Last Days

March 26, 2008

“Do you want the bad news or the really bad news?”

I had just received an email from Huong and at the mention of bad news my heart sank. She had left Prague three days prior to head back to Chios, but I had stayed behind to meet with a photography contact.

“Give it all to me,” I wrote back hastily.

She then began to detail out the series of events that would lead to the eventual parting of ways between her, the hut, the island, and ultimately Mr. Vardakas.

When she arrived back at the hut, the warm weather, a dripping shower, and airtight doors & windows (which we had left closed) had created a steam room effect. The entire hut was weeping. Our mattresses, our blankets, our sheets, our clothes, and any paper that was left out—all of it was soaked. A ½ inch of water covered the hut floor; water dripped from the ceiling and walls, and the entire bathroom ceiling was covered in mold that was quickly spreading to the kitchen.

To top it off, the next day she awoke to Mr. V. dumping brown liquid onto the roof from a suspicious cistern on top of the hut. “Um…what are you doing?” she asked him anxiously.

“We clean the tank, “ he replied.

“The sewage tank?” she asked even more anxiously. “Water from the toilet?’

“Yeah, the water, it comes down and we clean, “ he replied matter-of-factly.

She watched in horror as the brown liquid emptied out in vast quantities onto the rooftop and inched its way to our front door. She ran inside to escape and then discovered her bed was covered in tiny black specks that had been biting her all night. During her killing rampage, Mr. V. brought her a bill for April’s rent—9 days early. “Rent is due on the 21st!” he told her happily. I could just picture her, flip flop in hand wanting to swat Mr. V. like one of the tiny bugs that had pestered her all night.

The next day, he lured her into his apartment under the premise that he had some food to give her.

“I want to love you,” he told her over some pasticcio.

“I said no already,” she said coldly.

He was not deterred. “Poppy…she’s no good for nothing. She works too much. I told her to get out. So, you can move down here and live for free.”

Soon after I received an email detailing out these events and her decision to leave.

But the clincher was what had happened the following morning.

She wrote, “And, this morning I heard him having sex.”

Later I asked her how she came to this conclusion. Was it Poppy? Someone else? Who could he have possibly convinced? She proceeded (at my prodding) to tell me about the sounds she had heard in the dark. It reminded me of that scene in Grizzly Man where Werner Herzog tells the coroner that no one should ever listen to the tape that recorded the sounds of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend being killed. Well, I realize now that I never should have asked her to describe the sounds she had heard early that morning. It’s bad enough that she has to live with Mr. V.’s happy ending echoing in her ears—now I do, too.