Читать книгу The Meaning of Friday - Vanessa Gordon - Страница 20

11

Never known as an early riser, Day was later than usual to appear in the kitchen the next morning. Helen was washing up their glasses from the night before, having already spent a couple of hours working on the outline of her new book. It was tempting to involve a Greek policeman and a handsome waiter called Vangelis.

Before setting off for Flerio, they drove into Filoti for coffee at the café almost opposite O Thanasis. Helen liked the cheerfulness of this place, Café Ta Xromata was its name, meaning Colours. Customers sat on brightly coloured sofas with turquoise cushions, and were given bright cups and plates. Day checked his emails on his phone, but no significant replies had come in. They drank their coffee in contented silence, watching the village street going about its normal business. After half an hour, leaving payment on the table, they got back in the Fiat and set off to Flerio.

The lush sanctuary area of Flerio, near the village of Melanes, had been fertile even in ancient times, and was one of the oldest settled areas on the island. To get there from Filoti they first drove towards Halki, the village in the central hills which had once been regarded as the capital of the island. Day drove sedately, as always. After passing the cement works, incongruously ugly buildings that quickly disappeared after a bend in the road, they turned a sharp corner into Halki. Under the bulk of the white Barossi Tower several older men were sitting and talking in the shade by the roadside. Tourists sat outside cafés or wandered towards shops which sold woven goods, ceramics and souvenirs.

Leaving Halki again the road passed grassy fields of olive trees to the village of Ano Potamia. As far as Helen was concerned, Ano Potamia was famous for one thing: a favourite restaurant remembered from the distant time when she visited Naxos with her young Greek husband. It was clear, however, that Day had no thought of lunch. The countryside changed after Ano Potamia and the road climbed. Sometimes the landscape became almost moon-like in its rockiness, and a stunningly clear light filled the high hills. Day carefully negotiated the steep bends to circumvent the village of Melanes, and the road turned back on itself towards their destination.

Day parked the Fiat on the roadside by the entrance to the Sanctuary of Flerio. A crowd of tourists from a parked coach was heading towards the shadeless sanctuary site. Fallen columns and lintels could be seen across the fields. Day locked the car and placed his sunglasses on his face. Now he looked more like his TV presenter alter ego, and began to sound like him.

“That’s the Flerio Sanctuary over there. It was dedicated to the deities of the underground - not the underworld as in Hades, but the deities of the veins of marble and underground springs that provided such benefit to the ancient Naxians. There are signs that the workers at the local marble quarry worshipped here, you can see interesting chisel marks, dedications, that kind of thing. We think there’s a lot more of this sanctuary still buried beneath these fields awaiting some future excavation.”

“I wonder if this is where Michael thought he could make some great new discovery,” mused Helen. “Was he here a week ago?”

“Come on, let’s go and ask a few people,” said Day, and led the way.

***

The ticket office at the entrance to the sanctuary site was a wooden hut in which a young woman was issuing passes to the tourists from the coach. When the last of them had moved passed her, she greeted Day and Helen politely. Day showed his professional identity card and the woman seemed happy to answer his questions.

“Good morning, Kyria,” he began. “I wonder if you can help me, please? A friend of mine was here recently, asking about an area of the sanctuary which is still to be excavated. He spoke to one of your colleagues, I believe. I was hoping to talk to him.”

“I’m sorry, Kyrie Day, I don’t think I can help you. I can’t think which colleague you mean. I’ve been in charge here for the last two weeks, and nobody else from the Archaeological Service has been here. Nobody has mentioned a new excavation. Perhaps you could ring our head office?”

Day thanked her and said he would.

“If she’s been the only attendant on this site since Michael arrived on the island, there isn’t anyone else we can really ask, is there?” said Day crossly. “Oh yes, there is, let’s try the visitor centre!

Come on!”

He strode off down a path which disappeared down a slope towards a low building which served as the visitor centre. Its purpose was to explain the sanctuary, display copies of the more important discoveries, and provide visitors with bathroom facilities. Most people would pass through it during a visit. Day asked his question again at the reception desk, and this time had his phone ready to show the receptionist a picture of Michael Moralis.

“Kyrie, with respect, we have hundreds of visitors here every day. He might have been here, but I really couldn’t say. And nobody has asked me about a new excavation.”

Day thanked the receptionist and rejoined Helen, who was waiting in the sun outside.

“Nothing,” he said. “OK, at least we tried. Come on, let’s go and pay homage to the old kouros!”

***

They left the Flerio sanctuary, rejoined the road where they had parked the Fiat and followed the sign to the famous Kouros of Flerio. Day strode off ahead, suddenly carried away with enthusiasm. Helen followed at her own pace, relieved to leave the crowds behind. The old tarmac road came to an end and became a shady lane with overarching trees. These were not the thirsty figs and unkempt olives found all over Naxos, but alder, plane and willow trees whose roots drank from the springs guarded by the deities of the underground. The reputed lushness of the ancient valley was still in evidence.

A smaller path led up a few steps to a cool glade off the lane. This was the resting place of the Flerio kouros, an ancient marble statue of a male figure, one of three on the island. The floor of the glade, formerly part of the ancient quarry, was nothing but well-swept earth lit by dappled sunlight. It was a cool and silent place with a smell of dampness, or as day preferred to think, of antiquity. The huge marble statue lay against a modern dry-stone wall, and a cordon of fine rope protected it to some extent on the side closest to visitors. The recumbent statue was perhaps eighteen feet long, the roughly shaped figure of a naked man, lying on its back. It was made from a single piece of marble but resembled a chunk of old granite, being dark, rough and weatherworn. Disconcertingly, its head was at a lower level than its body, as if the man had fallen backwards. The right leg was broken through at the knee. Some shaping had been done to the chest and arms, and the marks of the quarrymen’s tools were still visible, but at some point all work on the marble had been abandoned. This anonymous kouros had been left to lie where it fell for many hundreds of years, unwanted.

“He’s quite a boy,” reflected Day quietly. “The sheer size of him. Every time I see him, I’m amazed. It’s the isolation of this place, the marks left by the original carving tools. And he’s two and a half thousand years old.”

“It’s funny to think that he might have ended up somewhere like the Acropolis, if something hadn’t gone wrong.”

“Yes. He could have stood proudly inside a temple anywhere in Greece. I wonder what happened. Did the workers find flaws in the marble that made them stop work? Or perhaps they broke the block.”

“Perhaps the customer changed their mind, or a war broke out, because it wasn’t only this kouros that they abandoned.”

“No, three in all. Worth seeing again, isn’t he?”

They stood for many minutes looking at the fallen marble giant. On her first visit here, with her husband Zissis soon after they were married, Helen had found this place an oasis of peace. Now she found it rather unsettling. Here, in this silent place, was a piece of antiquity which had lain on the spot since about 570 BC, and normally she would have shared the awe that Martin was describing. Instead, she was thinking about the body of Michael Michaelis, whom she had never known, but who should still be alive.

“I’m so pleased to have seen the old kouros again,” said Day, “but the whole trip was a bit of a waste of time, really, wasn’t it? If only we knew what Michael did with his time between arriving on Naxos and his death.”

They left the glade, Day offering his hand to Helen at the steep step down to the path. Looking up they noticed a small sign across the lane which read ‘GARDEN TAVERNA - DRINKS’. Day, curious as usual, walked across and peered over the gate. An elderly woman inside the garden saw him and came over, indicating with a sweep of her arm an old table set with jars of local honey, plastic pots of home-prepared olives, and unlabelled bottles of olive oil, each marked with a modest price. Her smile revealed missing teeth and her face was darkened by the sun. She beckoned to him insistently.

Day politely went inside, wondering if perhaps Michael had been here. The old woman said something in a heavy local accent. When Day replied in his carefully learned and excessively polite Greek, the woman laughed in delight. He asked for two bottles of water, which she went to fetch from her fridge. He gave her the money and she walked back to the gate with him.

“You have a wonderful garden, Kyria,” said Day, thinking of his next question. “Are you busy with tourists this year?”

“No, Kyrie. Who wants to come to a place like this? They get back on the coach and drive away to their hotels. I need a bigger sign, and a friend among the coach drivers!”

Day laughed with her. He brought out his mobile phone, opened it at the photograph of Michael, and showed it to the woman.

“Kyria, can you help me? Please could you tell me if you’ve seen this man?” he asked. Perhaps Michael had been here, spoken to this very woman, there was no reason why not.

She looked at the picture but shook her head. Disappointed but not surprised, Day went on to asked whether she had seen some friends of his, a Frenchman and an American, in the last week or so. The woman gave a small jump as if he had pulled a rabbit from a hat.

“There was a Frenchman here a few days ago, but he won’t be any friend of yours, Kyrie!”

Lying with alarming ease, Day claimed that he had met the men on the ferry and was trying to find them again to return an item of value.

“You want to find him? He was a rude man and up to no good. You should keep the money, Kyrie, that’s what I suggest.”

“Oh? What happened, Kyria?”

The woman looked astonished, as if Day should already have known.

“He insulted me,” she muttered.

“How, Kyria?”

“He offered me money for what he called my ‘old rubbish’. You understand? He was trying to buy ancient pots and jewellery, Kyrie. In the old days people used to sell the old things they found, it was one way to get the money to feed your family. But we don’t do that any more. We respect our antiquities, and the law. He’s a bad man, that one, you listen to me, Kyrie.”

They had reached the gate to the lane. Day asked if the old woman knew anything else about the Frenchman. She raised her chin to indicate no in the Greek way, and shrugged. Day wasn’t sure if her contempt was directed at the Frenchman or himself.

“You could ask for him in Apollonas,” she muttered as she turned back into her garden.