The Priest's Well (The Greek Village Collection Book 12) Read Online Free PDF Page B

for some wrong he had done. His mama on her knees, praying for his seven-year-old soul. His baba so recently dead to the world. Everything cold. The floor cold, his mama cold in her heart, his baba cold in his grave. Cold.
    He involuntarily shivers. He can understand Nefeli’s reserve, how easy it would have been for him to have taken that course, to have retreated inside himself, allowing his mama and the bullies at school to win. It was the softness and the concern of his mama’s priest that made the difference. He showed concern, compassion, offered support. Time and time again, he has sat in the sanctuary of the priest’s quarters reading the bible. Not because he wanted to read the bible but because that was what was expected of him when he sought refuge there and it seemed to please the priest. He sought the peace of those walls so often that one day, he found he had learnt some of the scriptures so well, he could quote them. The first time these pleasant passages came to his tongue unrequested was against his Mama. That shocked him. She accused him of something which he had not done and out popped a quotation: ‘Let him with no sin cast the first stone.’
    Her face went white, her fists clenched, and she looked like she was going to explode. In response, his own legs tensed, ready to run. But the outburst he was expecting from her never came. Her tension uncoiled, her colour returned, and she muttered something that almost sounded like an apology. It gave him such a feeling of power, so he tried the same tactic to defend himself against the school ruffians. With Biblical quotes, he pointed out the errors of their ways, promising eternal Hell for their actions. To his surprise, they didn’t laugh. Instead, it seemed his words scared them.
    Very soon, his position in life changed dramatically. His relationship with his mama became more equal, although she was still ever hard to please. He became someone who was respected at school. The teachers treated him with something approaching reverence. The only negative was from the priest who had showed him concern and support in the first place. He backed away as Savva’s confidence and arsenal of quotes grew. This was a response which Savvas struggled to understand. But to counteract the negative effect of losing the priest’s blessing, the bishop took him under his wing instead. He became a soldier of God.

Through in the bedroom, he pulls up the wooden chair to sit at the desk. The legs scrape across the floor, inscribing their mark in the layer of settled dust. The raffia seat is coming undone, something else that needs mentioning.
    The officially stamped paper lays uppermost, Nefeli’s clearly marked.
    He will read it through, focus his attention on getting into the big house. Then all this list writing and complaining about petty things like raffia chairs will be unnecessary. The book in the wastepaper bin catches his eye, and he finds himself retrieving it, the rhythm of the poem calling to his senses. Reading it over this time, it is the first verse that hits him hardest.
    ‘On the secret seashore, white like a pigeon we thirst at noon, but the water was brackish.’ He is not totally clear what it means, but it resonates. He thirsts but the water is brackish. That’s how he feels; driven by something like thirst, but the water he is offered is not clear, not pure.
    No, this thinking is self-indulgent nonsense. It is all emotional drivel.
    He pulls out the bill for covering over the well, which has stuck between the book’s final pages. Presumably Sotos had that done after Nefeli’s fall. If he had been here at the time he would have poured a truckload of concrete down it, sealed it forever, not just boarded it over with a piece of wood.
    His mind is wandering again. Where was he? Oh yes, the official paper for the big house.
    Head bowed, he concentrates, glad now that his mama spoke only Greek at home, although this document is mostly in official Greek,