The Whispers of Nemesis (8 page)

‘Excuse me,' said Leda. ‘I have something I must do, and it's growing dark. I shall take care to be gone before nightfall.'

She followed the path to the chapel, and opened its arched door. The stranger had lit no lamps or candles, and inside, all was dark. Leaving the door open to let in what daylight remained, she placed a few coins on the offertory plate and took a candle from the box; but amongst the charcoal discs for the censer and the little boxes of wicks and incense, there were no matches.

‘Allow me.'

The fat man was suddenly by her shoulder, and startled, Leda jumped. In his hand was a gold lighter, which he struck, holding out its blue flame to her candle's wick, and as the candle's own flame grew, its reflection showed his eyes as pools of disturbing depths. Leda took a step back.

‘Forgive me,' he said, with a smile, slipping the lighter into his overcoat pocket. ‘It was not my intention to frighten you. Sometimes, I move too silently in these shoes, and people think I'm sneaking up on them. Sometimes, of course, I am, though that was not my plan in your case. Please, don't let me interrupt your devotions.'

‘I came to light a candle, that's all,' said Leda. ‘And now I've done so, I'll leave.'

‘But you haven't paid your proper respects to the saint,' said the fat man, obstructing the door, perhaps unintentionally. ‘Who is the idol here? St Fanourios, it would seem. Please, I truly don't wish to disturb you. I shall wait outside until you're done, before I undertake my little tour. As the place is so small, I shall be done in half a minute, unless I find something of particular note. My interest is not in the present structure but in its foundations, and whether this chapel usurps an earlier building, an ancient temple. There have been rumours, down the years, of a temple to Demeter in this area. Whether this is the chapel that covers it, would be interesting to find out.'

He left her. Leda carried the burning candle to all the icons, and twisted it into the candle-box sand.

Outside, the fat man was standing once again before the shrine, smoking a cigarette whose tip glowed red in the twilight.

‘The Orthodox habit of digging up the dead has always seemed peculiar to me,' he said, waving his hand towards the skulls as she appeared. ‘Why not leave them in the ground where they are comfortable? And these fellows here have it worse than most, displayed like goods in some shop window. They may be useful as a reminder of mortality, but these men have been left no dignity. Even as I made my way up here, they were exhuming some other poor soul at the cemetery. Perhaps you know who it was?'

The evening shadows seemed to diminish his stature, and his affable expression encouraged confidences.

‘It was my father,' she said.

The fat man raised both his hands in apology.

‘How tactless of me!' he said. ‘Please, forgive me. Your father, then . . . May your God forgive his sins. But – forgive me again, it is my unalterable nature to be inquisitive – on such an important occasion, why are you spending your time here with St Fanourios and not at home with your family?'

‘You're right,' she said. ‘I should go back to them.'

‘Before you go, will you permit me a question?' He dropped what remained of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under the sole of his white shoe; then he bent to pick up the butt, and placed it on top of the shrine. ‘I shall dispose of that properly, in a moment. Now, please advise me: St Fanourios, the Revealer, your patron saint of lost things. I have misplaced a ring, which perhaps he may help me find. It's gold, and an antiquity, but its value to me is more sentimental than monetary. It was a gift to me from my mother, and she will be most upset to think I've lost it. If you would confirm that my understanding of the ritual is correct, I might invoke Fanourios's help myself. I must offer to say a prayer for the soul of his mother, is that right?'

‘You must offer to bake him a cake,' said Leda, ‘a
fanouropita
for the soul of his mother. Then you must take the cake to seven different houses, and before your neighbours eat, they must pray for St Fanourios's mother, too. All the cake must be eaten; none must be thrown away.'

The fat man looked doubtful.

‘How can I undertake this ritual?' he asked. ‘I don't know the recipe for
fanouropita
, and if I did, I have no kitchen to bake cakes.' He considered. ‘Do you think we might economise, and join my request with yours? When you bake your cake, will you ask for the return of my ring, as well as what you have lost?'

‘I shan't be baking any cake,' said Leda. ‘I'm sorry. I can't help you.'

She turned her back on him, and set off down the road, in the direction of the poet's house, and the village.

 

The evening was growing dark; the nearest trees were still visible, but in the deeper forest, night had already fallen. Leda walked as quickly as she dared, wary of irregularities in the road which would trip her. A kicked stone bounced away from her feet, and a second, much larger, hurt her toe. Then, her foot caught something else, a small, light object, which rolled tinkling over the ground.

She stopped, and peered down at the road. At first, she could see nothing; then her eye caught the glint of metal close to her shoe. She crouched, and picked up a ring. Clearly antique, the plain band was set with an unusual coin, stamped with a rising sun on one side, and a young man in profile on the other; and, even in the shades of evening, the ring shone with the glow of old gold.

Thinking of the fat man, she looked back along the road, but the chapel was round the bend, and out of sight. She considered going back, and giving him the ring, but night was closing in, and she was cold. She tried the ring on her middle finger. Made for a man, it was too big; so she slipped it in her pocket, and carried on along the darkening road.

Eight

Frona, Attis, Papa Tomas and Maria made their way in silence back to the house. Papa Tomas carried the metal box which held the remains from the poet's grave. Attis kept a guiding hand on Frona's back, by way of comfort.

The room where Santos had worked was never used. His papers and pens had long been cleared away, but on the old kitchen table which he had used as his desk, his typewriter still held the last sheet he had typed between its rollers, with the opening lines of an unfinished poem at its head.

The food which was to have welcomed the guests after the exhumation – sweet biscuits and Turkish delight, pine nuts and peanuts, crackers spread with fish-roe, brandy and wine – lay untouched on the starched, white cloths. Maria had prepared a dish of
kolyva
, food for the dead – boiled wheat flavoured with rose water and cinnamon, mixed with pomegranate seeds and raisins, and blanketed in icing sugar – which she had decorated with a cross in blanched almonds and silver dragées.

At the fireplace, Frona held her cold hands to the ash-choked fire. She had put on make-up for the ritual, but, no expert in the art, had chosen shades of rouge and lipstick which bled the bloom from her skin. Attis sensed in her the weariness of the careworn; her mouth was developing a downturn he hadn't seen before. He poured himself a Metaxa, and passed a glass to the priest, who sat on an ornate horsehair sofa which belonged to another age, his anorak still zipped over his robes, the box holding the bones from Santos's grave between his feet.

‘I think before we go any further, we should take another look at what we've got here,' said Attis. ‘Papa, would you mind?'

‘Not at all, not at all,' said Papa Tomas. ‘Not if you think it will help.'

‘I don't want to see,' said Frona, closing her eyes against the images from the graveside.

‘There's no need for you to look,' said Attis. ‘Not if it distresses you. Papa?'

Papa Tomas lifted the lid of the box. On a lining of white cotton, the many unwashed bones from Santos's grave were caked in earth, but the covering was too light to hide their form. The skull was elongated, and wide at the jaws; the teeth remained, with a set of almost human molars in the rear jaw, but at the front – at the snout – a dozen more protruded oddly, and two – curling upwards – were obviously tusks. There were bones clearly from a leg, but the creature they came from was not human; the leg was too short to be a man's, and ended not in the intricate bones of feet and toes, but in a point which could only be a hoof.

Papa Tomas crossed himself.

‘I'm afraid these are definitely from a pig,' he said to Frona, gently. ‘I don't think there can be any doubt of that.'

Attis peered into the box, and shuddered.

‘I'm afraid Papa Tomas is right,' he said. ‘Unthinkable as it is, somehow poor Santos has been . . . changed.'

He drank down his Metaxa.

‘Don't be absurd,' said Frona. ‘There's surely been some trick, some malicious prank.'

She looked towards Attis for reassurance.

‘Of course you're right, Frona,' he said. ‘Papa, you might close the box. The question is, what do we do now?' He put on his reading glasses, and from an envelope in his pocket, withdrew several papers held together with a legal seal. ‘Because, following today's events, the wording Santos used in his will takes on new meaning.'

‘What new meaning?' asked Frona. ‘What do you mean? Four years, he said, and four years have gone.'

Her face was troubled. Attis looked down at the papers; in the twilight, they were impossible to read. He switched on the lamp, snatching his hand from the sting of an electric shock. At the room's corners, the shadows deepened in the lamp's sallow light.

Attis scanned the pages.

‘I don't think he said four years, exactly,' he said, as he read. ‘That's what we assumed he meant. Here it is, here's the paragraph: the monies are to be distributed,
when my bones finally see daylight
. So I suppose everything rests on whether we can reasonably assume his bones have seen daylight today.'

The priest looked dubiously at the metal box at his feet.

‘But to declare those – whatever they are – are Santos's remains would make us look idiots,' said Frona. ‘They're not human; we can see that.'

Maria carried in a stack of plates, and laid them on the table.

‘Eat, all of you, please; come, eat,' she said, gesturing at the food. ‘What can I do with all this, if you don't eat? And where's Leda? She should eat something. She's had nothing since breakfast this morning.'

‘She isn't here,' said Frona. ‘I don't know where she is. She's had a great shock. How must the poor girl be feeling? Attis, will you go and look for her?'

‘I will,' said Attis, ‘when we've decided what to do. Papa Tomas will be wanting to get away.' He replaced the papers in their envelope. ‘Maria, tell me something. What are they saying in the village about this business?'

‘Business? What business? Papa, let me fill you a plate.'

‘Thank you,' said the priest. ‘That's very kind.'

‘This business.' Attis pointed at the metal box. ‘What are they saying about this?'

‘I haven't been to the village to find out,' said Maria, choosing from the best of the food for Papa Tomas. ‘But if I had to guess, I'd guess they'd be saying the poor boy's bones have been transformed.' She touched the corner of her eye, where tears were gathering. ‘Someone put the evil eye on him, is what I'd be saying. What else could they say, if it's the truth?'

In exasperation, Frona threw up her hands.

‘See! They'll have us in horns and hoods in no time, dancing on his grave at midnight. Their stupidity and superstition is beyond bearing.'

Papa Tomas blinked; Maria turned her back, and busied herself with the Turkish delight.

‘They have faith in powers beyond the earthly,' said the priest, ‘as should we all.'

‘So what do you say, Papa?' asked Attis. ‘In your professional opinion, are what we have here Santos's bones? Are you happy to inter them as such?'

The priest cleared his throat, and took his time in taking a drink which emptied his glass. He wiped a small dribble from his mouth.

‘Well,' he said, holding out his glass so Attis might refill it, ‘if they are – and I'm not saying they are – then clearly there's been some kind of – let's say something's been at work. So that would prevent me from interring them. They might be – well, tainted. If something has – interfered with them.'

‘You're saying,' said Frona, as Attis poured more brandy for Papa Tomas, ‘if there's been witchcraft or the devil's work, it might infect the other remains in the ossiary. Maybe they'll turn into pigs, too. Or sheep, or chickens.'

‘Well,' said the priest. ‘The bones in the ossuary are sacred remains. They await their resurrection in their blessed natural form.'

‘People wouldn't want to see their grandmother resurrected as a goat,' said Frona. ‘Is that what you're saying? What claptrap.'

‘Frona, please,' said Attis. ‘Papa, please go on.'