The Island

by Victoria Hislop

  The girls’ lives could not have been more altered if a tornado had snatched them and dropped them on Santorini. They acted out their days with a fixed routine, for only with a rigid, unthinking pattern of activity could they rise in the morning. Anna battled against it all, constantly complaining and questioning why things were as they were; Maria simply accepted. She knew that complaining achieved nothing at all and probably just made things worse. Her sister had no such wisdom. Anna always wanted to fight the status quo.

  ‘Why do I have to go and get the bread every morning?’ she complained one day.

  ‘You don’t,’ her father replied patiently. ‘Maria gets it every other day.’

  ‘Well why can’t she get it every day? I’m the oldest and I don’t see why I have to get bread for her.’

  ‘If everyone questioned why they should do things for each other, the world would stop turning, Anna. Now go and get the bread. Right this minute!’

  Giorgis’s fist came down with a bang on the table. He was weary of Anna turning every small domestic task she was asked to perform into an argument and now even she knew that she had pushed her father to the edge.

  On Spinalonga, meanwhile, Eleni tried to grow accustomed to what would be regarded as unacceptable on the mainland but on the colony passed for normality; she failed, however, and found herself wanting to change whatever she could. Just as Giorgis did not protect Eleni from his worries, she in turn shared her concerns about her life and her future on Spinalonga.

  The first really disagreeable encounter she experienced on the island was with Kristina Kroustalakis, the woman who ran the school.

  ‘I don’t expect her to like me,’ she commented to Giorgis, ‘but she’s acting like an animal that’s been driven into a tight corner.’

  ‘Why does she do that?’ asked Giorgis, already knowing the answer.

  ‘She’s a useless teacher, who doesn’t care a drachma for the children - and she knows that’s what I think of her,’ answered Eleni.

  Giorgis sighed. Eleni had never been reticent about her views.

  Almost as soon as they had arrived, Eleni had seen that the school had little to offer Dimitri. After his first day, he returned silent and sullen, and when she enquired what he had done in class his reply was ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing? You must have done something. ’

  ‘The teacher was writing all the letters and numbers on the board and I was sent to the back of the class for saying that I already knew them. After that the oldest children were allowed to do some really easy sums and when I shouted out one of the answers I was sent out of the room for the rest of the day.’

  After this, Eleni started to teach Dimitri herself, and his friends then began to come to her for lessons. Soon children who had barely been able to distinguish their letters and numbers could read fluently and do their sums and within a few months her small house was filled with children on five long mornings a week. They ranged in age from six to sixteen and, with one exception, a boy who had been born on the island, they had all been sent to the island from Crete when they had shown the symptoms of leprosy. The majority of them had received some basic education before they arrived, but most of them, even the older ones, had made little progress in all the time they had spent in a classroom with Kristina Kroustalakis. She treated them like fools, so fools they remained.

  The tension between Kristina Kroustalakis and Eleni began to build up. It was evident to almost everyone that Eleni should take over the school and that the valuable teacher’s stipend should be hers. Kristina Kroustalakis fought her own corner, refusing to concede or even consider the possibility of sharing her role, but Eleni was tenacious. She drove the situation to a conclusion, not for her own gain but for the good of the island’s seventeen children, who deserved so much more than they would ever get from the lackadaisical Kroustalakis. Pedagogy was an investment in the future, and Kristina Kroustalakis saw little point in expending much energy on those who might not be around for long.

  Finally, one day, Eleni was invited to put her case before the elders. She brought with her examples of the work the children had been doing both before and after she arrived on the island. ‘But this simply shows natural progress,’ protested one elder, known to be a close friend of Kyria Kroustalakis. To most of them there, however, the evidence was plain. Eleni’s zeal and commitment to her task showed results. Her driving force was the belief that education was not a means to some nebulous end but had intrinsic value, and made the children better people. The strong possibility that several of them might not live to see their twenty-first birthdays was of no relevance to Eleni.

  There were a few dissenting voices, but the majority of elders were in favour of the controversial decision to remove the established teacher from her position and install Eleni instead. For ever after there would be people on the island who regarded Eleni as a usurper, but she was profoundly unbothered by such an attitude. The children were what mattered.

  The school provided Dimitri with almost everything he needed: a structure to his day, stimulation for his mind, and companionship, in the form of a new friend, Nikos, who was the only child to have been born on the island but not taken to the mainland for adoption. The reason for this was that he had developed signs of the disease as a baby. If he had been healthy he would have been taken away from his parents, who, although they were overwhelmed with guilt that the child shared their affliction, were also overjoyed to be able to keep him.

  Every moment of Dimitri’s life was filled, successfully keeping him from dwelling on how things used to be. In some ways this life was an improvement. The small, dark-eyed boy now endured less hardship, less anxiety and fewer worries than had burdened him as the oldest of five children in a peasant family. Each afternoon, however, when he left the school building to return to the semi-darkness of his new home, he would become aware of the undercurrents of adult disquiet. He would hear snatches of conversation as he passed the kafenion or whispered discussions between people as they talked in the street.

  Sometimes there were new rumours mixed in with the old. There was the endlessly recycled discussion over whether they would be getting a new generator and the perennial debate over the water supply. In the past few months there had been whispers about a grant for new accommodation and an increased ‘pension’ for every member of the colony. Dimitri listened to a great deal of adult talk and observed that grown-ups endlessly chewed over the same matter, like dogs with old bones long since stripped of their flesh. The smallest events, as well as the larger ones such as illness and death, were anticipated and mulled over. One day, though, something took place for which there had been no build-up and little forewarning but which was to have a huge impact on the life of the island.

  One night a few months after Dimitri and Eleni had arrived they were eating supper when they were disturbed by an insistent banging on the door. It was Elpida, and the elderly woman was out of breath and flushed with excitement.

  ‘Eleni, please come,’ she panted. ‘There are boatloads of them - boatloads - and they need our help. Come!’

  Eleni knew Elpida well enough by now to realise that if she said help was called for, no questions needed to be asked. Dimitri’s curiosity was aroused. He dropped his cutlery and followed the women as they hastened down the twilit street, listening as Kyria Kontomaris blurted out the story, her words tumbling out one after the other.

  ‘They’re from Athens,’ she gasped. ‘Giorgis has already brought over two boatloads and he’s about to arrive with the third. They’re mostly men but I noticed a few women as well. They look like prisoners, sick prisoners.’

  By now they had reached the entrance to the long tunnel which led to the quay, and Eleni turned to Dimitri.

  ‘You’ll have to stay here,’ she said firmly. ‘Please go back to the house and finish your supper.’

  Even from the end of the tunnel Dimitri could hear the muffled echo of male voices, and he was more curious than ever abou
t what was causing such commotion. The two women hurried on and were soon out of sight. Dimitri aimlessly kicked a stone about at the tunnel entrance and then, looking furtively behind him, darted into the dark passageway, making sure he kept close to the sides. As he turned the corner he could see quite clearly what the fuss was all about.

  New inhabitants usually arrived one by one and after a quiet welcome from Petros Kontomaris slipped as discreetly into the community as they could. Initially, the best anyone hoped for on Spinalonga was anonymity, and most people remained silent as they were welcomed. On the quayside tonight, however, there was no such calm. As they tumbled off Giorgis’s small boat, many of the new arrivals lost their balance before landing heavily on the stony ground. They shouted, writhed and howled, some of them clearly in pain, and from his shadowy position, Dimitri could see why they had fallen. The newcomers seemed not to have arms, at least not arms that hung freely by their sides, and when he looked closer, he realised that they were all wearing strange jackets that trapped their arms behind their backs.

  Dimitri watched as Eleni and Elpida bent down, one by one undid the straps that kept these people tied up like packages, and released them from their hessian prisons. Lying in heaps on the dusty ground these creatures seemed less than human. One of them then staggered to the water’s edge, leant towards the sea and vomited copiously. Another did the same - and then a third.

  Dimitri watched both fascinated and fearful, as still as the rocky wall which screened him. As the newcomers unfurled themselves and slowly stood upright they regained a little dignity. Even from a hundred metres, he could feel the anger and aggression that emanated from them. Gathering round one particular man who appeared to be attempting to calm them, several talked at once, their voices raised.

  Dimitri counted. There were eighteen of them here, and Giorgis was turning his boat around again to return to Plaka. One more boatload was still to arrive.

  Close to the quayside in Plaka, a crowd had gathered in the square to study this curious group. A few days before, Giorgis had taken a letter from Athens across to Petros Kontomaris warning him of the lepers’ imminent arrival. Between them they had agreed to keep their own counsel. The prospect of nearly two dozen new patients arriving simultaneously on Spinalonga would send the islanders into a state of panic. All Kontomaris had been told was that these lepers had created trouble at the hospital in Athens - and as a consequence had been dispatched to Spinalonga. They had been shipped like cattle from Piraeus to Iraklion on two days of rough seas. Stricken with sunstroke and sea sickness, they were then transferred to a smaller vessel bound for Plaka. From there Giorgis was to bring them, six at a time, on the final stretch of their journey. It was plain for anyone to see that this bedraggled mob of abused and uncared-for humanity would not survive such treatment for long.

  The village children in Plaka, unafraid to stare, had gathered to watch. Fotini, Anna and Maria were among them, and Anna questioned her father as he took a short break before taking the final load across the water.

  ‘Why are they here? What have they done? Why couldn’t they stay in Athens?’ she demanded. Giorgis had no real answers to her persistent questions. But he did tell her one thing. While he was transporting his first batch of passengers to the island, he had listened intently to their conversation and, in spite of their anger and disenchantment, the voices he heard were those of educated and articulate men.

  ‘I have no answers for you, Anna,’ he told her. ‘But Spinalonga will make room for them, that’s what matters.’

  ‘What about our mother?’ she persisted. ‘Her life will be worse than ever.’

  ‘I think you might be wrong,’ said Giorgis, drawing on the deep well of patience that he held in reserve for his elder daughter. ‘These newcomers could be the best thing that ever happened to that island.’

  ‘How can that possibly be?’ Anna cried, dancing up and down in disbelief. ‘What do you mean? They look like animals!’ She was right about that. They did indeed resemble animals and, bundled into crates like cattle, had been treated like little more than that.

  Giorgis turned his back on his daughter and returned to his boat. There were just five passengers this time. When they reached Spinalonga, the other new arrivals were wandering about. It was the first time in thirty-six hours that they had stood upright. The four women among them remained in a quiet huddle. Petros Kontomaris was walking from one person to another asking for names, ages, occupations, and number of years since diagnosis.

  All the while he did this task, his mind was spinning. Every additional minute that he could detain them here with this bureaucracy gave him more time for some kind of inspiration about where, in heaven’s name, these people were going to be housed. Each second of procrastination delayed the moment when they would be led through the tunnel to find that they did not have homes and that, potentially, they were even worse off than they had been in the Athenian hospital. Each short interview took a few minutes, and by the time he had finished, one thing was very clear to him. In the past, when he had taken details of new arrivals, the majority had been fishermen, smallholders or shopkeepers. This time, he had a list of trained professionals: lawyer, teacher, doctor, master stonemason, editor, engineer . . . the catalogue went on. This was an entirely different category of folk from those who made up the bulk of the population on Spinalonga, and for a moment, Kontomaris felt slightly fearful of this band of Athenian citizens who had arrived in the guise of beggars.

  It was time now to take them into their new world. Kontomaris led the group through the tunnel. Word had got around that newcomers had arrived and people came out of their houses to stare. In the square, the Athenians drew to a halt behind the leader, who now turned to face them, waiting until he had their attention before he spoke.

  ‘As a temporary measure, apart from the women, who will be housed in a vacant room at the top of the hill, you will be accommodated in the town hall.’

  A crowd had now gathered around them and there was a murmur of unrest as they too listened to the announcement. Kontomaris, however, was prepared for hostility to the plan and continued.

  ‘Let me assure you that this is only a temporary measure. Your arrival swells our population by nearly ten per cent and we now expect the government to provide money for new housing, as they have long promised.’

  The reason for the antagonism to the town hall being used as a dormitory was that it was where the social life of Spinalonga, such as it was, took place. It represented, as much as anything could, the social and political normality of life on Spinalonga, and to commandeer it was to strip the islanders of a key resource. But where else was there? There was one empty room in ‘the block’, the soulless new apartment building, and this was where the Athenian women would be housed. Kontomaris would ask Elpida to take them there while he got the men settled into their makeshift quarters. His heart sank when he thought about his wife’s task; the only difference between the new block and a prison was that the doors there were bolted from the inside rather than from the outside. But for the men it had to be the town hall.

  That night, Spinalonga became home to the twenty-three Athenian newcomers. Soon, many of those who had come to gawp realised that more constructive action was needed and made offers of food, drink and bedding. Any donation from their meagre stores meant significant sacrifice, but all, bar very few, managed some gesture.

  The first few days were tense. Everyone waited to see what impact these new arrivals would have, but for forty-eight hours most of them were hardly seen, many lying impassively on their improvised bedding. Dr Lapakis visited them and noted that they were all suffering not just from leprosy but also from the rigours of a journey without adequate food or water and without shade from the relentless sun. It would take each one of them several weeks to recover from the months, perhaps years, of mistreatment they had endured even before they had embarked on their journey from Athens. Lapakis had heard that there was no discernible difference between conditions
in the leprosy hospital and those in the gaol just a few hundred metres away on the edge of the city. The story went that the lepers were fed on scraps from the prison and that their clothes were cast-offs stripped from corpses in the city’s main hospital. He soon learned that this was not just a myth.

  All the patients had been treated barbarically, and this group who had arrived in Crete had been the driving force behind a rebellion. Mostly professional, educated people, they had led a hunger strike, drafted letters which were smuggled out to friends and politicians and stirred up dissent throughout the hospital. Rather than agreeing to any change, however, the governor of the hospital decided to evict them; or, as he preferred to term it, ‘transfer them to more suitable accommodation’. Their expulsion to Spinalonga marked an end for them, and a new beginning for the island.

  The women were visited each day by Elpida and were soon recovered enough to have their tour of the island and to take coffee at the Kontomaris house, and even to begin planning how they would make use of the small plot of ground which had been cleared for them to grow vegetables. They recognised very quickly that this life was an improvement on the old. At least it was a life. Conditions at the Athenian hospital had been horrific. The fires of hell could not have been more stifling than the suffocating summer heat in their mean, claustrophobic rooms. Add to that the rats that scratched about on the floors during the night, and they had felt no worthier than vermin.