Aphrodite's Smile

by Stuart Harrison

  ‘Kalimera, Kyria Zannas.’ He stood and bowed slightly.

  She smiled at the way he spoke. ‘Kalimera, Hauptmann.’

  For a moment he didn’t know what to say. ‘I was passing, so I brought your mother some ham,’ he managed in the end. His Greek was heavily accented, but understandable, though he stumbled on some of the words.

  ‘You are very generous. She will be grateful.’

  Unused to being alone with her he sought for a way to communicate. ‘Have you been working this morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is hot.’ He looked toward the sky.

  ‘My father said that I can take you for a walk,’ she said.

  He looked around as if he expected her father to be standing somewhere close by, his surprise evident. ‘Your father said that?’

  ‘If you wish to.’ Julia pointed up the hillside. ‘I could show you a place where you can see the whole bay.’

  He said something then in German that she did not understand, but she didn’t need to. His smile told her everything she needed to know.

  After that day Hauptmann Hassel came more often. Things followed the same routine. He would arrive and present Julia’s mother with some small gift, then he would sit with her father and they would have a glass of wine and a cigarette until her father found some excuse to leave. Then Julia would appear and she would take him for a walk. Sometimes they went through the olive trees towards the monastery at Pernerakia high up at the top of the hill, other times they followed the path that led along the cliffs above the bay. They would find somewhere to sit and talk. He did most of the talking, often lapsing into his own language and, though she understood little of it, she was happy enough to listen. His voice was tender. He looked at her sometimes in a way that made her heart beat faster and her throat tighten so that she couldn’t speak. Sometimes when they were walking his arm would brush against hers and the muscles in her belly would convulse. She kept her expression impassive however and averted her eyes until she could breathe normally again.

  Each time after these walks when they returned to the house her mother and father would smile and stand outside to wave the Hauptmann off, though afterwards her father’s mood would change. His face would darken and he would ask her what had happened. She assured him that Hassel had not touched her in any way and, though he seemed relieved, she could see the agony that still burned in his eyes.

  A few weeks passed. One evening after she had gone to bed she heard men’s voices. Her father’s was among them. They talked for a long time and in the morning her father spoke to her. His manner was strange. There was an odd light in his eyes, as if he had a fever. He said that Hassel would come the next day as he always did. She was to take him for a walk as usual only this time she was to make sure they went along the path above the cliffs. On the way back, she was to lead him through the olive grove above the village, along the path which passed between the two slabs of rock where it was always shady, even in the middle of the day.

  The next afternoon when Hassel arrived he gave Julia’s mother a gift of a can of olive oil. Outside he smoked a cigarette with her father and drank a glass of wine and, if he noticed anything different about the way her father was acting, he didn’t show it. When her father got up to leave Julia emerged from the trees where she had been watching. The Hauptmann met her half-way, his eyes fastened on hers as he approached. She felt the familiar tug in her breast as they walked side by side, close together but never touching.

  They did not speak much that day. They went to a place on the headland high above the bay where they sat in the grass and looked out over the sea towards the brown hills of Kephalonia. Behind them the village was lost from sight. The sound of goat bells reached them from the hillside. Hassel lay back in the grass and looked at the sky. He said something and when she turned to him he smiled. He looked so young, his tanned face smooth, his eyes clear and strong. He spoke again and though Julia didn’t comprehend his words she thought she understood the emotion behind them. She knew he was wishing that there was no war, that they were not separated by the fact that he was a German soldier and she a Greek. But she knew also that if this were not so, he would never have come to the island and they would never have met. She wondered about his home, his family.

  Something stirred inside her and she shifted her position so that she sat close to him. She reached out and smoothed his hair. He rose to one elbow, surprise registering in his expression, but she made him lie down again, though this time with his head resting in her lap. She wanted to lean down and kiss his mouth. Sadness filled her because she thought of the men’s voices she had heard in the house, and she thought of the way her father had been acting and how he had looked that morning. She knew why he had made her bring the Hauptmann here and why he had insisted she return along the path between the two big rocks.

  A bird rose from the hillside behind them, its wings whirring as it took to the air. Hassel watched it, and for a second his brow furrowed but then he relaxed again. He closed his eyes and the hand that had shielded them from the sun lay in the grass. Julia wanted to hold it within her own hand, to press it against her cheek. She wondered how his skin would feel, what he would smell like. Sometimes when she was alone in the dark of her room she thought of him and her breasts ached and she could not sleep unless she walked barefoot for a while in the cool night air.

  She knew at once she could not do what her father had asked of her. It was not a decision made out of reason, but one from her heart. She looked down on Hassel’s face and she was filled with feelings which burst inside her, feelings which took hold of her with such force she could hardly breathe. There was little time. She did not think of the consequences. She roused him and when he opened his eyes he looked startled and uncomprehending. She told him urgently that they must leave. He didn’t understand her and suddenly she was overwhelmed with fear for him. She held his face in her hands and leaned close to him and she told him again that he must go, that men were coming to kill him, and she gestured toward the hill where even now they must be approaching. And then somehow she saw that he understood her. Her fear for him communicated itself and in so doing she revealed her love for him.

  He rose hurriedly to his feet and unfastened the pistol at his side, then he pulled her up and started back the way they had come. His face was different now. She saw a shadow of tension in the lines around his eyes, but he was determined too.

  They heard a sound above them, perhaps a rock which had been dislodged by a goat, but then again it could be the men who were meant to come for him. She stopped and when he turned to question her, she pulled him away, leading him by another path. He resisted, then looked back the way they had come and he understood and went with her, putting his trust in her. They ran, and when she slipped he stopped her from falling and for an instant he held her against him. She looked into his eyes and he into hers. When they arrived at the village, he pushed her towards the armoured patrol car. She hesitated, knowing suddenly that if she went with him she was taking an irrevocable step. A hundred thoughts flashed in her mind, a thousand images. Her home, her family, everything she knew. Her entire life seemed intensified and concentrated into this one moment, this one decision. As if everything she had experienced until then had meant to lead here. All at once a sense of calm descended over her.

  She looked at the Hauptmann and he understood. He got in the car and she climbed into the seat beside him.

  Irene had stopped speaking. The images her story had created fled and dissolved into the night. The lamp still glowed on the table, casting us in light and shadow. With surprise I saw that several hours had passed. Alex wore a look of intense concentration.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it is better that you hear the rest from somebody who was there. He can tell you far more than I can,’ Irene said. She turned to me. ‘You must take Alex to speak to Alkimos Kounidis.’

  ‘He’s the man I mentioned to you. A friend of my fa
ther’s,’ I explained. ‘During the war he was a member of the Resistance.’

  ‘He knew your grandmother, Alex,’ Irene added. ‘Tomorrow he will be at the funeral.’ She turned to me. ‘I am sure he will agree to talk to Alex if you ask him then.’

  She rose and cleared away our glasses, announcing that she was tired. I said that I would run Alex back to where she was staying. We drove in silence down the dark road, both of us still affected by the story we’d heard. When we stopped, Alex turned to thank me. She looked beautiful. I recalled again the way she had looked at me that afternoon in the cove, and how she had reached out to touch my cheek. Without thinking about it I leant across and kissed her on the mouth. When I pulled away she stared at me in confusion. Then she got out and went to the door where she turned and looked back.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said quietly.

  NINE

  On the day of my father’s funeral I went to his study, a room I’d avoided since my arrival on the island. The walls were lined with books and his desk was strewn untidily with papers and various archaeological magazines. At one end of the room a collection of fragmented clay vessels was laid out on a trestle table like pieces from a jigsaw puzzle. One pot had been completed, save for a missing hole in the side. From the card beside it made out in my father’s hand I read that it was a Corinthian aryballoi. The outside was decorated with intricate black-figured designs.

  I sat at the desk. The papers were a mixture of household accounts and invoices relating to the small museum he ran. A half-finished article written in longhand described a dig he’d worked on, but when I looked at the date I saw that it had been written eighteen months ago. The text was heavily edited. Much of it had been crossed out and rewritten in an effort, it seemed, to make what was essentially dry academic reporting appear even mildly interesting. It was an attempt that appeared largely to have failed, which I gathered was the conclusion my father had also arrived at.

  In one of the drawers I found a slim paperback, its cover faded and dog-eared. It was called The Dracoulis Enigma. I recognised the name of the man Alkimos Kounidis had mentioned, so I took it out to flick through the pages. Underneath was what I at first thought was a piece of rusted jewellery of some sort, but when I took a closer look I recognised the shape for what it actually was; a Maltese Cross. The four arrowhead-shaped points tapering towards the centre were unmistakable. It was the design used by the Germans during the First and Second World Wars for the medal known as the Iron Cross. I had seen it a hundred times in films and on book covers. I wondered where my dad had found it and why he had kept it.

  The paperback fleshed out the story that Kounidis had already told me. It had been written in the late-fifties after a letter sent by the curator of the museum in Argostoli to his sister in Athens came to light. The curator’s name was Dracoulis. He was an archaeologist and in the letter, written in 1940, he claimed that during the summer of 1938 he had discovered the location of Aphrodite’s Temple at an unnamed location on Ithaca. During his excavation he had removed a number of artefacts but he had never made his discovery public due to the imminent outbreak of war. Dracoulis had died in 1943 without ever revealing to anybody what he had found. In fact until the letter he wrote to his sister surfaced he was remembered only as a mild-mannered and unremarkable curator. The letter changed all of that. Suddenly his name became famous and his claims the subject of intense debate. At the time the book had been written, neither the temple nor the artefacts he mentioned had ever been found.

  The author of the book, somebody called Donald St James who had a string of letters after his name, debated the authenticity of the letter. Though some experts believed it could be genuine, arguing that the excavation of the temple might well have been buried during the devastating earthquake of the early-fifties, many did not agree. They focused on the missing artefacts. It was well documented that during the latter stages of the war the German commander on Kephalonia, an SS officer called Manfred Bergen, had systematically looted the antiquities kept in the museum in Argostoli and had them flown to Berlin. Many of these had subsequently been recovered, as had some documents referring to the event made by the ever-meticulous Germans.

  Donald St James asserted that if the artefacts Dracoulis wrote about had actually existed some trace of them would have been found, since Bergen surely must have included them with the shipments he’d flown to his masters in Berlin. Since this was not the case, St James concluded that the letter was false, a hoax perpetrated by persons unknown, though he gave no compelling reason why anyone would bother to do such a thing. Towards the end of the book there was a photograph of Manfred Bergen. It was a grainy black-and-white shot showing a very thin, unsmiling man wearing the uniform of the SS. There was a short piece about the sinking of the Antounnetta which occurred after it had left Ithaca. Bergen himself had survived that event but had died before the remaining survivors were picked up by another German ship near the mainland coast. Unluckily for them however, the rescue ship itself was attacked only hours later and all of the men from the Antounnetta were killed.

  I was about to put the book back where I’d found it when some pieces of folded paper fell out onto the desk from between the cover and the back page. They were both press clippings from a Greek newspaper. The text was indecipherable to me but one of them had several accompanying photographs. In each of them groups of people were pictured standing beside what appeared to be a museum display. The photograph had not been posed, but rather seemed to catch them informally, champagne glasses in hand, at some function or other. Another picture was of the display itself, a collection of figurines and various drinking vessels and the like in a glass case.

  There was one photograph which caught my attention over the others. In it the unmistakable figure of my father was clearly visible. He appeared to be talking to another man while slightly behind him and to his right another less distinct figure looked on. My dad was holding a glass, smiling broadly. I stared at his image for some time, thinking about the man I had known as a child before he left England. The man with whom I had spent my summers, while my mother preferred to stay at home in Oxford. Throughout my life I had never been able to reconcile that person with the one who had left me at the age of eleven. And there was another side to him of course – the side which Irene had loved for so long, the side which his friend Alkimos Kounidis had spoken of, testament to the affection in which he was held. A side I had never known.

  I didn’t hear Irene come to the door so it gave me quite a start when I looked up to find her there. I gestured to the things on the desk, feeling slightly embarrassed that I’d been caught going through them.

  ‘I was curious,’ I said.

  She smiled and looked around the room. ‘He spent a great deal of his time in here.’

  ‘I found this,’ I said, showing her the clippings.

  ‘Ah, yes. These pictures were taken in April. It is at the opening of the Dracoulis exhibit in Argostoli after the artefacts were returned from Switzerland.’

  I showed her the book I’d been reading. ‘In here it says there was no record of the artefacts leaving the island.’

  ‘It is assumed that they were sold after the war. Many antiquities stolen by the Germans fell into private hands. When the man who had bought these died and his collection was discovered, the Greek government claimed them back.’

  Irene saw the other clipping on the desk and picked it up. As she read it she appeared puzzled and then some darker, more troubling reaction flashed in her eyes.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It is an article about a man who was found dead on the island recently. It was terrible. He was murdered. Stabbed.’

  I remembered that when Irene had talked of my dad’s behaviour after he came home, the way he’d insisted on locking the house at night, she’d said crime was almost unheard of on Ithaca. Theonas had said the same thing, though he’d referred to a recent unusual incident and I assumed this was what he’d meant.

&n
bsp; ‘Who was he?’ I asked.

  ‘He was not identified. Nobody knew him.’

  ‘Then he wasn’t from the island?’

  ‘No. He did not appear to be Greek.’

  ‘Presumably the police didn’t find whoever stabbed him?’

  ‘No.’

  I wondered what had interested my father enough about this for him to keep a clipping of the story. Suddenly his claim that somebody had tried to kill him seemed less fanciful. ‘When did this happen?’

  Irene read the date. ‘In May,’ she said, ‘about three weeks ago.’

  Around the time my dad left hospital. Irene’s brow was deeply furrowed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. It is nothing,’ she said. ‘I must get ready.’

  I didn’t believe her. When she’d gone I returned the clipping to the drawer and made a mental note to ask Theonas about the dead man the next time I saw him.

  The funeral was held that afternoon at a small church in Vathy on the hill above the western side of the harbour. I was surprised by the number of people who arrived to pay their respects. They filed into the churchyard in small groups and pairs and bowed their heads as the priest recited the service.

  ‘Na zisete na ton thimaste,’ Kounidis said solemnly as he paused by Irene. She thanked him and kissed his cheek, then Kounidis went to the closed casket and kissed it before he paused in front of me.

  ‘May you live to remember him,’ he said, offering the traditional funeral-saying in English.

  On the way to the church, I had called in at the place where Alex was staying and asked if she would like to come and meet Kounidis. She’d been uncertain about attending the funeral at first, given that she hadn’t ever met my father, but I persuaded her that I’d like her to come and in the end she agreed. When Kounidis saw her his eyes widened, registering a brief shock as if he’d received a low-voltage jolt from some unexpected source. It was gone in a moment and he moved on.