Once upon a time there were holy trees, holy stones, and a snake, the holiest of them all. My first memory is quite simple though: that of a little rug at his apartment door, surely left behind by a previous tenant. That’s where every New Year stumbles. That’s usually how it happens. The evening arrives, a moment swelling from my longing to return, to pass through that front door’s keyhole and cracks, retrieving my twenty-three years of age and my love for T.
His eyes conjured up the funerary stelae of Alexandrian times. Those dark eyes with the whites shining, often resting on me, had the power to transfix me, his eyebrows bringing to mind a royal eagle’s wings spread open in flight. And T. himself seemed to possess a hidden ability to fly. Air was his element, and with the wind I still welcome him. That winter it hadn’t surprised me that our feet were hardly touching the ground as we walked together. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that he flew away and vanished . . .
I fell in love with him on the 8th of a long gone November, a day in which all things lost, everything invisible, is celebrated by the ephemeral world, as it was revealed to me years later. Outside our window the wind blew strong, setting free its dogs, the zephyr, the sirocco, the ostria, and the tramontane. It blew so hard I thought the gusts would blow right through me, and I struggled for breath.
The bell was broken, and I knocked lightly on the door. When I found myself sitting awkwardly at the edge of the bed, I clearly remembered a woman’s voice on the radio, singing, seeking revenge against her lover, who had stripped her of all joy. I never heard that song again, but T.’s voice returns each New Year’s Eve, whispering in my ear, “Remember when a day wouldn’t pass without rapture?” I wish I could remember less from that house, where no red light had been flickering, indicating a way out, warning me of an emergency landing.
It was a strange house, floating above the world. Though the bathroom stood opposite the front door, it might as well have been flung far into an empty lot, since our bodies were hardly human and only tangible in bed. There were two bedrooms, one quite dark, opening on to an airshaft, and the other overly bright, just like the living room. Both looked out on the community pool, Zappeion Park, and Lycabettus hill. The furniture and objects were of an obsolete elegance, the semicircular sofa clad in yellow velvet, a coffee table inlaid with mother-of-pearl arabesques and on top of it an ostrich egg. Numbers—or were they dates?—sometimes formed in the crimson rug, running and hiding in the weaving. On the floor our only pet, a sharp sword from the Philippines, rubbed at our feet.
Testing the omnipotence of thought, we would turn off the heaters when it got really cold, our foreheads burning. On rainy nights I opened the windows, inviting thundering oracles, calling in the lightning to turn us to ash before the summer light washed over us. Winter swept quickly through those rooms, invisible silkworms wrapping us in their feverish cocoons. As if we were fasting, we’d both lost over twenty pounds in five months.
* * * * * *
The weather had warmed by the time we arrived on the island. Without the fog surrounding us, without his steaming breath, I hardly recognized him. I remember thinking that on our last walk beside the sea, as our steps in the sand strained for the first time. “Do you believe in God?” he asked me all of a sudden, echoing the cedars on the beach, the pebbles and the sea creatures—seals, whales, and all the tiny clams. “I believe in the invisible,” I replied, “and I feel awe for the boundaries keeping me apart from these cedars, these pebbles, all the sea creatures.”
We caught the last boat and returned to Athens that same evening. Late at night a strong hot wind came up; T. had fallen into a deep silence a long time ago. I was slowly descending into the well of sleep when I heard his voice. “In this we are not alike. Though I am lacking in faith I aspire to the grace of God.” Drowsily, between half-closed eyelids, I saw the luster in his eyes for the last time. I felt him rise from the bed and heard him going out on the balcony. I awoke at dawn to a silent house. The front door was locked from the inside, but I still searched the house and balcony, every single drawer, averting my eyes from the gravel at the bottom of the airshaft. I kept searching for three years, slowly acknowledging that what we’ve loved is never lost, even if it returns back to earth. Sometimes on the morning of New Year’s Day his voice still dares me, “Don’t waste away your time with a slow death.” Hastily, I take up pen and paper to fill the gaping mouth of Time with words.
[“The Silkworm’s Address” is included in On My Aunt’s Shallow Grave White Roses Have Already Bloomed, stories by Maria Mitsora; translated from the Greek by Jacob Moe. Published by Yale University Press in September 2018 in the Margellos World Republic of Letters series. Reproduced by permission.]