‘Look, we’ve got to be optimistic,’ said Kyritsis. ‘There are some drug treatments under trial at the moment. They don’t work overnight, but do you think some of the patients here would be prepared to try them?’
‘I’m sure they would, Nikolaos. I think there are some who would try anything. Some of the wealthy ones still insist on doses of hypnocarpus oil, in spite of the cost and the agony of having it injected. What do they have to lose if there’s something new to try?’
‘Actually quite a lot at this stage . . .’ replied Kyritsis thoughtfully. ‘It’s all sulphur-based, as you probably know, and unless the patient is in generally good health the side-effects can be disastrous.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, anything from anaemia to hepatitis - and even psychosis. At the Leprosy Congress I’ve just been to in Madrid, there were even reports of suicide being attributed to this new treatment.’
‘Well we’ll have to think very carefully about which, if any, of our patients act as guinea pigs. If they have to be strong in the first place, there are plenty who would not be up to it.’
‘Nothing has to be done straight away. Perhaps we could start by drawing up a list of suitable candidates and I can then discuss the possibility with them. It’s not a short-term project - we probably wouldn’t begin to inject for several months. What do you think?’
‘I think that’s the best way forward. Having a plan at all will seem like progress. Do you remember the last time we compiled a list of names here? It seems so long ago, and most of the people on it are dead now,’ said Lapakis gloomily.
‘But things are different today. We weren’t talking about a real, tangible possibility of a cure in those days; we were simply trying to improve our methods of preventing contagion.’
‘Yes, I know. I just feel I’ve been treading water here, that’s all.’
‘That’s perfectly understandable, but I do believe there’s a future to look forward to for some of these people. Anyway, I shall be back in a week, so shall we have a look at some names then?’
Kyritsis took himself back to the quayside. It was now midday and Giorgis would be there to collect him as arranged. A few heads turned to look at him as he made his way back down the street, past the church, the shops and the kafenion. The only strangers these people ever saw were newcomers to the island, and no newcomer ever walked with such purpose in his stride as this man. As the doctor emerged from the tunnel and the choppy late October sea came into view, he saw the little boat bobbing up and down a hundred metres or so off the shore, and a woman standing on the quayside. She was looking out to sea but heard his step behind her and turned. As she did so, her long hair blew up in wisps around her face and two large oval eyes gazed at him with hope.
Many years earlier, before the war, Kyritsis had visited Florence and seen Boticelli’s captivating image of the Birth of Venus. With the grey-green sea behind her and her long hair caught by the wind, Maria strongly evoked the painting. Kyritsis even had a framed print on his wall at home in Iraklion, and in this young woman he saw the same shy half-smile, the same almost questioning incline of the head, the same just-born innocence. Such beauty in real life, however, he had never seen. He was stopped in his tracks. At this moment he was not regarding her as a patient but as a woman, and he thought her more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen.
‘Dr Kyritsis,’ she said, rousing him from his reverie with the sound of his own name. ‘Dr Kyritsis, my father is here.’
‘Yes, yes, thank you,’ he blustered, suddenly aware that he must have been staring.
Maria held the boat fast for a moment as the doctor climbed in, and then she released it and tossed him the rope. As Kyritsis caught it he looked up at her. He needed one more glimpse, just to make quite sure he had not been dreaming. He had not. The face of Venus herself could not have been more perfect.
Chapter Eighteen
AUTUMN IMPERCEPTIBLY TURNED to winter and the musky smell of wood smoke pervaded the air on Spinalonga. People went about their daily business wrapped from head to foot in every woollen layer they possessed to defend themselves from the cold, for whichever way the wind blew this small island caught its full force.
In Maria’s house the spirits of past inhabitants had been banished. Every picture, cloth and piece of furniture was now hers, and a glass dish of lavender and rose petals in the middle of the table scented the air with its sweet fragrance.
To Maria’s surprise, her first few weeks on the island passed quickly. There was one moment alone that left her with a distinct sense of unease. She had just moved out of Elpida’s warm and rather grandly furnished home into her own more familiar surroundings. As she turned the corner from the small alleyway into the main street to buy some groceries she physically collided with another woman. She was much smaller than Maria, and as they stepped away from each other Maria saw that she was considerably older too. Her face was furrowed with deep lines and so gaunt that her ear-lobes, which were greatly enlarged by leprosy, were monstrously accentuated. The old woman’s walking stick had gone flying halfway across the street.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Maria breathlessly, holding the woman’s arm and helping her to regain her balance.
Dark beady eyes glared into Maria’s.
‘Just be more careful,’ the woman snapped, grabbing her stick. ‘Who are you anyway? I’ve not seen you before.’
‘I’m Maria Petrakis.’
‘Petrakis!’ She spat the name out as though it had all the sourness of an olive eaten straight from the tree. ‘I once knew someone called Petrakis. She’s dead now.’
There was a note of triumph in her voice, and Maria immediately realised that this bent crone was her mother’s old enemy.
The two women went their separate ways. Maria continued up the hill to the bakery, and when she glanced back to see where Kyria Kroustalakis had gone, she saw that she was standing at the bottom of the street by the old communal tap, staring up at her. Maria quickly looked round again. She shuddered.
‘Don’t worry,’ said a voice behind her. ‘She’s pretty harmless really.’
It was Katerina, who had seen the collision between Maria and her mother’s old enemy.
‘She’s just an old witch marinaded in her own bitter juices, a viper who’s lost her venom.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, but she does a good impression of a snake who could still bite,’ said Maria, her heart beating slightly faster than usual.
‘Well, believe me, she can’t. But what she is good at is spreading bad feeling - and she’s certainly succeeded at that with you.’
The two women continued up the street together, and Maria decided that she would give Kristina Kroustalakis no further thought. She had already seen that many people on Spinalonga accepted their situation, and the last thing any of them needed was someone who undermined this.
A more welcome encounter with part of her mother’s past was her first meeting with Dimitri Limonias. Elpida invited them to her home one evening and both approached the meeting with some trepidation.
‘Your mother was extremely kind to me,’ Dimitri began, once drinks were poured and both were seated. ‘She treated me like her own son.’
‘She loved you like her own son,’ said Maria. ‘That’s why.’
‘I feel I should apologise in some way. I know that everyone thought I was responsible for giving her the disease,’ said Dimitri hesitantly. ‘But I’ve talked to Dr Lapakis about this at length and he thinks it is highly improbable that the bacteria were passed from me to your mother. The symptoms are so slow to develop that he thinks we contracted it quite independently from each other.’
‘I don’t believe any of that matters now,’ said Maria. ‘I’m not here to blame you. I just thought it would be a good idea to meet. You’re almost like a brother after all.’
‘That’s a very generous thing to say,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel as though I have much of a family any more. My parents have both d
ied and my brothers and sisters were never exactly in the habit of writing letters. No doubt they’re all ashamed. God knows, I do understand that.’
Several hours passed as the two talked about the island, the school and Eleni. Dimitri had been lucky. During his time on Spinalonga he had enjoyed the loving care of Eleni and then Elpida. One was an experienced mother and the other had treated him as the precious child she had always yearned for, giving him love and attention that sometimes almost swamped him. Maria was glad to have met this quasi-half-brother and the pair would often meet for coffee or even for supper, which she would cook while Dimitri enthused about his work. He currently had fourteen children in the school and aimed to get them reading by seven years old. Spending time with someone who was driven by his working life made Maria realise that being a leper was not going to dominate her every waking hour. A fortnightly appointment at the hospital, a compact house to keep neat and tidy, a small allotment to tend to. Along with the meetings with her father, these were the cornerstones of her single, childless existence.
To start with, Maria was nervous about telling her father that she had struck up a friendship with Dimitri. It might seem like a betrayal, as the family lore had always been that it was this boy who had infected Eleni. Giorgis had spent enough time with Lapakis to know that this was not necessarily the case, so when Maria made her confession that she was now Dimitri’s friend, her father’s reaction was unexpected.
‘What’s he like then?’ he asked.
‘He’s about as dedicated as Mother was,’ she answered. ‘And he’s good company too. He’s read every book in the library.’
This was no mean feat. The library now had over five hundred books, most of them sent from Athens, but Giorgis was unimpressed by this. There were other things he wanted to know.
‘Does he talk about your mother?’
‘Not much. He probably thinks that would be insensitive. He did once tell me that his life was better here than it would have been if he hadn’t had to come to Spinalonga.’
‘That’s an odd thing to say,’ exclaimed Giorgis.
‘I get the impression life was really hard for his parents and he certainly would never have become a teacher . . . Anyway, how’s Anna?’
‘I don’t know really. I suppose she’s all right. She was supposed to come and see me on the feast of Agios Grigorios but she sent a message saying she wasn’t well. I really don’t know what’s wrong with her.’
It was always the same story, Maria thought. Promised meetings and last-minute cancellations. It was a pattern Giorgis expected now, but from afar Maria continued to be annoyed by her sister’s callous disregard for the man who had struggled so hard to bring them up.
Within a month Maria knew she needed something to occupy her and picked a battered notebook off her shelf. It contained all her handwritten instructions on the use of herbs. For healing and cure, she had written on the title page in her neat, schoolgirl script. In the context of leprosy, those words looked so naïve, so optimistic, so entirely far-fetched. There were, however, plenty of other ailments that people suffered from on Spinalonga, from stomach disorders to coughs, and if she could relieve them of those as she had done so successfully in her old life, then it would be a worthwhile contribution.
Maria was bubbling over with news of her plans when Fotini came to visit her one day, telling her how she planned to scour the uninhabited, rocky part of the island for herbs as soon as spring came.
‘Even on those limestone cliffs with the salt spray there’s apparently plenty of sage, cistus, oregano, rosemary and thyme. Those will give me the basic means of providing remedies for general ailments and I’ll try to cultivate other useful plants on my allotment. I’ll need to get approval from Dr Lapakis, but once I’ve done that I’ll advertise in The Spinalonga Star,’ she told Fotini, who, on this chilly day, was warmed to see her dear friend so full of fire and enthusiasm.
‘But tell me what’s going on in Plaka,’ Maria asked, never one to keep the conversation one-sided.
‘Not much really. My mother says that Antonis is as grumpy as ever and it’s high time he found himself a wife, but Angelos met a girl last week in Elounda that he seems very keen on. So who knows, perhaps one of my bachelor brothers might be married before long.’
‘And what about Manoli?’ asked Maria quietly. ‘Has he been around?’
‘Well, Antonis hasn’t seen him on the estate quite so much . . . Are you sad about him, Maria?’
‘It probably sounds awful, but I don’t miss him as much as I thought I would. I only really think about him when we’re sitting here talking about Plaka. I almost feel guilty about not feeling more. Do you think that’s strange?’
‘No, I don’t. I think it’s probably a good thing.’ Since Fotini had been on the receiving end of Antonis’s gossip about Maria’s fiancé all those months ago, she had never entirely trusted Manoli, and she knew it would be better in the long term if Maria could put him to the back of her mind. After all, there was no chance that she would ever marry him now.
It was time for her to go. Maria looked down at her friend’s swollen belly.
‘Is it kicking?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Fotini. ‘All the time now.’
Fotini was nearing the end of her pregnancy and beginning to worry about the rough waters she had to cross to see her friend.
‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be coming across now,’ said Maria. ‘If you’re not careful you’ll be giving birth in my father’s boat.’
‘As soon as I’ve had the baby I’ll be straight back,’ Fotini reassured her. ‘And I’ll write. I promise.’
By now Giorgis had established a firm routine for seeing his daughter on Spinalonga. Though Maria was comforted by the idea that her father came and went sometimes several times a day, it made no sense for her to see him each time. She knew it would be wrong for both of them to meet so often; it would be to pretend that life was going on just as it had before, simply in a different location. They decided to limit themselves to three encounters a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. These days were the high points of her week. Monday would be Fotini’s day once she had resumed her visits, Wednesday was the day Dr Kyritsis visited, and on Fridays she saw her father alone.
In mid January Giorgis brought the exciting news that Fotini had given birth to a son. Maria wanted all the details.
‘What’s his name? What does he look like? How much does he weigh?’ she asked excitedly.
‘Mattheos,’ replied Giorgis. ‘He looks like a baby and I’ve no idea what he weighs. About the same as a bag of flour, I suppose.’
By the following week, Maria had embroidered a tiny pillowcase with the baby’s name and date of birth and filled it with dried lavender. Put it in his cradle, she wrote in a note to Fotini. It’ll help him to sleep.
By April, Fotini was ready to come and see Maria again. Even with her new responsibilities as a mother, she still knew the minutiae of everything that happened in Plaka and her antennae were well tuned to the comings and goings of its inhabitants. Maria loved to hear the gossip but also listened intently as her friend described the trials and pleasures of her new state of motherhood. For her part she shared all that took place on Spinalonga, and their talks always lasted for well over an hour, with hardly a pause for breath.
The Wednesday encounters with Dr Kyritsis were a very different matter. Maria found the doctor a little disconcerting. It was hard to disassociate him from the moment when the diagnosis had been delivered, and his words still echoed in her mind: ‘. . . leprosy is present in your body.’ He had condemned her to a living death and yet he was also the man who now held out a tenuous promise that one day she might be free of the disease. It was confusing to link him with the worst and possibly the best of all things.
‘He’s very aloof,’ she said to Fotini one day when they were chatting, sitting together on the low stone wall that surrounded one of the shade-giving trees by the quayside. ‘And a bit steely
, like his hair.’
‘You make it sound as though you don’t like him,’ Fotini responded.
‘I’m not sure I do,’ answered Maria. ‘He always seems to stare at me, and yet it’s as though he’s looking through me as if I’m not really there. He seems to make my father cheerful, though, so I suppose that’s a good thing.’
It was strange, reflected Fotini, how Maria kept bringing this man into the conversation, especially if she didn’t really like him.
Within a few weeks of Kyritsis’s first visit, the two doctors had short-listed the cases that they would monitor for suitability for drug treatment. Maria’s name was among them. She was young, healthy, newly admitted and in all ways an ideal candidate, and yet for reasons that Kyritsis could not explain even to himself, he did not want her to be in the first group that they would begin to inject several months from now. He struggled against this irrationality. After years of delivering unwelcome diagnoses to people who deserved so much better, he had trained himself to limit his emotional involvement. This objectivity made him imperturbable, even expressionless sometimes. Though Dr Kyritsis cared about humankind in a general sense, people tended to find him cold.