One August Night

by Victoria Hislop

  Perhaps Andreas was one of them, but Maria did not dare scrutinise the pathetic crowd.

  The stench was overpowering. The contained space and the temperature within the high prison walls must have heated the human excrement to the point of fermentation. Maria clasped her hand to her mouth and nose. Even so, she almost vomited.

  ‘In there,’ barked the guard, pointing to a small hut on her side of the fence.

  Maria walked through the open door. There was no sign of the women who had gone in before her. A prison officer was lounging back on his chair, feet up on his desk, smoking.

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said, with exaggerated politeness.

  She was grateful to be away from the stink outside, even if the smell of tobacco in this small space was asphyxiating. She looked into a pair of cold, unsympathetic eyes.

  ‘Why do you want to see this prisoner? You’re not related.’

  Maria felt stupid. She had not anticipated having to explain herself.

  ‘He’s my sister’s husband,’ she said simply.

  ‘And your sister is dead, I see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he was your sister’s husband,’ the man corrected her.

  He got up and began rifling through the messy contents of a filing cabinet in the corner. Once he had found what he was looking for, he held it a few centimetres from his face and started reading. He was small and grey-haired, and his jacket was unbuttoned, a roll of fat bulging over his trousers. Beads of sweat dripped down the side of his face and ran into his neck, making his collar darker than the rest.

  ‘He is a murderer, this man. He killed his wife, your sister, yes?’

  Maria nodded, feeling it wise to go along with him.

  ‘We have people like you in here all the time. They come in for revenge, pure and simple. If justice hasn’t been done, they come in to finish the job. I don’t blame them really. I’d do the same.’

  He sat down again and looked at her.

  ‘You’d be surprised how often it’s women who do this. They seem to keep the anger in them longer than the men. And it reduces the prison population here. It’s very overcrowded, you see. Six to a cell meant for three. What can I do?’

  This man obviously liked to talk, and she had no choice but to listen.

  ‘But I can let you in. If you like.’

  Maria managed to get in her ‘Thank you’ before he started up again. She wondered if he was expecting a bribe.

  ‘We usually only let in blood relations. But I suppose you are related by blood,’ he said. ‘In a way.’

  He smirked, amused by his own attempt at a joke.

  ‘Looks like he’s never had any other visitors . . .’

  Maria had sometimes wondered if any of the family had ever visited. Now she knew the answer. He had not seen a soul in three years.

  ‘. . . and just the one letter.’

  A flimsy piece of paper had floated out of the file and landed on the floor by Maria’s feet. She picked it up and handed it back politely, but not before noticing the signature of Andreas’s sister Olga at the bottom.

  The officer held it almost to his face.

  ‘His mother. It’s not from his mother. It’s about her. She died.’

  Maria nodded. She did not want to get on the wrong side of this man.

  ‘We don’t let prisoners hold onto their letters; they have to be re-filed, you see. Anyway, that lot out there, that’s only some of the prisoners. Your Vandoulakis will be locked in today. He has his exercise on a Saturday, according to this.’ He waved the file in the air. ‘So I’ll get someone to take you. He’s right over the other side.’

  They sat in awkward silence. The man lit another cigarette, put his feet back on the desk, picked up a newspaper and started to read. Many minutes later, another guard appeared.

  ‘Vandoulakis,’ said the officer languidly. ‘Delta 27.’

  Maria was escorted to a block that had been built shoddily against the outside wall. Inside, she saw some of the women who had been let in before her. They were sitting in a row at a long bench divided down the middle. On the other side of the bench, behind a dense wire-mesh partition, were the men they had come to see. There was only one empty seat and Maria took it.

  Some of those in the room, both men and women, were weeping, while others were shouting, banging a fist on the bench, or talking earnestly, perhaps sharing endearments or passing secrets. Every time the noise level became too high, one of the four guards who were positioned at each corner of the room would stand up and shout for silence.

  The guard had gone to collect Andreas. It seemed a laborious business. Maria sat there trying not to look at anyone. Andreas had no idea that she was coming. Perhaps he even had the right to refuse to see visitors. She was full of questions for herself. Why had she even come? It was hard to justify, which was why she had not even been able to explain it to her best friend. What would they talk about? What did she expect of him? These minutes gave her ample time to doubt if she had done the right thing.

  She almost got up to make her escape, but it was too late. There was movement behind the wire grille. And now there was a man standing there. She leaned forward, but the lighting in the room made it hard to see much more than an outline. She could just make out that this figure was handcuffed at the front. He sat down and she could see that he was leaning towards her.

  She was alarmed. They must have made a mistake and brought in the wrong person. This bald, bird-like figure was not Andreas. She turned round to see if she could attract the attention of the guards. Then, above the cacophony of other voices, she heard one she recognised.

  ‘Maria? Maria Petrakis?’

  However much a man changed physically, a voice remained exactly the same. Sorrow, brutality and lack of food had transformed his body beyond recognition, but this was, beyond doubt, her brother-in-law.

  Maria leaned forward to study the face pressed against the other side of the grille.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Maria.’

  She was shocked by his appearance. Even though she had seen a sea of other prisoners in the yard, uniformly abject, she had naïvely assumed that Andreas Vandoulakis would still be the man he had been. She had imagined that his pride and status would have allowed him to retain his air of superiority, even here. She realised how stupid she had been. A place such as this reduced everyone to the same level of degradation.

  Since the day Fotini had first questioned her plan, Maria had harboured doubts, and many times since she had got off the bus some hours before, she had wondered what on earth she was doing. But now, with Andreas sitting a metre away from her, she suddenly saw a purpose. It was written in the look of sheer gratitude in his expression. Just by sitting there, she had brought him a moment of happiness.

  Everything was hazy through the distorting prism of the mesh, but she could see his eyes. They seemed huge in a thin, shrunken face.

  For a moment they peered at each other. The volume of noise around them meant that they had to lean right in so that their faces were almost touching the metal, otherwise it was impossible to hear anything the other said.

  ‘Why did you come?’

  It was the only thing that interested Andreas but the one thing Maria could not articulate. She could not really define her motivation.

  Even before she had tried to think of something appropriate to say, a bell was clanging. It was loud and relentless and any conversation they might have been having would have been impossible now. There was a mass scraping of chairs as every prisoner got up simultaneously. They did not wait to be told. All of them knew there would be an immediate and violent beating if they dawdled. The four guards were now goading them out of the room. Over their shoulders, many were shouting a few final words to their visitors, but none of these were audible.

  The visitors got up with less haste and made their way silently to the door.

  Maria felt cheated by the lack of time she had spent with Andreas. It was little more than
a glimpse after so many hours of travel and waiting.

  ‘You have to be here by eight in the morning,’ said the woman who had been sitting next to her. She had noticed that Maria had only just taken a seat before the visiting period had come to an end. ‘That usually gets you fifteen minutes in here. But that’s the most you’ll ever have anyway.’

  Next time, thought Maria, she would catch the first bus out of Agios Nikolaos. Those few moments with Andreas had not been enough. She understood from the woman who had spoken to her that prisoners were only allowed one visitor each month, so as soon as she got home, she noted in her diary when she could next go.

  Nikos was back from his conference in Cairo a few days later. Maria needed to tell him that she had visited Andreas. She waited until Sofia was asleep.

  Her husband was a man of great compassion, but nevertheless he questioned whether it was really necessary for his wife to go to a place with a reputation for being one of the roughest prisons in Greece.

  ‘So you went alone?’ he said, trying to suppress his annoyance.

  ‘They don’t let people in in pairs, Nikos,’ she said. ‘You have to be on your own.’

  ‘But why now?’ he asked.

  ‘Sofia, I suppose,’ said Maria. ‘Every time I look at that child, I see Andreas. And it’s just so sad that she doesn’t know him. That she has no memory.’

  ‘But it’s not logical to tell her. We are Sofia’s parents now. And that’s the reality.’

  ‘I just felt . . .’

  ‘Felt what, Maria?’

  Nikos rarely uttered a strict word to his wife, or to his daughter for that matter.

  ‘I think your concern should principally be for Sofia,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t spend too much time thinking of Andreas Vandoulakis.’

  ‘Perhaps it was because her birthday is coming up,’ Maria offered, as an excuse.

  ‘I don’t really know what difference that makes. As she gets older, it becomes less relevant, doesn’t it, rather than more?’

  It was late at night and Nikos was tired after his journey back from Egypt. Maria poured him a whisky and came to sit with him on the sofa.

  ‘Well, even if Sofia never knows what happened, I just thought it would be nice to tell him that she is safe and well. How else will he ever know?’

  Nikos shrugged his shoulders. He did not have an answer for his wife. His only instinct was to protect this precious child whom he had so quickly grown to love, just as if she were his own. He put his arm around Maria and she nestled into him.

  ‘They told me in the prison that he’s never had any visitors. Not a single one!’

  ‘I’m surprised his father hasn’t been to see him,’ responded Nikos.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Maria firmly. She knew the Vandoulakis tribe better than her husband. ‘All that family honour . . . Imagine the shame, agápi mou.’

  They sat silently for a while.

  ‘And it was terrible in there. Horrific. The smell. The dirt. The look on all their faces. I don’t think the old man would manage it. And I’m glad his mother never saw it.’

  ‘I wonder if Andreas even knows that she died?’ Nikos mused.

  ‘His sister wrote,’ Maria answered. ‘I saw her letter.’

  A few more moments passed before either of them spoke again. There was a burning question as yet unasked.

  ‘So do you plan to go again?’

  The visit to Andreas had lasted little more than two minutes, so Maria had not even considered that it would be her last. She was haunted by that brief moment. She had seen into the soul of an abandoned man, and the look of relief that someone had cared enough to come was something she would never forget.

  She already had a date in mind, but she hesitated before answering.

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I would like to.’

  Nikos loved his wife without boundaries and unfailingly showed her respect.

  ‘If you think this is the right thing to do,’ he said, ‘I won’t try to change your mind.’

  ‘Nikos, Andreas Vandoulakis will never be released, so it won’t change Sofia’s understanding of anything.’ She knew that this was her husband’s greatest fear: that they might one day lose their daughter.

  ‘Very well, Maria. But next time, I will drive you there and wait outside to make sure you are safe.’

  ‘There’s no need, mátia mou. You have work to do, and I really don’t mind going on the bus. But you could take a few hours off and look after Sofia. That will save me taking her over to Fotini’s.’

  ‘Whatever is best. We can discuss all that before you go.’

  There was nothing more to be said that night. What Maria was doing made Nikos uneasy, but he could not get in the way of her natural kindness and would never try. It was the very quality that had drawn him to her.

  Throughout her time on Spinalonga, Maria’s faith in God had given her strength. She had lit more candles in the little church of St Pantaleimon than there were wild flowers on the hillside. She had prayed for mercy for those who were healthy as much as for the sick. She had prayed for those on the mainland as well as those on Spinalonga. She had prayed for the needs of the whole world, for people she did not know, for those who lived close to her and even for those she did not like, such as Spinalonga’s bitter school teacher, Kyría Kroustalakis, who had made her life so difficult. She had prayed for the souls of the living and the dead. She had never prayed for an end to suffering. It was part of the human condition.

  Certain prayers had been answered so spectacularly that all the days of her life would not be numerous enough to give thanks. When a cure for leprosy was found, there was not enough wax to make all the candles nor enough silver in the mines of the world to make the támata she wanted to offer. And when she was finally joined in marriage to Nikos Kyritsis, how could she begin to thank God? After the tragedies of previous years, his arrival on the island and his love for her seemed like divine intervention.

  Nikos did not have the same religious faith. He was a pragmatist, but he observed the strength it gave Maria and respected her beliefs and her actions, even though they were sometimes hard to comprehend. Her desire to make peace with Andreas was an example.

  Maria’s strong sense of God’s pity directed what she was doing now. If Christ had preached forgiveness, how could she ignore this teaching? Forgiving Andreas Vandoulakis from a distance was one thing; demonstrating it to him was another.

  Every night, Maria brushed her hair fifty times, a habit she had kept to since childhood. As she counted, she imagined the gloomy cell that Andreas would be sleeping in. How could anyone sleep six to a cell? Did they have beds? Did they have water? However abject she pictured it, she knew it could be worse.

  The only way this pity of hers would attain any real meaning would be if she demonstrated it by visiting. God’s mercy towards her had been shown in tangible ways, not only in the form of a drug that had cured an incurable disease, but also in the form of the wonderful man who lay soundly asleep in their bed.

  She began to tick off the days until her next visit.

  Chapter Ten

  IN PIRAEUS, THE weeks passed by quickly for Manolis, with days of demanding physical labour and nights of drinking and friendship. Nowadays he was earning more than he needed, and for only a small additional sum, Agathi moved him into a much larger room. It had a high ceiling and a balcony overlooking the main street. Shafts of sunlight and the rattle of the first tram woke him each day. The sound of goats and early-morning birdsong that used to be his alarm clock in Crete seemed very distant, and he recognised that he had become fully accustomed to urban life. Piraeus felt like home.

  He was as happy as any man could be who had lost the love of his life. At least he had not lost her to someone else, and for Manolis this was great compensation. Jealousy was not a characteristic exclusive to his cousin Andreas, nor to Anna for that matter, and he acknowledged to himself that he would have killed any man who had taken Anna from him. The baptism ph
otograph rarely came out of the drawer these days. He had no need to look at it any more. It meant that he had to see Andreas too, and even the image of himself now troubled him. He had changed so much since then. The photo was tucked inside the envelope along with the account of the trial.

  While Manolis lived without love, Agathi spent her days on its cloud.

  ‘We might get married,’ she told Manolis. ‘It would be nice, don’t you think? Just a few of us, then a nice dinner? I’ve even seen a dress . . .’

  Manolis could not imagine his landlady in white, but she seemed determined. She had not been married before and was more than ready now. Whoever had broken her heart in the past had not shattered it entirely. Like a few of her own china ornaments, Agathi was being glued back together.

  Stavros now spent most nights with her, appearing by Manolis’s side as he left the pension in the morning. They would then walk together to work, stopping to drink a strong, sharp coffee en route. From being one of the most withdrawn members of the crew, Stavros had become a little more talkative.

  Every weekend, the four of them, Agathi, Stavros, Manolis and Elli, would go to see a new film. Agathi and Stavros would hold hands throughout and sometimes even kiss in the dark.

  The film industry was booming, and new cinemas were opening at the rate of one a month. On this particular Saturday, they had gone to see the latest romantic comedy starring the beautiful Jenny Karezi. Agathi loved her as much for her singing voice as for her acting, and had been waiting eagerly for the film to be released.

  Manolis had to put up with Elli’s adoring looks when they went out for a coffee and something sweet, a glykó, afterwards, but he was kind to her, treating her as if she was his daughter. Agathi had confided to him that morning, ‘She’ll grow out of it, Manolis. Girls always have a first big crush.’ He hoped she was right, but meanwhile he gave Elli no encouragement.

  While he was happy that his landlady and Stavros were so content, Manolis doubted that he would ever again find himself in that state of love. He was firmly closed to the idea of it, convinced that he would never feel as deeply or intensely again.