‘Our hermit bought a still from old Mikey, and Mikey was happy to teach him the tricks of the trade. And he’s been a good student, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I would indeed. But a man living alone needs to take care. It’s all too easy, under those circumstances, to make the bottle too close a friend.’
‘You’re right there,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘And the fishermen who go over there have found him red-eyed and ranting, more than once. But he’s never too drunk to find the exact change when he’s selling a bottle, and he’s never been known to hand over a bottle for free.’
‘I suppose it’s no crime to enjoy the product of your own still,’ said the fat man.
‘And knowing the value of money doesn’t make him unique. I’ll find you that jam.’
The shopkeeper turned to the shelves behind him, and taking down a jar, rubbed dust from its lid with his sleeve.
‘So where does a hermit go travelling?’ asked the fat man, as the shopkeeper listed the prices of his purchases with a pencil, and began to tot them up. ‘What tempts a solitary man back into the world?’
‘He didn’t say,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘He never says much. One thousand six. One thousand five, for cash.’
‘Now I’m here, I need a place to sleep,’ said the fat man, as he handed over his payment. ‘Where would you recommend?’
‘I’d recommend the only place you’ll find a bed, at the taverna at the back of the square.’ The shopkeeper slipped his money into the till. ‘You’ll do fine there, and they’ll give you a decent dinner. But if you’re not planning a long stay, you’d better drink no more tsipouro. The ferry out sails at six tomorrow morning.’
‘Can I help you, kyria?’
At the city police station, the early shift was coming to an end. The officer on duty had plans for his free afternoon, and no intention of being late leaving the building.
The woman held tight to the boy’s hand; the boy looked up in awe at the man in uniform.
‘I want to report a missing person,’ said the woman.
The officer made no comment, but opened a drawer in a filing cabinet, and found the correct form.
He made a note of her details: her name, her address, her date of birth.
‘And the missing person?’ he asked.
‘It’s my father,’ she said. ‘His name is Myles Antonakos.’
The name was familiar to the officer.
‘You’ve been in here before,’ he said.
‘Six months ago. And six months ago before that. I’m hoping this time you might help me, instead of sending me away.’
The officer gave her a condescending smile.
‘Is your father over the age of eighteen?’ he asked.
‘He’s forty-five, next birthday.’
The officer put the form aside.
‘Then, once again, I must tell you there’s nothing we can do. Unless you have evidence of foul play?’
‘I have no evidence of anything,’ said the woman. ‘But he’s been missing such a very long time. We’ve had no contact from him at all since he left – not a letter, not a phone call, not even a postcard for my son.’
‘That’s your father’s choice, kyria. In the eyes of the law, he’s a free man.’
‘But he has – problems. He likes a drink. Sometimes, he drinks too much, and it gets him into trouble. Or he might be ill. His health was never good, because of his drinking.’
‘You might try the hospitals, then.’
‘All those locally, I’ve tried.’
‘Try other towns. Try other prefectures.’
‘Which towns? Which prefectures?’
The officer shrugged.
‘That, kyria, I don’t know.’
‘Please, listen. In a week, it’s my son’s name-day. My father’s, too; the boy is named for him. I promised Myles I’d do everything I can to find his grandpa by then, so they might at least speak on the phone. He misses his Pappou, don’t you, Myles?’ Sadly, the boy nodded. ‘And I miss him, too. But how to find him – I don’t know where to begin.’
‘With respect, kyria, neither do we,’ said the officer. ‘And, since you’re not aware of any crime having been committed, either by him or against him, I’m sorry, but he doesn’t fall under our remit.’
There were tears in the woman’s eyes.
‘But I keep telling you, he’s missing!’ she said. ‘He’d have come home to us by now, if he could.’
‘We’ve only your word for that,’ said the officer. ‘If you’re determined to track him down, my advice is to hire someone privately. But maybe he doesn’t want to be found. That’s often how it is, in these cases.’
With tragic eyes, the boy looked up at him. The woman squeezed the boy’s hand.
‘Come on, Myles,’ she said. ‘We’re wasting our time, in this place. There’s no one here who’ll help us find Pappou.’
The drunk’s companions were long gone; he had no memory of them leaving, only an awareness that for some time, he’d been alone. Maybe there had been no companions this evening; maybe he was thinking of yesterday, or of last week. He craved sleep, but who would help him home? There was no home; and so he must stay here, upright and suffering in a bar-room chair, when only lying down would ease the pain of his swollen belly.
A drink would help.
‘Ouzo!’
He reached out his shaking hand for his empty glass, and knocked it over. Addled, detached, he watched it roll to the table-edge, and fall.
The glass shattered on the tiled floor.
The barman was restocking the fridge with Dutch beer. He slammed the fridge door and pulled himself up from a crouch.
‘OK, that’s it,’ he said. ‘We’re closing.’
At the end of the counter, he threw a switch. The back-lighting on the bottle shelves went out; the alluring, mirrored images of vodkas, schnapps and brandies all went dark.
Head lolling, the drunk peered down at his feet.
‘An accident,’ he said, as his eyelids – against his volition – half-shut. He lifted his chin, to see better through the remaining slits. ‘Bring me an ouzo, friend. And have one yourself.’
The barman fetched a broom, and found a dust-pan beneath the unwashed cloths he used to wipe the bar. As he swept shattered glass from around the drunk’s feet, the drunk looked around himself in confusion.
‘Who broke that glass?’ he asked. ‘Why is there no service? An ouzo, friend, an ouzo!’
‘You don’t need an ouzo, you need a doctor,’ said the barman, walking back to the counter. ‘And we’re closed.’
The drunk fumbled for his trouser pocket.
‘Doctors be damned!’ he said. ‘And damn you too! Don’t think I can’t pay. I’ll pay you, and you’ll bring me another drink.’ He dropped what money he found in his trousers on to the table along with a bottle of pills, and squinted down uncertainly at the two small banknotes. ‘I’ve enough there, see. There’s enough there, isn’t there?’
‘I’ve told you, I’m closing,’ said the barman. ‘Out.’
‘May I buy you a drink, friend?’
From the shadows at the back of the bar-room, a man stepped up to the drunk’s table. The drunk peered up at him with unfocused eyes. Whether the man was known to him, or not, he couldn’t say.
The man looked down at him, appraising. The dim light accentuated the yellow cast to the drunk’s skin; it showed his face, wretched and sunken, and his shoulders emaciated to bone, and his limbs softly plumped with the same oedema which distended his stomach.
‘There’s a place down the street where they open late,’ said the man. ‘We’ll have a drink or two there.’ He turned to the barman, who was watching, arms folded. ‘And I’ll settle this gentleman’s bill. What does he owe?’
‘Nothing,’ said the barman. ‘There’s nothing to pay.’
The man scooped up the drunk’s cash, and the pill bottle.
‘Let me look after these,’ he said, and slipped both money and
medication into his pocket.
He stretched out a hand, and the drunk gladly accepted the help to stand. He cursed at the pain, but managed to sling an arm about his new friend’s neck, and was ready to stumble from the bar.
But the barman stepped forward and blocked their way.
‘Whatever you do, don’t buy him a drink,’ he warned the stranger. ‘A single glass’ll finish him.’
The stranger was bowed under the drunk’s weight.
‘Seems to me he’s had a few drinks already,’ he said.
The barman shook his head.
‘Not from me. His liver’s shot, and packing up. Makes them act like they’d downed a barrel of brandy. Just ply him with water, like I’ve been doing. He’s too far gone to know the difference.’
The stranger looked at him, and smiled.
‘Thanks for the tip, friend,’ he said, and led the drunk away, into the night.
Post-exhumation
Seven
By running from the exhumation, Leda had left the others far behind, and reached the poet’s house well ahead of those following. At the gate, she stopped, and looked back down the road. No one was in view. The house door was closed; no one was there to welcome her in.
She passed the gate, and went on along the uphill road.
The road ran through pine forest, overhung by the branches of lofty trees, each almost identical to the next and with no path between them. The forest was dense and dismal, without light for growth and greenery; instead, around the tree trunks spread a mat of rotting pine needles, whose russet softness absorbed and muffled Leda’s footsteps as the heels of her shoes struck the concrete road.
Melting snow released the clean scent of the pine needles. The first drops of a threatening rain shower touched her face, but came to nothing. She walked on, around a bend in the road, and on, until ahead of her was the chapel of St Fanourios and its shrine.
The shrine was a wooden cabinet, mounted on a pole. An unlit lamp stood on its roof; a glass door covered its front, and locked within, piled one on another, were seven jaundiced skulls, with stained teeth set in gaping grins. From childhood, the women around Leda had encouraged her to fear them: Don’t look them in the eyes, they said. One of them was a bad man, and will curse you.
The chapel was squat and ugly, with a round roof too flat to be conical, and its tiles covered with moss; its windows were of tiny proportions to save on glazier’s bills, or – as people said – because its builders feared a tax on daylight. People said many things about the chapel. They said the family that built it was afraid of hellfire, but had no corresponding love of God; that they’d tried to buy their places in heaven on the cheap, and built the chapel shoddily and meanly, thinking God wouldn’t notice their disrespect. But God, they said, had noticed, and wouldn’t grant his blessing to the place. They spoke of spooks and spirits seen by twilight, and of strangers at the shrine, there and then gone, in the same instant.
The family’s descendants had moved away, except for an ill-natured bachelor who had no more care for God’s house than his relatives, and refused to fund its maintenance. On the saint’s day, in August, a few of the pious came to pay their respects, but there was no celebratory music, or dancing, no wine, or feast. St Fanourios’s visitors were few; only those who needed his special kind of help crossed the threshold. Those passing on the road made their crosses and went by quickly, avoiding the fourteen eyes which watched them from the shrine.
Yet as Leda drew close to the chapel, a man was there. He had opened the shrine’s glass door, and was holding one of the skulls in the palm of his hand. The old stories of vanishing strangers came immediately to her mind, and believing herself unnoticed in the gloom of approaching dusk, she intended to retrace her steps and make her escape; but the man at the shrine seemed to sense she was there, and looking up from the skull he was examining, turned towards her.
Knowing she was seen, she felt obliged to continue on, towards the chapel. Drawing closer, she saw the man was tall, and overweight to the point of fatness, with glasses which gave him an air of academia, and a peculiar choice of footwear: old-fashioned, canvas tennis shoes, which – in spite of the muddiness of the road – were perfectly white. Between his feet was a holdall of the type favoured by athletes, not new, but of some vintage, in well cared for navy leather.
As she noticed his shoes, he seemed also to take an interest in her feet and the ladders which ran from the soles of her torn stockings up her heels and ankles.
He held out the skull on the palm of his hand. Fearing both the skull and the stranger, Leda slowed her walk.
But then the stranger smiled.
‘Kali spera sas,’ he said, politely, in a voice clearly of this world, and she wished him the same, moving, eyes averted, to pass by him.
‘Don’t be concerned that I take an interest in this skull,’ he said, to her back. His words were beautifully enunciated, his speech clear and accentless as the Greek of TV newscasters. ‘I was having a close look through the glass, and saw something about it which intrigued me. I admit to some mischief in picking the lock, but it’s a poor one, and a few seconds’ work even to a child, and I shall lock it again, when I go. I wanted a better look at this gentleman, for laudable reasons. Here, take a look for yourself.’
He offered the skull for her to see, and, curious, she glanced back.
‘There’s a crack, here on the parietal bone,’ he said. On the back of the skull, he ran a finger along a narrow line. ‘I’m afraid this man didn’t die of natural causes. Too late now, of course, to discover if his death was accidental, or not; but this poor fellow died from a blow to the head. It might have been a fall, or a branch dropping from a tree; or it might have been an attack from some enemy. It’s too late, now, ever to know; so I shall assume a broken branch, and return him to his companions.’ With care, he replaced the skull with the other six, and closed the shrine’s glass door. ‘I should take some photographs,’ he said. ‘My father would find this collection most interesting.’
‘You should be careful,’ said Leda. ‘Local legend has it one of them is cursed. And this place is rumoured to be haunted. It’s not somewhere you should be alone.’
‘Yet you have come alone,’ said the fat man. ‘I don’t suppose you were expecting my company.’
‘Excuse me,’ said Leda. ‘I have something I must do, and it’s growing dark. I shall take care to be gone before nightfall.’
She followed the path to the chapel, and opened its arched door. The stranger had lit no lamps or candles, and inside, all was dark. Leaving the door open to let in what daylight remained, she placed a few coins on the offertory plate and took a candle from the box; but amongst the charcoal discs for the censer and the little boxes of wicks and incense, there were no matches.
‘Allow me.’
The fat man was suddenly by her shoulder, and startled, Leda jumped. In his hand was a gold lighter, which he struck, holding out its blue flame to her candle’s wick, and as the candle’s own flame grew, its reflection showed his eyes as pools of disturbing depths. Leda took a step back.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, with a smile, slipping the lighter into his overcoat pocket. ‘It was not my intention to frighten you. Sometimes, I move too silently in these shoes, and people think I’m sneaking up on them. Sometimes, of course, I am, though that was not my plan in your case. Please, don’t let me interrupt your devotions.’
‘I came to light a candle, that’s all,’ said Leda. ‘And now I’ve done so, I’ll leave.’
‘But you haven’t paid your proper respects to the saint,’ said the fat man, obstructing the door, perhaps unintentionally. ‘Who is the idol here? St Fanourios, it would seem. Please, I truly don’t wish to disturb you. I shall wait outside until you’re done, before I undertake my little tour. As the place is so small, I shall be done in half a minute, unless I find something of particular note. My interest is not in the present structure but in its foundations, and whether this chapel usurps an
earlier building, an ancient temple. There have been rumours, down the years, of a temple to Demeter in this area. Whether this is the chapel that covers it, would be interesting to find out.’
He left her. Leda carried the burning candle to all the icons, and twisted it into the candle-box sand.
Outside, the fat man was standing once again before the shrine, smoking a cigarette whose tip glowed red in the twilight.
‘The Orthodox habit of digging up the dead has always seemed peculiar to me,’ he said, waving his hand towards the skulls as she appeared. ‘Why not leave them in the ground where they are comfortable? And these fellows here have it worse than most, displayed like goods in some shop window. They may be useful as a reminder of mortality, but these men have been left no dignity. Even as I made my way up here, they were exhuming some other poor soul at the cemetery. Perhaps you know who it was?’
The evening shadows seemed to diminish his stature, and his affable expression encouraged confidences.
‘It was my father,’ she said.
The fat man raised both his hands in apology.
‘How tactless of me!’ he said. ‘Please, forgive me. Your father, then . . . May your God forgive his sins. But – forgive me again, it is my unalterable nature to be inquisitive – on such an important occasion, why are you spending your time here with St Fanourios and not at home with your family?’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I should go back to them.’
‘Before you go, will you permit me a question?’ He dropped what remained of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it under the sole of his white shoe; then he bent to pick up the butt, and placed it on top of the shrine. ‘I shall dispose of that properly, in a moment. Now, please advise me: St Fanourios, the Revealer, your patron saint of lost things. I have misplaced a ring, which perhaps he may help me find. It’s gold, and an antiquity, but its value to me is more sentimental than monetary. It was a gift to me from my mother, and she will be most upset to think I’ve lost it. If you would confirm that my understanding of the ritual is correct, I might invoke Fanourios’s help myself. I must offer to say a prayer for the soul of his mother, is that right?’
The Whispers of Nemesis Page 5