by Peter Helton
That night, sleeping with the door ajar so Derringer could come and go as he pleased without waking me, I dreamt of a whispering army of men with fiery eyes infiltrating my night-camp in the mountains. The air smelled of electricity and rain as I hunted them in the dark, naked, armed only with a rock. Lightning struck with instantaneous thunder.
I woke with the noise of it still echoing in my mind, yet outside the moon rode low through wisps of white cloud and a west wind whispered in the olive groves. Derringer was out, hunting down the natives.
‘It says “Back before you receive this, I’m sure. Love Kyla”.’ Morva turned the postcard over in her hand and examined the picture on the front again. ‘She obviously expected to come back as planned.’
‘Looks like it. And you haven’t come across Niko’s Taverna?’ I tapped the picture postcard.
‘Come across it? Every firstborn son on this island is called Spiros after the patron saint, and the rest of them are called Nikos or Dimitris. There could be fifty Niko’s Tavernas.’
‘But this one’s right by the . . . ah yes, water, I take your point: we’re on an island.’
‘Yes, there must be thousands. Well, loads, anyway. Can’t remember when I’ve last been on a beach,’ she said, frowning into space, trying to remember.
‘Really? I’d have thought that would be the big attraction, living in a place like this: the beach-bum existence.’
‘Yeah, sure. You get over that very quickly. Walking on the beach in winter when the tourists are gone is fine, but you do that – what – once a month? No, I’ve never been a beach babe. It bores me and I can’t think of many things that are improved by the addition of sand. One thing about this, though . . .’ She turned the picture around and pushed it towards my breakfast plate. ‘That looks like fishing boats in the background, so it’s probably on the east side. I don’t think there’s mooring for fishing boats on the west coast. Too stormy. So that does narrow it down. I’m sure you’ll find it eventually; depends how long you’ve got.’
‘Not very. I don’t have much money and I can’t stay here sponging off you, so I’ll have to get . . .’
‘Rubbish, Chris,’ she interrupted, grabbing my forearm. ‘Listen, you’re not sponging, I’m really glad you’re here; in fact, if I had the money, I’d pay you to stay here. It’s been so . . . well, it’s been a bit . . . weird. Being here on my own, trying to get this painting school thing off the ground, spooky stuff at night, things going missing all the time . . .’
‘You mean Rob’s painting wasn’t the first thing that went AWOL?’ Rob and the others were already out among the ruins trying to find it.
‘Things constantly disappear. Sometimes they just move about and turn up in the wrong place and sometimes they disappear for good. Rarely, but it does happen.’
‘Like what?’
‘All sorts. Petty things . . . a teapot walked and didn’t come back. A wind-up radio was gone one day, back in its place the next. That sort of thing.’
‘It’s probably just kids, Morva, playing practical jokes on the foreigner.’
‘I know, but . . . You know what’s the creepiest thing?’ She picked up my coffee cup and saucer, then set it down again half an inch from where it was before and with the handle facing a different way. By a fraction. ‘Stuff like that. Someone obviously picks something up, has a look at it, then sets it down again. Slightly out of place, but just not enough out of place to be sure you’re not imagining things. It spooks me, Chris. People creeping around at night and just a couple of women and an old man out here. I’m beginning to get worried about it all. I can’t even get workmen to come out here and finish the accommodation. And I thought I could get connected to the grid and bring at least a bit of civilization to Ano Makriá . . . This candlelight thing is fine with good company when the wine is flowing, but when you’re by yourself . . . Please don’t worry about money. Go and find your missing Kylie . . .’
‘Kyla.’
‘Same difference. But hang around. Stay the summer. Hell, stay.’ Morva tried to make the invitation sound light-hearted, yet I could hear the tension crackling behind it. She squeezed my arm, then quickly got up and helped Margarita to clear the table. The girl was back, being her strange surly self. For breakfast she had served up the finest fried eggs I had ever tasted.
Morva grabbed her sun hat and walked off. ‘Good hunting, Honeysett. I’ll go and see if Rob’s painting has turned up yet and then perhaps I can get down to some actual teaching.’
I drove south in the Fiesta, mulling it over. Morva obviously needed help, but of course I couldn’t just stay here. I had stuff to do like . . . painting . . .
Stay the summer.
The impossible blue of the Ionian Sea filled my vision as I turned a corner on the shoulder of a hill, then it continued to flash glimpses past me in the gaps between dense vegetation: sea, olive, myrtle, sea, myrtle, myrtle, olive, sea.
Hang around.
These potholes would drive me barmy for a start. Snatches of music drifted on the air – a violin, a mandolin, singing, strange, ancient, fading; kaleidoscopic smells – pine scent tingling on the breeze, tourist coach heat haze laced with diesel fumes, hot tyres, suntan lotion, freshly baked bread.
Hell, stay.
A small white-and-blue village, giant plane tree and village pump, a whitewashed taverna with a terrace shaded by a twisted vine; I parked the car.
But of course Kyla had eloped with some Adonis down here – who wouldn’t want to? A new life, slower and simpler . . . Sunnier, for sure. I ordered fiercely fizzing orange – portokaláda – on the sun-dappled terrace of the taverna and showed my picture of Kyla to the boy who served me. He scrutinized it, shook his head and called over his shoulder for his mother. She wiped her hands on her apron, frowned at me, frowned at the picture, lifted her chin and raised her eyebrows: ochi. Not in this village. I sighed contentedly: good. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find the woman; it was bound to mean trouble, and right now I felt like a bit of peace and quiet, like sitting here in the shade, slurping luminous orange through a straw, watching that woman walk behind her donkey loaded with bundles of greens, just breathing. Each smell was distinctly etched into the air: the orange fizzing in my glass, the cigarette smoke of the old man across the road, the purple cascade of pink blossom at the corner of the terrace. Was I really being paid for this? It was simply too good to be true.
But if it wasn’t true, then why did they really send me here? I paid for my drink and drove to Corfu Town with my eyes glued to the mirrors, suspecting every flash of blue. But I didn’t spot the Toyota.
Morva probably hoped I would be cruising around the island all summer, searching for Niko’s Taverna, but I was looking for a short cut. I parked the car, then went to the offices of the tourist police. These, according to my language guide, were the people to ask – friendly and helpful and they’d all speak English.
They did. A young man in a blinding white shirt and tight black trousers led me into a drab office with venetian blinds across the windows and a ceiling fan stirring the smoke that rose from the cigarettes of the three uniformed men working there. I was shown to a cluttered desk, behind which sat an irritable-looking officer with neon-bleached skin and black walrus moustache. He looked relieved when he learnt I had not come about any larceny committed against my person. Finding a taverna was a lot more pleasurable. One look at the picture and he said he didn’t recognize it. He called over a colleague who gave the picture barely a glance, shrugged, fired off a blast of Greek and went back to his desk. I stretched my hand out for the postcard but the officer had started fanning his face with it.
‘Why do you want to find this taverna? Special taverna? We have many, many tavernes. My cousin has taverna in Sidari, you go Sidari yet? Veeery long beach. Veeery nice.’
‘A friend recommended it but forgot to tell me where it was. I just thought you might recognize it. It doesn’t really matter.’ I stretched out my hand for the postcard again.
He shrugged, smiled, turned the card over and read Kyla’s inscription. His smile wavered and faded. He scrutinized me with more attention now. ‘Perhaps it does matter. You are tourist, we are tourist police. We will try make your stay here . . . for you remember long time. Perhaps my boss know, I ask now. You wait here.’ His last words were not an invitation. As he left, he shot a sentence at his colleague who immediately came over and perched himself on the corner of the desk at which I was waiting. He was large enough to block the airflow from the fan and I soon felt sweat rising on my forehead. My guard just nodded and smiled at me like a Greek fisherman might smile at a good-sized octopus before turning it inside out and bashing it against a rock.
‘Káni leego zésti, eh?’ he asked in Greek. A bit hot, eh? I understood but wanted to keep what little Greek I spoke to myself. I looked at him blankly. He made no attempt at translation. Instead, he offered me a cigarette from a flat packet of Karelia and, like the idiot I felt, I accepted. Months of struggle against the weed instantly wasted, I inhaled the fragranced smoke as though it had the power to make me invisible. I had finished it by the time the walrus returned with my postcard. He handed it to me casually, saying, ‘Nobody know and we know all tavernes in Kerkyra. We think this picture not Corfu. Probably other island postcard. We think must be taverna on Kefalónia.’
‘Do you really? What’s it like there?’
‘Kefalónia veeery beautiful island this time of year. Perhaps not so hot, also,’ he added temptingly.
‘Well, I think I’ll go there, then.’
‘Good. Where you stay now?’
‘Benitses,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Good base for bird watching.’
As I left the office, I heard the two exchange a couple of sentences of which I only understood the last word: vlákas.
It means idiot. Under the circumstances, I had to agree. Why had I trusted the judgement of my language tape over that of Morva who had warned me against going to the police? Tourist police. Somehow it had sounded more like tourist information – helpful and harmless. I had given the game away, but I hoped they’d think, at least for a while, that I was shifting my search to the neighbouring island of Kefalónia.
I stopped abruptly in front of the window display of a patisserie as though captivated by the display and turned round towards the entrance door. I knew my paranoia levels had risen considerably in those twenty minutes I had sweated in the building, yet there was no mistake: I was being followed, by the young man with the blinding white shirt. If he was trying to do it secretly, then he was making a mess of it. He suddenly pretended to be studying the display of the shop he was passing, then looked embarrassed since it was selling ladies’ swimwear. Inside the patisserie I bought a few tiny squares of baklava to make my move look plausible. Further on, in nearby Theotoki Square, I bought a packet of Karelia and a lighter, lit a fresh cigarette and gratefully filled my lungs with carcinogens. Then I walked into the nearest travel agent and asked about ferries to Kefalónia. I took a leaflet with me which I pretended to study as I walked back, with my new shadow in tow, past the tourist police building to the car. Then I got the hell out of town.
NINE
‘I’m not sure it’s supposed to be quite that green,’ was my first observation.
‘I know, it’s very bright,’ Morva conceded.
‘What else did you use?’
‘I don’t remember, a bit of everything, quite a lot of some I liked the look of.’
‘Have you tasted it yet?’
‘Are you supposed to do that?’ The wooden spoon with which she had been stirring the evil mess in the large cast iron pot faltered. ‘It’s Margarita’s night off. I thought I’d cook them some sort of curry.’
‘Made curry before?’
‘No. I thought I’d just add spices until it tasted the way I liked it, but the point never seemed to arrive. The more I added, the worse it got.’
‘Have you done much cooking?’
‘Me? Hell, no. Boiled an egg, yes, but actual cooking . . . no. Dan was the cook. He was a bloody good cook . . . bloody, bloody good cook, bloody Dan the bloody bastard cook.’ Morva stabbed the spoon into the pot as though she had spotted visions of Dan rising from the heaving surface of the gunk. ‘Probably cooking some perfect bloody ’roo steaks for his perfect bloody girlfriend on his barbecue in sunny Oz this minute.’
‘It’s four in the morning there,’ I said helpfully.
‘On his bloody barbecue with built-in bloody lights, then! I don’t suppose you can cook?’
‘Thought you’d never ask. You go and teach your students; I’ll fix this.’
‘Can you fix it, you think?’
‘No problem.’
‘You’re a marvel.’ She planted a kiss on my neck that was just a bit longer than is traditional when kissing cooks and left the kitchen, humming a Greek tune to herself.
Now for the food. There is an easy way to fix any curry where the cook has been a little over-adventurous, heavy-handed or plain stupid with the spice-box. You pick up the pot, scrape the lot down the toilet and start again with a sensible recipe. I lugged the heavy casserole over to the outhouse and left a bunch of flies terminally surprised by dumping the sizzling content on top of them. It improved the smell in there immeasurably.
Next I checked the available ingredients in the kitchen, had a good laugh and walked back to the car. By now I had quite a good mental map of the worst potholes in the roads around the two Makriás and drove a lot faster than when I had first arrived, yet even so it was quite late in the afternoon for shopping when I rolled into the square and parked near the palm trees.
Dimitris, the owner of the kafénion, gave me a smile hovering somewhere between doubt and complicity. ‘Greek coffee for you, Chris?’
I was glad Dimitris didn’t pronounce my name crease. ‘I don’t think I have time for coffee, Dimitris; I need to shop for food and then feed, let’s see, five people and a cat. Are there any shops still open?’
‘In Greece, if we are awake, we are happy for business. And if they are asleeping, we wake them up. Come with me.’ Instead of showing me to a shop, he led me through several crazy-paved alleys and we did business in backyards and at narrow front doors. Sap green olive oil decanted into a wine bottle and stoppered with a paper bung from one place, the first knobbly tomatoes of the season from another, tiny lettuces and a plastic tub of tsatsiki at the next house. One man produced a dish of broad beans in a spicy sauce, and Dimitris admonished me to return to him the metal bowl it came in. A two-litre bottle of wine I hadn’t asked for also appeared. Small amounts of money were negotiated and handed over. A young man was dragged away from a card game to open the butcher’s shop near the square. Nothing was on display here but I had no say in the matter anyway. Dimitris told Spiros the butcher what to get and a paper bundle was handed over and paid for. ‘Tonight you make souvlaki,’ I was ordered. A bundle of split bamboo skewers made an appearance and I was given detailed instructions as to how to cook my souvlaki.
Dimitris helped me carry my purchases back to the car. ‘The police are looking for you. They come here one hour before,’ he said casually.
‘Did they?’ I said, trying to sound unperturbed. ‘I wonder why?’
‘They do not say. They think you stay here. They will be back, I fear.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I say nothing much: you were here, now you no longer here. But they also talk to the Englishman who looks at birds. He says to them about you drive first camping car, now drive red car.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes. Perhaps is better you now get green car. I have a cousin in town who rents cars. All green.’ He handed me a card from his shirt pocket.
I took it and drove off, promising to bring back all the containers once they were empty. At no point did Dimitris ask why the police might be looking for me and what I had to hide. I liked Dimitris.
Back at the ghost village – that’s how I thought of
it now – Morva had spread the good news that I was at the helm of the good ship Kitchen. Despite the cooking smells, I recognized Helen’s perfume as she tried to sneak up on me again. ‘He draws and paints and now he cooks, too. Why couldn’t I have met you ten years earlier?’ She leant against the table while I prepared what the tourist menus called Greek salad and the Greeks, I had learnt from Dimitris, choriátiki, village style. It means throwing into your bowl anything that’s around – in our case, one spiny cucumber, some knobbly tomatoes, crumbly feta cheese and last year’s olives.
‘Because instinct told you to avoid self-obsessed young artists painting nonsense in Turkey?’ I suggested.
‘That’s probably it.’
‘And I didn’t know how to cook then, so count your blessings.’
‘I’m counting them now. I think you’re probably the only one in this ghost town who can make an edible meal. I’m a disaster in the kitchen, like Morva, and I’m not sure Rob knows how to boil an egg.’
There was a pause. I filled it. ‘And Sophie?’
‘Sophie?’ She fished a slice of tomato from the bowl, shook out the seeds and took a bite out of it. ‘She’d serve up a dish of toads and lizards. And tuck in with gusto herself.’
‘Not impressed with life?’ That would explain the strange vacuum she created around herself.
‘Her son drowned. Right here, off Corfu. Diving accident while the whole family was here on holiday. Eighteen years old. She was there, in the boat, waiting. But he never came back up. And they never found the body. The boy just disappeared. That was three years ago, but Sophie won’t leave the island. As if there was a chance of her son rising again from the depths of the sea. Her husband gave up in the end and went home, back to England. He rented a flat for her near Corfu Town from where she can see the stretch of the sea where it happened. Morva says that taking up painting is helping and that she’s much better than she was. If that’s true, then I’m really glad I didn’t meet her earlier; she can turn pretty dark sometimes, quite out of the blue. Two suicide attempts. I’m starving. Will supper be long?’