The Whispers of Nemesis (15 page)

‘I'll do all right,' said the hermit, placing a tin of pears by the cash register. ‘I need batteries – big ones, for a torch – and I'll take a can of butane for the stove.'

The shopkeeper stopped the slicer, and looked with incredulity at the hermit.

‘Are you mad, friend?' he asked. ‘You can't be thinking of going over there, tonight? Take a bed at the taverna, relax, have a drink or two, and go tomorrow, in daylight at least.'

‘I know my way well enough,' said the hermit, ‘and you say it'll be worse tomorrow. So. What do I owe you?'

‘Well, don't expect me to come after you when you're sinking,' said the shopkeeper. He took a pencil from behind his ear, and on the back of a supplier's invoice began to list the hermit's purchases, adding a price he thought appropriate after each item. ‘A night crossing in this weather wants a lot of care, and – no offence, friend, no offence – your experience is not what it might be. Better sailors than you have come to grief on a sea like this. She's like a woman – respect her moods, or take the consequences. Stay here tonight, I tell you. You'd be a fool to go.'

‘The risk is my own,' said the hermit. ‘If you don't see me for a while, assume the trip didn't go well, and look for me on the seabed.'

The shopkeeper shrugged.

‘Two thousand nine, then,' he said. ‘Don't say I didn't warn you. Call it two eight, for cash.'

The hermit handed over three thousand-drachma notes.

‘Keep it,' he said. ‘I'll take a tin of something, for the dog.'

‘There's corned beef,' said the shopkeeper. ‘Or Spam. That animal likes Spam.' He gave the hermit a tin from the shelf behind him. ‘I didn't keep your newspapers, by the way. I thought you'd have no trouble finding newspapers, wherever you were. I'll keep one back for you again, from tomorrow.'

The hermit gathered up his purchases.

‘I mean it, about taking care,' said the shopkeeper. ‘It's a bad night to be out there, in your small boat. What's your hurry, that you must get back tonight? I'll tell you what, I'll get the wife to mind the store, and I'll keep you company. We'll go and have a drink together, you and I. What do you say?'

‘I appreciate your concern,' said the hermit. ‘But I've been away much longer than I intended, and I feel the need to return to my own quiet corner. I get tired of the world's ways, and its people.'

‘Don't we all, my friend?' said the shopkeeper, taking a drink of his
tsipouro
. ‘Don't we all?'

 

Outside, the hermit whistled his dog to heel, and heaved his haversack on to his back. At a berth along the quayside, he crouched to pull his boat in close; the dog jumped aboard, and padded, tail wagging, to the stern. The boisterous water rose and fell, its wave peaks splashing the roadway as they hit the harbour wall. Beyond the beacon at the harbour's end, the sea was dark.

By the light of a streetlamp, the hermit stepped into the boat, and stashed his small cargo under the seats, covering it with an oil-stained tarpaulin. He lifted the bench cover, and changed from his new shoes into a worn pair of boots.

In the deserted harbour, his engine sounded loud. With the navigation lights glowing red and green, he hauled in the anchor, cast off the mooring rope and headed out to sea.

Beyond the headland, where no land provided shelter and the wind could build its strength, the roughness of the sea was intimidating. He should, he knew, go back; yet the prospect of capsizing and going down seemed preferable to the shopkeeper's smug self-righteousness if he should return.

He gripped the tiller tight beneath his arm, and trained a torch-beam on the shoreline to gauge his distances; but the torch-beam found only water, and with no choice but to sail on blind, he gambled as he steered by wits and senses.

He wore no watch, and lost all track of time. The dark pressed in on all sides: ahead, behind, to port and starboard, there was no sign of lights, or land. The first wisps of panic entered his mind; the dog, becoming troubled, left his accustomed station at the prow, and lay down on his master's feet.

Then, the hermit began to doubt that he was alone.

A memory possessed him – a room, a bed, a bottle – and his sense grew, that the man who had lain in that bed was here, now, in the boat. Afraid to look, and as afraid not to know, he flashed the torch beam to the prow.

No one was there.

The dog whined. The hermit kept the torch trained on the prow, as if its light could keep his fears at bay; and with his free hand, he dug deep into his pocket for the scrap of paper he had put there.

The paper was folded in four, and he didn't trouble to read it. Wanting neither the paper nor the memory, he let the paper go, and in an instant it was carried away, lost in the dark. But the memory was different. Darkness was its friend, and helped it put down roots; and once the roots were strong, the memory began its virulent growth.

Death

Eleven

Winter had not finished with Vrisi. As the fat man sped away with Hassan, a fresh snowfall began – weighty flakes, at first, which fell grey through the air but became, on landing, white, and brightened the patches of gritty snow remaining from the last fall. Then, as the temperature dropped, the snow became a mist icy and fine as dust, and seemingly harmless; but this white powder blew into every cranny, and crept in under the doors, blowing off the roofs in ash-like clouds which flew wet in the faces of those passing, and quickly formed soft drifts of uncertain depths.

For three days, snow fell. Trodden down on house paths and steps, it froze into perilous ice, clear yet distorting as the glass in old windows. The housewives scattered salt, crackling the ice as it split; they hacked at it with their broom handles, and swept the shards away. The north wind grew in strength, until even the livestock shivered; the men carried feed heads down, half-deaf under the earflaps of trappers' caps, with the cold burning their thighs through their trousers, nipping their finger-ends red through their gloves. The chickens remained in their coops, pecking at dishes of warm mash, the few eggs they laid frozen solid in their shells. Ducks slithered on the pond's new ice; there was ice again on the water butts; icicles hung long from leaking gutters, and forgotten washing froze brittle on the lines.

The people stayed indoors, close to the fires, though the snow found its way down the chimneys, hissing as it dropped on the burning logs. Wrapped in their outdoor clothes, they ate pulse soups and broths, and the women warmed their hands on honeyed tisanes. The men kept glasses by their coffee cups and used alcohol to fight off boredom, until the pressure of being at home grew too much; then they went to the
kafenion
, where more alcohol led to risky bets on hands of cards. The more they drank, the more they lost; their curses grew angrier and bluer, ringing loud through the afternoons.

The roads were slick and treacherous, and, as the snow's depth grew, impassable except on foot. For a day, they stayed that way, until the men rigged a makeshift plough to a tractor and ploughed the snow into roadside mounds, which grew higher with each day's clearance.

During the night of the third day, the wind changed, and breaks appeared in the clouds; the morning which followed brought clear skies, and the thaw at last began. Snow slid from the roofs, and as it melted, revealed the buds of a new season's growth. Vrisi's spring ran fast with melt-water, which filled the pond where the ducks dabbled and dived.

But where the snow was deep, the thaw was slow; and where the banks of ploughed snow were in shadow, they lay, slowly shrinking, for over a week.

 

The phone rang.

Driven to bed by boredom and the hope of warmth, Frona lay the book she was reading on the blankets, and turned the bedside clock towards her to read its face.

The hour was not late, but as she went by the closed door, Leda's room was silent. In Santos's study, Frona answered the call.

‘
Oriste?
'

No one spoke, but at the end of the line, someone was listening: Frona was sure of it.

‘
Oriste?
' she said, again. ‘Who is this?'

The caller held on a few moments longer, not quite silent, breathing with care, until the receiver was replaced and the line went dead.

 

‘Who was on the phone last night?'

Frona was clearing breakfast. Leda had eaten almost nothing, but had crumbled a slice of cake on to her plate. The peel of an orange lay on the cloth, along with several uneaten segments of the fruit.

‘I don't know,' said Frona. ‘A wrong number. Aren't you going to eat that? Shall I ask Maria to cook you some eggs?'

‘I don't want anything.'

‘Leda, please eat something. You're making yourself ill.' She took a chair next to her niece and, tenderly concerned, scrutinised her face, where the symptoms of insomnia were plain. At the neck of Leda's sweater, her collarbones were unbecomingly pronounced, and her once slender wrists had become skinny. ‘Listen,
kori mou
,' went on Frona. ‘Listen to me. We're all upset about this business with your father. We all want to know what's happened, and where he is. He was my brother, my only brother, and it's a blade to my heart to think of his grave being desecrated in that way. But Attis has it in hand. With luck, the money will come through now, and life will be much easier for us. We'll find a nicer place, somewhere near the park, somewhere nearer your college. And we'll hire Attis's investigator to find your father's bones. I promise you, Leda, I won't rest until he's home where he belongs.' She made crosses over her breast. ‘We'll bring him home,
agapi mou
. You have my word on that.'

Leda turned away her face and closed her eyes. Tears squeezed between the tight-shut lids.

‘Don't,' she said. From the sleeve of her sweater, she pulled a handkerchief whose fabric was already damp from her crying.

‘Come here.' Frona opened her arms, and Leda leaned into her embrace.

Frona kissed the top of Leda's head.

‘I think it's time we went back to town,' she said. ‘Hanging round this old mausoleum is getting us down. Your father would never want you to take so much time off college; you know how he would disapprove of that. Remember what he used to say: talent has its place, but hard work pays the bills. And you have talent, Leda. One day you'll be a lovely actress. But you need to work on your talent, not sit around moping. We must go home, and you must work, and make him proud of you. Make us all proud.'

Leda shook her head.

‘I can't go,' she said. ‘Not until he's found.'

‘What can you do, here? Listen to me. The best thing I can do for your father is to take care of you, and that means looking after your best interests. And your best interests aren't here. They're in your life at home, with friends around you, not fretting and worrying about things we can do nothing about.'

Leda dried more tears with her handkerchief.

‘How can we go when everything's gone so wrong?' she asked. ‘It's all so hard on you! Everything you've done for me, I didn't know – I didn't understand, when I was younger, how difficult it was for you. And now, when it should be easier, it isn't! And I can't sleep for thinking of him, wondering what's happened. Where can he be?'

Frona stroked Leda's hair.

‘We'll find him,' she said. ‘Attis will see to that.'

‘I don't want to hire Attis's investigator. I don't think we should have strangers in our family's business. And you rely too much on Attis. How do you know you can trust him?'

Frona frowned.

‘But I do trust him. I trust him because your father trusted him.'

‘Did he? Are you sure about that?'

‘But our interests are the same, Leda; surely they are.'

‘You mustn't trust him. Be careful what you say, and don't discuss our business with him. Why are you so certain he's not involved?'

Wearily, Frona sighed, and squeezed Leda's shoulder as she released it.

‘Why should he be involved?' she asked. ‘
Kori mou
, you think just like your father. You're all imagination and fancy, as he was. We must trust someone, and who else do we have? We need to get out of here. I'll call Hassan, and ask if he can take us tomorrow.'

‘Not so soon,' said Leda. ‘I don't want to go until he's found.'

‘We have to go. I can't be away much longer. I've accounts to prepare for several clients, and I can't just abandon them. We don't have your father's money yet.'

Leda said no more, but rose, and walked out of the room. As Frona picked up the orange peel from the table, she heard Leda slowly climb the stairs.

In the kitchen, she laid the plates on the drainer. Maria wasn't there. Frona lifted the lid of the saucepan on the stove, and stirred a simmering soup of beef shin and carrots.