Manolis wanted to reassure Anna, however, that if Maria ever did return, it would not end their relationship. There was no possibility of him marrying a former leprosy patient.
He kissed her again, and for the second time that afternoon they made love, this time more wildly than before. It was only the sound of Sofia’s loud, insistent crying at being lifted out of her pram downstairs that disturbed them.
Manolis leapt from the bed and dressed hastily. He listened at the door for a moment and then, glancing back over his shoulder, smiled at the flawless naked form of his lover on the bed.
Languidly Anna raised a hand to her lips and blew him a kiss.
Then Manolis turned, picked up his dusty boots and padded down the back staircase out of the house.
Anna lay for a few moments before she got up, washed herself at the corner basin and chose something fresh from her wardrobe. Everyone knew that Kyría Vandoulakis always had a sleep in the afternoon, so the maid would not expect to see her for a while. She did her best to straighten the sheets, and as she was plumping the pillows, she noticed a tiny speck of red, a trace of Manolis’s blood, on one of them. She removed the pillowslip, dropped it into the laundry basket and found a fresh one in the linen drawer.
The months passed. Anna was demanding and passionate and emotional, a combination that Manolis could not resist. Her mood was intensified by an ever-deepening terror: the possibility of a cure for leprosy. Whatever Manolis said to reassure her, her dread about what Maria’s return could mean gnawed away at her. Fear and fury grew, making her mood febrile and her behaviour less rational. When Manolis visited, she was careless about whether the windows were open or closed, or whether she straightened the sheets after he had gone. It was almost as if she wanted their affair to be discovered.
What would happen if – and it was still no more than this – Maria came back? She constantly circled back to the same question and it was impossible for Manolis to make her understand his position. How many times did he have to promise her that he would never exchange her for her sister? The very notion of it was preposterous. But the idea was like a grub burrowing into her skin, laying its eggs and breeding more.
Manolis resigned himself to Anna incessantly pressing him on the subject. Normally he exerted something close to magic over his lover, but on this subject he was powerless.
Chapter Three
ONE EVENING THAT summer, Manolis was enjoying a second carafe of raki outside the kafeneío in Plaka. He loved the view of the bay and in general scarcely gave the sight of Spinalonga a second thought.
Giorgos was coming across the water towards the village. The boat glided over the surface of the sea, leaving behind it a mesmerising pattern of ripples, as even as the lines of a ploughed field.
Manolis watched the old man tether his boat below and make his way up from the jetty. He often bought Giorgos a drink after he had made a delivery to the island, and the two men always chatted for a while. Giorgos was a man restrained in speech and emotion, but today he looked happier than usual. It was evident even in the spring in his step.
‘You’ve heard the rumour?’ he asked simply.
Manolis nodded and the two men clinked their glasses together.
Manolis thought of a particular moment a few years earlier when Giorgos had appeared in the bar. He remembered the pallor of his skin, the stoop of his shoulders and the way he had avoided Manolis’s eye as he told him the terrible news about Maria. When Manolis thought about it now, his overriding emotion had been sorrow for the old man. He had felt little else. It was Giorgos he had pitied, not himself.
Manolis had always maintained that he had loved Maria once, but in recent months there had been plenty of time to reflect on this. Beyond question she had been very different from anyone he had ever met before, but her purity had been little more than a tease for him. The idea of her virginity had been alluring because he had enjoyed the anticipation of taking it from her, but when she disappeared from his life, it was sadness he had felt, rather than grief. He believed that the fates had played a role in removing her from his life.
Now that he thought about it, he recalled also feeling something close to relief. He had never been able to imagine himself waking up next to the same person day after day, knowing that this beginning would be some kind of end too.
Even if it was hard to admit to himself, at the core of his relationship with Maria had been another pleasure: that of stirring her sister to a fury. The idea of Anna’s jealousy gently but constantly simmering always sweetened his day, and made their eventual coming together all the more ferocious in its passion.
The two men had a brief conversation now about the news of a possible cure.
‘Let’s hope it comes to something,’ said Giorgos before getting up. It was a typical pattern. He never stayed long.
The evening held onto the heat of the day, and as he often did, Manolis stripped to swim off the rocks before heading home. He drove back with his hair still damp and a fine layer of salt on his skin.
Over the ensuing days, the temperature began to climb. There was not even the slightest hint of a breeze. Sea and sky merged into a single mirrored surface and the trees were motionless.
Later that week, Andreas invited Manolis to have dinner at their home. The whole family, including his sisters Olga and Eirini and their husbands and children, were there to celebrate Olga’s saint’s day. It was a noisy event.
Before dinner, while the grown-ups had a drink, Olga’s three boys, who were all under seven, tore up and down the stairs and along corridors, unrestrained by their parents. The oldest pretended to be a Turk and chased the younger two, brandishing a wooden sword he had brought with him, until he felled them one by one, and then the game began all over again. The only fact of history that had stuck in his head so far was that his country had once been liberated from four hundred years of Turkish rule after a number of battles. It provided endless potential for violent games with his brothers.
Olga and Eirini’s daughters played happily together on a rug. They were both four years old, and as well as being entertained by their toys, they were allowed to play with Sofia and plait her hair.
A real-life doll was even more fun than the ones with moulded faces and strange staring eyes, and they both got carried away while their parents were not looking. Suddenly the real one started crying, which made both of them grizzle, and Sofia was taken off to bed by the nursemaid. Both girls got a smack on the hand, which sparked a new wave of tears.
Even with the chaos created by the children, Manolis relished the opportunity to see Anna in front of the rest of the family. He knew she found the situation awkward and enjoyed that.
Everyone was uncomfortably overdressed that night, Alexandros and his two sons-in-law wearing jackets and the women their best evening dresses. Manolis had put on a clean white shirt, and his eyes frequently strayed across to look at Anna, who was in emerald-green silk. The colour of jealousy suited her well.
By the time they sat down to dinner and the children had calmed down, Anna’s nerves were frayed. It was not only the snivelling of the girls and the squeals of the boys that had caused this. It was her usual disquiet over the rumours of leprosy treatment.
If Anna was on edge, Manolis too was a little uneasy that night. The workers were often conduits of the latest – and usually accurate – news, and he knew that Andreas had heard the same information from them as he had. Nothing travelled faster than word of mouth, and as ever, by the time events were printed in the local newspaper, they were already well known.