The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘Come to help?’ he said. ‘Bring the bucket, then; let’s have the bucket.’

  He pulled the sharp edge of the blade across the cushion of his thumb; it drew a stinging line of blood. Standing, he arched his back, complaining at the aching in his kidneys. He’d had trouble passing water this morning, he told her. He ought to see the doctor. Behind him, the goat bleated; it sounded like derision.

  Irini felt the urge to comfort the goat, to stroke its head. What was the point? She gave Vassilis the bucket.

  ‘Let’s get on, then,’ he said. ‘Are we ready? Step away.’

  He knew men who, at this moment of playing God, as the instrument setting the soul adrift, sending it back whence it came, would bless the animal, wish it God speed. All mad, he thought. Faggots. It was a beast, that’s all; he felt no more for it than he would for an orange he bit into.

  The goat, sensing its time was here, began to bleat in panic. Irini gazed up into the branches of the lemon tree, focusing on the brilliance of the fruit, the gloss of the leaves, the structure of the branches. There was a light, tearing sound, and a splash of liquid in the dirt. The bleating became irregular; each wavering cry was interrupted at its middle by the goat’s desperate sucking at the air it couldn’t breath. Soon, nothing.

  Vassilis stretched, complaining, up into the tree and sawed, grunting, through the taut rope. The corpse dropped; warm blood spattered her shins and shoes.

  ‘Fetch that tablecloth, Irini. Quickly.’ He pointed to a sheet of blue-checked plastic by the yard door. She spread it where the blood was worst. Vassilis took hold of the forelegs and heaved the carcase on to the plastic.

  Complaining, he knelt beside it. With the point of his knife, he made the first cuts at the inside legs, delicate incisions to separate skin from flesh. He sliced, carefully and shallow, down the belly. Then, tugging gently, he peeled off the pelt, expertly, in one piece, like tearing Fablon from its backing, revealing beneath a layer of creamy fat, bubbled with air pockets, crackling like static.

  He handed the warm pelt to Irini.

  ‘Hang it over there, on the line.’ He waved a gory hand towards the washing line, where two white bedsheets hung billowing in the breeze. There was no line left, and Irini’s hands were too bloody to unpeg and fold the sheets, so she hung the skin over the lowest branches of the lemon tree.

  ‘Bucket!’

  She knelt beside him. He turned the flayed beast on its spine.

  ‘Get the legs,’ he said, ‘and hold it steady.’

  But it was hard; the greasy flesh slipped under her hands. The goat’s strange eyes were still bright, but bulged in the stripped skull; its little teeth grinned a rictus grin.

  Vassilis cut deep, from chest to scrotum, the stinking guts bursting through the incision as it opened. Irini let go of the hind legs to steer the guts into the bucket, but, one-handed, she couldn’t control them. They spilled like water; like live things, they slithered over the rim.

  Vassilis swore, and cursed the goat. At his armpits, his shirt was damp with half-moons of sweat, and the smell of his musk was potent. He lifted the spilled guts into the bucket, then plunged his hands into the body cavity, feeling around with the knife to cut them free, scooping out what was left – the grey ropes of shit-filled intestine, the spongy lungs, the beast’s still heart.

  ‘You’re done,’ he said. ‘I’d better fetch the saw.’

  At the yard well, the steel can they used to draw water stood empty on the well’s stone rim. Holding the blue nylon string, she dropped the can into the narrow shaft, where, unseen in the dark, it slapped the surface of the water and, filling, began to grow heavy. She hauled up the can, and splashed cold water over her rank, sticky hands.

  Angeliki brought a teacup, and a bottle of washing-up liquid; scooping water from the can, she rinsed the soap from Irini’s hands as Irini rubbed at them. There was blood behind her nails, dark as dirt; though she rubbed and rinsed and soaked her hands there, the blood remained.

  ‘Have you heard from your mother?’ asked Angeliki. ‘We haven’t seen her for a while.’

  She handed Irini a towel; its pattern was faded, its fabric almost brittle from over-washing.

  Irini wiped her hands.

  ‘I spoke to her two days ago,’ she said. ‘She’s going up to Athens to see my sister. She likes to spend time with the children.’

  ‘Grandchildren are such a blessing,’ said Angeliki. ‘She’ll have more time for you, I expect, when your little ones come along.’

  ‘I used to go with her,’ said Irini, ‘before I married. I miss the children too. And I love the city. My sister used to take me dancing, sometimes. One night I danced so much, my feet bled.’

  Angeliki sniffed.

  ‘The city’s dirty,’ she said. ‘All crowds and traffic. And I don’t know what kind of man your sister’s married to – what kind of man lets his wife go dancing with her unmarried sister? Who was your chaperone?’

  ‘He was,’ said Irini. ‘My brother-in-law loves to dance.’

  Taking the towel from Irini, Angeliki folded it square, taking the time to match corner exactly to corner.

  ‘Andreas was never a dancer,’ she said, ‘and I’ve never thought much of married women who dance. It wouldn’t surprise me if all that dancing was at the root of your problems down below. And I’m surprised your sister’s managed to make time to have children if she’s out dancing every night.’

  ‘Not every night,’ objected Irini. ‘Once in a while.’

  ‘Even so. There’s not many women here who’d compromise their reputations for a night kicking up their heels.’

  ‘I think that’s a great shame,’ said Irini. ‘An evening’s dancing once in a while would be marvellous for all of us. It would break the monotony.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by monotony,’ said Angeliki, huffily. ‘We’re all perfectly happy as we are, thank you.’

  Walking the road home, she held her share of the kill at arm’s length. The sharp spike of a roughly sawn rib had punched a hole in the plastic bag; through the hole, blood dripped, marking her trail downhill, showing exactly the route she had taken: where she had veered to the left, where she had stepped on to the verge to let a motorbike pass.

  As she came within sight of the house, she caught the sound of an engine. A red truck rolled past her; the driver blew his horn and waved. Irini didn’t know who it was. By the time she had remembered Theo and turned to wave, he had already disappeared around the bend in the road.

  Days later, Irini was returning home from St Savas’s bay. She walked down there often whilst Andreas was away; it had become her habit to go and look for the boat returning to port, even when she knew it was impossible he would be there, when he had been gone only a day or so. She walked slowly, idly reviewing the vegetation in the verges, sometimes picking a few edible leaves for salad or wild flowers for the table. At the end of the quay, she would sit a few minutes on the same bollard, scanning the horizon for the boat she knew she wouldn’t see; then, not seeing it, she would wander along the narrow beach, half-heartedly looking for shells on the gritty sand and for octopus in the shallows. Often, she would pay Nikos a visit; sometimes, she went the other way, towards the mountains. When the clock struck twelve, she would head back up the road, impelled by convention to be in the house by lunchtime.

  This time, as the red truck approached, she turned to face it. She saw his dark face smiling behind the windscreen, and his hand raised to her.

  She raised her hand to him. And as he disappeared around the bend, she found she was smiling, too.

  Here’s how it started: innocently. I saw her on the road sometimes, walking. She seemed, not lonely, that’s not the right word; self-contained, perhaps. She looked as if her mind was somewhere else. She always walked alone, and she always seemed to be walking for the sake of it, aimlessly. Killing time. I waved to her. I smiled. I didn’t feel it was wrong, but I knew in my heart that it was something to be hidden, because if
I had anyone with me in the truck I would pretend I hadn’t seen her. She was cautious at first, a little mystified probably as to why I was so friendly in this place where men and women may not be friends. The first time she smiled, a little part of me came alive with a kind of happiness I had not known before. You will say, of course, that I should have seen the danger. But once a candle has been lit in the darkness, who wants to snuff it out? And what danger is there in one candle? One candle’s worth of light isn’t much to ask in a life, surely?

  I was only playing. I was in control.

  But that little candle flared up, and something caught fire. Who could have guessed that one little candle burning in the dark would one day ignite – destroy – the fabric of my whole life?

  The way I was drawn to her was a mystery. I never understood it, but, almost from the moment I first saw her, more than anything in the world I wanted to hold her hand.

  In the beginning, he did no more than intrude, from time to time, on her thoughts. As one workman shouted to another out of sight, as the sound of hammering echoed down the valley, she would wonder, Is that you?

  But then the changes began. There were unnecessary trips out of the house, to fetch groceries she didn’t need or to take walks she didn’t want, because she might see him. She took care with her clothes; she put on lipstick. He became, slowly, insidiously, the highlight of her days. He preyed on her thoughts, occupying far more of them than he had a right to. And in those thoughts grew a strengthening undertone of lust. She wanted to know how he looked without his clothes. Sometimes, when the sun was hot, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and dangled a naked, taut-muscled arm down the side of the truck as he drove. She wanted to reach out and touch it.

  All this, this far. And, since the day of that fateful storm, not a single word spoken between them.

  I saw her at the carnival. I went with Elpida and Panayitsa; Panayitsa was dressed as a Turkish princess, all chiffon and gold braid. And she was there. I’d seen her old man: he was selling fish on the harbourside, making what he could before the people stopped eating fish for Lent. Amongst the folks in their Sunday best, he looked a scarecrow: his clothes were filthy, and he hadn’t shaved for days. But he was going home to her.

  I’d hoped she might be there. I had Panayitsa by the hand; I was afraid of losing her in the crowd. She was whining; she was cold, but she wouldn’t wear the coat Elpida had brought because it hid her costume. So I bought her cinnamon doughnuts to shut her up. She was eating them, dripping honey and powdered cinnamon everywhere. Elpida had gone to find her mother; she was going to be mad at me for letting Panayitsa get in such a mess.

  Suddenly, in the crowd I saw her. She was walking towards me, her eyes on my face. Then she was next to me, about to pass me, and she looked at me and smiled, such a pleased-to-see-you smile. She said my name, she said hello, and I smiled and said hello too. And then for a long moment she looked into my eyes and I remember thinking, how lovely your eyes are. In that moment, I understood that there was nothing innocent left in my feelings for her, nor in hers for me. I had a hard-on. When she walked away, she left me on fire.

  Nine

  The morning after he first met Nikos, the fat man was feeling under the weather. The malady from which he was suffering was self-inflicted. As evening fell, he had gone walking in the unlit, narrow backstreets and alleys which ran behind the main harbour, and found a taverna open for business. He had dined in the company of men: two old bachelors and a widower, a married man bored at home, two scowling youths with nowhere else to go. They had sat at decrepit tables between sacks of sprouting potatoes, cartons of paper napkins and crates of domestic wine and mineral water, calling out their conversation to each other, looking out on to the dark, deserted patio where in summer the visitors sat late over Greek salads and souvlakia. Now, the dried, dead, wind-scattered leaves of an overhead vine scuttered around the legs of the stacked-up patio chairs.

  The fat man was hungry, but the chef was not in the mood to cook.

  ‘It’s out of season,’ he said. He was an underweight, unsmiling man, much in need, thought the fat man, of a decent meal, for his disposition as much as for his physique. ‘Pork chops. That’s it, take it or leave it.’ He picked at the inside of his nose with a long fingernail.

  ‘Pork chops are fine,’ said the fat man, ‘as long as the pork is fresh. And I’ll have an ouzo, well-watered, if you’d be so kind.’ He found a seat at a table in the corner, beside a door marked ‘WC’. Beneath the door blew a draught which chilled the fat man’s ankles and brought the faint, sharp smell of the urinal to his table.

  Reluctantly, the chef threw a pork chop on to the smoking charcoal grill and, turning up the heat beneath a pan of well-used oil, peeled several poor-quality potatoes, digging out the black eyes and worm holes with the point of his knife.

  The fat man sipped his ouzo and ate his chop; after he had eaten, he sat on a while, listening to the banter between the chef and his customers. He ordered another ouzo, and bought one for the chef, and the gesture – or the alcohol – worked magic. Small dishes of delicacies began to find their way to the fat man’s table – a few sea urchins soused in olive oil and lemon, a plate of stewed wild bitter greens, some toasted bread with garlic sauce for dunking, a chunk of fried, salty-fleshed moray eel. The fat man sat, nibbling, listening, drinking, until the evening had slipped well into night. He paid his bill, and left a generous tip beneath his plate; then, weaving dangerously close to the deep, black water, he had wandered back along the harbour front to the cold discomfort of his hotel room.

  And so this morning, an aching head and a precarious stomach caused him to lie dozing long after the clock at the harbour’s end struck six. The water in the shower was only lukewarm, but he let it run over his scalp until the aching was reduced; shivering, he dried himself with the single hand-towel the hotel had provided.

  He dressed with care. He took from his holdall a shirt of peacock blue, and put on his suit, the sheen of whose extraordinary grey cloth seemed at once to shift from lavender to teal, the perfect foil for his shirt. From a small jar, he took a fingerful of pomade fragrant with orange-flower and rose attar, and stroked it through the damp disorder of his curls. He ran the tip of a steel file behind his fingernails, and polished each one with a chamois buffer. He cleaned his teeth with powder freshened with cloves and wintergreen. His shoes he daubed with a full coat of whitener; whilst they dried, he stood in stockinged feet on the balcony of his room and watched the view.

  The morning was bright, but cold. The fat man made his way to Jakos’s kafenion, and found a seat amongst the workmen fortifying themselves for the day’s work with strong coffee and cigarettes. The fat man drank one coffee, then ordered another. He lit a cigarette, but his hangover objected in a surge of nausea. The fat man, knowing better than to persist, stubbed it out.

  In ones and twos, the workmen drifted off, to building sites and cargo boats, to sweeping roads and painting houses. As the last workman left the kafenion, Jakos picked up his empty cup and well-used ashtray and carried them inside. The fat man heard the rattle of china in the stone sink, but then Jakos returned to the doorway, and, leaning on the doorpost, gazed out across the sea, as if his heart and thoughts were very far away.

  ‘What do I owe you?’ asked the fat man.

  Jakos turned his eyes towards him, and raised his chin.

  ‘Three hundred,’ he said. ‘Just give me three.’

  The fat man placed a five-hundred-drachma note beneath his saucer.

  ‘Maybe you can help me,’ he said. ‘There’s someone I need to find.’

  ‘Who might that be?’

  ‘One Thodoris Hatzistratis. You’ll know him, I’m sure.’

  ‘I know Theo,’ agreed Jakos. His eyes returned to the distant horizon, where the pale sky met the sea. ‘But he won’t be pleased to see you. He has a carpenter’s shop, opposite the chandler’s. Close by the taverna where you ate last night.’ The fat man understood his meaning; th
e grapevine’s sources had been at work. ‘You’ll find him there, about now. But don’t let on it was me who told you where he was.’

  ‘I never disclose my sources,’ said the fat man. And, wishing the café owner good morning, he set off in search of his quarry.

  He found the carpenter’s shop without difficulty. It occupied the ground floor of a dilapidated building; the workshop windows were opaque with dirt, and lengths of timber – some blond and freshly cut, some weathered grey – were stacked against the walls. Its doors were craftsman-carved, but years unpainted and black-spotted with the holes of woodworm; an ancient lion’s-head knocker snarled over a huge and ornate keyhole.

  The fat man pushed at the doors, and found them locked. He stepped up close to the window; with the tip of his index finger he rubbed a small, clean circle in the grime and put his eye to it.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  The fat man stepped back sharply from the window, and turned to face the man who stood behind him. He was dark-complexioned, with the heavy eyebrows which suggested Arab blood; he might have been handsome, but his face had been spoiled by the lines of perpetual frowning.

  And he was frowning now.

  The fat man gave him a genial smile, and held out his hand.

  ‘Might you be Theo Hatzistratis?’ he asked.

  The younger man didn’t take his hand. He held an antique key whose shaft was the length of his palm and whose loop end was so large, it made a key ring for a dozen others. He inserted this key into the ornate keyhole, and turned it.

  ‘What’s your business with me?’ he asked.

  The fat man dropped his hand.

  ‘My name is Diaktoros, Hermes Diaktoros. I’d like to speak to you, if I may.’

  ‘About what?’ Theo pushed open the workshop door. From within, the fat man smelled sawdust, and varnish, and the cloying must of damp.