The Bull of Mithros

by Anne Zouroudi

  He held out his hand to the coastguard officer, and Spiros took it.

  ‘Spiros Tavoularis,’ he said, and gestured in turn to the three others. ‘Vassilis Eliadis, Loskas Vergas and Makis Theonas.’

  The men all nodded in acknowledgement of their names. Loskas, the bank clerk, had made no gesture to the day’s celebration, and was conventionally dressed for work in the branch. Makis, the butcher, had made some effort with hair oil and cologne, but carried a smear of blood on the seat of his trousers.

  The fat man knew Vassilis from the taverna; he recognised the seersucker blazer, matched today with polished brogues and a violet shirt, and on his hands, cream kidskin gloves.

  ‘Are you by any chance the man they call Uncle Vasso?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’ve been hearing about you, from the curator at the museum. You are something of a philanthropist, I gather.’

  ‘I’m a Mithros man, by birth,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘No matter how far anyone travels in this world, we all have a duty to our place of origin. I do what I can.’

  Makis had a habit of blinking hard from time to time, as if he suffered with his nerves. He blinked now.

  ‘We’re all Mithros men,’ he said. ‘I was born here in Kolona, in one of those ruins over there.’ He pointed in the direction of the abandoned houses. ‘Some of these gentlemen, too, are from here. It broke our hearts to leave. We pride ourselves on being a rare breed, the last generation from Kolona. Tavoularis, Theonas, Loskas and Rokos – our great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers scratched a living from these soils. They reckon there were men living here in ancient times, two thousand years ago, maybe more. And we were the last of their lines.’

  ‘And which of you is of the Rokos line?’

  ‘There’s no one here today,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘We’re here in part to remember Socrates of that family, and to light candles in his name. He died in tragic circumstances, not far from here. I personally owe him a great debt. May his memory be eternal.’

  ‘May his memory be eternal,’ echoed the others.

  ‘So if life was so idyllic here, why did you leave?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘We ran out of the one thing we couldn’t live without,’ said Spiros. ‘The well ran dry.’

  ‘There’s water again now,’ said Captain Fanis, with some pride. ‘That’s down to army efficiency, and hard labour.’

  ‘It was hard labour here then,’ said Spiros. ‘I remember my father breaking his back, raising crops to maturity, and having no water in those last crucial days. That broke his heart, watching what he worked for wither when the heat was at its worst.’

  ‘Those were good days,’ said Makis. ‘We knew what life was about. We struggled, and we grafted, but we were free. We had no debts to anyone.’

  ‘Surely, pedi mou, your debts don’t make you unhappy,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘Your creditors never press you for payment. And anyway, no man is ever free of debt, even if he owes not a single penny of currency.’

  ‘That’s a profound observation,’ said the fat man. ‘I agree, it’s a rare man who owes no debt at all of obligation, or gratitude, or honour. What business are you in, if I might ask?’

  ‘I’ve a butcher’s shop,’ said Makis. ‘But I’d move back here tomorrow, if I could. I’d give up the business, and come back here, and hunt and fish to feed ourselves.’

  But the others laughed. Makis blinked, as if alarmed now at his temerity in speaking.

  ‘You’d be here without your wife,’ said the captain. ‘She’s the last one who’d settle for the simple life.’

  ‘It couldn’t be done,’ said Loskas. His arms were folded to challenge any contradiction; there was a pen-pusher’s callous on his right middle finger. ‘Now the army’s moved in, there’d never be enough water for them, and your crops. You’d still need money for clothes, and money to pay for fuel for your boat. And I can’t see your wife firing up that old bread-oven every morning, or scouring the beach for driftwood, either, if it comes to that.’ He clapped the sullen Makis on the back. ‘You should count your blessings, my friend.’

  ‘You’d have company, anyway,’ said the fat man, nodding towards the captain.

  ‘Only me, for any length of time,’ said Captain Fanis. ‘My lads here are conscripts; they come and go. Seven, eight months I have to make soldiers of them. As soon as they start shaping up, away they go again. I’m like a mother to them, all that time, and they leave me without a backward glance. They find it dull here, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Except for your recent arrival,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘I’ve heard he’s added some colour to your days.’

  ‘The sooner he’s gone, the better,’ said the captain. He turned to the fat man. ‘They mean the man you saw when you arrived. He was thrown overboard by his shipmates. Sharp practices at the card table, and bad company, Albanians, he says. They tipped him in and left him with us. No papers, nothing.’

  ‘He can’t leave until he’s got money,’ said Loskas, ‘and that won’t be until he’s got papers. Another day or two, at least.’

  ‘But he could get himself money now,’ said the captain. ‘He caused a bad stink last night, and took Gounaris’s gold chain off him at poker. I don’t want to see him going anywhere until Gounaris has had a fair chance to win it back, or there’ll be blood spilt.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me this,’ said Spiros. ‘I don’t want to see him leave until he’s proved to my satisfaction who he is.’

  ‘Or who he isn’t,’ said Loskas.

  The bell-ringer began a steady tolling.

  ‘Is that the cue for the parading of the icon?’ asked the fat man. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I shall make my way over there and see what’s going on. No doubt we shall all speak again.’

  ‘I need to take a leak,’ said Uncle Vasso, as the fat man headed away, towards the church. ‘At my age, you always need to take a leak.’

  He left them, going in the direction of the derelict houses. The captain began to tell the tale of how Gounaris lost his chain, but before he finished, Uncle Vasso returned, panting with the effort of almost running.

  With his gloved hand, he grasped the captain’s arm.

  ‘There’s someone up there!’ he said, and pointed up to the hills behind the village. ‘Up in the rocks, he was watching me! I caught the flash of something – binoculars! And when he saw I’d spotted him, he ducked down. He had a rifle on his back, Fanis! He could pick us off, one by one!’

  But the captain shook his head.

  ‘Someone hunting,’ he said. ‘The only thing he’ll be picking off is partridge.’

  But Uncle Vasso gripped his arm tighter.

  ‘Please, go and see,’ he said. ‘He could have his sights on any one of us, right now! I think we should put a wall between us and him, and move everyone inside the church. Please, Fanis, go and see what he’s about. Isn’t that what you’re here for, to keep strangers off these shores? I’m telling you, there’s someone up there who shouldn’t be!’

  He released the captain’s arm and moved behind him, making the captain a shield between himself and the rocks.

  ‘I think you should probably take a look, Fanis,’ said Spiros, looking anxiously in that direction. ‘There are women and children here who need your protection.’

  ‘It’s bound to be someone hunting,’ said the captain. ‘Who else could it possibly be? Surely you don’t think the Turks are invading? For God’s sake!’

  ‘What about our friend, over there?’ said Spiros, turning in the direction of the army camp. ‘What if his friends have come back for him? They might be here to take him away, or they might just finish him with a single head shot. Albanians with guns, Fanis! It’ll look bad for you if they start shooting, and you did nothing to stop it.’

  ‘If they’ve come in by sea, that’s your remit,’ objected the captain.

  ‘If he’s on land, it’s your jurisdiction,’ said Spiros. ‘Really, I think you should go and see who
’s there.’

  The captain sighed. He put two fingers in his mouth, and gave a sharp whistle, so all the people gathered at the church turned to look. Lillis was refilling the soldiers’ cups from a wine bottle. When the captain beckoned them down, they came reluctantly.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Skafidis.

  ‘There’s someone up there, in the rocks,’ said Uncle Vasso, still careful to keep the captain between himself and the hillside. ‘I saw him when I went to relieve myself. He was watching me through his binoculars. He’s got a gun.’

  ‘What kind of gun?’ asked Kastellanos.

  ‘It looked like a rifle to me,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘But from this distance, I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘Don’t worry, lads,’ said the captain. ‘It’ll just be someone after partridge.’

  ‘I heard something, last night,’ put in Skafidis. ‘When I was on watch, I heard somebody moving about.’

  ‘Panayeia mou! I told you so!’ Uncle Vasso crossed himself, and moved a step closer to the captain.

  Captain Fanis frowned.

  ‘And you raised the alarm, did you, Skafidis? When you heard someone moving on the camp, what did you do about it?’

  Skafidis went red.

  ‘I didn’t think it was worth mentioning,’ he said. ‘Everybody was sleeping.’

  ‘Don’t you think you should take a weapon of some kind?’ asked Uncle Vasso.

  The captain looked at him.

  ‘A gun,’ said Uncle Vasso. ‘Don’t you think you should take a gun?’

  ‘We won’t be needing any weapons,’ said the captain, as he led the soldiers away. ‘Do you have any idea how much paperwork would be involved, if we discharged a weapon this close to civilians?’

  The fat man didn’t go directly to the church, but left the path and crossed to the field’s eastern corner, where the wall was overhung by black mulberry. Tethered to one of the branches was a grey mule wearing a wooden saddle. It seemed that the mule had been left in the mulberry’s shade, but as the sun had risen higher, the shade had vanished, and left the animal in full sun.

  The fat man stroked the mule’s nose, and laid the flat of his hand on its neck. The skin was hot to the touch. Untying the lead-rein, he led the mule a few paces along the wall, back into the tree’s shade, and re-tethered it to a branch. Obscured by the deeper shade of the wall-corner was a memorial, a rustic cross of olive wood entwined with wooden leaves, and a wooden frame in the same style set around a marble stone. Though the woodcarving was well preserved, the marble’s inscription was badly weathered, and overgrown with lichens, but by leaning close, the fat man could make out a name – Socrates Rokos.

  He patted the mule’s neck, and left it sniffing at the sparse, dry grass. At the church, the white-garbed, gold-surpliced priest was carrying round the icon of St Nikodemos, droning as he led the faithful in their short walk. The smoke from rattling censers was fragrant with rose incense; behind the priest, the churchwarden scattered bergamot-scented holy water on the congregation. At the fat man’s approach, the people made space around the doorway to let him enter the church and pay his respects to the saint; but the fat man smiled politely, and instead found himself a seat on one of the benches, beside a heavily pregnant young woman and her mother, who warned him with an expression of disapproval against making any advances to her daughter.

  The priest finished his recital, and carried the unsmiling saint back inside the church. The great loaves of aniseed-flavoured communion bread were blessed, cut and offered round in baskets, and the women brought weak coffee and glasses of sweet wine. Children scrambled for warm loukoumades – honey-soaked, cinnamon-sprinkled doughnuts – and the pregnant girl and her mother wandered away, leaving the fat man alone on his bench, nibbling on a hard-baked koulouri.

  ‘Can I offer you one of these?’

  Olympia held out a plate of foil-wrapped cakes, where only three remained. Though tied back in a ribbon, somehow her hair was still disordered; her dated shade of lipstick had been applied without a mirror.

  The fat man smiled up at her.

  ‘Yassou, koritsi,’ he said. ‘If they’re chocolate, you certainly may offer me one. Thank you.’

  ‘I’d save it for later, if I were you.’ She sat down beside him with the plate on her lap. ‘They’ve got too warm, and you don’t want melted chocolate on your suit.’

  ‘Sound advice,’ said the fat man. ‘You’re looking very pretty, if I may say so. Are you here with your patient?’

  Olympia shook her head.

  ‘This excursion is far beyond her. A neighbour’s sitting with her for me. Sometimes I need to leave the sickroom, just to see what else is happening in the world. I think there’s going to be dancing, if they can find someone to play. Do you dance?’

  A boy approached with whisky on a tray, and the fat man took a glass. A young man greeted them on his way to smoke a cigarette outside the gate; he was handsome in his festival clothes, but Olympia showed no interest as he passed.

  ‘The last time I danced was at my cousin’s wedding,’ said the fat man, ‘and that’s some years ago, now. Are you married, kori mou?’

  She held up her right hand to show her empty ring finger.

  ‘I had a gift from one of my charges, her wedding headdresses. Since the day she’d married, she’d kept them in a box, but she knew when she was gone, they’d be thrown out with the rubbish. So she gave them to me as a blessing, a token of good luck, in the hopes they’d bring me a treasure of a husband, like the one she had. But so far, no luck.’

  ‘Surely you have suitors?’

  She blushed.

  ‘Not the right suitor.’

  The fat man drained his whisky.

  ‘A gift of good wishes is always welcome,’ he said, ‘but sometimes a charm needs time to take effect. And sometimes one who seems wrong in the beginning may turn out to be the right choice in the end. You should give it time, kori mou. That’s my advice to you. And speaking of time, I have kept my man waiting long enough.’ He stood, and held out his hand, so she gave him hers; but instead of shaking it, he bent his shoulders in a short bow, and touched it very lightly with his lips. ‘Despina, it has been a real pleasure talking to you. Please forgive me, but I really must go.’

  The bell-ringer had abandoned the campanile, and the men the fat man had been speaking to had dispersed. A flash of movement caught his eye: a line of khaki-clad figures amongst the scrub and rocks up on the hillside, their leader waving his arm over his head in a signal to the others to spread out. For a minute or two, the fat man watched them; then he set off in the same direction, towards the village ruins.

  He found a place of gradual dilapidation: the unheard slipping of stone from stone, the damage caused by determined plants and undermining roots, the destructiveness of goats and their pressings on unstable walls. He wandered through the houses, in and out of their melancholy rooms. Through a one-hinged door, he entered what had once been someone’s salone, where the slabbed floor was no longer level and no roof remained except the timbers. A homely chair, now seatless, was upturned in a corner. Beside the fireplace, a collapsing ladder led up to the moussandra, the wooden platform where a family once slept; its balustrade – a craftsman’s piece of ornate turning – was still intact.

  He went in every house, in every building, and covered every metre of the overgrown paths which led between them. On the hillside, he heard a whistle from a soldier, and a shout from another in return. Here, amongst the old houses, were a thousand hiding places; but if anything, or anyone, was hidden there, whatever, or whoever it was, was hidden well.

  Nine

  The captain led the soldiers in a sweep of the hillside, heading up through the gullies of dry stream beds, scrambling across slopes of scree and through sharp-thorned thickets. His target was a trio of walnut trees, from where there was a view of the whole of Kolona. The trek was lengthy, the sun was hot, and when they reached the trees, he raised no objections to the soldiers slumpi
ng down around their roots. Overhead, an eagle floated high on rising thermals; below them, the rocky hillside seemed empty. The captain shielded his eyes to block the sun, and scanned to left and right, but nothing moved.

  They tramped back down to the church, where the women were pleased to welcome them.

  ‘Here, kamari mou,’ said one, offering Gounaris more loukoumades. ‘You see how good they are? I made them myself.’

  A second gave Skafidis a plate of mullet, fished from a fire-blackened pan of oil. Skafidis took the plate, and from her apron pocket she gave him bread. As he took it, she patted his boyish cheek.

  ‘Kouklos!’ she said, and called out smiling to the other women. ‘Aren’t they all handsome? Eh, Sofia – if we were twenty years younger . . .’

  ‘Twenty years ago, I could still have been his grandmother!’ said Sofia, a woman without teeth. ‘But you’d have wanted me once!’ She laughed at Skafidis, and scooped up her sagging breasts, and lifted them to where they would have been when she was a girl, and twisted her hips, and turned the circle of a dance. ‘I’d have shown you a thing or two, back in those days!’

  The people laughed; Skafidis tried to smile, and blushed deep red. The women poured more wine, and served more food, and even the priest broke off a crust from a blessed loaf, and chewed. The company was convivial, and the wine was good. The men drank more than they ought to; cigarettes were smoked, and tales were told: tales most of them already knew, embellished and embroidered to be more humourous, or shocking, or remarkable, as each one deserved. The priest put away his holy-day garments, and sweated in his grey robes, and lifted his hat from time to time to scratch his itching scalp; and when the wine was gone and the day had reached its hottest hour, the people drifted away, clambering into the boats and trucks that had brought them, and were carried away with their shouts of ‘To chronou’ echoing on the blistering air.

  At the camp, there was an ouzo bottle and a glass on the terrace table. Of Manolis, there was no sign.

  ‘Where’s our friend?’ asked Lillis.