One August Night

by Victoria Hislop

  Agathi had a strong religious streak that manifested itself on important festival dates, and she insisted that both Stavros and Manolis accompany her to the great church in the main square of Piraeus on three consecutive days. On Megáli Paraskeví, Good Friday, Manolis followed the Epitáfios, the float festooned with flowers that represented Christ’s funeral bier, and the following day he waited in the street with an unlit candle ready to receive and share the flame disseminated from Jerusalem. ‘Christós anésti,’ he chorused with all the rest. ‘Christ is risen.’ He spoke the words, but he did not share this belief that the human body could be resurrected. If only it were so.

  On Sunday, he went again to church with Agathi and Stavros. On the way in, he lit two large candles and stood there watching them burn for a while before taking a seat. One was for Anna. Unlike the flame, his love for her would never die. The second was for Sofia. Although he gave her less and less thought, she was still his goddaughter, and if life had been different, he would be in church with her now in Crete, she proudly wearing the brand-new shoes he had bought her, the traditional Easter gift from nonós to vaftistíra.

  He contemplated this as they sat there for some hours listening to the chanting of the priests, before emerging into the spring sunshine more than ready for the feast of lamb waiting for them in their favourite taverna.

  For the first time in almost three months, Maria left the house that Easter Sunday. She checked her hair in the mirror as she was about to set out for church and was shocked to see the thin, pale face that looked back at her. She pinched her cheeks, then took her husband’s arm and they walked the short distance to the main square, with Sofia skipping along happily next to them. Dozens of people flowed along the pavements in the same direction to celebrate the Resurrection.

  Nikos was not a devout believer, but he could not stop himself reflecting that his wife had been reborn. There had been times in those early days of her illness when he had watched a dying woman, and now here she was next to him, alive, almost well and greeting her friends with a smile.

  Sofia was just as Manolis might have pictured her. She was wearing a new blue dress that her father had bought for her and some matching shoes from her mother. She was six now, and with her long corkscrew curls tied back in a ribbon, she looked very beautiful. Nikos could not help wishing that she looked less like Anna.

  For many months afterwards, Maria wrestled with the idea of how to broach the subject of resuming her visits to Andreas. She knew Nikos would be resistant.

  Finally, around the end of September, she brought the subject up.

  Nikos answered with a rare display of anger.

  ‘Absolutely not, Maria,’ he said. ‘How can you even think of going there?’

  ‘It’s more than six months since I went. He must wonder—’

  ‘Well write to him then,’ snapped Nikos. ‘That last visit practically killed you! And you talk of going again?’

  ‘But—’ she protested.

  ‘You are not strong enough yet. Even if you go at some future time, it’s far too soon even to contemplate it now.’ The words were said out of love, but their delivery was harsh. ‘It’s obvious that you picked up the infection in that filthy place.’

  ‘It was the cold . . .’

  ‘The cold may have made it worse, but . . . Well, you know what I think.’

  Maria got up and left the room. She did not enjoy conflict with Nikos, and it was worse when she knew he was right. Even on that very first visit, a woman she had talked to outside the prison had warned her it was easy to catch pneumonia inside those walls.

  She went into the living room and pulled a piece of writing paper out of the desk drawer. She should have written to Andreas before, and now she hastily scribbled a note to explain why she had not visited in all these months. She posted it that afternoon but knew that she could not expect a reply. Letter-writing was one of the privileges that convicted murderers were denied.

  A few weeks later, when she felt well enough to visit Plaka, she poured her heart out to Fotini.

  ‘I feel such terrible guilt,’ she said. ‘Imagine that poor man alone. It’s so awful. And if they don’t give him my letter, he will never understand why I suddenly stopped visiting.’

  ‘I still can’t understand why you feel so sorry for him,’ said Fotini, with the honesty of an old friend. ‘He killed your sister.’

  ‘Fotini!’

  ‘Maria, it’s the truth.’

  ‘Yes, but the truth isn’t all that matters. You haven’t been there and watched how his face changes when he sees me in front of him. It’s more than gratitude, Fotini. He looks at me as if I have saved his life!’

  ‘Couldn’t his father visit him?’

  ‘I really don’t think that’s a good idea. He is old and quite frail now.’

  ‘Well I’m certainly not going in your place, Maria.’

  Fotini was tough with her friend. Maria sighed.

  ‘I’ve promised Nikos that I won’t go again just yet. But one day I will. And meanwhile I’ll just hope that he gets my letters.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  MARIA WAITED UNTIL the following spring to raise the subject of going to see Andreas Vandoulakis again. She was well enough to visit now and put the date in Nikos’s diary to make sure that he would be able to take Sofia to school.

  Two days before the appointed day, Nikos came in from the hospital and put the newspaper down in front of her.

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing at the headline.

  PRISONERS PROTEST. FIFTY ON HUNGER STRIKE. FOUR DIE.

  Maria read the entire story, with Nikos looking over her shoulder. It was dramatic. Several prisoners had died as a result of violence, dozens more were on hunger strike and others were occupying the prison roof. Fires had been started. With something close to terror, Maria looked for a name she recognised and was relieved not to find it.

  Over the ensuing days, there were more confrontations between prisoners and guards. An officer had been stabbed to death with a dagger that must have been smuggled in by a visitor, and the prison authorities were cracking down hard. Fifty members of the police force had been brought in from Iraklion to help control the uprising, and residents of Neapoli reported that they had heard gunshots.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be going to see Andreas at the moment,’ said Nikos.

  Each day Maria read the developing story with horror. She hoped that Andreas was not involved, but it sounded as if all the prisoners had been united against the prison governors and were demanding a number of improvements.

  ‘The conditions are terrible in there,’ she said. ‘Inhumane. And what do they have to lose by complaining about them?’

  ‘So you sympathise with this?’ said Nikos, with a note of indignation.

  ‘That place is hell,’ Maria said. ‘You haven’t been there.’ She wished that Nikos could sometimes see things from her point of view.

  ‘I doubt it’s worse than any other prison in Greece,’ he said.

  ‘That might be true, but it doesn’t make it acceptable to put six men in a cell, does it?’

  Nikos did not have an answer.

  The disturbances in the Neapoli prison continued for another few months, and when they died down, the authorities announced that there would be a ban on all visitors for the foreseeable future. This was both a punishment and a way of guaranteeing that nothing else could be smuggled in.

  It was not until the following year, when order had been thoroughly re-established in the prison, that Maria was finally able to return.

  She was filled with huge apprehension when she got off the bus that day to take the long walk to the prison entrance. She found herself almost sick with anxiety, just as she had been after the officer had molested her.

  When she arrived, everything looked the same: the same guard at the entrance and the same officer to make a note of her visit.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ he said with sarcasm.

  She d
id not know what the correct response should be, and said nothing as he turned his back and began rummaging in his filing cabinet, humming all the while. He was even more rotund than she remembered.

  ‘Vag . . . Val . . . Van . . . Vandoulakis . . . Where are you, Vandoulakis?’ he muttered. ‘Mmm, Vandoulakis. Vandoulakis . . . Vandoulakis . . . Vandoulakis . . .’

  The more jovial he was and the more he repeated the name, the more irritated Maria became. How could they have lost a prisoner? She could see from where she was sitting that the filing system was chaotic, and had to restrain herself from getting up and taking a look herself.

  She started to become worried. Perhaps Andreas’s file had been thrown out. Or had he died? In all the chaos of the rioting, could that have happened? Yes, she told herself, that must be it. He had after all been one of the prisoners who had died in the riots. The authorities just hadn’t reported it.

  Just as she was about to ask a direct question, the officer suddenly stopped his search and slammed the drawer shut.

  ‘I know!’ he said, as though he had been touched by inspiration. ‘I know!’

  He turned round and leered, his face coming within a centimetre of hers. Maria flinched.

  ‘I’ve just remembered!’

  She could smell the nicotine on his breath.

  ‘He was moved!’

  He sauntered over to another cabinet in the corner. Maria was so relieved that she did not speak. She simply willed him to get a move on. Every moment that he procrastinated was a moment of her time with Andreas lost. She thought of all the women outside, and how some of them would probably not even get in today because of this officer’s dithering.

  He quickly found the Vandoulakis file.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, reaching inside the cabinet and pulling it out. ‘He’s gone to the other wing.’

  Maria did not even know there was another wing, but was relieved when she understood that he had not been moved to a different prison.

  ‘Gamma 10,’ he said, to the young guard hovering by the door. ‘Take the leper to Gamma 10.’

  The words were like a hornet sting. It took all her will not to react and for the sake of her dignity she succeeded. This man disgusted her on every level.

  She hurried out. It was an effort to keep up with the guard, and wherever it was that Andreas had been put, it was a lot further away than his old cell. She tried not to look at all the miserable buildings she passed, but she could not help noticing a few faces peering out from behind bars. Expressions of anger, sadness and curiosity were visible from the shadows.

  Finally they reached a building that was more modern than the rest. There was a scent of fresh paint in the air as they passed through one door and then another. Maria wondered how on earth anyone knew which key opened what in this place. They all appeared to be unmarked.

  She followed the guard down the corridor almost to the end. There were thirty doors on each side. They must all be cells, she thought, but how many men occupied each one she was yet to discover. It was a relief that the normally ubiquitous smell of human waste was masked by the whiff of emulsion.

  The guard stopped at the penultimate door and slid open the hatch so that he could see inside.

  ‘There’s your man,’ he said. ‘You have five minutes and I’ll be back. They say he’s not dangerous.’

  He slammed the hatch closed again and once more produced the correct key without hesitation.

  The door was thrown open and with great trepidation Maria went inside. She heard the sound of the key being turned in the lock behind her.

  There was a man sitting on the end of the bed. It was Andreas, his head shaved, in a shirt as white as the freshly painted walls.

  The shock for Maria was not his appearance but to find herself alone with him in a room four metres by three. Was this solitary confinement? Was Andreas being punished for something?

  ‘Maria!’

  It was that same look of sheer amazement that she remembered from her very first visit.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she found herself apologising. ‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to come.’

  As soon as she said this, she realised how strange it was to be apologising to Anna’s murderer, but her words were sincere. She hugely regretted this absence.

  ‘I got your letter,’ he said. ‘How terrible that you were so ill. How terrible. And I do hope it wasn’t because you had been here. There is so much sickness in this place.’

  ‘I am sure it was nothing to do with coming to see you,’ Maria fibbed. ‘But I am glad you got my letter. And then the ban on visitors for so long . . .’

  ‘Yes. I thought they might stop outsiders coming in for ever,’ said Andreas, offering her a chair. It was neatly tucked under a small table, the only other pieces of furniture in the room aside from the bed.

  The floor tiles were spotless, the blanket on the bed was clean, and she caught a reassuring smell of disinfectant. Even Nikos would have approved.

  ‘So . . .’ she began.

  This was the first time there had been the possibility of a proper conversation. In all her previous visits they had only managed a series of short questions and brief answers shouted above the noise of more than fifty other prisoners and their visitors. Now they were face to face in the silence.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Maria.’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s my . . .’

  ‘Pleasure’ was not the word. Neither was ‘duty’. Maria’s voice trailed off, but Andreas had plenty to say, and his words came tumbling out. This was not the pompous and aloof man who had married her sister. This was not the man who had carried about an air of superiority, and spoken down to everyone but his father.

  ‘It is because of you that my life has changed,’ he said, very seriously.

  Maria was momentarily bemused.

  ‘My father is writing to me now! Since I last saw you, he has been writing every month. I don’t have the letters. They take them away from me. But they have changed everything.’

  Maria was eager to understand what he meant.

  ‘At the beginning, he told me of his anger, his grief, his humiliation. I understood all of it. I really did. He told me that he and my mother scarcely spoke of me after that night. It was their way. He made it very clear to me that I had broken my mother’s heart. That it was my fault she had died. Olga had already told me that, but to hear it from my father was a thousand times worse.

  ‘Those first letters gave me the darkest days I have had since being here. I began dreading them. Sometimes I didn’t even want to open them. I cursed you, Maria, because I felt that it was because of you that he had started to write. And everything he wrote was true and drove deeper the dagger of shame.’

  Maria shifted in her seat, on the point of apologising for causing this pain, but Andreas was in full flow.

  ‘I was torn apart at the beginning, but even though I have my father’s words of sadness and regret going round and round in my head, at least the letters acknowledge my existence. He is saying to me: “Andreas, you are my son.” You can’t imagine what that feels like.

  ‘I wait for each letter. We are only permitted one a month, but something is better than nothing. Sometimes he just writes one or two sentences, but the letters have kept coming, Maria, and that’s all that matters to me.’

  He paused for a moment.

  ‘I was sad when I thought you had given up on me, and then there were the riots . . .’

  Maria interjected with a few muttered words. ‘I know, I know. It’s been so long . . .’

  Suddenly there was the scraping of bolts and the sound of a key in the lock.

  Andreas could not speak for a moment, but quickly wiped his face on his sleeve.

  ‘Maria, please come again soon. There’s so much more I want to tell you. And if you see my father, please thank him from me.’

  ‘Come on,’ barked the guard. ‘Time’s up. Out now.’

  A moment later, Maria was out in the corridor, be
ing ushered towards the exit.

  It was a very different visit from the previous one, and that evening, Nikos could tell that she was glad to have seen Andreas again.

  ‘He’s been moved,’ she told him. ‘And it’s very clean there. It almost smells like the hospital.’ She said this almost teasingly. She knew how much hygiene mattered to her husband.

  ‘Why has he been moved?’ enquired Nikos.

  ‘He didn’t say. He had too much else to tell.’

  Nikos did not ask for any more detail. The resumption of his wife’s visits to the prison did not please him. She had nearly lost her life as a result of going.

  There was, of course, an even deeper angst. This connection with Andreas instilled a profound fear within him. What would happen if Sofia discovered who her real father was? Along with his love for Maria, his bond with Sofia was the most treasured thing in his life. For some time they had known that Maria could not have children of her own. She was one of the unfortunate leprosy patients whose fertility had been affected by the disease, so they were both very conscious that Sofia would be their one and only child.

  Sofia was eight now, growing tall, learning to read, asking questions about the sun and everything under it. Everything was ‘Why?’ Being a scientist, Nikos could answer most of her questions, and satisfied her with clear and simple explanations for everything she wanted to know. He adored her and she idolised him. He seemed different from the fathers of most of her friends at school. He wore smarter clothes and had silvery hair and he even spoke with a different accent. Sofia knew he was very important at the hospital and that gifts sometimes arrived from people he had helped. One boy at school told her that he had saved his father’s life.

  For Nikos, even the smallest risk that he could ever lose this child who called him Babá was insupportable. The prison visits were the one source of conflict between him and his wife, and the day or so after they took place there was always a frostiness in the air. Maria was taking a part-time job at the hospital soon, so perhaps she would no longer have the time to go. This was his hope.