‘He’s the nicest man I have ever known,’ Agathi said, tweaking Stavros’s cheek as they sat all together in a pavement café. ‘He is as sweet as this ice cream.’
Stavros smiled, taking her hand.
Elli blushed. What seemed to her like geriatric love was embarrassing. Her aunt and Stavros seemed too old for such a thing, and it was only made more mortifying by their openness.
‘It’s more than twenty years,’ continued Kyría Agathi, as though Stavros was not sitting there, ‘since I knew love. And when that finished, I swore: never again!’ She banged the table with her free hand, making the sundae dishes rattle. ‘I tell you, I did! Never again! I said.’
A couple at the next table looked across with disapproval at this noisy woman in garishly colourful clothes. Even her perfume made her hard to ignore.
‘And then I meet this man! This lovely, handsome man! He is my dream come true.’
Stavros looked shy now. He was anything but handsome and he knew it. Taking Agathi’s hand, he kissed it gently and she in turn kissed his.
‘Oh, you sweet lovebirds,’ teased Manolis. ‘What a nice couple you make.’
As Elli shifted awkwardly in her chair, Manolis quickly called for the bill. There was something very endearing about their happiness, even if it made Agathi’s niece squirm.
‘You’ll understand one day, my little one,’ she said. ‘Love is not only for the young.’
In the early hours of the following morning, when even the noisy drunks who often ended their evening in the street had gone away, there was a huge rumpus down below. A woman was hammering on their door, yelling and screaming. It was May, so all the windows were open. The racket not only woke Manolis, it roused the entire household and the ones nearby.
Manolis leant over his balcony. He could see a woman. Her face was disfigured with anger so it was hard to tell her age, but her hair was bright blonde, obviously dyed.
She looked up when she saw him and screamed, ‘I’m going to kill them! I’m going to kill both of them!’
Other people, also disturbed by the shrieking, were opening shutters on both sides of the street and leaning out. It did not matter what time of night such a drama took place, it always drew an audience. If it did not concern them personally, that was all the better, and it became pure theatre. Most people knew that girls could hire out Kyría Agathi’s rooms by the hour and assumed that some regretful husband was about to emerge and be dragged by his collar down the street. They had seen it happen before and it was excellent entertainment.
The woman’s shrieking did not abate, and nor did the banging. Manolis had a clear view of her and she screamed up to him again.
‘Let me in! You bastard, let me in!’
He could tell that the noise of banging was not created by a bare hand. It was something hard. Probably metal. He also knew that it was only a matter of moments before this woman realised that the outer door was kept on the latch. He withdrew into his room, threw on his trousers and ran down the stairs two at a time. Other tenants stood on the landing in their underpants.
The woman was now in the hallway and Manolis could see that she was brandishing a handgun. She was still shrieking. Recognising Manolis as the man from the balcony, she fired her gun into the ceiling.
‘You tell me where Kostas and this woman are, you bastard! You just tell me! Or the next bullet will be for you!’
Manolis raised his hands slowly and cautiously, trying to seem as unthreatening as possible.
‘I know who she is,’ said the woman, more calmly. ‘She’s an old singer in the bouzoúkia. I know exactly who she is. He was never going to go off with a young one, was he? None of those young ones would even look at him.’
Manolis suddenly realised that the woman was in the right place. Whatever was behind all this, he wanted to protect Agathi at all costs. Her door was still firmly closed and Manolis prayed that it would remain so. If his landlady came out, he had no doubt that she would get that bullet.
He knew that the only tactic was to try and calm this harpy. First he must let her finish her rant.
‘It’s not so easy to disappear in this country, you know. You think there is a big distance between Thessaloniki and Piraeus? Well, anyone who works on the boats in the north, where would they vanish to?’
‘Tell me,’ said Manolis gently, attempting to engage her in dialogue.
‘To work on the boats in the south, wouldn’t they? Any fool could guess that. And I expect he would have gone to the islands next. He would try to vanish into some shipyard in Andros or Chios.’
Her hand was shaking so violently that she could hardly hold the gun, let alone pull the trigger, but Manolis was nevertheless uneasy to see that it was still pointed in his direction.
‘I suppose he could be there now,’ he said valiantly.
‘Well I’m not stupid. It’s taken me some months, but here I am. And once you are in Piraeus, you just narrow down the places, don’t you? And eventually you find the one you are looking for. You know where he is, don’t you?’
She drew breath for the first time, giving Manolis the opportunity to speak.
‘Kyría,’ he said, gently. ‘Madam.’ It was not the first time he had defused the passions of an angry woman with his mellifluous voice. He knew precisely the tone to adopt. ‘Please calm down. Are you sure you have the right place? I think there has been some mistake’
She lowered her gun. She was slightly calmer now, as though the narration of her route to Kyría Agathi’s house had helped her. She was talking now rather than screaming.
‘I am looking for Kostas,’ she said. ‘Kostas Konstantinidis.’
At that moment Manolis saw the landlady’s door open a crack. Surely Kyría Agathi would not be coming out to confront her lover’s wife? Even he might not be able to defuse the situation if she was.
But instead of his landlady, it was Elli who appeared, waif-like in her long nightgown. This vision of virginal innocence seemed completely to change the mood.
‘What is it, Kýrie Manolis?’ she asked.
The intruder was holding the gun limply by her side now.
‘Can we help you?’ Elli asked the demented woman, as if she was looking to rent a room.
The woman continued with her rant.
‘This isn’t her!’ she screamed. ‘He wouldn’t be with this scrawny kid. It’s that old singer he’s with. Lots of people have told me. Even the waiter in the bouzoúkia where she sings. This isn’t her!’
With her attention turned to Elli, Manolis seized the opportunity to grab the woman’s arm and wrestle the gun from her grip. It presented little challenge.
‘Go back to bed, Elli,’ he told her firmly. ‘I’ll see this lady out.’
Now that he was fully in command of the situation, he took the woman by the arms and firmly tried to bundle her out of the building.
‘You’ve got the wrong place,’ he said. ‘And if you ever show your face here again, you will regret it. Just get out!’
She struggled to escape, and the violence of her anger almost fuelled her to succeed.
‘Whatever anyone has told you, there’s no one by the name of Kostas Konstantinidis here.’ With those semi-truthful words, Manolis slammed the door and bolted it from the inside.
He turned around to find Kyría Agathi and Stavros in the hallway. They had heard everything.
Other tenants were leaning over the banisters to see what was happening, and without speaking, Agathi, Stavros, Elli and Manolis went back inside Agathi’s apartment and shut the door.
Manolis could see that his landlady was, for once, lost for words. She sat down in her armchair, pale as a sheet, apparently studying the pattern in the rug. Stavros took an upright seat at the table and lit a cigarette.
Elli vanished into her bedroom.
Someone would have to break the silence sooner or later, but meanwhile Manolis fetched some water for them all. He did not want to leave the pair of them alone.
Finally Kyría Agathi spoke.
‘That was your wife?’ she said, almost inaudibly. ‘That mad woman was your wife?’
Even if they could hear nothing else, her emphasis on the word ‘wife’ made her meaning very clear.
Stavros looked too terrified to speak.
‘And it was your idea to send my niece out as a decoy?’
Again no answer.
Manolis did not wish to manage another scene that evening. It was around five in the morning and the light was coming up, so he made the only viable suggestion.
‘I think we should all try and get a little sleep. Stavros can stay in my room tonight, and in the morning, you two need to talk.’
The two men left the room, and once upstairs, Manolis threw a blanket over a small settee where Stavros could sleep. He had no wish to interrogate his friend. He would leave that to Agathi. He for one needed to grab a few hours’ rest.
It was well past nine o’clock when Manolis woke. Stavros had gone.
He leapt out of bed. The thought of Agathi’s grief disturbed him as if it was his own. He had a desire to protect this sweet woman, this mother figure, whose vision of happiness had been shattered. And he felt responsible. Without him, after all, Stavros would not have met Agathi.
He washed and dressed, then walked slightly gingerly down the stairs. On the floor of the hallway there was a small pile of shattered plaster.
He looked up and saw the hole left by the bullet, and remembered then that he had left the woman’s gun in Agathi’s apartment. He had put it down as he poured the water. It gave him a distinct feeling of unease. Pressing his ear against the door, he could hear the sound of low voices on the other side. It was not his business to intrude, so he left the building and strolled along the seafront to find a seat at his usual Sunday-morning kafeneío overlooking the water. In spite of his earlier desire for anonymity, he had adopted one or two favourite places. Like any man, he enjoyed being addressed by his name.
It was a perfect early summer’s day. There was a warmth that touched the skin rather than scalding it and a breeze that gently rippled the surface of the sea rather than whipping it to a fury. May had a sweetness that was gone by August. He thought back to the time exactly three years earlier. Those were the beautiful times with Anna, before she had driven herself into a state of anxiety over her sister’s return from Spinalonga. If only she had kept calm, kept her faith in Manolis and not been so reckless. If only . . .
He hoped that Agathi would keep calm too. Perhaps there was an explanation for the events of the previous night.
Manolis passed an hour reading Kathimerini. The main news was an army coup in Turkey. Anything that happened in Ankara affected politics in Athens, but these days, unless it impinged on the vitality of the shipping business, Manolis was unbothered by it.
Eventually, after a second coffee and an accompanying cigarette, he got up to leave. It seemed a good time to be back at the pension.
He tapped gently on the door to Kyría Agathi’s apartment and Elli opened it.
‘They’ve gone,’ she said. ‘They’ve gone out.’
‘Do you know where?’
‘No,’ she answered unhelpfully.
‘Did they go together?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They were holding hands.’
That was enough to put Manolis’s mind at rest.
‘That’s nice,’ was all he could think of to say. He was intrigued but happy.
He went out for the rest of the day and returned early evening, by which time there were voices coming from the apartment when he passed. He knocked, and a beaming Agathi threw open the door. She had a glass raised in one hand and a bottle in the other.
‘Come, come!’ she cried with enthusiasm, as though he was late to a party he had been invited to.
Stavros appeared at the door next to her. He held a glass in his hand too.
‘Manolis, come and share this with us!’
They were drinking a bottle of cheap champagne and were in high spirits.
‘Stin yeia mas!’ said Agathi. ‘Cheers!’
Manolis was cautious, even though the pair of them seemed perfectly contented.
‘So what are we celebrating?’ he asked, trying to conceal any trepidation he felt.
‘Love!’ responded Agathi. ‘Isn’t that enough?’
‘Yes, of course it’s enough.’
‘We found each other, Manolis. And love binds us together.’
‘So . . .’ began Manolis, about to ask for a little more of an explanation. In the circumstances, it did not seem unreasonable.
‘Why don’t we sit down?’ suggested Agathi. ‘Stavros can explain. He has told me everything.’
They all took seats at the table and Stavros, who was unused to being the centre of attention, began to speak.
‘That woman last night. She was . . . is . . . my wife. And my name is Kostas.’
He paused there. Those were the bare facts, and Manolis was surprised that Agathi had wanted to know any more. But there she was, leaning in towards Stavros and even taking his hand. She was listening to all of this for the second time. He continued, clearly eager to unburden himself to Manolis.
‘I was forty-five then, and still a single man, living with my parents in a village up in the north. You know how it is, Manolis, I was called a fag, a pervert, every name under the sun. Even my parents were abused. “Something wrong with Kostas?” “Son a homosexual?” “Your boy a weirdo?” And do you know why I had never got married? For one simple reason. I had never met anyone to love. So why would I?’
Manolis nodded. He understood perfectly.
‘The stigma of it got so bad that we moved out of the village and went to Thessaloniki. There was less gossip and people minded their own business more in a city. My parents were much happier, even though they had left a place they loved.
‘In the apartment below us there was a family. The couple had four grown-up children. Three of them had moved out, but the oldest one, a daughter, was recently widowed and had returned to live with them. She was ten years younger than me, but nobody seemed to mind about that. My parents became friendly with hers and they were keen on the idea . . .’
Stavros paused to gulp down a glass of water. The evening was warm and the apartment stuffy. Agathi got up to throw open a window.
‘The moment I married her, I knew I had made a mistake. You see, I didn’t really know her. We moved into an apartment on the other side of the city, closer to the docks. And then it all began. When we were alone, not with her parents or mine, she was a different person. She beat me, she scalded me and one day she went at me with a knife. But how could I ever prove it? I had scars, but even my own mother didn’t believe me when I told her it was my wife. She thought I was getting into fights. I suffered like that for two years, but it felt like twenty. And I never lifted a finger against her.’
Manolis was shocked by the story, but, having met the woman the previous night, he could well imagine her behaving like that. She had been crazed, deranged. Stavros did not give her a name and Manolis did not want to know it.
‘I planned it for a while, and one day, when she was visiting her sister, I left. I couldn’t go to my parents in case her parents saw me. So I got a train and then another train, and fled to Athens, the only place where I thought I could disappear. And then I came down here to Piraeus because I knew there was plenty of work to be had. At that moment, I had nothing. No possessions, no money, nothing.’
Kyría Agathi put her arm around Stavros. Her love for him seemed to pour out of her.
‘Poor Stavros,’ she murmured. ‘My poor Stavros.’
‘And then Giannis gave you work?’ enquired Manolis.
‘Yes, and that was the beginning of my new life.’
‘Were there any . . .’
Stavros anticipated the question. He would have asked the same.
‘No, no children, and I thank God that he never blessed her with any.’
‘And �
�Stavros”?’
‘That’s my father’s name. I always preferred it to Kostas.’ He laughed. ‘It reminds me of him every day. You see, I can’t go back. I have written to my parents, but they understand why I don’t even want to tell them where I am. My in-laws would come after me too.’
‘I wish you had turned that gun on her, Manolis,’ said Kyría Agathi.
‘I’m not sure that would have helped anyone,’ said Manolis with a touch of irony. ‘Least of all me!’
Stavros had a little more to say.
‘I was free. That was all I wanted. I wasn’t looking for anything else. I wasn’t looking for anyone else. And then that night in the bouzoúkia, I heard this voice. And it belonged to this beautiful woman . . .’ He was gazing at Agathi as he talked. ‘I never expected to find such happiness. This woman, this goddess. She is the dream I never allowed myself to have . . .’
‘Oh Stavros,’ said Agathi, stroking his arm.
‘I know I should have told you all this before,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t risk losing you.’
She shook her head.
‘I’m not blaming you for anything,’ she affirmed. ‘And if she comes back here, she’ll have me to deal with.’
Manolis had worked with Stavros for nearly three years now and felt he knew him. He did not doubt either the veracity of his story or the sincerity of his love for Agathi. No man could have performed such lines, even if he was a star actor in one of those films they all loved so much. His own confrontation with the violent wife only added to his certainty that this story was the truth. He even felt suspicious about the death of Stavros’s predecessor.
‘So can we have a toast now?’ said Agathi, filling the glasses almost to overflowing.
Manolis picked up a glass, as did Stavros and Agathi and they all clinked them together.
The gun was still sitting where he had left it on the shelf. It was incongruous next to a small figure of Marie Antoinette. Stealthily he slid the weapon into his pocket.
That night, Stavros collected his clothes from his lodgings and moved into the apartment.
Agathi bought a new dress that same week – not the white one that Manolis had envisaged, but a pale green one – and the following Saturday, as soon as he got his wages, Stavros bought a ring.
One August Night Page 12