The Bull of Mithros

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘And all the rest of your fellow islanders were persuaded to be part of your hoax, which would bring in the tourists, and make them easy money. Your accomplices play their parts very well – they are gifted actors and pretenders, talented purveyors of what you sell as a modern myth. But myths have their roots in truth, and your bull isn’t a myth. It’s nothing but a racket.’

  Uncle Vasso blew out more smoke, and smiled.

  ‘What if it is?’ he asked. ‘What other way was there to get these idlers out of their poverty? They won’t work, if the work’s hard. But present them with something they can sit on their backsides and sell, it’s easy pickings and they’ll do it. My interest in this island is quite genuine, friend. I went away poor and I came back with money in my pocket, and I found Mithros the same hopeless backwater that I left. This is the land of my birth, and for that reason, I love it. You look at it now, prosperous and flourishing, and tell me what I did was bad.’

  ‘You recruited them all in a lie.’

  Uncle Vasso waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘They lacked leadership, direction, and I provided it. No more than that. And the public loves a good story. If people insist on being gullible, they must expect to be milked.’

  ‘You use the word gullible where others might say trusting,’ said the fat man. ‘And that is not the only instance where you’ve misused the trust of others.’

  ‘I dare say not. I’ve been blessed with a long life, and I’ve made no claims to sainthood.’

  ‘A long life, and a full one, apparently,’ said the fat man. ‘Your collection in the salone is impressive. Souvenirs of your travels, I assume?’

  Uncle Vasso examined the end of his cigar, and found it had gone out.

  ‘Do you have a light?’ he asked. ‘Maybe I should offer you a drink. Lemonia!’

  As the fat man passed Uncle Vasso his gold lighter, there was a quick step on the floorboards, and Lemonia appeared.

  ‘A drink for the gentleman, koukla mou,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘And another for me.’

  In the salone, Lemonia crouched to open a dark-wood cabinet, and removed a bottle of brandy. Uncle Vasso was watching her. He licked his lips.

  Lemonia brought the bottle and a glass for the fat man, and poured the brandy. As she left them Uncle Vasso watched the swing of her hips, and smiled.

  ‘In my own mind, I’m still a young man,’ he said. ‘And sometimes, my old body still plays along.’

  ‘You were going to tell me about your memorabilia.’

  ‘Is that what you’re here for, a traveller’s tales?’

  ‘I’ve heard several stories about where you made your money,’ said the fat man, ‘but I never heard the same story twice.’

  ‘You’ve been taking an interest in me, then?’

  ‘Almost since the moment I arrived. The first story I heard was that you’d made your money in the Congo. Coffee, I think they said.’

  ‘If you’re interested in my travels, I should be flattered.’ Uncle Vasso sipped his brandy. ‘There’s money in coffee, for certain. But I know nothing about the coffee trade.’

  ‘Were you ever in Egypt, selling cotton?’

  ‘Egypt? I’ve been there. I wanted to see the pyramids. They’re fabulous feats of engineering, and I have a great appreciation of man’s ingenuity. But I was only there a week. The place was hotter than hell, and the flies bit badly enough to make a man cry. No, I made not a cent in Egypt.’

  ‘It must be copper, then. I heard you made a fortune in precious metals.’

  Uncle Vasso laughed.

  ‘Commodities, all,’ he said. ‘But I did make my money in a commodity.’ He gestured to the salone with his left hand. Like the right, the back of it was sworled with dense, red scars; the last two fingers had no nails, but were fused together by taut skin, smooth as plastic. ‘My little collection there, my memorabilia, as you call them, the jungle drums, the beads and the masks. All of it, I got as a job lot. I had a friend who was in the import business, and I used to go to his warehouse from time to time to play cards. We had a couple of packing cases we used as our table, cases someone had shipped from Africa and never came to claim. One night we’d been drinking, and we got curious as to what had been shut away in those boxes, all those years. So we got a crowbar, and opened them up, and there was my collection. I gave him something for it and took it away. We nailed the lids back on the packing cases, and still used them as our card table. When I came back here, I said nothing at all. Rumour and speculation built my background, using the bric-à-brac in there as props. Happily what they invented for me was all legitimate.’

  ‘Were your business interests not legitimate, then? What commodity did you deal in?’

  Uncle Vasso smiled, and ground out his cigar in the ashtray.

  ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘in all the time since I returned to Mithros, no one has asked me that question. Why do you suppose that is?’

  ‘People make assumptions. They hear rumour, and take it as truth. Whereas I discount rumour, and make it my business to ask questions directly, as I am asking you now.’

  ‘You’re bold, my friend, asking such things of a man you don’t know,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘But I like boldness, and so I’ll answer you. The commodity I dealt in was a live one. I sold women, in the most successful chain of brothels Albania ever saw. The side benefits were, of course, considerable. But you, friend – what line are you in? You strike me as a man of the world. Maybe you’ve wandered into one of my establishments, on your travels.’

  ‘No,’ said the fat man. ‘I guarantee you absolutely I have not. The women I have known have come to me freely, and as friends. As to whether I am your friend or not, we shall yet see. I work for the Authorities.’

  ‘Which authorities are you with? Are you going to arrest me? Because if you try, I should warn you I won’t go quietly. Under the law of this country, I’ve done nothing wrong. Disapprove of my trade as you may, I conducted it on foreign soil. I’ve committed no offences under Greek law.’

  ‘I have no interest, at this moment, in your dirty little businesses in Albania. And you mistake my credentials. I am no officer of the law, no policeman, and I’m not here to arrest you. But I am here to see justice done. I have seen the ledger that Lemonia keeps for you, where you record debts and repayments. The Authorities who employ me are record-keepers too, and they believe that you have debts outstanding.’

  Uncle Vasso put down his glass.

  ‘I see. Do you bring trouble, then?’ he asked.

  ‘On the contrary. I bring an end to the trouble you have brought to this place.’

  ‘You’ve got me wrong, friend. I’ve brought nothing but prosperity to Mithros. I’ve a businessman’s acumen, and I’ve used it for everyone’s benefit.’

  ‘But that isn’t true, is it?’ asked the fat man. ‘The only man who has ever really benefited from your business acumen is you. On the surface, you have been generous with your money, but you have given it out as loans, rather than gifts – loans which all have strings firmly attached, and you have no qualms about calling in disproportionate favours as repayment. Favours of such magnitude as demanding help in an act of murder.’

  ‘Murder?’ Uncle Vasso shook his head. ‘You’re deluded, coming here and talking to me of murder.’ He held up both his hands to show the fat man the extent of his disfigurement. ‘I am a victim of crime, my friend, not a perpetrator. Now, you’ve shown me that trinket in the packet there, and I’ve been honest with you, and admitted the truth in relation to that. Take that back to your authorities, whoever they are. I’m an old man, and I need my bed. If you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Not yet, Vassilis,’ said the fat man. ‘We are here, you and I, at the end of the line. This is the tail-end of a story which began many years ago, when the robbers who gave you those injuries came to your house. But it was no random break-in, was it? Those men did not just happen to land in Mithros, ask around for the nearest wealthy man and come and rob you. You knew them, an
d they tracked you down. Why?’

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘Because it’s time. Because you’re tired of keeping the secret. Because, why not? Your time grows close; I know you sense that. You are no different from any other man, Vassilis. When you leave this earth, you want to go with your heart unburdened.’

  ‘So you want to act as my confessor? If I ever wish to confess my sins, I’ll call a priest. Go.’

  ‘I shall not go,’ said the fat man. ‘Not until you have told me everything.’

  Uncle Vasso sipped his brandy, and looked away. The fat man let the silence between them grow long.

  ‘I have a feeling about you, friend,’ said Uncle Vasso, at last. ‘I have a feeling of wanting to tell the truth. The truth about the bull is a long-kept secret and an excellent joke, which I’ve shared with everyone here. But I’ve never shared the truth about what happened that night, not even with my Lemonia, because it would have shamed me to tell her.’

  ‘Tell me, then,’ said the fat man. ‘We are, as I have said, at the end of the line. Why did they seek you out?’

  Uncle Vasso sighed.

  ‘Fire with fire, that’s what they said. My empire grew too big, and I lost control of it. No, that isn’t true. I didn’t take the time to control it. I developed a taste for poker, and sleeping late. I got careless. I let things slide. I didn’t bother with the details of the mundane and day-to-day. My businesses being what they were, I wasn’t subject to checks and controls. If I’d been in the hotel business, there’d have been official interference: the fire department, environmental health, all of them. But my business was brothels, and no one cared about the well-being of whores. We kept the lights turned down, and no one saw the problems. I had some wiring done on the cheap. There was a fire, on the ground floor. This place had three floors. The girls upstairs, they couldn’t get out. I was asleep when they came for me; I’d had a heavy night at the poker table, and I’d lost, badly, so I’d drowned my sorrows in whisky. They came for me, and I told them to go away. They came back and gave me the news, four women dead. I knew that wasn’t good. I didn’t pack. I went straight to the bank, and cleared out the accounts. I bought a car, paid cash, and drove away. One of the girls who died, we were close for a while. Tamara, she was called, a Greek girl from Livadia. I wasn’t in love with her, but she was easy company, we got along. We had a child, a son. I married her when she got pregnant, to give him a name. I don’t know what happened to the boy. I never asked, I never troubled to find out. And then they found me – Tamara’s sister’s boy, he brought them here. They did what they came to do, which was to hurt me, but they were clever. They didn’t finish me off; they made me wait. That’s what my nephew said to me, that I’d have to wait. He was a damnable man, a Greek working as a heavy for some Albanian mob. Half now, half later, he said, and they’d be back when they got round to it. And I’ve been waiting ever since. But he made a bad mistake whilst he was leaving, and killed Socrates, my betrayer. I half-thought his death would make me safe, would keep my nephew from coming back. I was starting to believe he’d gone for good, or come himself to some bad end.’

  ‘What did they steal?’

  ‘Nothing of importance. Money, the deeds to some property. He said it was for my son, but I’m sure my son never saw any of it. I hope my son has spent his life far away from that world.’

  ‘And what do you keep that’s so precious in the bank vault?’

  ‘My insurance policy. I suspect it’s worthless now. There are photographs of important men in compromising positions. It was easy to get footage whilst they were occupied with the girls. There are tapes, and videos. If there were ever trouble, I had all I needed to keep me out of jail. Except the men I used for my insurance must have moved on. New men have replaced them, I have no doubt.’

  ‘Then your nephew came back.’

  Uncle Vasso smiled.

  ‘You’re a sharp one, Kyrie Diaktoros. If circumstances were different, we might have done business, you and I. Yes, these past few days, here he was again. What were the chances of him being ditched here, in Mithros?’

  ‘The Fates have long memories. It seems they had not forgotten him, or you.’

  ‘Call it Fate if you like, or the worst of bad luck. I was brought the news that he was back. It doesn’t matter by whom. There was talk of the police, but what was the point in them? They’re still the lazy, useless fools they were when this was done to me.’ Once again he held up his hands. ‘Nothing has changed in that regard. But I wanted no arrest then, and I didn’t want one now. If he was arrested, the first thing he would have done would have been to talk about me. What would he have had to lose? There might have been extradition for me, and criminal charges for negligence, and I didn’t want to end my days in an Albanian jail. A great deal of my money is already spent, and I don’t have the necessary funds to buy off Albanian policemen. They have expensive tastes, and my insurance policy, as I’ve told you, is out of date. It used to be easy with them; I gave them free run of my girls, and they took full advantage. But I don’t have the girls any more, only my Lemonia. My lovely Lemonia, who has been such a help with the fiction of my background. She grew up in the Congo, and I adapted her stories as my own. She tells me you tried her cooking, that you enjoyed it. I’ve developed quite a taste for it, over the years.’

  ‘You never married her, though.’

  ‘No, I never did. I’m much older than she is. When I die, I don’t want her to put on widow’s weeds for ever. I want her to find another man, someone who’ll take care of her.’

  ‘Have you taken care of her? If anything happens to you, what would she do?’

  ‘She’d find herself a woman of property, through my will. I’ve never told her so. I had one threat hanging over my life. I didn’t need to wonder if she was poisoning my food to get at my cash. It’d be easy to disguise poison in a curry.’

  ‘I’ve heard people say you’re paranoid. That sounds like paranoia.’

  ‘My life has been under threat for seventeen years. It can’t be any surprise if I see danger in everyone.’

  ‘But you knew the source of the danger.’

  ‘My nephew. A man the world is very well rid of.’

  ‘That may be your view, and it may be the truth. But that doesn’t give you the right to judge him, and sentence him, and be his executioner. And you made your offence worse by recruiting others into your plans. Your hold on them was tight, and you abused that. All of them owed you money, and favours, and they were grateful, in the beginning, for your making their lives easier. You gave Makis a start in business, and helped Loskas with the burden of his daughters’ dowries. You helped Spiros buy his boat – a luxury he would never have afforded alone. Your cigars, by the way – where do you buy them?’

  Uncle Vasso picked the stub of his cigar from the ashtray, and sniffed at it.

  ‘From Nicaragua,’ he said. ‘I find the quality is finer than anything Cuban. I’ve developed my own little business, importing via Turkey. I keep a few, and send the rest on to a contact in the north.’

  ‘And your import business involves no taxes and attracts no attention from the coastguard. All of them – Makis, Spiros, Loskas – saw your loans as generosity, but your money chained them to you tight as Prometheus bound to his rock. And once you had them, you would never set them free. You milked them, and fed off them, calling in favour after favour.’

  ‘Your words are very harsh. I don’t see that I milked them. We had business arrangements, surely? They are men of the world, as am I.’

  ‘But they are not men of the world, Vassilis, they are men of Mithros, and what you saw as business, they saw as friendship. The template for your commercial dealings might have been appropriate once, but you brought that same model here, and it was in no way appropriate to the gentler men of this island. Surely you must see that?’

  Uncle Vasso laid the cigar stub back in the ashtray.

  ‘You may be right,’ he said, pensively. ‘
Maybe I have misused them.’

  ‘Most certainly you have. You made them killers. You misused them and misled them over a border they would never in a hundred lifetimes have crossed without your influence.’

  ‘But what could I do?’ asked Uncle Vasso. He spoke with a hint of contrition. ‘I had no choice but to recruit them. The job had to be done, and I needed help. I wanted him to suffer in the same way I had suffered. He put me through agonies, waiting for his retribution; he left me a legacy of never a moment’s peace. He made Death stand always at my shoulder, and I wanted him to have time to get well acquainted with Death, on his way out. I saw a man once, strung up by his feet. He’d given offence to some mafioso, and he was shown to me as a warning. I didn’t understand that hanging there could kill him, but the horror of his death was in his face.’

  ‘How did you get your nephew down the well?’

  ‘Simple enough. Once Milto had brought him to the spot, I held the gun to his head.’

  ‘And none of them betrayed you in that. Your hold on them is strong. They stuck together, and said the gun put to his head was Spiros’s. But it wasn’t. It was your empty weapon.’

  ‘He didn’t know it was empty. I made him kneel, and they tipped him in. I sent them away then, and they made their escape in the coastguard launch. I gave them my promise he’d be down there only a while, that I’d fetch Captain Fanis to get him out. They’re slow thinkers, or perhaps they don’t think at all. My nephew had seen them, and would point the finger, if he came up alive. They left, and I walked away, back to the celebrations. That’s how it was. Except for Milto. He had no guts, no stomach for any of it. It was his duty to be there, to avenge his father, and he shirked that duty. I wasn’t surprised. You expect no spine from a man too soft to eat meat. It’s not natural for a man not to eat meat. Meat makes the blood red, and gives strength and stamina.’

  ‘I was there when you tried to force a dish of lamb on him. You seem keen to force people into your way of thinking, even down to choosing the foods they eat. Milto had no illusions about his father. He knew his father deserved no retribution. Socrates was involved in bad business, and came to a bad end.’