"Η τρελή της Ιλιάδος"

 μεταφρασμένο στα Αγγλικά απο την Ιωάννα Σκορδαλάκη κατ επιθυμίαν αναγνώστριάς της απο την Αγγλία.

The crazy woman of Iliados Street

After dusk, Zaimi Street was empty of children.

We were all gathered in the upstairs neighborhood because we knew the pixie-like lady was going to come out.

She was a tall woman with a low bun whose appearance  didn’t allow you to define her age.

 Zaimi's crazy lady. She always wore the same outfit and the same summer shoes.

 A cream-coloured dress with long sleeves with cuffs, closed at the neck whose length reached the middle of her calf.

 Her shoes were pumps which had been cut at the back that she wore like slippers.

 She used to come out of the two-storey mansion with the garden and the tall fences that had broken glass on top of them so that one could not climb without being injured.

I heard that woman and her sister lived there.

 She stood right in front of her house every afternoon in the middle of the street.

She had her hands wrapped under her chest, her body rigid, her gaze pinned somewhere in the background and she looked westward.

 Completely  still and quiet. 

 For about half an hour.

Then she'd look at her watch and turn her body to the East.

She stayed like this for half an hour, and then she disappeared into the house.

I was a child at the time of my 11 years and I used to watch her from afar.

One day while she was on the street in her familiar way, the garage door of a next-door two-storey house opened.

 It was Moraitis' house that had a funeral home somewhere downtown, but he had brought the hearse to his garage.

 At the sight of the hearse she went off.

She opened her arms and lifted them up and gestured in a typical Greek way used to curse someone by extending one’s palm.

  She did this at the side of the hearse while shaking with sobs.

 I don't know what happened to that woman.

The house is still in exactly the same place as the same tall fences now restored and well-groomed.

 I think  it belongs to the Metropolis although I’m not quite sure.

The house we live in is my old family home. Near Zaimi.

 It has a narrow balcony where things are convenient. 

 So much so that it doesn’t allow me to take more than ten steps. 

 I go out these days of confinement every two or three hours to get a breath of fresh air.

 I put on my coat and stand in front of the balcony door.

 I touch my elbows on the railing and look down westward where the neighborhood bakery is. 

 It’s the only open shop in that direction.

Delphi Street is empty, no cars.

Then I look the other way to the East, there's barely a mountain and a bit of sky.

 The acacia tree on either side of the road has flourished  in the meantime, the birds are heard in the branches this year.

I enter and on the computer screen coffins parade with the numbers of the dead from the corona virus.

 The pandemic reaps the world.

We are still.

 The lunatics of the planet.

  And I feel like giving it my palm extended as if to curse it.

 No sobs but with anger.

 Except I don't know in which direction to aim.

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Thanks both of them.