Nightspawn (12 page)

A pretty speech. I would refuse to believe that I had made it, did I not have evidence, which I have. Erik hitched up his
trousers
, and blew his nose. I wondered if he had been listening to me. He had.

‘I must go now,’ he said.

‘Good luck.’

‘I shall see you in Athens, yes?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

But he had not gone six paces when he stopped, and retraced his steps.

‘I wanted to say that …’

He closed his mouth.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know.’

I did not know, but what difference did that make? He nodded, and went away. I did not have time to watch him go, for the white yacht, the great craft, was pulling away from the pier, out of the harbour, under full sail.

I walked through the little streets, humming to myself, sniffing the gorgeous odours of the island, lime and salt, fish, incense, bread and burning charcoal, and I realized that it was not I who was departing, but these things, this island, this beauty, they were going, were already becoming a memory. There were a few tears, yes.

From a sidestreet, a dim figure crept out and laid a hand on my shoulder. I let out a shriek, and leapt a foot into the air, and whirled about with the bottle lifted in my hand.

‘It’s me, Andreas. Erik tells me you’re leaving.’

‘Yes.’

He came with me to my room, where I packed a bag, and tied my papers with a piece of twine. Then I cast one last look around me, and switched off the light. Out of the darkness, Andreas’s voice said,

‘You don’t want to leave?’

‘Come on.’

We reached the quay as the last trawler was preparing to depart. Both yachts were gone now. Andreas saw me looking at the vacant mooring places, and he smiled, and said,

‘It seems we both have our losses, Mr White.’

‘Aye.’

The lights of the village trembled on the black water. The little boat rolled and shuddered around the thrust of its engine.

‘Ten hours to Athens,’ said Andreas gloomily.

I ignored him. The white flank of the liner loomed above us, and we climbed the swaying steps to the deck. Andreas found two seats for us on a bench under the canvas awning of the third-class area. We left our baggage there, and went out to stand by the rail. I felt that he was offering me something, a truce maybe, perhaps, even, friendship. I wondered what I would need to surrender in return, and decided that I would not be able to accept the bargain. But all these considerations were incidental to what was foremost in my mind, this awful sadness of departure, and I paid little attention to the poor creature by my side who was waiting for a word. Small sounds lapped about us, the calm sea swell, the deep thrumming of the engines. A bell clanged thrice. I clenched my hands on the damp rail. Across the water, the quayside was thronged with vague dark figures. Hands waved, and faint voices called farewells. Behind me, my fellow passengers stood locked in silence, and watched, with amazement almost, the little lights recede, and the twin white wakes set out behind us on their backward journey. The sky was blue, an impossible, deep blue, as though the night, falling from it, had drained half of its darkness. I watched the last of the world I was deserting, imagining that I would never see it again, and the voices from the quay, beating ever more weakly across the bay, seemed the voice of the island itself, of its inviolable hills and shores, bidding me, whom it was losing, its last farewell.

What did I say? It was a lie. I was not happy. There was no peace. Lust was the least of my terrors. The land was waste, nothing flourished. Time trammelled me in all my days, the light blinded me, broke my sight, and I saw nothing, nothing.

Autumn is approaching, and the ships are bellowing out on the sea. The fog comes to my window, nuzzles at my window like some friendly blind animal. I can feel the roots of the year withering. The sap retreats. My little feathered foes are growing restless for the golden south. See the seasons trundle off again on their tiresome course. Time passes, nothing endures. Only here, in these sinister pages, can time be vanquished. These little keys on which I dance transfix eternity with every tap. O city city. Tremulous music begins to drop like liquid through the wings. The lights grow dim, and from out of the dimness the lighted stage advances. There I stand, in the sober darkness of my robes, my hands uplifted. I am about to conjure up another world. Watch me closely. Abraca—

I walked across the Plaka, from under the violet shade of the rock into the sunlight. The blazing markets rang with sound and light. On stalls that lined the narrow streets ripe fruit was piled, slow explosions of crimson and yellow, breathtaking purples, the copper acned flesh of oranges. Children scampered, beggars lurched, the vendors roared their wares. A woman laid her hands upon a barrel of tomatoes, and smiled at me with her teeth as white as seashells, her fingers pressing the passionate
fruits. Lavender shadows lay between her lips. I carried away the image of glittering sapphire flies drawing a frame about her face. High above, behind me, the pillars of the Parthenon glowed in the sun, gold supports set between heaven and the massive rock. Dust flew in the air like yellow pollen, and a delicate blue heat-haze bloomed on the houses and the little shops, on hand and face and hair, on the ancient stones. In Monasteraki, the mood of the day was calm, matched to the sombre glow of copper and bronze in the bazaars. There I stopped, in an alleyway, to watch an old blind man weaving a basket, while above his head, in its ornate cage, a blinded canary whistled a song of unendurable tenderness, telling me that I would live forever, at the very least. Another spring.

The house was built on the side of one of those hills behind the palace. A high white wall with an imposing wooden gate set into it was all that I could see at first. I hesitated over the bell, then pressed it firmly. From beyond the wall came a tinkle, and again, faintly,
tink,
the far little chimes ringing strangely, secretively, amid the hum which came up from the streets below. An old woman with a stick passed by on the road. There were pines about, perfectly motionless, their outlines diffused in the sunshine. I watched the old woman until she had hobbled around the bend. Above, beyond the pines, there was the road again, repeating itself, and another wall, another turning, and presently another crone bravely scaling the heights. She
struggled
slowly upward, toward yet another, higher repetition, fading, as she went, into the furious blue light. Across the road, in the pines, an animal crouched and looked at me with its teeth bared silently. Behind it, half hidden by the trees, a figure stood. It was Yacinth. He laid his hand on the dog’s head. The animal licked its chops and wagged its tail, then came across the road and sniffed at my ankle. Good doggie. Why is it always the ankle that they consider, why not the knee, a much more tender region, with better tooth-holds? It was an enormous black beast with the head of a wolf. Yacinth looked up the road, and down the road, and at his feet, everywhere but at me.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

With a flick of his head he threw the curls away from his
brow, and lifted his sullen eyes to mine at last.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘Do you remember me?’

I smiled winningly. He did not bother to reply. I stopped smiling. As talkative as ever, the lovely child. I looked wistfully at the back of his neck, unprotected but for a gleaming whorl of black hair. A swift rabbit punch, and then … and then he asked,

‘Do you want me to come in?’

He glanced sidelong at my left ear.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to see your fa— to see Julian.’

Never could get the hang of these relationships. He pushed open a small trapdoor in the gate and we stepped through. The dog growled deep in its throat. The wall enclosed the garden on four sides, and in the centre of the garden stood the house, white, massive, its front face traced with a complex of
balconies
and outside staircases, hung with flowering creepers. There was an archway, wide enough for the passage of a car, cut right through the centre of the ground floor, and through a short tunnel a courtyard could be seen, with a fountain and a piece of sculpture, and figures sitting at a table. Two long cars were parked on the drive, nose to tail, a situation in which I thought the dog might take some interest, but he did not, and we walked on through the tunnel, into the courtyard. Julian sat by the table, the generous melons of his backside swamping a small cane chair, with, before him, one whom for the first few moments I did not recognize. Yacinth made a careless gesture toward me, and disappeared through the french window beyond the fountain. Julian, without rising, took my hand. The dog went to him and wagged its tail against his leg,
thump
thump
thump.

‘Mr White, Benjamin, my friend. How are you?’

‘Hello Julian.’

‘This is Colonel Sesosteris. Benjamin White.’

‘We’ve met,’ I murmured.

Aristotle exuded a profound gloom. He had changed, looked older and sicker. His eyes moved restlessly about the courtyard, seeming to suffer at the hands of everything they saw. He gave
me a distant, faintly irritated glance, and looked at his watch. I could not say if he remembered me or not. I did not very much care. Julian offered me a chair, and I sat down between them. The piece of sculpture atop the pedestal of the fountain represented a peculiar-looking hen, or a cock or something, with one claw uplifted and feathers bristling. Julian patted his belly with an open palm and squinted at the sky, yawning delicately behind three fingertips.

‘How are you getting on with that old crook Rabin?’ he asked.

I squirmed to the edge of the chair, and folded my hands in my lap.

‘Fine,’ I murmured. ‘Fine.’

‘Coincidence, meeting like that, eh?’

‘Yes.’

There was a silence. Aristotle sighed, and looked at his watch again. He scowled at it suspiciously, as though he thought it unlikely that the little hands could be trusted to stagger unaided from one minute to the next. Julian’s glass clicked as he set it down on the marble top of the table. I made an effort.

‘Your house is …’

But my effort was in vain, for already Julian had turned to Aristotle to say,

‘Benjamin is a friend of a friend of yours, Colonel.’

‘Oh yes?’

Aristotle’s voice was weary with indifference. His eyes rested on me for a moment; a flicker of recognition stirred in their lustreless depths, then died again, and he looked away. The waters rose and fell in the fountain, rose and fell. A cricket began to sing somewhere. Julian touched my arm.

‘Many of us in this city live under the protection of the Colonel here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps even yourself, without
realizing
it.’

I looked at him, but the merry eyes and smile were nothing but themselves. The back of Aristotle’s neck turned slowly crimson. Julian went on blithely,

‘As a visitor, Benjamin, what do you think of the situation here, I mean the political situation?’

I shrugged.

‘I’m not a political animal.’

Aristotle suddenly turned on me and said venomously,

‘Like all the English.’

I reared away from him in fright, stammering,

‘I’m, I’m Irish.’

He looked past my shoulder and sank once again into his pit of gloom.

‘So they tell me,’ he muttered.

The sun drew a length of shadow painfully across the table. It lay quietly between us, faintly shaking, drinking from our glasses. My eyes followed it to the ground, and to the dancing water of the fountain, from whence it came. My eyelids were wet. In the house, a clock chimed thrice, deep black notes that reached far down into the silence and left it quivering. Julian was drawing patterns in the gravel with the blunt toe of his shoe. He wore a nice light linen suit and a cream shirt. There was a tiny purple scratch on his jaw, where he had cut himself with his razor. The dog lifted its head, looked at something in the blank air which only it could see, then set its chin down on its paw again. We had none of us anything left to say. I felt as though the heat were trying to suck me into the sky. My brain was banging, and my head was like a lump of scorched wool. Something stirred behind the dark glass of the french windows. All this had happened before, somewhere, on another plane. I thought of that four-letter word of which Heraclitus was so fond. Things fluctuate, merge, nothing remains still. A late September day, say, and you pause in a deserted corner of a strange town. There is a white sunlit wall, and a patch of dark shadow. Dandelions nod among sparse grass. All is silent, but for an intimation of music somewhere, just beyond hearing. The leaning lid of a dustbin beckons you around the corner. You step forward, and come suddenly, breathtakingly, upon the river, far below, calm and blue, with a small white cloud swimming in it. You think that this has all been arranged, that some hand has set up the props, that wall, those flowers, all of them exact and perfect and inimitable, so that you may catch a strange memory of something extraordinary and beautiful. It never reaches you, but you walk on, down to the river, smiling,
enriched by the mere knowledge that such a memory exists and may some day be caught. You have touched the mystery of things. In time that moment in that strange town becomes itself a memory, and merges with the one which eluded you. Life goes on. Spring sunshine wrings your heart, spring rain. Love and hate eventually become one. I am talking about the past, about remembrance. You find no answers, only questions. It is enough, almost enough. That day I thought about the island, and now I think about thinking about the island, and
tomorrow
, tomorrow I shall think about thinking about thinking about the island, and all will be one, however I try, and there will be no separate thoughts, but only one thought, one memory, and I shall still know nothing. What am I talking about, what are these ravings? About the past, of course, and about Mnemosyne, that lying whore. And I am talking about torment.

‘Yes,’ said Julian. ‘Almost perfect, do you think?’

I brought my wandering eyes back into a semblance of straightness.

‘Is Helena here?’ I asked.

He was startled by my question, but nodded, and waved his hand at the house.

‘Yes, I think she’s about somewhere.’

He watched me curiously, but I had not the energy to be prudent. Aristotle’s eyes were closed, and his chin was sinking slowly down to rest on his breast. I left them, and went through the french windows, and found myself in a large, totally empty room. The walls and ceiling were painted a frozen blue, and the floor was of bare polished wood. Someone had to be insane to keep a room so indecently bare. I crept across the echoing floor and through a door into a dining-room, where five or six stark pieces of modern furniture stood in mutinous silence, as though, when I entered, they had halted in the midst of an electric dance, and were impatient for me to be gone, so that they might continue. There were other rooms, all of them extraordinary in some way. In that house, I was ridden by a nameless unease. The upper storey had a maze of white corridors flanked with closed and ominously silent doors. Each corridor found its way to a conclusion on the balcony,
which ran, without the protection of a hand-rail, around the perimeter of the open courtyard. I peered up into the blue square of sky, and my horror of spaces, enclosed and open, worked on me a rare treat of terror.

‘Highly dangerous, don’t you think?’ Julian said.

He stood behind me at an entrance to a corridor, one hand against the wall, the other in the pocket of his jacket. He came to my side and we looked down into the courtyard. Down there Aristotle sat, morosely eyeing the fountain, while he in turn was morosely eyed by the sleepy dog.

‘Yes,’ said Julian, with a little sigh. ‘Highly dangerous. For some reason, the architects refused to put up a barrier. Or perhaps it was the builders, a dispute of some kind. A senior official of the French embassy once fell from here into the fountain, during a party. He was very drunk.’

With a slow sweep of his hand he traced the line of the Frenchman’s descent. He pursed his lips, and sadly shook his head, but then I caught him glancing at me, and he could contain himself no longer. He began to laugh.

‘I must admit it was all great fun. You know, I think I shall have another party soon. What do you think? Will you come?’

He looked at me with his head on one side, and his eyes, well yes, what the hell, they did, they twinkled.

‘Yes, I’ll come,’ I said.

‘Good, good. Seen Helena? No? She must be around somewhere.’

We stood together quietly. Julian frowned, and looked at his toe, which drew an invisible parallelogram on the smooth stone of the balcony. He was going to ask a question, I knew, and I had a message from somewhere which told me: fend it off, quick. I lifted a finger and opened my mouth, but I was not quick enough.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have a proposition. How would you like to become the boy’s tutor, Yacinth, you know, hmm?’

I called down that uplifted finger, but my mouth stayed open.

‘Eh?’

‘A tutor. You. For Yacinth.’

He watched me now with an unsettling scrutiny, his head thrown slightly back, lips parted, eyebrows raised, like a
conductor waiting for the piercing sweetness of that first note of the flute which tells him yes, this performance will be perfect.

‘Brush up his English and so on.’ A twitch of the baton. ‘He’s extraordinarily precocious for his age, and we just cannot find a suitable school.’ A lifting of a rosebud of fingers.

‘What age is he?’ I asked.

The question seemed profound at the time. Julian chose to ignore it.