The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi Read Free Book Online Page B

will,’ said the fat man. He looked around the shop, and his eyes fell on the fridge’s display of cold meats and cheeses. ‘I wonder if you would cut me a few slices of salami? And is the cheese I see there by any chance kopanisti ?’
    â€˜It is,’ said the shopkeeper, climbing off his stool, blowing on his hands as he went behind his fridge. Reaching into the display, he placed a fat sausage of salami in the crook of the steel blades of the electric slicer, and cut the first slices on to a piece of waxed paper.
    â€˜So you’ve been in Seftos before? Forgive me, friend, but I don’t remember your face.’
    â€˜I was a younger man, then,’ said the fat man. ‘My family and I used to visit a little islet, just around the coast. My memories of those times are very happy. Maybe I should make the journey over there, for old times’ sake.’
    â€˜You might not be very welcome, if you did,’ said the shopkeeper, as more salami dropped on to the paper. ‘The islet’s occupied, these days, by a man not always keen on company. Our hermit, as we call him. Though he’s not there, now. You’ve no doubt come in on the big boat, so maybe you saw him at the dock. He’s just taken that boat himself, and gone away. He’s left me to care for his dog, that beast outside. I don’t like dogs, and I mistrust that one especially, but his master’s a good customer, so I said I’d do him the favour.’
    â€˜The dog seems placid enough, at the moment,’ said the fat man. ‘When you say his owner’s a hermit, do you mean he’s religious?’
    The shopkeeper smiled a wry smile at some private knowledge. He wrapped the paper around the salami, and secured the packet with an elastic band.
    â€˜He’s a man who likes the ladies too much to be religious,’ he said, reaching into the fridge for the kopanisti . ‘Though they’re not over-fond of him. Women like a man to smell sweet, and there’s more of goats than roses about our hermit. Which isn’t his fault; the man lives pretty rough. Folks used to say he was a fugitive from the law, but folks here’ll say anything to shine up a dull story. Witless and slow as the law may be, if they were after him, even they’d have tracked him down by now. If you ask me, he’s just a fellow who prefers his own company, and there’s no married man alive who doesn’t have some sympathy with that.’
    He cut a wedge of the soft cheese.
    â€˜But what does your hermit live on?’ asked the fat man. ‘I remember that place as barren, just olive trees and scrub.’
    â€˜He does all right for himself,’ said the shopkeeper, wrapping the cheese. ‘He has his goats, and a few chickens. He grows a few vegetables, and catches a fish or two. And he’s been enterprising.’ Moving back behind the counter, he reached down to a shelf and held up an unlabelled bottle of tsipouro , a potent spirit distilled from grape skins and stalks. ‘He makes this stuff. There’s a glass here, if you’d like to try it.’
    The fat man nodded agreement; the shopkeeper poured a measure into a fingermarked glass, and handed it to the fat man, taking his own glass from the till-top.
    â€˜ Yammas .’
    The men drank, and the fat man smiled.
    â€˜Quite a kick,’ he said. ‘Where does a man learn to distil tsipouro like this?’
    â€˜Our hermit bought a still from old Mikey, and Mikey was happy to teach him the tricks of the trade. And he’s been a good student, wouldn’t you say?’
    â€˜I would indeed. But a man living alone needs to take care. It’s all too easy, under those circumstances, to make the bottle too close a friend.’
    â€˜You’re right there,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘And the fishermen who go over there have found him red-eyed and ranting, more than once. But he’s never too drunk