The Magus, A Revised Version (68 page)

‘
I understand. In 1929?
’

The old man nodded.

‘
Did Mr Conchis have many guests before the war?
’

‘
Many, many guests.
’
This surprised Georgiou; he even repeated my question, and got the same answer.

‘
Foreigners?
’

‘
Many foreigners. Frenchmen, Englishmen, all.
’

‘
What about the English masters at the school? Did they go there?
’

‘
Ne, ne. Oloi.
’
Yes, all of them.

‘
You can
’
t remember their names?
’
He smiled at the ridiculousness of the question. He couldn
’
t even remember what they looked like. Except one who was very tall.

‘
Did you meet them in the village?
’

‘
Sometimes. Sometimes.
’

‘
What did they do at Bourani, before the war?
’

‘
They were foreigners.
’

Georgiou was impatient at this exhibition of village logic.
‘
Ne, Barba. Xenoi. Ma ti ekanon?

‘
Music. Singing. Dancing.
’
Once again Georgiou didn
’
t believe him; he winked at me, as if to say, the old man is soft in the head. But I knew he wasn
’
t; and that Georgiou had not come to the island till 1946.

‘
What kind of singing and dancing?
’

He didn
’
t know; his rheumy eyes seemed to search for the past, and lose it. But he said,
‘
And other things. They acted in plays.
’
Georgiou laughed out loud, but the old man shrugged and said indifferently,
‘
It is true.
’

Georgiou leant forward with a grin.
‘
And what were you, Barba Dimitraki? Karayozis?
’
He was talking about the Greek shadowplay Punch.

I made the old man see I believed him.
‘
What kind of plays?
’

But his face said he didn
’
t know.
‘
There was a theatre in the garden.
’

‘
Where in the garden?
’

‘
Behind the house. With curtains. A real theatre.
’

‘
You know Maria?
’

But it seemed that before the war it had been another housekeeper, called Soula, now dead.

‘
When were you last there?
’

‘
Many years. Before the war.
’

‘
Do you still like Mr Conchis?
’

The old man nodded, but it was a brief, qualified nod. Georgiou chipped in.

‘
His eldest son was killed in the execution.
’

‘
Ah. I am very sorry. Very sorry.
’

The old man shrugged; kismet. He said,
‘
He is not a bad man.
’

‘
Did he work with the Germans in the Occupation?
’

The old man raised his head, a firm no. Georgiou made a hawk of violent disagreement. They began to argue, talking so fast that I couldn
’
t follow them. But I heard the old man say,
‘
I was here. You were not here.
’

Georgiou turned to me with a wink.
‘
He has given the old man a house. And money every year. The old man cannot say what he really thinks.
’

‘
Does he do that for the other relatives?
’

‘
Bah. One or two. The old ones. Why not? He has millions.
’
He made the corruption gesture, meaning conscience money.

Suddenly the old man said to me,
‘
Mia phora …
once there was a big
paneyiri
with many lights and music and fireworks. Many fireworks and many guests.
’

I had an absurd vision of a garden party: hundreds of elegant women, and men in morning-dress.

‘
When was that?
’

‘
Three, five years before the war.
’

‘
Why was this celebration?
’

But he didn
’
t know.

‘
Were you there?
’

I was with my son. We were fishing. We saw it up in Bourani. Many lights, many voices.
Kai ta pyrotechnimata.
’
And the fireworks.

Georgiou said,
‘
Yah. You were drunk, Barba.
’

‘
No. I was not drunk.
’

Try as I did, I could get nothing more out of the old man. So in the end I shook them both by the hand, paid the small bill, tipped Georgiou heavily, and walked back to the school.

One thing was clear. There had been Leverrier, Mitford, and myself; but then others whose names I did not yet know back in the
‘
thirties; a long line. It gave me a return of great expectations; and the courage to face whatever new was being prepared in that now uncurtained theatre over on the far side.

I returned to the village that evening, and climbed up the narrow cobbled streets that led to the back of the village; past warrens of whitewashed walls, peasant interiors, through tiny squares shaded by almond trees. Great magenta sprays of bougainvillaea flamed in the sun or glowed in the pale evening shadows. It was a sort of kasbah area of the village, a very pretty kasbah, with its cross-glimpses of the plumbago-blue six-o
’
clock sea below, and the gold-green pine-covered hills above. People sitting outside their cottages greeted me, and I collected the inevitable small Pied Piper chain of children, who subsided into giggles if I looked at them and waved them away. When I came to the church I went in. I wanted to justify my presence in the quarter. It was densely gloomy, with a miasma of incense over everything; a row of ikons, sombre silhouettes set in smoky gold, stared down at me, as if they knew what an alien I was in their cryptlike Byzantine world.

After five minutes I came out. The children had mercifully disappeared, and I could take the alley to the right of the church. On one side there were the round cylinders of the church apses, on the other a wall eight or nine feet high. The alley turned and the wall continued. But halfway along it there was an arched gateway: a keystone with the date 1823 on it, and above that a place where there had once been a coat of arms. I guessed that the house inside had been built by one of the pirate
‘
admirals
’
of the War of Independence. There was a narrow door let into the right-hand of the two gate-doors, with a slit for letters. Above it, stencilled white on black on an old bit of sheet metal, was the name
‘
Hermes Ambelas
’
. To the left the ground fell away behind the church. There was no way of looking over the wall from that side. I went to the small door and pushed it gently to see if it gave. But it was locked. The islanders were notoriously honest, thieves unknown; and I could not remember having seen an outer gate locked like that anywhere else on Phraxos.

The rocky lane dipped abruptly down between two cottages. The roof of the one on the right was below the wall of the house. At the bottom a cross alley took me back and round to the other side. There the ground fell away even more precipitously and I found myself looking up ten feet of vertical rock even before the wall foundation started. The house and its garden walls on this side continued the rock face, and I could see that in fact it was not a very big house, though still by village standards much too grandiose for a donkey-driver.

Two ground-floor windows, three upstairs, all shuttered. They were still in the last sunlight and must have given a fine view west over the village and the straits to the Argolian mainland. Was it a view Julie knew well? I felt like Blondel beneath Richard
Cœur-de-Lion
’
s window; but not even able to pass messages by song. Down in a small square below I could see two or three women interestedly watching me. I waved, strolled on, as if my look upwards had been idle curiosity. I came to yet another cross alley, and climbed up it to my starting-point outside Agios Elias. The house was impregnable to passing eyes.

Later, down in front of the Hotel Philadelphia, I looked back. I could see over all the intervening roofs the church and the house to the right of it, the five windows staring out.

They seemed defiant, but blind.

Monday was a day of academic chores; catching up on the Sisyphean piles of marking that seemed always to roll down on my desk; finalizing
–
miserable word for a miserable prospect
–
the end-of-term examination papers; and trying all the time not to think about Julie.

I knew it was useless asking Demetriades to help me find out the names of the English masters at the school before the war. If he knew them he wouldn
’
t tell them; and very probably he genuinely did not know them. I went to the school bursar, but this time he could not help me; all the bursary records had
gone with the wind of 1940. On
Tuesday I tried the master who ran the school library. He went at once to a shelf and pulled down a bound volume of Founder
’
s Day programmes
–
one for each year before the war. These programmes were lavishly got up to impress visiting parents and in the back contained class-lists
–
as well as a list of
‘
professors
’
. In ten minutes I had the names of the six who had taught between 1930 and 1939. But I was still stuck for their addresses.

The week ground slowly past. Each lunch-time I watched the village postman come in with letters and give them to the duty prefect, who then made a slow, slow tour of the tables. None came for me. I now expected no mercy from Conchis; but I found it hard to forgive Julie.

The first and most obvious possibility was that they had flown back to England; in which case I couldn
’
t believe she would not have written at once
–
at least to tell me. The second was that she had had to accept the cancellation of the weekend; but she could still have written to console me, to explain why. The third was that she was being held prisoner, or at any rate
incommunicado
to the extent that she could not post a letter to me. I couldn
’
t really believe that, though I still had angry moments when I thought of going to the police.

The days dragged on, redeemed only by one little piece of information that fell into my hands by chance. Looking through the books in the English bay in the library for a suitable
‘
unseen
’
for the exams, I took down a Conrad. There was a name on the flyleaf, D. P. R. Nevinson. I knew he had been at the school before the war. Underneath was written
‘
Balliol College, 1930
’
. I started looking through the other books. Nevinson had left a good number; but there was no other address besides Balliol. The name W. A. Hughes, another prewar master
’
s, appeared on two poetry volume flyleafs, without address.

I left lunch early on the Thursday, asking a boy to bring me any letters that might be distributed later. I had come not to expect any. But about ten minutes afterwards, when I was already in pyjamas for the siesta, the boy knocked on my door. Two letters. One from London, a typewritten address, some educational publisher
’
s catalogue. But the other …

A Greek stamp. Indecipherable postmark. Neat italic handwriting. In English.

Monday, Siphnos

My dear sweet Nicholas

I
know you must be terribly disappointed about the weekend, and I do hope you
’
re better now. Maurice gave me your letter. I
’
m so sorry for you. I used to be the same, catch every disease my wretched little brats brought into class. I couldn
’
t write earlier, we
’
ve been at sea and today is our first sight of a post-box. I must be quick
–
they
’
ve just told me the boat that takes the mail to Athens goes in half an hour. I
’
m scribbling this in a cafe by the harbour.

Maurice has actually been rather an angel, though still a mute one. He insists on waiting till you
’
re with us this coming weekend, if you
’
re better.
(Please
be better! Not just for that.) M. has actually been playing a tiny bit hurt as well because we, unreasonable creatures, still won
’
t promise to go on with his new plan until we know what it entails. We
’
ve really given up trying to get it out of him
–
it
’
s such a waste of time, and he positively enjoys being dark and enigmatic.

Which reminds me, I forgot, he
has
let slip that he wants to tell you the
‘
last chapter
’
(his words) of his life and also that you will be expecting it now … he said the last bit with a sort of smirk, as if something had happened we don
’
t know about. He
’
s terrible, he won
’
t stop playing games. Anyway,
I
hope you know what it
’
s all about.

I
’
m saving the best to the last. He
’
s sworn we shan
’
t be whisked away again any more, if we want to stay on the island in his village house we can … perhaps you won
’
t like me any more if you can see me every day. That
’
s June, she
’
s fed up because I
’
m at last getting some sort of tan.

It will be only two or three days more when you get this. He may play some last Maurician trick, so please pretend, remember you haven
’
t heard about the last chapter thing, let him have one last little bit of teasing y&u if he wants it. I think there is a tiny bit of jealousy. He keeps saying how lucky
you
are … and not listening when I say
–
you know what I say.

Nicholas.

Night water. You were sweet.

I must finish.

I love you.
your julie