Enemy and Brother (5 page)

“A great pity, all the same,” the old man repeated.

A few minutes later, standing with Elsa Storme on the balcony and watching the floodlights come up on Lykabettos, I said, “You haven’t remembered the name of the widow’s lover?”

“It was a foolish thing for me to have said,” she answered. “I tend to blurt things out—to Shepherd’s dismay.”

“It can be refreshing,” I said, and realized how far round I had come in my estimate of this large, gawkish woman who was as direct of eye as she was of speech.

“It comes of being married to a cautious man.”

No, I thought. Of being married to a fool.

“Will you be in Athens long?” she asked.

“In and out. I expect to be in Greece for several months.”

“We go to Knossos in the morning.”

“I’ve never been to Crete,” I said.

“Do come. We shall have a house.”

“Thank you, but I’m afraid Byron never went to Crete either.”

“And to Corfu?” Again the directness.

“He very nearly got there once—by an ill wind at sea. I don’t think I shall follow him in quite that detail.” I offered her a cigarette and lighted it for her, then one for myself.

The lights were dimming on Lykabettos, coming up on the Acropolis across the city.

She inhaled deeply and let the smoke out slowly. “Have you ever had the experience of knowing something was going to happen, and then when there was really no reason for it to happen, it did?”

I said, “I’ve sometimes felt when something was happening that I’d been through the identical thing before.”

“It’s not that, though I’ve had that too. Tonight at the table before the subject of Webb’s murder came up, I knew we were going to talk about it. And there was a moment at the table when, instead of that charming little actress across from me, I saw Mrs. Webb. I don’t suppose it all that remarkable. I did sit opposite her at dinner in Corfu.”

“What does she look like?”

“What royalty should look like but generally doesn’t,” she said without hesitation. “If I were to need to describe a queen, I should remember Margaret Webb—the gold-blonde hair, tinted I suppose, but by God I couldn’t tell—fair complexion, blue, blue eyes and a simply gorgeous neck and throat. She must be over forty. I kept wanting to put my napkin up over half my face, like a Moslem, you know?”

I laughed.

“If you do go to Corfu…”

I shook my head.

She was persistent. “It would be so easy to arrange. The British consul gave
us
a dinner, and a Byron scholar, oo-la-la. He’s a darling old thing with pots of money. There! I’ve remembered the man with her that night—very dark, a head as round as a bowling ball. Displaced royalty, I’m fairly certain of that. Corfu’s alive with them.”

“If that’s living,” I said. “What is it like when there’s nothing but today?” I’d meant the question to be rhetorical.

“It’s like a Greek dancing,” she said, “and that really isn’t bad.”

I was amused at the image. “I suppose not—for the dancer.”

“Don’t you like to watch them?”

I shrugged. “I’ve spent so long watching and not understanding….”

“A novelist pretends to understand. It sometimes suffices for the real thing.”

I glanced at her and away.

We stood smoking in silence for a long time, hearing the laughter behind us and the city’s noises hollowly below. Then both of us reached out simultaneously to squash out our cigarettes in the same ashtray.

“I hope we meet again, Mrs. Storme,” I said.

She looked at me sharply. “If we do, it will be afterwards,” she said.

I did not know what she meant, but I was afraid to ask. She seemed to know so much. We went inside. A little later I left the party and walked the many blocks back to the hotel. I felt an aching loneliness and was grateful when I became aware of the malaise. You will say it is a terrible thing to be lonely, but I must tell you that the absence of such suffering is much worse than the suffering of absence.

T
HE AVEROFF PRISON LAY
just off the road to Marathon, its yellowed walls scored round with barbed wire. As I approached I observed a guard prowling, rifle in hand, a fenced area of rock and scrubby trees, but saw no prisoners. I saw but one sentinel on the prison wall in over an hour’s vigil, and for all the stir or sound from within the bleak building itself, he might have been guarding a tomb. All around it the work-a-day life of a city neighborhood went on. It was as though a grotesque, ancient monument had been left in the midst of modern apartment buildings even more ugly than itself.

I walked and watched and prayed in my fashion that some sign or inspiration would confront me, removing all the walls between myself and the man I sought. A street market trailed off from the back of the prison, its canopied stalls providing everything from overripe garden produce to American detergents in faded orange boxes. I bought three drachmas’ worth of sage and crushed it in my fingers, remembering Webb’s first contact on the Piraeus waterfront.

The heat of day was intense. I took refuge under the awnings of a
kafenion
across the busy street from the prison entrance and drank an orange
gazoza.
I became aware of a moderate traffic in and out of the prison of men with briefcases. I supposed them to be lawyers or lawyers’ messengers. I began to study them, to watch for arrivals, to follow departures. One could guess their status by their mode of transportation: two or three came in chauffeured limousines, others in Volkswagens, but the majority came and left by public bus. Watching men who had access to the prison doors, I evolved a plan largely dependent on my evaluation of a man by sight, a fallible gambit for the most experienced observer, which I was not. But a desperate need can rationalize the least likely means. I crossed the street, bought a package of cigarettes at the kiosk near the bus stop, and waited.

He was fair-complexioned and plump and, leaving the bus, he shook out his neatly folded suit coat and put it on, holding his briefcase between his knees. The coat was his Perseus’ Helmet: the moment he put it on he was a man of stature, of capability. A begging child, the first I had seen in Athens, approached him and received a coin which the child then flipped into the air, perhaps to see if the wind would carry it away. But my man rollicked down the street toward the prison, fairly exuding piety and well-being.

I returned to the table at the
kafenion
and waited, speculating on his practice. Petty thieves and license violators, absconders of lottery bets, short-term offenders. He would collect his fee on the spot. His office would be in his briefcase, his fortune in his pocket.

He came out far less exuberant than he had gone in, therefore no richer. As he crossed the street, having to wait on a rush of traffic—it was going on six o’clock by then—I moved quickly to the fruit stand near the bus stop and then, as he stepped up on the curb, approached him.

“You are an attorney?” I said in Greek.

His response was touching, as though I had at that moment conferred on him the title. Simultaneously with his smile he plunged his hand into his pocket and extracted a card which he offered with practiced grace. It read:

Nikos Spiridos

Attorney-at-law

There was no address, no phone number.

“Will you have a coffee with me?”

“Please,” he said, “it will be my pleasure if you will have one with me.”

We approached the
kafenion
where I had already spent much of the day. Spiridos clapped his hands for the waiter who acknowledged with a contemptuous shrug.

“Are you an American?” he asked me, standing until I had selected a chair.

“British.”

“Ah, forgive me.” He smiled broadly. “Some of my very good friends are British.” He gave himself up to a moment of silent appraisal of me, something rare in Greeks who are volatile and tactile questioners. Having spent an hour categorizing him, I wondered how he saw me. I was probably a good ten years his senior though I doubted that I looked it.

“So,” he said finally, “you are interested in someone over there?”

I waited, letting him deduce his way to me.

He held up a pudgy hand. “Forgive me, but a man of your position who needs a lawyer does not play roulette to find him at a bus stop. Besides that, you have not given me your name.”

“Jones,” I said, “David Jones.”

“How do you do, Mr. Jones? I am your servant—which cannot be said for the servant of your servant.” He half-rose and again clapped his hands.

The
kafenion
and its sidewalk tables were filling with men, the talkers, the players of cards and backgammon. The staccato rattle of dice ran through the clinking of cups and glassware: a shield of sound protected our conversation.

“May I ask some questions?” I said.

“Please. I am flattered.”

“Do you have many clients over there?” I said it in a way to imply my doubt that he did.

He smiled. “I have friends, and sometimes from friends come clients.”

“Are your friends in positions of authority?”

“Authority? That is too big a word. It means a fist and I like to do business with a handshake. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“I come every day and bring some little gift.” It was a rare admission on the part of a man trying to make an impression. But it built me up for the fact that I was going to have to pay two fees, his contact’s and his own. No fool, Nikos Spiridos.

He caught the waiter’s eye and ordered the coffee.

I said, “A man who is about to be released from prison—let us say I have a job in which he might be interested.”

Spiridos looked at me reprovingly. “Please. Do not confide in me more than is necessary, Mr. Jones.”

“I don’t intend to,” I said, having created exactly the impression I wanted. “It is far better that you know nothing of what I want with this man. Also, it is better that the man know nothing of me until he is on the outside and I can make contact with him myself.”

“Much better,” the lawyer murmured with open relief.

“It is also important that no one except you know that I am interested in him.”

“I am going to think of you as a humanitarian, interested in the—what is it called?—of former prisoners.”

“Rehabilitation.”

“Exactly.” Spiridos smiled brightly.

When our coffee came, I paid for it, having to call the waiter back in order to do so. When he was gone I took a thousand drachma note from my wallet and handed it to Nikos Spiridos. Without hesitation he tucked it away in splendid isolation in his own wallet.

“I am paying for privacy,” I said, “for the protection of all concerned.”

“Privacy,” Spiridos repeated. “It is a great shame it is so expensive.” He attempted a smile. “Especially among Greeks who expect to know everything for nothing.”

I looked at him coldly. “I thought we understood each other.”

“We do. I am only saying it will cost me more than it should in order to relieve the curiosity of my confidant.” He nodded toward the prison. He lifted the coffee cup delicately to his lips and sipped. “Is it too sweet for you?”

The words sent me on an odd reverie: the taste of vengeance: surely it was not what I was seeking. “I don’t know,” I murmured.

He laughed as though he understood the association.

“The name of the man is Paul Stephanou,” I said. “He has served seventeen years of a life sentence as an accessory to murder.”

Spiridos’ smile grew sickly. He wet his lips with a coffee-yellowed tongue. “The crime of murder is rare in Greece…. Except… I hope he is not political?”

“No,” I said. “You want to know as little as possible. The answer is ‘no.’”

“You are right. I shall not even try to remember the case.” A little spontaneity returned to his smile. “Probably I was too young.”

“Youth has many advantages,” I said sententiously. Then: “I wish to know the day and, if possible, the hour of his release. Will he come out that gate? Or better, where will he go? Find that out for me and I shall ask nothing more.”

Spiridos drank his coffee to the dregs and washed it down with ice water. “You are a trustful man, Mr. … ach, I have forgotten your name.”

“Good. I am no more trustful of you than I have to be, Mr. Spiridos. Nor should you be of me.”

“Only as I would trust a humanitarian,” he said. “Where shall we meet tomorrow—at, say, eleven o’clock?”

“Do you have an office?” I asked.

“Do you have a hotel room?”

We both managed to laugh.

“Let us meet in the market street in back of the prison,” I said.

Shaking hands, we parted.

I was peeling an orange the skin of which seemed as thick as the crust of the earth when I saw Spiridos the next morning. He approached from the opposite direction to that which I had expected, avoiding the prison walls. I offered him a wedge of the orange. He shook his head and rubbed his face down in an already damp handkerchief. The sun would have wilted a cactus and there was no shade.

“What a place to meet,” he said. “It smells like a garbage dump.”

“It’s well on the way,” I said. “Well?”

Spiridos glanced up at me and then looked around to see if we were being observed. I stuffed the remainder of the orange into my mouth and wiped my hands.

“Your friend,” he said finally, “it was a very expensive business to reach him.”

“You saw him?”

“Oh, no. He is a special prisoner.”

“How expensive?”

“I have spent the thousand drachmas. I will need another thousand now for my fee.”

“I am accustomed to pay for service after I have received it,” I said coldly.

“I just wished to make sure you understood my charges,” he said, and pulled a hair from his nostril which he looked at before flicking it away.

“Don’t play cat and mouse with me, Mr. Spiridos. It was not your esteemed legal council I employed. That, I suspect, could be bought for a button. If you have the information I asked for I am willing to pay that amount.”

He cringed a little. Not much. The language might be different but the substance of my abuse had been heaped on him before. “It is possible your friend will be released tomorrow afternoon. And it is possible he will be released next week. Nobody except the Minister himself knows.” He looked at me furtively. “You are wondering if that is worth two thousand drachmas.”