Greek Fire (6 page)

“It shows he's up to no good.”

“Even that doesn't make him attractive.”

“Go on.”

“By the way, did you know the chief dancer at the Little Jockey had been killed in a street accident?”

“No. One of those you saw?”

“The chief male dancer. I wonder why this Gene Vanbrugh was at the club the same night as I was.”

“When was the fellow killed?”

“The following day.”

“Find out as much as possible when you meet Vanbrugh.”

“I'll listen carefully to everything he has to say.”

“And of course,” added Lascou, “he will say so much more to you.”

They met as arranged outside the King George at three. There was still no great heat although the sun was brilliant. It fell on a square strangely silent after the abounding life of two hours ago.

She was sitting in a grey Silver Phantom Rolls. A chauffeur was standing beside the car, but when Gene came up he stepped respectfully back and opened the door. As Gene got in she looked at him thoughtfully but did not smile. She'd done her hair in a different way and was wearing Chinese jade ear-rings and a frock of grey jersey.

He said: “ You should have warned me.”

“What of?”

“If I'd known we were travelling the hard way I'd have put on battle dress.”

She lifted a half-ironical eyebrow and started the engine. The chauffeur stood back and saluted as the car turned off into Venizelou Street. It was not until they had gone some way that Gene spoke again.

“You must be very rich.”

“Why don't you talk Greek?”

“You must be very rich,” he said in Greek.

“Scarcely any accent. It is as if——”

“As if I came from one of the neighbouring
voμoı.
Never from the one I'm in.”

“How do you speak so well? You have relatives still here?”

“Nobody here.”

“You are staying with friends in Athens?”

“No, I have rooms.”

She waited but he said no more. They left the suburbs of Athens and skirted the barren eminences of Hymettus, travelling fast through olive groves and vineyards. Once they were out of the town there was practically no traffic except for the occasional farm cart piled high and drawn by donkey or mule moving ponderously on businesses known only to the black-dressed, black-scarved peasant woman between the shafts. An occasional village street saw them by, inevitable café, inevitable yellow mongrels, tiny Byzantine church, eucalyptus trees, tattered buildings, black-clad idlers staring.

He said: “Tell me about these excavations.”

“You will see them for yourself.”

“The paper said you were closely superintending the work.”

“That's because it was a paper which favours the people I am friendly with. I act in this for my friend, who is too busy to come down.”

“Tell me what you have found.”

She said: “Tell me why you went to the Little Jockey on Monday.”

He stared out at the road with his grave, craggy, withdrawn face. “Why not?”

“Why did you say at the play that Juan Tolosa had been killed in an accident the following day?—putting on an emphasis as if you didn't believe it was any such thing.”

“Did I? No.… But it's a little strange, isn't it, that the car which killed him was badly damaged but hasn't yet been found.”

“Who told you that?”

“I went along to the police inquiry this morning.”

“It was interesting?”

“His widow said the car mounted the side-walk and deliberately crushed him against a house.”

“She must have been hysterical.”

“Quite hysterical.”

She glanced at him. “ You don't think so?”

“The police did. That's all that matters, isn't it?”

As they came near Lavrion the green fields and vineyards gave place to old mine machinery, grey heaps of slag and rusty iron derricks. Then they were through the area of the silver mines and the brilliant sun lit up the low cliffs and ultramarine sea of Cape Sounion, with the white temple of Poseidon like a tall nun brooding on a hill. The girl drove up to the Acropolis and stopped the engine. They got out.

He said: “ When I was a student we used to come here at the week-ends to bathe.”

“You said last night you had not been before.”

“I've not been before with you.”

He stood by the car for a while looking about him, and she glanced once or twice at his face.

He said: “ Fruitful study of aesthetics as well as of ancient history.”

“Why?”

“Where does the impact come from? Thirteen pillars. Half a dozen rectangles of fluted marble with the sea as a drop curtain. If you analyse it, it's nothing.”

She said: “A rag and a bone and a hank of hair.”

He turned. “
Exactly
.” Then his eyes focused on her. “ Except that there's a physical as well as an aesthetic element in a woman's beauty.”

She didn't seem put out by his stare. “What is physical?” she said. “Where does it become only emotional? And what is emotional? Where does it become only aesthetic? I don't think you can separate them.”

“Well,” he said, “ let's say the difference with marble pillars is that there's no wish for personal possession.”

A sea breeze was stirring her hair and she put up a hand to it. “Personal possession is always unwise. What you grasp you destroy. Taste your pleasures and let them go.”

He said: “ I'm glad you agree with tasting them.”

“I'm glad you are glad.”

After a few moments he said: “Where are your excavations?”

“Down there, down nearer the sea. Last year a great statue was found here, of a warrior. They think it is of the seventh century
B
.
C
. and they think there is more yet to be found. There was of course a temple here long before this one was built
.”

“Can we go down?”

“The siesta will not be over.”

The promontory of Cape Colonna slopes down on its western side into a sandy bay, and they walked to it through pine trees where the ground was littered with the shells of hard-boiled eggs left behind by week-end picnickers. Near the sea just where rock and soil and sand met, there was the usual paraphernalia of archaeology: trenches, rubble, and beside it a disused ‘ tourist pavilion' in the shade of which a dozen Greek labourers crouched and slept.

“Here we began, you see, and here the statue was found. The head with its great helmet was broken from the body and the body was naked. But they fitted together. It couldn't have been broken naturally or they would not have been so far apart.”

He said: “You must be rich to have financed these diggings.”

“I didn't finance them—I told you. I have rich friends. It is the way we live in Greece.”

An elderly man came forward, hastily fastening his tie, and was introduced to Gene. He and the girl talked for some time on the progress of the operations. They stayed about half an hour. When they were alone again Gene said: “ Have you any of the things that have been found here?”

“The big things, like the statue, are in the National Museum, but I have a few of the smaller articles in my flat.”

“I'd like to see them sometime.”

They stopped, looking out to sea. The rocks showed copper and purple and green through the glass-clear water. A lip of white, inches wide, nibbled at the edge. Gene lingered on when she would have moved.

She said: “Is it true that you really have some affection for Greece?”

“Yes …”

“I mean true affection, not just empty sentiment.”

“Yes … But I don't think I like your politicians.”

“Do you like your own?”

“Maybe they're not the most admirable people in any country.”

“Well, they are no worse here.”

“This morning I was hearing about that man you pointed out to me last night. Lascou, was it? Someone I met this morning said that Lascou was the most dangerous man in Greece today.”

She opened her green lizard hand-bag. “ Have you a light, please? I haven't smoked this afternoon.”

“A match. We'd have to get in the shelter of the trees …”

They walked across to the pines. He flicked a match alight and held it to her cigarette. When he got close to her—a few inches from her face, he thought, yes, there really is danger. Her skin at close quarters had a faint luminosity. Nonsense, of course; so one's senses played one false. A rag and a bone and a hank of hair. A rag and a bone.… It was her own estimate.

She said contemptuously: “When an election is due one man will say anything about another in the hope that it will win him a vote.”

“And this is untrue?”

“You have told me nothing; how can I say what is true or untrue?”

“My friend, who is I think an intelligent man, said that there are plenty of hypocrites in the world who try to deceive others. George Lascou, he says, is that much more dangerous type, a hypocrite with visions of greatness who begins by deceiving himself.”

She looked down at her cigarette. “ Your friend no doubt is of an opposing party. Did he not also tell you I was George Lascou's mistress? You surely must know that too.”

Four or five ragged boys had been staring at the car, hanging on the handles, feeling the polished wings; at the sound of footsteps they scattered and ran off down the cindery track.

Gene said: “ I knew he was a man of infinite taste.”

She opened the door of the car. “It is time we started back.”

“Whenever you say.”

She got in and flicked the steering wheel once or twice with her green velvet gloves while he shut the door and walked round and slid into the seat beside her. She started the engine and drove off the way they had come. Behind them the sun was getting lower and the delicate tapering pillars of the temple seemed to support the sky.

He said in Greek: “ I owe you an apology.”

“That must have needed a lot of hard reasoning on your part, Mr. Vanbrugh.”

“I wonder if you could bring yourself to call me Gene?”

“I thought that it was a girl's name.”

“Not the way I spell it.”

They drove on.

She said: “Perhaps sometime you would be interested to meet this hypocrite, this shady politician.”

“I'd be delighted.”

“Write down your address. I can arrange it.”

“Could I call you? I'm changing rooms and haven't yet decided where to stay.”

“Well, where will you be tonight?”

“Out on my ear, I expect, if I don't get back. I promised to vacate my room by five, and have forgotten to pack my case.”

She didn't press any more, and silence fell again. He thought; a rag and a bone, a rag and a bone; stick to that; hold on to it for dear life. Plenty of women before but only two like this and both brought shipwreck. How often does the sailor put to sea? Not now; for Pete's sake certainly not now, knowing who she is and already something of what she's like, and who her friends. You don't have to be an optimist, you have to be a lunatic to set sail when all the storm cones are hoisted.

She said: “What have Greek politics to do with you?”

“If I explained that it would take a time.”

“I could listen.”

“You can't avoid it, can you? Sharing a car with a bore is one of the worst things. There's no escape except the end of the journey.”

“Well, you could try not to be boring.”

After a minute he said: “ It isn't all that easy to explain. You asked me if I was fond of Greece. But it isn't really a question of liking or disliking the country; it's a question of having it in my
blood
. I told you last night, but I don't know if you understood.”

“No, I don't think I did.”

“When people are born in a place they normally accept it as part of their inheritance; they take it for granted; they're all of a piece. I'm sure you are—in that respect anyway. You're Greek, and Greece comes first and the rest nowhere.”

“Maybe.”

“I'm American. Many Americans are ‘all of a piece'. But some are not. America's a young country—its roots go often into other people's soil. Mine do … Make no mistake, America's my native country and I wouldn't change it for any other on earth. Just the smell of it the minute you get in takes and holds you like a new experience, however often you return. I enjoy going there. My family and my friends are there.” He paused. “Do you mind if I stop talking Greek?”

“No. I don't mind.”

“But when I'm in the States, however hard I try, I feel myself there as a
visitor.
I'm a soldier on leave, a commuter, a dog on a chain. And the stake the chain's attached to is right here in Athens. Maybe I'm some sort of a throw-back, who knows, it can't always work the other way. For every hundred Europeans who go to America, maybe three or four—of them or their children or their children's children—travel the other way. I never thought I'd be one.”

“And are you?”

“I'm trying to explain. You asked me why I care about Greece and what is happening here. I'm trying to explain because I want you to know.”

He glanced at her. She was listening with a vigorous intelligence that went much deeper than good looks. It might be hostile but it was not sham.

“But don't think I have any glamorised view of your country, Anya. In spite of its history and in spite of all the glitter of Athens that makes it look like a carbon copy of Manhattan, I know the other side all too well. I know it's badly governed, poverty-stricken, unenterprising; part East, part West with a dash of the Balkans shaken in to make it more difficult.”

“You're too kind.”

“But that may be one one reason why I can't get it out of my system. I want to do things about it, just as I would for a lame child that's always falling in the mud. I'm never as content as when I'm here, never as much at home, never as conscious of a
root.
I tell myself it's nonsense, this preoccupation, a sort of blinkered self-hypnotism; I've got to stop it. At most I'm only one-quarter rooted here. My life's to do with the new world, not with the old. But it doesn't wash. I'm still the dog on the chain.”