From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  “Water,” Patronas said weakly.

  Jumping up, Evangelos filled a cup from a pitcher on the nightstand and held it to his lips. “You need anything else? Should I get the doctor?”

  “No, no.” Waving the glass away, Patronas collapsed back on the pillow.

  “You were in the operating room for a long time,” Evangelos reported. “More than four hours. At first, we wanted to airlift you to Athens, but the doctor said there wasn’t time. You’d bleed out before the helicopter arrived. Nikolaidis drove like a maniac, a hundred kilometers an hour, honking and screaming at people. Giorgos was in the backseat, holding you in his arms, trying to keep you warm so you wouldn’t go into shock, pressing down on the wound with his hands. Doctor said he saved your life.”

  “Where’s Achilles?”

  “In KAT, the trauma hospital in Athens. Tembelos summoned a helicopter which came and took him away. He’ll be all right, the doctor said. No lasting injuries.”

  Patronas looked around the room. Judging by the placement of the windows, it was the same one he’d been in the night of the fire, only instead of a gurney, there was a proper hospital bed and he was on it. A monitor with an eerie blue screen was tracking his heartbeats, the graph adjusting and readjusting itself, rising and falling with every breath he took, and he was hooked up to at least two intravenous drips, one a purplish bag of blood. He surreptitiously moved his hands down under the sheet, felt a length of tubing. Shit! They’d inserted a catheter, too.

  Uncomfortable, he squirmed around on the mattress. He felt like he’d been tied in a knot, his insides fiercely constrained. He fingered the patchwork of bandages on his gut. “What’s all this?”

  “Doctor said he stapled you,” said Evangelos.

  Patronas nodded. That’s about what it felt like.

  “I shouldn’t have shot him. I know that. But he was killing you, Yiannis. He was fucking killing you.”

  Patronas felt himself drifting off again. “Never mind,” he said.

  But Evangelos wanted to tell his side of the story. “After we got you settled, Nikolaidis called Stathis and told him what happened. After that, all hell broke loose. The newspapers got wind of it and people are saying I did it on purpose because Achilles Kourelas was Chrisi Avgi. But I didn’t do it for that reason, Yiannis, I swear. I did it to save you.”

  “Stathis say anything about me?”

  Unwilling to meet his eye, Evangelos nodded unhappily. “He wanted to know where Kourelas got the knife and how come you didn’t search him before taking him away. He also quizzed me about the gun—why I still had it after what happened in Chios.” Looking down, he hesitated. “You know, with the goats.”

  Patronas wished he could adjust the morphine drip, up the dose until he lost consciousness, drown Evangelos out somehow. It wasn’t enough that he’d almost died. Evidently, Stathis planned to fire him, too. At the very least, hold a public hearing and feast on his entrails.

  He had once seen a painting of Napoleon retreating from Russia. The emperor had been riding a horse—the landscape bleak and white with snow—and he had been surrounded by bloody soldiers. But it was Napoleon’s expression Patronas remembered best, the look of abject despair. Lying there in the hospital bed, he understood how the man had felt.

  Like the emperor, he’d bungled everything from start to finish. He’d assumed because Kourelas was Greek, he wasn’t truly dangerous, and look where that had gotten him? Skewered like a souvlaki and his quarry nearly killed.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Evangelos said.

  Closing his eyes, Patronas lay there, thinking. Even if I get fired, I can go back to working security at the archeological dig on Chios. Alcott’s my friend. He’ll take care of me.

  He sighed. Survival, not success. It seemed to be his destiny.

  With a wife and son, it would be much harder for Evangelos. He couldn’t afford to lose his job. The son, Nikos, needed special care; he’d perish without it.

  “I’ll do what I can to defend you, Evangelos,” Patronas said. “If there’s an inquest, I’ll say you behaved heroically, took down an armed madman single-handedly and saved my life.”

  Drifting off to sleep, Patronas smiled to himself. A hero, Evangelos? The opiates must be getting to me.

  Patronas thought he was hallucinating when Stathis showed up in the hospital room the next morning. As cocky as ever, his boss had brought a group of reporters with him, one from each of the major papers in Greece, and had a local photographer in tow. Worse was the way he was beaming at Patronas. Out of practice at smiling, he appeared to be baring his teeth, which made Patronas distinctly uneasy. He didn’t know why Stathis had come or what he wanted—a worrisome place to be with his boss.

  “There he is,” Stathis said, rushing over to his bedside.

  Posing next to the hospital bed, he put his arm around Patronas’ shoulders and suggested the photographer take a picture, saying Patronas and his team had cornered a dangerous serial killer, a man who targeted even children because of their race. “Chief Officer Patronas fought to protect the people of Greece—native born and migrant alike—and almost lost his life in the ensuing firefight.”

  Patronas started to correct him, to say that as far as he recalled, there’d been no firefight, only a single, poorly thought-out gunshot, but seeing the expression on his boss’ face, he decided to remain silent. Justice would be served, but not here, not now, and certainly not by Stathis.

  Looking in the mirror over the dresser, Stathis wetted the tip of his pinky finger and smoothed down his eyebrows and moustache. He then posed for more pictures, angling his head first to the left and then to the right, speaking affably to the reporters the whole time. Cashing in on Patronas’ injury.

  “You’ll be back in Chios before you know it,” he told Patronas. “I’ve already authorized the airfare.”

  “But the case—” Patronas protested.

  “The case is closed!” Stathis said.

  His boss left fifteen minutes later, waltzing out as casually as he’d come, the reporters trailing after him. “I’m heading to Paros on vacation,” he called out over his shoulder. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  Patronas didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At least he still had a job.

  After Stathis left, Patronas slept for a few hours.

  The doctor appeared at his side later that day and gave him a shot. “To prevent sepsis,” he said. He then changed the dressing on Patronas’ wound and adjusted his IV, removing the bag of blood and replacing it with another.

  After that, there was a steady stream of people: Petros Nikolaidis and his wife, the latter bearing a plastic container of avgolemono soup, and Papa Michalis and Giorgos Tembelos, who had split the cost of a fancy tart made of almonds and ice cream. They brought in chairs and sat there talking. The room got hotter and hotter, the ice cream eventually melting and pooling on the nightstand.

  “You okay, boss?” Tembelos asked.

  Patronas raised a cautionary hand. “Not ‘okay,’ Giorgos, entaxei.”

  He’d been on a campaign to rid his speech of foreign words such as ‘okay’ and had insisted his associates do the same. It hadn’t gone well; Tembelos especially had mocked him, speaking German on occasion just to torment him. ‘Guten Morgen, mein Herr,’ and the like. It was an insufferable situation, but Patronas was unwilling to concede defeat. Greek it was, and Greek was the language he’d use until the day he died.

  Tembelos gave him a long look. “For God’s sake, Yiannis, don’t start that Greek-only crap today, not after what happened.”

  “We should preserve our heritage.’

  “Our heritage is in shreds … or haven’t you noticed? One ‘okay’ more or less won’t make any difference. You need to watch yourself with this Greek thing. First, it’s the language, and then it’s the homeland, and before you know it, you’re joining Chrisi Avgi. It’s not that big a leap from purity of the tongue to purity of the race.”

 
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not a fascist. Leave me alone.”

  Tucking an extra pillow under his head, Petros Nikolaidis’ wife helped Patronas’ eat the soup, holding the spoon up to his mouth so he could sip it. Her name was Thalia, and she had curly black hair and a broad, open face. She seemed a kindly person and was very patient with him, wiping his face gently with a napkin between mouthfuls.

  “Given the fact that Achilles used a knife on you, Stathis believes he must have killed the boy, too,” Tembelos told Patronas. “As for the firebombing, we found a container of gasoline in the house. Now, Stathis is pressuring us to arrest Costas.”

  “So what if there was gasoline?” Patronas said. “What does that prove? They were car mechanics. Of course they’d have gasoline.”

  “He wants to nail them for it.”

  “I know. He paid me a visit earlier today with a bunch of reporters. Seems to think our shooting of Achilles Kourelas is his ticket to stardom.”

  Tembelos snorted. “As tous fane ta korakia.” Let the crows eat him.

  Patronas’ pain had returned, and he could feel himself beginning to fade. “What else is going on?”

  “Father, here, has been working at the school, doing what he can for the migrants,” Tembelos said, gesturing to the priest. “The rest of us have been dealing with the fallout from the shooting. Appears that there’ll be a hearing in Athens and we’ll all have to go before a panel and defend ourselves—convince the powers-that-be it was the correct course of action.”

  “It wasn’t,” Patronas said. “The only thing we knew at that point was that Achilles Kourelas was an asshole. We had nothing linking him to either crime.”

  “He would have killed you, Yiannis. The man is crazy.”

  “I just wish it had gone differently.”

  “Wisdom behind me, had I but had thee before,” Tembelos said. It was a famous Geek saying, one Patronas’ mother had often recited.

  “Wisdom in front of me would have been better.”

  The priest volunteered to stay with Patronas after Tembelos and the others departed. “I’ll help you until you’re back on your feet again, Yiannis. Be your eyes and ears.”

  “Do whatever you like, Father.”

  “A few prayers?”

  Patronas yawned. “If you must.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Honor good men.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Lydia Pappas lingered outside Patronas’ hospital room, peering in as if afraid to enter. “I can come back later if you want,” she said.

  “No, now is perfect,” Patronas said, beckoning her forward with his hand. “I had a bath and the doctor just left.”

  The bath had been an embarrassing affair. A stout Polish woman—a veritable giantess—had scrubbed him down with a washcloth, chiding him all the while, pushing him roughly this way and that. After shampooing his hair, she’d scrubbed the soles of his feet, his underarms and groin, even the inside of his ears, and rinsed him off with a hose. So thorough was the cleaning, Patronas felt as if he’d been through a carwash.

  He was feeling much better this morning, far less weak and confused. The doctor attributed his improvement to the multiple blood transfusions.

  “You lost a great deal of blood,” the doctor said, “but we managed to stabilize the situation. Your wound is starting to heal, and there is no sign of sepsis. Starting today, I want you to start exercising. You can hold on to Kyria Wanda.” He nodded to the Polish giantess standing next to him. “ Walk up and down the hall.”

  “Maybe later,” Patronas said, in no hurry to go anywhere with Wanda. “I’m a little tired.”

  Lydia Pappas had brought a bouquet of freesias that she set about arranging, filling the vase with water and setting it down on the nightstand next to him. “I came as soon as I heard.”

  She was wearing a voile dress with little flowers embroidered on it, the material so thin Patronas could see her bra, the line of her underpants. Her arm was still in a sling and her head was covered by the same kerchief she’d worn that night at Leandros—the one that made him think of Kazantzakis.

  Patronas felt a little tremor of excitement. Hardly the time for it, given the catheter and the little nightshirt he was wearing. The heart monitor started beeping faster and faster the nearer she came, the machines he was hooked up to giving him away.

  She nodded to the IVs. “What did the doctor say?”

  “According to him, I’m full of other people’s blood and doing just fine,” said Patronas.

  Self-conscious about his situation—the tubes and all the rest—he pulled the sheet up to his chin and ducked his head down like a turtle. “I’m supposed to go for a walk,” he said. “Would you care to join me?”

  After securing a robe from the nurse, they made their way slowly down the hallway, Patronas walking beside Pappas, clutching the pole with the IVs on it for support on one side, her arm on the other. After they returned, they sat together for a long time. Outside, the birds were lively and the scent of the flowers she’d brought hung heavily in the air.

  Patronas described how an old woman he’d met on Patmos put seeds out on her windowsill for the birds, taming them over time. “I never saw anything like it. They’d hear her voice and come. She said it was a small price to pay for their company.”

  “I’ll bring some seeds with me tomorrow,” Pappas said. “Maybe we can get them to visit you, too.”

  “Don’t let the doctor catch you or that Amazon he has working for him.”

  “Wanda? I met her.”

  Co-conspirators, they laughed together.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “How did you get interested in astronomy? It seems a strange pastime for a cop. Did you study it in school?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m not a well-educated man. I never went to university. I taught myself.”

  He described his nights working security on an archeological dig on Chios, how there wasn’t much on the hill where he was, only an immense blanket of stars. “I guess that’s where it started. I ended up buying a telescope, a strong one, and scanning the sky. You can see the rings of Saturn through it, all kinds of stuff. I bought a book, too. I wanted to learn more about what I was seeing, everything I could—”

  She leaned over and kissed him gently on the mouth, taking care not to disturb his IVs. Hearing the heart monitor, Wanda came rushing in to see what was going on and sent Lydia on her way.

  Patronas watched her leave. “Well, what do you know?” he said to himself.

  While Patronas was in the clinic, Lydia Pappas came every single day to see him, each time bearing a different gift: more flowers, an MP3 player so that he could listen to music, a bag of amygdalota, the almond cookies Sifnos was famous for, and even a pot one of her students had made with a sheriff’s star etched on the side.

  Usually she arrived late in the afternoon, after her classes had finished. Often they didn’t speak, just sat and held hands. Sometimes Patronas would doze off while she was there. Other times, the reverse would happen; she’d be the one to sleep. He liked to watch her then, her face gradually relaxing, her breathing becoming deep and steady. Thought what he felt at those moments might well be the beginning of love.

  The birds gradually found their way to his windowsill, and one afternoon, into the room itself, a group of sparrows flying around and around until they found their way out, with Lydia Pappas’ help. She herded them in the right direction with her scarf, holding it to one side like a toreador and waving them over to the window.

  “They’ll be nesting in your IV if you’re not careful,” she said with a smile.

  He and Pappas watched the birds pecking outside for a moment or two. “Give them more seeds,” he said.

  Smiling, she reached over and took his hand before sprinkling the seeds on the sill. “You’re a good man, Yiannis Patronas.”

  Patronas spent a lot of time walking up and down the corridor as the doctor prescribed, nodding to the migrant
s who were still there. He’d visited Sami Alnasseri’s aunt two or three times, sitting by her bedside and doing his best to communicate with her, using the translation application on his phone.

  Although still in a great deal of pain, she seemed to welcome the company, and they worked out a kind of language between them, half-English and half-Arabic. Congolezika, he told himself—Greek slang for a babel of tongues.

  She eventually admitted that Sami’s friends might have been Greek. They had been foreign men, she was sure, information Patronas took with a grain of salt. Most probably all she meant was they were from some place other than Syria. “Sami, he say, they are rich.”

  This revelation worried him, for it contradicted everything he knew of Costas and Achilles Kourelas. But, remembering the boy’s poverty, he decided it wouldn’t have taken much to impress him. As a refugee, he had needs that were all-encompassing. Reluctantly, Patronas began to think Stathis might have been right after all: the killer was Achilles Kourelas.

  Still, he had his doubts. Something about the case still bothered him. The solution seemed too tidy for one thing: both the arson and the boy’s murder laid at the doorstep of one person, a man who lacked the means and the intelligence to defend himself. In his experience, things didn’t happen that way. One question answered only gave rise to another and another, and so it was now.

  When he questioned Sami’s aunt about the fire, she said she hadn’t seen the person who threw the Molotov cocktail and had no reason to believe anyone would want to harm her. “It is us, they were after,” she said. “All of us, I am very sure. Not just me.”

  The doctor confided to Patronas that she needed skin grafts, that he was seeking to send her on to Athens, to a hospital with a team of doctors he trusted.