The Black Monastery

by Stav Sherez

  ‘I didn’t know what to say, what to tell her. We only suspected, after all. There was no proof yet that the commune had killed the little boys.

  ‘We both stood there in silence, against the chop of wind and spray of sea. She told me about the virus, her month in the hospital, watching her fellow islander die in the bed next to hers. Her conviction that she too would die in that anonymous military hospital.

  ‘For a moment, I thought of Charles Manson, I’m ashamed to admit it now, and the angelic faces of his lipsticked killers rose in front of me. I told myself keep talking to her, you’re a policeman, she doesn’t know this yet, find out what you can, interrogate her now when she thinks you’re trying to chat her up – but another part of me knew this was only an excuse.

  ‘We talked about the island. I edged around asking her about the cult. She said it was nothing. An experiment in self-sufficiency. “Come up and visit,” she told me. “Everyone always thinks the worst when they don’t understand something.”

  ‘I knew I had to tell her. Not because I was a policeman – I should have kept my mouth shut, pumped her for more information – no, because I was a man, and in the twenty minutes we’d talked I felt something I’d never felt before.

  ‘So I told her what we’d found. The rumours. The evidence pointing to the cult. What I was doing on the boat. Who the men drinking in the bar were. I said she should keep a low profile, stay in town and check into a hotel. Don’t go up there, I told her. Not until we sort this out, make whatever arrests we need to. Two months I’d been a policeman and already I was breaking all the rules.

  ‘I don’t know if either of you have come across a moment like that – when you make a decision and you know that decision will irrevocably change your life regardless of whether you are right or wrong?’

  He looks at them, sees them both nod involuntarily, wonders how many times they’ve made such a decision since being on the island.

  ‘I gave her the keys to my flat. I told her she’d be safe there. Take the spare room, wait it out. There would be an investigation even if the cult weren’t involved. She kept denying vehemently that anyone she knew could have done such a thing. Even if they were innocent, I told her, even then there would be a lot of hostility among the locals. It wouldn’t be safe for a while, not until the matter was cleared up. She tried to argue with me, told me she had a duty to the people up there – they didn’t know if she was dead or alive, if the virus had taken her. I said the whole interior would be crawling with cops. The cult would be interviewed and probably arrested. She could do more to help them on the outside. She was Greek; she could melt in, pretend to be a mainland tourist.

  ‘She cried when I told her about the bodies of the boys. She screamed and raged when I told her she was better staying away. But we agreed. Somehow, among the lash and snap of the waves, the noise of the boat, we agreed, a few days at my place, a room of her own, and then we’d see where to go from there.

  ‘Of course, by the time we got back to the island, everyone in the cult had committed suicide, and all the loose ends had been neatly tied up.’

  ‘You kept the secret for thirty-three years.’ Kitty’s voice is unreadable, the words clipped and sharp as broken glass.

  ‘The room in the museum,’ she says, sliding forward on the chair, watching as Nikos puts his arm on Alexia’s knees, an involuntary gesture of protection. ‘The room full of cult memorabilia and history. Damn it, I should have realised then.’

  Alexia slowly raises her head. Eyes red-rimmed and watery, she nods.

  ‘When I came back with Nikos I knew there had to be some kind of memorial,’ she says, her voice rising now. ‘It was the only way I could enshrine them. The only way I could get away with it. I had to look at those lies every day, polish the glass that sealed them in. But at least the commune wasn’t forgotten.’

  ‘But your friends killed two boys, how can you …?’ Jason’s tone feels unfamiliar to him, hard and crunchy like gravel.

  Alexia shakes her head, mutters no into the shelter of her hands.

  ‘They wouldn’t have committed suicide,’ she says, ‘and they would never have killed anyone, let alone two boys.’

  The atmosphere in the room has changed. The story, unburdened, has deepened the silence between Nikos and his wife. As if the years of shared secrecy had kept them glued together.

  ‘What do you mean they never would have committed suicide? Isn’t that how most cults end up?’

  She stares at Jason. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Make us,’ he replies.

  And so she tells them. Words buried so long ago she’s amazed they’re still there. Names and faces she’s consigned to wherever you put everything you never want to think about again, but here they are, rushing through her like a river in late spring. A part of her has always wanted to tell this story. To defend what they did, what they were – Nikos has never really asked her much, perhaps too scared to find out – and she’s glad because this is the only story she knows, and it is one she managed to hide and imply through the photos and articles in the museum but a story no one ever read or understood. A story that is the story of her life, part one.

  ‘I won’t bore you with background; the how and why and who I was. Everyone has their reasons to disappear. More so, then. The colonels ran the country like it was their personal interrogation centre. My dad, God forgive him, helped them. I’m sure he didn’t have much choice. Lawyers were co-opted as easily as anyone else. He always said they had something on him, that he was only trying to protect us. But this means nothing, right? Not to a twenty-year-old girl, her head burning with all the music and rhetoric coming from America.

  ‘I just walked out. A small bag filled with the few things which still meant anything to me. A photo of my parents at the Eiffel Tower, a copy of Howl and a cassette of American Beauty by the Grateful Dead.

  ‘It was summer. Getting exit visas from the country was too difficult. I took a boat instead, always wanted to go to the islands, saw my chance. I withdrew the money I’d saved for a car, bought tickets and spent three months island-hopping. I ended up in Palassos. This is where I met Frank.

  ‘We clicked the way young people do. He found out I had that tape, he had the same one – that was enough for us to become friends and spend afternoons on the beach talking about what was happening in the world, the counterculture, the Vietnam War, the reign of the colonels. I expressed my antipathy, told him my dad was a collaborator. He seemed very interested in my politics, my desire to disappear from the world of bombs and bodies. That’s when he told me about the commune.’

  Alexia stops, reaches for a cigarette, lights it and continues, her words brushed with smoke and years.

  ‘It was always a commune. You need to understand this. Only after what happened did people start calling it a cult. That was never what we called ourselves or how we saw each other. There was no leader. The four Americans who’d set up the camp were in charge of all practical disputes, but there was never an ideology, a belief, apart from the fact we’d all got sick and tired of the world we’d been born into and wanted something simpler.

  ‘Frank had been with the first three. They’d all been members of communes back in the States. He’d told me about the cops’ dirty tricks, the burning of their camps, Nixon, COINTELPRO, the constant harassment. They’d left the country and, after months of travelling Europe, ended up here. No one bothered them on the island, and when they bumped into like-minded people in town they invited them to join. You could leave any time you wanted to. Pray to any God you so wished. No one cared. As long as you did your share of the gardening and housekeeping, you were left alone.

  ‘We were all kids. We grew our own food, raised goats, sang songs in the evening and kept to ourselves. A few of the villagers helped us out with food or basic supplies at first. Then, as more people came to the island, something shifted, and we had to become more self-sufficient. We began to get strange looks in town, curses only I unders
tood, the sole Greek-speaker amongst them.

  ‘We wanted to see if we could make it on our own. Like me, most of the people there had come from middle-class families. We’d grown up in safety and comfort. Our lives had been handed to us on a platter. We wanted to know if we could survive without our parents. Without the support system of our backgrounds and hometowns. I think we did pretty well.

  ‘Then the virus swept through the island, and everything changed. Some of the members began to get paranoid, said it was a plot by the islanders to clear us off. Kill us if necessary. But no one really believed that. We knew the townspeople had come down with the same virus.

  ‘When I became sick, Frank took me down to the village. I spoke Greek to the doctor, and he immediately sent me off to the mainland. The rest, I’m afraid, you know.’

  She sits back, looking almost smaller now, as if the story has been a cyst kept inside her all these years. Nikos takes her hand. She pats his, says something in Greek and turns to Jason and Kitty.

  ‘No one was suicidal. No one believed in the apocalypse or any other cult prophecies. If we’d been asked to leave the island, we would have left, found somewhere else to set up. There’s no way anyone I knew would have committed suicide.’

  Jason leans forward, lowers his voice. ‘You’re so sure of that.’

  Alexia nods. ‘It’s impossible. Not only because no one even thought about suicide … and my God, there’s no way they would have done anything to a couple of boys, that’s really beyond imagining, but …’

  ‘But …’

  Alexia tilts forward to make sure she can be heard, ‘But, apart from all that, no one had guns. No one. It was exactly the kind of thing we were escaping from. That was one of the only rules we had. No one was allowed to bring firearms into the camp.

  ‘Tell me, because my husband can’t, even after all these years,’ she shoots Nikos a look that speaks of unanswered questions and bedroom silences, ‘tell me, how can thirty-five people kill themselves when they don’t even have a gun let alone any ammunition to perform the task?’

  THIRTY-SIX

  He watches his wife, the way she’s almost released now the story has been told, and how her body catches up to this new state of affairs. She sits straight, not crumpled in her hands or staring down at the floor. There’s a faint hint of amusement in her voice.

  ‘It really is nothing more sinister than that. People want it to be. They have this romantic vision of cults, but it was just a bunch of people growing vegetables, living communally, making breakfast for each other.’

  ‘Then why keep it a secret?’

  Nikos looks at Kitty, ‘No one likes loose ends. I didn’t want her to become one of those. To always be hounded by her past, by people’s suspicions. I believe we all have the right to start again, to wipe the clock.’

  Alexia had always insisted the cult was innocent of the murders. Nikos believed she believed this, but he also knew you could never really know anyone. They’d left the island the following summer. In Athens, it all began to fade, to become like the dust which was once the mortar and stone of the city’s temples and palaces. They’d gradually stopped speaking about it. It became a room they never entered. He hadn’t wanted to know more. It was enough that in the worst days of his life he’d found someone to cling on to, something that would remain through the erosion of years.

  But if the cult had really been innocent of the murders? Then he was as complicit as the killers themselves. Ignorance was no mitigation. Following orders had lost its charm. Protecting the one you loved above your responsibilities to the community was what got the world in this awful mess in the first place.

  ‘I think you need to look for Karelis.’

  Kitty’s words take him out of the well of his thoughts. ‘Karelis?’

  Kitty smiles. ‘He “disappeared” after the first two murders. He and Vondas weren’t happy about the reopening of the monastery and ruins as tourist attractions.’

  ‘That’s not much to go on.’

  There’s something about the theory that forces Nikos into the present moment. He remembers the castration scars on Vondas. The defaced pages of the book about the cult. The blacked-out photo of Karelis. The priest’s words at the empty funeral.

  ‘The killings all happened up by the monastery. He knows about 1974. Maybe Vondas and Karelis disagreed on how to stop tourists coming to the monastery. We talked to Vondas that night. I didn’t tell you, but he made it quite clear we weren’t welcome. He pretty much shooed us off the site. But maybe that wasn’t enough for Karelis. Maybe he went further and Vondas found out.’

  ‘You’re saying he killed his colleague?’ Nikos’s expression is a mixture of interest and disbelief.

  ‘If he killed the others then he’s certainly capable of that. When Vondas approached us, he seemed to come out of nowhere. I’m convinced now he was hiding in the labyrinth.’

  ‘The labyrinth’s been closed for years,’ Alexia says, but there’s something else in her face Jason can’t quite read.

  ‘We saw fresh footprints leading into it that night,’ he replies. ‘It would make sense that Karelis would know the way. An easy place to hide. To “disappear”. Close enough to the ruins to get away quickly.’

  Nikos finally lights the cigarette that’s been dancing between his knuckles for the past fifteen minutes. Alexia gives him a look, crumpled features and heavy disappointment, but he just shrugs and puts the match to the end of the cigarette. The sizzle fills the room. He shakes his head. Could he have been wrong again? Their theory resonates on enough levels, and he’s annoyed he hasn’t thought of it himself. But Petrakis ordered Dimitri to torch the library. This he knows for certain. Whether it has anything to do with the current murders, he’s not sure, but he knows he has to see Petrakis again. Has to learn what happened that night and what his own role, unwitting though it may have been, was.

  He gets up. Alexia seems reluctant to let go of his hand, but he leaves her no choice.

  ‘I’m going to follow what I know,’ he says to Kitty and Jason. ‘We have only your speculation about Karelis. That’s not enough for me, I’m sorry. I have to find out what happened that night in 1974.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The monastery is quiet and picture-postcard pretty. The sun reflects off the blinding white masonry. Jason stares at the sea below, the dark swell of waves breaking against the rocks, the circling of small white birds above the foam.

  Up here it still smells of sea, salt and tang but with the added touch of burnt wood. A reminder. Why they’re here. Not tourists any more. That, a whole world behind.

  The breaking of a branch startles Kitty.

  Jason looks out into the black trees. ‘Animals,’ he says, much too quickly.

  They move closer to each other and follow the path that leads down to the labyrinth. The ground is scuffed with footprints, one set reappearing, taking prominence over others.

  Though it’s still light, the canopy of trees covers them in darkness as they approach the gate. Jason knows it’s too high to climb and they’ll have to turn back. He senses Kitty knows this too and that she’s counting on it as much as he is.

  But when they reach the gate, it’s swinging open.

  A silent rush of air, blown against their cheeks, comes from the dark inside of the mountain. The same pair of footprints go beyond the gate and lead up to the entrance.

  ‘What if we get lost?’ he says, but it’s only for punctuation now. The footprints are fresh and deeply embedded into the soft earth.

  She takes the first step, then a second, and she’s lost to him. Shrouded in the perfect darkness of the cave. He follows. Feels the soft moist earth beneath him, the chill of the stone walls, the lure of the dark.

  ‘We don’t know what we’re looking for.’ It’s the last objection he can muster, standing in the dark chilled air, the light rapidly fading behind them. Kitty’s right next to him, but he can’t see her. Ten feet into the cave and they may as well be at t
he centre of the Earth.

  Kitty pulls something out of her jacket. A disc of light appears on the opposite wall, shedding enough illumination for them to see that they are in a small cavern, round-roofed and about the size of an average living room. The walls curve a foot above their heads, and they can hear the faint trickle of water in the distance. The earth beneath them is soft and damp. Two paths stretch into further darkness in front of them.

  They walk slowly, the torch scouting the ground as if it were a blind man’s cane. The path is easy to trace. The footprints deep and well defined. As if we were meant to follow, Jason thinks uneasily.

  They take turns and backswitching lanes, and, after a while, they’re no longer sure where they are or if they’re still headed in the right direction.

  The air is soft and damp like something crushed up against your face. There’s the steady hiss of the sea, a constant rush of white noise like a motorway in the distance. The passageway is only about three feet wide. Occasionally the walls buckle and lurch, and they have to press tight through the space, the wet rock like a tongue against their skin. Sometimes another path emerges out of the dark, and they stop and check their route. The walls whisper and groan. They make noises like an old abandoned house. They say you will never leave. In the flicker of torchlight, Jason can make out ancient graffiti; names and pictures scratched into the surface of the earth.

  They walk for another half-hour. Jason keeps checking his watch. The thought of what they’ll do when the torch’s batteries run out is something he keeps pushing to the back of his mind.

  Then Kitty stops dead. The torch goes off.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  He squints, follows the direction of her outstretched hand. He’s not sure what he’s looking for and, at first, doesn’t notice it. Then he does. A small aperture of white at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘It must be the exit.’

  He can hear her breathlessness, the fear she’s been hiding from him. The way the light is flickering, he’s not so sure she’s right, but maybe there’s a tree in front of the entrance, the flicker just sunlight filtering through its branches. He tells himself this so that all his other thoughts will stay silent.