‘I’m not going to say goodbye,’ she said. ‘Not just because it hurts, but because it isn’t goodbye. I shall be seeing you again, next week and the week after.’
‘How come?’ asked Maria, looking at her friend with alarm. For a fleeting moment she wondered whether Fotini was also leprous. That could not be, she thought.
‘I’ll be coming with your father to do the occasional delivery, ’ Fotini said matter-of-factly.
‘But what about the baby?’
‘The baby isn’t due until December, and anyway Stephanos can take care of it while I come across and see you.’
‘It would be wonderful to think that you might come and see me,’ said Maria, feeling a sudden surge of courage. There were so many people on the island who had not seen a relative for years. She at least would have a regular chance to see her father, and now her best friend too.
‘So that’s that. No goodbyes,’ said Fotini with bravado. ‘Just a “see you next week then”.’ She did not embrace her friend for even she worried about such proximity, especially with her unborn child. No one, not even Fotini, could quite put to one side the fear that leprosy could be spread by even the most superficial human contact.
Once Fotini had gone, Maria was alone for the first time in several days. She spent the next few hours rereading her mother’s letters, from time to time glancing out of the window and catching sight of Spinalonga. The island was waiting for her. Soon all her questions about what it was like on the leper colony would be answered. Not long now, not long. Her reverie was disturbed by a sharp knock on the door. She was not expecting anyone, and certainly no one who would knock quite so forcefully.
It was Manoli.
‘Maria,’ he said breathlessly, as though he had been running. ‘I just wanted to say goodbye. I’m terribly sorry it’s all had to end like this.’
He did not hold out his hands or embrace her. Not that she would have expected either. What she would have hoped for was a greater sense of sorrow. His demeanour confirmed to Maria what she had half suspected, that Manoli’s great passion would soon find another recipient. Her throat tightened. She felt as though she had swallowed broken glass and was no more able to speak than cry. His eyes would not meet hers. ‘Goodbye, Maria,’ he mumbled. ‘Goodbye.’ Within moments he had gone and once again the door was closed. Maria felt as hollow as the silence that once again filled the house.
Giorgis was yet to return. He had spent the last day of his daughter’s freedom engaged in normal humdrum activities, mending his nets, cleaning his boat and ferrying Dr Lapakis. It was on his return journey with the doctor that he told him the news. He said it so casually that Lapakis did not, at first, take it in.
‘I will be bringing my daughter over to Spinalonga tomorrow, ’ Giorgis said. ‘As a patient.’
It was perfectly usual for Maria to accompany her father on the occasional delivery, so Lapakis did not react at first, and the last few words were lost in the wind.
‘We went to see Dr Kyritsis,’ Giorgis added. ‘He will be writing to you.’
‘Why?’ asked Lapakis, taking more notice now.
‘My daughter has leprosy.’
Lapakis, though he tried to conceal it, was aghast.
‘Your daughter has leprosy? Maria? My God! I didn’t realise . . . That’s why you are bringing her to Spinalonga tomorrow.’
Giorgis nodded, concentrating now on guiding the boat into Plaka’s small harbour. Lapakis stepped out of the boat. He had met the lovely Maria so many times and was shocked by the news. He felt he had to say something.
‘She will receive the best possible care on Spinalonga,’ he said. ‘You are one of the few people who knows what the place is really like. It’s not as bad as people think, but still, I am so terribly sorry that this has happened.’
‘Thank you,’ said Giorgis, and tied the boat up. ‘I will see you tomorrow morning, but I might be a little late. I have promised to take Maria over very early but I’ll do my best to be back for you at the usual time.’
The elderly fisherman sounded preternaturally calm, as normal as if he was making arrangements for any other day. This was how people conducted themselves in the first few days of bereavement, thought Lapakis. Perhaps it was just as well.
Maria had made supper for her father and herself, and at about seven in the evening they sat down opposite each other. It was the ritual of the meal that mattered tonight, not the eating, since neither of them had any appetite. This was to be their last supper. What did they talk about? They spoke of trivial things, such as what Maria had packed in her boxes, as well as more important ones like when she would next see her father on the island and how often Savina would expect him for supper at the Angelopoulos house each week. Anyone eavesdropping would have thought that Maria was simply moving out to live in another house. At nine in the evening, both exhausted, they retired to bed.
By six-thirty the following morning, Giorgis had carried all of Maria’s boxes down to the quayside and loaded them on to his boat. He returned to the house to collect her. Still vivid in his mind, as though it had happened only yesterday, was Eleni’s departure. He remembered that May day when the sun had shone on the crowd of friends and school children as his wife had waved goodbye to them. This morning there was deadly silence in the village. Maria would simply disappear.
A cold wind whipped through the narrow streets of Plaka and the chill of the autumnal air encircled Maria, paralysing her body and mind with a numbness that almost blocked her senses but could do nothing to alleviate her grief. As she stumbled the last few metres to the jetty she leaned heavily on her father, her gait that of an old crone for whom every step brought a stab of pain. But her pain was not physical. Her body was as strong as any young woman who had spent her life breathing the pure Cretan air, and her skin was as youthful and her eyes as intensely brown and bright as those of any girl on this island.
The little boat, unstable with its cargo of oddly shaped bundles lashed together with string, bobbed and lurched on the sea. Giorgis lowered himself in slowly, and with one hand trying to hold the craft steady reached out with the other to help his daughter. Once she was safely on board he wrapped her protectively in a blanket to shield her from the elements. The only visible indication then that she was not simply another piece of cargo were the long strands of dark hair that flew and danced freely in the wind. He carefully released his vessel from its mooring - there was nothing more to be said or done - and their journey began. This was not the start of a short trip to deliver supplies. It was the beginning of Maria’s one-way journey to start a new life. Life on Spinalonga.
Chapter Seventeen
AT THE MOMENT when Maria wanted time to stand still it seemed to move faster than ever, and soon she would be dumped in a cold place where the waves broke on the shore. For once she had willed the boat’s engine to stall, but the gulf between mainland and island was covered in moments and there was no turning back. She wanted to cling to her father, plead with him not to leave her stranded here, alone apart from two crates into which her life was now packed. But her tears had been spent. She had saturated Fotini’s shoulder many times since her initial discovery of the mark on her foot, and her pillow was limp from the tears she had shed over the past two unhappy nights. Now was not the time for weeping.
For a few minutes they stood there alone. Giorgis was not going to leave her until someone came. He was now as familiar with the routine for new arrivals on the island as the islanders themselves, and knew that in due course they would be met.
‘Maria, be brave,’ said Giorgis quietly. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. Come and see me if you can.’
He held both her hands in his. He was bold these days, and particularly so with his daughter. To hell with it if he got leprosy. Perhaps that would be the kindest solution because he could then come and live with Maria. The real problem if that happened would be the deliveries to Spinalonga. They would be hard pushed to find anyone else to make them, and that would cause untold hardship and misery on the island.
‘Of course I’ll come if it’s allowed,’ she answered.
‘I’m sure it will be. Look,’ said Giorgis, pointing to the figure emerging through the long tunnel which passed through the old fortress wall. ‘Here is Nikos Papadimitriou, the island leader. I sent him a note yesterday to say I’d be bringing you today. He’s the man to ask.’
‘Welcome to Spinalonga,’ Papadimitriou said, addressing Maria. How he could have such levity in his tone baffled her, but it distracted her for a moment. ‘Your father sent me a note yesterday telling me to expect your arrival. Your boxes will be carried to your home shortly. Shall we go?’
He indicated that she should follow him up the few steps into the tunnel. Only a few weeks earlier, in Agios Nikolaos, she had been watching a Hollywood film where the heroine had swept up in a limousine and was led along a red carpet into a grand hotel while a porter dealt with her luggage. Maria tried to imagine herself in that very scene.
‘Before we go,’ she said hastily, ‘can I ask permission to come and see my father when he brings Dr Lapakis and does his deliveries?’
‘Why, certainly!’ boomed Papadimitriou. ‘I assumed that would be the arrangement. I know you won’t try to escape. At one time we had to prevent people coming through to the quayside in case they tried to get away, but nowadays most people don’t want to get off the island.’
Giorgis wanted to put the moment of parting behind him.
‘I know they’ll be kind to you,’ were the words of reassurance he heard himself saying to her. ‘I know they’ll be kind.’
One or other of them had to turn away first, and Giorgis waited for his daughter to make that move. He had always regretted his hasty departure when Eleni arrived on the island fourteen years ago. So great had been his grief that he had set off in his boat before they had even said goodbye, but today he must have more courage, for his daughter’s sake. Giorgis knew so much about the island now, whereas all those years ago his visits there had been just a job, a functional trip once or twice a week to drop boxes off on the quayside and then make a hasty retreat. In the intervening years his view of it all had been given a human dimension, and he had followed developments on the island as no other man outside it ever had.
Nikos Papadimitriou had been island leader ever since the election in 1940 when Petros Kontomaris had finally stood down, and he had now held the position for even longer than his predecessor. He had achieved great things on Spinalonga and the island had gone from strength to strength, so few were surprised when he was re-elected by an almost unanimous vote each spring. Maria recalled the day her father had transported the Athenians to Spinalonga. It had been one of the most dramatic episodes of that era, in a life rarely punctuated by much excitement. Her mother had written a great deal about the handsome, dark-haired island leader and all he did to change the island. Now his hair was grey, but he still had the same curled moustache that Eleni had described.
Maria followed Papadimitriou into the tunnel. He walked slowly, leaning heavily on his stick, and eventually they saw the light at the other end. Maria’s emergence from the darkness of the tunnel into her new world was as much of a surprise for her as for any new arrival. In spite of her mother’s letters, which had been full of description and colour, nothing had prepared her for what she now saw. A long road with a row of shops, all with freshly painted shutters, houses with window boxes and urns full of late-flowering geraniums, and one or two grander homes with carved wooden balconies. Though it was still too early for many people to be up, there was one early riser. The baker. The fragrance of freshly baked bread and pastries filled the street.
‘Despineda Petrakis, before I show you to your new home, come and meet my wife,’ said Papadimitriou. ‘She has made breakfast for you.’
They turned left into a small side street, which in turn led into a courtyard with houses opening off it. Papadimitriou opened the door of one of these and ducked to get inside. They had been built by the Turks, and anyone of Papadimitriou’s stature was more than a head taller than the original inhabitants.
The interior of the house was bright and ordered. There was a kitchen off the main room and stairs that led up to another floor. Maria even caught a glimpse of a separate bathroom beyond the kitchen.
‘Let me introduce my wife. Katerina, this is Maria.’
The two women shook hands. In spite of everything that Eleni had told her to the contrary in her many letters, Maria had still expected the place to be inhabited by the lame and the deformed, and she was surprised at the woman’s elegance and beauty. Katerina was younger than her husband and Maria surmised that she must be in her late forties. Her hair was still dark, and she had pale, almost unlined skin.