The Whispers of Nemesis

Home > Other > The Whispers of Nemesis > Page 21
The Whispers of Nemesis Page 21

by Anne Zouroudi


  ‘Frona’s a decent woman,’ said Attis. ‘She deserves an easier life, and I wish to help her towards that.’

  Outside, a car drew up, its wheels scattering the gravel as the driver braked and sounded a blast on the horn.

  Attis crossed to the window, and looked out.

  ‘It’s a taxi,’ he said. ‘Did you order a taxi?’

  The fat man smiled.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘I shall go and enquire. Be cautious whom you trust, Attis. I’ll be in touch, once everything becomes clear.’

  He held out his hand, and Attis took it. Outside, the taxi’s horn blew again.

  ‘It seems I am in a hurry,’ said the fat man, picking up his holdall. ‘But I have one more question, before I go.’ He reached into his pocket, and took out the diary Attis had removed from Santos’s desk. ‘Tell me, where did Santos die, the first time?’

  ‘In Nafplio.’

  ‘And why did he go there?’

  ‘Well,’ said Attis, ‘there’s a sad story, there. He was booked to do a reading at the university, but at the last minute, it was cancelled. I tried and tried to phone him before he left, to save him a wasted journey. I tried right up to midnight, but no one answered the phone. Probably it was out of order, or he hadn’t paid the bill. But the fact was, he didn’t need to go. They’d written to him, I gather, and told him not to come; I assume, in this backwater, the faculty’s letter didn’t reach him. The man who’d organised the visit was heartbroken, and blamed himself; he thought if he had given Santos more notice, he’d never have gone there, and he wouldn’t have died.’

  ‘But he didn’t die there, did he?’ asked the fat man. ‘And I think it would be a kindness if you telephoned that gentleman, and told him to blame himself no longer. I think Santos did get his letter, and went there anyway. Look.’

  He opened the diary at the date of Santos’s death, where the word ‘Nafplio’ was written in the poet’s hand, in ink; the word had been struck through, with a pencil.

  In puzzlement, Attis looked at the fat man.

  ‘But that’s absurd,’ he said. ‘Why would he have made that long journey, if he knew he didn’t have to go?’

  ‘That’s an excellent question,’ said the fat man, ‘and one I intend to have an answer to, very soon now.’

  Hassan waited at the wheel of his taxi, riffling through his collection of music cassettes. When he saw the fat man, he wound down his window to speak to him.

  ‘I thought I would find you here, my friend,’ he said, ‘though you move through Vrisi like a snake in the grass.’

  ‘I hope I am no snake,’ said the fat man, ‘and yet a snake’s slyness may sometimes be emulated to advantage. Why did you want me?’

  ‘I’m bringing you information,’ said Hassan. ‘I’ve been your eyes and ears, as you asked. I’ve taken a young lady on the beginning of a journey.’

  ‘And do you know where she has gone?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ he said. ‘Get in, and I’ll tell you whilst we travel.’

  But the fat man hesitated.

  ‘The bird has already flown,’ he said, ‘and if you know where she has gone, it will do no harm to let her get a head start, and think she is not followed. There remains something here in Vrisi I must take care of. Can you pick me up at the kafenion later on? Let us say eight o’clock. That should give me long enough to do what needs to be done.’

  ‘Eight o’clock it is,’ said Hassan.

  ‘In the meantime,’ said the fat man, ‘I’d appreciate a ride down to the village.’

  Early evening, and Maria was visiting the neighbours, talking over the gossip the day had brought: the low attendance at the funeral; Leda’s departure for Patras, and the dangers of travel to unescorted women; the dangers to Frona’s reputation, being alone in the house with Attis Danas.

  ‘She’s lonely,’ the neighbour was saying, as she shelled beans. ‘Lonely women fall so easily into sin.’

  ‘He’s a predator,’ said Maria, sipping tea. ‘He’s preying on her. Like a wolf, he’s waiting to take advantage.’

  But the neighbour’s husband laughed.

  ‘There’s only one predator, up there,’ he said. ‘A fine specimen of the most dangerous predator there is: a middle-aged woman with no man.’

  The first stars glittered in the darkening sky. Close by Roula’s truckle bed, Maria had left an oil lamp burning on the dresser; the glass was missing from the lamp’s door, and the flame danced in the draughts, throwing changing shadows across the room. A cold wind blew off the hills, and Maria had spread overcoats on top of the blankets to keep her mother warm; and Roula was warm enough, if her hands stayed under the blankets, though the cold had reddened her nose, and the blanket’s rough wool scratched her chin.

  Outside, a dog barked an alarm, then gave a troubled whine, and was quiet.

  Roula fell into a doze, a twilight sleep where memories seemed real. She travelled to a night when she, as a young girl with a friend, had come across a youth stripped naked, bathing away the midday heat in a mountain pool; she remembered how they had hidden, and watched. Smiling as she dozed, or dreamed, she didn’t hear the door open, or notice the oil lamp flicker as it did so; but she sensed someone was there, and opened her eyes to find Hermes at her side.

  He crouched down at the bedside, offering his hand. She took her own hands from the blankets and grasped his, and in the lamp’s light it seemed her hands were no old woman’s, but delicate and unblemished, as they had once been; and the blankets no longer scratched her chin, but were soft and warm as cashmere.

  ‘Hermes,’ she said, returning his smile. ‘I thought you’d gone without saying goodbye.’

  ‘Never,’ he said. ‘But goodbye is why I am here.’

  She looked into his unreadable eyes, and saw her own reflection in their depths.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘I am going to find the truth about Santos’s death,’ he said, ‘and the answer to the puzzle isn’t here.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ she said. ‘I have a feeling I am going away, too.’

  ‘I think perhaps you are.’

  ‘I want to go, but I worry about Maria. It’s her I don’t want to leave.’ She was silent for a while, looking away from him and at the lamp’s flame. ‘All lights burn out in time,’ she said, at last. ‘Will you stay with me?’

  ‘Of course, my precious one,’ he said. ‘I shall be here. Now sleep.’

  He bent down to her, and touched his warm lips to her cheek. In the coop, the chickens were restless; in his kennel, the dog began to whine. Roula touched Hermes’s face and squeezed his hand, and, keeping it in her own, she closed her eyes to sleep.

  The clocks struck eight. In the kafenion, the card-players ordered up another round and the cards were dealt again, as their eyes were fixed on the pot of money growing before one man. Eustis rose from his stool and poured more drinks, a cigarette clenched at the corner of his mouth. At a table by the payphone, the fat man sipped his beer and picked at a bowl of salted peanuts.

  Outside, a car pulled up, its yellow headlamps lighting up the road, the sign on its roof showing ‘For Hire’.

  The fat man left a banknote on the table, and shook Eustis’s hand on his way out. Wishing the card-players Kali nichta, he pulled the kafenion door closed, and climbed into the taxi to follow Leda.

  Twenty

  ‘I did as you asked,’ said Hassan, taking a bend in the road too fast. Even on full beam, the headlamps illuminated too little of the road ahead to settle the fat man’s anxiety, but Hassan knew the road so well, he drove by a series of guideposts: a junction marked a straight where he could pick up speed; a chapel meant a series of tight bends and a narrowing of the road. There was little oncoming traffic: only a labouring truck, overladen with straw bales, and a motorbike or two. From time to time, the headlamps caught night creatures: rabbits, and red reflections from the pinpoint eyes of rodents.

  The fat man gripped his s
eat as they sped round a bend he couldn’t see.

  ‘First tell me about you and Santos,’ he said.

  In the dark, Hassan’s shoulders tensed.

  ‘Me and Santos? I barely knew him. There’s nothing to say.’

  ‘You may have barely known him; but am I right in thinking your wife knew him quite well?’

  Hassan was silent.

  ‘When Santos left Vrisi four years ago – when he set out on his needless journey to Nafplio – how did he travel?’

  Hassan shrugged, and touched the brake to take a bend.

  ‘I drove him. I drove him to the station, same as I drove you. What of it?’

  ‘You must have found that hard, sitting there next to him, knowing as you did about him and your wife.’

  Hassan laughed; but even in the dark, the fat man could see he wasn’t smiling.

  ‘Not hard at all,’ he said. ‘I let him think I was the fool he took me for. I played along, as if I’d no idea at all of what he’d done. I let him think it, until we reached a stretch by Profitis Ilias, where there’s the devil of a drop into a chasm. And I pulled up right at the chasm’s edge, with the headlights shining into nothing, and I told him I’d drive both of us over, if I thought he might ever go near my wife again. And he cried and snivelled like a baby, and begged me not to do it; and I gave my word, on condition he never came back again to Vrisi.’

  ‘And he gave his word?’

  ‘Easily. I didn’t believe him, of course; when you’ve a man’s balls in a vice, he’ll promise anything. But evidently he took me seriously. He’s never been seen in Vrisi since then.’

  ‘Not alive, at least. And what was your plan, Hassan, if he did come back?’

  ‘I was going to shoot him. I kept my shotgun loaded for the purpose. Or I might have cut his throat, or brought him back up here and pushed him over that edge.’

  ‘Then you would have gone to prison.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Hassan. ‘But he took away my honour, and my marriage. There was no way I could have lived in Vrisi, with that dog, that scum, tucked away up there in his house, thinking he’d got away with it. I was ready for him, whenever he came back. But if you’re thinking that I killed him, friend, you’d be wrong. I didn’t need to kill him because someone beat me to it. And I don’t know who that was, but in my eyes, that someone did me a favour, and spared me jail.’

  ‘Yet you agreed to help me in tracking that person down.’

  ‘Agreeing to a thing and doing a thing, are not the same. You might have found me less willing to help, in other circumstances. But to tip you off that Leda was gone – no harm in that. No daughter kills a father. So I made enquiries on your behalf. It didn’t cost you much; I brought you change, in there.’ He pointed to the glove box. ‘The clerk in the ferry ticket office was happy enough to talk to anyone prepared to listen. She bought a ticket to the end of the line. But the crewman on the boat she sailed on, he wanted cash – ten thousand, to watch where she went after they docked.’

  They reached the crest of a hill, and began to descend the mountain foothills. The night was clear, and the view from the road – of the coastal flatlands, and the splendid, vast sea – was lit by a grey half-moon. To the south glowed the lights of the city; in a few miles, the road would widen and be lit with streetlights.

  ‘How will I find this crewman?’ asked the fat man.

  ‘The ferry is the Poseidon,’ said Hassan, ‘and it makes its journey daily. Nufris, they call the crewman, and he’s always on the boat; dark-skinned and out of Kos, or somewhere south. You’ll know him easily enough; he wears a red bandanna. He’s not a bad-looking man, with it on his head, and in his job he probably has a bit of luck with the women. But I saw him once without the bandanna, and he’s near enough completely bald, so no doubt the ladies get a shock when they find out what he looks like underneath.’

  ‘I’ll find him,’ said the fat man. ‘You’ve done a good job in putting strings on her, and I shall catch up with her, before long. A delay in my arrival – wherever she has gone – may anyway be beneficial. It will do no harm to let her settle in and let down her guard. I shall travel as fast as I can, and if that’s not fast, then I can use the time for thinking.’

  When they reached the port, Hassan parked the taxi on the harbour-front. The fat man bent down to unzip the holdall at his feet.

  ‘Now, your fare for this journey,’ he said. ‘I can pay you in cash, of course, and I’ll be leaving what’s in the glove-box as a tip; but I wish to offer you an alternative payment.’

  Reaching into his bag, he drew out a porcelain swan wrapped in bridal netting. The swan sat easily on the palm of his hand; its hollow back was filled with mauve-coloured fondants, shaped into sugar-dipped flowers.

  ‘A gift for you, to give to your wife,’ he said. ‘I think you should consider reconciliation. The swan is a symbol of life-long fidelity, which you and she can enjoy together, if you can find it in yourselves to make a fresh start. The sweets are made by a relative of mine, who refuses to divulge the recipe, though she swears by their ability to smooth the creases in cases where a couple are foundering, as you are. Take my advice, Hassan, and don’t be the servant of your pride. Your wife made a grave mistake, but I don’t think she loved the poet. You quizzed me, to know if she went to his burial, and I tell you, she wasn’t there. Take heart from that; she carries no candle for him, but might still have a spark for you. If the approach is never made, you’ll never know. So, which will it be, my friend – the money, or the swan?’

  ‘Your swan is very pretty,’ said the taxi driver, ‘but I put my faith in cash. From Vrisi to the port, six thousand drachma.’

  The fat man placed the porcelain swan on the dashboard, and smiled as he reached for his wallet.

  ‘You are a stubborn man, my friend,’ he said. ‘Happily, I am feeling generous. Take both.’

  The fat man took a room at a small pension close to the port, and dined in a waterfront taverna. He chose whitebait caught only hours previously, dredged in flour and fried crisp, served salted, with lemon on the side, and a plate of okra, stewed to melting with garlic and tomatoes. To drink, he ordered a bottle of Kefalonian wine, a blend of Robola and Tsaoussi grapes; and finding its chilled fruit and honey flavours very much to his taste, he sat on amongst the other diners after he had eaten, and drank the lion’s share of the bottle.

  The wine brought on a pleasant drowsiness; and, though his bedroom was cold from the sea, and roaring motorbikes passed close under his window, he fell asleep with no difficulty at all.

  When the first daylight came to Vrisi, Maria went downstairs to put her mother on the commode. But Roula couldn’t be woken; and Maria shattered the morning’s stillness with the first wails of her grief.

  The fat man frittered away the morning at the harbour-side, where seagulls cried over the returning fishing boats, and the outbound and inbound ferries kept the port lively. From a travel office, he bought a ticket to the end of Poseidon’s route, then passed the time in writing postcards bought from a periptero, in breakfasting on croissants and sticky pastries, and sipping coffee amongst the travellers and sailors.

  As the time of his departure grew close, the fat man walked the line of moored boats and yachts, of cargo ships and forlorn cruisers abandoned for the winter, to the dock where the Poseidon was preparing for her journey, and made his way up the ramp amongst the other embarking passengers. Merchants shouted instructions to the indifferent crew on where to offload their cargoes; nervous women lingered on the quay, anxious to spend as little time as possible afloat.

  The fat man held out his ticket for inspection by a crewman blowing bubbles from a piece of tired, pink gum, who ripped the piece of paper almost in half.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the fat man, politely. ‘I’m looking for one of your colleagues, a man they call Nufris.’

  The crewman was dealing with the next passenger, snatching a ticket from the hand of a young man with a shorn head and a soldier’s pac
k.

  ‘Up,’ he said, jerking his head back to signal the direction, as if the fat man couldn’t distinguish it for himself.

  Carrying his holdall, the fat man followed an iron staircase to the upper deck, where rows of orange-painted benches faced the stern and a view of the port, and lifeboats hung suspended from pulleys rendered non-functional by multiple coats of paint. A second crewman leaned on the deck rail, a red bandanna on his head, the last inch of a burning cigarette in his mouth as he watched the comings and goings on the quayside. The stubble on his chin grew grey in the heavy folds of his face, and one of his canines was missing; the stitching of his quilted jacket was going into threads, and the dirt and stains on its fabric were obvious, in spite of its dark-blue colour.

  The fat man’s tennis shoes were silent on the deck, and when he spoke – ‘Yassas’ – the crewman turned, startled.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he said. ‘You frightened me half to death!’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the fat man. ‘It was unintentional. Do they call you Nufris?’

  The crewman looked at him with suspicion.

  ‘Who’s asking?’

  ‘I believe a friend of mine asked a favour of you, yesterday. It concerned a young lady passenger.’

 

‹ Prev