The Priest's Well (The Greek Village Collection Book 12) (4 page)

‘Fridays,’ she replies without feeling. It seems the trust thing will take time to sink in. Perhaps now he should back it up by offering her something in return.

‘And do you take days off?’ He tries to make it sound like a light enquiry.

This question seems to baffle her. ‘No.’ The word is cautious, as if the question is some trick.

‘Then I suggest you take a day off a month. How would that be?’ She is bound to be grateful.

‘And who will look after Mama on that day?’

‘Oh, I see. No, I meant a day off from your housekeeping duties.’ But she does not seem pleased, not even grateful, just another nod, lead with her chin, agreed with by a blink of her eyes.

‘Is that all?’ She stands.

‘Yes.’ Savvas thinks about asking for more coffee. Something about the awkwardness between them repels him but as she stands, the way she moves suddenly inflames him. It is nothing she does intentionally. Rather, it is the way one of her knees rounds the other as she stands, the way her hips settle, ready to move. She is like an animal, a fragile animal with callused palms from hard work. She leaves.

Once she is gone, he stares towards the light. The back windows look out over an olive grove, no blank church wall there. With the shutters closed, he had not realised how rural the cottage is at the rear, opening onto trees and more trees. He can imagine Nefeli as a small child running between them, her hair flowing behind her, her long limbs speeding her flight. Then to fall down a well… How scared she must have been. How long was she down there? That sort of experience is enough to make anyone feel the world is an unsafe place.

A flick of a memory demands his attention. The hours he spent lying in the crucifix position on the cold church floor in penance for some wrong he had done. His mama on her knees, praying for his seven-year-old soul. His baba so recently dead to the world. Everything cold. The floor cold, his mama cold in her heart, his baba cold in his grave. Cold.

He involuntarily shivers. He can understand Nefeli’s reserve, how easy it would have been for him to have taken that course, to have retreated inside himself, allowing his mama and the bullies at school to win. It was the softness and the concern of his mama’s priest that made the difference. He showed concern, compassion, offered support. Time and time again, he has sat in the sanctuary of the priest’s quarters reading the bible. Not because he wanted to read the bible but because that was what was expected of him when he sought refuge there and it seemed to please the priest. He sought the peace of those walls so often that one day, he found he had learnt some of the scriptures so well, he could quote them. The first time these pleasant passages came to his tongue unrequested was against his Mama. That shocked him. She accused him of something which he had not done and out popped a quotation: ‘Let him with no sin cast the first stone.’

Her face went white, her fists clenched, and she looked like she was going to explode. In response, his own legs tensed, ready to run. But the outburst he was expecting from her never came. Her tension uncoiled, her colour returned, and she muttered something that almost sounded like an apology. It gave him such a feeling of power, so he tried the same tactic to defend himself against the school ruffians. With Biblical quotes, he pointed out the errors of their ways, promising eternal Hell for their actions. To his surprise, they didn’t laugh. Instead, it seemed his words scared them.

Very soon, his position in life changed dramatically. His relationship with his mama became more equal, although she was still ever hard to please. He became someone who was respected at school. The teachers treated him with something approaching reverence. The only negative was from the priest who had showed him concern and support in the first place. He backed away as Savva’s confidence and arsenal of quotes grew. This was a response which Savvas struggled to understand. But to counteract the negative effect of losing the priest’s blessing, the bishop took him under his wing instead. He became a soldier of God.

Through in the bedroom, he pulls up the wooden chair to sit at the desk. The legs scrape across the floor, inscribing their mark in the layer of settled dust. The raffia seat is coming undone, something else that needs mentioning.

The officially stamped paper lays uppermost, Nefeli’s clearly marked.

He will read it through, focus his attention on getting into the big house. Then all this list writing and complaining about petty things like raffia chairs will be unnecessary. The book in the wastepaper bin catches his eye, and he finds himself retrieving it, the rhythm of the poem calling to his senses. Reading it over this time, it is the first verse that hits him hardest.

‘On the secret seashore, white like a pigeon we thirst at noon, but the water was brackish.’ He is not totally clear what it means, but it resonates. He thirsts but the water is brackish. That’s how he feels; driven by something like thirst, but the water he is offered is not clear, not pure.

No, this thinking is self-indulgent nonsense. It is all emotional drivel.

He pulls out the bill for covering over the well, which has stuck between the book’s final pages. Presumably Sotos had that done after Nefeli’s fall. If he had been here at the time he would have poured a truckload of concrete down it, sealed it forever, not just boarded it over with a piece of wood.

His mind is wandering again. Where was he? Oh yes, the official paper for the big house.

Head bowed, he concentrates, glad now that his mama spoke only Greek at home, although this document is mostly in official Greek, which seems more like ancient Greek, and despite his fluency, he struggles.

‘Ah. I see!’ It is not such good news. The two people named—Nefeli and her crippled mama—have official rights to the house for their lifetimes. They do not own the house, but they have legal possession of it. But that could be, well, potentially, his lifetime. That’s bad.

He looks up and stares at the blank wall. If he keeps in mind that Nefeli thinks she only has the place until her mama’s death, he must be able to work it to his advantage somehow. Perhaps if he offers her something more permanent for herself, she might give up the big house before her mama dies.

His gaze drops to the wooden floor.

Perhaps it is better if she never knows the house could be hers for her lifetime. As the bishop said, it is sometimes better that people do not know everything.

A tap at the front door rouses him. Looking at his Rolex (a gift to himself to celebrate the completion of the noise insulation on his church in America), he wonders why Nefeli would be back so soon. It is nowhere near lunchtime. Leaving the papers on the desk, he goes through to let her in, but it is not Nefeli.

‘Ah, er.’ He cannot remember her name.

‘Maria,’ she prompts. He hadn’t really taken note of her before. She is thinner than she appeared in her housecoat, sweeping the road outside her house, perhaps even on the skinny, malnourished side. She must be late middle age because her hair is a flat dark colour that only a bottle of dye can bring. In front of her ears, the roots flash grey.

‘Can I help you?’ He would like to continue with his thoughts, sort through more of the papers.

‘Yes, you can. Someone stole my bike a couple of weeks ago and no one has done a thing about it and then some items of clothing went from my washing line and I suspect it is the same boys, but there is no discipline these days, they run amuck, playing football when they should be at school and stealing peoples’ property.’

The last thing he wants to do is invite her in, but to stand talking on the doorstep is inappropriate.

‘Shall we go over to the church?’ He steps out into the sunshine, looks up. It is surprisingly hot. One minute spring, the next summer.

‘No, Papas. The last papas offered some reflections after the Sunday service. It’s not traditional, but I know how you priests like the sound of your own voices. Here.’ She thrusts a sheet of paper at him, which he gingerly accepts. ‘I have provided you with some material for these reflections, best to give these young criminals’ families a bit of a nudge about their responsibilities.’

‘Thank you for your efforts, but I tend to write my own sermons, Kyria Maria.’ He pushes the papers back to her but she withdraws her hand. He all but prods her in her stomach with them.

‘You are new here, Papas. There are many things to learn about our village. One thing I know, and I am passing it on to you, is that there needs to be more self-discipline around here.’

He has seen this before in his parish in America, where there was a woman called Janet-Lee. Every week, she would have some grievance with someone and she would find their faults, write them up as a sermon without directly mentioning any names, and then deliver it to him to be read on Sundays. The first time she did this, she caught him off guard and he accepted the notes, but on reading them through, it was transparently obvious that vengeance was the motive and it was clear to whom she was referring. He burnt those notes in the fire. They felt potentially explosive. But having accepted them once, Janet-Lee seemed to think this was all the permission she needed to do it every week. Each essay, he put straight on the fire at home. But about two months later, in a quiet, almost bored moment when he had just received the news that his application for a grant to insulate the church had been turned down, he flipped though her latest offering and found within some very interesting information about a local council man involved in the processing of grant applications. With the right word in the right place, the grant went through smoothly, with a much larger budget than that for which he had initially applied. After that, he read Janet-Lee’s weekly offering avidly. It is amazing what people will do when something becomes personal. But as it is always personal when God is involved—does He not see everything, does He not know everything?—Savvas never felt guilt in using his knowledge in his dealings.

In the end, it could be said the he was just adapting to the ways of the world for the greater glory of the church. After all, God helps those who help themselves. Mama had told him this repeatedly. That was how his baba became the man he was, she said, although Savas was never sure what it was that his baba had done when he was alive. All he knew was that it was enough to keep his mama in comfort and private health care to the end of her days.

Maria does not take back her notes. Instead, she wishes him a good morning, her hands behind her back as she walks away. The same cat he saw earlier that morning follows her as she goes.

The sheaves of paper are covered in a spidery hand-written scrawl. Maybe he will go and find the local kafeneio and read them through, but then he would be sidetracked by meeting everyone, so perhaps not. He hasn’t even seen inside the church yet, but a church is a church, and he will be spending much of his future life there, so there is no hurry. However, the walls of the cottage are beginning to feel like they are closing in around him. He needs to get out, but where to go? No car means he is stuck in the village for now. That’s the first letter he will write, but for now, he needs to be outside. He goes around to the side of the cottage past the firmly boarded-up well.

The olive grove behind the house is not very big but would provide an income for a small family. He walks between the trees, which do not appear well tended. Did his predecessor take care of them? Did he rent out the land? Or did he leave it in the hands of Nefeli’s family? That is most likely.

The sunlight dapples the ground through the olive branches. The breath of an occasional breeze spins the leaves to show the bluey-green flashing to silver, and then back again. The rustling is so soft, he has to focus on it to hear it properly. There is a smell of warm earth and somewhere towards the village, a dog barks and children laugh. A car changes gear behind him and over at the grand house, a shutter bangs as if caught by the slight wind. It is peaceful here. His mama would love that he is Greece, in the land of his roots, in amongst the olive trees. She would be joyous at his coming home.

Below a tree he finds a smooth rock that is almost clear of twigs and debris. He sweeps at it with his foot, then sits. It is clearly a spot others have chosen before him, with the curve of the tree trunk just right to lean against. The view through the trees is a delight, the dappling of sun perfect. When did he last sit like this, on the ground in the sun? Not since he was a boy! He is glad he has two extra cassocks because this may dirty the one he is wearing, but right now, in the moment, he doesn’t care about the dust.

He smooths out Maria’s essay, which he has curled into a tube, and begins to read. It reads like a person trying to write a sermon as they imagine a priest would write. It is full of clichés and familiar bible quotes. It is all focused on making whoever has stolen her items of clothing feel guilty. Exactly what the items were is not specified. Having quickly read to this point, he is just about to give up when the last few paragraphs seem to change subject. They read, ‘even men of the church cannot resist all things.’ Is she talking about him or the last papas, Sotos?

‘They are just as susceptible to the charms of the devil as any man.’ His interest is momentarily aroused. Then it goes on to quote various bible passages that seem to have no relevance until, at the end, underlined: ‘Even with a whole heart, even with a whole spirit, desires and passions can take our lives until we realise it is a mistake. Sometimes it is too late to change our lives.’ Savvas frowns, trying to recall where he has read this. Somewhere, recently. Yes, isn’t that the last verse of the poem underlined in the book from the bureau? When would Maria have had access to the papas’ inner chamber?

A tree root is digging into his bottom and he tries crossing his ankles the other way around, but it brings no relief. Shuffling to one side, he looks at the ground to judge where it is flattest. The tree root arcs out of the soil before returning underground and reappearing to mould into the trunk. Where he has been leaning is the only bit of bark that is smooth. The rest of the tree is twisted and knotted, with deep holes and fissures that suggest multiple sapling trunks have grown and fused together. Some of the holes are so deep, they are partly filled with leaves and debris, but something blue is in one that is at ground level and wide enough for an animal to live in. Whatever it is has been stuffed deeply in the hole, leaving only a corner showing. Rolling onto hands and knees allows him to see more clearly that it is a book.

He looks around the olive grove, but apart from the humming of insects, he is alone. The book sticks as he tries to retrieve it and it takes bit of wiggling for it to come free. It does not look old, but when he opens it, on the first page is the date some ten years before. He flips through to the end, where the last date, in a very uncertain hand, is earlier this year. He remembers his own horror when he caught his mama reading his journal, and his initial response is to return the book to its hiding place. But something about the last date and the handwriting cause him to falter.

With another look around the grove, he pulls it free once again and puts the book up his sleeve to return to the cottage.