The Taint of Midas

by Anne Zouroudi

  Slowly, sleep came, and as it did so a thought came to his mind that he considered lucidly before he let it go. It was his culture that insisted on proper burial, that made the rites and rituals so essential to him; it was the same, he knew, for everyone who was brought up in the faith.

  Which made it very unlikely that, if Gabrilis Kaloyeros’s death was an accident, his killer would have left him there to rot. And that, in turn, suggested that, to make sure Mass had been said for Gabrilis, the killer would, quite likely, at some point have revisited the scene.

  On an alleyway in the old heart of the town, a light shone in only one window. Climbing from the Pony, the fat man heard the rhythm of dance music from neighbouring streets, the loud shouts of foreign voices, and the inharmonious singing of several drunks. In their direction, the sky glowed with polluting light which hid the stars; but to the west, where there was only the sea, the constellations were clear on the darkness of their natural background, and he fixed his eyes there for a moment, admiring their familiar, brilliant beauty.

  Then, walking around the car and opening the passenger door, he lifted a parcel from the seat. It was the parcel from the floor under his bed, but the addressee was not now the fat man. Written in heavy black capitals, a white adhesive label covered the villa’s address, redirecting the package to Aris Paliakis, at No. 40 on this street.

  The fat man took the parcel in his arms, and carried it towards the building where the light burned. At street-level, the building housed a shop selling women’s shoes; at the window on the first floor, a naked light bulb dangled. Alongside the shop, the fat man found a door bearing a brass plate engraved with just three words – Paliakis and Sons – and, passing through it, was faced with a short staircase. Nimbly, he climbed the stairs and, on the first-floor landing, stood and listened. Behind the left-hand door, there was slight movement, and here the fat man knocked; but without waiting for an answer he turned the handle, and walked straight into Paliakis’s private office.

  Paliakis looked up from the untidy stacks of paperwork that filled his desk. The room was very hot, the window closed against the music and the singers, and, under the thick smoke of cigarettes, the air held the odour of Paliakis’s sweat. The collar of his shirt was loose at the neck, the cuffs were pushed up over his wrists; his eyes were pink with strain, purplish and swollen with fatigue beneath. In an ashtray, a neglected cigarette burned. On the desk amongst the disordered papers a vending-machine coffee was half-drunk and cold; a packet of Petit Beurre biscuits, its Cellophane ripped open, spread crumbs over the documents.

  Paliakis stared at the fat man, who, freshly showered and cheerful, seemed cool in beige Chinos belted with Italian leather (The buckle, thought Paliakis, must surely be gold-plated); his polo shirt, in pale lemon-yellow, had a tiny galloping horse embroidered on the breast. On his feet, the old-fashioned canvas tennis shoes he wore were spotlessly, pristinely white; his smooth-shaved face was fragrant, and the scent stirred a memory in Paliakis – the blossom of orange trees, perhaps, or cherry. But, though he tried to grasp it, the memory slipped away, and, recovering from his surprise at the intrusion, he glared at the fat man.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

  Somewhere outside, a clock began to strike.

  The fat man gave a friendly smile, and laid the parcel on the desk, covering the papers Paliakis had been annotating with a pencil.

  ‘Kali spera sas,’ he said. ‘My name is Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens. And you are Aris Paliakis. I am pleased finally to meet you, Mr Paliakis.’ He held out his hand, but Paliakis made no move to take it. The fat man, still smiling, gave a small shrug of indifference. ‘My apologies for calling on you so late. I have tried to call on you before, at a more reasonable hour; perhaps your wife has told you?’

  ‘State your business,’ said Paliakis shortly. ‘I’m a busy man; I’m not here for your entertainment.’

  ‘Do you mind if I sit?’ Without waiting for Paliakis’s assent, the fat man did so, and, because the parcel on the desk was now obscuring his view of Paliakis, he shifted it to the left, disturbing the stack of papers it was sitting on. Paliakis frowned. ‘I’m making a delivery,’ went on the fat man. ‘This parcel is for you.’ He patted the parcel almost with affection, as a child might pat the head of a friendly dog.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Paliakis. ‘You’ve made your delivery. Kali nichta sas.’

  The fat man smiled more broadly.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s not that simple,’ he said. ‘You and I have much to discuss before we open it.’

  Paliakis frowned again, deepening the lines of bad temper in his face.

  ‘We? I’m sorry, Mr . . .?’

  ‘Diaktoros. Hermes Diaktoros.’

  ‘Mr Diaktoros. What exactly is the nature of your business? It’s late, I have a great deal still to do, and I would appreciate it if you would leave.’

  ‘All in good time. Take care with your cigarette there. It’s so easy to start fires accidentally.’

  The fat man pointed to the ashtray, where the burning cigarette had dropped its length of ash on to the desk and its smouldering stub had fallen into the mess of butts which filled the ashtray. For a long moment, Paliakis regarded the fat man, then, grim-faced, ground out the smoking stub.

  ‘I’m trying to cut down myself, although I feel no better for it,’ said the fat man. ‘Perhaps because my health, overall, is excellent. For a man of my age, I’m pretty sprightly.’

  Critically, Paliakis studied him – the bulk suggesting overweight, the owlish glasses, the greying hair – and found himself speculating on the fat man’s age. But it was impossible to determine. Paliakis would have guessed at fifty; and yet the fat man’s unlined skin, his muscle-tone, his optimism, suggested he might be considerably younger.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Is this about money?’

  The fat man slapped his broad thighs, and laughed.

  ‘Straight to the nub of it, Aris, straight to the nub! Indeed it is, yes; it is about money. But then, with you, everything’s about money, isn’t it?’

  ‘If you’ve some claim to make, speak to my lawyer.’

  ‘Pandelis? How interesting you describe him as your lawyer rather than as your son. Is that how you see him? As a tool to be used to get rid of annoyances like me?’

  ‘My son is an excellent lawyer.’

  ‘And, you’re thinking, he’ll make short work of me, whatever my business. But he can’t help you this time, Aris. My business is with you alone. It’s personal.’

  ‘State it, then, and be done. I’m a busy man.’

  ‘I’m here to return some lost property.’

  From his pocket, he took the little key and broken chain brought from the barber’s. In the palm of his hand, he held it out across the desk. The band of the gold ring rescued by Sostis from the sea glinted on his little finger. ‘Your talisman, I think.’

  He turned his palm, and the key slipped off on to the desk. Paliakis picked it up, dangling the key at the end of its chain.

  ‘Where did you find this?’

  ‘You left it at the barber’s.’

  ‘The fool broke the chain.’

  ‘The chain had a weak link. You lost it, the barber found it, and I’m returning it to you. It is customary, I think, to thank those who have done you such a favour.’

  ‘Then I thank you.’ Paliakis gave an insincere smile, and moved to slip the key into a drawer. But the fat man held up his hand to stop him.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘Am I right in taking you for a superstitious man, Aris? Are you hoping the return of your lucky key will bring a swift end to the problems of an unlucky week? Is this the key to your Midas touch – the object that turns everything you touch to gold? Your bad luck has nothing to do with the key, of course – your difficult week is a product of your own making.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s just an old key of no value. Are you wanting some reward? Ten eur
os, no more.’

  He reached down to the same drawer in the desk, where a little money was sometimes kept.

  ‘Petty cash?’ asked the fat man. ‘For the key, maybe. But how much for the box the key fits?’

  Paliakis took his hand empty from the drawer, and slid it shut.

  ‘Box?’ he asked. ‘What box?’

  The fat man smiled.

  ‘This one,’ he said, slapping the parcel. ‘My delivery. It’s addressed to you. Go on, open it.’

  ‘Is this some kind of joke?’ Paliakis asked. ‘Who sent you?’

  ‘I am here to deliver this box, and a message. The box came to me in a convoluted way, but it was intended, always, for you. A gift, I understand, from your grandfather.’

  The fat man’s words lit Paliakis’s eyes with interest but, pretending nonchalance, he kept them from the parcel. His hand went again into the drawer, and drew out a fifty-euro note, which he laid on the desk before the fat man.

  ‘I thank you for your trouble,’ he said. ‘But if this is, as you say, a gift from my grandfather, then I’m sure you’ll understand the opening of it is a moment when I’d enjoy some privacy. So, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’

  ‘Of course, you want me gone so I don’t see what’s in there. You don’t want me to tell what I’ve seen. But believe me, my discretion has always been absolute. And I already know what’s in the box.’

  ‘You opened it?’

  ‘Without the key? No. My knowledge is from word of mouth.’

  ‘Whose mouth?’

  ‘Is that important? Come, hurry up. Your impatience will make you burst a blood vessel.’

  Paliakis’s face was growing redder; his heart raced, and there was a lightness in his head. The fat man folded his arms and, with this gesture of his visitor’s stubbornness, Paliakis decided to delay no longer. Taking scissors from a pencil stand, he cut the fraying string and into the brown paper, which, dried out and somewhat fragile from many years, tore easily, like tissue. He ripped the paper off, and dropped it to the floor.

  It stood before him: a plain box of polished olive wood, its brass hinges dull, and in the lid, a small keyhole, just right for Paliakis’s key.

  On his upper lip, the sweat stood in beads, and he was smiling, strangely and so broadly his gold tooth gleamed. He fitted the key to the lock; it turned quite smoothly, as if the lock had only recently been oiled.

  Paliakis hesitated, then, with both hands, he slowly raised the lid and looked inside.

  The smile left his lips, the deep lines of a frown came to his forehead. Reaching into the box, he took out what was there: some photographs, and a sealed envelope, addressed with a single word in ink, whose black pigment had faded to burgundy. The word was Aris.

  The fat man, forgotten, was relaxed in his chair, his expression showing amusement, and interest.

  One by one, Paliakis studied the photographs. Of different sizes and finishes, three were in black-and-white, three in the unsubtle colours of photography’s earlier days. All, it seemed, had been taken at a similar time, but on different occasions. As he finished with each one, he laid them out in two rows of three, and when he was done, he studied all six together.

  The first photograph showed a house amongst other houses, a village house; a wooden handcart stood by the door, a chicken pecking round its wheels. Then, a picture of two people, a man and a woman, in clothes and hairstyles of the sixties. Beneath the shady branches of a tree, the woman was seated on a kitchen chair, shielding her eyes as she looked into the sun; beside her, the man lay in a truckle bed, a pillow at his head, his body covered in a blanket made up of knitted woollen squares sewn into patchwork. The woman smiled, trying for levity for the camera, her hand resting affectionately on the man’s shoulder; but the man’s face was serious, his dark eyes shadowed by a fall of glossy black hair.

  Another picture: the same scene, at the same time, but the woman’s place was taken by another man, and the chair had gone. This man crouched by the truckle bed, clasping the lying man’s hand in a self-conscious handshake. Next, a small boy of four or five years old stood alone and proud before the camera, his belly out, his grin wide; but, even in black-and-white, stains showed on his little shirt, his shorts, too big, were drooping, and his naked calves and feet were pale with dust. There, again, the black-haired man, a picture taken in a bedroom, where the man lay flat, still unsmiling, in an old-fashioned, carved wooden bed, a white sheet up to his neck, his arms stiff at his sides. And lastly, the woman and the child, though somewhat younger: he a toddler, both standing, and the child reaching up, grasping the woman’s fingers to be sure he didn’t fall. The woman, Paliakis noticed, wasn’t pretty, and her smile was not wholly natural, as if she had posed reluctantly, and a moment ago had shyly refused her cooperation.

  Paliakis’s eyes lingered on the picture of the two men. He picked it up, and brought it closer to his face to examine their faces.

  ‘Do you know those people?’ asked the fat man.

  Paliakis shot him a look which damned his impertinence; but then he answered.

  ‘This man.’ He indicated the standing man. ‘I believe it’s my grandfather.’

  The fat man lowered his head in acknowledgement.

  ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘Aris Paliakis. The man for whom you are named.’

  Again, Paliakis looked at him.

  ‘How do you know him? What has this to do with you?’

  ‘Let me explain it like this. Your grandfather gave this box into my family’s care. We have been a kind of poste restante facility – with delivery to be made if the message were ever required. Which, in my judgement, it now is.’

  Paliakis held up the envelope.

  ‘So you know what’s in here?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘So tell me, Mr Diaktoros.’

  ‘Read, and discover for yourself.’

  Paliakis ran his finger under the envelope’s edge; the old glue had no adhesion, and the envelope opened without tearing. Inside was a letter: three pages on paper ripped from a spiral-bound book, the fragments of the torn holes untidy at the edges. The handwriting was cramped and careful, as if penned by a hand unused to writing, and marred by clumsy crossings out, not for misspellings but for rewording, as if to improve the phrasing of a thought.

  My dear grandson,

  I write this on the advice not of a friend, but of a man whose judgement I have come, in a short time, to respect.

  If you receive this letter, the news is bad; you have followed in my footsteps, and gone too far in a dream of wealth and money.

  As a man of middle age – you know already – I did something which made me, in the eyes of that small-minded community I called home, a legend. In our village, a man could be a legend for very little – for growing a giant cucumber, even, or surviving a fall from a rooftop. Is it the same still? Perhaps it is.

  In fact, what I did was very ordinary. I closed my bank account, and moved the cash elsewhere. There. In bald terms, my boy, it’s not the stuff of legend. It was not an action, though, that they could understand, and so they gave all kinds of meanings to that simple act, multiplying my holding to a fortune in the process. I knew what they said afterwards, because they told me. The argument with the banker became his theft, embezzlement, the fortune in the box became gold pieces, land deeds, a treasure map. Fools!

  I believed that, given time and silence from me, the legend of my hidden fortune would die. But your father, of course, was its truest believer, though I told him a thousand times there was nothing to it. You seemed a bright lad as a youngster, and I believed you would make something of yourself without the need for me to interfere. It seems now I may have been wrong.

  So here’s the truth, my boy, and you won’t like it. I kept silence on the whereabouts of my fortune because there was none. The argument with that idiot at the bank was simple: I told him I was giving my money away. The man was apoplectic; he seemed to take my madness, as he called it, personally. Bu
t I had learned all I needed to know about money, though the lessons were hard-learned. You know, in your heart, what I learned, though you may have difficulty believing me. Firstly, money buys you nothing of true value. Secondly, there is only one exception to this rule. Sometimes, you can use money to buy peace of mind, and the easing of suffering, and by that means you can free yourself from its influence.

  The man in the photographs is my cousin, Nikolas. As boys, he and I were inseparable, the best of friends. Friends are something I never had, in later years. I hope you do not suffer the same lack. Friends keep your feet on the ground, and make you stay true to yourself.

  Nikolas married, and had a son. And then, by the worst luck possible, he fell down a well and broke his back. A letter reached me from his wife and I – sick with my money fever – was disposed to ignore it. But I had a visitor who persuaded me of the right thing to do. They had my money, most of it. It went, I think, on doctor’s bills and pain relief, and schooling for the boy.

  My message to you, dear boy, is this. Look around you, see what you have of value, and cherish it. Trade money for time, and use your time wisely. That’s the way to happiness. Do what you love, and be content. Listen to an old man’s words. Respect the messenger who carries this letter. Sometimes a stranger has insights those who know us well can’t see.

  Good luck to you, Aris my boy,

  Your most affectionate

  Grandfather

  Aris laid the letter on the table. Picking up the photographs one by one, he dropped them in the litter bin by his feet, amongst the screwed-up paper and the empty coffee cups.