The Doctor of Thessaly

by Anne Zouroudi

  ‘Please, sit,’ she said, indicating the chair she had vacated. ‘Sit a while. Mother will enjoy the company. Will you take coffee? Mother’s no doubt ready for her tea.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking her seat. ‘As I recall, you make excellent coffee.’

  Giving no smile, or word, or sign of pleasure, she let his compliment pass unacknowledged. She pulled open one of the deep drawers of the dressing table, where there were no clothes but stacks of photograph albums, varied in size and colour and giving off the equine smell of leather. Choosing one from near the bottom of the drawer, she handed it to the fat man.

  ‘Whilst I’m making coffee,’ she said, ‘perhaps you would turn the pages for Mother.’

  As she walked away down the hall, he opened the heavy album to its waxed cover sheet, through which he read its handwritten title page: ‘1959’. A little awkwardly, the fat man slanted the album towards the old woman, positioning it where he thought she might best see it, and turned to the first of the photographs. The page’s fabric was spotted with pale grey growths of mould and smelled of must and damp, as if he had opened some long-sealed vault; but the photographs were brilliant with light, and sparkled with memories of that summer. He turned the pages, and each turn seemed to lead him down a forgotten road, each page a day in that long-past year; and it seemed too that the silent woman beside him called to him from the place where he was heading, as if she had taken the road ahead of him, and was pleased to guide him to the place she was quite content to be.

  When the mechanic’s wife called him to the kitchen for his coffee, the fat man carefully closed the album and laid it on the chair he was vacating. For a long moment, he looked down on the frail figure in the bed. At the corner of her mouth, a bubble of spittle rose and shrank as she breathed. He touched her forearm, and finding the skin cold, closed the window and secured the latch. Glancing again at the portrait of her in her prime, he lifted her hand up to his lips and lightly kissed its veinous, bony back.

  On the kitchen table, a plate held a slice of sponge cake topped with cinnamon-spiced apples.

  ‘I used the apples you brought,’ said the mechanic’s wife, ‘so Mother can eat them, softened.’

  The fat man took a seat with a view of the forecourt, where the mechanic was half-hidden beneath the Mercedes’s bonnet. The mechanic’s wife placed his coffee on the table. Putting water to boil for the old lady’s tea, she added a twig of wild sage to the kafebriko and a teaspoonful of honey to a spouted invalid cup.

  He cut his first mouthful of cake, and ate it with a fork.

  ‘Has your mother been ill long, Litsa?’ he asked.

  She didn’t look at him as she replied; she seemed busy watching for the water’s boil.

  ‘It’s over a year now, since her stroke. It seems so cruel to us. She was always the busiest of women, always doing; always active. If she has to go, why doesn’t God just take her?’

  The fat man had no answer, and a silence grew between them. At the stove, the gas burner whispered; as the water grew hot, the sage’s scent displaced the stronger smell of coffee.

  Cutting once again into his cake, he asked, ‘Who took the photographs?’

  ‘My father,’ she said. ‘It was his life’s work – though not his real work. His real work was a smallholding. But photography was his passion. Every spare drachma went on photographic essentials: film, chemicals for his darkroom, wood for framing. He made the frames himself. Mother used to say if he’d applied himself to that trade, he’d have made a useful living as a carpenter.’

  ‘He was quite an artist.’

  Turning to him, she gave a short laugh.

  ‘Do you think so? I certainly never did; nor did Mama. She saw it as an expensive hobby that made life difficult.

  He came home one day with a camera he’d bought off some traveller, and that was it. To him, it was a marvel of the age; it’s just a piece of worthless junk, now.’

  ‘You still have the camera?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘But the photographs themselves – they might be worth something.’

  ‘They’re just snaps. But he spent hours, days on them. We never saw him. He had a shed he used as a darkroom; that’s where he preferred to spend his time. When he died, and Mother came to us, she wouldn’t leave anything behind; everything from that shed came too. It’s all there in the workshop now, getting in Tassos’s way and gathering dust. If I told Mother there was money in the photographs, she’d still not agree to part with them. And anyway, what use is money to her now?’

  Steam was rising from the kafebriko; turning off the gas flame, she poured the sage tea into the invalid cup.

  ‘With respect,’ he said, quietly, ‘the day will come when she’s not here to object.’

  ‘You think I’m ridiculous, of course, with her in that condition.’ With an emotion he read as anger, she banged the kafebriko down on the stove, spilling the tea remaining in the pot on to the stove top. ‘I’m sure you’re thinking it could make no difference to her, the state she’s in. But I know she’s still here with us. She hears and she understands. And she feels things, too; I know she does. Excuse me. I must take her her tea.’

  She touched the cup and burned her fingers. In frustration, she looked round the kitchen for a cloth. The fat man leaned forward, and taking a folded tea towel from the back of his chair, held it out to her.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, ‘but the tea’s too hot for her, just yet. I shall say no more; your husband will be finished soon and I shall leave you in peace. And you must believe, Litsa, that people respect you for respecting your mother. You are treating her as she deserves and I approve wholeheartedly of that.’

  ‘You think she deserves any of this?’ To hide gathering tears, she faced the window. ‘Life was hard for her and the ending’s harder still. Day after day bedridden like that, with me wiping her backside and feeding her like a baby, with nothing to look forward to but the end.’

  ‘You may think she sees it like that, Litsa, but perhaps she sees it as a blessing, to be cared for in her last days by someone who loves her enough to do it.’

  ‘I know how embarrassed she must be. She was always such a modest woman.’

  ‘I think she is beyond embarrassment,’ said the fat man. ‘She has, I think, one foot in this world and one in the next. She sees where she is going, I’m sure. She seems comfortable to me, and content.’

  She seemed about to answer him, but instead shook her head. Picking up the cup with the cloth, she blew on the tea to cool it.

  ‘She’ll be thirsty,’ she said, ‘if you’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Gladly,’ he said. Through the window, he watched the mechanic lower the Mercedes’s bonnet. Drinking down his coffee, he swallowed the last of his cake and rose from the table. ‘It appears it is anyway time for me to leave you. My thanks to you for the refreshment, especially the cake. Your light hand is appreciated.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Unsmiling, she watched him to the door. As his hand touched the handle, she stopped him. ‘Kyrie. About the photographs – don’t say anything to my husband. If he thinks they’re worth anything, he won’t care what Mama or I think about it.’

  ‘You need have no worries about that,’ said the fat man. ‘You’ll find I’m very good at keeping secrets, when the secret deserves to be kept.’

  As the fat man approached, the mechanic’s eyes were watchful. He wiped his hands on an oily rag and tucked it into the belt of his trousers.

  ‘She kept you entertained, did she?’ he asked.

  ‘Your wife, as I’m sure you appreciate, is a woman of worth, a hard worker and of a very sober nature. I trust you value her as you should.’

  The mechanic scowled, as if about to take issue with the fat man’s remarks; but before he had formed his words, the fat man smiled and reached for his wallet.

  ‘All fixed?’ he said. ‘I think we agreed the same as last time, didn’t we?’

  He counted out several no
tes, and taking them, the mechanic stuffed them into his trouser pocket.

  ‘I know where to find you if I’ve any more problems,’ went on the fat man. ‘But hopefully she’ll cope now, rain or shine.’ Inside the workshop, the paint sprayer hissed, and he nodded in that direction. ‘Your son’s a great help to you, I’m sure; and what a benefit for him to start life with a good trade.’

  ‘He’s always been keen to join me in the business. Twice the labour, twice the income, I say.’

  The fat man opened the Mercedes’s door. On the driver’s seat, a smudge of oil had dirtied the leather, and thinking of his raincoat, he hesitated to get into the car. But the rain was falling again, heavy drops creating ripples in the puddles; so he got in anyway, and waving cheerily to the mechanic, drove away.

  Sixteen

  The fat man took the road towards the foothills, driving across the plain between smallholdings where the leaves of spring crops were already showing, and empty fields were ploughed and ready for planting cotton. Where the road began to rise and its bends became sharper, he slowed the Mercedes to look for the track Evangelia had told him was there; and where a fast-flowing stream was crossed by a timber bridge, he left his car.

  The path was clear at first, leading him through woodland of beeches and wild chestnuts; but beyond the trees, the path grew rockier and less marked, until at the edge of an upland meadow it disappeared, hidden by mountain grasses and flowers. The breeze had moved the morning’s rain inland, and a blue sky carried only the remnants of clouds, so, out of the shaded woods, the sun was pleasantly warm. Walking at a fast pace uphill, the fat man inhaled deeply and deliberately, taking in air sweetened by pollen and the scent of spring. At the brow of the hill, he stopped and looked around to take his bearings. The place where he was heading was above him and to the north, and so he made his way in that direction. A few paces on, the grass was rutted; here and there, the ruts were deep and churned to mud. Placing his holdall beside him, the fat man crouched to examine the ground. Beyond doubt, a motorbike had been ridden this way.

  Shadowed by a mountain outcrop at the far side of the meadow was a stone-built cabin, its corrugated-iron roof held on by rocks and rope. As the fat man grew close, a dog began to bark; as he grew closer, a rangy mongrel – grey-muzzled, with tumorous swellings on its inner thighs and belly – strained at its chain, snarling in frustrated rage at the fat man, who stopped just out of its reach. Bending to the dog, the fat man held out his hand for it to sniff; but the dog was mistrustful, and cowering, tucked its tail between its legs and slunk into the rusty oil barrel which made its kennel. There, it stood on its bed of dirty straw and faced the fat man to protect the bone it had been gnawing on: the lower leg of a sheep, with a few bloody scraps of meat and the sheep’s hoof still attached.

  For a few moments, the fat man waited, expecting the dog’s barking to have roused anyone inside, but the door remained closed. Moving without noise, he made his way to the back of the cabin, which fell in the shadow of the mountain. A crop of spearmint filled an old tin bath, and the fat man plucked a sprig in passing, holding the herb to his nose to sniff its fragrance. Behind the bath, a large tarpaulin – ripped in places into holes, in others patched and stitched, weighted at its corners and its edges by heavy rocks – covered some large object. Tossing several of the rocks behind him with obvious ease, the fat man released one corner of the cloth and lifted it to see what was hidden underneath; and the dog, which watched at the end of its chain, began to bark again.

  Orfeas the shepherd judged the hour by the light and length of the day, and when he came in from the lambs, it seemed to be an hour or two after noon: too early for a drink, but a good time to eat. There were tins left on the shelf, and hard bread and crackers in the tin, so he chose luncheon meat and a tin of pears in juice, and took a handful of the crackers. With his forearm, he swept the breakfast crumbs from the table top to the floor, and laid his lunch out on the table.

  The room was dark (the room was always dark, regardless of the hour, midday or midnight; only the depth of darkness varied, because the shutters were never opened to let in daylight or the faint light from the stars). The ashes in the grate were cold, and lifted in puffs of grey powder each time the wind breached the hopeless chimney or drove through the unfilled holes in the stone walls.

  As he wound the steel key on the tin of meat, the dog whined, and having whined, began to bark in earnest, its chain rattling on the ground as it ran backwards and forwards before the door. He called out to it for silence – the damn dog barked at everything, from a sheep knocking the pen rails to a crow cawing overhead – and, briefly, it was quiet; but then its racket began again, and so he left the meat on the table and threw open the door.

  No one was there. The dog had stretched its chain to its limit, and with sorry eyes looked back at him from the corner of the cabin.

  ‘Hush your noise,’ said Orfeas, and the dog wagged its tail uncertainly.

  Orfeas went back inside the cabin.

  He finished opening the luncheon meat, and with the can opener, opened the tin of pears, then found his knife and spoon and wiped the knife blade on his trousers. He set the two tins – both with their lids still hanging – in his accustomed place at the table. Sitting, he dug out a wedge of meat, and stuffed it in his mouth with a damp-softened cracker, which tasted of nothing but flour as he chewed it into pap. There was nothing else, and so he took another. Finishing the meat, he ate the pears, snapping off the lid and drinking the juice from the tin. He lit the primus stove, poured water from a bottle into a saucepan, and added coffee and sugar from their packets. As the coffee heated on the flame, he stood in silence, looking at the bottle of rough spirit on the table; he looked at it until he thought he might as well, and then folded his arms and turned his back on it. The coffee boiled. Orfeas unscrewed the cap off a tartan thermos flask, decanted the coffee into it and fastened the flask into his shoulder pouch.

  Outside, the dog lay, head on paws, beside the oil barrel. Orfeas unfastened the chain from its collar and took a few steps mountainwards, expecting the dog to follow him, but the dog bounded away and disappeared from sight. Orfeas cursed, and putting finger and thumb under his tongue, gave a sharp whistle to call it back. But the dog did not respond, and so Orfeas followed it.

  Behind and beyond the cabin, under the branches of a solitary fig tree, was a table where the shepherd ate in summer, and seated there, on Orfeas’s chair, was the man he had recently seen talking to Chrissa – a man tall as himself, though somewhat fatter, seeming comfortable in the mountain terrain despite his inappropriate dress. The fat man was eating off Orfeas’s table, with Orfeas’s dog sitting by his knee, and as Orfeas watched, the fat man broke off a piece of whatever he was eating and fed it to the grateful dog.

  As Orfeas approached, the fat man seemed not to notice him; but as he drew closer, the fat man smiled and raised a hand in greeting.

  ‘Kali mera sas,’ he called, and fed another morsel to the dog. ‘Forgive my intrusion. I was enjoying your view with my lunch.’

  As Orfeas reached the fig tree, the dog left the fat man’s side, and pressing its hard body against the shepherd’s thigh, licked at his fingers in apology for its defection. Orfeas looked down at the fat man’s meal: a wax-paper packet of mortadella sausage, spotted with rondels of pork fat and pale green pistachios; two varieties of white-marbled salami, both crusted with coarsely crushed peppercorns; fine-cut slices of mature yellow Gruyère, more holes than cheese. There was a paper bag of fresh bread rolls, which the fat man was using to make sandwiches, and to drink, Italian mineral water, in an elegant, sapphire-blue bottle.

  ‘Please,’ said the fat man, offering the food with spread hands, ‘join me. There’s plenty, as you can see.’ Splitting a bread roll with his thumb, with relish he folded inside it a slice each of mortadella, salami and cheese, and bit into it.

  ‘What do you want here?’ asked Orfeas.

  The fat man looked up at him. The shephe
rd’s skin was dark from windburn and sunburn; his hair was receding, but long on his neck. Above the garlic from the sausage and the pungent cheese, his odour was strong, of sheep and sour milk, of the summery sweetness of hay; there was, too, the musk of the human male and, faintly, the smell of alcohol. The shepherd was not handsome; the features of his face seemed mismatched, though his eyes were distinctive, silver-grey and – at this moment – suspicious.

  And beside one eye, his cheek was cut; a graze ran from his chin to his eyebrow.

  ‘You’ve been in the wars, my friend,’ said the fat man. ‘You’ve made a mess of your face. The back of your hand, too; that looks nasty. And I couldn’t help but notice that you’re walking with a limp. Have you had some kind of accident?’

  ‘I’m prone to accidents,’ said Orfeas. ‘The ground up here is rough.’

  The fat man took a bite out of his roll.

  ‘Please,’ he said, gesturing again at the food, ‘help yourself.’ He peeled a slice of mortadella from the packet, and held it out for the dog, but the dog, back under its master’s jurisdiction, was afraid to take it, and hid behind the shepherd’s legs. ‘I know this terrain is treacherous, especially on a motorbike, and especially when the rider is an amateur. I should tell you I was with Dr Dinos when he got the message to come to you. The usual exaggeration in its passing from mouth to mouth had you at death’s door.’

  ‘It’s just a few cuts. I’ll mend.’

  ‘Do you know,’ said the fat man, ‘I have something that will help. An old cure that’s not very often used, these days.’ He reached into his pocket and took out the bottle of merbromin tincture he had bought at the pharmacy. ‘Use this,’ he said. ‘It’ll do a better job of healing than time alone. But be careful not to get it on your clothes; it stains red and is very tricky to get out. I am impressed that you managed to get the motorbike back home again in your injured state, if this is, indeed, your home. It’s a charming spot, though the facilities seem somewhat basic for permanent occupation. Forgive me!’ He laid down his sandwich, and stood up from the table. ‘I have you at a disadvantage; I have not introduced myself. Hermes Diaktoros, of Athens. I am here investigating the recent attack on Dr Chabrol.’