Free The Messenger of Athens: A Novel by Anne Zouroudi

bed linen, the carpets and the rugs she’d made by hand. And the damp made it always cold, and dank; on sunny days, they sat outside for warmth. No house—no home—should be like that. But their landlord was in Athens, and never came here; more importantly, the rent was very low. It would have to do, he said, for now. If they were thrifty, before too long they’d build a dream house of their own.
    A ndreas hawked the cream of his catch on the mainland: the spiny-backed German fish, two good-sized snapper, peachy pink, the slender, silver bream and the ugly John Dory, the clawless local lobsters which had crawled into his traps, the urchins and the oysters he had gathered. Some of what he made, he spent on necessities—fresh stocks of ice, loaves of fresh-baked bread. He prepared his nets and lines to make his final casts, and, when all was in order, he set sail in the direction of home.
    The ocean was his element almost as it was the fishes’. Under power, he steered the boat to rock over the gentle swell, or head-on to meet the rising giants, the wakes of ships and ferries. Where there was land—islands or islets, he knew them all—he ran her in close, to take advantage of their shelter; where there was no land, withoutreference to his compass his course was straight, as if the ruts between the waves were roads that he knew well. When it was time to halt, he remembered where the rocks would hold his anchor, and where it would drag useless across the sand, and let him drift; he remembered where he’d had success, the tiny coves and inlets where the catches had been good, and there he set his nets.
    And he knew his quarry. He knew the habits of each species: the times they liked to feed, the weather that they favored, the depth that they would swim. He knew which bait would be their downfall: a sugar-coated slice of shrimp, a luminous, squid-shaped lure, a crumb of bread or ham. It was, to him, a contest, which the smartest of them won. When the fish stole the bait, and got away with it, he cursed them. But, often enough, there was that weight on the line, that vibrating and tugging which told him he might win, if he was fast enough, and hauled in the fish thrashing and frantic, before it shook itself free.
    He pulled them in and held the jerking, slippery, panting creatures to force the hooks back through their bony lips. His callused hands absorbed their slimy oils; the big fish bled, and spattered him with blood through gasping gills. This sharing of their fluids was, he believed, crucial to his skill. And every day he fished, he ate of them—raw urchins from the shell, sardines grilled on a fire, a tin of mackerel—and the acids of his stomach broke down their bones and skin and melded them with his. This way, he said, he shared their essence, and made their secrets his.
    His life was with those sea-bred creatures. He sharedtheir spirit, and their gift of silence. In another life, he’d choose to be a merman.
    O n Saturday, early in the morning, while she still lay in the warmth of the bed, Andreas came home. A key rattled in the lock, the door opened and quietly closed (she left the bed; the room was cold; she pulled on socks and slippers). A chair scraped across the kitchen floor, his striking lighter rasped, he coughed (she found her robe; bobbing before the mirror, she smoothed her bed-wrecked hair). As the smoke of his cigarette reached the ceiling, she was at his side, holding his hand, smiling at his smile.
    He kissed her lightly, with salt-dried lips; his long-unshaven whiskers scratched her cheek. He looked a wild man, windswept, sunburned, filthy. His eyes, so swollen and pouched from broken sleep they were only slits, were sore and red. And body, breath, clothes, he stank: sweat, oil, onions, piss. And fish.
    “Hello, wife,” he said, still smiling.
    “Welcome home,” she smiled back. “I’m glad you’re here.”
    She made him tea, and fried him eggs, and as he ate, he told in brief the tale of