Street Scene before the Miracle

Note; this short story was originally published on 1 April 2023, on my Substack newsletter, The Traveller’s Literary Supplicant.

By Christopher Deliso

Once again, at four o’clock in the morning, the telephone rang; it awoke Stelios, the air-force pilot, from a deep and dreamless sleep. And once again, there was no national-security emergency; no invitation to a dogfight with a Turkish pilot over airspace incursions or some similarly mundane affair.

It was just the angry woman from the bar again, demanding Stelios come collect his younger brother Petros, and return her stolen property too.

Stelios sighed, and rubbed his thinning hair, frustrated. He scrambled to throw on some jeans and his leather jacket over a black tee-shirt. He bounded down the apartment’s stairs and outside, towards the listless sleeping bars between their street and the waterfront.

The damp port air filled his lungs. Dawn itself was far off, perhaps in doubt, but Stelios walked with certainty, impatient, fixing his hair. He heard the missing brother before he could se him. And when he did, the usually expressionless pilot was astonished.

For there on the corner was Petros, singing in the dark on a small bench, delightedly clanging on the keys of a miniature piano. Clearly, it did not belong there, amidst the shuttered kiosks and shops and empty parked cars, the air flecked with salt and the sullen seagulls’ caws…

“Petros! What’re you doing? Where did you get that thing?”

“Ah good evening, my dear brother!” cheered the pianist, merrily drunk. “I… borrowed it from the bar, having… the purpose of enjoying the superior acoustics of the harbor.”

Stelios gaped. For despite his brother’s name, he was a lightweight. The strength of ten men was needed to move such an object. His brother did not have the strength of ten men.

“But… how… did you take it?” the pilot persisted. “And why would they let you take it- you know, this woman’s very angry! She phoned me, just”-

“Oh, I was drinking with friends, when some of those foreigners, the FRONTEX border guards arrived,” Petros replied, hammering the keys. “I played them some old rizitika songs, after telling them which bars could become… dangerous for various reasons, from our Alexandroupoli all the way up to Orestiada- their usual patrol route… and they were too much grateful for this information, my dear brother. So, they gladly helped me to borrow this piano, for my acoustical experiment, when the woman was distracted in counting her receipts… ach! our Evros has changed so much since those foreigners came.”

“But,” Stelios replied, then gave up. He did not believe a word; yet he had no alternate explanation for the situation. What the pilot did know was his duty. He could not physically carry a piano, even this more miniaturized one… he would have to make some calls, yet again, because of his irresponsible and sick younger brother. Of course no one would steal it. But he couldn’t just leave it there until the light of day!

Stelios noticed the musician had gone pale and was shivering.

“Come on, Petros,” he said wearily, draping his leather jacket over his younger brother’s weak frame. “We must go home. I have work in two hours. And I must find how to get this thing back to its owner before the police hassle us again! This woman was so nervous, because of your antics, and”-

Petros suddenly laughed so oddly – as if his laugh had gone out of him and echoed from a great distance – while waving his hand at the dark sky. The strangeness of his laugh temporarily silenced both Stelios and the unseen gulls.

“Brother, don’t take things so heavy,” he said brightly. “Hey, guess who I ran into tonight at the bar? We spoke wonderfully for an hour.”

“Who?” replied Stelios skeptically.

“Why, Uncle Leftheris, of course,” replied Petros, laughing. “He says hello.”

“Brother,” the pilot sighed, “Uncle Leftheris has been dead eleven years now. You know he”-

“No! You’re mistaken!” shouted Petros fervently. “Leftheris also says that in order to reverse your vision problem, while you still can, you must venerate the icon here in Alexandroupoli – I forget the name of it, or the church, but you’ll know it, he said – ask for the icon which protected the village peasants from blindness, when the rays of the sun reflected harshly up from their salt marshes by the sea.”

“Vision problem?” retorted Stellios. “I’m a Hellenic Air Force pilot!”

Nodding wearily, Stelios surveyed the raving drunk. The sky bled into porphyry tones as they went off, arm in arm, down the chalk-grey pavement and then up the stairs, Stelios putting a finger to his brother’s lips to keep him from waking the neighbors with his excited ravings.

“I’ll make you a coffee, and then please go sleep,” the pilot admonished. “I have to deal with your stupid piano too! Petros, you will be the death of me!”

After water and coffee had been administered to the still-shivering brother, Stelios put him in bed and made the phone calls. Luckily, someone he knew in the police also knew someone who could organize some migrants for the piano-moving job. Stelios was thus back at the street corner as dawn broke, awarding each migrant-mover a twenty-euro bill. He then led them and the piano to the bar, where he apologized to the angry proprietress.

“My last warning,” she said nervily. “Your brother is not welcome here!”

“Understood,” Stelios said, bowing deeply, as if saluting a judge or empress. “I assure you, he will not return here again.”

Yet even despite this needless show of gravitas, Stelios could not imagine how correct his prediction would be. For when he returned to the small shared flat, he found his brother was dead.

“Petros! Petros!” he shouted, shaking the chill body frantically. “Wake up!”

Stelios tried everything, and called everyone; but it was no use. He skipped work that day, and the next day too, making phone calls to arrange for the funeral.

Later, soon after he had gone blind, Stellios retired from the Air Force on an early pension. And, while he did make many inquiries about the particular icon that Petros had mentioned during his last hour on earth, no one could remember its exact whereabouts. Some had heard a certain story, but the details had become faint over time…

This was lamentable, for another reason. Although the blind pilot still dreamt in color, he could not hear the words of the one person who now appeared regularly in his dreams, Uncle Leftheris. For while the old man would smile and energetically speak, his words wee ever obscured by the din of a merry piano.