Decision at Delphi (29 page)

Straight from Wichita, Kensington, and Heidelberg, Strang thought, took firm hold of Cecilia’s arm and began steering her to the door. “Sorry. Have to go. Another time, old boy.”

He came after them. “I didn’t say good-bye to the lady.” He caught Cecilia’s hand and held it with exaggerated grace. “Parting is such sweet sorrow,” he said sadly.

“Another time,” Strang repeated firmly, and pulled Cecilia into the cab. “We’re stayed for, Bassanio.” As the cab started away, he looked at her. “And what was so funny about all that? Damned nuisance—” He looked at his watch and scowled. “The Church of St. Dionysios,” he told the driver, who nodded with pleasure, seeing a long, clear run through the almost empty streets, and the cab leaped forward.

“Hold tight,” Strang warned her.

“Don’t you like him?”

“Used to be one of my favourite film stars”

“Now what did he do, except quote Shakespeare?”

“Murdered him. That’s Juliet’s speech, not Romeo’s.”

“Purist! You murdered Shakespeare a little yourself.”

“Just giving him another variation in exit lines.”

“Oh yes—what was that about barbarians?”

For a moment, he said nothing. “It just proves you should never think aloud. Or some idiot is going to seize what you say and turn it into another of his stock clichés. My God, how many bars have heard that one!”

So that’s what really angered him, she thought.

“If he understood what he was talking about,” Strang went on, “he wouldn’t go around repeating it, not with that smile on his face.”

“Perhaps you ought to send him the poem that Cavafy wrote about the barbarians. That would take the smile off anyone’s face.”

He looked at her quickly. “You know modern Greek poetry?”

She shook her head. “Only that poem,” she admitted honestly. “‘Waiting for the Barbarians’. Steve sent me a translation.”

He asked the question that had troubled him a little before, “How well did you know Steve?”

“I only met him twice. Once, he talked about Cavafy. Once, he told me about—” she glanced at the driver’s neat, well-brushed head—“about authentic Greek music.” She paused.

“How does it go again—the poem?” Slowly, hesitantly, she began it, almost speaking it to herself.

“What are we waiting for, all crowded in the forum?

The Barbarians are to arrive today.

Within the Senate house why is there such inaction?

The Senators, making no laws, what are they sitting there for?

Because the Barbarians arrive today.

What laws now should the Senators be making?

When the Barbarians come they’ll make the laws.”

She paused again. He was silent, watching the empty streets with a frown, as if he were puzzling out a long and difficult problem. So she fell silent, too.

“Go on,” he said. He was still watching the streets.

“Why did our Emperor get up so early in the morning?

And at the greatest city gate why is he sitting there now,

Upon his throne, officially, why is he wearing his crown?

Because the Barbarians arrive today.

The Emperor is waiting to receive

Their Leader. And in fact he has prepared

To give him an address. On it he has

Written him down all sorts of names and titles.”

And then she forgot the exact lines—something about the chief men in the city going out in all their richest clothes, with bracelets and amethysts and splendid flashing emeralds, because the Barbarians would arrive today; things of this sort dazzled the Barbarians.

And none of the orators would be speaking, all would stay silent, because the Barbarians would be here today; and they were bored with eloquence and speechmaking. Yes, she thought sadly, remembering the last bitter lines, everything is ready to welcome and appease the Barbarians, and then when the Barbarians don’t arrive—

“Why are all the streets and squares emptying so quickly...

Because night has fallen and the Barbarians have not come
...

And now what will become of us without Barbarians
?—

Those people were some sort of a solution.”

She shivered. “Its end always depresses me,” she confessed. “I just don’t want to believe that people can become so decadent that nothing is worth fighting for.”

He came out of his own thoughts. “That’s the poem’s value,” he said. “If it makes a man say ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll do!’ then that’s something. It’s a spine-stiffener.”

“If one has a spine left. That’s the horrible thought.”

“There are plenty of good stiff spines still around,” he said. “Just ordinary people like Steve and Petros. And do you see the old Cretan’s spine bending?”

“No,” she agreed. She looked at him. She thought, I don’t see yours bending either. “All right,” she told him, “I’m on their side.” She shook her head. “Imagine an American saying she is on the royalist side, though!”

“Petros must be a republican, if he is as proud as he is of having fought under Zervas. Steve is a socialist.” He looked at her with a smile. “Our side is a mixed bunch, thank God! When we’ve all got the same labels around our neck, then we
are halfway to defeat. The group mind makes things very easy for Barbarians to take over.”

“Dissension can be dangerous, too, if I remember anything of my Greek history.”

“Not as long as you don’t develop curvature of the spine.” He noticed her worried face. “Don’t forget that the poem could have ended on a worse note. It could have said that Barbarians were the only solution. When a civilised man begins to believe that—well, he has had it.”

“But no intelligent civilised man would ever believe that.”

“Wouldn’t he?”

“But do you really know
anyone
like that?” she challenged him, unconvinced.

He wished to God he didn’t keep thinking of Christophorou.

He didn’t answer, at first. “I hope not,” he said at last.

The taxi sped away, leaving them on a broad street lonely with night, standing in front of a row of steps and the yawning entrance of a twin-towered church.

“This way,” Strang said, and they began retracing their direction.

Ten minutes ago, Cecilia was thinking, I was walking along narrow streets of old houses, low and clustered; now I’m somewhere high on the side of a hill of straight streets crisscrossing, with public buildings and apartment houses. She was a stranger, deaf and blind; she could neither understand the spoken language—these two men, passing now, what were they talking about?—nor recognise the street names. She stared up at the corner sign, quite hopelessly: Δημοκριτου.

“Dimocritou,” Strang told her, “or, as we say, the street of Dimocritus. See, it slopes down toward the main drag. Got your bearings now?”

How shall I ever manage, travelling around by myself? she wondered desolately. “Dimocritou,” she repeated, and looked down the long hill. So this is where we go to tea tomorrow with Mr. Thomson, she thought. If ever, she added, I wake up in time. She looked at the street sign again. “I thought I knew the alphabet, at least. And some phrases. You know what, the taxi driver didn’t pronounce one word like any records I ever learned from!” She sighed, thinking of the Peloponnese this week. “Lee told me not to worry. Famous last words. Everyone speaks English, he said; and if they don’t, use your French. French in the Peloponnese?”

“You’ll get on famously,” he told her. “You don’t need words to help you along. This is the hour of depression, that’s all.” He had tried to sound more cheerful than he felt.

But she glanced at him. “Let’s talk of someone with real worries. Katherini. What are we to do with her?”

“Get her off the street as quickly as possible. Keep her safe until we know that Pringle’s place is clear, I suppose. Then—” he almost sighed himself—“take her there, make sure she feels safe, let Pringle contact the right people.” After that, he thought, I can start worrying about Steve.

“What’s wrong with our hotel? She could stay in my room until the morning.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you mixed up with all this.” He looked sharply across the street at two young men: students, perhaps? He relaxed.

“Aren’t I?”

“Not so far. Not openly, at least. I hope. And if we had the time now, ‘I’d take you back to the hotel. But—” There was a light truck driving slowly toward them. He grasped her arm. But it drove past them. “Wrong guess,” he admitted. A car passed quickly, and three men talking busily. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or worried that this district had a scattering of life in it, even at this hour. “Now, it’s all right,” he reassured her. “This is the street. Petros gave me careful directions. Or else I’d be as lost as you are.”

The truck is late, she thought nervously, as she saw him look at his watch again.

“We can’t loiter here.” They had reached the corner of Jan Smuts Street. They began to retrace their steps toward Dimocritou again. “We can’t risk walking too far away, either, from the meeting place.”

“Where is it?”

“Just here. Anywhere about here.” His eyes searched for a shop doorway, or the entrance to a block of apartments which could shelter them. “There are some houses over there being turned into apartments,” he said. Canvas sheets were spread all over the working front, and scaffolding partly covered the sidewalk. But even if it looked bleak, the work-in-progress offered some shadows and protection from the open street. “Let’s cross over,” he suggested. “We can wait there.”

“What about a night watchman?” She followed him quickly.

“It doesn’t seem as if one is needed around here.” Mounds of lime were all that greeted them. It was as desolate as it had looked from across the street. “Yes, I know,” he told her. “I’m wondering for the tenth time tonight how we ever got into all this.”

“But we are, and that’s that,” she said. “You said something
to Katherini, down at the
tavema,
about political conspiracy.” She glanced at him. “Sorry. But I’m just so lost, in every way. You think Katherini’s aunt is behind it all?“She has the money. There must be two or three others on the top level.”

“No more than that?”

“A secret isn’t as well kept as this one if you start spreading it around several people.”

“So then you think that if the top men were caught “

“Cut off the head, what use is the body?” That had been too abrupt, too sharp, he thought. He turned his eyes away from the street, so irritatingly empty now, and looked at her. He took her arm and gripped her hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m getting on edge.” He looked at his watch again, and then back at the street.

“Could three or four people plan so much trouble?” she asked, if only to keep him from staring silently at the street.

“The trouble exists. It may be dormant, but they know how to waken it. That’s their way of working. They have money, brains, and a ruthless philosophy. They must have organised well; all orders radiating out from the top committee, no one knowing who else is in the conspiracy except the leaders. I heard of two men who could identify one of the leaders—Nikos Kladas—and they were murdered.”

She looked at him in horror. “What kind of people are they?”

“Extremists. And for once, I use the word correctly. They’ve travelled so far to the left that the next step is straight into a padded cell. That’s my personal opinion. A Khrushchev Communist would call them leftist deviations, I expect. But the jargon boys make things too blurred, too complicated. It is simply that there are people in this world who want to build, and there are others who want to destroy. And all the nastiest
human failings belong to that group: spite, revenge, jealousy, false pride, greed, ambition, and just plain hate. Oh, they doll up their politics with fine phrases and slogans; they find excuses for their anger. But it all ends in anarchy and destruction.”

He could sense her disbelief. Or perhaps, more kindly, her unwillingness to accept any such philosophy as nihilism.

“Look,” he said, “if I could have told your father in 1932 that within ten years Hitler was going to get men not only to build gas chambers but to run them, destroy other human beings by the million, what would your father have said?”

“I see now,” she said slowly, “I see what you mean.” And then, angrily, “They are mad, all of them! Crazy mad.”

“Ask Katherini,” he said quietly, “if her aunt and her friends are mad. Crazy mad.”

“You mean, she’d think I was crazy for suggesting it?” There was more than a hint of a sharp edge to her voice.

He didn’t give an inch. “Yes,” he said. “She’d think just that. They are a collection of ruthless power-politicians who are making sure they are going to win, this time.”

“But if they believe in complete destruction, then they’ll be destroyed, too.”

“They’ll take that chance. After all, who is more likely to survive—a pack of wolves or a flock of sheep?”

“But—” she began, and stopped. Together, they looked along the street as they heard the heavy sound of an engine pulling up a hill.

It was a light truck, they could see now, as it turned sharply around the corner and came toward them. It slowed down a little; not much, though. Strang stepped out to the edge of the sidewalk, so that he could be more clearly recognised. Cecilia
followed him, and stood beside him. Surely Petros will notice us, she thought. If it was Petros. Alarm and dismay swept over her, for the truck was not stopping. It slowed down only enough to let a small, thin figure jump out, her head wrapped in a black scarf, her loose coat flapping. Katherini almost fell, recovered herself, and then ran with amazing speed toward their outstretched hands. She grasped them and pulled toward the shadows. “Hide!” she said. “Hide!” She covered her mouth, and knelt down. Strang crouched and pulled Cecilia with him. They heard the sound of another engine coming up the hill. Strang looked at Katherini. She nodded. So they
had
been followed.

The waiting only lasted a minute, but to the three still figures, motionless behind the barricade of lime heaps and wooden props, each second stretched out interminably. Strang listened tensely. The truck had travelled some distance before the car—its tyres hissing as the corner was taken too sharply— turned into this street and gathered speed on the level stretch of roadway. It was passing them, a sleek, tail-finned body of green and white and chromium. It was gone.