Black Butterflies (12 page)

Then quite suddenly, amidst the flashing lights, red flares and music, the Turkish boat is on fire. There are no lights creating this as it is no illusion. The boat is ablaze. Marina gasps out loud. She senses Panos, or his friend, turn and look at her but it is too dark for Marina to tell who it is, or for him to see her. She puts her hand over her mouth to gain some control but it slips to her lap as the ship continues to burn, lighting up the fishing boats and water taxis that are now circling like vultures.

Blink. Crack. Marina’s hand to her mouth. Fireworks explode from the ship. Star bursts and red flares. Rockets and fizzings. Marina’s eyes water and she wipes away a tear of fun and fear. As each explosion rips through the ship the scene below is lit up bright as day, like lightning striking. The music swells. The fishing boats circle menacingly. The ship is sinking now, but still the silver fireworks ignite, the surrounding Greek fleet slowly backing away into the darkness, lights extinguished. The Turkish ship capsizes, the mast dipping into the water, the Turkish flag now beneath the waves, the flames flickering and struggling for life as the water takes their oxygen, until all is dark and still. Marina wants to cheer. But as soon as the feeling comes upon her a series of rocket fireworks are launched from along the harbour’s edge. Her emotions are left suspended as a new spectacle unfolds.

And then, the rockets gone, silence and dark remain. Not a light, not a sound. The island could be empty.

Out of the silence come the first few bars of a
sirtaki
, Zorba’s dance. Steady and slow at the beginning, baram de de de, baram de de de, dropping a tone, baram de de de, baram de de de, and then picking up at a gallop. Marina can no longer help herself and she claps in rhythm, only to find, very quickly, her hands not meeting as she is overwhelmed by the firework display of rockets from the harbour exploding in time to the music’s beat. As the music gets faster so do the explosions of silver until, the music is played out by coloured fireworks ignited from behind the cannon at the top of the step with nothing but sky for a backdrop. The fireworks are thunderous, bursting overhead in reds and greens and purples, showering the island.

The sky grows wider and wider as the pyrotechnics reach greater heights and explode in a sunflower of colour, only to detonate again in fizzing puffs of spiralling embers. Silver to blue to red, the intensity of light illuminating a lacework of smoke trails drifting in the sky.

One after another the florets and dandelion clocks of illuminated spectrum fill the sky until the music can no longer be heard for the whizzes and bangs, cracks and whistles. The dome of sky above Marina’s head is filled to capacity, each phenomenon being surpassed by the next extravaganza, until the sky is bright with colour and Marina’s face shines in the glow, her blue dress reflecting each colour in turn, becoming itself part of the painting. Marina looks down at her hands. They too are changing colour.

Just as she thinks there can be no more, the final earth-shattering bang sends a rocket so high Marina thinks it has extinguished itself, but when it appears to be directly overhead there is an explosion of light followed by the accompanying delayed crack. Each separate spark of this first disgorging flare detonates again, and the night sky is filled with silver rain that falls and falls, trails of white smoke streaking the sky in the aftermath.

One of the boats in the harbour sounds a rude horn in a token of appreciation. This is followed by another and another, the large boats moored outside the harbour wall blaring their baritones for minutes at a time, smaller vessels parping repeatedly, everyone trying to outdo their neighbour. All around the town people are whistling.

Marina, hidden in the dark, whistles and whistles, first to show her appreciation but then because she is trying to out-whistle someone on a hill the same height as her across the harbour. Back and forth they shrill it out, Marina feeling every bit like the naughty child she is enjoying being.

A tap on the microphone is dimly audible in the massive noise the people of the island are making. It brings some order, and the wave of quiet grows until the man on the microphone can be heard thanking this person and that for their contribution to the evening, ending with thanks for the anonymous donation that paid for the fireworks. He names every child who has danced and even gives good wishes to those who could not for whatever reason, mentioning each by name, the island united by their youth. No one is forgotten, judging by the long list he reads out.

Panos and his friend turn and begin the delicate and careful trek down from the very top as the list of names continues. As they near Marina, Panos acknowledges her and Marina greets them both with a smile and wishes them
‘
Kali Nikta
’ – goodnight – although she is aware that for them the night will likely not be over, as they will probably go down to a bar or a friend’s house. They pass by, discreetly holding each other’s sleeves. The second couple comes towards Marina.

Marina quickly bends to the ground and fumbles around in her bag on the floor. She has heard Eleni
’s voice. This is Eleni and her boyfriend. The desire to look and see who he is tugs at her but she dares not look up. She continues rummaging in her bag and they pass behind her in the dark.

Eleni says,
‘Goodnight.’

Such good manners.
Marina opens her mouth to reply but takes a second to lower her voice and hold her nose in the dark. The result is she sounds unbelievable, and as if she smokes forty cigarettes a day.

Eleni
’s friend replies in a light youthful voice. He doesn’t sound thirty-five, which feels like a relief for some reason. After they have passed Marina feels safe in the dark on the top of the hill to look after them. He is about the same height as Eleni, slim built, lithe perhaps, and he is offering his hand to help Eleni on every step. Marina instantly likes him for this action alone. Eleni trips and she is caught, and gifted with a kiss. Such tenderness.

Marina tries to hurry down the steep unlit slope to get a better look at him, see his face, but it is treacherous and the hill drops away down to the town on one side. A false step could be fatal. She looks up to see them again. He is wearing a strange hat, but then in the dark everything can seem strange. She focuses on placing her feet until the ground becomes more solid.

She can still see them away in the distance as they turn into the whitewashed passages. Eleni looks so light on her feet, so carefree. They are so similar she could confuse the two at this distance.

Marina makes a mental note that she can now eliminate any of the three men left on her list by height and build. Now she knows his dimensions she could have easily ruled out chubby Aris Kranidiotis without even talking to him, as well as the tall millionaire Costas Voulgaris, although she had enjoyed his performance. Panos would have almost fitted the bill, although perhaps a little tall and with broader shoulders. Eleni
’s man had been narrow top to bottom: a wiry stick, although it feels unfair to judge in the dark, the dark being so deceiving that Eleni had not even recognised her own stooping, nose-pinching mother.

The way down to the lit paths seems very quick as soon as she is off the hill top. Once amongst the houses, Marina makes it back to Zoe
’s within ten minutes. The house is dark; no sound of the television as she passes the front door.

Just before Marina turns out the light in her own room she takes her list from her bag and puts a line under Apostolis Kaloyannis. It is late, but if she can get up in time she will walk out to the boatyard before the sun is up tomorrow.

It is still cool when Marina
’s little alarm clock rouses her at 5 a.m. For a moment she thinks she is at home and must get up to open the shop. She turns onto one side and pushes herself up, swinging her legs to the floor, which her feet find before she expects it. She sits up straight and leans her weight forward to stand. Only when she is upright does she open her eyes.

The sight of the rented room dispels all thoughts of her shop and she feels tempted to sit back down again, lean over, allow gravity to pull her down to the mattress and curl up to go back to sleep. She even begins to bend her knees to sit, her bottom poised over the mattress edge. But a vision of Eleni from last night focuses her commitment. Her flip-flops feel cooler than her shoes and most of the creases have dropped out of her dress overnight.

She steals into the unbroken dawn with her hat pulled firmly down on her head, but at the last minute she changes her mind about the flip-flops and returns to put on socks and her comfortable old shoes. Much more practical for walking.

The houses are silent. Windows wide open to let in the cool night air, black interiors for the sleepers within. Marina is not sure she remembers how to get to the upper road which joins the coastal path heading to the boatyard. She knows she must go behind Zoe
’s, up the side of the hill, and she trusts she will join the top path that will lead her all the way to the village of five houses with the beautiful beach-front further along the coast road to the western end of the island.

The narrow paths are deceptive in the half-light. They look like public rights of way between houses, but twice Marina finds herself turning a corner into someone
’s back yard and retracing her steps. It is taking longer than she anticipated just to find the main path she needs. At this rate the dawn will break and the sun will chase into the sky, leaving her return journey heat-stroke hot and shadeless. She walks faster until she finally finds the path and sets out at a good pace.

She took this path once before, way back then. Aunt Efi had been asleep again and Marina had tiptoed down the steps, lifted the door open so the bottom wouldn
’t scrape, and headed out in the hot afternoon. She had found the top way that leads to the coastal path by chance, and when it had opened out into a pretty little valley down to the sea Marina had felt she was in a different world. Goats grazed in the fields above the path, and donkeys and goats in the field to the right. To Marina’s knowledge it is the only working farm on the island, the only fields of green. The farm house is planted under a rocky outcrop whose top must have incredible views of the sea. However, the farmer must have decided shade was more important and his house nestles into the rock so its back provides the fourth wall.

Nothing has changed. The smell of goats and the sounds of goat bells tell Marina they are there, but the goats above the path in amongst the scrub and the rocky outcrops blend to invisibility.

The gently undulating field to her right also hosts the sound of goat bells, but they too are invisible. In the middle of the field is a twisted old olive tree, beneath which a white ghost of a horse is tethered, the pre-dawn light melting its outline into the haze. Its head nods as it plucks grass, and its flicking calls to mind the flies that will grow more persistent as the heat increases. Marina presses on, aware that the cool she is enjoying has a limited window.

She can hear a distant voice up on the hill. The silhouette of a man leading four donkeys heads toward the town. Marina wonders why, if he is talking to himself, he is being so loud. He stops and the donkeys, following his lead, dip their heads to the ground. The man
’s silhouette turns and Marina can see his arm is raised, he is on his mobile. He sees Marina and waves, and continues to shout down the phone as he turns and resumes his morning trek.

Marina
’s path begins to drop and the hills slide away to the sea, which has just begun to take on a pale silver-orange sheen on its oil-like surface as the sun peeps its first tentative rays over the horizon.

Marina joins the coastal path slashed into the hillside, which continues its descent without relenting its curve towards the sea. There are a few houses dotted at this joining of the paths. A small church embraces the hillside, the stone above the door inscribed 1820.

Past the houses she can see the coastal path stretching along the length of the island. Dawn is breaking over the sea behind her and the path is golden. A black butterfly lands in front of her. It pauses motionless, wings closed, until it darts up to join a friend, circling in dance. The charms of these butterflies have not diminished over the years. She was so taken when she was last here that she spent hours when stuck in Aunt Efi’s apartment embroidering them onto hankies and other things. Always two of them, joyfully circling in depressing black thread. Joyful and depressing, reflecting her ambivalent mood.

Marina, on the level path, increases her speed, her flat black shoes at one with her feet. She watches her feet for a few steps. A small piece of cotton thread sticking up on the toe of her right shoe is new. It looks strangely clean against her old shoes.

The view down the channel is uninterrupted here. There is a small island close to the shore, black against the orange water, with a tiny whitewashed church on top like a piece of royal icing. The island further out is larger, also boasting a church. The island beyond casts a long shadow across the water behind it. Far across the water a tiny black speck accompanies the low chug of its fishing-boat engine, heading home for breakfast.

Marina makes a note of the sun
’s advance and looks ahead along the path. She is making good progress but is concerned that she cannot see the path some way ahead at all. She wonders if there has been a hill slide. There will be some sort of path, presumably, but the way will become harder.

What Marina thought was a small inlet before the path disappeared turns out to be a sizable recess, the path becoming a concrete road as it cuts across the beach to section off the dry bay, sharply scooped out from the steep hills. She has reached the boatyard, and the sun is barely off the horizon. Marina congratulates herself on her speed. Half a dozen little wooden fishing boats have been dragged up onto the shingle beach. On the other side of the wide raised concrete path, inside the yard itself, a few larger vessels are lined up, standing on their keels and propped up by wooden poles on either side, with makeshift wooden ladders dotted liberally where needed. A grand wooden caique, next to a small wooden tug, next to modern fibreglass yacht. The supporting poles look like giant insect legs, a frozen army ready to march, tarpaulins, slung like greatcoats over shoulders, protecting them from the sun as the hulls are caulked and painted. Underbellies half-stripped of paint, the underlying wood scorched by the flame-torches of the workmen. A silent platoon of suspended effort. All is still.

To the left of the yard is an impressively large old stone house set into the hill, the covered veranda with its stone arch overlooking the place of work. But all is quiet here too. The shutters closed, abandoned chairs on the patio.

A cockerel crows as if to prove someone lives in the valley
’s bowl. Amongst the orange and olive trees Marina can see half a dozen low-lying stone houses, blue in this light, their orange roofs burnt dark in the sun, belying their age.

Marina is not sure what to do. A sense of panic grips her chest. The boatyard is clearly packed up for the season. Dry dock is not the place for boats in summer, and it is a wonder there are any here at all.

At the other side of the beach near the ramp used for hauling the boats in and out of the water there is a painted notice.

Marina, at a loss for what to do next, and feeling as if her task has become insurmountable, allows her legs to continue their pace until she is standing in front of the notice. It is written on a piece of weathered hardboard with a scratchy marker pen that all but runs out of ink near the end, the letters fading.

Boat Owners, Sailors, Captains and Crew

We love you in the winter when your work is our business
…

We love you in the summer when by chance we meet and share sailing stories over an ouzo
…

But if you have a work-related problem in the heat of the summer, ask yourself if it can wait till we re-open in the less hot months before you call us or walk up to our house in the mountains where you will find us enjoying the cooler heights during this time.

Tolis and Takis Kaloyannis

27522

Tolis and Takis, father and son? Marina feels her hope reignited at the sight of his name.

She has brought no bag and so no phone. However, her legs feel energised as if the years of sitting in her shop have stored up the need to move. The thought of the walk up into the mountains gives her a thrill. Before the muscles in her calves have had a chance to relax she strides out again along the path and turns to cut down the side of the valley, and then left to head further along the island through the pine woods. She leaves behind houses that look as if they have not been lived in for years, and even some, when viewed from the rear, that prove to be no more than shells, their roofs fallen in long ago. Another cockerel calls as the pine trees close behind Marina, muffling all sound.

Marina’s lungs claw as the track begins to climb steeply now. She pauses to take breath and can see the streak of sun between the pine trees stretching across the sea. The hill on the far side of the boatyard behind her shades the pine trees from the dawn and the needled undergrowth is still, quiet and dark. The path continues, and after some time Marina wonders if she will gain the mountain village before the sun forces her to hastily retreat. The path turns further inland, and as she tops one hill, another hill even higher appears. It seems too far. There is a mountainous ridge to her right and a rocky outcrop to her left. It keeps the path in the shade. The sun has not yet risen here. Marina feels sure she can make it to the top of the next hill, but what if there is yet another hill beyond that?

She decides the top of the next hill is her turning point. But as this is gained and she deliberates at which tree exactly she will turn and admit defeat, she sees a very long-eared hare leap across the road above her, its black tufted ears so comical. Marina wishes to see another and climbs some more in hope, and is rewarded. The hare pauses, squatting on hind legs, front legs dangling, tufted ears upright, swivelling. She giggles and stays alert for more. The trees are thinning and the hare darts towards an open area. Marina follows the path, mesmerised.

She can hear a cockerel crow somewhere up the road and the trees have thinned out to scrub. Goat bells tell her she is within distance of human habitation. Another cockerel. A walled enclosure. A donkey’s saddle, wood and padded leather, by the side of the road. Marina’s excitement grows as there on a hillock in front of her is the first mountain-village house, this one flat-roofed. Low stone walls with mesh fences below it contain the cockerel and some hens which run to her excitedly.

The hill on her left still keeps the sun at bay, and as Marina passes the house on the hill the road divides, left into a dell with two cottages dotted or right towards a two-storey stone house on a ridge that Marina feels sure will give her a view down the other side of the island.

The idea of seeing down the other side of the island appeals, and she turns right. Set into the hillside by the road is a big concrete tank, no doubt for water. Hanging by its feet, from one corner of the block, is a seagull, its beak open, its tongue protruding, its eyes crusted white. Marina recoils.

People come here to hunt. Rabbits and hares in the summer. The place suddenly feels sinister and Marina turns to retrace her steps. It is then that she sees the village. It is not the one or two houses she has seen. There, on this side of the house with the flat roof, are a dozen houses all crowded in together in the shade of the hillock.

Instead of there being four houses for Marina to check, there are twenty. Finding a single man’s house without causing undue interest will not be possible. Marina gasps. What if he is not single? What if he is married, and Eleni is ‘the other woman’? Marina crosses herself twice and pushes the thought away. But the thought will not dissipate. It explains Eleni’s reticence, her anger.

‘
Oh, my poor baby,’ she says to the sky, and sinks down to sit on a wall.

‘
Who’s your poor baby?’

Marina jolts. The chickens have spoken. She turns her head to see which chicken it is. An angelic boy smiles back up at her. He is crouched on the ground with his hand open, resting on the floor. The hens pick corn from his upturned palm. He is wearing a pair of swimming trunks. His feet are black, his dark tan even, his hair sticking out at every angle, messy from sleep. He obviously lives in his shorts. Red shorts. His hair as blonde as the gods themselves. His eyes brown, dark brown. Marina is dazzled.

‘This one is
my
baby,’ he says, and picks up a fluffy-bottomed red Rhode Island hen. The chicken seems very happy tucked under his arm. He fishes in a home-made bag slung over his shoulder and holds out a handful of corn to her. She pecks eagerly.

‘
She’s beautiful,’ Marina says

‘
Who are you up here to see?’

‘
Oh! I am not sure, maybe no one.’