Aphrodite's Tears

by Hannah Fielding

  Helena’s body was lying in state beneath an iconostasis, a wooden wall of elaborate carvings and rare icons painted in gold, brilliant ochre, blues and reds. Next to it she looked pale, drained of all colour, which seemed odd somehow, after a lifetime of passion and frenzied mania. Damian wished it had been possible to at least have flowers to honour her passing but the church seemed to be doing its best to make up for that, and he was grateful for the colourful high-arched windows of stained glass and the bright paintings decorating the walls – a visual encyclopaedia of the orthodox religion. Looking now at the scenes from the final weeks of Jesus’s life, he wondered what lessons he could take from the familiar story, but his mind was unable to make sense of anything that night.

  Damian walked over to Marika, who was sitting as immobile as a dark-eyed sphinx, weeping soundless tears at the loss of her charge. He spoke a quiet word to her before taking a handful of candles and distributing them among the large candleholders on either side of the altar, before which Helena was laid, and in a sandbox on the floor for the souls of his departed ancestors. Then he straightened and took a step towards his cousin. Seeing her so peaceful made him remember the tender, gentler side of her, which had made increasingly rare appearances as mental derangement had taken over. He wanted to reach out to the spirit of his cousin but found himself unable to focus on anything at all, his grief struggling with his other distractions.

  All he could think about – worry about – was Oriel. It was as if his very life depended on finding her safe and well. Damian couldn’t bear the thought that she might be lying somewhere injured, cut off from the outside world, buried under the rubble and debris that was strewn over the island. As he sat there beside the waxen-faced body of his cousin, who in life had been animated by strange and psychotic passions but in death looked so fragile and still, all he could think of was Oriel crying out for him, trapped and injured: Damian, help me! He could almost hear her terrified voice echoing around the church, haunting him in a waking nightmare. He wanted to run to her but he was thwarted at every turn and that, in itself, felt like the stuff of bad dreams, too.

  He couldn’t bear the stillness of the chapel any longer. Silently he asked Helena to forgive him for such a short visit then he turned abruptly and strode out of the church.

  He drove to Mattias’s cottage, deciding to wait with his old friend until first light when he would drive back to Heliades to meet the rescue team. Damian knew he would never be able to sleep and, in any case, he wanted to quiz the fisherman in case there was anything – the slightest clue – he might have as to Oriel’s possible whereabouts.

  Mattias met him at the door of his cottage and closed it after him quickly so as to avoid letting in any more ash and dust than necessary. ‘It comes in through every crack, settling on everything. I keep telling Anna not to worry. If she dusts it off, it’ll only be back, so why bother?’

  He ushered Damian into the living room, lit by the dim glow of a pair of hurricane lamps. Anna, who was sitting at the table, knitting by the light of one of the lamps, stood up to bid Damian welcome, her round face creased with concern.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot make you coffee, Kyrios. We have no electricity, you see,’ she explained. ‘But let me bring you some water and a piece of honey cake.’

  ‘Please don’t trouble yourself on my account,’ Damian said. ‘A glass of water would be welcome. I don’t think I could eat a thing, to be honest.’

  Mattias had drawn a couple of chairs up to a small side table, on which stood one of the lamps. On the table were two small painted wooden replicas of the Virgins of Chora. A little earthenware vase of Greek basil had been placed in front of the icons and a candle lit in their honour.

  ‘Ah, our ladies of March and May,’ said Damian bitterly as he sat down. ‘Where are you now when we need you?’

  Damian saw the pity in his old friend’s eyes. Mattias knew him well enough to sense immediately the extremes of anxiety he was suffering, so great was his desire to find Oriel.

  ‘The harbour’s been the most badly hit, Elias says,’ Mattias told him. ‘Not surprisingly, the coast took the worst of it.’ His expression then became grave as he placed a hand on Damian’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry about your cousin, Kyrios. Elias told us what happened. God rest her soul.’

  Damian gripped Mattias’s arm, silently nodding his thanks.

  The older man sighed heavily. ‘The saints be praised that hardly anyone else was hurt.’

  Damian thought of the fishermen’s huts on stilts ranged around the harbour. They must have folded in on themselves, toppling like flimsy card houses. ‘It does seem miraculous we haven’t sustained many casualties, from what we can see,’ he agreed.

  ‘Any more news of Oriel?’ Mattias asked.

  Damian gave a sigh more like a shuddering sob. ‘Mattias, I don’t know how I can bear this! I will do anything, make a pact with the devil if I have to … I just have to find her. Where the hell could she be?’ His slate eyes were like a grey sea dashing against stormriven rocks. ‘Do you know of any beach she might have gone to? Somewhere she wanted to explore?’

  ‘You need to calm yourself, Kyrios Damian,’ said Mattias soothingly. ‘We’ll find her, you’ll see. I think she might have been exploring one of the secluded coves I told her about. You know, the ones on the north side of the island. That’s where I’d look first in the morning if I were you.’

  Anna brought the men water and, after that, the three of them sat quietly, the old couple occasionally offering some new idea or word of comfort. For the most part they prayed silently, their eyes on the icons of the Maytissa and the Martiatissa, who had rescued the island from pirates but hadn’t prevented the great Typhoeus from raising his monstrous head and disgorging a great stream of fire and ash into the sky.

  At times Damian felt utterly defeated, his faith struggling, and then his prayers sounded hollow to him. In those moments he questioned if there were a God out there at all. It seemed to him that he and the islanders were nothing more than the tiny inhabitants of an anthill, scurrying about while careless boys poured boiling water on their home.

  And why had this happened? he asked himself. Just now, when everything was good for the first time in his adult life. Was it really to be his fate forever, to be struck down each time after he had just picked himself up again? Would the curse never lift? Before Oriel had come into his life again he had felt able to bear anything – shielded by an armour of numbness, not caring. But now he had found someone so precious, the pain of thinking he might lose her was unbearable.

  Finally, just before dawn, Damian made his farewells, Mattias and Anna both embracing him warmly with words of encouragement, and drove to Heliades. There had been no further eruptions of Typhoeus – and no more quakes or even tremors. He hadn’t slept at all and hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before; he was vibrating with a nervous energy, desperate for the search to begin.

  As agreed, ten men with dogs in three cars arrived at the house at first light, complete with the digging equipment they had used in the rescue operations elsewhere on the island. They were joined by Damian’s own hounds, Peleus and Heracles, who paced and sniffed at their master’s feet, sensing his agitation. He had found a scarf of Oriel’s and now let the dogs pick up her scent from it before pushing it into his pocket.

  Damian was sure that Mattias’s hunch was right so they immediately went to the harbour to start from there and work their way north. In the cool light of dawn they revisited the scene of the previous evening and this time they were even more appalled. Everywhere they looked, the devastation was plainly to be seen. Ash and dust covered the landscape like cold, dead snow. Windows were broken, leaf-barren trees felled and cars overturned. A couple of old buildings were nothing more than a tumbled heap of splintered wood, their beams distorted out of all recognition. On the quay and in the streets, bits of bedsteads, broken chairs, wooden babies’ cradles … Every kind of domestic household item was strewn about and there w
as something about the sight that was infinitely pathetic.

  The shore was littered with the wreckage of smashed boats, while others still lay at their moorings, every one of them minus their masts or waterlogged and sinking. Here and there, a yacht lay on the sand, tossed ashore by the raging floodwaters and the huge waves of the storm. The whole shoreline was a tangle of fallen trees and telephone wires, even dead livestock that had yet to be removed. It was a depressing sight.

  It was mid-morning when, finally, Damian spotted Oriel’s car. He had detached himself from the group and was leading his own investigation with Stavros, out by Manoli’s bar. As he came to the place where Oriel had parked her car, he noticed that the road was badly scored, as if something sharp had been dragged across it, and there were a few fragments of glass in the sand. He looked over the precipice, and there was the Volkswagen: it was lying on its bonnet on a bluff, having been blown off the edge of the escarpment. It was halfway down the cliff, upturned and crumpled.

  ‘Over here,’ he shouted to Stavros, trying to keep the strong emotion he felt under control. ‘Get the others!’

  Please God let her be alive, he prayed, and then he was off, his hounds at his heels, clambering along the flank of the cliff, the sharp points of rocks and the thorns of dried-out bushes tearing at him as he went. He had no breath left now for issuing orders but trusted Stavros would organize the team. Damian himself was nothing more than a panting, sweating automaton that could not stop, would never stop – his only thought was that of his one goal: to find Oriel.

  Once he had established she wasn’t in the wrecked car, Damian looked anxiously around him but still there was no sign of her. The ash caught in his throat, choking and bitter. He cupped his hands to his mouth and called out her name twice … three times, but there was no movement or sound anywhere on the clifftop or down the long stretch leading to the beach. The ground sloped downwards steeply on the far side, the rocks piled anyhow, as if from some prehistoric explosion. The trees that had fallen were very old, their roots exposed but still alive. It was a strange scene – the sun, usually brilliant above a turquoise sea, shrouded in a grey haze – like looking through filmy, cinereal-coloured muslin. At any other time he might have enjoyed the strange and savage beauty of the place – even in its devastation – but now he was only conscious of his own dismay.

  He and his dogs had now been joined by Stavros and Elias, and together they hurried across the rough patches of brush and thorn, scrambling over boulders and piles of grey scree in their haste to get to the cove. All three men bellowed Oriel’s name and listened anxiously, but only the wind answered their harrowed calls.

  In the minutes that followed, the frenzy of the early morning gradually ebbed from Damian and he began to be tormented by doubts. There were many moments when despair flooded him and he had to fight to prevent the torrent of tears, which were bottled up inside, from overwhelming him. His stomach was clenched so tightly it was like a boulder in his abdomen. He had quit yelling orders, his mind too occupied with horrific images of Oriel lying at the bottom of a cliff under a thick layer of ash, her limbs broken, eyes waxy and unblinking. Or had her beautiful body tumbled from the cliffs and into the sea, to join the wrecks in the depths of the ocean that she so liked to explore?

  Now the other members of the team had joined the three of them and their bloodhounds were moving through the undergrowth with Damian’s dogs, zigzagging hither and thither as they picked up first one scent, then another. As soon as they reached the beach, Damian paused for a brief moment to survey the devastation. He remembered it well, the half moon of white sand where he and Yolanda used to play as children, which later became a lovers’ trysting place. Now it was covered in a grey film of ash, tumbled driftwood and a mass of seaweed, grey and snakelike as the writhing, grizzled locks of Medusa.

  He shuddered. A thought suddenly struck him. There was a cave, wasn’t there? Yes, there it was. The entrance was covered by rocks and the branches of broken trees. The bloodhounds were making a beeline for it, sniffing and growling before digging frantically among the boulders and earth. Then they stopped and barked.

  Damian’s heart leapt, suffocating, into his throat. Elias issued an order and the men – their faces blackened, smarting eyes red-rimmed, clothes covered in dust and ash – got to work with spades and shovels, clearing an opening big enough for a man to get through. After speedy deliberation it was decided that Damian, Stavros and Elias with one dog would enter the cave while the remainder of the team stayed outside. Damian insisted that a small group went back for a stretcher and medical supplies so that no time would be lost in waiting for help, should they find an injured Oriel. A surge of fresh hope had risen in him now. The dogs had indicated that she was somewhere in the cave and he wanted to believe that she was hanging on in there, waiting for him, knowing that he would come for her. Oriel was a fighter and if she was there then Damian was certain she wouldn’t give up.

  Inside there was lonely darkness and the dank smell of rocks and earth kept perpetually damp. Gasping and coughing as their lungs filled with the various fumes that had built up in the cave, the men struggled, scrambling their way through the narrow rocky path of the tunnel with their torches. They called, but still there was no movement, not the slightest sound. Damian’s disappointment flooded him like a wave of nausea. What did you expect? he asked himself roughly, Oriel sitting there, enjoying a picnic? Yet in spite of that empty darkness, he went on, feeling that somewhere in the warren of caves leading deep into the cliffside she might be crying for him.

  ‘Oriel!’ The thin thread of Damian’s control almost broke and his shout cracked in his throat but he moved on relentlessly with the bloodhound, straining to pierce the gloom ahead. Then he stopped, holding his breath, absolutely still as if a gun were pointed to his head. Had he heard something? But the dog, nose to the ground, dragged frantically on his leash, pulling Damian forward, as if eager to lead him on towards his quarry, beckoning him like some canine will-o’-the-wisp. He quickened his step, Stavros and Elias hurrying to keep up, and together they stumbled down the path that was dropping more steeply at every pace.

  ‘Oriel … Oriel … Oriel …’ Damian shouted, his heart thumping so fast he thought he might lose his breath. The echoes chimed and danced back to him, cascading down an unearthly scale. Then he caught sight of another entrance half blocked by rubble.

  The dog stopped and barked … Silence … then again small staccato barks, which were met with only more silence.

  * * *

  She must have slept or lost consciousness for a long time but now Oriel was suddenly brought back to reality by the excruciating pain of sudden cramp in her legs. She straightened them, which only seemed to make the pain worse. She was conscious, too, of the dryness of her mouth, her throat parched as sandpaper. Now she wondered, with the passing curiosity of conscious thought, how long it took to go mad. As she did so, Oriel thought she heard the echoes of a man’s voice travelling through the darkness.

  She must be dreaming … Like the wings of a captured bird eager to fly, yet hesitant of release, her eyelids fluttered.

  Damian? Yes, it was Damian, calling out her name! Attempting to scramble to her feet, Oriel began to cry hysterically. ‘Damian, Damian, over here,’ she sobbed, realizing as she did, that her voice was barely more audible than a whisper.

  Please let him hear me. He’s got to find me!

  ‘Hold on, agápi mou,’ she heard him say through the haze in her head. There was a lot of banging and scraping and then, soon enough, Damian’s torch was shining on her face. In her semi-consciousness Oriel was aware of powerful arms around her and his voice assuring her that she was all right. She knew then that her sanity was restored and felt the exquisite comfort of his grasp. Her teeth chattered as she was seized by violent fits of shivering and all she could do was lean helplessly against his powerful chest, feeling the safe haven of his encircling arms.

  EPILOGUE

  Oriel ran a temper
ature, sometimes delirious, and slept for most of the week that followed. In her dreams, the cave and Yorgos merged together in confusing and sometimes terrifying fragments. Thoughts clamoured for admittance into her mind but she resisted the urge to remember, sensing the experience might be painful. She was aware of Damian giving her medicine, helping her to drink water or silently sitting by her bed every time she opened her eyes and it made her feel secure.

  Now and again, when she had seen him at her side, she’d tried to communicate but her heavy lids had always fallen back down and she’d been unable to speak. With his dark head resting against the pale upholstery of the armchair and his eyes closed, his face looked haggard and drained of colour. He was blue-jawed, as if shaving had been a sketchy affair, accomplished swiftly – whether because he begrudged time away from her side or was just too tired to care about the way he looked, she didn’t know.

  That morning when she opened her eyes, Damian wasn’t in the chair where he had sat religiously day and night. Instead, Irini was sitting in his place. And now, for the first time, Oriel made a conscious effort to look around her. This was neither her room at Heliades nor the one at the staff house. The pale jade-green ceiling, the black-and-white mosaic flooring and frescoed walls, and the two tall niches that harboured precious statues of ancient divinities had nothing to do with either dwelling. Where was she?

  ‘Kaliméra, Despinis, you look so much better today.’

  ‘Kaliméra, Irini. Efharisto, I do feel much better,’ Oriel said as she sat up slowly, propping herself against her pillows. ‘But where am I?’

  ‘You are in the Kyrios’s house on the island of Paxi.’

  Oriel knew a moment of panic, which must have shown on her face because Irini immediately tried to reassure her. ‘Don’t worry, Heliades is fine. Helios will survive. Typhoeus is asleep again, that’s what the islanders are saying.’