The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  Stavros, beaming, jumped up.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, and the fat man shook his hand.

  The proprietor placed a glass of water and a small, white china cup before the fat man; the tarry coffee had the caramel scent of burned sugar. He nicked the cap off a bottle of retsina beaded with condensation and stood it at the centre of the old men’s table, then leaned his shoulder against the doorframe and looked out to sea.

  Thassis Four-Fingers seized the cold wine and held up the bottle to the fat man.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Thassis, ‘and good health to you, sir.’ He splashed cold wine into their glasses; all three raised their glasses to the fat man, and drank.

  The fat man sipped at his coffee.

  ‘You’ll have business here, I expect,’ said Adonis, twisting his eyes towards him.

  The fat man bent down to his holdall, unzipped it and fumbled inside. He pulled out a bottle of shoe-whitener. Like a dancer, he pointed his left foot, then his right, inspecting his tennis shoes. Removing the plastic cap, he dabbed the sponge applicator carefully on a scuff mark on the toe of the right shoe, and on a small splat of mud on the left. He twisted his feet, first the left, then the right, examining the shoes for further blemishes. Finding none, he replaced the cap, placed the shoe-whitener inside the holdall and zipped it up.

  In fascination, the old men watched him. They had forgotten Adonis’s question when the fat man sat back in his chair and answered it.

  ‘I’m here to investigate the death of Irini Asimakopoulos.’

  The proprietor brought his eyes back from the far horizon.

  ‘What’s to investigate?’ he asked. ‘Fell off a cliff, didn’t she? Could happen to anyone.’

  Laughing, Thassis spluttered into his drink, but the fat man said nothing.

  So the proprietor asked him, ‘What’s your idea, then?’

  Adonis, a shrewd man, smiled.

  ‘He thinks somebody pushed her,’ he said.

  ‘Who’d push her?’ said the proprietor, derisively, and immediately from his uninhibited drunkenness Thassis provided an answer.

  ‘Theo Hatzistratis’s wife would!’ he said. And he laughed again.

  No one joined him in his laughter. Digging him with his elbow, Adonis turned his eyes towards the vegetable stall, where a woman was complaining at the number of caterpillars in the cauliflowers.

  ‘What’d I say?’ asked Thassis.

  Silently, the proprietor disappeared into the back of the café.

  ‘Why would Theo Hatzistratis’s wife want to push Mrs Asimakopoulos off a cliff, Thassis?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘Why’d you think?’ asked Thassis. He dropped his head, suddenly maudlin. ‘Women. All the same. I’d sooner put my hand in a bag of snakes than trust a woman.’

  ‘Are you saying that Mrs Asimakopoulos was having a relationship with Theo Hatzistratis?’ the fat man asked Adonis.

  ‘I’m saying bugger all,’ said Adonis. He emptied his glass and banged it down on the table.

  There was silence for a while. Thassis began to hum a tune, a morbid song of a man’s doomed love for a faithless girl; his humming grew louder until he broke into song, then shouted the lyrics at the top of his cracked old voice.

  The fat man walked inside and paid what he owed. When he wished the old men goodbye, he received no reply.

  Two

  From the sea, the island of Thiminos showed exactly what it was: rock, one huge rock, so undercut by the salt water of the southern Aegean it seemed to float free, rising and falling in the swell. Mostly, the cliff faces of its coasts were sheer; where the slopes were gentler, they were all thin dirt and stone. There was little else: a few black pines rooted into the mountainsides at improbable angles; thorny, run-down shrubs between the boulders. And yet, here and there, it held a colourful surprise – on an empty beach, a tiny, white chapel in a garden of fresh, fuchsia-blossomed evergreens.

  It was an island with no beauty of its own, but around its shores, where the sea ran the gamut of all blues – turquoise and lapis lazuli, sapphire, ultramarine and cobalt – the water and sunlight changed it. Grey rocks on the beach shone silver; there was gold in the dull soil on the mountain slopes. Fool’s gold. Tricks of the light.

  There was one way in and one way out: by sea. Five nautical miles adrift from any shipping lane, from the island’s shores even the great tankers heading for the oil-rich nations of the Arabs were only micro-silhouettes. At night, their distant lights were strings of diamonds, slipping slowly away over the edge of the world.

  One year before the fat man came to Thiminos, Andreas Asimakopoulos prepared for sea.

  ‘For certain,’ he said, untying the oily rope that moored the boat to the jetty, ‘I’ll be back with you by Wednesday.’

  Irini caught hold of his arm, and he brushed her cheek with dry lips; the odour of fish was about him already, even before he cast off.

  ‘Take care,’ she said. ‘Good fishing.’

  She watched until the boat was out of sight, around the headland; in the moment when he disappeared from view, she waved once more, for luck. Whenever he left, she wished he would stay; his absence rubbed salt into her loneliness.

  Then Tuesday night brought storms. She lay alone in bed, listening as the wind tore through the branches of the eucalyptus trees along the road and the rain pounded at the windows. She wasn’t worried for his safety; he took care of his safety very well. She worried they would lose some roof tiles, and there was no one to replace them; she worried that a tree would come down on the house, and she would die alone. At midnight, she warmed a glass of milk and sweetened it with honey; propped up amongst the pillows (his and hers), she sipped, and drifted into dreams.

  When the night was over, she went walking, away down the empty road to the sea. The wind was still high; as she passed beneath the shimmying branches of the pale-barked eucalyptus, their limbs groaned, like souls racked.

  And the wind was cold. It passed straight through her jacket, and through all the layers of her clothing. It gnawed her fingers, and drew the blood of her face to the tip of her nose, leaving her cheeks drained and pale. When she reached the seafront, even within the arms of the crescent bay the waves were whipped up and frosted with foam. To the right, where the shingle beach was narrowest and the road surface low, each seventh wave flowed smooth as cream across the road, up to the church wall, and the wall’s base had become the terminus for the sea’s flotsam: driftwood and plastic, shells, skeins of weed, bottles and rusting cans. Where the bus should stop, a deep pool had formed, and at its edge lay a tangle of yellow fishing-net, matted with sand and the white blade-bones of squid. With the toe of her boot she turned the net, releasing a small green-backed crab, which, frightened by the light, scuttled towards the in-running sea.

  The church clock struck nine. Overhead, rain threatened.

  She had known he wouldn’t come. At the jetty, there were no boats. Beyond the bay’s shallows, the mast of a solitary yacht dipped towards the water’s surface, to port, to starboard, like the blade of a metronome, a corner of its furled sailcloth flapping loose.

  She walked the road around the curve of St Savas’s bay, watching the headland at the bay’s mouth, just in case he still might come; he still might, and she still might have company tonight. The few white-painted houses were shuttered, their doors – head-on to the sea, a rope’s length to the moorings – were closed. On the terrace of the small hotel, a woman swept languidly at wet leaves blowing from an overhanging almond tree; in the shelter of a ramshackle chicken coop, a rooster crowed over a run of shivering hens.

  By the boatyard, the beach was crowded with boats, veterans hauled from the sea to pass the winter. Out of their element, the curves of their flanks seemed flat, the flow of their forms rigid; their paint was salt-bleached and cracked, their varnish lifting and peeling like dry, callused skin. Between their hulks, the shingle was stained with spent oil and diesel.

  Last Easter, they
had argued here. The root of their argument was the same as always: the promises he’d made before they married, he now chose to forget. He’d said they’d go away, and see the world; now, all the plans she talked about he ridiculed. It was his laughter that had made her angry.

  Outside the boatyard workshop, she stroked the red-leaded ribs of a half-built caique. Shut away from the cold, the men were working, within; there were heavy blows, from a hammer, and the whine of a circular saw, slicing hull planks.

  The men were working, so there would be fire. And behind the workshop, the brazier was stoked high with offcuts of fresh pinewood; its sap-sweet smoke billowed blue in the lee of the wind. She offered her palms to the flames, closing her eyes against the smoke, sniffing at the clean fumes of hot tar rising from a black, battered bucket at the brazier’s feet.

  The whine of the saw became silent; the latch of the workshop door rattled.

  She didn’t want to talk to them. They’d know Andreas was away. The older one, the one with rotten teeth, had a peculiar sense of humour; and the short one, the one with the missing fingers, would proposition her.

  Me and you, he’d murmur. No one will know; I’m not the kind to talk. We’ll have a good time. Just tell me when to come.

  She lowered her hands from the brazier, and went on.

  The house at the road’s end was tall and once grand. Jutting out into the water, its broad terrace was worked from stones taken from the sea. On the lintel was fixed a painted sign: Café Nikos. To the back of the terrace, as far as possible from the water, stood a single table, and four chairs; at the table, wrapped warm in heavy clothing, face hidden by the peak of a sheepskin cap, sat an elderly man.

  She approached him carefully; he might be sleeping. She stood at his side, and watched the slow rise of his breathing. She waited, then placed a hand on his shoulder.

  He pushed up the peak of his cap, like the slow opening of an eye.

  ‘Uncle Nikos,’ she said. ‘Kali mera.’

  The old man sniffed, and wiped rheum from his nose.

  ‘I thought you were asleep,’ she said. ‘If you want to sleep, I’ll leave you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said. ‘Only a fool would sleep out here, in this cold. Bloody wind. It gets right in my bones. Sit, sit, Irinaki. I’ve been watching you. I watched you all along the road.’

  ‘What have you done with all the tables?’

  ‘I stacked them round the back, out of the storm’s way. I’ll fetch them out again.’ He placed his hands on the arms of his chair, as if he might get up. A muscle tensed in his face, a wince. His hands relaxed. ‘By and by,’ he said. ‘It’s still blowing. I’m too old to be hooking furniture out of the sea.’

  ‘I was looking for Andreas. He hasn’t come.’

  The old man cast his gaze across the far sweep of the sea like a wise old salt, like a weather-hardened seadog or a time-served seaman. He was none of these, but he liked to play the part.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘not today. The weather’s set now. Three, four days. He’ll not be back before Saturday.’

  Unhappily, she sighed.

  ‘All winter, the sea keeps us prisoner,’ she said. ‘No way in, no way out.’

  He patted her knee. ‘Sit a while. I’ll make us some coffee. I’ll put something in it to keep out the cold.’

  ‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘Andreas doesn’t like me to drink.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, smiling, ‘who will tell him? When the cat’s away, my dear, the mouse can do exactly as it pleases.’

  He hauled himself from his chair and walked heavily, with the carefulness of the suffering old, into the flagstoned kitchen.

  He was not in business for the money, but for the company. He called his house a café, put chairs and tables on his terrace, and served drinks to anyone who sat down with him; but on days when he had no appetite for gossip or brewing coffee, and on days when he thought the calamari fishing might be good, the café was closed.

  He blamed the calamari more and more, when customers found the kitchen door locked and the house silent. But in his heart, he knew his time was growing short. At night, the pains in his stomach too often wrecked his sleep, sabotaging his ability to battle through the day. These too were days when he ‘went fishing’, shut away in the bedroom at the back of the house, blinds drawn, with a jug of water to drink and a pot to piss in, dozing, dreaming, remembering. Some days, he believed he’d never again leave that bed. On better days, he swigged chalky antacids directly from the bottle, and thanked God for some relief. But there was blood in his stools, and his appetite was all but gone. He was a frightened man: afraid to see a doctor, afraid of dying alone in the night, more afraid to show need, and fear.

  He spooned coffee from the jar, and took the brandy bottle from the shelf. But the brandy was not his vice; it was from the medicinal-blue bottle of Milk of Magnesia that he surreptitiously unscrewed the cap, and, turning his back to the terrace, drank like a man addicted.

  She put her hands around the coffee cup to warm them, but the coffee, cooled by milk and brandy, had no heat. He had added too much alcohol; it flamed her cheeks red, and set her stomach on fire. It worked its magic quickly. Soon, the bleakness of the outlook mattered less.

  He took a cigarette from the packet and struck a light from a box of matches, cupping it against the wind. His hands shook, and the swelling of his joints made him clumsy, but he had had many years of practice. He drew in smoke.

  ‘So,’ he said, wiping his nose with a finger. ‘Have you spoken to your mother?’

  ‘The phone’s still out of order. I went to the company office to tell them. Twice. They said they’d come. But they haven’t been.’

  ‘Because they’re idle.’ He flicked ash on to the wet stone terrace. ‘Go again. Make a nuisance of yourself.’

  ‘It won’t make any difference. They won’t come for me. They won’t work for foreigners. Andreas can go, when he comes home.’ She looked towards the headland and the cloudbanks which hid the mainland. ‘If the weather were clear, we might see our village from here. I can see it, sometimes.’

  He dropped his cigarette butt into a puddle by his chair, watching the paper change from white to grey as it absorbed water. Her eyes were wet. He believed it was the wind, stinging them.

  ‘You’re deluded,’ he said. ‘Our village is fifteen miles up the coast.’ She crushed his cigarette butt with her foot. ‘You should phone your mother. She’ll worry, if you don’t. Use a public phone. If they’re working.’

  ‘She worries less, now I’m off her hands.’

  ‘She misses you. Like you miss Andreas.’

  ‘With him gone, there’s nothing for me to do.’

  ‘Some women,’ he said, ‘would be glad to have the freedom of an absent husband. No meals to cook. No shirts to wash. Time to walk, and talk to me.’

  ‘When you came here, Uncle, why did you stay?’

  ‘Plain and simple. I fell in love with your aunt. And with this place. Look at that.’ He swept his arm across the breadth of the bay. ‘All this beauty. And listen.’ The waves were breaking on the jetty; across the bay, the canvas of the yacht’s loosened sail snapped in the wind. ‘Silence. No traffic. No crowds. Peace, and quiet. The secret of a happy life. What more could you want?’

  ‘Life,’ she said. ‘Excitement.’

  ‘Excitement is vastly overrated,’ he said. ‘Take it from me.’

  ‘A change of scene, then. Athens. Australia.’

  With a gesture, he dismissed both.

  ‘Forget all that,’ he said. ‘Put it out of your mind. He married someone else. Your life is here, now. Andreas isn’t the travelling kind.’

  ‘He told me he was. He told me he’d take me anywhere I wanted to go.’

  ‘Men say all kinds of things, when they’re in love. Your life is here now.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. You travelled everywhere. Saw the world.’

  ‘I travelled for my work.’ Venezuela, Costa R
ica, Brazil. ‘It was hard being away.’

  The women, all those beautiful, willing women. It was hard to come back.

  He took another cigarette from the pack. She stood, and took their coffee cups inside the house whilst he recalled. At night, he had played poker in smoky, run-down bars where the rum was cheap and red-lipped whores played salsa on the jukebox. And whether the cards were with him or against him, whether he was lucky or not, he always kept enough bills in his shirt pocket to take a girl back to his room. They’d go all night, those Latin girls, they’d lick and suck and ride until the sun was rising and all he wanted was to sleep. They didn’t fake it, like all Greek whores who were only in it for the money. Greek girls were too inhibited; they had too much religion. Those Latinas just loved to fuck. One, he’d stuck with for a while – Flora, with that tiny waist and those massive hips, just begging for it. And the night he had to leave her, she brought her sister too, to make it memorable. Memorable! They’d tied him to the bed and made him watch the two of them together, unbuttoning each other’s blouse, kissing each other’s tits, playing with each other’s fannies – sisters, for the love of Christ! – until he was begging them to come to him. And they left him tied up and rode him all night, taking turns to slide on to him, taking their time to get what they wanted, until he was so sore he begged for them to stop. Next morning, his parts were so swollen he could hardly walk; he had to take a taxi to the train station. And the driver had known the girls he was talking about, had slapped him on the back, laughing commiserations at his discomfort, and told him it was good he was leaving town, that no man alive could take two nights with those two.

  He could feel a pleasant swelling in his trousers; if she hadn’t been here, he might have gone to bed, given it a pull and tried to make something of it. But she was here, and sitting next to him again. The memory could be conjured back, when she had gone.

  ‘It was hard to be away,’ he said. ‘It’s the sacrifice some men make, to feed their families.’

  ‘Maybe marriage isn’t for everyone,’ she said. ‘Maybe not everyone’s made to stay in one place. I know what you think, Uncle. You think I carry a torch for Thomas. Mother thinks the same. But it wasn’t him; I wasn’t in love with him. He was gone too long. But all those postcards – the cities, and the beaches, and the outback – all those places he’s seen, all the things he’s done, I want to go there too. Maybe not for a lifetime, but I want to see it all for myself. You think no one should have dreams. Andreas is the same. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been, if I hadn’t married Andreas.’