There was no mistaking her. Raven haired, full-bosomed and clad in a dress now soaked with blood that no one else at this gathering could have afforded in a month of feast days, it was, without any doubt at all, Anna Vandoulakis. Maria knelt down beside her on the rug.
‘It’s my sister,’ she whispered through her sobs to Kyritsis. ‘My sister.’
Someone in the crowd was heard to shout: ‘Find Giorgis!’ and seconds later Giorgis was kneeling by Maria’s side, weeping silently at the sight of his elder daughter, whose life was ebbing away before them all.
In a few minutes it was all over. Anna never regained consciousness, but her dying moments were spent with the two people who loved her most, praying fervently for her salvation.
‘Why? Why?’ repeated Giorgis through his tears.
Maria knew the answer but she was not going to tell him. It would only add to his grief. Silence and ignorance were what would help him more than anything at this moment. He would learn the truth soon enough. What would haunt him always was that in a single evening, he had celebrated the return of one daughter and lost the other for ever.
Chapter Twenty-three
WITNESSES SOON EMERGED from the crowd. One bystander had heard a couple arguing through the open window of the car when he had passed it a few minutes before the gunshots, and a woman claimed to have seen a man running off down the street immediately afterwards. This information sent a group of men off in the direction of the church, and within ten minutes they had returned with their suspect. He still held the weapon in his hand, and made no attempt to resist arrest. Maria knew his identity before she was told. It was Andreas.
There was a profound sense of shock in Plaka. It had always promised to be a memorable night, but not quite in this way. For a while people stood around in small groups and talked in low voices; it had not taken long for word to pass around that it was Maria’s sister who had been shot dead, and that Anna’s husband had been arrested for the crime. An extraordinary party had come to an untimely end and there was no choice but to wind up the evening and go their separate ways. The musicians dispersed and the remains of the food were put away; muted goodbyes were said as the Athenians began to leave, taken by their families and friends to start a new life. Those with shorter distances to go had been offered beds by local people for the night and were to stay until the following day, when they would start their journeys back to their villages and towns in other parts of Crete. Andreas Vandoulakis had been taken away under police escort to spend the night in an Elounda cell and Anna’s body was carried to the small chapel by the sea, where it was to remain before burial.
The daytime temperature had not dropped. Even now, when night was almost giving way to breaking day, there was a breathless warmth in the air. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Giorgis’s small house was overcrowded. Last time his visitors had been looking forward to a celebration. This time they prepared for a great lamentation. The priest had visited but when he could see that little comfort was to be given in such tragic circumstances, he left.
At four o’clock in the morning Giorgis climbed, exhausted, to his room. He was numb and did not know whether this was grief or perhaps a sign that he was no longer capable of feeling at all. Even Maria’s long-awaited return felt like nothing now.
Kyritsis had stayed for an hour or so, but there was no more he could do tonight. Tomorrow, which was already today, he would help them make arrangements for the funeral, but meanwhile he would snatch a few hours’ sleep in a spare room above Fotini and Stephanos’s taverna.
At the least interesting of times the villagers loved to gossip, but now they scarcely had time to draw breath. It was Antonis who was able to shed some light on the events leading up to Anna’s killing. In the early hours of the morning, when a few of the men still sat around a table in the bar, he related what he had observed. A few weeks before, he had noticed that Manoli always seemed to slip away for several hours in the middle of the day. It was circumstantial evidence, but even so it might go some way towards explaining what had driven Andreas to murder his own wife. During this period, Andreas’s mood had darkened by the day. He was ill tempered with everyone with whom he came into contact and his workers had begun to live in fear of him. A gathering thunderstorm rarely brought such tension. For so long Andreas had been kept in the dark, blissfully unaware of his wife’s behaviour, but once he had emerged blinkingly into the daylight and seen the truth, there had been only one course of action. The drinkers in the bar were not unsympathetic, and many agreed that being cuckolded would drive them to murder. A Greek’s manhood would not stand such ignominy.
Lidaki seemed to be the last one to have seen Manoli, who had now disappeared without trace, though his precious lyre still hung on the wall behind the bar.
‘He came in here about six o’clock last night,’ he said. ‘He was his usual cheerful self and he certainly gave the impression he was going to stay for the celebrations.’
‘No one seems to have seen him after that,’ said Angelos. ‘My hunch is that he felt awkward about seeing Maria.’
‘Surely he doesn’t still feel under obligation to marry her?’ chipped in another voice.
‘I doubt it, knowing Manoli, but it might have kept him away all the same,’ said Lidaki.
‘Personally I don’t think it has anything to do with Maria,’ said Antonis. ‘I think he knew that his time was up.’
Later that morning Antonis went up to Manoli’s home. He held nothing against this charming but feckless individual; he had been a good companion and drinking partner, and even the passing thought that he could be lying in his house in a pool of blood could not be ignored. If Andreas had killed his wife, it might not have been beyond him to kill his cousin too.
Antonis peered through the windows. Everything looked just as normal: the unruly mess of a bachelor home, with pots and plates piled up in no apparent order, curtains half drawn, a trail of crumbs across the table and an uncorked, two-thirds-empty bottle of wine; all of this was what he would have expected to see.
He tried the door and, finding it open, ventured inside. Upstairs in the bedroom, in a scene which might well have simply been further evidence that the person who lived here had no regard for tidiness, there were signs of a hasty departure. Drawers were pulled open and items of clothing spilled out like a volcanic eruption. Wardrobe doors gaped to reveal an empty rail. The unmade bed with its skewed sheets and flattened pillow was as Antonis might have expected, but what really gave him the clue that the feeling of emptiness in the house was possibly a permanent one were the picture frames that lay face down on the surface of a chest of drawers in the window. It looked as though they had been knocked over in haste, and two of the frames were empty, their contents hurriedly ripped out. All the signs were there. Manoli’s truck had gone. He could be anywhere in Greece by now. No one would be looking for him.
Anna’s funeral was not to take place in Plaka’s main church, where Andreas had sought shelter, but in the chapel on the outskirts of the village. This small building overlooked the sea and had an uninterrupted view of Spinalonga. Nothing but salt water lay between the chapel’s burial plot and the lepers’ final resting place where the remains of Anna’s mother lay in the ground.
Less than forty-eight hours after the death, a small, darkly clad group gathered in the damp chapel. The Vandoulakis family was not represented. They had remained firmly within the four walls of the Elounda house since the murder. Maria, Giorgis, Kyritsis, Fotini, Savina and Pavlos stood with their heads bowed as the priest prayed over the coffin. Wafts of incense billowed from the censer as lengthy intercessions were said for the forgiveness of sins before the comforting words of the Lord’s Prayer were uttered almost inaudibly by them all. When it was time for the interment, they moved outside into the relentless glare of the sun. Tears and perspiration mingled to flow down their cheeks. None of them could quite believe that the wooden box soon to disappear into the darkness contained Anna.
As the coffin wa
s lowered into the ground, the priest took some dust and scattered it crosswise over the remains.
‘The earth is the Lord’s,’ he said, ‘and all who dwell on it.’ Ash from the censer floated down to mix with the dust, and the priest continued: ‘With the spirits of the righteous made perfect in death, give rest to this the soul of thy servant . . .’
The priest’s delivery had a singsong lilt. These words had been spoken a thousand times, and they held the small congregation spellbound as they poured from his scarcely parted lips.
‘O pure and spotless Virgin, intercede for the salvation of your servant’s soul . . .’
Fotini contemplated the notion of a pure and spotless Virgin interceding on Anna’s behalf. If only Anna herself had remained a little more spotless, they might not be standing here now, she thought.
By the time the service was drawing to a close, the priest was in competition with an army of a thousand cicadas, whose unrelenting noise reached a climax as he came to the closing words.
‘Give her rest in the bosom of Abraham . . . May your memory be everlasting, our sister, and worthy of blessedness.’
‘Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Eleison.’
A few minutes passed before anyone could bring themselves to move. Maria spoke first, thanking the priest for conducting the ceremony, and then it was time to walk back into the village. Maria went home with her father. He wanted sleep, he said. That was all he wanted. Fotini and her parents would return to the taverna to find Stephanos, who had been minding Petros and playing with the carefree Mattheos on the beach. It was the quiet mid-afternoon hour. Not a soul stirred.
Kyritsis would wait for Maria on a shady bench in the square. Maria needed to get away from Plaka just for a few hours and they planned to drive to Elounda. It would be the first journey she had made in four years, apart from the short one which had brought her from Spinalonga to the mainland. She yearned for an hour or so of privacy.
There was a small kafenion she remembered by the water’s edge in Elounda. Admittedly it had been somewhere she used to go with Manoli, but that was all in the past now. She would not let thoughts of him follow her. As they were shown to a table where the sea lapped gently on the rocks below them, the events of the past forty-eight hours already seemed distant. It was as though they had happened to someone else, somewhere else. When she looked across the water, however, she could clearly see Spinalonga. From here the empty island looked just the same as it ever had, and it was hard to believe it was now completely devoid of human life. Plaka was out of sight, concealed behind a rocky promontory.
It was the first opportunity Maria and Kyritsis had had to be alone since the moment outside the church on the night of the feast. For perhaps one hour her life had held such promise, such a future, but now she felt that this great step forward had been counteracted by several back. She had never even addressed the man she loved by his Christian name.
When he looked back on this moment some weeks later, Kyritsis blamed himself for rushing in. His overexcitement at the prospect of their future together bubbled over into talk of his apartment in Iraklion and how he hoped it would be adequate for them.
‘It isn’t very spacious, but there is a study and a separate guest room,’ he said. ‘We can always move in the future if we need to, but it’s very convenient for the hospital.’
He took her hands across the table and held them. She looked troubled. Of course she did. They had just buried her sister, and here he was, impatient as a child, wanting to talk about the practicalities of their life together. Clearly Maria needed more time.
How comforting, the sensation of his hands clasping hers, full of such warmth and generosity, she thought. Why couldn’t they just remain here at this table for ever? No one knew where they were. Nothing could disturb them. Except her conscience, which had followed them here, and now nagged at her.
‘I can’t marry you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I have to stay and look after my father.’
The words seemed to Kyritsis to have come out of the clear blue sky. He was shocked. Within minutes, though, he saw it made perfect sense. How could he have expected everything to continue on its former path, given the dramatic events of the past two days? He was a fool. How could this woman, whom he had been drawn to as much by her integrity and selflessness as by her beauty, be expected to leave her bereaved and distressed father? For his whole life rationality had ruled him, and the one moment when he had denied it to let his emotions take their turn, he had stumbled.
One part of him wanted to protest, but instead he held on to Maria’s hands and gently squeezed them. He then spoke with such understanding and forgiveness that it almost broke her heart.
‘You’re right to stay,’ he said. ‘And that’s why I love you, Maria. Because you know what’s right and then you do it.’
It was the truth, but even more so was what he said next.
‘I shall never love anyone else.’
The owner of the kafenion kept his distance from their table. He was aware that the woman had broken down in tears and he did not like to intrude on his customers’ privacy. There had not been any raised voices, which was unusual for a row, but it was then that he observed the sombre way in which the couple were dressed. Except for old widows, black was unusual for a summer’s day, and it dawned on him that perhaps they were in mourning.
Maria eased her hands away from Kyritsis’s grasp and sat with her head bowed. Her tears flowed freely now and ran down her arms, her neck and between her breasts. She could not stop them. The restrained grief at the graveside had only temporarily held back the overwhelming sorrow that now burst its dam and would not abate until every last drop of it had poured out and drained away. The fact that Kyritsis was so reasonable made her weep all the more and made her decision all the more lamentable.
Kyritsis sat looking at the top of Maria’s bowed head. When the shaking had subsided, he touched her gently on the shoulder.
‘Maria,’ he whispered. ‘Shall we go?’
They walked away from their table, hand in hand, Maria’s head resting on Kyritsis’s shoulder. As they drove back to Plaka, in silence, the sapphire-blue water still sparkled, but the sky had begun to change. It had started its subtle transition through azure to pink, and the rocks took on the same warm tones. At last this terrible day was beginning to fade.
When they reached the village, the doctor spoke.
‘I can’t say goodbye,’ he said.
He was right. There was too much finality about the word. How could something that had never really begun come to an end?
‘Neither can I,’ said Maria, now perfectly in control.
‘Will you write to me and tell me how you are? Tell me what you’re doing? Tell me how life is for you in the free world?’ asked Kyritsis with forced enthusiasm.
Maria nodded.
It was pointless prolonging the moment. The sooner Kyritsis went, the better it would be for both of them. He parked outside Maria’s house and got out to open the passenger door. Face to face they stood, and then for a few seconds they held each other. They did not so much embrace as cling to each other, like children in a storm. Then, with great strength of will, they simultaneously released each other. Maria immediately turned away and went into her house. Kyritsis climbed back into his car and drove away. He would not stop until he got back to Iraklion.
The unbearable silence inside the house quickly drove Maria back out into the street. She needed the sound of the cicadas, a dog barking, the buzz of a scooter, squeals of children. All of these greeted her as she walked towards the centre of the village where, in spite of herself, she glanced up the street to check whether Kyritsis’s car was still in sight. Even the trail of dust his wheels sent into the air had already settled.
Maria needed Fotini. She walked quickly to the taverna, where her friend was spreading the tables with paper cloths, snapping lengths of elastic around them to keep them from blowing away in the wind.
‘Maria!’ Fo
tini was pleased to see her friend, but dismayed at the sight of her ashen face. Of course, it was not surprising she looked so pale. In the past forty-eight hours she had returned from exile and seen her sister shot and buried. ‘Come and sit down,’ she said, pulling out a chair and guiding Maria into it. ‘Let me get you something to drink - and I bet you haven’t eaten all day.’
Fotini was right. Maria had not eaten for over twenty-four hours, but she had no appetite now.
‘No, I’m fine. Really I am.’
Fotini was unconvinced. She put the list of things that needed to be done before the first evening customers arrived to the back of her mind. All of that could wait. Drawing up another chair, she sat down close to Maria and put her arm around her.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked tenderly. ‘Anything at all?’
It was the note of kindness in her voice that sent Maria shuddering into sobs, and through them Fotini could make out a few words that gave away the reason for her friend’s ever-deepening misery.
‘He’s gone . . . I couldn’t go . . . couldn’t leave my father.’