The Dark Side of the Island

The door closed behind him and for the first time Lomax was conscious of a faint stirring of excitement, a cold finger that seemed to touch him somewhere inside. He pulled on his linen jacket and went out on deck.

As he stood at the rail watching Kyros grad-u ally rise out of the sea, Captain Papademos emerged from the deck-house and paused beside him. He was heavily built and almost blackened by the sun, his face seamed with wrinkles.

He put a match to his pipe. ‘It’s difficult in this heat haze, but if you look carefully you can see Crete in the distance. Quite a view, eh?’

‘Something of an understatement,’ Lomax said.

‘I’ve been everywhere a sailor can go,’ Papademos continued. ‘In the end I found I was only travelling in a circle.’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Lomax said.

He took out a cigarette and Papademos gave him a light. ‘For an Englishman you speak pretty good Greek. The best I’ve heard from a foreigner. You’ve been out here before?’

Lomax nodded. ‘A long time ago. Before the flood.’

Papademos looked puzzled for a moment and then his face cleared. ‘Ah, now I see it. You were in the islands during the war.’

‘That’s right,’ Lomax said. ‘Working in Crete with the E.O.K. mostly.’

‘So?’ Papademos nodded, serious for a moment. ‘Those were hard times for all of us. The people of these islands don’t forget how much the English helped. Have you been back before?’

Lomax shook his head. ‘Never felt like it. In any case, I always seemed to have something more important to do. You know how it is.’

‘Life, my friend, she grips us by the throat.’ Papademos nodded sagely. ‘But seventeen years is a long time. A man changes.’

‘Everybody changes,’ Lomax said.

‘Maybe you’ve got a point there, but why Kyros? I could think of better places.’

‘There are some people I want to look up if they’re still around,’ Lomax said. ‘I’d like to see if they’ve changed too. Afterwards, I’ll move on to Crete and Rhodes.’

‘On Kyros nothing changes.’ Papademos spat down into the water. ‘Ten years I’ve been making this trip and they still treat me as if I’ve got the plague.’

Lomax shrugged. ‘Maybe they just don’t like strangers.’

Papademos shook his head. ‘They don’t like anybody. You sure you’ve got friends there?’

‘I hope so.’

‘So do I. If you haven’t, you’re in for a pretty thin time and you’ll be stuck for a week until I call again.’

‘I’ll take my chances.’

Papademos knocked the ash from his pipe on the rail. ‘We’ll be here for four hours. Why don’t you have a quick look round for old times’ sake and then go on to Crete with me? They’ll show you a better time in Herakleion than they will here.’

Lomax shook his head. ‘Next week I’ll take you up on that offer, but not now.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Papademos shrugged and went back into the deck-house.

They were close inshore now, the great central peak of the island towering three thousand feet above them. As the little steamer rounded the curved promontory crowded with its white houses, a single-masted caicque, sails bellying in the breeze, moved out to sea. It passed so close to them that Lomax could see the great eyes painted on each side of the prow.

The man at the tiller waved carelessly and Lomax raised a hand and then the throbbing of the engines began to falter as they slowed to enter the harbour.

On the white curve of sand, brightly painted caicques were beached and fishermen sat beside them in small groups mending their nets while children chased each other in the shallows, their voices somehow muted and far away.

He went back to his cabin and started to pack. It didn’t take long. When he was finished, he left the canvas grip and the portable typewriter on the bunk and went back on deck.

They were already working alongside the stone pier and as he watched the engines stopped and everything seemed curiously still in the great heat.

On the pier, three old men dozed in the sun and a young boy sat with a fishing line, a small black dog curled beside him.

As the steward emerged from the cabin carrying the canvas grip and the typewriter, Papademos came out of the deck-house. ‘You travel light.’

‘The only way,’ Lomax said. ‘What happens now? Do I just walk off the boat? Doesn’t anyone want to see my papers?’

Papademos shrugged. ‘There’s a police sergeant called Kytros who attends to all that. He’ll know you’re here soon enough.’

By now a couple of sailors had the gangway in position. The steward went first and Lomax put on a pair of sunglasses and followed him.

As he took out his wallet to tip the man, he was aware that the three old men were all sitting up straight and looking at him curiously.

The boy who had been fishing was winding in his line. As the steward went back on board, he hurried across, the dog at his heels.

He was perhaps twelve with brown eyes in a thin, intelligent face. His jersey was too big for him and his pants had been patched many times.

He looked up at Lomax curiously for a moment and then said slowly in English, ‘You want a good hotel, mister? They look after American tourist real nice.’

‘What makes you think I’m an American?’ Lomax asked him in Greek.

‘The dark glasses. All Americans wear dark glasses.’ The boy replied in the same language instinctively and his hand went to his mouth in astonishment. ‘Say, mister, you speak Greek as good as me. How come?’

‘Never mind that,’ Lomax said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Yanni,’ the boy told him. ‘Yanni Melos.’

Lomax extracted a banknote from his wallet and held it up. ‘All right, Yanni Melos. This is for you when we reach this hotel of yours where they treat Americans so well. It had better be the best.’

Yanni’s teeth gleamed in his brown face. ‘Mister, it’s the only one in town.’ He picked up the canvas grip and typewriter and hurried ahead, the dog at his heels, and Lomax followed.

Nothing had changed. Not a damned thing. Even the pillbox the Germans had constructed to guard the pier was still standing, its concrete crumbling a little at the edges. All that was missing were the E-boats in the harbour and the Nazi flag over the town hall.

The boy led the way between tall, whitewashed houses, moving away from the waterfront. Once or twice they passed someone sitting on a doorstep, but on the whole, the streets were deserted.

The hotel formed one side of a tiny cobbled square with a church opposite. There were several wooden tables outside, but no sign of any customers, and Lomax guessed that the place would probably liven up in the evening.

He followed the boy into a large, stone-flagged room with a low ceiling. There were more tables and chairs and a marble-topped bar in one corner, bottles ranged behind it on wooden shelves.

Yanni put down the canvas grip and the typewriter and vanished through a door at the rear. It was cool and pleasant after the heat outside and Lomax leaned against the bar and waited.