by Leta Serafim
Everyday there were pictures of the migrants on the news, crossing the channel between Greece and Turkey on flimsy rubber rafts. Some of these boats had capsized and all those onboard had drowned, many of them children. It was tragic, entire families dead, the Aegean awash with bodies. And turning their backs on them wasn’t the answer, he believed, or building a wall to keep them out like diseased livestock the way Hungary had. He and the priest had discussed the situation repeatedly. But if there was an answer, they hadn’t found it. All those people pouring into Europe, some of them jihadists, intent on inflicting misery and destroying everything in their path. And unlike their ancestors, who’d given non-Muslims a choice—convert or die—these men were human time bombs and only wanted to kill.
As expected, Papa Michalis had counseled compassion.
“What if there’s a critical mass in human life?” Patronas had argued, “A point at which outsiders tip some invisible balance and the others rise up against them? It’s happened already once in Europe, people dying by the millions because of what they were. It could happen again, I’m sure of it.”
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, Yiannis,” Papa Michalis said. “The evil unto the day.”
Still Patronas remained uneasy, fearing Europe was in for another round of bloodshed, that it was just a matter of time. The previous year, Greek farm guards shot and wounded over thirty men from Bangladesh, fruit pickers who’d been laboring for months without pay in Neo Manolada, a village in western Peloponnese. Prior to that incident, the same guards had killed two of the migrants’ dogs, warning them ‘This is how we’ll deal with you,’ and one had tied an Egyptian migrant to his truck and dragged him some distance. Then in January, a Pakistani man was stabbed to death on the streets of Athens. The situation was spiraling out of control. On the island of Lesvos, the epicenter of the crisis, a couple of Greek women had been raped by migrants. Acts of retaliation were sure to follow.
He, for one, had no problem with the Syrians, who were fleeing the deadly chaos that had engulfed their country. It was the others, the so-called ‘economic refugees,’ he had no use for. With fifty percent unemployment, there were no jobs in Greece. No way could the government feed or house these men. So why had they come? To peddle crap in the street? To beg?
His colleagues on Chios felt even more strongly, spoke of preventing the migrants from disembarking on Greek shores, of forcefully turning their boats around. An explosive situation, no doubt about it.
Across the street from Leandros Studios was a large swimming pool with a luxurious bar. A beautiful place. The underwater lights in the pool made the blue-green water glow like a jewel in the night, a warm breeze rippling its bright surface. It, too, was completely deserted, the carefully arranged tables like scenery in a play, everything in readiness for a performance that would never take place.
What was it Nikolaidis had said? The island was a Greek tourist destination. And this year, the Greeks had no money and they hadn’t come.
“I used to have an office in Apollonia, staff and everything,” Nikolaidis said, nodding to the empty pool. “But it’s gone now, part of the government’s austerity program. Way things are these days, I’m lucky to be employed.”
Patronas lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He didn’t want to discuss the decline of Greece, not tonight, not after what he’d seen. He still felt sick about Thanatos.
He looked toward the sea, wishing he could wade into it and wash away the memory, the image of the little boy and what had been done to him. He was too old for this, too old to deal with murdered children.
“What kind of person does a thing like this?” he asked Nikolaidis. “Chains a kid to a pole and slits his throat?”
“Ena teras,” Petros Nikolaidis said quietly. A monster.
Chapter Five
Exercise nobility of character.
—The Delphic Oracle
A beautiful woman, Lydia Pappas appeared to be in her mid-thirties. She had a thick mane of reddish-brown hair braided and pinned at the nape of her neck, and was dressed casually in cargo pants and a photographer’s vest with little zippered pouches down the front. Pockets seemed to be the theme, and she had many.
Patronas and Nikolaidis were sitting on the terrace outside her apartment with her. The units in the complex all faced the public beach, and Patronas could hear the waves—little ones, kymatakia—washing along the shore. Out in the harbor, a light shone on the mast of a sailboat, star-like in the darkness. Lydia Pappas had turned off the overhead light and lit a lantern, saying she preferred it to the other, which drew mosquitoes.
After introducing himself, Patronas gave a little speech thanking her in advance for her cooperation and asking if he had her permission to tape the interview.
“Of course,” she said.
He began by asking, “How’d you get to Aghios Andreas this morning? There are no buses at that hour.”
“I rode up on a moped,” she replied. “I timed it so I’d be there just before dawn. I wanted to watch it, to see the light fill the sky. It was glorious and I was glad I’d come. Such beauty. And then,” she shuddered, “that poor, poor child. I don’t think I will ever get over it.”
Her voice was deep and melodic, and she had an intense way of speaking, a hint of the theatrical in her choice of words. “I keep seeing him hanging there.” She closed her eyes, seeking to block out the memory.
Patronas nodded, understanding what she meant about the contrast between the beauty of the dawn and the ugliness of murder. Like her, he had never been able to reconcile the two, believed he never would.
“Where’s your moped now?”
“I parked out front.”
He asked for the keys and sent Nikolaidis out to take a look.
The child wasn’t bleeding when she’d discovered him, Pappas went on to say. He had obviously been dead for some time. She had seen no one either going or coming and nearly fallen down the stairs in her haste to get away.
Patronas was curious about what had drawn her, a single woman, from Boston to Sifnos, and finally, earlier that day to Thanatos. Was she running away from something? A divorce perhaps, the death of a family member? Or had she come to Greece like so many others in search of something she lacked at home? He didn’t know what brought them here, but they turned up every summer, those women, the sad ones like Shirley Valentine, who had affairs with Greek men and thought they’d discovered the meaning of life.
She sounded highly educated; her Greek was impeccable. Seeing her amphibious-looking footwear, olive drab sandals she’d chosen to wear with socks, he thought she might be a scientist, an academic of some sort. When it came to fashion, they were a nation unto themselves, the academics. Ralph Lauren himself wouldn’t know what to do with them. His friend, Alcott, always wore a hat with flaps that covered his ears like a French Legionnaire’s. It was a preposterous thing, that hat, justly ridiculed by the local Greeks. And socks. Alcott, too, was fond of socks. Woolly white socks that reached halfway up his legs.
It turned out Lydia Pappas was an artist, a potter. A ‘ceramicist,’ she said, who taught at a university in Boston in the winter and participated in a six-week educational program on Sifnos during the summer.
“Most of our coursework focuses on Greece—the ancient sites and history, the culture then and now,” she said when Patronas quizzed her about it. “Regardless, the program is not affiliated with any academic institution, and the students don’t get credit for attending.” She laughed. “You want my honest opinion? It’s a very pretentious and expensive summer camp. Costs upwards of seventy-five hundred dollars per student.”
She fingered the zipper on her vest. “They pay me pretty well, and room and board are included. I wouldn’t have been able to come here otherwise. I wanted to see the tsoukaladika, the ceramic workshops, on the island and learn how to make skepastaria, the pots the locals use for revithia, chickpea soup. Learn the technique and go back and teach it to my students in Boston. Sifnos has
been justifiably famous for its potters since ancient times. At one time, the word ‘Sifnian’ was synonymous with the profession. It actually meant ‘potter’ to Greeks in the old days.”
Patronas knew things were strange in America, but this was the first he’d heard you could study pot-making in a university. Pay good money to get a degree in laspi, mud. He shook his head. Such frivolity. No wonder the Chinese are taking over.
“I am an artist, Chief Officer,” she said as if sensing his skepticism. “Clay is my medium. I am very good at what I do.”
“Now about this morning?” Patronas said, seeking to return to the matter at hand. “Try and remember what you saw up there on that rock. The slightest detail could be important.”
“The fire was out when I got there and the little boy was dead. I checked for a pulse, but that was all I did. I didn’t touch anything. There were flies all over him. Flies crawling on his face, in his eyes.” She shook her head as if trying to block out the image. “Flies everywhere.”
“Did you see anyone else in the vicinity?”
“No. No one.”
“Again, why did you go there? There are more convenient places to watch the sun come up.”
“There’s an American here and he said it was worth the trip.”
Nikolaidis and Patronas looked at each other.
“How well do you know him?” Patronas asked carefully.
“I met him this summer. Leandros is not a big place—there are only three apartments—and I kept bumping into him. You know how it is when you work abroad? You make friends with people you’d never speak to at home. A man named Richard Svenson is in charge. Like me, he teaches in Boston during the winter and Sifnos in the summer.”
“How did you both end up here?”
“The program rents apartments in Leandros and in a couple of the other buildings in Platys Gialos as dormitories for the kids.”
She pointed out at the harbor. “He has a boat, a big inflatable Zodiac, and he and his students are always out on it. Sometimes he invites me along and I go, or we all have meals together. I’m here alone and it breaks up the solitude, keeps me from forgetting my English. He dives, too.”
“So you’re both professors in Boston?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s the one who suggested you visit Thanatos, that rock where you found the body?”
“No. Richard only recommended I visit Aghios Andreas. He didn’t say anything about that other place. He’d gone to the museum earlier and said that I shouldn’t miss it. That it was an impressive facility.”
“And the summer study found this apartment for you?”
“That’s right. The kids have to stay in one of the buildings the program leases and part of our job is to supervise them while they’re here. Greece doesn’t have the same liability and safety concerns as in the states, so there are no residential advisers or rent-a-cops. It’s pretty lax actually, just us. We teach them, have a meal or two together, and make sure everybody’s back in their rooms by midnight.”
“You have any problems with them?”
Tired now, she fidgeted in her seat. “Not really. The study screens them pretty well. It’s my first summer, but the program has been around for a long time. It’s run by a consortium of Greek academics in the United States.”
Patronas had no doubt the summer study had been devised by a group of his countrymen, wanting free airfare to Greece, an expense-free summer vacation. Many schools offered such things. Even the church ran one, Ionian Village in Peloponnese. His homeland called and the diaspora answered.
“So no problems?” he asked.
“None that I am aware of.”
After asking her permission, he took her hand and gently rolled the tip of each finger back and forth on an inkpad. He pressed it onto the official fingerprinting card, one in each of the labeled boxes, first the left index finger, then the right. Her nails were blunt, cut straight across like a man’s, and her skin was abraded in places, chapped from her days working with water and clay.
“Now if you’d be so good as to open your mouth,” he said.
Lydia Pappas quickly complied and he swabbed the inside of her cheek. “Sorry I have to do this, but we need to eliminate you as a suspect. It’s just a formality, nothing to worry about.”
She gave him a bleak smile. “A clear sky has no fear of lightning.”
It was an old proverb, meaning the innocent have nothing to fear. A strand of her hair had come loose and she brushed it back. Flame-colored, it caught the light of the lantern for an instant.
“Would you be willing to go back to Thanatos with me at dawn tomorrow?” Patronas asked. “Reenact how you found the body? You might have seen something at the time, but not realized it.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’ll do anything I can.”
“Very well then. I’ll pick you at four thirty a.m.”
She stood in the doorway when they left. Raising a tentative hand in farewell, she called out ‘good night’ and kept waving, the ink still smudged on her fingers. Patronas waved back.
Chapter Six
What you learn as a child, you cannot forget.
—Greek Proverb
Judging by his expression, Richard Svenson wasn’t happy to see Patronas and the other two policemen. He occupied an apartment on the second floor of the Leandros complex and was hard at work on his computer, a pile of books stacked up on the table next to him.
“Yes, what is it?” he snapped.
A narrow-faced man with thinning hair, he was dressed in jeans and a white oxford shirt and wore wire-rimmed glasses like John Lennon’s. He had a fussy, slightly pompous air about him and spoke as if he expected to be listened to.
“May we come in?” Patronas asked. “We’re police officers and we need to speak with you.”
Svenson studied him for a long moment. “Tonight?” He made no effort to hide his annoyance.
“Yes. It’s important.”
While Tembelos set up the camcorder, Patronas and Nikolaidis hastily inspected Svenson’s apartment. Without a warrant, they’d been forced to improvise, Nikolaidis engaging Svenson in conversation while Patronas pretended to use the bathroom. He hastily sprayed the sink and shower stall with luminol and checked the drains, finding no trace of blood. He then moved on to the bedroom, opening and closing drawers and rummaging around in the closet. He lifted his eyebrows when he emerged, signaling Tembelos and Nikolaidis he hadn’t found anything. It was the Greek equivalent of shaking one’s head.
“Why do you need to tape this?” Svenson nodded to the camcorder.
“I don’t know what the protocol is in America, but it’s customary in Greece.”
“You people and your bureaucracy. No wonder your country is such a mess.”
Ignoring the gibe, Patronas requested Svenson’s permission to tape the interview.
Svenson nodded, saying he’d be happy to speak Greek if that would speed things up; he was fluent in both languages.
Relieved, Patronas slid his little Divry’s English-Greek dictionary back in his briefcase. A tiny thing, it always took too long to find the word he was seeking, derailing an interrogation. The suspect would sit there yawning while he searched and searched, momentum hopelessly lost.
Alas, five minutes into the interview, Patronas found himself reaching for the Divry’s; Svenson’s Greek was simply incomprehensible. Endings gave him trouble. He was talking about an upcoming trip he was planning to Turkey and the marvelous food there, but instead of saying yaourtoulou, a goat dish prepared with yogurt, he said, katroulou, which meant ‘baby girl pissing herself.’ Worse, the American was unaware of his inadequacies and chatting up a storm.
Tembelos found Svenson’s garbled Greek hysterical and was bent down over the camcorder, guffawing so loudly Patronas suspected his friend, too, must be pissing himself.
“Let’s speak English,” Patronas said in a tired voice.
He then gave his name and recited the date and the time o
f the interview as he had with Lydia Pappas. “First, please, what brought you to Sifnos this summer?”
“Where to start …. Well, to begin with, I’m a full professor at Boston University and I’m here running a summer study.”
A talker, he went on to say that he had majored in religion in college—specifically obscure and ancient ones. Then he discussed the life events that had led him in that direction—a disappointment in love, the death of a brother. In the latter case he’d been quick to add, “from heart disease,” not drugs or suicide or AIDs. He insisted that Patronas call him ‘Richard,’ saying he didn’t believe in titles.
First names and best friends from the very start, even a foreign police officer he had never laid eyes on, a cop, who unbeknownst to him, was investigating a murder. A foolish man, Richard Svenson. He should be more careful.
In Patronas’ experience, Americans only wanted two things in life: to get this party started and to stay forever young. Hence, Viagra and Grecian Formula. To shop was also on the list, but mainly with women.
Once, he’d preferred them to all other tourists, but since his country’s economic collapse, his affection had waned, given way to resentment and envy. Greece was broke, yet here they came with their sunscreen and naiveté. And what they worried about enraged him. Gluten, for God’s sakes, when half the world is starving. He started doodling furiously in his notebook, drawing Svenson with horns and a tail, waving an American flag.
“A few of the students are studying ancient religions under my tutelage,” Svenson was saying, unaware of Patronas’ dark thoughts. “They’ll write a paper on what they’ve learned, get credit for their time. Initially, I wanted to take them to Ephesus and the cave churches in Cappadocia in Turkey, but the people who run the program ruled it out. I was hoping to visit Azize Barbara as well with its famous fresco of St. George and St. Theodore, struggling against the dragon and the snake. Much of our coursework this summer has been devoted to pagan and Christian symbolism—a great example of the synergy. I don’t know if you’re aware of the origins of the legend. Supposedly the dragon poisoned the countryside around Cappadocia, and to appease it, the people there fed it their children.”
