The Island (13 page)
Authors: Victoria Hislop
The reason for the antagonism to the town hall being used as a dormitory was that it was where the social life of Spinalonga, such as it was, took place. It represented, as much as anything could, the social and political normality of life on Spinalonga, and to commandeer it was to strip the islanders of a key resource. But where else was there? There was one empty room in ‘the block’, the soulless new apartment building, and this was where the Athenian women would be housed. Kontomaris would ask Elpida to take them there while he got the men settled into their makeshift quarters. His heart sank when he thought about his wife’s task; the only difference between the new block and a prison was that the doors there were bolted from the inside rather than from the outside. But for the men it had to be the town hall.
That night, Spinalonga became home to the twenty-three Athenian newcomers. Soon, many of those who had come to gawp realised that more constructive action was needed and made offers of food, drink and bedding. Any donation from their meagre stores meant significant sacrifice, but all, bar very few, managed some gesture.
The first few days were tense. Everyone waited to see what impact these new arrivals would have, but for forty-eight hours most of them were hardly seen, many lying impassively on their improvised bedding. Dr Lapakis visited them and noted that they were all suffering not just from leprosy but also from the rigours of a journey without adequate food or water and without shade from the relentless sun. It would take each one of them several weeks to recover from the months, perhaps years, of mistreatment they had endured even before they had embarked on their journey from Athens. Lapakis had heard that there was no discernible difference between conditions in the leprosy hospital and those in the gaol just a few hundred metres away on the edge of the city. The story went that the lepers were fed on scraps from the prison and that their clothes were cast-offs stripped from corpses in the city’s main hospital. He soon learned that this was not just a myth.
All the patients had been treated barbarically, and this group who had arrived in Crete had been the driving force behind a rebellion. Mostly professional, educated people, they had led a hunger strike, drafted letters which were smuggled out to friends and politicians and stirred up dissent throughout the hospital. Rather than agreeing to any change, however, the governor of the hospital decided to evict them; or, as he preferred to term it, ‘transfer them to more suitable accommodation’. Their expulsion to Spinalonga marked an end for them, and a new beginning for the island.
The women were visited each day by Elpida and were soon recovered enough to have their tour of the island and to take coffee at the Kontomaris house, and even to begin planning how they would make use of the small plot of ground which had been cleared for them to grow vegetables. They recognised very quickly that this life was an improvement on the old. At least it
was
a life. Conditions at the Athenian hospital had been horrific. The fires of hell could not have been more stifling than the suffocating summer heat in their mean, claustrophobic rooms. Add to that the rats that scratched about on the floors during the night, and they had felt no worthier than vermin.
was
a life. Conditions at the Athenian hospital had been horrific. The fires of hell could not have been more stifling than the suffocating summer heat in their mean, claustrophobic rooms. Add to that the rats that scratched about on the floors during the night, and they had felt no worthier than vermin.
Spinalonga, by contrast, was paradise. It offered unimagined freedom, with fresh air, birdsong and a street to amble down; here they could rediscover their humanity. During the long days of their journey from Athens, some had considered taking their own lives, assuming that they were being sent to an even worse place than the vile Hades where they had been struggling to survive. On Spinalonga, from their window on the second floor, the women could see the sun rise, and during their first days on the island they were entranced by the sight of the slow-breaking dawn.
Just as Eleni had done, they turned the space they were given into a home. Embroidered cotton cloths hung across the windows at night and woven rugs spread across their beds transformed the room and made it look like any simple Cretan dwelling.
For the men, it was a different story. They languished on their beds for several days, many of them still weakened by the hunger strike they had staged in Athens. Kontomaris organised for food to be brought to the hall and left in the vestibule, but when the dishes were collected on the first day the islanders saw that their offerings had scarcely been touched. The great metal cooking pot was still full to the brim with lamb stew; the only indication that there was any life in the building was that of the five loaves brought to the town hall, only three remained.
On the second day all the bread was eaten, and on the third, a pan of rabbit casserole was scraped clean. Each day such signs of increased appetite signified the revival of these pitiful creatures. On the fourth day, Nikos Papadimitriou emerged, blinking, into the dazzling sunlight. Forty-five years old and a lawyer, Papadimitriou had once been at the centre of Athenian life. Now he was the leader and spokesman for a group of lepers, playing this role with just as much energy as he had put into his legal career. Nikos was a natural trouble-maker, and if he had not gone into law, he might have chosen crime instead. His attempts to oppose the Athenian authorities by organising the revolt in the hospital had not been entirely successful, but he was more determined than ever to win better conditions for his fellow lepers now that they were on Spinalonga.
Though sharp-tongued, Papadimitriou had great charm and could always gather supporters. His great ally and friend was Mihalis Kouris, an engineer who had, like Papadimitriou, been in the Athenian hospital for nearly five years. That day, Kontomaris took them around Spinalonga. Unlike the majority of newcomers shown the island for the first time, a constant stream of questions flowed from these two men: ‘So where is the water source?’ ‘How long have you been waiting for the generator?’ ‘How often does the doctor visit?’ ‘What is the mortality rate?’ ‘What are the current building plans?’
Kontomaris answered their questions as well as he could, but could tell by their every grunt and sigh that they were rarely satisfied with the answers. The island leader knew perfectly well that Spinalonga was underresourced. He had worked tirelessly for six years to improve things and in many areas he had succeeded, though never to the degree that everyone wanted. It was a thankless task, and as he strolled out beyond the town towards the cemetery, he wondered why he had bothered at all. This was where they would all end up, however hard he strived to make things better. All three of them would eventually lie beneath a stone slab in one of these subterranean concrete bunkers until their bones were moved to one side to make way for the next corpse. The futility of it all and the distant sound of Papadimitriou’s insistent questioning made him want to sit down and weep. He decided at that very moment that he would tell the Athenians the bald facts. If they were more interested in reality than in simply being made to feel welcome, then so be it.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he said, stopping in his tracks and turning round to face them both, ‘everything you want to know. But if I do that, the burden becomes yours too. Do you understand?’
They nodded in assent, and Kontomaris began to give them the details of the island’s shortcomings. He described every hoop he had jumped through in order to make any changes and told them about all the issues currently under negotiation. Then the three of them went back to the leader’s house and, with Papadimitriou and Kouris’s fresh perspective on the island’s facilities, drew up a new plan. This included works in progress, projects to be started and finished within the coming year and an outline of what would be undertaken in the forthcoming five-year period. Such prospects in themselves would create the sense of moving forward that these people needed so much.
From that day, Papadimitriou and Kouris became Kontomaris’s great supporters. No longer did they feel like condemned men, but as though they had been given a new start. Life had not held so much potential for a very long time. Within weeks, the proposals, which included specifications for building and reconstruction, were ready to be submitted to the government. Papadimitriou knew how to lean on the politicians, and his law firm in Athens, a family practice of some influence, became involved. ‘Everyone on this island is a citizen of Greece,’ he insisted. ‘They have rights and I’m damned if I won’t fight for them.’ To the amazement of everyone - apart from Papadimitrou himself - within a month the government had agreed to provide the sum of money they had asked for.
The other Athenians, once they had risen from their torpor, threw themselves into new building projects. No longer were they abandoned invalids but members of a community where everyone had to pull their weight. It was now late September, and though temperatures were more moderate, the issue of water was still pressing - the addition of twenty-three new inhabitants had placed more demand than ever on the supply from the mainland and the crumbling water tunnels. Something had to be done, and Mihalis Kouris was the man to do it.
Once repairs were complete, everyone looked to the heavens for rain, and one night in early November their prayers were answered. In a spectacular display of sound and light, the skies opened, noisily emptying their contents on to the island, the mainland and the sea all around. Pebble-sized hailstones bounced down, breaking windows and sending goats scampering for safety on the hillsides, as flashes of lightning bathed the landscape in an apocalyptic luminescence. Next morning the islanders woke to find their watersheds brimful of cool, clear water. Having resolved the most pressing issue of all, the Athenians then turned their attention to creating homes for themselves. There was a derelict area between the main street and the sea; it was where the Turks had built their first houses. The dwellings, mere shells, were constructed right up against the fortress walls and would have been among the most sheltered of all enclaves. With the sort of industry and efficiency rarely seen on Crete, the old houses were restored and raised up out of the rubble, with good-as-new masonry and skilfully planed carpentry. Well before the first snowfall crowned Mount Dhikti they were ready to be occupied and the town hall was once again available for everyone. Not that the initial resentment against the Athenian lepers had lasted for long. It had only been a matter of weeks before the population of Spinalonga had recognised the potential of the new islanders and realised that what they might give would far exceed what they could ever take.
Then, as winter approached, the campaign for the generator began again in earnest. Heat and light would become the most valuable commodities as the winds began to find their way through chinks in every door and window, whipping through the draughty homes in the fading mid-afternoon light. Now that the government had discovered that Spinalonga had a more strident voice, one that could not be disregarded, it was not long before a letter came promising everything that was required. Many of the islanders were cynical. ‘I wouldn’t put money on them keeping their word,’ some would say. ‘Until I can turn on a lamp in my own house, I won’t trust them to deliver,’ agreed others. The general view among people who had been on Spinalonga for more than a few years was that the government’s promise was worth no more than the flimsy paper it was written on.
Just ten days before all the parts arrived, labelled and complete, the anticipation of the generator was the main topic of Eleni’s identical letters to Anna and Maria:
The generator is going to make so much difference to our lives. There was one here once before so some of the electric fittings are already in place and two of the men from Athens are expert in how to make it all work (thank goodness). Every house is promised at least one light and a small heater and those are due to arrive at the same time as the rest of the equipment.
Anna read her letter in the dying light of a winter’s afternoon. A low fire burned in the grate but she could see her breath on the cold air. A candle cast a flickering light across the page and she idly poked a corner of the sheet into its flame. Slowly the fire crept across, melting the paper until she held nothing but a fingertip-sized piece which she then dropped into the wax. Why did her mother have to write so often? Did she really think that they all wanted to hear of her warm, contented and now well-lit life with that boy? Her father made them reply to every letter, and Anna struggled over every word. She was not happy and she was not going to pretend.
Maria read her letter and showed it to her father.
‘It’s good news, isn’t it?’ Giorgis commented. ‘And it’s all thanks to those Athenians. Who would have thought that a ragbag like that could make such a difference?’
By the beginning of winter, before the sharpness of the December winds arrived, the island had warmth and, after darkness fell, those who wished could now read by the dimmest of dim electric lights.
When Advent began, Giorgis and Eleni needed to decide how to deal with Christmas. It was to be their first one apart for fifteen years. The festival did not have the importance of Easter, but it was a time for ritual and feasting within the family and Eleni’s absence would be a gaping void.
For a few days before and after Christmas Giorgis did not cross the choppy waters to visit Eleni. Not just because the vicious wind would bite into his hands and face until they were raw, but because his daughters needed him to stay. Similarly, Eleni’s attentions had to be on Dimitri and they played out in parallel the age-old traditions. As they always had, the girls sang tuneful
kalanda
from house to house and were rewarded with sweets and dried fruit, and after early morning mass on Christmas Day they feasted with the Angelopoulos family on pork and delicious
kourambiethes
, sweet nutty biscuits baked by Savina. Things were not so very different on Spinalonga. The children sang in the square, helped bake the ornate seasonal loaves known as
christopsomo
, Christ’s bread, and ate as never before. For Dimitri it was the first time he had enjoyed such plentiful quantities of rich food and witnessed such hedonism.
kalanda
from house to house and were rewarded with sweets and dried fruit, and after early morning mass on Christmas Day they feasted with the Angelopoulos family on pork and delicious
kourambiethes
, sweet nutty biscuits baked by Savina. Things were not so very different on Spinalonga. The children sang in the square, helped bake the ornate seasonal loaves known as
christopsomo
, Christ’s bread, and ate as never before. For Dimitri it was the first time he had enjoyed such plentiful quantities of rich food and witnessed such hedonism.
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