That explained why his bones looked as if they might pierce through his skin.
‘They suppressed the riots violently. Even by the standards of this awful place it was shocking. Several prisoners died.’
‘We read about some of this,’ said Maria. ‘But I am sure most of it went unreported.’
‘Of course it did,’ responded Andreas, pausing for a while before continuing. ‘After a few weeks things went back to normal. Or worse than normal really. All of us were punished in one way or another for what had happened. As well as no visitors, we couldn’t receive letters, and food portions were halved.’
Maria sat there horrified. However harsh people on the outside might imagine it, the real cruelty in this prison was ten times worse.
‘Then one day – it was only just light, so it must have been around five in the morning – two guards came into the cell and pulled me off my bunk. They handcuffed me and led me out. It was a moment of terror because I had no idea what was happening. I thought I was being taken somewhere to be punished, but suddenly I found myself here! It was the opposite. As if I was being rewarded. And everything has changed. I still don’t have my freedom, but I can breathe in here. I can think. I am alone!’
‘You even have a book!’ exclaimed Maria, noticing a copy of the Holy Bible lying on the table.
‘It’s all we’re allowed,’ smiled Andreas. ‘But it’s better than nothing.’
‘But why did this happen?’
‘I have an idea, though I can’t be certain. I think it’s to do with money. I think someone is paying a large sum of money.’
‘Your father?’
‘It can’t be anyone else, can it?’
‘He didn’t say anything to me,’ said Maria.
‘I don’t think he would.’
Maria looked around her. It was a very small space, but the sense of tranquillity within it was palpable. She had visited a few monasteries in Crete and had seen the kind of cells where monks slept. It was not so different.
‘We never see the other area now. We’re kept separate. Exercise, eating, everything. We don’t have any contact with the other inmates. But when someone new comes in here, we learn what they think over there. There’s huge resentment.’
‘There must be,’ said Maria. ‘But do you really think the prison authorities would take such a bribe?’
‘Of course they would.’
Maria was getting anxious. She glanced at her watch. Time was running away and she must give him the letter before the guard returned.
The envelope was a little grubby and creased after all these months inside her bag, but Andreas’s name was still legible on the outside. She deftly took it out and slid it underneath the Bible.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a letter from your father,’ Maria said nervously. ‘I know you aren’t allowed to receive letters this way and they’ll be able to work out who got it in here, so . . .’
They heard the sound of the bolt being drawn back.
‘. . . so read it when I’ve gone.’
‘And you’ll explain to my father why I don’t write back?’
‘He understands,’ said Maria, picking up her bag.
Chapter Fifteen
IT WOULD BE a while before Maria was in the right frame of mind to go to Neapoli again. Hard as she tried, she had never managed to banish that sexual assault from her mind and the prison officer’s renewed intimidation of her had revived her fear and made her even more reluctant to visit than ever. It was something she could not share even with her best friend.
Eventually she felt ready to go but, a few days before, she went to see Alexandros Vandoulakis, taking Sofia as usual.
It had become a habit now that the little girl would make biscuits for them all with Kyría Hortakis. Maria was a good cook but not a very proficient baker, and she was glad that Sofia had someone else to teach her this skill.
It was spring now, and they were practising making koulourákia, the delicious Easter biscuits flavoured with orange zest and vanilla. Sofia was impatient with stirring the ingredients, but Kyría Hortakis insisted that the dough of flour, sugar and olive oil should be perfect before they began to shape them. This was when the little girl became excited. They took a section and twisted each one into the form of a snake.
‘And you know why we do this?’ asked the housekeeper.
Sofia shrugged, too busy concentrating on her task to answer.
‘Because thousands and thousands of years ago, the people who lived here, who were called the Minoans, worshipped snakes!’
Sofia laid her uncooked biscuit carefully on the baking tray and looked up at Kyría Hortakis with her big brown eyes.
‘So why would they want to eat them?’
‘That’s a good question, mátia mou,’ the housekeeper answered, smiling.
They both continued silently fashioning the dough until the whole tray was filled and ready to put into the oven.
Maria and Alexandros Vandoulakis knew they had some time ahead of them to talk privately.
‘I gave him your letter,’ said Maria. ‘And he seemed very happy to get it.’
‘Ah, good. And he is still in that room of his own?’
‘Yes,’ answered Maria, understanding now why the old man had smiled in that knowing way all those months before. It had puzzled her at the time, but now it confirmed that he had paid the cost of Andreas’s move to a more civilised place.
They chatted for a little while longer, and then Maria went to the kitchen. The old man had asked her if she would fetch him a glass of water.
The biscuits were just out of the oven, and Sofia was arranging them carefully on a cooling rack.
‘She did them all by herself!’ Kyría Hortakis reported with delight.
‘I’ll bring them in in a moment,’ said Sofia. ‘But only when they’re ready.’
She would be nine in a few months and was very capable and determined. She wanted to do everything properly, and planned to sprinkle the biscuits with sugar and put them on a particular plate.
‘Don’t worry, agápi mou,’ Maria assured her. ‘I won’t interfere.’
She and the housekeeper exchanged a smile.
Maria returned to the drawing room.
Alexandros Vandoulakis appeared to have fallen asleep. Maria knew that he often had an afternoon nap, but not usually until they had left.
She tiptoed across to his chair and put the glass on the table adjacent to him. She noticed that his head had tipped forward slightly awkwardly, and then that there was no rise and fall in his chest. He was completely still. With a shaking hand, she took his wrist and felt for a pulse. There was nothing.
Moving his head into a slightly more natural position, she ran from the room and called Nikos from the telephone in the hallway. He would come immediately from the hospital.
In the kitchen, she took Kyría Hortakis to one side and managed to convey what had happened without telling Sofia. The devoted housekeeper, who had been with the family for more than half a century, dashed out of the room. Maria could hear her sobbing in the drawing room, and put on the radio to muffle the noise.
Time went by slowly. Maria kept Sofia playing in the kitchen, telling her that her grandfather had fallen asleep and they must not wake him.
Eventually Nikos arrived. He often came by to collect them from a visit, so it was not such a surprise for Sofia to see him there, but she had never seen him with such a worried look on his face.
‘What’s wrong with Babá?’ she asked her mother as Nikos hurried from the room.
‘I think he’s tired, moró mou . . . He’s probably had a very busy day.’
Ten minutes later, Nikos reappeared looking even more grey-faced than before. He sat down at the big kitchen table with his wife and daughter and took the girl’s hands.
‘Sofia,’ he said. ‘A long time ago, when you were very little, your yiayiá passed away. Megálos Pappoús was very sad for a long time, but he knew tha
t one day they would be together again.’
‘And is that where he is now? With Yiayiá?’ Sofia replied very matter-of-factly. One of her friends at school had lost her grandfather the previous week, so she was familiar with where grandparents went.
Maria looked at Nikos, knowing that her husband did not really believe in what he was saying, so she helped him out.
‘Yes, Sofia. He is with Yiayiá now.’
Sofia began to cry, but once her parents had both hugged her, she stopped. She wanted to see her grandfather and was allowed to look at him one last time from the doorway.
Kyría Hortakis was inconsolable, and Maria stayed with her while Nikos took Sofia home.
As soon as Alexandros’s daughters and their husbands arrived, Maria left. They were always very frosty with the sister of the late Anna Vandoulakis, and she could sense their resentment that she had been the last person to see their father alive.
It was the duty of immediate family to go through the formal processes of mourning, and Olga’s driver was instructed to give Maria a lift home.
Alexandros Vandoulakis was buried thirty-six hours later. The funeral was held in the large church in the centre of Neapoli and attended by several hundred people. There were too many of them – estate workers, local dignitaries, family and friends – to fit in at once, but everyone had the opportunity to pay their respects to this well-loved man.
It was a warm, still afternoon, and as she stood on the steps of the church after the service and listened to the tolling of the bells, Maria wondered if Andreas might be able to hear them. The prison was less than five kilometres away.
Suspecting that Olga and Eirini would not make it a priority to write to their brother, she resolved to go and see him within the next day or so. She knew that Alexandros Vandoulakis would have wanted her to do that.
She put aside her fear of the prison officer to make her visit. He was there, perspiring and leering as usual, but perhaps even he had a modicum of respect for someone in mourning. He found the Vandoulakis file, made his notes without the usual quips and summoned the guard to escort her across the yard.
Her black attire was the first thing Andreas noticed.
‘Your father?’ he said, as soon as the door was bolted behind her. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’
He had assumed she was in mourning for Giorgos, who was several years older than his own father.
‘Can we sit down?’ Maria asked quietly, taking the wooden chair as Andreas sat on his bed. ‘I’m afraid it’s your father, Andreas. He died two days ago. I am so sorry.’
Andreas put his head in his hands for a few moments. It was as if he was praying. There were tears in his eyes when he looked up, but they did not fall. Andreas found it hard to cry.
‘I was at the house when he died,’ explained Maria. ‘It was very peaceful. I had just told him that you now had his letter.’
Andreas was quiet for a moment.
‘Let me show you something, Maria,’ he said at last, with great composure, reaching for the Bible on his desk. Inside, almost as if it was being used as a bookmark, was a sheet of paper. He drew it out carefully, as if it was as precious as a sheet of gold leaf. The envelope had been dispensed with. ‘Look! Do you see what he says?’
He showed it to Maria but without letting it go, and before she had a chance to cast her eye over it, his eagerness got the better of him.
‘Let me! Listen.’
As Andreas read his father’s words, Maria sat and marvelled at how alike father and son sounded.
Dear Andreas,
I am sorry it has taken me so long to realise this. I have been slow.
I merely want to tell you one thing.
If Maria can forgive you, then I can forgive you too.
Your loving father
Maria looked down at the floor as he repeated the words. He spoke them as if they were from the Holy Scriptures.
‘“If Maria can forgive you, then I can forgive you too.”’
She saw that tears now flowed down his cheeks, and felt a great lump in her throat.
‘My father forgave me, Maria. I never imagined . . . Before he died, he forgave me . . .’
She wanted to touch him on the arm, just as a sign of comfort, but restrained herself.
Andreas looked directly at her.
‘Maria, there is no doubt in my mind that you are an angel.’
She felt very uncomfortable with the word. She tried to do her best for people, but there was nothing angelic about her. If there was, she might not get so upset with Nikos, with whom there was always a level of friction when she came to see Andreas. And she might be more patient with Sofia when she refused to tidy her room. No, she was no angel.
‘I don’t think so, Andreas,’ she said firmly.
‘But you are definitely an angel in the purest sense. Angelos – from the ancient Greek for “messenger”. That’s you. Like Gabriel. He was God’s messenger.’
Maria looked slightly bemused. Andreas’s theological knowledge surprised her.
‘You brought this letter, Maria, and it conveyed the most important news I have ever received. Just as the Angel Gabriel’s message was for Mary.’
There was the now familiar scraping of a bolt being drawn back, the same ugly noise that heralded the end of every visit. Andreas hastily hid the letter back inside the Bible.
That night, Maria had a vivid dream. Alexandros, Eleftheria, Anna and Andreas were all together at a long table under some trees, eating, laughing and talking happily.
It was a beautiful, peaceful scene. It was only later on that she began to analyse it. Why had Andreas been there, eating with the dead?
Chapter Sixteen
OLGA IN PARTICULAR was eager for the reading of the will. How had her father divided the estate? Had he given Andreas’s daughter a share? Perhaps he had even left a portion to his absent nephew Manolis? There were various possibilities and all of them made her anxious.
She had married a man who was less wealthy than his family had made out, and not only that, she had discovered he had a penchant for gambling. With four children and a husband who regularly lost hundreds of thousands of drachma playing cards, Olga was praying for salvation.
Eirini had made a much better match. She hoped for something from the will, but fully expected that her father would have left Olga the lion’s share, given that she was clearly the favourite daughter.
The lawyer’s offices were even gloomier than the Vandoulakis house, with dark wooden panelling and low-wattage lights. It was with great effort and much stumbling over his words that the old lawyer read out every last sentence of the will.
Olga sat next to her husband trying unsuccessfully to appear relaxed. Eirini was there alone. Her husband was in Athens finalising the purchase of a new building in the city centre.
Although it took the lawyer more than an hour to finish reading it, the essence of Alexandros Vandoulakis’s last will and testament was very simple. The great estate, with its vast swathes of olive groves and vineyards, had been left equally to his two daughters.
Although the old man had very precisely and fairly divided the land to the last half-hectare, the two sons-in-law immediately squabbled over the boundaries, and the sisters each felt that the other had been given the more fertile vineyards, the more productive olive groves, the larger share of land that might be ripe for development in what was now considered to be the new gold rush: tourism. Of late, areas closer to the sea, which were unusable for agriculture, were seen as potential sites for hotels.
The sisters quarrelled viciously over the monetary value of what they had inherited. Neither of them gave a moment’s thought to the circumstances that had brought them such riches. Olga had been left the Vandoulakis house and Eirini was to have Andreas and Anna’s house, which had stood empty since that terrible August night. During and after the reading of the will, none of them even mentioned Andreas, who if circumstances had been different would now be the owner of all this land.
One morning, Maria bumped into Kyría Hortakis in the market in Agios Nikolaos. She was very happy to see the housekeeper and asked how everything was in the Neapoli home. She assumed that Kyría Hortakis had remained there to work for the new incumbents.
‘I stayed a week,’ answered the elderly woman. ‘That was all I could manage. I couldn’t work for those people. Not for another moment. They bickered about everything. She bickered with him. The children bickered with each other. Bickering, bickering, bickering. I couldn’t stand it, Kyría Kyritsis. Not at my age. Not after working for that lovely Kýrios Vandoulakis. He didn’t smile very much, but he was always kind to me. And you know what he did? He left me some money. I never expected that. Enough to rent a nice house and to live on for a few years. I’m seventy-three now, Maria. I don’t need those . . . people.’
Maria was not surprised to hear any of this. She had no illusions about Andreas Vandoulakis’s sisters and was glad that she had no need to come into contact with them now. She was relieved – and Nikos even more so – that they showed no interest in their niece.
Some weeks after she had seen Kyría Hortakis, a letter arrived for Maria and Nikos addressed to ‘The Legal Guardians of Sofia, formerly Vandoulakis’. The letter was from the lawyer in Iraklion and informed them that Alexandros Vandoulakis had placed in trust for Sofia Petrakis the sum of five hundred thousand drachmas, to be released on her twenty-first birthday.
Maria blinked and thought she had misread the noughts. Nikos had to read it out to her twice before she believed it. It was a huge sum.
Manolis was the one person in the family unaware of Alexandros’s death, but given that he had been left out of the will, there was no legal obligation to track him down.
One August Night Page 17