‘Yes, Paulos, you are disgusting,’ said another boy.
‘You can’t talk. What about that donkey?’
‘What donkey, you lying swine?’
They were walking past me. I had expected them to turn on me now as the demon’s lover. I had expected to be knifed or hung or perhaps flung into the remains of the fire. But it didn’t happen. The villagers ignored me completely. They walked right past me as though I had become invisible. In small groups and large ones, the whole village made its way back down the donkey track, talking and laughing like revellers returning from a party.
I was left there on my own. Still unsteady from so much raki, I tottered to the edge of the glowing ash. Lucy’s body lay face down, its hands stretched outwards, devoid of any remnant of human flesh.
I remembered her room back at the ASPU house, the books that been placed there simply as props for the young college-girl image, yet each one of them slowly and painfully read by her in her efforts to understand the world in which she lived…
54
After some time, I made my way down the dark donkey track to the village. Although it was now the early hours of the morning, it seemed that the whole village, from aged crones to tiny children, was gathered either inside or outside of the single store. Bottles of wine and raki were being passed around. The policeman was drinking with the priest. A CD player was blasting out bouzouki music. Arm in arm the shepherds Petros and Andreas were dancing with the young men who’d tried to pull the shell of Lucy from out of the fire. There were many cheers and shouts of laughter.
‘Did you see when I shot her?’
‘If Markos wasn’t afraid of a little heat, he’d have held onto me and I’d have been able to fish the demon’s body out.’
‘We’d have knifed her there and then if she hadn’t dived out of the window.’
‘But did you hear that noise?’
‘I tell you I hit her fair and square with that shot. That body of hers must have strong armour.’
No one paid the slightest attention to me. Except for a few children, no one so much as glanced in my direction.
I went over to my car. The bags that Lucy and I had left in the upstairs room had all been piled up neatly against the front wheel, and someone had scratched a symbol onto the paintwork on the door: a Greek cross, the emblem of the Greek Christian Army.
I climbed in and started up the engine, with an empty seat beside me. Then I drove very slowly away.
No one even looked round as I headed off into the darkness.
I drove all through the night, lurching and bumping along those crumbling roads, the car creaking and groaning, loose stones cracking against the doors and windscreen.
Trees, rocks, buildings, loomed momentarily into the headlights and vanished again.
Occasionally there was a goat or a rabbit.
Once I passed a priest, striding along alone in the middle of the night.
55
After I’d lost Lucy to the fire, I wandered for a long time with no purpose, without any sense of myself as an individual person who acted and made decisions in the world. Yet things still happened. A month or so afterwards, someone stole my car in the port of Patras. The loss of it troubled me, yet I had left it unlocked, as if part of me wanted to lose it. Something inside of me sought to rid myself of everything, to tear away the surface and expose the cowering thing inside, like Lucy tearing away her irrelevant flesh.
I went to the docks and bought a ticket for the first ship to sail. It was going north, to the Ionian islands, just across the water from where my journey began.
I arrived late at night in Corfu. I needed somewhere to rest and I found a sailors’ hostel near the port, where I’d have to share a room.
My roommate didn’t get in until two in the morning. He was an elderly Venetian seaman. He had just been paid and had been out in the Old Town drinking. He had finished off by visiting a prostitute. Now he was feeling disgusted with himself.
‘It seems so delicious in anticipation, doesn’t it?’ he grumbled, when he found that I was still awake and could speak Italian. He undressed noisily in a gust of garlic and booze and sweat. ‘And then afterwards you feel ashamed.’
He belched mournfully as he climbed into bed.
‘Never mind. I’m truly repentant, so I’ll confess to a priest in the morning and God will forgive me.’
He rolled to and fro, looking for a comfortable position in the hard, damp bed.
‘You could do with a wash, my friend,’ he muttered as he settled down.
But I was fascinated by his ability to manage his conscience.
‘You can really do that, can you?’ I asked him. ‘Any time you do something bad, you can go to a priest and confess and be forgiven.’
‘Of course,’ the Italian answered drowsily.
‘But why does it work?’
The sailor sighed, drew breath and then explained slowly as if to a child: the human race was given free will so that it could chose good or evil. But Adam and Eve made a wrong choice and, as a result, humans have been sinful ever since, so that really all of us deserve to burnt for the rest of eternity in hell. Luckily, God was merciful and sent his only son to be crucified to pay the price of human sin. As a result, though all human beings were still sinners, they could be saved from the fire if they believed in Jesus and repented their sins.
With that the sailor rolled over and once more prepared himself for sleep.
‘But do you really believe in this?’ I asked him.
‘Of course!’ the Italian protested indignantly. ‘Now, will you let me sleep?’
‘But I thought that God was omnipotent. If he wanted to change his own rules, why didn’t he just change them? Why did he have to punish his son?’
‘These things are mysteries,’ muttered the Italian.
I considered.
‘What happens if people sin in heaven?’
He sat up.
‘Please, enough. I want to sleep. No one sins in heaven. Everyone knows that!’
‘Don’t they have free will anymore in heaven?’
‘Of course.’
‘But I thought free will meant people could choose.’
There was a brief silence. I had clearly over-taxed the sailor’s skills as a theologian.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘in heaven they just know the right thing to do.’
‘Didn’t Adam and Eve?’
The Italian growled.
‘To cast doubt is also a sin you know,’ he said, lying down again, ‘and now, if you have any more questions, save them for the morning and go and see a priest.’
And with that he sank down into loudly snoring sleep, leaving me lying awake, as I did every night, going over and over in my mind the moment when I had betrayed Lucy.
It wasn’t an accident, that was what haunted me, it wasn’t just a slip of the tongue brought on by too much raki. I had made a choice. I had arranged on purpose for her to be destroyed.
56
Next morning I went and found a church. In a buzzing gloom of gold and frankincense and ancient wood blackened by beeswax and chrysm, I found a priest, a man of about my age, though he looked much older with his long beard.
When I explained what I wanted the priest led me immediately to a small side room in which two candles burned in front of a gold icon of the crucifixion.
‘Face the altar, not me.’
I looked at the golden image.
‘Everything I tell you is confidential, is that right?’ I asked.
‘It is between you, me and God,’ said the priest from behind my shoulder.
I nodded.
‘I am an Illyrian,’ I said, ‘I don’t believe in your religion or know much about it. But I do know that you make a distinction between a body and its soul. Illyria doesn’t understand that. Illyria doesn’t believe in things that can’t be measured. I think that leaves a lot of things out.’