The element -inth in Greek

by Alison Fell

He lay under an olive tree with his arms stretched above his head, as if trying to embrace the trunk. It was, Yiannis thought as he approached, an attitude of abandon. A man asleep after coitus – or rather, a boy. A fat boy at that. When he and Christos came closer neither looked at the other but both had seen. The erection, the size of the glans. This before they registered the stillness.

  From the undergrowth came the lazy buzzing of a bee. There was a scent of peppermint flowers and also of something else, something not death or decay, but sweeter. A whiff of the pastry-shop. As if the youth had been stuffing his face in the zacharoplasteion.

  Although Yiannis had seen enough of death to know that he would not find a pulse, he laid the back of his fingers briefly against the exposed throat. His fingers came away sticky. He saw then that the body was not fat at all, but grossly swollen. The honey seemed to ooze from every pore. Behind him Christos let out a high hee-hawing laugh.

  ‘Like a fucking baklava, sir!’

  Christos was only 20, from Thessaloniki, seconded to the island for the lager-lout season. Yiannis radioed headquarters, turning away while the rookie vomited into the peppermint flowers.

  What appeared to be small black olives, fallen prematurely, littered the ground around the body. Then one of them quivered and crawled. A queasy sweat broke out on Yiannis’s brow. He saw the puncture-marks, in hundreds. He jumped up and stamped his boot down hard on the fugitive insect.

  Bees, for Christ’s sake. They were fucking bees.

  He told Christos to make a preliminary search of the area while they waited for the ambulance. Somewhere there would be clothing. Bathing trunks at least, or a towel, wallet, cellphone.

  He wiped his fingers on a handkerchief and, retreating to a safe distance, hunkered down on a tree-stump to smoke. On the yellow earth ants ran to and fro, telegraphing one another, fanning out excitedly around his feet. Soon the fan would form itself into a column which would advance in disciplined fashion on the honeyed corpse. Yiannis flicked his lighter and held the flame to the bum of a glossy big general. He watched the back legs shrivel. His hand was shaking.

  Christos was blundering about in the undergrowth, cursing at nettles. The sea was invisible through the dense mass of trees but Yiannis, hearing the disco blare of a boat, forced himself to picture it: a tall tiered castle packed with Aussies and beercans, hugging the coast, leaking music and detritus.

  Christos emerged from the undergrowth, zipping up his fly. ‘Can’t see a thing, sir. So do we know whose land it is?’ At the corner of his mouth a spot of sick clung to an incipient moustache. Yiannis looked at it with distaste.

  ‘Stavlakis. Old boy, lives up top, by Agia Stephanou.’

  The trees were ill-kept, and on the north-facing slope the olives were small and poor. Here and there rotting nets lay in snarls. The terrace walls, washed down by winter rains into yellow gullies, had been left unrepaired, for Stavlakis was alone now, his sons and daughters emigrants to London, Munich, Melbourne.

  The alarm had been raised not by the old boy but by an English couple hiking round the headland, who had run back to the Totem Bar to telephone. The Harknesses. When Yiannis got there they were flushed with sunburn and fright, the husband gulping down a Metaxa at 9.30 in the morning. White strap-marks criss-crossed the woman’s red shoulders. A busty Rep. from Flagstaff strove to instil calm, dipping napkins into ice water and applying them to the back of the woman’s neck. Her name, he remembered, was Lynda. The look she’d turned on him both begged and blamed. This he’d found unfair, if understandable. Horrors happened which even with the best will in the world the police could not prevent, but it didn’t take a Socrates to work out that this kind of incident could scupper a whole season.

  When he looked at his watch he was surprised to see how little time had passed since then. It was as if death’s stillness had acted contrarily on him, accelerating the inner clockwork of his hours. In the corner of his eye the corpse in shadow was a windfall, a swollen plum. Tapping a brusque finger to his upper lip, he pointed at Christos. ‘Elaré, pedaki-mou. Clean yourself up before Forensics get here.’

  ‘Time of death, between 4 and 6am.’ The doctor’s tone nursed some age-old Homeric grudge. ‘Approximately,’ he snapped, as if Yiannis really needed to be told. Yiannis was reminded of the day he’d arrived back in Greece, ten years ago now. In the Immigration queue, his head stunned into emptiness by the long white hours of the flight, he’d wondered what on earth the Passport Officials were scowling at. Then he realised that this confusion was a measure of just how long he’d been away – long enough to forget that, in the mindset of the Greek male, a smile signified weakness, submission. The male face was supposed to impress, to impose its authority, not to charm.

  So it was dawn, thought Yiannis: the dew-damp dawn of summer. A perfect hour. People could have been about. Yia yias struggling up the hill to the church. Service workers heading for the hotels of Katomeli. Bakers, midwives, squid-fishers pottering about on the crystal sea.

  The scene had been photographed and taped off, pending a more thorough examination. The paramedics had zipped the sheeted body into a bag and stretchered it down the slope and along the beach-front track to the ambulance, which was parked outside the Totem Bar.

  The Iatrodikastis had stripped off his white jumpsuit and bundled it into the boot of his car; now he crouched by the standpipe outside the Bar, splashing water over his face and hands, cursing at the heat. Water ran down his bare arms and puddled in the sunlit road.

  Yiannis fetched two cans of Pepsi from the cold cabinet inside the Bar and handed one to Christos. On the terrace Aphrodite – a good three dress sizes up from the original, but otherwise not entirely misnamed, in his opinion – and her sister Fotini, who had been pretending to wipe down the tables, hovered mutely. Little Fotini had crumpled a corner of her apron across her mouth; while her big sister was simply, hugely, staring.

  He held the cold metal can against his cheek, thinking of the stickiness of the honey, the way the stains had seeped darkly through the sheet. For the moment the fat boy’s body was hidden, and sweltered in the heat like the rest of them, but not, he knew, for long; soon it would rest in the enviable cool of the Mortuary.

  He told Christos to drive them back to the station, to take the lad’s mind off the item in the ambulance. They bumped along the rutted road behind it, in a silent, anti-climactic procession: lights, yes, but it was a damn sight too late for sirens. There were maize-fields on either side of the road, olive groves; laundry airing on the vine-shaded terraces of smallholdings. The Pantelides’ donkey, untethered from its ethnic tourist cart, munched on thistles in their yard.

  Just then old Asterios came roaring round the corner on his papaki, his gnarled brown knees jutting at a reckless angle. A cockerel that had been manning the roadside leapt for cover. Asterios still kept his newspaper kiosk in Katomeli’s main square, but at his age, four top-speed commutes a day was surely pushing it. He waved to Yiannis and wobbled, swerving into the middle of the road.

  For a second memory plied its shrieking brake in Yiannis’ stomach, as the old man corrected, missing them by a whisker. So close, you could almost smell the ouzo on his breath.

  ‘Ai gamisou!’ Yiannis turned to shake his fist at the wake of dust. ‘He’ll prang that thing one day. We’ll be scraping him off an olive tree!’

  ‘Bit of a mangas, eh?’ Again Christos unleashed his pent-up dismaying laugh. His eyes were shocked and bright.

  Yiannis patted his top pocket for cigarettes and went to shake one out for Christos. He found himself looking at an empty packet he’d picked up near the bottom of the path. He’d been on automatic by then, clocking it less as evidence, more as careless loutish litter. Davidoffs. The ads were everywhere these days. The More You Know. A ladies’ sort of smoke, upmarket from Assos, but that wasn’t saying much. He placed the packet carefully in the glove compartment.

  The ambulance picked up speed on the coast road, heading for Heraklion. They left
it at the intersection and turned right into town. In Solomos Square, several streets back from the ceaseless commerce of the beachfront, civic Katomeli drowsed in the lunchtime heat. Yiannis told Christos to drop him off at the Station, maybe drive around for a bit, get some wind back in his sails. His report could wait an hour or two, given the circumstances.

  Inside the Station ceiling-fans stirred the decrepit air. Sotiris, the Watch Sergeant, smoked at the front desk. Panayotis’ door was closed but he wasn’t at lunch; through the wrinkled glass panel Yiannis glimpsed the tall black kalimafki of a cleric.

  ‘What’s with the Archigos?’

  ‘He’s holed up with the Patriarch. Remember that Gazi business last year, when the Jehovah’s Witnesses were trying to muscle in?’ Sotiris leaned across the counter to whisper. ‘They’re taking it all the way to Strasbourg.’

  Yiannis passed through the barrier and checked his pigeonhole. ‘Persistent buggers, the Jehovahs. But you have to hand it to them. Every last one was offed in the war, did you know that? No other church totally refused to cuddle up to the Nazis.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Sotiris, scenting a political discussion and shifting quickly into neutral.

  Although he was pushing forty, Yiannis still thought of him as Young Sotiris. Younger than Yiannis, certainly, but then so was everyone else in the station, including Panayotis. He could still remember how they’d teased the kid when he first joined up: the goatherd’s son from the Lasithi, long-armed, short-legged, his boots still stinking of goat-shit. Years in the force had dulled the wild gleam of his grin and turned him into a wary, deferential man. Some, of course, would say sensible. Not the type, at any rate, to fuck off mid-career like Yiannis and jeopardise his chances of promotion. Sotiris might not be a fast-tracker, but at least there were no shadows on his service record.

  On the other hand, thought Yiannis, nor were there any shining lights.

  Ruefulness was a habit he must have picked up with the language, like the shrug of acceptance, the self-deprecating Aussie grin. Impatient with his un-Greek ironies, he went to his desk and sat down to type his report. But first he phoned his lunch order through to the Delfini. They knew his needs there, catered for the tastes of a man with no sense of taste to speak of. Cucumber, apple, their sharpest ewe’s-milk cheese. Crisp textures and definite tastes, nothing bland or mushy.

  He took out the Davidoff packet and placed it on the blotter. It was probably contaminated,, but worth bagging just in case. He noticed writing on the side of the pack, in black ink. Roman capitals. He poked the packet with a pencil, swivelling it round.

  AKA. Also known as – in English, at least. Then a name. KALLIS.

  ‘Hey Sotiri. Ever heard of a Kallis? K.a.l.l.i.s.?’

  ‘Not in these parts. Could be a mainland name. Or Pontian, maybe. Want me to check?’

  Yiannis went over to study the screen. An odour of stale sweat hung around Tassos: ironically the accident which had robbed him of all sense of taste had sharpened his sense of smell.

  The screen flagged a No Result.

  ‘You could try Supplementaries?’

  Yiannis snorted. The Supplementary lists hadn’t been updated for three years, and in any case it was a slow business, scrolling through them.

  ‘Thanks but no thanks. I’d be better off with the phone book.’ He went to the shelf and flicked through the Ks. Nothing.

  He went back to his desk, rang Gaylene Evnochides in Heraklion, and left a message. Gaylene was a girlfriend of his sister’s; she was also Flagstaff’s Head Rep on Crete. English, but married to a Greek who ran a dress shop called Dragonesse on Kalokairinou, Gaylene had a management style which was cool but appeasing – a combination that worked equally well with both nationalities. If he wanted to talk to the Flagstaff clients he was going to need her on board.

  While he waited for his lunch to arrive he communed with Karen’s photograph.

  Ela, Yianni, ela! Her smile teased him from a time when they were both innocent of the knowledge of illness; her red hair burned in the Antipodean light. The only woman he’d ever known who could simultaneously tan and freckle.

  Aka Kallis.

  ‘Kallis’ meant nothing; it could only be a name. Kallos, on the other hand, meant beauty.

  Oh so many mornings, he thought, as the great darkness woke again inside him, and ten thousand miles behind.

  Aka kallos, he told Karen’s photograph: Also known as beauty.

  When Yiannis got home Terpsikore was waiting at the gatepost to greet him: his kore, his lovely dancer. A real Cretan cat, sharp-featured, long-eared, with a narrow body and the tail of a snake. Her white coat was creamy in the afternoon sun, dappled by the shade of the fig leaves. She flowed like water down the wall and reconstituted herself at his feet.

  Into his mind came an image of the two plump Persians D.I. Mattei kept in his Paris apartment in Le Cercle Rouge. Every night they waited for his return, each on its personal brocaded cushion, and every night Mattei whispered the same endearments, switched on the same table-lamps in the same order, set down the same dainty bowls on the spotless kitchen floor.

  D.I. Mattei was fastidious, predatory, a man who never missed a trick. Yiannis remembered a wide-angle shot of winter trees, a phalanx of police fanning out across the misty furrows of a French field. Katomeli had its video-shops, but you had to go to Heraklion to get the real classics: Visconti, Antonioni, the Nouvelle Vague. The ultimate cool of Jean-Pierre Melville.

  If D.I. Mattei was punctilious in every sphere, the Yves Montand character was his exact antithesis. Sanger the renegade, the washed-up cop. Boozy but still brilliant, his hangdog face a 50 year lesson in love and suffering. Sanger’s apartment was a slum of empty anis bottles. When Sanger spoke of the ‘occupants of the cupboard’ you knew what he meant, because Jean-Pierre Melville let you in on his delirium, showed you the rats and roaches and lizards that crept out in the night and slithered under the bedclothes to have their wicked way with him.

  If Yiannis hadn’t actually been there, he knew it had been a close thing. After Karen’s funeral his personal cupboard had a door that led to the underworld, and the key was alcohol. At nights he entered it eagerly, only to wake unsatisfied, until his dipsa, his thirst for her, was so great that it could no longer be slaked by the hours of darkness but grew to the size of the morning and the long day beyond.

  At first he’d reported for work as usual, dull-witted and surly, his heart locked tight against the sympathy of his colleagues. Later he barricaded himself in the house and lay all day in the shuttered dark, drinking methodically, while friends and neighbours rattled like dry beans at the letterbox. How he’d hated them, for their utter irrelevance, and also for their ignorance. Why couldn’t they comprehend that no living being could be the slightest bit of help?

  When oblivion still didn’t find him, he took to the road in search of it, tanked-up and tonning it down the Great Ocean Highway, burning up the miles for hour after hour, until he forgot what tongue he spoke, and what country he was in, and even which side of the road to drive on.

  Only the accident, perhaps, could have forestalled the fate his will seemed set on.

  He remembered the lights of a container truck, the swerve. His own Electra Glide in Blue across the gravel-dry craters of the moon. For a second his synapses registered the lit digits of the speedometer, like some implacable glyph of the Gods. And then there was nothing, neither moon nor sun, nor his love, nor even the bitter-sweet misery of abandonment.

  In High School they’d been taught that tragedia was what happened when a man had one thing in mind for himself and the Gods another. Thus Homer, and the birth of the Hero. But Yiannis knew that he was no hero, and the Gods who had taken matters out of his hands were not, it seemed, death-dealers, but quite the opposite. Like his Aussie doctors, what was on their agenda was life, whether or not he had a taste for it, and there was nothing to do, in the end, but submit body and spirit to their wishes.

  The cat had wound h
erself around his ankles. ‘Ela, koritsi-mou,’ he murmured, bending to stroke her. The meeting with Flagstaff was set for 6pm. He would feed her early, take a shower, find a clean shirt. Stroll back to the station to pick up the car from Christos.

  Terpsikore’s high-pitched purr ceased abruptly. She sniffed at his shoes and stepped back, accusing him with her yellow eyes. Perhaps she had smelled the death on them. Or perhaps she had smelled the honey. With a small sneeze of protest she turned her back on him and stalked towards the door.

  Shaved and sweet-smelling, Yiannis headed down the hill towards the town centre.

  Pericles was in his favoured spot on the stoop of the grocer’s, nodding his head over his worry-beads. Spying Yiannis across the street, he produced the usual straight-armed salute which Yiannis had decided long ago not to interpret as a comment on the fascist tendencies of the police force.

  Pericles, he reflected, was a sad case. He’d been a postman all his life, a solid, reliable worker, until one Christmas when he had stolen all the gifts he was meant to deliver: wind-chimes, scented candles, Belgian chocolates, cowbells from the Bernese Oberland. Most of the haul had been lavished on his elderly mother; the rest he had stashed in his bedroom, which the old lady, being too frail to climb the stairs, no longer cleaned.

  The first sign that something was amiss had come when a sack of mail was discovered in a water-trough – hundreds of postcards, all stamped and ready to fly off to Germany and Holland and New York; postcards in every language, their messages now dew-soaked and indecipherable.

  When Yiannis, alerted by the Post Office, arrived at the house, he found shelves stacked with stinking merchandise: French cheeses, whole Scotch salmon, rotting paw-paws and mangoes. It was astonishing, really, the things people thought they could send through the post. Even more curious, though, was that Pericles had recorded each item in a series of ledger books, dutifully noting down its weight, its value, its provenance.