As he finished speaking, Andreas came over.
‘Kalispera, Giorgis. How are you?’ he asked rather formally. The appropriate niceties were exchanged and then the moment came for them all to leave the church. Alexandros and Eleftheria Vandoulakis hovered in the background. Eleftheria was still embarrassed by the gulf that existed between themselves and Giorgis Petrakis, and privately she felt a great deal of pity for the old man. She did not, however, have the guts to say so. This would have been to defy her husband, who felt as keenly as ever the shame and stigma of having such a close connection with the leper colony.
The family were the last to leave the church. The bearded priest, magnificent in his gilded crimson robes and tall black hat, stood laughing in the sunshine with a group of men. All around him women in bright floral dresses chattered and children ran about, dodging the adults and squealing as they gave chase to each other. There was to be a party tonight and a sense of excitement hung in the air like an electric charge.
The wall of shimmering heat that met Giorgis when he emerged from the marble coolness of the church of Agios Grigorios made him feel light-headed. He blinked in the glare and beads of perspiration rolled down his cheeks like cool tears. The collar of his woollen jacket prickled uncomfortably at his neck. Was he to stay with this crowd and make merry through the night? Or should he return to his village, where the familiarity of every winding street and worn front door gave him comfort? As he was about to try and slip away unnoticed, Anna appeared at his side.
‘Father, you must come and have a drink with us. I insist on it,’ she said. ‘It’ll bring the baby bad luck if you don’t.’
Giorgis believed as much in the influence of fate and the importance of trying to ward off evil spirits and their malicious power as he did in God and all his saints, and not wishing to bring any misfortune to this innocent baby he could not refuse his daughter’s invitation.
The party was already in full swing when he parked his truck under a lemon tree at the side of the long driveway that led to the Vandoulakis home. On the terrace outside the house, a group of musicians was playing. The sounds of lute, lyre, mandolin and Cretan bagpipe wove in and out of each other, and though the dancing had not yet begun, there was a keen sense of anticipation. A long trestle table was laid out with rows of glasses, and people helped themselves from barrels of wine and took platefuls of meze, small cubes of feta cheese, plump olives and freshly made dolmades. Giorgis stood for a while before helping himself to some food. He knew one or two people and for a while engaged in polite conversation with them.
When the dancing began, those who wished to do so joined in, while others stood around to watch. Glass in hand, the old man looked on as Manoli danced. His lithe figure and energetic steps made him the centre of attention, as did his smile and the way in which he shouted instructions and encouragement. In the first dance he whirled his partner round and round until it made onlookers dizzy to watch. The regular thump of the drum and the passionate insistence of the lyre had the power to mesmerise, but what held the audience spellbound was the spectacle of someone entirely transported by the rhythmic beat of the music. They saw in front of them a man with the rare ability to live for the moment, and his sheer abandon showed he did not give a damn what people thought.
Giorgis found his daughter standing by his side. He could feel the heat from her body, even before he saw she was there, but until the music stopped there was no purpose in speaking. There was too much noise. Anna folded her arms and unfolded them and Giorgis could sense her agitation. How desperately she seemed to want to be among the dancers, and when the music stopped and new people filtered into the circle and others bowed out, she quickly slipped in to take her place. Next to Manoli.
A different tune struck up. This one was more sedate, more stately, and the dancers held their heads high and rocked backwards and forwards and to left and right. Giorgis watched for a few moments. As he caught sight of Anna through the forest of arms and spinning bodies he could see that she had relaxed. She was smiling and making comments to her partner.
While his daughter was immersed in the dance, Giorgis took the opportunity to leave. Long after his small truck had bumped its way down the track and out on to the main road, he could still hear the strains of music in the air. Back in Plaka, he stopped at the bar. It was where he would find the easy camaraderie of his old friends and a quiet place to sit and think about the day.
It was not Giorgis who described the baptism to Maria the following day but Fotini, who had been given a detailed description by her brother, Antonis.
‘Apparently he hardly put the baby down for a minute!’ raved Fotini, outraged at the man’s audacity.
‘Do you think that annoyed Andreas?’
‘Why should it?’ asked Fotini. ‘He clearly doesn’t suspect a thing. Anyway, it left him free to circulate with his neighbours and the other guests. You know how focused he is on everything to do with the estate - he loves nothing more than talk of crop yields and olive tonnage.’
‘But don’t you think Anna wanted to hold her?’
‘I don’t honestly think she’s that maternal. When Mattheos was born I couldn’t bear him to be out of my arms. But everyone is different and it really doesn’t seem to bother her.’
‘And I suppose Manoli had the perfect excuse to monopolise her. Everyone expects it of the godfather,’ said Maria. ‘If Sofia is his child, it will have been the one day of his life when he could make a fuss of her like that without anyone questioning it.’
Both women were silent for a while. They sipped their coffee and finally Maria spoke.
‘So do you really think Sofia is Manoli’s child?’
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ answered Fotini. ‘But he certainly feels a strong bond with her.’
Andreas had been delighted by the birth of Sofia, but became anxious about his wife during the next few months. She looked ill and tired but seemed to perk up when Manoli came to call. At the time of the baptism Andreas had been unaware of the strong current that flowed between his wife and cousin, but in the months that followed he began to question the amount of time that Manoli spent in their home. His position as a member of the family and now nonos to Sofia was one thing, but his frequent presence in the house was another. Andreas began to observe how Anna’s mood could change the minute Manoli left, from frivolous to frowning, from gay to grumpy, and noticed how her warmest smiles were reserved for his cousin. He tried to put these thoughts from his mind for much of the time, but there were other things to arouse his suspicion. One evening he returned from the estate to find the bed unmade. This happened several more times, and on two other occasions he noticed that the sheets had only been roughly straightened.
‘What’s wrong with the maid?’ he asked. ‘If she’s neglecting her duties, she ought to be sacked.’
Anna promised to talk to her, and for a time there was no more cause for complaint.
Life on Spinalonga continued just as before. Dr Lapakis came and went each day and Dr Kyritsis got approval from the hospital in Iraklion to increase his visits from once to three times each week. One particular autumn evening as he made his journey from Spinalonga to Plaka, something struck him forcibly. Dusk had already fallen; the sun had dropped behind the mountains, depriving the whole strip of coastline of its light and plunging it into near darkness. When he looked round, however, he saw that Spinalonga was still bathed in the golden glow of the last of the sun’s rays. It seemed to Kyritsis the right way round.
It was Plaka that had many of the qualities you would expect of an island - insular, self-contained and sealed against the outside world - whereas Spinalonga hummed with life and energy. Its newspaper, The Spinalonga Star, still edited by Yiannis Solomonidis, carried digests of world news along with comment and opinion. There were also reviews of films which were due to be shown in forthcoming months, and extracts from the writings of Nikos Kazantzakis. Week by week they serialised his visionary book Freedom and Death and the in
habitants of the colony devoured every word, waiting each week for the next instalment, which they would then discuss in the kafenion. When the Cretan writer was awarded the World Peace Prize in June that year, they even reprinted his acceptance speech. ‘If we do not want to allow the world to sink into chaos, we must release the love which is trapped in the heart of all humans,’ Kazantzakis had said. The words resonated with readers on Spinalonga, who were all too aware of the mayhem and suffering that they had been protected from both in Greece and further afield by being incarcerated on the island for so long. Many of them relished the chance to stretch their intellects, and they would sit for hours chewing the cud over the latest sayings of this literary and political Goliath, as well as other contemporary authors. Several of the Athenians had books sent out each month to augment the sizeable library already on the island which was free for everyone to use. Perhaps because they dreamed of leaving, they continually looked outwards, beyond the place where they lived.
The kafenion and the taverna overflowed with customers in the evening and now even had competition in the form of a second small taverna. The allotments round the back of the island all looked as though they would yield good crops that summer, and there was plenty to buy and sell in the twice-weekly market. The island had never been in such good shape; not even when the Turks first built their homes had conditions been so comfortable.
Occasionally Maria allowed herself a moment of frustrated outburst with Fotini.
‘It’s almost more agonising now that I know there’s a chance we might be cured,’ she said, gripping her hands together. ‘Can we dream or should we just be happy with the present? ’
‘It’s never a bad thing to be content with the present,’ said Fotini.
Maria knew her friend was right. She had nothing to lose if the here and now could be enough. One thing that did prey on her mind, however, was the consequence for her of being cured.
‘What would happen then?’ she asked.
‘You’d be back with us in Plaka, wouldn’t you? Just as you were before.’
Fotini appeared to be missing the point. Maria stared down at her hands and then looked up at her friend, who was crocheting the edge of a baby’s coat as they talked. She was pregnant again.
‘But if I was no longer on Spinalonga, I would never see Dr Kyritsis again,’ she said.
‘Of course you would. If you weren’t living here he’d no longer be your doctor and things might be different.’
‘I know you’re right, but it fills me with dread,’ said Maria. She pointed at the newspaper which lay on her table, open at the serialised extract from Kazantzakis’s book. ‘See that,’ she said. ‘Freedom and Death. It sums up my situation exactly. I might get my freedom, but when I do it’ll be no better than death if I can’t see Dr Kyritsis any more.’
‘Has he still not said anything to you?’
‘No, nothing,’ Maria confirmed.
‘But he comes to see you every week. Doesn’t that say enough?’
‘Not quite,’ Maria said bluntly. ‘Though I do understand why he can’t say anything. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do.’
Maria betrayed none of her anxiety when she saw Kyritsis. Instead she used the time with him to ask for advice in helping the cases she looked after in the ‘block’. These were people who needed immediate relief from the aches and pains they endured on a daily basis. Some of their problems were irreversible, but others could be alleviated with the right physiotherapy. Maria wanted to make sure she was advising them correctly on exercising, since some of these cases rarely got to see a doctor. More vigorously than ever she threw herself into her work. She was not going to dwell on what she regarded as the remote possibility of leaving Spinalonga. Repatriation would bring such mixed feelings, not just for her but for so many others. Spinalonga was a safety net for them, and the thought of leaving it was bittersweet. Even when they were no longer infectious, many of them would carry the scars of the disease, the strangely pigmented skin, the twisted hands, the deformed feet. The rehabilitation of such cases would be another lifetime’s work.
Unbeknown to her, the doctors were testing and retesting the patients who had been the first to receive the treatment, just over a year before. Five of them appeared to be entirely free of the bacillus. One of these was Dimitri Limonias; another was Theodoros Makridakis. During all those years since Papadimitriou had beaten him to the position of leader, Makridakis had maintained his political opposition to the Athenians, who had effortlessly made themselves the ruling class. Now portly and white-haired, he still stood for election, but each year, as the support for Papadimitriou became stronger, the number voting for Makridakis diminished. He hardly minded at all. Why should he? The living conditions for all of them had improved exponentially since he had arrived on the island all those years ago, and he knew as well as anyone that this had largely been thanks to his Athenian friends. His attitude to them had softened over the years and he only maintained his opposition so that he could sustain a lively debate with them in the kafenion.
At the tail end of a long and arduous day, Kyritsis and Lapakis sat down to review some test results. Something had become very obvious.
‘You know we’ll soon have a good case for letting these patients go, don’t you?’ said Kyritsis with a rare smile.
‘I do,’ replied Lapakis. ‘But we’ll need government approval first and they may be reluctant to give it so soon.’
‘I’ll request their release from here on condition that they continue to have treatment for a few months afterwards and check-ups for another year after that.’
‘Agreed. Once we’ve got government authority, we’ll tell the patients, but not before.’
Weeks passed before a letter came. It stated that the patients would have to test negative for a whole year before they could be let off the island. Kyritsis was disappointed by the delay this would entail, but even so the goal he was aiming for now seemed within reach. Over the next few months the tests remained clear, and it looked as though the first dozen could be gone by Christmas.
‘Can we tell them yet?’ asked Lapakis one morning. ‘Some of them keep asking when and it’s hard to keep fobbing them off.’
‘Yes, I think it’s time. I believe there’s no danger now of a relapse in any of these cases.’
The first few patients greeted the announcement of their clean bill of health with tears of joy. Though they promised to keep the news to themselves for a few days, neither Lapakis nor Kyritsis imagined for a moment that they could possibly do so.
At four o’clock Dimitri arrived and sat waiting his turn. The patient before him, the woman who worked in the bakery, emerged tear-stained, dabbing at her scarred cheeks with a large white handkerchief. She must have been given some bad news, thought Dimitri. At two minutes past four, Kyritsis put his head round the door and called him in.
‘Sit down, Dimitri,’ said the doctor. ‘We have some news for you.’
Lapakis leant forward, his face beaming.
‘We have been given permission to release you from the colony.’
Dimitri knew what he was supposed to feel, but it was as though the numbness that used to afflict his hands had returned and this time taken his tongue. He remembered little of life before Spinalonga. It was his home and the colonists were his family. His real family had long since stopped communicating with him and he would have no idea how to find them now. His face had become very disfigured on one side, which was not a problem here, but in the outside world it would single him out for attention. What would he do if he left, and who would teach in the school?
A hundred questions and doubts whirled around in his mind and a few minutes went by before he could speak.
‘I would rather remain here while I have a function,’ he said to Kyritsis, ‘than leave all of this behind and go into the unknown.’
He was not alone in his reluctance to leave. Others also feared that the visible legacy of the disease would always remain with them a
nd mark them out, and they needed reassurance that they might be able to reintegrate. It was like being a guinea pig all over again.
In spite of the misgivings of these few, it was a momentous occasion in the island’s history. For more than fifty years lepers had come but never gone, and there was thanksgiving in the church and celebration in the kafenion. Theodoros Makridakis and Panos Sklavounis, the Athenian who had set up the thriving cinema, were the first to leave. A small party gathered by the entrance to the tunnel to bid them farewell, and both of them fought back tears, with little success. What weight of mixed feelings burdened them as they shook hands with the men and women who had been their friends and companions for so many years. Neither of them knew what life over that strip of water held for them as they boarded Giorgis’s waiting boat to pass from the known into the unknown. They would travel together as far as Iraklion, where Makridakis would try to pick up the threads of his former life, and Sklavounis would take the boat to Athens, knowing already that his former career as an actor could not be resumed. Not the way he looked now. Both men would keep a tight hold on the medical papers which declared them ‘Clean’; there would be several occasions over the following few weeks when they would be obliged to show them in order to verify that they were officially free of the disease.