‘I’ll leave you to settle in,’ Kontomaris said. ‘My wife will be over to see you later and she will show you round the colony.’
‘Your wife?’ exclaimed Eleni with more surprise in her voice than she had quite intended. But he was used to such a reaction.
‘Yes, my wife. We met and married here. It’s not unusual, you know.’
‘No, no, I’m sure it isn’t,’ said Eleni, abashed, realising that she had much to learn. Kontomaris gave the slightest of bows and left. Eleni and Dimitri were now alone, and they both stood looking about them in the daytime darkness. Apart from a threadbare rug, all that furnished the room was a wooden chest, a small table and two spindly wooden chairs. Tears pricked Eleni’s eyes. Her life was reduced to this. Two souls in a sombre room and a pair of fragile chairs that looked as though they might crumble with a hand’s touch, let alone the full weight of a human body. What difference between she and Dimitri and those frail pieces of furniture? Once again, there was an imperative for false cheer.
‘Come on, Dimitri, shall we go and look upstairs?’
They crossed the unlit room and climbed the stairs. At the top were two doors. Eleni opened the left-hand one and went in, throwing open the shutters. The light poured in. The windows looked over the street and from here the sparkle of the sea could be seen in the distance. A metal bed and yet another decrepit chair was all that this bare cell contained. Eleni left Dimitri standing there and went into the other bedroom, which was smaller and somehow greyer. She returned to the first, where Dimitri still stood.
‘This one will be your room,’ she announced.
‘My room?’ he asked incredulously. ‘Just for me?’ He had always shared a room with his two brothers and two sisters. For the first time his small face showed some expression. Quite unexpectedly he found that one thing at least had improved in his life.
As they descended the stairs a cockroach scuttled across the room and disappeared behind the wooden chest which stood in the corner. Eleni would hunt it out later, but for now she would light the three oil lamps which would help to brighten this gloomy dwelling. Opening her box of possessions - which contained mostly books and other materials that she would need for teaching Dimitri - she found paper and pencil and began to make a list: three lengths of cotton for curtains, two pictures, some cushions, five blankets, a large saucepan and a few pieces of her best china. She knew her family would enjoy the idea that they were all eating from the same flower-sprigged plates. Another important item she requested was seeds. Although the house was dismal, Eleni was greatly cheered by the little courtyard in front of it and had already begun to plan what she would grow. Giorgis would be back in a few days, so within a week or two she would have this place looking as she wanted it. This would be the first of many lists for Giorgis, and Eleni knew that he would fulfil her requirements to the very last letter.
Dimitri sat and watched Eleni as she drew up her inventory of essentials. He was slightly in awe of this woman who only yesterday had been his teacher and now was to care for him not just between the hours of eight in the morning and two in the afternoon but for all the others as well. She was to be his mother, his
meetera
. But he would never call her by any name other than ‘Kyria Petrakis’. He wondered what his real mother was doing now. She would probably be stirring the big cooking pot, preparing the evening meal. In Dimitri’s eyes that was how she seemed to spend most of her time, while he and his brothers and sisters played outside in the street. He wondered if he would ever see them again and wished with all his heart that he was there now, messing about in the dust. If he missed them this much after only a few hours, how much more would he miss them each day, each week, each month? he wondered. His throat tightened until it hurt so much the tears flowed down his face. Then Kyria Petrakis was by his side, holding him close and whispering: ‘There, there, Dimitri. Everything will be all right . . . Everything will be all right.’ If only he believed her.
That afternoon they unpacked their boxes. Surrounding themselves with a few familiar objects should have lifted their mood, but each time a new possession emerged it came with all the associations of their past lives and did not help them forget. Every new trinket, book or toy reminded them more intensely than the last of what they had left behind.
One of Eleni’s treasures was a small clock, a gift from her parents on her wedding day. She placed it in the centre of the mantelpiece and a gentle tick-tock now filled the long silences. It struck on the hour, and at precisely three o’clock, before the chimes had quite died away, there was a gentle knock on the door.
Eleni opened the door wide to admit her visitor, a small, round-faced woman with flecks of silver in her hair.
‘
Kalispera
,’ said Eleni. ‘Kyrios Kontomaris told me to expect your visit. Please come in.’
‘This must be Dimitri,’ said the woman immediately, walking over to the boy, who remained seated, his head resting in his hands. ‘Come,’ she said, holding out her hand to him. ‘I am going to show you round. My name is Elpida Kontomaris, but please call me Elpida.’
There was a note of forced jollity in her voice and the kind of enthusiasm you would summon up if you were taking a terrified child to have a tooth pulled. They emerged from the gloom of the house into the late afternoon light and turned right.
‘The most important thing is the water supply,’ she began, her matter-of-fact tone betraying that she had taken new arrivals on a tour of the island many times before. Whenever a woman arrived, her husband would dispatch Elpida to welcome her. This was the first time that she had given her talk with a child present, so she knew she would have to modify some of the information she usually imparted. She would certainly have to control the vitriol that rose up inside her when she was describing the island’s facilities.
‘This,’ she said brightly, pointing to a huge cistern at the foot of the hill, ‘is where we collect our water. It’s a sociable place and we all spend plenty of time here chatting and catching up with each other’s news.’
In truth, the fact that they had to trudge several hundred metres downhill to fetch water and then all the way back with it angered her beyond words. She could cope, but there were others more crippled than her who could barely lift an empty vessel let alone one that brimmed with water. Before she lived on Spinalonga she had rarely lifted more than a glassful of water, but now carrying bucketfuls was part of life’s daily grind. It had taken her several years to get used to this. Things had perhaps changed more drastically for Elpida than for many. Coming from a wealthy family in Hania, she had been a stranger to manual work until she arrived in Spinalonga ten years earlier; the hardest assignment she had ever undertaken prior to that was to embroider a bedspread.
As usual, Elpida put on a brave front for her introduction to the island and presented only the positive aspects of it all. She showed Eleni Petrakis the few shops as though they were the finest in Iraklion, pointed out where the bi-weekly market was held and where they did their laundry. She also took her to the pharmacy, which for many was the most important building of all. She told her the times when the baker’s oven was lit and where the
kafenion
was situated, tucked away down a little side street. The priest would call on her later, but meanwhile she indicated where he lived and took them to the church. She enthused to the boy about the puppet shows which were put on for the children once a week in the town hall and finally she pointed out the schoolhouse, which stood empty today, but on three mornings each week contained the island’s small population of children.
She told Dimitri about other children of his own age and attempted to prise a smile out of him by describing the fun and games they had together, but no matter how hard she tried, his face remained impassive.
What she refrained from speaking of today, especially in front of the boy, was the restlessness that was brewing on Spinalonga. Though many of the lepers were initially grateful for the sanctuary that the island provided, they became disenchanted after a while and believed themselves abandoned, feeling their needs were met only minimally. Elpida could see that Eleni would soon become aware of the bitterness that consumed many of the lepers. It hung in the very air.
As the wife of the island leader she was in a difficult position. Petros Kontomaris had been elected by the people of Spinalonga, but his most important task was to act as mediator and go-between with the government. He was a reasonable man and knew where the boundaries lay with the authorities on Crete, but Elpida saw him battling continually against a vociferous and sometimes radical minority in the leper colony who felt that they were being badly treated and who agitated constantly for improvements to the island’s facilities. Some felt that they were mere squatters in the Turkish rubble even though Kontomaris had done everything he could in the years he had been in charge. He had negotiated a monthly allowance of twenty-five drachma for every inhabitant, a grant to build the new block of flats, a decent pharmacy and clinic and regular visits from a doctor from the mainland. He had also constructed a plan which allocated land to each person on Spinalonga who wished to cultivate their own fruit and vegetables either to eat themselves or to sell at the weekly market. In short, he had done everything he humanly could, but the population of Spinalonga always wanted more and Elpida was not sure that her husband had the energy to fulfil their expectations. She worried about him constantly. He was in his late fifties, like her, but his health was failing. Leprosy was beginning to win the battle for his body.
Elpida had seen huge changes since she had arrived, and most of these had been achieved through her husband’s endeavours. Still the rumbles of dissatisfaction grew by the day. The water situation was the main focus of unrest, particularly in the summer. The Venetian water system, constructed hundreds of years earlier, collected rainwater in tunnelled watersheds and stored it in underground tanks to prevent evaporation. It was ingeniously simple, but the tunnels were now beginning to crumble. Additionally, fresh water was brought over from the mainland every week, but there was never enough to keep more than two hundred people well washed and watered. It was a daily struggle, even with the help of mules, especially for the elderly and crippled. In the winter it was electricity they needed. A generator had been installed a couple of years earlier and everyone had anticipated the pleasure of warmth and light in the dark, chilly days from November to February. This was not to be. The generator packed up after only three weeks and had never worked again; requests for new parts were ignored and the machinery stood abandoned, almost entirely covered now with a tangle of weeds.
Water and electricity were not luxuries but necessities, and they were all aware that the inadequacy of the water supply in particular could shorten their lives. Elpida knew that, although the government had to keep their lives tolerable, its commitment to making them better was perfunctory. The inhabitants of Spinalonga seethed with anger and she shared their fury. Why, in a country where huge mountains reared up into the sky, their snowy peaks clearly visible on a wintry day, were they rationed? They wanted a reliable fresh water supply. They wanted it soon. There had been, as far as there could be amongst men and women, some of whom were crippled, violent arguments about what to do. Elpida remembered the time when one group had threatened to storm the mainland and another suggested the taking of hostages. In the end they had realised what a pathetic straggling crew they would make, with no boats, no weapons and, above all, very little strength.
All they could do was try and make their voices heard. And that was where Petros’s powers of argument and diplomacy became the most valuable weapon they had. Elpida had to maintain some distance between herself and the rest of the community but her ear was continually bent, mostly by the women, who regarded her as a conduit to her husband. She was tired of it all and secretly pressurised Petros not to stand in the next elections. Had he not given enough?
As she led Eleni and Dimitri around the little streets of the island, Elpida kept all these thoughts to herself. She saw Dimitri clutch the edge of Eleni’s billowing skirt as they walked, as if for comfort, and sighed to herself. What sort of future did the boy have in this place? She almost hoped it would not be a long one.
Eleni found the gentle tug at her skirt reassuring. It reminded her that she was not alone and had someone to care for. Only yesterday she had had a husband and daughters, and the day before a hundred eager faces at school had looked up into hers. All of them had needed her and she had thrived on that. This new reality was hard to grasp. For a moment she wondered if she had already died and this woman was a chimera showing her round Hades, telling where the dead souls could wash their shrouds and buy their insubstantial rations. Her mind, however, told her it was all real. It had not been Charon but her own husband who had brought her to hell and left her here to die. She came to a halt and Dimitri stopped too. Her head dropped to her chest and she could feel huge tears well up in her eyes. For the first time she lost control. Her throat contracted as if to deny her another breath and she took one desperate gasp to drag air into her lungs. Elpida, until now so matter-of-fact, so businesslike, turned to face her and grasped her by the arms. Dimitri looked up at both women. He had seen his own mother cry for the first time that day. Now it was the turn of his teacher. The tears coursed freely down her cheeks.