And the Mountains Echoed

had come a long way since the 1960s, and that I was certain I could, if not fix, then at least significantly improve her disfigurement. Thalia refused, to enormous bewilderment on my part.
This is who I am
, she said to me. An insipid, unsatisfactory answer, I thought at the time. What did that even mean? I didn’t understand it. I had uncharitable thoughts of prison inmates, lifers, afraid to get out, terrified of being paroled, terrified of change, terrified of facing a new life outside barbed wire and guard towers.
    My offer to Thalia still stands to this day. I know she won’t take it. But I understand now. Because she was right—this
is
who she is. I cannot pretend to know what it must have been like to gaze at that face in the mirror each day, to take stock of its ghastly ruin, and to summon the will to accept it. The mountainous strain of it, the effort, the patience. Her acceptance taking shape slowly, over years, like rocks of a beachside cliff sculpted by the pounding tides. It took the dog minutes to give Thalia her face, and a lifetime for her to mold it into an identity. She would not let me undo it all with my scalpel. It would be like inflicting a fresh wound over the old one.
    I dig into the eggs, knowing it will please her, even though I am not really hungry. “This is good, Thalia.”
    â€œSo, are you excited?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    She reaches behind her and pulls open a kitchen-counter drawer. She retrieves a pair of sunglasses with rectangular lenses. It takes me a moment. Then I remember. The eclipse.
    â€œAh, of course.”
    â€œAt first,” she says, “I thought we’d just watch it through a pinhole. But then Odie said you were coming. And I said, ‘Well, then, let’s do it in style.’ ”
    We talk a bit about the eclipse that is supposed to happen the next day. Thalia says it will start in the morning and be complete by noon or so. She has been checking the weather updates and is relieved that the island is not due for a cloudy day. She asks if I want more eggs and I say yes, and she tells me about a new Internet café that has gone up where Mr. Roussos’s old pawnshop used to sit.
    â€œI saw the pictures,” I say. “Upstairs. The article too.”
    She wipes my bread crumbs off the table with her palm, tosses them over her shoulder into the kitchen sink without looking. “Ah, that was easy. Well, scanning and uploading them was. The hard part was organizing them into countries. I had to sit and figure it out because you never sent notes, just the pictures. She was very specific about that, the having it organized into countries. She had to have it that way. She insisted on it.”
    â€œWho?”
    She issues a sigh. “ ‘Who?’ he says. Odie. Who else?”
    â€œThat was her idea?”
    â€œThe article too. She was the one who found it on the web.”
    â€œMamá looked me up?” I say.
    â€œI should have never taught her. Now she won’t stop.” She gives a chuckle. “She checks on you every day. It’s true. You have yourself a cyberspace stalker, Markos Varvaris.”
    â€¦
    Mamá comes downstairs early in the afternoon. She is wearing a dark blue bathrobe and the fuzzy slippers that I have already come to loathe. It looks like she has brushed her hair. I am relieved to see that she appears to be moving normally as she walks down the steps, as she opens her arms to me, smiling sleepily.
    We sit at the table for coffee.
    â€œWhere is Thalia?” she asks, blowing into her cup.
    â€œOut to get some treats. For tomorrow. Is that yours, Mamá?” I point to a cane leaning against the wall behind the new armchair. I hadn’t noticed it when I had first come in.
    â€œOh, I hardly use it. Just on bad days. And for long walks. Even then, mostly for peace of mind,” she says too dismissively, which is how I know she relies on it far more than she lets on. “It’s you I worry for. The news from that awful country. Thalia doesn’t want me listening to it. She says it will agitate me.”
    â€œWe do have our incidents,” I say, “but mostly it’s just people going about their lives. And I’m always careful, Mamá.” Of course I neglect to tell her about the shooting at the guesthouse across the street or the recent surge in attacks on foreign-aid workers, or that by
careful
I mean I have taken to carrying