The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  The candles all blow out at once. They are shrouded in darkness. The press of bodies against them. The deep breathing and slitted looks.

  Then it begins.

  A rocket arcs over the boat’s mainsail and explodes into the stars. Showers of red and green umbrella down onto the harbour. The liturgy sinks deeper as more people sing the dolorous melody. The brass band sounds like it’s playing a funeral waltz. The horseshoe cliffs reflect and amplify the sound.

  Kitty looks around, fascinated. The faces of the people are frozen in a medieval tableau of sin, penance and suffering. She’s about to call Jason when the world explodes. Her eardrums scream with feedback, and her eyes close to bright brilliant glare.

  Her ears are still ringing, but her vision’s adjusting. She sees the fire. Illuminating the main boat. Slowly engulfing it in its caress. People cheer and scream and raise glasses to the night. Kitty and Jason can’t move. The chanting grows furious, as if somehow the collective power of the town could usurp history, take out the new invaders just as devastatingly as the firebrands of old took out the Turks.

  The boat burns upon the water. Ripples of flame surround it like a halo of gold. The crowd cheers and whoops. Kitty looks closely and – yes – those are effigies tied to the mast, flames licking at them like the tongues of hungry lovers. She watches mesmerised. Unable to pull herself away. To even think of herself beyond this moment. She understands now how shared awe and wonder can make us forget ourselves for a while, disappear into the warm soup of the crowd. Something in her aches. The way people subsume to something bigger than themselves. It is almost like church.

  The effigies whirl and dance in the flames. They look so real. She thinks of witches in the hills and dark deeds in forested places. She tries not to think. To let herself fall. But she’s always there, watching herself in silent commentary.

  ‘Christ, I think someone’s up there.’ Jason’s pointing to the effigy on the far left. His face is drawn. Teeth clamped down tight. Kitty scrunches and focuses. The effigy’s moving, flailing, fighting against something.

  ‘It’s just the wind and flame. It’s like Guy Fawkes,’ she whispers into his ear.

  They continue watching. The music gets louder. The crowd crams tighter. Kitty tries to hold her claustrophobia back, to forget these people amassed around her. Stare at the sea. The boats. The burning water.

  The main mast finally cracks, and the sound reverberates through the harbour as it collapses aflame into the dark swell of sea, where, for a moment, it lights up the underwater trenches and then is swallowed by the blackness.

  The crowd wails. The crowd cheers. The crowd cries out for more.

  She watches them. They look back at her. She feels they know. Know everything. That perhaps this ceremony is for their dead and that, later, the retribution will come. She feels silly for feeling these things, knows it’s her imagination usurping reason but she’s helpless to fight it.

  When the boat sinks, when the sea collapses in around it, the harbour shakes to a resounding cheer which leaves only darkness in its wake.

  The crowd does not disperse. It drinks from small dark glasses and glares at the foreigners. The celebration has turned into something else. The singing gets louder, more impassioned, and she can now see pain and fear among the faces as if the very words coming out of their mouths bring them back to some atavistic defeat which has crippled and bent them for so long.

  They watch the last boats leave the harbour. They watch the crowd empty-eyed with the realisation that now they are back to their lives. That every moment of awe has its end and that the trick is to somehow carry it back into your day-to-day.

  The crowd holds dense and tight like rush-hour passengers. Jason tries to move forward, but it only brings grunts, incomprehensible mangles of sentence as if, in all this awe and wonder, language has deserted the islanders.

  And then the screaming starts.

  Where it begins they can’t tell. One moment it’s all chanting and singing and the next there are people screaming. The crowd moves as one mass. Bodies shift and twirl and fall.

  Jason grabs onto Kitty but they can’t move. The crowd presses tighter. The brass band’s playing but all of a sudden the trumpet drops out on an off-key screech and stops. They turn towards the bandstand and watch as the musicians drop their instruments, looking down at something in front of them with barely concealed horror, and jump into the crowd.

  They hold each other tight. They watch the crowd move slowly, like ripples in a cornfield, a ribboning away from the bandstand.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  Kitty turns to him. His eyes are wide and bulging. There’s nothing she can say as the crowd groans and shudders, and she’s pulled away from Jason, her hand ripping out of his as if they were both swimmers suddenly chanced upon opposing currents.

  Jason tries to reach for her, but she’s gone. The crowd closed up again. He’s carried along by the momentum, his feet barely touching the ground, as the villagers head away from the bandstand.

  His head turns and swivels trying to locate Kitty. He’s pushed along by the crowd but he can’t see where there is to go. Everyone is heading away from the bandstand. The mass of people shoves and crams and heads for the water. He sees a cigarette kiosk buckling under the weight of movement and then collapsing as people rush into the space it leaves. He sees women and children falling, the crowd rushing over them oblivious, only one thing on their minds. For a moment, he wonders if this is part of the ceremony; people are waving their arms and flailing as if in the throes of religious ecstasy. It reminds him of mannerist paintings of supplicants and flagellants, roped out along a dirt road, fighting their own skin and bones as if demons resided within.

  A women falls in front of him. She grabs onto his hand. Her nails rips across his palm, and she loses grip. She is swallowed by the many-legged crowd, churned under its feet, not even time enough for screaming. In the gap that opens up, Jason twists and jumps and pulls himself out of the stream only to be immediately taken up by another one, a rip tide of black-clothed celebrants wheeling out towards the harbour.

  His ribs feel crushed and bruised. His shirt is torn and ripped from his body. He’s on higher ground now, and he can see the centrifugal pull of the crowd. Moving away from the bandstand towards the water. Already people are jumping in, their arms windmilling as they crash into the blue water.

  He gets pulled up and almost falls himself, only managing to grab hold of someone’s shirt at the last moment, and he’s whirled again, facing away from the water, back towards the bandstand. He passes a wall perpendicular to the sea, and sitting on it are thirty or forty cats, skinny and shivering, watching, their haunches taut, tails like question marks rigid behind them.

  He pulls and scrambles and manages to find his footing. He turns, and there’s Kitty, a deep red scratch across her face and her hair tangled around her eyes. He reaches out and manages to grab her. They both pull out of the stream they’re trapped in and come crashing against each other like two ends of an elastic band.

  ‘Thank God.’ He wipes the hair from her forehead. She takes his hand. Then they’re both swept up by the crowd again as it tries for the high ground, away from the bandstand and the sea.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘Look.’

  The ground is moving below them in a rush, but he can’t miss the slivers of orange carpeting the cobblestones. The crowd lurches, shifts and staggers. Centipedes wind in and out of the cracks, climbing dresses and limbs. They pass by an abandoned wheelchair covered in centipedes, torn strips of clothing, a row of women on their knees praying, centipedes crawling across their outstretched hands.

  The floor below them is sticky and dark. Their shoes stick and squelch as the crowd rushes onwards. They pass by the group of donkeys wildly chomping and writhing against their tethers. Their manes covered in centipedes. The donkeys finally break through, swivel-eyed and crazed, bellowing like madhouse inmates as they stam
pede towards the water, people falling like cornstalks in their wake. The animals jump into the sea, their heads trying to gain air, their heavy saddles and mantles dragging them down, until there’s only their eyes wild and uncomprehending and then a few bubbles breaking the surface of the water and they’re gone.

  Jason brushes off the centipedes climbing Kitty’s legs. They jump and bite. Little needles in his skin. She’s holding him tight, trying not to look at the ground. Jason can see the red welts and bumps appear on her skin. He can feel the poison cruising through his own veins.

  He grabs Kitty’s hand, pulls her roughly. He can see a break in the crowd. He swivels, and something rips in his back, but the momentum is enough, and he carries Kitty with him and they both land, clear of the crowd, on the hard sticky cobbles. They get up immediately and begin to run, their feet slipping and sliding on the wet street. They head away from the crowd, towards the bandstand. Kitty gives Jason a puzzled look. ‘It’s the only way,’ he manages to shout above the maelstrom of noise. He can hear Kitty’s breath, short and ragged behind him. They run past the bandstand, instruments abandoned, sheets of music flying in the air.

  Jason turns suddenly when he feels an arm grab his, locking tight.

  ‘This way. Quick.’

  He sees George’s face, contorted by the effort of holding onto him, sees his beard, his dark eyes.

  They follow George, keeping close, as he passes by fallen women and kneeling men, prams left abandoned and children’s toys covered in centipedes. They wind through small, deserted back streets, and, just as Jason begins to worry, begins to wonder where George is taking them, this unfamiliar part of the island, the deep blackness – just when panic is rising like too much food in his throat, just when he is about to scream, wrench his hand away – they turn a corner, and there’s the hotel, serenely quiet in the dazzling spotlight of an almost full moon.

  III

  THIRTY-THREE

  Nikos walks through a town less familiar to him now than when he first stepped off the boat. He nods, greets, says hello, but in every face he watches for a sign, some signifier that they’re hiding something.

  The town seemed subdued after the boat-burning. No one had died, though several almost drowned, and the doctors were deluged with people wanting treatment for bites. But the centipedes left as suddenly as they’d appeared. He’d seen locals crossing themselves that afternoon, standing in front of the statue of St John the Silent, asking for contrition, for a blow to open their hearts up to God. They would stand there all day. What happened was explainable by science not fear and faith, he knew.

  The rubbish gets collected once a week on Palassos. Tuesdays. Two days away. Sometimes being in a small town has its benefits.

  Nikos didn’t think to bring gloves. His hands are caked in oil and scraps of food, some half-digested, left to rot in the garbage these last few days. He’s had to jump into the dumpster. Not only can he see better, all the way to the bottom, but he’s also hidden here in case some villager should stroll by, wondering why their Chief of Police is elbow deep in week-old rubbish.

  But he knows how the island works. How overconfidence and a sense of security breed recklessness. He’s counting on it. It’s been four days since the fire in the library. Four days since Petrakis’s son walked in stinking of kerosene and denying all knowledge of that fire.

  Nikos knows Dimitri, knows Petrakis raised him spoilt and lazy. Is counting on this as his hands sort through fish entrails, empty bottles of ouzo and sodden toilet paper. The heat outside is terrible. Inside the dumpster it’s worse. And the smell. He wishes he’d bought something to cover his face. Takes off his T-shirt and wraps it around his head like an anti-globalisation protestor. It makes things better. But only a little. There’s the overwhelming stink of rotting mutton, fermented alcohol, stale cigarettes, vomit and … he feels his pulse fight up his neck against the tight strangle of the T-shirt – yes, a faint trace of kerosene.

  He finds it three minutes later. Lying near the bottom. Just as he thought, Dimitri too lazy to get rid of the kerosene can anywhere but in the dumpster behind his own house. Why should he? His dad was the Mayor after all, who would even bother looking?

  He climbs up and into the fresh air. He gulps at it as if he’d just emerged from deep water. He drops the can and vaults the dumpster, landing winded on the cobblestones.

  He looks around, but no curtains shimmy, no windows creak. It’s dinnertime, after all, and people are eating, talking, watching TV with the volume so loud it’s a health hazard. He stands, does a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree check and allows himself a moment of pleasure as he takes the can and puts it carefully into a plastic bag he removes from the back of his jeans.

  Just as he’d thought. Dimitri set the fire. But why? This proof in front of him isn’t much good without that.

  The houses in this part of the village are terraced. As if each has climbed onto the shoulders of the other trying to scale the heights, away from the stink and heat of town. Nikos crouches, one house up from Petrakis’s. He can see through the window that leads into the main room, hear the dead hum of the TV as it’s turned on, Petrakis’s heavy footfalls as he comes back from the toilet.

  He gives him a minute, thinks of Alexia back at the house, panic trembling on the edges of her smile that morning. The way she’s turned distant and sulky, all walls and empty space. He wonders how she’s coping. Never the one to air her fears, but, over the years, he’s learned to read them, the smallest twitch, the lines around her mouth, the way she would answer a question.

  His head snaps up. From inside the house he can hear Petrakis shout and curse Jesus, his voice loud and brandy-trembled, and Nikos knows he’s seen it.

  He was hoping the old man wouldn’t be too drunk. Wouldn’t come back in, not even bothering to turn on the lights, and slump in armchair or bed until morning. Then he would have had to wait here all night, and already his calves feel like they’re filled with burning needles.

  But Petrakis has seen it. And, now the cursing and shouting have stopped, Nikos can hear the faint beep of phone numbers being punched, and then, as he’d expected, the angry voice, gruff and ungiving, growling into the phone: ‘Get over here right now.’ There’s obviously some argument because the next thing Petrakis says is ‘I mean it,’ and the slamming of the phone is like a thunderclap.

  He can see the back of Petrakis’s head as he sits on the sofa. Waiting. Staring at the rusted and stinking gas can that rests, neatly centred, on top of his dining table.

  It was easy getting in. Another boon of small villages. No one locks their doors or windows. Even now with all that’s going on.

  Petrakis’s mother gave him a shock. He was sure he saw her mouth twitch. But she was frozen as always. It was only his imagination. Her eyes bored into the back of his head as he placed the can on the table.

  Five minutes later, and Dimitri’s scooter rasps and stutters to a halt outside the house. The young man is dressed in a pink T-shirt, red jeans and white shoes. His hair’s gelled and slicked and looks like it’s made out of patent leather. Clubbing. Out harpooning the tourist women when his mobile rang, Nikos guesses, hence his reluctance to come see his father at this hour. He’s sweat-soaked, dark half-moons on his shirt, and out of breath as he waits for his dad to answer the door.

  Nikos thought of broaching him earlier. Taking him in for questioning. But Dimitri wouldn’t have given over that easily knowing his dad would spring him within the hour. There would have been nothing to gain, and, if Nikos has learned any lasting lessons in his years as a policeman, it’s knowing which battles are worth fighting and which can be won.

  It doesn’t take them long, as he suspected it wouldn’t. His view is a good one. The light inside Petrakis’s house is as bright as supermarket-aisle illumination, shadowless and supreme like the light of God. From where he is, he can see every movement and hear the words flung across the room as if the window were a frame and it’s a Punch and Judy show he’s wa
tching.

  Dimitri walks in, swagger and petulance boiling and bubbling. He can’t wait to ream his old man out, shout at him for all this hassle, but Petrakis just points to the table, and Dimitri, halfway through the first admonishing sentence, turns, stares, his words grind to a halt, and he just stands there shaking his head as if he’s watching a dog levitate.

  ‘What the fuck is the meaning of this?’ Petrakis shouts, and Nikos realises he could have heard the conversation all the way back at his house, so loud is the old man’s voice. A loudness that masks uncertainty and fear.

  Dimitri keeps shaking his head as if this is all just some strange dream he’s walked into and he’s certain any moment he’s going to wake up from.

  ‘You fucked up again, you idiot,’ the old man shouts, and Dimitri raises his head, all too aware now that this is really happening and that an answer is required of him.

  ‘ … rid of it,’ he mutters weakly, so much so that Nikos only catches the last three words.

  The scream of flesh against flesh makes Nikos jump. It’s an unnatural sound that cuts cleanly through the stillness of night. Dimitri reels from his father’s slap. He almost stumbles, putting his hand to his reddening cheek in a look of shock that’s almost cartoon-like. As if all our actions turn into clichés when life surprises us.

  ‘Got rid of it,’ Petrakis mimics, his voice juiced with venom. ‘What the fuck is it doing here then? Walked here by itself? Jesus, if you weren’t my son I’d think you were fathered by a mule.’

  Dimitri’s body language is all acquiescent slumber and shrug. He seems smaller than he did a few minutes ago at the door. His head is valiantly trying not to hang down, but it’s failing. His shoulders respond and angle in towards his back. He starts shuffling until Petrakis screams, ‘Stand still and fucking answer me.’

  ‘I threw it in the bin just like you told me.’