by Alison Fell
‘Some advert for the cause he was,’ she muttered, struggling to hold the map flat in the wind. ‘Bloody wowser!’
He remembered how he’d spotted two kookaburras, high up, staring each other out across a gap between branches. Australia’s emblematic bird. Some advert for the New World, he said, pointing them out to Karen, hoping to raise a laugh. Although Karen the Aussie would hear nothing against them, to him they looked hunchbacked and irascible, like two old codgers suffering from gout.You could imagine each one saying to itself as it contemplated its mirror image, Well, thank God I don’t look like that ugly fuck!
Despite himself, he smiled at the memory.
Was that why he’d picked the fight with Dora? So that he could smile to himself in the darkness, or equally give in to good honest melancholy?
Terpsikore wafted like a ghost out of the undergrowth and walked listlessly towards the kitchen door. He wondered if she was sickening for something; she hadn’t touched the fish he’d tried to tempt her with at supper-time. He trod his cigarette butt into the dirt and followed her indoors.
*
Irini’s salon was on Epimenidou, in the shadow of the old Venetian Arsenal. In the evenings the street was a favourite rat-run for kids on papakis but at 10 am, with the Heraklion rush hour over, it was reasonably tranquil.
Irini had taken on a new assistant, a bleached-blond Sicilian who called himself Nikki, although his real name, he confided – as if Yiannis was remotely interested – was Giovanni. He wore a brief mesh vest dyed in camouflage colours and a low hipster belt studded with brass cartridges. Peroxide Giovanni from Palermo, thought Yiannis as he waited, swathed in towels, to be washed and shorn.
‘When are you due at HQ?’ his sister asked.
‘It’s okay, the meeting isn’t till 2.’
Her head was bent busily over a bride-to-be, a girl of no more than 18 who was wearing a crop-top and tight jeans. Although Irini’s own hair was cut in an aggressively modern bob, like clipped crow’s wings, she was teasing the bride’s hair into the kind of bouffant her mother might have sported in the ‘70s, dancing nimbly round the chair while the girl sat before the mirror like someone sedated, staring at her reflection. On the counter below the mirror sat a coronet attached to a cloud of white veiling.
There was something disturbing about the girl’s acquiescence, her abject surrender to antique tradition. A lamb to the slaughter, thought Yiannis. It had been hard enough to persuade Karen to go to the Registry Office, let alone to consider a white wedding. She’d been dressed in some kind of pale blue suit, high heeled shoes; wistfully he remembered that she hadn’t bothered with stockings.
Tilting Yiannis’ head back over the basin, Nikki adjusted the water temperature.
‘Not too hot?’
‘No, no. Perfect,’ said Yiannis, closing his eyes and letting tiredness wash over him.
In the small hours of the morning a blast of gunfire had jolted him out of sleep. He’d put the pillow over his head, assuming the inevitable Cretan wedding party: they’d be letting off the customary fusillades, peppering the signposts with exuberant bullets. Then he heard music, and the crackle of American voices, and got up, cursing.
In the living room the television, inexplicably, was showing a black and white film; John Wayne’s totemic face straddled the Greek subtitles. When he entered Terpsikore leapt off the sofa, clattering the remote to the floor. Had she stepped, somehow, on the button? When he scolded her she flattened her ears to her head and let out a wail of misery.
‘What?’ he demanded, clicking the off-button, staring at her. There was something about her posture that worried him: the way she had spread her haunches into a semi-squat, pained and ungainly. As he watched she began to drag her rear-end across the rug. He saw drops of fluid, pee perhaps. Then she squealed again and he saw that there was blood.
‘What’s wrong, Kore?’
Panic-stricken, he knelt down beside her, but the cat hissed at him and shrank from his touch.
Yiannis couldn’t bear the broken-hearted sounds that were coming from her. For a wild moment he thought of calling Dora, who would know what to do. Then he remembered the flyer she’d given him, for an Animal Rescue Clinic run by one of her ex-students from the commune up at Neo Chori; Dora had worked as a volunteer for a while, campaigning about the stray problem.
He ran to the telephone and rifled through the small drawer under the table. The Clinic in Heraklion was closed, but a recorded message gave an out-of-hours number for emergencies.
A woman’s voice answered sleepily in German, apologised, and launched into harshly-accented Greek. Near to tears, Yiannis gabbled back in English.
The woman listened for a moment.
‘You know Neo Chori? Can you get her up here now? Take the first track on the right past the village signpost.’
Somehow he had swaddled Kore in a towel and bundled her into the cat-box. He’d driven up the hill like a madman, swerving round the hairpin bends, trying to ignore the eerie keening from the back of the car. Just before Neo Chori village a painted signboard on the right said ‘Halcyon’.
The dirt road meandered upwards for a kilometre before he sighted habitation: beehives looming whitely in the headlights, a geodesic dome, polytunnels. The house was long and low, of whitewashed stone with new breezeblock extensions. A light-coloured jeep was parked outside, next to a battered pick-up truck. When he got out of the car an invisible dog barked at him from an outbuilding.
A woman dressed in a lab-coat over pajamas appeared on the porch, her dark hair scrubbed back and plaited in two long braids.
‘I am Wiltraud,’ she whispered, putting a finger to her lips. ‘The children, you understand.’ She took the cat box from him and hurried it inside.
In the kitchen she donned latex gloves, lifted Kore gently out, and set her on the table. The cat flattened herself, squirming away, her eyes aghast.
‘Poor girl,’ said Wiltraud. ‘She’s in much pain. Will you hold her for me? I must give some sedation.’ She took a syringe from a box in the fridge and soaked a cotton wool swab in something that smelled sharply, familiarly, of hospitals.
Yiannis held Kore down but could not look. Wiltraud’s ears had parallel piercings from the lobe to a point halfway up the rim; he stared fixedly at the empty holes, willing the shot to take effect. She was stroking Kore’s head, murmuring to her in German. The cat’s movements grew weaker. Yiannis felt the flaccidity steal into her muscles like death.
Wiltraud glanced up at him. ‘I think it’s better to go out while I examine her. I will take some minutes.’ Under the stark strip-light her eyes were blue and sorrowful in a wide sunburned face.
Yiannis nodded mutely, blinking back tears. He retired to the hallway, where red stickers forbade him to smoke. Spotting a noticeboard on the wall, he parked himself in front of it. What he assumed to be work rosters were neatly typed in English, with ruled columns in which people – some of them children, judging by the unformed writing – had signed up for domestic tasks: ‘chickens’, ‘cooking’, ‘compost’, ‘laundry’, and ‘recycling’. He counted seven names, including Wiltraud’s. He’d known of the place, of course, if only because it was on his patch, but since he’d never had cause to visit he assumed that whatever went on here was conducted in a fairly unobtrusive, law-abiding way. It certainly didn’t correspond with the popular idea of a commune. No empty beer-bottles lolled on the porch, no ashtrays spilled over with the tell-tale cardboard litter of joints. He had a feeling it wasn’t marijuana they were growing in their polytunnels. The impression he gained was one of orderliness and industry; he could imagine the six other communards, tucked up under their unbleached cotton sheets, sleeping the quiet sleep of the righteous.
Beside the work-roster there was an Internet printout in English, headed Acropolis Meouw.
‘Simply put, the feeling on the islands is that death from malnutrition, disease, or starvation (or poisoning, in winter, when no tourists can see) is acceptabl
e because it is ‘natural’. It involves no active intervention by humans, so it must therefore be ‘nature’s way’ and ‘God’s will’ or what have you. All intervention, especially surgical intervention, and especially involving castration of males, is seen as unnatural and barbaric.’
He remembered now what Dora had said about the leafletting campaign she’d been involved in: she’d been chastised, even spat at, for taking the outsiders’ line. If the leaflets were as aggressive as the printout, no wonder they didn’t go down too well with the locals. He skimmed the statistics on health benefits, and learned that neutering reduced the incidence of prostate cancer, and spaying before the first cycle reduced the risk of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers.
Cold superstition nudged at the base of his spine. He stood, rigid as a gun barrel, firing his pointless prayers at the gods. He’d had no idea that cats could suffer from ovarian cancer. By the time the pain arrived it was almost always too late: this he’d learned, only afterwards, from Karen’s consultant.
He went to the screen door and peered miserably out. On the porch wind-chimes, stirred by the breeze, tinkled out their spirit-message. Beyond the wooden deck were tubs of geraniums; a child’s swing made from a car tyre dangled from a shadowy olive tree.
He went outside and lit a cigarette. Moths fluttered at the porch light. No sounds came from the kitchen. He shivered and wrapped his arms across his chest, trying not to imagine the tumour burgeoning unsuspected in Kore’s slender belly.
At last Wiltraud emerged and beckoned him in. ‘She has cystitis, as I thought.’ She handed him a small cardboard packet; inside were several foil-wrapped sachets. ‘You must give her one powder twice a day with food.’
Yiannis almost sobbed with relief. ‘That’s all?’ He looked at Wiltraud apprehensively. ‘You mean, apart from the cystitis, she’s okay?’
‘Cysitis is unpleasant enough, I think! However, I would like to keep her here tonight, so that I can check her again in the morning. If you don’t mind to pick her up tomorrow? Late afternoon would be convenient.’
Wiltraud had refused to charge for the treatment, telling him that the Clinic survived on donations. He’d given her 50 euros, but now he wondered if that had been enough. The commune, she said, were involved in organic farming. Already they sold their honey and vegetables through several health-food shops in Chania and Heraklion, and – surprisingly, he thought – they were also raising an organic herd. He’d assumed such an establishment would be strictly vegetarian, not to mention the fact that Crete wasn’t exactly big on agribusiness: all the herds he knew of simply scratched around in the hills, so didn’t that mean they were organic enough already?
‘And how is Dora?’ she’d asked as he got into the car. Startled by the question – he was aware Wiltraud had been a student of Dora’s but he couldn’t remember mentioning their relationship – he hadn’t known how to answer.
He thought of the pathetic body on the sheeted table, the legs so boneless, the long tail limp as a hair-ribbon. Something in Wiltraud’s expression had made him anxious; he couldn’t quite believe she was giving him the whole picture. But then medics always seemed evasive to him, particularly when they were trying to reassure; that knowledgeable neutrality of theirs was an open invitation to fear the worst.
Sighing, he surrendered himself to Nikki’s attentions. The Italian was massaging in a herb-scented conditioner. His thumbs circled up from Yiannis’ temples to palpate his scalp, while the fingers worked gently at the knotted muscles at the back of his neck.
When Nikki rinsed he cupped a palm tenderly over Yiannis’ ear to divert the flow of water from his face. Yiannis shut his eyes and let the water flush away the contagion of the night, its racking sounds and hospital odours. A tear slithered easily out of the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek, to be gathered up in Nikki’s tactful hand and sluiced away in the current. Nikki patted his hair to soak up the moisture, and turbanned the towel around his head.
He got up groggily and allowed himself to be ushered to the row of chairs that faced the mirror. ‘You’re a magician,’ he said sincerely, slipping the Italian a 5 euro note.
‘With you in a minute,’ said Irini, glancing across at him. She had clipped a hairpiece shaped like a snail to the crown of the bride’s head, and was teasing out side-ringlets with a tail-comb.
Yiannis took an English magazine from the pile of Vogue and Hello and flicked through it. Take a Break, the cover invited, but the cheerful title belied the contents. The readers who, for a small fee, had submitted their personal stories, seemed to be either recently bereaved, suicidal, or afflicted with obesity or cancer.
An infant of five years old had eaten herself to death; an ex-athlete, having succumbed to the lure of junk food and gained 27 kilos, tried to drive his car off a cliff.
Spanking Men Cured my Depression, read one headline. He turned the page quickly. His eye fell on a column of household hints, also sent in by readers. To stop a freshly-painted room smelling, leave a bowl of salt in it overnight.
Ingenious, he thought, making a mental note to try it out at some distant time in the future, when he felt a definite urge to decorate.
Nikki was dealing with another customer, a cowed-looking woman in middle age who sat with her handbag in her lap and her eyes fixed glumly on his reflection. He had seized two hanks of her dull brown hair, which he held out on either side of her head; he was discoursing on highlights, a field in which he was evidently an expert.
‘To colour the hair, it lifts the face.’ He flattened his palms on her cheeks and stroked the skin upwards.‘It’s to be young and free, yes? Me, you see, I start as a … how is it … black-head, like the little goldfishes, but now, like them, I am a Goldilocks!’ Nikki giggled. ‘It’s fun, no?’
Yiannis didn’t think the client looked convinced.
He lit a cigarette and watched Irini position the wedding coronet on the crest of the girl’s coiffure. She fluffed the long veil out, holding a hand-mirror behind the chair so that the bride could admire the full 360 degrees of her glory. A curl was tweaked here, a fold adjusted there, while the girl sat stock still in front of her new reflection, as if hypnotised by a rattlesnake. She murmured her approval, and the coronet was lifted off and replaced in its ribboned hat-box. A chiffon scarf shrouded the wondrous head. When she got up from her chair Yiannis glimpsed, above the low waist of her jeans, the intimate flicker of a thong.
‘When’s the wedding?’ he asked Irini, while the girl texted busily on her mobile.
‘This afternoon, at Ayios Titos.’
Outside the plate-glass windows of the salon a car squealed to a halt at the kerb, hooting. The girl moved gingerly across the tiled floor, touching a hand to the unwieldy chiffon edifice on her head.
Irini fussed around her, adjusting the chiffon scarf at the nape of her neck, flicking a clothes-brush across her shoulders. She handed over the hat-box and ran ahead to open the door.The girl followed cautiously, holding the box out in front of her, like a wedding cake.
‘Ciao ciao!’ Nikki cried, clapping his hands. ‘I wish you a beautiful life!’
‘My congratulations,’ Yiannis called out, inwardly crossing his fingers, wishing her a husband with kind hands, and not, please God, some macho commissar or country oaf.
When she had waved the bride off Irini came to stand behind his chair, comb and scissors in hand. Her eyebrows questioned him in the mirror.
‘So did you ring Mother?’
‘Shit!’ said Yiannis, who’d completely forgotten that the annual visit was fast approaching.
Every August since his return to Greece his mother had stayed for two or three weeks at his house in Katomeli – which was fair enough, he reasoned, since Irini had more than discharged her filial duty over the years, and in any case the flat above the salon which she shared with Tassos was cramped and hot, and trembled with inner-city traffic.
Their father had died in the early 90s, while Yiannis was living with Karen in Mel
bourne. After the funeral Irini had asked him to move back to Crete and help look after their mother, and so he would have done, if Karen’s first operation hadn’t intervened. The full burden had therefore fallen on Irini, until Aunt Ioulia, who had also lost her husband, asked her younger sister to move to Athens and share her house in Pangrati.
‘Is Ioulia coming, do you know?’
‘No, she’s off to Aegina with Anna’s lot. And some of Petros’ kids, I think.’
‘Anna’s lot’ were their cousins, the Leandrous. Or perhaps they were second cousins? Yiannis could never remember: Irini, not he, was the proven expert on relations.
The smell of bleach wafting across from Nikki’s trolley made his eyes water. Evidently the client must have succumbed to persuasion, for Nikki was now tiling her head with squares of aluminium foil, in which her small set face was framed like some hoplite in an armoured helmet.
‘So who’ve they put in charge of the investigation?’ Irini asked.
‘Vasilakis.’
‘Andreas? That’s nice for you.’ Irini’s scissors paused above his head. ‘Isn’t it?’
Yiannis nodded doubtfully. He and Vasilakis had been rookies together years ago, but Vasilakis was now plain clothes, with the Criminal Division in Chania. It was at his request, Yiannis was sure, that he had been co-opted on to the team.
Irini was eyeing him in the mirror, lips pursed.
‘You know, I still don’t understand what keeps you with the Tourist Police. I always said you’d make C.I.D. if you’d only put your mind to it.’
Once again he was unnerved by his sister’s capacity to read him like a book. As Irini never tired of pointing out, she’d had neither the advantages nor the encouragement that he, as the favoured son, had enjoyed, yet despite this she’d gone on to make a success of herself. It was understandable if she had little sympathy with those who – as she saw it – were given opportunities but failed to grasp them.