He headed for the little church at Kadathineaon and Sotiros streets.
A line of Greeks-families-moved slowly ahead of him.
He passed through the wrought-iron gates. There were twenty people or so in the courtyard outside the church, waiting. He stood beneath the trees and could see inside through the open door to where they were lighting votive candles and talking, a small cheerful little crowd, the icons and altar behind them.
Candlelight threw a glow into the courtyard. Beside him a woman fingered her rosary. Men held firecrackers and sparklers. A teenage girl came around and handed each of them a long thin candle.
It was nearly twelve.
The crowd began to file out of the church.
They filled the courtyard. There was quiet conversation and laughter. Most everyone was smiling. To Chase it looked more like a picnic or the Fourth of July than a religious occasion. It was hard to remember that this was the most important day on the Orthodox Calendar, but that was the way with the Church in Greece. It was never somber. Even the priests drank and sinned.
He knew that the early Church Fathers had grafted their holy day onto the pagan Festival of Adonis, who had died for the love of a goddess and was reborn again each spring. In ancient times, a very cheerful occasion. Here, at least, it still was.
The priest took the dais now. He was singing. The crowd grew quieter.
The candlelight in the trees, the soft Eastern-sounding music-it was very pleasant here. Even his headache had relented some. He was glad he’d come.
The priest raised his arms and shouted, “Hristos Anesti!" Christ is Risen!
Church bells began to peal from near and far away throughout the city. From balconies of homes above him sparklers and skyrockets flared. Beyond the gate fireworks exploded.
In the courtyard they lit their candles, passing the flame candle to candle. The man beside him lit Chase’s for him and then embraced him, kissed him on the cheek. Chase kissed him back. A little woman with a gold front tooth turned from her family and kissed him too, warm and welcoming. He found himself smiling, stooping to return the kisses of her little boy and girl as well.
After a while people began to drift away-many of them, Chase knew, to break' their fast with the blood-red eggs that symbolized the resurrection and rebirth and to drink some wine. Others returned to the church. Another service would begin soon now.
He stood beneath the trees. He could smell incense thick on the night air, and gunpowder.
On impulse he went inside.
He walked to where the votive candles were burning and placed his own, burning low, among them.
As he took his hand away it guttered out.
And, he thought, Tasos.
He saw a crumbling mountainside. A harbor. A man falling amidst a shower of debris.
He knew there was no help for it. It had happened already.
He felt a moment of warning, of terrible design.
Then emptiness.
He began to cry.
Faces turned to him in sympathy, even concern-but no one moved to interfere with him. His grief was his own. He stood watching the others place their candles next to his through a growing film of tears. Then suddenly felt like a stranger there and walked away.
In the morning he had the details from Tasos’ wife. It had been swift anyway. There was that much.
He told her on the phone why he would not be able to make the funeral, heard the silence at the other end of the line and knew she did not understand.
For the second time in twenty-four hours he called Elaine.
LELIA
MYKONOS
The box in which she lay felt thin as paper.
She sat up slowly, felt a soft fleshy rending from the cold gray shell beneath her like the petals of a flower blossoming outward from the bud.
She gazed across the room at the altar and the icons. They were poor and worn with age.
The flowers had no scent
She looked down at the vault of flesh.
She waited.
DODGSON
“You knew, of course, that she was pregnant?”
“What?”
The police lieutenant nodded, tapping the desk with his pencil. Even at noon the station was dingy, airless and dark.
“Three months pregnant. It is long before you knew her though, correct?”
He thought of her as he’d seen her the day before, lying in a plain wooden coffin in the tiny church, a lily in her hand. Someone had placed a fifty-drachma piece over her lips. For Charon, Xenia said. It is the custom.
The mortician’s art had failed him. The face did not look peaceful. Even in death she frightened him.
It was impossible to believe she’d been carrying a baby.
Something gentle in all that violence.
“Yes. That’s correct.”
The policeman shrugged. “Do not let it concern you.”
Lieutenant Manolakas looked nervous. Dodgson wondered why. He’d questioned them early Saturday morning just after the accident and then again that afternoon. He’d been completely controlled and actually quite decent-only asking them not to leave the island for a few days in case he needed more from them. He took statements from all of them and from the other witnesses. All quite calmly. So what was bothering him now?
“Pregnant,” said Dodgson. “God, I didn’t know.”
“Of course not. Many things, I think, you didn’t know.” He sighed and wiped his forehead. “Many things I don’t know.”
He glanced at Billie and could see that she read anxiety in the man too.
“Like what?”
“Like…let me begin for you.” He sighed again, shuffling some papers on his desk.
“First, we trace the Canadian passport, correct? She has no family left in Quebec. Mother, father, both are dead. But her father is clearly Greek and Narkisos is not a common name so we look for family here. We find a second cousin in Athens but he does not know her. Wants nothing to do with her. Says, bury her.
“But there is more in our records on Miss Narkisos. This one, she is a bad one I think.”
Billie’s grip tightened on his arm.
It felt good to have her there. It was well past dawn Saturday morning when they’d gone back to his room and made love for the first time, in a kind of mutual frenzy at first, throwing off the fear and blood and violence but then it had changed, become infinitely sweeter and far more special, a quiet commingling of them both that was passionate but concerned too and afterwards that was what had remained, the passion and the concern, and he knew she had touched him in a way no other woman had ever touched him, not even Margot.
“What do you mean?”
“She has been in Greece almost two months according to her passport. February in Athens there was a disturbance in a bar. Her name was taken down but she was not arrested. It appears she assaulted…forgive me, how do you say putana?”
“Prostitute,” said Dodgson.
“Prostitute. The woman’s face, her jaw, she broke it. Also one rib. The woman had to go to hospital. But this woman is also a bad one so Miss Narkisos is not arrested. Okay.
“A month later in Ios a German tourist complains that she steal his money. This is the beginning of March and we look for her but she is already off the island. We do not know where. Still we look. And we think she go to Santorini next because more money is stolen there, this time from a Swedish girl Miss Narkisos rooms with a few days. But we cannot be sure it is her. And again, when we begin to look she is already gone off the island. But she assaults this girl too. Hurts her badly.”
“My god,” said Billie.
“Yes, it’s true. I believe it is not good to know this one for long. But there is more. And worse. For me worse, anyway.”
He paused. He was sweating. Anger and embarrassment seemed to vie for possession of the man. He threw up his hands.
“She is gone!”
“Gone?”
“The box, the coffin is there.
But Miss Narkisos is gone.”
His mind couldn’t wrap around it at first. “How…?”
“Let me explain. This morning we intend to bury her. There is nothing to be learned from the body, there is no one to claim her. So we would bury her. I tell two men, I say go to the church, inform the papas, the priest. Fine. They are gone maybe a minute when the priest is here. In my office. A good man, a very pious man, very responsible-and now he is crazy. Because he heard nothing last night, nothing, yet this morning the box is empty. The body is gone.”
“But where…?”
“We do not know. My people are searching now. This is very bad for me, you understand.”
“Of course, but…”
‘To care for the dead…properly…is a most sacred duty. The papas is disgraced, I am disgraced. And you must account for your whereabouts last night. You can do that?”
“Of course we can.”
“Good. Good for you. Not so good for me. I don’t understand it. Who would want to do such a thing?”
“I don’t know.”
He wondered what to tell Danny, who was still so shaken that Dodgson didn’t even like to mention Lelia in front of him. He guessed they’d all discovered something about themselves on the steps of the Harlequin that night that they didn’t like much. Lelia could do that to you.
Billie tugged at his arm.
“Let’s go,” she said. “I want a swim in the ocean very much right now. Is that all right, Lieutenant?”
He nodded. “I will take your statements later, after dinner, if we have still not found her body by then. You do not seem like body snatchers to me. But please be careful, though. The seas are very high today. The earthquake, it changes the weather.”
“We will.”
“I will let you know when we find her.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t worry.”
They walked out into the midday heat. They turned into the narrow streets off the harbor.
He thought about standing in the dimly lit church yesterday morning, Xenia and Billie beside him.
Goodbye, Lelia, he’d murmured.
He recalled now that he’d said that once before.
He’d been early.
THE SUMMONS
Shortly after midnight Easter morning, while Jordan Thayer Chase made his sad way home from the church in Athens, while Lelia Narkisos lay in her well-made wooden coffin, while Billie Durant and Robert Dodgson made love the second time that night, Gerard Sadlier lay in his tent at the campground off Paradise Beach, dreaming.
He had gone through a door and it was the wrong door but he was unable to go back and now it was night upon the mountain, and he was Chosen.
He climbed through a throng of people. All of whom were his subjects.
Some were small, weak-human clutter that blocked his way, that tested his will and resolve.
Others were huge, even bigger than he was and from these he received a passionate, proud obedience. His slaves. They pushed the others aside for him as he passed with no concern for bloodied bodies or broken limbs. Yet he sensed a vivid danger from them too. Should he show the slightest weakness they would crush him.
A beautiful woman with long blonde hair approached him. Like all the others the woman was naked. Don't you know me? she said. He reached out and recognized her by the heavy ripe weight of her breasts. Then she gestured, Follow me.
He knew her.
His victim. His sacrifice to the Other.
At the top of the mountain lay a bowl of fruit, still on the vine, surrounded by white flowers. His robe was white too and the woman lifted it off his shoulders while he peeled the pearlike fruit and tasted it. It was sweet, rich, flowing with nectar.
He turned to her naked, his penis erect and throbbing. He thrust her to her knees. She opened her mouth, ready to take him inside.
He was the true Son. All this night to be treated as the Living God.
Her mouth closed over him. The men bowed. The women gnashed their teeth and slathered with lust.
The dream shifted.
He stood before a woman dressed in black.
He knew her face. And knew he had no power over her. Quite the contrary.
The woman held a knife like the ones that shepherds carry, a curved sharp blade. She swung it in a slow reaping motion down across his body as she told him what it was he had to do and he nodded.
The dream shifted.
He became a common laborer, digging with a spade.
The dream shifted.
He was back atop the dark looming mountain, his cock thrust deep into the throat of the first woman while behind him stood the Other, dressed in black, reaping.
A cry of adoration burst from all those gathered there.
The world went to its knees before him.
Sucking him dry.
***
He woke with an erection and the sense that he was not quite well, an ache in his bones like the flu.
He could not clear away the images of the dream. In every other dream he could remember the images had faded quickly. These grew clearer. He looked around at the tents on the hillside and they all seemed unfamiliar, distant, strange. Superimposed over all of them was the mountain, the woman in black, the dream.
When at last Dulac awoke and crawled from his tent Sadlier sat in front of his campfire feeding it twigs one by one and staring into the flame, at the flickering image of himself in flowing white, and the immense obeisant crowd, at the breasts he could see through the veil of black.
Dulac was annoyed.
That dumb hulking Sadlier had not even bothered to start the coffee.
“You might have thought of us for once,” he said.
Sadlier said nothing.
“Prick.” He squatted before the fire, rubbing his hands to warm them.
“The woman,” Sadleir muttered. 'The one who died.”
“Yes. What about her?”
The rasp in Sadlier’s voice surprised him. Was he ill?
“We need her.”
“What?”
“Get her.”
“Go back to sleep, Gerard.”
“No. You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you later. With some coffee.”
Dulac watched him turn from the fire. It seemed to him that his eyes weren’t focusing properly. He opened his mouth as though to speak and the lips hung slack for a moment, gleaming wet. It was not like Sadlier to be sloppy. Filthy, yes, but not sloppy.
Then he did speak and Dulac thought, of course, he’s still asleep. He’s talking in his sleep. Either that or crazy. Because what he said was, 'She’s alive.'
Dulac merely looked at him.
He said it again, with force this time and leaning close.
“She’s alive. She’ll give us everything-"
His eyes were red, his face perspiring. His breath smelled horrible.
Dulac had not seen him this way since Pakistan.
Since they’d killed Henri.
He’d realized at the time that it was not over the hashish that they’d killed a man but simply because they had the opportunity and the reason. He’d seen that on Sadlier’s face then and he saw something much like it now.
He sighed. “What do you want from me, Gerard?”
The thin lips parted in a smile.
Ah, yes, thought Dulac. Sadlier stared and smiled and Dulac knew that look very, very well.
And he thought, We’re in for it now.
PART 3
PERSEPHONE
“Oh what a wicked thing it is for flesh To be the tomb of flesh, for the body's craving To fatten on the body of another…”
-Ovid, Metamorphoses
THE ISLAND
THE FIRST DAY
The harbor woke.
Fishermen stepped from caique to caique, each to his own, checking traps and nets in the first red glow of sunrise, then ambled to the dockside cafe and waited for the owner to organize and p
repare his good thick coffee.
They smoked and watched the waves. The sea was less tortured today. On this side of the island, at least, they’d get some fishing done.
A pelican woke-a brisk flurry of pinfeathers. Its bright red eye caught something moving along its back, an insect. Its long snake-like neck turned the head ninety degrees and its orange-yellow bill plucked the bug from its feathers. Then it began to preen. A fisherman from the cafe doused the pelican with a bucket of water. The bird was used to this. It dipped its head, acknowledging him.
Cats prowled the narrow strip of sand in front of the cafe and dipped beneath the hulls of boats blocked and awaiting repair, their noses twitching to the scent of decay. A pair of mongrel pups raced across the square, faced each other and began their roughhouse play.
The morning was warm and breezy.
***
The flower man woke beneath a wall of snapshots, all pictures of himself-his basket on his shoulder, grinning into Polaroids, Nikons, Kodaks.
***
Kostas Mavrotopolous’ pregnant wife Daphne threw open the turquoise louvered shutters to their bedroom and looked out upon the bed of red and yellow flowers. She turned and smiled upon her sleeping husband.
***
At the Sunset Bar on the other side of town a starved tabby cat hopelessly stalked a seagull perched upon the rocks by the shore. Inside the bar its owner Georgio selected tapes for the evening, Vangelis and Irene Papas-one less item to deal with later, allowing him time on the beach today with the French girls he was meeting this afternoon.
***
In the shop two doors down the town carpenter moved his sawhorse out to the concrete ledge by the sea. It would cut down on the sawdust in the shop and there were many orders for repairs and refmishings and new chairs and tables now that the tourist season was about to begin.