The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  She’d almost gone to the beach. Almost forgot the whole thing. It was only money, she’d told Jason last night. But it was more than that, she knew. And perhaps it was just that she wanted the comfort of known surroundings, the clatter and hum of law enforcement going about its business. Some measure that this island had rules and people who enforced them. Or maybe all she wanted was to hear the concern in someone’s voice when they told her how sorry they were and how they would deal with the incident as soon as they could.

  But, as she stood waiting for the desk man to ask her what she was doing there, she knew it would be none of these things.

  Policemen hurried in and out, their faces pale and harried, their speech clipped and breathless. She could see that most of them were from somewhere else, their uniforms bluer and shinier than the locals’.

  She told the desk man she was there to report a mugging. She wanted to speak to a detective. After an interminable moment where the man just nodded and she was certain he couldn’t understand a word of English, he finally sighed, coughed something up into a folded grey handkerchief and pointed towards a row of tables where men sat hunched over phones which were like extensions of their own bodies, cradled tight against reddening ears.

  She stood in the centre of this scene and took in the room around her. The walls flecked and stained with coffee. The piles of papers lying on the floor, unboxed and unlabelled. The dark whisperings of the detectives. The map on the far wall. The photo of a group of ruins, the broken columns like bones in the moonlight.

  ‘Yes, can I help you?’

  She jumped at the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand on her shoulder. She snapped away from him, remembering why she was here.

  ‘I’ve come to report a mugging,’ she said in her best accent. The voice she used for hotel managers and recalcitrant salespeople.

  The detective towered over her, tall and thin and stooped. His cheeks were mottled by a three-day beard, his clothes rumpled and stained, the shirt hanging out. He stood there staring at her, stroking a moustache she was certain had gone out of fashion in 1977. His stare made her feel guilty in its unblinking intensity. She’d often written about policemen’s stares and how they affected the innocent. This was the first time she’d felt it. She was about to repeat what she’d said, wondering if the man had understood her, when he spoke.

  ‘A mugging.’ His voice was slightly accented but flat and uninflected like the speaking clock.

  She’d never felt like this in front of a policeman before, guilty, unsure of herself, feeling all the words in her head racing to her defence. ‘I was mugged,’ she began, her tone laced with uncertainty and apprehension. ‘My wallet…’ she continued, but the policeman lifted his hand to silence her.

  ‘Costas,’ he called, and a young man put down his phone and walked over towards them.

  She looked at the young man as he stood to attention. He was barely in his twenties, his eyes misaligned so that it seemed he was looking in two directions at once. His head was nodding rapidly as the older policeman said something to him in Greek. They both grinned, the young man sneaking a glance at Kitty. The detective turned and disappeared into the smoky bowels of the station.

  The young policeman stared at her, still grinning. His head nodding up and down like one of those plastic dogs people put in the backs of their cars. He pointed to a desk filled with stacks of scattered papers. How could anyone work like this?

  ‘Yes?’ the young man asked, his voice sliding the words through his mouth as if they were sweets he’d just got tired of.

  ‘I was walking up from the ferry last night. I had my suitcase…’ she began, thinking now that she was here she may as well get it over with, when the young man raised his finger to stop her.

  ‘Suitcase?’ he stuttered, and she realised she’d been given someone who spoke maybe five words of English.

  ‘Do you understand anything at all?’ She tried to keep her voice down, to suppress the anger and frustration crawling up her throat.

  Costas nodded his head then shrugged his shoulders.

  She searched her memory, but she didn’t think classical Greek had a word for ‘suitcase’. Her phrasebook was back at the hotel. ‘Hopeless,’ she said and got up, her knee hitting the underside of the table, causing the other detectives to look up from their phones.

  ‘Thanks for all your help,’ she said to the room, her tone new and unfamiliar like she’d just discovered it the way you discover a skirt you’d forgotten you’d bought. The detectives smiled, nodded their heads or lit cigarettes and then went back to what they were doing. She’d come here not for justice – she knew muggers were rarely caught – she’d just wanted someone to say, it’s all right, we’ll deal with it, and instead here she was in the middle of a police station shouting at the unimpressed detectives, letting all the frustration of the past two days explode through her.

  She was suddenly so embarrassed. How could she have just snapped like that? She turned and saw the detective with the moustache talking to someone by the door. She walked up to him, her legs striding long and purposeful, each step grinding against the stone floor of the station house. She wanted to explain something to him, she didn’t quite know what.

  He turned to her, his eyes facing the other side of the room. Someone shouted, and everyone stopped what they were doing. She was about to say something when the detective abruptly turned, ignoring her and headed into a small, dark office filled with serious-looking men in business suits.

  She walked back from the station and sat in a small café. Under the marqueed darkness, the air still and solid as concrete, a futile fan spinning overhead. She kept looking up, hoping that Jason would be walking along, that they’d bump into each other like she’d predicted. The police station and moustachioed detective receded. The sun scraped them away. She began to feel different already. Not the person who’d boarded a plane twenty-four hours ago. She thought about how distance changes you. How unfamiliarity forces you to become yourself. It was strange and exhilarating to be free of encumbrances and responsibilities. Back home she always felt tethered to a leash of phone messages and emails. There was always someone to get back to, a launch, a birthday, a litany of small duties to distract you from your life.

  She ate lunch quietly and without appetite and drank a bottle of mineral water. She stared at the misty humps of nearby islands, like whales breaking through the water, and wondered if she’d somehow alighted on the wrong island. To her left, two donkeys, tied to a lamppost, stood stoically in the heat, flies spotting their muzzles like black freckles. Their owner tried to entice passing tourists for a ride, hitting the donkeys with a switch for punctuation. The animals shied and staggered but they were hobbled, and there was nowhere for them to go. Their eyes were milky and tired. She couldn’t stand their forbearance, their silent suffering, and she turned away.

  Ahead of her she could see the yachts sloshing and swaying in their moorings. Great big Cadillacs of the sea, sealed and air-conditioned with all the accessories: satellite TV, Cycladian sculptures and running stock reports. She watched the servants, dressed up in white suits in the forty-degree heat, pouring drinks, emptying ashtrays, washing the bow. She couldn’t think of anything worse. Even looking at the boats made her feel seasick.

  She sat there and thought about Don. She’d married him a month after she’d got the deal for Crime Novel. They’d known each other for years. They fell into marriage as if it were a lunch date, something they felt they ought to do. And then the accident. That awful day, the worst of her life, lying in the emergency-ward bed, Don on the other side of the country, she alone with only the white walls, the white smocks of the doctors and the white emptiness inside her.

  The waiter startled her out of herself, asking if she wanted anything else. He kept asking her if she needed help. She’d forgotten how over-attentive men in the Mediterranean could be. A part of her recoiled against this, and she sent him away with a shrug, but there was also something thril
ling about it, something which promised a certain enchantment. And now that she was alone … she wasn’t sure Don ever looked at her like that any more … she noticed something had changed, something subtle and yet surprisingly fundamental.

  ‘On the house, madam.’ The waiter hovered over her, blocking the air from the rickety fan. He put a slab of thick, crumbly cheesecake in front of her. A cat ran under the table, brushing her bare feet. ‘I don’t like cheesecake,’ she said, pushing the plate away.

  ‘A drink, perhaps?’ She was about to shake her head, then stopped, looked up at the waiter, seeing his face for the first time, only a boy really, and asked for a cup of coffee.

  She was on her second cup when he joined her. She hid behind her coffee cup as he sat down, her heart already racing from the caffeine, now kicked into overdrive. The man smiled at her across the table. There was a bright artificial buzz in his eyes.

  ‘You’re English, right?’ He asked, his voice thin and nasal and Northern. ‘Me too. Name’s Wynn.’ He pushed his hand forward but she was still holding the cup, and she just smiled and he retracted it. She could see something in his face change. She wanted to get up. Would he follow her, do what last night’s pair had only threatened to? She wondered if she’d been transported to an island of rapists and thugs.

  ‘Don’t mean to be rude or anything but least you could do is say something.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So, you do speak?’

  She nodded. He kept staring at her breasts. It made her acutely aware of her own body. She felt it squirm under his heavy-lidded stare.

  ‘I wanted to be alone.’

  ‘Garbo, right?’ Wynn smiled at her. His teeth were as yellow as the nicotine-stained fingers of her father.

  ‘I wasn’t quoting.’ She needed to take control of the situation. She didn’t know why he’d sat here. What did he want? She looked around. The waiters were nowhere to be seen. She was the only customer in the restaurant.

  ‘Your first day here?’

  She shrugged. She could sense things quickly spiralling out of control. She could feel the ground beneath her and the heat blasting her head. Where the hell were the waiters?

  ‘Don’t be scared.’ Wynn leaned forward, and she could smell his breath, sweet and sickly like the flesh of a papaya. ‘I was only trying to be friendly. In a strange land and all that.’

  ‘This is Greece.’

  Wynn shook his head. ‘This is the islands, love, and there’s a big difference.’

  The word love felt like a hand crawling up her back.

  ‘What is it you do?’

  The question surprised her. She thought about lying, telling him she was an accountant, something that would stop conversation dead.

  ‘I’m a writer.’

  Wynn smiled, but he didn’t seem surprised like people normally were. ‘What kind?’

  ‘Crime fiction.’

  Wynn lit a cigarette, leaned towards her. ‘Wow. You must have trouble with stalkers and crazy fans, right?’

  Despite the heat, she shivered. ‘No more than anyone.’

  Wynn stared at her. Shook his head. ‘Must make you really paranoid when people like me approach you.’

  ‘It’s not the first thing I think of.’

  Wynn smiled. ‘Maybe you should. Not everyone’s who they appear to be. Things that at first sight seem accidental can prove to be quite the opposite if you take a closer look.’

  She grabbed her notes, put them in her bag, upset by Wynn’s overfamiliarity. ‘Thank you for the advice.’

  ‘I suppose you’re here to write about the cult?’ Wynn continued, startling her. ‘The island’s glorious history and all that?’

  She looked up at him bemused, but, for the first time that day, also a little intrigued.

  ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’ Wynn laughed. ‘They don’t put that in your guidebooks, and thirty-three years … guess that’s still a bit too close to be called history.’ He crushed his cigarette. ‘You have wonderful legs.’

  She blushed.

  Wynn smiled. ‘Sorry, if I’m intruding. Don’t mean to be. Just you looked very sad sitting out here and I thought … maybe … well, never mind. Really, that was all. Just wanted to see if you were OK.’

  His smile disarmed her. What could she say?

  ‘No problem,’ Wynn said, getting up. ‘And you really do have gorgeous legs. You ever need any help, come and see me,’ he added. ‘There’s some strange people on this island.’

  Who did he mean? Was he talking about the men from last night or just trying to freak her out? She hated the way she thought, always through the dark glass of suspicion. ‘Thank you,’ she replied and watched Wynn smile his dazzling smile as he turned and disappeared into the glare of the sun.

  She got up from the table and walked in a daze through town. There seemed to be nothing more than tavernas trying to be English cafés and souvenir shops selling the same tacky items. It depressed her. The white buildings reflected the heat. The uneven pavements made her stumble. Everything was old and cracked, patched and mended but yet scarred with memories of past violences and upheavals. As if the whole island itself was a ruin, battered by wind and time.

  She noticed photos of young men and women pinned to the side of shops and curled around lamp-posts. The images faded and ghostly from the endless sun. She couldn’t read the words any more, but she knew what they said. The last refuge and hope of families. The human equivalent of lost-dog posters.

  Soon the small tavernas and grocery shops thinned out, and she passed a row of boarded-up businesses and hotels, failure writ in their very stones and broken windows. She continued to the beach and took off her flip-flops and walked barefoot on the hot sand. She liked the friction the sand caused as it rushed between her toes, and the sea smelled the way the sea was supposed to smell. Kelp and old plastic bags washed up on the shore and stuck to small rocks, strange fish darted in the green shallows. The beach was deserted, no one crazy enough to be out here in the full heat of the sun. The island had become a ghost town, and it felt as if she were the only person left.

  She was walking back into town when she saw them.

  She stopped and held her breath. The man who’d introduced himself as Wynn was standing outside a restaurant. But it was the other man who caught her interest.

  The two of them were talking as if old friends. Then there was a quick shuffle of hands, and they parted. She stood there unable to move. Then she followed Jason.

  TEN

  He heard someone coming up behind him. He was carrying a small amount of weed in his pocket. Listening and watching for cops. He jumped when he heard footsteps.

  He smiled, but Kitty didn’t smile back.

  ‘What were you doing with Wynn?’ She stopped in front of him, her mouth pursed tightly, her eyes cold as blue ice.

  How did she know who Wynn was? His name? A thousand questions flashed through Jason’s head. Had Wynn talked to her, and, if he had, did he mention the little favour he did or didn’t do? Was she going to have him arrested? Tell him she never wanted to see him again? Jason decided to go with the truth. Well, part if it anyway.

  ‘He sold me some weed.’ His voice was almost unrecognisable to him.

  ‘You smoke that stuff?’

  ‘It’s not exactly crack.’

  Her face was unreadable. Something flickered behind her eyes. Was this the last time he’d see her? The mention of drugs hadn’t gone down well. He was about to apologise, make up some excuse, when she said, ‘I don’t suppose you’d be up for that coffee now?’

  They sat under the shade of a huge tarp. The sun kept at bay for a while. Jason’s head throbbed and screamed. He couldn’t look Kitty in the eye. He thought about how different this scene would be if he hadn’t met Wynn that first night. How easy and innocent and full of promise. But it was inside him, gnawing away like a parasite, casting a dark stain on everything.

  He watched the tourists crowded
around the surrounding tables. Their beer bottles reflecting green light. They complained about the food and locals. They laughed loudly and spat on the floor. They wore their tattoos and football shirts like primitives from another era, their women quiet and acquiescent behind them. They had no secrets to tear them from this moment.

  Kitty told Jason about Wynn sitting at her table, harassing her. She didn’t mention him saying anything about that first night.

  ‘Probably just seeing if you were a customer,’ Jason said, which seemed to relieve her. While Kitty ordered, he wondered what Wynn had really wanted.

  ‘So, did you go to the police?’

  She looked up over her coffee. There was a certain apprehension in her face, something he couldn’t quite read. ‘It was a waste of time,’ she replied curtly. ‘Wouldn’t sully their hands with something as inconsequential as a mugging.’

  Her voice was tinged with bitterness. A hardness he hadn’t seen before curled her lip. He wondered what had happened.

  They didn’t say anything for a long time. Their chairs faced the sea, and they stared at it, silent and slick, as they drank their coffee. The ferry boats sliced through the waves, trailing foam and gulls. Jason couldn’t stop thinking about Wynn. What he wanted and why. There were already too many coincidences. The men appearing the night before, Wynn sitting down at Kitty’s table today. Was he watching them right now?

  He’d made a huge mistake. He should have sent her the manuscript. Even at the bottom of a rabbit cage would be better than this.

  He looked away. Afraid of catching her eye. He kept expecting to hear Wynn’s voice at any moment, see him approaching their table, the mocking tone and snide innuendos.

  ‘Are you here on holiday?’

  Her question took him by surprise. He turned towards her and almost blurted out the truth. He almost said: I followed you. I wanted so much to meet you, I didn’t think there was any other way. ‘I came to do some work; to write. I wanted to get away from London. I thought it would be a quiet island or perhaps I thought it wouldn’t bother me. I’m not so sure any more.’