When the Devil's Idle by Leta Serafim

French. We get three euros for a handful, and it
costs us nothing. They don’t mind, the family, I do this. As long
as the garden is done, I am free.”
    He spoke passable
Greek and appeared to be what he said he was, a poor immigrant
seeking a foothold in a new land. He had a kind of sweetness about
him, a childish desire to please. He tended a herd of goats, too,
he said, although they weren’t his, looked after them for a man who
lived in Athens. Anything to get by. He and his wife stayed on
Patmos until November, when they left for Athens.
    “ What
do you do in Athens?”
    “ Cleaning. Offices, houses.”
    Patronas
continued to question him. “Do you ever see anyone else when you’re
picking oregano?”
    “ Tourists.”
    They inked his
fingers with a kit they’d brought with them and wrote down
everything he said. After they’d finished, they took a cast of his
shoes, planning to compare it to the prints they’d found in the
garden. Patronas wanted to chase the keys down, too, but doubted
they would lead to anything. Like the gardener’s shoes, just
another dead end.
    “ You
got a passport?” he asked the man.
    The man retrieved
it from a drawer and quickly handed it over. Patronas copied down
the number, thinking he’d ask Evangelos Demos to run it and see
what came up. Then he handed it back to him. “Don’t leave Patmos
without telling us. We might have to talk to you again.”
    “ I am
here,” the man said. “My wife also. We are not going
anywhere.”
     
    “ You
sure you don’t want to stay with us?” Evangelos Demos asked when
they got back to the car. “It’s a big house. There’s plenty of
room.”
    Patronas shook
his head. He’d spent time with Evangelos’ wife, Sophia, on Chios
and had no desire to repeat the experience. A country woman of the
old school, she was built like a fire hydrant and was just about as
malleable. Evangelos’ mother-in-law, Stamatina, who’d been living
with them at the time, had been even worse. She was a ferocious old
battle-ax who was hard of hearing and consequently shouted
everything, instructions mainly, from a chair in the kitchen,
banging her cane on the floor.
    “ From
Sparta, your wife?”
    “ Yes,
her mother, too. The whole family. Sparta bore you. Sparta you
adorn. ”
    An old saying
meaning one was loyal to where one came from. The part about
‘adorn’ wouldn’t apply to Sophia though. There’d be no dressing
that one up. She’d stay as she came—stout and humorless—a warrior
to the core. Everyone talked about how warlike Spartan men had
been, but they were nothing compared to the women.
    “ E
tan e epi tas ,” Spartan mothers were said to have told their
sons as they headed into battle. Come back with your shield or on
it. In other words, victory or death. They were a force of nature,
those women, human tsunamis. Made his ex-wife look like
Tinkerbell.
    Evangelos turned
the key and they started down the mountain, the gravel of the road
gleaming in the headlights of the car.
    Patronas patted
the seat appreciatively, admiring the American workmanship. The
Jeep might be two decades old, but it still ran better than his old
Citroen with its pathetic two-horse-power engine. His car had given
up the ghost during a rainstorm—it and his marriage within a week
of each other—its canvas roof coming loose and flapping in the wind
like a wet sheet on a clothesline. As a result, the car had filled
with water and molded, speckles of mildew darkening its interior
and scenting the air. Although he’d tried, Patronas had been unable
to sell it. He’d been forced to pay an exorbitant fee to have it
towed away. Now he rode a Vespa.
    Not a step up in
the world, he thought gloomily, more like a move
sideways.
    He lit a
cigarette and watched the countryside, struck anew by how empty
this side of Patmos was, just one bald hill after another. It
suited him, the barren landscape, matched his mood.
    “ My
wife is very unhappy on Patmos,” Evangelos Demos