The Two Faces of January (15 page)

“You know who it is. Open the door.”

“I don't care to see you.”

Rydal's shoulder crashed against the door, made the wood creak, but the lock held.

Chester opened the door.

“Thanks,” Rydal said, and came in.

Chester thought for a moment that Rydal was drunk. But his eyes did not look drunk. Rydal swung the door shut carelessly behind him. He stood looking at Chester for several seconds, his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. Chester looked away from his eyes, then back again.

“Just what do you want?” Chester asked.

“I came in to kill you,” Rydal said, his fingers moving a little at his waist. “You know—I'll just say you were a suicide. I've already planted the idea in the hotel-keeper's mind.”

Chester had started to sweat, though he was not at all afraid. It was too absurd. He smiled slightly. “And how were you proposing to do it?”

“Hang you. A couple of ties'll do it. That light fixture looks substantial.”

Chester glanced up. The light fixture was not at all substantial, he thought, not at all. He shifted his feet to a firmer stance. “Get out of my room.”

“Oh, no.” Rydal smiled. “Maybe you'd like to turn me in to the police first. You wouldn't want to die before you'd done that, would you? Do it now, what're you waiting for? See how far you get! You disgusting swine,
haven't you a brain in your head
?” Rydal's voice was suddenly loud. He leaned forward. A vein stood out in his neck.
“Swine!”

“Get out of here. You're hysterical.” Now Chester was afraid of him.

Rydal bit his lip. He became visibly calmer, as quickly as he had flared up. “I don't think I'll bother talking to you,” he said, and walked to the door. “We'll continue this in Athens, all right? You'd better take the boat tomorrow, not the plane.”

Chester did not say anything. He was looking at Rydal, but he had not moved from where he stood.

“Unfortunately I'd better, too. The police might pick me up before three tomorrow, and that'd give you time to get away from me.” Rydal went out and closed the door.

Chester did not want to go down and ask about the boat now. Let Rydal take care of it, as long as they both had to catch it. He went to the door and turned the key. Then he undressed slowly, and slipped between the sheets without bothering with pyjamas. But he left the light on. He felt safer with the light on. He realized that he was afraid to turn Rydal in to the police, even turn him in by means of a telephone call in which he would not give his own name, and even in Athens. Rydal had too much against him. Rydal could call Niko in as a witness, as a corroborator of the passport falsification, if he had to. Rydal could tell the police about his Chamberlain alias—and God knew what Colette had told Rydal about him, maybe plenty. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get rid of Rydal by killing him. On his second try, he mustn't fail. The safest, Chester thought, was to get someone else to do it. Maybe someone Niko in Athens would know. Tell Niko he had a dangerous job for someone, an important job he was willing to pay a lot of money for. Niko would know the right person. Don't tell Niko what it's all about. Just talk to the one man who would do it. Chester would be able to tell as soon as he saw the man. If the first man weren't right, he might know someone who would be right. It could be done.

13

Rydal was
surprised the next morning at 7:30
not to get any response from his knock on Chester's door. He knocked several times and called Chester's name. No answer. Then he ran downstairs.

The same man was on duty behind the desk, dozing now, tipped back against the wall in a straight chair. He sat upright when Rydal rapped on the counter.

“Excuse me. The gentleman in number ten. Has he checked out?”

“Who?”

“Number ten. Mr. Chamberlain.”

“Ah, no, he went out at . . . oh, four or five o'clock.”

“This morning? With his luggage?”

“No, no,” the man said, smiling. “Not with his luggage. I don't know, maybe he was going for an early morning walk.”

“Thanks.” Rydal walked to the front door and looked up and down the little street. Well, relax, he thought. Chester would be back. Unless of course he'd taken all his money from his suitcase and gone off with it, left his luggage behind. Rydal couldn't believe that. Just as he was about to turn and go back into the hotel, Chester came around the corner. Rydal walked back into the lobby. “He's coming,” he said to the man.

“Ah, good. He sleeps badly, your friend, maybe.”

“I suppose. We'll be leaving in half an hour, so could you make up our bills?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rydal walked slowly towards the stairway, not wanting the proprietor to see any hostility between him and Chester. As Chester approached the stairway, Rydal, on the fourth step, turned and said, “Good morning. I've just asked the man to make up our bills. We ought to leave as soon as possible. The boat leaves at nine.”

Chester looked puffy-eyed and pale. “Okay,” he said.

Rydal went to his room on the second floor, and Chester went on to the third. “See you downstairs at eight,” Rydal said.

Around 8, they paid their bills in silence, loaded their baggage into the same taxi, and set off for the port. There was a newsboy on the dock near the ship. Rydal bought an Iraklion paper. One glance at the front page and he saw there was no mention of a body having been found at Knossos. Rydal spoke to a ship's steward on the dock, and was told that tickets could be bought in the main saloon on the main deck. Rydal asked a porter to take their luggage on board.

Fortunately, there were still state-rooms available in first class. Rydal did not care to go even second class on such a ship. There was a third class probably relegated to the ship's bowels, and the open stern of the main deck was already jammed with people who had no shelter at all for the twenty-four hour trip, people who were eating oranges and bananas and sandwiches and throwing the remains over the side or simply dropping them at their feet. A glimpse of them as he had gone up the gangway had depressed Rydal. They looked like cattle in a pen, except that these were already pushing and squabbling over sleeping room for the night, some providently holding positions by lying down on the deck and refusing to budge: man was capable of thinking ahead.

“I can give you a state-room together,” said the purser.

“No, no, that's quite all right,” Rydal said, almost too vehemently. He was speaking in English to the purser, who sat behind a desk in the main saloon, and Chester was standing four feet away. “Separate ones are fine.” The prospect of sharing a state-room with Chester had brought a reaction that he felt was visible.

Chester got a number 27, Rydal a number 12. They were on opposite sides of the ship.

To Rydal's great joy, his state-room, a room for two, was empty, and more than likely it would stay empty. He hadn't seen anyone else buying tickets from the purser. As soon as his suitcase was inside, he took off his jacket, pushed the curtain of his porthole aside and glanced out—getting a glimpse of Iraklion that looked like yellow-white stones tumbled down a hill, and a close-up of a blue-capped porter hurrying by just outside on the deck—then he sat down on a bunk and put his hands over his face. Now, he thought, surely just about now, they were finding Colette's body. That was what this morning's sunlight would bring, Colette's body. Rydal lay on the bed with his hands behind his head and his eyes closed, listening to the ordinary, workaday shouts, bumps, clanks and footfalls all around him and above him. The news would come in on the ship's radio before noon, he thought. The news would get around the ship, among the passengers. It was bizarre enough. Rydal thought of Colette's pocketbook—it had been under her right arm, under the elbow—and wondered what was in it. Not her passport, Rydal thought, but maybe a driver's license, for Mrs. Howard Cheever, maybe a photo of herself and Chester, maybe a photograph of Chester, or had Chester thought to make her take all such things out of her billfold? He imagined the ticket-seller at the Knossos palace, chattering away now, telling the police about the young man with the American accent who had asked him if anyone had driven away in a taxi. Yes, the young man had behaved more suspiciously than the older man. In fact, he hadn't seen the older man leave at all, perhaps. Rydal imagined the police speculating as to whether Chester might also have been murdered by the young man, his body still somewhere on the grounds, down in one of the oil-vat pits, or in a corner of one of the labyrinthine rooms, or lying in some drainage depression in a floor, perhaps behind the queen's bathtub.

Rydal realized he could be out of it, if he chose. Chester was under his heel, not the other way around. Rydal quite expected that Chester would try to kill him, probably try to hire someone to do it, because he wouldn't have the cleverness or the courage to do it himself. Yes, Chester was in a very, very bad position, his morale worsened by the death of his wife. Rydal enjoyed seeing Chester in a bad position, enjoyed seeing terror in his face. It was not at all that he was playing policeman, avenger of Colette, Rydal told himself. He was simply amusing himself, and he was going to grow tired of it in about four days, he thought, even if they got to Italy or France in that time, and then he would quit it. He would leave Chester, after giving him some worse scare than he had yet known. After perhaps preparing a way for Chester to run right into the police. That was his idea, in principle. Rydal slid the chain bolt in the door, so that the door could open only about three inches, if anyone tried to open it, and then he shaved at the basin. To the right of the basin was a narrow door which gave on to a shower. The boat was getting under way.

Around 10:30
he went on deck to look at the sea. But he did not look behind, at Crete. He did not want to see Crete disappearing. Ahead and on either side, there was no island in view, nothing but blue, rolling, and slightly choppy water. The sky seemed unusually bright and clear, as if yesterday's rain had swept the world of clouds. Rydal explored the boat, went through the little main saloon again, where the purser's desk had been, and down some central stairs covered with worn linoleum that was held down by fixtures of brass-plated tin, stairs with a heavy wooden balustrade that might have had a certain elegance in the days of Queen Victoria. The ship was fairly clean, but everything on it had been allowed to wear out. The first-class lounge had a dreary atmosphere. It was a round room at the stern, above the open deck where the cabinless passengers were crammed. There were not enough chairs, and only one sofa, fully occupied. There was not a piano or a card table. A few men—two looked Italian, one might have been French—leaned against the partitions between the wide windows, smoking quietly, gazing out at the water. A Greek radio program of dance music was on. The ship had begun to roll. Rydal heard a plump woman on the sofa say in French that, if this kept up, there wouldn't be many for lunch. The rolling of the ship made the floor alternately push and fall away from his feet. There was a tiny bar to the left of the door, Rydal saw now, only a short counter, with no seats provided, and no barman, either.

And here, standing at a window smoking, Rydal heard it on the 11 o'clock news. It was the first item:

. . . the body of a young woman found on the south terrace of the Palace of Knossos . . . killed by a large vase which came from an upper terrace . . . not yet been identified (static obliterated a phrase here and there) . . . believed to be American. . . . are certain she was the victim of a deliberate attack, as there had been no vase directly above her on the parapet . . . Police are withholding other information until . . .

“Knossou?”
One of the men Rydal had thought were Italian was taking it up in Greek. “What a place for a murder, eh?”
And the two laughed a little.

Rydal turned his eyes drearily away from them.

“What's the news?” asked the Frenchwoman. She was knitting away briskly at something beige.

“A murder in the Palace of Knossos,” answered her companion in Greek-accented French.

“Tiens! A murder! And we were just there Sunday! A murder of whom?” The knitter sat up.

“Une jeune américaine! Mon Dieu, ces américains!” Head shaking.

Rydal watched it spread slowly, like a small fire as yet undangerous, through the lounge, watched the smiles, the shrugs, the eyebrows lifted with interest, and dropped again. Many had no doubt just been to the palace. It was a tourist must. The interest in the lounge was only mild, but enough to make people ignore the rest of the news.

The news report came from Athens, Rydal heard at the conclusion. It had gone from Crete to Athens and bounced nearly all the way back again. Rydal carried his cigarette to a standing ashtray, put it out, and went back to his state-room. The long metal key was in his pocket. Chester, he supposed, was drinking Scotch in his own state-room. Rydal took out his black-and-white covered notebook, and wrote:

January 16, 19—

11:10 a.m.

No entry for the 15th, Monday. This is the Tuesday after the Monday. Monday will not be forgotten, and I know I could not do it justice. Now I am on a boat with C. between Iraklion and Piraeus, and have just heard the news report, which mentions no names. I am on a boat full of hogs and idiots, attached to one hog-idiot as if he were a particular magnet for me, as if he had some important relationship to me (like a father's), and as if we have some important destiny to fulfil together. I know the destiny, it's all quite clear, simple, sordid, nothing mysterious about it, and there'll be no surprises. I detest him. I think I am fascinated by that. I have no desire to kill him, have never wanted to kill anyone. But I will say I would like to see him fall. Just fall, in every sense of the word. He has certainly begun already.

On the contrary, it's my own life that I have to protect. Chester has every reason to get me out of the way, not only because of what I know about him, but because he thinks I have had his wife, and he hates me for that. And she's gone, and all that. That's why I am ready to weep for the nonsense and the idiocy of all this, she's gone. And Chester hates himself for that. Like all stupid people who hate themselves, he'll strike out against anybody else.

Rydal waited until very late to enter the dining-room for lunch. But there was Chester in a corner, a bottle of yellow wine beside his plate, eating away. Rydal turned in the doorway, and went back to his state-room. Chester had not seen him. Around 4 Rydal ordered a small but elegant lunch, as elegant as the ship afforded, which was—Rydal consulted with the steward—a mushroom omelet, salad of endives, Brie cheese. There were meat dishes, but Rydal did not want meat. With this he had a cold white Montrachet, the most expensive white wine on the list.

Then he added to his notebook-journal (the front part was for poems, the back part for his irregularly kept diary):

What bores me is the mundaneness of all this—wrong word, I mean prosaicness (prosaism?), its dreariness and drabness and its predictability. I am expecting something to hit me like a flash, a bright light in my face. I want a moment of truth—that may also kill me. I want illumination. I am sure it comes in a flash of comprehension, and that it's not something one sits down and works out on paper or in one's thoughts. Colette was beginning to give me it.
Beginning,
yes, but with her it would have been a flash finally also. It was beginning when she made me break out in a smile, or laugh as I haven't laughed since I was a kid. She would have lifted me to a certain plane that would have lasted for days and then—wham! The truth. It might have happened if we had ever made love. Yes, the flash, the flash. She would have given it to me and I let her die! If I'd only rushed forward instead of sideways or back or whatever I did, I could have caught her by the shoulders, pushed her back—with
me.
And then, my God! Would she have stayed with Chester then?

No. She would have said, with the simple logic that any child is capable of “Chester, you were trying to kill him. You're evil and I hate you.” And maybe, “I love Rydal.” All simple, all so simple. Now idiots smirk in the sleazy first-class lounge, listening to the news of her death. I am bound to say, to be honest, that I would take great pleasure in avenging her. My Pallas Athenae, Vestal intacta. Back to Latin, more than Greek a language for warriors. The wine is in my blood. I'll sleep a while.

At ten to 6, Rydal was in the lounge again with a glass of metaxa in his hand, awaiting the news. A man came up to him and asked in Italian-accented English if he would like to make a fourth at bridge. Rydal glanced, and saw that a bridge table had mushroomed at one side of the room.

“Thank you, I . . . not feel so well.” Rydal lifted his glass of reddish-brown aperitif to imply that he was taking it for medicinal purposes.

“You are Italian!” said the man in Italian, smiling.

“Si, Signor,” Rydal nodded. At least his suit was Italian. His shoes happened to be French.

“I thought you were American.”