The Island (15 page)

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Authors: Victoria Hislop

BOOK: The Island
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‘I packed and then I unpacked,’ Elpida replied mysteriously. ‘We’re staying here.’
 
Precisely on cue, there was a firm knock at the door. Papadimitriou had arrived.
 
‘Kyria Kontomaris invited me to eat with you,’ he said simply.
 
Once they were all seated and a generous glass of ouzo had been poured for each of them, Kontomaris regained his composure.
 
‘I think there’s been some kind of conspiracy,’ he said. ‘I should be angry, but I know you both well enough to realise I’ve no choice in this matter.’
 
His smile belied his stern tone and the formality of his words. He was secretly delighted at Papadimitriou’s generosity, not least because he knew how much it meant to his wife. The three of them toasted each other in ratification of the deal that had been struck, and the issue of the leader’s house was never mentioned between them again. There were a few rumbles of dissent among the council members and fervent discussions about what would happen if a future leader wished to reclaim the splendid house, but a compromise was eventually reached: tenancy of the house would be reassessed every five years.
 
After the election, work continued apace with the renovation of the island. Papadimitriou’s efforts had not merely been an electioneering ploy. Repairing and rebuilding went on until everyone had a decent place to live, their own oven, usually in the courtyard in front of their home, and, even more importantly for their sense of pride, a private outdoor latrine.
 
Now that water was being collected efficiently there was plenty for everyone, and an extensive communal laundry was built with a long row of smooth concrete sinks. It was little less than a luxury for the women, who would linger over their washing, making the area a vibrant social focus.
 
The social aspect of their lives was also enhanced, however, in less workaday situations. For Panos Sklavounis, an Athenian who had once been an actor, the working day began when everyone else’s had ended. Not long after the election, he took Papadimitriou to one side. Sklavounis’s approach was aggressive, which was typical of the man’s manner. He liked confrontation and as an actor back in Athens had been used to hustling.
 
‘Boredom is growing like a fungus here,’ he said. ‘What people need is entertainment. Lots of them can’t look forward to next year, but they might as well have something to look forward to next week.’
 
‘I see your point and I agree entirely,’ responded Papadimitriou. ‘But what do you propose?’
 
‘Entertainment. Large-scale entertainment,’ replied Sklavounis rather grandly.
 
‘Which means what?’ asked Papadimitriou.
 
‘Movies,’ said Sklavounis.
 
Six months earlier, such a proposal would have seemed ambitious beyond words and as laughable as telling the lepers they could swim across to Elounda to visit the cinema. Now, however, it was not beyond the realms of possibility.
 
‘Well, we have a generator,’ said Papadimitriou, ‘which is a good start, but it’s not all that’s required, is it?’
 
Keeping the islanders happy and occupied in the evening might indeed help rule out much of the discontent that still lingered. While people sat in rows in the dark, thought Papadimitriou, they could not be drinking to excess or hatching plots in the
kafenion
.
 
‘What else do you need?’ he asked.
 
Sklavounis was quick to reply. He had already worked out how many people could fit into the town hall and where he could get a projector, a screen and the film reels. He had also, very importantly, done the figures. The missing element, until he had committee approval, was money, but given that so many of the lepers were now earning some kind of income, an entry fee could be charged to the new cinema and the cost of the entire enterprise might eventually cover itself.
 
Within a few weeks of his initial request, posters appeared around the town:
 
Saturday 13 April
7.00 p.m.
Town Hall
The Apaches of Athens
Tickets 2 drachma
 
 
 
By six o’clock that evening, over one hundred people were queuing outside the town hall. At least another eighty had arrived by the time the doors opened at six-thirty, and the same enthusiasm greeted the film the following Saturday.
 
Eleni bubbled with excitement when she wrote to her daughters about the new entertainment:
 
 
We are all so enjoying the films - they’re the highlight of the week. Things don’t always go to plan, though. Last Saturday the reels did not arrive from Agios Nikolaos. There was such
disappointment when people realised that the film was cancelled that there was nearly a riot, and for several days people went about long-faced, as though the harvest had failed! Anyway, everyone cheered up as the week progressed, and we were all so relieved when your father was spotted carrying the reels ashore.
 
 
 
Within weeks, however, Giorgis began to bring more than the latest feature film from Athens. He also had a newsreel, which brought the audience sharply up to date with the sinister events that were taking place in the outside world. Though copies of Crete’s weekly newspaper made their way to the island and radios occasionally crackled with the latest news bulletin, no one had had any idea of the scale of the growing havoc being wreaked across Europe by Nazi Germany. At this stage these outrages seemed remote and the inhabitants of Spinalonga had other more immediate things to concern them. With the elections behind them, Easter was approaching.
 
In previous years, the observance of this, the greatest of Christian festivals, had been subdued. The festivities taking place in Plaka made plenty of noise, and although a reduced version of the same dramatic rituals was always held in Spinalonga’s little church of St Pantaleimon, there was a sense that it was not the same as the full-scale celebrations taking place across the water.
 
This year it was to be different. Papadimitriou would make sure of that. The commemoration of Christ’s resurrection in Spinalonga was to be no less extravagant in expression than anything held on Crete or in mainland Greece itself.
 
Lent had been strictly observed. Most people had gone without meat and fish for forty days, and in the final week, wine and olive oil had been consigned to the darkest recesses. By Thursday of Passion Week the wooden cross in the church that was big enough to accommodate perhaps one hundred souls (so long as they were as tight-packed as grains in an ear of wheat) was laden with lemon blossom and a long line formed down the street to mourn Christ and kiss his feet. The throng of worshippers both inside and outside the church stood hushed. This was a melancholy moment, and all the more so when they looked on the icon of St Pantaleimon, who was, as the more cynical of the lepers described him, the supposed patron saint of healing. Many had lost faith in him some time earlier, but his life story had made him the perfect choice for such a church. A young doctor in Roman times, Pantaleimon followed his mother’s lead and became a Christian, an act which would almost certainly result in persecution. His success in healing the sick aroused suspicions and he was arrested, stretched out on a wheel and finally boiled alive.
 
However cynical the islanders might be about the healing powers of the saint, they all joined in Christ’s great funeral procession the next day. A coffin was decorated in the morning, and in the late afternoon the floral
epitaphoi
was carried through the streets. It was a solemn procession.
 
‘We have plenty of practice at this, don’t we?’ Elpida commented sardonically to Eleni as they walked slowly along the street, the two-hundred-strong snake of people winding its way through the little town and up on to the path that led round to the north side of the island.
 
‘We do,’ she agreed, ‘but this is different. This man comes alive again—’
 
‘Which is more than we’ll ever do,’ interjected Theodoros Makridakis, who happened to be walking behind them and who was always ready with a negative comment. Resurrection of the body seemed an unlikely concept, but the strong believers among them knew that this was what was promised: a new, unblemished, resurrected body. It was the whole point of the story and the meaning of the ritual. The believers clung to that.
 
Saturday was a quiet day. Men, women and children were meant to be in mourning. Everyone was busy, however. Eleni organised the children into a working party to paint eggs and then decorate them with tiny leaf stencils. Meanwhile other women baked the traditional cakes. By contrast with such gentle activities, the men all helped in the slaughter and preparation of the lambs which had been shipped over a few weeks before. Once all such chores were done, people again visited the church to decorate it with sprigs of rosemary, laurel leaves and myrtle branches, and by early evening a bittersweet smell emanated from the building and the air was heavy with anticipation and incense.
 
Eleni stood in the doorway of the crowded church. The people were silent, subdued and expectant, straining to hear the initial whispers of the Kyrie Eleison. It began so softly it might have been the breeze stirring the leaves but then grew into something almost tangible, filling the building and exploding into the world outside. The candles which had burned inside the church were now extinguished and under a starless, moonless sky, the world was plunged into darkness. For a few moments Eleni could sense nothing but the heavy scent of molten tallow that pervaded the air.
 
At midnight, when the bell from the church in Plaka could be heard tolling resonantly across the still water, the priest lit a single candle.
 
‘Come and receive the light,’ he commanded. Papa Kazakos spoke the sacred words with reverence, but also with directness, and the islanders were in no doubt that this was a command to approach him. One by one those closest reached out with tapers, and from these the light was shared around until both inside and outside the church there was a flickering forest of flames. In less than a minute darkness had turned to light.
 
Papa Kazakos, a warm-natured, heavily bearded man with a love for good living - making some justifiably sceptical about whether he had observed any kind of abstinence during Lent - now began to read the Gospel. It was a familiar passage and many of the older islanders moved their lips in perfect synchronicity.
 
‘
Christos anesti!
’ he proclaimed at the end of the passage. Christ is risen.
 
‘
Christos anesti! Christos anesti!
’ the crowd shouted back in unison.
 
The great triumphant cry carried on in the street for some time as people wished each other many happy years - ‘
Chronia polla!
’ - responding with enthusiasm: ‘
E pisis
’ - ‘Same to you’.
 
Then it was time to carry the lighted candles carefully home.
 
‘Come, Dimitri,’ Eleni encouraged the boy. ‘Let’s see if we can get this home without it going out.’
 
If they could reach their house with the candle still lit, it would bring good luck for a whole year, and on this still April night it was perfectly feasible to do so. Within a few minutes every home on the island had a candle glowing in its window.
 
The final stage of the ritual was the lighting of the bonfire, the symbolic burning of the traitor Judas Iscariot. All day people had brought their spare kindling, and bushes had been stripped of dry branches. Now the priest lit the pyre and there was more rejoicing as it crackled and then finally went up with a roar while rockets soared into the sky all around. The real celebrations had begun. In every far-flung village, town and city, from Plaka to Athens, there would be great merrymaking, and this year it would be as noisy on Spinalonga as anywhere across the land. Sure enough, over in Plaka, they could hear the lively blasts of the bouzouki as the dancing on the island began.
 
Many of the lepers had not danced for years, but unless they were so crippled that they could not walk, they were encouraged to get up and join the circle as it slowly rotated. Out of their dust-filled trunks had come pieces of traditional costume, so that among them there were several men in fringed turbans, long boots and knickerbockers, and many of the women had donned their embroidered waistcoats and bright headscarves for the night.
 
Some of the dances were stately, but when they were not, the fit and active would take their turn, spinning and whirling as though it was the last time they would ever dance. After the dances came the songs, the
mantinades
. Some were sweet, some melancholy; some were ballads telling long stories that lulled the old folk and children almost to a slumber.

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