When the Devil's Idle by Leta Serafim Page B

should be back
tomorrow.”
    “ Any
clue as to the history of the deceased, who he really
was?”
    “ Not
yet. They’re checking. It’s hard. Staff’s been cut. Might take some
time.”
    “ How’s
Papa Michalis bearing up?”
    “ Stubborn as ever. He drove the technicians crazy. ‘What’s in
the liquid in your pipette? After you weigh the organs, do you put
them in formaldehyde? If so, how long does it take before the flesh
degrades?’ He’s a ghoul, that one. Could star in a zombie
movie.”
    Patronas shook
his head as he closed the phone. He could see the priest in his
robes peering over the technicians’ shoulders, poking his nose in
their trays of gore and holding body parts up to the light.
‘Putrefaction’ was one of his favorite words. ‘Cadaver’ was
another, and he could go on at length about ‘adipocere,’ the soapy
foam that occasionally forms on corpses and ‘saponification,’ the
process that produces it. He’d often discussed these things with
Patronas—unfortunately, more often than not, during
meals.
    Patronas was too
tired to undress and fell asleep on the bed with his clothes on.
His sleep was restless, his dreams disturbed—there was something or
someone crying out that he couldn’t get to. He woke up at three
a.m. and got up and drank a glass of water. There’d been a message
somewhere in his dream, he was sure of it. Something he’d missed
during the day or forgotten to ask. If only he could
remember.
    He fumbled around
for cigarettes and stepped out on the balcony. Across the street,
the children’s playground shone in the darkness, the metal bright
under the moon, the swings creaking in the wind. Music was coming
from a taverna at the end of the street, a Greek cantata from the
time of the war. He stood outside listening for a long time,
smoking in the dark.
     
     

Chapter Seven
Everyone is a physician, a musician, and a
fool.
—Greek Proverb
     
    P atronas and the owner of the hotel had a friendly
conversation over breakfast the next morning. She’d fried potatoes,
poured in beaten eggs, and cooked it all in oil until a crust had
formed, then slid it onto a plate and handed it to him. A loaf of
fresh bread was set out on the table, along with butter and a clay
pot full of homemade orange marmalade.
    She set the
long-handled pot, the briki, on the propane stove and lit
the flame. “How do you want your coffee?”
    “ Metrio ,” Patronas said. Medium.
    He cut off a
piece of the omelet and ate it slowly, savoring the taste. “My
mother used to make eggs like this. It was one of my favorite
dishes as a child.”
    She smiled.
“Mine, too.”
    “ It’s
delicious. Thank you.”
    When the coffee
boiled, she poured it into a tiny cup and handed it to him, then,
unbidden, sat down at the table next to him. The room was warm and
she wiped her brow with the back of her hand, touched her hair with
her fingers. She was wearing a green dress of the thinnest cotton,
so sheer Patronas could see the stitching on her brassiere
underneath, the line of her panties. The latter appeared to be a
thong, although he couldn’t be sure, his wife having favored far
more substantial underwear. Like shorts, Dimitra’s panties had
been, Bermuda shorts, reaching almost to the knee. Big and white
and hideous.
    The woman’s hair
was pinned up today, a damp strand escaping and curling at the nape
of her neck. She was sitting so close he could smell the soap on
her skin.
    Antigone Balis
told him the hotel had been in her family for nearly twenty years.
She’d inherited it after her father died. “I couldn’t be bothered
with it for a long time,” she said. “I mean, who wants to be stuck
on Patmos in the winter? Summer’s fine, but the rest of the year,
it’s a graveyard. But then my husband died and I said to myself,
‘Why not give it a try?’ He was much older than I was and had been
sick for a long time. I needed a change.”
    “ How
long have you been here?” Patronas pushed his