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    The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure
    The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure
    The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure
    Ebook197 pages1 hour

    The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure

    By Thomas Agrafiotis

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    About this ebook

    In 1989, the nearly centenarian Yakovakis, an artist of shadow puppetry, is murdered in his artist's haunt. At the same time, a bas-relief depicting a demon disappears from his collection. The search for suspects begins with his circle of friends. But after his funeral, members of this circle, his friends and colleagues, are murdered, one by one. Who, then, is responsible for these murders? Investigators connect the stolen bas-relief to the murders, but what did this figure represent to have become the apple of discord between collectors, adventurers and artists? Could it be that this frightening leather shadow hides unexplored secrets that had disappeared in the depths of the centuries?

    An original detective novel, Ex Oriente Lux (out of the East, light).
    For the first time, the art of modern Greek shadow puppetry, at once timeless and ancient, is the protagonist in a detective novel that develops over a series of short, distilled narrations. On a first level, the reader will encounter the puzzle of the murderer's identity. On a second, the sanctum of Eastern mysticism... A seemingly lifeless, reddish figure gathers its vitality from the artist to come to life at the time of the performance. But could it now have the power to live forever?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Agrafiotis
    Release dateFeb 14, 2019
    ISBN9780463463086
    The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure
    Author

    Thomas Agrafiotis

    Thomas Agrafiotis was born in Kozani in 1976. As a lecturer (Law 407/1980) he taught the module “Art of the Greek Shadow Theater as a Means of Children Education” at the Department of Preschool Education, School of Education, University of Western Macedonia (based in Florina) during the academic years 2009-10 and 2010-11. He is a puppeteer and teacher, as well as an elected member of the Artistic Council of the National Shadow Theater Association. He conducted his doctoral thesis at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on the educational dimension of Karagiozis and its use in Primary Education. His work regarding Shadow Theater has been awarded in literary contests for the novels, I Periplaniseis enos Kallitechni (Wanderings of an Artist) and Ta Onira enos Epanastati (A Rebel’s Dreams), while in late September 2008, he won the Original Script award at the 4th Greek Shadow Theater in Patras, presenting the epic and religious drama, O Karagiozis kai o Thisavros tou Theou (Karagiozis and God’s Treasure).

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      Book preview

      The Mystery Of The Semi-carved Figure - Thomas Agrafiotis

      A detective story

      1

      The mystery of the semi-carved figure was initially brought to light thirty years ago - in what is seen as the dirty year of our Lord, 1989, and for others a year of political unrest. Of course, no one paid attention to it beyond the limits of the city in which it had appeared. And I don’t think it would have surfaced at all, had I not decided to break my silence, thirty years later, mostly to get to some of the perpetrators, but also to put an end to the monotony in my life.

      The hero of this story is Iakovos, mostly known by his artistic nickname Yakovakis. By that time, Yakovakis had reached the age of ninety-nine, just a breath away from a full century, a living icon of our country’s history, both in terms of historical facts - as he had participated in a series of military events - and in terms of art, expressed through his numerous and elaborate little creatures.

      2

      Yakovakis was not merely an integral personality and an artist in the full sense of the word, but also a model Christian. He didn’t limit his faith to lighting the odd candle or making the sign of the cross each time he passed by his parish church during the short route between his humble home and his studio, which also served as a meeting point for artists. On the contrary, he constantly engaged in various charities and acts of actual love towards his colleagues and friends.

      He didn’t have a family of his own but had many spiritual children as well as brothers. His younger sister, long-time widowed, was the one who helped him and prepared his little hovel, keeping it as decent as possible. His only treasures were his sister, his art, his tools and an artistic secret, which he hid from everyone for years.

      3

      All those years, at first without having realised it himself, Yakovakis had hidden an artistic secret in his old-fashioned, wooden chest. And unfortunately, I was the one to blame for opening his eyes to it and for letting others in on it - people who should not have known.

      Theoretically, they were all close to him, people above suspicion, innocent by all appearances or seemingly honest. However, in reality, almost all of them were people that wanted to pluck the chick, eat its innards and leave only the bones. In this case, the chick was wooden. In other words, it was his wooden chest.

      The chest contained all sorts of tools the artist needed for his art and each had its own special value. But one of them was more than valuable...

      4

      Of course, the concept of value is somewhat relative when one deals with art. The value of a work is usually subjective. There are obviously objective criteria, such as age, rarity or the manufacturer’s identity, but to a great extent, the artwork’s value is defined by the potential buyer’s desire to acquire it. This desire may be governed by immeasurable and subjective emotions. Other than the artefact’s utility, sentimental value can raise the overall value of the amount offered.

      Based on all the above mentioned indicatively, we can approximately determine the value of items belonging to Yakovakis-whether precious or not. However, an additional secret greatly raised their value. It was a secret Yakovakis himself kept hidden in the secret bottom of his small wooden treasure chest...

      5

      The mystery of the semi-carved figure stopped being a secret when Yakovakis revealed it to me on a cold winter night. From that moment on, the secret transformed into a complex and multi-faceted mystery. Until that day, nobody knew about that semi-carved figure, other than the artist himself, his sister and some old classmates and friends, already deceased, for Yakovakis’s old age had moved past his generation’s limits.

      His living friends, his last-remaining disciple and his colleagues were much younger. However, Yakovakis got along fine with people who were thirty, forty even fifty years younger than himself. His close circle of friends was mainly composed of seven individuals: six men and a woman.

      6

      Yakovakis’s best friend was a colleague of his, aged but still younger than him. He lived in a village, neither too close nor too far from the city where our hero worked and lived. He often visited him, bringing goods from his yard in the village. Eggs, oranges, sometimes even a hen from his hen house. He did make some profit out of all this, as Yakovakis never let him leave empty-handed. He repaid him with the secrets of his art.

      His colleague, named Iordanis, was probably the only artist of his generation that was both Yakovakis’s colleague and friend. Deep inside, he may have been jealous of Yakovakis because he had never managed to make a name for himself such as that of his century-old friend.

      7

      The second member of Yakovakis’s close circle was Apollo. Apollo was not a simple folklore artist like Yakovakis, Iordanis and all the other heroes of the old folk theater. He was a university professor in the region who specialised in folk arts and folk theater. They had been in each other’s company for years, and Apollo wanted to one day write his friend’s biography.

      However, his efforts always faltered because of lack of money; to edit a book of decent size and quality required funding of a significant amount, which he never felt he could receive. Both the state’s lack of interest toward traditional folk arts, as well as Yakovakis himself were to blame for the above, as he was too humble and modest to push for the publication of a book about himself.

      8

      The third link of the narrow, seven-member circle of the century-old Yakovakis was his last-remaining, younger and most important disciple, known as Liakos. Liakos was a student who, while he benefited from Yakovakis, returned those benefits to his master. He had been devoted to him for years and loved him the way a son loves his father. Though they were not blood relatives, they shared a deep spiritual affinity; a good disciple is the worthy spiritual child of his master. And it is certain that Liakos, deservedly, believed that if we owe our existence to our parents, we owe our well-being to our teachers.

      In short, Yakovakis and Liakos never let jealousy or the usual artistic rivalries come between them. On the contrary, they helped each other throughout all in the dire circumstances they faced during their lives.

      9

      Yerasimos was a hearty pensioner and the publisher of the biannual newspaper in his village of origin. An islander himself, he was married to a high school teacher passionate about folk theater and the study of folk culture. She was a literature teacher at the high school right across from Yakovakis’s studio.

      Meetings with the artist always started as a simple chat and ended in long conversations, immersed in wine, until the break of dawn. Yakovakis was the initiator, though this was not good for his old age. Their meeting point was an old inn at the square, next to the school of Yerasimos’s wife. More often than not, Yakovakis’s sister had to drag him out of there drunk as a skunk while scolding his partners in crime, the equally drunken couple...

      10

      The two remaining members of Yakovakis’s close circle of friends called themselves the Egyptians. They were Greeks originally from Alexandria in Egypt and were referred to as Egyptians due to their origins. Not only did they perform their folk art but they focused on collecting artistic material. Unlike most artists, they weren’t simple collectors who merely collected representative tools of their art. They were frantic hunters of scarce and rare collectible pieces of an art that was considered by many to be fading away.

      The Egyptians were also referred to as Dioskouroi, as their behaviour resembled that of Castor and Pollux. They weren’t twins - they had a sister named Helen - but they were known for their courage, honesty, generosity, kindness and virtue. They led their lives and acted as one...

      11

      Yakovakis’s close circle of friends was surrounded by a wider circle of other friends or distant relatives who did not have frequent contact with him. For example, I was also one of his other friends, but I was under the impression that he never considered me to be, at least up until that time, very close to him. Though he did surround me with love and great affection whenever we met. Besides his sister, he’d also had a brother, long since dead.

      However, he was not connected to him at all as he had immigrated to America, and his traces had been completely lost. The only thing I knew about him was that he had been the family’s black sheep. People actually said that he had died in a settling of scores, having left no family behind.

      12

      In the beginning, the secret of the semi-carved figure was very well kept. Yakovakis recounted the story to me, leaving me literally speechless. It wasn’t simply an old and

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