I’m dreaming, was my first thought. My body had risen weightless into the air, helped by the movements I’d made, like swimming; the cold night air blew chill on my cheeks and ruffled my hair. My heart was beating wildly.
 
For me, who all these wretched years had been dragging my crippled leg along, it was like a wholly unexpected, magic cure. I’m flying, I thought. Like a bird—like an angel.
 
The nocturnal sky over Athens was full of stars. The cold that came down from the north was piercing. The city lay still and silent; only the clothes hung out to dry on some washing line flapped as the wind gained strength. To my right, the long and narrow roof of the church of Zoodochos Pigi, with its rusty grey tiles, resembled the spine of some sleeping animal lying in drugged torpor, indifferent to the misery all around and the cold. I could make out the palm trees in its courtyard, planted around a small fountain decorated with shells that symbolized the life-giving source of the church’s name. In the bell tower I saw the bells whose undulating rhythm obstinately and methodically sounded the hours, the half-hours and the quarters (you could hear them just as clearly from the office on Gamvetta Street), and called the faithful to services or tolled for some hurried funeral—the latter being more common these days. In the old days, mingled with the bells that rang for vespers, you could hear in the silence the monotone voices from the Byzantine music class at the Conservatoire.
 
Now, after midnight, everything was quiet. Everything, that is, except the beating of my heart. The patrol had left, Fidiou Street was deserted once more, the body of the old man still lay in its awkward position on the steps.
 
I had to go back home. I’d left the balcony door open. I didn’t have my keys in my pocket, otherwise I would have gone down the back steps in the light-well and let myself in by the kitchen door. If I rang one of the bells, would they let me in or would they be scared? On the ground floor, the service door used to put the garbage out on the sidewalk was locked. Mrs Leni, the concierge, had the only key to it; and she slept in the little ground-floor apartment in the backyard of the next-door building to the west of ours. It was clear what was going to happen: my body knew before my mind and was already getting prepared: I was going to fly again. I would try and it would happen, this was certain.
 
The drug… ah, yes, the drug which old man Yannakopoulos had given me, the parting present ordered by the Big Boss… There was a conspiracy somewhere here, a piece of trickery of the first order… but what? I stood on the parapet of the roof and gazed down without fear. I stretched out my arms. The street gaped like the mouth of a well which gets narrower as it goes down, a funnel ready to suck me in. I flapped my arms. At once I felt the great resistance of the air. With my first movements I had lifted off from the parapet, the tips of my toes searching for it. All fear disappeared. I was flying.
 
I turned in the air so that I was facing the roof, about two or three feet from the wall, my legs stretched out behind me like a bird’s tail, I rose a bit higher then let myself lose height again. After which, sure now of my powers, I began to swim down through the air, floor by floor. Most of the wooden shutters were lowered, only in Balomenos’ apartment were they up.
 
When I reached my own apartment I touched down lightly and silently on the balcony. I’ve got wings! I thought. Even if I hadn’t seen anything reflected in the windowpanes of the building, even if I hadn’t observed any changes in my body, it was nevertheless certain. I might not be able to see them but I had them.
 
And there was no doubt whatsoever: the pharmacist’s potion was responsible. Old man Yannakopoulos may not have had a clue about it. The Big Boss was clearly a wizard, a fakir, a conjuror, a miracle-worker, a genie—at any rate someone who bore no relation at all to this godforsaken place and these wretched times. I turned on the light in the bedroom. I examined myself carefully, front and back, in the full-length mirror in the wardrobe. There was nothing: no wings, and no tail either. My face looked just the way I’d last seen it when I shaved that morning, my cheeks sunken, dark rings under my eyes, my nose slightly crooked as always, my teeth yellow from lack of cleaning. Some angel!
 
I pulled out the drawer with my underclothes in it to check that what I remembered of the earlier part of the evening had at least really happened. The wings and the flight to the roof and back might well be fantasies—well, let them be so, hunger gives rise to strange visions. But the sovereigns I needed to hold in my palm again, to feel once more the weight that is so disproportionate to their size and which always makes gold seem alive.
 
When I’d done this, I sat down in exhaustion on the unmade divan and put my head in my hands. It wasn’t the first time I’d sat like this—I’d done the same thing the evening after I returned home to Queens from the hospital on Staten Island. I’d sat on the bed then too, though perched on the edge so as not to make my wound more painful, and I’d reflected. A heavy door had closed on my life so far; it would never open again. I was at the beginning of a passage whose end was unknown to me; everything had to start again from scratch, my role had changed, the goal of my life could no longer be the happiness and fulfillment that every human being knows. I was handicapped, condemned to wander forever on the fringes of normal life, hiding my pain and my loneliness so that no one, neither man nor woman, should ever guess at them, even if their aim was to try to soften them for me.
 
The only time I’d ever been to an opera was with Freddy. Freddy was a fanatic opera lover; his greatest happiness was the fact that he made enough money to be able to buy tickets to the Opera, which was then on Broadway and 39th Street. So I’d seen a strange scene there which had remained engraved in my memory. At that time I was utterly in love with Lauretta and, like everyone who’s in love, wasn’t interested in anything that didn’t have as its central subject love and sexual happiness. It was a German opera. In one scene a hideous dwarf comes in and starts leaping around on the rocks by a river in which three blonde ladies are bathing—they were not very attractive, wearing pink and blue gossamer drapery on top of flesh-colored bodystockings to make it look as if they were naked. After they natter on and on for hours, sometimes the dwarf and sometimes the fairies, he becomes angry and gives chase to them. They make eyes at him but when he starts to be interested they run off and begin to mock him and swear at him for being a dwarf and ugly. In the end, in fury, he rushes forward and steals a ball made of golden foil that the fairies are guarding as jealously as their maidenhead and—as Freddy explained, who was shivering and bulging-eyed with excitement—the dwarf then renounces and curses love and all its joys. From henceforth, he says, the sole purpose and joy of his life will be power and wealth (the golden foil ball)—May Love, he cries, be accursed!
 
Neither the music nor all the running around on the stage had made me shiver bodily the way Freddy was shivering beside me. But, I have to admit, the music the orchestra played when the dwarf pronounced his curse froze me in my place. After that the blah, blah, blah began again and within ten minutes I’d fallen into the sweetest sleep in the world in my comfortable seat.
 
It was the music played by the orchestra then that was filling my ears again as I sat that night on the edge of my bed in my little apartment in my old neighborhood, with my head in my hands.
 
Except that while the dwarf seized the golden foil ball and ran off squealing with happiness, I left at night to board a small freighter which had been found with the help of someone who had good contacts in the docks. My possessions were winched aboard, my cabin was just big enough for a bunk on which to lie down, and the journey to Piraeus took an age. And when I was cast up on dry land once more, I found myself face to face with a new place and people whose like I’d never seen before. The only thing I recognized was the language I heard spoken all around me. No familiar faces; no familiar objects.
 
And now once again I was faced with a new reality, just as unfamiliar but not as despairing. Horror and the fear of the unknown had now been replaced by a lightheadedness and joy similar to that you might feel if you suddenly won the sweepstakes or lottery, or if an inheritance came your way from an unexpected quarter. You hear music again, the sky is full of light, everything seems to be smiling at you in friendship, vouchsafing you a new existence, a Promised Land that is opening its doors wide and inviting you to take your first steps into it.
 
I could fly, goddamn it, I could fly!
 
The lame man is no longer lame, or if he is it doesn’t matter. I had discovered the angelic destination for which my existence was intended. From now on, nothing would be the same. No misfortune could henceforth touch me. No fear could paralyze me.
 
I got up, burning with fever. I ran to the kitchen and devoured all the chickpeas left in the saucepan. This was the end of fear, this was the end of hunger and misery. In the morning I would fly—or rather, no, I wouldn’t fly; I should only use my new ability in cases of great need or danger. I would go down to Piraeus for supplies, as I’d planned to do. With five sovereigns in your pocket many things become possible. And then I’d come back home, put my supplies away safely and get myself ready like a lord for the first night of Pagliacci. The Big Boss could play whatever tune he felt like on his fiddle. I would dance!
 
 

© Alexis Panselinos 2020
 
This is an excerpt of the novel The Lame Angel by Alexis Panselinos, translated from Greek by Caroline Harbouri, Recital Publishing 2020.