Why I Killed My Best Friend. Amanda Michalopoulou
PRAISE FOR AMANDA MICHALOPOULOU
“Flawlessly translated, WIKMBF uses the backdrop of Greek politics, radical protests, and the art world to explore the dangers and joys that come with BFFs. Or, as the narrator puts it, ‘odiodsamato,’ which translates roughly as ‘frienemies.’”—Gary Shteyngart
“What typifies Michalopoulou’s novels is their artful structure, the stories within stories, alternative versions of the same event, an intense, introspective, sometimes obsessive, female protagonist who seeks to express herself in some form of art, characters that slip away from us just as we think we know who they are, and an unreliable narrative that is constantly being undercut, reworked, tilted at a different angle and, indeed, brought into connection with the real world.”—Vivienne Nilan
ALSO BY AMANDA MICHALOPOULOU IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
I’D LIKE
Copyright © 2003 by Amanda Michalopoulou
Translation copyright © 2014 by Karen Emmerich
Originally Published by Kastaniōtēs, Athens, Greece as Giati skotosa tin kaliteri mou fili
First edition, 2014
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request.
ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-94-8
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
This book was published with the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the National Book Centre of Greece.
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627
Contents
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Translator’s Acknowledgments
A wild animal charges into the room and knocks me to the floor before I know what’s hit me. All I see is an eye glaring fiercely from beneath a tuft of blond hair.
“Niaaar!” it roars. “I’m a tiger! I’ll tear you to shreds!”
The first graders and I have been sitting and drawing in a circle on the floor, as we do every afternoon. I’ve just gotten them under control; my reward is the dry, monotonous scuffing of pencils on paper. Natasha, one of the shyest girls, starts to shriek when she sees me flat on my back on the floor. Panos shapes his fingers into a gun and lets out a string of incoherent sounds, something between machine gun fire and spitting. The tiger pounces on him and bites the barrel of his gun. While he’s recovering from the shock, it lunges at me again, trying out a new set of roars. I look over and see Saroglou, the principal, standing in the door, one hand over her heart.
“My Lord, Maria! She slipped right through my hands . . .”
I grab the girl by the wrists to immobilize her. It’s a trick I’ve learned well, how to grab a child by the wrists. “What’s going on? How on earth did she—”
“You think I’ve ever seen anything like it? Spoiled tomboy!”
“What’s she doing here?”
“She’s new. Her name’s Daphne Malouhou. The family just moved back to Athens from Paris. Her parents work long hours, and they asked if we’d let her into the after-school program. Do you think you can handle her?”
The little girl continues to struggle as if possessed. I have her by the arms, but she keeps flailing her feet in the air. She crumples Natasha’s drawing with her shoes and Natasha begins to wail inconsolably. By now the rest of the kids are whimpering, too. In hopes of calming them down, I tell Saroglou to leave and close the door behind her. Then I tell the kids we’re going on a journey into the jungle, where we’ll turn into wild animals and show our hooked claws, just as Daphne did. They start to roar like lions and slowly but surely stop being afraid of the newcomer. To add to the atmosphere, I beat a rhythm on the floor with my fingertips. A stream of memories from Africa floods my mind: suya with peanuts at the beach, imitation Coca-Cola, hide-and-seek with Unto Punto behind the badminton court.
Daphne is still prancing around bewitched, half horse, half tiger. She elbows the other kids out of the way as she takes a victory lap around the room, but her primary target is me, the animal tamer. She rushes at me, grabs both my thighs and squeezes. How strong she is! She raises her head and stares at me intently. I shiver: that same dimple in her chin. The same look in her eye. The same tenacity. All that’s missing is a white streak in her eyebrow.
“Are you going to be a good girl now?”
“Not if I don’t want to!”
“Daphne, I’m not kidding!”
“Me neither,” she says, and pinches my calf.
It isn’t so much the commotion caused by her entrance that convinces me. Or even the hard evidence: France, the dimple, the blond hair, the resemblance. It’s the pinch that does it.
“What’s your mother’s name?” I ask.
“I’m not telling.”
“Your mother’s name is Anna.”
The girl jumps back.
“You’re a witch!” she says.
“Of course I’m a witch. And if you don’t behave, I’ll turn you into a tiger for good.”
Her mouth drops open. Then she closes and opens it a few times, soundlessly. Like our goldfish, back then, in Ikeja.
I’m crouching on the lawn under the palm trees at our house in Ikeja. I’m eating something green and crunchy, using both hands because, as Gwendolyn says, you can’t catch fleas with one finger. Across from me is the stone pond with the goldfish, only it’s empty now. We can’t bring our fish with us to Athens. Where do fish go when people move? I hope they go down a pipe into the sea to find their long-lost families, and hug by rubbing their scales together since they don’t have any arms. When fish move to a new place, there are no suitcases, no tears. Mom and I have the handkerchiefs she embroidered with our initials in case we want to cry, and a shipping container for our things. Unto Punto carries everything out of the house, even my roller skates. Except for Dad’s things. Dad’s going to stay in Nigeria with the empty goldfish pond.
It’s summer and the rainy season has started. We have to leave before the beginning of the school year so I can adjust to the “Greek system.” In the Greek system the blackboard