He began to lift Maria’s boxes and load them on to his pick-up truck. It was only a short distance to the Petrakis house, but too far to carry everything by hand. The two women crossed the square, leaving Giorgis to tie up the boat. They would go on foot. Trestle tables were already set up and chairs were laid out in groups. Bright little flags traced the four sides of the square and fluttered gaily across its diagonals. It would not be long before the party began.
By the time Maria and Fotini arrived at the house, Stephanos had already unloaded the boxes, which now sat inside the door. As she went in, Maria felt a pricking sensation on the back of her neck. Nothing had changed since the day she left. All was immaculately in place just as it always had been: the same embroidered sampler with its welcoming ‘Kali Mera’ - ‘Good Morning’ - that her mother had completed just in time for her marriage hung on the wall opposite the door to greet visitors, the same collection of pans hung near the fireplace and the familiar set of flower-sprigged china plates was ranged on the rack. Inside one of her boxes Maria would soon find some matching ones and the parts of the service would be united once again.
Even on such a luminous day, it was gloomy in this house. All the old familiar objects might still be in their places, but the walls themselves seemed to have absorbed the profound misery that had been endured within them. They exuded the loneliness of her father’s previous few years. Everything appeared to be the same, but nothing was as it had been.
When Giorgis walked in a few moments later, he found Stephanos, Fotini, Petros and Mattheos, who was clutching a small posy of flowers, and Maria all crowded into the little house. At last it seemed that some fragments of his life were fitting back together. His beautiful daughter was standing in front of him, one out of the three women in the framed photograph he looked at each and every day. In his eyes, she was lovelier than ever.
‘Well,’ said Fotini. ‘I shouldn’t stay too long - there’s food still to be prepared. Shall we see you back in the square?’
‘Thanks for everything. I’m so lucky to be coming back to old friends like you - and a new friend as well,’ she said, looking towards Mattheos, who now plucked up the courage to step forward and give her the flowers.
Maria smiled. They were the first flowers she had been given since Manoli had presented her with some four years earlier, only a week before she had gone to be tested for leprosy. The little boy’s gesture touched her.
It was more than half an hour later, changed into a different dress and with her hair brushed until it gleamed more brightly than the mirror itself, that Maria felt ready to go out and face the curiosity of the inhabitants of Plaka. Despite the welcome that some of her neighbours would give her, she knew that others would be scrutinising her and looking for signs of the disease. They would be disappointed. Maria did not bear the slightest trace. There were several on whom the disease had taken a greater toll. Many would hobble for life on their crippled feet, and the unlucky few who had lost their sight would forever be reliant on their families. For the majority, however, lesions had vanished, ugly skin pigmentations had faded to invisibility, and feeling had returned to the places where anaesthesia had numbed them.
Maria and her father walked together towards the square.
‘I won’t believe it until I see it,’ said Giorgis, ‘but your sister has said she might come tonight. I got a note from her yesterday.’
‘Anna?’ said Maria, astonished. ‘With Andreas too?’
‘So she said in her letter. I suppose she wants to welcome you back.’
Like any parent, he yearned for reunion and assumed that Anna thought it a good moment to make up for her negligence over the past few years. If he could have two daughters back instead of one that would make him happier than ever. For Maria, on the other hand, a meeting with Anna tonight was a prospect that she did not relish. Celebration not reconciliation was the purpose of today: every last leper on Spinalonga was finally to be given his liberty.
In her Elounda home, Anna was preparing herself for the party in Plaka, carefully pinning her hair and meticulously applying her lipstick so that it followed precisely the curve of her full lips. Sitting on her grandmother’s lap, Sofia watched intently as her mother painted her face until her cheeks were as highly coloured as a doll’s.
Ignoring both his mother and his daughter, Andreas marched in.
‘Aren’t you ready yet?’ he asked Anna coldly.
‘Almost,’ she replied, adjusting her heavy turquoise necklace in the mirror and lifting her chin to admire the effect before spraying herself with a storm cloud of French perfume.
‘Can we go then?’ he snapped.
Anna seemed oblivious to her husband’s icy tones. Eleftheria was not. She was discomfited by the way her son addressed his wife. She had not heard this coolness of tone before, nor seen him give her such glaring looks, and she wondered whether Andreas had, at last, woken up to the familiarity that now existed between his wife and Manoli. She had once mentioned her concerns to Alexandros. It was a mistake. He was angry and swore to boot out ‘that good-for-nothing Don Juan’ if he crossed any boundaries. After that, Eleftheria had kept her worries to herself.
‘Night-night, sweetheart.’ Anna turned to her little daughter, whose chubby arms reached out towards her. ‘Be good.’ And with that she planted a perfect imprint of her lips on Sofia’s forehead and left the room.
Andreas was already waiting in the car, the engine revving. He knew why his wife was taking such meticulous care with her appearance, and it was not for him.
It was something extraordinarily small that had finally made Andreas face the fact that his wife was being unfaithful to him: an earring under his pillow. Anna was always meticulous about removing her jewellery and carefully laying it inside a velvet-lined drawer in her dressing table before she went to bed, and Andreas knew he would have noticed if she had come to bed wearing her gold and diamond earrings the previous night. He said nothing when he saw the glint of gold against the white linen as he climbed between his otherwise immaculate sheets, but his heart turned to ice. In that instant, his philotemo, the very sense of honour and pride that made him a man, was mortally wounded.
Two days after that he came home in the early afternoon, parking his car some distance away and walking the last fifty metres to his house. He was not surprised to see Manoli’s truck parked outside. He had known it would be there. Opening the front door quietly, he stepped into the hallway. A clock ticked but otherwise the house was deadly quiet. Suddenly the silence was shattered. A woman wailed. Andreas gripped the banister, repulsed, sickened by the sound of his wife’s ecstasy. His instinct was to leap the stairs two at a time, burst into his bedroom and tear them both limb from limb, but something stopped him. He was Andreas Vandoulakis. He had to act in a more measured way and he needed time to think.
As Maria approached the square there was already an immense crowd gathered there. She spotted Dimitri standing at the centre of a small group along with Gerasimo Vilakis, who had run the colony’s kafenion, and Kristina Kroustalakis, who was smiling. It made her almost unrecognisable. All around was the buzz of excited talk and the faint strain of music as someone strummed a bouzouki at the far end of the street. Greetings were called from left and right as she came into the open space. She met many boisterous families and friends from Athens and was introduced by them as Agia Maria or ‘the herbal magician’. The latter pleased her, though being sanctified most definitely did not.
The last few hours had been so momentous that she had given little thought to Dr Kyritsis. There had been no goodbye, so she was sure they would meet again. It could not be soon enough. Coming into the thick of the crowd, Maria felt her heart lurch as though it might dislodge itself from her chest. There he was, sitting at one of the long tables with Lapakis. In the mêlée he was the only person she saw, his silver hair almost luminous in the fading light. The doctors were deep in conversation, but eventually Lapakis looked up and noticed her.
‘Mari
a!’ he exclaimed, getting to his feet. ‘What a great day for you. What is it like being home after all this time?’
Fortunately it was not a question she was really expected to answer and if it had been she would not have known where to begin or where to end. At this moment, Papadimitriou and his wife approached, with two men who bore such a close resemblance to Papadimitriou that it went without saying that they were his brothers. The island leader wanted his family to meet the men who were responsible for giving them a new life. There would be a thousand toasts later, but they wanted to be the first to say thank you.
Kyritsis stood back but Maria could feel the pressure of his gaze, and as Lapakis talked to the Papadimitrious, he drew Maria to one side.
‘Can I have a moment of your time?’ he asked politely, but loudly enough to be heard above the noise. ‘Somewhere quieter than here,’ he added.
‘We could walk down to the church,’ she answered. ‘I want to go in and light a candle.’
They left the packed square where the cacophony of excited voices had reached a deafening pitch. As they walked the length of the empty street towards the church, the crowd sound became little more than a background hum. A sense of impatience determined Kyritsis’s next action. Enough of this woman’s life had been taken away by the disease and every second seemed one too many lost. His restrained bedside manner left him for a moment and boldness took over. By the entrance to the church door, he turned to face her.
‘I have something to say. It’s very simple indeed,’ he said. ‘I would like you to marry me.’
It was a statement, not a question. And it was as if no reply was required. For some time now, there had been no real doubt in Maria’s mind that Kyritsis loved her but she had forced herself to stop imagining that this might have some kind of resolution. She had found it safer in the past few years to banish daydreams as soon as they had started to take shape and to live in the here and now where disappointment could not lay waste her fantasies.
For a moment she said nothing, but looked up at him as he held her by the shoulders, his own arms outstretched. As though she needed persuasion that he meant it, he filled her silence.
‘There has never been anyone who has affected me as you have. If you don’t wish to marry me, I shall go away and you need never think of me again.’ His hands had tightened their grip on her shoulders. ‘But either way, I need to know now.’
So it was a question. The moisture had drained from her mouth and a supreme effort was required to regain control of her tongue.
‘Yes,’ was the single, husky syllable that she was capable of expelling. ‘Yes.’
‘You will?’ Kyritsis seemed astounded. This dark-haired woman, this patient of his whom he felt he knew so well and yet still knew so little about, was agreeing to be his wife. His face broke into a smile and Maria’s mirrored it, dazzlingly. Uncertainly at first, and then with increasing passion, he kissed her, and then, suddenly aware of how they must look in the deserted street, they pulled apart.
‘We must return to the celebrations,’ said Kyritsis, speaking first. His sense of duty and correctness was even more keenly developed than her own. ‘People might wonder where we are.’
He was right: they needed to return because it was a night for everyone to share before they went their separate ways. By the time they got back to the square, the dancing had begun. A huge circle had formed and a slow pentozali dance was in progress. Even Giorgis had joined in. The man who so often sat in the shadows at any event had come forward and now wholeheartedly joined the merrymaking.
Fotini was the first to spot her friend’s return in the company of the doctor, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Maria, at last, had the opportunity for happiness. The pair had chosen not to say anything tonight - they wanted Giorgis to be the first to know, and the heady atmosphere of this panegyri was not where they wanted to tell him their news.
When Giorgis came to find them at the end of the dance, he had only one question on his lips for Maria.
‘Have you seen Anna? Is she here?’
In the past few years, he had more or less abandoned hope of his family ever being together, but today there was a chance of it. He was puzzled by Anna’s continuing absence, though; she had, after all, promised to be here.
‘I am sure she will come, Father, if she said she would,’ Maria reassured him, though the words sounded hollow to them both. ‘Why don’t we have another dance,’ she suggested. ‘You seem to have the energy.’ She led her father back to the fray and they joined in as a new dance began.
Fotini was busy carrying plates of food to the table. She noticed the doctor observing Maria dancing and felt happier than ever that her dearest friend had found such a fine man. By now it was dark, the wind had dropped and there was not a ripple in the sea. The temperature seemed not to have fallen even by one degree since that airless afternoon, and when people came to sit out between dances, they thirstily gulped back tumblers of sharp wine, slopping much of it in the dust. Maria returned from her dance, found her place at Kyritsis’s side and they simultaneously lifted their glasses. It was a silent toast.
Anna and Andreas were nearly in Plaka now. Neither had spoken throughout the journey. Both were lost in their own thoughts. It had occurred to Andreas that Manoli might resume his engagement to Maria now that she was back, and as they approached the village and could see the thronging crowd he broke the silence, taking pleasure in provoking his wife with the suggestion.
‘Manoli? Marry Maria? Over my dead body!’ she screamed with a passion he had never seen in her before. The barriers were down now. ‘What makes you say that?’ Anna could not let it drop.
‘Why shouldn’t he? They were engaged and about to get married before,’ he taunted her.
‘Shut up. Just shut up!’ She lashed out at him as he parked the car.
The violence of Anna’s response had shocked Andreas.
‘My God!’ he roared, defending himself from the hard blows that rained down on him. ‘You love him, don’t you!’
‘How dare you say that!’ she screeched.
‘Go on, why don’t you admit it, Anna! I’m not a complete fool, you know,’ he said, trying to regain control over his voice.
Anna was silent, as though her fury had momentarily subsided.
‘I know it’s true,’ said Andreas, almost calm now. ‘I came home early one day last week and he was there with you. How long. . . . ?’
Anna was now crying and laughing at the same time, hysterical. ‘Years,’ she spluttered. ‘Years and years . . .’
It seemed to Andreas that Anna’s scarlet lips smiled as though even now she was lost in some kind of ecstasy. Her denial would have given him a place to retreat, the possibility that he was wrong after all, but her admission was the greatest mockery of all. He had to wipe that rictus grin from her face.
In one deft movement he reached inside his jacket pocket and drew out his pistol. Anna was not even looking. Her head was tilted back, the round beads of her necklace vibrating with her laughter. She was delirious.
‘I’ve never . . .’ she gasped, now completely crazed with the excitement of telling him the truth, ‘I’ve never loved anyone as much as Manoli.’ Her words lashed out like a whip, cracking the air around him.
In the main square, Kyritsis watched as the first of the fireworks was let off into the limpid sky. Rockets would be sent into the air every hour until midnight, each one exploding with a violent bang and a shower of sparks that were reflected like gems in the still sea. As the first volley of fireworks came to an end there was a moment’s quiet before the band thought it worthwhile striking up again. Before they could do so, however, there were two more loud and unexpected bangs. Kyritsis turned his face upwards, expecting to see a shower of glittering sparks descending from the sky, but it was immediately apparent that there would be none.
A commotion had broken out around a car parked near the square. It had been seen drawing up only a few minutes earlier a
nd now a woman lay sprawled in the passenger seat. Kyritsis started to run towards it. For a moment it seemed as though the rest of the crowd was petrified into inactivity. Disbelief that such an act of violence could intrude on this merrymaking almost paralysed them, but they cleared a path to let him through.
Kyritsis felt the woman’s pulse. Although it was weak, there was still a sign of life.
‘We need to move her,’ he said to Dr Lapakis, who was now at his side. Rugs and pillows had miraculously appeared from a nearby house and the two men carefully lifted the woman down on to the ground. At their request, the crowd of onlookers moved to a respectful distance to let them do their work.
Maria had worked her way to the front to see whether there was anything she could do to help. As they laid the woman down on the blanket, she realised who it was that they held in their blood-stained embrace. Many in the crowd now recognised her too and there was a collective gasp of horror.