Maria continued cleaning and polishing for an hour or so longer until Giorgis returned. Perhaps for the first time, she did not feel anguished about leaving him. He looked strong for a man of his age and she knew for sure that he would survive without her being there. Nowadays he did not seem too bowed down with the world’s worries, and she knew the companionship of his friends in the village bar meant that lonely evenings were thankfully rare.
‘Anna came by earlier,’ she said chattily. ‘She’ll be returning quite soon.’
‘Where has she gone then?’ Giorgis asked.
‘To see Savina, I think.’
At that moment Anna walked in. She embraced her father warmly and the two sat down to chat as Maria made drinks for them both. Their conversation skimmed all the surfaces. What had Anna been doing? Had she finished all the work on her two houses? How was Andreas? The questions Maria wanted to hear her father asking - Was Anna happy? Why did she so rarely come to Plaka? - went unasked. Not a word of Maria’s forthcoming wedding was mentioned, not the slightest reference was made to it. The hour went quickly and then Anna rose to go. They said their farewells and Giorgis accepted an invitation to visit the Elounda house for Sunday lunch in just over a week’s time.
After supper, when Giorgis had gone to the kafenion, Maria decided to do one last task. She kicked off her shoes to climb on to a rickety chair so that she could reach into the back of a tall cupboard and, as she stepped up, she noticed a strange mark on her foot. Her heart missed a beat. In some lights it might scarcely have been visible. It was like a shadow but in reverse, a patch of dry skin that was slightly paler than the rest. It almost looked as though she had burned her foot in the sun and the skin had peeled off to leave the lighter pigment underneath. Perhaps it was nothing at all to worry about, but she felt sick with anxiety. Maria usually bathed at night, and in the dim light such a thing could have gone unnoticed for months. She would confide in Fotini later, but she did not plan to worry her father about it yet. They all had quite enough to think about at the moment.
That night was the most troubled Maria had ever endured. She lay awake almost until dawn. She could not know for certain and yet she entertained little doubt about this patch. The hours of darkness passed with aching slowness as she tossed and turned and fretted with fear. When she finally fell into a brief and fitful sleep, she dreamt of her mother and of huge stormy seas which wrecked Spinalonga as though it was a great ship. It was a relief when day broke. She would go and see Fotini early. Her friend was always up by six o’clock, tidying away dishes from the night before and preparing food for the following one. It seemed she worked harder than anyone in the village, which was especially tough on her given that she was now in the third trimester of her pregnancy.
‘Maria! What are you doing here so early?’ Fotini exclaimed. She could see that there was something on her friend’s mind. ‘Let’s have some coffee.’
She stopped working and they sat down together at the big table in the kitchen.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Fotini. ‘You look as though you haven’t had a wink of sleep. Are you getting nervous about the wedding or something?’
Maria looked up at Fotini, the shadows under her eyes as dark as her untouched coffee. Her eyes welled with tears.
‘Maria, what is it?’ Fotini reached out and covered her friend’s hand with her own. ‘You must tell me.’
‘It’s this,’ said Maria. She stood up and put her foot on the chair, pointing to the faded patch of dry skin. ‘Can you see it?’
Fotini leaned over. She now understood why her friend had looked so anxious this morning. From the leaflets regularly distributed in Plaka, everyone round here was familiar with the first visible symptoms of leprosy, and this looked very like one of them.
‘What do I do?’ Maria said quietly, tears now pouring down her cheeks. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Fotini was calm.
‘For a start, you mustn’t let anyone round here know about this. It could be nothing and you don’t want people jumping to conclusions, especially the Vandoulakis family. You need to get a proper diagnosis. Your father brings that doctor home from the island nearly every day, doesn’t he? Why don’t you ask him to have a look?’
‘Dr Lapakis is a good friend of Father’s, but he’s almost too close and someone might get to hear of it. There was another doctor. He used to come over before the war. I can’t even remember his name but I think he worked in Iraklion. Father would know.’
‘Why don’t you try and see him then? You’ve plenty of excuses for going to Iraklion with your wedding round the corner.’
‘But it means telling my father,’ Maria sobbed. She tried to wipe the tears from her face, but still they flowed. There was no avoiding this. Even if it could be kept secret from everyone else, Giorgis would have to know, and he was the one Maria would most have liked to protect.
Maria returned home. It was only eight o’clock but Giorgis was already out, and she knew she would have to wait until the evening to speak to him. She would distract herself by continuing with the work she had begun the day before, and she threw herself into it with renewed vigour and energy, polishing furniture until it gleamed and picking the dust with her fingernail from the darkest corners of every cupboard and drawer.
At around eleven o’clock there was a knock at the door. It was Anna. Maria had already been awake for seven hours. She was exhausted.
‘Hello, Anna,’ she said quietly. ‘Here again so soon?’
‘I left something behind,’ Anna answered. ‘My bag. It must have got tucked down behind the cushion.’
She crossed the room and there, sure enough, concealed beneath a cushion, was a small bag in the same fabric as the dress she had been wearing the day before.
‘There, I knew it would be there.’
Maria needed a rest.
‘Would you like a cold drink?’ she asked from her elevated position on a stool.
Anna stood looking at her, transfixed. Maria shifted uncomfortably and climbed down from the stool. Her sister’s eyes followed her but they were trained on her bare feet. She had noticed the sinister mark and it was too late for Maria to conceal it.
‘What’s that patch on your foot?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Maria defensively. ‘Probably nothing.’
‘Come on, let me see it!’ said Anna.
Maria was not going to fight with her sister, who now bent down to have a closer look at her foot.
‘I think it’s nothing, but I am going to have it checked,’ she said firmly, standing her ground.
‘Have you told Father about it? And has Manoli seen it?’ Anna asked.
‘Neither of them knows about it yet,’ answered Maria.
‘Well, when are they going to know? Because if you’re not going to tell them, then I’m going to. It looks like leprosy to me,’ Anna said. She knew as well as Maria what a diagnosis of leprosy would mean.
‘Look,’ said Maria, ‘I shall tell Father tonight. But no one else is to know. It may be nothing.’
‘You’re getting married in less than a month, so don’t leave it too long to find out. As soon as you know the truth, you’re to come and let me know.’
Anna’s tone was distinctly bullying, and the thought even crossed Maria’s mind that she was relishing the thought of her sister being leprous.
‘If I haven’t heard from you within a fortnight or so, I’ll be back.’
With that, she was gone. The door banged shut behind her. Apart from Maria’s pounding heart, a faint whiff of French perfume was the only evidence that Anna had ever been there.
That night, Maria showed Giorgis her foot.
‘It’s Dr Kyritsis we ought to go and see,’ he said. ‘He works at the big hospital in Iraklion. I’ll write to him straight away.
He said little more than that, but his stomach churned with fear.
Chapter Fifteen
WITHIN A WEEK of writing, Giorgis had receive
d a reply from Doctor Kyritsis.
Dear Kyrie Petrakis,
Thank you so much for writing to me. I am sorry to hear of your concern about your daughter and would be very pleased to see you both for an appointment. I shall expect you on Monday 17th September at midday.
I would also like to express my sorrow that your lovely wife Eleni passed away. I know it was some years ago, but I only recently heard the sad news from Dr Lapakis, with whom I am once again in contact.
With kind regards.
Yours sincerely,
Nikolaos Kyritsis
The appointment was only a few days away, which was a relief to both father and daughter as they were both, by now, thinking of little else other than the mark on Maria’s foot.
After breakfast on that Monday morning, they set off on the three-hour trip to Iraklion. No one thought it strange that the two of them should be going on such a long journey together and assumed it was on some kind of business connected to the forthcoming wedding. Brides-to-be had to buy gowns and all sorts of other finery, and what smarter place to go than Iraklion? chattered the women on their doorsteps that evening.
It was a long and often windswept journey along the coast, and as they approached the city, and the mighty Venetian harbour came into view, Maria wished more than anything that they had no cause to be here. In her entire life she had not seen such dust and chaos, and the noise of trucks and construction work deafened her. Giorgis had not visited the city since the war, and apart from the hefty city walls, which had stubbornly withstood German bombardment, most of it had changed beyond recognition. They drove around in a state of confusion, catching glimpses of spacious squares with fountains playing in their centre, only to pass the same point some time later and realise to their irritation that they had been going round in circles. Eventually they spotted the newly built hospital and Giorgis pulled up outside.
It was ten minutes before midday, and by the time they had negotiated the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital and found Dr Kyritsis’s department, they were late for their appointment. Giorgis, particularly, was flustered.
‘I wish we had allowed more time,’ he fretted.
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure he will understand. It’s not our fault that this city has been turned into a maze - or that they’ve built this hospital like one as well,’ said Maria.
A nurse was there to greet them and took some details as they sat in the stifling corridor. Dr Kyritsis would be with them shortly. The two of them sat in silence, breathing in the unfamiliar antiseptic smells that characterised the hospital. They had little conversation to make but there was plenty to watch as nurses bustled about in the corridor and the occasional patient was wheeled by. Eventually the nurse came to escort them into the office.
If the war had transformed the face of Iraklion, it had left an even greater mark on Dr Kyritsis. Though his slim figure was unchanged, the thick black hair had turned silver-grey and the previously unlined face now bore clear signs of age and overwork. He looked every one of his forty-two years.
‘Kyrie Petrakis,’ he said, stepping from behind his desk and taking Giorgis’s hand.
‘This is my daughter Maria,’ said Giorgis.
‘Despineda Petrakis. It’s over ten years since I saw you but I do remember you as a child,’ said Dr Kyritsis, shaking her hand. ‘Please, do sit down and tell me why you have come.’
Maria began, nervously at first, to describe her symptoms.
‘Two weeks ago, I noticed a pale mark on my left foot. It’s slightly dry and a little numb. With my mother’s history I couldn’t ignore it, so that’s why we are here.’
‘And is it just this one area? Or are there others?’
Maria looked across at her father. Since the discovery of the first mark, she had found several others. No one ever saw her undressed, and she had had huge difficulty craning her neck to examine her own back in a small bedroom mirror, but even in the dim light she had made out several other blemishes. The patch on her foot was no longer the only one.
‘No,’ she replied. ‘There are some others.’
‘I will need to examine them, and if I think it necessary we will have to take some skin smears.’
Dr Kyritsis got up and Maria followed him into his surgery, leaving Giorgis alone in the office to contemplate the anatomical drawings that lined the walls. First of all Kyritsis examined the lesion on her foot and afterwards those on her back. He then tested them for sensitivity, first using a feather and then a pin. There was no doubt in his mind that there was some impairment to nerve endings, but whether it was leprosy he was not one hundred per cent certain. He made detailed notes and then sketched on an outline of the body where the patches had been found.
‘I am sorry, Despineda Petrakis, I will have to take some smears here. It won’t take long, but I am afraid it will leave your skin a little sore afterwards.’
Maria sat in silence as Kyritsis and a nurse prepared slides and gathered the required instruments. Only a month ago she had been showing off the latest items from her trousseau to her friends, some silk stockings which floated across their hands, lighter than air, as transparent as dragonfly wings. She had tried them on and they slipped over her skin, so gossamer fine it was as though her slim legs were still naked; the dark seam that traced the back of her leg was the only clue to their existence. She had then tried on the shoes she was to wear on her wedding day, and now the same foot that had slipped into that delicate shoe was to be cut open.
‘Despineda Petrakis, I need you to lie on the couch, please.’ Dr Kyritsis’s words broke into her reverie.
The scalpel was razor sharp. It penetrated her skin by no more than two millimetres but in her mind the incision was magnified. It felt as though she was being sliced apart like meat as the doctor gathered enough tissue pulp from below the surface of the skin to put on the slide and examine under a microscope. She winced and her eyes watered with pain and fear. Kyritsis then took a smear from her back, and the nurse quickly applied some antiseptic ointment and cotton wool.
Once the bleeding had stopped, Maria was helped from the couch by the nurse and they returned to Dr Kyritsis’s office.
‘Well,’ said the doctor. ‘I will have the results of those smears within a few days. I shall be examining them for the presence of the Hansen bacillus, which is the only definitive proof of the presence of leprosy. I can write to you or, if you prefer, you can come and see me again and I can tell you in person. Personally, I think it’s better for all parties if a diagnosis can be given face-to-face.’
In spite of the long journey involved, both father and daughter knew that they did not want to receive such news by post.
‘We’ll come to see you,’ said Giorgis on behalf of them both.
Before they left the hospital, another appointment was made. Dr Kyritsis would expect them at the same time the following week. His professionalism was absolute and he had given no hint of what he expected the result to be. He certainly did not want to worry them unnecessarily, nor did he wish to give them false hope, and his manner was therefore neutral, almost indifferent.
It was the longest week of Maria’s life. Only Fotini knew that her friend was living on the edge of a precipice. She tried to occupy herself with as many practical tasks as possible, but nothing was enough to distract her from what might happen the following Monday.
The Friday before they were due to return to Iraklion, Anna called on her. She was eager to know: had Maria been to have tests? What were the results? Why did she not know? When were they going to hear? There was no implied sympathy or concern in her questions. Maria answered her sister in monosyllables and eventually Anna went on her way.
As soon as her sister was out of sight, Maria rushed off to see Fotini. She had been disturbed by the almost vindictive note of enthusiasm she had detected in Anna’s reaction to the situation.
‘I suppose she’s eager for information because it could affect her one way or the other,’ said Fotini holding her
friend’s hand tightly. ‘But we mustn’t dwell on that. We must be optimistic, Maria.’
For a few days Maria had hidden herself away. She had sent a message to Manoli that she was unwell and would not be able to see him until the following week. Fortunately, he did not question it, and when he saw Giorgis at the bar in Plaka, his future father-in-law supported her story and assured Manoli that his daughter would be better before long. Not being able to see Manoli made Maria miserable. She missed his gaiety and felt leaden with misery at the prospect that their wedding might now be in jeopardy.
Monday arrived, eventually. Maria and Giorgis repeated the journey to Iraklion, but this time found the hospital more easily and were soon sitting outside Kyritsis’s office once again. It was his turn to be late. The nurse came out to see them and apologised for the delay. Dr Kyritsis had been detained but would be with them within half an hour, she said. Maria was nearly beside herself. So far she had managed to contain her anxiety, but the thirty minutes she now had to wait took her beyond the limits of endurance, and she paced up and down the corridor to try and calm herself.
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