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Fiction

Woman in Tree

By Amanda Michalopoulou
Translated from Greek by Karen Emmerich

Marianna Domvrou stepped out of the corner store carrying a red bucket and match­ing mop. She enjoyed running errands in her new neighborhood, as if she were an ordinary woman in need of ordinary things. When people recognized her and smiled at her—which happened often, almost incessantly—Marianna would return the smile and con­tinue on her way. She knew people felt the need to stop and stare until she dis­appeared from sight, though she never turned to check. By now she was so well-known that turning around would have made her seem shallow or insecure. She was aware of the situation, and tried to walk the way her mother had taught her to long ago: shoulders back, head high, but not so high that people would think she was stuck-up. She was also aware that while some admired her, others hated her. Just yesterday a man spat on the sidewalk at her feet to show her how much he detested her. Marianna tried to keep in mind that people saw her as a symbol, not a person. And so she had continued to go about her life these past two months, as if it were perfectly natural for people to be paying her all this attention.

It was a hot, muggy day. Turning left at the main square in Psychiko, she walked past a stopped car. The woman in the driver’s seat stuck her head out the window and waved. “Way to go, girl!” she called, then triumphantly honked her horn twice. Marianna shifted the mop to her other hand and wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans. The sky was growing steadily darker. She saw a Filipina pushing a stroller with twins, casting pleading glances at the clouds as if praying for it not to start raining until they were safely home. Marianna couldn’t hurry, it didn’t suit her image. Sometimes people took photographs of her with their cell phones. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight, a picture on the Internet of her running in a panic. Her new apartment behind the square was just five minutes away. She’d make it. And if she didn’t, she could put the mop on her head like a hat. That was the kind of thing they expected of her.

As she passed by the park she heard a girl’s fragile voice:

“Lady, lady!”

She peered through the bars of the fence. The playground was deserted.

“Up here!”

The voice was coming from the sky. She raised her head and saw a huge, desiccated pine tree—these days on the news they were always talking about pine infestations caused by beekeepers overusing a particular parasite.

“Here, up here!”

The girl was perched like a cat on a high branch. She must have been eight or nine. She had on black leggings and a striped purple shirt.

“What are you doing up there?”

“I climbed up and now I can’t get down.”

Marianna looked around. Not a soul in sight. Sometimes the streets and squares of her posh new neighborhood were deserted for hours on end.

“And no one can hear me.”

Marianna opened the low gate of the playground and set the mop down beside her on the thin grass.

“Where’s your mother?” she asked. With children of that age there was usually a parent around, or a nanny, particularly in an area like Psychiko.

“My mother’s dead,” the girl said faintly.

Marianna swallowed hard. She turned the bucket upside down and used it to give herself a leg up into the tree. What on earth had she been thinking, asking such a personal question of a little girl she didn’t know who just needed her help? she wondered as she scrambled up. She kept reaching her arms up as high as she could, and each time she grabbed hold of a new branch she thought about how out of shape she was. She’d be turning thirty-five in a few weeks. She really needed to start exercising. To stop painting all day.

There was a strange fork in one of the limbs. The lower branch was scrawny, while the other pointed up at a dangerous angle. The girl was perched at its very tip.

“Can you give me your hand from where you are?” Marianna asked, though as she spoke she wondered what would she do with that hand when she got it. The girl shook her head several times and started to cry. Her blonde ponytail shook, too.

The first drops of rain started to fall.

“OK,” said Marianna. “I’ll come to where you are. What’s your name?”

Her lungs burned from the effort of the climb. The sky behind the branches was growing continually darker.

“Aella,” the girl said, and wiped her eyes.

“A what?” Marianna said.

“Aella. She was the fastest of the Amazons.”

Marianna sighed. How far would people go, looking for an original name for their child? And here she was, the fastest of the Amazons, stranded and cling­ing to a branch. With Marianna trying to help. Do you feel at all like Joan of Arc? one clever journalist had asked. What do you mean? she had responded. Are you trying to help others, to show them some­thing they can believe in?

“I can’t climb any higher,” Marianna said, raising her eyes entreatingly. “Doesn’t anyone ever drive down this damned street?”

Perhaps she should have stayed on the ground. Waved down some passing car. What she felt for strangers was, in the end, a kind of controlled anthropophobia. It didn’t bother her if passersby pointed at her, even spat at her, as long as she could keep on moving unimpeded, detached from them all. When people tried to talk to her she would quicken her pace, pretending she hadn’t heard. She would walk off diagonally, like a spider that’s decided to weave its web elsewhere. She had learned how to shake free quickly and tactfully of obtrusive strangers at art openings and restau­rants.

“No one’s going to come,” Aella said. “We’re in trouble.”

Marianna was very close to her now. She could see clearly the girl’s tight little mouth and furrowed brow. She had big eyes and bony wrists. She was a lonely child, Marianna decided, who was trying to get through life by climbing trees. Meanwhile, the rain was getting heav­ier.

“Give me your hand.”

Aella refused, stubbornly shaking her ponytail.

“Then I’ll come up there, and you’ll climb down over me. I’ll hold you. Does that sound good?”

Aella hugged the branch tighter.

“OK, I’m coming.”

Marianna climbed up onto the branch. Her shirt clung to her back, her hair was dripping. She felt as if she were on a mission to save this girl, just as two months earlier it had been her mission to save Greece. How does it feel to have created such a major scandal with your work? one journalist had asked, holding a metal-meshed microphone up to her mouth. I can’t answer that question, Marianna had said. I know it would make things much easier for you if I did, but I can’t.

The talk show hosts tried harder to draw her out. They complimented her on her portraits as technicians shoved tiny microphones under her blouse. Then someone would say three, two, one, we’re on the air, the studio would fall silent, and the host would introduce her with phrases such as, Today we have with us the woman who toppled the government, or, the artist who painted her own Inquisition, or, an individual who just yesterday was a total unknown, though today all of Greece knows her name.

Then a montage would cover the timeline of events. Her solo exhibition “Greek Dreams” at a gallery in Metaxourgeio. The religious nutcase with a switchblade who slashed a painting of naked priests and parliamentarians kneeling in the Vatopedi Monastery. The incident with the other painting, which a gang of Golden Dawn members smashed over her head because it showed them naked, too, eating a Greek flag, with all their symbols lined up on a table like a still life, illuminated from behind by what critics described as “pure Flemish light.” The montage continued with the events outside Parliament, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered carrying wooden placards on which they had pasted blurry reproductions of her paint­ings, the favorite being the one of members of Parliament rolling around in the mud.

While the video played, the host would lean forward in his chair and try to engage her in conversation, using words like “astounding,” “unique,” and “impressive,” the kind of adjectives she often heard from people who didn’t know a thing about art. Marianna would smile politely, as if her host were expressing deep truths. Then the mon­tage would end and the questioning would begin.

How did you decide to become an artist?

Before this happened, no one ever asked me anything serious about my paintings.

Why politicians and clerics and not less recognizable figures?

What interested me was the contrast between those lewd faces and the light that streams into Flemish paintings.

Did it ever occur to you that art might endanger to your integrity?

Political life is even more dangerous for my integrity. My mental integrity, that is.

What do you think people saw in your paintings? After all, these scandals were already well-known, and you’d think we’d had enough images of them already.

My paintings have no parapolitical value, nor any trace of humor. I’m interested in the classical values of painting. In the shades of color on the parliamentarians’ skin as they roll in the mud.

Aella crawled on her belly along the branch. Marianna grabbed her, practically lifting her into the air. She was skinny, light as a feather. As Aella tried to find her footing a little further down, Marianna threw a leg over each side of the branch as if astride a horse, balancing her body so as to support the girl’s weight. Aella’s ponytail was drenched, and her green hairband was the last thing Marianna saw from up on her perch as the girl placed one Converse on the lowest branch and the other on the thick trunk of the pine.

“Thanks!” the girl called. “I’d never have made it without you.”

The girl spoke to her for the first time in the singular, the way people do who have lived through a crisis together.

“What are you waiting for? Come down!”

Only then did Marianna realize what was going on with the tree. Her perspective was all off. She wondered if perhaps something similar had happened with the members of Parliament and the priests in Vatopedi. Her elegiac tone had been all wrong. But that fact made people think about the scandals in a different way, one that had nothing to do with the actual events, but with their own point of view. Why were they living as they did if they could live some other way?

The strange perspective of the rising branch made it impossible for Marianna to lower her foot down to where the branches forked. She was afraid she would fall. She stretched out her leg—impossible.

“Come down,” Aella called.

“I can’t.”

“So what do we do?”

“Go and call someone. Tell them to bring a ladder.”

She was wet to the bone. She imagined herself as the central figure in one of her sought-after paintings. A faint light through the dark clouds. The red bucket upside down on the grass. The aban­doned swings in the background. And she, behind the ailing branches. Her title would be as simple as always: Woman in Tree.


© Amanda Michalopoulou. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Karen Emmerich. All rights reserved.

 

English Greek (Original)

Marianna Domvrou stepped out of the corner store carrying a red bucket and match­ing mop. She enjoyed running errands in her new neighborhood, as if she were an ordinary woman in need of ordinary things. When people recognized her and smiled at her—which happened often, almost incessantly—Marianna would return the smile and con­tinue on her way. She knew people felt the need to stop and stare until she dis­appeared from sight, though she never turned to check. By now she was so well-known that turning around would have made her seem shallow or insecure. She was aware of the situation, and tried to walk the way her mother had taught her to long ago: shoulders back, head high, but not so high that people would think she was stuck-up. She was also aware that while some admired her, others hated her. Just yesterday a man spat on the sidewalk at her feet to show her how much he detested her. Marianna tried to keep in mind that people saw her as a symbol, not a person. And so she had continued to go about her life these past two months, as if it were perfectly natural for people to be paying her all this attention.

It was a hot, muggy day. Turning left at the main square in Psychiko, she walked past a stopped car. The woman in the driver’s seat stuck her head out the window and waved. “Way to go, girl!” she called, then triumphantly honked her horn twice. Marianna shifted the mop to her other hand and wiped her sweaty palm on her jeans. The sky was growing steadily darker. She saw a Filipina pushing a stroller with twins, casting pleading glances at the clouds as if praying for it not to start raining until they were safely home. Marianna couldn’t hurry, it didn’t suit her image. Sometimes people took photographs of her with their cell phones. It wouldn’t be a pretty sight, a picture on the Internet of her running in a panic. Her new apartment behind the square was just five minutes away. She’d make it. And if she didn’t, she could put the mop on her head like a hat. That was the kind of thing they expected of her.

As she passed by the park she heard a girl’s fragile voice:

“Lady, lady!”

She peered through the bars of the fence. The playground was deserted.

“Up here!”

The voice was coming from the sky. She raised her head and saw a huge, desiccated pine tree—these days on the news they were always talking about pine infestations caused by beekeepers overusing a particular parasite.

“Here, up here!”

The girl was perched like a cat on a high branch. She must have been eight or nine. She had on black leggings and a striped purple shirt.

“What are you doing up there?”

“I climbed up and now I can’t get down.”

Marianna looked around. Not a soul in sight. Sometimes the streets and squares of her posh new neighborhood were deserted for hours on end.

“And no one can hear me.”

Marianna opened the low gate of the playground and set the mop down beside her on the thin grass.

“Where’s your mother?” she asked. With children of that age there was usually a parent around, or a nanny, particularly in an area like Psychiko.

“My mother’s dead,” the girl said faintly.

Marianna swallowed hard. She turned the bucket upside down and used it to give herself a leg up into the tree. What on earth had she been thinking, asking such a personal question of a little girl she didn’t know who just needed her help? she wondered as she scrambled up. She kept reaching her arms up as high as she could, and each time she grabbed hold of a new branch she thought about how out of shape she was. She’d be turning thirty-five in a few weeks. She really needed to start exercising. To stop painting all day.

There was a strange fork in one of the limbs. The lower branch was scrawny, while the other pointed up at a dangerous angle. The girl was perched at its very tip.

“Can you give me your hand from where you are?” Marianna asked, though as she spoke she wondered what would she do with that hand when she got it. The girl shook her head several times and started to cry. Her blonde ponytail shook, too.

The first drops of rain started to fall.

“OK,” said Marianna. “I’ll come to where you are. What’s your name?”

Her lungs burned from the effort of the climb. The sky behind the branches was growing continually darker.

“Aella,” the girl said, and wiped her eyes.

“A what?” Marianna said.

“Aella. She was the fastest of the Amazons.”

Marianna sighed. How far would people go, looking for an original name for their child? And here she was, the fastest of the Amazons, stranded and cling­ing to a branch. With Marianna trying to help. Do you feel at all like Joan of Arc? one clever journalist had asked. What do you mean? she had responded. Are you trying to help others, to show them some­thing they can believe in?

“I can’t climb any higher,” Marianna said, raising her eyes entreatingly. “Doesn’t anyone ever drive down this damned street?”

Perhaps she should have stayed on the ground. Waved down some passing car. What she felt for strangers was, in the end, a kind of controlled anthropophobia. It didn’t bother her if passersby pointed at her, even spat at her, as long as she could keep on moving unimpeded, detached from them all. When people tried to talk to her she would quicken her pace, pretending she hadn’t heard. She would walk off diagonally, like a spider that’s decided to weave its web elsewhere. She had learned how to shake free quickly and tactfully of obtrusive strangers at art openings and restau­rants.

“No one’s going to come,” Aella said. “We’re in trouble.”

Marianna was very close to her now. She could see clearly the girl’s tight little mouth and furrowed brow. She had big eyes and bony wrists. She was a lonely child, Marianna decided, who was trying to get through life by climbing trees. Meanwhile, the rain was getting heav­ier.

“Give me your hand.”

Aella refused, stubbornly shaking her ponytail.

“Then I’ll come up there, and you’ll climb down over me. I’ll hold you. Does that sound good?”

Aella hugged the branch tighter.

“OK, I’m coming.”

Marianna climbed up onto the branch. Her shirt clung to her back, her hair was dripping. She felt as if she were on a mission to save this girl, just as two months earlier it had been her mission to save Greece. How does it feel to have created such a major scandal with your work? one journalist had asked, holding a metal-meshed microphone up to her mouth. I can’t answer that question, Marianna had said. I know it would make things much easier for you if I did, but I can’t.

The talk show hosts tried harder to draw her out. They complimented her on her portraits as technicians shoved tiny microphones under her blouse. Then someone would say three, two, one, we’re on the air, the studio would fall silent, and the host would introduce her with phrases such as, Today we have with us the woman who toppled the government, or, the artist who painted her own Inquisition, or, an individual who just yesterday was a total unknown, though today all of Greece knows her name.

Then a montage would cover the timeline of events. Her solo exhibition “Greek Dreams” at a gallery in Metaxourgeio. The religious nutcase with a switchblade who slashed a painting of naked priests and parliamentarians kneeling in the Vatopedi Monastery. The incident with the other painting, which a gang of Golden Dawn members smashed over her head because it showed them naked, too, eating a Greek flag, with all their symbols lined up on a table like a still life, illuminated from behind by what critics described as “pure Flemish light.” The montage continued with the events outside Parliament, where hundreds of thousands of people gathered carrying wooden placards on which they had pasted blurry reproductions of her paint­ings, the favorite being the one of members of Parliament rolling around in the mud.

While the video played, the host would lean forward in his chair and try to engage her in conversation, using words like “astounding,” “unique,” and “impressive,” the kind of adjectives she often heard from people who didn’t know a thing about art. Marianna would smile politely, as if her host were expressing deep truths. Then the mon­tage would end and the questioning would begin.

How did you decide to become an artist?

Before this happened, no one ever asked me anything serious about my paintings.

Why politicians and clerics and not less recognizable figures?

What interested me was the contrast between those lewd faces and the light that streams into Flemish paintings.

Did it ever occur to you that art might endanger to your integrity?

Political life is even more dangerous for my integrity. My mental integrity, that is.

What do you think people saw in your paintings? After all, these scandals were already well-known, and you’d think we’d had enough images of them already.

My paintings have no parapolitical value, nor any trace of humor. I’m interested in the classical values of painting. In the shades of color on the parliamentarians’ skin as they roll in the mud.

Aella crawled on her belly along the branch. Marianna grabbed her, practically lifting her into the air. She was skinny, light as a feather. As Aella tried to find her footing a little further down, Marianna threw a leg over each side of the branch as if astride a horse, balancing her body so as to support the girl’s weight. Aella’s ponytail was drenched, and her green hairband was the last thing Marianna saw from up on her perch as the girl placed one Converse on the lowest branch and the other on the thick trunk of the pine.

“Thanks!” the girl called. “I’d never have made it without you.”

The girl spoke to her for the first time in the singular, the way people do who have lived through a crisis together.

“What are you waiting for? Come down!”

Only then did Marianna realize what was going on with the tree. Her perspective was all off. She wondered if perhaps something similar had happened with the members of Parliament and the priests in Vatopedi. Her elegiac tone had been all wrong. But that fact made people think about the scandals in a different way, one that had nothing to do with the actual events, but with their own point of view. Why were they living as they did if they could live some other way?

The strange perspective of the rising branch made it impossible for Marianna to lower her foot down to where the branches forked. She was afraid she would fall. She stretched out her leg—impossible.

“Come down,” Aella called.

“I can’t.”

“So what do we do?”

“Go and call someone. Tell them to bring a ladder.”

She was wet to the bone. She imagined herself as the central figure in one of her sought-after paintings. A faint light through the dark clouds. The red bucket upside down on the grass. The aban­doned swings in the background. And she, behind the ailing branches. Her title would be as simple as always: Woman in Tree.


© Amanda Michalopoulou. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Karen Emmerich. All rights reserved.

 

Γυναίκα στο δέντρο

Η μαριαννα Δόμβρου βγήκε από το μπακάλικο κρατώντας στο χέρι έναν κόκκινο κουβά με σφουγγαρίστρα. Της άρεσε να κάνει βόλτες στην καινούργια της γειτονιά, σαν να ήταν μια φυσιολογική γυναίκα που χρειαζόταν απλά πράγματα. Όταν την αναγνώριζαν και της χαμογελούσαν –πράγμα που συνέβαινε συχνά, ή μάλλον συνεχώς–, η Μαριάννα ανταπέδιδε το χαμόγελο και συνέχιζε το δρόμο της. Καταλάβαινε ότι οι άνθρωποι ένιωθαν την ανάγκη να σταματήσουν και να την κοιτάξουν ώσπου να εξαφανιστεί από το οπτικό τους πεδίο.

Δε γύριζε το κεφάλι για να σιγουρευτεί. Ήταν τόσο διάσημη, που η στροφή του κεφαλιού θα την έκανε να δείχνει ανασφαλής ή ρηχή. Είχε επίγνωση της κατάστασης και προσπαθούσε να περπατάει όπως της είχε μάθει παλιά η μητέρα της: πίσω οι ώμοι και το κεφάλι ψηλά, όχι όμως τόσο ψηλά που να λένε ότι είχε καβαλήσει το καλάμι. Ήξερε επίσης ότι άλλοι την θαύμαζαν κι άλλοι την μισούσαν. Τις προάλλες ένας άντρας έφτυσε στο πεζοδρόμιο δίπλα της για να δείξει πόσο την απεχθάνεται. Η Μαριάννα προσπαθούσε να θυμάται ότι την αντιμετώπιζαν ως σύμβολο, όχι ως πρόσωπο. Κι έτσι συνέχιζε να ζει τους δυο τελευταίους μήνες, σαν να ήταν φυσικό ν’ ασχολούνται μαζί της.

Ήταν μια ζεστή μέρα με κουφόβραση. Στρίβοντας αριστερά, στην πλατεία Ψυχικού, πέρασε δίπλα από ένα σταματημένο αυτοκίνητο. Η οδηγός έβγαλε το κεφάλι της από το παράθυρο και την χαιρέτησε. «Μπράβο, κορίτσι μου!» φώναξε και πάτησε θριαμβευτικά δυο φορές το κλάξον. Η Μαριάννα κράτησε τη σφουγγαρίστρα στο άλλο χέρι και σκούπισε την ιδρωμένη παλάμη της πάνω στο τζιν της. Ο ουρανός έκλεινε. Διασταυρώθηκε με μια Φιλιππινέζα που έσπρωχνε ένα καρότσι με δίδυμα ρίχνοντας ικετευτικά βλέμματα στα σύννεφα, σαν να προσευχόταν να μη βρέξει ώσπου να φτάσουν στο σπίτι. Η Μαριάννα δεν μπορούσε να βιαστεί, επειδή ήταν έρμαιο της εικόνας της. Μερικές φορές σήκωναν τα κινητά τους και την φωτογράφιζαν. Δε θα ­ήταν ωραίο θέαμα η φωτογραφία της στο Διαδίκτυο ενώ θα έτρε­χε αλαφιασμένη. Το καινούργιο της διαμέρισμα, πίσω από την πλατεία, απείχε μόλις πέντε λεπτά. Θα προλάβαινε. Κι αν δεν προλάβαινε, θα μπορούσε να φορέσει τον κουβά στο κεφάλι της αντί για καπέλο. Κάτι τέτοιο περίμεναν από κείνην.

Περνώντας μπροστά από το πάρκο άκουσε μια λεπτή κοριτσίστικη φωνή.

«Κυρία, κυρία!»

Κοίταξε μέσα απ’ τα κάγκελα. Η παιδική χαρά ήταν έρημη.

«Έι, εδώ!»

Η φωνή ερχόταν από τον ουρανό. Σήκωσε το κεφάλι της κι είδε ένα θεόρατο ξεραμένο πεύκο – τελευταία στις ειδήσεις μιλούσαν για τη βαμβακίαση.

«Εδώ, εδώ!»

Το κορίτσι είχε κουρνιάσει σ’ ένα ψηλό κλαρί σαν να ήταν γάτα. Θα ’ταν οχτώ ή εννιά χρόνων. Φορούσε ένα μαύρο κολάν και μια μοβ ριγέ μπλούζα από πάνω.

«Τι κάνεις εκεί πάνω;»

«Σκαρφάλωσα και δεν μπορώ να κατέβω».

Η Μαριάννα κοίταξε τριγύρω. Ψυχή. Μερικές φορές οι πλατείες και οι δρόμοι του Ψυχικού εκκενώνονταν για ώρες.

«Και δε μ’ ακούει κανείς».

Η Μαριάννα άνοιξε το χαμηλό πορτάκι της παιδικής χαράς και άφησε τη σφουγγαρίστρα δίπλα της, στο αραιό γρασίδι.

«Πού είναι η μαμά σου;»ρώτησε.

Σ’ αυτή την ηλικία υπάρχει ένας γονιός τριγύρω ή μια οικιακή βοηθός, ιδίως στο Ψυχικό.

«Η μαμά μου έχει πεθάνει», είπε το κορίτσι αχνά.

Η Μαριάννα ξεροκατάπιε. Γύρισε τον κουβά ανάποδα και τον χρησιμοποίησε σαν σκαλί για να σκαρφαλώσει. Πώς της ήρθε να ρωτήσει κάτι τόσο προσωπικό ένα άγνωστο κορίτσι του Δημοτικού που χρειαζόταν τη βοήθειά της; αναρωτήθηκε καθώς σκαρφάλωνε. Τέντωνε τα χέρια της για να πιαστεί και σε κάθε κομβικό σημείο της αναρρίχησης αναλογιζόταν πόσο αγύμναστη ήταν. Σε μερικές εβδομάδες έκλεινε τα τριάντα πέντε. Θα ήταν συνετό να ξεκινήσει γυμναστική στην πρώτη ευκαιρία. Να πάψει ν’ ασχολείται με τη ζωγραφική όλη μέρα.

Ένα κλαδί διχάλωνε παράξενα. Το χαμηλότερο παρακλάδι ήταν ισχνό. Το άλλο, που ανέβαινε ψηλά, είχε επικίνδυνη κλίση. Η μικρή ήταν κουρνιασμένη στην άκρη του.

«Μπορείς να μου δώσεις το χέρι σου από κει που είσαι;» ρώτησε η Μαριάννα, ενώ από μέσα της σκέφτηκε: και μετά τι θα το ’κανε αυτό το χέρι;

Το κορίτσι κούνησε πολλές φορές το κεφάλι του κι άρχισε να κλαίει. Μαζί κουνήθηκε πέρα δώθε κι η ξανθιά του αλογοουρά.

Άρχισαν να πέφτουν οι πρώτες σταγόνες βροχής.

«Καλά», είπε η Μαριάννα. «Θα έρθω εκεί που είσαι. Πώς σε λένε;»

Το στήθος της έκαιγε από την προσπάθεια. Ο ουρανός, πίσω απ’ τα κλαδιά, σκοτείνιαζε.

«Άελλα», είπε το κορίτσι και σκούπισε τα μάτια του.

«Άε- τι;»

«Άελλα. Είναι η πιο γρήγορη Αμαζόνα».

Η Μαριάννα αναστέναξε. Πόσο μακριά μπορούσε να φτάσει κανείς αναζητώντας πρωτότυπο όνομα; Ορίστε η πιο γρήγο-
ρη Αμαζόνα, σκαρφαλωμένη στο κλαδί, ανήμπορη. Κι η Μαριάννα να προσπαθεί να βοηθήσει. «Νιώθετε λίγο σαν την Ιωάννα της Λωραίνης;» την είχε ρωτήσει ένας ξύπνιος δημοσιογράφος. «Δηλαδή;» είχε ρωτήσει η Μαριάννα. «Θέλετε να βοη­θήσετε τους άλλους, να τους υποδείξετε κάτι στο οποίο να πιστέψουν;»

«Δεν μπορώ ν’ ανέβω», είπε και κοίταξε προς τα πάνω παρακλητικά. «Μα δεν περνάει κανείς απ’ αυτό τον αναθεματισμένο δρόμο;»

Καλύτερα να μην ανέβαινε. Να σταματούσε κάποιο περαστικό αυτοκίνητο. Αυτό που ένιωθε για τους ξένους τελικά ήταν ελεγ­χόμενη ανθρωποφοβία. Δεν την πείραζε να κυκλοφορούν πλάι της και να την δείχνουν με το δάχτυλο, ούτε καν να την φτύνουν, αρκεί να περπατούσε ανενόχλητη και να μη σχετιζόταν με κανένα. Όταν της μιλούσαν, άνοιγε το βήμα σαν να μην είχε ακούσει αυτό που της έλεγαν. Περπατούσε λοξά, σαν αράχνη που αποφάσισε να πλέξει αλλού τον ιστό της. Ήξερε να απομακρύνεται γρήγορα και διακριτικά από τους φορτικούς στα εγκαί­νια εκθέσεων ή στα εστιατόρια.

«Δε θα περάσει κανείς», είπε η Άελλα. «Την πατήσαμε».

Βρισκόταν κοντά της τώρα. Έβλεπε καθαρά το σφιχτό στόμα της μικρής, το συνοφρυωμένο της μέτωπο. Είχε μεγάλα μάτια και κοκκαλιάρικους καρπούς. Ήταν μοναχικό παιδί, αποφάσισε μέσα της. Προσπαθούσε να τα βγάλει πέρα με τη ζωή σκαρφαλώνοντας σε δέντρα. Στο μεταξύ η βροχή δυνάμωνε.

«Δώσε μου το χέρι σου».

 Η Άελλα αρνήθηκε κουνώντας με πείσμα την αλογοουρά της.

«Τότε θ’ ανέβω εγώ και θα περάσεις από πάνω μου. Θα σε κρατάω. Εντάξει;»

Η μικρή αγκάλιασε σφιχτά τον κορμό.

«Λοιπόν, έρχομαι».

 Η Μαριάννα σκαρφάλωσε στο κλαδί. Η μπλούζα είχε κολλήσει στην πλάτη της. Τα μαλλιά της έσταζαν. Ένιωθε πως ο προορισμός της ήταν να σώσει αυτό το κορίτσι, όπως πριν από δυο μήνες προορισμός της ήταν να σώσει την Ελλάδα. «Πώς νιώθετε που δημιουργήθηκε ένα τόσο μεγάλο σκάνδαλο εξαιτίας της ζωγραφικής σας;» την ρώτησε ένας δημοσιογράφος, βάζοντας μπροστά στο στόμα της ένα μικρόφωνο με μεταλλικό πλέγμα. «Δεν μπορώ να απαντήσω σ’ αυτή την ερώτηση», είχε πει η Μαριάννα. «Καταλαβαίνω πως θα σας διευκόλυνε τρομερά η απάντησή μου, αλλά δεν μπορώ».

Οι δημοσιογράφοι που είχαν δικές τους εκπομπές προσπαθούσαν να την ξεψαχνίσουν. Της έκαναν φιλοφρονήσεις για τα πορτρέτα της, ενώ οι τεχνικοί του πλατό έχωναν κάτω από την μπλούζα της το μικροφωνάκι. Ύστερα κάποιος έλεγε «τρία, δύο, ένα, πάμε», γινόταν ησυχία στο στούντιο και οι οικοδεσπότες την παρουσίαζαν με φράσεις όπως «Σήμερα έχουμε μαζί μας τη γυναίκα που έριξε την κυβέρνηση», ή «την καλλιτέχνη που ζωγράφισε τη δική της Ιερά Εξέταση», ή «έναν άνθρωπο που μας ήταν άγνωστος ως χτες, αλλά σήμερα ξέρει τ’ όνομά του ολόκληρη η Ελλάδα».

Κάποιος ρεπόρτερ παρουσίαζε το χρονικό: την ατομική της έκθεση «Ελληνικά Όνειρα» στην γκαλερί του Μεταξουργείου. Το σκίσιμο του καμβά –που απεικόνιζε γυμνούς βουλευτές και μοναχούς γονατισμένους σ’ ένα μοναστήρι του Βατοπεδίου– από την ημίτρελη θεούσα με το σουγιά. Το επεισόδιο με τον άλλο πίνακα που της φόρεσαν κολλάρο οι χρυσαυγίτες, επειδή τους ζωγράφιζε κι εκείνους γυμνούς, να τρώνε μια ελληνική σημαία, με όλα τους τα σύμβολα αραδιασμένα σαν νεκρή φύση πάνω στο τραπέζι, ενώ απ’ το φεγγίτη πίσω τους έμπαινε αυτό που η κριτική ονόμασε «ατόφιο φλαμανδικό φως». Το ρεπορτάζ αρχείου συνεχιζόταν με τα επεισόδια στη Βουλή, τις εκατοντάδες χιλιάδες κόσμου που είχαν μαζευτεί απ’ έξω. Κράδαιναν ξύλα πάνω στα οποία είχαν κολλήσει θολές αναπαραστάσεις των έργων της, κυρίως αυτό με τους βουλευτές που κυλιόντουσαν στη λάσπη.

Όσο έπαιζε το βίντεο, ο οικοδεσπότης της εκπομπής τεντωνόταν στο κάθισμά του και επιχειρούσε να της πιάσει κουβέντα χρησιμοποιώντας λέξεις όπως «τρομερό», «μοναδικό», «εντυπωσιακό», τα επίθετα που χρησιμοποιούν όσοι δεν ξέρουν από τέχνη. Η Μαριάννα χαμογελούσε ευγενικά, σαν να της έλεγαν βαθυστόχαστες αλήθειες. Ύστερα άρχιζαν οι ερωτήσεις.

«Πώς αποφασίσατε να ασχοληθείτε με την τέχνη;» Απαντούσε: «Κανείς ποτέ δε με ρώτησε σοβαρά για τη ζωγραφική μου πριν απ’ αυτό».

«Γιατί πολιτικούς και ιερωμένους και όχι λιγότερο αναγνωρίσιμα πρόσωπα;» Απαντούσε: «Μ’ ενδιέφερε η αντίστιξη ανάμεσα στο φως που μπαίνει από ένα φεγγίτη στη φλαμανδική ζωγραφική και σε πρόσωπα έκφυλα».

«Σκεφτήκατε ποτέ ότι η τέχνη μπορεί να γίνει επικίνδυνη για την ακεραιότητά σας;» Απαντούσε: «Η πολιτική ζωή είναι ακόμα πιο επικίνδυνη για την ακεραιότητά μου. Την ψυχική μου ακεραιότητα, θέλω να πω».

«Τι πιστεύετε ότι είδε ο κόσμος στα έργα σας; Τα σκάνδαλα είναι γνωστά και φυσιολογικά θα έπρεπε να έχουμε χορτάσει εικόνες». Απαντούσε: «Τα έργα μου δεν έχουν παραπολιτική αξία, ούτε ίχνος χιούμορ. Μ’ ενδιαφέρουν οι κλασικές αξίες της ζωγραφικής. Οι αποχρώσεις του δέρματος των βουλευτών καθώς κυλιούνται στη λάσπη».

Η Άελλα σύρθηκε με την κοιλιά πάνω στο κλαδί. Η Μαριάννα την βούτηξε, σχεδόν την σήκωσε στον αέρα. Ήταν αδύνατη, σαν πούπουλο. Όταν ετοιμάστηκε να κατέβει, η Μαριάννα κάθισε ιππαστί και ζύγιασε το σώμα της για να κρατήσει το βάρος της μικρής. Η αλογοουρά του κοριτσιού είχε μουσκέψει και το πράσινο λαστιχάκι της ήταν το τελευταίο πράγμα που είδε από εκεί ψηλά, καθώς η Άελλα στήριξε τη μια της ελβιέλα στο χαμηλότερο κλαδί και την άλλη στον χοντρό κορμό του πεύκου.

«Ευχαριστώ!» φώναξε. «Δε θα τα κατάφερνα ποτέ χωρίς εσέ­να».

Της μίλησε στον ενικό – όπως μιλάνε οι άνθρωποι που ζουν μαζί ένα δράμα.

«Τι περιμένεις; Κατέβα!»

Μόνο τότε η Μαριάννα κατάλαβε τι συνέβαινε με το δέντρο. Είχε λάθος προοπτική. Από το νου της πέρασε η σκέψη ότι κάτι παρόμοιο συνέβαινε και με τους βουλευτές ή με τους μοναχούς του Βατοπεδίου. Ο ελεγειακός της τόνος ήταν λανθασμένος κι αυτό έκανε τους ανθρώπους να σκεφτούν τα σκάνδαλα μ’ έναν νέο τρόπο, που δεν είχε σχέση με τα ίδια τα γεγονότα αλλά με την προοπτική τους. Γιατί ζούσαν όπως ζούσαν αν μπορούσαν να ζήσουν αλλιώς.

Εξαιτίας της προοπτικής του ανωφερικού κλαδιού τής ήταν αδύνατον να κατεβάσει το πόδι της και να πατήσει στη διχάλα. Φοβήθηκε πως θα πέσει. Τέντωσε το πόδι – αδύνατον.

«Κατέβα!» φώναξε η Άελλα.

«Αδύνατον».

«Και τι θα κάνουμε τώρα;»

«Καλύτερα να φωνάξεις κάποιον. Πες τους να φέρουν μια σκάλα».

Είχε μουλιάσει ως το κόκκαλο. Είδε τον εαυτό της σαν πρωταγωνίστρια σ’ έναν από τους πολυσυζητημένους πίνακές της. Λίγο φως μέσα απ’ τα σκοτεινά σύννεφα. Η κόκκινη σφουγγαρίστρα αναποδογυρισμένη στο γκαζόν. Οι εγκαταλελειμμένες κούνιες στο βάθος. Κι εκείνη πίσω απ’ τα άρρωστα κλαδιά. Ο τίτλος της θα ήταν όπως πάντα λιτός. «Γυναίκα στο δέντρο».

 

 

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