From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Patronas told him.

  “Just do what you’re doing. Keep talking to her. She is a lost soul, profoundly depressed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Pray for happiness.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  Patronas was discharged seven days later, and he and Lydia Pappas went swimming that night. He’d taped a plastic bag over his bandage to prevent it from getting wet. Not very appealing, but somehow with Lydia, it didn’t seem to matter.

  They walked up the beach to the Platys Gialos Hotel and waded into the cove there, then swam along the rocky coast and out into the open sea. Lulled by the waves, they lay on their backs and held hands for a few seconds, then continued to swim. Soon they were surrounded by a vast darkness, the division between the sea and sky lost, the night seemingly endless and overtaking the earth. Overhead, the stars were radiant, so brilliant Patronas imagined he could see their reflection on the surface of the water. Lydia laughed as she swam, her hair undulating around her when they paused to rest, the long length of it moving back and forth on the current.

  When they grew tired, they climbed up on the rocks that formed the far end of the cove and lay down on their backs. The night was warm and they stayed like that a long time. Someone had put up a metal pole and was flying a Greek flag. A gull was standing on top, watching them with frank curiosity.

  Later Patronas couldn’t remember who had reached for the other first, whether it had been him or Lydia. All he remembered was kissing her over and over, and his boundless joy when she drew him closer, and then closer still, shivering and crying out in pleasure.

  He buried himself in her hair and licked the salt off her skin, called her name out loud until he could call no more.

  His neraida.

  Two days later Patronas moved out of Morpheus and into Lydia Pappas’ studio apartment at Leandros. The summer study would be drawing to a close soon, so they didn’t have much time, and they wanted to make the most of it. He was still on sick leave, so they took it easy, swimming in the afternoon and cooking the evening meal together. Patronas had never been with any woman but his former wife, and he found the experience exhilarating. Lydia didn’t sulk, for one thing. Didn’t argue, didn’t rage. She actually seemed to like him, which was a revelation in and of itself.

  His wife, Dimitra, had been less than forthcoming with her favors, so in his weakened state he found keeping up with Lydia more than a little challenging. Also, the incident with Achilles Kourelas had affected him more than he realized. Lydia woke him one night, saying he’d been whimpering in his sleep, crying out in anguish. The light of the full moon had been everywhere, and they’d lain in each other’s arms, her face luminous in the moonlight, her reddish hair tangled up around him. Breathing in her scent, Patronas would gladly have died then and there.

  It is enough, this. I need nothing more.

  Kazantzakis said in Zorba the Greek that it is a sin to deny a woman when she summons you to her bed and you do not go. Patronas did his best, but he often needed a nap in the afternoon.

  While Tembelos applauded Patronas’ good fortune, he worried about the eventual outcome of his romance. “Only you would give your heart to a woman who lives in the United States, one you cannot afford to visit.”

  “Giorgos, I’m crazy about her. I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

  “For God’s sake, Yiannis. You can’t move to Boston, and she’d be a fool to stay here. Pull yourself together.”

  Papa Michalis had similar reservations. “You’re at a crossroads, Yiannis,” he told him one morning over coffee. “You’ve been alone for far too long. Even when you were married, you were alone. And now this brash young redhead comes along and sweeps you off your feet.”

  “She makes me happy, Father.”

  “Drunks say the same thing about whiskey. You must not let lust be the guiding principal in your life. You should see yourself. You’re all … giddy.” The priest made a kind of sweeping motion. “It’s most unsettling, even a little unseemly in my view, given that you’re an officer of the law.”

  “I’m happy,” Patronas repeated.

  “Happiness is an American state of mind, something those people feel they are entitled to and are always going on about. You and I, we are a mature people. We are Greeks.”

  Patronas continued to visit Sami Alnasseri’s aunt in the clinic. After the doctor inspected his wound, he’d stop by her room and sit with her. They had formed a kind of a hesitant friendship. Thinking she’d be more comfortable if there was another woman present, Patronas invited Lydia Pappas along late one afternoon. It was quiet now in the clinic, the Syrian woman the only patient remaining.

  Lydia took her hand and sat with her for the next hour. When Patronas returned to the clinic the following day, she insisted on accompanying him. The two women would always smile at each other and chuckle whenever he said something. ‘A man,’ they seemed to be saying in that universal female language they both shared. ‘What do you expect?’

  Lydia often brought the Syrian woman flowers or a box of sweets. Noor was elated and cried once at the sight of the roses, said something in Arabic neither Patronas or Lydia understood. The two of them spent many hours with her over the next ten days. Easing her suffering became almost a joint project between them. Once Lydia demonstrated what she did for a living with her hands—the pot making—and Noor nodded in approval.

  They accompanied her to the ferry when she left for the hospital in Athens, pushing her up the ramp in a wheelchair, and promised to visit her there after her surgery. Lydia had arranged to have a vase of roses placed in her room in preparation for her arrival, and Patronas had asked Stathis to speak to the medical staff on the floor and tell them to treat her as a foreign dignitary.

  Before she left, the woman grabbed Patronas’ hand and held it. “Sami? What of him?”

  “I will find the person who killed him,” Patronas said. “I give you my word.”

  “Justice, you said before,” she whispered. “Justice for Sami.”

  Patronas nodded. “Yes, yes. I promise.”

  And then it all came crashing down. It started with a phone call from Richard Svenson one morning, saying he needed to see him.

  “I’ll meet you at Narli’s,” Patronas said. “It’s less than a block from Leandros.”

  “I’d prefer not to do it in Platys Gialos. I’m in Apollonia now. Let’s meet in the lobby of the municipality building.”

  Reluctantly, Patronas agreed. He was on foot today and would have to take the bus. Nikolaidis was already in Apollonia, and Tembelos and the other two had taken off in the Rav to visit the village of Heronissos, far to the north. The priest had heard the best fish were there and had commandeered the vehicle at breakfast that morning. The old man had recently taken up driving, but he hadn’t really gotten the hang of it, so Tembelos had gone along to supervise, to reach over and put his foot on the brake if Father got confused. Having nothing better to do, Evangelos Demos went along for the ride. Since traffic was rare on the road to Heronissos, Patronas had consented to the outing, thinking that at the speed Papa Michalis usually drove, they would get there faster if they walked.

  He had no idea why the priest wanted to take up driving at his advanced age, but he seemed determined. “I thought the automobile was a fad when it first appeared in Greece,” he told Patronas. “A misjudgment on my part.”

  Petros Nikolaidis was in the municipality building, documenting what had transpired preceding the wounding of Achilles Kourelas. “A mere formality,” Stathis had assured Patronas. Still, it had to be done and Nikolaidis had volunteered.

  “Wait for me inside the municipality building,” Patronas told Svenson on the phone. “I don’t have a car and I’ll have to take the bus. It might take me some time.”

  It actually took him close to ninety minutes. Buses were few and far between in Platys Gialos and he’d just missed the last one. When it finally did arrive, it
made multiple stops, one every block or so, discharging islanders all along the road. Tourists were also onboard. The locals ignored them with well-practiced neutrality—outsiders, they were simply invisible to them—content to chat with one another in Greek. Causing a further delay, the tourists would stand in the doorway of the bus, guidebooks in hand, and ask the driver directions in bewildered voices. Parallel universes.

  Petros Nikolaidis was still laboring away when Patronas finally got to the municipality building; he said Richard Svenson had never appeared. The only people in the lobby were locals seeking tax stamps, and it had been like that the entire day.

  Exiting the building, Patronas walked through Apollonia and then on up the hill to Artemonas, searching the restaurants and coffee houses. Svenson might have gone for lunch prior to their appointment and been delayed. However,. he saw no trace of him.

  An alarm was beginning to sound in his head, and he called the summer study, only to learn that Svenson had departed more than three hours before, saying he was heading back to Platys Gialos.

  Patronas quickly called the owner of Leandros and asked him to check and see if Svenson was in his room. Within minutes, the man phoned back and said no one had answered the door at the apartment.

  “What about the kids? Are they there? If so, put them on.”

  “They’re always in class at this hour. They usually turn up here around four. You can always tell … the music.”

  “Did you see Svenson come in? The people at the summer study said he was on his way there.”

  “No, and he usually stops by the office to say hello. Real friendly, the professor. Typical American. Wants people to like him.” The owner hesitated. “I have a master key. If you want, I can unlock the door and check inside for you.”

  “Do that and get back to me.” Patronas gave him his cellphone number and hung up.

  The owner called back within minutes. “His computer is on, but he’s not there.”

  Growing anxious, Patronas called Tembelos on his cellphone and summoned him and the others back to Apollonia. “Richard Svenson has gone missing.”

  They spread out and searched the island, dividing it into quadrants. Concentrating on Platys Gialos, Patronas and Evangelos Demos worked their way through the village, interviewing the staff at Flora’s, the taverna Svenson had said he frequented. While the people they spoke to said that they knew Svenson on sight, as far as they knew, he hadn’t been around today.

  Tembelos was exploring Apollonia with Nikolaidis and Papa Michalis. There were no ferry boats off the island until four p.m., so they held off expanding the search to Kamares. Turning up nothing, they continued on to Castro and Faros.

  While in Kamares, Patronas had stopped at the headquarters of the Coast Guard and alerted the staff to Svenson’s disappearance. Not wanting to cause a panic, he’d told them not to search the boat before it departed, but to stand by in case he needed them. He would call if he and his men didn’t find him.

  By the time he reached Castro, the sun was going down. Tourists were sitting outside the bars, drinking beer and watching the light fade from the sky. Patronas studied the medieval citadel at the top of a mountain, its eastern flanks plunging nearly straight down into the sea. A maze of narrow alleyways, the area had been occupied for centuries, each subsequent civilization building on the remnants of the one before. Patronas kept losing his way, taking a side street that led nowhere or back to where he’d started, which only added to his growing anxiety.

  Although he searched every square inch of the village, stopping to question each person he met as before, he came up empty-handed.

  A tiny chapel occupied an islet some distance away, a stone bridge leading out to it. Tourists were making their way there, stick figures in the distance. For a moment he stopped to watch them, but could see no one who resembled Svenson.

  The village of Faros fronted a shallow bay. Seaweed darkened much of the water, undulating slowly in the current. The beach was more dirt than sand, muddy. Little more than a collection of rooming houses, cafés, and hostels, Faros appeared far less prosperous than Platys Gialos, its inhabitants surviving on a much poorer class of tourism. He spoke to each of the residents in turn, but again, no one had seen the American.

  Before returning to Platys Gialos, he called the Coast Guard and told them they needed to start searching the boats—public or private, it didn’t matter. Svenson had vanished and they had to find him.

  Patronas went back to Flora’s in Platys Gialos after leaving Faros, thinking Svenson might have turned up there for dinner. The taverna was crowded, its tables full. The waiter he spoke to—the dark-haired son of the owner—told him Svenson and his students usually came in around eight o’clock, but he hadn’t seen them tonight.

  Patronas and his men ate a quick meal, the inevitable tyropitas and a platter of soutzoukakia, meatballs flavored with cumin, before continuing the search. Patronas was desperate now. It was getting late. Soon they’d have to call off the manhunt—no one to talk to, everyone in bed.

  The kids had returned from the summer study and they aided in the search, as did Lydia Pappas after Patronas called her to say Svenson was missing.

  Charlie Bowdoin was distraught. “Jesus, where did he go? What could have happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Patronas said grimly.

  Gilbert and Nielsen were equally glum. Silently following Patronas’ instructions, they combed the grounds of Leandros and the uninhabited area between the beach and the migrant camp, shining their flashlights into the dry riverbed. Lydia Pappas had taken it upon herself to tackle the Greeks in the neighborhood, going from house to house, seeking some clue as to the professor’s whereabouts.

  Close to midnight, Patronas returned to Leandros and ordered the owner to let him into the professor’s apartment. Unsure of what he’d find, whether it was a crime scene or not, he donned his protective gear beforehand. Inside, he found the rooms to be in good order. Svenson’s clothes were all put away—either hanging in the bedroom closet or folded neatly in the drawers of the dresser. The dishes had all been washed and were stacked up in the drainer, a clean dishtowel laid over them. There were no toiletries in evidence in the bathroom; they’d all been stowed away in a small leather case.

  Opening the door to the balcony, Patronas stepped outside and lit a cigarette. The moon was high overhead and it was a beautiful evening, a thin line of clouds along the horizon catching the light. It felt strange to be here, looking down on Lydia Pappas’ terrace. He wondered if Svenson had seen them together, been aware of their deepening relationship.

  The apartment itself was a mirror image of hers. It appeared the professor had been working at the table in the kitchen. As the owner had told Patronas earlier, the American’s computer was still on and a cup of coffee, now filmy and cold, sat on a coaster next to it.

  Pulling up a chair, Patronas quickly scrolled down the computer screen, seeking information as to what Svenson had been working on, what might have led him to contact him. Although it was hard to type with gloves on, from what he could tell, the American had been writing a paper on the shrine in Cappadocia, probably in preparation for his upcoming visit there.

  Patronas’ men had followed him into the apartment, and he ordered them to turn the place inside out. “Suit up and go through everything. Take it room by room.”

  Dressed in a hazmat suit, Evangelos Demos dutifully began opening and closing drawers. “I don’t understand it,” he told Patronas. “A place the size of Sifnos …. Surely someone must have seen him.”

  “Apparently not,” Patronas said impatiently.

  Patronas was still working on the computer when Tembelos appeared at the door to the kitchen. “Coast Guard’s here,” he said. “They found him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  He who becomes a sheep is eaten by wolves.

  —Greek Proverb

  Leaving Svenson’s apartment, Patronas walked to the marina in Platys Gialos with Tembelos and t
he Coast Guard officer who’d reported the find. The wind had picked up, and it tore at their clothes as they made their way out onto the quay, waves slamming into the distant sea wall. Disturbed by their presence, a gull left its perch on the mast of a sailboat and took flight, wheeling high overhead, cawing raucously.

  Another Coast Guard officer was waiting for them, standing on a small floating dock that ran perpendicular to the quay. Seeing Patronas, he pointed to a black Zodiac.

  The yellow light of the mercury lamps was garish against the darkness, and it heightened the eerie, science fiction atmosphere of the scene. Svenson’s Zodiac was anchored about midway down, located between a small wooden fishing boat and a midsized yacht flying a German flag. Again, Patronas thought of parallel universes.

  And now a third universe had been added to the mix, that of the migrants.

  The wind was brisk and the Zodiac was bobbing up and down, a length of rope hanging off the port side. Something about the rope didn’t look right to Patronas. It appeared too taut, like a fishing line that had gotten snagged. Far beneath it he caught a glimpse of a white shape.

  Pulling on his protective gear, Patronas jumped down into the boat and began tugging on the rope, trying to pull it up. Something was holding it back and he searched the dark water again for the source. About two meters down, he spotted Svenson’s body. Arms outstretched, the American was caught in the rope.

  “An accident?” Tembelos asked.

  With the help of the two Coast Guard men, he and Patronas were in the process of laying Svenson’s body out on the quay. Borne by the waves, the Zodiac kept shifting, drifting farther and farther away, only to return again when the wind changed direction. It was proving to be an arduous task.

  After Patronas had called, the dispatcher at the Coast Guard station had checked the registration of Svenson’s boat, found out where he’d anchored it, and dispatched the two men there. It had been a sensible move, saved them countless hours.