YANNIS (Cretan Saga Book 1) (34 page)

‘Can we say a prayer for Dimitris?’

Beside each bed a leper knelt, those who were legless sat with heads bowed respectfully. For some unaccountable reason Yannis found he was crying, and as he rose Spiro’s eyes looked suspiciously moist. He gave a weak grin.

‘Lucky man. He deserves heaven after all he’s been through.’

‘Is he very old?’

Spiro shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Is he really dying?’

Spiro nodded. ‘I expect so. Somehow people seem to know.’

‘How many people have died here?’

‘About thirty, I think, since I’ve been here, anyway.’

Yannis felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle. ‘I think I’ll go to bed.’

For the rest of the evening the ward was quiet. No one played dice or cards, groups chatted together in undertones, everyone glancing at Dimitris from time to time. The white haired man stayed by his bed in a continual attitude of prayer. Sleep did not come easily to anyone, least of all to Yannis who seemed to hear the slightest sound. The dawn light was filtering through the high, grilled window when Yannis heard a sound that made his hair stand on end. The shrill keening of women came to his ears, making him shiver. Groping his way to Spiro’s bed he shook his friend awake.

‘What’s happening?’

Spiro propped himself up on one elbow. ‘They’ve told his wife.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In one of the other wards.’

‘What? Are there women in here as well?’ Yannis’s eyes widened in horror. ‘He would have wanted his wife with him at the end.’ The dirty sheet had been pulled up over Dimitris’s face.

The keening and wailing continued well into the morning, until Yannis felt his teeth on edge and his head throbbing. ‘When will they stop?’

‘When they’ve been told the body’s been taken away.’

‘I wish they’d hurry up!’

‘It’s not a pretty sight,’ warned Spiro.

Yannis shrugged. ‘I’ve not seen anything in here yet that could be described as pretty.’

Spiro was right. The disposal of Dimitris’s corpse was sickening. Two orderlies arrived and threw a sack at the first inmate they saw. He held out his deformed hand and was tapped by a truncheon. ‘Get on with it.’

Unwillingly he made his way towards Dimitris’s bed and an orderly beckoned two more men over. The first held the sack open whilst the others placed the bodily remains inside. They tied it securely and dragged it to one side of the ward. The orderly unlocked a trapdoor set in the floor and the body was unceremoniously pushed through.

‘Where does it go?’ asked Yannis in a whisper.

‘I’m not sure,’ answered Spiro, ‘probably to an incinerator. They treat us like rubbish whether we’re dead or alive.’

‘Can’t we do something? We’re people. We can’t help being ill. If we spoke to a doctor wouldn’t he do something?’

‘Yannis, you have to realise that once you’re in here you can do nothing. If you complain to an orderly he’ll just give you a cosh.’

‘Suppose we forced them to take notice of us?’

‘How?’ Spiro was scornful. ‘What shall we do? Stage a protest march or go on hunger strike?’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Yes, Yannis, and so am I when I say there’s nothing we can do.’ Spiro walked away.

Yannis followed him. ‘Let’s talk to Manolis. Maybe he can think of something. He’s been here longer than us.’

Spiro sighed. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

Manolis was as scornful as Spiro had been. ‘I suggest we break up our beds and attack the orderlies with the iron bars, then we can walk out of the doors and return to our homes. Stop dreaming, Yannis. I thought you’d come to terms with it by now.’

Yannis tilted his chin defiantly. ‘I’ll never come to terms with it. I may have to put up with indignities, it doesn’t mean I have to accept them.’

He left the two men together and returned to his bed. It seemed strange not to have his noisy, putrefying companion next to him. He had grown used to the bubbly breathing and the nauseous smell.

‘I’m getting like the others,’ he thought miserably. ‘I’m beginning to accept these conditions and even be grateful for them.’ He banged his fist on the mattress. ‘I won’t! I won’t!’ he vowed. His head cleared. ‘I won’t what? I won’t lay here day after day, growing steadily more neglected, then what am I going to do?’

Dimitris’s bed was filled before the week was out. A middle-aged man, whose eyes held a wild, hunted look was allocated to it. Yannis spoke to him gently, introducing himself and asking the stranger’s name. The eyes stared at him and two well-shaped and manicured hands fluttered at him, pointing to his mouth.

‘Can’t you speak?’

The man shook his head.

‘Can you hear?’

The man’s hands fluttered again and he nodded.

Yannis crossed his legs under him and sat on the man’s bed. ‘I’ll talk and you can nod or shake. Understand?’

For almost an hour Yannis sat communicating with the dumb leper, when he left him he felt more depressed than usual.

‘You know,’ he said to Manolis, ‘I can almost envy you. He can’t speak and he has trouble eating. I dread to think what the inside of his mouth is like. He ought to have special foods and milk to build up his strength.’

Manolis looked at Yannis in despair. ‘What’s the point of fattening him up? It would be better to starve him for a few days so he could die.’

‘Have you seen his hands?’ asked Yannis. ‘He was a musician and he has the most beautiful hands you’ve ever seen.’

‘Some of us would just like hands,’ remarked Manolis dryly. ‘You have to accept, Yannis, that the people who enter these four walls are here to die, and most of us would be grateful to get it over and done with. You seem to have some wonderful idea that we’ll all get better. Face facts, Yannis. We’re the living dead. There’s no hope at all for us.’

Manolis turned away, but Yannis took him by the shoulder and rolled him back to face him. ‘I’ve been thinking and I’ve got a plan. I want to know what you think.’

Manolis sighed. ‘I think you’re crazy.’

‘No, seriously, listen to me. Suppose we attacked the orderlies, no hear me out,’ Yannis remonstrated as Manolis threw back his head and laughed. ‘If we overpowered them, took their truncheons away, and held them here until the authorities agreed to treat us properly.’

‘They’d probably shoot us! For a start we aren’t able to fight them. We’re all of us sick and most of us are crippled, and if by any chance we did manage to overcome them they’d only send more to take their place. You must just put up with it, Yannis, like the rest of us.’

Yannis shook his head. ‘I’m sure if the hospital authorities knew how we are treated they’d do something. Conditions weren’t as bad as this in Heraklion. The food wasn’t very good, but it was edible. The doctor came to see us once a week. Here I’ve never even seen a doctor. Let’s give it a try.’

Manolis looked at Yannis’s flushed face and bright eyes with suspicion. He was probably running a temperature. ‘We’ll talk to Spiro. Call him over.’

As Spiro approached Manolis shook his head at him. ‘Yannis has been thinking and wants to put an idea to you.’

Spiro sat on the end of the bed. ‘I’m listening.’ He winked at Manolis.

‘I want to attack the orderlies and make them take us to the administrator. He’d have to listen to us.’

‘Would he? Why?’

‘He’d have to listen because we’d only make reasonable requests. I’ve thought it all out carefully.’ Yannis settled himself on the end of Manolis’s bed. ‘We’d ask them to provide more water, so we can wash properly,’ he began to tick them off on his fingers. ‘We’d ask for more food, so we don’t fight over it like a crowd of animals, and fresh food, not scraps and stale left-overs.’

Spiro nodded. ‘That sounds reasonable enough.’

‘Then we’d ask for clean sheets and clean clothes more often. Once a month isn’t enough. We all smell. Think of those who have open sores, their clothes and sheets stick to them. We could include in that clean bandages, every week at least.’ Yannis paused for breath.

‘I don’t know. They could make it worse for us.’ Spiro was doubtful.

‘Worse! How could it be worse? They hit us, underfeed us, leave us in the kind of filth you wouldn’t keep an animal in and dispose of our dead like sacks of rubbish.’

‘Does it matter when you’re dead?’

Yannis rounded on Manolis. ‘It may not matter to you when you’re dead, but you know the effect it has on the rest of us. God knows we have little enough dignity whilst we’re alive, why shouldn’t we have a little when we die?’

Spiro shifted uncomfortably. ‘I know you’re right, Yannis, but I can’t see it working.’

‘Let’s try. How many others are there as fit as us?’

‘I don’t know, ten, twelve maybe.’

‘Then let’s ask them. If they all say no I’ll forget it, but if the majority are with me, let’s give it a try.’ Yannis’s eyes gleamed with enthusiasm, the first he had shown since he arrived.

‘We’ll see,’ Spiro was cautious. ‘I’ll talk to some of the others.’

Manolis thumped his stump on his mattress. ‘You’re mad, both of you. If you manage to overpower the orderlies, and if you manage to get to the administrator’s office, and if you manage to get him to listen to you, what do you think he’s going to do?’ Spiro and Yannis looked at him. ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing.’

‘Then we’ll do it again, and again, until he does do something.’

‘Count me out.’ Manolis turned away from his friends. Spiro raised an eyebrow to Yannis and jerked his head. They walked over to Yannis’s bed.

‘Take no notice of him. He’s having a bad day.’ Spiro leant his head on his hands. ‘I love Manolis like a brother. He kept me sane when I first came here, but how I wish he would die!’

Yannis hardly heard him. ‘Spiro, who’s the most respected man in here?’

‘I don’t know. Whoever’s managed to survive the longest I should think.’

‘I don’t mean like that. I mean by profession. The priest, what about him?’

‘Maybe, but he isn’t really a priest. He was a monk.’

‘Anyone else? Yiorgo, the doctor?’

‘He’s all right with cuts and bruises, but he’s not a doctor. He was a butcher before he came in here. Still is, according to his patients.’

‘We need someone who’ll be listened to. Someone that even the authorities will respect. Think, Spiro, you know them all better than I do.’

‘There’s Andreas, but he can’t walk. He was a lawyer.’

‘We could carry him.’

‘That would mean using more men who were fit. I’m not sure if we’d have enough.’

‘You’re with me, then?’ Delighted Yannis clapped his friend on the back. ‘We’ll do it, I know we will.’

‘I wish I had your confidence.’

Yannis gazed at Spiro earnestly. ‘I’ve got to do something. I’ll go mad soon. There’s nothing to do, no books, not even a newspaper. Anything could have happened in the world and we wouldn’t know. Do you even know what day it is?’

Spiro considered; then shook his head. ‘Yannis, I fretted like you when I first came here. It takes a while to settle down and accept. If you continue to get yourself so worked up you will go mad.’

‘I will not accept this life, this existence. You were a farmer before you were brought here. Don’t you miss being out in the fields, smelling the soil, picking your crops?’

To Yannis’s surprise tears filled Spiro’s eyes. ‘Of course I miss it. Sometimes I dream I’m back home and I wake up smelling the soil or the grapes. When I was first diagnosed I shouldn’t have agreed to treatment. I should have hidden and let my family care for me.’

‘You’d have been found and sent to the island.’

‘What island?’

‘Opposite my village there’s an island. They send all the lepers there that they find hiding in the caves or begging.’

‘Have you been there?’

Yannis remembered his night visits. ‘I’ve sailed round it with my uncle. We used to send food out to them, usually the poorest of the crop. Now I’d insist that my Pappa sent them the best of everything.’

‘Do your parents know you’re here?’

Yannis shook his head. ‘No one knows.’

‘Won’t they have worried and looked for you?’

‘Probably, but I can’t do anything about it now. That’s another thing we could ask the administrator for – paper and pencils so we could write to our relatives.’

‘Please, Yannis, give up this scheme of yours.’

‘I thought you agreed with me?’

‘I do, but I can’t see it working.’

‘We won’t be any worse off if it doesn’t work,’ Yannis replied stubbornly. ‘If you don’t want to do anything yourself introduce me to Andreas and let me ask him to speak for us. Point out the men you think are the fittest and let me approach them. If everyone disagrees with me I’ll accept that I’m wrong and forget the whole idea.’

Spiro gave up. ‘Very well, after supper we’ll talk to Andreas.’

The old man listened carefully to Yannis. ‘My boy,’ his voice was thin and weak. ‘I agree with you. Something should be done, something must be done, but I can’t help you. I haven’t the strength.’

‘We could carry you, sir,’ Yannis offered eagerly.

Andreas shook his head. ‘I shan’t be here much longer. By the time you needed me to speak for you I could be dead, then your efforts would have been for nothing. You must find someone stronger.’

‘We need someone they would listen to, he must be a lawyer or solicitor.’

‘Costas is the man you want. He was a politician in Athens. They’d listen to him. Call him over, Spiro, and you can tell him all you’ve told me.’

Spiro looked around until he saw the man. Wearing an incredibly dirty, old, grey suit, a middle aged man sat on the edge of his bed. His clawed hands hung down between his knees; altogether he presented a picture of apathy.

‘I’ll get him.’ Spiro threaded his way through the beds to the other side of the ward. At first Costas shook his head, then finally Spiro persuaded him and he rose slowly and shuffled over to them, sitting on the end of Andreas’s bed.

‘Come closer,’ ordered Andreas.

Obediently Costas moved nearer and Andreas repeated to him the conversation he had shared with Spiro and Yannis.

Costas shook his head. ‘It won’t work. They won’t listen.’

‘It’s worth trying,’ insisted Yannis. ‘Will you speak for us?’