The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (23 page)

T
he bus was very late, and the wait at the quayside was long. The short bench beneath the wooden bus-shelter was already occupied, by a serene young girl who nursed a sleeping baby boy on her breast. Beside her sat a scowling youth with one arm bandaged and cradled in a muslin sling; his face was raw with weeping grazes.

The fat man seated himself on the steps of a stone staircase leading down into the water and watched the fish swim at his feet. A shoal of tiny, glittering fry moved as an entity, a tumbling ball shape-shifting like a cell seen through a microscope. The fledgling fish moved fast, but synchronously; they darted here, there, here, and there were no stragglers, no dissenters, no breakers from the pack, swimming together because their lives depended on it. It was a mindset, thought the fat man, adopted by far too many people: safety in conformity, running always with the herd. He thought of Nikos, and his view that everyone should settle in life for what they’d been given; then he was troubled about the old man, and wondered if he was well. He had promised Nikos another visit, before
he left this place; he would go today, if the main business of his day left time.

By the time the bus arrived, a small crowd of passengers had gathered. They ushered the serene girl before them, to take her choice of seats; as she climbed aboard, her dreaming baby boy made little sucking movements with his lips, like kisses blown towards his doting mother.

A woman with a paper bag of pharmacy medicines spoke to the driver.

“You’re late, George,” she said. She didn’t care (nothing was pressing), and the driver offered her no reason, but silently took the coins she held out to him.

The fat man squeezed into his preferred seat at the driver’s back. The scowling youth was last to board; he offered George a note to pay his fare.

The driver looked the young man in the face, and smiled, unpleasantly.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “So here you are, back with us after all this time. Where’s that motorbike of yours, Sostis?”

From the base of his neck to the roots of his hair, the young man colored.

The driver slipped the banknote in his pocket, and began to pick out the smallest of his small change.

“D’you know,” he said, still smiling, “I saw a bike just like that brute of yours only yesterday. But it can’t have been yours. This one was in a ditch.”

The youth’s jaw tightened; he held out his hand for his change, but the driver held the many coins tight in his fist.

“So where is your bike today, Sostis? In the shop? Out of petrol? Here.” He let the coins fall into the youth’s hands. “Let it be a lesson to you.”

The youth moved away to an empty seat.

“You can’t tell ’em anything,” said the driver. He released the handbrake, and the bus moved off. “They always know best.”

On his mother’s breast, the baby gave a gentle sigh.

T
he bus drew into the village square. The grocer’s wife paused in her rearrangement of the pastel-colored broom handles which stood against the window of the tiny shop; she watched the passengers descend, as though waiting for someone she knew. At the hotel, the winter-fallen leaves had all been swept away, and an aluminum ladder leaned against the outside wall, where new paint was drying on the pale-blue stucco. Alone on the patio, an old man in a navy-blue seaman’s cap rested on a solitary paint-splattered chair; he clutched a posy of white-petaled marguerites, and at their heart, a single garden rose, pink and fragrant. As the passengers descended, the old man limped across the square towards the bus.

The fat man touched the driver on the shoulder.

“I wonder, George,” he said, “if you could advise me. I’m looking for a goatherd called Lukas. You’ll know him, I expect.”

George gave a snort, as if blowing a stray insect from his nostril, and rubbed a knuckle into his red eyes.

“Oh aye,” he said, “I know Lukas. What in God’s name do you want with him?”

“I want,” said the fat man, evasively, “to find him.”

“The boy’s touched!” George tapped his forefinger to his temple. “Have they not told you that?”

“No,” said the fat man. “No one’s told me that.”

The last of the passengers was gone; none remained except the fat man.

The old man put one hand on the doorpost, and one foot onto the bus’s step, then waited, panting, for the impetus to haul himself aboard.

The driver put his foot to the accelerator, and revved the engine, chiding the old man.

“Come on, Nikolas, for God’s sake,” he said. “We’re late enough already, without hanging about for you.”

The fat man left his seat, and took the old man by his elbow to assist him. Beneath the thin cloth of his jacket, the skin slipped loose over the ends of bones.

“Allow me, sir,” said the fat man.

The old man smiled at him. The craters of his cheeks sank in his vacant gums; the remnants of his hair were like blown cobwebs. The fat man lowered him into a seat across the aisle from his own.

“You’ll be going to the cemetery, will you, Nikolas?” asked the driver.

“Yes,” said the old man, “the cemetery, if you please.” Anticipating the short journey, he smiled on, like a child at the promise of a treat.

George eased the bus into the narrow lane on the
square’s far side. He raised his voice almost to a shout, to compensate for the thundering old diesel engine, and for talking with his back to his passengers.

“I don’t know why you don’t stop up there,” he called. “It’d save us carrying you, when the time comes.” As the smile left the old man’s face, the driver laughed.

The fat man laid his palm on the old man’s forearm, and leaned across to speak into his ear.

“Don’t listen to him, friend,” he said. “I see a good few years left for you, yet.” He touched a conspiratorial finger to the side of his nose, and winked. “Your flowers are glorious,” he added, louder. “Your wife’s a lucky lady.”

But the old man shook his head.

“I never married, sir,” he said. “I never was blessed, that way. I’m taking these for a very good friend of mine, who passed away just recently.”

“Not recently,” challenged George. “A year ago, at least.”

“Time passes,” said the fat man. “As I get older, the years fly by. And you were telling me, driver, how I’d find this Lukas.”

“I hope you’ve got your walking shoes on,” called George.

“I have on my trusty winged sandals,” replied the fat man, and held out his right foot. The tennis shoe was freshly whitened; the laces were new, and unmarked. The old man looked down at the shoe, and smiled. “So if you would tell me where I’ll find him, I’d appreciate it.”

“He has a house—hut—smallholding, God knows what you’d call it, up by Profitis Ilias,” George said. “I
can’t take you that far. The road’s no good, for this old bus. I could take you as far as St. Anna’s. Take you about half an hour to walk from there. Maybe less. But you’ll not find him at home at this time. He’ll be out with the herd.”

“He’ll be home for his lunch, no doubt,” said the fat man. “And by the time I get there, there won’t be long to wait.”

Where the road began its descent to St. Savas’s Bay, George took the other fork, towards the mountains, winding beneath the spreading branches of a line of pomegranate trees, passing the half-built houses at the village boundary.

At the cemetery gates, the fat man took the old man’s arm and helped him to the ground. The old man took his hand, and pressed it firmly between his own.

“God bless you, sir,” he said. “God bless you for a saint.”

The fat man waved away his thanks.

“It’s absolutely nothing,” he said. “No more than anyone would have done.”

George put his foot to the accelerator, and revved the engine.

As the bus wound slowly up the mountain, the cemetery came back into view. The fat man watched as, far below, Nikolas picked his way amongst the tombs of marble, until, finding his friend, he removed his cap and, kneeling, bowed his head, laying down his wilting posy on the cold, white stone.

A
mile and a half beyond the village, an ancient chapel looked down onto the sea. Its roof was circular, tiled in terracotta green with lichen; over its low doorway hung a bell, whose coiled rope hung on a meat hook driven into the wall.

“St. Anna’s,” said the driver. “Follow this road a little ways, until you come to the mule track, off to the right. That’ll take you to Profitis Ilias. After that, you’ll find your goatherd’s house, the first you’ll come to. The only one you’ll come to! It’s hard to miss, even for a stranger.”

“My thanks to you, George,” said the fat man. “How much do I owe you?”

The driver considered.

“Three hundred would be fair,” he said. “Just give me three.”

The fat man laid a thousand-drachma note on the dashboard.

“Keep the change,” he said.

As the rumbling of the engine died away, the fat man listened to the sounds of the never-silent mountains. The wind stirred the pine trees into whispering; a screaming jay took flight, the beating of its wings echoing off the rocky hillsides which dropped away to the ocean.

He reached the mule track quickly; his stride was long, and for such a large man, he was exceedingly fast on his feet. Wide enough for one pack-laden donkey, the track’s construction was of even-sized, square-hewn stones, laid in a pattern of precise geometry. It was a masterpiece
of both artisan’s craft, and art; it was a testament to the patience and time-to-spend of another era, an era which, in this place, was only just slipping over the horizon. Here was a piece of the heart of Greece, of Greece the immutable, of timeless, ageless Greece—mountains against a clear sky, a glimpse of sapphire sea, the scent of herbs carried on the wind. And stillness; except for the rustling of wind-stirred grasses, the stillness was profound—yet the fat man found himself listening for a sound not quite heard, for music dying away, as if ancient pan pipes might have played here, only moments ago.

The mule track led him over the inland hills, to the monastery of Profitis Ilias, whose white walls had for centuries enclosed communities of monks. The fat man, being curious, pushed open the wrought-iron gate leading into the chapel precincts. At the corner of the courtyard, honey bees crawled on a bush of rosemary in powder-blue flower. Outside the long refectory, a cup tied to a string lay on the well-cover, and the fat man, opening up the well, hauled up and sipped a cup of cool, clear water. He wandered into the dim, cold chapel, where unsmiling images of Profitis Ilias stared down from smoke-blackened walls. The air was sickly with old incense; overhead, the paraphernalia of Orthodoxy hung: candle chandeliers and ornate brass incense-burners.

The fat man took a candle from an alcove, but put no payment in the offertory box. Lighting the candle with his cigarette lighter, he held it up against the dark, illuminating the wall high above the arched door. There, a medieval fresco filled the wall, its simple, brilliant colors
still intact. It depicted the damned being cast into hell; at its top sat Christ, surrounded by his saints. None was smiling; none intervened as they looked down on a group of mortals (all naked, all labeled with some vice—lust, greed, pride, avarice) being ordered by a frowning angel into the gaping mouth of a fearsome, fish-like monster. The fish-monster swam in a lake of red and yellow fire; red devils armed with pitchforks and instruments of torture (whose uses were unthinkable) teased and prodded the hell-bound crowd. Above all this, Christ, like royalty confronting a bad smell, seemed to have noticed nothing.

The fat man lowered the candle to inspect the floor, a mosaic of black pebbles inlaid with white, arranged to depict the creatures of the deep—a bloated fish with water spouting from its thick-lipped mouth, an octopus, a leaping dolphin. The fat man smiled. The Greeks who built this chapel had been half-hearted converts to Christianity and hell-fire; they had been smart enough to hedge their bets. In this floor was their appeasement to the Old Ones; these images of ocean creatures were all tributes to Poseidon.

Not far beyond Profitis Ilias, he found the small stone hut where Lukas made his home. It was a lonely place; the view from the single window was of empty hills, and broad, unending sky. A young kid, still pretty in its soft baby coat, was fenced inside a pen of chicken-wire; it held a bandaged foreleg off the ground, and bleated at the fat man as he rubbed its fluffy forehead with a knuckle.