Enemy and Brother (32 page)

I could not make conversation. Elsa understood. She kept looking at her watch, her eyes always going from it to the gate.

“Everything will be a little behind schedule,” I said. But I too kept thinking of the companions in the car, Paul’s asking questions of Maria and the only answers, the silent pressure, yes or no. “Was Cassandra good?” I asked by a kind of desperate effort.

“Remarkably. But then everyone was. And there never was an anti-war play like
The Trojan Women
.”

“A curious choice,” I murmured.

“There was a controversy, I understand. A part of the committee wanted
Andromache.
One wonders why.”

“There’s a reference in it to the kings of Epirus.”

“Oh.”

Step by agonizing step, we drew nearer to our host and his distinguished guests. I could feel the sweat on my back and little beads of perspiration glistened on Elsa’s upper lip. She fumbled in her purse, groping round the folded package for her handkerchief.

Then, on the next step, standing to the side, I was able to see the Princess, and beyond her as she turned to meet the approaching guest, Margaret came within full compass of my gaze. Her head was high on that beautifully arched neck, and crowned by the golden hair. Had time stood still for her that she had lost none of her beauty, none of that unassailable serenity of mien? She seemed to look no different from the night I had danced with her in Athens.

I felt myself grinding my teeth. I still could not believe her evil.

Elsa moved before me, the line quickening. She presented both herself and me to Deputy Chaconis and Madame Chaconis, who shook our hands and presented us to the Princess. That gracious lady asked me if I were the Byronic scholar she had been told would be present tonight.

“I am a student of Byron, yes, Your Highness.” And all the while I felt Margaret’s eyes upon me.

“Perhaps you will visit us and tell us of your work.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” I bowed with painful awkwardness and turned as Elsa said, surely a test of her own metal, “Countess Braschi, may I present Professor John Eakins?”

“Professor John Eakins,” Margaret repeated, her eyes and mine meeting and holding as she gave me her hand. There was no question but that she had recognized me instantly, and if she was in any way disconcerted it showed only in the briefest moistening of her lips. “May I present my husband, Signor Braschi?”

Braschi, small, dark and elegant, gave me a firm handshake. It somehow steadied me, the brief thought flitting through my mind that he too had been beguiled.

Margaret said, “Is this your first visit to Greece, Professor?”

“In my pursuit of Byron, yes.”

“And will you be here long?”

“Alas, only until tomorrow.”

“Then we must talk—perhaps when the line is finished. Byron was one of my earliest enchantments.”

The official receiving line ended with the Braschis, but a few feet on, as Elsa and I proceeded toward the stairs, two men were talking, their backs to us. As we approached they turned and bowed, both clicking their heels.

“Colonel Alexis Frontis,” the shorter of them said in self-introduction, his hand extended. His face had the fineness and the coldness of a newly minted coin despite the smile he shot at us. I shook his hand and murmured my name and Elsa’s. Frontis introduced us to the commanding general of the Northern Greek forces. Nothing in Frontis’ eyes gave any sign of recognition. The line had been long and we were late. If he had not recognized me, the next few minutes of my life were in Margaret’s keeping.

At the bottom of the steps Elsa and I accepted champagne, touched glasses and smiled at the trembling of one another’s hands. I moved with her through the guests to where we could see both the garden entrance and the balcony. Musicians were arriving, but not yet the singers. When the last of the guests had passed beyond the steps, I too returned to the balcony. The Princess had gone indoors. Others were talking in small groups. Colonel Frontis was with the Braschi group. Margaret saw me at once, I thought. I lit a cigarette and stood near the railing where I could see her while seeming to look down on the festive garden. She and another woman withdrew together, probably on Margaret’s suggestion that they attend their makeup.

At the door Margaret stood aside for the woman to precede her, and then, half-turning to close the door, nodded to me. After a moment I followed. Her companion had gone on. We found a drawing room unoccupied and off it a small balcony which protruded over the side street.

Margaret’s first words were, “It must have taken great courage to return to Ioannina.”

“Byron came here. I’m simply following his trail.”

“Is that all, truly?”

“One can’t help remembering,” I said.

“I can and have,” she said. “I have tried to live a useful life in Greece.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And you also, I should gather—a scholar and professor. Have you married?”

“No. One wants to have his own identity to marry.”

“And you’ve come back to find it?”

“I am content now not to marry.”

“As was I,” she said, “not to remarry for a long time.”

I watched an ancient bus turn into the street. It came toward us.

“I supposed you to be in America,” she said. “I might even have written you—except that I did not know to whom to write.” She tested the balcony rail, then leaned on it, her back to the street.

The bus passed below us. I recognized the costumes of the singers from Kalpaki.

“What would you have written?”

“That I was sorry for what had happened to you…. I shouldn’t have written it. I only say so now having sometimes thought I might.”

“You knew I hadn’t killed your husband?”

Her face was in the shadow until she lifted it to look at me. “I never believed you had.”

“Your sworn testimony was not precisely clear on that point,” I said dryly.

She looked at me and put her hand on my arm to turn me to where she could see my face in the light. “Have you waited all these years, Jabez Emory, to say that to me?” It carried a sort of melancholic reproach.

“I have waited all these years to ask you what you believed to be the truth in your husband’s death.”

“You have made the proper distinctions… ‘what I believed.’” She drew a deep breath. In spite of myself my eyes dropped to her bosom. She wore a sapphire set round by diamond chips and pearls. It lay nested just where the swell of her breasts commenced. As soon as she spoke I looked at her eyes. They had something of the color of the sapphire, the light from the drawing room shining in them.

“I am going to assume that when you have heard what I say now you will wish no more than I to have the matter publicly reopened. It was a burden neither of us deserved, you the least….” Again the deep breath. “I am quite sure Alexander Webb was a Communist agent. I had known him to be a sympathizer when we were married. In those days it did not appall me. It was alien but not beyond my understanding. I must be honest and say that shortly before I met him—in Iran—I had been indiscreet enough to associate with certain Germans. I won’t go into this now. It is relevant only in that while I didn’t think precisely in those terms, there was something of the quest for exoneration in my marriage to him.”

Did ever a man hear anything more plausible, even to the use of circumstance?

She went on: “One of the questions that was always asked during the endless speculation following his death was why he had chosen so difficult a route to reach the north of Greece when, they said, he might simply have flown from Athens to Yugoslavia and re-entered Greece across the Yugoslav or Albanian border. He could not. The American authorities would not have permitted it. He was already under surveillance. It was hoped that he would lead them to his Communist contacts in Athens. I did not know this at the time. I only knew that he was under surveillance. In leaving as he did, he escaped them. Going north, he did not intend to return to Athens, or to me, or to the United States. He was on his way behind the Iron Curtain.”

“But he turned back,” I said.

“Did he? I don’t know that, Jabez. Perhaps you do. I only know that his body was found on the road to Ioannina.”

I ran my hand across my eyes, trying to remember, to reorient myself once more. “The letter he mailed to you from Patras, Margaret: in it he said, ‘I am taking young Jabez Emory with me. What do you think of that, my dear?’ What did that mean to you?”

“We had questioned, he and I, the possibility of your being an American agent,” she said.

An echo chamber could have given back the words of Webb’s journal no more accurately.

“And did you show that letter to the American authorities?”

“My dear Jabez, it came to me only after they had intercepted it.”

“Then one question, Margaret: why were you silent during the trial?”

“I did not testify against you. I simply told the truth of what I believed to be the rather touching friendship between you and me.”

“But concerning Webb,” I said.

“You seem to forget what I thought once was amply clear to you: I loved Alexander Webb. He believed in what he was doing. And this I said to the American inquisitors who questioned me many times and then chose, for reasons of their own, to remain as silent as myself.”

I realized how convincing she would have sounded to those inquisitors. She went on: “It was only after the trial when I approached the King through friends to ask clemency for you that I was given to understand that clemency had already been arranged. Then I knew the meaning of your so-called escape.”

“Who killed him, Margaret?”

“Do you know? Does anyone know?”

“Yes.”

She waited, her brows arched a little.

“He will be accused tonight,” I said.

“Not tonight surely, Jabez.” Then: “Do I know him?”

I said nothing.

“To spare the Princess—to spare all of us this harsh thing, surely tomorrow is time enough? After all these years, Jabez?”

“No,” I said quietly, avoiding her eyes.

“You must realize I could call out now and accuse you as the convicted killer of Alexander Webb.”

“It would not matter.”

“And you know I would not do it. But tell me who he is at least.”

As if far, far away—or on a turned-down radio—I could hear the singing of the chorus from Kalpaki.

“I should be with the Princess,” Margaret said, “and with my husband. They will be looking for me.”

“Then you must go and join them,” I said, and indicated the way for her to precede me.

“Do I deserve this cruelty from you? Who will thank you for your belated intelligence that will destroy so gentle and felicitous an occasion?”

“Is that all it will destroy, Margaret?”

“Ah, I see,” she said slowly, and, moving into the house, “One wonders then who sent you here.”

God in heaven, was there no way to break her? If I had not read Webb’s journal with my own eyes…. She must realize that I had recognized Demetrios, that he would be named Webb’s killer. But of course! The moment she saw me she became divorced from the association. Demetrios, accused, would stand alone.

I watched her run down the balcony steps and slip into the chair beside the Princess, before whom the chorus was now performing. Maria and Paul were slowly making their way toward them through the scattered guests.

Demetrios-Frontis was standing behind the Princess. He held Margaret’s chair until she was seated. Then he turned and, putting on his glasses, stared up at me. I think it was in that instant that he realized where he had seen me before.

I ran down the other steps and found Elsa not far from the gate. Behind her were two men of the sort she claimed to be able to recognize instantly as Secret Service. As she moved forward, so did they, and I suspected she had somehow recruited them to our side. Which, after all, was the Princess’ own.

The chorus was singing one of the interminable Epirot ballads. As I reached Elsa’s side, the two men moved in close. Elsa signalled to them. They stood at ease. She did indeed have command when she needed it. Frontis began to edge along the back of the chairs. The gate was behind us. Elsa I heard say to one of the men as Frontis neared us, “He must stay.” Whether they understood her words, her gesture was emphatic. Both men moved into Frontis’ path, and one of them, politely, indicated that the gentleman must go back to his place. Frontis squared his shoulders, but like a soldier he returned to his place behind the Princess. I took Webb’s diary from Elsa and when the song was ended moved quickly to Paul’s side. I had not come too soon for Maria. Her eyes were wild. I saw with what difficulty Paul was holding her hand. She had seen Demetrios.

The applause had not altogether died out when Paul raised his voice. He sang a phrase of the Greek National Anthem, his rich deep baritone silencing the movement of guests and the uncertain clamor that had arisen among the singers when they saw him. One of the chorus came toward him—I should suppose the man responsible to Demetrios for Paul’s captivity. I stepped between them and said, even as Elsa’s friend had said to Demetrios, “Go back to your place.” He obeyed me.

“Your Royal Highness and gracious guests,” Paul started, “grant this poor minstrel a moment’s listening. You will see that I am blind as was Homer to whom I crave no further comparison save that as he was a Greek, I am a Greek.

“Homer sang of glory, but I must sing of infamy. I come here not because I would have chosen to interrupt your feast, your music—but because if I had not come tonight, I might not have lived to name this evil who is among you.

“I will leave to your own conscience what knowledge you may have of him today and what in your hearts you have expected of him, but let me tell you, you are deceived. He pretends to be all things to all men. He, the ruthless hunter of Communists, is by the Communists revered. I and they know him as Demetrios….”

Little sounds of shock staccatoed through the garden: there would be those, aside from some of the chorus members, who had heard the name. It was his presence that shocked them.

“To most of you,” Paul’s voice rang out, “he is Colonel Alexis Frontis, and it is he we have come to accuse….”