Rien Ne Va Plus by Margarita Karapanou

Author:Margarita Karapanou [Karapanou, Margarita]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566567725
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
Published: 2013-09-19T22:00:00+00:00

40.

I knew right away, the instant I conceived. It was three in the morning on the nineteenth of July. Afterward, Alkis rolled over onto his stomach and whispered:

—I want a child so badly.

Then he fell asleep.

I lit a cigarette and went out onto the terrace.

There was a full moon.

By August nineteenth I still hadn’t gotten my period. Glyfada steamed in the heat wave. On the thirtieth, Alkis would be going to England for a veterinarians’ conference. I would meet him there in September. The morning he left, as he stood in the door with his suitcases, I told him the results of the test: I was pregnant. He dropped to his knees before me and pressed his cheek against my belly. Then I watched as his car disappeared around the corner.

The heat wave made the landscape barren, like the moon, as the temperature climbed into the forties. The sky turned completely white, viscous. The government was taking emergency measures because of the heat. I stayed alone in the house with Caesar and Lyn. The sea stretching before me was viscous, too, like oil, utterly still, and it had turned a deep green. All day long I sat naked in the sun, smoking. I never left the house. I stared at the sea, lighting one cigarette with the butt of the one before. The house filled with music: How deep is your love…, Just like a woman…, Baby, please come back… I carried the speakers out onto the terrace. The deafening metallic voices poured out into the heat and plunged into the sea. I could feel the baby coursing through my body, from my head to the soles of my feet. I no longer saw anyone at all. I was completely alone with Caesar and Lyn. At night I took Lyn on long walks through the empty city. The darkness was absolute. It was so hot that everyone kept their lights off. Only the TVs were on, glowing like aquariums. As we walked I would hear the sound of the twelve o’clock news drifting out. When we got home Lyn would flop down on the marble floor next to my bed, crossing her front legs and stretching her hind legs behind her, trying to keep cool.

The dreams would begin as soon as I fell asleep. I hadn’t dreamed in years. But now I dreamed of the baby. It was angry at me and I didn’t know why. It was trying to tell me something. It would make a sharp gesture with the thumb of its right hand: no.

—I don’t want you! I would shout in my sleep.

—Whether you want me or not, I’m here now, and I’m all settled in. Then it would laugh, a little sadly. Of course it’s a little cramped in here, and the heat makes me sweat.

The dreams were always exactly the same, the same words, coming in the same order in the course of each night.

Late at night, I always dreamed that the baby was hanging

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