The day for departure came, and whether people had prepared themselves or not, it was time to leave. This time it was not only Giorgis who went to the island, but half a dozen other village fishermen who finally believed they had nothing to fear and would help ferry people away from Spinalonga with all their worldly possessions. At one o’clock in the afternoon on 25 August, a small flotilla could be seen approaching from Plaka.
A final service had been held in the tiny church of St Pantaleimon on the previous day, but people had filed through the church to light candles and mumble their prayers for many days before that. They came to give thanks, and as they took deep breaths to calm their unsteady nerves, inhaling the heady, treacle-thick scent of the candles that flickered around them, they prayed to God that He would give them the courage to face whatever the world across that narrow strip of water brought them.
The elderly and those still sick were helped on board first. Donkeys worked hard that day, plodding back and forth through the tunnel bearing people’s possessions and pulling carts piled high with boxes. A great mountain of goods built up on the quayside, turning a long-held dream into the tangible reality of departure. It was only now that some of them really believed this old life was ended and a new one was to begin. As they made their way through the tunnel they imagined they could hear their own heartbeats drumming against its walls.
Kyritsis was officiating on the quayside in Plaka, ensuring that those who were still sick and being taken back to Athens to continue treatment were carefully dealt with.
Among the last few left on the island were Lapakis and Maria. The doctor had needed to clear up the final pieces of paperwork and had packed all the necessary folders in a box. These medical records gave his patients a clean bill of health and would be in his own safe-keeping until everyone had crossed the water. Only then would he distribute them. They would be the islanders’ passports to freedom.
Leaving the little alleyway from her house for the final time, Maria looked up the hill towards the hospital. She could see Lapakis making his way down the street, struggling with his cumbersome boxes, and set off to help him. All around her were signs of hasty departure. Until that final hour, a few had refused to believe that they were really leaving. Someone had failed to fasten a window and it now banged in the breeze; several shutters had come loose from their catches and curtains flapped around them like sails. Cups and saucers sat abandoned on tables in the
kafenion
, and in the school room an open book lay on a desk. Algebraic formulae were still scratched in chalk on the blackboard. In one of the shops a row of tins remained on a shelf as if the shopkeeper had imagined he might open it up again some day. Bright geraniums planted in old olive oil drums were already wilting. They would not be watered that night.
‘Don’t worry about me, Maria,’ said the doctor, red in the face. ‘You’ve got plenty to think about.’
‘No, let me help you. There’s no reason why you should break your back for us any more,’ she said, taking one of the smaller record boxes. ‘We’re all healthy now, aren’t we?’
‘You certainly are,’ he replied. ‘And some of you can go away and put this whole experience behind you.’
Lapakis knew as soon as he had said it how hard this would probably be, and was embarrassed at his own thoughtlessness. He fumbled his way towards the words that he thought would give greatest comfort.
‘A new beginning. That’s what I mean . . . You’ll be able to have a new beginning.’
Lapakis was not to know it, but a new beginning was exactly the opposite of what Maria wanted. It suggested that everything of her old life on the island would be swept away. Why should he know that the most precious thing of all was something she would never have found but for her exile on this island and that, far from wanting to leave everything of her life on Spinalonga behind, Maria wanted to take the best of it with her?
As she took a last look up the main street, acute feelings of nostalgia almost made her swoon. Memories rolled one after the other into her mind, overlapping and colliding. The extraordinary friendships she had formed, the camaraderie of laundry days, the merrymaking on feast days, the pleasure of seeing the latest films, the satisfaction in helping people who really needed her, the unwarranted fear when fierce debates raged in the
kafenion
, mostly between the Athenians and usually on subjects that seemed to have little relevance to their own day-to-day lives. It was as if no time at all had elapsed between the moment she had stood on this spot for the first time and now. Four years ago she had been full of hatred for Spinalonga. At the time, death had seemed infinitely preferable to a life sentence on this island, but now here she was, momentarily reticent about leaving. In a few seconds, another life would begin, and she did not know what it would hold.
Lapakis read all this in her face. For him, as well, life was to bring new uncertainties now that his work on Spinalonga was over. He would travel to Athens to spend a few months with the lepers who were going to the Santa Barbara hospital and still needed treatment, but after that his own life was as unmapped as the moon.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I think we should go. Your father will be waiting for us.’
They both turned now and walked through the tunnel. The sound of their steps reverberated around them. Giorgis was waiting at the other end. Drawing deeply on a cigarette, he sat on the wall in the shade of a mimosa tree watching for his daughter to emerge from the tunnel. It seemed as though she would never come. Apart from Maria and Lapakis, the island was now evacuated. Even the donkeys, goats and cats had been ferried across in a scene reminiscent of Noah’s Ark. The last boat, except for this, had departed ten minutes earlier and the quayside was now deserted. Close by, a small metal box, a sheaf of letters and a full packet of cigarettes had been dropped, all testimony to the hurried departure of the final group. Perhaps there had been a hitch, Giorgis thought in a panic. Maybe Maria could not leave after all. Perhaps the doctor had not signed her papers.
At the moment when these rogue thoughts had taken on an uncomfortable reality, Maria emerged from the black semicircle of the tunnel and ran towards him, her arms outstretched, all second thoughts and doubts about leaving the island forgotten as she embraced her father. Wordlessly he basked in the sensation of her silky hair against his rough skin.
‘Shall we go?’ Maria asked, eventually.
Her possessions were already loaded on board. Lapakis got on first and turned to take Maria’s hand. She put one foot on the boat. For a fraction of a second the other remained on the stony ground, and then she lifted it. Her life on Spinalonga was over.
Giorgis untethered his old caique and pushed it away from the quayside. Then, nimbly for a man his age, he jumped aboard and swung the boat around so that it was soon heading away from the island and out towards the mainland. His passengers faced towards the front of the boat. They watched the sharp point of the prow which, like an arrow, sped swiftly towards its target. Giorgis was wasting no time. His view of Spinalonga was still all too clear. The dark shapes of the windows looked at him like hollow, sightless eyes and their unbearable emptiness made him think of all those lepers who had ended their days afflicted by blindess. Suddenly he had a vision of Eleni as she was the last time he ever saw her, standing on that quayside, and for a moment the joy of having his daughter close by him was forgotten.
It was only a matter of minutes now before they were to land. The little harbour in Plaka was crowded with people. Many of the colonists had been greeted by family and friends; others simply hugged each other as they touched their native land for the first time in as many as twenty-five years. The noisiest contingent were the Athenians. Some of their friends and even colleagues had travelled all the way from their city to celebrate this epoch-making day. There would be no time for sleep tonight, and tomorrow morning they would all make their way back to Iraklion for the return journey to Athens. For now they would teach Plaka a thing or two about the art of making merry. Some of them were musicians and had already practised that morning with the locals, forming an impressive orchestra of every instrument, from lyre and lute and mandolin to bouzouki, bagpipe and shepherd’s flute.
Their new baby, Petros, in arms, Fotini and Stephanos were there to greet Maria, along with Mattheos, their little brown-eyed boy, who danced about with excitement in the heady atmosphere, not at all aware of the significance of the day but delighted by the suggestion of carnival in the air.
‘Welcome home, Maria,’ said Stephanos. He had stood back as his wife embraced her best friend, waiting his turn to greet her. ‘We are so glad that you are back.’
He began to lift Maria’s boxes and load them on to his pick-up truck. It was only a short distance to the Petrakis house, but too far to carry everything by hand. The two women crossed the square, leaving Giorgis to tie up the boat. They would go on foot. Trestle tables were already set up and chairs were laid out in groups. Bright little flags traced the four sides of the square and fluttered gaily across its diagonals. It would not be long before the party began.
By the time Maria and Fotini arrived at the house, Stephanos had already unloaded the boxes, which now sat inside the door. As she went in, Maria felt a pricking sensation on the back of her neck. Nothing had changed since the day she left. All was immaculately in place just as it always had been: the same embroidered sampler with its welcoming ‘
Kali Mera
’ - ‘Good Morning’ - that her mother had completed just in time for her marriage hung on the wall opposite the door to greet visitors, the same collection of pans hung near the fireplace and the familiar set of flower-sprigged china plates was ranged on the rack. Inside one of her boxes Maria would soon find some matching ones and the parts of the service would be united once again.
Even on such a luminous day, it was gloomy in this house. All the old familiar objects might still be in their places, but the walls themselves seemed to have absorbed the profound misery that had been endured within them. They exuded the loneliness of her father’s previous few years. Everything appeared to be the same, but nothing was as it had been.
When Giorgis walked in a few moments later, he found Stephanos, Fotini, Petros and Mattheos, who was clutching a small posy of flowers, and Maria all crowded into the little house. At last it seemed that some fragments of his life were fitting back together. His beautiful daughter was standing in front of him, one out of the three women in the framed photograph he looked at each and every day. In his eyes, she was lovelier than ever.
‘Well,’ said Fotini. ‘I shouldn’t stay too long - there’s food still to be prepared. Shall we see you back in the square?’
‘Thanks for everything. I’m so lucky to be coming back to old friends like you - and a new friend as well,’ she said, looking towards Mattheos, who now plucked up the courage to step forward and give her the flowers.
Maria smiled. They were the first flowers she had been given since Manoli had presented her with some four years earlier, only a week before she had gone to be tested for leprosy. The little boy’s gesture touched her.
It was more than half an hour later, changed into a different dress and with her hair brushed until it gleamed more brightly than the mirror itself, that Maria felt ready to go out and face the curiosity of the inhabitants of Plaka. Despite the welcome that some of her neighbours would give her, she knew that others would be scrutinising her and looking for signs of the disease. They would be disappointed. Maria did not bear the slightest trace. There were several on whom the disease had taken a greater toll. Many would hobble for life on their crippled feet, and the unlucky few who had lost their sight would forever be reliant on their families. For the majority, however, lesions had vanished, ugly skin pigmentations had faded to invisibility, and feeling had returned to the places where anaesthesia had numbed them.
Maria and her father walked together towards the square.
‘I won’t believe it until I see it,’ said Giorgis, ‘but your sister has said she might come tonight. I got a note from her yesterday.’
‘Anna?’ said Maria, astonished. ‘With Andreas too?’
‘So she said in her letter. I suppose she wants to welcome you back.’
Like any parent, he yearned for reunion and assumed that Anna thought it a good moment to make up for her negligence over the past few years. If he could have two daughters back instead of one that would make him happier than ever. For Maria, on the other hand, a meeting with Anna tonight was a prospect that she did not relish. Celebration not reconciliation was the purpose of today: every last leper on Spinalonga was finally to be given his liberty.