The Scapegoat Page 2

  She was the one who bought me my first dictionary—and she didn’t mess around, either, she went straight for Triandafyllidis. We graduates of Aristotle University don’t approve of the Babiniotis approach, she told me, as if an elementary school kid would have any clue what she was talking about. She insisted on teaching me how to use it. She always took it down off the shelf carefully. But one afternoon it slipped from her hands and smashed my favorite toy car, a red one. She waited patiently for me to stop crying. Then she asked me to look up “assemble” in the dictionary and made me copy all the synonyms and antonyms into my notebook.

  Mom found it amusing, but she also basically agreed with Grandma’s approach. Grandma advised her to take charge of my education, and she did. What we learned in school wasn’t enough. That was just the basics, the absolute minimum, as Grandma was always saying. I had to do my homework on my own. Mom, meanwhile, taught me the extra stuff, the above-and-beyond, the frosting on the cake that makes the difference between a diligent student and an exceptional one. We filled endless notebooks with language drills and math exercises, the twin pillars of knowledge, the salt of all sciences. Dad just looked on. He went along with my mother’s decisions—after all, he didn’t have time to waste on questioning her judgment.

  I liked school. During summer vacation, when we’d go out to a place by the beach in Halkidiki, I was bored out of my mind. Sure, I chased frogs, collected ants, raced down the hill on my bike. I scraped my knees on brambles, did underwater flips in the sea, dug for worms in the dirt. I had to sit quietly in my room during siesta, even if I wasn’t sleeping. Which meant hours of computer games and piles of comic books. Sounds great, right? Maybe, but who could possibly stand it for eighty-six days in a row? In the afternoons Mom would prepare me for the next year’s schoolwork. Sure, I whined, but studying was what saved me.

  I don’t know when things took a wrong turn. Mom blames Kitsiou, the mule-faced history and language arts teacher we had last year. She filled my notebooks with red ink. Is this really what you believe? she would scrawl in the margin, enraged at my ideas. He’ll never get far if he keeps going down that path, she once let slip when Mom went in for a conference. My essays suffered from a lack of organization and an overly aggressive sense of irony. Mom’s angry comment to me when she got home was, Her brains aren’t worth a fig. Usually Mom tries to maintain some kind of solidarity with the literature teachers, but with Kitsiou things got so bad she wrote a letter to the principal. The perfect twenty on my report cards of previous years had dropped to a seventeen, then a sixteen, and it looked like it might go even lower. I know my child, Mom insisted to the department head, there’s no way his performance has gotten so poor. But no one could do anything about it. Inside her classroom, a teacher is queen of the realm, as Mom should have known.

  I don’t think it was Kitsiou’s fault. At a certain point, school just became unbearable.

  But I kept gritting my teeth and bearing it. If it were up to me, I would drop out before graduation. I started getting leg cramps, fevers, awful stomach aches, chronic gastroenteritis. And pain. Like hand grenades exploding in my gut. Once Mom even called a cab and rushed me to the hospital. The doctor smiled.

  —It’s just nerves, was his diagnosis.

  He gave me a double shot of tranquilizers.

  —This would put even a bull to sleep, he told Mom, winking.

  A week later the headaches started. I rubbed my eyes until I saw spots. I would’ve gouged my eyes out if I thought it would make the hammering in my head stop. I tied my bandana so tightly it left a mark on my forehead. I couldn’t stand up straight, I had to lean against walls to walk. Mom brought me paracetamol, Lonarid, whatever over-the-counter painkiller she could find. I swallowed them and closed the door.

  I basically lived in my room. Everyone seemed like morons. I guess I had a screw loose somewhere.

  You can get pretty much any pill you want online. Antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, Buspirone, hydroxyzine, sertraline, paroxetine, venlafaxine. It’s crazy. Indications, contraindications, proper dosage for facilitating synaptic transmission via serotonin reuptake. Great, as if that made any sense to anyone. No adverse effect on alertness, best results within a month. That’s what the website promised. You have to get off it gradually, though, or you’ll go into withdrawal. They never tell you how bad that part is.

  Game over, Mom flipped out. The door to your room is to remain open at all times, she said. Actually, she started leaving all the doors and windows in the house open, to let in fresh air. And she made sure I got my recommended daily allowance of vitamin C, squeezed orange juice for me three times a day. She filled the house with whatever natural dope she could find: sallowthorn, ginseng, spirulina. Royal jelly, saffron tea, pollen. It all went straight down my throat.

  And guess what? It turns out sunlight and exercise are all it takes to flood the brain with serotonin. All the magazines say so. Mom read that and made up her mind. For the time being she stopped bugging me about my homework, she figured my psychological well-being took priority.

  Maybe it was a fear of competition, like that shrink said. To me he seemed like a nutcase himself. Mom got a zillion recommendations and references before settling on him. He asked a bunch of questions, I counted the pockmarks on the wall. He sang his little song, we handed over a hundred euros, he asked to see me again. Are you kidding me?

  I mean, why don’t they all get lost.

  All I know is, if I ever have to take another exam in my life, I’ll die.

  Souk entrusted me with a list of topics to choose from. He has his own way of speaking. He never just gives you a notebook, he entrusts you with it. When I first had him as a teacher, back in my first year of middle school, I thought he was really tall. It took months for me to realize that he’s actually what you would call average height. But in class he seemed to grow taller, until he filled the whole room. Once he suddenly spread his arms out to his sides. He was wearing black, of course, his uniform, we call it, since he always wears exactly the same outfit, winter or summer. And with his arms spread wide, he looked like an eagle about to swoop down on us. All the kids in the front row ducked. Souk gave an explanation of Attic reduplication in verb forms, then abruptly clapped his wings shut again. An entire class will remember akouo, akikoa for the rest of their lives.

  Souk is the one who taught our class what a reference book is. He bought shelves, paid for them out of his own pocket, the gym teacher told us later, shaking his head at Souk’s idiocy. Souk screwed them into the wall next to the blackboard one afternoon after school let out.

  —This is where you’ll keep your dictionaries, grammar books, and literary histories, he announced the next day.

  At first we didn’t give it much thought. But Souk had a plan. Instead of going home with us, the reference books stayed at school, and they got used on a daily basis. Tons of exercises. Our parents were ecstatic. Souk had earned their trust. Grandma Evthalia even came to school to congratulate him. Finally, she said, someone was correcting our essays with professional rigor, underlining our mistakes in red pen, suggesting alternate wording, teaching us new words, explaining the difference between katarhas, “firstly,” and katarhin, “in principle,” and quoting phrases in ancient Greek. She decided it was time to buy me Vostantzoglou’s 1949 Antilexicon, which has antonyms, word roots, and etymologies. She put it on my bookshelf at home, beside the Triantafyllidis dictionary.

  —This book will be a valuable friend. I’ll show you how to use it, she promised. It will enable you to use words properly and with elegance.

  She’d written a dedication on the first page:

  To my beloved grandson,

  for your success,

  Grandma

  Over the next few years we had other history and language arts teachers. Good ones, bad ones, so-so ones. None like Souk, though. They all smiled more. And assigned less homework. But Souk had taught us to think—even the kids who’d never admit it knew it was true. He
was the only one who’d earned enough respect to be addressed as sir whenever we ran into him outside of school. With everyone else, we just crossed to the other side of the street, or mumbled some incomprehensible greeting.

  It didn’t matter that he was a tough grader—justifiably tough, he claimed. It didn’t matter that he even failed kids, lots of them.

  —It takes effort to fail, but I know that won’t stop some of you from trying, he warned.

  And now here we are together again. It’s my senior year, I’m twenty centimeters taller than him and I still feel like he’s the giant.

  —Georgiou, I’m entrusting you with a list of possible research topics. When you’re ready, inform me of your decision.

  —I’m just a kid, sir. I’d prefer if you chose for me, I dared to suggest.

  —You’re not a kid, you’re a mule. I’ll expect your decision by Wednesday.

  Souk didn’t mince words. He didn’t give us encouraging slaps on the back, didn’t try to reassure us. But with him at least you knew where you stood.

  Souk’s sheet of paper sat on my desk all afternoon. Untouched. At the top of the list was the Gris affair. Messy from the start, an unsolved case even now. I’d heard about it, but that was all.

  —Don’t you have Latin homework? Mom asked.

  I was in the middle of a mission and didn’t even lift my eyes from the screen.

  —Mom, I’m going to die. Who knows when, maybe even today. Do you really want me to have spent the last half-hour of my life studying Latin?

  Mom’s given up. This time last year she’d have started shouting. Now she just shuts the door and walks away. She used to do that thing with her eyes, too. You know what I mean. All moms play that game. They stare at you and you’re supposed to freeze. To repent, to apologize.

  As soon as she left the room, I called Dad at work.

  —When are you coming home?

  —That’s so sweet, I miss you too.

  —Come on, I’m serious, when are you coming home? I want to ask you something.

  —Ask me now, I’ll be late.

  He’s always late. Something always comes up at the last minute. Something only he can take care of.

  —What do you know about the Gris affair?

  —Why? Is it on the exam?

  In the battle over the Panhellenic Exams he’s on Mom’s side.

  —I have to do this project for school and I thought maybe you’d know something. You’re the one who told me about it in the first place.

  At home Dad doesn’t talk much. He sits there and pretends to be listening, but really he’s just filtering out whatever he doesn’t think is important. If you ask him about current affairs, though, he really gets going. He gives way to no man, says Grandma, who’s seen him hijack plenty of family gatherings and Christmas dinners over a piece of front-page news. But when his reporter’s jaw gets going, when he launches into his I-know-how-it-really-went-down routine, I just press mute. That’s why I can’t remember a word of what he told us about the Gris affair. All I remember is the name. And Dad on the sofa, shouting.

  —A project about Gris? Who gave you that assignment? he asked, incredulous.

  —Souk.

  —Who?

  —Soukiouroglou, Dad. My history teacher?

  —Is that the guy you had in middle school? Sort of a loose cannon?

  —Yup, that’s him.

  —I didn’t think he had it in him. Turns out he’s got balls.

  —Dad, do you know anything or should I just hang up?

  —Minas, I’ve got the whole file at home. Gris worked at the paper, you know.

  —Great, I’ll be waiting, I said and hung up.

  I can picture Dad looking at the receiver. Time for his evening drink. A half glass of bourbon with a splash of water. Two cigarettes, one after the other. I don’t have a hidden camera or anything, but I’m sure. That’s one good thing about parents: they’re predictable. Everyone knows that.

  Dad got home at 12:37. Mom had already gone to bed. We’d fought and she wanted me out of her sight. Dad slipped off his shoes. Every morning Mom picks his sweater off the coat rack, sniffs the armpits and tosses it into the hamper, even though Dad complains that too much washing ruins them.

  —I was waiting for you.

  Dad smiled. He lifted the paper napkin off the plate on the kitchen table to see what Mom had left for his dinner. Whole wheat pasta, pesto with basil from the pot on the balcony. A chocolate turtle for dessert. A calorie bomb from start to finish, but Dad only eats once a day. Always after midnight, when he gets home from work. When Mom’s in one of her moods she makes pasta, which she calls an “edible antidepressant.” It’s what we swallow instead of a pill. It works okay.

  —So tell me about this project of yours, he said, putting his plate in the microwave.

  —“The Manolis Gris case: presentation of facts, assessment of evidence, disputation of sources and views, historical context, and critical evaluation.”

  I held up the sheet Souk had given me so he could see it.

  —Isn’t that sort of a lot?

  —That’s how Souk is. It’s no fun for him if he doesn’t bring you to your knees.

  —Yeah, but don’t you have to study for the Panhellenics this year?

  I gave him a look. He nodded. Same page.

  —If I comport myself with academic rigor and intellectual gravity in the research and writing of this paper, I said, mimicking Souk’s voice, I’ll be excused from daily evaluation in our class.

  Dad listened absentmindedly as he fixed himself a nightcap: he put some tsipouro on the stove and stirred in three spoonfuls of honey. Tsipouro with honey gives you sweet dreams, he always says. He recommends it to Grandma, too, whenever she complains of insomnia. Lysimelis, he adds playfully, quoting Archilochus on limb-loosening desire, since meli for “honey” sounds just like meli for “limbs,” and Grandma adores anything having to do with ancient Greek.

  —I’ll need a few days to look over my files, he said.

  I was so happy I kissed him on the cheek. He hid a smile. Then I sat down and kept him company for another five minutes. That’s my limit.

  —Minas, Dad couldn’t keep from adding, you know you could get into university if you wanted to. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

  I didn’t reply. He took a sip of his drink and turned on the TV. If there’s one thing I respect about him, it’s that he knows when to keep quiet.

  THROUGH OTHER EYES

  The faculty meeting was scheduled for six p.m. The teachers were sitting in groups, some chatting or whispering in one another’s ears, others ostentatiously bored. The principal was still in his office, rustling papers, looking over his agenda. The vice principal—a little meatball of a woman with spindly legs and a girlish ponytail, who sang songs from the resistance when she was in a good mood and always had a smile for everyone, as one of her tricks for getting things done—was already in her seat. She looked out at the warring factions before her: the dad types; the union organizers; the loners who kept their heads down and avoided taking sides; the silent, patient types; the ones who were critical of everyone but themselves; the pissed-off-for-no-reason; the arrogant and annoyingly talkative; the neutrality seekers; the politically engaged. It was each man for himself or everyone thick as thieves, depending on who had what to gain.

  In the far left corner of the room, with the back of his chair tilted against the wall, sat Soukiouroglou. He had a book in his lap, a prop to occupy his eyes and hands. He held it open and turned a page every so often, though it was anyone’s guess whether he was actually reading.

  —Contrary to our usual practice, the principal announced on entering the room, the student council representatives will be present at this meeting.

  The students filed in, the middle schoolers unsure of themselves, waiting for the older kids to take their seats first. Chairs had been set up for them in the center of the circle, exposed to view on all sides—a spot chosen on purpose by
the administration, some would later suggest. The middle school student council president wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. The high school representatives, on the other hand, sat there with a combative air and notebooks at the ready. The girls crossed their legs almost brazenly. Some of the veteran teachers in the room took offense at that stance, though none of them said anything. Their disapproving looks were enough.

  The next day some of the teachers defended them—they’re just kids, they haven’t learned how to sit properly, where to put their legs—but most of them knew that body language speaks volumes, reveals all kinds of secret thoughts. Like when Minas Georgiou, who was nearly two meters tall, stretched his gangly legs in their clunky combat boots straight out under the seat in front of him, bottoms up, as if he were mocking them with the red smiley faces painted on the rubber soles. Some were startled, others just figured it was yet another instance of ridiculous teenage fashion, one of those fads that last half a season, tops. Minas watched the meeting unfold with that passive smile kids wear when they want grown-ups to just get off their backs.

  The principal scanned the agenda. Rising to his feet, proud of his democratic impulses, which some dissenters called a shocking lack of responsibility, he opened the floor to the students first.

  —I’d like to share with you the statement prepared by our fifteen-member council, began Evelina, the high school student council president. We’d like your permission to organize a one-day event at our school concerning the global financial crisis.…

  Before she’d even finished her sentence, a current of whispers had spread over the teachers’ part of the room. A few snickered loudly.