The Messenger of Athens: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

prepared for sea.
    “For certain,” he said, untying the oily rope that moored the boat to the jetty, “I’ll be back with you by Wednesday.”
    Irini caught hold of his arm, and he brushed her cheek with dry lips; the odor of fish was about him already, even before he cast off.
    “Take care,” she said. “Good fishing.”
    She watched until the boat was out of sight, around the headland; in the moment when he disappeared from view, she waved once more, for luck. Whenever he left, she wished he would stay; his absence rubbed salt into her loneliness.
    Then Tuesday night brought storms. She lay alone in bed, listening as the wind tore through the branches of the eucalyptus trees along the road and the rain pounded at the windows. She wasn’t worried for his safety; he took care of his safety very well. She worried they would lose some roof tiles, and there was no one to replace them; she worried that a tree would come down on the house, and she would die alone. At midnight, she warmed a glass of milk and sweetened it with honey; propped up amongst the pillows (his and hers), she sipped, and drifted into dreams.

     
    W hen the night was over, she went walking, away down the empty road to the sea. The wind was still high; as she passed beneath the shimmying branches of the pale-barked eucalyptus, their limbs groaned, like souls racked.
    And the wind was cold. It passed straight through her jacket, and through all the layers of her clothing. It gnawed her fingers, and drew the blood of her face to the tip of her nose, leaving her cheeks drained and pale. When she reached the seafront, even within the arms of the crescent bay the waves were whipped up and frosted with foam. To the right, where the shingle beach was narrowest and the road surface low, each seventh wave flowed smooth as cream across the road, up to the church wall, and the wall’s base had become the terminus for the sea’s flotsam: driftwood and plastic, shells, skeins of weed, bottles and rusting cans. Where the bus should stop, a deep pool had formed, and at its edge lay a tangle of yellow fishing-net, matted with sand and the white blade-bones of squid. With the toe of her boot she turned the net, releasing a small green-backed crab, which, frightened by the light, scuttled towards the in-running sea.
    The church clock struck nine. Overhead, rain threatened.
    She had known he wouldn’t come. At the jetty, there were no boats. Beyond the bay’s shallows, the mast of a solitary yacht dipped towards the water’s surface, to port, to starboard, like the blade of a metronome, a corner of its furled sailcloth flapping loose.
    She walked the road around the curve of St. Savas’s Bay, watching the headland at the bay’s mouth, just in case he still might come; he still might, and she still might have company tonight. The few white-painted houses were shuttered, their doors—head-on to the sea, a rope’s length to the moorings—were closed. On the terrace of the small hotel, a woman swept languidly at wet leaves blowing from an overhanging almond tree; in the shelter of a ramshackle chicken coop, a rooster crowed over a run of shivering hens.
    By the boatyard, the beach was crowded with boats, veterans hauled from the sea to pass the winter. Out of their element, the curves of their flanks seemed flat, the flow of their forms rigid; their paint was salt-bleached and cracked, their varnish lifting and peeling like dry, callused skin. Between their hulks, the shingle was stained with spent oil and diesel.
    Last Easter, they had argued here. The root of their argument was the same as always: the promises he’d made before they married, he now chose to forget. He’d said they’d go away, and see the world; now, all the plans she talked about he ridiculed. It was his laughter that had made her angry.
    Outside the boatyard workshop, she stroked the red-leaded ribs of a half-built
caique
. Shut away from the cold, the men were working, within; there were