Affectionately, he smiled.
‘How do you do it?’ he said. ‘They’ll burn you for a witch. You haven’t changed at all.’
Kokkona laughed.
‘Liar,’ she said. ‘You’re still the same, at least.’ And it was true: he hadn’t changed. As always, the years washed over him and touched him little, like water over granite. In others, time did its work, the changes subtle in youth more pronounced as each year passed, but he seemed always immune. ‘Except you’ve put on a pound or two. And you’re wearing glasses. So perhaps you are getting older, like the rest of us.’
He took the glasses from his face.
‘The glasses are a disguise,’ he said, ‘to make people think I’m clever.’
‘That will never work,’ she smiled. ‘You’ll never take anyone in. Will you change before dinner? You’re later than I expected.’
The good humour left his face, replaced by a weariness he had never shown before; and suddenly, he did seem aged, so she asked herself how she could have missed the change so obvious in him now.
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I’m late indeed. The question is, am I too late?’
He waved away her question as to his meaning.
‘Let me bathe and change,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you the bad news whilst I eat. Will you open me a bottle of last year’s vintage? It was an excellent year, and I’ve been looking forward to seeing what they made of it. And perhaps a glass or two will make the news a little easier to bear.’
In the kitchen, she dressed the salad and plated up his food. A bottle of Australian Chardonnay stood on the table. She knew, of course, he wouldn’t be fooled, and then she’d have to give him some bad news of her own: that no one could be found, these past two years, to pick the grapes and make the wine he loved.
The fat man took linen trousers and a cotton shirt from the wardrobe. They were clothes he recalled wearing, classic in style but, acquired almost a decade ago, dated in their cut. They had been beautifully cared for, laundered and pressed each year, with the moths kept at bay by the sachets of herbs that hung amongst them – herbs sent by the fat man from the north, and unknown to Kokkona. There were dried buds scented like almond and rose together, and leaves smelling strongly of bergamot; and amongst these were bear-brown pods like laburnum, which split and scattered hard round seeds on the wardrobe floor. In the hand, the seeds had no odour at all, but when Kokkona, in curiosity, had crushed several in a pestle and mortar, their stink was foul as dog faeces, and she had understood at once why they might repel the moths.
He laid the clothes over the bedstead carved with barley sugar twists, and sat down on the mattress covered with cool white cotton sheets. Beneath the bed, where no rug covered them, the black-stained floorboards shone with the beeswax Kokkona applied and buffed by hand. He bent to find his espadrilles – ochre-yellow Turkish leather, embroidered in gold and red – and picking up the slippers, ran his eye over several boxes and packets stored there, hidden away. Their sizes varied, from a ring box to a carton; most were wrapped in plain brown paper and carried the stamps and marks of post-office delivery. One was in pink tissue, another was in striped paper for a birthday. He made a count of them, and satisfied himself that – apart from Kokkona’s careful dusting – they were untouched.
On the ornate dressing table where the mirror was spotted with age, two bottles – one of cologne, one of hair oil – stood on a cloth of handmade lace. Taking the stopper from the cologne, he sniffed at the bottle. The exotic scents so expertly combined by the perfumier – the bitter orange of Tunisian neroli, the sweet honey smell of immortelle, the earthy tang of vetiver – were tainted by age.
His bag lay on the bed. The style of bag he favoured never changed – a leather holdall of the kind that others used for sport. The colour, however, varied, and normally his choice was bright: red, blue, green, purple. But this one was sombre: black, with a distinctive picture on its base, a silver sun half-risen, emanating silver rays.
From the holdall he took a fresh bottle of the dressing-table cologne, and, splashing a little into his hands, patted it on his cheeks. From a small jar, he took a fingerful of sweet pomade and stroked it through his damp curls. He ran the tip of a steel file behind his fingernails, and polished each one with a chamois buffer; he cleaned his teeth with powder freshened with cloves and wintergreen. He slipped the espadrilles on his feet, and sat down to daub his tennis shoes with a full coat of whitener. In the treads of the left shoe, a watermelon seed was lodged. With the point of his nail file he removed it, held it up to the lamplight, then placed it on the lace cloth on the dressing table.
He pulled on the linen trousers, slipped on the cotton shirt taken from the wardrobe, but the trousers were tight around his belly, and the shirt’s buttons gaped open on his chest. His reflection in the mirror showed a man not at his best.
From the holdall he took a polo shirt in lemon-yellow, and Italian slacks in navy-blue, and changed his clothes again. Hanging the clothes he had outgrown back on the rail, he closed the wardrobe door.
In a drawer of the bedside table was a small aluminium tin embossed with a flying bee. Twisting off the lid, he sniffed at the waxy ointment it contained; it smelled of pollen, with a faint tang of citrus. Replacing the lid, he slipped the tin into his pocket, and went to join Kokkona on the verandah.
Kokkona served him food he would enjoy: a home-reared rooster stuffed with rice and its own liver and broiled in giblet broth, a dish of artichoke hearts dressed with olive oil and lemon, a fresh loaf to dip in the juices.
As he took his seat at the verandah table, the night’s heat drew beads of sweat on his upper lip. Around the oil lamp overhead, a helpless moth danced.
The cold wine was decanted into a ceramic jug painted with lemons. She moved to fill his glass; he held it to the lamplight, which shone through the golden, glistening wine and the condensation forming on the glass. He sniffed at the wine, sipped it, and placed the glass back on the table.
‘A miracle has occurred,’ he said. For a moment she was hopeful, but the look he fixed on her was shrewd, and she turned her eyes from him on to the fluttering moth. ‘My vines, which have always, in the decades since they were planted, produced Roditis grapes, have this past year produced Chardonnay. I wonder what the explanation could be, Kokkona.’
She spread her hands before her.
‘I didn’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you, knowing how disappointed you’d be.’
‘Disappoint me, then,’ he said. ‘A little disappointment can do no more to spoil the day.’
‘There’s no wine,’ she said. ‘The past two years, there’s been no one to pick the grapes, no one to make the vintage or bottle it. No one wants that work now.’
He held out his glass to her.
‘Taste this wine, Kokkona.’
She shook her head.
‘No wine for me,’ she said.
He sighed.
‘In the old days,’ he said, ‘women didn’t deny themselves small pleasures. This new morality our Orthodox friends all foster, this making virtue of denial, seems pompous and cheerless to me. Of course they don’t allow you wine. You might become giddy and wanton.’ Smiling, he winked at her, and pushed his glass away. ‘So you’ll have to take my word for what I say. The wine’s not bad. Pour it back in to the bottle and recork it, and give it, if you wish, to someone who’ll enjoy it. But to me, its taste is strange; it tastes of foreign soils and rains. It lacks the taste of home – of these hills, our sun, our soil and stones, our vines. And that, to me, is everything that makes drinking wine a pleasure. I’ll have a jug of water, if you please. If there’s still water in the well.’
She fetched water and filled his glass.
He drank, and inclined his head in satisfaction. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to give offence. You’re not to blame, I know. And you don’t drink wine, and so you may not understand me when I say that in our wine I taste the sk
y: every sunrise, every sunset that the vines have seen have given flavour, given spirit to the grapes. Every drop of rain, every molecule of earth at the vine roots, every stone, even the goat dung that washes down the hillside is held within it. Our wine distils the flavours of this land, the very essence of this countryside. The wine you served tastes of another country, a place of deserts and muddy rivers. What joy can that bring to a Greek soul? Believe me, Kokkona – there is no pleasure like the song your heart sings to the accompaniment of a glass of your own wine.’
For a few moments he was silent, looking out into the night, contemplating, as if considering the truth of his own words.
‘At least,’ he said at last, ‘I used to think so. It seems I’d struggle now to find anyone of like mind.’
From the wicker chair, she watched him eat a little of the chicken. With the edge of his fork, he sliced an artichoke in two and speared one half of it, chewing on it for a long time without swallowing. He took no bread. Before long, he laid down his fork.
‘I find I have little appetite tonight, Kokkona,’ he said. Removing his glasses, he pinched his nose as if against a headache.
‘I expect you’re tired. It’s a long journey.’
‘It’s more than that,’ he said. ‘It’s because the news is bad. Gabrilis Kaloyeros is dead.’
‘Panayia mou!’ She crossed herself, and sat back in the chair with both hands clasped on her chest. ‘When? How?’
‘I found him on the coast road,’ said the fat man. ‘A hit-and-run.’
‘Panayia mou!’ She crossed herself again. ‘But who would do such a thing?’
‘Who indeed? Who would leave an old man dying at the roadside?’ He rose from the table and crossed to the balcony railing; leaning there, he stared up at the stars. ‘He had a noble heart, and deserved a better end.’
‘He wasn’t the same, you know, after Maria went. He wasn’t well. Perhaps it was his own fault: a fall, or his old heart giving up. He was too frail to be making that journey in this heat, but he was a stubborn man. No one could tell him.’
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said the fat man. ‘Gabrilis was hit by some vehicle, and the driver left him there to die alone. Of course the police suspect I’m responsible, because I found him. Their habit is to look for the obvious.’ He turned to face her. ‘But I shall look further afield.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘The mortuary, I assume.’
‘He must be fetched home. Who’ll make the arrangements?’
‘Are there no suitable relatives?’
‘I’m a third cousin myself. There’re other cousins, but no one else, I don’t believe.’
‘Will you take charge, then? I’ll pay the bills, of course. Make sure all is done correctly. Spare no expense.’
‘I must call my sister to organise the vigil. We’ll have to speak to the carpenter and the priest. There’s so much to do.’
‘Do you have a telephone at home?’
‘We all have telephones now. Except you.’
‘Except me,’ he agreed. ‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘But you’ve barely eaten.’
He crossed to where she sat, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘As always, Kokkona,’ he said, ‘your food is of the best. But Gabrilis’s death has made me very angry, and when anger fills the stomach there’s no room for food. So put this feast away, and bring it out again tomorrow when I might do it justice. Then get your things. You’ve arrangements to make, and I have matters to attend to myself, before the night is over.’
The wine cellar was reached through a wooden trapdoor in the flagstones of the kitchen floor. The staircase down was short, six steps, the treads spotted with the holes of old woodworm. The ceiling was a vault of stone, which at its high point cleared his head, but, over the wine racks, its curved line dropped low, and to choose a bottle he had to stoop, or crouch.
As he turned up the gas on the lamp to its fullest, the soft light fell on bottles thick with dust, whose labels were fading into illegibility. At the cellar’s end, where the racks disappeared into darkness, the remains of the oldest and greatest vintages were stored – a little left from before the forties war, and some very special bottles from Macedonia. Close to where he stood were the wines from the most recent decades, in better quantities.
But in the racks allocated for the last two years, where several dozen bottles should be stored, there was no wine.
In the past, there had been tastings that went on long into the night, prolonged by good-natured arguments over the merits of the ’63 or ’75. There had been times they drank so much they couldn’t tell whether they were drinking red or white. But there was no argument here tonight, nor any laughter; and the friends themselves, where were they? The cellar lay in silence, a reproach on his neglect both of this place and of his friends. Gabrilis had been amongst the last of these. The fat man had returned too late, and found only the echoes of a more cheerful past. The cellar he used to enter with such anticipation was a mausoleum now, and as the lamplight showed him the dusty bottles, he heard the whispers of happier times, and was sad.
No one to make the wine, this year or last: the news here in Arcadia was bad indeed. But some good might be salvaged still. He searched amongst the racks, and found a single bottle: the last of a wonderful vintage, the ’68. It was an appropriate tribute to his friend.
As best he could, he brushed the dust and sandy dirt from the dark-green bottle and, tucking it beneath his arm, climbed up the cellar steps.
Five
Late at night, the Namco Pony pulled off the highway on to the track leading to Gabrilis’s house. In the fat man’s long absence, no repairs had been made, and every pothole was more treacherous than he remembered.
The fat man was a cautious driver. For fifty metres, he persuaded the Pony slowly forward; but, when the exhaust pipe scraped on stone a second time, he stopped the car, and in the dim light from the dashboard dials opened the glovebox. A national route map (so well used the creases were deteriorating into holes) covered a rubber-cased torch, large and heavy as a cudgel. He switched it on; its response was poor, a weak, dull-yellow glow. The fat man shook it, and whacked the torch once on his thigh; it leapt to life, giving out a well-charged beam of light.
In these small hours, no traffic was passing on the coast road, and as he walked up the track the night was quiet. Above him, the pine trees were black against the glorious stars, the temple ruins dark behind them. A breeze fresh with the tang of resin and pine bark ruffled the fat man’s hair. From amongst the trees, a silent owl rose and glided away.
In his left hand was his holdall; his right hand held the torch to light the way. Through the soft soles of his tennis shoes, the stones were sharp; the torch’s range was short, making the way to the house seem longer than in the past. When the track began to level, he knew he was close to the house, and that ahead of him, in daylight, he’d see the melon patch. But things were not as they had been. Tonight, there was no Manyiatis, barking, jumping, sniffing at his hands for treats.
He shone the torch beam straight ahead, and the light picked out a section of green foliage, framing a small piece of the garden as if in a camera’s viewfinder. And something was intruding in the picture. By the fence, a white transit van was parked. The fat man, it seemed, was not alone here after all.
He approached the van with caution, and touched its bonnet with the back of his hand, finding the engine warm but cooling. The licence plate was local. In the rear window, a sticker advertised Valvoline motor oil. He shone the torch beam through the driver’s window, showing, on the passenger seat, waxed-paper wrappers of takeaway souvlakia amongst empty cans of beer and iced coffee. A pair of charms – a blue glass eye and a ceramic bulb of garlic – hung from the rear-view mirror.
He turned off the torch, and waited for his eyes to adapt to the darkness. Through the trees, the unsteady light of a flame burned in Gabrilis’s window.
Avoiding the
path, the fat man made his way up to the verandah. There, on the table where he had sat so many hours with his friend, was a plate littered with the bones of small fish, the end of a stale loaf, an empty glass, and a bowl filled with grapes cut from the overhead vine.
Concealing himself behind the house wall, the fat man looked in at the window. At the centre of the floor an oil lamp burned; by its light, a man was ransacking the room. The bed had been stripped of its dirty sheets, the mattress overturned; the cheap icons had been taken from the walls and lay face down on the rug, their cardboard backing ripped from their frames. Glass and china lay broken on the tiles. The clothes from the chest of drawers were flung about the room, little white balls of moth-deterring camphor scattered amongst them, and the empty drawers upturned by the stove. The shotgun Gabrilis had kept hidden under the bed stood on its stock beside the door.
Dark as a shadow, the intruder riffled through a sheaf of papers discovered amongst Maria’s elastic stockings and flowered housecoats. The gaslight was poor for reading, and the intruder bent close to the lamp, but the words, apparently, remained unclear. In impatience, he roughly folded the papers, and stuffed them in the pocket of his shorts.
Now the intruder looked about him, as if for hiding places he might have missed, and his eyes settled on the shelf above the fireplace. Here, Gabrilis kept the treasures the fat man brought him, a gift each time he visited. The professor’s curiosities, Gabrilis had called them; and many were curious indeed, intriguing trinkets of obscure origin.
The intruder took the oil lamp, and moved with it towards the fireplace, holding it up to view the collection. Some pieces, it seemed, held his attention: an ivory chessman, shaped like the crowned king of a Norse tribe; a small finger bone sealed in an ebony reliquary; a carved box, which when opened played Slavic tunes; a terracotta horse in the naive style of ancient Troy; a two-handled cup painted with dancing satyrs. It was the cup that tempted him most, and he reached out his hand to take it from the shelf, but as he did so the fat man opened his own hand, and let his torch fall clattering to the verandah’s wooden boards.
The Taint of Midas Page 4