FREE ENGLISH EXTRACT · ZUZANA JUREŇOVÁ

Ouzo, Olives & Oligarchs

Opening excerpt from “Sunscreen, Silence & a Suspicious Amount of Concrete”.

The problem with attempting boredom, Vivienne had concluded on approximately day four, was that boredom refused to attempt her back.

It was not for want of trying. She had tried the beach. The beach was beautiful in the particular, non-negotiable way of things that have been beautiful since before recorded history and intend to remain so without your input. The sea was the exact blue that painters spend careers approximating and never quite achieve. The light was the colour of an argument settled in someone’s favour. The air smelled of thyme, salt, and the productive silence of a civilisation that had been here for four thousand years and seen everything.

Vivienne had lasted forty minutes before she’d started mentally translating the Swedish tourists’ conversation three umbrellas down. They were arguing about suncream. She corrected their subjunctives internally and felt both better and worse about herself.

She’d tried the book. The book was a novel she’d bought at Athens airport from a display labelled ESCAPISM!, which she’d found optimistic. It was about a woman who moves to a Greek island to ‘find herself.’ Vivienne already knew where she was. She was on a terrace in Crete, wearing sunglasses that had survived a Venetian rooftop chase and a hat she’d borrowed from Atlas and hadn’t returned, reading a novel about a woman who was doing considerably less than she was and finding it considerably more meaningful. She’d put the book face-down after chapter two. The spine cracked in a way that sounded like judgement.

She’d tried the wine. The wine was local and serious and tasted of mineral and afternoon. She’d drunk one glass, decided it deserved better than to be drunk recreationally, and spent twenty minutes analysing its regional characteristics instead of relaxing. This was, she was aware, not relaxing.

She had also, in the interest of full disclosure, tried meditation. She had downloaded an application in Athens that promised, in soothing sans- serif, to quiet the mind in twelve minutes or less. The application had asked her to close her eyes, breathe deeply, and let thoughts pass like clouds. Vivienne had let one thought pass. The next thought had pulled out identification, explained it was actually a fully operational threat assessment, and demanded to know why the site foreman had changed his route to work twice in four days. She had deleted the application. The application had asked if she was sure. She had been sure.

She had tried, briefly, to be interested in the local architecture. This had lasted until she noticed that the new resort on the headland was using the same concrete supplier as three other developments along the coast that had received planning approval inside six weeks, which was either a remarkable coincidence or a procurement trail, and she had absolutely no way of knowing which without making a few calls, which she was not going to make, because she was on holiday.

She had not made the calls.

She had, however, written down the supplier's name. Just in case. In very small writing. At the back of the notebook, where it didn't count.

Now she was sitting on the terrace of the house they’d rented — rented, Atlas had specified, not sourced through back channels, not borrowed from an agency contact, not accessed via a key left under a fourth flowerpot — watching the valley below turn gold in the four o’clock light, and making a list. She was trying not to make a list. The list was making itself.

Items so far: 1. The new resort construction on the headland is too fast for planning permission. 2. Three of the workers are not workers. 3. The project manager’s shoes are wrong for a construction site. 4. Someone is burning documents at the site office at 11 p.m. 5. The taverna owner’s cousin has been told his olive grove ‘no longer qualifies’ for agricultural protection. He has the paperwork. The paperwork is wrong.

She stared at the list. The list stared back with the patient gravity of a document that knew it was going to cause trouble and had made peace with this.

She crossed out items 1 through 5.

She wrote them again, neater.

Her holiday is not going to plan.

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© Zuzana Jureňová. Extract published by the author for readers to try before buying.