The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (18 page)

He came towards her. She had her coat half on; she made to put her left arm in its sleeve.

“Just one moment,
madame
.” His sarcasm was new; it
was pronounced and unnerving. “Come here.” He beckoned to her, exaggeratedly, with his index finger. His eyes were red with alcohol and disturbed sleep. “Come here,
wife
.”

He was making her uneasy; she didn’t move.

“I won’t be long,” she said. It was lightness that was needed; she said it lightly.

He shouted, “Come here!”

She didn’t know what had made him angry, or what would appease him. There had been outbursts lately—a plate smashed, a fist slammed on the table—small eruptions of the rage which had been growing in him, quietly, but steadily. She feared him then, but contempt made her foolhardy, and she goaded him—
Go on then, hit me, it’s what you want to do
—instead of offering appeasement.

But this was going to be different, because he was somehow not the same.

She tried appeasement now; she began taking off her coat.

“If you don’t want me to go,” she said, feigning petulant indifference—innocence—“I won’t go.”

“I said come here!”

He lunged for her, grabbed her hair at its roots, close to the scalp, and pulled, forcing her head towards his face. He pulled her, whimpering, by the hair, across the kitchen to the store cupboard, slammed back the cupboard door.

“Let’s look, shall we?” His reasonableness was counterfeit, touched with madness. “Let’s look together, and see if we have any milk.”

Her face was twisted with the pain from her scalp; in
her mind, she could see the next few minutes. And part of her said, “Don’t fight him, just take it; it won’t be so bad.” But the pain from her head
was
bad, very bad, and the strength of his grip made it clear he could do to her whatever he liked. It was his to choose if she lived or died, and the terrifying violence coming off him was about to explode.

Because she knew what he was going to find in the cupboard. Because her obsession, her addiction, her need to find
him
, see
him
, had made her careless, and there was a price to pay for carelessness. Still the moment seemed a long time coming; he seemed to stand there minutes, hours, reviewing the shelves, before he found what he, too, knew was there.

He took the first tin of milk, the kind they used for coffee, and threw it across the room. It hit the wall, denting the plaster, and fell to the floor.

“There’s no milk.” Childishly, he mimicked her voice, her innocent assertion, her lie. “There’s no fucking milk, she says! Here!” He pulled a second tin from the shelf, threw it at the wall. “You lying fucking bitch! A cupboard full of the fucking stuff and she says there’s no milk!” He looked again in the cupboard. She began to cry, quietly, at the horror of it, at the stupidity of her attempted deception, as he found a liter carton of UHT milk, brightly patterned with a red-and-white cow. He held the carton up in front of her face; then, without warning, brought it down on her head. She screamed. He struck her again, on the back, then dropped the milk, deciding he preferred his knuckles. He held her face straight before him and punched. She
felt her lip split, and the warmth of the blood as it reached her tongue. Where he had hit her, she expected pain, but her face felt numb. He hit her again, on the side of the head, so her ear sang. She dropped to her knees, fell onto all fours, and tried to crawl. For a moment, he held her back by her hair, until a clump came away in his hand, and he let go, to hold it up and look at what he had done. Sensing escape, she scrambled towards the underside of the table, but he kicked her hard up the backside, between the cheeks. She screamed again; or perhaps she had been screaming all along. He bent to grab her foot and, pulling her flat onto her face, dragged her back, full length, to the center of the floor where he could get at her. He kicked her in the ribs, and on her right side, something gave with excruciating pain. She curled into a ball, as small as she could make, forearms protecting her bleeding scalp, and he kept kicking, and kicking, and kicking, panting with the effort he was making. Then consciousness began to fade; an unknown voice inside was chanting,
Soon be over, soon be over
. Then the kicking stopped.

She stayed where she was, curled tight, arms around her head. She waited, not moving, trying to get a sense of where he was, what he was doing, what he was thinking. Minutes passed, in silence. The fear of renewed attack began to leave her.

She lowered her arms and opened her eyes. She could see his legs; he was still standing just in front of her. She raised her eyes further. His head was bowed onto his chest, his fists were clenched, and he was weeping.

Unsure which way to move to stand with the least
pain, she pushed herself onto her knees and sat back on her feet. Dazed, and faint, for a long while she remained still. He took a tentative step forward, but she held a hand up to him, and he stepped away. Wincing, clutching her ribs where the pain was worst, she grasped a corner of the table and heaved herself to her feet. She limped into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.

She heard the creaking of a floorboard as he appeared in the doorway, and turned her face towards him. His eyes were soft, sorry and swollen.

“Irini,” he said. “Irinaki. Are you all right?” She turned her face away. He sat down heavily on the bed, and tried to take her hand; she pulled it away.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Just leave me alone,” she said. Her voice sounded strange, unlike herself.

“Irini…” His eyes filled again with tears. “Irini, I can’t take anymore. I can’t stand it, the thought of you and him…”

She shouted, “Leave me alone!”

He stood, and paused a moment in the doorway, afraid to say more out of fear of the loss of her he was certain to provoke. She heard him shuffle away, like an old man, into the living room, and the creak of the sofa as he lay down.

S
he thought because of the pain and shock that she wouldn’t sleep; but sleep must have come, because he woke her. He was out on the roof; he was sitting where on
summer nights they used to sit together, holding hands. He was out there, alone in the cold, and he was singing. No words were decipherable—maybe there were none—but the notes of his voice were clear, and the hopelessness of his song clearer still. His soul was in it, and his heartbreak, his loss, his grief and his devastation: all were there. Without words, the lyric shone through: he loved her, he needed her, he couldn’t bear the loss of her, yet she no longer wanted him. He knew he had lost her, and he was singing his pain to the mountains.

She wiped tears from her eyes. His anguish evoked in her an answering heartache she had not anticipated, a heartache which threatened to dispel the self-righteous anger she felt against him for the violence he had done her, and that anger was her only defense against her shame, and guilt. His pain was unbearable to him, and she was its cause; she had mistreated him and destroyed the life of quiet affection they had enjoyed together. She had let herself love another man. Andreas knew it, and to spare him disgrace, she must take the disgrace on herself, and leave him. It was impossible now that she should stay.

For some time she lay crying—for herself, for Andreas, for the sadness of their tragedy—until she thought of going to him, and trying to make things right. But as that thought came to her, Love put the Other into her mind, and reminded her that any kind or decent act towards Andreas—any reconciliation—would have unpalatable consequences.

She could not, would not, leave
him
. The answer, Love whispered, lay in duplicity. For Andreas, she might feel
deeply sorry; but she should use that residual tender feeling to make their life together bearable, until the time was right for the lovers to declare themselves.

Still Andreas’s song of love for her went on. Draining the last finger of whisky, he hurled the empty bottle into the night; somewhere on the hillside rocks it smashed, and he, despairing, sobbed.

Irini told herself that she was torn between the old love and the new, but didn’t leave the bed they shared to comfort him. She told herself that it was for the best. But her heart, not fooled, allowed her no illusions; the light of truth shone brightly there, and showed her to herself for what she was—the ruthless, selfish creature Love had made her.

T
he fat man paid George the bus driver his fare, and asked to be set down where the road began its downward gradient, just below the windmills. As the bus climbed slowly up the winding road, the fat man looked down on the almost deserted port. Around the headland, a vast, three-decked ferry slid slowly through the cobalt waters towards the harborside.

Beyond the windmills, George pulled off the road and braked to a stop. The fat man struggled from his seat, and, thanking the driver, climbed down from the bus, which set off downhill towards the heart of the village.

Below the road was a strip of grassy meadow where three milk-goats, each tethered by a foreleg, grazed; across the meadow lay a footpath, a muddy track worn through the grass, scattered with the droppings of the goats.

The fat man, thinking of his newly whitened shoes, hesitated; as he did so, a vehicle came into view below the windmills, making its way towards the village. The car was gray; on its side, it bore white lettering:
Astinomia
.

The fat man waited until the car rounded the bend. As
its driver caught sight of the fat man, he slowed the car, and brought it to a halt.

The Chief of Police wound down his window, and smiled a smile which didn’t reach his eyes.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you still here. I thought you’d be catching the ferry that’s just docked.”

“Chief of Police, you do me a disservice,” said the fat man. “I could hardly leave without notifying you of my findings.”

“Still determinedly detecting?” smiled the Chief of Police. “Might I ask what you have detected, so far?”

“In truth, very little,” answered the fat man. “But it is early days yet, early days. Tell me, which of these houses is the Asimakopoulos house?”

The Chief of Police raised his chin and laughed.

“So that’s what brings you up here,” he said. “Hot on the trail. The husband as prime suspect, I suppose. Don’t trouble yourself. He didn’t do it.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked the fat man. “Because he told you so?”

“I’m telling you, don’t waste your time. He’s not the type.”

“Anyone can be the type, if they’re pushed to it,” said the fat man. “The
crime passionel
. Spontaneous crime. Opportunist crime. I’m sure it’s an area of which you have experience.”

The Chief of Police looked at the fat man for a long moment, then shrugged.

“Talk to him if you like,” he said. “He didn’t do it. No one did it. It was suicide.”

“So which is the house?”

“You can’t see it from here. Ask the neighbors.” He depressed the clutch, and put the car in gear.

“By the way,” said the fat man, “you say you hail from Patmos.”

The Chief of Police frowned, and flicked a speck of dust from his trouser leg.

“My people are from Patmos, yes,” he said, uncertainly.

“I have good friends there,” said the fat man. “Perhaps you know them?”

“Patmos is a large island,” said the Chief of Police. “One can’t know everyone. I’ll wish you good hunting, Detective. I have business to attend to.”

He let out the clutch, and drove away. The fat man set off across the meadow, painstakingly picking his way through the mud and the goat dung.

T
he path emerged on an alleyway paved with stones, interrupted all along its length by steps, a couple going up, three going down, to follow the contour of the hillside. At intervals, houses had been built on plots hewn out of the rock; beyond their terraced gardens, they faced the lower slopes of the mountains across the valley, where the white-walled cemetery lay. Above the clay-tiled roofs, darting swallows called. A cowering mongrel dog approached the fat man, and, head down and fawning, sniffed his shoes. The thin hair of its coat was in patches scratched away, where fleas had been tormenting it; a sore
beneath its eye was weeping creamy pus. The fat man bent to stroke its head, but the dog slipped away, disappearing behind a derelict house where down-headed thistles grew high around the doorway. He whistled to the dog, and called to bring it back, but from the empty house came only silence.