The Whispers of Nemesis (6 page)

Maria pushed the plate towards her mother.

‘That's what he said in the will. It's how he wanted it. There's nothing for anyone for four years.'

‘Four years!' said her mother, a biscuit only halfway to her mouth. ‘What was he thinking of? Had he lost his mind? Does he want his family to starve?'

‘He didn't
say
four years, exactly,' said Maria. ‘The lawyer read out his words, so we could hear them for ourselves. Santos put it very poetically.
When my bones finally see daylight
. Something like that.'

‘I suppose he meant, then,' said the neighbour, chewing thoughtfully, ‘until his exhumation.'

‘Yes,' said Maria, nodding slowly. ‘Yes, I suppose he did.'

Roula gave a hard, barking laugh.

‘I'd have paid money to see their faces, when that was read out!' she said. ‘How did they take it,
kori mou
? All credit to the poet, after all! He had a sense of humour I never saw.'

‘He was never a humorous man, in truth,' said Maria. ‘He was always very earnest, from being a boy.'

‘Sounds to me as if he earnestly doesn't want them to have his money,' laughed her mother. ‘Well, they won't be liking that, I shouldn't think. And I don't suppose you like it either,
kori mou
. Four years till you get your little legacy! Maybe I'll take a leaf out of his book, and keep you waiting the same way!'

‘There's no point in that when you've nothing to leave,' said Maria, sourly. ‘What legacy are you going to will to me?'

‘Only wisdom and memories,' said Roula. ‘Wisdom and memories,
kori mou
. For which you should be grateful. Mine's a legacy you won't wait years for; and what better gifts could a mother possibly leave?'

Pre-exhumation

Six

The island of Seftos was no siren, no draw for crowds of visitors. Long, flat and featureless, its unremarkable landscape had an undistinguished history, with no mention in the myths of ancient times nor any references in the guidebooks of today. Set on a wide and sweeping bay which gave no shelter, its town was ranged like a battalion, with tradesmen's premises and stores all at the centre, and commonplace houses on either flank. Behind the town grew acres of medlar orchards, whose old trees blossomed, at the appropriate season, into an attractive pink; but the market for medlars was never better than slow, and despite the growers' co-operative's ardent efforts at promotion, the fame of the Isle of Medlars had never spread beyond the boundaries of its own prefecture.

A few days before the poet's exhumation, the weekly boat to Athens – a vast vessel, whose long-serving captain was always apprehensive of Seftos's shallow waters – docked hours late alongside the island's own small ferry, which had no sailing scheduled for that day. Anxious to make up time and press on to the next port on their route, the crew handled the offloading with efficiency, lowering the ramp as the ship-to-shore lines were being secured, ushering off the disembarking foot passengers as they beckoned forward those waiting to board.

The arriving passengers were hurried away by relatives complaining of the delay, or disappeared down alleyways to back-street homes. But a figure watching from the ramp-head – an overweight man in an overcoat, with white tennis shoes on his feet – seemed undecided whether to leave the boat or not: he stepped on to the ramp, then back on to the deck; he checked his watch, and bit his lip, and stepped forward and back again.

The freight was light, and soon claimed and carted off, in trucks, on motorbikes, by hand. The ferry's hefty ropes were already cast off, and a crewman's hand was on the lever to raise the ramp, when the watching man called out to him to wait and stepped forward a third time.

The engines were powering up, and the crewman shouted over the water's churning.

‘Run, friend!'

The fat man ran down the ramp, a hand raised in thanks to the crewman. The ferry moved away from the quay, whilst on the harbour-side, the fat man seemed to be doubting his decision. But as the foghorn gave a short blast of farewell, and the boat disappeared round the northern headland, he shrugged, picked up his bag and walked away from the dock towards the town's heart.

Along the quayside, boats hauled from the sea in autumn were still waiting for spring painting. Pigeons sheltered beside a chimney stack on the bakery roof; the tattered flag at the war memorial fluttered on its pole. An old man limped slowly by, a seaman's cap pulled down over his ears; as he passed the fat man, he gave a nod of greeting, and muttered,
Krio
– cold.

Over the doorway of the general store, the stems of last year's May Day flowers hung, long dead, as good luck, with a carbon cross from an Easter candle's smoke marked on the lintel. Tied with old rope to a trestle table lay a long-legged black hound, too dejected to raise his head as the fat man passed. With rain threatening, one of the narrow double doors remained bolted shut, so the fat man was forced to enter the store sideways. Hessian sacks of dried goods – lentils and chickpeas, rice and chicken-feed – obstructed his passage, and he edged between them to reach the counter.

The shop was lit only by a single bulb, and the daylight was blocked by boxes of stock – biscuits and pasta, canned fruit and shampoo – stacked up in front of the window. There were smells of garlic and onions, of salt anchovies, soap powder and oranges, and of cheese from the humming fridge, above which a caged linnet chirped once, and was silent.

The shopkeeper had tried to make himself comfortable: an empty coffee cup was at his elbow, a tumbler of spirit was on the till-top, the remains of a ham sandwich lay on a plate. He was past his prime, and had let himself go; his cheeks had four days' worth of stubble, and his fingers were stained ochre with nicotine. On the shelf behind him, a radio was tuned to a talk show, where two men argued about a basketball team's performance.

‘They played like spastics, as usual,' said the shopkeeper to the radio, and switched it off. Rubbing his hands to restore their warmth, he turned to the fat man.

‘
Yassas
,' he said. ‘
Kalos tou, kalos tou!
A winter visitor! You're a very rare bird, if I may say.' He looked the fat man up and down, admiring his cashmere overcoat in midnight blue, his grey suit with its subtle stripe, his waistcoat buttoned over a pale shirt. The fat man's owlish glasses gave him an air of academia, and his greying hair, though in need of cutting, was thick with curls; he placed his bag – a holdall of the type favoured by athletes, not new, but of some vintage, in well cared for navy leather – between his feet, drawing the shopkeeper's attention, as he did so, to his white shoes. ‘But visitors are a rarity at any time, in this backwater, and I don't ever recall one turned out like you. No offence, friend, but are you sure you're in the right place?'

The fat man smiled, and held out his hand.

‘Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens,' he said. ‘And I must admit, Seftos wasn't my intended destination. I disembarked on something of a whim. Many years have gone by since I was on the Isle of Medlars.'

The shopkeeper laughed as he shook the fat man's hand.

‘It's a strange thing to be known for, wouldn't you say? A fruit too sour to eat until it's rotten? But if you want medlars, you must come back in the autumn. We're buried in the damn things, then.'

‘It's medlars I've come for now, if I can get some,' said the fat man. ‘I know it's not the season, but I'm hoping to find some spoon sweets, or other preserves. I'm intending to pay a visit to an old friend, and when I heard Seftos announced on the ferry tannoy, I was reminded of her partiality to the fruit. I shall be late, now, where I was going, but that business must wait. Medlars are such a rarity, these days, I thought I should take the opportunity when it presented itself. Did you know medlars were regarded, centuries ago, as an aid to chastity? Men made their women eat them, to stop them straying.'

‘I can shoot holes in that remedy, in a second,' said the shopkeeper. ‘The women here are medlar-eaters from birth, so by that logic, you'd expect them all to be virtuous as St Agnes, and that, they most certainly are not. I've got medlar jam, if you think it would suit.'

‘Since it's not in my power to change the season, it will,' said the fat man. He looked around the shop, and his eyes fell on the fridge's display of cold meats and cheeses. ‘I wonder if you would cut me a few slices of salami? And is the cheese I see there by any chance
kopanisti
?'

‘It is,' said the shopkeeper, climbing off his stool, blowing on his hands as he went behind his fridge. Reaching into the display, he placed a fat sausage of salami in the crook of the steel blades of the electric slicer, and cut the first slices on to a piece of waxed paper.

‘So you've been in Seftos before? Forgive me, friend, but I don't remember your face.'

‘I was a younger man, then,' said the fat man. ‘My family and I used to visit a little islet, just around the coast. My memories of those times are very happy. Maybe I should make the journey over there, for old times' sake.'

‘You might not be very welcome, if you did,' said the shopkeeper, as more salami dropped on to the paper. ‘The islet's occupied, these days, by a man not always keen on company. Our hermit, as we call him. Though he's not there, now. You've no doubt come in on the big boat, so maybe you saw him at the dock. He's just taken that boat himself, and gone away. He's left me to care for his dog, that beast outside. I don't like dogs, and I mistrust that one especially, but his master's a good customer, so I said I'd do him the favour.'

‘The dog seems placid enough, at the moment,' said the fat man. ‘When you say his owner's a hermit, do you mean he's religious?'

The shopkeeper smiled a wry smile at some private knowledge. He wrapped the paper around the salami, and secured the packet with an elastic band.

‘He's a man who likes the ladies too much to be religious,' he said, reaching into the fridge for the
kopanisti
. ‘Though they're not over-fond of him. Women like a man to smell sweet, and there's more of goats than roses about our hermit. Which isn't his fault; the man lives pretty rough. Folks used to say he was a fugitive from the law, but folks here'll say anything to shine up a dull story. Witless and slow as the law may be, if they were after him, even they'd have tracked him down by now. If you ask me, he's just a fellow who prefers his own company, and there's no married man alive who doesn't have some sympathy with that.'

He cut a wedge of the soft cheese.

‘But what does your hermit live on?' asked the fat man. ‘I remember that place as barren, just olive trees and scrub.'

‘He does all right for himself,' said the shopkeeper, wrapping the cheese. ‘He has his goats, and a few chickens. He grows a few vegetables, and catches a fish or two. And he's been enterprising.' Moving back behind the counter, he reached down to a shelf and held up an unlabelled bottle of
tsipouro
, a potent spirit distilled from grape skins and stalks. ‘He makes this stuff. There's a glass here, if you'd like to try it.'

The fat man nodded agreement; the shopkeeper poured a measure into a fingermarked glass, and handed it to the fat man, taking his own glass from the till-top.

‘
Yammas
.'

The men drank, and the fat man smiled.

‘Quite a kick,' he said. ‘Where does a man learn to distil
tsipouro
like this?'

‘Our hermit bought a still from old Mikey, and Mikey was happy to teach him the tricks of the trade. And he's been a good student, wouldn't you say?'

‘I would indeed. But a man living alone needs to take care. It's all too easy, under those circumstances, to make the bottle too close a friend.'

‘You're right there,' said the shopkeeper. ‘And the fishermen who go over there have found him red-eyed and ranting, more than once. But he's never too drunk to find the exact change when he's selling a bottle, and he's never been known to hand over a bottle for free.'

‘I suppose it's no crime to enjoy the product of your own still,' said the fat man.

‘And knowing the value of money doesn't make him unique. I'll find you that jam.'

The shopkeeper turned to the shelves behind him, and taking down a jar, rubbed dust from its lid with his sleeve.

‘So where does a hermit go travelling?' asked the fat man, as the shopkeeper listed the prices of his purchases with a pencil, and began to tot them up. ‘What tempts a solitary man back into the world?'

‘He didn't say,' said the shopkeeper. ‘He never says much. One thousand six. One thousand five, for cash.'

‘Now I'm here, I need a place to sleep,' said the fat man, as he handed over his payment. ‘Where would you recommend?'

‘I'd recommend the only place you'll find a bed, at the taverna at the back of the square.' The shopkeeper slipped his money into the till. ‘You'll do fine there, and they'll give you a decent dinner. But if you're not planning a long stay, you'd better drink no more
tsipouro
. The ferry out sails at six tomorrow morning.'