Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  Finally the policeman prevailed and the men joined in to lift Dan from the boat. He was barely able to stand. His naked body, scratched and bloodied, made me think of Jesus. Like an aging Mary Magdelene, an old Greek woman offered her apron to wrap around his waist. This made him look both tragic and ridiculous. The burly cop pulled Dan’s arm over his shoulders and started into the crowd. There must have been upwards of forty people now gathered at the shore, a mixture of tourists and townies. We parted to make way as they walked him off the beach.

  As they passed by, Dan caught sight of me. He was groggy but still conscious enough to hold me in his gaze. Following his initial recognition, there came a look of warning and a slight shaking of his head. No, he seemed to be saying. You must keep yourself out of this.

  When I looked up, I saw the cop was eyeing me as well. Fearing he might notice some family resemblance, I nonchalantly turned away and slid back into the crowd. If he was suspicious of me, he didn’t show it. He continued on, walking with Dan, without once looking back.

  Although most of the tourists remained on the beach, much of the town crowd followed them. I trailed behind at a distance, far enough not to be noticed. They walked several long, winding, uphill blocks to what must have been the police station, though the only thing to identify it as such were the security bars on the high-set window and the blue-and-white squad car parked out front. Although a few men went inside with Dan and the cop, most remained out on the street, talking in hushed voices and lighting cigarettes.

  I watched them with increasing anxiety, trying to decide what to do. I wanted desperately to talk to Dan, to find out if he knew what had happened. But there was no way I could see him now without turning myself in. We might both be indicted for the murder.

  A dog barked from a window nearby. A voice called out to shush it. Shutters opened above me, and a woman shook out a dust rag and peered down curiously.

  The dog continued barking, and the men down the street began looking my way. One of them crushed out his cigarette, staring at me intently.

  I turned away casually and ambled down an alley. As I rounded the corner, I ran.

  BACK DOWN on the esplanade, I ducked into a café. The place was nearly empty. Two local men at a table in the back were sipping Turkish coffee from tiny cups and smacking checkers on a backgammon board. I took a seat at a small table in the front beside a young, backpacking couple. When the short, balding proprietor appeared, I asked him for a bottle of water and a coffee.

  The man noticed my hands were shaking. He looked at me for a moment. Although he appeared to understand English, I was afraid to ask him any questions that might arouse more suspicion. I waited until he went back to the kitchen, then turned to the two backpackers.

  “Excuse me,” I said, speaking in nearly a whisper. “Can you tell me what island this is?”

  The boy was lanky, with acne scars and ruffled hair. The girl, a blonde, reminded me a little of Phoebe. She exchanged a look with her boyfriend, then turned to me in confusion. “I’m sorry? What you are asking?”

  “This island we’re on—what is it called?”

  Now she looked genuinely curious. “Ogygia,” she said.

  It was the only answer that could have made any sense. “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “The ferry,” the boy said. “From Páros.”

  “When does it come again, do you know?”

  “We board tomorrow morning,” he said. It turned out they were students from the University of Heidelberg. They said this was the only town on Ogygia; the rest of the island was olive groves, vineyards, and pastureland, all on the slopes of the mountain. They were planning a hike that morning. “We are told on the cliffs is a monastery,” the boy said. “And higher up are caves.”

  They asked if I was American, and if I had heard about the naked man in the boat and the decapitation. When I told them I had seen the policeman take him, they began to ask me questions.

  The proprietor came to collect their bill.

  “I really don’t know any more than you do,” I told them.

  The bald man glanced at me again before he headed back to the kitchen.

  I noticed the dinghy had been pulled up onto the beach. Several locals had gathered beside it, undoubtedly pointing out bloodstains and recounting the morning’s tale. Out in the harbor, a few fishing boats had anchored near the yacht, but I didn’t see anyone boarding it.

  As the German couple left the café, I spotted the policeman marching onto the wharf with his entourage of citizens. He climbed into what I assumed was the police boat, a white-hulled fiberglass cruiser that looked at least forty years old. They helped him unlash the boat from the dock, and the cop was soon rumbling out over the water on his way to investigate the yacht.

  My heart was hammering. Don’t panic, I thought. I’ve got to keep cool and figure this out.

  I tried to imagine what the cop would make of the bloody mess on the boat. Would he assume it had all been done by Dan? The women had left no trace of themselves. I wondered what had happened to the rest of Basri’s body. Had it been tossed overboard? Why had Dan made a prize of his head? Why had I been holding his thumb? That had not been chopped off, but torn out by the root.

  How could this nightmare have happened!

  Basri had been murdered. My brother was in jail. I was a fugitive, possibly a killer. A policeman was heading to the scene of the crime. Eventually, he’d find the Zodiac and begin a search for me. If I was captured, Dan and I could easily be put away for life.

  I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t talk to Dan without the risk of getting caught. I had to locate the women and find out what had happened. But I didn’t speak any Greek, and I didn’t know a soul on the island, no one in the country who could help me.

  No one. Except…

  12

  DAN HAD left his cell phone in his backpack; I had grabbed it along with his wallet and passport before I left the yacht. Now I began digging for it in the bottom of my pack. I found it and turned it on. The number was listed in his directory, but when I tried to call, the screen read “No network available.” The island was off the grid.

  I considered asking the café proprietor if I could use his phone, but I feared I had already aroused his suspicions, and I didn’t want to risk being overheard. After paying my bill and picking up some change, I headed for the square with the old-fashioned phone booth I’d passed on the way to the waterfront.

  The clouds were dispersing, the sun was breaking out, and the streets of Ogygia were awakening. I hustled up a lane past tourist shops just opening their doors. A father and his two little boys walked by me, wearing only their swimsuits. A bent old Greek lugged an enormous basket of bread on his back. Another man peddled past on a three-wheeled cargo bike. There were no autos on the flagstone streets; it felt like a medieval city.

  I almost got lost again looking for the square. The many twisting alleys were bewildering. Arching passageways, steep stone stairs, high walls shrouded with ivy. Eventually I came into the treeless plaza, where an outdoor market had been set up and was thriving. I headed directly for the phone booth.

  My hands were still shaking as I fumbled with the coins. I plugged them in and dialed and waited as it rang.

  And rang. Answer, I prayed. Please be home. Please, please—

  “Yásou—“.

  “Phoebe?”

  She continued speaking in Greek.

  “Phoebe—it’s me, Jack.”

  It wasn’t until I heard the beep that I realized I was talking to a machine. I quickly blurted out a stumbling message about Dan and I being in serious trouble, that we needed her help, that we were on an island called Ogygia, that she could reach it on the ferry from Páros, and to please come as quickly as she could. I told her I’d look for her on the ferry in the morning.

  I hung up.

  An empty silence filled the booth. My call seemed desperate and pathetic. Why get Phoebe involved in this nightmare? How could she possi
bly help?

  I stared out at the old women shopping in the square. They looked like black-cloaked dwarves. A wave of nausea came over me. A sickening feeling of dread.

  We’re in the hands of the Fates, Dan had said.

  I pushed out of the booth and took a deep breath. The air smelled of fish and the smoky odor of game. I drifted into the square.

  The round stone fountain was bone-dry and lifeless, with nervous pigeons perched on the pillar at its center, and two old women resting on its rim. A sleeping dog nearby looked dead. Walking past it, a man led a mule to a beehive oven, where his wife began unloading the animal’s massive bundle of sticks, fuel for roasting the chicken and rabbit skewered inside the fire. Smoke from the oven hung in the air and lent to the confined space of the square a gloomy illusion of distance.

  Peering through this smoky haze, my eyes fixed suddenly on a woman across the way. Something about her looked familiar. Although much younger than the other local women, she was dressed even more conservatively, with a black head scarf and a long black skirt that gave her the appearance of a nun. I moved closer to get a better view. A grizzled merchant half her height was selling her a few dolmades. It wasn’t until she started to walk away that I finally realized who she was.

  Damiana.

  My heart soared. Even though I couldn’t quite see her face, I was certain it had to be her. The black scarf couldn’t hide her satiny curls, and she had the same graceful, languorous gait I had so longingly admired on the beach. She briefly perused the other stalls—holding up a glimmering cluster of grapes, smelling a bundle of lilacs, picking through bins of almonds and chestnuts—before finally purchasing a handful of dates and what looked like a child’s toy, a small bird carved in wood that dangled from a string.

  I moved closer, my pulse pounding hard. I was tempted to walk right up and tap her on the shoulder, but suddenly I feared she might reveal who I was and possibly make some kind of scene. So I hid among the buyers and waited. When she finally left the square and headed up a street, I followed surreptitiously behind, hoping to find out what I could before confronting her.

  The street was fortunately a popular route. Both tourists and locals were walking it, and I could easily blend into the crowd. Damiana nibbled a date as she climbed the curving road. When she encountered a flight of steps, she lifted her skirt off her ankles, and I noticed she wore the same long-laced sandals she had worn the previous night.

  More than once a passing Greek tipped his hat in respect. Although she appeared to acknowledge them, she never once stopped to talk.

  Toward the top of the hill, she turned abruptly and entered a narrow alley. I waited at the street until she vanished around a turn, then cautiously followed in after her.

  The walls of the alley were two and three floors high, with several flying buttresses arching overhead. I followed the sound of her steps on the cobblestones. At one point the lane narrowed to the width of my shoulders, and an arched top covered it like a tunnel. At the end a skinny cat waited to get a glimpse of me, then suddenly fled as I approached. The lane jogged sharply, straightened, then turned back again. I heard a splash of water tossed from a pail, and seconds later, as a door closed, I stepped over the resulting puddle. The sound of footsteps suddenly faded away, and as I rounded the final bend, I saw that Damiana had exited into the street.

  I hurried after her.

  The street bordered a large square, at the end of which stood a great Byzantine church. A rickety bus rumbled past, spewing a noxious fog. I watched Damiana cross to the church and enter through large wooden doors at the side.

  The basilica dominated the leafy square and looked quite striking from afar. A large golden dome with slender, arched windows capped one end; a belfry tower rose from the other. Between them, smaller conical domes sprouted from its red-tiled roofs. Attached to the church was another stone building, built in a later century but designed in a similar style. I thought it must have been a school or a rectory, though it appeared to be no longer inhabited.

  Only a few tourists occupied the square, along with a middle-aged Greek woman walking a dachshund, and a nun in a full, flowing habit floating away down the street.

  The bell in the tower rang out. I figured it must have been the call to mass. The tourists, who had been snapping pictures of the church, suddenly gathered up and filed inside.

  I crossed the street and followed in after them.

  IT TOOK a moment for my eyes to adjust. There were very few windows in the thick stone walls, and the interior was dim and smoky. I stepped slowly forward into the open nave of the church. A few dark figures sat alone in the pews, and a group of tourists were gathered in a corner, off to the side of the central dome. A woman’s voice among them reverberated softly.

  I sensed a kind a palpable stillness in the air, and paused to gaze at the ceiling.

  The bright wash of morning sunshine squeezed through the narrow windows high up in the dome, casting angled beams of light against the upper walls. These walls were covered with elaborate mosaics, glimmering scenes of Christ and the saints, which bathed the dusky space below in an eerie luminescence. An odor of mold and stale incense permeated the damp air and added to the tactile sense of tranquility, the seemingly touchable silence.

  I approached the crowd of tourists who had gathered around their guide. It was her voice I’d been hearing, and as I got closer, I realized she was speaking perfect English. When I wandered around to the back of the group and turned to look at her face, I saw it was Damiana.

  “… some of the finest mosaics in all of Greece,” she was saying. “Several were damaged in the earthquake of 1881, but—”

  She stopped when she spotted me, long enough for her audience to wonder who I was. All of them turned to look at me. After a moment, Damiana recovered and carried on with her spiel.

  “—much of the damage has been repaired. The church was built in the thirteenth century, when the island was a part of the Byzantine Empire. Late in the fourteenth century, the Venetians took control, and following them, the Ottomans, who ruled over all of Greece for three hundred and fifty years. They whitewashed many of the frescoes, intending to obliterate them, but it actually helped to preserve them. If you look at the wall behind you, you can see the Nativity scene, which has been partially restored…”

  She continued, trying her best to ignore me while leading the group along. Apparently, she was employed by the church as a docent. She seemed to know everything about the building. She spoke at length about its architecture, and the design and construction of the dome. Her knowledge of the many mosaics was impressive. She described the scenes depicted and the techniques of the craftsmen, pointing out subtle details in the intricate designs.

  I grew impatient. “What was there?” I asked obnoxiously, pointing to a bare spot in the Betrayal in the Garden. An apostle was leaning toward Jesus, and most of his head was missing.

  “Earthquake damage,” she said flatly. “Couldn’t be repaired.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” I said. “But what is it that’s missing?”

  She seemed reluctant to answer. “It’s…the Kiss of Judas,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought. A shame it hasn’t been fixed. I see Peter lopping off the soldier’s ear—that’s in perfect condition.”

  The tourists eyed me. I knew I was being ridiculous, but it felt good to vent my anger. Damiana looked at me without responding, then went on with her talk.

  When she finished with the mosaics, we moved into the narthex, the vast entry hall, with tall pillars supporting its soaring conical domes. This, too, was filled with mosaics, and the floor was intricately patterned with marble. Beyond it was the belltower, which had been added after the earthquake, and to the side off the apse was a passage to the building next door.

  This building was not a school or a rectory, as I’d thought, but an infirmary, built to care for the sick during the rule of the Venetians. She took us down into an operating room she said was used
to care for those wounded during the Greek revolt in 1822, which led to an Ottoman slaughter, and again in the Second World War, when Ogygians resisted the Nazi occupation. They finally closed the O.R down after the civil war that followed. “The last few decades,” she said, “have left the island in peace.”

  After hearing this tumultuous history, I doubted the Ogygians would enjoy their peace for long.

  I waited while she wrapped up her talk and answered the tourists’ questions. Then, when the last of them had left, I asked her some questions of my own.

  “What happened last night?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You what?”

  She turned and walked away.

  I followed her. “Last night. On the boat. You were there.”

  “I’ve never seen you before,” she said.

  I grabbed her arm. “Never seen me before? You’ve seen me, all right. And I’ve seen you. And you weren’t exactly wearing that…burqa a you’re wearing now.”

  “Let go of me,” she said.

  “Tell me who you are. Tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “Let go of me or I’ll scream.”

  She was looking directly at me. I stared back at her. I had no doubt she would do what she said. But still I was unwilling to relent.

  Damiana turned her face away. I waited for her scream.

  “Begging your pardon?” An elderly gentleman and his wife were standing just inside the door. The man held his hat to his chest. He hesitated a moment, then asked in the kindliest voice, “We are wondering, Signorina… when is next you are talking?”