by Brian Lumley
‘And earthquakes,’ she went on. ‘Rhodes has always suffered from them. The Colossus fell in an earthquake. And all of this hundreds of years before the first Christian. The Goths invaded in A.D. 269, but by A.D. 620 the Persians were in occupation. Three hundred years later it was the Saracens, who sold off the fallen Colossus as scrap metal! Just think – his pieces had lain on land and in the water for over eight hundred years! And in another century and a half, along came Aroun-al-Rashid and his Seljuk Turks.’ She paused abruptly at a crossroads of alleys and caught Trace off-guard, dragging him to a halt. ‘The Turks, yes! Did you know that right here where we stand, the Turkish mainland is less than twenty miles away?’
She was so clever, so close. Trace couldn’t resist the impulse but drew her to him and kissed her. She drew back, seemed to ignore the fact of his kiss, hurried on with him whirled along behind.
The alleys were almost empty of people here. Occasionally, at street corners, they would see distant tourists ogling old arches or peering at maps and guidebooks. ‘Charlie,’ Amira said over her shoulder, ‘have you been listening at all?’
‘Of course I have,’ he answered indignantly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Too right. Greeks and Turks and Achaeans and all that. Temples to Zeus and Apollo and wot-not …’
Amira sighed, ducked through a low doorway into a tiny, shadowy taverna. They had passed several but this one seemed to please her. The sign outside had said ‘Theos’ Restant’, and the menu seemed similarly conjectural - to Trace, anyway:
Very Salletts!
Lamp Cattles!
Staffed Tomates!
And:
Red Snapers … ?
Amira laughed at Trace’s reading of the thing, and translated: ‘Various salads, lamb cutlets, stuffed tomatoes, and red snappers. The snappers are fish, and delicious!’
They each had a small Greek salad: mainly cool tomato pieces and sliced cucumber with a few black olives over a shredded cabbage base, topped with chunks of soft fetta cheese and liberally doused in olive oil and wine vinegar. Trace had tried similar dishes in Greek restaurants in London, but here –
‘This really is delicious!’ he said, dipping a crust of brown bread in the moist residue on his plate. ‘This retsina, too. And yet back in London – I’d have to be bloody hungry to go in for this!’
‘Greek food,’ she informed, ‘– more so than any other, I think – suits its natural surroundings. Do you know what I mean? It’s more right than a bratwurst is in Germany, more suitable than even spaghetti would be in Italy. I mean, I have eaten octopus and squid in Famagusta, but I’d hate it in Genoa – and yet the Italians are supposed to be the experts!’
‘Tell me more about Rhodes,’ said Trace. He ordered a second bottle of retsina; they were small bottles, and anyway the stuff didn’t seem especially lethal.
‘You were interested!’ she said.
“Course I was!’ (But it had been her voice, mainly.)
‘Your own Richard the Lionheart came here,’ she said. ‘He recruited the Rhodian fleet into his crusade. Then, in the early 12th Century, the Byzantines. Fifty years later the island was still Byzantine, though in fact it was controlled by Genoese admirals. In 1306 they sold it to the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. After that … in 1480 the island was beseiged by the Turks, and forty years later Suleiman the Magnificent took it by force. Then the Turks ruled for almost four hundred years. Between 1912 and 1945 the Italians ran the show, but in 1947, finally the island went back to Greece.’
‘Quite a history,’ Trace commented.
‘Oh, yes! Would you like a cigarette?’ She offered him one from a Greek pack.
‘I don’t usually,’ said Trace. ‘But I rather feel like one right now. Thanks.’
They smoked and finished off the rather bitter, resinous wine in silence. Then it was time to go.
On their way back to the hotel she refused Trace’s arm, was quiet, seemed more distant somehow. He decided she was happier talking, said: ‘I still don’t know anything about you.’
‘My father was a German Jew,’ she told him. ‘He still is, if you know what I mean, but not in Germany. My mother was a Jewess living in Switzerland. During the war he got across the border and they met in Luzern. At the close of the war they married, and in 1950 went to live in Tel-Aviv. There was no hardship for they both had money. They hadn’t wanted a family but I came along anyway. That was in 1955. My mother died two years ago but my father still lives in Israel. He’s retired now but unofficially – you could say as a sort of hobby – he looks after the sites of old excavations and archaeological digs around Tiberias and El Hamma.
‘But Israel has always had its problems. My father lived with some of them, saw others coming, sent me out of the country for my education. I grew fond of travelling, meeting people. It’s a life that suits me, and it suits my father. He loves me very much, but likes me safely outside Israel, you see? Every now and then I go home, like when this present holiday is over, but mainly I live in Richmond, London. It’s my father’s house really; I keep it up for him, in case he ever needs a refuge.’
‘And you’re … on your own? I mean, you’re still single?’
‘There have been boyfriends, but nothing serious. Nothing lasting, anyway.’
‘Story of my life,’ said Trace.
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘Well, we have plenty of time, both of us.’ Following which she seemed even more withdrawn.
‘What about tonight?’ said Trace.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Tonight?’
‘I mean, do you have plans? It will be a beautiful night. There are night-clubs, discos, shows I should think. I believe there’s even a casino somewhere.’
She gave him a fleeting smile, a sad one, he thought. ‘No, I don’t gamble, Charlie. Life’s a big enough gamble, isn’t it? As for night-clubs and shows: I don’t think so. I came out here for some peace and quiet. Anyway, we’re off early tomorrow. I for one would prefer a clear head. We won’t be flying to Karpathos in a modern jet, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘No, indeed. A flying rabbit hutch, more likely! Wait and see.’
Their conversation during the remainder of their walk was trivial, lacked zest. Trace delivered Amira to the hotel where she at once went up to her room, and then he restlessly headed back out into the streets. He was, in fact, feeling tired but guessed he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Not yet. First he must burn off a little of his excess excitement. Sexual? Probably …
But on their way back something strange had happened and it was still on Trace’s mind. It was one of those things which only register later, which come up clearer on reflection.
It had been as they’d passed an old lace lady’s stall close to the dockside, when Amira had paused to pick up a piece of fine work to admire. The old girl had got to her feet, held up her work against the blue sky to emphasize its intricacy – and in doing so she’d stared deep into Amira’s eyes …
… Then she’d backed off, stumbled and almost fallen. And Trace had heard her say: ‘Ai! Kallikanzaros! Kallikanzaros!’
A youth, possibly the old lady’s grandson, had caught her, seated her again in her chair. But Amira had quickly turned away and walked off. Trace had had to hurry to catch her.
Now he let his feet take him back that way. The old woman was no longer in attendance but the Greek youth was still there, putting away her lace and closing up the stall. Trace spoke to him:
‘Er, do you speak English?’
‘Eh?’ the boy looked up. ‘English? Oh yes, me speak.’ Then he recognized Trace, went wide-eyed for a moment. ‘Ah! Your lady, yes? Me sorry. The old woman …’ He scratched his ear, then held out his hands palms up, put his head on one side and shrugged. ‘Me sorry.’
Trace took out a fifty Drachma note – small change, in fact – and handed it over. ‘Tell me, what is, er, Kallikan - , er, Kallikan – ’
‘Kallikanzaros?’
‘Right, Kal
likanzaros! What is it?’
‘Bad thing,’ said the boy at once. ‘Devil!’ He made horns with his forefingers.
Trace frowned, began to turn away, muttered: ‘Crazy old woman.’ But the boy had heard him, came scrambling round to confront him.
‘Not crazy!’ he shook his tousled head in emphatic denial. ‘Not she. She i kali gynaikes!’
Later, at the hotel, Trace got it right. He asked the English-speaking boss of the place what i kali gynaikes meant.
‘I kali gynaikes is a “good woman,”’ the man told him, smiling. ‘A clever woman, gifted. A woman who can cure with her hands, who sees – everything. Things we cannot see. There are still a few left on Rhodes.’
And: ‘Oh,’ Trace had said.
But when he would have turned away the man stopped him. ‘Excuse, but you were out walking, yes? With the Miss Halbstein?’
‘That’s right,’ said Trace. ‘Yes, we were walking.’
‘She came down and left this for you.’ And he handed Trace a guidebook to Rhodes. The frown lifted from Trace’s face at once. Amira had said she was new to Rhodes and he’d thought she must be lying, but the guidebook explained everything. It was all in there, everything she’d told him.
Devil? No, not Amira Halbstein. Or if anything, a rather clever little devil, a rather beautiful one.
But although Trace now felt easier about things, still he limped all the way upstairs to his room …
Chapter Two
Flying rabbit hutch! thought Trace. A pretty good description. Square-bodied, square-winged, with the door at the rear like a hatchback, the plane didn’t inspire confidence. A mini-van with wings, painted battle-ship grey and silver, and a pilot who looked like yesterday he’d been herding goats somewhere!
Trace had had his early morning call – and had then gone straight back to sleep! When finally it had got through to him that someone was banging on his door, and that the time was 7:40, then he’d come off the bed like a rocket. And into his clothes without washing or shaving, and downstairs with his case to cram himself with cold eggs and bacon washed down with tepid coffee, and into an ancient Mercedes taxi whose engine sounded like an asthmatic dinosaur.
8:25 when he got to the airport. They pushed him through a caricature of customs, hurried him across the tarmac and concrete carrying his own suitcase. But half-way across, with sand in his eyes and sweat dripping from every pore, then he’d stopped hurrying. He’d seen the plane by then – seen the pilot kneeling on top of its squat body, feeding it Avgas from a hose! And beside the stubby-looking winged thing a fuel truck, its driver sitting on the front bumper with an unlighted cigarette dangling from his bored mouth.
For God’s sake don’t light it! thought Trace, climbing aboard into a seating area just a little bigger than a large bathroom. There was only one seat left, his. It was at the back, just in front of the ‘luggage compartment’, which consisted of wooden shelves bolted to the walls. Someone had stood a large whicker basket on one of them; it was full of live chickens, all individually trussed to keep them from moving about too much. They didn’t look especially happy about it.
As for the other passengers: they were made up of a Greek priest, a pair of peasants, Laurel and Hardy from the hotel, two middle-aged Greek women, a young German couple already beautifully bronzed, and Trace himself. And Amira. She was seated up front but didn’t look back as he boarded.
He was only on board a moment or two and had just got comfortable when the pilot took his seat in the front, fiddled with switches until a flashing light came on over his head saying:
‘NO SMOKE – BELT UP!’
Great! thought Trace. And: am I really going to fly in this?
Almost as if the thought had been read, the pilot turned in his seat, smiled and nodded at everyone, said, ‘Hello – we go!’ and that was that. They went.
But as the plane taxied, turned, revved-up and finally took off, Trace’s bad mood fell away along with the concrete runway beneath. The take-off was smooth as silk; the throaty roar of the engines quickly fell to a soft growl; the plane gained altitude with ease and clipped south-west at a steady, reassuring, one hundred and fifty or so m.p.h. And Trace actually found it exhilarating.
The windows were square, gave good views; all the shades and colours of the land, the shoreline and ocean seemed painted by some magical, luminous brush; the aircraft’s shadow was a dark blot flowing first over the earth, then the ocean, all the time growing smaller until at last it merged with the sea as the plane climbed steadily into the sky.
But Trace had only sufficient time to begin to enjoy it; for in a short while the plane’s nose came around and the island of Rhodes itself slid from view, after which there was only the ageless sea. That alone might be enough to lull him, ease his mind – that incredible, glinting, inviting Aegean ocean – but since the two airports were less than a hundred miles apart …
… It seemed only moments before distant, rocky ramparts rose up in the south-west – the long crag which was Karpathos – and then the nose of the plane dipped as the pilot commenced his approach run.
In his pocket, Trace had Amira’s paperback guide-book. He’d skipped through it last night before sleeping, noting that as well as Rhodes it also contained a map and history of Karpathos. He’d marked the location of Kastrouni’s ‘monastery’ on the map and now hoped to glimpse the site on the way in, but he soon saw that this was out of the question. Not knowing exactly how or where geographically the aerial approach was made, he found he couldn’t orient the map with the actual island. Instead he read up on a few Karpathian points of interest.
The island was forty-seven kilometres long, ten wide at its widest. Lots of orchards, vineyards; plenty of water, with ample shade from the ever-present crags and outcrops. And mountains, of alveolate – honeycombed – rock. Volcanic, certainly, or at least the result of once-terrific volcanic activity. There were a handful of villages, some virtually cut off or largely inaccessible through difficult mountain trails. Main town: Karpathos, previously Pighadia, or Pigadhia, or Pigathi. Amoupi, or Amopi – not a village but simply ‘a place’, a bay – lay a few miles to the south of Pighadia. And south again, where great craggy cliffs rose straight out of the sea, there stood or should stand Kastrouni’s monastery, its tenant, and ‘the thing he watches over.’
Suddenly Trace realized that he didn’t know where Amira Halbstein would be staying. Pighadia? Somewhere else? It would be too much of a coincidence if she, too, had booked a room at Amoupi beach. No, she’d probably be staying in Pighadia, which meant that Trace would be trapped between two desires and interests: the alleged pile of the monastery on the one hand, and the girl (woman, really, for in fact she was Trace’s senior by three years) on the other.
Trace’s thoughts had arrived at this juncture when the plane banked steeply, rapidly lost height, sped slantingly inland across a flat stretch of coast. And as the ground came up, so the speed of the aircraft seemed to increase, though that was purely illusory. The plane lost more height, and –
– Where the hell is the airport? Trace wondered. Which was just a moment before he saw it.
Touching down on cinders and dirt, and as the plane completed its perfect landing and taxied to a halt, he saw it – and almost didn’t believe it! There, at the end of the single landing strip, a shack. Literally – or almost literally - a shack, with a fence projecting forlornly to one side and ending in a few broken, leaning boards. Customs? Baggage checks? All the other normal airport procedures? Forget it!
As Trace and the rest disembarked, so a fuel truck lumbered into view from behind the shack; with a grin and a wave to his departing charges as they entered the shack, the pilot climbed up out of his cabin and onto the plane’s roof, ready to refuel for his return trip. His new passengers were already moving toward the plane – all six of them. Four Greek peasants (was it right to keep thinking of them as peasants?) and a pair of golden-brown Swedes in shorts and T-shirts. Trace couldn’t help smiling as
he noted that one of the Greeks carried a large polythene bag of red mullets!
In the shack the newcomers milled around and bumped into each other, shook hands with some sort of island dignitary, a little man with a huge moustache and a grin as wide as his face, and were offered coffee or cold drinks. Trace accepted a Coke and an additional map of the island, and in another minute or two he and the rest were let out through a back door to stand in the brilliant sunlight and watch a small caravan of taxis come trundling like so many bugs down out of dusty hills.
Laurel and Hardy (or Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet?) and Amira Halbstein got the first one, asked to be taken to Pighadia. As their car drove off she spotted Trace looking at her, waved, mouthed carefully articulated words at him: ‘Be – see – ing – you.’
‘To – night?’ he mouthed back; but already a cloud of dust had been thrown up by the taxi’s spinning wheels, and the car had made a sharp turn. So that Trace was left with only a picture of her smile – and her nod of agreement?
The young German couple were speaking to the driver of the second taxi. Trace heard Amoupi mentioned, joined them. And suddenly he was tired. Determined not to favour his left leg, it had been a strain to sit, walk, act as if there was nothing wrong with his left side. But there was. What it was he couldn’t say – some muscular disorder, a problem associated with his club foot, (let’s face it, he thought, that’s what it is: a clubbed foot,) – but sooner or later he was going to have to have it seen to.
Sitting in the front passenger seat, he shielded his eyes against the sun blazing through the window, lay back his head and closed his eyes. And stayed that way until, maybe half an hour later, the driver gave his shoulder a shake and said:
‘Mister? Amoupi!’
The brochures hadn’t lied. There was a long narrow curving beach with stubby, low-lying rocky bay arms at each end. To the south of the beach, on a rising, jutting bluff overlooking the sea, a tiny, dazzling white church with a domed tower stood as if in silent appreciation of its location. The taverna was a house, really, with a seaward-sloping roof and a large kitchen in front; and in front of that, a large vine-roofed patio where square tables were set out in the shade. Ten paces from the patio the sea lay like a big blue pond, with a tidemark less than twelve inches wide. Along the beach to the north some driftwood – bleached, skeletal trees – had been washed up right to the edge of where the scrub started. Obviously the sea wasn’t always so calm.
