I watched her coming down the road, said Thanos. You know, as you leave Antimachia there is a cemetery. I was waiting there to pick up a friend when she came, leading her goat. She sat down by the road opposite the cemetery. Her eyes were wet. When I spoke to her she looked away.
What are you doing? I said.
I am waiting for him, she said, not looking at me.
Who?
I am waiting for my son.
Where is your son?
I come here every day at three in case he comes.
Comes from where? Where is your son coming from, Kyria?
They told me he was killed, on a merchant ship. They didn't tell me how he died, so maybe he will come.
When was your son killed?
Fifteen years ago.
Well, you can imagine! Thanos said to me. I turned away, so that she wouldn't see the tears in my eyes.
After a while I moved closer to her again. I felt I had to do something to ease things for her. I said, But Kyria, your son is here. Why do you imagine he is lost? This earth lets nothing go, even if you drown or are killed, you are still here. The earth holds on to its own. Nobody falls off it into space. Nothing is lost. You do not have to see his eyes or touch him to believe it. He is here anyway, with you, your son.
How do you know these things? the woman asked him.
Well, what could I say to comfort her? asked Thanos. She wouldn't believe me if I told her the truth, so I said, I am a teacher.
Ah, she said, you are a teacher. That is why you speak so nicely. You are a teacher.
* * *
I remember, said Thanos, when I lived in New York, and Nina stayed in Greece. (Although she is my mother, I have always called her Nina.) We couldn't afford phone calls in those days, so she would write to me.
Go down to the ocean, she would say, and kiss the waves, and I will do the same, and in that way we will kiss.
Poetry, isn't it? But Nina meant it, it was real to her.
Anyway, that woman with her goat. I don't know where it came from, what I told her. I felt a need to give her something. She had given me a story, an insight.
Then my friend arrived, two hours late, as I was leaving. A soldier, from the base. I told him about the woman and her goat, and how she had been coming there for fifteen years to meet her son, the way the Trojan women must have gone to wait, and all the women after any war, outside the city walls, at the edge of town, like that old woman.
Somehow it must have influenced him too. He asked me then to drive him into town, to ring his mother.
That night I phoned Nina. These things happen for the good, if you have eyes to see it.
Will you see that woman when you go to Kos, sitting by the roadside with her goat? I doubt it. That was years ago, and she was already old. Her face was covered in wrinkles, and she looked like somebody whose time had come.
Her sailor son was waiting for her, somewhere.
1988