Forth into Light (The Peter & Charlie Trilogy) (22 page)

A fresh drink was on the bar in front of him. He picked it up and swallowed some of it. “Look. The house is quite big. You have a comfortable room of your own. You have a door with a lock. You have only to turn the key and forget the rest of us exist. Good God, Jeff. I recognize your right to a private life. It’s not too much to insist that a minor stay out of a bar. You seem to forget that all this talk isn’t necessary. I have only to tell the police you’re not supposed to be in here and they’ll keep you out.”

“The police! All your talk about understanding and you always end up calling the police.”

“I mention the police because you won’t listen to reason. Can’t you realize I’m not trying to break up a friendship but talking about this particular bar?”

“Your son is very stubborn. I’ve found that out.” Dimitri laughed gaily and grabbed the back of Jeff’s hair and gave his head a shake. It was a natural affectionate gesture and George liked him better for it. It lightened the atmosphere.

Jeff pulled away with a normal boy’s impatience. “I don’t understand it. I’ve been coming here for weeks and now all of a sudden it’s forbidden.”

It was the first hint of his yielding. George warned himself to let the boy come around in his own way. “That’s the point you keep missing,” he said mildly. “I’ve learned things today. You’re in danger. You’re a foreigner, for God’s sake. Do you want to get us all deported?”

“I don’t care what happens to me. What difference does it make?”

George prayed for patience. Jeff was suddenly so like the child he had recently been, a child having a tantrum. He wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and lead him out from behind the bar. “Please, Jeff. Nothing has changed except not coming here for the time being.” To his dismay, he saw Jeff’s eyes fill with tears.

“I just hope you don’t expect me to leave now.” The boy’s voice was choked. He ran his fingers through his hair. “We’ve—I can’t—If I’m not coming here any more, I have things to do. I’ve got to explain certain things to him. We have to talk. I’ll be home later.”

George took a deep breath of relief. He had somehow managed it. “Very well. Let’s make a bargain. I’ll let you stay this last time if you promise not to hang around down here. Go back upstairs and stay out of sight. Get whatever business you’ve had together settled and done with.” He drained his glass once more and put it on the bar. He nodded and smiled in their general direction and turned and left.

He found that he was having trouble walking straight. His sleep hadn’t sobered him as much as he had thought. A few ouzos shouldn’t affect him like this. Still, he hadn’t disgraced himself with Jeff. The boy was going to be all right. He would damn well see to it that he was all right. A challenge for the next few weeks. He had been through enough for tonight. He could get as drunk as he liked.

Outside, to his increasingly muddled senses, there seemed something sinister about the heat. Something was definitely wrong. Maybe it was the ouzo. Dimitri must have really socked him with it.

His effort to keep a steady course caused him to walk with great purpose, but he had no idea what he was going to do. He headed automatically for Lambraiki’s. He was hailed from a table and veered aside and fell into a chair opposite Sid Coleman and his girl.

“Great, Yorgo,” Sid greeted him. “That was a great landing. For a minute there, I thought you were going to overshoot the field.”

“What’re you guys drinking?” George demanded, peering at the glasses on the table.

“Apple juice. Great stuff. Tell him, Dorothy. Tell the man about apple juice.”

“It’s made of the juice of the finest selected apples, scientifically ripened and untouched by human hands.” The line emerged appropriately from Dorothy’s scrubbed, fresh doll’s face. She had dimples in her cheeks that made her smile bewitching.

“How about that, Yorgo? It says so right on the bottle. Selected.
Chosen
, like the Jews. Want some apple juice?”

“You two are nuts. Get me some brandy.” Hands were clapped and orders were called.

Sid leaned forward earnestly. “You drink too much, you know that, Yorgo? Why don’t you let me fix you up with some pot? You really ought to try it.”

“Very friendly of you and all that, but I tell you I don’t like the stuff. You kids think you’ve discovered it, but I tried all that years ago.” He filled a glass with brandy as soon as the small tankard was put before him and drank it down.

Coleman shook his head sadly. “That stuff’s
bad
for you, man. Pot’s the thing for you. Sarah would love it, I bet. Jeff could get you all you needed. A family that smokes together flies together. Look at Dorothy here. All I have to do is give her a few puffs and she thinks I’m Marlon Brando. It’s great. Isn’t it great, darling?” They leaned toward each other and exchanged a look of naked and tender desire.

“You better watch out,” George warned, finding that the minatory note made him feel more sober. “They’re about to crack down on dope here.”

“Jesus! Don’t say that. You hear, darling?” His fine Semitic features flared and swooped dramatically. “You mean all that stuff about Costa and Dimitri? Don’t let them, Yorgo. This isn’t the right season for growing your own.”

“You grow the stuff? You’re mad. When are you going to stop playing games and wake up to reality?”

“Wake up to
reality
?” Coleman gave an extravagant impersonation of incredulity. “Did you hear that, darling? He thinks we should wake up to reality. Do you know what her idea of reality is, Yorgo? Marriage. She wants us to get married.”

“What’s so funny about that? You’ve been living together for two years. Why shouldn’t you get married?”

“You hear that, lover?” Dorothy said with lazy satisfaction. “You hear what the man said?”

“Jesus Christ. Women are chattels. You know that, Yorgo. By nature, they belong in the stable with the cows. Give them a nice clean stall and plenty of hay. Service them regularly. That’s all they understand. I
like
cows, but I wouldn’t want to marry one.”

George poured himself another generous, measure of brandy and swallowed half of it. “There’s a lot of stru—truth in what you say, Coleman.”

“There is. There definitely is. How about some other realities? You’re the reality man, Yorgo. What other realities do you have to offer?”

“They’ll come to you, boy. Even up there in your marijuana patch, they’ll get through to you.”

“That’s it. That’s
it.
Can you think of a more harmless—no, I’ll go further. Can you think of a more exemplary life? Living in harmony with nature. I sow. I watch the tender shoots struggling up toward the sun. I tend them. I give them
water.
But it’s not all clear sailing, I can tell you that. What if there’s a sudden freeze? Or hail. Do you have any idea what a sudden hail storm can do to a crop? Wipe it out in the twinkling of an eye. Hail. It’s really murder. I’m wiped out. I have to start all over again, at grips with nature with nothing but my bare hands. The dignity of man. Perservering in the face of adversity. It’s the theme of all great literature. You know that, Yorgo.”

“I’ll say one thing for you, Sid. You’re a cheerful bastard. I hope you can keep it up.”

“You know what the trouble with you is, Yorgo? You believe in things.”

“Do I?”

“Sure. The flag. Mother. You believe it all means something. Now you take—yes, take Peter. Peter could be a saint or the devil. How about that, Yorgo? It doesn’t matter. Right? He’s the pagan life-force. He lives. Peter
lives.
He doesn’t go around finding meaning in everything.”

“Not meaning. That’s religion. Faith. Faith in man, in his ability to make a good life with what he’s born with.” Astonished to have said so much without stumbling, George pushed on. “You can’t take Peter. I’m taking him. He’s what I’m talking about. He’s the only person I know who has the courage to—to make a consistent try for happiness. I’m not sure creative people have any business hoping for happiness so go ahead and louse up your life, but you have no right to tell everybody else that happiness doesn’t exist. Peter’s happy because he respects his capacity for happiness and is prepared to make sacrifices for it. Most people don’t and won’t. There’s a reality for you.” George was impressed by his lucidity and coherence. The words were coming slowly but made perfectly good sense. His body might be drunk but his mind wasn’t.

He had opened his mouth to continue when the ground moved under him. A bad sign. The table lurched and retreated from him. He made a grab for his glass. The ground shook under him again as if it were trying to unseat him. There was a crack like the snap of a bullwhip followed by a thunderous crash. George found himself lying on the cobbled paving with an arm lifted over the back of an overturned chair. This wasn’t good. He was making a public spectacle of himself. He heard Coleman saying something near him and realized that all the lights had gone out. He pulled himself up quickly and made out Coleman’s figure bending over his girl on the ground. There were lumps of broken masonry scattered about. No immediate explanation came to his mind, but he was suddenly filled with an urge to run.

“Come on,” he cried. “Get her out of here.” He lunged forward and pulled at the girl’s legs.

“Are you all right?” Sid asked dazedly.

“Get her out of here. The goddamn building’s falling down.”

Coleman followed his example and they managed to gather her up and move her down toward the water. Staggering and lurching under the load, George became aware of people milling about all the length of the
quai
, the mumble of voices, an occasional shout, a scream.

“What
is
it? What’s going on. What happened?” Sid kept repeating as they staggered to the edge of the
quai.

They stretched the girl out on the cobbles and she moaned. “Darling, are you all right? Come on, darling. Everything’s all right. Come on, darling, sit up.” Sid’s incantation continued until Dorothy struggled into a sitting position.

“What happened?” she gasped. “God. My head.”

“You got conked. There, just sit there for a minute. You’ll be all right.”

George’s eyes were beginning to see in the dark. He looked back to where they had been sitting. A building had definitely fallen on them. But which one, and why? He was struck by a change in the town’s low skyline. Something was different. Something was missing.

“Jesus Christ,” he exclaimed. “The clock tower. The whole bloody clock tower fell on us.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Look there. You see? That’s where it should be.” The line of roofs was all of a level against the star-pricked sky, no longer dominated by the ornate square tower. As they looked, the air was filled with a curious roar, growing in strength, like the approach of an enormous wave. In another moment, people began spilling out of the streets which led back up into the town. They came in increasing numbers and the roar became a din of a thousand voices and the slap of running feet. The whole town was assembling on the waterfront.

“What’s going
on
?” Sid complained again.

“It’s an earthquake, silly,” Dorothy announced as if it were an everyday occurrence. “Didn’t you feel it?”

“So that’s what it was,” George exclaimed. “I thought it was the drink. I guess it
was
an earthquake.”

They helped Dorothy to her feet.

“Do you think there’ll be more of it?” Sid demanded.

“I’ve felt tremors from time to time,” George said. “Nothing like this. There hasn’t been a real earthquake here since the eighteenth century.”

“That was real, man. That was real enough to suit me. We could have been
killed.
”

George laughed at the shocked indignation in Sid’s voice. He looked back at the gap in the sky where the tower had been. People streamed past them in the dark. Where were they going? Perhaps there was some safe place they all knew about. Flashlights winked among them. Lamps were beginning to appear at the taverns along the front. He heard the Greek word for earthquake being repeated excitedly. “
Sismos. Sismos. Sismos.
” Keening women clutched children. He noticed that it was suddenly much cooler. A breeze had sprung up from somewhere. He thought of Sarah and steeled himself not to go look for her. He knew that if he hadn’t had so much to drink, he already would be rushing home. He was in no mood or condition to rush anywhere. Home. He understood how Jeff felt about it. Let the earthquake bring it crashing to the ground. And Sarah with it. It was his only hope of freedom.

Joe Peterson emerged from the crowd with the Swedish girl, Lena, at his side. “Is that you, George?” he demanded in his boyishly enthusiastic voice. “Hi, everybody. How about
this
?”

“We hoped you’d like it,” George said. Dark figures whom he didn’t recognize moved in beside them, a boy, two girls.

“Why aren’t we having a drink? How about it, George? Do you think the Lambraikis could dig us out some champagne? I think champagne for after an earthquake is definitely the right idea.”

“Shouldn’t we be
doing
something?” Sid asked. “Digging people out from the rubble? Stamping out bubonic plague? Purifying the
water
system?”

“I don’t think we’d better get started on any of that until the lights come on,” George said.

Jeff and Dimitri were still behind the bar where George had left them, their voices unnecessarily low under the blanket of music, discussing his visit. They were standing so close together that Dimitri had only to lift his finger to run it teasingly over the back of Jeff’s hand.

“I tell you,” Dimitri insisted, “he practically said he doesn’t mind if we go to bed together.”

“No. I couldn’t. Not at home. Don’t you understand? They’d all know what was happening.”

Dimitri laughed and ran his fingers over Jeff’s hand again. “Of course, they’ll know, my Jeff. I’ll love that. It will be like having a new family. If you’re a good lover, I’ll spend the night with you quite often.”

“Maybe if you——”

The floor moved under their feet and brought them together with a bump. They steadied themselves against the bar and exchanged a puzzled look.