The Island (10 page)
Authors: Victoria Hislop
‘Don’t be afraid to cry,’ said Elpida gently. ‘The boy will see plenty of tears here. Believe me, they’re shed freely on Spinalonga.’
Eleni buried her head in Elpida’s shoulder. Two passers-by stopped and stared. Not at the sight of a woman weeping, but simply because they were curious about the newcomers. Dimitri looked away, doubly embarrassed by Eleni’s weeping and the strangers’ stares. He wished the ground beneath him would part just like in the earthquakes he had learned about in school, and then swallow him up. He knew that Crete was regularly shaken, but why not today?
Elpida could see what Dimitri was feeling. Eleni’s sobbing had begun to affect her too: she sympathised terribly but she wanted her to stop. By good fortune they had come to a halt outside her own house, and she led Eleni firmly inside. For a moment she felt self-conscious about the size of her home, which she knew contrasted starkly with the place Eleni and Dimitri had just moved into. The Kontomaris house, the official residence of the island leader, was one of the buildings from the island’s period of occupation by the Venetians, with a balcony that could almost be described as grand and a porticoed front door.
They had lived here for the past six years, and so sure was Elpida of her husband’s majority in the yearly elections that she had never even imagined what it would be like to live anywhere else. Now, of course, it was she who was discouraging him from staying on in his position, and this was what they would give up if Petros chose not to stand. ‘But who is there to take over?’ he would ask. It was true. The only others who were rumoured to be putting themselves up had few supporters. One of them was the chief among the agitators, Theodoros Makridakis, and though many of his causes were sound, it would be disastrous for the island if he was given any power. His lack of diplomacy would mean that any progress that had already been made with the government would be undone and it was quite likely that privileges could be subtly withdrawn rather than added to. The only other candidate for the role was Spyros Kazakis, a kind but weak individual whose only real interest in the position was to secure himself the house everyone on Spinalonga secretly coveted.
The interior provided an extraordinary contrast with almost every other home on the island. Floor-to-ceiling windows allowed light to flood in on three sides, and an ornate crystal lamp hung down into the middle of the room on a long dusty chain, the small, irregular shapes of coloured crystal projecting a kaleidoscopic pattern on to the pastel walls.
The furniture was worn but comfortable, and Elpida gestured to Eleni to take a seat. Dimitri wandered about the room, examining the framed photos and staring into a glass-fronted cabinet that housed precious pieces of Kontomaris memorabilia: an etched silver jug, a row of lace bobbins, some pieces of precious china, more framed pictures and, most intriguingly of all, row upon row of tiny soldiers. He stood gazing into the cabinet for some minutes, not looking beyond the glass at these objects but mesmerised by his own reflection. His face seemed as strange to him as the room where he stood and he met his own gaze with some disquiet, as though he did not recognise the dark eyes that stared back at him. This was a boy whose entire universe had encompassed the towns of Agios Nikolaos, Elounda and a few hamlets in between where cousins, aunts and uncles lived and he felt he had been transported into another galaxy. His face was mirrored in the highly polished pane and behind him he could see Kyria Kontomaris, her arms wrapped around Kyria Petrakis, comforting her as she wept. He watched for some moments and then refocused his eyes so that they could once more study the soldiers so neatly arranged in their regiments.
When he turned around to face the women, Kyria Petrakis had regained her composure and reached out both hands towards him. ‘Dimitri,’ she said, ‘I am sorry.’ Her crying had shocked as well as embarrassed him and the thought suddenly occurred to him that she might be missing her children as much as he was missing his mother. He tried to imagine what his mother would be feeling if she had been sent to Spinalonga instead of him. He took Kyria Petrakis’s hands and squeezed them hard. ‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said.
Elpida disappeared into her kitchen to make coffee for Eleni and, using sugared water with a twist of lemon, some lemonade for Dimitri. When she returned she found her visitors sitting, talking quietly. The boy’s eyes lit up when he saw his drink and he had soon drained it to the bottom. As for Eleni, whether it was the sweetness of the coffee or the kindness, she could not tell, but she felt herself enveloped in Elpida’s warm concern. It had always been her role to dispense such sympathy and she found it harder to receive than to give. She would be challenged by this reversal.
The afternoon light was beginning to fade. For a few minutes they sat absorbed in their own thoughts, the silence broken only by the careful clink of their cups. Dimitri nursed a second glass of lemonade. Never had he been in a house like this one, where the light shone in rainbow patterns and the chairs were softer than anything he had ever slept on. It was so unlike his own home, where every bench became a sleeping place at night and every rug doubled up as a blanket. He had thought that was how everyone lived. But not here.
When they had all finished their drinks, Elpida spoke.
‘Shall we continue our walk?’ she asked, rising out of her seat. ‘There’s someone waiting to meet you.’
Eleni and Dimitri followed her from the house. Dimitri was reluctant to leave. He had liked it there and hoped he might go back one day and sip lemonade, and perhaps pluck up courage to ask Kyria Kontomaris to open the cabinet so that he could take a closer look at the soldiers, maybe even pick them up.
Further up the street was a building several hundred years newer than the leader’s residence. With its crisp, straight lines, it lacked the classical aesthetics of the home they had just left. This functional structure was the hospital and was their next stop.
Eleni and Dimitri’s arrival had coincided with one of the days on which the doctor came from the mainland. This innovation and the building of the hospital had been the result of Petros Kontomaris’s campaign to improve medical treatment for the lepers. The first hurdle had been to persuade the government to fund such a project and the second to convince them that a careful doctor could treat and help them without danger of infection to himself. Finally they relented on all counts, and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday a doctor would arrive from Agios Nikolaos. The doctor who had put himself forward for what many of his colleagues thought was a dangerous and foolhardy assignment was Christos Lapakis. He was a jovial, red-faced fellow in his early thirties, well liked by the staff in the dermatovenereology department at the hospital and loved by his patients on Spinalonga. His great girth was evidence of his hedonism, in itself a reflection of his belief that the here and now was all you had so you might as well enjoy it. It disappointed his respectable family in Agios Nikolaos that he was still a bachelor, and he knew himself that he was not helping his marriage prospects by working in a leper colony. This did not bother him unduly, however. He was fulfilled in this work and enjoyed the difference, albeit limited, that he could make to these poor people’s lives. In his own opinion, there was no afterlife, no second chance.
Dr Lapakis spent his time on Spinalonga treating wounds and advising his patients on all the extra precautions they could take and how exercise could help them. With new arrivals he would always do a thorough examination. The introduction of the Doctor’s Days, as they became known throughout the community, had done a huge amount to lift morale on the island and had already improved the health of many of the sufferers. His emphasis on cleanliness, sanitation and physiotherapy gave them a reason to get up in the morning and a feeling that they were not simply rising from their beds in order to continue their gradual degeneration. Dr Lapakis had been shocked when he arrived on Spinalonga at the conditions many of the lepers lived in. He knew it was essential for good health that they keep their wounds clean, but when he had first arrived, he had discovered something akin to apathy among many of them. Their sense of abandonment was catastrophic and the psychological damage inflicted by being on the island was actually greater than the physical harm caused by the disease. Many could simply no longer be bothered with life. Why should they? Life had ceased to bother with them.
Christos Lapakis treated both their minds and their bodies. He told them that there always had to be hope and that they should never give up. He was authoritative but often blunt: ‘You will die if you don’t wash your wounds,’ he would say. He was pragmatic and told them the truth dispassionately, but also with enough feeling to show that he cared, and he was practical too, telling them precisely how they needed to care for themselves. ‘This is how you wash your wounds,’ he would say, ‘and this is how you exercise your hands and legs if you don’t want to lose your fingers and toes.’ As he told them these things, he demonstrated the movements. He made them all realise more than ever the vital importance of clean water. Water was life. And for them the difference between life and death. Lapakis was a great supporter of Kontomaris and gave him all the backing he could in lobbying for the fresh water supply that could transform the island and the prognosis of many who lived there.
‘Here’s the hospital,’ said Elpida. ‘Dr Lapakis is expecting you. He has just finished seeing his regular patients.’
They found themselves in a space as cool and white as a sepulchre and sat on the bench that ran down one side of the room. They were not seated for long. The doctor soon came out to greet them, and in turn, the woman and the boy were examined. They showed him their patches and he studied them carefully, examining their naked skin for himself and looking for signs of development in their condition that they might not even have noticed themselves. The pale-faced Dimitri had a few large, dry patches on his back and legs, indicating that at this stage he had the less damaging, tuberculoid strain of the disease. The smaller, shinier lesions on Eleni Petrakis’s legs and feet worried Dr Lapakis much more. Without any doubt she had the more virulent, lepromatous form and there was a distinct possibility that she might have had it for some time before these signs had appeared.
The boy’s prognosis is not too bad, Lapakis mused. But that poor woman, she’s not long for this island. His face, however, did not betray the merest hint of what he had discovered.
Chapter Five
WHEN ELENI LEFT for Spinalonga, Anna was twelve and Maria ten. Giorgis was faced with managing the job of home-making single-handedly and, more importantly, the task of bringing up the girls without their mother. Of the two, Anna had always been the more difficult. She had been obstreperous to the point of uncontrollability even before she could walk, and from the day her younger sister was born it seemed she was furious with life. It was no surprise to Giorgis that once Eleni was no longer there Anna rebelled furiously against domesticity, refusing to take on the maternal mantle just because she was the elder of the two girls. She made this painfully clear to her father and to her sister.
Maria had an altogether gentler nature. Two people with her sister’s temper could not have lived under the same roof, and Maria fell into the role of peacekeeper even if she often had to fight an instinct to react against Anna’s aggression. Unlike Anna, Maria did not find domestic work belittling. She was naturally practical and sometimes enjoyed helping her father clean and cook, a tendency for which Giorgis silently thanked God. Like most men of his generation he could no more darn a sock than fly to the moon.
To the world at large, Giorgis seemed a man of few words. Even those endless lonely hours at sea had not made him yearn for conversation when he was on dry land. He loved the sound of silence, and when he passed the evening at the
kafenion
table - a requirement of manhood rather an optional social activity - he remained quiet, listening to the people around him just as though he was out at sea listening to the lap of the waves against the hull of his boat.
kafenion
table - a requirement of manhood rather an optional social activity - he remained quiet, listening to the people around him just as though he was out at sea listening to the lap of the waves against the hull of his boat.
Though his family knew his warm heart and his affectionate embrace, casual acquaintances found his uncommunicative behaviour almost antisocial at times. Those who knew him better saw it as a reflection of a quiet stoicism, a quality that stood him in good stead now that his circumstances had changed so drastically.
Life for Giorgis had rarely been anything but tough. He was a fisherman like his father and grandfather before him, and like them he had become hardened to long stretches spent at sea. These would usually be whiled away in tedious hours of chilly inactivity, but sometimes the long, dark nights would be spent battling against the wild waves, and at times like those there was a distinct danger that the sea might have its way and consume him once and for all. It was a life spent crouched low in the hull of a wooden caique, but a Cretan fisherman never questioned his lot. For him it was fate, not choice.
For several years before Eleni had been exiled there, Giorgis had supplemented his income by making deliveries to Spinalonga. Nowadays he had a boat with a motor and would go there once a week with crates of essential items, dropping them off on the jetty for collection by the lepers.
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