The Messenger of Athens: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

heavy blows, from a hammer, and the whine of a circular saw, slicing hull planks.
    The men were working, so there would be fire. And behind the workshop, the brazier was stoked high withoffcuts of fresh pinewood; its sap-sweet smoke billowed blue in the lee of the wind. She offered her palms to the flames, closing her eyes against the smoke, sniffing at the clean fumes of hot tar rising from a black, battered bucket at the brazier’s feet.
    The whine of the saw became silent; the latch of the workshop door rattled.
    She didn’t want to talk to them. They’d know Andreas was away. The older one, the one with rotten teeth, had a peculiar sense of humor; and the short one, the one with the missing fingers, would proposition her.
    Me and you
, he’d murmur.
No one will know; I’m not the kind to talk. We’ll have a good time. Just tell me when to come
.
    She lowered her hands from the brazier, and went on.
    T he house at the road’s end was tall and once grand. Jutting out into the water, its broad terrace was worked from stones taken from the sea. On the lintel was fixed a painted sign: CAFÉ NIKOS . To the back of the terrace, as far as possible from the water, stood a single table, and four chairs; at the table, wrapped warm in heavy clothing, face hidden by the peak of a sheepskin cap, sat an elderly man.
    She approached him carefully; he might be sleeping. She stood at his side, and watched the slow rise of his breathing. She waited, then placed a hand on his shoulder.
    He pushed up the peak of his cap, like the slow opening of an eye.
    “Uncle Nikos,” she said. “
Kali mera
.”
    The old man sniffed, and wiped rheum from his nose.
    “I thought you were asleep,” she said. “If you want to sleep, I’ll leave you.”
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Only a fool would sleep out here, in this cold. Bloody wind. It gets right in my bones. Sit, sit, Irinaki. I’ve been watching you. I watched you all along the road.”
    “What have you done with all the tables?”
    “I stacked them around the back, out of the storm’s way. I’ll fetch them out again.” He placed his hands on the arms of his chair, as if he might get up. A muscle tensed in his face, a wince. His hands relaxed. “By and by,” he said. “It’s still blowing. I’m too old to be hooking furniture out of the sea.”
    “I was looking for Andreas. He hasn’t come.”
    The old man cast his gaze across the far sweep of the sea like a wise old salt, like a weather-hardened seadog or a time-served seaman. He was none of these, but he liked to play the part.
    “No,” he said, “not today. The weather’s set now. Three, four days. He’ll not be back before Saturday.”
    Unhappily, she sighed.
    “All winter, the sea keeps us prisoner,” she said. “No way in, no way out.”
    He patted her knee. “Sit a while. I’ll make us some coffee. I’ll put something in it to keep out the cold.”
    “Not for me,” she said. “Andreas doesn’t like me to drink.”
    “Well,” he said, smiling, “who will tell him? When the cat’s away, my dear, the mouse can do exactly as it pleases.”
    He hauled himself from his chair and walked heavily, with the carefulness of the suffering old, into the flagstoned kitchen.
    He was not in business for the money, but for the company. He called his house a café, put chairs and tables on his terrace, and served drinks to anyone who sat down with him; but on days when he had no appetite for gossip or brewing coffee, and on days when he thought the calamari fishing might be good, the café was closed.
    He blamed the
calamari
more and more, when customers found the kitchen door locked and the house silent. But in his heart, he knew his time was growing short. At night, the pains in his stomach too often wrecked his sleep, sabotaging his ability to battle through the day. These too were days when he “went fishing,” shut away in the bedroom at the back of the house, blinds drawn, with a jug of water to