Scorpionfish, стр. 37
I placed the T-shirt atop the dresser. I intentionally buried old shirts in my drawers so Katerina would not notice and therefore not throw them away. Now I suppose I wouldn’t have to worry about that. All these last moments; my days had become populated by them.
The final months of my time on the Pacific, before I was to marry, I was nearly crippled by last moments. Midwalk through a bustling market in Ho Chi Minh City, I’d think about how I’d never walk through here again, never smell these stalls with those stinky, delicious fruits; these places where I bought fabric for finely tailored shirts that I still own, spending what there would be half a monthly salary. I’d never hear the particular cadence of the language, never sip that strong coffee. I’d probably never again feel the quiet stillness of Kyoto, where no one even used a horn; or pull into the spectacular port of Shanghai. The tenderness of those places for the last time, as touristy as my gaze was, was so crippling that in some ports I could barely leave my cabin. My crew would leave for dinner and I would tell them I did not feel well, that I needed to catch up on work. I fell in love in Casablanca only because, as I realize now, I knew it was a last moment, a traveler from London whose father was Irish and mother was Egyptian. Nothing happened between us, nothing physical, that is, but I even thought about her during my wedding, and when the doctor who delivered the twins had the same corkscrew curls and perfect eyebrows, I could feel it in my groin, the twisting throb of closing opportunities. I felt it again today, like descending deep into the bowels of the ship, the recesses of the engine room, the heavy doors locking shut behind me. Lights out.
•
I dreamt of Aris and Mira, but only Aris’s face was clear. Mira was like a character in a book that I felt I had both vividly imagined yet could not entirely see—long hair, a shoulder, her wrist stacked with bracelets. I was conflating that drink with Aris and that time I saw her in the taverna in Exarcheia. I was imagining her walking by and seeing us there. In my mind I saw Aris get up and chase her through the crowd. I saw his petulance and her anger, then his anger and her petulance. Her lips dry from the heat, her eyes accusatory; the way her cheek still held a faint pink mark. He touched her hair and then her hip and guided her off the path of the street, next to a postcard stand and a kiosk, where she bought a bottle of water, took a long drink, and wiped her chin and throat with the back of her hand. There was something wild about her, unpredictable. She made no eye contact while he talked. The way he touched her hair before they parted, the way it felt salty and textured, the way her back moved away from him into the crowd.
Of course I hadn’t seen any of this. I had simply imagined it to be true. I’d only seen them interact twice. First, that night at the taverna, when they quickly disappeared behind the grape trellises, into the alley. And again while I watched from my Athens balcony. Yet I remembered these things as if I were recalling his memory. As if I were he. As if I were there.
I quietly went out to my father’s balcony and looked over the valley, lit up by the moon.
11
Mira
Nefeli did not attend her own opening. She did not acknowledge the flowers we sent the morning of, nor did she respond to any of our messages, as though the show she’d worked so hard to complete was not happening at all.
When I arrived at the museum, people were clustered outside—talking, smoking. I found Fady and Dimitra and the kids. Leila had dressed the part of a young artist herself, with her dark glasses, her black clothing. Rami wore pressed jeans and a pressed paisley shirt, a blue sport coat, his hair all messed up with product (Leila, no doubt), and new heavy-framed glasses just like Fady’s.
“Hey, handsome,” I said, and Rami grinned his toothy grin. I took a picture of Fady and Rami, their arms around each other, now looking very seriously at the camera.
On the side of the museum, WELCOME was painted in a dozen languages, which was not part of Nefeli’s installation but provided an interesting juxtaposition—all that earnestness. But her installation comprised a dozen bright-red megaphones, each the height of an old phone booth or a kiosk, which lined the sidewalk in front of the building and then the road. I wasn’t sure what they were constructed of—wooden frames with painted, papier-mâché exteriors, I guessed. They each held a camera to film street activity, projecting the images to a room filled with screens in the gallery. A few other megaphones were installed across the city: near the university, in a square in Petralona, and outside the Victoria train station. These contemporary street images were being juxtaposed with historical news footage. It was a project about surveillance and protest, and also the distortion of time and sound—the manipulation of sound through time. And, as Fady added, the silence of the current moment. The megaphones, whose bells faced the sidewalk, captured images rather than projecting sound.
Wandering along the line of megaphones, weaving between the guests with their cocktails, I wondered who was watching us inside. What moment in history this moment of mine was superimposed upon. Somewhere within the museum I wandered through time.
The gallery inside was crowded as well, and despite Nefeli’s absence, the mood was celebratory. But we kept watching the door for her. Leila and Rami drifted ahead of