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Black Olives
In those days while my then-wife taught English to a mustached young nurse who hoped to join her uncle's practice in Queens, I'd sip gin on our balcony and listen to her read aloud from the phrasebook, then hear the student mimic, slowly, Where does it hurt? then my wife repeat those words so the woman might enunciate each syllable, until I could no longer bear it, so ''d prowl the Ambelokipi district attempting to decipher titles emblazoned on marquees- My Life As A Dog, Runaway Train, Raging Bull- then stroll past dark shops that still sold only one item- kerosene, soap, cheese, notebooks - to step down into the shop that sold olives, only olives in barrels riddling a labyrinth of dank aisles and buttressing brick walls. I'd sidle among squat drums, fingering the fruit, thumbing their inky shine, their rucked skins like blistered fingertips, their plump flesh, the rough salts needling them, judging their cowled heft, biding my time. Always I'd select a half-kilo of the most misshapen, wrinkled and blackest olives sprung from the sacred rubble below Mt. Athos, then had to shout "Fuck Kissinger!" three times before the proprietor would allow me to make my purchase, then step back out into the smut-stirred Athens night to begin the slow stroll home, bearing now my little sack of woe, oil seeping through brown paper, each olive brought toward my mouth mirroring lights flung from marquees and speeding taxis, each olive burning its coal- flame of bitterness and history into my tongue.