One August Night

by Victoria Hislop

  The only person she knew who had any kind of contact with Manolis was Antonis. So a week later, when they went to Plaka for lunch in the taverna, she took Fotini to one side.

  ‘Can I ask you a huge favour?’ she said. ‘Do you think your brother would post something to Manolis for me?’

  Fotini looked very surprised.

  ‘To Manolis? What on earth do you want to send to that rogue?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a letter . . .’

  ‘You’re writing to him? What on earth for, Maria?’

  ‘Nothing important. But I do want him to get this.’

  Fotini could see that her friend was being cagey.

  ‘Well, I could get his address from Antonis, I suppose. Then you could send it yourself.’

  ‘I don’t really want that,’ admitted Maria. ‘Do you think he would actually send it for me?’

  ‘All right, fíli mou. You’re being very mysterious, but go on, give it to me. I’m going over to see them next week, so I’ll ask him then.’

  Antonis was more than happy to do his sister’s friend a favour. It seemed a while since he had contacted Manolis, and he wrote a letter of his own. It was the usual brief and semi-legible précis of news about his business, names of some new cars that had come on the market, and two suggested dates for his next visit to Piraeus. He enclosed Maria’s letter with his and put it on the table ready to post.

  Chapter Twenty

  EVEN BEFORE ANTONIS had got round to going to the post office, Maria and Nikos received a letter. It was from the governor of the prison.

  Andreas Vandoulakis had died. The letter informed them when the burial was to take place but arrived after the event.

  Nikos read the letter first and then passed it to Maria.

  Maria felt neither surprise nor great grief. She had seen close up the strength of religious faith that had made Andreas yearn for death. Now he was where he wanted to be.

  She noticed a look of relief on her husband’s face. As far as Nikos was concerned, Andreas’s death meant an end to his irrational fear that the Vandoulakis family might take Sofia away from them. One careless comment from Maria and the calm expression she saw on her beloved husband’s face would be wiped away. In a few years’ time they would have to consider what Sofia was told, and only then would she tell him about the possibility of Manolis being the girl’s father. For now, it was enough that the man who had killed her sister had died in peace. She was happy to have enabled that.

  Without discussing it with Nikos, she decided to visit Andreas’s grave.

  She went on a day in early February when the sun could not break through the low clouds. At the entrance was a flower stall, and having purchased the least desultory posy on display, she went through the gates. Unless they had families who demanded other arrangements – and very few did – all the life-sentence prisoners who died in the Neapoli prison were buried in one corner of the sprawling cemetery situated on a hillside above the town. In this dark, neglected area where weeds grew waist high, there were no well-tended graves with sentimental expressions of love inscribed on the headstones. There were no photographs of the deceased or oil lamps with flames kept alight by grieving relatives. It was a bleak environment, and particularly so on this colourless day.

  Maria soon found the place she was looking for. The name was marked on a wooden cross and the grave was long and narrow. She remembered how painfully skeletal Andreas had been on that last visit. There were rarely any visitors in this area of the nekrotafeío, and two attendants who were hacking away at some frost-hardened ground not far away regarded her with curiosity.

  She crossed herself several times, then stood over the grave for a few minutes before laying her flowers.

  ‘Anapávsu en iríni, Andreas,’ she said, under her breath. ‘May you rest in peace.’

  After a moment or two of contemplation, she crossed herself and turned away, knowing that she would never return.

  She was home in time for Sofia’s return from school. They chatted about what had happened in classes that day, and Maria began to make the supper.

  ‘My friend Despina has a boyfriend!’ revealed Sofia.

  ‘A boyfriend? But she’s only thirteen!’ exclaimed Maria, who had been dreading the moment when Sofia started to take an interest in boys. She was already taller than most of the other girls and looked older than her fourteen years.

  ‘And he has a friend . . .’ admitted Sofia.

  ‘Well, you’re both too young to start going around with boys, Sofia. So the answer to whatever your question is is no!’

  Sofia flounced from the room and Maria heard a door upstairs slam.

  She tried to stop herself thinking it, but Sofia was reminding her more and more of Anna when she was that age. It was not only as an adult that her sister had been disobedient and wild.

  When Nikos came home, Maria had a quiet word with him about Sofia’s friend and her boyfriend.

  ‘Will you say something to her when we’re having dinner?’ she asked. ‘She listens to you more than me.’

  With great subtlety, Nikos steered the conversation round to Despina that evening, and by the end of it, he had agreed that Sofia could go with her after school that Friday for an ice cream along with two boys in their year at school.

  ‘I’ll be home by five, Babá,’ she promised, giving her father a peck on the cheek before going up to bed.

  ‘She’s got you wrapped round her little finger,’ Maria said indulgently.

  ‘A visit to the zacharoplasteío is not worth fighting about, is it?’ responded Nikos.

  Maria nodded in agreement. She suspected that there were bigger battles to come.

  During these weeks, a new hotel was being fashioned on the site of Pension Agathi. As soon as the previous tenants had left, scores of workmen had moved in. They had stripped out all the old furniture. One of them had pocketed the small gun he found in an old chest of drawers, and another had taken Agathi’s mirror with the lights round it for his wife.

  Their first task was to fit the place out with more modern lighting, and a shower cubicle was installed in the corner of every bedroom. To advertise ‘en suite’ put it in a category above every other establishment in the immediate area.

  Within a short time of the previous tenants vacating, the Sunrise Hotel was ready, and after only a week of opening, it was overwhelmed with business. When a guest left, the efficient and fastidious manager immediately sent in a cleaner to get the room ready for the next client. The place quickly gained a reputation for cleanliness and value, and he often had someone waiting in the foyer with a suitcase for the first available vacancy.

  One morning, the manager was at the front desk taking a payment for a departing guest. Three new guests were queuing to check in, and he realised there had been an overbooking. There were only two rooms available. The phones were both ringing and one of the cleaners came down to say that all the lights had fused on the top floor.

  At that moment, in walked the postman with a stack of letters in his hands.

  ‘Just put them down there, please,’ the manager instructed irritably, indicating a small table already supporting an overfilled rack of printed ferry timetables.

  The postman did as he was instructed, but the timetables scattered across the floor.

  Generally the manager was a patient man, but this concatenation of annoyances tipped him over into a state of annoyance. He hated mess. He grabbed the mail to stop the whole table falling and marched into his office.

  First he called an electrician, and then a neighbouring hotel. The overbooked guest would have to stay there. Then he quickly sifted through the post. At the end of each week he dutifully returned anything addressed to Pension Agathi to the postman, who in turn handed it back to the manager of the local post office, one of the laziest civil servants around. His task was to trace people who had left no forwarding address, but he rarely bothered. ‘Half of them will be in Australia by now!’ he joked.

  Th
e bulk of the mail comprised bills, which the manager put to one side, and a few booking requests, which he opened. There was one letter without the name of the hotel, but the address was theirs, and although the name on the envelope was scrawled, it bore some resemblance to his own: Markos Andreakis. Perhaps it was a booking. Using his silver opener, he slit open the envelope and withdrew the contents.

  The first thing he saw was a list of food items – flour, eggs, sugar . . . – which seemed strange. Puzzled, he turned it over. Although he immediately realised the words roughly pencilled on the other side were not meant for him, the first line grabbed his attention.

  Dear Manolis,

  You will know that I am in prison serving a life sentence for killing my wife, Anna.

  The receptionist came into the office to seek help with a customer complaint, but the manager waved him away with his hand.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ he said curtly, compelled to read on.

  My days are hastening to an end and soon I will be with my maker. He will not take me until I have shared with you, Manolis, the reason that I committed the worst sin known to man: to take a life.

  Anna and I were married for some years and we did not produce a child. Then, as if by a miracle, she conceived and our daughter Sofia was born. I was keen, of course, for a son, but as the years went by, there was no second pregnancy. I quietly went for a test at the hospital in Iraklion to see if the problem was mine. I did not tell Anna. It was quite simple to do and the result was almost immediate. My sperm count meant that I was incapable of fathering a child. I could not be Sofia’s father.

  On that same day, I came home early and heard you and Anna in our marriage bed.

  In one day, I experienced more humiliation, loss and damage to my pride than any man should. I managed to contain this for a while, but on that August night, as we drove into Plaka, Anna taunted me with her love for you and laughed in my face. It pushed me to fire the gun.

  My conscience does not allow me to leave this world without revealing the truth of Sofia’s paternity.

  May God be with you.

  Your cousin, Andreas

  Markos Andreakis read the letter through again.

  In his spare time, he was an avid reader of detective stories and enjoyed guessing who the murderer was, but this felt like he had skipped to the final chapter. He was slightly shocked by the honesty and bluntness of a real-life criminal. He folded the letter up and put it in his shirt pocket so that he could share it with his wife that night, and then went out into reception to deal with the mundane drama of yet another overbooking.

  The manager’s wife was equally intrigued by the letter but agreed that there was nothing they could do to ensure it got into the right hands. She put it behind a large clock on the dresser, feeling that it was not the kind of thing one should throw away. When the clock was eventually moved for repair, the envelope slipped down the back and was forgotten.

  In more or less the time it had taken Pension Agathi to be transformed beyond recognition, Manolis, Agathi and Stavros had sailed across the world. They had stopped at a few places en route for sightseeing, including India and China, but their ship was now docking in Melbourne, and Agathi’s cousin Pavlos and his wife were there to meet them.

  They had left Piraeus in winter and arrived on the other side of the planet to find the summer. It was a beautiful day for their first encounter with this vibrant city. Pavlos drove them through its elegant streets, and they admired the lofty palm trees and gleaming modern buildings as they went. None of them had expected somewhere so affluent and sophisticated.

  Pavlos had several apartments and had put one aside for Agathi to live in. He owned another close by where Manolis could stay. He would not ask for any rent for the first six months, since Agathi was going to be his star singer at the bouzoúkia, and he immediately gave Manolis a job in his latest taverna. ‘I can see you will be the perfect front man,’ were almost his first words to this stranger.

  Within a few days, Manolis was working at Zorba’s. Restaurant work was less physical than the heavy manual labour he was used to. For now, his charm and his voice were the key assets for the job. The staff liked him and he revived his Cretan accent, which customers seemed to love. He even borrowed a lyra from one of the waiters and played for them. It made him smile to bring the authentic sound of Crete to this strange new version of Greece. It was years since he had felt the powerful vibration of strings beneath bow, and he lost himself in the sensation.

  He also resolved to learn English, and spent his spare time with a grammar book and Pavlos’s niece, Zoie, who was a language teacher.

  Zoie was only notionally aware of her Greek roots. She had been born in Melbourne almost as soon as her parents arrived there, and had only seen images of Athens in picture books. She was blonde but with almost black eyes, and was always cheerful, with a disposition as sunny as the place she had grown up in. She had got her degree in Sydney but returned to Melbourne straight afterwards, and now in her late twenties, she worked in a language school specially for Greeks. Many of them who came off the boat did not speak a word of English and wanted to learn fast.

  Agathi was not one of those. Her preoccupation in the first few weeks was to create a home. Her trunks duly arrived and Stavros deftly put up some shelves so that she could unpack her china figures. Miraculously, out of the several hundred, only Alice in Wonderland was slightly damaged. Stavros carefully glued her arm back on, impressing Agathi, who admitted that she could not see the join. He also built a cabinet for her record collection, and soon the apartment was more luxurious and comfortable than their old place in Piraeus. They had a generous balcony too, and discovered a passion for potted plants. In this sultry Melbourne climate, they planned to create a jungle of exotic creepers and cacti.

  Manolis was in the taverna for most of his waking hours, so Agathi and Stavros offered to help furnish his apartment for him. Stavros built cupboards and put in a new kitchen, even though it seemed unlikely that Manolis would ever have time to use it. During his fifth lesson with Zoie, when they were naming parts of the house and items of furniture, it came up in conversation that Manolis had never bought even a single chair in his life. It led to the idea that he should have his next lesson in a shop. Together they selected a three-piece suite, a kitchen table and a bed. The following lesson was spent in a fabric store, ostensibly to learn colours and shapes, with Manolis happily accepting Zoie’s advice on curtains and a bedspread.

  ‘Perrpool,’ he said, struggling.

  ‘No, Manolis, purple!’

  ‘Purble!’ he said triumphantly.

  Zoie’s smile lit up her face.

  They both laughed and laughed and found they could not stop. Manolis was unfamiliar with such a combination of beauty, kindness and good humour. He found Zoie both attractive and intoxicating, and only a short while later, they found themselves beneath the bedclothes they had chosen together.

  A few months after they had arrived, Agathi performed at the bouzoúkia’s opening. She sang lustily from her favourite repertoire and the crowd cheered wildly and applauded between every song. It was a long night of music and tsikoudiá, and the place was entirely packed out by enthusiastic expatriate Greeks.

  Stavros gazed at Roussa. The memory of that first time he had seen her in Piraeus was still vivid. Tonight he felt as if he was in a dream. All those thousands of kilometres away from where they had first met, he was listening to the woman he loved and she was singing just for him.

  Manolis was a little late arriving, as he had to cash up at the taverna, but when he sat down, he found a case on the table. It had a label attached to the handle. Pavlos had heard about his lyra playing and thought he should have one of his own.

  He looked around for the boss, as he was known, but Pavlos was busy with some customers. Manolis opened up the case and lightly plucked at the strings. It was already tuned.

  When Agathi took a break, Manolis moved forward to the stage and began to play. The a
udience was hushed, enthralled by this pure Cretan sound. He continued for half an hour or more, and then began to sing too. All around him were smiles and eyes that welled with tears. When he finished, he found Pavlos standing by the side of the stage.

  The two men embraced.

  ‘I have no words,’ said Manolis. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve received such a gift.’

  He was still holding the exquisitely inlaid lyra in one hand, the bow in the other.

  ‘The guys at Zorba’s told me about your playing!’

  ‘Ah . . .’ responded Manolis modestly.

  ‘If you like,’ said Pavlos, ‘you could hang it on the wall behind the bar, so it’s there for you next time.’

  Words failed him, but Manolis did manage a smile. Pavlos slapped him on the back and moved away to greet more customers.

  Back at his table, Manolis found Zoie sitting there.

  ‘That was perfect,’ she said. ‘I have never heard anything like that before. It was magical.’

  ‘Efcharistó,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’ He realised that her praise meant more to him than all the rest of the applause put together.

  It was well beyond midnight now and even the soberest in the room were drunk. It was time for the noisier part of the evening.

  It was obligatory now for the great rebétiko hits of the forties and fifties to be played. And when the musicians struck up the notes of the soulful zeibékiko, Manolis raised a glass with Stavros, Agathi and Zoie.

  ‘Stin yeia mas,’ they said in unison. ‘To our health.’

  In the minds of both men was the last occasion when Manolis had danced to this music. Tonight he felt no need. Finally his pain and loss had been left behind.

  Afterword

  IN THE SUMMER of 2001, I was on holiday with family and friends on the north coast of Crete, not far from Agios Nikolaos. We went on holiday to Greece most years, with the destination often randomly chosen.

  That year we were staying in a rented apartment complex, with basic facilities and a swimming pool impractically shaped like the island of Crete. The pattern of our days was to spend the morning on the beach and then to visit a place of interest in the afternoon. By the end of the first week, we had visited all the archaeological sites scattered around the area, as well as every possible museum. These included an entire museum dedicated to the iris and its historic uses in the dyeing of thread and fabric. I loved them all, but unsurprisingly the children were less enthusiastic. They were ten and eight at the time and nagged to spend the whole day playing on the beach. I would have been the same at their age, but in spite of sympathising with them, I was determined to pursue the parental mission to educate them – even on a summer holiday. Greece for me, even then, was far more than a place for hedonistic pursuits.