A Foreign Country by Fotios Sarris

Author:Fotios Sarris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dumagrad
Published: 2020-11-17T08:16:43+00:00

6

We had agreed to meet at a restaurant on Park Avenue my father frequented since he’d started driving a cab. Arriving twenty minutes late, he walked past me with barely a nod. He knew the owner, of course, as well as the cook, and he had to make his obligatory stop in the kitchen. When he returned, he took a seat across from me and asked for a Molson Export, letting the waiter know he’d already placed an order for a hamburger steak with the cook. He asked if I wanted anything and I told him I’d eaten at home. I already had a beer in front of me. He settled back with a groan and lit a cigarette. He had on an old brown wool sports jacket and clashing blue shirt, no tie, and had lost weight. Lately, all his clothes were ill-fitting. He hadn’t bought anything new in ages and was uncharacteristically rumpled, though his hair (greased and swept back, and now, by the look of it, bolstered with Grecian Formula) was back in style.

When his beer arrived, he poured it with his usual care to avoid a head and asked why I wanted to meet. For several months, he’d been hounding me about my plans for university. Like most immigrants, my parents regarded the physician as the summit of intellectual and social achievement, and since grade one, my father had made it clear I would be going to med school. By high school I knew this wouldn’t be happening, though I hadn’t told my parents. But neither had I made up my mind about what I would do instead, and with the deadline for undergraduate applications looming, I’d had to make a decision. Left to myself, I might have gone in for English literature or philosophy, but even I understood that these were subjects better suited to trust-fund babies and people with family connections who didn’t have to worry about landing a job after graduation. They were unlikely to win my father’s support. So I hit upon what I thought was a brilliant subterfuge.

I didn’t get the reaction I’d expected.

“Klassikés spouthés?” my father said, looking at me as though he’d just bitten on a lemon.

“Do you know what that is?”

I’d had to look up the term and liked the ring of it in Greek. It sounded more distinguished than mere classics. But my father looked unimpressed. I outlined the program, emphasizing that I would focus on Greek language and literature. This, I thought, was my ace in the hole. But the way he reacted, I might as well have said I planned to study early Mandarin.

“What are you going to do with ancient Greek?” he said.

“That’s just a part of it. You have to know the language to read the original writings. But you study everything, the language, culture, history.” I mentioned Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, Sophocles. I figured invocation of these sacred names would dispel all merely sublunary concerns.

My father hauled on his cigarette and stubbed it out.

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