The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (13 page)

He beckoned the fat man to bend close, and spoke into his ear.

“Go to Profitis Ilias,” he said. “There’s a man who lives in a cabin there, right on the mountain. They call him Mad Lukas, and you’ll find him rather strange. But he knows something that’ll interest you. He saw something. Someone. Go and ask him who it was he saw, up there in the mountains—in just the spot where her body was found.”

S
till the furious wind blew, ripping across a sky of clearest blue. At the roadside, the eucalyptus trees creaked and groaned; at the window, Irini caught a single chime above the wind’s howl as the clock of St. Thanassis struck ten. In the bedroom, Andreas slept. And then, a huge crack, and a sudden, shivering rustle of dry leaves whose whispers seemed to rise in panic; a dulled thud as split wood crashed down on concrete, and the storm-felled limb lay a barrier across the road, the narrow leaves on its broken branches fluttering like faded, tattered pennants in the wind.

She ran to the bedroom. Andreas lay on his back, mouth open, his breathing profound and slow. His unshaven face was ridged with softening folds; in sleep, he had the vulnerability of a child, or of great age. It seemed a shame to wake him; and so, returning to the kitchen, she pulled on her warmest jacket and walked out into the storm, alone.

The bitter wind went for her eyes; it peppered them with dust and grit which stung until the tears ran, and spread her hair across her face like a veil. She stood, wind-whipped
and shivering, holding her hair as best she could off her face, beside the fallen branch. It was, she knew, far beyond any strength of hers to move it from the road, and, deciding she must disturb Andreas after all, she turned towards the house. But, above the whooping wind, she caught a sound which stopped her: the sound—and the danger—was moving closer, in the faint but growing rumble of a vehicle approaching.

T
he bends in the road were blind; the drivers, in the main, were not.

But Theo Hatzistratis was searching for the number of the mainland lumberyard; last time, they sent the wrong lengths of timber, all too short. He wanted to speak with Malvilis, and check that the order was right; he wanted to talk to Buscotis, the warehouse man, and tell him to make sure that, first boat out when the storm passed, it would be here. The number was scrawled in pencil on a paper napkin; the napkin was in the pocket of his jacket, which lay on the passenger seat. He turned the jacket over, and looked down to guide his hand to the pocket. When his eyes switched back to the road, the road was blocked.

The brakes needed attention; he had known it for weeks, but time was too short to hang about the garage workshop watching Stavros on his back beneath the truck, losing his wrenches and his temper and making the problem worse than when they’d started.

He stamped on the brake, pumped it, pressed it to the floor. There was a sliding, a spraying of gravel, a squealing
of tires. He closed his eyes, his arms braced on the wheel in readiness for the impact, but all he felt was a light, playful shove of a bump as he made contact.

He opened his eyes. The front of the truck was buried amongst the gray-green leaves and twigs of eucalyptus. Beyond, a woman watched him with startled eyes; she held the closed fingers of one hand over the “o” of her mouth.

He switched off the engine. As he climbed out of the truck, she gathered her magnificent hair—
hair for burying your face in
—and, pulling it impatiently over her shoulder, held it there. The wind was behind him; it caught him in the back, and made him take a step towards her.

He knew her, knew who she was, though he didn’t know her name. He knew she was Andreas the Fish’s wife, the woman Andreas had fetched himself from the mainland. Now, he could see she was worth fetching. She was a woman a man could admire. Savor. Caress.

The wind nudged him again, propelling him forward; as he took another step, he found there was no resistance in him at all.

I
blame the wind for everything: the wind fetched down the branch, and laid it like a trap across the road. I didn’t know him, I had never seen his face before; and yet as we faced each other, something passed between us—a flicker of recognition, understanding, a tiny charge of emotion which made us, somehow, conspirators. But in a heartbeat it was gone, and I was left looking at this man who was a stranger to me. He was tall, and younger
than Andreas. He wore a full beard, untrimmed, a mourning beard; his black eyebrows were heavy, as if he might have exotic ancestry, Arab blood from the palm-fringed oases and scented harems of the Mussulmen. He had two heavy creases above his nose, which made me think maybe he frowned too much; but then he smiled at me, and those deep frown-lines just melted, and softer lines, from too much smiling, appeared at the corners of his dark and lovely eyes
.

A
nd then I realized that I was staring, so I lowered my eyes, but I could feel his still on me. He was bolder than he should be, like the boat-builders; except with Theo, somehow I didn’t mind.

H
e called out, “Yassas”; he had to shout to lift his voice over the wind.

“
W
e have a problem here,” he yelled, and he kicked hard at the branch, expecting—I suppose—that it would rock, and give. But the branch was solid, rigid, and his face crumpled in pain, and he swore at himself and his own stupidity. And then he smiled at me, and I couldn’t help myself—I laughed.

H
e shouted something else to me, but the wind carried his words away and I couldn’t understand him, even if I watched his lips. So he parted the leaves, and stepped across the branch, and stood so close to me I could smell the scent of wood on him, the freshness
of pine resin, and cigarettes on his breath. And on his hand I saw a wedding ring, a heavy band of white gold tight on his finger.

I
told him I had seen the branch fall, that I had watched it from the window.

H
e asked me where Andreas was, and I told him he was sleeping. He called Andreas an idle dog, and said that he would get him out of bed.

H
e walked away from me. His thighs were long, his walk was supple, fluid. I watched him go. I watched him open my house door, and enter it as if it was his own, and I felt no objection to his intrusion
.

S
he stood alone in the road, waiting, until the two men came out of the house together. Andreas was fastening his jacket, and laughing. The stranger pulled the door closed behind them.

It was the same, always: now there were two of them, she was visible to neither one. They did not speak to her, but stood a little distance away, gesturing, conferring, while the wind brought scraps of their talk to her ears.

“If we could borrow a winch…”

“… tie it to the back of your truck…”

“… in the workshop… ten minutes…”

It was cold, and the wind was a torment. Irini went inside to watch them from the shelter of the kitchen, but by the time she reached her chair at the window, they were out of sight, gone walking away down the road to the bay.

W
hen they returned, she was making the batter for a lemon cake, beating margarine and sugar to a pale cream. Above the wind, an engine with a holed exhaust roared; a banana-yellow truck, badly rusted, pulled up outside the house. Crouched in the back, ducking behind the cab for shelter, Andreas and the stranger were red-cheeked from the cold, their hair comical in wind-teased peaks. In the cab sat the two boat-builders from St. Savas. The short one, the one with the missing fingers, looked over at the window where she stood and, seeing her there, raised his hand in friendly greeting, as if he never murmured those things to her when Andreas was away.

Andreas vaulted down onto the road. From the bed of the truck, the stranger lifted a chainsaw—a brute of a machine, heavy, long-bladed, jagged-toothed—and passed it to Andreas, then jumped down himself.

The four men stood together, heads cowed against the wind, and talked. She watched Andreas gesture above his head and point out the long, pale scar where the branch had been ripped from the trunk. They prodded at the branch with their toecaps, and made theoretical slices through it with the sides of their hands. They folded their arms self-importantly and discussed the possibilities. They
spat on the ground and interrupted each other. They ridiculed the boat-builder with the missing fingers and called him
malaka
. And finally, they appeared to agree to a plan.

Andreas held up the chainsaw and peered at its workings, but one of the boat-builders—the one with rotten teeth—was impatient, and snatched it from him. Holding it before him, its brutal blade at the center of the group, he yanked at the starter cord, pulling it to its full extent. Nothing. He yanked again. Nothing. He lowered the saw, and the stranger pointed to a small, black button on the motor. The boat-builder pushed the button, held the saw up level with their faces, and yanked a third time at the cord.

As Andreas, the stranger and the boat-builder with the missing fingers leapt back, out of range, Irini heard the roar of the chainsaw. The boat-builder lowered it to the branch; and in a spray of sawdust and woodchips, the first log fell away.

T
hey swaggered laughing into the kitchen, pulled chairs up to the table and sat themselves down. Outside, on the verge where pink cyclamen had bloomed, a stack of logs had grown. In the road, the wind skimmed the tops off the hillocks of soft sawdust and spirited the fine powder upwards, and away.

Andreas slammed an ashtray down on the table and spoke to Irini over his shoulder.

“Make us some coffee, wife,” he said.

They leaned back in their chairs, legs splayed wide,
fumbling in their jackets for cigarettes and lighters. Andreas, finding his first, offered around a red-and-blue-banded pack of Assos: cheap Greek tobacco, rolled into cigarettes so badly made that sometimes the filters came off in the smoker’s mouth. Irini watched Andreas pinch off the loose, white tip of the cigarette he was about to light. If they had been alone, he would never have removed it, because she would complain. Unfiltered cigarettes made his cough worse, and she would nag him for his early morning hacking and hawking and spitting which spattered mucous leavings in the bathroom sink.

The air was thick with cloud-gray smoke. She lit the gas burner, spooned aromatic coffee and damp sugar into the water-filled pot, and set it on to boil. From the parlor dresser, she fetched four of the pastel-flowered porcelain cups which had been a wedding present from her sister and wiped them clean.

The men grew loud as they talked, stimulated by their little adventure, excited by the glut of small-time news the storm had brought.

“It’s taken the roof off Petros’s new bathroom,” said the boat-builder with the rotten teeth. “He came to us for a tarpaulin. I lent him one, but that’s gone as well. He didn’t tie it down right. I told him not to skimp on the rope…”

“What about old Pantelis the Tomato Man?” asked Andreas. “It blew him over! He’s broken three ribs. And his wrist. But there’s no boat to take him to the mainland to get it plastered…”

“Stavros the Draper, his boat, that fiberglass one he
bought last year, slipped its anchor,” interrupted the boat-builder with the missing fingers. “Ran onto the rocks, broadside. Lot of damage.
Lot
of damage. Serve him right for trying to avoid dry-dock fees, tight old bastard. He said last autumn we charge too much. I said to him, no skin off my nose, your money’ll be going into my wallet now anyway…”

Irini watched the thin wisps of steam rising from the surface of the coffee, waiting for the moment when it would boil and rise, frothing, to the brim of the pot. Across the room, Theo watched her, shyly, or slyly, the direction of his eyes hidden by his heavy brows. The coffee boiled, and she lifted it from the heat, pouring it carefully into the delicate cups. As she poured the last drops into the last cup, she glanced towards him; somehow it was no surprise to find him watching.

Andreas pushed his chair back from the table and stood up.

“Let’s have a drink!” he said. “I think we’ve earned ourselves a drink, lads.”

Irini placed the coffee before the men. No one thanked her. Andreas grabbed a bottle of good Metaxa from the shelf and took four glasses from the cabinet, then stood a glass before each man and splashed in a shot of brandy.