He was standing in front of the refrigerator. He had opened the door and was staring at its contents: a watermelon cut in half, two or three slices of cheese in a rectangular plastic container, stale bread, and three bottles of water. Sweat dripped down his forehead onto the mosaic tiles like site-specific rain. The only thing I could think of as I observed his motionless state was that he wanted neither to eat nor drink. All he wanted was to breathe in the cold air.
This damned heatwave hadn’t occurred in thirty years, or so the news had been repeating ad nauseam since morning. They were already reporting two deaths from heatstroke—we could be the next two, despite having no risky medical history. Our lives were weighed down by burdens we pretended not to see or feel, feigning normality. But perhaps everything was normal. After all, this is how things go—downhill.
In any case, this fucking heat, which had trapped us under the ceiling fan for three days now, wouldn’t let us escape ourselves. I lit a cigarette. By then, he had closed the refrigerator door and was sitting in the yellow rocking chair, clipping his toenails. From the way he held the clipper, it was clear that pampering himself was the last thing on his mind.
I jumped up and switched on the radio. The latest news prescribed political anger. Maybe if we clung to it, we’d be distracted, I thought. But the mere idea seemed more unbearable than the heat. I switched the radio off and lay down on the couch. The fan made an odd noise, similar to the clacking of my father’s dentures at noon, and it startled me.
“Let’s get out of here,” I blurted.
“Go where? What do you mean?” he replied. “The heatwave is supposed to end tomorrow.”
I stayed silent.
The only thing left for me to do was run away before nightfall, before I closed my eyes and had the same nightmare that had been haunting me for three days: that I was dead, naked on a double bed, under a fan recirculating warm air, making the same clicking sound as my father’s dentures.
Translated from the Greek by Despina Pirketti.
