The Bull of Mithros

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Lillis. ‘Sometimes they’ve seen the trick before.’

  ‘Your captain says you’re the troop’s mechanic,’ said Manolis. ‘What’re the chances of you giving me a ride over to the port?’

  ‘None,’ said Lillis. ‘Even if I could get the damned Jeep to run, there’s no fuel. Besides, you’ll be going in the launch with the captain, when we get back.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Manolis. ‘Listen, lads, might either of you lend me a boat fare? I’ll make it worth your while, if you’ll front me five thousand. Ten would be even better.’

  Kastellanos looked at him, and, incredulous, shook his head.

  ‘Ten thousand?’ he asked. ‘On a soldier’s pay? You must be mad! Friend, you’ve been sitting in that sun for far too long.’

  The fat man swam away from Aphrodite’s mooring. His stroke was confident and fast; his limbs were supple, his skin was tanned almost to copper. Breathing through his snorkel-pipe, he moved across the depths, seeing nothing but the ocean’s immense blueness, split by phosphorescent spikes of diffused sunlight.

  A few strands of his hair were caught between mask and forehead, and the compromised seal let in a trickle of water. He stopped, and trod water as he pulled off the mask, and shook it dry. Before replacing it, he glanced back at the view of Mithros’s coastline, and high on the promontory, the Governor’s Villa caught his eye. For a few moments he studied its graceful architecture, ideal for its enviable position, overlooking the channel between Mithros and its neighbours and the boats passing on the waves far below.

  He replaced his mask, and continued to swim away from Aphrodite, his target a deserted stretch of coast not visible from the harbour. As he grew close, the water grew shallower, becoming intense turquoise of great clarity. Through his mask the seabed spread below as if he were flying over it, giving a dreamlike view of fine sand and wafting weeds, the silvery flickerings of darting fish, and colonies of black urchins on the encrusted rocks.

  A hundred metres offshore, he stopped swimming and lay face-down on the swell, rising and falling as he was carried slowly closer to land. The place was inhospitable, and it would be difficult to leave the water without shoes; the strong waves breaking at the water’s edge would knock a man off his feet. By swimming a few strokes here and there, the fat man kept his distance from the danger, and let the water cradle him as he surveyed the seabed and the fish below.

  The rocks beneath him were the lava of volcanoes, set into jagged pinnacles and troughs. The sand lying in the narrow passages between them drew amber centipedes and soft, pink slugs. The fat man floated and drifted, seeming content to go with the tide and observe this world from above. But then his eye was caught by a rock different from the rest: a softer stone, paler than the basalt grey of the igneous rocks.

  He fanned the water, steadying himself directly over the stone and estimating its depth. Then, filling his lungs deeply, he dived, and pulled down as fast as he was able to the seabed. A school of startled whitebait scattered around him. He touched the stone, and dragged fronds of burgundy weeds from its surface to see what was beneath; and when he was sure of what he’d seen, he swam back to the surface, emerging with a sharp out-breath to clear his snorkel, before turning back in the direction of Aphrodite.

  Manolis sat on a chair with no back, digging in the dirt with a stick, glancing from time to time up at the sun to estimate how much time had passed since he had arrived back at the camp. Behind him, Lillis was working on the Jeep; metal rang on metal as he knocked a spanner on a stubborn bolt. On the Jeep’s wing was an assortment of nuts and bolts he had already removed, and a length of rubber tubing cracked with perishing. On the driver’s seat, the radio played the Turkish station. Lillis’s hands were black with oil; the sun beat on his deep-brown back, but Lillis didn’t seem to care.

  ‘So you think you’ll ever get that thing going again?’ asked Manolis.

  Lillis didn’t answer. The bolt he was working on was loose; he fitted the spanner to it, and began to twist.

  ‘Because you’re not much of a unit without transport, are you?’ persisted Manolis. ‘You’re not exactly mobile, without wheels.’

  Lillis raised his head from under the bonnet. He didn’t speak, but pointed with his spanner at the launch tied at the jetty.

  ‘And what happens when that goes wrong?’ asked Manolis. ‘Are they going to get you to fix that, too?’

  Lillis bent back under the bonnet. From the jetty, Captain Fanis shouted, and beckoned to Manolis to come down.

  ‘Thank Christ,’ said Manolis. He tossed away his stick. ‘See you around,’ he said to Lillis, but Lillis didn’t reply.

  Manolis made his way down the beach, his feet hot inside the stiff boots the captain had lent him, and sore from the cuts on his sole. By the launch, the captain pointed to a seat in the prow, and Manolis climbed aboard. The captain, Gounaris and Skafidis had put on uniform jackets and caps. The captain took a seat beside Manolis. Gounaris and Skafidis settled on the stern bench.

  Skafidis fired the engine, and steered out into Kolona bay.

  The engine was loud; the captain made no effort to talk over it, but watched a graceful seagull skim the waves. Manolis scanned the sea around them for other boats. Gounaris was in high spirits – he had plans to pay a visit to some new girl – and he and Skafidis were laughing as they speculated on how far Gounaris might get.

  The swell and the head-wind were light, and the launch made good time. As they entered the harbour, Manolis glanced up at the Governor’s Villa.

  ‘That’s a beautiful place,’ he said to the captain, pointing up at the house. ‘A house like that would cost a fortune.’

  ‘And the man who owns it has a fortune,’ said the captain.

  Skafidis cut the power and motored slowly over to the quayside to tie up.

  ‘Who would that be, then?’ Manolis asked the captain.

  The captain was distracted, uncoiling a rope from under his feet. ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘The man who owns that house,’ said Manolis. ‘What do they call him?’

  ‘His family name’s Eliadis,’ said the captain, passing the rope’s end to Gounaris. ‘They call him Vasso. Why? Were you thinking of asking him for a loan?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ said Manolis.

  When all the men were ashore, the captain addressed Gounaris and Skafidis.

  ‘You two, go and buy everything on that list. You have brought the list, haven’t you, Gounaris?’ Gounaris held up a piece of paper. ‘Tell them you have my permission to sign for what you buy. If you have problems, come and find me at the coastguard’s office. Skafidis, get fuel for the boat. And make sure Gounaris doesn’t spend all his time where he shouldn’t be. We’ll rendezvous at – what time is it now?’ He looked in the direction of the town-hall clock; but the clock had long been broken, and for weeks had shown the time as five to three. ‘Let’s say an hour and a half, then,’ said the captain. ‘Two hours at most. If I’m not here by the boat, find me at the kafenion.’

  Captain Fanis led Manolis away from the hectic harbour-side. They passed a chandler’s, where Greek flags in many sizes hung like bunting, and sticky spiders’ webs at the window corners were glutted with flies. Outside a tiny grocer’s, a woman worked a delicate piece of lace; curious, she watched the men go by, whilst her deft fingers manipulated the bobbins and cotton. Next door, the pharmacy was closed; a well-used card pinned to the door read, ‘Back in five minutes’. Between the pharmacy and a butcher’s shop – where the smell of meat no longer fresh hung in the air – was a warehouse. A bicycle was leaned against its front; a wooden staircase bolted to the side of the building led up to what had once been a merchant’s offices and home. On the wall above the staircase – missing a screw, so it pointed at the ground – was a sign: two crossed blue anchors, between the words ‘Hellenic Coastguard’ and ‘Port Authority of Mithros’.

  In the doorway of his shop, the butcher was smoking a cigaret
te. By his feet, a cat chewed with vigour on a scrap of purple offal, a section of windpipe or bowel.

  ‘Makis, kali mera,’ said the captain, as he and Manolis passed. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Oh, you know how it goes,’ said the butcher. ‘Could be better, could be worse.’ He looked at Manolis, who seemed to take his interest.

  ‘The lads’ll be in shortly for our order,’ said the captain. ‘I suppose it’s ready for them, is it?’

  The butcher nodded, slowly.

  ‘I’ll make a start on it now,’ he said. ‘Just as soon as I’ve finished this cigarette, I’ll get to it.’

  The cat picked up the offal, and with it dangling between its fangs, tried to sneak past the butcher into the shop; but with surprising agility, the butcher put out his foot, and gave the cat a light kick which sent it in the opposite direction.

  ‘Damned thing,’ he said. ‘Yes, it’ll be ready. Give me half an hour, and I’ll have it done.’

  ‘It’ll be sooner than half an hour,’ said the captain. ‘They’ll be here at any moment.’

  ‘I’ll get to it, then,’ said the butcher, and smacked the back of his neck where a fly had landed.

  The captain led Manolis up the warehouse staircase, which rattled and vibrated as they climbed, as if there were only a bolt or two holding it to the wall. Manolis kept a tight grip on the handrail as if it might save him in a fall; but the handrail itself was not secure, with one bracket missing, and loose screws in the remaining three.

  At the stairhead, the door to the coastguard’s office was propped open with an old flat-iron standing on its end. Inside, the office was fiercely hot. With the rattling of the staircase, the officer in charge had ample warning to prepare himself for visitors, and by the time the captain and Manolis entered the room, his feet were off the desk, his newspaper was folded away in a drawer, an official document was open before him and a pen was in his hand, as if he had been interrupted in writing. A fan on a stand whirred in front of him, its draught lifting the edges of a stack of papers weighted down against the fan and the sea breezes by a handgun in its holster.

  ‘Kali mera sas,’ said the coastguard officer, formally, to both men; and then, informally, to the captain, ‘Yassou, Captain Fanis.’

  ‘Yassou, Spiros,’ replied the captain. ‘How’s things?’

  ‘Oh, busy, busy,’ said Spiros. He leaned back in his chair and scratched his belly, which was impressively flat, given his age; he was well groomed, and his uniform, despite the heat, had kept its ironed-in creases. Around the light fitting and in the window casement, flies danced. A clock on the wall ticked the seconds away. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’ve had a visitor, at the camp,’ said the captain. ‘This gentleman here.’

  Spiros offered a smile, but Manolis didn’t catch it; he had crossed the room behind the captain, and was looking out of the window.

  ‘He’ll not have found much hospitality with you, I’m sure,’ said Spiros. ‘Army rations are best left behind in youth.’

  ‘He didn’t have any choice,’ said the captain. ‘His companions ditched him.’

  ‘Ditched him?’

  ‘They threw him overboard and abandoned him.’

  Spiros’s eyebrows lifted.

  ‘Really?’ he said. ‘Now why would they have done that?’

  ‘I’ll let him tell you,’ said the captain, and stepped back, leaving Manolis open to Spiros’s scrutiny.

  Spiros’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

  Manolis shook his head.

  ‘I don’t believe so,’ he said.

  ‘So, let’s have it,’ said Spiros. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Manolis. ‘We argued over a card game. They dumped me, and motored off. As a joke, of course, but those guys don’t know when the joke should be over. I swam to the base. The captain offered me bed and board, and here I am.’

  Spiros picked up the fly-swatter which lay across the desk, and brought it down swiftly on a bluebottle crawling on the stack of paperwork. He flicked the flattened corpse to the floor; a bloody smear remained on the papers.

  ‘Damned flies,’ he said. ‘They come up from the butcher’s. If Makis would keep the shop clean, there wouldn’t be so many.’ He exchanged the swatter for a pen, and turned to a blank page on a pad of paper. ‘Who threw you overboard, and from what vessel?’

  ‘I don’t know their names. They were crew, Albanian. We were playing cards, and they didn’t like it when I won.’

  ‘Albanians always are very poor losers,’ said Spiros. ‘What vessel?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. I didn’t notice.’

  ‘What port did you sail from, then?’

  ‘Look,’ said Manolis, ‘I don’t see why we need to go through this. I’ve suffered no harm, and I can see you’re busy. If you’ll just direct me to the bank, I’ll get out of your way.’

  ‘Where are your papers?’ asked Spiros. ‘Passport, ID?’

  ‘I don’t have them. They didn’t exactly give me time to pack.’

  ‘If you’ve no ID,’ said Spiros, ‘and no passport, and I assume you have no bank-book either, how will you get money from the bank?’

  ‘I’ll have to talk to them about that. There is a bank, is there?’

  ‘Yes, there’s a branch of the National Bank. Do you have an account there?’

  ‘Happily, yes.’

  ‘But the bank will need ID. You don’t have ID. You left it with your Albanian friends and it could easily be misused. I’m going to have to report it as having been stolen.’ He put the paper to one side, opened a drawer and pulled out a pad of forms in pastel colours: blue, pink, green and yellow. He scribbled his pen on the edge of the topmost form. The pen didn’t work. He pushed it back into his pen-pot, and took another.

  ‘Name?’ he asked.

  ‘Chiotis,’ he said. ‘Manolis Chiotis.’

  ‘Ah, Chiotis,’ said Spiros. ‘Any relation to the singer?’

  Manolis sighed, and shook his head.

  Spiros wrote the name in the correct box on the form.

  ‘Address?’

  Manolis gave a street address in Thessaloniki.

  ‘OK,’ said Spiros. ‘Now tell me, so we can track this vessel: what type of craft was she?’

  ‘Just some old cargo boat. It smelled bad. I think maybe they’d been transporting chickens. They were sailing from Volos to Alexandria, and that suited me. I was looking for a cheap ticket, and I got one.’

  ‘You were headed for Alexandria? In Egypt?’

  ‘No. I was headed for Crete. They were going to put in there.’

  ‘Forgive me, kyrie,’ asked Spiros, very politely, ‘but why thumb a ride with a group of foreigners you don’t know, when you might easily have made the journey by regular ferry, and not run the risk of being thrown overboard?’

  ‘In retrospect, you’re quite right,’ said Manolis. ‘It was a foolish thing to do. Look, I’m a businessman, and I need to get back to my work. If you would just direct me to the bank . . .’

  ‘I’m not sure how that would help you, immediately,’ said Spiros. ‘As I say, without ID, you can’t access your account.’

  ‘You could vouch for me. Issue me with a temporary card.’

  Spiros shook his head.

  ‘With respect,’ he said, ‘I cannot possibly do that. You might be anyone. I’ll tell you what you should do. Call your family – there’s a phone booth on the harbour-front – and tell them what has happened, how you’re in a bit of difficulty. Ask your wife to send your birth certificate, marriage certificate, photographs, bank-books, anything she’s got which will confirm who you are. She can send them to the post office, and you can pick them up there.’

  ‘I don’t have a wife,’ said Manolis. ‘I’ll get someone to transfer money to the post office.’

  ‘Ah, but the postmaster won’t release funds without ID either, will he? You must have a friend, I assume, who could
bring those papers for you? I realise this will all take time, so you’d better make up your mind to spending a few more days with us.’

  ‘I could borrow money,’ said Manolis. ‘Maybe you’d lend me something? You have my word I’ll make it good, when I get home.’

  ‘I would, of course,’ said the officer, ‘if only my salary would stretch to making loans.’

  ‘But how will I live? I have to eat, and I have nowhere to sleep.’

  Spiros looked at the captain.

  ‘I think under the circumstances, the best thing I can do with you is to prevail upon the captain to take care of you. Captain, what do you say?’

  The captain frowned.

  ‘How can I do that, Spiros? I run a military establishment, not a hotel for passing travellers.’

  Spiros rose from his chair. He smiled at Manolis.

  ‘I wonder if you would excuse us, just for a moment?’ he said.

  He took the captain by the arm, and led him to a back room, where he spoke quietly in the captain’s ear.

  ‘Do me this favour, Fanis. I don’t like the look of this guy. I’ve seen him before, somewhere. I recognise his face. Just take care of him for me for a day or so, whilst I make some enquiries. I can’t lock him up – he’s committed no offence – but I want to look into his background before he disappears. Look at him; he’s anxious to be gone. Left here in the port, he’ll blag his way on to some vessel and be gone in no time. Over there with you, it’s like house arrest. He can’t go anywhere without your say-so.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure. He’s tried to walk out once already.’

  ‘See? That’s my point. From here, the job’s too easy. He’ll cadge a ride on a yacht, and he’ll be gone. Come on, Fanis. It’s in all our interests.’

  The captain hesitated.

  ‘OK. But a day or two, no more.’

  Back in the office, Spiros sat down at his desk.

  ‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘I’ve managed to persuade Captain Andreadis to accommodate you until your paperwork comes through and you can be on your way. You’ll find it pretty quiet over there, but you’ll be comfortable enough, I’m sure. Why don’t you treat it as a holiday at government expense?’