Sons of Sparta

Chapter Two

A dark-haired, barely teenage girl in jeans and a pink hoodie opened the door. “It’s Yianni,” she said to seven men in jeans and work shirts sitting at a white linen-covered table in a room just beyond the entryway.

“She means Athens Yianni,” said one of the men.

“Of course she does,” said a white-haired man at the far end of the table, his face lit up in a broad smile, eyes sparkling. “The rest of you malaka Yiannis are already here.” Uncle had just affectionately lumped nearly half of Kouros’ cousins into the category of wankers.

Uncle stood up and spread his arms wide, like a bear waiting to embrace a bull.

“You look terrific, Uncle. I see you let your hair grow longer.”

The two men hugged and exchanged kisses on both cheeks. “Stop bullshitting a bullshitter. I’m a fat old man and you know it. Everyone knows it.”

Kouros’ reply was lost in barrage of comments and catcalls from the men at the table as they shuffled back chairs and stood to embrace and exchange kisses with their cousin.

Uncle stood by his chair, watching and smiling.

“Where shall I sit?” asked Kouros.

“Next to your uncle,” said a man about Kouros’ age, but a head taller and far broader. “We have to put up with him all the time. You haven’t had the pleasure since our cousin’s wedding.”

“And that was three years ago. It’s way past your turn to suffer through his stories,” said a younger and shorter man.

The group laughed as Uncle shook his head and looked at Kouros. “They’re very lucky your aunt is no longer with us to hear them speak like that about her husband.”

“Theos singhorese tin,” nodded the big man. “If mother were still alive, no one would dare speak like that. She’d whip us all.”

More laughter, and more wishes that “God forgive her soul.”

Uncle raised a bottle of beer. “A toast. To all of us. Together again. Yia sas.”

Kouros picked up a beer and clinked the bottle against his uncle’s, “Yia sas.” He went around the table doing the same with each cousin, every one a bull. Some small, some large. Kouros fell into the middle of the herd.

Though it was still early afternoon, Kouros figured from the number of soiled plates, empty beer bottles, and overflowing ashtrays on the table that they’d been carrying on like this for hours. But no one seemed drunk, as if everyone realized there was a serious purpose for this get-together.

A woman in her thirties walked in from the kitchen, carrying plates filled with food, followed by the girl in the pink sweatshirt carrying more food.

“Here, Yianni, you must be starved. Eat,” said the woman.

“Cousin Calliope! I can’t believe it’s you.”

“Why, do I look so bad?”

Kouros nodded toward the girl. “No, you look like your niece’s sister, not her aunt.”

The teenage girl rolled her eyes.

Calliope smiled. “Father,” she said to Uncle, “if this is how men from Athens talk, I understand why you and Mother never let me leave home.” She bent over and gave Kouros a big kiss on each cheek, then a smack to the back of his head.

Kouros smiled, “Glad to see you picked up where your mother left off.”

Calliope waved a hand at the men at the table. “Someone has to keep this family in line.”

The men laughed. But not too hard, for they knew there was truth in her words. Historically, Mani fathers were rarely home, leaving Mani mothers to decide family matters, such as selecting which of her sons would face death to avenge a slight to the honor of the family.

“Come,” she said to her niece. “Back to the kitchen. Time to leave the men alone to tell more lies to each another.”

Uncle leaned over to Kouros. “I’ve been blessed with two daughters and three sons. Luckily, only Calliope lives with me. For she’s the less strong-willed of the sisters. I think your aunt trained them to haunt me.” He smiled. “Eat. We’ll talk later.”

Kouros ate as Uncle’s oldest son, the biggest of the cousins, talked about a tourism explosion in their part of the Mani. “The land’s yielding more euros per acre from visitors than any crop ever did.”

“Later, Mangas,” said Uncle. “Let your cousin finish his meal in peace.”

He’d used his eldest son’s nickname, not his given name, Yianni. Greek tradition had the firstborn son named after his paternal grandfather and the second son after his maternal grandfather. That’s why four of the seven cousins sitting around Uncle’s table were Yiannis: Mangas, Kouros, Uncle’s slain brother’s son, and his surviving sister’s second son. The non-Yianni cousins were Uncle’s two younger sons, Theo and Giorgos, and the surviving sister’s older son, Pericles. To the extent the interests of the female members of the family were affected by this meeting, it would be up to their brothers and sons to protect them.

“Don’t worry about me, Uncle. I can chew and listen at the same time,” said Kouros.

“No. You’ll finish, then we’ll talk.” Uncle’s voice was hard.

Kouros finished as quickly as he could without offending his uncle.

“Would you like more?”

“No, thank you.”

Uncle nodded, paused for a few seconds, and smacked his hands firmly on the table.

Seven bulls jerked to attention.

“It is time.”

***

“Our ancestors have lived on this land for hundreds of years. We are Mani. No one can ever change that. No government, no foreigner, no neighbor. And while some of our neighbors may choose to sell their birthrights, we shall never sell.”

Some cousins nodded.

“But I also appreciate the times in which we live, and the struggles many of you face. And will continue to face. We are a family and no one of us should benefit at the expense of another.”

Where is he headed with this? thought Kouros. He caught a puzzled look on the face of his slain uncle’s son. I guess I’m not the only one wondering.

“I’ve decided to accept a proposal for our property.”

“What?” said Uncle’s youngest son, Giorgos. “You can’t. You just said you’d never sell.”

“Giorgos is right,” said his brother, Theo. “This is our home. We can’t leave it except through death.”

Uncle raised his hands to calm his sons. “Spoken as true sons of Mani, for which I’m proud. But hear me out.”

Giorgos’ face was blood red, but he said not a word. In the Mani you dared not disrespect your elders.

“I’ve not sold the property. I’ve agreed to lease all of our land on the plateau for ninety-nine years except for this house, the tower, and the surrounding ten acres, which will remain ours. The rest will return to our family in your children’s children’s lifetimes.”

Giorgos exploded. “What are you talking about? This is our land. No one else can ever live on it.”

“What’s the rent?” asked Theo.

Uncle smiled. “A sensible question. One I would expect from my son the accountant.” He paused. “Until the property is developed, the rent will be equal to twice what we could earn if used as farm land. Once it’s developed, we’ll receive a net rent equal to three percent of the project’s gross annual proceeds.”

“But who would make such a deal?” said Theo.

“One desperate for the land who realized that was the only deal I would make.”

Giorgos still fumed, but less so. “Who are you leasing it to?”

“Someone who wants to build a luxury resort hotel, complete with a golf course.”

“They must be crazy,” said Giorgos. “A golf course here? In this waterless oven?”

“And an airstrip.” Uncle shrugged. “I don’t know about such things. I just know the terms will bring us far more money than we could ever hope to see from the land, and the land will still be ours.”

Kouros cleared his throat. “May I speak, Uncle?”

“Of course.”

“I’m very happy for you and hope it’s as good a deal for you and your family as you say, but I don’t think you asked me or Yianni-” he pointed at his slain uncle’s son-“here for our advice. You and our aunt inherited the property from Grandfather when he died. It is yours for the two of you to do with as you wish.”

Uncle waved his finger. “You’re wrong. It is not just a good deal for me and my sister and our children. It’s a good deal for all of our family.”

Now puzzled looks came from all around the table.

“When I die, Calliope will continue to live in this house. But all of the cousins, including your sisters, will share equally in the rents. I do not need the money, and I will take care of my sister. She has agreed. And when you pass on, your children will inherit your shares.”

“I don’t understand,” said the surviving aunt’s son, Pericles. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because your mother and I think it’s fair. Two of our brothers and a sister died on this land defending our honor, and if my mother had not forced my sister and Athens Yianni’s father to flee, they too, would likely have died here. We all suffered, we all endured. We shall now all share in the family’s good fortune.”

Uncle looked at each face sitting around the table and fixed his eyes on Kouros.

“I don’t know what to say, Uncle,” said Kouros. “Thank you.”

“Yes, thank you,” said the slain brother’s son.

Uncle nodded. “You’re welcome.”

Kouros glanced around the table for any sign of disappointment on the faces of those who now shared their inheritance, but they’d all had time to regain whatever composure they might have lost.

“I think this calls for some serious drinking,” said Pericles.

“Yes,” said Uncle. “Calliope, bring in the whiskey. Please.”

Kouros had come prepared for a clash with his family over what he feared would be an effort to compromise his position as a cop, not to learn that he’d now have an income for life. How much didn’t matter. He just felt relieved that his worries were unfounded.

Kouros was on his third celebratory shot of whiskey with his cousins when Uncle touched his arm.

“Yiannis, may I speak with you for a moment?”

“Sure, Uncle. What is it?”

“It’s private. Come with me out to the tower.”

So much for unfounded, thought Kouros.

***

The sun wouldn’t set for another few hours, but Uncle still carried a flashlight. The five-story, effectively windowless tower had been built for war, not comfortable dwelling, and its narrow vertical slits were designed for taking aim at an enemy, not for admitting light.

As they walked to the tower, Kouros looked west across a rock-strewn patchwork of fields sloping down toward the Ionian Sea and a cove with a tiny beach from which pirate ships once sailed. He wondered what Uncle had on his mind. Family intrigues played as much a part in life here as struggles to survive on land as fertile as chalk. Gray chalk. Even the sea yielded little food here. Nature’s bounty had forgotten this place, blessing it in consolation with magnificent sunsets and quiet solitude.

Perhaps Uncle was right to lease the property. Tourism just might be God’s plan for this long-suffering land.

“You never knew my father’s father,” said Uncle, scratching his ear. “He was good at his trade and provided well for his family.”

“As I recall, he was a pirate,” said Kouros.

“Yes, but not an ordinary one. He preferred guile to battle. Did you ever hear about his ‘priest routine’?”

Kouros gave a quick upward nod of his head, the Greek gesture for “no.” “And I’m not sure I want to know.”

Uncle grinned. “I think you’re old enough to handle this family secret. Your great-grandfather liked to pose as a priest for rich visitors and officers who’d come ashore from ships anchored off the coast. He’d gain their confidence, find out what they desired and, on the pretext of taking them somewhere to satisfy their itch, lure them to where his crew waited to kidnap them all. His men treated him as if he were one of their captives, and he’d convince the real captives to appoint him their intermediary in ransom negotiations between the captors and the victims’ ship. That was his way of pirating a ship without risking the life of his men.”

Uncle stopped at the door to the tower and looked at Kouros. “Some of the victims even gave him a reward for saving them from ‘cutthroat Mani brigands.’ Yes, your great-grandfather was creative in his business. Successful, too.”

“Sounds like someone else I’ve heard tell of.”

Uncle laughed. “I guess you could say I came by my trade honestly. I certainly shared his desire to protect his men as best he could. My way was to insist that they prey only on the outside world, drawing blood if necessary from other Greeks, Albanians, Tsigani, Europeans, North Africans, anyone but fellow Maniots.” He turned to unlock the door. “And therein also lay the greatest difference between us. I abhorred our Mani blood feud history and did whatever I could to prevent that plague from spreading. That’s not to say I haven’t done a lot of very bad things, caused many to lose their lives, and taken some myself, but always outsiders, never Maniots.”

Uncle paused. “Unless, of course, there wasn’t a choice.”

Uncle stepped inside and Kouros followed.

Towers always looked so much roomier from the outside, but their necessarily thick walls drastically reduced their inner dimensions. Though considered larger than most, this tower had less than one hundred square feet of first floor space, and each ascending story was smaller than the one below. The open, west-facing doorway filled the room with light. It was empty except for a freestanding ladder in the southeast corner running up through a trapdoor in the floor above. More ladders ran between the other stories, each capable of being pulled up quickly.

“Do I sound like an old man on the edge of making his confession?”

“The thought did cross my mind,” said Kouros.

“But you’d think I’d know better than to pick an honest cop as my confessor.” He put his hands on Kouros’ shoulders. “What I’m about to tell you I’ve never told another living soul.”

“Uncle, I’m not the right person to hear this.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” He drew in and let out a deep breath. “There is nothing more important to me than my children. Nothing.”

Uncle walked to the front door and closed it, shutting out all but a narrow spray of light cutting across the room through a tiny, barred window on the north wall and a pale glow fanning down through the trapdoor from tiny windows and narrow gun slits above. He stayed in the shadows by the door.

“Until the day I die I will never understand what drove my grandfather to have my father kill his sister. She was his daughter.”

Kouros looked down at the floor.

“I could never bring myself to cause someone to kill my child. Or my sister or my brother. I am not a fool, I know it happens, it is part of our culture, but for me…no…never. Not after all that I saw in this house.

“My father never got over killing his sister. He never spoke of it, but he lived his life as if he’d died the day he murdered her. And when his own children began falling victim to vendetta, he took no steps to save them. As if he saw their deaths as the price God had placed upon his soul to pay for his sin. It was my mother who sent your father and aunt to Athens, and pleaded with the council of elders on my behalf.

“And all the many things he did for all those women he cared for in the village, he did seeking a forgiveness that never came.”

He took a step toward Kouros. “The strangest thing of all is, I don’t think my father’s father ever forgave his son for the killing. My father’s return to the village as a doctor was not just my father’s penance, but became his father’s as well. Every day, the father saw the son and remembered what he’d made him do. It was a festering wound impossible to heal. And when his first grandchild fell to vendetta, Grandfather did not leave his grandson’s burial site for two days and two nights. He returned home with fever but did not send word to his son for help. He stayed in his bed and died of pneumonia as his wife-my grandmother-sat patiently in the corner of the room watching him pass on.”

He took another step closer to Kouros. “They were all sad people. Sad every day of their lives.”

Silence.

“That’s quite a burden you carry, Uncle. But I’m really not the one to help you with this. Perhaps a priest, a-”

He raised his hand for Kouros to stop. “No, that is not the sort of help I need. I’ve lived with this all my life, and will live with it for the rest of it. I have something I want to show you.” He walked past Kouros into the darkest corner of the room and shone his flashlight into a stone, trough-like structure once used to store powder kegs and shot for musket battles.

“My grandmother never uttered a word to her husband about his decision to have their daughter killed, but he knew she never forgave him. He’d murdered her pride and joy.”

“How do you know?” said Kouros.

“She told me after Grandfather died. Long before that, when I was the baby of the family, she took care of me so that my mother could do other things. Like all grandmothers, she liked talking to babies. She had much she wanted to tell, but dared not tell an adult, so she opened up to me. She got used to talking to me about her secrets, and the older I grew the more she revealed. From her I learned things different from what others told me. Proud talk about the honor of vendetta she tempered by showing me the inevitable emptiness of it all, mourning her beloved Calliope every day of her life.

“My Calliope is named after her, Theo and Giorgos after my slain brothers, and their sister after my slain sister. So that I never forget what our family has lost to vendetta.”

Kouros watched as his uncle began removing stones from inside the bottom of the trough.

“I’ve spent my life trying to spare my family the curse of vendetta. I made my decision to lease our land for that same reason. I don’t want my sons and their cousins fighting over what should happen to our land after I am gone. Some, like Giorgos, want to keep it as it is, no matter what. Others, like Theo, see the benefit of selling. Who knows what my sister’s son Pericles may be thinking? He and his brother like the high life in Athens but don’t have the money to afford it. Mangas is only interested in living life as it comes.”

“Following in his father’s footsteps?”

“I hope with the same attitude toward family. One that will never bring the two of you into conflict. But that’s not why I brought you in here.”

He piled up the stones next to the trough and on top of them placed several boards that had lain beneath the stones. He reached into the trough and lifted out a large box covered in cloth.

“What’s that?” said Kouros.

“Calliope’s chest.”

“The murdered Calliope?”

He nodded. “Grandmother hid it here the night of her murder. She feared Grandfather would destroy it. Later, she worried that showing it to my father would only bring deeper sadness to his life. She showed me where she’d hidden it just before she died and made me promise to pass it on to my daughter when I had one, or someone else I thought would treasure the memory of Calliope and ‘could forgive her for the mistake of loving a boy too much.’

“She made me promise to follow her instructions to the letter.” He stood and carried the chest to Kouros. “But I never could bring myself to open old wounds. So I left it here, buried in my grandmother’s shawl.”

“But what does this have to do with me?”

He put the chest down at Kouros’ feet. “Because the vendetta isn’t over.”

“You can’t be serious.”

Uncle sighed. “I wish I weren’t. But vendettas can go on for generations.”

“This isn’t that sort of vendetta, Uncle. There’s been no bad blood between the families for fifty years.”

“I thought the same thing until last week. When I received a threat.”

“What sort of threat?”

“One written across the back of my morning paper.” He pulled a folded newspaper page out of his back pocket and read: “Your father took his sister’s and her lover’s lives to preserve our ways. We shall take yours to save our Mani. You have one week to change your plans or die.”

“That sounds crazy.”

“I know.”

“May I see it?”

Uncle handed him the page. The message had been carefully pasted onto the newspaper with words cut out of other newspapers.

“Any idea who did this?”

Uncle gestured no.

“What plans are they talking about?”

“My guess is the hotel.”

Kouros scratched the back of his head. “In your line of work, Uncle, you must have made a lot of enemies. What makes you think the threat didn’t come from one of them?”

“I thought that, too, at first. But I’ve had death threats before and my enemies know they don’t scare me. Besides, if any of them wanted to make a macho point to impress some third party with how tough they could be by taking me on, I can assure you it would be for a flesh-and-blood real reason, not some generations-old vendetta bullshit. They’d know this sort of threat would make me think the sender a fool, one I’d never take seriously. And I didn’t. Besides, I was too busy working on completing the hotel deal to worry about it.”

“Then why are you taking it seriously now?”

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. “Yesterday, I received this anonymous SMS.” He held the phone so Kouros could read the message: YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE IS OVER. NOW IT IS YOUR TIME TO DIE.

“I will die someday. How, when, and where is in God’s hands. Or maybe the devil’s. But I don’t want my death resurrecting a vendetta that will take more of my family. My sons are hotheads. Proud of being Maniots, but they don’t know what it means to mourn a lost sibling or child, or to live in fear of what your neighbor might be about to do to you at any moment.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I want you to find out who’s threatening me.”

“Then what?”

Uncle locked eyes with Kouros. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Uncle, I can’t set someone up for execution.”

He put a hand on Kouros’ shoulder. “That’s not what I have in mind. That would only fuel the vendetta. If I know who is behind this, perhaps I can reach out and make peace.”

“And if not?”

Uncle shrugged. “All I ask is that you think about it on your drive back to Athens. See if there’s some way you can bring yourself to help that won’t compromise your principles. If you can, I’d be grateful. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you’d take Calliope’s chest with you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. As I said, I promised my grandmother to give it to someone who would treasure her daughter’s memory and not judge her for her mistake. I don’t see that in either of my daughters, as much as I love them. So, just in case I never get around to keeping that promise, I’d like you to be the one to do it for me.”

Kouros swallowed. “I’m honored.”

He picked up the chest and handed it to Kouros. “And if you do decide to help me find who’s behind this threat, I promise you no one will die because of it.”

Kouros smiled. “Promise?”

“My word of honor.”