The Whispers of Nemesis (35 page)

‘With what did you hit him?' asked the fat man.

‘With what came to hand. An empty bottle.'

‘You broke his face with an empty bottle,' said the fat man, ‘for your publicity stunt. How many blows?'

‘Two, or three. What difference does it make? He was already dead.'

‘If his face was swollen and bruised, as Leda says, the chances are he was not already dead,' said the fat man. ‘But if he was, so much the worse for you.' He pointed a finger at the poet. ‘You are guilty of a very serious crime, and of the greatest sin, according to the ancient Greeks. Hubris: arrogance and pride, a belief that your gifts, your talents, set you above the laws of other men. But no man is above the laws of decency, Santos, and mutilation of a corpse is, in my view, as low as any man can stoop. You reached for the stars, and have ended in the sewers of immorality. Why did you think you had the right to mutilate that poor man's body? Have you succumbed to madness in this place? Without the moderating effects of the world – of other people, all of whom see themselves at the centre of the universe – has your ego grown to monstrous proportions? You seem to have become convinced that nothing has more value than your talent and your poetry, and that makes you, in my eyes, a very misguided man. Poetry is poetry, Santos – words on a page, no more. But a man is a man, with a name, and a soul, and a right to dignity; and whoever it was whose corpse you stole, and dishonoured, deserved much better.'

He turned to Leda.

‘And you,
kori mou
– what do you make now of your heroic father? Rarely have I known a man make such selfish use of his own child! You agreed to be his accomplice when you thought the game was harmless. Relatively harmless, we should say; we must not forget poor Frona. But he changed the rules, and demanded you still play along, and lie to the police, and keep silent about his theft of another man's identity, and his life. He has treated you badly,
kori mou
. But I think you already know that, don't you?'

Leda stood up.

‘I'm ready to go now,' she said. ‘I'm going home, to confess to Frona.'

The poet jumped to his feet.

‘Leda! Please, stay, and we'll talk.'

He grasped his daughter by the shoulders, but firmly and calmly, she removed his hands.

‘I'll come with you, then!' he said. ‘I'll come with you, and we'll talk to Frona together!'

‘You will not,' said the fat man. ‘You will remain here, alone, and reflect for what time remains to you on what you have done. Stay here, write your poems, develop your genius; no one will either know, or care. Slip slowly into obscurity, poet; become a name fading within literature's dusty pages. The world's indifference, and the loss of your daughter's love and respect, is the greatest punishment I can conceive for you. Your sister is unlikely ever to forgive you, and you may reflect on that, too. And there is another matter.' From his inside jacket pocket, he produced a folded document – several pages, held together with a lawyer's seal – and a silver-cased ballpoint pen. ‘This is your new will. You will find it identical in every way to the original, except that it post-dates the version Attis supplied to me, and your clever clause denying your heirs immediate access to their inheritance has been removed. And, in a departure from the usual protocol, you will find your signature has already been witnessed – by three good friends of mine – in your absence. So, in your daughter's and your sister's interests, please, sign.'

He turned to the will's final page, where three signatures stood alongside the empty place for Santos's own, and held out both document and pen.

The poet seemed ready to object.

‘You'll sign voluntarily, of course,' said the fat man. ‘For your daughter's sake.'

Angrily, the poet scrawled his name. The fat man took back the will and his pen, and returned them to the security of his pocket.

‘The great poet's final autograph,' he said. ‘This young lady and your sister will now rightly benefit from your published work, and from Nemesis's odes, and after the way you have used them, it is right they should do so. As for you, your claim to enjoy life at its most basic level will now be tested. There'll be none of the comforts of wealth for you, Santos. Seftos will be your prison, and if you attempt to leave, it will only be for a smaller jail, and disgrace. If you set a foot beyond the island's boundaries, I shall make sure that you are arrested and charged with the murder of the man who lies in your grave, and you will see all the esteem and honour you have earned vanish, and the stain of scandal will leech all value from your precious verses. It remains to me now to do all I can to identify your victim, and let his family know where he can be found.'

He rose, and picked up his cigarettes and the matchbox, which he tossed to the poet, so it landed in his lap.

‘A parting gift,' he said. ‘Open it.'

Cautiously, the poet pushed out the matchbox tray with his fingertip. A horde of black flies flew up into his face, and scattered through the cabin. The poet dropped the matchbox to the floor, and swatted at the flies, which buzzed and settled through the room.

‘Carrion flies,' said the fat man. ‘Hatched from maggots which feed on the flesh of the dead. They are there at the end for all of us, no matter who we have been in life. The flies do not distinguish between poets, and paupers. Leda,
kori mou
– shall we go?'

 

‘He went too far,' said Leda, as she and the fat man walked towards the jetty. ‘I knew it as soon as I saw that poor man's body. I felt so sad for him, and so sorry for what I'd agreed to do. I kissed his hand, and said a prayer for him, but it didn't help. What my father did is unforgivable. Yet Papa just doesn't see it.'

The shopkeeper had seen them coming, and fired the boat's engine.

‘Your father's pride in his gift has swollen beyond all rationality,' said the fat man. ‘It's a trap many have fallen into before him.'

‘Can things be made right for the man in his grave?'

‘I hope so.'

‘And what about Inspector Pagounis?' she asked. ‘I'm worried he might arrest an innocent man.'

‘I'll talk to him, without giving too much away. We'll tell him you have doubts about the identification you made. He may ask you more questions, but the part you'll have to play in handling him will be nothing to a woman of your talents. In the interests of literature, I aim to protect your father's reputation, so I will do what I can to make matters right without the whole truth coming out.'

‘I thought we'd be a family again,' she said, wistfully. ‘When the four years were over, I thought he'd just come home. Except there would be money, and he'd be happy.'

As the boat motored back to Seftos's harbour, the day was drawing to its end; on the hillsides behind the town, the first flushes of the sunset enhanced the medlar blossom's pink.

Leda sat alone at the prow.

‘They call the young lady Leda,' said the fat man to the shopkeeper.

‘Is that right?' asked the shopkeeper. ‘Is she some relative of his, then?'

‘I believe so,' said the fat man. ‘In some versions of the myths, Leda and Nemesis are one and the same. Perhaps they are, and perhaps they aren't. Nemesis is the bringer of retribution, and it was Leda who led me to this place. What should we make of that?'

The shopkeeper seemed uninterested. He offered the bottle of
tsipouro
to the fat man. Little of the spirit remained.

‘No, thank you,' said the fat man, shaking his head.

The wind was cold. The shopkeeper put the bottle to his lips, and drank.

 

Along the quay, Manolis was still sitting on his bucket, though his line was no longer in the water but coiled around a wood offcut at his side. The fat man stood behind him and looked across the bay, in the direction of the poet's island.

‘There are so many big fish swimming in that ocean,' he said.

Manolis turned to look at him with interest.

‘You strike me as a man who has a fisherman's most important quality,' said the fat man, ‘that of patience. If we wait long enough, we all get our dues, whether our dues are big fish or no catch at all. But I think you're overdue a decent catch, don't you?'

With a theatrical flourish, the fat man first showed an empty hand, then reached up to Manolis's ear and seemed to pull something from inside it. Between three fingers, he held up an object to show Manolis; it was a glass bead, in mottled colours of blue and yellow.

Manolis's eyes opened wide.

‘You must promise me, if I give you this bead, you will keep it safe,' said the fat man, and Manolis gave a slow nod. ‘This bead is special. Tie it on your line, and wait and see what comes to you. With a bead like this, you need neither hook nor bait; the fish will love the colours, and you wait and see, Manolis! When you come out here fishing tomorrow morning, those fish will jump from the water into your lap. What do you think?'

He placed the bead in Manolis's hand.

‘I'll come and see how you're getting on, before I leave,' said the fat man. ‘And if you've caught anything over a kilo, I want you to keep it for me. I shall give you a fair price for it, of course. Do we have a deal? Excellent.'

 

Towards evening, a benevolent breeze cleared away the clouds to leave a starlit sky.

Denes sat at a window table, a glass of ouzo to hand. In a chair beside him, Elli was mending a rip in a pair of boy's trousers.

On the road outside, a car pulled up; a man climbed the steps to the hotel door.

‘Father-in-law,
kali spera
.'

‘Hassan,
agori mou
! How are you, son, how are you?'

‘I'm well, father-in-law.'

Unsure of his welcome, Hassan looked at his wife.

‘
Yassou
, Elli.'

‘Hassan.'

‘I brought you something.'

He took a single step forward; then, finding resolve, he approached her.

He held out the porcelain swan, and Elli smiled.

 

In Frona's city apartment, the phone rang.

She turned down the volume on the television.

‘
Oriste?
'

‘Frona, is that you? It's me, Attis. I was just phoning to ask if you were busy.'

Frona glanced at the TV screen, where a man in a lamé jacket was shaking the hand of a talent-show contestant.

‘Not really,' she said.

‘I was wondering, then,' said Attis. ‘It was just a thought, in case you might . . . Would you have dinner with me?'

‘When?'

‘Now. I hope you'll say yes. I've booked a table, and I could pick you up in, say . . . Well, now. I'm outside, Frona. I'm in a taxi outside.'

Frona looked out of the window, where a grey Mercedes waited, engine running, at the kerb.

She ran a hand uncertainly through her hair.

‘What if I say no?' she asked.

‘Then I shall have to eat an excellent dinner alone. Please , do come.'

‘I'd love to,' she said. ‘Give me five minutes, and I'll be down.'

In Memoriam

Epilogue

Some months later, on the island of Kerkyra, the fat man knocked at the door of a village house. A young boy ran to open it.

‘
Yassou, mikre
,' said the fat man. ‘Is your Mama here?'

His mother joined him at the door.

‘Can I help you?' she said. ‘Myles, go inside.'

‘I think, perhaps, I can help you,' said the fat man. ‘Are you the daughter of Myles Antonakos?'

The woman grew pale.

‘I am,' she said. ‘Do you have news of Papa?'

‘I do,' said the fat man, ‘though I must tell you that the news is not good.'

Tears came to the woman's eyes.

‘I expected no good news, after all this time. What's happened to him? Where is he?'

‘He's in a village called Vrisi, in the northern mountains,' said the fat man. ‘If I might come in, I have a difficult story to tell.'

 

Late summer, and in Vrisi's cemetery, the dried-out weeds and grasses were burnt pale by the August sun. The sexton wore a straw hat against its heat; his water bottle lay almost empty in the oak tree's shade. Sheltering the flame with a cupped hand, he held a lighted match to the bowl of his pipe, and puffed on the stem in phuts and spits to encourage the tobacco to burn.

At the grave where Santos Volakis had never lain, a new headstone had been erected. The fat man looked down at the carved white marble, and read out the inscription.