One of Chrysoula’s cousins sat with Stavros when we went to the village telephone to call Australia, where Stavros and Chrysoula’s son lived. Alexander had already left for Greece, his wife told Chrysoula. He was going to surprise them, was planning to buy a house there to live in during the summers and rent out at other times. He had heard, no doubt, that tourism was growing, that foreigners would come to this small village so close to the sea. Stavros had told Alexander that a hotel was planned on a nearby beach, next to an important archaeological site, the Byzantine village called Monemvasia, a jumble of houses on a promontory connected to the mainland, where small houses climbed up to a church at the top of the mountain. But the most startling news for this village of Sekea was the possibility that electricity would be brought to them. Stavros had been the mayor who had been negotiating this new development.
I did not want electricity to come here. I loved our way of life, the dark nights but the skies encrusted with stars, the quiet. I like the darkness best, and that time just before darkness. There are no doubts then, just belief in whatever lies underneath the dark. I prefer not to see the eyes of those who will try to look with jealousy or with evil intentions. Sometimes harm is not at all intended — but it comes anyway. Just a glance — that is all it takes.
I love cooking on a fire or on coals. I do not even mind using the outdoor toilet; I keep mine clean and free of insects. Eventually, the outside world will bring something else: lack of belief in my abilities.
As I sat outside my house that evening, I feared the loss of all that I loved. I wanted every night to be like this: the shadows slowly growing and the setting sun making the small houses glow red. This was the time between light and dark when anything seemed possible. And just when the darkness brought a threat of fear and blindness, the moon and stars would miraculously appear. Now, I faced my own guilt. I had wanted Stavros dead. His plans were changing my way of life. But I did not kill him. I watched the sun slip behind the mountain, lit my oil lamp, and prepared for bed.
When I finally slept that night, I dreamed that Maria was standing in front of my house, pointing at the full moon, a small girl clinging to her leg. I woke up and looked out the window: the moon was still a small sliver in a sky covered by stars.
I woke again when I felt someone slip into my bed. My lover Yiannis, a widower, often visited me at night. He held me now and let me sleep. In the morning he was gone. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had such a friend. It would make me seem too “normal” for a woman who healed and knew spells.
In the morning I walked to Chrysoula’s house. People were gathering to offer their sympathy. The priest, Father Nectarios, was sitting outside the house, greeting villagers, who stooped to kiss his hand. He made the sign of the cross many times. Our eyes met, but he did not acknowledge me. I walked past him and entered the house.
Alexander had arrived and stood beside his father’s body. Chrysoula was sitting next to him, crying softly. The table was stacked with food and drink brought in by women of the village. I kissed Chrysoula and she again whispered to me her request: “Katina, please find out who did this. I will pay you.”
She started to wail again and said to me, “I knew we were going to have bad luck. It was because of that foreign girl who came, that Maria, who claimed to be related to us. I knew she would cause some catastrophe.”
“This was not her fault,” I told her. “Please believe me. Someone else purposely killed your husband.” Chrysoula continued sobbing.
I went outside and looked at the people gathered there. There was Yorgos, the village clerk, who had worked closely with Stavros. He was an intelligent man, who had attended the secondary school, the gymnasio. He liked to read novels, though they were hard to come by. His son in Athens sometimes sent him books and Yorgos shared them with me. We enjoyed discussing them. I did not believe that he was a killer. His wife Penelope was there, too — a kind woman, but not as intelligent as her husband. I think she resented my friendship with her husband.
There were also Evangelios, builder of houses; Nikos, proprietor of our one taverna; and Kyria Kalliope, an attractive widow who had isolated herself since her husband had died two years ago. When I saw Pericles coming, I almost left, but stopped myself. I was being paid to investigate this crime and must stay. Pericles and I had been sweethearts years ago, but he had, instead, married Marika, daughter of the priest. He had had little choice, due to his parents’ wishes, but I thought he had been much too willing to marry her. Marika was a large-bosomed woman whose hair had been a bouquet of beautiful black curls. After his marriage, Pericles had come to my home several times in the night, but I had always turned him away. Still, I knew that Marika was jealous of me and had always suspected that her husband still loved me. She walked by me with her husband, stopping to kiss her father as she passed by, but ignoring me. Her mother, Eftihia, was now standing behind her husband, looking sadly at all those who had come. Pericles glanced at me and winked. I couldn’t help but smile. I had missed him at first but had accepted my fate.
I had been considered unmarriageable because my parentage was a mystery. I had been left at the home of our former priest, Father Konstantinos, who, though celibate, with no wife to assist, had raised me, with the help of his housekeeper, the kindly widow Demetra. I had a happy childhood, but, when I came of age, people wanted to keep their sons away from me. They did not know who my family was, or whether I might be related to them.
It was suspected that my mother was a young woman who had disappeared several months before my birth and abandonment. She had been called Haroula, Joy, and had always had a cheerful personality. She was never known to have had a boyfriend. No one knew what had happened to her. Somewhere in this village was my father, or at least I had always believed that. But no man ever looked at me with shame or even fatherly concern.
Now I was 52 years of age and the mystery of my heritage did not matter any more.
That night I delighted in Yiannis’s embraces, and forgot, for a time, my assignment. But early in the morning I was there at the church to honour the passing of Stavros Yorgopoulos, the man who wanted to lead our village into modernity.
Father Nectarios chanted the beautiful words I loved. At the end, everyone filed up for the last kiss, leaning over Stavros to kiss him and make the sign of the cross — or perhaps just to touch him and cry. One elderly woman, a stranger, hung behind. She turned and walked away. I went looking for her but she had disappeared.
I wondered whom Stavros would visit tonight. He would walk for forty days, visiting all those he had known. The village would be quiet, without music or dancing, until this time was over. I did not expect him to visit me. I was uneasy that night, however. Though the darkness usually comforted me, I thought I heard whispering and I smelled something, the scent of a kind of soap that I did not use. A breeze made my curtains flutter. I lay there waiting, but Stavros did not materialize. Still, I felt his presence.
I slept but something woke me. A tapping on my door, the rear door of my small house. This was real tapping, I thought, not the whisper of a ghost. I opened the door to a stranger, perhaps the elderly woman I had seen at the funeral.
“Please let me come in,” she said quietly. “I am Haroula.”
I held up my lamp and looked at her face. I knew that I was staring at my own mother.
“The Virgin Maria told me that I must come to see you,” she said. “I arrived to find that Stavros had died. But I am glad that you are here, alive, thriving.”
I began boiling water for a small coffee, a kafethaki. My mother sat there at my table, looking at me sadly. “I am so sorry to have missed your life, my daughter. But I have always loved you. I regret that I couldn’t be here. I was going to confront Stavros, your father, who raped me when I was a young girl. But I was too late.”
Stavros was my father. The man who had been threatening my livelihood, my very existence, had also been responsible for my conception. I could not speak for a long time.
“I am sorry.” My mother took my hand. “He never knew that he had a daughter. I told only my mother and Father Konstantinos, who adopted you. My mother was Demetra, the woman who raised you.”
I cried then. I was happy that Demetra had been my grandmother. She had made my childhood a happy one.
“But why did you leave?”
“Stavros’ father knew that he had raped me. He forced me to leave — but I secretly brought you back to my mother. I had no money and had to work as a servant to a family in Sparta. Eventually, I married a local man and we moved to Canada. He would not have married me if he had known that I had a child, that I was not a virgin.”
After two hours, my mother left me. I lay in bed but could not sleep that night. The shadow of a man, hanging, kept swinging back and forth on my wall.
In the morning sun, it seemed that everything had been a dream. I walked to the agora. Villagers were gathered around two men in suits who were standing in front of a large black car. They were here, they said, to discuss with the mayor the plans for bringing electricity to the village. Panayotis took them to Yorgos in the village office. Soon the men went away, asking that they be informed when a new mayor had been chosen.
That night I heard a whisper coming from my window as I lay in bed. A dark shape was standing there. “Who is that?” I cried out. The shape floated in. “Stavro, leave me alone. I do not want you as a father. Go away!” The shadow floated back through the window. I had hoped my mother would return, but she did not. I told no one, not even Yiannis, about my visitors.
In the morning, to my surprise, Father Nectarios came to my door. I politely made him a kafethaki and sat with him on my veranda. He admired my plants, thriving even in the dryness. “You must be wondering why I am here,” he said. I did not reply.
“We must work together to keep away the modern world. It is a world of evil and blasphemy. If we get electricity, soon television will come and then people will lose their faith. This will hurt you, too. Not just the church. I would not normally make a bond with you. I always thought you were connected to the devil. But I see that you have done much good for the people of this village. And you are the lesser of two evils.” He sipped his coffee, some drops landing on his long beard. I wondered how he could stand wearing the heavy black garment in this heat. His hair was tied back but loose strands fell on his neck. His face was creased with worry.
“Father, I believe in the church. My views are not so different from yours. But I have other beliefs, ones that the church has condemned, for fear of losing its power. I, too, fear the electricity. But we cannot stop it forever. It is destined to come to us. All we can do is to try to persuade people to have faith in the old ways.”
“We must do more. Think of something,” he said. He got up, knocking over his chair, and stalked off. Then he turned back. “And please stay away from my son-inlaw. Stop tempting him.”
I did not want to help him, after that final comment. And all I knew were herbs and spells — words used to influence events. Father Nectarios did the same thing, but he would not admit that. So, I burned incense and spoke words of power, though I did not think that these would be enough.
Life resumed as if nothing had happened. My mother did not return. Chrysoula went into seclusion. Alexander returned to Australia. Father Nectarios prayed in his church and spoke on Sundays about the evils of the modern world. Yiannis came almost every night to my bed. People came to me for help against the evil eye. I tried to forget that Stavros was my father.
Sunday morning I woke up to screams. I threw on my housedress and followed the screams to the church. Eftihia was yelling for help from inside the church. I followed the mob inside — and there was Father Nectarios, lying in blood on the altar. I pushed through the bodies and knelt to check his pulse. It appeared that he had been stabbed with a kitchen knife. I could not examine him closely, however, for Eftihia spat on me. “It is you. You caused this. You with your old ways, defying the church yet daring to show your face inside this building. Because of you, no one tried to bring a real doctor here. I know who you are — the bastard of the whore Haroula. That is all you are.”
When I felt no pulse, I stood up and walked out of the church. I returned to my bed and cried until I slept. I saw my mother in my dream, crying for me, reaching her arms out. “It was not your fault,” I exclaimed. “It was Stavros, that evil man. I’m glad he is dead.”
My mother disappeared and I saw eyes, only eyes, glowing red, burning holes in the darkness.
In the morning Panayotis brought me a letter. It was from Canada, from a lawyer’s office. Inside was news I could not believe. A letter from my mother, telling me about my conception and birth, about Stavros, all the things she had already told me. There was a note with the letter: “We regret to inform you that your mother died before she could mail this letter. We are sending it to you. It was not found immediately; the burial has already taken place, nine months ago. Her husband died before her, and we did not know that she had a daughter. We are sorry that you were not informed sooner. Please accept our condolences.” She had been dead well before she came to visit me.
Had I seen this letter before? Had I dreamed her return to me? Had I cast the evil eye on Stavros? Had I caused the death of the meddling priest?
The night was dark. There were not so many stars as before. The moonlight was pale and weak.
A rustling woke me up that night. I reached for Yiannis, but he had not come tonight. Someone was there, though, standing beside my bed, staring at me. The shadow on the wall showed someone in a black cassock, someone with long hair and a scruffy beard. “Father, why are you here? I cannot help you. Please go away.”
“I have to confess to someone, and God will not listen. He knows my sin. I will now burn for eternity.”
“I know of your sin, Father. You knew that Stavros was a rapist, yet you kept silent. You did not help my mother or me.”
“I know. That is true. But I am speaking of a much worse sin. It was I who murdered Stavros. I asked him to meet me that night. I begged him to prevent the coming of electricity, but he laughed at me. ‘You can’t hold back time,’ he said. And he called me old man, I, a priest, and the man who had never told about his crimes. Your mother was not the only woman he raped — and I had kept silent. ‘I never told of your sins,’ I said to him. He replied, ‘Sins! Is it a sin to find pleasure in a young woman’s body? Your ways are old-fashioned. Leave me alone, old man.’
He laughed again. In my anger, I reached out and grabbed him by the throat. My fury must have given me strength. He tried to fight me off, but he was tired and weak from working all day in the fields. I had not planned to kill him, but I couldn’t stop. When I saw that he was dead, I went for help. One man who respects me — I won’t name him — helped me hang him from the rope that was still there, hanging down from the branch of the tree where we hang animals when we clean them. I told him that Stavros had tried to kill me and that I had needed to defend myself. He swore in God’s name that he would never tell anyone that I had killed Stavros. We placed an overturned chair beneath him. I thought that people would think he had committed suicide. God forgive me.”
I was unable to speak for a few minutes. “But who killed you . . .” I could not say “father.” “Who killed you, Nectario?”
“I did it with my own hand, the worst sin of all. I will burn and burn.”
I thought I smelled fire, saw smoke blowing out of his beard.
I sat up to look more closely, but there was only emptiness where he had stood. I sat up the rest of the night, drinking cool water that I had brought in from my well, wondering what I should do. This was something I would not tell. The truth would destroy the villagers’ faith.
The days passed, but the villagers were still quiet, looking suspiciously at each other, not daring to trust their former friends. The murders were still a mystery to almost everyone. The summer was hot and dry. I was fanning myself outside my house when I saw flam
es. The forests in the mountains were burning. Flames were leaping down the mountain, reaching for our village. A spark leapt onto my bare foot, sputtered and went out. Yiannis and I filled buckets with water and fought the flames back. Everyone in the village was doing the same. We did not want to leave. A few people filled bags with their belongings and started along the road on donkeys, in carts, or in old decrepit cars. Most of us were still fighting the fire. Finally, I packed my herbs and potions, my goat and chickens, and filled Yiannis’ wagon with all I could. I ran around my house saying the words of power, of protection. Ancient words that most people had forgotten. I buried my icon of the Virgin Mary with my statue of Dionysus in the dirt in front of my door. I prayed that they would keep my house safe.
A lone helicopter flew overhead. Then two planes, spraying. Still, the fires roared. My eyes were stinging. I was coughing. Yiannis handed me a handkerchief. We covered our faces as we rode away. Down the mountain. To the sea. We had nowhere to go. We stared out at the sea, watching the sunset trying to break through the dense smoke, the blackened sky.
When we were able to return, my house was still standing, but scorched along one side. I dug up the icon and the statue, and set them up inside. The villagers were slowly filing back, some of them finding burnt clothing and furniture in their houses. But we were all safe. We were all still here. The village had not been destroyed. Though the church was damaged by smoke, the priest’s Bible and the icon of the Virgin Maria survived.
Yiannis and I are married now. Everyone is happy for us. He is building another room onto my tiny home so that there will be space for his belongings. I could never leave this place.
I have told no one about Nectarios’ confession.
It is months later. Everyone in the village has gathered in the agora. Voices shout and hands applaud as something zings across the wires, competing with the sun, bringing heat and light. It will dim the stars. Yorgos, the mayor, turns on the first electric light in the village. It illuminates his office, the papers on his desk. He will be able to work at night now. He will be able to read for many more hours each day. Perhaps that is why he agreed to sign the papers. Already men are working to bring one outlet to each house. Eventually, we will cook on electric stoves — though I don’t know who can afford to buy one. People are already planning to open tourist shops, to sell hand-knit sweaters, homemade goat cheese, and warm bread.
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