My Brother Michael (18 page)

The sun was already hot and bright, though it was only just a little past seven o’clock. I walked along the
village street to post my letter, then turned into the steep way that climbs between terraced streets to the mountainside above.

This was a flight of wide steps, bounded by whitewashed walls from which the sun beat back. The already blinding white was muted everywhere by greenery; from every wall and roof spilled vines and hanging ferns, the vivid pinks and scarlets of geraniums, and brilliant cascades of marigolds and black-eyed Susans. At my feet hens pecked and scratched about. Now and then I stood aside as a donkey or a mule picked its dainty accurate way down the steps, while a black-veiled peasant woman, following it, smiled and gave me a soft ‘Good morning.’

The steps took me eventually clear of the village, on to the hillside where piles of rubble and kerbstones indicated that a new road was being built. I made my way carefully along this, watched by the friendly and curious stares of the workmen, and, before I was aware that I had come so far, found myself clear of the last house, and out on the open hillside above the studio.

The climb had been steep, and the sun was hot. The path led along the foot of a low cliff-wall, which cast, at this early hour, a narrow shade. I found a flat rock in a recess of shadow, and sat down to recover from the climb.

The path that I was on seemed to be a continuation of the one that Simon and I had taken last night. It passed above the studio, then slanted down into the knot of pines that I remembered, and vanished thence more steeply towards the ruined temple precincts. Not
far from where I sat, below me now and to the right of the path, I could see the studio, dumped down raw and square and ugly in its quarried plateau. Beyond it the valley of the olives swam and shimmered in the immense liquid distance of light, and beyond that again mountain after mountain, and the sea.

Then my attention was taken by a movement near the studio.

Someone was as early abroad as I. I heard the scuffle of footsteps mounting the rough path that led up from the plateau. Then I saw him, a thin, fair-haired figure carrying a rucksack, and clambering at a fair speed and with very little noise, towards the path where I sat in the shadow. He hadn’t looked in my direction; he was making for the knot of pines above the shrine, and moving away from me rapidly.

He reached the path. He was about seventy yards away from me, near the fence that marked the graveyard. He stopped, and turned, as if to pause for breath and survey the view.

I was just about to get to my feet and hail him, when something about the way he was acting caught my attention, and I stayed still. He had taken a couple of quick steps back and sideways, into the shadow of a pine tree. The dappled shade netted and hid him, maculate, invisible. He stayed there, stock-still, and he wasn’t looking at any view; his head was bent as if he studied the ground at his feet, but I knew, suddenly that he was listening. He didn’t move. There was no sound in the lovely bright morning but the chime of a goat-bell from the other side of the valley, and the
crowing of a cock down in the village. No sound from the studio; no movement.

Nigel lifted his head, and was looking about him, still with those wary, abruptly stealthy movements. It was quite obvious that, wherever he was going, he didn’t want to be followed, and remembering Danielle, I thought I saw his point. And I wouldn’t interrupt his getaway either. Smiling to myself, I stayed where I was. I didn’t think he would see me unless I moved, and nor he did. He turned suddenly, and leaving the path, plunged uphill through the pines towards the higher levels where the ancient stadium stood, and, beyond it, the track that led above the Shining Ones and away into the upper reaches of Parnassus.

I gave him a minute or two, and then I got up and went on. Soon I, too, was under the shadow of the pines, and to my right was the tumbledown fence, and the thicket of dried weeds that edged the graveyard.

I don’t quite know what made me do it, except that somehow, already, Michael Lester’s affair was my own. I pushed open the creaking gate and went in among the stones. When I found it I had to spell it out very slowly to be sure it was the one.

MIXAE
Λ Λ
E
Σ
THP

This alien cross, an alien epitaph … and in my ear Simon’s voice, claiming him still: ‘
My brother Michael
.’ And behind that again I could hear the ghosts of other voices, other claims:’
The woman of my house, the cousin of Angelos, the brother of Michael’… ‘“No man is an island, entire of itself
.’

I stood there in the hot early-morning silence and thought about Simon. Today, I was committed to Simon’s quest. I, too, had answered a claim. He was going to see the place where Michael had died, and he had wanted me to go, too.

And I? Why had I said that I would go? I had said last night that it was absurd, and so it was … But I had a queer feeling that, quite apart from Simon’s need of me, I had a need of my own. I, too, had something to find.

A bird, small and bright as a blown leaf, flew across the hot stillness. I turned away and made my way between the dusty mounds towards the gate.

I was thinking now, not of Simon, but of myself. Not of the self, the identity I had felt it so necessary to assert when I had sent back Phil’s ring, but of the identity I had assumed so lightly yesterday and which, it seemed, I could not yet put off. Not Camilla Haven, but just ‘Simon’s girl’.

I let myself quickly through the gate, and hurried down the path till it brought me out above the ruins of the great shrine.

I’ve already written enough of Delphi, and indeed it’s not easy to write about. The place takes the heart and the senses and wrings them dry. Eyes and ears and the instinct of worship are all that is needed there.

I walked slowly downhill in the sunlight. Here was the little pomegranate tree, clinging to a cleft in the marble of the theatre. Its leaves hung now without a rustle, dark green and still. The fruit was flame-coloured
and as glossy as witchballs. Here were the breakneck steps … and here the stage of the theatre, where Simon had spoken last night; I could see the mark at the centre, where one’s voice was taken and flung high up the mountainside. And now the steps to the precinct … that must be the monument of Alexander … and this the temple floor of Apollo.

The six great columns stood up like fire against the immense depths of the valley.

No one was about. I crossed the temple floor and sat down at the edge with my back to one of the columns. The stone was hot. Above my head the crumbling capitals were alive with the wings of martins. Far below me the olives shimmered along the valley. In the distance Helicon was blue, was silver, was grey as Aphrodite’s doves. Everywhere were the voices of songbirds, because Delphi is sanctuary. Somewhere in the morning distance sheep-bells were ringing …

It was still only eight o’clock when I left my seat and walked down the Sacred Way from the temple to the edge of the precinct, where a thick rank of pines keeps it from the road below. I went along the path under the pines, then down to the museum which sits in a curve of the road. I already seemed to have been up and about for so long that it was a surprise to find the doors still shut. There was a man in guide’s uniform sitting under the trees on the other side of the road, so I crossed over to speak to him.

‘The museum?’ he said in answer to my query. ‘I am afraid it doesn’t open till half past nine. But would you like a guide now for the ruins, no?’

‘Not this morning, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been up there. But possibly tomorrow, if I’m still in Delphi … Will you be about here?’

‘Always, at this time.’ He had a dark square face, and, surprisingly, blue eyes. His look was sophisticated, and he spoke very good English.

I said: ‘I wanted to see the Charioteer.’

‘Of course.’ He grinned, showing very white teeth. ‘But there are other things too, here in Delphi.’

‘Oh, yes, I know, but isn’t he the first thing everyone looks for in the museum?’

‘Of course,’ he said again. ‘If you come with me tomorrow I will take you also round the museum myself.’

‘I should like that very much.’ I hesitated. ‘Do you – I wonder if you know the young English artist who is staying up at the studio? Thin and fair, with a little beard?’

‘Yes, I know him. He has been here in Delphi for quite a time, no?’

‘I believe so. Does he – has he been to the museum much?’

‘Indeed yes. He comes very often to draw. Have you seen any of his drawings,
kyria?
They are very good, very good indeed.’

‘He showed me some of them last night, but not, I think, any of the statues and antiquities. I imagine he would do those well. Did he do any of the Charioteer?’

‘Of course. Did you not say yourself that he is the first thing one looks for? And certainly in our small museum he is the
pièce de résistance
.’

‘Was he – did you notice if the artist was here yesterday?’

The guide didn’t seem to be at all surprised at the odd catechism. His experience of tourists must have bred in him a vast tolerance. He shook his head. ‘I do not think so. I was here all day, but he may have been down here while I was up in the ruins. The tour takes nearly an hour. If you wish to see him, he sleeps up at the studio above the site, where they are building the new road.’

‘Perhaps I’ll see him later.’ I judged it time to drop that particular catechism. ‘What new road are they making away up there above the village? Where can it possibly go?’

‘To the stadium. Have you seen that yet?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It is high above the shrine. Many tourists who come to Delphi never see it at all, because the climb is too steep. It is very beautiful – just the old oval race-track with the tiers of seats, exactly as it was in ancient times, and with the view … always that view of the olives and the valley and the sea. So now they make a road to let cars and buses take the tourists up.’

I stifled a pang at the thought of yet another wild and lovely sanctuary invaded by cars and buses, and said: ‘Ah, yes. I suppose anything that will bring money into Greece is a good thing. You are a native of Delphi,
kyrie?
’

‘No. I am a man of Tinos.’

‘Oh. Then … I suppose you weren’t here during the war?’

He smiled. ‘No. I was busy – very busy – on my island.’

My island
. There it was again.
A man of Tinos
.

Then he would not remember Michael Lester. It was possible that he had never heard of him. In any case – I caught at myself – I must not let myself go beyond even Simon’s claim on my interest. I said merely: ‘Of course.’

He was rolling a cigarette with neat, quick movements.

‘There was certainly no need
then
for guides in Delphi,
kyria
. No one was troubling then about the shrine and the sanctuary and the Charioteer! We may say, if you like, that it is a pity – if men had had the time to come, as they came here in the days of the Oracle, when Delphi was the centre of the world, no doubt they would have found their quarrels healed.’ That quick sophisticated look, and the sudden grin again. ‘That, you understand, is what I always say when I show my tourists round. It is a very effective bit of patter. The Amphictionic League of Delphi. The League of Nations. UNO. Very effective.’

‘I’m sure it is. Do you add the bits about the fights between Delphi and her neighbours, and the laying waste of Chrissa, and the monuments for Athenian victories over the Spartans, and Spartan victories over the Athenians, and the Argive monument stuck down just where it would annoy the Spartans most, and—’

‘Sometimes.’ He was laughing. ‘I shall have to – what do you say? – watch my step when I show you round tomorrow, shall I not?’

‘Not really. I read an awful lot up specially before I came. It makes it more exciting to
know
what happened here. I looked at a lot of photographs, too.’ I hesitated again. ‘The Charioteer …’ I said slowly.

‘What of him?’

I was carrying a guide-book in my hand;
A Concise Guide of Delphi
, it was called, and on the cover there was a photographic reproduction of the head of the famous statue. I held it out. ‘This. I’ve heard so much about him, but I can’t help wondering if I’ll really like him. Those eyes; they’re inlaid with onyx and white enamel, aren’t they? And there are long metal eyelashes? They do look alive, I admit, but – look, you see what I mean?’ I indicated the print. ‘That narrow forehead and the heavy jaw; it’s not strictly a beautiful face, is it? And yet everyone says he’s so wonderful.’

‘And so will you. No picture gives the true impression. It’s the same with the great Hermes at Olympia. In photographs he is effeminate, the marble too smooth, and shining like soap. But the statue itself takes away the breath.’

‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

‘Then prepare yourself to see the Charioteer. It is one of the great statues of Greece. Do you know the thing that comes to me first whenever I see him again – which is every day?’

‘What?’

‘He is so very young. All that gravity, that grace, and so young with it. It used to be thought that he was the owner of the team – the winner of the race – but now
they say that he was probably the driver for some lord who owned the chariot.’

I said hesitantly: ‘There’s a bit in Pausanias’ account of Delphi, isn’t there, about a chariot of bronze with a naked “lord of the car” who might have had a driver, a youth of good family?’

‘I believe there is, yes. But it could hardly apply to our Charioteer,
kyria;
the evidence is that he was probably buried in a great landslip during an earthquake in 373
B.C.
, and, without being uncovered again, was built into the – what do you call it? – the supporting wall (the “earth-holder” is the Greek word), that was erected to stop the rocks and earth from engulfing the temple again.’