1: ARRIVAL
The island was dying, and that wasn’t an issue as far as Lieutenant Stephanos Stephanidou was concerned; what really irked him was that he had been selected to share its demise. Selected? Manoeuvred, more like, outflanked, set-up and then sent down, to this desolate and almost-deserted island, this remote region about as far away from the bustle and business and busy-ness of the city, of the capital, of Athens, as it was possible to be. The arsehole of empire; he remembered reading that somewhere, in regard to Burma and the British Empire. Go back to the Ancient civilizations, Greece followed by Rome, at that time Armenia, Assyria and Mesopotamia took the title; too far from the capital to be governed effectively and too alien to assimilate Western culture. OK, so this island wasn’t that far away, just a few miles off the coast of Turkey, but in today’s terms it had to be right at the edge of modern Greece, by anybody’s reckoning.
He’d arrived on what was laughably called the ferry, a small and dilapidated vessel from a neighbouring island at which he’d arrived by a similar vessel, having flown into the biggest island nearby to boast an airport. Even the hardiest of tourists in search of what they were pleased to call ‘The Real Greece’ would be sorely tried at having to make such a journey, he reckoned, so there were few if any tourists; which was of course why the island was dying. And here he was back at the beginning of this chain of thought.
The beginning? No, not here, this was the end, more like. Go back to Athens and his old self, an intelligent and well-educated lieutenant of police, in the course of a promising career. Sent to work under a far-from-ideal superior officer, paranoid and jealous of his own post, sweetened as it was, Lieutenant Stephanidou had no doubt, by many perks, small and not-so-small, the bribes and bungs earned through looking the other way on numerous occasions over many years. The senior officer sensed a threat and a rival in the junior, a man already noted for his integrity and determination to discharge his duty honestly and not troubling to hide his contempt for the superior whom he despised. Not too difficult for the junior to make mischief, make waves, cast doubt on the conduct of the senior in the right places, the right ears. Have him discharged, at the very least, dishonourably and without pension, and then step easily into his shoes? The senior couldn’t have that, so he made the mischief, whispered supposed worries regarding the junior into the right ears. A set-up arranged, the blame for certain mistakes placed squarely on the shoulders of the innocent junior, with so-called brother officers ready to support the senior, for the correct consideration, of course, and the junior cautioned, disciplined and destined to end his career on this God-forsaken island, much as those who fell foul of the Roman emperors were wont to do. He’d read that somewhere, or seen it on TV; which? Immaterial, really, but wherever it was from he remembered hearing that the Emperor Augustus, banishing his daughter Julia for scandalous sexual antics, had sent her to an island which measured only eight miles from one end to the other; or was it that one could walk from one end to the other in eight minutes? Tiny, anyway, enough so to drive the occupant mad, and looking at the island which awaited him, Stephanidou tried to comfort himself with the obvious fact that this island was bigger than that to which poor Julia was sent; by how much he was yet to find out.
The main town of Ayios Andreas itself was nothing; a small harbour, into which he was unceremoniously put ashore with his belongings, few as they were because he wouldn’t need much here. A few buildings, all in a dilapidated state of repair and in need of renovation, although knocking them down and starting again might be the easier option, Lieutenant Stephanidou thought. Shops and houses in the main, he noted, and, at the far right-hand end of the harbour-front, a church. He scowled at the sight of this particular edifice; despite his upbringing in the Orthodox church, his faith in God had suffered as a result of his recent injustices at the hands of Man. Where was the place for a merciful God in all of that, he had asked himself, over and over again, where the justice? He was an ordinary man, trying to live a good life, not asking a lot, but this evil had come upon him anyway; so he wavered on a thin line between belief and disbelief and came down firmly on the side of the latter.
He dragged his attention back to the harbour-front and noted the regulation kafenion with a couple of old men sitting outside, immobile as if they were permanent fixtures, which they probably were. It was far too quiet, though; where were the children? They were noticeable by their absence, at this time of day; where was the regulation group of little girls, sitting on the pavement giggling and speaking secrets to each other? Where the small boys with bicycles, chasing each other loudly around and being shooed away by irate waiters when they got too close to the outside tables and the paying customers sitting there? No girls, no boys, no tavernas, no waiters and no customers either, for that matter; just a place marked by a piece of waste ground to the other side of the harbour, covered with concrete and garbage, plus a group of crumbling buildings that looked as though one of the non-existent children could push them over with one finger.
Lieutenant Stephanidou resisted the urge to try pushing them himself, for fear of the consequences, and contented himself with asking directions to the Police Station from the old men; they pointed, and gave brief directions; so not statues then. He found his way, to yet another decaying building in the back street behind the harbour front; a street of sorts, anyway, if not particularly long, with few buildings interspersed by patches of waste ground, decorated with refuse including a rusting bicycle and overgrown with weeds which in one case were being slowly and methodically consumed by a tired and world-weary-looking donkey which appeared as ready to fall over as the building to which it was lackadaisically tethered.
He made his way into the police station, marked as such by the rather ragged blue and white national flag which hung wearily from the tarnished pole which stuck out at right-angles from the wall over the doorway. It was rather too dark inside, the air heavy and humid despite the efforts of an old and creaking ceiling fan which rotated slowly and noisily over his head. A figure moved behind the front desk, pushing backwards the revolving chair on which he sat by dint of pushing against the desk with his feet, which had been resting thereupon. Stephanidou duly introduced himself, receiving a desultory handshake and greeting in return; “Yes”, he was indeed the Captain in charge, assuming there was anyone else working there of whom he might be in charge, and “Yes, I was expecting you”. After polite enquiries as to whether Lieutenant Stephanidou had had a good journey, he got down to business. “You’re posted to Palliohorio; I’ll take you there myself, now, do you want coffee, water, to freshen up, first?” The Lieutenant took advantage of all these offers as he covered his dismay; where was Palliohorio? He’d assumed he’d be working here, where the action was, he thought ironically; could it get any worse?
It could. After a drive of about thirty minutes, in a police car that rivalled both so-called ferries for dilapidation and lack of speed, Captain Petrides parked up in a tiny village, if it were big enough to deserve that classification, and ushered his new subordinate into one of the damp and derelict-seeming buildings which lined the square, along with the regulation church and kafenion, the usual couple of old men sitting outside looking like clones of those seen in Ayios Andreas. They were outside both church and kafenion, he noted, because the latter was positioned right next to the former, with anyone attending church obliged to pass through the forecourt of the kafenion to get there. The captain followed his eyes, and his thought; “The church owns the building and the land, and rents it to Giorgos for his coffee shop; it makes them some money, and the men don’t have to walk too far to get into the church, so everybody benefits”. He didn’t add, Lieutenant Stephanidou thought, that given the apparent average age of the population here, should the men happen to die whilst sitting in the kafenion, or walking the short distance from there to the church door, it wouldn’t be too much trouble to get them to their own funerals.
The police station-house consisted of a one-storey building, opposite the church and kafenion, apparently falling down like everything else around it; the whitewash of the old brick walls and the blue of the door and shutters were faded and dirtied with time and long-overdue in needing to be renewed. Inside, an unprepossessing office area, painted at about the same time as the outside, Stephanidou reckoned, consisted of dirty off-white (very far off) walls, furnished indifferently with a rusting and creaky ceiling fan to match that seen in the office at Ayios Andreas and shabby yet still functional (just about) metal-framed and laminate desk, chair and filing cabinets. A door at the back of the room led to the living accommodation, shabby yet mercifully functional, like the office area. A small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, all leading off of an only-sightly bigger living room at the back which, however, boasted what must be the height of modern living here; a television, antiquated and black-and-white (which became apparent when Captain Petrides switched it on with an air of pride) but at least in working order. A door from this room led onto a terrace to one side of the building which was shaded by unkempt grapevines growing over a rusting metal structure of poles, facing onto an overgrown and wilting mess which may once have been a garden. The outer boundaries of this consisted of yet another crumbling brick wall, low enough to scale easily to reach what would be Lieutenant Stephanidou’s mode of transport; a beat-up old banger with ‘POLICE’ embossed upon it, the word recognisable despite patches of paint having flaked off of the letters in places, which sat drunkenly on the uneven road surface outside the wall. It must have been a new car in about the early twentieth century, Stephanidou thought ironically.
Captain Petrides was fulsome in his praise of these official and domestic arrangements; his whole air was of one who has single-handedly recovered the Parthenon Marbles from the British and is returning them to their rightful home in Athens. “Everything under one roof, you see, convenient and comfortable; no spending hours stuck in the traffic whilst getting to work. Sofia, Giorgo’s wife at the kafenion, will cook for you if you wish, and do laundry and housework too, and she won’t charge you much. There’s a small shop over the way, run by Stelios, you can’t miss it, but you can always pick up stuff when you come into town to see me. Everything’s there in the office, files and so forth, car keys in the desk drawer and the car is parked round opposite the terrace, as you can see. I suggest you get some rest now, have a good sleep and familiarise yourself with it all in the morning; but don’t rush, you’ve plenty of time, nothing ever happens around here anyway. Give me a call when you’re up and about.”
So he departed, leaving the Lieutenant to a late meal at the kafenion, courtesy of Sofia; there wasn’t much available but cold food, bread and cheese and sour village wine, and Stephanidou wondered if there ever would be anything cooked, given that Sofia and her husband Giorgos were clearly on the wrong side of eighty and apparently not up to much by way of strenuous physical activity. But they were welcoming and friendly, generous with the wine and ouzo and interested in anything he could tell them of the latest goings-on in Athens, the extent of their outside world, it seemed. But the food they gave him was much better than nothing, given that Stephanidou hadn’t eaten since before his lengthy ferry journey, and the alcohol helped him to whatever sleep he found possible in what followed, a hot night in a hard bed with no air-conditioning, but unsurprisingly he hadn’t expected any. There was an old ceiling fan, but it had only two settings, off and on, and went around so slowly and creaked so alarmingly when in the latter mode that the Lieutenant feared that, even should he get to sleep despite the noise, it might just fall down and decapitate him with one of the blades while he slept. So he turned it off altogether and slept fitfully, dreaming of his life; his old life, as he had thought earlier, except that life for him felt over, by now. Ironically he thought, for irony was rapidly becoming his default mode of thinking, that it wouldn’t be much trouble to get him to his own funeral at the nearby church either; because from here on in he was a dead man.
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