The Island

by Victoria Hislop

  ‘We have already made Spinalonga a more civilised place, and in some ways it is now an even better place to live than the towns and villages that serve us.’ He waved his hand in the direction of Plaka. ‘We have electricity when Plaka does not. We have diligent medical staff and the most dedicated of teachers. On the mainland, many people are living at subsistence level, starving when we are not. Last week, some of them rowed out to us from Elounda. Rumours of our new prosperity had reached them and they came to ask us for food. Is that not a turnaround?’ A murmur of assent rippled through the throng. ‘No longer are we the outcasts with begging bowls crying, “Unclean! Unclean!”’ he continued. ‘Now others come to us to seek alms.’

  He paused for a moment, enough time for someone to shout out from the crowd: ‘Three cheers for Papadimitriou!’ When the cheers died down, he added one final note to his message.

  ‘There is one thing that binds us together. The disease of leprosy. When we have our disagreements, let us not forget there is no escape from one another. While we have life, let us make it as good as we can - this must be our common purpose.’ He raised his hand in the air, pointing his finger upwards into the sky, a sign of celebration and victory. ‘To Spinalonga!’ he shouted.

  The crowd of two hundred mirrored the gesture, and with a cry that was heard across the water in Plaka they cried out in unison: ‘To Spinalonga!’

  Theodoros Makridakis, unnoticed by anyone, sloped away into the shadows. He had long yearned to be the leader and his disappointment was as bitter as an unripe olive.

  The next afternoon, Elpida Kontomaris began to pack her possessions. Within a day or two she and Petros would need to move out of this house and into Papadimitriou’s current accommodation. She had expected this moment for a long time but it did not lessen the feeling of dread that weighed her down so that she could scarcely summon the energy to move one foot in front of the other. She went about packing in a desultory fashion, her heavy body unwilling to do the task and her misshapen feet more painful than ever before. As she stood contemplating the prospect of tidying away the precious contents of the glass-fronted cabinet - the rows of soldiers, the tiny pieces of porcelain and the engraved silver that had been in her family for many generations - she asked herself where these valuables would go when she and Petros were no more. The two of them were the end of the line.

  A gentle tap on the door interrupted her thoughts. That must be Eleni, she thought. Though busy with school and the task of motherhood, Eleni had promised to come by that afternoon to help her, and she was always true to her word. When Elpida opened the door, however, expecting to see her slim, fine-featured friend, a large, darkly dressed male figure filled the frame instead. It was Papadimitriou.

  ‘Kalispera, Kyria Kontomaris. May I come in?’ he asked gently, conscious of her surprise.

  ‘Yes . . . please do,’ she answered, moving away from the door to let him in.

  ‘I have only one thing to say,’ he told her as they stood facing each other, surrounded by the half-filled crates of books, china and photographs. ‘There is no need for you to move out of here. I have no intention of taking this house away from you. There is no need. Petros has given so much of his life to being leader of this island that I have decided to endow him with it - call it his pension, if you like.’

  ‘But it’s where the leader has always lived. It’s yours now, and besides, Petros wouldn’t hear of it.’

  ‘I have no interest in what has happened in the past,’ replied Papadimitriou. ‘I want you to stay here, and in any case I want to live in the house I’m restoring. Please,’ he insisted. ‘It will suit all of us better this way.’

  Elpida’s eyes glistened with tears. ‘It’s so kind of you,’ she said, extending both her hands towards him. ‘So very kind. I can see that you mean it, but I don’t know how we are going to persuade Petros.’

  ‘He has no choice,’ said Papadimitriou with determination. ‘I’m in charge now. What I want you to do is unpack all your things from these boxes and put them back exactly where they were. I’ll come back later to make sure you’ve done that.’

  Elpida could see that this was no idle gesture. The man meant what he said and was used to getting what he wanted. This was why he had been elected leader, and as she repositioned the lead soldiers in their ranks she tried to analyse what it was that made Papadimitriou so hard to disagree with. It was not merely his physical stature. That on its own might simply have made him a bully. He had other, more subtle techniques. Sometimes he moved people round to his point of view simply through the modulations of his voice. On other occasions he would achieve the same end by overpowering them with the force of his logic. His lawyer’s skills were as sharp as ever, even on Spinalonga.

  Before Papadimitriou went on his way, Elpida asked him to eat with them when he returned that evening. Her great talent was in the kitchen. She cooked as no one else on Spinalonga, and only a fool would ever turn down such an invitation. As soon as he had gone she went about preparing the meal, fashioning her favourite kefethes, meat balls in egg-lemon sauce, and measuring out the ingredients for revani, a sweet cake made with semolina and syrup.

  When Kontomaris came home that evening, his duties as leader finally completed, there was a lightness in his step. As he entered his home, the fragrant smells of baking wafted over him and an apron-clad Elpida came towards him, her arms outstretched in welcome. They embraced, his head resting on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s all over,’ he murmured. ‘At long last it’s over.’

  As he glanced up, he noticed that the room looked just as it always had. There was no sign of the half-filled crates that had been standing about the room when he had left that morning.

  ‘Why haven’t you packed?’ There was more than a note of irritation in his voice. He was weary and he so much wanted the next few days to be over. Wishing they were already transported to their new house, the fact that nothing seemed even vaguely ready to go upset him greatly and made him feel more exhausted than ever.

  ‘I packed and then I unpacked,’ Elpida replied mysteriously. ‘We’re staying here.’

  Precisely on cue, there was a firm knock at the door. Papadimitriou had arrived.

  ‘Kyria Kontomaris invited me to eat with you,’ he said simply.

  Once they were all seated and a generous glass of ouzo had been poured for each of them, Kontomaris regained his composure.

  ‘I think there’s been some kind of conspiracy,’ he said. ‘I should be angry, but I know you both well enough to realise I’ve no choice in this matter.’

  His smile belied his stern tone and the formality of his words. He was secretly delighted at Papadimitriou’s generosity, not least because he knew how much it meant to his wife. The three of them toasted each other in ratification of the deal that had been struck, and the issue of the leader’s house was never mentioned between them again. There were a few rumbles of dissent among the council members and fervent discussions about what would happen if a future leader wished to reclaim the splendid house, but a compromise was eventually reached: tenancy of the house would be reassessed every five years.

  After the election, work continued apace with the renovation of the island. Papadimitriou’s efforts had not merely been an electioneering ploy. Repairing and rebuilding went on until everyone had a decent place to live, their own oven, usually in the courtyard in front of their home, and, even more importantly for their sense of pride, a private outdoor latrine.

  Now that water was being collected efficiently there was plenty for everyone, and an extensive communal laundry was built with a long row of smooth concrete sinks. It was little less than a luxury for the women, who would linger over their washing, making the area a vibrant social focus.

  The social aspect of their lives was also enhanced, however, in less workaday situations. For Panos Sklavounis, an Athenian who had once been an actor, the working day began when everyone else’s had ended. Not long after the election, he took Papadimitriou t
o one side. Sklavounis’s approach was aggressive, which was typical of the man’s manner. He liked confrontation and as an actor back in Athens had been used to hustling.

  ‘Boredom is growing like a fungus here,’ he said. ‘What people need is entertainment. Lots of them can’t look forward to next year, but they might as well have something to look forward to next week.’

  ‘I see your point and I agree entirely,’ responded Papadimitriou. ‘But what do you propose?’

  ‘Entertainment. Large-scale entertainment,’ replied Sklavounis rather grandly.

  ‘Which means what?’ asked Papadimitriou.

  ‘Movies,’ said Sklavounis.

  Six months earlier, such a proposal would have seemed ambitious beyond words and as laughable as telling the lepers they could swim across to Elounda to visit the cinema. Now, however, it was not beyond the realms of possibility.

  ‘Well, we have a generator,’ said Papadimitriou, ‘which is a good start, but it’s not all that’s required, is it?’

  Keeping the islanders happy and occupied in the evening might indeed help rule out much of the discontent that still lingered. While people sat in rows in the dark, thought Papadimitriou, they could not be drinking to excess or hatching plots in the kafenion.

  ‘What else do you need?’ he asked.

  Sklavounis was quick to reply. He had already worked out how many people could fit into the town hall and where he could get a projector, a screen and the film reels. He had also, very importantly, done the figures. The missing element, until he had committee approval, was money, but given that so many of the lepers were now earning some kind of income, an entry fee could be charged to the new cinema and the cost of the entire enterprise might eventually cover itself.

  Within a few weeks of his initial request, posters appeared around the town:

  Saturday 13 April

  7.00 p.m.

  Town Hall

  The Apaches of Athens

  Tickets 2 drachma

  By six o’clock that evening, over one hundred people were queuing outside the town hall. At least another eighty had arrived by the time the doors opened at six-thirty, and the same enthusiasm greeted the film the following Saturday.

  Eleni bubbled with excitement when she wrote to her daughters about the new entertainment:

  We are all so enjoying the films - they’re the highlight of the week. Things don’t always go to plan, though. Last Saturday the reels did not arrive from Agios Nikolaos. There was such disappointment when people realised that the film was cancelled that there was nearly a riot, and for several days people went about long-faced, as though the harvest had failed! Anyway, everyone cheered up as the week progressed, and we were all so relieved when your father was spotted carrying the reels ashore.

  Within weeks, however, Giorgis began to bring more than the latest feature film from Athens. He also had a newsreel, which brought the audience sharply up to date with the sinister events that were taking place in the outside world. Though copies of Crete’s weekly newspaper made their way to the island and radios occasionally crackled with the latest news bulletin, no one had had any idea of the scale of the growing havoc being wreaked across Europe by Nazi Germany. At this stage these outrages seemed remote and the inhabitants of Spinalonga had other more immediate things to concern them. With the elections behind them, Easter was approaching.

  In previous years, the observance of this, the greatest of Christian festivals, had been subdued. The festivities taking place in Plaka made plenty of noise, and although a reduced version of the same dramatic rituals was always held in Spinalonga’s little church of St Pantaleimon, there was a sense that it was not the same as the full-scale celebrations taking place across the water.

  This year it was to be different. Papadimitriou would make sure of that. The commemoration of Christ’s resurrection in Spinalonga was to be no less extravagant in expression than anything held on Crete or in mainland Greece itself.

  Lent had been strictly observed. Most people had gone without meat and fish for forty days, and in the final week, wine and olive oil had been consigned to the darkest recesses. By Thursday of Passion Week the wooden cross in the church that was big enough to accommodate perhaps one hundred souls (so long as they were as tight-packed as grains in an ear of wheat) was laden with lemon blossom and a long line formed down the street to mourn Christ and kiss his feet. The throng of worshippers both inside and outside the church stood hushed. This was a melancholy moment, and all the more so when they looked on the icon of St Pantaleimon, who was, as the more cynical of the lepers described him, the supposed patron saint of healing. Many had lost faith in him some time earlier, but his life story had made him the perfect choice for such a church. A young doctor in Roman times, Pantaleimon followed his mother’s lead and became a Christian, an act which would almost certainly result in persecution. His success in healing the sick aroused suspicions and he was arrested, stretched out on a wheel and finally boiled alive.

  However cynical the islanders might be about the healing powers of the saint, they all joined in Christ’s great funeral procession the next day. A coffin was decorated in the morning, and in the late afternoon the floral epitaphoi was carried through the streets. It was a solemn procession.

  ‘We have plenty of practice at this, don’t we?’ Elpida commented sardonically to Eleni as they walked slowly along the street, the two-hundred-strong snake of people winding its way through the little town and up on to the path that led round to the north side of the island.

  ‘We do,’ she agreed, ‘but this is different. This man comes alive again—’

  ‘Which is more than we’ll ever do,’ interjected Theodoros Makridakis, who happened to be walking behind them and who was always ready with a negative comment. Resurrection of the body seemed an unlikely concept, but the strong believers among them knew that this was what was promised: a new, unblemished, resurrected body. It was the whole point of the story and the meaning of the ritual. The believers clung to that.

  Saturday was a quiet day. Men, women and children were meant to be in mourning. Everyone was busy, however. Eleni organised the children into a working party to paint eggs and then decorate them with tiny leaf stencils. Meanwhile other women baked the traditional cakes. By contrast with such gentle activities, the men all helped in the slaughter and preparation of the lambs which had been shipped over a few weeks before. Once all such chores were done, people again visited the church to decorate it with sprigs of rosemary, laurel leaves and myrtle branches, and by early evening a bittersweet smell emanated from the building and the air was heavy with anticipation and incense.

  Eleni stood in the doorway of the crowded church. The people were silent, subdued and expectant, straining to hear the initial whispers of the Kyrie Eleison. It began so softly it might have been the breeze stirring the leaves but then grew into something almost tangible, filling the building and exploding into the world outside. The candles which had burned inside the church were now extinguished and under a starless, moonless sky, the world was plunged into darkness. For a few moments Eleni could sense nothing but the heavy scent of molten tallow that pervaded the air.

  At midnight, when the bell from the church in Plaka could be heard tolling resonantly across the still water, the priest lit a single candle.

  ‘Come and receive the light,’ he commanded. Papa Kazakos spoke the sacred words with reverence, but also with directness, and the islanders were in no doubt that this was a command to approach him. One by one those closest reached out with tapers, and from these the light was shared around until both inside and outside the church there was a flickering forest of flames. In less than a minute darkness had turned to light.

  Papa Kazakos, a warm-natured, heavily bearded man with a love for good living - making some justifiably sceptical about whether he had observed any kind of abstinence during Lent - now began to read the Gospel. It was a familiar passage and many of the older islanders moved their lips in perfect sync
hronicity.

  ‘Christos anesti! ’ he proclaimed at the end of the passage. Christ is risen.

  ‘Christos anesti! Christos anesti!’ the crowd shouted back in unison.

  The great triumphant cry carried on in the street for some time as people wished each other many happy years - ‘Chronia polla!’ - responding with enthusiasm: ‘E pisis’ - ‘Same to you’.

  Then it was time to carry the lighted candles carefully home.

  ‘Come, Dimitri,’ Eleni encouraged the boy. ‘Let’s see if we can get this home without it going out.’

  If they could reach their house with the candle still lit, it would bring good luck for a whole year, and on this still April night it was perfectly feasible to do so. Within a few minutes every home on the island had a candle glowing in its window.

  The final stage of the ritual was the lighting of the bonfire, the symbolic burning of the traitor Judas Iscariot. All day people had brought their spare kindling, and bushes had been stripped of dry branches. Now the priest lit the pyre and there was more rejoicing as it crackled and then finally went up with a roar while rockets soared into the sky all around. The real celebrations had begun. In every far-flung village, town and city, from Plaka to Athens, there would be great merrymaking, and this year it would be as noisy on Spinalonga as anywhere across the land. Sure enough, over in Plaka, they could hear the lively blasts of the bouzouki as the dancing on the island began.