The Whispers of Nemesis (2 page)

‘Forgive me, forgive me,' he said to Frona, pressing her free hand between his own. ‘That old clock of mine has stopped again! It's unreliable, and I should throw it out, but we grow attached to things, don't we, we grow attached. Leda,
kori mou
, have courage. We shall honour your father, and carry his bones to their final rest. How are we getting on?' He released Frona's hand, and looking down on the widow, wished her
kali spera
.

‘You're just in time, Papa,' said Katerina. ‘He's here, beneath my fingers.'

A scrawny hand gripped Leda's shoulder.

‘Don't you worry,
kalé
,' said an old woman, speaking low in Leda's ear. ‘Your father was a good man, and his bones will be white, and clean.'

‘I have him!' cried Katerina. ‘I have the skull!'

She pulled from the earth an object black with soil, and held it before her.

‘Pass it up,' called one of the gathering, impatiently. ‘Pass it to his daughter, so she can wash him.'

But no one joined her in her demand. All were staring at the object in Katerina's hand.

Bewildered, Frona turned to Papa Tomas.

‘
Panayia mou
,' said Papa Tomas, and made several urgent crosses in the air.

 

Leda ran, and no one moved to stop her; she ran the path between the tombs, as far as the cemetery gates, where she kicked off her shoes, picked them up and ran on faster, down the lane between the snow-banks which still lay at the verges. The cement was cold and hard, and sharp stones pricked her feet; but in the exhilaration of running barefoot, her stricken face relaxed, and as she slowed down to a walk, the redness of exertion brightened her pale cheeks.

The lane led her to Vrisi's village square. Breathless, she brushed the dirt from her feet; the small cuts on their soles were seeping blood, and the nylon of her stockings was in shreds. She slipped her shoes back on her feet, and glanced behind. No one, as yet, was following. Out of habit learned from her father, she looked up above the foothills, searching for airborne eagles, but the skies were empty; on the road which wound in hairpins through the pine-forests, nothing moved.

She walked slowly towards the heart of the square, where a statue stood on a plinth engraved with her father's name –
Santos Volakis, Poet
– and the dates of his birth and death. The granite figure was a bland-faced man, undistinguished, and dressed in a style of suit her father had worn only at his own wedding; it held one finger to its cheek, in an effeminate gesture her father had never made, mocking in its vacuous contemplation of a wordless book the incisiveness she had so admired in him. Bright scraps of litter lay in the hardy weeds around the statue's base; pigeon-droppings fouled her father's shoulders and the toe-caps of his shoes.

Along the cemetery lane, voices high with the excitement of a drama were growing close. Leda drew her coat tight round her, and lowered her head; and, trusting in this attitude to defend her against unwanted enquiry into her welfare, she set off uphill on the familiar road, in the direction of the house she had once called home.

Four Years Previously

 

Fence your own vineyards, and covet not those of others.

Greek proverb

Two

The audience was alive with anticipation. Most of its members had arrived early, and checked the slowly passing minutes on their watches, flicking through well-read volumes brought for signing as they exchanged pleasantries with strangers. As the hands of the wall-clock moved close to the hour, a man – somewhat overweight, and rather taller than most – took a seat amongst them, tucking a leather holdall between his feet and unbuttoning his raincoat before settling into his chair.

On the platform of the draughty hall, the Dean in all his pomposity at last rose from his seat, and spreading his arms wide as a circus ringmaster, exhorted the warmest of welcomes for the visiting speaker.

‘It is an unsurpassed honour for the university, and for the Department of Hellenic Studies in particular, to present to you our most distinguished guest. Santos Volakis has been called the finest poet of his generation, but I suggest that the innovative nature of his work, his mastery of contemporary poetic form and the beauty that he weaves from the words of our noble language might easily earn him a place amongst the greatest of
all
generations. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce him to you now – Santos Volakis!'

Clapping his fleshy hands together, red-faced and beaming, the Dean led the light (though enthusiastic) applause from the forty-two people before him, and sat down on his carved-backed chair before a bust of an ageing Homer.

Through the hall's high windows, rain dribbled from broken guttering to the lintels, and splashed into pools spreading across the car park. Behind the platform's long, oak table, Santos Volakis stood, opened up a slim volume at a page marked with a strip of yellow paper, and slipped his hands in the pockets of his gabardine trousers, stooping as though his back carried some burden, his head low, as if he bore some grief. Too young by at least a decade for grey-haired gravitas, he cultivated that quality through an older man's style of dress – a brushed-cotton shirt, a waistcoat lined with silk, a jacket with the elbows patched in ovals of green leather – and as a mark of his creativity, wore his hair down to his shoulders. With languorous abstraction, he brushed stray strands from his eyes.

‘Thank you,' he said. ‘I shall read, if I may, from
Songs from Silence
, my latest collection. And aiding me with a dramatic interpretation of my work, my lovely daughter, Leda.'

Leda stepped from behind a stage curtain of faded velvet, slender in a gown of powder-blue chiffon, satin ballet shoes tied with ribbons on her feet, her hair pinned up in an elaborate arrangement of ringlets. She brought with her to the stage two masks, mounted on silver rods: sinister, porcelain faces drawn from the dramas of ancient Greece, one showing the despair of Tragedy, the other – which she held up to conceal her own face – Comedy's ridiculing grin.

The clock on the wall ticked away the expectant seconds. At first, the poet seemed to have no intention of beginning. He looked down at his audience, regarding them as if they were curios on display, until his eyes fell on a young girl in the front row, at whom he smiled. Then, with only a glance at the pages of the open book, he began his recitation. In unhurried, seductive tones as dark as chocolate, his mesmerising verses span webs of erotic craving and love, of loss, grief and regret, of fierce patriotism and stirring longings to be carried home. And as he spoke, Leda gracefully mimed the poem's sentiments, illustrating through artful movements the subtle nuances of her father's words, from time to time switching masks, always whilst her back was to the audience, so her own face was always hidden by a false smile, or a bogus frown.

At the end of each poem, there was a pause, which seemed to wake the poet's listeners from the dreams he had inspired and prompt them to eager applause. As he turned the page to each fresh poem, he surveyed his audience with arrogance, assessing their ability to grasp the finer shades of meaning in his verses; and wherever he had doubts, he turned the page again.

For forty minutes, he went on in this way – reciting, captivating, judging, moving on – until he finished the last poem in the volume. Sighing, he closed the book, said ‘Thank you,' and sat down, as Leda slipped away behind the curtain.

In a light sweat of excitement, the Dean tugged at his bow-tie to loosen it, and rose once more from his seat.

‘Marvellous!' he said. ‘Breathtaking, absolutely! Such a privilege for all of us to hear that
astonishing
work read by the man who created it. And
Kyrie
Volakis has very kindly agreed to stay with us a while, to answer your questions and sign copies of his books, which are on sale at the back of the hall. Now, will you please join me in thanking him once again in the accustomed manner? Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Santos Volakis!'

The Dean ushered the poet off the platform and through the hall. The people who had been his audience stood back, and watched the poet curiously as he passed, as if surprised to find him merely human.

A short queue had already formed before the desk where the poet was to sign copies of his books; behind a table stacked with Santos's three published anthologies, a young man waited with an open cash-box.

The man with the leather holdall rose from his seat. Beneath his raincoat, he wore a charcoal-grey suit, whose excellent cut disguised his corpulence, to a degree, though the quality of his tailoring was blighted by the old-fashioned, white canvas tennis shoes on his feet. He made his way to the bookseller's table, where he picked up a copy of
Songs from Silence
, and read a few lines before turning it over to examine the stiffly posed black-and-white photograph of the poet on the back cover.

The fat man smiled at the bookseller.

‘The photograph does him no justice,' he said, in the clear, accentless Greek of TV newscasters. ‘The man, in life, has the charisma of an artist, which the camera cannot capture. I'll take the book.'

As the bookseller counted out change, the fat man glanced across at the signing-desk, where the short queue had grown longer.

‘A pity I don't have time to wait to have my copy signed,' he said, pocketing coins. ‘I am a great admirer of
Kyrie
Volakis's talent. Still, life's twists and turns are unpredictable. Perhaps he and I shall meet some other time. Thank you.'

As the fat man left the hall, the Dean saw that the poet was comfortably seated, and snapped his fingers at a faculty secretary, who rushed up with a carafe of water and a glass of acidic wine. The poet held her eyes as he thanked her, and the secretary – a woman close to forty, and no longer used to flirtation – dipped her head to hide the blush spreading up her neck, and hurried away.

Santos removed the cap from a black fountain pen, brushed his long hair abstractedly from his eyes and looked up at a girl whose own tight-plaited hair reached down to the small of her back.

Nervously, she smiled at him, and handed him a copy of the slender, hard-backed book from which he'd read – a handsome edition whose pale-blue jacket carried the poet's name and the title,
Songs from Silence
, in graceful, white script, and on whose spine, below the publisher's name – Bellerophon Editions – a spread-winged Pegasus carried a sword-wielding warrior.

‘I'm such a fan of yours,' she said.

‘Who is it for?' asked the poet, his pen ready over the title page.

‘Marianna,' she said. ‘And could you please write a line from the
Songs
, too?'

As the queue dwindled, the Dean came to Santos's side.

‘Is your daughter not with us?' asked the Dean.

‘Leda had a train to catch,' said the poet. ‘She wanted to be home by this evening. She has an examination tomorrow, and she's conscientious in her studies. She hopes to go into higher education, later this year.' The poet's speech was pedantic, and not like other people's; he chose his words like a poor man at a market, as if they must offer best value, and once the words were chosen, they were carefully fitted together, so his sentences emerged perfect both in structure and in meaning, each one a puzzle already completed. There were no corrections, no hesitations or reversals, none of the verbal tics of common conversation. The poet was a master of his language: his most casual communication declared it.

‘How admirable, then, that she took the trouble to be here,' remarked the Dean.

The poet took a volume from the man before him, and having asked his name, began to write.

‘She's a devoted daughter, and I, for my part, appreciate that devotion,' he said. ‘She has, in the past, covered hundreds of miles to be with me at my readings. Happily, the journey today was not such a long one.'

‘Speaking of journeys, what time will your driver be here?' asked the Dean.

The poet finished an elaborate signature, and handed the autographed book back to its purchaser. He looked up at the Dean.

‘My driver?' he asked. ‘They don't supply me with a driver. I shall no doubt find a taxi, when I'm done. Please.' He beckoned to the last customer in his queue.

‘No driver?' asked the Dean. ‘But surely . . .'

Again, the poet looked up.

‘There was a time,' he said, ‘when poets were venerated, when the rewards for the work were just.' He pointed with the end of his pen towards the bust of Homer on the platform. ‘Those days, sadly, are gone, and I shall end my days, like some Van Gogh, in penury, yet with the small hope that my work will live on, when I am gone.'

The candour of his statement drew sympathy, whilst the pathos of his stated situation shocked his listeners – the customer waiting for his signed book, the Dean, the faculty secretary counting the proceeds from the book sales.