The Whispers of Nemesis Page 2

  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.

  ‘But there must be no question of public transport!’ said the flustered Dean. ‘We shall arrange something for you, of course! If you will give me a few minutes . . .’

  ‘Might I offer?’ asked the secretary, looking up shyly from the coins she was stacking in careful piles. ‘Wherever you’re going, it would be an honour for me to drive you.’

  Three

  Responding to discomfort – the rhythmic and persistent stabbing of an object in his lower back – the man unwillingly came to, and waved his hand weakly towards the prodding, which stopped, but too late to avoid the return of consciousness; and consciousness brought awareness of urgent nausea (which he swallowed down as best he might), of severe headache and of a mouth so dry, his tongue stuck to his mouth-roof, and produced a strange, crackling sensation as he peeled it free. There was a bad smell around him, a reminder of his grandfather in his incontinent dotage.

  Nausea, and headache: he closed his eyes against them, but as soon as he did so, the stabbing came again.

  He opened one eye on a familiar vista – the rose-patterned fabric of his daughter’s sofa. He could make out the roses clearly, and so concluded it must be day. Blinking both eyes open, he winced at the mid-morning light that filled the room, and turned his head from the sofa-back to find the source of his tormenting.

  His young grandson stood beside him, earnest in his concern.

  ‘Pappou.’

  The man’s nausea threatened eruption. The only cure was sleep.

  ‘Go away, God damn it!’ he shouted at the boy. ‘Leave a man to sleep, why can’t you?’

  Through the pounding of his head, the man heard small feet pad across the room, as far as the doorway. From there, the boy called out, Mama, Mama, and from the yard outside, his mother responded.

  ‘What is it, Myles? I’m busy.’

  ‘Mama, Pappou’s wet his trousers!’

  The man opened his eyes, and sniffed. The bad smell, the old people’s smell – was that him? In consternation, he put his hand under the blanket and touched his groin. The cloth of his trousers was damp.

  He heard his daughter hurrying through the kitchen, and her instructions to the boy to go outside. The man pressed his face to the sofa-back. There were quick footsteps, and the blanket was ripped away.

  ‘Papa! Papa! Get up!’ She shook his shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, look at the state of you! Get up, get up now, and get out!’

  Even through the haze of his hangover, the heat of her anger was disturbing. His headache was immediately worse.

  ‘Hush your noise, woman, and leave me be!’ he demanded. ‘Let a man sleep!’

  ‘Leave you be! To stink up my house, lying there in your own piss, like an animal! Get up, and get yourself cleaned up, whilst I see what I can do with this mess! And when you’ve cleaned yourself up, pack a bag. Enough, now! You can’t stay here any more.’

  He opened his eyes, and saw the roses on the sofa-back with fresh clarity.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He turned his head to look at her. She stood over him, hands on hips just like her mother, a tired, run-down woman, getting old before her time.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said. ‘I can’t cope with you any more. And Yiorgos won’t allow you in the house, not after last night. You can’t blame him, Papa. Not after what you did. And this . . .’ She
wafted a hand over the sofa, over him. ‘You have to stop the drinking, Papa. Take yourself to a doctor, please! You’re killing yourself! You must see that, surely?’

  He pulled himself up to a sit and put his head in his hands, pitying himself his misery.

  ‘What do you care?’ he said. ‘A daughter who puts her own father on the street!’

  ‘What can I do?’ In exasperation, she spread her hands. ‘How many chances have I given you? I love you, Papa, but you have to leave here, for a while. For everyone’s sake – for Myles’s sake. You frighten him when you get like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He looked up at her, blinking.

  ‘Like last night. When you get violent.’

  ‘Violent! I’m never violent!’

  Tears grew in her eyes.

  ‘How can you say that, Papa? You hit Yiorgos! He’s gone to work with a black eye!’

  ‘That faggot you married? He should stand up for himself! He’s not much of a man to let an old man like me land one on him!’

  ‘Papa, you woke the neighbours again, you woke Myles. You terrified him so badly, he was screaming! And when Yiorgos asked you to stop singing, you hit him in the face!’

  The man laughed.

  ‘Did I, by God?’ He examined his knuckles, where there were grazes and the blue of bruises. ‘Looks like I got him good!’

  ‘It isn’t funny, Papa. I’m sorry, but you have to go.’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘My own daughter,’ he said. ‘It’s a dark day, when it comes to this.’

  He put only necessities in his bag: clean underwear and socks, a change of shirts, what money was left under the mattress, a half-bottle of ouzo she hadn’t managed to find. As he left the house, she cried, and tried to hug him.

  He pushed her away.

  ‘You take care of yourself,’ she said. ‘Please, get some help. There are places where . . .’

  ‘Where what?’

  She didn’t go on, but pressed something into his hand: a piece of paper, folded over coins.

  ‘Take this, and look after it. It’s our phone number. I wrote it down. I know what your memory’s like, these days. Call me when you get settled. And keep that money by; don’t spend it. It’s for the phone, for emergencies. And you’ll let me know where you are, won’t you? Papa?’

  ‘As if you cared,’ he said, slamming the door.

  The boy banged on the window, and waved goodbye.

  His grandfather blew him a kiss, and walked away.

  He caught a bus as far as the port town, and found himself a bar where they bought him drinks, as long as he amused them with his ramblings. But when his ramblings turned to ranting, they threw him out; so he staggered along the waterfront, singing for his own amusement, and shouting to anyone who passed to come and drink with him.

  At the last berth on the quay, a ferry was preparing to sail, the crewmen ready to cast off the heavy ropes which bound the vessel to the shore; and struck by a fancy to journey who-knew-where, alive with the thrill of adventure, he called out.

  ‘Wait for me!’ he said, ‘I’m coming with you!’

  ‘Come on, then, friend!’ The crewmen laughed behind their hands, winking at each other. ‘To malaka! Come on, you’ll make us late!’

  He staggered up the ramp, and fell down amongst the cargo. The crew left him alone, and at the ports they called at through the night, still didn’t wake him, but let him sleep, unconscious, until the first rays of a red sun lit the sky.

  As the same dawn broke over the university, the faculty secretary left the poet’s hotel room. Hair dishevelled, her make-up left behind on the pillowcases, she made her way downstairs to the lobby with a new lilt to her hips, which the yawning night-porter appreciated, as he unlocked the front door to let her go.

  By the time Hassan reached home, that first light had touched the chicken coops and set the backyard roosters crowing.

  He slipped off his down jacket, and laid his car keys on the table alongside the night’s takings. In the children’s room, the baby and his young son were both sleeping. Hassan stood a few moments over the cot, and leaned down to touch the soft, black curls on the baby’s head.

  But in the neighbouring bedroom, his wife was wide awake. Fully clothed, she lay rigid on the bed, her arms wrapped round herself against the chill.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned to face him. Her usual smile of welcome wasn’t there.

  ‘Hassan,’ she said. ‘You and I need to talk.’

  Another night, and far from the city and the university, cold rain was falling on the village of Vrisi. In the study of the old house, Santos Volakis sat alone in the candlelight, his chair drawn up close to the dying fire. The last glass from a bottle of indifferent wine stood beside him on the hearth; on his lap was a typewritten letter, signed in blue ink. He laid back his head and stared up at the lime-washed ceiling, where the oak beams were solid and straight, but the plaster was swollen with water damage and yellowed by smoke, and strands of broken cobwebs wafted in the draught from the hallway. The rugs on the stone-flagged floor were worn and faded; the shelves Santos’s grandfather had made – where old calfskin-bound volumes of mythology, philosophy and biography stood beside modern works of poetry and fiction – were riddled with woodworm.

  The poet’s eyes stang with weariness and wine, and he rubbed at their lids as if his knuckles might soothe their redness. The candles had burned low, and he switched on a lamp to brighten the room. Taking up a ram’s-head poker, he knocked a shroud of ash from the hot embers, and placed several small pine logs on the fire. New flames grew from the fresh fuel; when the blaze was at its height, he dropped the letter on to the fire, and watched the paper’s centre char in a round of black, before flames caught its edges and consumed it.

  He stood, and crossed to the window. Hands in pockets, for some minutes he looked out; but the lamplight and candlelight together showed him nothing but the sheen of wetness on the yard, and rain falling in silver needles from a sky where the stars were hidden by clouds.

  The phone rang. The caller was persistent, but the poet seemed indifferent as the phone rang on, and on. When it at last fell silent, he returned to his chair, and drank down in two swallows the wine left in his glass. He held up the empty glass, twisting it to catch the firelight in the crystal’s facets, until he held out his open hand and let the glass fall to the rug, where, dribbling its dregs, it rolled beneath his chair.

  The phone rang again. From his chair, the poet watched it, until seeming to find resolve, he stood, and picked up the receiver; but before the caller could speak, the poet depressed the cradle and broke the connection. He lifted his fingers, and the dial tone buzzed in the earpiece.

  He laid the receiver alongside the telephone.

  As the small hours approached, the wind’s force increased; sharp squalls bent the pine trees and smattered dead needles on the window, where rainwater held them fast. Troubled by his dreams, the poet drowsed uneasily in his chair, called back to wakefulness by the wraith’s touch of a draught on his neck, or the rattle of a loose latch somewhere in the closed and sleeping house. One by one, the candles all went out.

  In the hour before dawn, the headlamps of a car shone through the window. Outside, the driver cut his engine.

  The poet blinked away sleep, and rose from his chair. In the chill of the hallway, he switched on no lights.

  His suitcase was ready at the stair-foot. When he left, he closed the door behind him with no noise.

  Four

  Sirens were wailing across the city; the cold wind carried smoke and fragile fragments of charred ash. On the roof terrace, summer’s chairs were piled up and bound together with rope; all but one of the folded tables were stacked and secured in chains. As Attis Danas climbed the stone steps to the terrace, his view was of the city’s geography painted in lights: an arc of streetlamps marking the curving shoreline, with the sea black behind; d
rifts of house-lights making bright the eastern and western suburbs; and to the north, amongst the foothills, scattered lights reaching up to the famed church of Ayia Triander, high on its floodlit rock. At the head of the stairs, the savour of seared meat from the taverna’s charcoal grill was displaced by the smell of burning, and the diners’ chatter below gave way to tourist music, piped through speakers strung from the spindly cordons of a winter-naked vine.

  At the terrace corner, overlooking the intersection, a single table held a wine bottle and a flickering candle burning in an amber tumbler. Leaning on the terrace wall, looking down on to the street below, a man swilled burgundy wine in his glass and sniffed at its bouquet.

  ‘Kyrie Yorgas Sarris, if I’m not mistaken,’ said Attis, with mock formality.

  The man turned, and gave him the warmest of smiles.

  ‘Attis! How are you, pedi mou, how are you?’

  With clasped hands and back-slapping, the men embraced; as they broke away from each other, Yorgas ran his amused eyes over Attis, and raised his eyebrows in exaggerated admiration of Attis’s clothes.

  ‘Look at you,’ he said, ‘the man-about-town. And what have you done to your hair? You dog! Have you been dyeing it?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Attis. ‘I make an effort, at least.’

  Yorgas laughed, and looked down at himself: at the overcoat he’d had for years that no longer fitted him, at the suit in need of pressing, at the white shirt missing a button at the chest. More than a day had passed since he’d shaved, and several weeks at least since he’d seen a barber.

  ‘Well, I’m an old dog, so expect no new tricks from me,’ he said. ‘As my good wife says, I’m beyond help.’

  On the streets below, tail lights flared as traffic slowed for a red signal.

  ‘What are you doing up here, out in the cold?’ asked Attis. ‘They’re holding our table downstairs. I’m sorry I’m so late. The taxi driver took a short cut, and cost us twenty minutes. Half the roads across town are closed.’