Earlier in the day the sun had disappeared behind an overcast and the air had become sultry and still. Far out to sea, a storm thundered faintly as it moved toward them. Nikos took a sip from his glass and gazed across his garden. Out over the cliffs of Kerkyra, out at the ocean beyond. Out where the setting sun would normally be. The thunder grumbled again, softly and distantly, and Nikos smiled.
"It's going to rain," Demetrios said gloomily, his head down. He seemed to be staring into his empty coffee cup there on the metal lawn table between them.
Nikos slouched in one of the metal chairs that matched the table. His legs were thrown out in front of him, his expansive midriff displayed with disregard. The glass went again to his lips and he felt the resiny fire of the liqueur going down. "Be thankful it wasn't earlier in the day," he said. "It's bad for business."
"You shouldn't worry about the business, Babas. You should let me do that."
"And you should cheer up, Demetraki. You should drink the ouzo."
"You don't listen to me."
Nikos ran a finger over his bushy mustache. "I listen."
"And you shouldn't call me Demetraki. I'm not a little boy anymore."
He chuckled. "Ah, that's true. But to me, you will always be my little Demetraki." His smile widened as he added, "If we are going to be so formal, maybe you should call me Pateras instead of Babas, eh?"
The faraway thunder rolled, punctuating the silence. Eventually Demetrios said, "You know, sometimes I don't even know where I live."
"What are you talking about?"
"We work all day in town. And some nights. And the people come into the shop and you hear the German and the French and the English. And all the rest. Don't you ever wonder whose island this really is?"
"It's just the summer."
Demetrios played with the little cup on the saucer, his head still down. He sat straight-backed, neat in his sports shirt and slacks. He said nothing.
Nikos picked up the bottle and poured another half-centimeter into his glass. He looked hard at Demetrios. "When I was a little boy, maybe 8 or 9, you know what I got for Christmas that year? An orange. That was my Christmas present. An orange."
"You shouldn't work so hard," Demetrios said.
"What would you have me do?"
"You should leave the business of the shop to me. You've worked too hard for too long. You should leave it behind and just relax."
"I should just sit here and drink the ouzo?"
"If that is your wish."
Nikos looked out over the leaden water, gauged the timbre of the approaching thunder, and sipped. His son's hair, he noticed, was sprinkled with gray. Lowering the glass, he asked, "Did the order come in from Larisa?"
"Yes," Demetrios answered softly.
"And?"
"All we got was handbags and belts."
Nikos took his time in swallowing more ouzo. "And?" he repeated.
"Most of it came from Skopje. You know, in the new Macedonia. And some, I think, is even from Bulgaria."
"How bad is the leather?"
Still staring down into his coffee cup, Demetrios waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.
"And what are we going to do with it, Demetraki?"
"We'll sell it to the tourists. They'll never know the difference."
Nikos gazed far out over the water, his smile gone. "We will send it back," he said.
Demetrios remained silent. There was another round of thunder. At last he said, "We hear too much of the American music. The British rock. All that junk.""I suppose."
"Don't you think we're losing something?"
"Probably." Nikos thought back. Back to before he was married and Demetrios was born. All the way back to before the airplanes came. Back again to when he was a child. He remembered a single, bony goat. The gnawing bellies of himself and his sisters. The cold and damp and darkness of winter.
Demetrios spoke as if to himself. "Sometimes I don't know if the island belongs to us anymore."
"You should drink the ouzo, Demetraki."
Demetrios snorted. "And get drunk like the tourists?"
Nikos felt the corners of his mouth go up as he transferred another dollop from the bottle to the ouzo glass. There was the babble from the tv in the house and the rumble of thunder getting louder. "It's been a good season," he commented.
"It should be your last season, Babas. If you would listen to reason, you would see that. It's time for you to rest."
He shifted his mind away, once more going back in time. He pictured the statue of St. Spyridonas, resplendent in red and black and gold, being carried down the main street to the church. The bouzouki bands were playing, the people singing and dancing, the retsina flowing. It was the annual festival day in his boyhood village. The 25th of May. "The old music is not for every day, Demetraki," he said at last. "The young ones want the English music."
"We are losing something."
He shrugged. "It's a new world, Demetraki." The thunder growled. Looking out over the Bay of Ambelaki, he could see the gray wall of rain approaching. When the grayness touched the rocks called Petrokavaro out in the bay, he would pick up his bottle and glass and go inside.
Demetrios glanced up, started to say something, then resumed peering down at his empty cup. Finally he said, "We could sell the stuff. The tourists would never know. Half the shops in Paleokastritsa do worse than that."
Vasili stepped out of the back door of the house and came over to the lawn table. "Rain, huh?" the boy asked rhetorically. He was dressed in blue jeans and a red Chicago Bulls T-shirt.
Without looking up, Demetrios said, "Ask your grandmother to make me another cup of coffee."
"You could go ask her yourself," the boy replied.
Demetrios did not respond. He slowly raised his head to stare out over the cliffs toward the storm.
Nikos brought his ouzo glass to his lips. His eyes caught those of Vasili and wouldn't let go. He jerked his head a fraction of an inch toward the house, and the teenager turned and went inside.
Demetrios spoke in low tones. "Even our own children seem like foreigners."
"They are just young."
"They pay no attention to us."
Demetrios took another measured sip of ouzo, concentrating on it as he swallowed. He could see his own father--red-faced and angry as only the desperate can be, swinging the strap cut from a worn-out horse harness down on him, the bleating son. He remembered.
The approaching storm gave out a sharp clap of thunder, and they both turned their heads to gaze out to the bay. Demetrios said, "I want to buy more wallets. I know where we can get them for a good price. A place in Piraeus."
Nikos eyed the bottle on the table and decided there would be no more from it tonight. The shop down in the town probably wasn't all that much to show, he thought, for a lifetime of standing and smiling through the long summer days. Not that much to show for a life. But then, he asked himself, how many of those people could sit as he was sitting and look out over their patio to the sea? How many could sit like this and drink the ouzo?
And now his Demetraki wanted to get more wallets. When they already had too many wallets. The price from the makers was good, he knew, because the tourists this season didn't want their wallets. Nikos sighed and once more ran a finger over his mustache.
He carefully placed his glass on the table, visually measuring how much was left in it. "Have you got a cigarette?" he asked Demetrios. After lighting up, he said, "You wish things were different."
"I am tired of discos," Demetrios said. "I am tired of people in shorts with cameras around their necks."
"We all are," Nikos agreed, smiling again as he glanced at Demetrios's Fiat parked out front. He puffed, his left hand wrapped reassuringly back around the cylinder of the ouzo glass. His smile grew. "Think how peaceful it could be around here without them. It would be just like winter. Like winter when you can go into Paleokastritsa and be lucky to find someone to sell you a loaf of bread."
"It's time for you to let go, Babas. We will take care of you."
Vasili came out with another cup of coffee on another saucer, shuffling so as not to spill. "It's going to rain," the boy said, then escaped back into the house.
Nikos blew out smoke. "So, Demetraki, you would like some changes?"
After a long moment, Demetrios said, "The Americans don't smoke. Have you noticed that?"
"I guess so."
"Why is that?"
Nikos flicked ash onto the ground and thought. "They're rich," he said. "Perhaps that's it. They have enough money to find pleasure in more expensive things." He thought about that some more, dropped it, then asked Demetrios again, "You want changes, eh?"
"Yes."
He dragged on the cigarette. "If I was to leave the shop, who would help you?"
Demetrios took a cautious slurp of his new coffee. "Aliki would help," he said, his voice low.
"Ah. I see." He studied the downcast face of Demetrios. "And you are the one that preaches that the wife is to stay at home."
"That is the way it should be. A woman should be home with the children. She should cook and clean. That is the way it has always been."
Nikos looked at his ouzo glass as he turned it slowly on the table. He murmured, "That hardly describes Aliki."
"The children are growing up. Things have changed."
"I see."
"Do you understand, Babas?"
"Yes. Aliki wants to become part of the business."
"What she says makes sense. It's time for us, Babas."
Nikos inhaled automatically, the flavor of the tobacco going unnoticed. "There's not enough for three of us," he said.
Demetrios looked at him squarely. "If Aliki does not go there, she will go somewhere else in town. I cannot . . . accept that. I want her to be with me."
"Ah."
Demetrios returned to his coffee. "You deserve the rest, Babas," he said into his cup.
Nikos pretended to be absorbed in the view out over the cliffs. He noticed that the storm was getting ominously close, that Petrokavaro was now obscured. Just a little bit longer, he thought. From inside the house came the aroma of sofrito from the kitchen, the blather of tv news bouncing in by satellite from Thessalonika.
"So," Demetrios asked, "what do you think?'"
"I think we will send back the order from Larisa."
Demetrios stared down into his half-finished coffee on the lawn table. The thunder sounded again, near at hand, and a cool breeze suddenly hit them. "It's going to rain," Demetrios said dejectedly. "Should we go inside?"
Nikos looked at his Demetraki, hunched over his coffee like an old woman. He savored his last sip of ouzo and smiled. "There's no hurry," he said. "Just a little bit longer and we'll go in."
Robert Gardner, Engr. '66, is engineering manager at a U.S. Army arsenal in Rock Island, Ill.
