be staring into
his empty coffee cup there on the metal lawn table between
them.
Nikos slouched in one of the metal
chairs that matched the table. His legs were thrown out in
front of him, his expansive midriff displayed with
disregard. The glass went again to his lips and he felt the
resiny fire of the liqueur going down. "Be thankful it
wasn't earlier in the day," he said. "It's bad for
business."
"You shouldn't worry about the
business, Babas. You should let me do that."
"And you should cheer up,
Demetraki. You should drink the ouzo."
"You don't listen to
me."
Nikos ran a finger over his bushy
mustache. "I listen."
"And you shouldn't call me
Demetraki. I'm not a little boy anymore."
He chuckled. "Ah, that's true. But
to me, you will always be my little Demetraki." His smile
widened as he added, "If we are going to be so formal, maybe
you should call me Pateras instead of Babas, eh?"
The faraway thunder rolled,
punctuating the silence. Eventually Demetrios said, "You
know, sometimes I don't even know where I live."
"What are you talking
about?"
"We work all day in town. And some
nights. And the people come into the shop and you hear the
German and the French and the English. And all the rest.
Don't you ever wonder whose island this really
is?"
"It's just the summer."
Demetrios played with the little
cup on the saucer, his head still down. He sat
straight-backed, neat in his sports shirt and slacks. He
said nothing.
Nikos picked up the bottle and
poured another half-centimeter into his glass. He looked
hard at Demetrios. "When I was a little boy, maybe 8 or 9,
you know what I got for Christmas that year? An orange. That
was my Christmas present. An orange."
"You shouldn't work so hard,"
Demetrios said.
"What would you have me
do?"
"You should leave the business of
the shop to me. You've worked too hard for too long. You
should leave it behind and just relax."
"I should just sit here and drink
the ouzo?"
"If that is your wish."
Nikos looked out over the leaden
water, gauged the timbre of the approaching thunder, and
sipped. His son's hair, he noticed, was sprinkled with gray.
Lowering the glass, he asked, "Did the order come in from
Larisa?"
"Yes," Demetrios answered
softly.
"And?"
"All we got was handbags and
belts."
Nikos took his time in swallowing
more ouzo. "And?" he repeated.
"Most of it came from Skopje. You
know, in the new Macedonia. And some, I think, is even from
Bulgaria."
"How bad is the
leather?"
Still staring down into his coffee
cup, Demetrios waved a hand in a dismissive
gesture.
"And what are we going to do with
it, Demetraki?"
"We'll sell it to the tourists.
They'll never know the difference."
Nikos gazed far out over the water,
his smile gone. "We will send it back," he said.
Demetrios remained silent. There was another round of
thunder. At last he said, "We hear too much of the American
music. The British rock. All that junk."
"I suppose."
"Don't you think we're losing
something?"
"Probably." Nikos thought back.
Back to before he was married and Demetrios was born. All
the way back to before the airplanes came. Back again to
when he was a child. He remembered a single, bony goat. The
gnawing bellies of himself and his sisters. The cold and
damp and darkness of winter.
Demetrios spoke as if to himself.
"Sometimes I don't know if the island belongs to us
anymore."
"You should drink the ouzo,
Demetraki."
Demetrios snorted. "And get drunk
like the tourists?"
Nikos felt the corners of his mouth
go up as he transferred another dollop from the bottle to
the ouzo glass. There was the babble from the tv in the
house and the rumble of thunder getting louder. "It's been a
good season," he commented.
"It should be your last season,
Babas. If you would listen to reason, you would see that.
It's time for you to rest."
He shifted his mind away, once more
going back in time. He pictured the statue of St.
Spyridonas, resplendent in red and black and gold, being
carried down the main street to the church. The bouzouki
bands were playing, the people singing and dancing, the
retsina flowing. It was the annual festival day in his
boyhood village. The 25th of May. "The old music is not for
every day, Demetraki," he said at last. "The young ones want
the English music."
"We are losing
something."
He shrugged. "It's a new world,
Demetraki." The thunder growled. Looking out over the Bay of
Ambelaki, he could see the gray wall of rain approaching.
When the grayness touched the rocks called Petrokavaro out
in the bay, he would pick up his bottle and glass and go
inside.
Demetrios glanced up, started to
say something, then resumed peering down at his empty cup.
Finally he said, "We could sell the stuff. The tourists
would never know. Half the shops in Paleokastritsa do worse
than that."
Vasili stepped out of the back door
of the house and came over to the lawn table. "Rain, huh?"
the boy asked rhetorically. He was dressed in blue jeans and
a red Chicago Bulls T-shirt.
Without looking up, Demetrios said,
"Ask your grandmother to make me another cup of
coffee."
"You could go ask her yourself,"
the boy replied.
Demetrios did not respond. He
slowly raised his head to stare out over the cliffs toward
the storm.
Nikos brought his ouzo glass to his
lips. His eyes caught those of Vasili and wouldn't let go.
He jerked his head a fraction of an inch toward the house,
and the teenager turned and went inside.
Demetrios spoke in low tones. "Even
our own children seem like foreigners."
"They are just young."
"They pay no attention to
us."
Demetrios took another measured sip
of ouzo, concentrating on it as he swallowed. He could see
his own father--red-faced and angry as only the desperate
can be, swinging the strap cut from a worn-out horse harness
down on him, the bleating son. He remembered.
The approaching storm gave out a
sharp clap of thunder, and they both turned their heads to
gaze out to the bay. Demetrios said, "I want to buy more
wallets. I know where we can get them for a good price. A
place in Piraeus."
Nikos eyed the bottle on the table
and decided there would be no more from it tonight. The shop
down in the town probably wasn't all that much to show, he
thought, for a lifetime of standing and smiling through the
long summer days. Not that much to show for a life. But
then, he asked himself, how many of those people could sit
as he was sitting and look out over their patio to the sea?
How many could sit like this and drink the ouzo?
And now his Demetraki wanted to get
more wallets. When they already had too many wallets. The
price from the makers was good, he knew, because the
tourists this season didn't want their wallets. Nikos sighed
and once more ran a finger over his mustache.
He carefully placed his glass on
the table, visually measuring how much was left in it. "Have
you got a cigarette?" he asked Demetrios. After lighting up,
he said, "You wish things were different."
"I am tired of discos," Demetrios
said. "I am tired of people in shorts with cameras around
their necks."
"We all are," Nikos agreed, smiling
again as he glanced at Demetrios's Fiat parked out front. He
puffed, his left hand wrapped reassuringly back around the
cylinder of the ouzo glass. His smile grew. "Think how
peaceful it could be around here without them. It would be
just like winter. Like winter when you can go into
Paleokastritsa and be lucky to find someone to sell you a
loaf of bread."
"It's time for you to let go,
Babas. We will take care of you."
Vasili came out with another cup of
coffee on another saucer, shuffling so as not to spill.
"It's going to rain," the boy said, then escaped back into
the house.
Nikos blew out smoke. "So,
Demetraki, you would like some changes?"
After a long moment, Demetrios
said, "The Americans don't smoke. Have you noticed
that?"
"I guess so."
"Why is that?"
Nikos flicked ash onto the ground
and thought. "They're rich," he said. "Perhaps that's it.
They have enough money to find pleasure in more expensive
things." He thought about that some more, dropped it, then
asked Demetrios again, "You want changes, eh?"
"Yes."
He dragged on the cigarette. "If I
was to leave the shop, who would help you?"
Demetrios took a cautious slurp of
his new coffee. "Aliki would help," he said, his voice
low.
"Ah. I see." He studied the
downcast face of Demetrios. "And you are the one that
preaches that the wife is to stay at home."
"That is the way it should be. A
woman should be home with the children. She should cook and
clean. That is the way it has always been."
Nikos looked at his ouzo glass as
he turned it slowly on the table. He murmured, "That hardly
describes Aliki."
"The children are growing up.
Things have changed."
"I see."
"Do you understand,
Babas?"
"Yes. Aliki wants to become part of
the business."
"What she says makes sense. It's
time for us, Babas."
Nikos inhaled automatically, the
flavor of the tobacco going unnoticed. "There's not enough
for three of us," he said.
Demetrios looked at him squarely.
"If Aliki does not go there, she will go somewhere else in
town. I cannot . . . accept that. I want her to be with
me."
"Ah."
Demetrios returned to his coffee.
"You deserve the rest, Babas," he said into his
cup.
Nikos pretended to be absorbed in
the view out over the cliffs. He noticed that the storm was
getting ominously close, that Petrokavaro was now obscured.
Just a little bit longer, he thought. From inside the house
came the aroma of sofrito from the kitchen, the blather of
tv news bouncing in by satellite from
Thessalonika.
"So," Demetrios asked, "what do you
think?'"
"I think we will send back the
order from Larisa."
Demetrios stared down into his
half-finished coffee on the lawn table. The thunder sounded
again, near at hand, and a cool breeze suddenly hit them.
"It's going to rain," Demetrios said dejectedly. "Should we
go inside?"
Nikos looked at his Demetraki,
hunched over his coffee like an old woman. He savored his
last sip of ouzo and smiled. "There's no hurry," he said.
"Just a little bit longer and we'll go in."
Robert Gardner, Engr. '66, is engineering manager at
a U.S. Army arsenal in Rock Island,
Ill.
About the Contest
This year's fiction contest--our fourth--drew more than
100 entries from alumni of Stanford's undergraduate,
graduate and fellowship programs. Each story was read by one
of three first-round judges: former Stegner fellow Daniel
Orozco, who now lectures in the creative writing program;
and current Stegner fellows Jack Livings and Angela Pneuman.
Six finalists went on to John L'Heureux, professor of
English and creative writing, who selected the winner
published here.
"'The Island' is a model of restraint," L'Heureux
commented. "In a single sustained scene, Robert Gardner
gives us a conversation between father and son that
reveals--even as they refuse to talk about it--just what is
at stake for them. The dialogue is subtle and off-center in
a way that substitutes for action."
Submissions for the next competition are due by October 1, 2001. The
winner will receive $750 and will be published in Stanford next spring.
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