The Island (6 page)

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Authors: Victoria Hislop

BOOK: The Island
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Dressed in the unfamiliar feel of crisp, ironed cotton, she wandered down the dark back stairway and found herself in the restaurant kitchen, drawn there by the powerful aroma of strong, freshly brewed coffee. Fotini sat at a huge, gnarled table in the middle of the room. Though thoroughly scrubbed, it still seemed to bear the stains from every piece of meat that had been pulverised there and every herb that had been crushed on its surface. It must have also witnessed a thousand moments of frayed temper which had simmered and boiled over in the intense heat of the kitchen. Fotini rose to greet her.
 
‘
Kalimera
, Alexis!’ she said warmly.
 
She was wearing a blouse similar to the one she had lent Alexis, though Fotini’s was in shades of ochre that matched the full skirt that billowed out from her slender waist and nearly reached her ankles. The first impression of her beauty that had struck Alexis so forcibly the night before in the kindly dusk light had not been wrong. The Cretan woman’s statuesque physique and large eyes reminded her of the images on the great Minoan fresco at Knossos, those vivid portraits which had survived several thousand years of time’s ravages and yet had a remarkable simplicity that made them seem so contemporary.
 
‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Fotini.
 
Alexis stifled a yawn, nodded and then smiled at Fotini, who was now busily loading a tray with a coffee pot, some generously proportioned cups and saucers and a loaf that she had just removed from the oven.
 
‘I’m sorry - it’s reheated. That’s the only bad thing about Sundays here - the baker doesn’t get out of bed. So it’s dry crusts or fresh air,’ Fotini said laughingly.
 
‘I’d be more than happy with fresh air, as long as it was washed down with fresh coffee,’ responded Alexis, following Fotini out through a set of the ubiquitous plastic strips and on to the terrace, where all last night’s tables had been stripped of their paper cloths and now looked strangely bare with their red Formica tops.
 
The two women sat overlooking the sea which lapped the rocks below. Fotini poured and the dense black liquid gushed in a dark stream into the white china. After the endless disappointing cups of Nescafé, served as though the tasteless dissolving granules of instant coffee were a delicacy, Alexis felt no cup of coffee had ever tasted as powerful and delicious as this. It seemed that nobody had the heart to tell the Greeks that Nescafé was no longer a novelty - it was this old-fashioned thick and treacly fluid that everyone, including her, craved. The September sunshine had a clear brilliance and a kindly warmth that, after the intensity of the August heat, made it one of the most welcome months in Crete. The furnace-strong temperatures of midsummer had dropped and the hot, angry winds had gone too. The two women sat opposite each other beneath the shade of the awning and Fotini put her dark, lined hand on Alexis’s.
 
‘I’m so pleased you have come,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine how pleased. I was very hurt when your mother stopped writing - I understood perfectly, but it broke such an important link with the past.’
 
‘I had no idea she used to write to you,’ said Alexis, feeling as though she should apologise on her mother’s behalf.
 
‘The very beginning of her life was difficult,’ continued Fotini, ‘but we all tried, we really did, to make her happy and to do our best for her.’
 
Looking at Alexis’s slightly puzzled expression, Fotini realised that she had to slow her pace. She poured them both another cup of coffee, giving herself a moment to think about where to start. It seemed she would have to go back even further than she had originally imagined would be necessary.
 
‘I could say, “I’ll begin at the beginning”, but there is no real beginning here,’ she said. ‘Your mother’s story is your grandmother’s story, and it is also your great-grandmother’s story. It’s your great-aunt’s story too. Their lives were intertwined, and that’s what we really mean when we talk about fate in Greece. Our so-called fate is largely ordained by our ancestors, not by the stars. When we talk about ancient history here we always refer to destiny - but we don’t really mean the uncontrollable. Of course events seem to take place out of the blue that change the course of our lives, but what really determines what happens to us are the actions of those around us now and those who came before us.’
 
Alexis began to feel slightly edgy. The impregnable safe of her mother’s past, which had been so resolutely locked for her entire life, was now to be opened. All the secrets would come spilling out, and she found herself questioning whether she really wanted that. She stared out across the sea at the pale outline of Spinalonga and remembered her solitary afternoon there, already with nostalgia. Pandora regretted opening her box. Would it be the same for her?
 
Fotini spotted the direction of her gaze.
 
‘Your great-grandmother lived on that island,’ she said. ‘She was a leper.’ She didn’t expect her words to sound quite so blunt, quite so heartless, and she saw straightaway that they had made Alexis wince.
 
‘A
leper
?’ Alexis asked in a voice that was almost choked with shock. She was repelled by this thought even though she knew her reaction was probably irrational, and found it difficult to hide her feelings. She had learned that the old boatman had been a leper and had seen for herself that he was not visibly disfigured. Nevertheless, she was horrified to hear that her own flesh and blood had been leprous. That was entirely different, and she felt strangely disgusted.
 
For Fotini, who had grown up in the shadow of the colony, leprosy had always been a fact of life. She had seen more lepers arrive in Plaka to cross over the water to Spinalonga than she could count. She had also seen the varied states of the victims of the disease: some cripplingly disfigured, others apparently untouched. Untouchable had, in fact, been the last thing they seemed. But she understood Alexis’s reaction. It was the natural response for someone whose knowledge of leprosy came from Old Testament stories and the image of a bell-swinging sufferer crying, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’
 
‘Let me explain more,’ she offered. ‘I know what you imagine leprosy to be like, but it’s important that you know the truth of it, otherwise you will never understand the real Spinalonga, the Spinalonga that was home to so many good people.’
 
Alexis continued to gaze at the little island across the shimmering water. Her visit there yesterday had seemed so full of conflicting images: the remains of elegant Italianate villas, gardens and even shops, and overshadowing them all the spectre of a disease which she had seen portrayed in epic films as a living death. She took another gulp of the thick coffee.
 
‘I know it’s not fatal in every case,’ she said, almost defensively, ‘but it is always horribly disfiguring, isn’t it?’
 
‘Not to the extent that you might think,’ replied Fotini. ‘It’s not a rampantly fast-spreading disease like the plague. It sometimes takes ages to develop - those images you have seen of people who are so terribly maimed are of those who have suffered for years, maybe decades. There are two strains of leprosy, one much slower to develop than the other. Both are curable now. Your great-grandmother was unfortunate, though. She had the faster-developing of the two types and neither time nor history was on her side.’
 
Alexis was feeling ashamed of her initial reaction, humbled by her ignorance, but the revelation that a member of her family had been a leper had been a bolt out of the bluest of skies.
 
‘Your great-grandmother may have been the one with the disease, but your great-grandfather, Giorgis, bore deep scars too. Even before his wife was exiled to Spinalonga, he used to make deliveries to the island with his fishing boat, and he continued to do so when she went there. It meant that he watched on an almost daily basis as she was gradually destroyed by the disease. When Eleni first went to Spinalonga hygiene was poor, and though it improved a great deal during the time she was there, some irreparable damage was done in her early years. I shall spare you the details. Giorgis spared Maria and Anna from them. But you do know how it happens, don’t you? Leprosy can affect nerve endings, and the result of this is that you can’t feel it if you burn or cut yourself. That’s why people with leprosy are so vulnerable to inflicting permanent damage on themselves, and the consequences of that can be disastrous.’
 
Fotini paused. She was concerned not to offend this young woman’s sensibilities, but was also very aware that there were elements of the story that were nothing less than shocking. It was simply a case of treading carefully.
 
‘I don’t want your image of your mother’s family to be dominated by disease. It wasn’t like that,’ she added hastily. ‘Look. I’ve got some photographs of them here.’
 
On the big wooden tray propped against the coffee pot there was a tatty manila envelope. Fotini opened it and the contents spilled out on to the table. Some of the photographs were no bigger than train tickets, others were postcard size. Some were shiny, with white borders, others were matt, but all were monochrome, many faded almost to invisibility. Most had been taken in a studio in the days before the spontaneous snapshot was possible, and the stiffness of the subjects made them seem as distant and remote as King Minos.
 
The first photo Alexis focused on was one she recognised. It was the picture that her mother had next to her bed of the lady in lace and the platinum-haired man. She picked it up.
 
‘That’s your great-aunt Maria and great-uncle Nikolaos,’ said Fotini, with a detectable hint of pride. ‘And this one,’ she said, pulling out a battered picture from the bottom of the pile, ‘was the last picture taken of your great-grandparents and their two girls all together.’
 
She passed it to Alexis. The man was about the same height as the woman, but broad-shouldered. He had dark, wavy hair, a clipped moustache, a strong nose, and eyes that smiled even though the expression he maintained for this photograph was serious and posed. His hands seemed big in comparison with his body. The woman next to him was slim, long-necked and strikingly beautiful; her hair was wound into plaits which were coiled up on top of her head, and her smile was broad and spontaneous. Seated in front of them were two girls in cotton dresses. One had strong, thick hair worn loose about her shoulders and her eyes were slanted almost like a cat’s. She had mischief in her eyes and plump lips that did not smile. The other had neatly plaited hair, more delicate features and a nose that wrinkled as she smiled at the camera. She could almost be described as skinny and, of the two girls, was much more like the mother, with her hands held softly in her lap in a demure pose while her sister had her arms folded and glared, as if in defiance, at the person taking the photograph.
 
‘That’s Maria,’ said Fotini, pointing at the child who smiled. ‘And that’s Anna, your grandmother,’ she said, indicating the other. ‘And those are their parents, Eleni and Giorgis.’
 
She spread the pictures out on the table, and occasionally the breeze lifted them gently from its surface and seemed to bring them to life. Alexis saw pictures of the two sisters when they were babes in arms, then as schoolgirls, and then as young women, by that stage just with their father. There was also a picture of Anna arm in arm with a man in full traditional Cretan dress. It was a wedding picture.
 
‘So that must be my grandfather,’ said Alexis. ‘Anna looks really beautiful there,’ she added admiringly. ‘Really happy.’
 
‘Mmm . . . the radiance of young love,’ said Fotini. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice that took Alexis by surprise, and she was about to quiz her further when another picture surfaced which seized her interest.
 
‘That looks like my mother!’ she exclaimed. The little girl in the photograph had a distinctive aquiline nose and a sweet but rather shy smile.
 
‘It
is
your mother. She must have been about five then.’
 
Like any collection of family photographs, it was a random selection that told only fragments of a story. The real tale would be revealed by the pictures that were missing or never even taken at all, not the ones that had been so carefully framed or packed away neatly in an envelope. Alexis was aware of that, but at least she had now been given a glimpse of these family members that her mother had kept so secret for so long.
 
‘It all began here in Plaka,’ said Fotini. ‘Just behind us, over there. That’s where the Petrakis family lived.’
 
She pointed to a small house on the corner, a pebble’s throw from where they sat sipping their coffee. It was a tatty, whitewashed building, as shabby as every other home in the ramshackle village, but charming nevertheless. Its plastered walls were flaking and the shutters, repainted time and time again since Alexis’s great-grandparents had lived there, were a shade of bright aqua that had peeled and cracked in the heat. A balcony, perched above the doorway, sagged under the weight of several huge urns from which flame-red geraniums cascaded downwards, as though making their escape through the carved wooden railings. It was typical of almost every home on every Greek island and could have been built at any time in the past few hundred years. Plaka, like any village lucky enough to have been spared the ravages of mass tourism, was timeless.

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