The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (20 page)

“Did you beat her, Andreas?” asked the fat man, quietly.

“Oh, they’ll all be running to tell you that,” said Andreas, bitterly. “That’s how they see me, now. The wife-beater who drove his wife—like Mother says—to an early grave. Do you think that’s where I wanted her?”

“No, I don’t,” said the fat man. “So why don’t you tell me how it was?”

“I loved my wife; that’s how it was. We were happy.
I
was happy. I thought she was too. Just goes to show…” He sniffed, and rubbed at his nose with the back of a hard-skinned hand. The fat man thought of the small boy, playing with his truck in the street. “Things changed. Not overnight, but fast enough. One day she can’t do enough for me, the next when I walk in a room, she walks out. There were new clothes, and make-up—and she was never home. Always out and about, walking, walking. When she wasn’t walking, she was mooching by the window, looking for
him
. Look. I’m island born and bred, but I’m not a fool. I knew there was another man; I could
smell him. It was like he was in the house with us, all the time. I couldn’t stand it, the way she was, the way she despised me. She didn’t want me there, in my own house. I did beat her. Once; it was only once.”

“Once too many, my friend,” said the fat man, sternly. “There can never be any place for violence between a man and a woman. By beating her, you desecrated the love you say you had for her.”

“Do you think I’m not sorry? Well, let me tell you: I regret it more than anything I’ve ever done. No man was ever sorrier. It was the lying, and the thinking she was going to be with him; it maddened me, it made a madman of me. I didn’t do it again. I left her alone, after that. I took myself off, spent my time at sea, came home from time to time to see—what a jerk I was, a total jerk—I came home to see if things had changed. I thought she’d get it out of her system. I thought I’d come home one day and it’d all be over. I prayed it would, and I was fool enough to think God was on my side.” He gave another mirthless laugh. “God! What a yellow-bellied cuckold I was! I thought the best way was to leave them to it, for a while. Get out of the way. What I should have done was take the old man’s shotgun, and shoot him like a dog. Straight through the heart…”

“Why didn’t you?” asked the fat man.

Andreas glanced at the whisky glass just out of reach, and at the coffee cup before him. He picked up the coffee, and drank from it.

“My mother makes bad coffee,” he said, “always too sweet. Irini made good coffee. Just so.” He let his head
roll back, and stared at the ceiling where threads of cobwebs dangled.

“So why didn’t you shoot him?” the fat man asked again.

“Don’t think I didn’t want to,” said Andreas. “I thought about it, night and day. I thought if I caught them together, I’d shoot them both. When I was fishing, it’s all I thought about: killing him. There’s nothing noble in why I didn’t do it; it was cowardice, saving face. If I’d shot him, everyone would have known that bastard was screwing my wife.”

There was silence. Andreas lowered his head and rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“I don’t believe you,” said the fat man, quietly.

“Well,” said Andreas, smiling. “That’s your problem, friend.”

“I don’t believe,” went on the fat man, “that there was nothing noble in your not seeking him out. I don’t think you’re a coward, Andreas. I don’t think you’d have shot him, but if you’d taken your fists or a stick to him, no one would have blamed you. I think there was something else.” Andreas drank again from his cup, but said nothing. “I think you didn’t lay hands on him because you knew if you did, you’d disgrace her. You’d have had to divorce her, wouldn’t you? Send her back to her mother, bags packed.”

Andreas laughed.

“You got me,” he said. His eyes were bright with tears. “Bang to rights. Guilty as charged. Pity me. A man—less than a man, a man without balls—who loved his wife so
much, he’d take back another man’s leavings. That’s me. Poor fool that I am, I believed that if I waited around long enough, she and I could pick up the pieces. Only there are no pieces to pick up, are there? Pass me that glass now, friend.”

“A moment more,” said the fat man.

He bent to the floor, and, unzipping his holdall, took out a small Ziploc bag of herbs—dried flowerheads, seeds, small twigs and leaves—which he laid before Andreas.

“I said I wanted to help you, Andreas,” said the fat man, “and I do. I believe—in spite of your attack on your wife—that you have a good and faithful heart.” From the depths of his grief, Andreas sighed. “That heart is shattered, I know. Love has been cruel to you—almost impossibly so. Sometimes, the Fates cannot be excused, or forgiven. Your grief is unbearable to you, and so you seek comfort in a glass. That is natural. But drink will kill you, and I have something better. These,” he patted the bag, “are herbs you will not know. I have gathered them on my travels. They will help you sleep, and calm your mind. Make tea with them, and drink a little—only a little—when you feel the need, when the pain in your heart is worst. And when you’re feeling able, go back to sea. Do your work, and wait for time to pass. You will find love again; you have my word. One day, you’ll tie up in a port not far from here, and she’ll be there. Not Irini; none of us can bring her back. But she would want you to be happy—loved—again. And you will be, Andreas. In time, you will be.”

Andreas turned to him; the fat man put an arm around his shoulders, and for a moment held him close.

“Courage, son,” he said. “Have courage.”

The fat man stood. Quietly, he left the house. In the street, the wind was freshening; behind the mountains, high banks of rain-filled clouds were swelling. Of the small boy and his mother, there was no sign. As the fat man pulled the door closed, a cockerel crowed; as its cry died away, from behind the door the fat man caught the sound of Andreas’s weeping.

T
heo? Theo!”

H
e broke off tracing the pattern on the kitchen tablecloth with his forefinger. Blue squares.

“Have you?” Elpida stood impatient at the stove, stirring; she had that look of whining ill temper he so disliked. From one pan came soft sizzling, and the savory smell of onions browning in hot oil; from another, steam, and a low bubbling. Where his finger had traced out the squares, a fat fly crawled.

“Have I what?”

“Got any money?”

“What for?”

“Have you been listening, Theo?”

He hadn’t been listening; his mind had been elsewhere. He had been thinking, planning, scheming. Turning things over in his mind. He had been dreaming, of the woman he wanted. Hard-core dreams. He had another hard-on he didn’t want Elpida to notice.

“What do you want money for?” he asked.

“Shoes.”

“You’ve got too many shoes.”

“For God’s sake, Theo. Not for me. For Panayitsa.”

He wanted no trouble. He leaned away from the table; sliding his hand into the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out all that was there—two thousand-drachma notes, and a few coins—and laid the money on the table.

“Is that enough?” He was impatient. This kind of trivia was anathema to him, these days.

“No.” She looked confused, and annoyed; he knew the price of shoes. What he was offering her wouldn’t cover a quarter of it.

He didn’t want to be around her; he was restless in this house. He believed he was concealing it, but he was wrong. He hated to look at her, because she had changed for him, and he had lost sight of any qualities he had ever valued in her. And this kitchen, which he had known intimately all his married life, he saw with carping eyes—a long, low-ceilinged room ruined by faults. The pine-boarded floor sloped by so many degrees, he had—some years ago, on a day when they were happy—shored up the far side of the stove with wooden wedges so the saucepans as she cooked were on a level. Everywhere was cleaned, every day, because that was her life’s work; there were no spiders in the corners where the sunlight never reached, no dust gathering in the grooves between the floorboards. They lived with the scents of compulsive domesticity always in their nostrils—laundry soap, bleach, starch, the ammoniac stink of Brasso—and the irritating touches her mother had taught her: the showy ornaments and gaudy
icons, the doilies of hand-crocheted lace on every surface. And there, hanging above the fireplace, the great buffed and burnished copper pans that had been her grandmother’s, symbols of the continuity of their line and of their calling. He thought them ugly. A memory came to him of Elpida polishing the pans, black-handed, proud, and smiling. He despised her for her pride now, and his guilty heart cringed.

To him, the room stank of poverty and scrimping, of making-do. The flimsy curtains were strung on a length of fishing twine suspended between two nails knocked into the flaking plaster. The tabletop was a piece of wood sawn from a cast-out door; beneath the blue-squared tablecloth, the depressions cut to take the hinges were clear. The seats of the four cane-bottomed chairs had gone into holes, so Elpida had made cushions to cover the damage, cutting the covers from old clothes, stuffing them with the remnants of a torn bed sheet.

He looked, and saw it all as a stranger would see it.

Is this all we have?
he thought.
Is this all I’ve done?

She said, “You can eat now, if you want.”

He didn’t give a damn about food.

“I’ll eat later,” he lied. He stood, and took his jacket from the peg. “I’m going out.”

“Why are you going now, when the food’s just ready?”

He had no answer; he didn’t know. So he said, “I’m going to the bank.”

“The bank closed an hour ago,” she said.

No answer. He was gone.

She stirred the boiling chick-peas, caught one with a
spoon and, popping it in her mouth, bit on it. It was soft. She turned off the burner. Outside in the street, she could hear Panayitsa’s shrieks amongst the others as the children played.

She opened the door and called out, “Panayitsa! Time to eat!”

But her shouting had no impact; the children yelled and sang and shouted as they played on, into the afternoon.

O
utside, beneath the window, tires scattered the loose stones and gravel of the unmade road. A car slowed, and stopped. Above the idling engine, a tape was playing, traditional music,
rembetika
, slow and sad.

Elpida crossed to the window. In Theo’s space, a silver Mercedes was parked. In its time, it had been a showpiece; its upholstery was soft, red leather, its trim walnut veneer and highly polished chrome. Now, it was a curiosity, the kind of car tycoons drove in black-and-white, after-midnight movies. Elpida knew the car, and its driver. Everyone knew Michaelis Kypreos.

Kypreos switched off the engine; the music stopped. The talismans dangling from the rear-view mirror—a turquoise-studded crucifix; a small, laminated icon of a rosy-cheeked madonna; a sachet of pot-pourri—became still.

Elpida switched off the iron, kicked off her slippers and put on her yard shoes. A length of straw was stuck to one sole with drying chicken shit.

Kypreos stood in the road, hands on his waist, looking up at the window. He was a big man, and ugly.
Face like an octopus’s underside
, the people said. They didn’t say it to his face. Kypreos had money, and influence. The people didn’t like him, but his money bought their respect.

Kypreos began to shout up at the window.

“Carpenter! Carpenter! Are you there, God damn you?”

Elpida ran a hand through her lank hair and went out into the courtyard. As Kypreos strode towards her, she opened the door wide.

K
ypreos was the kind of man who was never satisfied; he always wanted more. He had made his money somewhere in Africa, and packed up and left when the region’s natives looked like winning their rebellion. In Africa, he said, he’d had a string of supermarkets; but the people talked about gun-running, and illegal interests in diamond mines. In Africa, he said, he had servants in his house. He had a mansion here, with gold taps in the bathroom; he slept (the people said) with his pretty young wife in a water-bed big enough for four. His wife, the people knew, was having an affair with a ferry-boat captain; but none of them had the temerity to tell Kypreos.