“Your husband was just like him,” she told Mary, looking her straight in her roving eyes.
“Like who?” the priest asked.
“Like you! For not taking responsibility for what you do. For having sex, and then making the woman come up with excuses if there are consequences.”
Athina sank to her knees, plopping her shoulder bag on the floor next to her.
Father Alexis looked alarmed. “What are you doing?”
“I want to make my confession.”
“Here?”
“We did it here, didn’t we? And you have to promise not to interrupt me.”
Father Alexis knelt beside her. For a moment, he wondered if it might not be a ploy to seduce him again. Though the whole affair had been hasty and ended rather miserably, perhaps Athina had, despite all, enjoyed herself. In fact, he assumed she had; he’d been told by more than one housewife that he bested their husbands in bed.
“I will be talking to the Panayia, not to you,” Athina emphasized.
“Her forgiveness is the same as God’s.”
“That’s good, because I think I’m going to need it.”
Athina took a moment to sort out what she wanted to say. Initially she had heaped guilt on herself for making the first move; though when she really analyzed it, Father Alexis had made the first move by kneeling and embracing her legs. How sexy had that been? How seductive his mournful eyes? Yet now he accused her of plotting the whole affair! It was the same double standard that she wanted to portray in the Miss Icon procession. Treat women as sexual objects then blame them for the sex. Force them to come up with all the excuses why it occurred and bear whatever consequences. Mary blamed her pregnancy on God. Father Alexis wanted to blame their encounter on Athina. God may have given Joseph a pass, but Athina was determined the priest wasn’t going to have it so easy.
“Two nights ago, I had sex with a man for the first time,” Athina told the Madonna. “I’m not exactly ashamed that I did. It was going to happen sometime, and not everybody gets married first. You can certainly understand that. Some people think what I did is a sin, so I am asking for forgiveness, even though I am not convinced that what I did qualifies as a sin. I do know it was definitely not the right thing to do in the church, and I am sorry for that.”
Athina paused, and when the priest didn’t reply, she asked, “Aren’t you going to forgive me?”
Father Alexis said, “You are not sufficiently penitent.”
“You said I only had to ask for forgiveness. You didn’t say I had to actually want it.”
“At least you need to be sorry for what you did.”
“You’re not. Besides, I am sorry for what I did, but I am more sorry for my second sin.”
“What is your second sin?”
“I need forgiveness for my first sin first.”
The priest rolled his eyes, exasperated by being caught up in a charade he helped create. “All right. You are forgiven.”
“Thank you. Are you ready for my second sin?”
“I am ready.”
“Technically it’s probably not a sin either, but it definitely should be.” Athina looked again at the Crowned Madonna, and told her, “I did it for the first time with the totally wrong man.”
The priest bristled next to her.
“You already know how icky it was because you were watching the whole time”—she heard his sharp intake of breath—“but that’s not what made it bad. It’s because I don’t even like him.”
“Confession is not a joke!” Father Alexis snapped.
“Today, when he had a chance to say something nice, instead he accused me of planning the whole thing—like I had taken advantage of him, when he actually started it all.”
“You will not continue!”
Athina surprised herself with the courage to add, “Men never take responsibility. Joseph didn’t, and look at the crazy story you had to come up with.”
The priest leapt to his feet. “This is blasphemy! You will not say these things in a church!”
“So, does God forgive me?”
“Get out of this church!”
Athina scrambled to her feet. “You said I only had to ask!”
“Get out!”
The girl stepped out of his reach. “She’s a symbol for the repression of women by men like you! She’s your saint, not ours! That’s going to be my message in the procession.”
“I shouldn’t even allow you to be in the procession,” he hissed.
“Why, because I’m no longer a virgin? If you kick me out, I’ll tell people whose fault that is!”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You don’t think so?”
Trembling with rage, Father Alexis snatched her bag off the floor and hurled it toward the entrance, its contents scattering in every direction. “Get out!” he thundered.
Athina fled for the door grabbing what she could off the floor. Father Alexis, arms outstretched, swooped down on her like a huge bird of prey ready to pounce on his kill. “Get out!” he cried. “Get out!”
The girl screamed and ran outside. If God existed, surely He would strike her with a bolt of lightening for her sacrilegious confession, and a second one to finish her off for insulting the priest. Neither was forthcoming, and the farther she ran from the church, the more justified she felt for having done both. It was sad enough that her first time had to be blamed on anyone, let alone blaming it on her entirely. It made Athina more determined than ever to portray Mary as Everywoman too repressed to express her essential self.
◆ ◆ ◆
“MY GUESS IS THAT THE arsonist is somebody from the village,” Nick told the mayor. They were still in the archives room discussing the case. “A stranger would be noticed in the village. My second guess is that he or she was at the meeting in the church. Arsonists like to see their crimes.”
Who had been in that crowd? both men pondered. Nick remembered a half dozen people he had since seen around the village, but he knew nothing about any of them. The mayor, on the other hand, knew everyone; if not intimately, at least by lineage and general disposition. For his whole life, they had been his friends, neighbors, and now constituents. He couldn’t imagine any of them contemplating such a hateful act. He shook his head, muttering, “It’s impossible that he is from Vourvoulos. Who would do such a thing?”
“Someone with a motive,” Nick replied. “We just don’t know what it is. Tell me about the Takis Fire.”
“That was over three years ago.”
“Wasn’t Takis gone for two years, and when he returned, the fires started?” Nick asked, hating himself for casting suspicion on the young man.
“You think Takis is the arsonist?”
“Tsounis thinks he set one fire purposefully.”
“Because Takis had closed the kitchen shutters.”
“He told me that.”
“Captain Tsounis makes it sound menacing, when it had been Takis’s chore since he was a boy. Sometimes it seemed that she made the kids do things just to make them work. She was hard on them.”
“Hard enough for Takis to want to kill her?”
“I never believed it,” the mayor replied. “Both children were adopted, so they didn’t grow up loved by the whole village in the same way as other children. Vassoula was a little older and more mature, so it may not have mattered so much to her, but for Takis, everything was more difficult. He was quiet, and different in a way you couldn’t say. People explained it by his being adopted, but he never outgrew it, and he never had many friends. He was always a little lonely.”
You don’t outgrow being gay, Nick thought, certain that Takis’s homosexuality explained much of what made him different. For that alone, in any Greek village, he would have grown up lonely.
“The boy made it no secret that he wanted to leave for Australia,” the mayor continued. “He was always doing something to make a little money. Carrying groceries for people. Feeding a pet. Cleaning or fixing something. It wasn’t
much, certainly not enough to buy a ticket, so when people heard about the insurance money, the rumor started that he killed his parents for it. Then when he bought a one-way ticket to Melbourne, people were convinced that he was guilty and running away. In reality, he could only buy a one-way ticket because he didn’t plan to come back in a year, but people twisted things like that and used them against him. The same with the insurance.”
“How is that?”
“He didn’t even know about the insurance until his parents were dead.”
“Then how could it have been his motive to kill them?”
“People didn’t believe him. They said he must have known. Otherwise, why would he contact the orphanage?”
“The orphanage?”
“Markos and Zeeta purchased life insurance when they adopted the kids. The orphanage required it to protect the children until they were eighteen in case something happened to the parents.”
“So why did he contact the orphanage?”
“He says he didn’t. He claims the investigators contacted it for information on their adoption, and the orphanage contacted him.”
“He wasn’t already eighteen?”
“Not for another couple of weeks.”
“How lucky was that?” Nick asked.
The mayor shrugged. “People said the same thing you’re suggesting. I couldn’t believe Takis was a murderer.”
“Maybe an arsonist?”
“I can’t say. In America, quiet boys do bad things. It’s never happened here.”
“How much was the insurance money?”
“Not enough to murder two people.”
“You would be surprised how little people kill for.”
“I hope not for a one-way ticket to Melbourne. He didn’t get much more than that.”
“He got a chance at a new life. That’s worth more than money to a lot of people.”
“It sounds like you think Takis is guilty.”
“I’m not convinced that he’s not,” Nick admitted. “He’s a nice guy, hopefully too nice to do something really terrible.” He started to load things into his daypack. “Well, I’m off chasing fires.”
They climbed the spiral stairs and crossed the grand reception room. At the front door, he said, “Now that the arsonist has made the threat very clear, he’s going to expect you to do something. He’s going to want to know that you are taking him seriously.”
“What should I do?” the mayor asked.
“Call another meeting.”
“Tonight?”
“No, not tonight. The arsonist wants to see us nervous, not panicked. If we panic, he might panic. Tomorrow would be better.”
“Tomorrow is the procession. Everybody will be busy with that.”
“Then the day after,” Nick said. “That might buy us some time. The arsonist will be curious about what’s going to be said.”
◆ ◆ ◆
NORMALLY RIDI RODE HIS SCOOTER home for a short afternoon siesta, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Jura. She had come looking for him, bearing his child, bearing him new responsibilities—certainly new if the child had survived. He didn’t deny his role in his own undoing, nor did he want to discount their lifelong friendship, ending in a startlingly passionate though brief affair; and yet, he felt ambushed. It left him with a sinking feeling in his stomach. All his hard work, the future he had planned, his love for Athina: all were threatened. How could it have happened? He had resisted temptation so many times; why did he succumb to Jura only days before he departed? And how was it possible that she got pregnant? He had been so careful. He went to a pharmacy in Tirana where he could anonymously finger through the packets of condoms, never imagining so many choices— extra thin, pre-lubed, flavored—and ultimately settling on extra thick: they sounded the safest.
Safe! He wanted to weep, he felt so vulnerable.
The note, saying the clinic was closed, was still taped to the door. How could it have been only that morning that he saved the girl from drowning, or first saw that note? In half a day, he had endured an age of worries. That very morning he had learned, in the same breath, that he was a father and then not. He might have had a son if the clinic had been better equipped to save a preemie after the heavy, pounding sea beat him from his mother’s belly. The notion of having lost his first son deepened Takis’s gloom as he went inside.
The doctor’s door was ajar.
“Doctor?” he said softly.
He heard a chair scoot back. A moment later, the doctor stood in her open door. “Hello, Ridi,” she said, and gave him a warm smile.
“Jura is okay?”
“I told her she lost the baby.”
“She will not die, will she?”
“No, she will not die. She is weak and very sad. She needs time to heal.”
“It is okay if I see her?”
“Of course. She would like that. Her door is open.” The doctor smiled and went back into her office.
Ridi tapped on Jura’s door, heard nothing and went inside. The little light squeaking past the shutters plunged the rest of the room into darkness. Approaching the lumpy bed, at first he couldn’t see the girl. “Jura?” She didn’t stir, and he stepped closer. “Jura?”
She rolled onto her back; her face the same gray as her sheets. “Are you here, Ridi?”
“I’m here.”
“It scared me when I woke up and you were gone.”
“I had to go to work.”
“I thought you had left me.”
“I’m here now. Don’t be scared.”
“Sit here, Ridi, next to me where I can see you.”
He scooted onto the edge of the bed. “The doctor says that you are going to be okay.”
“How can I be okay again? I lost our baby.”
He touched her arm. “She told me.”
She clutched his hand, and whimpered, “It was a boy.”
“I know.”
“He might have been your son.”
“Might have been?” For a fleeting second, Ridi wondered if his paternity was in doubt.
“If he had lived. I know you don’t want to believe me, but I have only been with you.”
“Then I have truly lost a son.”
“Are you angry with me, Ridi?”
“Why would I be angry with you?”
“For coming to find you.”
“Of course I’m not angry, but why did you come through Turkey? Didn’t you have a passport? Albanians can come to Greece. You know that.”
“It was stolen at the border. There was a crowd and people were pushing and I was pickpocketed. I was frantic. You can’t imagine! I knew I didn’t have time to get a new passport before the baby came, and then I would need a passport for the baby. I had to come now and a man said he could help me. He said he could bring me to your island.”
“He probably stole your passport so you’d need his help. That’s how the smugglers operate. It was dangerous for you.”
“I wouldn’t have come without Ruben.”
“Ruben? Your brother?”
“He took me to the border, and when my passport was stolen, he said the same thing, it was dangerous for me to go alone with that man. So he said he’d come with me to find you. Did he drown?”
“They’re searching for all the men.”
“The other four were brothers. Ruben didn’t know how to swim. None of us did.”
“Which makes what you did even crazier.”
“We pretended to be husband and wife so the other men wouldn’t try to touch me.”
“You should’ve turned back. You should’ve gone home.”
“After a week, it was so hard we almost did, but then we heard borders were closing everywhere and I was afraid I might not be let back into Albania. If I didn’t have a passport, how would they know I wasn’t a refugee? I didn’t want our baby born in a camp, and every day we were one day closer to you. I wanted you to feel him kick. He was so strong, and now I’ve lost him. I’m so sorry tha
t I lost him!”
Ridi touched her arm. “It’s okay. At least you’re alive.”
“A baby was my only chance. I knew you would never abandon your child. I thought, if only I could get pregnant!”
“You thought what?”
“I wanted it to be a boy. I was sure you would never abandon a boy.”
“You tried to get pregnant?”
“And now he’s dead!”
Ridi pulled away from her. “What did you do?”
The girl brushed away the hairs stuck to her cheeks. “I know what I did was wrong.”
“Tell me what you did.”
“I poked holes in your things.”
“My things?”
“Your rubber things. With a needle so you wouldn’t notice.”
“You poked holes in my condoms?”
“At least two or three holes. They were very thick.”
“I know. I chose them to protect us. Both of us.”
“I’m sorry, Ridi. I am truly sorry.”
“You’re sorry? You did all this to trap me? To make me stay with you?”
“To let me escape with you.”
“By getting pregnant? That’s not usually an escape.”
“It was my only chance.”
“Damn you, Jura. Damn you! Those weren’t my condoms, those were our condoms, to protect both of us from something we didn’t want.”
“He was your son, Ridi, however it happened.”
“You stole him from me. The last thing I wanted to give you was a child. You cheated me, and you cheated him!”
“He’s why I came to find you.”
“It wasn’t the way to make me love you.”
“You won’t abandon me, will you, Ridi? Not after all I’ve been through for you. Not now that I’m here.”
Ridi couldn’t answer her. There were too many things to think about, and he couldn’t think, not in that suffocating room. He fled, and before he was out the clinic’s front door, the girl’s mournful cry erupted. He heard the doctor scrape back her chair to go and comfort her.
◆ ◆ ◆
LYDIA HAD MAPPED THE LATER fires describing physical markers, much as old maps had, placing a property line as so many meters from a rock outcropping or corner of another terraced plot. It wasn’t exactly GPS, but Nick usually found the scorched patch within minutes. For the tenth fire, there were no markers, only an X approximating where the fire had been. He poked along the valley’s steep hillside trying to reconcile curves on the map with bends in the road. Deciding he had arrived, he pulled over.
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