The Stolen Book Read online

  Sara Alexi

  THE STOLEN BOOK

  oneiro

  Also by Sara Alexi

  I hope you enjoy The Stolen Book.

  I’ve included a preview of The Rush Cutter’s Legacy at the end, to give you a taste of the next in the series.

  Happy reading,

  Chapter 1

  The slats of the unopened shutters offer Niki a narrow, panoramic view of the village. Whitewashed houses bask in the midday sun, red-tiled roofs shimmer in the heat, and a dry dust has settled over everything, diluting colours and bringing women out to their front patios and courtyards with brushes and brooms.

  Up the road, in the top corner of the square, nestles the village shop, its door jammed open, inside too dark to see the well-used chair that waits for customers who want to linger and chat. Nor is it possible to make out the tumble of colourful clutter—the daily necessities stacked within, on which Niki and the rest of the village are so reliant. Propped in a plastic bucket by the entrance, shepherd’s crooks catch on customers’ shoulders as they enter, squinting. Just now, a stray dog, a white one with one light brown paw, lies in the shop doorway, the occasional customer stepping over him to enter.

  But Niki’s attention is on the kafeneio at the head of the square, which is gently buzzing, full of animated men. One by one, they take their leave, ready for their midday meal and afternoon sleep. From this distance, Niki recognises them by their gait, their heights, the greys and browns of their hair as they push and roll their shirt sleeves past the elbows or hitch up their baggy serge trousers. She cannot see Karolos, his dark hair usually so visible amongst his peers, and she continues her search as the men say their goodbyes to their neighbours, sitting in the same seats as yesterday, the week before, the year before that, their fathers before them. A nod or a lift of a finger reassures that they will see each other again.

  If she leans her cheek against the shutter and looks to the right, she can see the tables and chairs outside the eatery next door. There is a dog there too, curled up at the base of the tree, which is wrapped around with fairy lights and which looks so pretty at night. It is too hot for any customers to sit outside today. Laughter comes from within and the radio quietly plays a rebetika accompaniment. These are the widowed farmers, the bachelors, and those needing a break from their wives. They have no dinners to return to so they go to Stella’s eatery.

  The smoky aroma of roast chicken from Stella’s grill is rich and thick and makes Niki’s stomach rumble. He’ll be here soon, surely?

  In the other direction, flanked with cottages that sink into the landscape, the narrow road leaving the village is straight as far as the primary school, where it curves sharply to the right past the multi-coloured railings. The corner is alive with boys bursting through the gates to run home as fast as they can and mamas chatting as their arms are pulled by small fingers eager for food and a mesimeri sleep. It is unlikely he would be in that direction. Their land is the other way, up towards the monastery.

  A ribbon of sun filters back through the shutters, highlighting Niki’s dark eyes. Her nose is in shadow but the delicate curve of her mouth is also illuminated as it twitches in and out of smiles in response to the village life being played out before her.

  She pulls her head back as a butterfly crawls through the laths to find its way inside. The colourful creature circles the room in a dance, expressing joy at being alive, exploring the space until it is drawn back towards the light, fluttering too excitedly to find its way out again. After a moment it settles, exhausted, folding its red wings to reveal a mottled grey and black underside. If it were to crawl just one step, between the horizontal wooden bars, towards the sun, it would be free. But as the rays warm the tips of its feet, it explodes once again into life and its delicate wings make no impression on the unyielding shutters.

  Niki reaches to save it, to open the shutters, to let it unleash its energy into the blue sky.

  ‘Again!’ Karolos flings himself onto the wooden kitchen chair, which creaks in response. Niki starts at his unexpected and sudden entrance and automatically picks up a tea towel, ready to take his lunch from the oven.

  ‘Can you believe it? The ground was dry as a bone.’ He struggles to unlace his boots. ‘I should have gone out last night to check.’

  Niki puts the pastichio on the table, a serving spoon beside it, and fills the glasses from a chilled jug from the fridge.

  ‘Do you want to wait for the boys?’ she asks. The issue with the watering system is not a new one. The Dimos turns the pressure down to stop the water being wasted at night when the tariffs are cheaper, but the result is there is not enough flow for the automatic systems to work and the farmers cannot water their trees in the cool of the night. The fruit dries and withers and it is not unknown for a farmer’s yield to be halved, and with it his income.

  ‘What am I supposed to do, go out with a bucket and water them one by one?’ Karolos continues. ‘Is this country that backward?’

  Niki says nothing. They have been through this all before, and for now, he just needs to let off steam.

  ‘If we had the money, we should build our own sterna, or drill, make a well,’ Karolos grunts.

  ‘Why don’t you just water them by day? If we have no choice, what else can you do?’ Niki takes forks from the drawer that does not close properly, the handle long gone, Karolos’ baba’s workmanship not standing the test of time.

  ‘And how am I meant to know which nights there will be no water to know to water that day?’ He rubs his hands vigorously up and down his face. The hair that was hanging loosely over his forehead perks up into a quiff as he runs his hands through his mane, pulling at the knots where it is longer at the back. He has always worn it long, influenced by the football players of the 1980s. ‘The cost is double in the day, and the sun dries it up as soon as it wets the ground.’

  Niki takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. If she says anything, their frustration will escalate. He will shout, she will end up in tears, and they will argue. If only he just had a bit more force, a little more action. But he is content just to potter around the village all day long on his moped, accomplishing nothing, satisfied that the oranges will grow themselves, that the olive trees will produce as they have every other year, and then grumble about their problems, without ever actually doing anything about them.

  Up until now, it is not the growing that has been the problem; rather, the selling. Actually, it has not been the selling—that is easy. The buyers come from Saros or beyond and agree a price and Karolos gathers together a gang of illegal immigrants to pick. The trucks are loaded and the oranges leave. It is getting paid that is the problem. Two years now, they have not received the money owed for the oranges. Karolos could have just been unlucky the first year, but to sell to the same man the following year?

  ‘You know, sometimes I wonder how much you really value me and the boys.’ Niki cannot hold herself back. ‘You say you can do nothing, but there must be something you can do. I will take a bucket and do the watering myself if I have to.’

  Karolos drinks down a glass of water and Niki refills it. The glass catches and reflects the sun that streams through the back door, which he has left open. The prisms of light flicker over his smooth skin. He is just as handsome as the day she met him, a bit more craggy perhaps, but with such a kind face.

  A red chicken picks up its feet as it steps from their back yard of compacted mud into the shade of the kitchen. Karolos glances at it. Niki flaps a tea towel in warning, but it takes its time to retreat and as soon as her attention is elsewhere, the hen makes its way back inside, pecking at the floor by the side table where Niki cut the bread.

  ‘You know, sometimes I wonder if you are not keen to send the boys to university in England. Are you not proud of them, that they have worked so hard, been offered places? You say it is no life to be an orange farmer and yet you do nothing to make sure that the boys will not follow in your footsteps. Do you want them to become orange farmers like you, not being paid for years, struggling to survive, a life of living hand to mouth?’

  It is a bittersweet thought. If they study abroad, they will probably stay and work abroad, and it will give them a chance. The price of that chance is that she will miss them. Of course she will miss them. It will break her heart to have them so far away, but at least they will have a proper life, with choices, comforts.

  ‘Of course I want them to go, but life is not so easy. We don’t always get what we want.’ Karolos’ voice is gentle, always gentle, even when he is angry.

  Niki can feel her limbs tensing. ‘So what? We don’t even try?’

  ‘We are trying, Niki. What more can I do? I am taking the man to court to get paid, but you know that with the system as it is, it will take years and even then, what will make him actually pay the money even if the judge says he does owe us?’

  ‘Why on earth did you trust him after he already owed us so much?’ Her tears are flowing now, as they always do. The powerlessness she feels eats away at her until it squeezes out of her tear ducts.

  ‘Niki, we are all trying to make a living, the man who bought our oranges just as much as us. So he had a bad year. We cannot judge him forever on that.’

  ‘You are too good Karolos, too kind, too forgiving. You didn’t have to sell to him again. You know what it makes me feel? It makes me feel you are more interested in pardoning him than you are in providing for your boys!’ It has all been said before. The acid in her stomach burns and she sits down, exhausted with it all, putting her
head in her hands.

  ‘Niki my love,’ Karolos leans across the table to touch her, stroke her hair. She looks up at him. He wipes away a tear with a gentle thumb. ‘Niki, we will be alright. Always we will be alright. So we might have to adjust our dreams a little, but this is just life.’

  The light in the room changes. Spiros stands in the doorway, Petros right behind him, their football shirts wet under their arms, boots in their hands. Niki jumps up and takes plates down from the plate rack, all emotions on hold.

  ‘Good day, boys?’ Karolos asks.

  ‘I’m starving. Can we eat?’ Petros pushes past his brother to sit down and serve himself.

  Chapter 2

  She must hurry. Missing the first, and only, bus into Saros will mean taking a taxi, rendering the day pointless, as most of her wage will go on the fare. If Karolos could only carry a mobile phone, then at least she could call him, bring him out of the top orchards and get a lift on his moped. How many times has he left his phone in the hills under an olive tree or dropped it on stony ground?

  The bus is just pulling to a standstill in the square as she hurries to meet it, as much as the first heat of the day will allow. School children jostle on in a lazy manner, subdued by the early hour. They talk quietly, some plugged into their own private worlds, nodding to the beats. Petros was one of these children last year. Now he no longer needs to take the journey with her. He has finished for the summer, his last exams taken, so when he is finally drawn from his bed, he will go with Spiros in friends’ cars or on the back of a motorbike to enjoy the beaches and nightclubs; a daily ritual until September.

  Cosmo grinds the gears of his moped to a standstill in front of the bus and, with a leg grounded on either side of his metal steed, his fingers walk through the letters in his leather bag. His post office badge hangs limply from his shirt, threatening to fall at any moment, his cap abandoned to allow his brow to sweat freely.

  ‘Niki,’ he says and holds out an envelope towards her. He stuffs the post bag back in the wire basket over the front wheel and drives off, only to stop across the road to deliver several letters to Vasso in the kiosk, next to the palm tree, in the centre of the square. Two illegal immigrants lounge on the circular wooden seat around the tree, arms over eyes as they snooze in its dappled shade. Having delivered the letters to Vasso, Cosmo abandons his bike and the post bag and ambles toward the kafeneio as if his day’s work is done. Over the years, the post office has received a great number of complaints about late and lost mail.

  Niki opens the letter when she is seated and the bus is moving away, the village quickly diminishing behind them. It is the heating bill for last winter, and she gasps at the amount. Another obstacle; the world conspiring against her. It seems every which way she turns, they owe money and every which way she looks, they in turn are owed money. How can they live, how can they make plans for the future if they never get paid for what they produce? Her jaw tightens, her teeth clench, and her tongue automatically finds the small, but slowly enlarging, hole at the back of one of her front teeth. Vasso in the kiosk, who seems to know a little about everything, suggested it could be from grinding her teeth at night. She has never caught herself doing this but most mornings she wakes with her teeth locked together so tightly, the muscles in her cheeks ache. She consciously relaxes her jaw now, opening and closing her mouth without parting her lips.

  The chatter on the bus grows in pitch as they pull to a halt to pick up more children from the next village. The bus judders as it moves off again and Niki watches the rows and rows of orange trees passing, the sun glancing off the shiny leaves, the ground under them pale and dusty, dry. The problem with the water affects all the farmers in the area.

  The next trees are dark underneath and a hissing sound through the open window tells that a watering system is on. At this time of day, more than half of it will be lost in evaporation, nor will the tree take in all that it needs during the day and the oranges will not fatten. It is almost a waste of time in such heat—not to mention more expensive—but it is a desperate measure.

  Last week, when the pressure was low three nights in a row, Niki ended up feeling particularly defeated, to the point where, on the third morning, she phoned the university in England to find out what would happen if the boys could not take the places they had won in September. It was a difficult conversation, as her English is reasonable but nowhere near fluent, but it was with relief that she understood that her boys could defer their places to the next academic year.

  Well, if they don’t get paid for last year’s oranges soon and this year’s fruits do not fatten, she will have to tell the boys that that is exactly what they will have to do.

  These thoughts accompany her until the bus pulls up at the town’s bus station.

  Saros is always a bit of a shock to the senses. It is not a big town, but the pace is not quite as slow as in the village and the sun seems brighter and hotter as it glares off the pavements and the shop windows.

  The mass of schoolchildren piles off the bus before her, the boys shouting and laughing now they have woken a little, calling each other names. The girls link arms, in no hurry, ambling, heads close together, engaged in intensely quiet conversations.

  Taxi drivers fill the café chairs that spill onto the pavement outside the station, smoking endless cigarettes and drinking bottomless chilled coffees as they lean back to bask in the sun.

  Too many drivers and not enough work.

  Leaving behind the noise, Niki takes a back lane down toward the harbour. The cobbled road, hemmed in by stone buildings and bougainvillea-draped balconies, is too narrow for cars but the occasional motorbike leans on its own support, half blocking her way. She can see the sea peeking between buildings, sparkling, inviting. When summer is on its way, it never ceases to thrill her and today, the shimmering blue lifts her from her earthly concerns and fills her with a curious sense of optimism. A sense that there is something just beyond her grasp that will make her life totally different. A sense of impending change. There is no reason for this; nothing has altered. It is just a feeling, but her footfall lightens and she is in danger of skipping.

  The grand buildings by the port, three and four stories high, have been converted into cafés and tavernas on the ground floor where they face the harbour, idyllic in the summer, buffeted by salted spray in the winter. Around the side or the back, these solid stone buildings boast tall, ornately carved wooden double doors which indicate the wealth of times gone by. The entire length of the port is fronted by these Venetian-influenced buildings, once homes for the rich. Now the money is made from the bars, and the rooms upstairs are mostly too noisy to be lived in and have fallen into disrepair. Some are used as storerooms for the tavernas below as the timber rots and the roof tiles slip.

  As Niki approaches, she can see Kyria Toula on the balcony at the side of her mansion, one of only a handful that are still lived in. A boy on a moped has attached a basket of vegetables to a line hanging from the balcony above, and Toula is hauling it up with the aid of a small electric winch, which whines in complaint. There is an orange crate fastened to the back of the boy’s moped with wire, and it is filled to overflowing with fluffy-topped celery, shiny, deep purple aubergines, courgettes carefully propped up to preserve their flowering ends, and other seasonal edibles.

  ‘Thank you,’ Toula calls down to the boy, who waits until the basket is over the balcony rail, and with a twist of his hand, revs his machine and putters away.

  ‘Kalimera,’ Niki calls up to her.

  ‘Ah Niki. Here you are.’ Toula fishes in her apron pocket and throws down a large key. ‘That will save me coming down. That lift’s still not working properly. Please don’t use it, as it worries me.’

  Picking the keys from the floor, as she has missed the catch, Niki heads towards the door. Inside, after the sun, it is shockingly dark and she must wait for her eyes to adjust. The relative cool makes her shiver. Just inside the front door, the ancient lift stands with its wooden doors wide and the metal concertina gates open. The floor is at an angle, and the whole thing looks unsafe. She would not go up or down in it even if Kyria Toula asked her.