Arrested Song: Extract
1947–1959: CHAPTER 2, IV
The storm started on an early-September afternoon, sending everyone home during shopping hours. Because of the storm, because her son was afraid of thunder, the communist commander’s wife put the boy to bed later than usual, after she had trimmed his hair and fed him a snack, and the rain had finally slackened.
They had been using the chamber pot, but once the rain stopped, Ermione threw a shawl around her shoulders and padded to the outhouse. The privy was cold and damp as she lowered herself over the Turkish toilet, hands clutching her bunched-up skirts. She then hurried back with the empty chamber pot; had just put it away and bolted the door when she heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path. There was a rap at the door.
‘Nikos!’ Ermione darted back to the entrance, fumbling with the bolt. ‘Ni—’
The man who came hurtling out of the dark was not her husband but Dimitris Stephanides, the son of the late olive-mill owner. He was hissing at her to be quiet.
Ermione sprang back. The intruder had a flick knife. His eyes darting about, Stephanides took in the large, cluttered kitchen: the basin of dishes waiting to be washed, the dying fire, the shadowy corners beyond the range of the oil lamp. It was only nine o’clock but the storm had caused a power outage. A laundry line was suspended from two long nails, hung with a child’s underwear. On the table, next to a flower vase, lay a hand mirror, a comb, a pair of kitchen scissors.
‘Where’s your husband?’
Stephanides crossed the room, walking with a slight limp. He reeked of ouzo.
‘He’s not here.’ Ermione had backed away, intent on Stephanides’s every movement.
‘I know he’s not here! Where is he, I asked!’
Ermione’s face quivered. ‘I haven’t seen my husband in months!’
‘Oh, go on! He couldn’t stay away from you this long.’ Stephanides snickered. He was a balding, thickly built man with eyes that seemed to be in perpetual search of some misplaced item. He was only in his mid-thirties but the extravagant moustache looked like it would have to compensate for quite a lot. Years ago, he and Nikos Antipas had been classmates.
‘I hear you’re such a good wife too,’ the intruder said, ‘washing your husband’s feet and all. Isn’t that right?’
Ermione raised a shoulder, as if deprecating her own wifely devotion. She seemed about to say something when lightning filled the windows. She was a beautiful young woman, with honey-coloured hair tumbling over her shoulders. Her parents had died in Skala Sykamnias during the Occupation; her in-laws did not approve of their son’s choice of bride any more than they did of his politics.
‘I suppose you’re hoping to collect the reward?’ she blurted out.
Stephanides cleared his nose. ‘I’m planning to collect the reward,’ he stated, looking at her with a crooked smile. ‘Now, for the last time, where is he?’
‘I have no idea!’ Ermione tossed out. ‘But I know you’ll never catch him!’
‘You think so? You think he’s too smart for us, eh?’ Stephanides chortled. ‘Funny thing is his own father doesn’t think he’s so smart, does he?’ Nikos Antipas’s father was a staunch royalist; he’d been heard to laugh in the kapheneion, hearing of the twenty-five-million-drachma reward placed on his son’s head. ‘He’s not worth so much as a drachma, that’s what his father said!’ Stephanides’s eyes gleamed with irony. ‘What d’you say to that?’
‘What do I say? I say a single one of his fingernails is worth more than the whole of you put together – moustache and all!’
At this, a black spark appeared in Stephanides’s eyes.
‘You bitch! Who do you think you are? You who came here with nothing but the rags on your back! You stupid, arrogant bitch!’ Saying this, the intruder gave Ermione a violent push, watching her stagger backwards. She managed to right herself, only to trip on a bird whistle and go reeling to the floor, her slipper flying off her foot. ‘A communist bitch opening her sewer of a mouth! At Dimitris Stephanides!’
Ermione sat hunched over her foot, her face scrunched with pain.
‘What’s the matter? Has the lady hurt herself?’ Stephanides tilted forward, mock-solicitous. He was about to add something when Ermione leaned forward, spitting straight into the taunting face.
‘You!’ Stephanides looked stunned for a moment, but quickly rallied. He put away the knife. He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, then a pair of handcuffs. He swiped at his cheek with the rumpled cloth, then stuffed it into Ermione’s mouth. He grabbed her wrists and bound them with the handcuffs.
‘So, where’s that clever husband of yours now, eh? Let’s see how quickly he comes to your rescue!’
It was raining again, the storm blowing gusts of water against the windowpanes. Ermione was weeping now, kneeling with her mouth gagged and her hands shackled, eyes wildly sweeping around the room. Stephanides stood stroking his moustache, like a military strategist contemplating his next manoeuvre.
All at once, as if inspired, he lunged towards the table and pounced on Ermione’s scissors. With a swift, brutal gesture, he swept away the drying underwear. Then he cut down the laundry line, which was made of butcher’s twine.
She began to jostle from side to side, resisting his efforts to bind her. Soon, he had her all trussed up, hunched over in the pool of flickering light, with the dying embers hissing in the hearth and the rain spitting on the tiled roof. There was a rip of lightning, a ferocious roar of thunder that seemed to shake the house to its very foundations. In the absence of the customary dowry, Nikos and his family lived in an old rented house, standing all alone on the way to the harbour.
Seizing a clump of hair, Stephanides began to hack, the scissors flashing through Ermione’s thick tresses. He gripped an ear, letting the golden coils drop around the defeated body like flowers from a dying bush. He chopped on the left and on the right, on top and on the bottom, in front and in the back, never so much as glancing at Ermione’s face until he was done. The young wife’s head resembled the shorn skulls of female prisoners in wartime newsreels.
Only then did Stephanides stop to look into his victim’s eyes. He lowered himself to Ermione’s level and poked his face at hers, his tobacco-stained teeth bared in something between grin and grimace. ‘So! Are you going to tell me now?’
The response to this was a choked sound, a toss of the violated head.
‘No?’ He stood up, letting his hand travel to his belt. There was a momentary hush. He let go of his buckle, then began to fumble with his fly buttons. He undid them slowly, deliberately, ignoring the muffled sounds coming out of Ermione’s constricted mouth. His absorption was such that a moment passed before he registered that her eyes were fixed not on him, but somewhere beyond his shoulder.
There was no doubt about it: the child gave him pause. He stood on the threshold, a six-year-old boy dressed in a flannel robe, his bare feet peeping from under the hem, his eyes huge with terror. As the man’s gaze fell on the boy, his mother let out a choked sound and appeared to grow limp, a look of pure entreaty filling her eyes.
The child was whimpering. He took a step forward, arms raised in frantic appeal. ‘Mama!’
‘Stay where you are!’ Stephanides barked. ‘Don’t budge, or I’ll kill your mother, understand?’ He gave the child an arresting look, then shifted his attention back to Ermione. He appeared, all at once, almost conspiratorial, as if the two of them shared a secret beyond the child’s ken. ‘So, you ready to tell me now?’
The response this time was a strangled sound, a slow, defeated nod. Stephanides leaned forward. He yanked the gag out of Ermione’s mouth, waiting, while she fought a spluttering cough. Finally, she stopped. She remained silent.
‘Well?’
‘He’s in the hills … somewhere around Vafios.’ The young mother looked doomed, her eyes darting towards her son. The boy’s whimpering had turned into gulping sobs; a worm of mucus was sliding from his nose.
Stephanides ignored him, searching the mother’s face. Unable to decide whether she was telling the truth, he reached into his trousers and whipped out his penis. The air in the room grew dense with menace. For a moment, Stephanides seemed to hesitate; then, squaring his shoulders, he began to urinate all over Antipas’s wife. He aimed the stream at her neck, her face, her raw scalp, like a gardener bent on watering every corner of a neglected garden. Ermione, whose face was streaked with tears, now had urine coursing down her cheeks. She kept her head angled to one side, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth twisted with disgust.
‘So, is there anything else you might like to tell me?’ Stephanides had taken out his knife and was sliding it across his own cushioned palm, as if testing its sharpness. ‘Where can we find your husband?’
Slowly, Ermione’s eyes blinked open. She glanced at her son, then at the knife, trembling violently. She looked straight into her captor’s face and shook her head. There was, her gesture said, nothing else she could tell him. She was at his mercy. For another moment, Stephanides stood staring at her with restless eyes. The boy was clutching at his groin, his sobs turned to hiccups. The man looked fleetingly at a loss, like an actor groping for forgotten lines.
‘Look here!’ He had picked up the mirror and was thrusting it at Ermione, whose eyes were screwed shut. ‘Look, I said: I want you to see yourself!’
And at last she did. She glanced at her own reflection, then raised her gaze, the sea-green eyes shimmering with accusation.
‘Don’t look at me like that! You’re lucky it’s me or you’d be losing something more precious than your whorish hair!’ Stephanides rose and tossed the mirror into the sizzling hearth. The shattered glass made a shriek escape the child’s mouth, but the intruder shot him another look and the shriek faded into a whimper.
Stephanides was about to put his knife away when something seemed to strike him. Bending forward, he narrowed his eyes and held the blade to the young mother’s throat. ‘If you’re ever tempted to talk, remember this!’ he said, gazing at her creamy neck like a lover. ‘Understand?’
Ermione was silent. The child sobbed, a puddle of urine forming at his feet.
‘Do you understand?’
Ermione dropped her gaze. She nodded.
Stephanides let out a long, heavy breath. He snapped the knife shut and returned it to his pocket, then went about freeing Ermione’s wrists. Outside, it was raining again. Stephanides hesitated, then finally turned to go, pausing only long enough to pat the child’s head, as if to reassure him that all would be well.