Bells were suspended from every tree in Spyros's garden. When the sea breeze stirred, the lightest and smallest of the bells would begin to tinkle. When the breeze grew stronger, the trees would sound like a herd of goats surging over the mountainside after being let out of the fold in the morning, and when the wind blew more strongly from the north, the heaviest bells would sound a deeper note and a chaos of chimes would erupt among the fig and almond trees, and from the silvery foliage of the olives.
Some of the bells were indeed identical to those worn by sheep and goats. Others were little shiny bells like the ones worn in braids of village girls on festive occasions, so that they became audible during the dancing. Still others were exotic - strings of small brass bells from India, and bells of a kind found in Himalayan temples and monasteries. There were also wooden bells and chimes from Indonesia, but it was the number that impressed visitors, rather than the variety.
Whenever people asked Spyros why the bells were there, he would become evasive, retreating behind an enigmatic expression.
"That is for me to know and for you to wonder at, and work out," he would say.
Naturally, such a challenge would give rise to all manner of speculation. Some of the visitors to Spyros's villa, perched in a lonely part of the island, high above the sea, assumed it was a ploy to frighten birds that might otherwise raid the figs and olives, but when they asked Spyros about this, he lifted his chin in the abrupt gesture that means no.
"There are not enough birds left on this island to pose a threat to the olives and figs," he would say.
Other visitors wondered if the bells were there to deter intruders, who would set them jingling and jangling as they made their way through the densely-planted trees.
"Is there going to be much difference between the sounds the bells make in the presence of intruders or in gusts of wind?" Spyros asked.
Nobody could answer this question with any certainty.
Yet others speculated that the bells might be some kind of memorial to relatives who had perished in various conflicts, beginning with Smyrna, a Greek city in Asia Minor which had been the site of a conflagration during the hostilities between Turks and Greeks in 1922. Spyros's mother's family had been annihilated in that carnage.
"It is the most original explanation so far," said Spyros, "but it is not the precise reason for the bells."
"Perhaps it gets too quiet for him here, taking care of Eleni, who never speaks," suggested one friend to another, "so the bells are company."
"Perhaps he has joined an Eastern sect, and the bells are to keep evil spirits away," was the rejoinder, "because it is not a local custom to hang bells on trees."
Bells hung also from the villa's eaves, singly and in strings, like garlic. When it rained, they glistened and the drops hung from their lips like beads.
At such times Spyros would push Eleni's wheelchair to the window, so that she could watch the play of raindrops on the metal shells, and listen, if there was a wind herding the squalls in from the sea, to the commingled voices of the downpour and the bells.
On breezy summer days when they were alone except for Eleni's nurse, Spyros would take his mother into the garden, and wheel her chair among the trees for her to inspect the bells. She would reach out her hands to them, smiling shyly, wonderingly, as Spyros watched. "Eleni's bells," he'd say reassuringly.
When Eleni, aged perhaps five, had been plucked to safety from Smyrna's blood-stained, burning quay, she had been clutching a bracelet made of little bells. She had been so traumatised that she hadn't uttered a word for months, but would sometimes gaze at the bracelet of bells on her wrist, shaking them to make them jingle.
Many years later, a chance encounter between Eleni's adoptive family and another refugee from Smyrna had brought to light the fact that Eleni's father had been an ironmonger, and his emporium had stocked, among other things, every conceivable kind of bell, from dinner gongs to doorbells and carriage bells worn round the necks of horses.
Now that Eleni, in old age, had regressed to a childlike state, and had once again ceased speaking, the only stimulus to which she responded with obvious pleasure was the bells Spyros had collected and hung throughout the garden. When the first breath of the Meltemi rippled through the trees Eleni's eyes danced with pleasure, and on summer evenings when Spyros and Eleni dined al fresco, lanterns hung from the branches overhead illumined the table beneath, and whenever a zephyr from the sea played among the bells, cascades of notes sprayed the air like stars made audible, and Eleni's eyes shone.