The Whispers of Nemesis (28 page)

‘Forgive me,' said the fat man. ‘I should introduce myself. Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens.'

He offered a hand, but she looked down at her own full hands, and shrugged.

‘Frona Kalaki,' she said. ‘Santos was my brother.
Chairo poli
.'

‘
Chairo poli
. But I already know who you are. Having seen you at the funeral, I drew my own conclusions. I have come to see Attis. I thought I might find him here.'

‘He's in the house. Let me show you the way.'

She led him to the walled edge of the orchard, where a narrow gate of wooden staves led into a garden overgrown by weeds and unchecked shrubs. Chickens scratched amongst the roots; a skinny cockerel jerked his head to watch them pass, setting his ruby comb and wattle trembling. Close to the house, a strip of land had been cleared for cultivation; here, the last of the winter's tall artichokes and hardy spinach grew, and shoots of new crops showed green against the stony earth.

‘Are you the gardener?' asked the fat man, as they passed.

‘Not me,' said Frona. ‘I'm never here. Maria does what she can, but she's getting too old to manage very much.'

‘Is it your intention to sell the house?'

‘That might be my intention,' said Frona, ‘but my intention won't find a buyer. I'm not hopeful of getting a sale. The value of the place is in the land. Someone might take the land off our hands, knock down the house and build something civilised people could live in.'

They reached the open back door, and the fat man followed Frona into an old-fashioned kitchen, where polished copper pans hung on flaking lime-plaster walls, and the embers of a wood fire smoked in a raised fireplace. Frona placed the milking stool on the bare floorboards and pushed it under the pine table with her foot; she took an enamel jug from the dresser and poured in the goat's milk from the bucket. The milk only half-filled the jug. She put the bucket on the stool, under the table.

‘Not worth the trouble,' she said, holding up the jug. ‘Poor Tina belongs in a
stifado
. Can I offer you coffee? Though you'd have to put up with my brew. Maria's gone home. She has to take care of her mother.'

‘Maria has a lot of work,' said the fat man, ‘for someone you describe as elderly.'

‘Not really,' said Frona. ‘She airs the house and uses the garden as she wishes. She's cooking for us whilst we're here, but in a day or two, we'll all be gone.'

‘Do you know what I would prefer to coffee?' said the fat man, placing his holdall by his feet. ‘A glass of that goat's milk. Though I see it's not a plentiful commodity. Would you mind?'

‘Not at all.'

She filled a glass from the jug and handed it to the fat man, who tasted it, and smiled.

‘Still warm,' he said, ‘and full of the flavour of the orchard. Your brother, I believe, loved this house; his poetry shines with the affection he felt for it. Yet you – forgive me for rushing to conclusions – seem not to share his sentiment. Is that true?'

She pointed to a chair and asked him to sit, taking a seat herself as he did so.

‘Let me tell you a little about my brother,' she said. ‘Whether it will help you or not, I don't know. I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, of course; but anyone but a saint would be angry with him for what he's done to us.'

‘Are you angry with him, then, Frona?'

She laid a hand across her forehead and closed her eyes.

‘He was my brother, and I loved him,' she said. ‘But for this disgrace, and this deception, if he walked alive into this kitchen at this moment, I would kill him with my own hands.' She opened her eyes, took her hand from her face and looked earnestly at the fat man. ‘Try and understand how it has been. I hate this house and this village, with its small minds. I came back here after my divorce, when Santos was alone too, to take care of him and Leda. I've cared for Leda as my daughter since she was a baby. That was my duty, and I fulfilled it. Not uncomplainingly, to tell the truth; but my conscience is clear. God sees all, and God knows I did what was right. When Santos died – when he led us to believe he had died . . .' She stopped, and shook her head. ‘You have to get to the bottom of this for us,
Kyrie
. If I never understand what's been going on, I shall lose my mind, I swear. When we thought he was dead, I took Leda with me back to the city and we made our lives there. I make a little money, though not much. I do accounts for some small businesses, help out with their taxes – only a few hours a week, but I've a settlement from my husband, too. But it's been hard. Leda wanted to go to college; she wants to be an actress, and I've done my best for her. But why my brother tied up her – and my – inheritance has lost me many nights' sleep. Bills that couldn't be paid, and his money mouldering in some bank. I cursed him; I cursed my own brother his stupid, dramatic gesture! Because that's what I assume it was: the same old Santos, always with the drama! No wonder his daughter wants to be an actress! She's inherited nothing from him, thus far, but his love of theatrics.'

She fell silent.

‘You have no idea, then,' asked the fat man, ‘where your brother was, or what he was doing, these past four years?'

Vehemently, she shook her head.

‘If I'd known he was anywhere but in his grave, would I have left him there and struggled to feed his daughter,
his
flesh and blood,
his
responsibility? I would not! I would have tracked him to the ends of the earth, and fetched him home! But this, this – what can I call it but a farce? He was always secretive, withdrawn. Always one to keep things to himself. Being the only one of us to know where he was – that would have amused him, I'm sure. Amused him, at our expense! That kind of cruelty, I wouldn't have expected of him.'

‘Tell me about him,' said the fat man, quietly. ‘What kind of man was he?'

She became pensive; her face took on a look of sadness.

‘He wasn't a bad man,' she said, ‘which only makes this odd affair more troubling. He loved this house, you're right; he loved its peace and quiet. He had good memories of it, from childhood, and there was a large part of Santos which never really grew up. He wasn't a good father; he was too absorbed in his own world, his words and poems. Words were his world, and there wasn't room for Leda, or a wife. Leda was noisy and disturbed him, and he liked everything calm and undisturbed. He never cleaned his study, and he wouldn't let Maria clean it either. He used to say he liked dust; he said it absorbed noise and made the room quieter. Isn't that ridiculous?' She looked at the fat man; there were tears in her eyes. ‘His study was such a mess, all books and papers, and things he used to pick up on his walks. Hours and hours he'd walk, alone and in all weathers, and he'd bring things home with him, like a child – pine cones, flowers, pebbles, all kinds of rubbish. He was a magpie; he collected things that interested him, and that was most things. He was interested in people, too. He used to eavesdrop on others' conversations. He was quite shameless about it; if he found a conversation really interesting, he would join in.'

The fat man smiled, and she smiled back, though sadly.

‘He never liked electricity,' she said. ‘He preferred the natural light of fire and flames. He used to burn church candles, three or four together, in preference to any electric light. He used to say, “Fire begets fire”; I suppose he meant his own imagination and ideas. He never drew the curtains at the windows. When it got too dark to read what he was reading or writing, he used to stop and lie down on that old sofa, and sleep a while. And with his candles, he used to say they gave him better dreams, that dreams flourished in their warmth. He said sleeping by candlelight evoked his best work. All he had in the study was one electric lamp. He even took the bulbs out of the overhead fitting. He said if the light was only dim, Maria wouldn't see the dust, and try to come in and clean.'

Again, she fell silent.

‘He sounds a remarkable man,' said the fat man.

Frona wiped tears away from under her eyes, and the anger came back to her face.

‘Oh, he was remarkable, all right,' she said. ‘Only a remarkable man would abandon his own family, and leave them as good as penniless, and go and hide himself away for four years, just to make fools of them.' She stood up from the table. ‘You wanted to see Attis. I'll go and find him.'

‘I'm pleased to find him still here,' said the fat man. ‘I thought a man as busy as he is would be rushing back to the office.'

Frona blushed.

‘Attis wants to stay a couple of days, and I agreed,' she said. ‘He's been very good to me. He thought it would be helpful to me, if he was around.'

The fat man's eyebrows lifted.

‘Really?' he asked. ‘That is most kind of him. And does Leda appreciate his offer of help, too?'

‘Leda? Leda's already left. She said she wanted to get away, get out of Vrisi. She hasn't been easy, these past days. I was glad to let her go.'

The fat man frowned.

‘And where has she gone?'

‘To see some college friends, in Patras.'

‘When did she leave?'

‘A couple of hours ago. Hassan's driven her to the port. I'll go and call Attis for you. Come with me, and you can talk to him in Santos's study.'

 

When Attis entered the study, the fat man was by the bookshelves, a cloth-bound book in his hand.

‘Ah, Attis,' he said, ‘I'm pleased to see you again.'

He turned the book to hold it by its spine, and with the page edges towards the floor, shook it, hard.

‘What on earth are you doing?' asked Attis. ‘That book may be valuable!'

‘My thought exactly.' The fat man replaced the book on the shelf, and selected another, at random, from the shelves above. ‘I'm conducting a search,' he said, shaking the book he had chosen in the same way as the last, ‘but I am finding very little. It is a time-consuming business; but I am told that our poet was a secretive man. I think there may be undiscovered poems hidden here, but the question is, with all these works to choose from, where might they be? What do you think? If you were hiding poems, which shelf would you choose?'

He stood back, appearing to consider all the rows of books which lined the wall.

‘I really don't think you should do that,' objected Attis. ‘I don't think it's your place . . .'

Swiftly, the fat man turned.

‘You don't think it's my place to do what?'

Startled, Attis took a step away.

‘To search Santos's study. I don't think Frona would want you to do that.'

‘But you invited me here to help you solve the mystery surrounding Santos,' said the fat man, reasonably. ‘Who knows but that the answer lies in one of these volumes? You expect me to be methodical, I am sure, in my investigation, and the methodical approach is to take down these books, one at a time, and search them in sequence.'

‘But I don't see what you would gain.'

‘Why? Because you have already looked? Or has there not been enough time for you to do so, and you'd like to be the one to get there first?'

‘Really, I object . . .'

But the fat man held up a hand to silence him.

‘A moment,' he said. ‘I have a feeling about . . .' He stepped up to the shelves, and from a high shelf on the far left chose a black-bound book whose title was embossed on the spine in gold. ‘
Explorations in Classical Drama
. Now here's a promising work, since it is in a drama we find ourselves here.' He opened the book at its centre, and allowed the first half of the pages to flutter through his fingers, then the second half. Towards the back of the book, folded into four and tucked away, was a sheet of paper. ‘Well, a lucky strike indeed,' he said. He replaced the book on the shelf, and carefully unfolded the paper, which was discoloured with age and dog-eared, and bore the round mark of some cup or glass; but the fading handwriting was clear. ‘Behold, a poem!
Sea Nymphs
. Did Santos ever write a poem called
Sea Nymphs
, that you know of?' Attis shook his head, and intrigued, moved forward to take a look, and the fat man held it out to him. ‘Here, see what you make of it.'

Attis read through the verses, and sighed.

‘It's an early version of one of his best-known poems,' he said. ‘But he didn't call it
Sea Nymphs
. It became
View from the Rocks
. This is inferior to the final version, of course; but it's fascinating to see the thinking behind its development. I'll keep this; it must be preserved.'

‘By you?' asked the fat man. ‘Are you, then, custodian of Santos's work?'

‘I suppose I must be. Who else?'

‘Santos's daughter, perhaps? Or his sister?'