“Don’t tell me you want to go there.”
“Can we? We’ve got the whole afternoon.”
He sighed. “Okay, but let’s not hang around too long. I don’t like the sound of the place, or the creep either.”
Zeffy had suddenly woken and was sitting bolt upright, watching me with his pretty brown eyes. I felt sure he knew what ‘creep’ was by now. I’d said it often enough.
Glika Nera (Sweet Waters) was a small village on the right-hand side of the peninsula, heading north. It had an old Byzantine church in the square but otherwise not much else that was memorable. Outside a kafeneio two old guys were drinking ouzo and grizzling over something. Clearly location was everything here, as it was near the sea and protected on one side by a high promontory covered in olive trees.
We parked the car near a grocery store, where we bought some small bottles of water, and Angus suggested we walk down to the seashore with Zeffy. I hadn’t thought about actually walking around the place and at first it was pleasant, but after a while I felt nervous.
“What if the creep’s actually here and he sees us? Foreigners in his miserable patch. It might ramp up his grudge,” I said.
“If we see him, I can ask him why he keeps stirring up trouble in Marathousa.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Angus didn’t answer. I hoped he was joking. We trailed down a narrow street past a row of houses in a poor state. A radio somewhere played a mournful wail of a song like an old woman keening. A couple were bickering, a baby crying fitfully, the smell of roasting chicken filled the air. On the street a bone-thin black dog nosed an empty food carton, looked up and then vanished over a low wall. At the end of the street on the corner was a stone chapel overhung with trees. A whitewashed perimeter wall had graffiti scrawled on it. Angus told me it had “Ellines Patriotes Enomeni” painted at the top with its logo and a line that Angus translated: ‘Greece for Greeks only’.
“Well, this is obviously the place that sired your creep, and plenty more of them. They will blame all Greece’s current problems on incomers. Typical of the extreme right,” said Angus.
Also taped to the wall was something that looked like a small flyer with EPE along the top and underneath the word Oxi (No) in bold type and the lines that Angus translated as: ‘No to austerity, no to poverty, no to the sell-out of our homeland’.
“That looks like an old election flyer,” said Angus. “I seem to remember it was pinned up around the Mani last year during the general election. The party has a clutch of MPs in parliament now. Absolutely outrageous.”
When we came to the beach, we found it deserted, with a few houses along the narrow road in front. Zeffy wanted to swim but we kept him on the lead. The sea was clear and very blue and obviously earned the village its name, but everything else was jaded. Just as we were about to turn and leave, a man came rushing out of a small white house towards a car. When he saw us, he stopped and glowered, narrowing his eyes at the dog. Zeffy responded with a low growl. The man yammered in Greek and Angus replied. They had a short exchange. I heard the man use the word xenoi, foreigners. I knew that word by now. Then he jumped in the old banger, slamming its door, and drove off, watching us in the rear-view mirror, from which a set of worry beads jangled.
“What was that all about?”
Angus shook his head. “He wanted to know if we were lost. Asked if we were foreigners. You probably got that bit. I said, ‘Yes, is that a problem?’ He didn’t answer, just gave me that stare. Visit’s over. Short but hardly sweet, like the water.”
“I can’t believe you provoked him like that, Angus. He could have got really nasty.”
Angus just shrugged. Once we were back in the car, he drove fast out of the place. But as we slowed down near the intersection for the main road, we saw another kafeneio we hadn’t taken much notice of the first time. It was on its own, with a derelict building hunched against it on one side. There were a few metal tables outside under a sun-faded awning. I was shocked to see Dionysos the creep sitting at one of the tables, drinking and smoking, playing the board game tavli. Angus glanced at the men but didn’t know Dionysos was one of them because he’d never seen him. But I recognised him straight away: the long greasy hair, the malevolent black eyes. He looked up and saw me. I flinched. Zeffy saw him too and started to bark at the thug who’d wounded his head.
“What’s Zeffy barking at?” asked Angus.
“Nothing, let’s go.”
When we were well on the road north, I told Angus I’d seen Dionysos at the last kafeneio with a few cronies.
“You should have told me.”
“After your exchange with that other guy at the beach I thought you’d jump out of the car and give the creep a right bollocking. That wouldn’t have helped.”
“Nah. I just wanted to see what he looked like for future reference. I’d rather do the lambada with Thekla than take on those numpties.”
I smiled at the vision of Thekla doing Latin American dancing.
Angus sighed. “I don’t know if we did ourselves any favours by going to Glika Nera, but it’s good to know what we’re up against, what we’re all up against, if this party gets any more powerful in Greece. Some Greeks actually fear a return of the junta era of the 1960s and 70s. They’re getting wound up. I hear them in the kafeneia, the old boys, talking about tanks rumbling down the streets again. But I don’t think we’ll ever get to that point. I hope we don’t.”
At least now I had a better sense of what dark conspiracies were being silently spun here in this backwater.
“Why does the creep keep coming to Marathousa? It’s a long way away,” I asked.
“You saw Glika Nera. There’s not much happening, is there? I imagine most of the men in the village are unemployed now. Not their fault and there’s not much arable land and not that much tourism either, and the crisis has ramped up the hopelessness. No expats here to hassle though, are there? The creep probably goes to other places in the Mani where he knows there’s expats – Brits, Germans, whatever. Marathousa has its fair share. He probably has a few mates in Marathousa.”
We got back late in the afternoon, tired from the trip, but at least I had the Peregrine interview under my belt. Just as we pushed open the gate and walked down the path, I saw Thekla in the front garden, bending over, snipping green things yet again and putting them in a plastic bag, much like the woman at Vathia, except Thekla cut an odder figure; better dressed than the village women, her hair well-coiffed, as usual.
“What next?” Angus said in a hoarse whisper.
“You could ask her for a spirited rumba round the herb beds.”
He guffawed. “In your dreams!”
She straightened up when she saw us.
“I hope you don’t mind. I called by to gather some horta from the garden,” she said with proprietorial ease, as if everything within a few miles’ radius belonged to her. Angus eyed her with impatience.
“This is my father, Angus, by the way.” He nodded and fumbled for his door key, not waiting to exchange pleasantries.
“We’ve just driven up from Cape Tainaron, Kyria Thekla,” I said. Angus had recently taught me to address women with whom I was on a more formal footing with the honorific Kyria, Mrs. I did it with her now for a touch of irony. I certainly didn’t need to be formal with her. The first time we’d met, I was lying naked in her nephew’s bed.
“You’re welcome to come in for a drink of something,” I said, with no great enthusiasm, but she was Leo’s aunt after all. She eyed Zeffy suspiciously when I walked inside with him on the lead.
“Leo tells me the house was freshened up in the winter and I am looking forward to seeing what he has done,” she said.
I went off to make some hot drinks. She wanted camomile tea. Angus wanted instant coffee, though I imagined he’d have liked something stronger. She wandered around the house, gazing at everything, touching furniture, books, running a finger along the dusty bookcase and wincing.
&
nbsp; “The kitchen is very nice,” she said, walking around the small space, turning on the mixer tap, admiring cupboards. The kitchen had been an old drab space but now it looked modern with sage green cupboards, grey tiles and a new cooker. We sat at the dining table, sipping our drinks. She eyed me a lot, the way some Greek women often do, in a kind of brazen way, with unsmiling eyes.
“Leo tells me you are a journalist, Bronte. What things do you write?”
“Stories about Greece, that’s all.”
She didn’t probe further, for which I was relieved.
“Leo tells me you’re quite good friends with Myrto next door.”
I nodded.
“Ah, Myrto. Now she has stories. She tells many of them, as we would say, much embroidered, I think.”
I realised there was no love lost between them. Angus gave me a pained look over the top of his coffee cup.
“What do you do with your time here?” I asked. “It must be quite dull for you after Athens.”
“Pah! Athens. Nothing but troubles, riots. So many tensions. I am so relieved to be in the village. I work in my garden a little. It has gone wild since last year. I meet with old village friends. I do things for church. This morning we had a special celebration before Megali Evdomada, the Holy Week of Easter. You would have liked it. It celebrates the miracle of the raising of Lazarus,” she said, with a look of sour reprimand, as if I should have made the effort to be there. I had completely forgotten that the coming week was the start of Greek Easter, I’d been so obsessed with finding Eve Peregrine.
“Did Leonidas go to the service?” I asked.
“Not here,” she sniffed. “He went to the church in Kalamata. He will not be coming to Marathousa at all this weekend.”
“Yes, I know that,” I said, without missing a beat. “I meant in Kalamata.”
She glanced at me, cat-like. So, she knew already that Leonidas would be busy with ‘family things’ in the city this weekend. Of course. She would have applauded this on-going connection with the Tooth Fairy, as I had once jokingly christened Phaedra the dentist. I gave Angus a knowing look. He rolled his eyes at me. I got up and whisked the cups over to the sink. A hint we wanted her to go now.
Once she was out the door, clutching her bag of greens, I walked back to the kitchen. Angus was holding two bottles of beer.
“You might need this,” he said, handing me a bottle.
I slugged some beer, the cold liquid fizzing down my throat. A few more gulps and I felt better. It had been a day of surprises and sleuthing amid the ghostly towers of Vathia, and revulsion in Glika Nera, but all of it had deflected my attention from Leonidas and Phaedra. Now I’d have to think about them.
“Damn Thekla! She knew all along that Phaedra was back in town and the rest,” I said, finishing off the beer and fetching another bottle from the fridge.
“You’re drinking too much, pet,” said Angus, with mock concern. It was the kind of thing I usually said to him.
“I haven’t even started yet,” I said, winking.
“Get used to Thekla. Greek families – tight as two coats of paint. It’s nice mostly. They’re all loyal to each other and mostly kind to a fault, but now and then it can also be brutal, especially for an outsider when there’s honour at stake or family cohesion. I know you’re daft about Leonidas, and I like him too, as I keep saying, but if you were ever to get really serious, if you were to marry him, you’d be joined to people like Thekla as well – it all comes with the territory.”
Holy Mother! Was this what it would be like marrying a Greek – if that were actually on the cards – with all the layers of traditional and cultural differences? I could barely speak Greek, let alone fathom everything else. Angus tapped the back of my hand. “Don’t you worry about Thekla though. Beneath all that arch bluster I’m sure she’s a quivering Bambi.”
I laughed. “Hardly!” I said, skulling beer. “But Thekla might not be in the village for the long haul. She’ll get bored and want to go back to Athens.”
“Not so fast, Bronte. A Greek friend of mine who does odd bits of building work around the village says she’s getting him to do some repairs and work on her garden and the stone wall on the perimeter, which has collapsed in a few places. It’s a big garden, it’ll take time. She wants to supervise it.”
My heart sank with chilly foreboding. I would need to go out and buy one of those small blue glass beads that Greeks wear to ward off evil beings.
Chapter 14
Trees have ears
That evening I called Leonidas, just out of curiosity. He had indeed been to the special church service for Lazarus.
“Did you go with your family?” I asked him sweetly.
“Yes, I did. My mother, Eleni, particularly likes it. I would have invited you, Bronte, but I don’t know if you’re quite ready to meet all my family yet. They might frighten you off,” he chortled. If they were like Thekla, they probably would. I wanted to come right out with it. What about Phaedra, was she there? This was a time when I wanted Polly back in Kalamata. She had been such a brilliant confidante and knew everything that was going on in Kalamata. She would know what to do about Phaedra. I had recently sent her an email and had been disappointed to learn she wouldn’t be back until weeks after Easter.
“So, you’re still not coming back this weekend. No time?” I asked.
“No, agapi mou. I have family things, as I said. I am so sorry. But next weekend is very important here. We have a big service on Saturday night after the Holy Week. Although I will go to the cathedral in Kalamata for that, as I usually do, I will be in the village on Sunday. Everyone celebrates on this day with a big family feast. This year I will arrange a barbecue at Villa Ambelia for a nice group of people, locals mostly, not family, as they will celebrate in Kalamata. You can invite a few people too, perhaps Myrto. I know you like her a lot. Or whoever you like. Okay? You will like the lunch. It will be very nice.”
When I hung up, I felt marginally better. No Phaedra, at least. Polly once told me she always went back to Koroni, on the opposite peninsula, where her parents came from and had a large villa, for all the main Greek celebrations.
I updated Angus about my phone call to Leonidas. “Why didn’t you just ask him straight out about Phaedra? You have to know for sure,” he piped up.
“I want to stay cool, you know. There may be nothing in it.”
“I hope not. If he’s back with Phaedra, I’ll banjo him, I promise, Bronte.” I laughed, even though it wasn’t the least bit amusing.
Less amusing was the fact that Leonidas hadn’t mentioned her at all, not even in passing. It nipped at me constantly. Maybe I just had to get a bit real about things.
The next day I found Myrto in her farm, sitting under the fig tree, sewing up a hole in a sock. There was a small goat tied to a tree and Zeus the donkey nearby as well, also tethered. He was making a great heehaw noise over a pile of unappealing black things, which I later found out were carob pods, supposedly an animal delicacy, if you could even describe something that looks like it’s been cremated on a barbecue as such.
“Where you been, my girl?” she asked, patting a plastic chair next to her.
“What are you doing, mending socks?”
She laughed. “Good job, eh?” she said, holding one up for me. The hole in the blue sock had been stitched with red thread. It was like something a child might have done at play school.
“Sock belongs to Angelos. Now I’m like his mother, doing all the little jobs for him.”
“You get on well together, working the land here. That’s so nice. It was a good idea of Leonidas’s, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s worked out good.”
Angelos was a bright young man of 25 who’d had a promising job in advertising in Athens but lost it during the crisis. His father, Leonidas’s brother, had suggested Angelos should go back to Kalamata to look for other work and to be with the family at least. When no other jobs eventuated, he agreed it would be a good thing t
o return to his roots and work the land for a year or so. Leonidas then arranged for Angelos to work with Myrto, who never had enough workers to help with the olive harvest on her 600 trees, most of which had been left to grow wild.
“Where is Angelos?” I asked her.
“Over in the other field doing some hard yakka on my trees,” she said, using the colourful Aussie word for work. I still laughed at her curious English and how she stitched in Aussie slang, bits of Greek, and anything else to hand, a bit like the way she darned socks.
We talked for a while about our news. I told Myrto about visiting Glika Nera and about Dionysos, the creep. I told her to keep an eye out for him.
“If he comes from Glika Nera, he’ll be no good. They all have crazy ideas there.”
I talked to her about Thekla, digging her heels into Marathousa. I didn’t say much though, as I’d already learnt that most Greeks didn’t like to criticise other villagers. In the past it had been a matter of loyalty but also survival. When the Ottoman Turks and other interlopers were snapping at their heels, villagers everywhere needed all the friends they could get. But Myrto was a bit more candid, some might say reckless, than many other Greeks, probably from her years in Australia.
“That old kourouna! You think the old crow seems real nice and polite, nice clothes, nice hair – BIG!” she said, her hands shooting up vertically past her ears. “But deep down, Bronte, she’s a scorpion. Stings when you don’t expect.” She chuckled, digging her needle into another sock.
I laughed at her description, from a crow to a scorpion. It kind of hit the spot.
“Funny I call her a scorpion because she has big fear of the scorpion. Po, po, po! Let me tell you! She has a small olive grove behind her house. Once I help her during harvest and a big black scorpion falls out of the tree onto her head. She goes craaazy, rushing around like a woman on fire, and screaming. Was real funny, now I remember.” Myrto laughed while she darned.
I made a mental note of Thekla and scorpions. Who knew when that could be useful? Myrto finished the socks, snipping the cotton thread with her teeth and putting her sewing kit away in a plastic bag.
How Greek Is Your Love Page 13