The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  Opening one of the brass-handled drawers, the Chief of Police produced a heavy, cut-glass ashtray already half-full of grey ash and butts stained brown with filtered smoke.

  The fat man reached into his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes incongruous with these late years of the twentieth century – an old-fashioned box whose lift-up lid bore the head and naked shoulders of a 1940s starlet, her softly permed platinum hair curling around a coy smile. Beneath the maker’s name (Surely, thought the Chief of Police, they went out of business years ago?) ran a slogan in an antique hand: The cigarette for the man who knows a real smoke. Taking out a matchbox and shaking it, the fat man frowned when there was no answering rattle from within. He placed the matchbox on the desk and searched again in his jacket pocket. Producing a slim, gold lighter, he knocked the tip of a cigarette on the desk, lit it, and replaced the lighter in his pocket.

  ‘The autopsy report,’ said the fat man, exhaling smoke as he spoke. ‘I’d like to have my own copy, for reference.’

  The Chief of Police smiled and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘here in the islands, we do things a little differently from the way things are done in the city. We like to take a more personal approach. Being that much closer to the community we serve.’

  ‘And where are you from originally, Chief of Police?’

  ‘Patmos,’ said the Chief of Police. ‘I come from Patmos.’

  ‘And you’ve served here how long?’

  ‘Over a year.’

  ‘And you feel you have got to know the people here well, in that short time?’

  The Chief of Police ignored the question. Instead, he went on: ‘In cases like this, part of our job is to avoid scandal for the family concerned. A good name is very important to these people.’

  ‘Where is the autopsy report, Chief of Police?’ The fat man was beginning to sound impatient.

  ‘Well,’ said the Chief of Police, ‘I decided it was unnecessary. No autopsy was performed.’

  The fat man’s expression began to change, from genial to dangerous.

  ‘How is that possible?’ he asked. ‘Mrs Asimakopoulos was a young woman in good health, was she not?’

  The Chief of Police gave a sideways nod of assent.

  ‘It was your duty to have an autopsy performed. You know full well it was. So explain to me why there was no autopsy.’

  The Chief of Police, believing he held all the aces, smiled triumphantly.

  ‘Because,’ he said, acidly, ‘the cause of death was clear. Though not what was written on the death certificate. It was a delicate matter.’

  ‘So what was written on the death certificate?’

  ‘Accidental death.’

  ‘And what, in your opinion, was the true cause of death?’

  ‘Suicide.’

  ‘Suicide?’

  ‘She jumped off a cliff.’ He shrugged. ‘Absolutely no doubt. Cut and dried.’

  ‘Even if it were suicide,’ said the fat man, playing with the ash in the ashtray with the burning end of his cigarette, ‘what could possibly be “cut and dried” about a woman in a small, close community like this one committing suicide? What possible motive could she have had?’

  ‘It was a copycat suicide. She had the idea from the postman.’

  ‘What postman?’

  ‘The old postman who committed suicide.’

  ‘And what was his motive?’

  ‘Who knows? Wife unfaithful, money troubles . . .’

  ‘So was Mrs Asimakopoulos’s husband unfaithful? Did she have money troubles?’

  The Chief of Police sat forward again.

  ‘Mrs Asimakopoulos was herself an unfaithful wife,’ he said.

  ‘Really? With whom was she unfaithful?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.’

  The fat man looked at him for a long moment. ‘Do all supposedly unfaithful wives here jump off cliffs?’

  The Chief of Police laughed. ‘If they did, there’d be only us men left.’

  The fat man did not smile. ‘So why this one?’

  ‘She married a local man. She had relatives here who introduced her to her husband. But she wasn’t from here. She came from the mainland.’

  ‘And you think that was sufficient reason for her to kill herself?’

  ‘Possibly. Maybe she felt isolated. Homesick.’

  ‘How long had she lived here?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. One year or ten, what’s the difference? Harris!’

  The ponderous sergeant, interrupted as he clipped one of his cheap, ballpoint pens into the breast pocket of his shirt, flinched.

  ‘I’ve no doubt you can enlighten us,’ said the Chief of Police to the sergeant. ‘How long had Mrs Asimakopoulos lived here?’

  The sergeant looked from the Chief of Police to the fat man, pushing out his lower lip as he considered.

  ‘Two years,’ he said, at last. ‘I don’t believe it’s more.’

  ‘It’s three, at least,’ interrupted the undersized constable. ‘My mother-in-law’s brother lived in that house before Asimakopoulos rented it, and he’s been dead a while now. Three years at least. Maybe even four.’

  The sergeant opened his slack, wet mouth to object, but the Chief of Police raised a hand to silence him and turned back to the fat man.

  ‘In answer to your question, she hadn’t been here long,’ he said.

  ‘But certainly long enough to settle down and start a family?’ suggested the fat man. ‘Did she have children?’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’ He looked back to the sergeant, who slowly shook his head.

  ‘That’s quite unusual for this part of the world, wouldn’t you say – a young woman, quite recently married, and no offspring? If she was barren, that might be an important causal factor in depression. But you’ll have spoken to her doctor about her mental health, I’m sure; if there were physical problems, I’m sure he would have mentioned them, would he not?’

  The sergeant returned all his attention to his ballpoint pens, whilst the constable bent below his desk to re-tie his shoelaces.

  ‘Our doctor is a very busy man, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate,’ said the Chief of Police, smoothly. ‘But Mr Asimakopoulos was his wife’s senior by some years. Some would say he was a lucky man, to have a younger woman to keep him warm at night. But who knows? Perhaps he was lacking the . . . potency . . . of someone younger. A younger man might well have succeeded where he failed, the right man for the job . . .’

  His expression brightened with lascivious speculation, but when the fat man frowned he averted his eyes, and rubbed at an invented itch behind his ear.

  ‘How old was Mrs Asimakopoulos,’ asked the fat man, ‘exactly?’

  ‘Twenty-five, twenty-six, thereabouts. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.’ The Chief of Police smiled. ‘I don’t know exactly. In my experience, you can’t force corpses to answer questions about themselves just because there are forms to be filled in.’

  ‘You didn’t ask the family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you ask the family?’

  ‘I thought it better to let them get on with their lives in peace.’

  ‘Your consideration does you credit, Chief of Police, but it makes you look a poor policeman. And perhaps you would be good enough to tell us all’ – he turned and gestured at the two men apparently absorbed in paperwork – ‘if we don’t all know already, how much you charged for your consideration?’

  Colour flooded into the Chief of Police’s cheeks, but the fat man, clearly expecting no answer to his question, stood and stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘As a man worthy to wear your badge, perhaps you should be asking yourself the question you seem to have neglected, Chief of Police. Perhaps you should be asking yourself, did she jump, or was she pushed?’

  The Chief of Police forced a laugh of derision. ‘Such drama, Mr Diaktoros! Murder, and bribery! These are the sleepy Greek islands! I’m
afraid you have been too long on the mean streets of Athens.’

  The fat man picked up his holdall and addressed the undersized constable.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if you could recommend a hotel with a decent room?’

  But the Chief of Police interrupted his reply.

  ‘As I suggested, the Port Police launch . . .’

  The fat man went to place a hand on the constable’s shoulder.

  ‘Walk with me,’ he said. ‘Show me the way.’

  As the door closed behind the fat man and the constable, the Chief of Police pulled his ashtray towards him, and, taking a cigarette from a crumpled pack, bent it to straighten the curve it had acquired. He picked up the matchbox the fat man had left on his desk and slid it open.

  Sleek, with long feelers flailing, a huge cockroach darted forward out of the matchbox and scuttled at speed across the back of the policeman’s hand, on to the file which lay on his desk.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  In revulsion, he swiped the vile creature to the floor, where it ran for cover amongst the candy-striped computer printouts.

  As the bewildered sergeant looked on, the enraged policeman pursued it, stamping here, there, here, until the cockroach at last evaded him and disappeared amongst the stacks of official files.

  The undersized constable took the fat man to the Seagull Hotel, an open-all-year rooming house owned by the policeman’s second cousin. They walked side-by-side around the harbour, the constable full of questions he dared not ask, his anxious eyes scanning doorways and balconies, alleys and stairways, to see who observed them. The fat man strode with confidence, nimbly sidestepping the rain-filled potholes, and genially greeting everyone they met.

  At the hotel door, the fat man thanked the constable and dismissed him, then watched as the man in uniform made his way slowly back to the police station, stopping here and there to speak: to the stallholder selling fruit and vegetables, to the proprietor of the electrical shop, to the patrons at the tables of the outdoor café. As he spoke, he pointed towards the hotel, and heads turned in the fat man’s direction, so the fat man knew he had chosen well: the constable would be an excellent emissary in spreading word of his arrival.

  The lobby of the hotel was dark, and unheated, and the dour woman behind the reception desk was buttoned into heavy, home-knitted woollens. The desk was covered in yellowing newspaper, on which stood four squat candlesticks and an uncapped tin of Brasso. The woman looked him up and down over stern, half-moon glasses and smiled a lupine, hand-rubbing smile. Beyond her canines there were no teeth in her upper jaw; when she spoke, the fat man caught the fetid whiff of halitosis.

  ‘Good day, sir, good day,’ she said, laying down a cleaning rag. ‘Are you looking for a room? I have one nice room free on the first floor, very clean, lovely view. No finer view in Greece.’

  She lifted the edge of the newspaper and pulled towards her a leather-bound register. With Brasso-blackened fingers she flicked week by week through its pages, from January towards this day’s date. All the pages were empty.

  ‘Will you be staying long?’

  He glanced around the lobby, at the rows of unused glasses on the shelves behind the little bar, at the bowls of dusty, artificial flowers in the window recess, at the icon of the suffering Christ above the entrance to the WC.

  ‘A few days, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Not longer than a week, certainly.’

  ‘If you’re staying more than two nights, I can give you a special rate. It’s the cost of doing laundry that’s expensive, on short stays.’ She named a price. It was extortionate. ‘Much cheaper than hotels in Athens, I’m sure.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘In Athens, I don’t frequent hotels. I’ll pay you half that, if you’re including breakfast and a daily change of linen.’

  He had expected argument, but none came. Instead she smiled at him, and he knew he had been fleeced.

  ‘I’ll get my husband,’ she said. ‘He’ll show you to your room.’

  His room was cold, with no comforts: the floor was bare-tiled with no rug to warm the feet; the faucets in the poky bathroom dripped on to stained porcelain; the bed was hard and narrow and, beneath its starched white pillowcase, the single pillow was discoloured with the secretions of many strangers’ heads. The doors out to the balcony were swollen with winter rain, and needed a sharp kick to open them. Outside, leaning on the rust-spotted, cast-iron railing, he lit himself a cigarette and let his eyes travel beyond the harbour across the open sea, towards the outlines of the snow-capped Turkish mountains. But the beauty of the view was diminished by the lack of sunlight, and the low, cobweb-grey clouds hid the far horizons. He shivered and, stepping back into the room, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray at his bedside; then, picking up his holdall, he made his way out of the hotel and along the harbourside.

  The windows of the tourist emporiums were shuttered closed; the unswept backstreets were spoiled with wind-blown litter. Too early in the year for Easter’s rejuvenations, in places the flaking whitewash had dropped like scurf from the walls of houses, exposing raw stone and brick beneath.

  He came to the café where the undersized policeman had spoken with the patrons. It was a small kafenion of the old Greek style; a sign over the door gave the proprietor’s name: Jakos Kypriotis. The wooden tables, outside and in, were covered in sheets of gingham-patterned plastic, held down against the wind by elastic knotted under the table rim. Between the glass-fronted fridges of imported beer and Fanta orange soda, a once-handsome man with Brylcreemed hair and an Errol Flynn moustache leaned on a stone sink; he gazed through the open doorway and across the sea, as if his heart and thoughts were very far away.

  One of the terrace tables was occupied by three old men. A half-litre bottle of cheap retsina, almost empty, stood between them; before each of them was a tumbler well-filled with the yellow wine. The fat man pulled out a chair at a neighbouring table and sat down, and as he sat, the old men fell silent. The fat man glanced behind him for the proprietor.

  Then one of the old men turned in his chair.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, and he smiled a broad simpleton’s smile, raising his hand in a cheery wave. The fat man inclined his head, politely, and glanced again into the café, where the proprietor was still absent in the distance.

  The old man stood, and, holding out his hand, took an unsteady step towards the fat man. The two remaining at the table shook their heads.

  ‘Sit down, you old fool!’ said one. ‘Leave the man alone!’ But the simpleton, grinning, still proffered his hand to the fat man.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the simpleton.

  The fat man took his hand and shook it.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. Beaming, the simpleton stumbled back to his seat. The fat man looked again over his shoulder to where the proprietor had not moved.

  The man who had not yet spoken raised his glass with a trembling hand and sipped at the wine. He leaned towards the fat man.

  ‘You’ll have to shout,’ he slurred. ‘He’ll stand all day, pretending he doesn’t know you’re there. Jakos! Customer!’

  The proprietor withdrew his reluctant eyes from the horizon and came to the doorway. He looked resentfully at the fat man, and raised his eyebrows in question.

  ‘Greek coffee, please, no sugar,’ said the fat man. ‘And a bottle for the gentlemen.’ He indicated the old men, and the proprietor tutted his disapproval as he turned to go inside. The simpleton jumped up, and grasped the proprietor’s arm.

  ‘Jakos, pleased to meet you, pleased to meet you!’ The simpleton held out his hand, but the proprietor ignored it and, wrenching his arm from the old man’s grasp, went scowling to the stove.

  The simpleton, dejected, sat down.

  The third man drank again from his glass and, squinting, viewed the fat man. His eyes were deeply lined, as if the squint were habitual to him – perhaps through myopia, perhaps from the irritation of cigarette smoke: one cigarette,
freshly lit, burned between his nicotine-stained fingers, whilst a forgotten second was a still-smoking, ashy remnant in the foil ashtray before him – or perhaps he was trying to pick the fat man’s true image from two or three which split and swam before him. His rail-thin body was wasted from long-term abuse; the hand holding the cigarette shook.

  ‘You’ve a friend for life, now you’ve shaken his hand,’ he said, clapping the simpleton hard on the back. ‘But you’ll struggle to get much out of him except, “Pleased to meet you”. He’s an old fool. I say that as one who’s known him man and boy. When he was young, he was a young fool. Now he’s old, he’s an old fool, and a pain in the arse. Still. We’re all what God made us.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said the fat man.

  ‘You’ll be from Athens.’ The old man spoke triumphantly, as if he expected to impress the fat man with his perception. So the fat man put on a look of surprise, which made the old man smile. ‘I went to Athens once,’ he said.

  But his companion contradicted him.

  ‘You’ve never been to Athens, you lying bastard. You’ve never been further than St Vassilis.’ He named the monastery and its hamlet five miles away, at the far side of the island. This man had a curious disability, a fusing of the vertebrae at the top of his spine. Unable to turn his head, when he spoke, his eyes swivelled towards the target of his remarks, but his torso remained rigidly facing forward. It made him both comical and grotesque, yet he might once have been an attractive man.

  ‘I might’ve been to Athens,’ protested the smoker. But, anxious not to pursue the matter, he decided the moment was right for introductions.

  ‘Thassis is the name,’ he said to the fat man. ‘Thassis Four-Fingers.’ He held up his left hand to show the stump where the index finger should have been. ‘This is my friend Adonis’ – the fat man’s eyes widened at the irony of the deformed man’s name – ‘Adonis Spendthrift they call him. Tight as a nun’s cunt on Good Friday. And this,’ he gestured towards the simpleton, ‘is Stavros Pleased-to-Meet-You.’