The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (14 page)

“Yammas!”
he said, sitting down and holding up his glass. “Good health!”

But as they raised their glasses to their lips, there came a hammering at the door.

Andreas drank down half the brandy in his glass.

“Get the door, wife,” he said.

Irini crossed to the door, and, with her foot behind it to prevent the wind taking it from its hinges, opened it a few inches; but the man standing outside was impatient.

“Let me in, for Christ’s sake!” he said, and, putting his hand to it, pushed the door wide open. The wind swept through, ushering in a flurry of dried leaves and sawdust. Irini closed the door. The men at the table lowered their glasses, and regarded the visitor in silence. Squat, and bald except for the curled, gray hair above his long-lobed ears, he wore the clothes of a young man: a jacket in fine Italian leather, a linen shirt open at the neck. On his right hand, the nail of the little finger was long, and filed square: the mark of a man above manual labor.

The visitor smiled around at them, showing teeth filled here and there with gold.

“Well,” said the visitor, “here’s a pretty gathering. Having a party, are we, fellas? Irini, my dear, how are you?”

In greeting, he took her fingertips limply in his own, and brushed a soft, smooth-shaven cheek against each of hers. His skin smelled sweet, of violets, and Nivea lotion.

“Mr. Krisaxos,” she said. “Welcome. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, no, my dear, thank you.” He looked in turn at the men around the table. Still none of them spoke. “I’m looking,” he said, “for the idiot who’s blocking the road with their truck. And I see the culprit right there, don’t I, Nephew?”

Theo, coloring, stood up from his seat.

“Sorry, Uncle Louis,” he said. “I’ll get it shifted.”

Theo walked towards the door; as he passed his uncle by, the older man squeezed his shoulder, in a way which might have been avuncular affection, or reproach.

“Yassas,”
said Theo, and passing quickly through the doorway, he was gone.

“Well,” said Louis Krisaxos. “We can’t all drink the day away. Some of us have work to do. Don’t get too drunk, gentlemen.” He pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to show the gold watch on his wrist. “My word, is that the time? Sorry to disturb you. Irini, come and have coffee with Anna. She’d love to see you.”

They watched the door close behind him.

“Old faggot,” said the boat-builder with the missing fingers. “He’ll screw anything that moves. He’s got a hot date with a soldier’s backside; I’ll put money on that.”

“A date with his own right hand, more like,” said the boat-builder with the rotten teeth. And they all laughed; except Irini, who removed the stranger’s coffee cup and glass from the table and took them to the sink to wash them.

The boat-builders drained their glasses.

“Back to work,” said the one with the rotten teeth.

As they left, the boat-builder with the missing fingers called out goodbye, but as Andreas closed the door behind him, she gave no answer.

A spatter of soot and brick dust fell from the chimney breast into the fireplace.

“Can’t stand that man Krisaxos,” said Andreas, taking a cigarette from the pack. He put it to his mouth and lit
it. “He thinks he’s a cut above us all, now he’s made his pile.”

“Your mother says he’s a good businessman,” she said.

“He’s no businessman; he’s a thief, a crook. That old queen will tread on anyone to get where he wants to be. His blood is bad: that family’s got more skeletons in its closet than the rest of this island put together. Trust me, they’ll all come crawling out one day to bury him. And I’ll be glad to lend them a shovel to do the job properly.” He drew on his cigarette, and flicked a few flakes of ash into the ashtray. “He wants a good dose of what they gave his father. A shot of the old medicine, that’d sort him out.”

Irini ran water into the sink.

“What happened to his father?” she asked.

“He was rotten to the core,” said Andreas. “Tassos, they called him. His appetites were warped. They had to put a stop to it.”

Irini left the sink, and went to sit beside him at the table.

“Tell me,” she said.

He poured himself another finger of Metaxa and held out the glass to Irini. She took a sip of the mellow, brown liquor; Andreas drank down half of what remained.

“Friend Louis is a faggot, pure and simple,” he said. “He doesn’t try to hide it anymore. But his father’s perversions were far worse, and the family kept the secret very close. Some say he practiced first on Louis and his sister. There was talk, from time to time; the neighbors
heard things. But children grow, and old man Tassos liked them very young. He started on his niece’s daughter, a tiny thing just six years old. He got her in the house with promises of chocolate. When the niece got to him, he’d got his trousers around his knees, and the child was crying, half-undressed.”

“My God,” said Irini. “Did they call the police?”

“Police?” He knocked ash from his cigarette. “What would they have done? Old man Tassos had a bit of money; he’d have paid a lawyer to lie on his behalf, and walked away. No, there was no need for the police. The child’s father went for him with the grandfather, and dragged the dirty dog out of hiding in the cellar. They tied him to the plane tree in the square, and left him there a while to let the crowd gather while they fetched a big, old rooster; just to make the pervert sweat, they slit the bird’s throat in front of him. And when they’d got him gibbering and begging, the child’s father had the honor of daubing his head with tar, and they pulled the feathers from the rooster and covered old man Tassos’s head in them.

“When they put him on a mule and paraded him around the town, they took him past his own house so his wife could see. She spat on him from the window, and took the kids—our friend Louis and his sister—straight home to her mother. She divorced him, of course. Her family wouldn’t stand the shame.”

“What happened to him, in the end?”

“Ah, now—there’s a question.” Andreas drank down the last of his Metaxa. “After they let him go, he stumbled
off and wasn’t seen again. Some say he’s here to this day, holed up in some back room in some relative’s house, still too ashamed to show his face. But I think he’s long gone, years since, somewhere far away, yearning like all exiled Greeks to come back home. He’ll never come home. He’ll never dare.”

There was silence as he drew on his cigarette, and exhaled.

“Anyway. Just watch that one,” he said. “He’s got his eye on you.”

She laughed.

“What would that old goat want with me?” she asked. “I’m not his taste.”

But as Andreas replaced his jacket on the peg and went to switch on the TV, it seemed to Irini that it might not be Louis Krisaxos he’d meant.

C
lean Monday, the first day of Lent: a day of austere feasting, to clean the stomach and prepare the body for deprivation. In a sky without cloud, Irini had expected the sun to give some warmth, but even in the sheltered lee of the chapel wall, on the mountainside the damp chill of winter remained. Amongst the rocks, scrawny ewes grazed the new growth of herbs and grass, their fattening lambs pulling at their teats; at the hill’s foot, where the dry riverbed ran, the children aimed missiles—rocks, sticks, a broken-strapped sandal—into the branches of a walnut tree, trying to dislodge the last few nuts (they grew high, and would never be within their reach) of its crop.

Andreas’s mother, Angeliki, had cleared a level patch of sandy ground, pitching the largest stones into the spreading bushes of thyme, uprooting a twisted branch of oregano and sweeping away the scattered sheep-droppings with its fragrant leaves. Now, she spread a patchwork quilt, and hunted in the thyme bushes for the heaviest stones she had thrown away to weight its corners. Strathia, Irini’s sister-in-law, had lost, briefly, the scowl she wore around her
children; bending into the back of the truck, she hauled out the coolers which contained the picnic. Beneath her dress, her thighs were pale, and slack; at the backs of her knees, thick veins ran.

Irini spread the Pyrex dishes and Tupperware bowls at the center of the quilt, and laid out the fasting foods: no oils, no fats, no meat, or fish which bled. They had brought olives, fat, sour, green ones and the shriveled, milder black; there were carrots, cauliflower and hot peppers pickled in brine, baby beetroot in jars, gherkins in vinegar, fish roe in tubes. There was an octopus Andreas had caught, and black-striped, whiskered prawns. There were scallions and Kos lettuces Angeliki had pulled from the garden, peppery rocket, pink radishes and the pale-mauve globes of turnips. Irini had boiled potatoes, and sprinkled them with salt and lemon juice; Strathia had steamed fresh mussels with bay leaves and onions. There were slabs of sticky, sweet vanilla halva swirled with cocoa, and flat, dimpled loaves of Clean Monday bread, and—wrapped in water-soaked towels to keep them cool—bottles of chilled retsina and lemonade.

But Angeliki was fretting.

“There won’t be enough. We should have brought more bread. Strathia, we’ve forgotten the salt.”

“It’s here, Mother.”

“Your father won’t like those mussels cooked with bay leaves. He can’t stand the taste of bay.”

“Let him eat something else, then.”

“This lettuce is all holes. You can’t keep the snails off it, not with all this wet weather. I did wash it, though; I
have given it a good wash. But I don’t think your father’ll eat it with holes in the leaves.”

The scowl returned to Strathia’s face.

“For heaven’s sake, Mother,” she said.

Crouched over the stack of fallen branches they had broken for firewood, the men—Andreas, his father Vassilis, Strathia’s husband, Socratis—were poking dried twigs and grass into its base. Andreas lit a cigarette, and put his lighter to the fire. Smoke billowed around them, masking them, and cleared to reveal them, like shadows on a day of scattered clouds: here, then gone. Socratis pitched a root of thorny capers into the growing flames; it spat a shower of crackling sparks high into the air. One falling spark, still glowing, caught Vassilis on the back of his hand; as he, cursing, flicked it away and licked the stinging burn, Andreas and Socratis laughed.

Andreas was still smiling as he walked back to the women; he put his hands on Irini’s shoulders and kissed the tip of her nose. Beneath the wood smoke which was already in his hair, he smelled familiar, safe. She placed her hands on his waist (it was thickening a little, as he grew older), and made them partners, ready for the dance.

Through the fabric of his clothes, she pinched the softness of his body.

“What’s this?” she said, teasing, smiling.

“My wife’s cooking,” he said. He touched his lips to hers.

“It’s time for a drink. Strathia, find the cups. We’ll have a glass of wine.”

“I don’t want wine,” said Angeliki. “It gives me a headache.”

“You’ll have a headache anyway, no doubt, by the time we’re done,” said Andreas. He winked at Irini, crazing the skin around his eyes. “You’ll have a glass of wine, and like it.”

Strathia was handing around the paper cups.

“Well, just a small one, then,” said Angeliki.

W
hen the fire burned down to red-hot embers, Socratis spread the octopus on the grill and placed it over the heat. Beneath the walnut tree, the children probed a nest of ants with stalks of grass; from behind the chapel, where goats foraged, came the hollow rattling of bells. Slowly, the octopus flesh changed from dull pink to deep red; its juices dripped, hissing, into the embers.

Socratis drank from his cup, and flicked a crawling insect from the end of his nose with the pad of his thumb. He had a boxer’s nose, bent and misshapen; it fitted his reputation as a hard man. Before their marriage, he battered a rival for Strathia with an iron bar; the rival limped now, and his vision in one eye was blurred. But as time had passed, Socratis and the rival had shaken hands, and shared a drink together, many times. Socratis was not a man for grudges. Not if he prevailed.

Across the valley, at the horizon, a man appeared at the wall of an abandoned olive grove. He leaned, like a biblical prophet, on a long staff and stood, like a sentinel, looking down on them. Socratis, shading his eyes with
the flat of his hand, squinted to identify the watcher and, having done so, grunted, and silently prodded the embers with a stick. Andreas’s eyes were not as good as they had been, once; from this distance, he could not identify the figure.