Cartes Postales From Greece

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘I heard that he reached Sicily. There was never any expectation that he would return, but he left me with this duty that I still perform today. Each time I see a butterfly, I wonder if this is the sign that Icarus’s soul has flown. But I cannot be sure, so I continue. And I will do so for ever.

  ‘This island, henceforth named after Icarus, has always been a place where people lived long lives. There have been plenty of theories about why this should be. In the days when Daedalus came, we ate little except fish, then we discovered the hot, radioactive springs, then everything we ate was organic, and nowadays people here keep their own idiosyncratic timetable and have very little stress. So who knows why other people live so long? But I know why I still live. Because I must.

  ‘I keep the location a secret so that it doesn’t get trampled by tourists, but I visit Icarus every day, just as I promised his father I would.

  ‘As the years go by, real history, actual events, begin to be treated as legend. Listeners lose their belief in the reality. But this, the first plane crash, happened, right over there.

  ‘And the exquisite feather you are now looking at is from Icarus’s wings …’

  Ariadne did not let go of her feather, it was far too precious to her, but everyone gathered around to touch it. I will never forget its silkiness under my fingertip. And I shall never forget this extraordinary woman. I am sure if I go back in another thirty years she will be there, waiting to retell her tale, her platinum hair still thick and strong and her skin like a girl’s. The original Ariadne, daughter of King Minos, who was so cruelly dumped by Theseus, found new love on Naxos, where Bacchus fell in love with her and made her his queen. It’s yet another Greek myth about the mending of a broken heart. Bacchus immortalised his beloved by throwing her crown into the sky, where it turned into a constellation, the Corona.

  Immortality and mortality are ever-present themes in Greece, both ancient and modern. Death is everywhere you go in this country. There are death notices on the lamp posts, cemeteries on the edge of every small village and memorials by the roadside. I was more conscious of mortality during those months than ever before in my four and half decades. And yet, I saw that people challenged death, in the way they drank and danced and loved. In all the excess I witnessed, I detected defiance.

  Ikaria is a huge rock in the middle of the sea, where people have survived great hardship from invaders and the elements themselves. It is not a place to feel sorry for yourself, and during a religious festival that took place while I was there I drank and feasted until late in the night.

  This is where I learned to dance, where I found myself taken into a circle that moved clockwise, slowly and rhythmically. I towered above everyone else there, but they gave me warm smiles. The Ikariotikos soon sped up, but no one lost patience with me as I attempted to master the steps. I was part of a single entity, one organism with a hundred legs. I closed my eyes and went with the rhythm, and now I believe I could do this ancient dance in my sleep.

  I stayed above an empty shop in Evdilos, swimming in a hot spring almost every day, talking to strangers. I went to find Ariadne again and we drank a coffee in the sunshine.

  Without prompting, she looked at me and said:

  ‘You’ve heard of Diphilus?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘He was a Greek playwright and is supposedly the person who said: “Time is a physician that heals every grief.”’

  ‘Do you think that was true for Daedalus?’ I asked.

  ‘Eventually,’ she said. ‘But more importantly, I think it is working for you.’

  I cannot account for why she said it. I had never talked to her about myself. But perhaps when you have lived for thousands of years, you develop a sixth sense.

  Ikaria is where I finally felt truly alive once more, where I found myself wanting to live into old age, rather than not wanting to live at all. I can no longer tell you that without you these places are nothing. I have learned that the source of joy is not to be found in another person and we should not look for someone to complete ourselves.

  It is July now. I had been travelling for forty weeks (I had counted each one as it passed), but the road did not lose its fascination even once. I never had any idea what I would discover at the next place, or the next, or the next, and I know I haven’t finished. For now, though, I am happy to be still. That’s the reason I stopped sending postcards.

  I am no longer travelling. I arrived back in Athens after Ikaria and decided to stay.

  It is not an easy city to live in. At street level, life is difficult. The traffic is terrible, the paving stones are broken, many of the shops are boarded up and there is graffiti everywhere. Some of the time, life comes completely to a halt when there is a strike or a demonstration, and then it’s often a bad idea to be too near the centre of the city. Things can get violent. People here are angry with the economic situation: the old people whose pensions have been cut and the young who have no jobs – and almost everyone in between whose earnings are taxed to the point that they end up with nothing. Added to all of this are the needs of the refugees who have arrived in Athens, many of them camping outside in the squares – people from war-torn countries with nothing but what they stand up in.

  Fortunately, there is more to Athens than this unhappiness and discord. There are certain things that cannot be destroyed, such as the Greek habits of hospitality and storytelling.

  Where I live, I have a beautiful roof terrace from which I can see the sea, the mountains and the Acropolis. I have a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. I can watch the sunset in one direction and the sunrise in the other. I can see the lights of the ferries making their way to the islands. I can see shooting stars and the wax and wane of the moon. When there is a storm and the sun breaks through from behind the clouds, I can see the whole arc of a rainbow. Its beginning and its end. Each time I see these things, I am reminded of the indestructible soul of this country.

  The ancient Greeks worshipped the sun, the moon and the stars and made gods out of them, but we abandoned this way of thinking because a new religion told us that these gods were false and that there was only one God. I believe we lost so much by listening to this.

  When I look up at the night sky I gain so much strength (a great deal more than I would by going to a church and being reminded of human frailty). On this sultry July evening on my terrace, feeling a warm south-easterly wind stroke my face, I realise that I am no longer waiting for you, or dreaming of you. I am in a place where I have found peace.

  July 2016

  September 2016

  It was the last night of Ellie’s holiday, and she was once again on her balcony. She closed the notebook and sat with it on her lap, looking up at the stars that Anthony loved so much. Only a moment later she saw one shoot across the sky. Over this past week she had learned it was rare for more than five minutes to go by before a star fell. She looked for Ariadne’s Corona. The sea was so calm tonight that there was only the gentlest sound of water lapping on the sand. If she could make time stand still, this might be the moment she’d choose.

  She found the envelope still folded in the side pocket of her handbag. Perhaps she had not tried hard enough to find S. Ibbotson. These stories were intended for her. The envelope had become very crumpled over the past weeks and, as she tried to put the book back inside, it tore right across. She noticed that there was an address written on the back.

  Anthony Brown, 389 Aristophanous Street,

  Athens 11281

  She stared at it. She was flying back via Athens, but did she have the courage to go and find this man? This would mean telling him that S. Ibbotson had never received the postcards and that she, Ellie, had opened a package that was not addressed to her. She refolded the envelope, tucked it into her bag and put the notebook on top.

  It was midnight now, and she got her suitcase from the wardrobe and began to pack. Everything bore the sweet smell of sun cream and was slightly crisp with salt and sand. Even the thought of unpa
cking at the other end of her journey, throwing these colourful clothes into her washing machine and eliminating the aroma of the past wonderful days, filled her with sadness. Perhaps she would not wash her sarongs but instead hang them up in her flat until the scents of sunshine and summer had naturally gone.

  Even as she asked herself the question about the writer, she knew that there was only one answer. She was compelled to seek him out.

  Ellie left her hotel in Tolon after breakfast the following morning, got a taxi to Nafplio and had one last coffee in the square. Then she walked to the bus station and soon found herself heading towards Athens once again. The motion of the coach sent her to sleep, and she woke up in the heat of day to find that she had reached her destination.

  Disoriented and with a slight headache, she got out her metro map and worked out how to find Aristophanous Street. It was a long way to the nearest station and even then it would mean several changes, so she decided to take a taxi. Her flight was not until one the following morning, but her time was limited: she wanted to visit the Acropolis as well as deliver the notebook. It was already mid-afternoon. The temperature had not dropped below thirty degrees all day.

  The taxi driver dropped her a long way from her destination in order to save himself time, but eventually she found the right street and number, and then, on a panel of several dozen bells, saw the name she was looking for.

  She rang the bell and after a few moments heard a man’s voice.

  ‘Mr Brown,’ she began nervously, ‘I have a package for you.’

  ‘Would you like to come up? I’m on the top floor.’

  He must think she was a delivery service.

  The bell on the outer door buzzed and she let herself in.

  As the lift clanked slowly to the sixth floor, Ellie glanced at herself in the wall’s mirrored surface. Her hair was dry and bleached from the sun, her nose burnt and she had beads of perspiration on her forehead. She wished she looked a bit smarter. T-shirt and shorts did not seem the right dress code for this smart apartment block.

  The lift stopped and, as the door opened, she saw a man standing in front of her.

  He had thick brown hair with a few wisps of grey and was very slim, wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt. He reminded her of an actor her mother liked.

  Anthony immediately noticed what Ellie held in her hands. He had not even looked at her face, just at the battered blue notebook.

  Ellie registered his shock and surprise.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked, with as much self-control as he could muster.

  Suddenly, Ellie felt like a thief. She had an urge to thrust it into his hands and run straight down six flights of stairs and out again into the sun-baked street. Only an instinct to defend herself from suspicion stopped her.

  ‘You sent it to me,’ she said, immediately realising that it must sound stupid.

  ‘I sent it to you?’

  Anthony looked really confused now.

  ‘Sort of …’

  They stood looking at each other in puzzlement. He was staring at Ellie, trying to work out if she might be the sister he had never met. He decided she was too young.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ he said. ‘If you would like to, that is.’

  Even if it was just for a glass of water, which she now desperately needed, Ellie couldn’t see the harm. She felt she knew this man a little and was fairly certain that he was not the type to harm her in any way.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘I’m Anthony. But you know that … And you’re …?’

  ‘Ellie,’ she replied. ‘Ellie Thomas.’

  Ellie followed Anthony into a large, light space, minimally furnished with low, modern furniture and book-lined walls. She glimpsed a small kitchen at the far end of the room. They went out on to a terrace, situated on the other side of sliding glass doors. There were some well-established olive trees in pots and an area shaded by a pergola where there was a table and chairs. Several large volumes were spread out on the table, next to a laptop.

  ‘Let’s sit here,’ he suggested, indicating a comfortable cream sofa with a glass-topped table in front of it.

  Ellie sat down.

  ‘What would you like?’ said her host. ‘Coffee? Juice? Herbal tea?’

  ‘Just water would be nice,’ said Ellie.

  Anthony disappeared to get a bottle of water and some glasses.

  ‘It’s strange seeing it again,’ he said, sitting down opposite her and indicating the journal that sat on Ellie’s lap. ‘It was my companion …’

  ‘Yes, mine, too, in a way,’ said Ellie, putting it down on the table that divided them.

  ‘I never imagined I would see it again,’ he said, picking it up. ‘But I’m glad it didn’t disappear into the ether.’

  For a moment or two he turned it over in his hands with exaggerated care. Then he started to slowly flick through its pages.

  ‘Has something happened to Sarah?’ he asked with great solemnity.

  Ellie felt herself blush. Sarah. That must be S. Ibbotson. It was strange hearing the name.

  ‘No,’ she answered, taking a sip of water. ‘Well, not as far as I know … But, to be honest, I have no idea. I don’t know who she is …’

  Anthony looked up for a moment, a look of surprise on his face.

  Ellie continued.

  ‘But it was delivered to my home, and so were the postcards, and I read them and kept them … and then the notebook arrived as I was leaving … And they somehow went together and I felt as if it was … as if … well, it seemed OK.’

  She was aware that she was rambling.

  Anthony was taking in everything she said.

  ‘Delivered to your home?’

  ‘S. Ibbotson … doesn’t live at that address. So …’

  Ellie could see that this came as news. There was a pregnant pause.

  ‘That shouldn’t really be such a shock,’ he said with resignation. ‘It was hardly her only lie.’

  ‘Do you mind me asking who she was … is?’

  ‘If you have read the journal, then you will know the most important things,’ he said. ‘I thought she was the love of my life.’

  Ellie nodded.

  ‘I met her in the bar at the Curzon in Mayfair,’ Anthony began. ‘The person she was meant to meet hadn’t turned up, and I was sitting alone having a drink. I was killing time before going to a film by a Greek director called Lanthimos.’

  Ellie tried to give the impression that she had heard of him. Anthony went on.

  ‘I don’t generally chat up strangers. In fact, when I think of it, she was the one who spoke to me first. Conversation got round to Greece. She had been there as a child on a yacht owned by friends of her parents, but just to a few islands.”

  ‘She doesn’t sound like the kind of person who would have lived in my area at all,’ interjected Ellie.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It sounds like she comes from a posh background. It’s a bit grungy where I live.’

  Anthony gave a half-smile.

  ‘Anyway, she was the kind of person who had been taught the art of conversation and always knew the right thing to say, the sort who couldn’t be on her own for more than two minutes without starting to chatter.

  ‘She was quick to catch on to my interest in Greece. She had read History of Art at university, so the conversation flowed, and her interest in my book on Cycladic sculpture seemed sincere. She remembered that one of the islands she had been to as a child was one of the Cyclades. Whether or not I was deluded, I fell deeply in love with her.’

  Ellie nodded from time to time. She had met girls like Sarah, but they had never been her friends.

  ‘I mistook the sparkle in her eyes for attraction, but I think the glistening was a mixture of enthusiasm for our conversation and the wateriness that people with contact lenses suffer. Probably it was nothing more.’

  Occasionally, there was a crack in his voice. Whether it was f
rom sadness or anger, Ellie found it hard to discern.

  ‘So did she work?’ asked Ellie, curious about this girl.

  ‘She had a part-time job in a friend’s gallery in Notting Hill, but nothing that stopped her making impromptu visits to exhibitions in the middle of the day. She sometimes came with me to the British Museum, where I was doing some of my research. When we stood in front of the Parthenon Marbles, she said that she wanted to see the rest, and to see where they had originally come from. It was a nice moment. It was her suggestion. “Yes, let’s do it,” I said. The new Acropolis Museum would be the finale, the apotheosis. We spent the next six months planning the trip.’

  ‘She always came to stay at weekends with me. In the eighteen months we were together, she never invited me to her place – she said she lived with her sister and we wouldn’t be alone.’

  ‘She really doesn’t sound like the sort of girl who would live in my place,’ Ellie said. ‘It’s pretty dingy. A basement. Dark. With a kind of old-lady smell in the hallway.’

  ‘That’s definitely the address she gave me,’ said Anthony. ‘Perhaps she had once known someone there? In any case, I don’t think she was the person she made herself out to be on any level. I persuaded myself that she was one thing and, actually, she was another.’

  ‘Where did you live in London?’ asked Ellie curiously.

  ‘In a mansion block in Bloomsbury, close to the British Museum. It was nothing like this, but I had a clear view of those enormous pillars that seem to hold up the whole of the building. On a day when the sky was blue, I could even imagine myself in Athens.’

  Ellie sat back and listened, sipping her water from time to time. Anthony clearly wanted to talk. She got the impression that he had kept most of this to himself.

  They sat for a while, and then Anthony wanted to show her the various views from his terrace and to point out the landmarks.

  ‘There’s the Acropolis,’ he said, pointing. ‘And there is Lycabettus. And you can just see the Botanical Gardens. And there is the Parliament Building, the Vouli.’