Uncle Adonis, L.M.
By Wynn Parks
Published by Wynn Parks
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2007
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Epigram for this story taken from Road to Rembetika coutesy of Gail Holst-Warhaft.
Dedicated to the memory of Andreas Fisilanis and his "hog" Lee Roy
You told me when you grew up
You’d give me your heart.
From the time I was eight years old and waiting tables in the taverna, through my teen years, I would walk past Dinosaki’s cafenion at least once, sometimes twice a week. My Uncle Adonis would spot me through the big window, and beckon me to have a coffee with him. I wasn’t allowed to drink it at home, and Uncle Adonis’ invitations became opportunities to assert my independence. I’d once overheard my grandmother tell my mother that she should still count herself lucky to have married my father, rather than Uncle Adonis. This secret fascinated me, and in elementary school, I’d sometimes tried to imagine life with Uncle Adonis for a father.
It was during one of those coffees that I first heard Uncle Adonis called by the initials “L.M.”. He had been involved in a conversation with friends, and it wasn’t until afterward that I’d had the opportunity to ask him what “elem” meant. He hadn’t understood at first; then the coin dropped.
“Ah, ‘L.M.’? They use to call me that. Procopis was called ‘Stick’; Damianos was ‘Fingers’…”
“’Stick’? ‘Fingers’?” I puzzled.
“Well, Procopis wanted to settle everything by fighting, and Damianos played the bazouki. ‘L.M.’ was for ‘Ladies’ Man’.”
At that age, it was all the explanation I needed.
Many coffees later, my voice had begun to crack and the girls whose braids I’d pulled in the lower grades, were suddenly growing breasts. An emerging adolescent curiosity about the old man himself, grew in me. I’d nearly forgotten my Uncle’s nickname, until one afternoon, in the cafenion, Procopis used “elem” again. This time, I blurted out:
“’Ladies Man’! You still call him that?”
“Why not?” Procopis winked, “The pootza is the only part of a man, which won’t stay wrinkled.”
“Hey, Horiatis!” Uncle Adonis made the ‘screw-loose’ sign at Procopis, then turned to me “---never mind these clod-hoppers---I have many interests, Akis. Wine, politics…”
“…laying naked in the sun, with back-packer girls…” Procopis interjected.
“What did I say? He’s a bumpkin… And even if I had, that would be part of a well-balanced life as well. Ask Damianos, he makes music. He’ll tell you.”
Damianos held up his hands, and started singing the “Catholic Girl from Syros” under his breath, which put the other two in stitches. The image of my gray-headed Uncle, naked, on a rock, grinning at some curvaceous and equally naked back-packer, was shocking. Though I tried to shake the effects of this conversation, it weighed more and more heavily upon my thoughts, until I was totally distracted. Finally, I left, saying that my mother would be looking for me. Later, after the street lamps were switched on, I waited on some steps where I knew he’d pass, on his way home, and sat so that he would see me first.
“Akis, is that you?”
“Uncle!” I said, surprised, “I thought you were probably home by now.”
“No, I stayed late with those two bums.”
“They were really joking you. I couldn’t believe what they were saying.”
“What couldn’t you believe? We’re both men together, you and I.”
“Yes, but there are thirty years between you and most of the back-packer girls. They could be your daughters.”
“No, no,” Uncle Adonis looked amused, “I was never married… Akis, listen to me, these are the thoughts of mothers and wives. Soon you will learn to think with your pootza, as Procopis might say, eh? What a pity your father died so young. There are some things that you just can’t learn from your mother.”
“My mother worships me!”
“Yes, yes, of course… How can I say it: the father gives you a mirror of the world as it can be, instead of how it should be…”
“But Uncle, you’ve never had children!”
“But nephew,” he shrugged, “Neither of us has. Your mother is a saint on Earth, but I can hear these words coming from her mouth. Come walk with me. One hour, we’ll go down the waterfront, and after, you can go where you want. Do you remember the time we saw the drowned woman?” This caused me an unexpected rush of early memories:
The day had been gray and the sea still unsettled. I told Uncle Adonis I’d been riding his shoulders through the last stubble field before the shingle beach, and we’d found a crowd of villagers standing at a distance from a woman’s body, crossing themselves. She was laying in sodden clothes. Her left breast was exposed, and there were little flat rocks over her eyes.
“Yes,” said Uncle Adonis, “and her hair was all wet and matted with shell and sand. You remember better than I do.”
There’d been no doctor on the island then, so they sent for the village mid-wife. A monk from the monastery came to witness. He wouldn’t touch the dead woman for fear she was a suicide. Finally, the mid-wife showed up ---somebody’s old pro-yahyah. As she got off her donkey, everybody shouted questions at her except Uncle Adonis, who stood silent and still as a statue. When the mid-wife reached the body, she held a mirror before the woman’s face. The monk turned away when the mid-wife spread the woman’s legs, and reached far up under her skirt. No one spoke while she washed her hands in a bucket of sea water. Finally, she whispered to the monk, who turned to all of us. He raised his hand for silence and said,
"Virgin!" I could remember, as we walked back, thinking my Uncle was laughing silently about something. This thought was followed by the realization that, instead, he was silently sobbing.
Now, Uncle Adonis was nodding agreement.
“…And you said, ‘Poh, poh, poh, Adonis; poh, poh, poh.’.”
“I was afraid to ask why.”
“Who knows? Perhaps I was feeling guilty.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I felt sorry for her. She was a refugee from Macedonia, and a little crazy. They said she’d been raped by some Serbs, and she wasn’t accepted by the village women. She had no family, and everybody said she took in washing to save enough money for a dowry. I was one of her few customers, and one morning, when I went by to collect my laundry, she invited me into her patio for tea, and explained to me that she wanted to have a child, but didn’t want to get married. She told me that she’d done my laundry for almost two years now, and thought I could be trusted. Then, Akis, my boy, she offered me good money, and no strings attached, if I would make her pregnant. I thought about it. She wasn’t a bad looking woman; had a good smile, and strong eyes, like your mother. So I told her I didn’t care; I could use the money. But inside I was thinking, my God, fierce and desperate! So, I agreed to meet her in the grass, beside the old temple of Aphrodite, three nights later, when the moon was waxing. I would bring beer and salted nuts; she would bring a rug. But when the time came, it didn’t make as much sense as when I was with her, and I didn’t go.