Dead Europe (2 page)

I had promised Zach that he could stay up late and watch
Star Wars
. He was so excited that he had to go and piss twice before we could start it. Lying between Colin and me, his legs were shaking in anticipation as the first bombastic notes of the score thundered through the stereo. Colin read to him as the yellow letters scrolled across the screen.

—A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away …

The boy turned to him, his face flushed, his eyes shining. Uncle Colin, he asked, does that mean Europe?

HIGH IN THE mountains, where the wind goes home to rest, lived Lucia, the most beautiful woman in all of Europe. Now one must not simply dismiss this claim as an exaggeration, a parochial and ignorant testament from the villagers and Lucia's kin. It is true that most of the village had not travelled far beyond the mountain ridges which formed their world. But the fame of her beauty had spread wide, from village to village, from village to town, from town to city, until carried in whispers through the roaming of commerce and war, it became a legend that began to cross even borders. Word of Lucia's beauty circulated slowly, but it did circulate, and men and women began to swear by the moon-milk complexion of her fair skin, her slender long hands, the coal-black hair that swam down to her waist. By the time of her thirteenth birthday Lucia's myth had spread so wide that travellers would go miles out of their way, circumnavigate the precarious mountain ridge, to stop at Old Nick's cafe, order their coffee or chai, and sit in hope of glimpsing the radiant girl.

But Lucia's father had no intention of allowing any man to covet his daughter. He himself began to be enamoured of the exquisite cast of her delicate face, intoxicated by the emerging abundance of her young flesh. His wife, noticing the stark hunger in her husband's eyes, kept a vigilant watch on her youngest daughter. Between the twin sentries of her father's ravenous desire and her mother's fearful jealousy, Lucia spent most of her days cloistered in silence. She was forbidden to go to school, as were all her sisters, and she
was only allowed outside the family courtyard if escorted by her fathers or her brothers. To speak to any man, or even to a boy who was not a relative, was a sin to be punished with the most savage of beatings. She was allowed basic formalities with male relatives but even then she was ordered to not look them directly in the eye and to keep her face lowered at all times. Her mother's eagle gaze immediately noted any indiscretion on Lucia's part, and the punishment that followed was always swift and harsh. Both her eyes were blackened when she had laughed at her cousin Thanassis' impious joke. Her father's belt drew blood from her back when he whipped her on hearing that she had spoken to Baba Soulis' boys after church one Sunday. While thrashing her, Lucia's father would be deaf and blind to her agonies and her laments, exhausting himself with his brutality. Only afterwards, his rage spent, would he crawl on his knees in front of her, kissing her feet, pleading for, demanding apologies, licking clean her bloodied hands or brow or back. Watching all this was his increasingly terrified wife, who silently crossed herself and implored the saints that a suitor would come soon to take away this treacherous daughter. And if the saints won't help, she added, then let Black Death take her.

It should not be thought that Lucia was oblivious to the effects of her beauty. Her sisters, her brothers, her own father had shown enough devotion for her to understand that her looks were indeed powerful. She may have been forbidden to glance at men, but she took any opportunity that arose to break this command. When the priest fed her the communion wine she looked him boldly in the eye, causing his hand to shake; when her older brother hoisted her on his shoulders for a ride, she threw her skirts over his head; when she kissed the cheek of her just-wed brother-in-law before the altar, her whole family was shamed. Fotini, the eldest of the sisters, had been betrothed to Angelos, the
oldest son of the widower Kapseli. Fotini's dowry had cost the family dearly—fifteen of their finest nanny goats, their cherished store of carpets and blankets. But the Kapselis family owned vast fields along the valley and it would be a prosperous match. When the marriage vows were completed and the families lined up in the church to kiss and bless the married couple, Lucia kissed Angelos twice chastely on his cheeks, but whispered her blessing close to his ear. The youth blushed and shivered, and almost fainted. And immediately underneath the thick black cloth of his grandfather's Constantinople suit, his erection flared. As the remaining guests kissed him and shook his hand they could not help but notice the awkward lump pressing against them. An initial sniggering, then laughter, and then howls of mirth followed the newlyweds outside the church. That night, on returning home drunk from the celebrations, her father's savagery had been so fierce that Lucia lay bleeding and unconscious for days. She was locked in the cellar, with the wine and the snakes, and only her mother was allowed to see her. And even she was forbidden to speak to her. Silently brushing her blood-matted hair, stroking her bruised face, Lucia's mother nursed her daughter back to life, forcing her to eat wet bread, splashing water on her lips, all the time imploring God and the saints and the Virgin to find a husband for her daughter. And if there were to be no one to the liking of the feverish possessed man who paced the floor above them, contorting in knots of guilt and self-disgust for the damage that he had inflicted on his most prized possession; if there were no acceptable suitor to be found, the mother prayed, let the Devil take her.

—We should marry her to Michaelis Panagis.

Lucia's father snorted, drank from his wine, and climbed into bed next to his wife. She turned her back to him. She smelt alcohol, sweat and sex on him. The embers in the kitchen fire were waning and she could hear her two
daughters in the bed next to them quietly snoring. Lucia was still banished beneath the house. The boys were asleep, four of them on the one bed, in the room across the courtyard. Her husband touched her shoulder and she lifted her nightdress and slightly raised her leg. He entered her quickly, fucked her like a hare. He began snoring as soon as he had finished. She shook him awake. Lucia was not responding to her ministrations, was sickening. She must be married.

—We should marry her to Michaelis Panagis, she repeated.

—We have two others to marry off first.

—No, she insisted, Panagis is a good marriage. He'll bring wealth. It will be easier to marry the others after that.

—He's a bastard. I won't give my Lucia to any bastard.

—You won't give Lucia to anyone.

Michaelis Panagis was the child of the idiot Panagis and his Albanian whore, Maritha. It had been assumed that Panagis, who still dribbled and slurped when he spoke, would never find a wife, but his father had returned one morning with a young Albanian girl whom he had purchased across the mountains and whom he offered to his son. Within two years they had three children. As people could not believe that the idiot Panagis had it in him to sire a child, it was assumed that all three offspring were bastards, children of the Albanian whore and her father-in-law. They were all sickly children, living in filth and poverty, but the youngest, Michaelis, had surprised the village by disappearing when little more than a child and emerging years later fat and rich from his travels abroad. He had worked in Egypt and in America and on returning to the village he had paid for a pew and a gold icon for the Church of the Holy Spirit. Now every Sunday the idiot Panagis and the whore Maritha sat in front of the congregation, ignoring the envious glares behind their backs. Michaelis had built a huge house high above the village.
Though he was still insulted behind his back, there was no one in the village who did not greet him with a friendly word, who did not offer him the choice of any of their daughters.

—In the name of God, Husband, he has money.

He was silent.

—She is dying. It's a curse. It's a curse because you want to sin against your daughter.

The force of his fist on her face was so loud in the quiet mountain night that it woke the sleeping girls, who began to cry. He left his wife moaning, pulled on his trousers and descended the cellar stairs.

Lucia was lying still on the solid dirt ground. Her face was pale and her eyes dark hollows. He crouched before her and she hardly stirred from her stupor. He touched first her cheek, then her shoulder. He felt the firm curve of her breast. She did not stir but her frightened eyes looked straight into his soul. He closed his eyes, whispered his love for her and pulled her listless hand towards him. Quickly he stroked himself with her cold velvet hand and he spilt over the black dirt. He was crying.

—If he will take you, Daughter, you are to marry Michaelis Panagis.

He grabbed the child and kissed her harshly on the lips and face. Lucia pulled away.

—You are the most beautiful woman who has ever lived. Satan take you.

He raised himself and pulled up his trousers. Don't forget I am with the saints, Lucia. I am a saint for not raping you.

He climbed the stairs and locked the cellar door.

What is the use of being the most beautiful woman in the world if I'm barren?

The moon was high in the sky, and a slight breeze brought forth a keening from the pine trees that echoed through the mountains. Lucia and Michaelis had been married four years and she had yet to produce a child. The envious whispers and jealous curses that used to follow her along the paths of the village were now replaced by mutterings of pity and self-righteous joy.

Curse the damn lot of you. Lucia found sleep impossible; her dreams were filled with nightmares of demons and dead children. She cursed her father, her mother-in-law. She blamed her sorrow on the evil done to her by years of jealous occult mischief. She cursed her envious sisters and her embittered cousins. Surely it was one of them who had cast a spell on her womb? They were all bitches, jealous ugly bitches.

Every Sunday Lucia offered another promise to God should he make her pregnant, and every Sunday afternoon she and her mother would work together to undo the damage of the Evil Eye. Her mother would drop a touch of oil into the vial of holy water and she would read the villagers' gossip and spite in the dispersion of the oil. Then Lucia would pray in hope of undoing the evil; she would send down her own curses to the women who envied her. But still nothing stirred inside her. And every month when she felt her body flushing out her blood, she cursed the names of every woman in the village, spitting out each one.

But still nothing stirred inside her.

As she lay there, sleepless, there was a scratching on the door and she went cold. She held her breath. From the outbuilding she could hear bleating from one of the goats. Then the scratching continued. She shook Michaelis awake.

—Michaeli, there's something outside.

Her husband jumped out of the bed, reached for his hunting knife and opened the door. Two shivering figures stood under the moonlight.

—What in the devil are you doing here?

Lucia hid under the quilt. She knew one of the men at the door. It was Jacova, who worked as a tanner in Thermos; it was to Jacova that Michaelis sold the skins of the wolves and the minks that he hunted. Beside the Hebrew was a young boy, his eyes large and black. She could not hear the whisperings between her husband and the Hebrew.

Don't let them in, Michaeli, she prayed. Don't you dare let them in. But her husband beckoned her to rise and to bring out some wine. She pulled a shawl across her shoulders and, without looking at the strangers, she made her way into the dark cellar to fetch a pail of wine. She placed two glasses in front of the men and she and the boy sat apart on a bench near the dead fire while the men talked to each other in whispers. They did not dare light the lanterns. Lucia peered through the shutters at her mother-in-law's house across the courtyard. No one stirred. She came and sat back on the bench.

She looked the boy up and down. She had never been so close to a Hebrew and was surprised at how ordinary he seemed. His features were not so different from those of her own brothers. His brow was wet, as indeed it would be if he had just completed the long walk from Thermos up into the mountains. She could smell his fear, and the keen hint of his trade, the bitter reek of pelt and leather. Though still only a child, he was developing the strong forearms of his father. He was destined to be a handsome man. She smiled at him but the boy blushed and immediately looked down at his feet. Lucia smiled to herself. She was still beautiful.

—I will forget him. If you take him he will be as your son.

Lucia strained to hear more of the conversation.

Michaelis shook his head.

—It is too dangerous, Jacova. The Germans are everywhere and all the region knows that Elia is your son. We cannot hide him.

Lucia nodded to herself. Good. Good answer, husband. All the harpies in the village will be lining up to denounce us.

—Michaeli, I have known you a long time. Yes, the Germans are everywhere, that is why my wife and daughters and I must flee. But up here in these mountains there are many hiding places. You can hide the boy. And this war will not last. Once it is over, once the Germans have gone, the boy is yours to keep.

Lucia shook her head in disbelief. The man was a fool if he thought that they would be taken in. Everyone knew that the Hebrews could not be trusted. Even if the Germans were to be conquered, nothing would stop Jacova returning and claiming his son. No, throw him out, Michaeli, throw out the Hebrew and his bastard child.