The Whispers of Nemesis (26 page)

The food was warm, its smell appetising. The noses of the other men twitched.

‘Hey, Hassan!' called out a forestry warden – a man of self-importance, who wore his uniform whether he was on his shift or off it. ‘What have you got there? What's he brought you?'

‘Liver,' said Hassan, picking up a fork and spearing a piece, putting it in his mouth and chewing. ‘Goat's liver. Very fresh. Very tasty.'

The forestry warden stood, and straightening the jacket of his uniform, pushed his way between the tables to the counter.

‘
Elá
, Eustis!' he called. ‘Bring us some
mezedes
!'

‘How many for?' shouted the patron.

‘All of us!' replied the forestry warden, waving his arm over the company.

‘
Amessos
,' called the patron, and only a moment later appeared with more dishes of the same, distributing them to each of the five remaining tables.

The men's faces showed their pleasure.

‘He knows us too well,' they said. ‘Eustis, bring us some salt!'

‘All breaking the Lent fast,' called Hassan to the other tables. ‘Your God will take offence.'

‘Don't you eat anything, Dinos,' said Eustis, touching one man on the shoulder as he passed with a salt-shaker. ‘Your wife's forbidden me to feed you. If you don't eat what she's cooked when you get home, she'll come in here after me, and it won't be only Vasso with no balls.'

‘The hell with her,' said Dinos, a man with no hair on his head, except for his moustache. ‘If she'd learn to cook like you do, I'd be glad to eat her food. Her mother's a lousy cook, too; burning and boiling dry is in their blood. Bring us another round of drinks here, Eustis; another round for us all.'

The fat man tasted the liver; it was, as Hassan had said, a fresh, well-flavoured mouthful: a touch of pink at the centre, the onions soft and flavoursome, the whole made interesting with a scattering of thyme.

‘Excellent,' he said, pouring water into his ouzo to make it cloudy, and taking a drink. He bit into a piece of the crisp bread, which had the smokiness of flame-toasting, and the strength of the garlic Eustis had rubbed it with before it went on the grill. ‘You were right, our patron here knows his food. So, I want to talk to you about the poet, this twice-dead poet who's now buried again. His story is certainly interesting – remarkable enough to draw the gentlemen of the press.'

‘Did the family send them away?'

‘No,' said the fat man, ‘they did not. In fact, I rather wondered whether they might have been there by invitation. The poet's agent seemed keen to help them with their story.'

‘Publicity,' said Hassan. ‘And what do they say – there's no such thing as bad publicity?'

The fat man laughed, and speared three chickpeas on the tines of his fork.

‘That's a common misconception amongst the fame-hungry,' he said, putting the chickpeas in his mouth. They were soft to the palate, their musty flavour sharpened with the lemon. ‘Publicity and notoriety are first cousins, and often go hand in hand. Like the faces of Janus, one will favour you, the other will bite you in the backside; one will raise you to the stars, the other will drag you to the gutter, and the first can easily metamorphose into the second. A wise man is always cautious in courting publicity.'

‘I suppose it's the agent's job to work for his client,' said Hassan. ‘It's his job to sell as many books as he can.'

‘I suppose so,' said the fat man, taking more liver. ‘But who is his client, now? In whose interests is he working?'

‘The family's, and his own, surely?'

‘Maybe. But what if those two interests were conflicting?'

‘Why should they be?'

‘Now that,' said the fat man, ‘I do not know.'

The fat man finished his toast, and brushed crumbs from his lapels.

‘I've been rereading Santos's work,' said the fat man. ‘I know you prefer the work of your national poets, but Santos's work is really very fine. He was a man who delighted in our landscapes, clearly a patriot who had a gift for eulogising this great country. But his work reveals other aspects of the man. There was tragedy in his life, I think. It is life's tragedies which produce our greatest art, and he is a fine example of that. But what is the human story, Hassan? Who was the woman who caused him such heartbreak when he lost her? He blamed himself, I think, for whatever happened; there's a quality in the poems beyond straightforward grief. I sense regret, and guilt. I'm sure you know the story; tell me.'

The patron leaned over the table, and removing the empty plates, replaced them with three more.

‘Pigeon breast,' he said, ‘stewed in red wine. A little potato frittata, and some of my home-pickled vegetables.'

The fat man tried the pigeon, and found the flavour excellent, the sanguineous taste of the game, the garlic and the herbs all married perfectly with dark-red wine.

Hassan took a small square of frittata; the omelette's colour was bright with the yolks of the eggs, in contrast to the pale lemon of the carefully fried potatoes.

‘So,' he said, ‘you want to know the family secrets?'

‘Does the family have secrets?' asked the fat man.

‘If you're an investigator, then you know all families have secrets,' said Hassan. ‘Just some conceal them better than others.'

The fat man laughed, and took a drink of his ouzo.

‘You're right, of course,' he said. ‘And I should be honest with you. Yes, I am very interested in the family's secrets. They have become an interesting family, with their Lazarus poet. Tell me his story.'

‘What can I tell you?' asked Hassan, taking another piece of frittata. ‘I didn't know the man.'

‘I assume that what you mean is, you didn't know him well. But you knew him, of course; you told me so, last time I was here. And I don't ask you as an intimate acquaintance. I ask so I can understand the background to his life.'

‘All I can tell you is what anyone else would say. He lived in that big house up there, which he somehow inherited. Of course it should have gone down the female line to his sister, but she's not a country-lover. She left to work in the city – she studied accountancy, I think – and married a man there, who kept her until he found a younger model and left her – not destitute, but not very well off either. But our poet claimed to love this place; he said it was in his blood, his soul, and that's the reason he gave for staying in that old house that had been his parents' and his grandparents'. Frona, of course, wants to see it sold, but until the terms of the will are met, it isn't hers to sell. So she's stuck with paying old Maria to look after it as it slowly falls down round her ears.'

‘So what about his wife? What happened to her?'

Hassan picked out a creamy bloom of pickled cauliflower and bit down on it. The fat man tried the frittata, and waited for him to go on, pouring a drop more water into his glass.

‘A good question, my friend,' said Hassan at last, taking a piece of pickled carrot. ‘Eat, eat. I can have Eustis's delicacies again tomorrow; you may have to wait a while longer.' The fat man chose another piece of pigeon. ‘When Santos was nobody . . .' Hassan gave an unkind laugh. ‘The fact is, to many here in Vrisi, Santos was never anybody except a village boy. When they put up that memorial, there were objections at the waste of public money and complaints that Venizelos would have made a handsomer statue. But when he was nobody to anybody, the people used to ridicule him and take the piss. You've only to look around you to see a poet doesn't count for much in Vrisi. Time was, there wasn't a woman here would look at him. What was there to look at, after all? And he was a loner; he spent too much time by himself, shut away writing his poems.'

‘It is the nature of the work to be solitary, I suppose,' said the fat man, as Eustis placed another dish on the table: cubes of aubergine, dipped in batter and deep fried, liberally sprinkled with salt. ‘Another ouzo, if you please, patron, and – Hassan, will you join me?'

‘Another lemonade will do me fine, thank you,' said Hassan, giving his empty bottle to Eustis as he left. ‘But when Santos's book was published, it was as if he'd been coated in golden honey. Oh, life was very different for that dog, then.

‘Listen, friend, the fault around his wife was Santos's own. Every man alive knows how weak women are; their urges are strong, and they've no self-control to deny them, without a man to hold them in check. You've seen it a thousand times; they take the step so easily, from respectability to tramp. Now Santos's wife wasn't beautiful, but she wasn't the worst you've seen, either. And she was clever; she had some kind of university degree, so she was never going to settle easily, here in Vrisi. He left her too much to her own devices, whilst he was attending to the needs of the local ladies who'd decided the touch of fame made even him a worthwhile prospect. Well, he made up for lost time, all right, for all those years when even a port whore wouldn't touch him; and he left his own wife bored at home, with only old Maria and a crying baby for company. So what can you expect? She got herself a boyfriend.'

‘And who was this boyfriend?'

Hassan helped himself to the aubergines.

‘A so-called friend of Santos's, an American-Greek, who also called himself a poet. But he was having no success at all, so he came to stay in Vrisi because he'd nowhere else to go. Santos had him in the house as a favour, as a guest. His friend was in need of a roof over his head, and Santos offered his hospitality. Crumbs to the beggar, and not doors; but it was a grave mistake on his part to let that wolf into the fold. Two months later, this so-called friend was gone, and Santos's wife went with him.'

‘Where did they go?'

Hassan shrugged.

‘America. But America's a big place. Who knows?'

‘And the baby?'

‘Little Leda went nowhere. Maria looked after her, for a while. Then Frona got divorced, and came to look after both her niece and her brother. Which wasn't, I imagine, what she'd planned out of life, though being childless herself, she took to Leda as her own. With his wife gone, Santos became the stone that never smiled. That house, I suspect, was less than cheerful.'

The fat man offered the last of the aubergine to Hassan, who waved it away, so the fat man ate it.

‘And our poet never tried to fetch her back?'

‘I don't know. To look at him, moping round in cuckold's horns suited him quite well.'

‘You had a low opinion of him.'

‘Is that a crime?'

‘And Leda? Does she never see her mother?'

‘Not as far as I know. She and her father were very close, and she grew attached to Frona. She's no need of a woman who abandoned her for some man she hardly knew.'

Eustis brought Hassan's lemonade and replaced the fat man's empty glass with another tumbler of ouzo.

‘She's not the only one who abandoned poor Leda, though, is she?' said the fat man, when Eustis returned to the kitchen. ‘Now she has to come to terms with the fact that her father's been alive, somewhere, these past four years, and left her and his sister to grieve. What kind of father would do that?'

‘A poor one,' said Hassan. ‘A very poor one indeed.'

‘I agree,' said the fat man, thoughtfully. ‘And now he is back in Vrisi, but this time, properly dead. What has been going on, Hassan? Where was he, these past four years? And when he came back here for the last time, how did he get here, and where from?'

‘Who knows? If you had the answer to that, it'd kill a lot of gossip.'

The fat man took out his cigarettes and offered them to Hassan, who shook his head.

‘What are they saying?' asked the fat man, lighting a cigarette.

‘They're saying plenty. That he was coming back here secretly to take something hidden in the house. That sounds possible, to me. Why else would he be walking up the road? But he didn't walk all the way here; it would have taken him hours, and he'd have been seen by someone passing. No: he had transport of some kind. He didn't come by bus, so the bus driver says. So I presume he got here by car.'

‘But where is that car?' asked the fat man.

‘Maybe someone else was driving,' said Hassan. ‘Parked up and left him to walk up the hill unseen, and waited for him elsewhere. When he didn't come back, they left him to it. With snow coming, no one would want to wait. Once it snows, without the right vehicle and the right driver, you're stuck. And anyone who wanted to avoid being seen wouldn't want to get stuck. Or maybe that person knew the poet had come to grief, and let things take their course. A slip on the ice, down he went, and that was it.'

‘Maybe,' said the fat man. He drew on his cigarette, and exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘But don't you think that, if it were an accident, most people, under any circumstances, would call for help?'