The Two Faces of January (13 page)

“Um-m,” said Chester contemptuously, but a very cold chill had gone over him. “When? If he's going to do it, what's he waiting for?”

“Athens,” Colette said. “He says he's going to tell the police in Athens.”

Chester frowned. “Light me one, will you, honey?”

“I tried to reason with him. I couldn't. He was quite calm, but—” She lit the cigarette and handed it to him. “What do you think we should do, Chester?”

Chester chewed his underlip. “I don't think he intends to do it. If he did, he wouldn't wait till he got to Athens. If he did, he wouldn't tell us, either. He's in this as much as we are.”

“I don't think he cares about that.”

“Don't be silly.”

“No, Chester. Talk to him yourself, if you want to. You'll see what I mean.”

“Wouldn't dream of talking to him. Asking him—Oh, yes, now I get it. I'm slow today. He wants more money. A big hunk this time, I suppose.”

“No, he doesn't. He didn't mention money. Not a hint.”

“He wants me to mention it.” Chester got out of bed, reached for his shirt, which was on a chair, and went into the bathroom, where he put on his robe. He felt on familiar ground now. The bum wanted money. “Wait and see. I'll see what his attitude is tomorrow—or tonight. He's going with us on the bus to Iraklion tomorrow, I'll bet.”

“Yes. He says he doesn't want you to get out of his sight.”

Chester smiled. “Well, either tonight or tomorrow morning, he's going to mention money. Or you. The only thing else I can think of that he'd want is you.” Chester bent and pinched her cheek gently. “Now, don't worry about it, will you? I've got enough to pay him off. Not that I'd want to make a second payment,” he added, looking musingly at the rumpled bed. “They always lead to more.”

“You won't have to worry about that. That's not what you have to worry about.”

“We'll see. I don't want you upset about it. What did you arrange with him about this evening? Anything?”

“He doesn't want to eat with us.”

“Good. Let him eat alone. Pay for his own dinner for a change.”

“He pays his way enough, doesn't he? He's not going to eat tonight.” She drew lightly on her cigarette and let the smoke out in a thick, uninhaled puff.

Something in her voice, a sympathy, made Chester look at her. “How sad. He announced that to you?”

“No. I know him, that's all. I know the mood he's in.”

“And you're feeling sorry for him because he's not eating dinner?” Chester came towards her. “That bum in there?”

“Chester, if you hit me again, I'll scream! I forgave you once, but I won't do it again!” She had jumped up from the bed and moved towards the door.

Chester pushed his fingers through his thin hair. “All right, honey, for Christ's sake. My God, I wasn't going to hit you. Listen, honey . . .” Scowling, treading heavily on his bare feet, he came towards her and only stopped when she drew back from him again. “Honey, you'll drive me nuts if you keep on like this. We're going to drop that guy in there. In Iraklion. Wait and see. And when we get rid of him our troubles'll be over. We mustn't—we absolutely mustn't quarrel like this.”

“All right, Chester.”

11

Rydal's anger
had gone through several stages by Monday morning. Beginning with the moment Chester had roared at him that Colette was hiding in the bathroom, his anger had been “blind
”, as the classicists said, and Rydal knew why. The whole scene had been just too much like the one with his father over Agnes. His father had accused him of a seduction—even worse, practically a rape, according to Agnes—and there had been Chester, accusing him of adultery with his wife. It had been like being hurled back to some traumatic instant in time, like the instant of birth, which some psychiatrists said was so awful that nature made people forget it. Rydal hadn't stood up to his father, but he had stood up to Chester. He had hit back at Chester in the only way he could, by saying he would turn him in. And an hour later, when he had cooled down a little, he had seen the absurdity of his anger, but he had not turned loose of his idea of informing on Chester. Yet there were a couple of strikes against it: Rydal loathed the role of stool pigeon; and, second, Colette was going to be hurt by it as well as Chester. Rydal could turn himself in, as an accessory, as well as Chester, but he didn't want to, which meant that he hadn't the moral courage to.

He had pondered the problem all Sunday night in bed, and had not slept at all. He was really sure of only one small thing, and that was that he didn't want the filthy five thousand dollars. Colette would take them back for him, he was sure. Chester, however, probably wouldn't accept them, because he knew they caused him shame.

During the night, Rydal's anger had flared again, a dozen times, as he thought over the scene in which Colette came out of the bathroom. Fatigue doped his brain until he had no control over it, and he could not stop the scene once it began unfolding again. And so had the scenes in his parents' house unfolded again, his mother coming to him and saying in her careful, gentle, embarrassed, word-choosing way that Agnes had said he had been annoying her, that Agnes had said he “used force on her”. And, irrationally, Rydal's anger against Chester had been more and more whipped up in the night. “I thought it best to tell your father about this,” said his mother, “and he would like a word with you in his study, Rydal.” (Yes, Rydal realized last night that it had been his mother who told him his father wanted to see him, his mother who had used the phrase “a word with you”.)

The night had been a chaos, but there was a thought that had remained steady, with him, since before he went to bed. That was that he should keep Chester thinking that he would inform on him, keep Chester in fear of it, whether he really did it or not. That was why he had been so firm about it when Colette had come in to talk to him. Rydal wanted to see Chester panicky. Chester making an attempt on his life was ludicrous. Would Chester want another corpse on his hands? Chester was already on the brink of panic. Yesterday, or the day before, he had been murmuring something to the effect that he had better not try to get the film that was in his camera developed. Pictures of him and Colette in Athens or somewhere else in Europe, Rydal supposed. No, he had better not. And he had asked Rydal about the strings of amber beads that so many men carried in their hands, jiggling and fondling them as they stood idly on street corners. Rydal had explained that people bought them to twiddle, just to relieve nervousness. Chester had looked at one jiggler almost enviously. The beads were on sale at every newsstand. Rydal had been amused.

As early as possible, Rydal had checked on the bus to Iraklion. It was leaving at 9 this morning. Rydal telephoned Chester's room at a quarter to 8, spoke to Colette, and told her about the bus. Colette sounded as stiff and formal as he. Rydal paid his bill, walked with his suitcase to the bus terminal—the bleak square—and boarded it at twenty to 9. He had bought a newspaper, not because of Chester, but because he wanted to see the news. The five thousand dollars were a resilient lump in his left-hand trousers pocket. Colette and Chester arrived in a taxi at ten to 9, and got on the bus.

“Morning,” Rydal said to Colette from his seat.

“Good morning,” her clear, high voice replied.

She and Chester sat down side by side two or three seats in front of Rydal and across the aisle. Chester's beard was quite visible from a distance now. Rydal noticed that a few people looked at him as if he were a man of importance, a scientist, perhaps—or a college professor.

Rydal was soon asleep, once the bus began moving. It was a shallow sleep, full of tension and sprinkled with incomplete dreams that startled him half awake and made him stir in his seat. They were not dreams, he thought, but daydreams of a tired and anxious mind. He saw Chester shooting him, in one. He imagined Chester grabbing him from behind with an arm across his throat, in some dark street of Iraklion or Athens, where there was no one around to see, when Rydal didn't have a chance against Chester's surprise attack. But between these violent imaginings, he embraced and kissed Colette, a relaxing and pleasant thing to imagine. It made even the hardness of the window-sill bearable to his elbow, the throbbing metal back of the seat in front of him pleasant to his knee-cap. He looked through half-closed eyes at Colette's reddish blond head next to Chester, who had kept his hat on. Now and again, Colette turned her head to talk to Chester, and he saw her face, but mostly she rested her head back against the seat.

By Rethymnon, the mid-point more or less of the journey, he had determined to stand fifteen minutes with Colette, to bring her coffee or a Coca-Cola, a sandwich fetched with effort from the best restaurant. At Rethymnon, he found himself behaving stiffly, nodding a greeting to her, lighting himself a cigarette, turning his back on them. He drank a cup of sweet coffee, rushed to a W.C. in a near-by café, rushed back, still clinging to the newspaper of Chania, and got into his seat again.

It clouded over, then began to rain in a fine, drizzling way. As they neared Iraklion, Rydal looked for Mount Ida, which he had seen leaving the town, but it was too misty for it to be visible. The road worsened, grew smoother again, and then they were back in Iraklion, the bus unloading in the unpaved square. There was time to make the 3:30 plane for Athens, Rydal saw. He assumed Chester was going to do this, and he also felt sure Chester would ask him not to take the plane, if he appeared to be going to. That was just too bad, Rydal thought. Chester was going to have a very hard time shaking him off. They might even return to the States all together. Rydal stood in the Iraklion square, his suitcase between his feet, watching Chester and Colette gathering their luggage from the bus.

Chester hailed a cab.

Then Rydal walked over to them. “You're going to the airport?” Rydal asked Colette.

“No. He wants to see the Palace of Knossos,” she answered, dropping the K in her pronunciation of Knossos. “Not such a hot day for it, is it?” She looked chilly and unhappy. Her hands were in the pockets of her topcoat.

“So you're staying over tonight,” Rydal said. “In Iraklion.”

“I guess so. We'll miss that afternoon plane, if we go to Knossos.”

Rydal saw that Chester was having difficulty explaining something to the driver. Chester was pointing to his luggage. Rydal was not going to go to his assistance.

“Chester wants to check the luggage somewhere while we visit the palace,” Colette said. “I suppose he's asking the driver to go to some other hotel besides the Astir. Chester doesn't want to go back there.”

But Chester was asking the driver for a place to check the luggage, Rydal could tell, because the driver was yelling back in Greek, “There
isn't
any baggage depository!”

Rydal let them fight it out. He heard them talking about the Hotel Corona, agreeing to that. It was only three blocks away, Rydal remembered, over by the Iraklion Museum. Chester beckoned for Colette to join him.

Colette looked from Chester to Rydal in a confused way, then said, “Bye-bye” to Rydal, as if it were a temporary parting.

Which it was, Rydal thought. He picked up his own suitcase and walked to the Corona. By the time he got there, Colette and Chester were just coming down its front steps. It was an old-new building, vaguely yellow and vaguely dirty, its design in the bad taste of an American movie house of the 1930s.
Chester's taxi was waiting at the curb. Chester looked at Rydal coldly, and for the first time that day.

“Mind if I join you in Knossos?” Rydal said. “I'd like to see it, too.”

“I do mind. I'd rather be alone,” Chester said. He turned around, after starting towards the taxi. “And if you don't leave us alone, I'll ask a policeman to remove you.”

“You'll ask a policeman?” Rydal asked in an incredulous tone.

Chester turned away and got into the taxi in which Colette was already installed.

Rydal looked around hastily for a taxi, saw none, and decided to try the square, or little park, by the Iraklion Museum, one street away. Here there were two taxis standing at a curb, one with a driver in it. The driver was very happy to make the trip to Knossos.

They left the city on the same road the bus had come in on, but soon made a slight turn to the left. Chester's taxi was not in sight. Rydal sat up and looked at the scenery. He remembered the picture of Knossos in his father's study, an old photograph showing some of the remains of the old palace in the background—not enough, Rydal remembered, to satisfy him as a child. “But where is the
labyrinth
?” he had used to ask his father, and, with a sigh, his father would explain that most of the palace was out of sight in the photograph, that the palace was four storys high and most of it behind the hill in the photograph. Rydal remembered the hill best: a dark grassy hill on which a few cypresses stood like black exclamation points, a hill bisected by a pale, undulant path that crossed the whole picture, and in the foreground, two grazing sheep and a black donkey. He looked now for such a hill on the approach to Knossos.
Was there really a labyrinth?
He had used to ask his father that, too, his child's mind unable to grasp the subtle blending of fact and legend. Rydal had later understood that the bewildering and interconnecting rooms of the palace itself had given rise to the legend of a labyrinth, or maze, and the bull-dancing of the young men to the legend of the monster bull, the Minotaur, who breathed fire at the depths of the labyrinth.

The fine rain still came down.

“Knossou,”
said the driver, pointing to a wire fence they were driving along beside. There were no buildings or houses in sight.

“Where's the palace?” Rydal asked.

“Behind the hill.”

They drove into a graveled semi-circle where there was a ticket booth. Rydal saw Chester's and Colette's figures walking up the hill beyond, towards the cypresses, towards the palace columns and roof, which Rydal could see now. This was the hill of the photograph. Rydal paid the driver and tipped him so well that the driver wanted to wait for him. But since Chester had apparently dismissed his own driver, Rydal told the man not to wait.

“There're buses every hour, aren't there?” Rydal asked.

“Every hour, sir.”

Rydal waved good-bye to him and went to the booth to buy his ticket of admission. In the booth was a sleepy-looking man in an overcoat and a hat, swathed to the eyes in his muffler.

“Ena, parakalo,” said Rydal, presenting his money.

He was given a small white ticket.

“Not many people today, eh?” Rydal said.

The man gave an unintelligible, rather Italian exclamation like “Gwah!” and lifted his hands, as if to say only idiots would come on a day like this.

Rydal turned up his overcoat collar, picked up his suitcase, then, on second thought, asked the man if he could leave the suitcase with him for a few minutes. The man said certainly.

“Oh, it's not heavy. I'll take it along,” Rydal said. He didn't trust the man.

Rydal climbed the hill. Slowly the palace came into view, a flat open area on his left, paved with stone, like a court or stage, a drop of ground behind it, and, on the right, the palace itself, which looked like a conglomeration of huge boxes, outside stairways without handrails, open terraces whose roofs were supported by dark red columns—the renowned russet red of Crete.

Rydal walked through a doorway barely higher than his head. Stairs led up and stairs led down. The floor appeared to be hard pounded earth. At least it was dry here. The room had three open doorways. Rydal took the one on his right. It led to another room which also had three doorways. Two long spears leaned against a wall, and after staring at them for a few seconds, Rydal realized what deadly weapons they would make, running through a man, and he shivered a little and set his suitcase down. Then he carried it to a corner of the room, out of the way. There seemed to be no one in the palace, not even a caretaker. But of course it was January, a Monday, and raining.

He walked to a doorway—the doorways were open and ­doorless—and listened. Now he heard Colette's voice from above. Rydal looked up. He saw only part of an outside stone stairway, and the straight edge of a terrace floor or a roof, with the grey sky behind it. He took some outside stairs going up, careful to keep a bit close to the wall of the building, as there was a two-storey drop on his right. The stairs brought him to a hallway whose mural made him catch his breath. Here were the spindle-waisted bull dancers, leaping over the horns of the graceful bull.

“Chester?” That was Colette's voice, still above him.

Smiling, Rydal took another flight of stairs two at a time, and emerged on the roof, or a roof. There was still another terrace above him, and there stood Chester silhouetted against the sky, his hand on a pillar which rose at the head of some steps. Chester saw him. Rydal waved. Chester turned away with apparent annoyance. Rydal climbed up to Chester's level. Colette was walking under a stone portico ten yards away, where some large vases were lined up. Chester strolled, with his head down, on Rydal's right, on an extension of the terrace roof. Rydal went closer to him. Where Chester walked was a blind alley. There were round pits on the right and left of Chester, four feet deep or so, where, Rydal remembered from his father's description, containers of oil and wine had once been stored. Chester saw him coming, and immediately came back, as if he were afraid Rydal might rush him and push him off. Rydal stepped aside to let him pass, though there was room for two people to pass without touching.