The Messenger of Athens: A Novel (6 page)

“Now, I want you to imagine what would happen if the chair you’re sitting on were comfortable. You have nothing else to do today. You would settle into your chair—and perhaps never leave! I would be bringing you coffee all day long! Later on, you would ask me for blankets and a pillow, and sleep where you sit! When George the bus driver came in to drink his beer, he would sit down, make himself comfortable—and decide not to drive the bus anymore today! Beyond all doubt, Athimos the plumber would do the same! There would be no more public transport on this island: our drains would remain forever blocked! So I, in a moment of genius, had this idea. I sought out and installed in my café the most uncomfortable chairs I could find. It was not difficult; we Greeks are very good at producing uncomfortable chairs. And you’ll find none of these hand-picked chairs has four legs the same length. They throw you slightly off balance, so you can never quite relax. Always, within half an hour, your backside is numb. You stand up to relieve it, and while you’re standing up, you might as well go about your business. It is a carefully thought-out strategy which has so far never failed me. It is perfect for ousting both bores and drunks alike. It is a strategy so brilliant that I wrote to the government suggesting a national ban on comfortable chairs in any form. Imagine the improvements in productivity! Greek manufacturing would lead the world! But I must be honest: they haven’t yet replied. Probably some ambitious politician has stolen my idea and is furthering his career by selling it as his own.”

There was a short silence.

She smiled at him. “And who could blame him?”

He grinned, and lit another cigarette.

“Anyway,” she said. “I was sitting in my comfortable chair, somewhere I knew, perhaps our kitchen. But it was without any other furniture. Then I looked up, and there was a woman sitting opposite me. She was sitting on a wooden chair, the kind that never has four legs the same length. And uncomfortable.”

“Exactly like these,” he put in.

“Exactly like these. And she, she was the most beautiful woman you could ever imagine. She wasn’t young, though she had no lines in her face, not even when she smiled. Her skin was porcelain smooth, and bright with health, touched with gold, as if she had been kissed by the sun. Her hair was the blonde of a Scandinavian, all beautifully woven with flowers. And her face—her lips were full like a young girl’s, and her eyes were captivating, mesmerizing… such a beautiful, beautiful face. On her forearm, she wore a coiled bracelet, a silver snake with jeweled eyes, and she was so lovely I gazed and gazed at her. I wanted her hair, and her bracelet. I wanted to be like her. No, more than that. I wanted to
be
her.

“And I knew she was in the wrong chair. She didn’t speak to me but I knew we should change places. I didn’t want to, not at all. I wanted to stay in my lovely chair, but I knew I must give it to her. So I got out of my soft armchair and she went and sat in it, and I sat on her uncomfortable one. Then she smiled at me and pointed towards my feet. There was a parcel there I hadn’t noticed, some
kind of gift in a box, gorgeously wrapped in cellophane and ribbons, and I knew it was for me.”

She was silent, remembering.

Nikos said, “Did you open the parcel?”

“No.”

He leaned forward to press his point. “Take an old man’s advice, Irinaki. Don’t.”

T
hey sat on for a while, in silence, growing colder.

“Dreams of Aphrodite are always dangerous,” he said. “Especially to married women.”

“Aphrodite?”

“Who else could she possibly be? Listen to me, Irini. I’m quite serious. You must avoid the gift of Love she brought you at all costs. It will end in heartbreak. Love your husband. He’s a good man.”

“Yes, he’s a good man,” she agreed. But love? She looked past him, considering: was affection an adequate substitute, or just a pale form of an emotion valuable only in its deeper state?

“Anyway,” she said, “old age is making you superstitious. There are no gods.”

“Why so certain? Look.” He gestured towards the hill-sides, and at the open sea. “This is their terrain. They’re not far away. Some say when the people stopped believing in them, they ceased to exist. But this view’s still what it was when Jason built the
Argo
and the Minotaur was eating virgins in the labyrinth. Two thousand years, and nothing’s changed; and don’t think they’ve gone!
Orthodoxy is just a façade, a veneer. If you look around,
really
look”—he pointed to the center of his forehead—“using
this
eye, then you start to see. They’re here. They’re watching. And interfering.”

Far inside his stomach came a shot of pain, as if a spiteful finger had found and poked at the heart of its disease.

“They play with us still,” he said. “And they still don’t play fair. Christianity demands a life of good behavior, but there’s a straightforward payoff at the end. That’s why it was so easy to persuade the ancients that they should dump Zeus and his whole rotten family in favor of the Israelite. The old gods are self-serving, and vindictive. Except on rare occasions. Sometimes, when the mischief had been bad, old Zeus would make amends. Sometimes, he’d do the right thing. He had it in him.”

“You shouldn’t talk this way,” she interrupted. “Mama would think you’re leading me into paganism. We’re Christians now.”

“Yes, but why?” he persisted. “Why did we change allegiance? I’ll tell you why. Reliability. You know where you are with Christ. Live a good, clean life, and buy your passage into paradise. With the old ones, virtue made them jealous. And happiness was worse. They didn’t like to see mere mortals happy. If you were too happy, they’d rape your wife or kill your herds or sink your ships. No wonder they were ousted. Only they didn’t go far.”

“But if they’re here,” she said, “why don’t we see them? There were so many of them. People used to run across them all the time, in ancient times. I’ve never met anyone who’s met a god.”

“Perhaps you met one,” he said, “in your dream last night. And if you met one in the street, I suppose they’d look ordinary enough. They wouldn’t go in for bright lights and halos and crowds of angels, would they? They leave that to the opposition. They’re more underhand. Discreet. Sly.”

The church clock struck ten. She closed her eyes and, flexing the cold-rusted joints of her fingers, turned her face to the sky as if the sun would warm it. Outside the hotel, two men were talking to the woman there, and as they spoke, the woman continued to sweep, her hands moving the broom forwards and back, compelled by habit. When the taller man threw back his head, it was a moment before the wind brought his laughter to their table, so that man, and laughter, seemed disconnected; and, though dismissive of her uncle’s odd advocacy for deities long dead, it seemed possible, at least, that someone other than the man she could see might have laughed—someone who stood, invisible, beside her chair.

She shivered. The two men were on the road, heading towards them.

“We have company,” he said, squinting his eyes into clearer focus. “Our respected constabulary, hard at work.”

“I must go,” she said, rising.

“Irini.” He grasped her hand and held it between his own. His skin was pale between the bones, and molded over every vein. “A favor, my dear. Go for me to the cemetery, and take your aunt some flowers. I can’t go myself. My old legs won’t walk that far.” He released her hand,
and delved into his trouser pockets. “Yellow. Yellow was her favorite color.”

“Last time, you said pink.”

“Did I? Well. As you say, we all like a change.” He offered her a banknote of low value.

“You should go yourself, sometimes,” she said. She looked at the banknote. Her mother said he kept a fortune hidden in the chimney. “You could take a taxi.”

“Pah.” He pinched at his tongue as if pulling at a swallowed hair, then turned in his chair and spat. “Waste of hard-earned money. The walk will do you good. And call your mother. Don’t forget. Say hello from me.”

“Why don’t you call her?” She pushed her chair beneath the table, and pocketed the banknote. “She’d like to hear from you, too.”

“I would if I could,” he said. “You know I would, but I’ve been waiting a month for them to come and repair the phone.”

P
anayiotis Zafiridis, recently installed as Chief of Police, believed in the power of first impressions. He was keen to impress the ladies; the new leather jacket, the sharp creases in his trousers, his close-cut, slicked-down hair all said so. Stellios Lizardis, his constable, believed in the power of advertising. He belted his trousers high on his waist, to lift and plump his genitalia. As they passed close by Irini on the road, they spoke respectfully—
Yassas
—but, a few paces on, the Chief of Police stopped and turned to make a full assessment.

The comb which held her hair in place had slipped, and lustrous, black hair coquettishly hid one dark eye. He scanned the slow switch of her wide hips, and ran his tongue across his thin lips.

“Look at that,” he said. “Couldn’t you just—”

Lizardis held up his hand.

“Don’t say that here. She’s the old man’s niece.” He inclined his head towards Nikos’s house, where, with a carrying wind and the amplifying power of water, Nikos might catch their words.

They had reached the boatyard. Inside the workshop, all was silent.

“He might make an introduction,” said the Chief of Police.

“She’s married.”

“I like them married. They demand less time.”

Lizardis was ambitious. He was keen to impress the new man with his local knowledge.

“I can tell you about her,” he said. “When she was still on the mainland, my brother’s friend’s brother knew her. He knew the family very well.”

The Chief of Police took Lizardis by the arm, and pulled him behind the wooden flanks of a beached boat.

“No one will overhear, here,” he said. “How
well
did this guy know her?”

Lizardis shrugged.

“He was posted close by her village for his National Service. There was some family connection, so he went visiting from time to time. He made a move on her, once. He didn’t get anywhere.”

“No finesse, then,” said the Chief of Police. “A woman like that wants careful handling.”

Lizardis shook his head.

“It wasn’t that. She was engaged to someone else. At least, there was an understanding. Whether they’d exchanged rings or not, I don’t know. But the family wasn’t happy: the fiancé had gypsy blood, on his mother’s side. He went away, to make his fortune in Australia. The way I heard it, her family paid his ticket to get him out of the way. He was gone a long time—years—with her sitting at home, waiting for the call to go and join him. But when the call came, it was from his sister, saying he was marrying someone else. Well, they didn’t let her know it, of course, but the family was over the moon, because all this time they’d had someone suitable lined up, someone she wouldn’t even look at. So when they knew the gypsy was out of the running, straight away they went paying their respects to their groom-in-waiting. They were all ready to go to the priest and get the banns read. Happy ever after.”

“Groom-in-waiting? You mean the guy she’s married to now?”

Lizardis shook his head.

“It got complicated. True or not, rumors went about that she and the gypsy had been more than friends before he left.”

“You mean he’d been screwing her?”

“That’s what people said. So then the family’s choice pulled out. Soiled goods. She was high and dry and not getting any younger. There was a big family conference,
and they settled on Asimakopoulos. He was in the market for a wife. Old man Nikos here introduced him to the family.”

“Not exactly made in heaven, then, this marriage?” The Chief of Police’s voice was hopeful.

“He’s a decent guy.”

“But she’s been around, hasn’t she? And if she likes those gypsies, maybe there’s some hot blood there, just waiting for the right hot-blooded man…”

Lizardis’s face showed doubt.

“He wasn’t a full-blooded gypsy,” he said. “The gypsy blood was generations back. And my brother’s friend’s brother didn’t get anything from her except a slapped face.”

“Even so,” the Chief of Police clapped Lizardis on the back, “we have to start somewhere, do we not?”

They crossed the beach and made their way to the café, where Nikos sat, waiting, at his table.

“Chief of Police,” said Nikos, “good morning to you. And Stellios, how are you?”

Nikos’s smile was broad. The Chief of Police was always welcome, at Nikos’s café; Nikos had a particular interest in him. He had observed about Zafiridis a tenseness, and a watchfulness, which his newness to the job, and to the place, could not explain. The Chief of Police, suspected Nikos, was not quite what he seemed: he was a man with something to hide, some secret he would not want to see revealed. There was a challenge there, which could be met; if played carefully, if lulled and wooed, the Chief might make a slip. A man with secrets—a man who
lied—was always vulnerable to error; a man with secrets who held high office was a pigeon ripe for plucking.

Nikos offered them the best of his dubious chairs. Zafiridis, sitting back from the table, crossed one foot over his knee. Above his short, beige sock, the flesh of his calf was pallid, and sparsely covered with feeble, dark hairs; amongst them ran the tail-end of a knotty vein, swollen and varicose.