The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (11 page)

T
he bus—a minibus, with rust-riddled wheel arches and tires with no tread—was already waiting at the bus stop. The driver, a man with a doleful, sagging face, leaned on the sill of his open window. The stubble of his unshaven cheeks was gray beyond his years, and as he watched the fat man’s approach, no interest showed in his bagged and bloodshot eyes.

On the rearmost seats, two women whispered to each other like conspirators, hugging bags of warm bread loaves to their breasts.

The fat man stood at the driver’s window. Close up, the stink of last night’s Scotch was strong on the driver’s breath.

“Good afternoon, friend,” said the fat man. “Is this the bus for St. Savas?”

The driver bent his head. Yes.

“What time do you leave?”

“From the port, every hour, on the hour. From St. Savas, every hour, on the half-hour. No buses between two and four.” He recited the simple timetable like a chant.

The fat man climbed into the bus and squeezed himself with some difficulty into the seat behind the driver. He filled, quite easily, two-thirds of a seat made for two; on the unoccupied portion he placed his holdall.

He tapped the driver on the shoulder.

“How much to the end of the line?”

“One hundred drachma.” The fat man produced a coin from the change in his pocket, and handed it to the driver.

An elderly man with a parcel of whitebait wrapped in newspaper hauled himself, panting, into the seat across the aisle from the fat man. He lay the parcel on his knee; the fluids from the fish—from scales, fins, bowels, bones—were already soaking through their wrapping, darkening patches of the fabric of his trousers.

“Good day, all, good day,” he said, turning to see who else was on the bus. “Now then, George,” he addressed the driver, “I’ve nearly killed myself running to catch you, and you’re still sitting here as if we’ve all the time in the world. Fire her up, man, and let’s be on our way.”

“Another two minutes yet, by the clock,” said George, and he, the old man, the two women and the fat man craned their heads towards the clock tower at the end of the harbor.

“He’s right, Vassilis,” said one of the women. “Two minutes yet.”

“Well, bugger me,” said the old man. “I needn’t have killed myself after all.”

“That’s what you get here,” said the driver, morosely, not taking his eyes from the clock. “Those that’re early want you to leave the rest behind. Those that’re late blame you for not waiting beyond your time. There’s no winning with these people.”

The fat man smiled, politely, sympathetically, but, unsure whether it was he whom the driver addressed, said nothing. So the three men sat a while in silence; behind them, the women whispered secrets which would soon be known to all.

Across the water rang the lonely, hollow note of the first afternoon hour.

The driver started his engine, and the bus moved slowly along the harbor front and labored up the steep, switchback road which wound across the island to St. Savas’s Bay.

High above the port, the fat man looked down through his window onto the rain-dulled blues of the harbor waters. Above the road, a line of cylindrical windmills crowned the rocky ridge like the crest on the head of a lizard, the weathered stone of their walls a chameleon match for the rough mountain slopes. But, unused for decades, the mills were falling into ruins; their canvas sails were long stripped from their frames, the once-conical roofs were all open to the sky.

Beyond the mills, the road began to descend. The driver took the blind bend at speed; the fat man closed his eyes, feeling the twists in the steep lane in the lifting
of his stomach. The lane leveled; the driver braked, and brought the bus to a halt.

The fat man opened his eyes.

The bus stood in a stone-paved square; amongst the houses which lined it were a tiny general store, and a small hotel where a winter of dead leaves lay on the patio. Outside the store, the grocer’s wife paused in the picking-over of a box of aubergines, and watched the passengers descend, as if she were expecting someone.

Hugging their bread loaves, the women paid the driver in small coins and climbed down from the bus.

“Is this St. Savas?” the fat man asked the driver.

“No, no, not yet,” answered the old man, fumbling in his trouser pocket. “This is the village. Stay where you are, sir, stay where you are. St. Savas is a little way yet.”

“Well,” the driver snapped at the old man, “are you coming with us, then, or are you getting off?”

“I’m just looking for my fare,” said the old man. He looked into the palm of his hand at what his fumbling had produced, and chose three twenty-drachma coins for the driver. Handing them over, he stood and tucked his sodden parcel beneath his arm. The lap of his trousers was dark where the fish-reeking water had soaked them.

“Keep the change,” he called, as the bus pulled away.

“Silly old fool,” muttered the driver.

They wove through the narrowest of lanes, between houses so close an outstretched hand would touch them as they passed, to the head of a wide, shallow valley, where the lane once more became a rural road. Rattling downhill, the fat man looked out on the tatters of an agricultural
heritage: groves of squat, silvered olive trees, their crops all unharvested; the wheat terraces, brilliant with ungrazed meadow-grass and thistles; the collapsed boundary walls of small vineyards where the vines were no more. They passed beneath a line of shivering eucalyptus trees, and by the Half-way House, and soon they reached the sea again, where the driver turned right, and halted. He switched off the engine and leaned tiredly on the sill of his window, as if the fat man were not there. The cooling engine ticked and popped; tiny waves tumbled the sharp gray stones of the roadside shingle.

“Thank you, friend,” said the fat man, climbing out of the bus and slamming the door.

But the driver did not answer.

The fat man took the curving path which followed the line of the sea. At the boatyard, chickens scratched amongst the upturned boats and discarded paint cans; a smoking brazier held the ash of a recent fire. The fat man paused to inspect the joints and plane-work on the newly assembled ribs of a rowing boat, and poked, frowning, at a half-finished fiberglass repair on the hull of a two-man speedboat. Overhead, a white gull wheeled. Picking a strand of drying seaweed from the sole of his left shoe, he walked on until he arrived at a tall house at the path’s end. On the door lintel was fixed a painted sign, with writing so badly cracked and faded it could not be read. At the back of a terrace patchworked with stones taken from the sea stood a single table, and four chairs; at the table sat a man wrapped warm in heavy clothing, his face hidden by the peak of a sheepskin cap.

“Good afternoon,” said the fat man, politely. “I wonder if I am in the right place for a cup of coffee?”

Nikos pushed the peak of the cap off his face and regarded the fat man.

“A stranger in paradise,” he said. “It’s not the season for strangers. But coffee we can manage, winter or summer. How do you take it?”

“Greek coffee, no sugar,” said the fat man. “Thank you.”

Nikos hauled himself out of his chair and limped into the kitchen. Beneath the chair he had vacated, a ginger cat with watering, inflamed eyes licked the thin hair of its flank. Beyond the boatyard, the bus turned the corner and disappeared up the harbor road. The wind drew ripples in the rainwater pools lying in the hollows of the terrace stones. The fat man shivered.

Nikos brought coffee, and water, and a clean ashtray to the table, and sat down with the fat man. He held out his hand.

“Nikos Velianidis.”

“Hermes Diaktoros. Hence the winged sandals.” The fat man pointed to his tennis shoes. Nikos smiled, as if he might have understood the joke.

The fat man gestured at the bay and towards the mountains, whose peaks were hidden in lowering clouds.

“It’s very beautiful here,” he said. “Peaceful. A spot like this would suit me very well.”

“Would it, now?” asked Nikos. “Well, sir, I’ll tell you something. If I had a thousand drachma for everyone I’d heard say that, I’d be a rich man now. You know what they say. The grass is always greener.”

“Sometimes, it’s true,” said the fat man.

“We have a lot of foreigners,” said Nikos, “who think they’d like this life. A life of ease. It’s too much ease that drives them home again.”

“It’s certainly very quiet.”

“It wasn’t always like this. This island was a center of industry, once.”

“Really?” The fat man peeled the cellophane from his new pack of cigarettes and offered it to Nikos, who took one. Nikos held up a gold lighter which burned with a small, steady flame, and the fat man leaned towards him to light his own cigarette. “May I say that, frankly, I have seen very little here of what I would term industry.”

“Sponges,” said Nikos. “They were the heart of an international business. We fished them, cleaned them, packed them and shipped them. There were thousands of people living here, all making a good living out of sponges. We were merchants, and exporters on a grand scale.” The fat man thought of the derelict warehouses he had seen in the harbor square. “Now, we are importers. Germans, English, Dutch. We trade in ice cream and cold beer and sunbeds. Seasonal, but profitable. Six months’ hard labor, six months sitting on our arses waiting for the next wave to roll in.” He drew on his cigarette. “But you,” he said, “if I may say so, are not typical of our clientele. We don’t get too many from Athens.”

“News travels fast.”

“Listen,” said Nikos. “You can’t pick your nose here without everyone knowing about it. And I expect the Chief of Police’s nose is out of joint now you’re here.”

The fat man took a sip of his coffee and replaced the cup carefully in its saucer.

“The state of Mr. Zafiridis’s nose,” he said, “is not my concern.”

“I don’t suppose it is,” said Nikos. “Though he’s an interesting man, nonetheless.”

He folded his arms across his belly and waited for the stranger to take his bait. The fat man smiled, and bit.

“In what way could he possibly be interesting? I found him lacking both charm and intelligence.”

“He is charmless and stupid, of course,” said Nikos, wafting away the fat man’s observations with his cigarette smoke. “But he’s a man with a secret.”

“Yes,” the fat man concurred, flatly. “He is.”

Nikos looked at him.

“You know?”

“Yes, I know. Presumably, so do you. Weren’t you about to tell me?”

Nikos stubbed out his cigarette.

“I must swallow my pride,” he said, “and admit that I don’t. So if you know his secret, please satisfy my curiosity. The Chief of Police is an enigma I have puzzled away at for some considerable time. I know he is not what he seems. But the man is like a hermit crab: the more you try and winkle him out, the deeper he conceals himself. He’s a man with something to hide. Unfortunately, he is also a master at hiding it. If you know, indulge me, as a curious old man.”

For a few moments the fat man hid his mouth behind his hand and looked at Nikos, assessing, considering.

“I wonder,” he said, finally. “Are you the kind of man who can be trusted with another man’s secrets?”

“I never break a confidence.” Nikos bent and stroked the cat beneath his chair, concealing the light blush which the lie brought to his skin. The cat sniffed at his hand, then stood and ambled towards the kitchen door.

But the fat man seemed to take him at his word.

“Mr. Zafiridis,” he said, leaning back, relaxed, in his chair. “His secret is quite an unusual one, even amongst our nation, where lying is a way of life. He is not Mr. Zafiridis of Patmos, as he pretends, but a certain Mr. Xanthos, from Sifnos.”

Nikos smiled in delight.

“An imposter!”

“Just so. He and the real Mr. Zafiridis met on a ferry out of Piraeus. Mr. Xanthos was heading home to a wife he disliked and some embarrassing problems with the tax man. Mr. Zafiridis was on his way here, to take up his new post as Chief of Police; but he, too, had a lot on his mind—in particular a certain young lady who had proved unworthy of him, but not before she had spent every drachma he had. The two men got talking, and then they started drinking; Mr. Zafiridis, especially—the real Mr. Zafiridis—became very drunk. They talked of Mr. Zafiridis’s work, and he made the statement several times that a trained monkey could be a perfectly adequate Chief of Police. In fact, he was quite correct: one has only to look at your own ‘Mr. Zafiridis’ to see the truth of this statement. Then the real Mr. Zafiridis, maudlin drunk but rather rashly nonetheless, expressed a wish to die. Without
his paramour, he said, life was not worth the living. Our ‘Mr. Zafiridis’ took him at his word, and helped him over the side twelve miles off Halkidiki. But not before he helped himself to the real Mr. Zafiridis’s papers. He presented himself here as the new Chief of Police—and has been here ever since.”

The fat man drained his coffee cup.

Nikos’s eyes were bright with excitement.

“How has he got away with it?” he asked. “And what happens if someone who knows the
real
man comes looking for him?”