The Whispers of Nemesis by Anne Zouroudi Page B

than I. Please, lead on.’
    But despite his suggestion that Attis should go ahead, the fat man’s pace on the road was surprisingly quick, and Attis found himself hurrying to keep up.
    â€˜Are you a resident of Vrisi?’ asked the fat man, as they walked.
    â€˜I? No.’ For a moment, Attis was silent. ‘I should perhaps explain my interest in what brought you here. Santos Volakis was my client. I was his literary agent.’
    â€˜Ah.’ The fat man nodded with interest. ‘So tell me, what exactly does such a relationship entail?’
    â€˜Let’s find somewhere warm and order coffee,’ said Attis. ‘Then you can tell me what you offer as an investigator, and if it seems to both of us we might do business, I’ll tell you everything you need to know.’
    At the edge of the village, a path of steps and stones led down between the houses, leaving the winding road to its longer route. A young girl pegged baby clothes on a line, her fingers red with cold in fingerless gloves; the fat man wished her kali mera , whilst Attis passed her by as if she were not there. A man hacked with a mattock at the ground of a small plot; on the doorstep of his house, his sullen wife was polishing a copper pan. The man watched as they went by and gave answer to the fat man’s greeting, whilst his wife looked away, her hand still rubbing rhythmically at the pan. By an outdoor oven, a woman was splitting logs and breaking sticks, as her ugly daughter warmed her hands on the oven’s flames. The woman smiled enticingly at the passing men, and showed a tapsi of chicken and potatoes ready for the oven when the fire burned low: bait for a suitor for the daughter, who, scowling, turned her wide-hipped body away, and wiped her nose on the cuff of her jacket sleeve.
    Their path (which the fat man seemed to know, in fact, as well as Attis) began to level out, until it rounded a corner and rejoined the road. The road was wider here, and straight, crossing levelled land where in a gravelled playground, the chains of the swings were broken, and the steps to the top of a little slide were crooked. Lanes led to a school and to the church, before the road passed the village square, where the granite Santos read his wordless book.
    The fat man stopped at the foot of the statue, and looked up at the poet.
    â€˜It appears the villagers take little care of Volakis’s monument,’ he said, grimacing at the bird-droppings on the poet’s shoulders. ‘Do they have no pride in their famous son? A bucket of water and a scrubbing brush would soon restore him to his intended glory. And what of the family? Have they no objections to his state?’
    â€˜I’m afraid Santos wasn’t always popular in Vrisi, and taking care of his memorial isn’t a task many of them would volunteer to do. As for the family, I don’t know. They’re rarely here to notice, I suppose.’
    Behind the statue, across the square, was a pond enclosed by a low wall.
    â€˜Here it is,’ said Attis, as they drew close to the water, ‘the spring which gives Vrisi its name.’
    They looked over the wall. A trickle of water ran out of the hillside to feed the pond, which drained, at its far end, into a stream which fell steeply down the hillside and was lost between the village’s lower houses. At the water’s edge, ducks preened on opaque remnants of slow-melting ice.
    â€˜Most picturesque,’ said the fat man, politely.
    â€˜Santos told me that the spring used to be sacred to some god, though which one, I don’t remember. There used to be swans here, a nesting pair, but I see they’re not here now.’
    â€˜Swans are the most beautiful of birds, much admired since ancient times,’ said the fat man. ‘You’ll no doubt know the myth in which Zeus himself chose its form to pursue the unwilling Leda, and that after their copulation, Leda is said to have given birth