Dr Lapakis spent his time on Spinalonga treating wounds and advising his patients on all the extra precautions they could take and how exercise could help them. With new arrivals he would always do a thorough examination. The introduction of the Doctor’s Days, as they became known throughout the community, had done a huge amount to lift morale on the island and had already improved the health of many of the sufferers. His emphasis on cleanliness, sanitation and physiotherapy gave them a reason to get up in the morning and a feeling that they were not simply rising from their beds in order to continue their gradual degeneration. Dr Lapakis had been shocked when he arrived on Spinalonga at the conditions many of the lepers lived in. He knew it was essential for good health that they keep their wounds clean, but when he had first arrived, he had discovered something akin to apathy among many of them. Their sense of abandonment was catastrophic and the psychological damage inflicted by being on the island was actually greater than the physical harm caused by the disease. Many could simply no longer be bothered with life. Why should they? Life had ceased to bother with them.
Christos Lapakis treated both their minds and their bodies. He told them that there always had to be hope and that they should never give up. He was authoritative but often blunt: ‘You will die if you don’t wash your wounds,’ he would say. He was pragmatic and told them the truth dispassionately, but also with enough feeling to show that he cared, and he was practical too, telling them precisely how they needed to care for themselves. ‘This is how you wash your wounds,’ he would say, ‘and this is how you exercise your hands and legs if you don’t want to lose your fingers and toes.’ As he told them these things, he demonstrated the movements. He made them all realise more than ever the vital importance of clean water. Water was life. And for them the difference between life and death. Lapakis was a great supporter of Kontomaris and gave him all the backing he could in lobbying for the fresh water supply that could transform the island and the prognosis of many who lived there.
‘Here’s the hospital,’ said Elpida. ‘Dr Lapakis is expecting you. He has just finished seeing his regular patients.’
They found themselves in a space as cool and white as a sepulchre and sat on the bench that ran down one side of the room. They were not seated for long. The doctor soon came out to greet them, and in turn, the woman and the boy were examined. They showed him their patches and he studied them carefully, examining their naked skin for himself and looking for signs of development in their condition that they might not even have noticed themselves. The pale-faced Dimitri had a few large, dry patches on his back and legs, indicating that at this stage he had the less damaging, tuberculoid strain of the disease. The smaller, shinier lesions on Eleni Petrakis’s legs and feet worried Dr Lapakis much more. Without any doubt she had the more virulent, lepromatous form and there was a distinct possibility that she might have had it for some time before these signs had appeared.
The boy’s prognosis is not too bad, Lapakis mused. But that poor woman, she’s not long for this island. His face, however, did not betray the merest hint of what he had discovered.
Chapter Five
WHEN ELENI LEFT for Spinalonga, Anna was twelve and Maria ten. Giorgis was faced with managing the job of home-making single-handedly and, more importantly, the task of bringing up the girls without their mother. Of the two, Anna had always been the more difficult. She had been obstreperous to the point of uncontrollability even before she could walk, and from the day her younger sister was born it seemed she was furious with life. It was no surprise to Giorgis that once Eleni was no longer there Anna rebelled furiously against domesticity, refusing to take on the maternal mantle just because she was the elder of the two girls. She made this painfully clear to her father and to her sister.
Maria had an altogether gentler nature. Two people with her sister’s temper could not have lived under the same roof, and Maria fell into the role of peacekeeper even if she often had to fight an instinct to react against Anna’s aggression. Unlike Anna, Maria did not find domestic work belittling. She was naturally practical and sometimes enjoyed helping her father clean and cook, a tendency for which Giorgis silently thanked God. Like most men of his generation he could no more darn a sock than fly to the moon.
To the world at large, Giorgis seemed a man of few words. Even those endless lonely hours at sea had not made him yearn for conversation when he was on dry land. He loved the sound of silence, and when he passed the evening at the kafenion table - a requirement of manhood rather an optional social activity - he remained quiet, listening to the people around him just as though he was out at sea listening to the lap of the waves against the hull of his boat.
Though his family knew his warm heart and his affectionate embrace, casual acquaintances found his uncommunicative behaviour almost antisocial at times. Those who knew him better saw it as a reflection of a quiet stoicism, a quality that stood him in good stead now that his circumstances had changed so drastically.
Life for Giorgis had rarely been anything but tough. He was a fisherman like his father and grandfather before him, and like them he had become hardened to long stretches spent at sea. These would usually be whiled away in tedious hours of chilly inactivity, but sometimes the long, dark nights would be spent battling against the wild waves, and at times like those there was a distinct danger that the sea might have its way and consume him once and for all. It was a life spent crouched low in the hull of a wooden caique, but a Cretan fisherman never questioned his lot. For him it was fate, not choice.
For several years before Eleni had been exiled there, Giorgis had supplemented his income by making deliveries to Spinalonga. Nowadays he had a boat with a motor and would go there once a week with crates of essential items, dropping them off on the jetty for collection by the lepers.
For the first few days after Eleni left, Giorgis dared not leave his daughters for a moment. Their distress seemed to intensify the longer their mother was away, but he knew that sooner or later they would have to find a new way of living. Although kind neighbours came with food, Giorgis still had the responsibility of getting the girls to eat. One evening, when he faced the task of cooking a meal himself, his woeful inadequacy at the stove almost brought a smile to Maria’s lips. Anna, though, could only mock her father’s efforts.
‘I’m not eating this!’ she cried, throwing her fork down into her plate of mutton stew. ‘A starving animal wouldn’t eat it!’ With that she burst into tears for the tenth time that day and flounced from the room. It was the third night that she had eaten nothing but bread.
‘Starvation will soon crack her stubbornness,’ her father said lightly to Maria, who patiently chewed a piece of the overcooked meat. The two of them sat at opposite ends of the table. Conversation did not flow and the silence was punctuated by the occasional chink of their forks on china and the sound of Anna’s anguished sobs.
The day eventually came when they had to return to school. This worked like a spell. As soon as their minds had something other than their mother to focus on, their grief began to abate. This was also the day when Giorgis could point the prow of his boat once more in the direction of Spinalonga. With a curious mix of dread and excitement he made his way across the narrow strip of water. Eleni would not know he was coming, and a message would have to be sent to alert her to his arrival. But news travelled fast on Spinalonga, and before he had even tied his boat to the mooring post, Eleni had appeared round the corner of the huge wall and stood in its shadow.
What could they say? How could they react? They did not touch though they desperately wanted to. Instead they just spoke each other’s names. They were words they had uttered a thousand times before, but today their syllables sounded like noises with no meaning. At that moment Giorgis wished he had not come. He had mourned his wife this last week, and yet here she was, just as she always had been, as vivid and lovely as ever, which only added to the unbearable ache of their impending separation. Soon he would have to leave the island again an
d take his boat back to Plaka. Each time he visited there would be this painful parting. His was a gloomy soul and for a fleeting moment he wished them both dead.
Eleni’s first week on the island had been full of activity and had passed more quickly than it had done for Giorgis, but when she heard that his boat had been spotted on its way from Plaka, her emotions were thrown into a state of turmoil. Since her arrival she had had plenty of distractions, almost enough to keep her mind away from the sea change which had taken place, but now that Giorgis was standing there before her, his deep green eyes gazing into hers, there was only one focus for her thoughts: how much she loved this strong, broad-shouldered man and how much it hurt her to the very core of her being to be separated from him.
They asked almost formally about each other’s health, and Eleni enquired after the girls. How could he respond, except with an answer that only just brushed the surface of the truth? Sooner or later they would get used to it all, he knew that, and then he would be able to tell her honestly how they were. The only truth today was in Eleni’s answer to Giorgis’s question.
‘What’s it like in there?’ He nodded in the direction of the great stone wall.
‘It is not as dreadful as you imagine, and things are going to get better,’ she replied, with such conviction and determination that Giorgis found his fears for her instantly suppressed.
‘Dimitri and I have a house all to ourselves,’ she told him, ‘and it’s not unlike our home in Plaka. It’s more primitive but we’re making the best of it. We have our own courtyard and by next spring we should have a herb garden, if you can bring me some seeds. There are roses already in bloom on our doorstep and soon there’ll be hollyhocks out too. It’s not bad really.’ Giorgis was relieved to hear such words. Eleni now produced a folded sheet of paper from her pocket and gave it to him.
‘Is it for the girls?’ enquired Giorgis.
‘No, it’s not,’ she said apologetically. ‘I thought it might be too early for that, but I’ll have a letter for them next time you come. This is a list of things we need for the house.’
Giorgis noted the use of ‘we’ and a pang of envy hit him. Once, ‘we’ had included Anna, Maria and himself, he reflected. Then a bitter thought of which he was almost instantly ashamed came into his head: now ‘we’ meant the hated child who had taken Eleni away from them. The ‘we’ of his family no longer existed. It had been split asunder and redefined, its rock solidity replaced by such fragility he hardly dared contemplate it. Giorgis was finding it hard to believe that God had not deserted them all. One moment he had been the head of a household; the next he was just a man with two daughters. The two states were as far apart as different planets.
It was time for Giorgis to go. The girls would be back from school soon and he wanted to be there for their return.
‘I shall be across again soon,’ he promised. ‘And I’ll bring everything you’ve asked for.’
‘Let’s agree on something,’ said Eleni. ‘Shall we not say goodbye? There’s no real sense in the word.’
‘You’re right,’ responded Giorgis. ‘We’ll have no goodbyes. ’
They smiled and simultaneously turned away from each other, Eleni towards the shadowy entrance in the high Venetian wall and Giorgis to his boat. Neither looked back.
On his next visit, Eleni had written a letter for Giorgis to take back for the girls, but the moment her father held out the envelope, Anna’s impatience got the better of her and, as she tried to snatch it out of his hands, it was ripped in two.
‘But that letter’s for both of us!’ protested Maria. ‘I want to read it too!’
By now Anna was at the front door.
‘I don’t care. I’m the oldest and I get to look at it first!’ and with that she turned on her heels and ran off down the street, leaving Maria weeping tears of frustration and anger.
A few hundred yards from their home was a little alleyway that ran between two houses, and this was where Anna, crouched in the shadows and, holding the two halves together, read her mother’s first letter:
Dear Anna and Maria,
I wonder how you both are? I hope you are being good and kind and working hard at school. Your father tells me that his first attempts at cooking were not very successful but I am sure he will get better at it and that soon he will know the difference between a cucumber and a courgette! I hope it won’t be long before you are helping him in the kitchen too, but meanwhile be patient with him while he is learning.
Let me tell you about Spinalonga. I am living in a small, tumbledown house in the main street with one room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs, rather like at home. It is quite dark but I am planning to whitewash the walls, and once I have put my pictures up and displayed my pieces of china I think it will look quite pretty. Dimitri likes having his own room - he has always had to share so it is quite a novelty for him.
I have a new friend. Her name is Elpida and she is the wife of the man who is in charge of the government of Spinalonga. They are both very kind people and we have had a few meals at their home, which is the biggest and the grandest on the whole island. It has chandeliers and every table and every chair has some kind of lace draped across it. Anna especially would love it.
I have already planted some geranium cuttings in the courtyard and roses are beginning to bloom on our doorstep, just like at home. I will write and tell you lots more in my next letter. Meanwhile, be good, I think of you every day.
With love and kisses,
Your loving Mother xxxxx
P.S. I hope the bees are working hard - don’t forget to collect the honey.
Anna read the letter over and over again before walking slowly home. She knew she would be in trouble. From that day on, Eleni wrote separate letters to the two girls.
Giorgis visited the island much more regularly now than before and his meetings with Eleni were his oxygen. He lived for those moments when she would appear through the archway in the wall. Sometimes they would sit on the stone mooring posts; at other times they would remain standing in the shade of the pines that grew, as if for the purpose, out of the dry earth. Giorgis would tell her how the girls were, what they had been doing, and would confide in her about Anna’s behaviour.
‘Sometimes it’s as though she has the devil in her,’ said Giorgis one day as they sat talking. ‘She doesn’t seem to get any easier with time.’
‘Well, it’s just as well that Maria isn’t the same,’ replied Eleni.
‘That’s probably why Anna is so disobedient half the time, because Maria doesn’t seem to have a wicked bone in her body,’ reflected Giorgis. ‘And I thought tantrums were meant to be something children grew out of.’
‘I’m sorry to leave you with such a burden, Giorgis, I really am,’ sighed Eleni, knowing that she would give anything to be facing the daily battle of wills involved in bringing Anna up instead of being stuck here on this island.
Giorgis was not even forty when Eleni left, but he was already stooped with anxiety, and over the next few months he was to age beyond recognition. His hair turned from olive black to the silvery grey of the eucalyptus, and people seemed always to refer to him as ‘Poor Giorgis’. It became his name.
Savina Angelopoulos did as much as she was able, whilst managing her own home too. On still, moonless nights, knowing that there could be a rich catch, Giorgis would want to fish, and it became a regular event for Maria and Fotini to sleep, top to tail, in the latter’s narrow bed, with Anna on the floor next to them, two thick blankets for her mattress. Maria and Anna also found they were eating more meals at the Angelopoulos home than their own, and it was as if Fotini’s own family had suddenly grown and she had the sisters she had always wanted. On those nights there would be eight at the table: Fotini and her two brothers, Antonis and Angelos, her parents, and Giorgis, Anna and Maria. Some days, if she had the time, Savina would try to teach Anna and Maria how to keep their house tidy, how to beat a carpet and how to make up a bed, but quite often she woul
d end up doing it all for them. They were just children, and Anna for one had no interest in anything domestic. Why should she learn to patch a sheet, gut a fish or bake a loaf? She was determined that she would never need such skills and from an early age had a powerful urge to escape and get away from what she regarded as pointless domestic drudgery.