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Thimio's House

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 1

Near Death Experience

It's a lovely sunny day and it's time for you to get ready to go to town. Your mother has woken you and drawn back the covers to stop you from falling asleep again. Your mother gives you a kiss on the cheek, snuggling her face into your neck before picking up the soft toys that have fallen on the floor. Eeyore and Tigger always fall on the floor. After putting the toys on the chair, your mother goes to the bathroom to do her lovely hair.

In town you hold your mother's hand. Town's a busy place. You stay where you've been told to stay—by the lamppost. The dummies in the shop window have no clothes on. Suddenly they're lying in the road with no clothes on, and a jet of water's sprouted up out of the ground, and a very hot wind's made the litter stick to everything, including you.

You remember the heat, the smoke, the rubble, the blood, the shouting and screaming.

In hospital, everything's a murmur. The murmur feeds on you, taking whatever it needs and discarding the rest—extracting the pink. You lie dead for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, combing and being combed, crying out for mother, your hair and body in tatters, your skin forming an inhibiting bracken that you struggle to get out of.

Emerging elsewhere, in a dazzling place, you suddenly feel a friendly feeling and see a glow and a shimmer. The glow and the shimmer brighten to become a person—not your mother, but a person so bright that it's impossible to make out their features. The person is holding a shiny object in their hand. They put the shiny object up to their mouth and blow into it, playing high notes—tee-teeee, tee-tee-teeee, tee-teeee—which makes the person's hair billow out in response as though the breath is escaping out of the top of the person's head.

Enveloped in the trumpet call's chilling burn, you know your vision has something to do with the way you've been made and unmade, and that the vision means you've been made again for a second time within the blissful noise of the trumpet, which is everywhere except in the room where you've been resuscitated and told you'll have to lie on your front for weeks.

That was when you were nine years old, before you'd understood that the trumpet was a summons, calling you back to life.

CHAPTER 2

Warmonger!

The rain was torrential, bouncing off roads and pavements, making rapid lie-detector lines. The lies being detected were those of the reckless bankers, the phone-hacking journalists and the corrupt politicians.

Fish had been wandering the city since midday, listening to sounds. City sounds he found inspiring, but today they seemed reproachful, bombarding him like sonic projectiles. The sounds all cried warmonger! their myriad hisses and rumbles and clangs all going off like acoustic ammo. He was the victim of these munitions, especially the incoming shots of the goldsmith's clock (which said one hour to go) and the armour-piercing voice telling him his phone credit was zero.

Today his wandering had purpose: a last-ditch meeting with the solicitor at three. Skirting the Coffee Democracy queue, he headed for Toney's Café, taking the route past the Occupy tents. As he walked through the encampment he saw the djembe guy talking to some of the other protestors, a sodden banner behind him listing the movement's core grievances: bank bail-outs, spending cuts, tuition fees, arms trading, banking crisis, heating costs, exploiting nature. The bearded drummer waved to him and pointed to the Monument—a reminder to him of his busking promise. Fish acknowledged the djembe guy with a thumbs up and entered the mall (capitalist cathedral), his mindchoir now on a rant (ooooaaaaeeee!) and his orchestra on a bombing raid (brrrrrrrrrmmmmm).

He was starting to doubt the wisdom of his symphonic project. Symphonies were an ineffective protest. He'd been told this twice in the past week: first by his composition professor and then by the djembe guy. The poncho-wearing drummer had said that symphonies were a part of the problem, the province of the one per cent. 'Don't get me wrong, it's really cool what you're doing and that,' he'd said, stroking his goatee, 'but who's gonna hear it? Moneyed dudes that's who.' The djembe guy had then issued him a challenge. 'Come and join us here, man. Get your hands dirty. Come busking.'

Fish liked the djembe guy, he seemed sincere. He had a point too about the slowness of his symphonic resistance, but it had been shortsighted of him to dismiss the tactic so readily.

Crossing the replica public square where the giant teddies sing "fun, fun, fun", Fish felt suddenly vulnerable. Apart from the piano taking up most of his room and the symphony taking up most of his head, he was alone in the world. The whole point of writing a symphony was to rectify this, create social magic. Otherwise there was nothing to live for.

In Toney's Café he tore off the end of a sugar sachet and stared at the posy of fake ice-cream cones arranged in the window. He hadn't enjoyed having his commitment questioned, his methods attacked, and now the seminar incident was replaying in his head like an earworm—'You don't have to be a genius to work out whose debts Britney's referring to, but it's obvious to me that she's playing the entire financial system off against itself, giving every fat cat in the world a taste of that green slime stuff she puts in the guy's mouth in the video.'

His comments caused hilarity.

The back story to the scenario was the megastar's classic hit, Toxic. The track had been pounding the woodchip every night in the communal house and the song's prophetic message had grooved its way into his thoughts, so he'd decided to conscript the diva because she said pertinent things like: 'Oh baby you're so toxic'.

—Have you really quoted Toxic in your symphony?

—Are you seriously suggesting that Britney Spears predicted the global financial crisis?

—Well, who's to say Britney hadn't seen it coming? She had her finger on the pulse back then, you know.

Bowing to sub-prime applause, he'd opened the lid of the classroom piano and laid into it, pounding the keys in unstructured bursts, unleashing an executive bonus of notes and chords.

With the cheers of the class adrenalising him, he'd gone to reclaim his score from the professor's clutches, but the musical snob had held onto it, giving it a curt sniff first before holding it aloft like a dirty pair of underpants. He'd responded by snatching back the thick wad of paper, rolling it up and whacking the professor in the face with it.

The sharp edge of his score created social magic—conjuring blood first and then a designated first-aider.

Ejected from the seminar, he'd retreated to the Union bar to find news of his clash gobbling bandwidth. Facebook had gone mental and the leader of the University Wind Band—always quick off the mark with anything publicity-worthy—had sent him an email begging him to bring the score and parts of his 'amazing militant music' to Friday's rehearsal.

Fish didn't think he'd be able to oblige the bandleader. He was too confused, too messed up in the head, too concerned over how on earth he could legitimately join the Occupy protest now without appearing hypocritical. In mounting his offensive he'd committed the cardinal sin of peaceful resistance. "Whacking" might sound innocuous in a Tweet, but it still amounted to violence.

Gulping on his lager, he'd tried to ignore the music playing on the in-house sound system, its connotations lending inappropriate grandeur to the war being shown on SKY. But when the giant screen showed hundreds of Thimio lookalikes rampaging through the streets of Athens, and the music suddenly achieved a perfect fit, he realised then that it was time for him to get serious.

* * *

The solicitor's office was up a steep flight of stairs, which made Fish feel like he was going to the gallows. He reckoned he could always whack the solicitor if things didn't go his way, seeing as he was now a warmonger. But the solicitor turned out to be lacking in whackability. In fact he was friendly and badly dressed, which reduced his whack value. The groove under the solicitor's nose held firm when his mouth and lips explained to him how inheritance issues could often be perverse and that no amount of legal action would change the fact that his adoptive mother had left the piano to him and the house to the church.

Numbed by the news, Fish stood outside in the street and gazed up at the Mediterranean-style frontage of the Stand 'n' Tan that the solicitor's was above. Along with every TV report and newspaper headline it reminded him of Thimio.

Ever since the Euro crisis had hit, old memories had bobbed up to the surface: his adoptive father's tanned face, his droopy moustache, his oregano-and-Swarfega smell, his pumice-rough hands, the way he used to mangle the names of department stores ('Woolwuthers,' 'Littlywoods,' 'Markaspencer'), his delicate tutorial on how to crack open the pumpkin seeds called pasatébo.

Psaráki was what Thimio used to call him. It was Greek for "little fish". His father's death had seemed unreal. On the telly there'd been a platform on stilts and footage of a downed helicopter. Search and Rescue never found Thimio.

CHAPTER 3

"Trick"

Frightened, you flee.

Pack your bags and flee.

Stalked all the way.

The baritone sax too big for the boot, lying on Bruno's back seat.

Signs of life rising up all around.

A roar of living life.

A tsunami.

A curling, living willow pattern of life.

I'm loving angels ...

On the outskirts of Belfast you skin up, constantly checking over your shoulder, drained of energy but loving the open road, the security of it. You want to keep going forever. The world is big enough. Moving, you revive things—rouse fields, restore towns, awaken skies, stir rivers. The speedometer keeps you on the right side of sixty. After sixty all hell breaks loose.

Spread your golden wings ...

You inhale deeply. The cool smokestream settles you ... makes you feel unmade and made again ... helps you feel joy at the undoing of the done ... at the gathering of parts from as far as a bomb blast can send them ... lets you feel proud of your "trick" for re-gluing the beautiful mother torn asunder (wait here, Sweetie, while I pop in for some ham), for replacing the hairs caught in the hairbrush (sudden ears of cloth), for fixing the forever-wrecked breasts (hot cloth!), the confetti freckles lost on the breeze (sticking!), the fluttery eyelashes (singed!), the keepsake lip (scorched!), the laugh damaged beyond repair (burning!).

After you've lost your pursuer you'll resume the task of reassembling your mother. This is your goal. You have the skills.

CHAPTER 4

Seizmós

In his symphony, violins make curved Vs the shape of wings.

His tan was a disaster! His life was a disaster! The objects on the windowsill agreed. Gel Spray—its label facing the wall—was spurning him. Shaving Mirror, all steamed up like a huffy mother, was reminding him of how stupid he looked. Only Toothbrush showed empathy, standing there alone in the cup like an orphan.

Fish had been soaking himself in the bathtub for over an hour, trying to decaffeinate himself. What had induced him to go in and get a tan he had no idea. Maybe he'd thought it would improve his fortunes, make him look more like Thimio, or perhaps give him the edge at the police station when he went to get cautioned. He hadn't bargained on spray. He'd expected bright lamps, not spray!

Giving his arms and legs another scrub, he felt an arpeggio of anger ripple through him, which had nothing to do with the professor's jibes and a lot to do with coming a poor second to the church. Greta had done him out of hundreds of thousands of pounds and had rendered him virtually homeless.

He couldn't give a toss. He was on his way down. The seminar incident had merely sealed his fate. A letter requiring him to withdraw from his course was on its way. Greta would have huffed big time. Thimio would have told him not to worry and to go see the world.

He could have done with some of his father's wisdom right now. Thimio had known a thing or two about disasters: 'Get a clear word from someone who knows' was his maxim.

On the oil-company helicopter there hadn't been anyone who "knew". But at the Pelion house Thimio's "clear word" had come from his grandmother—Yiayia Maria. An earthquake had awakened the teenage Thimio and he'd made his way around to the other side of the wobbling hardboard partition to where Yiayia Maria kept her bed.

'It's nothing, go back to sleep,' the old lady had said, and Thimio had jumped to it, because Yiayia Maria "knew". She'd escaped a house fire in Athens once by jumping from a third-storey window. Yiayia Maria was a sklirí yeinaíka—a "hard woman" who'd lived alone for thirty years in a remote house by the sea.

Both Thimio and Yiayia Maria had survived the '54 quake, and to celebrate, the octogenarian had smoked a cigar, and her obedient grandson had received a haircut from an alcoholic farmer. The inebriated neighbour had staggered along the recently devastated path with his scissors and his comb in his hand, and Yiayia Maria had brought out a chair and placed it defiantly over one of the newly formed cracks in the ground. Kátse káto meant "sit down", which was what Thimio had done, allowing the amateur barber free-rein, the object of the haircut being twofold: to ensure the young man's mother would recognise him when he went home to Volos and to prevent him from resembling a priest.

Later that same day, an old man called Yiorgo had climbed up onto Yiayia Maria's roof to realign the loose slates. A newly cropped Thimio had been indoors giving himself his first ever shave. The shaving mirror had rotated. Flecks of soft beard had vibrated in the soapy scum. The mirror had danced. Pots and pans had clattered. The suspended cheese larder had swung violently—peradóthe-peradóthe. Yiorgos's anxious face had flashed past the window. 'Seizmós! Seizmós!' the old timer had cried.

That second tremor had been brief but violent, as off-the-scale as the peals of laughter emanating from the Petrino Bar that evening when the men of the village had resumed their tsípouro-drinking and games of távli. A vast plane tree outside the Petrino hadn't budged in the quake, despite the ground around it having snapped like a biscuit. Feeling himself lucky to be alive, Thimio had etched his name into the bark of that tree.

Thimio had been Fish's "someone". His father's absence was why his life was now a disaster.

With a brown-streaked body there wasn't much he could do except stick to his work regime and maybe have a few more baths before Friday's rehearsal. His imminent departure from the university wouldn't stop him from making the most of his final band practise, though. He would go out with a bang. Music was all he had now. It was the only good thing Greta had given him. Everything else had been skatá—shit.

CHAPTER 5

Digit

Cooking a nice plate of champ is how you're reconstructing her today. You mash up the boiled potatoes (like so), chop the scallions, mix in a dollop of butter and some milk (well done, Sweetie) then pile the lot onto a plate. The volcano shape comes easily ... but not a volcano now that you look at it, more like a landfill slope. You add a veggie sausage in sick commemoration, recalling with the help of your notepad the way your fringe had been irritating you that day at the dump, and how you'd had to keep brushing your hair away from your eyes with your sleeve because your hands, or rather your Kevlar gloves, had been too filthy to be touching your face with. The rest of the team had gone to the pub. One last delve, you'd insisted, knowing it broke the rules.

The song playing on your Walkman at the time was My Special Angel. The machine—a wee totie piece of retro you'd bought yourself after winning the scholarship at Northern—you'd likened to the getting of a new purse, hence the mixtape.

... from paradise ...

The landfill's north foreshore was where you'd been based those three weeks, the preceding three months having been spent getting the Environment Agency clearances, the polio, tetanus and hepatitis jabs, and negotiating access to that area away from the active dumping: a place you'd dubbed "the valley", located between the "hillock" and the "dune", a place where the stench was unspeakable. Your descriptions of the various pongs had been uninventive. More like curses. But after half an hour in the noxious perfumery words became redundant, because the smells vanished, or rather the capacity to detect them did.

From afar, the landfill was a rowdy splatter of colour. Close up, it was a repository, an archive, in which every object told a story. How many stories had you disturbed that day? How many had you unwittingly trampled on? How many more were still waiting to be uncovered in the municipal marshland of waste paper and buckled plastic?

You'd kneaded the top layer of mustardy sludge, picking out a drinks bottle, a half brick, splinters of wood, a condom, bits of eggshell, a shitty nappy, a hot dog (some were known to last 15 years), several newspapers (every three-foot bucket of trash produced 10 to 30 readable ones), a syringe, a human finger ...
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Thimio's House by John Kefala Kerr. Copyright © 2013 John Kefala Kerr. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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