The Feast of Artemis (Mysteries of/Greek Detective 7)

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘It was as close as they could get. Anyway, what does it matter, now? It’s all water under the bridge, and folks’ memories are short.’

  ‘Not in my experience,’ said the fat man. ‘People remember for much longer than you might think. When did all this happen?’

  ‘Not this summer just gone, the summer before. And speaking of time, when do you need your trousers? If I get on all right with this suit, I could have them ready the day after tomorrow.’

  The tailor’s lane led to a busier street where a periptero was lit up on the corner, and the fat man went in that direction. He passed a bar where the bartender, arms folded, watched a football match with a group of cheering, jeering youths; in a dark corner, on a leather sofa, a petulant girl lay her head on a young man’s shoulder, whilst he craned his neck for a better view of the television, and watched with envy his friends seated at the bar. Steam from a kebab shop carried appetising smells of charred pork and garlic, and the fat man paused there long enough to read the menu before remembering the reason for his visit to the tailor’s, and moving on.

  The periptero’s owner was wrapped up for the depths of winter: fingerless gloves, a quilted anorak, a woollen hat pulled over his ears. Space was cleared on the plank-wide counter for a portable TV, where the football game played in grainy black and white, and the owner was watching it from his stool, his son seated beside him on an upturned crate, smoking and drinking from a can of beer.

  ‘Just look at these malakes,’ said the owner to his son as the fat man approached. ‘Your mother’d make a better centre-forward.’

  One of the players took a shot at the goal-mouth, and the TV crowd roared; the ball went wide, and the crowd groaned.

  ‘Poustis,’ said the son, and drank beer.

  ‘Kali spera,’ said the fat man, genially.

  The owner gave him a curt nod, then his eyes went back to the television.

  The fat man reviewed the periptero’s stock – bags of roasted nuts and seeds, packets of biscuits, chewing gums and bubble gums, magazines and next year’s calendars – and chose, after some deliberation, two bars of chocolate, one of Pavlidis dark in its classic blue wrapper, one of Ion milk with toasted almonds. He laid the chocolate on the counter, and waited to be served.

  But the owner, focused on the football, appeared not to notice him.

  ‘That was never a foul!’ he said, pointing at the set. ‘There was absolutely nothing wrong with that tackle!’

  ‘And look at him, lying there groaning like a baby!’ said his son. ‘Get up, poustis! The money they get paid, you’d think they could play the whole ninety minutes!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ interrupted the fat man, politely. ‘I wonder if I might have some cigarettes?’

  With some annoyance, the owner looked at him, his eyes flashing back to the TV.

  ‘Get up!’ demanded the son. ‘Get up, malaka! You’ve only got a couple more minutes to play!’

  ‘There’ll be injury time,’ said the owner, turning away from the fat man. ‘At least five minutes, the way these malakes have performed.’

  ‘I’m looking for these,’ said the fat man, holding out a pack of his cigarettes to show the starlet’s face. ‘Do you have them?’

  ‘What?’ asked the owner, without looking at him.

  ‘These,’ said the fat man. ‘Do you have any in stock?’

  The owner glanced very briefly at the pack.

  ‘No,’ he said. His eyes went back to the television. ‘Looks like they’re bringing on Savevski.’

  His son ground out his cigarette.

  ‘About time,’ he said. ‘They should have played him from the first minute. Now maybe we’ll see some action.’

  But the TV was beginning to misbehave. The picture elongated itself from the middle, drawing itself into an arrowhead where nothing on the pitch could be made out; then the screen began to roll round, slowly at first but speeding up to a flickering blur.

  The owner whacked the set on its side.

  ‘Damned thing!’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s the aerial,’ said his son. ‘Jiggle the aerial.’

  The fat man waited. The picture on the television flickered round, and the owner smacked the set again. His son stood up and twisted the two-pronged aerial in every possible direction, with no impact whatever on the faulty picture.

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ said the fat man, ‘could you look for my cigarettes?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t have them,’ said the owner, in annoyance.

  The fat man smiled.

  ‘Many people say that to me,’ he said, affably, ‘but they often find, if they look properly, that they have a packet or two hidden away.’

  The son tilted the TV forward, and fiddled with the aerial lead in the back.

  ‘Make sure it’s in properly,’ said his father.

  ‘That’s what I’m doing,’ snapped the son.

  The TV commentary was becoming eager, the crowd’s excitement showed in its roar. With his attention on the commentary, the owner began a cursory search of his shelves of cigarettes, as the crowd’s noise reached a crescendo, and the commentator shouted, ‘Goal!’

  ‘For Christ’s sake!’ complained the son. ‘We missed it!’

  ‘What a great goal for Savevski!’ enthused the commentator. ‘Just seconds after being brought on to the pitch, and he scores. Who could ever doubt that the old magic is still there?’

  Behind a stack of boxes of Silk Cut was a torn packet the owner didn’t recognise. He glanced inside.

  ‘Well, I’ll be . . .’ he said, under his breath. Reaching in, he took out three packs of the fat man’s cigarettes and placed them on the counter.

  ‘Excellent,’ said the fat man. ‘I’ll take two boxes of matches, too.’

  On the TV, the final whistle blew. As the fat man turned from the periptero counter, the flicker on the screen was slowing down. By the time he’d put his purchases in his hold-all, the picture was restored to normal.

  An ambulance was approaching, its siren blaring, the strobe of its lights flashing blue across walls and tarmac. It tore by, and the fat man watched it go, until its red tail lights were out of sight, and the siren faded to nothing in the night.

  A little after ten, Miltiadis Sloukas put on his anorak, closed up his tailor’s shop and locked the front door with a heavy key. Walking slowly, he followed his usual evening route, past the gelateria, which was still open for business. At one of the empty tables, Renzo stroked the terrier sleeping on his lap; seeing Miltiadis, he paused in his stroking and half-raised a hand, but Miltiadis pretended he hadn’t seen, and hurried by.

  At the ouzeri on Democracy Square there were men that he knew.

  ‘Eh, manka!’ called one (a sea captain who’d retired to a landlocked life and a wife he didn’t love, and anchored his future firmly to the bottle; two years into retirement, he’d aged five or ten). ‘Romeo! You old tom-cat! Are you off to see that woman of yours?’ He gestured obscenely with his index finger and a fist, and the men with him all laughed.

  Miltiadis didn’t respond. On the far side of the square, he followed a side street as far as the Kokoras souvlaki shop. At an outside table, four off-duty soldiers were finishing plates of gyros. A poster was stuck to the glass in the shop door, a rousing, bold-lettered message with a Soviet-style picture of bulbous-biceped, square-jawed men. Miltiadis read the poster – ‘Unite with our tobacco farmers! Candlelight vigil for solidarity!’ A date was given, and the address of the kebab shop. He shook his head, and pushed open the door.

  Steamy air fogged the windows, and trapped the burned-oil smell of frying. Behind the counter, a woman was washing dishes. Hearing the door, she turned with a weary expression; but seeing Miltiadis, she took her hands from the hot water, drying them as she approached the counter between the range of steel griddle-plates and deep-fat fryers, moving carefully by the shaved roll of doner kebab rotating slowly on a vertical spit.

  On his way thro
ugh the shop, Miltiadis passed a young man seated alone at a table spread with papers and pamphlets.

  ‘Yassou, Xavier,’ he said.

  The young man looked up, and smiled from behind round wire-framed glasses and a patchy untrimmed beard.

  ‘Yassou, Theié,’ he said.

  Miltiadis took four lemons from his anorak pockets, and placed them on the counter.

  ‘Dora, kali spera,’ he said. ‘I brought you these, from the tree at home. I picked them myself, this afternoon. I noticed you were running short, yesterday.’

  She smiled, and was almost attractive. In front of the red-glowing grill, fat ran down the doner’s close-packed meat into a drip-tray.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and ran a hand over hair made damp and shapeless from the kitchen’s heat. ‘Look at me, what a mess I am. We’ve been busy.’

  With a questioning look, he glanced at the young man and his papers.

  ‘Do you mean you’ve both been busy?’ he asked. ‘Or only you?’

  ‘I mean the shop. Can I get you something?’

  ‘I might have a beer.’ She started to come out from behind the counter to go to the fridge, but he stopped her. ‘I can get it.’

  He chose a can of Heineken, and as he popped the cap, she handed him a glass.

  ‘Will you come and sit a minute?’ he asked.

  But the door opened, and two of the soldiers came in.

  ‘Two more gyros,’ said one, reaching the counter. ‘With onions, chips and sauce.’

  The other was searching his pockets for change.

  ‘Tomatoes on one,’ he said.

  As she dropped rounds of pita on to the griddle, Dora sighed.

  The first soldier wandered over to Xavier’s table.

  ‘Oi, malaka!’ he said. ‘When are we going to see you at the barracks? It’s time you got your fat arse slimmed down to size. We’ll get you fit and pulling women in no time!’

  Xavier looked exaggeratedly to either side of the soldier, and outside.

  ‘What, like those women with you?’ he asked. ‘That’s the only reason you were so keen to do your time, because boy genius there’ – he thumbed at the second soldier – ‘told you you’d be pulling women right and left in those uniforms. Now you’re both puppets of the state, and still no women. I like your hair, by the way. It really suits you.’

  He touched a curl of his own, thick hair. Self-consciously, the soldier slid a hand over his brutal cut.

  ‘How do you avoid it, Xavier?’ he asked, tetchily. ‘No, really. How old are you now, twenty-four, twenty-five? No job, no university, and yet no call-up. You must be getting very creative with your excuses. How do you get away with it?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked it out?’ Xavier gestured to the kitchen, where his mother held the pitas flat with a spatula to brown them, her face glowing from the griddle’s heat. ‘My mother’s a widow, I’m an only son. Even our backward government realises she’d be sunk without me. Automatic exemption.’

  ‘So why is it that she’s back there grafting, and you’re sitting on your arse?’ The soldier called out to his friend. ‘Eh, malaka. Get me a Coke.’

  ‘My mother respects my ambitions,’ said Xavier.

  ‘Ambitions? What ambitions?’

  ‘Ambitions beyond your grasping, malaka!’ He laid down his pen, and looked over to where his mother was slicing hot meat from the grilling cylinder. ‘Hey, Mama! Whilst you’re doing those, do one for me!’

  As Dora dropped another pita on the griddle, Miltiadis caught her eye, and gave a censorious frown. Dora looked away. Miltiadis picked up his beer and took a seat, away from Xavier’s table. Above his head, the silent television was showing the news, film of the prime minister in a gilded chair, talking to a visiting foreign dignitary.

  ‘Look at that snake!’ said Xavier, bitterly, looking up at the footage. ‘He sits in his golden chair, and he smiles, and shakes their hands. Nah! Here, malaka!’ He stabbed at the paper he was writing on. ‘Here are the flaws in your foreign policy!’

  The soldiers laughed.

  ‘So when you’re prime minister, I suppose we won’t see you sitting in a chair like that?’ said one. ‘And what will you offer the president when he comes to call? A kitchen chair? A bar-stool?’

  ‘They should all stand,’ said Xavier. ‘The role of administering power should be uncomfortable.’

  Dora shovelled the first pita from the griddle on to the waxed paper in her hand, layered it with browned meat, sliced onions and chips scooped from a fryer basket, and expertly twisted the paper to hold the pita in a fold. She shook on salt, added a squirt of sauce from a plastic bottle and handed the wrapped gyros to the soldier, then made another with the addition of tomato and handed it to his friend. She took their money, and gave them change. From outside, as the soldiers sat back down with their colleagues, there was a burst of laughter.

  Dora rubbed at an ache in her shoulder, and turned her son’s pita on the griddle.

  ‘Xavier, what do you want on this gyros?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said. He crossed out a line in his letter, and wrote in new wording over the top. ‘No, Mama, wait. I don’t want mustard.’

  Miltiadis drank his beer, and watched the mime of the prime minister’s diplomatic efforts on the silent television. Dora made her son’s gyros, laid the paper-wrapped food on a plate, and slammed the plate on to the counter.

  ‘Xavier, come and get this,’ she said. ‘Miltiadis, let me get you something to eat.’

  Miltiadis drained his beer, and went back to the counter.

  Xavier glanced up from his writing.

  ‘Theié,’ he said, ‘could you pass that over here?’

  His face set, Miltiadis picked up the plate and put it in front of Xavier. He beckoned Dora to him.

  ‘So what do you think?’ he asked, quietly. ‘You and me, later – how about it?’

  Dora pulled an expression of hopelessness, and bent her head towards her son, subtly so he wouldn’t see.

  Miltiadis placed his empty beer glass on the counter, and turned to leave.

  ‘Will you come tomorrow?’ Dora asked.

  Miltiadis’s usual answer to this question was a smile, and a wink. But tonight, he only shrugged, and left her without a backward glance.

  Nine

  The fat man was breakfasting on Stavroula’s plum cake. The window on to the garden was open; rain had fallen overnight, and the freshness of the lemon trees blended with the coffee Lefteris was brewing.

  ‘Do you have plans for today, kyrie?’ he asked.

  The fat man swallowed a mouthful of ginger-spiced sponge.

  ‘I was thinking I might play the tourist this morning,’ he said. ‘I passed a church which interested me, when I was on the way to the Papayiannis orchard – the church where you directed me to fork left. I thought it looked as if it might have some interesting history. It has a touch of the Byzantine, certainly, and I thought there might be parts of the structure which are earlier than that.’

  ‘The chapel of St Laurentios,’ said Lefteris. The kafebriko was singing, and the foaming coffee began to rise. Lefteris snatched the pot off the flame, and holding it high, poured an aromatic stream into the fat man’s cup. ‘It’s old, all right. The oldest structure in Dendra, so people say.’

  ‘St Laurentios, is it?’ said the fat man. ‘Your patron saint of cooks and chefs, and a man who met a very unpleasant end. Many of your Orthodox saints were unfortunate in their deaths, but I find St Laurentios’s one of the most unpleasant.’

  Lefteris carried the coffee to the fat man’s table, and placed it by his hand.

  ‘What happened to him?’ he asked. ‘My wife would no doubt know – the lives of the saints are her bedtime reading.’

  ‘Laurentios annoyed his Roman captors by cheating them of the church’s wealth, which even in those days was considerable. So they strapped him to a gridiron, and roasted him over a fire. He was greatly admired for his stoicism, but when the heat eventua
lly became too much even for a suffering saint, he is said to have cried out – with remarkable fortitude and wit, given his circumstances – “I’m done on this side, turn me over and eat!” ’

  Lefteris grimaced.

  ‘That is unpleasant,’ he said. ‘Can I get you more plum cake?’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said the fat man. ‘As you know, I’m struggling to maintain my figure. I shall drink my coffee, and take myself for a walk in the chapel’s direction.’

  Lefteris picked up the fat man’s empty plate.

  ‘Speaking of the Papayiannis’s,’ he said, ‘you might be interested in this morning’s news. You met the old man whilst you were over there, didn’t you?’

  ‘I did,’ said the fat man. ‘I talked to him for a while.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Lefteris. ‘According to the postman, his heart gave out. He died in hospital, during the night. Sad news for the Papayiannis’s, but there’ll be plenty of Kapsis’s waiting to dance on his grave. There’s a great gathering of the Papayiannis clan for the vigil and the funeral later on. We’ll hope it goes off peacefully. There was some unpleasantness in town during the night, youths spitting and jostling. The Kapsis boys reckon they know exactly who’s responsible for poor Dmitris being where he is, and they want the Papayiannis boys to know they know. But nothing will ever be proved, and truth to tell, Kapsis’s have behaved almost as badly, in the past. But you can bet there won’t be many Kapsis’s paying their respects to Donatos today.’

  ‘Will you go?’

  ‘I’ll show my face. Stavroula’s that rare woman who doesn’t enjoy a good funeral, so it falls to me.’

  ‘I’d appreciate you letting me know where and when the funeral will be,’ said the fat man. ‘I might decide to go along and pay my respects myself.’

  ‘What about your brother?’ asked Lefteris. ‘Have you seen anything of him?’

  ‘I have neither seen nor heard anything of him since the feast, and I am daring to take that as a positive. With a little luck, it may mean he’s staying out of trouble.’

  The fat man walked a while, heading in the general direction of St Laurentios. Two black-clad widows waited at a bus stop, their heads wrapped in scarves against the mild morning, and the fat man wished them kali mera; they mumbled their responses, and pressed their wicker baskets protectively against their thighs until he passed. A man in a baseball cap held a chihuahua on a lead, and unashamedly watched it defecate on the roots of a plane tree.