The Messenger of Athens: A Novel by Anne Zouroudi Read Free Book Online Page B

swollen and varicose.
    The wind scattered powdery ash from Nikos’s cigarette; like flaking skin, it settled on Zafiridis’s thighs.
    “Who was that lovely young lady we passed on our way here, Nikos?” asked the Chief of Police, stroking away the ash.
    Beneath the table, his companion prodded at his foot.
    “You mean my niece, Irini,” said Nikos, unconcerned. “She’s a lovely girl, isn’t she? She’s married to my good friend, Andreas Asimakopoulos, a fisherman. They have a house, away up the road.” He pointed with his thumb. “But what about your family, Chief? You said last time we met that your wife would be joining you, soon. Has she still not arrived?”
    He glanced at Zafiridis’s right hand, and confirmed what he had noticed before: the third finger bore no gold ring.
    “She doesn’t like to travel, when the weather’s bad,” said Zafiridis.
    “You’ll be missing her,” said Nikos. “And tell me, have you sampled any of our local delicacies yet?”
    There was a note of mischief in his voice. The policeman looked at him with frosted eyes.
    “You’ll find our oysters very good,” said Nikos. “I’ll tell Andreas to bring you some, when he returns.”
    “In that profession, he’ll be away a good deal of the time, your friend,” said Zafiridis. “Your niece must get quite lonely.”
    “She has me. We keep each other company.”
    “Forgive me, Nikos, but an uncle is not the same as a husband.”
    “Your concern for my niece’s well-being is touching, Chief. Are you afraid she may be molested on the way home? Or perhaps your interest is more…
personal?
”
    Lizardis cleared his throat, loudly. The Chief’s thin mouth bent, like a rod, into a smile with no warmth.
    “Just doing my job, Nikos,” he said. “It’s my job to protect people.”
    “Well,” said Nikos, baring his teeth in his own cold smile, “don’t plan on offering your kind of protection to my niece. You would insult me. In any case, she’s a respectable girl, and not corruptible by you.”
    The Chief of Police laughed. “What a low opinion you have of me, Nikos. And what a high opinion of women. You and I both know that in here”—he tapped himself with a finger where his heart should be—“in here, they’re all whores. All open to the right offer. And now, how about making us some coffee?”
    A t the house, Irini was alone. The day slipped slowly by, and into early decline. The lark which Andreas kept for the sweetness of its song seemed listless in its tiny, bamboocage. Irini filled the pot from which it fed with fine seed, and waggled her fingers through the bars to stir the bird to eat; but the lark turned its head away, and remained unmoving on its perch.
    She sat down at the window and watched a spider weave its web beneath the sill, then watched the struggling of a moth that blundered into it. She knocked moss from the outhouse roof, and swept the scattered geranium leaves from the courtyard steps. She picked and tied a bunch of sage, and brewed hot tea from some of it; but the tea swam with drowned mites, and she threw the sage away. She thought of Andreas, and whether he was keeping dry; she thought about Nikos, and whether he was staying warm.
    As evening fell, beneath the small domestic sounds—the chink of a cup cleared away, the bright applause of a TV game show, the drip of water in the sink—the silence gathered strength. The silence, day by day, was growing louder, and the day was almost here when she would understand the paradox: that this silence was not silence, but the swelling sound of emptiness.

Three
     

     
    E ach time she leaves, my wife calls out to me—“I’m going now, Theo”—as if I want to know. She’ll take her time, but still forget my cigarettes, or something, so later on she’ll have to go again, and she’ll complain, and ask me to drive her down in the truck. And I’ll say, The walk will do you good, and she will want to say, Well, you go then, but won’t