The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘He’s no businessman; he’s a thief, a crook. That old queen will tread on anyone to get where he wants to be. His blood is bad: that family’s got more skeletons in its closet than the rest of this island put together. Trust me, they’ll all come crawling out one day to bury him. And I’ll be glad to lend them a shovel to do the job properly.’ He drew on his cigarette, and flicked a few flakes of ash into the ashtray. ‘He wants a good dose of what they gave his father. A shot of the old medicine, that’d sort him out.’

  Irini ran water into the sink.

  ‘What happened to his father?’ she asked.

  ‘He was rotten to the core,’ said Andreas. ‘Tassos, they called him. His appetites were warped. They had to put a stop to it.’

  Irini left the sink, and went to sit beside him at the table.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  He poured himself another finger of Metaxa and held out the glass to Irini. She took a sip of the mellow, brown liquor; Andreas drank down half of what remained.

  ‘Friend Louis is a faggot, pure and simple,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t try to hide it any more. But his father’s perversions were far worse, and the family kept the secret very close. Some say he practised first on Louis and his sister. There was talk, from time to time; the neighbours heard things. But children grow, and old man Tassos liked them very young. He started on his niece’s daughter, a tiny thing just six years old. He got her in the house with promises of chocolate. When the niece got to him, he’d got his trousers round his knees, and the child was crying, half-undressed.’

  ‘My God,’ said Irini. ‘Did they call the police?’

  ‘Police?’ He knocked ash from his cigarette. ‘What would they have done? Old man Tassos had a bit of money; he’d have paid a lawyer to lie on his behalf, and walked away. No, there was no need for the police. The child’s father went for him with the grandfather, and dragged the dirty dog out of hiding in the cellar. They tied him to the plane tree in the square, and left him there a while to let the crowd gather whilst they fetched a big, old rooster; just to make the pervert sweat, they slit the bird’s throat in front of him. And when they’d got him gibbering and begging, the child’s father had the honour of daubing his head with tar, and they pulled the feathers from the rooster and covered old man Tassos’s head in them.

  ‘When they put him on a mule and paraded him round the town, they took him past his own house so his wife could see. She spat on him from the window, and took the kids – our friend Louis and his sister – straight home to her mother. She divorced him, of course. Her family wouldn’t stand the shame.’

  ‘What happened to him, in the end?’

  ‘Ah, now – there’s a question.’ Andreas drank down the last of his Metaxa. ‘After they let him go, he stumbled off and wasn’t seen again. Some say he’s here to this day, holed up in some back room in some relative’s house, still too ashamed to show his face. But I think he’s long gone, years since, somewhere far away, yearning like all exiled Greeks to come back home. He’ll never come home. He’ll never dare.’

  There was silence as he drew on his cigarette, and exhaled.

  ‘Anyway. Just watch that one,’ he said. ‘He’s got his eye on you.’

  She laughed.

  ‘What would that old goat want with me?’ she asked. ‘I’m not his taste.’

  But as Andreas replaced his jacket on the peg and went to switch on the TV, it seemed to Irini that it might not be Louis Krisaxos he’d meant.

  Seven

  Clean Monday, the first day of Lent: a day of austere feasting, to clean the stomach and prepare the body for deprivation. In a sky without cloud, Irini had expected the sun to give some warmth, but even in the sheltered lee of the chapel wall, on the mountainside the damp chill of winter remained. Amongst the rocks, scrawny ewes grazed the new growth of herbs and grass, their fattening lambs pulling at their teats; at the hill’s foot, where the dry riverbed ran, the children aimed missiles – rocks, sticks, a broken-strapped sandal – into the branches of a walnut tree, trying to dislodge the last few nuts (they grew high, and would never be within their reach) of its crop.

  Andreas’s mother, Angeliki, had cleared a level patch of sandy ground, pitching the largest stones into the spreading bushes of thyme, uprooting a twisted branch of oregano and sweeping away the scattered sheep-droppings with its fragrant leaves. Now, she spread a patchwork quilt, and hunted in the thyme bushes for the heaviest stones she had thrown away to weight its corners. Strathia, Irini’s sister-in-law, had lost, briefly, the scowl she wore around her children; bending into the back of the truck, she hauled out the coolers which contained the picnic. Beneath her dress, her thighs were pale, and slack; at the backs of her knees, thick veins ran.

  Irini spread the Pyrex dishes and Tupperware bowls at the centre of the quilt, and laid out the fasting foods: no oils, no fats, no meat, or fish which bled. They had brought olives, fat, sour, green ones and the shrivelled, milder black; there were carrots, cauliflower and hot peppers pickled in brine, baby beetroot in jars, gherkins in vinegar, fish roe in tubes. There was an octopus Andreas had caught, and black-striped, whiskered prawns. There were scallions and Kos lettuces Angeliki had pulled from the garden, peppery rocket, pink radishes and the pale-mauve globes of turnips. Irini had boiled potatoes, and sprinkled them with salt and lemon juice; Strathia had steamed fresh mussels with bay leaves and onions. There were slabs of sticky, sweet vanilla halva swirled with cocoa, and flat, dimpled loaves of Clean Monday bread, and – wrapped in water-soaked towels to keep them cool – bottles of chilled retsina and lemonade.

  But Angeliki was fretting.

  ‘There won’t be enough. We should have brought more bread. Strathia, we’ve forgotten the salt.’

  ‘It’s here, Mother.’

  ‘Your father won’t like those mussels cooked with bay leaves. He can’t stand the taste of bay.’

  ‘Let him eat something else, then.’

  ‘This lettuce is all holes. You can’t keep the snails off it, not with all this wet weather. I did wash it, though; I have given it a good wash. But I don’t think your father’ll eat it with holes in the leaves.’

  The scowl returned to Strathia’s face.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mother,’ she said.

  Crouched over the stack of fallen branches they had broken for firewood, the men – Andreas, his father Vassilis, Strathia’s husband Socratis – were poking dried twigs and grass into its base. Andreas lit a cigarette, and put his lighter to the fire. Smoke billowed around them, masking them, and cleared to reveal them, like shadows on a day of scattered clouds: here, then gone. Socratis pitched a root of thorny capers into the growing flames; it spat a shower of crackling sparks high into the air. One falling spark, still glowing, caught Vassilis on the back of his hand; as he, cursing, flicked it away and licked the stinging burn, Andreas and Socratis laughed.

  Andreas was still smiling as he walked back to the women; smiling, he put his hands on Irini’s shoulders and kissed the tip of her nose. Beneath the woodsmoke which was already in his hair, he smelled familiar, safe. She placed her hands on his waist (it was thickening a little, as he grew older), and made them partners, ready for the dance.

  Through the fabric of his clothes, she pinched the softness of his body.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said, teasing, smiling.

  ‘My wife’s cooking,’ he said. He touched his lips to hers.

  ‘It’s time for a drink. Strathia, find the cups. We’ll have a glass of wine.’

  ‘I don’t want wine,’ said Angeliki. ‘It gives me a headache.’

  ‘You’ll have a headache anyway, no doubt, by the time we’re done,’ said Andreas. He winked at Irini, crazing the skin around his eyes. ‘You’ll have a glass of wine, and like it.’

  Strathia was handing round the paper cups.

  ‘Well, just a small one, then,’ said Angeliki.

  When the fire burned down to red-hot embers, Socratis spread the octopus on th
e grill and placed it over the heat. Beneath the walnut tree, the children probed a nest of ants with stalks of grass; from behind the chapel, where goats foraged, came the hollow rattling of bells. Slowly, the octopus flesh changed from dull pink to deep red; its juices dripped, hissing, into the embers.

  Socratis drank from his cup, and flicked a crawling insect from the end of his nose with the pad of his thumb. He had a boxer’s nose, bent and misshapen; it fitted his reputation as a hard man. Before their marriage, he battered a rival for Strathia with an iron bar; the rival limped now, and his vision in one eye was blurred. But as time had passed, Socratis and the rival had shaken hands, and shared a drink together, many times. Socratis was not a man for grudges. Not if he prevailed.

  Across the valley, at the horizon, a man appeared at the wall of an abandoned olive grove. He leaned, like a biblical prophet, on a long staff and stood, like a sentinel, looking down on them. Socratis, shading his eyes with the flat of his hand, squinted to identify the watcher and, having done so, grunted, and silently prodded the embers with a stick. Andreas’s eyes were not as good as they had been, once; from this distance, he could not identify the figure.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.

  Vassilis hawked, and spat on the ground.

  ‘Lukas,’ he said. ‘Let’s eat. When he gets here, there’ll be nothing left.’

  The watcher raised a hand, and waved; the echo of his shout was indecipherable.

  ‘Where’re your manners, Father?’ asked Strathia. ‘Call him down.’

  ‘D’you think there’ll be enough, if he comes?’ asked Angeliki, doubtfully.

  ‘For God’s sake, Mother,’ said Strathia. ‘Andreas, call him down.’

  Leaning on his staff, the figure began to pick his way down the hillside. His gait was uneven – not quite a disability, but a limp.

  ‘No need,’ said Vassilis. ‘He’s halfway here already.’

  Strathia handed Lukas a cup of wine, and he, glancing to where Socratis poked the fire, thanked her. He placed the cup between the insteps of his boots – thick-soled, black boots, scuffed, and dull with dust, bought cheap from a demobbed National Service soldier – and, lifting the patch which covered it, rubbed at his left eye with a dirty finger. He had acquired his flak jacket and khaki trousers as part of the same deal with the soldier, but the trousers fitted badly, and were held up by a leather belt buckled tight around his ribcage, so the crotch of the trousers was too high up in his own. Because he wore the trousers so high, there was a gap where his shins showed pale pink scars between his trousers cuffs and the tops of his boots. In his solitary life, he took no care of himself, and had become too thin; he ate voraciously when food was offered, but spent too many of his evenings in the company of drunkards in the village ouzeri. He smelled bad, of his unclean self, and of his goats. But he was not without his vanity: he took pride in his hair, which hung in knotted, sun-bleached dreadlocks on his shoulders. His pride was that his hair was touched just once a year; he had one aunt who loved him, and every Easter Day, she was permitted to wash it, and cut half from its length.

  He bent to pick up his wine, and drank, eyes lowered.

  ‘Will you eat with us?’ asked Strathia.

  But Lukas declined.

  ‘I’ve to be getting on,’ he said. ‘I’ve twenty goats to water, up at Agia Anna.’

  Vassilis broke the crisp-crusted end from a loaf, and bit into it, saying nothing.

  ‘The goats’ll wait a while longer,’ said Strathia. She offered him a bowl of olives, and the loaf from which her father had taken the end. ‘Eat,’ she said.

  Lukas broke a piece of bread, and took a handful of the olives. With a pair of tongs, Socratis lifted the roasted octopus on to a plate, and carried it to Angeliki, who placed it at the centre of the gathering.

  Socratis, grinning, slapped Lukas on the back. Lukas flinched.

  ‘How’re you doing, Cousin?’ asked Socratis. ‘Not married yet?’

  Angeliki cut the legs from the octopus, and sliced its body; the inner flesh was starkly white against the red and black of its seared skin. Dousing it with lemon juice, she sprinkled it with flakes of dried oregano pulled from a bush.

  ‘Eat,’ she said. ‘Everyone eat. Strathia, call the children.’

  ‘Leave them,’ said Socratis. ‘They can eat later.’

  For a few minutes they ate in silence. Irini watched Lukas tear off a hunk of bread and dip it in the octopus’s lemon-sharp juices, then smear a second piece with cod’s roe.

  ‘So,’ said Vassilis, ‘forty days to your haircut, Lukas.’

  Lukas’s mouth was stuffed with half-chewed bread.

  ‘I may not bother, this year,’ he said. He put his hand to his head, and fingered one of the dirty dreadlocks.

  ‘If it gets much longer, you’ll fall over it,’ said Andreas.

  ‘Come on, Lukas,’ said Strathia. ‘Let’s have the news. What are they talking about, downtown?’

  As she spoke, a faint blush stole across Lukas’s face. He reached for the wine bottle, and refilled his cup.

  ‘I don’t know much,’ he said.

  ‘Sure you do,’ said Andreas. ‘Come on. Fill us in.’

  Socratis stood.

  ‘I’ll put some of those prawns on the grill,’ he said. ‘It’s hungry work, listening to his monologues.’ He wandered away to the fire.

  ‘Well,’ said Lukas. He speared the tip of an octopus leg with his fork, and bit into it. ‘You’ll know all about Manolis Mandrakis’s wife, no doubt.’

  ‘Which Manolis Mandrakis?’ asked Strathia. ‘Do you mean the house-painter?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lukas, ‘the young one.’

  Irini knew him. She knew his wife, too: a tall, thin, morose girl who provoked public disapproval by wearing trousers.

  They waited. Lukas unwrapped the sticky halva, cut a piece and put it in his mouth.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Andreas.

  ‘Well,’ said Lukas, ‘Mandrakis caught her with the Chief of Police.’

  Angeliki drew in her breath.

  ‘Never,’ she said.

  ‘It’s true,’ said Lukas. ‘He found them half-naked in the back of her father’s shop. He’s got that butcher’s next to the ice factory.’

  Angeliki crossed herself, quickly, three times.

  ‘Mandrakis didn’t dare lay a finger on that police scum, of course,’ Lukas went on. ‘Just told him to get out and close the door behind him. Then he shut himself in with his wife and beat the shit out of her.’

  There was silence.

  ‘He’s divorcing her, of course. Her family are in a terrible state. The mother’s got heart problems; she got palpitations and had to have the doctor.’

  ‘My God,’ said Andreas.

  ‘That son-of-a-bitch policeman wants sorting out,’ said Vassilis. ‘Why didn’t Mandrakis get his brothers on to him? He’s got enough of them.’

  ‘One of the brothers is a bar owner,’ said Lukas. ‘Needs his drinks licence. That bastard would have shut him down.’

  As the afternoon faded, the wine bottles were emptied. The men drank ouzo, and talked; Lukas lay on his back in the shade of the chapel wall, sleeping. The acid of the food, the pickles and lemon juice, the dry wine, had given Irini a sharp pain in the stomach. She stretched out, feeling the sun on her legs and arms, and closed her eyes. She thought of the morose face of Mrs Mandrakis, and imagined it pummelled, and bloodied; and she wondered if the girl had cried and screamed, or if she had submitted quietly to her punishment, knowing that no one would come to her aid.

  Eight

  Irini, mindful of her duty, went calling on her mother-in-law. She went reluctantly, driven in Andreas’s new absence by a yearning for companionship. There was an awkwardness between the women (the story was an old one: no woman could ever be good enough for him), and she expected to be received, as always, coolly. But she had chosen her time badly. Her mother-in-law was unctuous in her welcome. She described Irini’s arrival as fortu
itous.

  ‘Come in, Irini,’ said Angeliki, ‘come in. Your father-in-law is wanting some help.’

  She was a tiny woman, fine-boned and fragile in her mind. For many years, the doctor had prescribed her Valium. The drug had left her vague, and forgetful, so the house was always littered with chores half-done: half the brasses polished, half the potatoes peeled, half the laundry ironed and put away, and often two trips in a morning to the baker’s to fetch the bread she had already bought. There was today a smell of scorching: at the stove, water boiling over in a forgotten saucepan hissed on the hotplate. In the yard, a goat was forlornly bleating.

  Angeliki handed Irini a folded cotton apron and a plastic bucket.

  ‘Put your apron on,’ she said. ‘You’ll not want to get it all down your clothes. It makes such a mess, if you’re not careful. He’ll be ready to start. I expect he was waiting for me.’ She placed her tiny hand in the small of Irini’s back and guided her through the yard door. Her touch was delicate but insistent, like that of a mouse’s paw. Irini moved quickly, to be free of it.

  Dangling from the branches of a lemon tree, the goat was strung up by a rope tied around its back feet. An old billy, it stank of goaty musk and the piss which fear had drained from its bladder. Stretched out, its cloven hooves hung inches from the ground it couldn’t reach. It spun slowly at the end of the rope, a full turn clockwise, then anticlockwise, watching the earth through the black slits of its strange, yellow eyes. Its wretched cries were neatly spaced, like a pulse; it had perhaps been hanging there some time.

  Her father-in-law crouched close by, sharpening a hook-tipped hunting knife on a flat stone wetted with spittle. Though the sun had no strength in it, his face was red, his sparse-haired pate and bald forehead moist; from beneath his shirt (the fabric strained across his dome-round belly) she smelled a similar goat-like musk: much milder, sweeter, but, essentially, the same. He scowled at her, as if not pleased to see her, but Irini knew he was indifferent whether she assisted, or Angeliki. To him, one woman was as useless as the next.