“So let’s do one project and shut up half the bellyachers,” Stavros suggested.
“We still have to decide which problem to solve first,” Mayor Elefteros pointed out.
Immediately the women’s shrill voices went into overdrive as did the men’s worry beads. Of course the question had been asked before, but it had been posed rhetorically, not in a state of near emergency. The close call Shirley and Lukas had the night before, and its reminder that the arsonist was creeping ever closer, juxtaposed with the mayor’s acknowledgment that the bell tower was in imminent danger of collapsing, added urgency to the villagers’ dilemma.
“It’s a sacrilege not to ring the bell!” one woman declared.
“Or a blessing,” her husband piped up.
“How do we know that there is an arsonist?” someone wanted to know. “Maybe it’s just a practical joker trying to scare us.”
“Precisely!” said Father Alexis said. “The fire is guesswork, but the crack is a visible fact!”
“Then sell more of your fake icons and fix it yourself!” Petros suggested.
“I can’t paint them as fast as the tower is crumbling!” the priest shot back.
Lydia asked, “Did you bring my map, Dimos?”
The mayor handed it to her.
“I’ll show you how we know there’s an arsonist.” She unfolded it while reminding everyone that there had been eleven fires, if they included the one last night at her parents’ house, and it had to be the same arsonist because the same type of detonator had been used.
She held the map over her head so people could see the line she had drawn on it. “The fires crisscrossed the valley, and that’s why they seemed random. It wasn’t until I mapped the first nine fires that I saw the pattern, and it’s the same for the two since then: each one is a step closer to Vourvoulos.”
“Anybody can draw a line between random dots and make them look like something,” Vassoula scoffed.
“I connected them in chronological order, not randomly. I’d say it’s rather ambitious for a practical joker to situate his fires so precisely. No, it’s a message. Someone has drawn an arrow that points straight at Vourvoulos.”
A worried grumble passed through the crowd, though sentiment remained divided. For every Oh my God! What if she is right? there was a Have you seen the crack in the tower? It’s bigger every day, and every day people walk under it!
“Wouldn’t it be hard to blow up a tank like that?” Takis asked. “Does anyone know?”
Everybody looked expectantly at Lydia, who admitted, “I don’t know.”
A man said, “It would take more than a match, that’s for sure!”
“Or dropping a cigarette while taking a piss behind it, because we’d all be dead by now!” another man added.
“You’re right, it wouldn’t be easy to ignite it,” Nick spoke up.
“Who is that?”
“Superman?”
“He speaks Greek!”
“I know something about tanks and blowing them up. Yours looks like it dates back to World War II. Is that right?” Nick asked.
“Actually, the tank was constructed in 1923,” Captain Tsounis answered. “It was built to refuel boats crossing between here and Turkey during the Exchange.”
Nick knew the captain referred to the two million Greeks and Turks, long-settled in each other’s country, that had been forced to return to ancestral homelands most never knew. “Then that fuel tank is heavy gauge steel, it’s what they used back then,” he replied. “It would take more than a rabbit rifle to ignite it.”
“What about dynamite?” Stavros asked. “That’s easy enough to get.”
“It wouldn’t take much dynamite,” Nick admitted.
“We can’t move the tank,” Captain Tsounis spoke up. “As you all know, we are in a worsening refugee crisis. The numbers are increasing despite the end of summer. If we move the tank, we will have to curtail our operations for several days or weeks, and potentially thousands of people could drown.”
Immediately the villagers were in an uproar.
“My God, thousands! How many does he think are coming?”
“We’re ruined!”
“We’ll lose everything!”
“Let them drown!”
“Quiet everyone! Let Captain Tsounis speak,” Mayor Elefteros said to no avail. “QUIET!”
When the crowd finally quieted, Captain Tsounis said, “When it turned colder, we expected the number of refugees to drop. In fact, they are increasing. About three hundred people land every day along the coast. We pick another hundred out of the water every couple of days.”
“That’s only the number who make it,” Stavros reminded them, and everyone recalled the recent morning when he had returned to port with two young men tangled in his nets. Word spread quickly of his catch that day. Before an ambulance had arrived from the island’s capital to haul away the bodies, the village had turned out to watch the fisherman uncurl their fingers from the yellow nylon mesh and lift them onto the wharf—a visceral reminder of the deadly toll taken by the treacherous narrow channel separating them from Turkey. Desperate refugees, fleeing wars as far away as Afghanistan, sometimes tried crossing with little more than balloons tied at their waists to keep them afloat.
“When is it going to stop?” asked a local restaurant owner. “No one wants to come inside my restaurant when people are sleeping on the sidewalk out front.”
“I don’t have an answer, Petrina, except not soon,” the Coast Guard captain replied. He looked around, his expression solemn, before he added, “The reality is, there are three million refugees in Turkey who want to come here.”
The number stunned them. They gasped as if receiving a collective blow. Across their frightened faces sailed the armada of rafts they imagined bearing down on them. “Three million?” Petrina barely managed to ask.
“Shoot them before they ever get to shore!” an older woman cried. “When they do, they have more rights than we do! SHOOT THEM!”
The murderous outburst from a village matriarch hushed the crowd. People glanced at each other. Who else harbored such dark thoughts? How much did they personally agree?
“No, we can’t let them drown and we can’t shoot them,” Lydia said. “Tourism is already bad enough. Mass murders and dead bodies washing ashore won’t help any of our businesses.”
“You just want to keep selling your sandwiches!” Petros sniped.
“You know that’s a lie,” Lydia shot back.
“I can vouch for her,” Takis said. “We’re ten meters apart when we’re handing out stuff and she doesn’t sell anything.”
“You are both traitors!” the matriarch shouted.
“Hush, Myra, you’re embarrassing yourself,” a friend told her.
“I won’t be quiet! People in this village go to bed hungry every night, but who’s giving them free sandwiches and sesame bars? Who helps us when the tourists stop coming and our businesses are ruined? No one! We have to help ourselves. But first, we have to stop them. STOP THEM!”
For a long moment, no one spoke in an uneasy silence. “It’s a stressful time for everyone,” Mayor Elefteros finally remarked. “If anyone is truly going to bed hungry, I will find a way to help. Captain Tsounis, did you want to add anything?”
“In fact, I do. In my opinion, the fuel tank is a threat, arsonist or not, and I have shared my reasons with the mayor.”
“Which I put into my request to Athens,” Mayor Elefteros confirmed.
“The tank has developed hairline fractures with some seepage which increases the risk that it could catch fire. Also, its base is showing signs of exhaustion that someone with dynamite could easily exploit. I’m very skeptical that the tank can survive a move. We need a new tank first before we dismantle the old one, if you want to make sure the Coast Guard stays operational here.”
“In which case, we will absolutely need financial help from Athens,” the mayor added.
“Which you won’t get,” Vassoula said.
“Then why not repair the bell tower?” the toothless widow asked.
“Precisely!” exclaimed Father Alexis. “Let us pray!”
◆ ◆ ◆
SEATED AT HER KITCHEN TABLE, Shirley put a second drop of precious truffle oil on a cloth and offered it to Dingo. Again the dog turned his ungrateful snout away. He usually drooled at its funky odor—to Shirley, it reeked of something half-decomposed—but dogs liked odd scents, the stinkier the better. That day, though, Dingo wasn’t interested in sniffing anything. Obviously he was put off by the pervasive smell of smoke. She hoped not for long. They had made a small investment of both money and hope in training the dog to sniff out truffles; specifically rare white ones, and their growing season would peak in a couple of weeks. They didn’t need much to replace what little money Lukas made from fishing, which he should have stopped doing years ago, but kept on as long as he could. Like everyone, they’d been punished by the chronic economic crisis, but at seventy, his knees could barely keep him upright through rough seas. For what people were prepared to pay for a nauseating white fungus, Dingo only needed to find a half dozen of the truffles a year to offset Lukas’s fishing income—itself dwindling in the overfished Mediterranean.
Shirley’s sense of smell was disoriented, too. She felt plunged into an ashtray. Cutting a lemon in half, she inhaled its bitter freshness, and pressed it to the dog’s nose. He would have nothing to do with that either. “Oh, Dingo,” she fretted.
The dog hadn’t left her side all night, even though Lukas didn’t like him sleeping in their bedroom. He claimed Dingo’s solemn eyes looked disdainfully at his every lovemaking move, but that night Lukas had relented. Sure enough, he awoke feeling amorous, surprising Shirley, because she hadn’t spiked his usual nightcap of ouzo with Viagra, something she’d started doing some months earlier, with results they both enjoyed. That morning he had managed entirely on his own with Dingo as a witness. Their sex had been good at every age, but that morning Lukas’s lovemaking was especially desperate; driven, she knew, by the loss of his beauties. She gripped him tighter to encourage his pleasure, wanting him to forgive himself for the sawed-off trees in the yard. When they finished, he didn’t roll away but held onto her, and she nuzzled his broad hairy chest, enjoying their extra intimacy despite his stale breath. Only when the dog rested his chin on the bed, groaning pitifully for attention, did they stir themselves to face the reality of that first day after the fire.
They glanced out the windows to confirm that the nightmare had been real, not imagined, and tried not to look again. They had seen enough by moonlight to know the extent of the heartbreak. They went about their routine as if nothing were different—using the toilet, brushing their teeth, making coffee—but it was all different because of their lack of annoyance at getting in each other’s way or hogging the bathroom. They remarked how much worse the fire could have been: the house had been saved, the smell of smoke wasn’t too bad, luckily a stranger had rescued Dingo.
Lukas left to have his usual coffee with “the boys,” the old men who gathered every morning in the port to rant about the news in general and the government in particular, all the while puffing on cigarettes that stained their bristly moustaches yellow. Village life didn’t offer much stimulation—Stavros accidentally shooting himself in the foot while hunting rabbits was about the most exciting story of the year—so the boys would exaggerate anything, turning their small sardines into Moby Dicks; but that morning the only story told would be last night’s fire, and that needed no embellishment. Out the window, Shirley watched her husband pause on the porch judging his Pyrrhic victory. He had saved his home by sacrificing what he loved the most about it. Lukas would get no pleasure exaggerating that story.
He walked slump-shouldered to his car, and that’s when Shirley finally broke down and cried. Dingo pressed against her leg to comfort her. His snout sought her hand and licked it, and that made her weep more. “Oh Dingo! Dingo! Our beauties!” But they weren’t their real beauties, Shirley reminded herself—though sometimes the three of their four daughters who had left for jobs in Germany felt as lost to her as the fallen trees outside. She sighed, pulling herself together. “What’s done is done,” she murmured.
She fluffed a couple of wispy scarves around her neck, hoisted her shoulder bag, and braced herself for her first foray into the charcoaled landscape. Her car was still parked on the road and she had to wade through ashes piled ankle deep by the breeze. Dingo, heels, nose to the ground, sniffing the singed earth behind her. Fretful that his sense of smell was permanently doomed, she hoped to rouse the dog’s enthusiasm by flinging open the car’s back door and exclaiming, “Let’s go truffling!”
Apparently the dog’s sense of smell was seriously compromised. Not noticing the cats, he jumped into the back seat and provoked an explosive hiss as the animals attacked their cages intent on shredding him. If Dingo had wings, he couldn’t have flown any faster out of the car.
◆ ◆ ◆
EVERY TIME HER DAUGHTER CONVINCED Shirley to drive the stray cats to the veterinarian’s to get them fixed, she swore that she would never do it again. There was always an upsetting event, and that morning was the last straw. The miserable animals, forgotten overnight, had horribly messed themselves; and now, moaning like witches in heat, clawed at their cages until their paws bled. The car reeked despite having the windows open and the air conditioning at full blast. To no avail, Shirley pressed a lemon to her nose. Dingo, upright in the passenger seat, trembled each time the cats’ tortured chorus swelled.
Shirley pitched into the harbor’s tiny parking lot. “Oh, thank God!” she heaved when she saw a free space. She fled the car, gulping fresh air. “What a horror! A dreadful horror!”
Dingo bounded out after her. The cats howled in unison, and Shirley slammed the door on them. “Oh shut up!” she yelled, though in fact she felt sorry for the animals. If she had lost what they had lost, she’d be howling too; and a moment later she was howling “Lydia!” all the way down the wharf, her scarves trailing behind her.
Her daughter glanced up from taking an order. “Oh crikey, what now?”
Shirley collapsed into a chair. “I am never never never taking your cats to the vet’s again. My car is ruined!” She pressed the lemon to her nose and tossed it into the harbor. “Even my lemon smells like cat piss!”
“Ridi!” Lydia shouted.
He peered from the kitchen.
“Bring Mum a fresh lemon!”
“Bring Mum her wine!” Shirley bellowed. “And remember my ice!”
“Isn’t it a little early for wine?”
She scowled at her daughter. “It’s too early for cat piss, too!”
A minute later, Ridi appeared with the iced wine. Lydia told him to get the cats out of Shirley’s car and clean up their mess, and he went back inside for a bucket and rags.
Athina, fuming, said to her mother, “They’re your cats and Grandma’s car. Why does Ridi have to do it?”
“They are not my cats. They are feral cats, and Ridi works for me.”
“He’s a waiter. He’s not your slave.”
“Whose job should it be? Your grandmother’s?”
“Why do all the worst jobs have to be Ridi’s? Because he’s Albanian?”
“It’s not because he’s Albanian.”
“Then why?”
Her daughter’s question brought Lydia up short. She didn’t want the girl to have an affair with the boy, or worse, marry him. She admitted she felt that way because he was an Albanian, but she didn’t like to think that she singled him out for the worst jobs, either.
Ridi came back sloshing sudsy water out of a bucket. “Is the car open?”
“Open? Can’t you smell it from here?” Shirley asked. “And you’ll need more water than that.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Lydia said to Athina.
“I’m right?” The girl was immediately suspicious. Her mother rarely ever conceded anything, and nothing so easi
ly.
“I need Ridi at the restaurant.” She took the bucket and handed it to her daughter. “I want you to clean your grandmother’s car.”
Athina looked incredulously at the bucket she suddenly found herself holding. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, she cannot,” Ridi protested. “It is a job too dirty.”
“We all have to do dirty jobs occasionally.”
“But the cages are too heavy for her to carry.”
“Well, she manages to carry trays of food when it suits her mood, so I think she can manage a cat. Only be careful of their claws when you let them out. As soon as you’re done, we’ll rehearse for the procession.”
“I hate you,” Athina said, and stomped off.
As Lydia watched her go, she saw her hips in her daughter’s, and recognized her own strong will as well. She was determined that they would be friends—someday.
◆ ◆ ◆
WHEN FATHER ALEXIS STARTED RINGING the bell, the mayor had correctly assumed it was to call a meeting to assail his injunction against doing that very thing. He explained to Nick how the bell tower’s repair had become inextricably entwined with the village’s response— or lack thereof—to the threat posed by the arsonist. Nick had agreed that he should attend the village meeting, but let the mayor go ahead of him, thinking it better if they weren’t seen together. When he’d entered the churchyard five minutes later, he’d discovered a boy joyriding the bell’s rope. Stavros, whom he recognized from the port, ran outside to stop him. He hadn’t shouted, instead waving his arms to get the boy’s attention. Evidently the kid was deaf. Nick had trailed the fisherman back inside.
In all likelihood, the arsonist was a local someone with a grievance, he or she had probably been in the crowd. Nick had observed the villagers as they argued, looking for an expression that seemed more eager than concerned about the prospects of a calamitous fire, or maybe smugly satisfied for managing to create an atmosphere of fear. But he’d noticed no untoward expression; no especially smug or pleased look among their genuinely worried faces.
Takis and Vassoula had stood together. Shoulder-to-shoulder, they seemed a team, yet other than both having black hair, the brother and sister bore little resemblance. Hers was a haunting beauty, the kind that launched ships and broke souls, whereas Takis, with lively blue eyes and bushy curls, was robust by comparison, and youthful. Nick guessed him to be in his early twenties, which made him at least ten years younger, which marred his passing fantasy of seducing the youth who would probably regard him as an old man. In a way, it was a relief. When Nick was twelve, he’d been burned in a fire that left his back badly scarred. He’d grown up shy about his body, never confident of his rugged handsomeness, frequently relieved a sexual encounter he fantasized never transpired. Takis was so beautiful, he was intimidating.
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