Signs of a Struggle

by Tony Kaplan

  Christos puts his phone down. “His secretary will call you with a time. You should go and see Phil Trepanis,” Christos says again and nods. “He wouldn’t tell me anything – confidentiality clause – you know, doctor-patient thing. But maybe he’ll tell you – you’ve come all the way from England, looking for her and you’re practically family, know what I mean?” I nod. “Let me know, will ya? She was crazy, but a hell of a fuck, I hope you don’t mind me saying. Wouldn’t mind getting her into my bed again.” He gets up. “Now, do you want a tour of the property? I’ll make it worth your while – have the kitchen staff prepare us something – the kitchen is just about up and running.”

  After the tour (he is especially keen for me to see the banks of photo-voltaic cells out the back), we eat (alone) in an expansive dining room which overlooks the sea. For all his Americanism, Christos Papademos is engaging company and a generous host. He tells amusing stories about the Italian mobsters he and his father worked with in New York. He is clearly fond of his father. “He is supposed to be retired, but he still has his office and wants to micro-manage the family business. Watches every cent. Heh,” he laughs, “If it had been up to him, they would never have found that body in the bridge. For him, it was like, ‘Why spend money on demolishing the old bridge? The new road goes around it.’ But for me, it is an eyesore. I have my aesthetic standards,” he says with a self-effacing smile. “Our backers want what the tourists will admire and that’s what I give them.” In spite of his zealous entrepreneurship, he and his family are ardent supporters of PASOK, the social democrats, Greece’s version of the Labour Party. “The big earners, ship owners, all have their companies registered in tax havens. Our economy now depends on tourism – for the good of the people, we must do what we can.”

  We dine on swordfish, lightly grilled and drink a delicious Sauvignon Blanc from a South African vineyard. I can see what Lucy must have seen in him. When I take my leave of him, he clasps me to him and I, for all my earlier scepticism, return his warm embrace. He is an okay guy – rich, but okay. As I make my way back to my motorbike, I am grinning for no reason and my legs feel light. With all the Scotch and the wine I’ve drunk, I must ride extra-carefully. I must not ruminate on the images in my mind of Lucy being fucked by Christos. Will there be a reply to my e-mail?

  22

  I intend to check my e-mails when I get back to Agia Anna, but I am so drowsy that instead I go straight to my room and collapse on the bed. I wake when it is already darkening and confuse this for the light of dawn. Only the sound of activity from the taverna – Yiannis shouting, Soulla shouting back, rebetika, the clatter of dishes - re-orientate me. I shower and go downstairs for something to eat, even though I’m not hungry. Force of habit. I remember that I should go to the Seaview and check my mail, but something holds me back, makes me put it off.

  As I’m walking down stairs, the dream I had of Lucy resurfaces. Naked and forceful, she’d wanted to be on top and for some reason I had not wanted her to be. We’d struggled. She’d overpowered me and rubbed her cunt vigorously on my thigh with a look of determination. I swear I could even smell her sex. “Get off me!” I’d shouted, even as my cock had rebelled and gone rock hard. I pushed her and she’d landed on the floor, astonished, strung… I had been left with the still undecipherable taste of feelings, swirling together, not blending. But the remembering of the dream had rekindled my erection and I turn and go back upstairs, and consider taking myself in hand. But, back in my room, my arousal dissipates, I’m left with the entirely irrational feeling that I’ve cheated on Agapi. Agapi! Why? I don’t have any claims on Agapi and she doesn’t have any claim on me. Ridiculous. Anyway, Jesus, it was just a dream. Curiously, though, I feel a sense of propriety with Agapi that I never quite managed with Lucy. I should have been angry that Lucy had cheated on me by fucking Christos, having practically invited me to the island. I should have felt jealous. But I hadn’t. I’d only felt deflated. So why the dream?

  Anyway, I don’t feel like to going to the Seaview now. They're probably busy anyway. I'll get my e-mails first thing in the morning. Instead, I go downstairs again and find that my usual table at Yianni’s occupied by a German couple staring into one another’s eyes with adoration, holding hands across the table. Annoying. Yiannis must attribute my expression of irritation to not having my preferred seat, he shuffles to me solicitously and whispers, “Soon they will leave. Come, sit here. When they go, you go there.” He ushers me to a small table near the kitchen door, to reinforce the temporary nature of my positioning to the tardy canoodling Germans. He marches over to them and pointedly places the bill in front of the man. “Logariasmo. The bill,” he says curtly, his smile a grimace of hospitality, before he turns and walks back to me, stands next to me and watches the woman take the bill from the man, put on her spectacles and then read the itemised bill carefully. It’s all in Greek I know. I don’t know what she is examining. I see Yianni’s fingers drumming. He turns to me, “They come here before. They no leave a tip. Nothing.” He does his each-hand-wiping-the-other-clean gesture of finality. The German couple call him over and question something on the bill. He crosses it off. They give him money and wait while he counts out the change. They get up smiling. The man thanks him and slaps Yiannis on the back in a show of brotherliness and no hard feelings. Yiannis lets him, but turns his face to me and shakes his head in a show of what he has to put up with. “Please come again,” he says unconvincingly. The lovebirds leave with stiff backs. I imagine them back in their air-conditioned room, fucking to a metronome. Click-clack, click-clack.

  I get up and move to my table and wait as Yiannis clears their debris, before sitting down. I tell him I’ve been to the Poseidon and that I’ve met Christos. “Kapitaleest,” he says by way of insult. I tell him that Christos supported PASOK. “Is like Blair in your country,” he says, “New Labour. New PASOK. Andreas, the son of Papandreou, he came from America a professor, a revolutionary. And what he became? – a rich man… kapitaleest.”

  “Socialism is not everyone being equally poor,” I quote Deng, the Chinese leader.

  “But do the poor peoples get rich? Or the rich get more rich?” he says. “Later we talk, my friend,” he says.

  After my simple meal – I settle for spanakopita – spinach and feta pie – Yiannis leaves the last table still going for Bobby to attend to and sits down with me, his cigarettes and brandy as accompaniment. “Bobby, dio kafedes – metrio,” he shouts to his son to bring us Greek coffee. Bobby, silent as ever, nods with the slightest of frowns. His father could have asked nicely, said please. The absence of the “parakalo” is a signal of the hierarchy between father and son, which the son resents. I am sure Kat wouldn’t have let her father get away with it.

  “So, you met Christos Papademos? The Amerikano. Did he tell you about his father? Hektor.”

  I tell him I met the older Papademos and that his son told me some very amusing stories about their dealings in New York with the mafia.

  “CIA.” Yiannis says. “Even before the Colonels, Hektor Papademos was work for the CIA. He was President of the American Friendship Club on the island. The CIA was at the backside of the Colonels. Many peoples – sosialistes - they not like the United States – because of the war. Hektor, he say he support PASOK, but Hektor only support what make money for him. The Americans, the CIA, give him lots of money and they make him in charge of the money they send for to build a hall for the peoples in Agia Sofia, for to make better the harbour. If you want a jobs in America for you or for your sons, you go to Papademos – he fix it.” Each hand wipes the other clean. “For America Independence Day, big party in Agia Sofia for everybuddy - flags for wave in the street – the Stars and Stipe-pes. When the junta was finished up, the CIA was pay for Hektor and his family all to go to America. They come back rich… more rich than when they was here before. But now is Christos, the son, in charge. Christos he is clever – he make big donation to PASOK, he make a party for all the peoples so they will vot
e for Nikos Angelopolis to be the Mayor. How you think they let him build there? That land – all the beaches, the forests – it was protected. But no protected from Christos Papademos. His father walk around like he is the King. Ha!” Yiannis barks a derisive laugh. “He is like what-is-name, Don Corleone! Ha!”

  Our coffee arrives and Yiannis accepts his cup with a mild distraction. I make a point of thanking Bobby, Bobby smiles and raises an eyebrow. He sees I’ve noticed his father’s dismissal of his son as not requiring the formality of a thank you. “Go tell your mother I will come to help her when I have had my kafe,” Yiannis says in English for my benefit. “That woman she is work hard.”

  I ponder what he has told me about the Papademos family. Their allegiances have soured my feelings – I had admired the older Papademos as patrician and had quite liked Christos. I don’t know what weight to give Yianni’s cynicism. Is what he said true, or does he resent them because they have done better than him in history’s fickle flow?

  23

  As it happens I over-sleep and get woken by a call to tell me Dr Trepanis can see me briefly after he has finished his morning clinic. I have thirty minutes to get into Agia Sofia. I shall have to check for that e-mail later.

  When I get to the hospital, I am directed to Dr. Trepanis's clinic and told to wait. I get to wait thirty minutes. I could have got my e-mails, I think irritably. Then I hear my name (mispronounced), and see the good doctor advancing on me. He thrusts his hand out, introduces himself cursorily and then rushes in front of me into his office and goes behind his desk to grab his sandwiches and bottle of water. “You don’t mind,” he says, as he unwraps what is either a late breakfast or a very early lunch. He has had a frustrating morning and is irritated that he has agreed to fit me in. He practically growls when a nurse walks in without knocking and hands him a stack of folders and waits while he initials prescriptions. They don’t speak. I know from the receptionist to whom I chatted while I waited for him, that after this, he has minor surgery, and then an antenatal clinic this afternoon and home visits later. He is one of only two doctors at the hospital, in fact on the island. People who need major surgery and even mothers delivering babies have to go to the big island by the single propeller plane that makes the thirty-minute journey twice a day.

  Dr Trepanis must be in his mid-forties, although his world-weary, deeply-riven frown, hollowed cheeks and thinning hair suggest he may be younger than he looks. The medical certificate on his wall is from Manchester University Medical School. “You want to know about Miss Discombe?” he asks. I explain the nature of my enquiry. I tell him that Christos Papademos sent me. “Christos, how is he?” he asks. He is not really interested. He is giving himself time to think. “I saw your friend, Miss Discombe, but you understand I am bound by confidentiality.” I tell him why I am worried – she has not been seen for nearly a month. He hesitates. He takes a big bite of his sandwich and chews it pensively. I tell him what I already know from Christos. He nods and purses his lips.

  “Okay. I prescribed Valium. But maybe she needed something stronger. I am not a psychiatrist you understand, but from what I have seen before, maybe she needed something more… a mood stabiliser perhaps. Perhaps I should have… I gave her an appointment to see me again, but she never came back. I thought she’d gone back to… where was she from? Australia?”

  “What do you think is wrong with her?”

  He inspects me - a risk assessment. He wants to ascertain how much he can trust me. “Okay,” he sighs, “If she is missing, then I must tell you. I think she might be at risk. In my opinion, Miss Discombe was hypomanic when I last saw her. I think she may have a bipolar affective disorder.” He pronounces the diagnosis carefully. “If she is missing, it could be because of this.”

  Fuck, could Lucy have had a serious mental health problem all along? That would fit, I think, feeling, fleetingly, a stupid smug glow of vindication, before I remind myself that the harsh, rejecting e-mail may be fake and my concern for her reasserts itself. Jesus, where can she be? In what sort of state? What has she been getting up to? What has she got herself into? Fuck, what have I got myself into? “So…” I begin tentatively.

  “If her hypomania progressed to full manic, she may have become delusional, acting irrationally, without restraint, disinhibited…” says the doctor, who is looking grim. “On the other hand, it would not be uncommon for someone with bipolar to make a mood switch and become severely depressed very quickly. Has your friend ever been suicidal, do you know?”

  I tell him I don’t know, but I shall try to find out. I must get hold of Irini – perhaps she knows more. I offer to text Irini from his office, but apologetically he tells me he won’t have the time to wait – he has to prepare a report for a mother in premature labour who is due to fly to the big island within the hour. I thank him for his time.

  I stand in the street and text Irini straight away. I think I should probably let the Chief of Police know – now there is definitely good reason to be looking for Lucy urgently.

  Panagiotis receives this news circumspectly. “What I can do, Dhomas?” He sees that I am floundering and throws me a float. “Okay, I will speak with Dr. Trepanis,” he says with a sigh, “I will phone the airport and the harbour authorities. Maybe we will find her.” He places a fat encouraging hand on my shoulder, and tells me, “Don’ worry, my friend.” This does not convince me. I ride back to Agia Anna reconstructing all of Lucy’s cries for help and feeling like a real prick for being so self-centred, cynical and shallow. I promise in future to be more diligent and serious-minded and compassionate.

  Irini replies before I get back. “We need to talk. Skype later?”

  So I go straight to the Seaview and get online and skype Irini. Suddenly there she is, blurred but real, tangibly apologetic, shame-faced. She is probably looking at me scowling full-screen at her. Yes, she tells me, Lucy did have “mental health issues”. In fact that was how they met – in an adolescent mental health unit. Irini and my mother had not wanted me to be troubled in what was my final year at university, so they had kept this from me. Maybe also, Irini confessed, both she and my mother felt ashamed, felt I’d judge them as my father would have done. Irini had developed an eating disorder – bulimia. Lucy’s problems were more acute – she’d tried to kill herself soon after she’d moved to the UK. Her mother in Australia had been institutionalised and her estranged step-father in England had offered to pay for private schooling at a prestigious school if Lucy came to live with him. Within weeks, under cover of a drunken state, he had raped her. But, Irini is quick to add, Lucy had been a fighter, a “survivor”. She’d recovered with the help of the therapy team and she had been the one who’d helped all the other girls in the unit, been the big sister, especially to Irini. She’d moved in with Irini and our mother after they’d both been discharged, even though the unit had not been in favour of this. Lucy had been her “rock” and protector. “Sorry I didn’t tell you all this, Tom. I kind of felt it was private, you know…? I didn’t want it to put you off.”

  “Fuck it, Irini, I’ve come all this way and Lucy could be anywhere. Jesus, Irini!”

  “I know. I’m sorry. What can I say?”

  “You’ve still not heard anything from her?

  “No, nothing,” says Irini, her voice muted apologetically.

  “Was she bipolar?”

  “Not that I know of…” Irini offers hesitantly.

  Just then, the ping of a new message and when I check New Mail, it’s from Lucy. It's the e-mail I have been waiting for. “Just hang on!” I instruct Irini firmly. I must read the reply to the message I sent.

  There it is. I feel my blood drain, my feet go icy cold, the goose bumps rising on my arms. Lucy remembers very well the time we spent together in Prague. "Please send to me the photos.” I read it again to be sure.

  I was right. Lucy and I never were in Prague. Whoever wrote this reply is not Lucy.

  The e-mail I’d sent to Lucy’s e-mail address, telling h
ow much I’d enjoyed Prague with her and that I had pictures of her in Prague Castle which I treasured. If it had been Lucy, she would probably have mailed back, “WTF?” or something like that. She would have assumed I was being weirdly cryptic or very drunk. But what I have instead is confirmation that someone has Lucy’s laptop and is trying to put me off the trail. Someone is pretending to be Lucy. The hairs on my neck prickle.

  I’d worked out what in that previous e-mail hadn’t sounded like Lucy’s voice. Not just the Thomas instead of Tom, and the Americanised “write you”, it was the absence of the apostrophised verbs – the “do not” rather than “don’t”, the “I am” rather than the “I’m”. I’d checked her e-mails from before which had always sounded so conversational and casual. I’d had to correct this stylistic quirk so many times when sub-editing the reports she sent to New World Order. She always used apostrophised verbs.

  Suddenly I know, with a feeling of certainty, what I have tried to keep at bay - Lucy is dead. Or is she? Maybe (I clutch at it) ... maybe she is out of her mind, and someone is covering for her. Or (it is a possibility) someone is holding her prisoner.

  “Oh, God, Irini,” I say back to my sister’s image on my screen, “This not good.”

  As I say this, I know I will have to find her, to find out what's happened to her. I pray she’s still alive.

  24

  I should let Panagiotis know. What will he say? “Don’ worry, Dhomas.” Dhomas… he calls me Thomas – everyone else calls me Tom – he got my name off my passport when I first saw him; everyone else has my name from me – Tom. Is that just a Greek thing, or is it significant? Do the cops have Lucy’s laptop? If so, why? What would she have on her computer they want kept silent? Who else might be involved? Who can I trust?