He crossed the room to the files containing the land documents. Their disorganization was apparent from the crumpled papers crammed into voluminous folders covered with scribbling. The more important documents were relatively better sorted, and he soon found the cadastral maps for Vourvoulos and the area around it; though, as the mayor had predicted, they were far from exact. An effort had been made to create proper maps by assigning GPS coordinates to specific geographic features—a rock outcropping, bend in a stream, or turn in a fence—then extrapolating property boundaries from there. It was a nice, neat exercise in good governance, the outcome of which met with fierce hostility. Rolled together with each map was another copy for public comment. On them, people had redrawn property lines, crossing out names and adding their own, repeatedly writing diko mou!—mine!—and signing the changes, defiantly staking their claims to plots of meager land.
Nick opened his phone to retrieve the GPS coordinates he recorded that morning for the half dozen fires he’d located, some not far off the road, others that took trampling through rough fields to discover. They had all been close to small abandoned settlements or a lone house—but always a building. None had turned into a major fire, which Nick attributed to planning and more than a little luck. The island’s long dry summer could turn almost any spark into an inferno, so especially in those months, the arsonist must have selected windless nights to set them. He’d also chosen isolated clumps of bushes and trees, lessening the chance of the flames spreading. No, the arsonist hadn’t failed in setting a bigger fire. He was playing a game. Toying with the village. Waiting for it to catch on to what was really happening. He wanted to torture it with fear before destroying it. Somehow the village must have tortured him.
He set about the task of pinpointing the fires’ GPS positions on the cadastral map, which proved to be a guessing game. Its scale was too small, the individual plots tiny, and the owners’ names, scribbled and overlapping, made it a palimpsest requiring an archaeologist’s expertise to decipher. Worse, two names had been recorded for most properties straddling the valley: Greek names that seemed to come from everywhere—Kritikos, Rodinos, Gianniakos—followed by bracketed names suggesting that, at one time, the Efendi family owned much of the land. Mehmed Emin Efendi. Yusuf Ozturk Efendi. Omar Aga Efendi. The Turkish landowners before the Exchange, or so he concluded.
Could that be the connection? The arsonist selected his sites because they once belonged to the Efendi family? Why would that be? A feud, or revenge for some ancient wrong? Was the answer in the file drawers surrounding him? He was wondering where to start his search when Mayor Elefteros appeared on the precarious spiral stairs carrying a tray.
“I made coffee,” he said. “Greek coffee.”
Nick took the tray and set it on the table. “As long as it has caffeine, I’ll drink it.”
They picked up the demitasses and sipped from them.
“Who were the Efendis?”
“The Efendis?”
“It looks like they owned almost everything in the valley at one time. Here,” Nick indicated, and ran through the names he had been able to make out.
The mayor chuckled.
“What is it?”
“Efendi is not a name.”
“It’s not?”
“It means ‘sir’ only they put it at the end of their names.”
“They put ‘sir’ on land maps?”
“Do you think that Sir Thomas More’s property was recorded under the name of Tommy More?”
Nick chuckled. “So much for my brilliant Turkish connection.” In an instant, his first hopeful clue to the arsonist had been eliminated. The family to whom he wanted to link the fires was no family at all.
Memories.
That’s what the mayor told him that he would find. Obviously, memories of some sort motivated the arsonist. Would he find them buried in the memory drawers? Would he recognize them? He hoped he had those answers before it was too late.
◆ ◆ ◆
FATHER ALEXIS HAD GROWN UP in foul circumstances: the lower end of working class in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Athens that reeked of petroleum from the refinery next door. It was the reason they lived there—his father worked the lines off-loading crude from tankers—and it was also why his mother couldn’t leave. His father had been killed in an explosion, leaving her too destitute to move. She was literally stuck, and Father Alexis—back then still a boy called Manolis—would have been, too, if not for the Church. Priests recruited boys who, like him, had only two other options: the military or the refinery. Young Manolis didn’t leave it to chance. He approached the local priest, seducing him with his good looks, sucking up to earn a ticket to somewhere else. That ticket took him away but didn’t make him rich, and as much as Father Alexis thought chiefly of himself, he wanted to buy an apartment for his mother where she wouldn’t have to smell her husband’s oily death every day.
The priest carried his easel from the vestry and set it next to the altar. On it, he placed his copy of the church’s renowned Crowned Madonna. The original icon hung overhead. He had only a few touch-ups before his copy would be indistinguishable from it. The painting depicted Mary swathed in a soft teal robe, idly leaning back, disdainful of baby Jesus nursing at her breast, her expression bored and sulky at the same time. It was one of the church’s smaller icons, but the Madonna’s dazzling crown—a gem-studded two-tiered affair with double tiaras joined together by rounded posts—made it the most exceptional.
The humble church boasted a number of notable icons, which Father Alexis had already capitalized on, as he had in his other parishes. Each village had been more miserable than the last—one reeked of pigs, another of an abattoir, and now Vourvoulos with its sardines—but they had a wealth of icons that Father Alexis painstakingly reproduced. At the seminary he had been required to master art restoration, the notion being that every priest should know how to repair aging icons or restore them if damaged in the country’s many earthquakes. He discovered he had a knack for precisely matching colors and recreating textures, and taught himself how to brighten icons by dabbing away years of soot, while using ash from incense to smudge his copies—rendering both the same dull sheen. By the time he crossed the line between reproductions and forgeries, his images could have fooled the original artists themselves.
The priest moved a stand of votive oil lamps to the side and folded back the ancient cloth on the stone altar to not risk damaging it with paint. Before he started, he opened the church door for air circulation; he didn’t like the buildup of fumes from paint and turpentine. The priest didn’t worry if someone caught him at work making his copies. He had a reputation for painting the most authentic fake icons. It was how he managed to steal the original ones.
He unrolled the rags in which he kept his brushes and picked up his palette, and looked the Crowned Madonna in the eye. Turning back to his easel, his copy stared back at him, too. Though disconcerting to have two Madonnas giving him a disapproving look, at least he had succeeded in capturing their roving eyes.
Engrossed in his task, Father Alexis didn’t notice anyone enter the open church door, and jumped with fright when he heard, “She is awesomely perfect!”
He whirled around.
It was Athina. Like the Virgin he was copying, she had draped a teal blue cloth loosely over her shoulders; and though not cradling a suckling infant, her clinging T-shirt left no doubt where a baby would press its hungry lips. The young priest, confronted by those demanding nipples, stepped back and bumped into his easel, smearing paint on his hand.
“Oh, look what I made you do!”
“It’s nothing.” Father Alexis rummaged in his voluminous pockets and pulled out a tissue. Stuck to it was Lydia’s gooey green mint from the night before. Disgusted, he stuffed the offensive tissue back into his pocket and from another fished out his reliable flask of Sporell. Rubbing the clear gel on his hands, he asked, “Do you want some?”
Father Alexis believed that if the wor
ld had more Sporell users, it would be healthier, and certainly less contagious. But at that moment, it wasn’t about disease he was thinking, it was about the nymph in front of him. Unlike his Roman Catholic counterparts, Orthodox priests were permitted to marry (which reduced but didn’t eliminate their penchant for altar boys), so by extension it wasn’t a sin to fantasize about sex; and about Athina, the priest was definitely entertaining unholy thoughts.
Athina sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like anything.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
“Does it feel icky to touch it?”
“It’s like hand lotion.”
“It’s not creamy.”
“Do you want me to rub it in for you?”
She held out her hands, palms up, and he took them. He split the glop of Sporell between them and began to rub it in. He hadn’t intended to give her a hand massage, but found himself pressing his thumbs into her palms and slipping his fingers between hers. He was reminded of when he was a little boy, his mother rubbed sunscreen all over him, taking extra care to work it in between his fingers and toes. He had tingled then, and he was tingling again, his desire for the girl barely concealed by his robe. To try to think of something else, he glanced up at the icon of the Madonna. “You look like her!” he blurted.
“Who?”
“You even have the Virgin’s hands!”
Athina wasn’t sure how to take that, especially since her own thoughts were anything but virginal. He might be a dubious priest, but his good looks were indisputable: a strong nose that women whispered guaranteed an eager lover, and a stubbly beard that every girl fantasized scratching her in places indecent to think about in church.
“There,” he said, giving her hands a last good squeeze. “That should keep you until you have a chance to wash them.”
“Thank you, Father.”
“What brings you to church this morning? I don’t suppose you have come for confession?”
Athina blushed. Could he know what she had been thinking about his fingers and scratchy beard? “Do people still do that?”
“Do what?”
“Confess. I mean, do people really tell you everything they’ve done?”
“Not everything is a sin. Besides, people have many reasons for confessing. Though I hope you are still young enough that your sins are only in your thoughts.”
Oh, my God! He had read her mind!
Wanting to change the subject, Athina pulled her phone from her bag. “Can I take her picture?” Without waiting for an answer, she started clicking away.
Startled, it took Father Alexis a few seconds to step between her and the forgery. “Wouldn’t you prefer pictures of the original?”
Athina already had enough photos and scrolled back through them. “These will definitely help Ridi make me a crown.”
“Ridi?”
“My boyfriend. Well, not yet. He wants to be my boyfriend. I want him to make me a crown. For the contest.”
“The contest?”
“The Miss Icon Contest, silly—I mean, Father. It’s your contest. Anyway, I’m going as Mary, and Grandma said I should have a crown so people will know who I am instantly without having to be told. I’m not going to be dressed exactly traditionally and I don’t want them to be confused.”
“Ah, yes, the procession,” Father Alexis replied, a little confused himself. “Mary has worn many crowns. You could have picked a simpler design.”
“It has to be this crown because most of the people here are such cows that they’ve never left the island—or hardly ever—so this is the only version of Mary they really know. Anyway, Ridi won’t mind. He’ll do anything for me.”
“You are lucky to have such an admirer.”
“I know. Do you think my idea to portray Mary as a modern woman is stupid? My mom, of course, thinks my whole idea for Mary is stupid. Everything I do is stupid. She hates me.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.”
“Okay, she doesn’t hate me. She only hates how I look, what I do, and what I think. I get calls on my mobile sometimes at night and my mom acts like I’m breaking one of the Ten Commandments.”
“Moses was not a modern man,” Father Alexis said.
“That’s funny,” Athina replied, making a mental note to Google “Moses” later.
“It sounds like you need someone understanding to talk to.”
“Do you mean you? My mom would freak if she knew I was talking to you. To start with, you’re a priest, if you want to know why.”
“God will forgive her.”
“She would scream if she heard you say that!”
“Screaming moms. Now we don’t need more of those, do we?”
Athina, realizing the priest was flirting with her, thought it was weird but liked it. She tilted her head to imitate Mary in the painting. “Do you think I’ll make a good Mary?”
Before his eyes, she transformed herself into the Crowned Madonna. Her lifted chin and angled head conveying disdain for all things secular—including the infant at her breast. For the first time, Father Alexis realized that the Madonna was truly frowning at the child at her nipple, as if he were just the hungry Son of Somebody and not the Son of God. “You will be perfect,” he assured Athina.
“You better wait to see my costume before you say that.”
“I am certain it will be good.”
“A second ago, you said I would be perfect!”
Father Alexis smiled. Now she was flirting with him.
◆ ◆ ◆
IT SEEMED TO RIDI THAT all he did was fold blue tablecloths. Or more precisely, fold, unfold, and refold them. He was forever setting tables for meals not served. Lydia was struggling financially; that was evident from how many tablecloths he returned to the clean cupboard every night.
That evening, only a couple of tables were occupied, though admittedly it was on the early side of dinner hour. The tourists had abandoned Greece sooner in the season than usual, or so the locals complained. Ridi couldn’t say with any authority. He’d arrived about that time last year when their numbers would be diminishing anyway. Still, tourists had been scared off by news coverage of the grim refugee situation on the island, when in fact the vast majority never passed through the village. Those who did never caused a problem except to slow down the line at the grocery store. Reality would have been more truthfully portrayed by filming the half dozen men hanging out on the dock and smoking. Syrians that evening, Ridi guessed; he heard them chatting in Arabic, their quiet voices carrying over the flat water as the first traces of sunset appeared in the sky.
At least setting up tables let him keep his back to Vassoula’s Bar. She was always flirting and going so far as to blow lewd kisses his way. He wasn’t blind. She was the stuff of fantasies. The only woman the village men, as well as himself, could imagine performing certain salacious acts. Ridi had abused himself with notions of her—which always included peeling off her patterned stockings—but that morning, he wasn’t daydreaming about crude sex. Instead he daydreamed about kissing Athina’s pouty lips. Closing his eyes, he whispered aloud, “Toso omorfi eisais!” How beautiful you are!
“Ridi,” he heard, and whirled around.
As if his thoughts had conjured her up, she stood there. “Did I startle you?”
“I was only thinking,” he replied.
“I do that, too, sometimes. Who were you talking to?”
Ridi blushed when he answered, “You.”
“I heard what you said.”
“It’s true!”
“I know. Father Alexis thinks I am beautiful, too.”
“Whose father?”
“Father of no one, silly. He’s the priest. We call priests ‘father’ to subjugate women, though it’s so weird, I can’t explain it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry. All that’s important is that he says I’ll be a perfect Mary.”
“A perfect marry, I agree!” the lovestruck waiter exclaimed.
“And he’s the judge.”
“The judge?” Ridi couldn’t believe his ears. Had Athina arranged for a priest to marry them?
“For the Miss Icon Contest. Have you forgotten?”
“Of course I am not forgotten. I tell everyone to vote for you.”
“But you haven’t seen my costume yet.”
“You will be most the beautiful. Another girl is not possible!”
“I know, and you are so sweet to say so. But people are supposed to vote for my costume, not me, if you understand the difference.”
“I still vote for you.”
“Even if I am the most beautiful girl, I might not win. That’s why Grandma says I need a crown.”
“A crown?”
“Yes, like the Virgin Mother’s.”
The young waiter thought his Greek had improved, but he had no idea what Athina was talking about. “How can a mother be a virgin?”
“That’s my question, too, and my whole point in the contest. I’m trying to say Mary probably wasn’t a virgin but claimed she was because, well, she was only engaged to Joseph, not really married to him. Like that was going to change what they would eventually do. Do you understand?”
“Who is Joseph?”
“Okay, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. Only I need a crown like the Virgin Mother wears. At least in our church she wears one.”
“A crown?”
The girl circled her hands over her head. “A hat for a queen? Do you understand?”
“Yes!”
“Can you make a crown for my costume?”
“Sure I make you a crown. You will be a queen!”
Athina scrolled through the photos on her telephone. “Can you make one like this?”
“You want a crown so tall?” Ridi worried.
“I know, it’s like two crowns in one.”
“It needs an elevator.” He had just learned that word, though without a single elevator in the village, it was unlikely to come in handy.
“You’re not going to disappoint me, are you? Because I’m sure someone can make it.”
Fire on the Island Page 8