The Island

by Victoria Hislop

  Spinalonga, by contrast, was paradise. It offered unimagined freedom, with fresh air, birdsong and a street to amble down; here they could rediscover their humanity. During the long days of their journey from Athens, some had considered taking their own lives, assuming that they were being sent to an even worse place than the vile Hades where they had been struggling to survive. On Spinalonga, from their window on the second floor, the women could see the sun rise, and during their first days on the island they were entranced by the sight of the slow-breaking dawn.

  Just as Eleni had done, they turned the space they were given into a home. Embroidered cotton cloths hung across the windows at night and woven rugs spread across their beds transformed the room and made it look like any simple Cretan dwelling.

  For the men, it was a different story. They languished on their beds for several days, many of them still weakened by the hunger strike they had staged in Athens. Kontomaris organised for food to be brought to the hall and left in the vestibule, but when the dishes were collected on the first day the islanders saw that their offerings had scarcely been touched. The great metal cooking pot was still full to the brim with lamb stew; the only indication that there was any life in the building was that of the five loaves brought to the town hall, only three remained.

  On the second day all the bread was eaten, and on the third, a pan of rabbit casserole was scraped clean. Each day such signs of increased appetite signified the revival of these pitiful creatures. On the fourth day, Nikos Papadimitriou emerged, blinking, into the dazzling sunlight. Forty-five years old and a lawyer, Papadimitriou had once been at the centre of Athenian life. Now he was the leader and spokesman for a group of lepers, playing this role with just as much energy as he had put into his legal career. Nikos was a natural trouble-maker, and if he had not gone into law, he might have chosen crime instead. His attempts to oppose the Athenian authorities by organising the revolt in the hospital had not been entirely successful, but he was more determined than ever to win better conditions for his fellow lepers now that they were on Spinalonga.

  Though sharp-tongued, Papadimitriou had great charm and could always gather supporters. His great ally and friend was Mihalis Kouris, an engineer who had, like Papadimitriou, been in the Athenian hospital for nearly five years. That day, Kontomaris took them around Spinalonga. Unlike the majority of newcomers shown the island for the first time, a constant stream of questions flowed from these two men: ‘So where is the water source?’ ‘How long have you been waiting for the generator?’ ‘How often does the doctor visit?’ ‘What is the mortality rate?’ ‘What are the current building plans?’

  Kontomaris answered their questions as well as he could, but could tell by their every grunt and sigh that they were rarely satisfied with the answers. The island leader knew perfectly well that Spinalonga was underresourced. He had worked tirelessly for six years to improve things and in many areas he had succeeded, though never to the degree that everyone wanted. It was a thankless task, and as he strolled out beyond the town towards the cemetery, he wondered why he had bothered at all. This was where they would all end up, however hard he strived to make things better. All three of them would eventually lie beneath a stone slab in one of these subterranean concrete bunkers until their bones were moved to one side to make way for the next corpse. The futility of it all and the distant sound of Papadimitriou’s insistent questioning made him want to sit down and weep. He decided at that very moment that he would tell the Athenians the bald facts. If they were more interested in reality than in simply being made to feel welcome, then so be it.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, stopping in his tracks and turning round to face them both, ‘everything you want to know. But if I do that, the burden becomes yours too. Do you understand?’

  They nodded in assent, and Kontomaris began to give them the details of the island’s shortcomings. He described every hoop he had jumped through in order to make any changes and told them about all the issues currently under negotiation. Then the three of them went back to the leader’s house and, with Papadimitriou and Kouris’s fresh perspective on the island’s facilities, drew up a new plan. This included works in progress, projects to be started and finished within the coming year and an outline of what would be undertaken in the forthcoming five-year period. Such prospects in themselves would create the sense of moving forward that these people needed so much.

  From that day, Papadimitriou and Kouris became Kontomaris’s great supporters. No longer did they feel like condemned men, but as though they had been given a new start. Life had not held so much potential for a very long time. Within weeks, the proposals, which included specifications for building and reconstruction, were ready to be submitted to the government. Papadimitriou knew how to lean on the politicians, and his law firm in Athens, a family practice of some influence, became involved. ‘Everyone on this island is a citizen of Greece,’ he insisted. ‘They have rights and I’m damned if I won’t fight for them.’ To the amazement of everyone - apart from Papadimitrou himself - within a month the government had agreed to provide the sum of money they had asked for.

  The other Athenians, once they had risen from their torpor, threw themselves into new building projects. No longer were they abandoned invalids but members of a community where everyone had to pull their weight. It was now late September, and though temperatures were more moderate, the issue of water was still pressing - the addition of twenty-three new inhabitants had placed more demand than ever on the supply from the mainland and the crumbling water tunnels. Something had to be done, and Mihalis Kouris was the man to do it.

  Once repairs were complete, everyone looked to the heavens for rain, and one night in early November their prayers were answered. In a spectacular display of sound and light, the skies opened, noisily emptying their contents on to the island, the mainland and the sea all around. Pebble-sized hailstones bounced down, breaking windows and sending goats scampering for safety on the hillsides, as flashes of lightning bathed the landscape in an apocalyptic luminescence. Next morning the islanders woke to find their watersheds brimful of cool, clear water. Having resolved the most pressing issue of all, the Athenians then turned their attention to creating homes for themselves. There was a derelict area between the main street and the sea; it was where the Turks had built their first houses. The dwellings, mere shells, were constructed right up against the fortress walls and would have been among the most sheltered of all enclaves. With the sort of industry and efficiency rarely seen on Crete, the old houses were restored and raised up out of the rubble, with good-as-new masonry and skilfully planed carpentry. Well before the first snowfall crowned Mount Dhikti they were ready to be occupied and the town hall was once again available for everyone. Not that the initial resentment against the Athenian lepers had lasted for long. It had only been a matter of weeks before the population of Spinalonga had recognised the potential of the new islanders and realised that what they might give would far exceed what they could ever take.

  Then, as winter approached, the campaign for the generator began again in earnest. Heat and light would become the most valuable commodities as the winds began to find their way through chinks in every door and window, whipping through the draughty homes in the fading mid-afternoon light. Now that the government had discovered that Spinalonga had a more strident voice, one that could not be disregarded, it was not long before a letter came promising everything that was required. Many of the islanders were cynical. ‘I wouldn’t put money on them keeping their word,’ some would say. ‘Until I can turn on a lamp in my own house, I won’t trust them to deliver,’ agreed others. The general view among people who had been on Spinalonga for more than a few years was that the government’s promise was worth no more than the flimsy paper it was written on.

  Just ten days before all the parts arrived, labelled and complete, the anticipation of the generator was the main topic of Eleni’s identical letters to Anna and Maria:

  The generator is going to
make so much difference to our lives. There was one here once before so some of the electric fittings are already in place and two of the men from Athens are expert in how to make it all work (thank goodness). Every house is promised at least one light and a small heater and those are due to arrive at the same time as the rest of the equipment.

  Anna read her letter in the dying light of a winter’s afternoon. A low fire burned in the grate but she could see her breath on the cold air. A candle cast a flickering light across the page and she idly poked a corner of the sheet into its flame. Slowly the fire crept across, melting the paper until she held nothing but a fingertip-sized piece which she then dropped into the wax. Why did her mother have to write so often? Did she really think that they all wanted to hear of her warm, contented and now well-lit life with that boy? Her father made them reply to every letter, and Anna struggled over every word. She was not happy and she was not going to pretend.

  Maria read her letter and showed it to her father.

  ‘It’s good news, isn’t it?’ Giorgis commented. ‘And it’s all thanks to those Athenians. Who would have thought that a ragbag like that could make such a difference?’

  By the beginning of winter, before the sharpness of the December winds arrived, the island had warmth and, after darkness fell, those who wished could now read by the dimmest of dim electric lights.

  When Advent began, Giorgis and Eleni needed to decide how to deal with Christmas. It was to be their first one apart for fifteen years. The festival did not have the importance of Easter, but it was a time for ritual and feasting within the family and Eleni’s absence would be a gaping void.

  For a few days before and after Christmas Giorgis did not cross the choppy waters to visit Eleni. Not just because the vicious wind would bite into his hands and face until they were raw, but because his daughters needed him to stay. Similarly, Eleni’s attentions had to be on Dimitri and they played out in parallel the age-old traditions. As they always had, the girls sang tuneful kalanda from house to house and were rewarded with sweets and dried fruit, and after early morning mass on Christmas Day they feasted with the Angelopoulos family on pork and delicious kourambiethes, sweet nutty biscuits baked by Savina. Things were not so very different on Spinalonga. The children sang in the square, helped bake the ornate seasonal loaves known as christopsomo, Christ’s bread, and ate as never before. For Dimitri it was the first time he had enjoyed such plentiful quantities of rich food and witnessed such hedonism.

  Throughout the twelve days of Christmas, Giorgis and Eleni sprinkled a little holy water in each room of their respective houses to deter the kallikantzari, seasonal goblins that were said to play havoc in the home, and on 1 January, St Basil’s Day, Giorgis visited Eleni once again, bringing her presents from the children and from Savina. The ending of the old year and the beginning of the new was a watershed, a mile-stone that had been safely passed, taking the Petrakis family into a different era. Although Anna and Maria still missed their mother, they now knew that they could survive without her.

  Chapter Six

  1940

  AFTER ITS BEST winter in years came Spinalonga’s most glorious spring. It was not just the carpets of wild flowers that spread across the slopes of the island’s north side and peeped out of every crack in the rocks that made it so, but also the sense of new life that had been breathed into the community.

  Spinalonga’s main street, only a few months earlier a series of dilapidated buildings, was now a smart row of shops with shutters and doors freshly painted in deep blues and greens. They were now places where shopkeepers displayed their wares with pride and islanders shopped not just out of necessity but for pleasure too. For the first time, the island had its own economy. People were productive: they bartered, bought and sold, sometimes at a profit, sometimes at a loss.

  The kafenion was flourishing too and a new taverna opened which specialised in kakavia, fish soup, freshly made each day. One of the busiest places in the main street was the barber. Stelios Vandis had been the top hair stylist in Rethimnon, Crete’s second city, but had abandoned his trade when he had been exiled to Spinalonga. When Papadimitriou learned that they had such a man in their midst, he insisted Vandis resume his work. The Athenian men were all peacocks. They had the swaggering vanity of the city type and in their former days had all enjoyed the ritual of the fortnightly trim to both hair and moustache, the condition and shape of which almost defined their manliness. Life took a turn for the better now that they had found someone who could make them handsome again. It was not individual style that they aspired to but identically luxurious and well-coiffed hair.

  ‘Stelios,’ Papadimitriou would say, ‘give me your best Venizelos.’ Venizelos, the Cretan lawyer who had become prime minister of Greece, was thought to have had the most handsome moustache in the Christian world, and it was appropriate, the menfolk joked, that Papadimitriou should emulate him, since he clearly aspired to a position of leadership on the island.

  As Kontomaris’s strength began to fail, the leader relied more and more on Papadimitriou, and the popularity of the Athenian grew among the islanders. The men respected him for what he had achieved in such a short time; the women were grateful too; and soon he enjoyed a sort of hero-worship, no doubt enhanced by his silver-screen looks. Like most of the Athenians he had always lived in the city, and one result of this was that he did not have the bent and grizzled appearance of the average Cretan male who had spent the best part of his life in the open air, scraping a living off the land or out of the sea. Until the past few months of manual labour, his skin had seen little sunlight and even less wind.

  Although the Athenian had ambitions, he was not a ruthless man, and he would not stand for election unless Kontomaris was ready to retire.

  ‘Papadimitriou, I’m more than ready to give up this position, ’ the older man said one night in early March over a game of backgammon. ‘I’ve told you that a thousand times. The job needs fresh blood - and look at what you have done for the island already! My supporters will back you, there’s no question of it. Believe me, I’m just too weary now.’

  Papadimitriou was unsurprised at this last comment. During the six months since his arrival he had seen Kontomaris’s condition deteriorate. The two men had been close for some time and he had known that the elderly leader was grooming him as his successor.

  ‘I’ll take it on if you really are ready to let go,’ he said quietly, ‘but I think you should give it a few more days’ thought.’

  ‘I’ve given it months of thought already,’ replied Petros grumpily. ‘I know I can’t go on.’

  The two men played on in a silence only broken by the clack of the counters.

  ‘There’s one other thing I want you to know,’ said Papadimitriou when the game finished and it was time for him to go. ‘If I do win the election, I shall not want to live in your house.’

  ‘But it isn’t my house,’ retorted Kontomaris. ‘It’s the leader’s house. It goes with the position and always has done.’

  Papadimitriou drew on his cigarette and paused a moment as he exhaled. He decided to let the matter rest. The issue might be hypothetical in any case since the election was not entirely a fait accompli. It would be contested by two others, one of whom had been on the island for some six or seven years and had a large following; the election of Theodoros Makridakis seemed, to Papadimitriou at least, a distinct possibility. A large contingent of the population responded to Makridakis’s negativity, and although they loved to lap up the benefits of all Papadimitriou’s hard work and the dramatic changes of the past six months, they also felt that their interests could be better served by someone who was driven by anger. It was easy to believe that the fire that propelled Makridakis might help him achieve things that reason and diplomacy could not.

  The annual elections in late March were the mostly hotly contested in the history of the island, and this time the results actually mattered. Spinalonga was somewhere worth governing and leadership was no longer
a poisoned chalice. Three men stood: Papadimitriou, Spyros Kazakis and Theodoros Makridakis. On the day of the election every man and woman placed a vote, and even the lepers who were confined in the hospital with little chance of ever emerging again from their sickbeds were taken a ballot paper which was duly returned to the town hall in a sealed envelope.

  Spyros Kazakis won a mere handful of votes and Makridakis, to Papadimitriou’s relief and surprise, gained fewer than one hundred. This left the lion’s share and the clear majority to the Athenian. The population had voted with their hearts, but also with wisdom. Makridakis’s posturing was all very well, but achievement counted for more, and for this Papadimitriou knew at last that he was recognised. It was a pivotal moment in the civilising of the island.

  ‘Fellow inhabitants of Spinalonga,’ he said. ‘My wishes for this island are your wishes too.’ He was speaking to the crowd gathered in the small square outside the town hall on the night following the election. The count had just been double-checked and the results announced.