The Messenger of Athens

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘I’ve been sent from Athens,’ he said, ‘to investigate the death of Irini Asimakopoulos.’

  Theo stood for a moment with his back to the fat man, looking into the workshop. When he turned, his face wore a puzzled smile.

  ‘So why do you want to speak to me?’ he asked.

  The fat man was feeling unwell, and had no appetite for diplomacy, or being messed with. So he laid it on the line.

  He said, ‘Because she’s dead, and you were having an affair with her.’

  The smile left Theo’s face.

  ‘That’s a damn lie,’ he said, coldly.

  The fat man took a step closer to Theo. ‘Where’s the lie?’ he asked. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she? Undeniably rotting alone up there in the cemetery. Isn’t she?’

  Theo turned away from the fat man, and pulled the workshop door closed.

  ‘I think she was in love with you,’ persisted the fat man. ‘Maybe very much in love. And I think you might have been in love with her. Maybe you still are. Are you, Theo?’

  Theo turned the ancient key to lock the door and removed it from the keyhole.

  ‘I didn’t even know the woman,’ he said. ‘So I suggest you take your investigation elsewhere, and stop troubling innocent citizens like me.’

  And, slipping the keys into the pocket of his jacket, he sauntered away.

  It was the fat man’s experience that nothing settles an abused and angry stomach better than the smooth, sweet softness of a custard slice.

  At the baker’s, he chose an almost perfect example, heavily dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. He ate with relish, powdered sugar falling on his lapels and down the front of his shirt. He folded exactly in half the paper bag his confection had been supplied in, and tucked it in the front pocket of his holdall for later disposal, then took a blue, paisley-patterned silk handkerchief from his top pocket and used it to flick the sugar off his clothes. He put the handkerchief away, picked up the holdall, and, closing his eyes, squinted as if thinking hard, or trying to recall something to memory. Opening his eyes, he set off purposefully towards Jakos’s kafenion.

  Theo was there, alone at a table for two. The fat man sat down at his table. Theo stared off to one side, pretending, like a child, that the fat man was invisible.

  The fat man leaned forward, and spoke low.

  ‘I don’t care, Theo,’ he said, ‘if you look at me or not when I’m talking to you, just so long as you listen. I have a job to do. That job is to find out who killed Irini Asimakopoulos. She may have killed herself. Or you may have killed her. Or someone else may have done it. I will find out. But it won’t end there, because I don’t just want to find out who killed her. I want to know who was responsible for her death. Which is not necessarily the same thing. Responsibility is the key here, Theo. So I’m going to leave you alone for a while to think long and hard about your part in this tragedy – because I know you played a starring role, my friend – and the next time I see you, we’ll have a proper heart-to-heart.’

  He stood up from his chair.

  ‘A word of advice,’ he said. ‘Don’t piss me off. I get nasty when I’m pissed off.’

  The fat man walked away, whistling, in the direction of the bus stop.

  Ten

  In a hundred different ways, she gave herself away. It was in the time she took to style her hair, and put on the make-up she had rarely worn before; it was in the money that she spent on lotions for her face and body. It was in the dowdy clothes she threw away, and the new, more flattering outfits she bought to take their place. It was in the way she neglected all the chores, and didn’t care what food was on the table; it was in the time she didn’t spend with him, and in her absence when his boat returned to port. It was in the way she went earlier to bed, so she could feign deep sleep when he came to join her, and in her disinclination to be touched, or kissed, or held, at any time of day. But it was clearest in her eyes, and their expression; they showed her love for him was fading, that her emotion was being channelled to a newer passion, somewhere – someone – else. It was, for him, the cruellest cut: to see affection shrink, and be replaced by cold indifference, and contempt.

  When Love began to show her ugly face, Irini failed to recognise her, and so allowed her in. In her quiet life, the spark generated by the interested smile of an ordinary man – a man of no consequence – assumed a disproportionate importance, and Love, scenting opportunity, quick as a rat nipped through the open door.

  It was hard to determine when or where the shift took place. Somehow, though, this man became sole occupant of her thoughts: first thought, when she awakened; last thought, before she slept. Slowly, lingeringly, she lost her heart, and all her freedoms – freedom of thought, freedom of action. Over herself, she had no control.

  Failing to heed old Nikos’s wise advice, she unwrapped the pretty, shining gift brought by the stranger in her dream. The comfortable armchair of her marriage was abandoned. All those quiet, dull – peaceful – days when she had walked, sewn, baked, complained of nothing to do – they were a memory now. Her time was taken up in sitting at the window, waiting for him to pass, afraid to move, afraid to miss the moment.

  Pandora-like, she lifted the lid on Love’s Box of Delights, and discovered that the flavours of Love are many. He met her eyes and smiled; she dipped into Ecstasy and Euphoria. How sweet they were, how she came alive at their taste! Her step was light; there was magic in the morning. He turned his head, pretending he did not know her in the street; she tasted bitter Despair and Devastation, and descended into blackness. Life was not worth the living, because he did not love her.

  She tried Hope and Delusion, the brightest-shining offerings in the box of fool’s gold. One day they would be together, she knew they would. Their love would last for ever, of course it would. Their lives would be happy ever after; they would go away together, and start a new life. Of course they would.

  She tasted Dreaming, that potent soporific. Dreaming led her gently to her chair near the window and abandoned her there, gazing out, for hour upon hour, watching, waiting. Dreaming sat next to Compulsion and Obsession in the box, and, taken together, they were a fatal combination; they rendered her inert. Compulsion and Obsession gave her neither rest nor peace, chaining her in the grooves of new habit until Hope left her late at night, releasing the sentinel to her bed.

  But not to sleep. For there, in the deepest, darkest corner of the box, was the largest of the Delights, glowing red like hot coals. But this coal would not be cooled with water. This delight would have to burn itself out; Time and Habit are its only remedy.

  It was Passion, dangerous and despicable, uninvited and presumptuous. Passion travelled straight to her groin and lodged there, glowing, a hot stone demanding the cooling touch of ice only one man could bring. Its heat spread through her body until she was on fire with the desire and need and longing to be touched, licked, shafted by him, only him, a longing so intense that soon it wiped out all the other delights, spreading through her existence like a virus, like rampant weeds in an untended garden, until she was no more than hot, lustful flesh demanding to be sated. In the night, she burned.

  Andreas, not a complete fool, smelled the rottenness which had invaded their home. He was not to blame, he knew, for the changes in his wife. He himself had not changed. She was changed. Love, playing its dirty tricks, made her more attractive to him; she dressed well, wore perfume, had a light in her eyes which was not there before. But when he wanted her, she would not open her arms to hold him; like a port whore, open-eyed and uninvolved, she let him go through the motions, and afterwards left him alone in the bed, lonely and degraded.

  He knew who was responsible; he named the offender, and made accusations which she laughingly denied. He had no proof. It drove him mad. When he began to shout, she curled her lip in distaste, and turned away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Andreas’s low voice came from the dark doorway of the room where she thought he was sleeping.

  �
�Out.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘There’s no milk.’

  He nodded very slowly, watching her, his lids low over his eyes. Lifting his hand to his mouth, he cleared his throat; the hand was shaking, vibrating with too much whisky and too little sleep. He looked dishevelled, unkempt. His face had the red imprint of creases from the blanket he had used as a pillow; his shirt was crumpled, and stained, the flies of his trousers were part-unzipped.

  He came towards her. She had her coat half on; she made to put her left arm in its sleeve.

  ‘Just one moment, madame.’ His sarcasm was new; it was pronounced and unnerving. ‘Come here.’ He beckoned to her, exaggeratedly, with his index finger. His eyes were red with alcohol and disturbed sleep. ‘Come here, wife.’

  He was making her uneasy; she didn’t move.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she said. It was lightness that was needed; she said it lightly.

  He shouted, ‘Come here!’

  She didn’t know what had made him angry, or what would appease him. There had been outbursts lately – a plate smashed, a fist slammed on the table – small eruptions of the rage which had been growing in him, quietly, but steadily. She feared him then, but contempt made her foolhardy, and she goaded him – Go on then, hit me, it’s what you want to do – instead of offering appeasement.

  But this was going to be different, because he was somehow not the same.

  She tried appeasement now; she began taking off her coat.

  ‘If you don’t want me to go,’ she said, feigning petulant indifference – innocence – ‘I won’t go.’

  ‘I said come here!’

  He lunged for her, grabbed her hair at its roots, close to the scalp, and pulled, forcing her head towards his face. He pulled her, whimpering, by the hair, across the kitchen to the store cupboard, slammed back the cupboard door.

  ‘Let’s look, shall we?’ His reasonableness was counterfeit, touched with madness. ‘Let’s look together, and see if we have any milk.’

  Her face was twisted with the pain from her scalp; in her mind, she could see the next few minutes. And part of her said, ‘Don’t fight him, just take it; it won’t be so bad.’ But the pain from her head was bad, very bad, and the strength of his grip made it clear he could do to her whatever he liked. It was his to choose if she lived or died, and the terrifying violence coming off him was about to explode.

  Because she knew what he was going to find in the cupboard. Because her obsession, her addiction, her need to find him, see him, had made her careless, and there was a price to pay for carelessness. Still the moment seemed a long time coming; he seemed to stand there minutes, hours, reviewing the shelves, before he found what he, too, knew was there.

  He took the first tin of milk, the kind they used for coffee, and threw it across the room. It hit the wall, denting the plaster, and fell to the floor.

  ‘There’s no milk.’ Childishly, he mimicked her voice, her innocent assertion, her lie. ‘There’s no fucking milk, she says! Here!’ He pulled a second tin from the shelf, threw it at the wall. ‘You lying fucking bitch! A cupboard full of the fucking stuff and she says there’s no milk!’ He looked again in the cupboard. She began to cry, quietly, at the horror of it, at the stupidity of her attempted deception, as he found a litre carton of UHT milk, brightly patterned with a red-and-white cow. He held the carton up in front of her face; then, without warning, brought it down on her head. She screamed. He struck her again, on the back, then dropped the milk, deciding he preferred his knuckles. He held her face straight before him and punched. She felt her lip split, and the warmth of the blood as it reached her tongue. Where he had hit her, she expected pain, but her face felt numb. He hit her again, on the side of the head, so her ear sang. She dropped to her knees, fell on to all fours, and tried to crawl. For a moment, he held her back by her hair, until a clump came away in his hand, and he let go, to hold it up and look at what he had done. Sensing escape, she scrambled towards the underside of the table, but he kicked her hard up the backside, between the cheeks. She screamed again; or perhaps she had been screaming all along. He bent to grab her foot and, pulling her flat on to her face, dragged her back, full length, to the centre of the floor where he could get at her. He kicked her in the ribs, and on her right side, something gave with excruciating pain. She curled into a ball, as small as she could make, forearms protecting her bleeding scalp, and he kept kicking, and kicking, and kicking, panting with the effort he was making. Then consciousness began to fade; an unknown voice inside was chanting, Soon be over, soon be over. Then the kicking stopped.

  She stayed where she was, curled tight, arms around her head. She waited, not moving, trying to get a sense of where he was, what he was doing, what he was thinking. Minutes passed, in silence. The fear of renewed attack began to leave her.

  She lowered her arms and opened her eyes. She could see his legs; he was still standing just in front of her. She raised her eyes further. His head was bowed on to his chest, his fists were clenched, and he was weeping.

  Unsure which way to move to stand with the least pain, she pushed herself on to her knees and sat back on her feet. Dazed, and faint, for a long while she remained still. He took a tentative step forward, but she held a hand up to him, and he stepped away. Wincing, clutching her ribs where the pain was worst, she grasped a corner of the table and heaved herself to her feet. She limped into the bedroom and lay down on the bed.

  She heard the creaking of a floorboard as he appeared in the doorway, and turned her face towards him. His eyes were soft, sorry and swollen.

  ‘Irini,’ he said. ‘Irinaki. Are you all right?’ She turned her face away. He sat down heavily on the bed, and tried to take her hand; she pulled it away.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Just leave me alone,’ she said. Her voice sounded strange, unlike herself.

  ‘Irini . . .’ His eyes filled again with tears. ‘Irini, I can’t take any more. I can’t stand it, the thought of you and him . . .’

  She shouted, ‘Leave me alone!’

  He stood, and paused a moment in the doorway, afraid to say more out of fear of the loss of her he was certain to provoke. She heard him shuffle away, like an old man, into the living room, and the creak of the sofa as he lay down.

  She thought because of the pain and shock that she wouldn’t sleep; but sleep must have come, because he woke her. He was out on the roof; he was sitting where on summer nights they used to sit together, holding hands. He was out there, alone in the cold, and he was singing. No words were decipherable – maybe there were none – but the notes of his voice were clear, and the hopelessness of his song clearer still. His soul was in it, and his heartbreak, his loss, his grief and his devastation: all were there. Without words, the lyric shone through: he loved her, he needed her, he couldn’t bear the loss of her, yet she no longer wanted him. He knew he had lost her, and he was singing his pain to the mountains.

  She wiped tears from her eyes. His anguish evoked in her an answering heartache she had not anticipated, a heartache which threatened to dispel the self-righteous anger she felt against him for the violence he had done her, and that anger was her only defence against her shame, and guilt. His pain was unbearable to him, and she was its cause; she had mistreated him and destroyed the life of quiet affection they had enjoyed together. She had let herself love another man. Andreas knew it, and to spare him disgrace, she must take the disgrace on herself, and leave him. It was impossible now that she should stay.

  For some time she lay crying – for herself, for Andreas, for the sadness of their tragedy – until she thought of going to him, and trying to make things right. But as that thought came to her, Love put the Other into her mind, and reminded her that any kind or decent act towards Andreas – any reconciliation – would have unpalatable consequences.

  She could not, would not, leave him. The answer, Love whispered, lay in duplicity. For Andreas, she might feel deeply sorry; but she should use that re
sidual tender feeling to make their life together bearable, until the time was right for the lovers to declare themselves.

  Still Andreas’s song of love for her went on. Draining the last finger of whisky, he hurled the empty bottle into the night; somewhere on the hillside rocks it smashed, and he, despairing, sobbed.

  Irini told herself that she was torn between the old love and the new, but didn’t leave the bed they shared to comfort him. She told herself that it was for the best. But her heart, not fooled, allowed her no illusions; the light of truth shone brightly there, and showed her to herself for what she was – the ruthless, selfish creature Love had made her.

  Eleven

  The fat man paid George the bus driver his fare, and asked to be set down where the road began its downward gradient, just below the windmills. As the bus climbed slowly up the winding road, the fat man looked down on the almost deserted port. Around the headland, a vast, three-decked ferry slid slowly through the cobalt waters towards the harbourside.

  Beyond the windmills, George pulled off the road and braked to a stop. The fat man struggled from his seat, and, thanking the driver, climbed down from the bus, which set off downhill towards the heart of the village.

  Below the road was a strip of grassy meadow where three milk-goats, each tethered by a foreleg, grazed; across the meadow lay a footpath, a muddy track worn through the grass, scattered with the droppings of the goats.

  The fat man, thinking of his newly whitened shoes, hesitated; as he did so, a vehicle came into view below the windmills, making its way towards the village. The car was grey; on its side, it bore white lettering: Astinomia.

  The fat man waited until the car rounded the bend. As its driver caught sight of the fat man, he slowed the car, and brought it to a halt.

  The Chief of Police wound down his window, and smiled a smile which didn’t reach his eyes.