The Tavern
Empty eyes, grey faces, urine-yellow walls; plaster cracks, powders splintered floors; warm beer in chipped mugs, flies, heat, time . . .
Men playing a game with chips and coins, sliding along rows of wood, clicking; no tavern sounds, laughter, talk; silence, broken by clicking and the flies.
The square in front of the tavern is empty. It is quieter than inside: no sounds of children playing, laughter. The old clock in the bell tower has stopped. Time stops. The bells were sold eight years ago.
Houses: ruins with cracked timbers, boarded windows, brass door knobs and knockers. No one knocks.
Love? There is none here, though they say that the old man with no legs still loves the world. But he is sick, in the head; he talks to the statue of Athena in the grove. Crazy.
How can there be love when there are no children? All the children, sons and daughters, are gone. To Athens. There they can have money, and a good life . . . and time. Time to pass the time away.
I wonder if Pavlo still plays the balalaika. He used to be quite good; a communist taught him to play when he was passing through eight or ten years ago. And drinking, and dancing, music, and enough time to . . .
Heat, and silence, except for the buzzing of flies. The players have gone home. Their children have gone.
The crazy one still waits for his son to come back, when his son is the only one who can never return. He was killed eight years ago by the communists, just outside of Athens. They say the old man was with him when he died. And yet he waits, and asks Athena to bring the boy home.
But the gods have gone.
Dust rises from the square, and the broken fountain fills with it. The road to Athens stretches away from the town into the twilight, winding, unsure, terrifying. Outside, along the road, there is time that passes and leaves more than silence and dust.
The inn-keeper spits, and it is the only sound. The floor takes on another scar, near an old dust-filled bullet hole. The man walks out into the square and heads home; no reason to lock up anymore.
The game rests on the table, old, abandoned. No one wins.
Click.
