The Devil Takes Half (41 page)

One swallow does not bring spring.

—
Aristotle

P
atronas looked around Profitis Ilias. He could hear Alcott shouting orders inside the cave. A row of amphorae were being crated up for shipment to Athens, each one being carefully painted with a pair of tiny white numbers by a graduate student. Alcott had been a good boss. He'd given him a lot of responsibility and made good on his pension. He'd even asked Patronas to ferry some of the more valuable jewelry from the cave to the National Museum in Athens. Cops had met Patronas' plane and escorted him across the city in a motorcade. Watching people's heads turn, Patronas had felt like the prime minister. Alcott always promoted Patronas as the one who'd actually found the ruins and arranged for the BBC to interview him about the discovery.

“
What do I say?” Patronas had asked him. “The English, for me, it's a struggle.”

“
How did you feel when you first saw the city?”

“
Astonished. I felt astonished. That place, it took my breath away.”

“
What else?”

“
I felt like I could see the people.”

“
The Minoans?”

Patronas nodded. “I found some toys … a little wagon made out of clay. Some figurines I thought might be dolls. It was like the children were still there, hiding in the shadows.”

“
That's perfect,” Alcott had told him. “That's all you've got to say.”

And so Patronas had gone on television, talking about what the English reporter had termed ‘the archeological discovery of the century.'

He liked being up on the hill, walking around in the open air with Tembelos, discussing the finds with Alcott. And then, of course, there was the detective agency Papa Michalis was intent on establishing. Their work hadn't amounted to much so far, mostly accumulating evidence in divorce cases, but the priest had gotten business cards printed up with their names on them and was thinking of renting air time on the local radio station. “We'll call ourselves ‘the eyes,' ” he'd told Patronas. “Get it? Private eyes, all-seeing eyes.” The old man would be crushed if Patronas pulled out now.

* * *

As Patronas had predicted, an army of archeologists descended upon Chios from all over the world. A group of German scientists from Heidelberg had even come in their own plane, an ancient Convair, and there were now groups of foreign archeologists digging all over the island. A local resident was building an open air theater behind the cathedral in Chora, planning to stage a sound and light show reenacting Minoan life, and there were rumors of a new hotel going up on the Roussos farm, accommodations for the hundreds of tourists who now wanted to visit the site.

Alcott had divided up the cave. One area belonged to an American university in the Midwest, another to the Sorbonne, still another to the German archeologists from Heidelberg. It was like Berlin after the war, little flags marking each group's domain. Patronas now had a laptop and kept track of everyone allowed access to the site on something called a ‘spreadsheet,' which Alcott had created for him. He'd check them in as they entered the cave, check them out again when they exited.

He had counted fifty people that morning when he was down in the cave, fifty people on their hands and knees, shifting soil back and forth, the way his mother had once done with flour. Some test results had come back, and Alcott informed him that the bones in the amphorae were far older than the rest of the artifacts.

“
They're at least two hundred years older than anything else in the cave,” he said, “according to all the tests we've run on them.”

“
What does that mean?” Patronas asked.

“
If means when they fled Crete or Thera or wherever else they were, these people brought their dead with them.”

And so we all do,
Patronas thought.
We bring our dead with us wherever we travel, wherever we go. Their bones lay beside us as we sleep. Their eyes look up at us in the faces of our children. Their voices haunt our songs.

He left the cave and stepped out into the wind. The fields below were barren, the grass of summer withered and gone.

* * *

Patronas occasionally had dinner with Papa Michalis at a tavern by the harbor, inevitably footing the bill. The priest favored the most expensive varieties of fish, claiming they had fewer bones, and always prefaced his main course with five or six appetizers. Shrimp was a special favorite, the larger the better, as was
barbounia,
priced at sixty-four Euros a kilo. In spite of his age, he remained a prodigious eater and would tilt his head and down the smaller ones all in one gulp like a seal.

“
Guess who just called me?” Patronas asked him late one night. It was too cold to sit outside and they were huddled at a table in the back near the kitchen. “Evangelos Demos.”

Stunned, the priest put down his fork. “Whatever for?”

“
To help him with a case.”

“
Tourist trouble?”

“
No. Murder.”

Like a dog hearing the sound of his master's voice, the elderly priest sat up a little straighter and leaned forward, his face intent. “Murder?”

He immediately launched into a long, convoluted discussion of the possible forensic techniques Patronas might employ to catch the killer, swabbing the fingernails of the corpse being a prominent one.

“
Father,” said Patronas gently. “The victim was a child, a seven-year-old boy.”

The priest grew very still. “Where?” he finally asked.

“
An island called Thanatos.”

Aggelos: Angels

Agglos:
Englishman

Aginares a la Polita:
Artichokes in the style of Constantinople

Akrotiri:
Ancient Minoan city on Santorini. ‘The Greek Pompeii'

Anapoda:
Backwards

Andreas einai:
Literally, ‘the men are.' Dismissive expression, as in ‘what did you expect?'

Apolektikos
: Apoplectic

Apothiki:
A closet/storage space

A sto diablo
: Go to the devil, equivalent of ‘what the hell'

Bougatses
: Dessert made of puff pastry and custard

Bourekakia:
Appetizer made of eggplants stuffed with cheese and fried

Briam:
A vegetable stew

Daskalopetra:
Literally ‘teacher's rock', a famous landmark on Chios

Dolmadakia
: Stuffed vine leaves

Dolmates gemista
: Stuffed tomatoes

Drakos
: Vampire, monster

Eisai kala
: Are you well?

Evlogeitos, H Kyrie
: Words from the Orthodox memorial service. Literally, ‘bless us, O Lord.'

Engonaki:
Grandson

Gafa
: Mistake

Galapetras:
Literally ‘milk stones,' ancient seals with intaglio inscriptions

Geliographia: Cartoons

Horta:
Cooked wild greens

Kafenion:
Old fashioned Greek coffee shop, patronized only by men

Kalamatino:
Circle dance from Kalamata in Peloponnese, popular Greek folk dance

Kale mera
: Good day

Kale spera
: Good evening

Kamaki:
Spearfisherman, a man who picks up women

Kathiki:
Vulgar word for chamber pot

Kathighiti
: Professor

Kokkoretsi:
Grilled intestines, chittlins, offal

Kolopetsomeni
: A person whose ass is made of leather

Kommotis:
Hairdresser, beauty parlor

Kourabiedes
: Special holiday cookies

Kouvetta:
Sugared almonds used as favors at baptisms and weddings

Kyria/Kyrie:
Mrs., a title of respect

Laderna:
Portable musical organ operated by hand

Laiki
: Open air market

Loucoumades:
Fried dough covered with honey, walnuts and cinnamon

Malia pisgris
: Literally ‘cotton candy hair,' used to describe hair of the elderly

Meltemi:
Wind from the Sahara

Meletzanasalata: Eggplant salad

Meletzanes
: Eggplants

Me stravose:
They crucified me

Mezes/mezedakia:
Assorted appetizers

Miralogia:
Rhymed funeral dirges sung by elderly women in rural Greece

Mouvgale to ladi:
He/they squeezed the oil out of me

Na zisete:
Congratulations

Nuxtaloulouda:
Flowers that release their scent at night

Olympiakos
: Soccer team of Athens

Ouzo
: National drink of Greece, anise flavored and very strong

Paidi Mou
: Term of endearment, literally ‘my child'

Panageri
: Celebration usually held at a church in conjunction with a saint's name day

Panagia Mou
: Holy Mother of God, informal, equivalent of ‘holy smokes'

Parea:
Companionship, friends

Paximadia
: Narrow hard-crusted sweetbreads, similar to Biscotti, rusks

Phaistos
: Site of ancient Minoan settlement where the disc bearing its name was found

Poustis
: Slang for homosexual, equivalent of ‘faggot'

Psaria tou Morocco
: Fish from Morocco

Psychopathis
: Psychopath, psychopathic

Raki
: Very powerful Cretan liquor

Refithia keftedes
: Meatballs made from garbanzo beans

Retsina:
Greek white wine flavored with the resin of pine trees

Rizogalo
: Rice pudding

Skordalia
: Sauce made of garlic, olive oil, and potatoes

Skylovris
e: Nasty remark, literally a ‘dog bite'

Smyrneiko
: In the style of Smryna, a city in Asia Minor destroyed by the Turks

Striegla
: Loud, shrewish woman

Styfado
: Stew made of veal and pearl onions and flavored with cinnamon

Svingis: Donuts

Taramasalata
: Spread made of fish roe and mashed potatoes

Theotokos
: Formal term for the Virgin Mary, used only in church

Ti kaneis:
How are you?

Trahana:
A primitive pasta made of sourdough, usually cooked in broth

Trelli/Trellos:
Derogatory term, ‘crazy'

Trigono
: Dainty sweets made of filo and nuts in the shape of triangles

Trikkala
: Very small three-wheeled truck used in the Greek countryside

Tsipouro
: Very powerful liquor from Crete

Varvarus
: Barbarian

Vlachos
: Moron, imbecile

Vrasta
: Boil them!

Xontroulis: Fatso

Xenos/xenii/xenia:
Foreigners, strangers

Yeia Sou
: The equivalent of hello/greetings

T
he daughter of an itinerant scientist,
Leta Serafim
was born in Wisconsin and spent the first years of her life in San Diego. Her family moved to Washington, D.C., when NASA was created and her father went to work for that agency. A genuine rocket scientist, he served there for twenty-five years in many capacities—Director of Unmanned Space, Director of Astronomy, Associate Administrator and Chief Scientist—and supervised the American missions to Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.

Leta attended Wells College in upstate New York for two years before transferring to George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She graduated with a degree in political science and Russian studies, with a focus on Dostoyevsky, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn.