Aphrodite’s Smile

He was tall and thin with a fringe of white hair around his otherwise bald head. He regarded me with interest before his features creased into a friendly smile. ‘You have the look of your father about you. Kalos-ton Ithaca, Robert. Though I wish that I could welcome you under more happy circumstances.’

Irene stood to meet him as he climbed the steps. She held out her hands and when he grasped them in his own she turned to me. ‘Robert, I would like you to meet Alkimos Kounidis. Alkimos and your father were great friends.’

Kounidis kissed Irene on both cheeks then extended his hand to me. ‘May I offer you my sympathies? Your father spoke of you often, Robert. I hope you do not mind if I call you that? I feel as if I know you already.’

‘Of course.’

We shook hands and then he turned back to Irene. ‘And you Irene? Iste kala?’

‘Ime entaxi,’ she answered. I’m OK.

Kounidis joined us and Irene made him a glass of sweetened iced coffee, and one for his driver who remained by the car, sitting in the shade smoking a cigarette. Kounidis and Irene spoke about the funeral arrangements and then Kounidis began reminiscing about my father and the time they had spent together over the years. He told a story about a time they had gone to a nearby island after diving on a reef off the coast and had spent the evening eating and drinking in a taverna there.

‘Your father climbed up onto the table to sing us all a song, Robert. Even though many of us begged him to spare us. He would not listen and he sang a traditional ballad in its entirety but when he came to the most moving part at the very end, he lost his footing and crashed to the floor.’ Kounidis shook his head and chuckled. ‘There was much applause, though I do not think it was in appreciation of Johnny’s talent as a singer.’

I had difficulty reconciling this gregarious image of my father with the one I carried of him. ‘It sounds as if you knew a side of him that I didn’t, Mr Kounidis,’ I commented.

‘I came to know him quite well I think. He spoke of you often, though of course I am aware that your relationship was not always close,’ he added tactfully.

‘That’s one way of putting it I suppose.’

‘Unfortunately this sometimes happens between fathers and their sons I think. Your father liked to remember happier times. He talked of when you were very young. I believe that you used to go with him on his archaeological digs in England.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Time changes many things. Your father regretted that living here meant that he did not know you better. Even though he loved Ithaca.’

I snorted derisively. ‘If he told you that, I’m afraid he misled you. The reason we didn’t know each other had nothing to do with the fact that he chose to live here. It was because after he left England he conveniently forgot that he had a child. I didn’t hear from him for almost two years. That’s a long time for a boy, Mr Kounidis.’

‘Robert, please,’ Irene interrupted.

I held up my hands in mock surrender. ‘I know I don’t sound like the grieving son, but the truth is that my father had a talent for glossing over certain things.’

‘What happened to your father before he left England affected him very badly,’ Irene said. ‘It took him a long time to get over it.’

I knew the scandal had ruined his career but I had heard this excuse before and I always had the same answer. ‘It didn’t stop him marrying you while he was busy getting over it.’

‘Forgive me,’ Kounidis interjected hastily, ‘I should not have brought the subject up.’

Irene looked at me with a mixture of hurt and reproach, and I wished I hadn’t said anything. It was pointless going over this same old stony ground now that my father was dead and I knew it. I had never blamed Irene for any of it, though it had sounded as if I had, if only a little.

‘I’m sorry, Irene,’ I said. ‘You too, Mr Kounidis. Please accept my apologies.’

He made a gesture as if to dismiss any further thought of it and I tried to divert the topic of conversation. ‘How did you come to know my father, are you also an archaeologist?’

‘Please, call me Alkimos. And to answer your question, I am afraid that unlike your father I was never a scholar. I am retired now of course, but for many years I was a simple businessman.’

‘Alkimos is being modest,’ Irene said, seizing on the change of direction. ‘He owned a very successful shipping company in Patras on the mainland.’

‘I had an interest in a few ships. It is not such a big thing.’

I doubted that. I hadn’t seen too many people on Ithaca who drove around in large, nearly-new chauffeur-driven Mercedes. ‘Then you’re not from Ithaca originally?’

‘As a matter of fact I was born here, but I left when I was a very young man, after the war.’

I was surprised. According to my quick calculation that meant Kounidis had to be at least in his late seventies, though he didn’t look it.

‘I went to sea,’ he went on, ‘and over the years I saved a little money. Eventually I managed to raise enough to buy an interest in a small freighter. I was fortunate to have a little success. Did you know that Ithaca has a great seafaring tradition, Robert? Some of the great Greek shipping families came from here. The Stathatos brothers and the Charalambis family to mention two. My own accomplishments were much more modest of course.’

‘You moved back here after you retired?’

‘Yes. I have had a house on Ithaca for many years. Like Odysseus I always longed to return home. You are familiar with Homer?’

‘A little.’

‘Alkimos helped your father with his work,’ Irene said.

‘I made small contributions towards the cost of some of his excavations over the years, no more. I was honoured to help. Unfortunately in Greece there is never enough money for such important archaeological work.’

‘Without Alkimos’s help, your father’s museum would never have been able to remain open,’ Irene said.

‘Irene exaggerates of course,’ Kounidis demurred. ‘I had great respect for your father, Robert. He was an educated and intelligent man, as well as being a good friend. If I was able to assist in some small way then I regard it as a privilege. You know of course about Aphrodite’s Temple? Your father always hoped that one day he would discover its whereabouts.’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know that a man named George Dracoulis claimed to have first discovered it in the thirties?’

I was surprised. ‘I thought it had been lost since ancient times.’

‘And so it was. In fact scholars have always disputed its existence. But Dracoulis wrote a letter to his sister in which he claimed to have found the temple. Unfortunately this could never be proven because Dracoulis died during the war, and by the time the letter came to light the earthquake of 1953 had buried the site he had unearthed. At least that was the theory of some. Including your father.’

‘Though I gather from what Irene has told me that in recent years even he had given up any hope of finding it.’

‘This is true, of course. It was a great shame to see him become so despondent. Though he knew in the end that Dracoulis was proved right.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Some of the artefacts that Dracoulis recovered from the site were discovered in a private collection last year in Switzerland. It was proof that everything he wrote in the letter to his sister was true. At least Johnny knew that the temple really existed. I am sure that someday it will be found.’

I wondered if that might have added to my father’s despair. To know that the temple was actually somewhere on the island, but that even after twenty-odd years he hadn’t found it and probably never would.

‘I recall that your father mentioned that you are in business?’ Kounidis said, changing the subject.

‘Property development, yes.’

‘Your father also said that you are quite successful.’

‘Prices have been going up,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t take a genius in those conditions.’