Got an attitude to life, have you? Oh my God! The row these people make!
The applause at the end of An die Musik was so distracting that he fled upstairs to his room. At a nod from Eugenia a maid tripped up with him, lit a lamp on his desk, bowed and withdrew. He sat down and read on:
Since I am doing my best to restore to you what should be yours, I implore you to respect my wishes in certain matters which cannot affect your interests.
I hope that you will allow Eugenia to remain in my house for the rest of her life. I have already made over an income to her but this is her home and here she should remain. My sons are dead, but she was their mother.
What? That woman? Alfred? Sleeping with the servants! The old goat! Foreigners! Mrs Benson? Does she know he went on like this?
Secondly I am anxious for the future of my friends and neighbours on Keritha. I have always envied them a little. They strike me as better able to endure the human lot than people elsewhere in what is called the civilized world. They take a view of life which is now very rare, although at one time it was universal. They have been protected by various circumstances from change.
At one time nobody supposed man’s lot to be happy. It was wretched. He was born only to die. A long life meant that time would inevitably change and take from him all that he held most precious. He lived at the mercy of chance; was certain of no good fortune. All that he knew for certain was evil. Men called themselves wretched mortals and made no bones about it.
What earthly grounds has he for saying all this? Deiloi Brotoi? Homer never meant that seriously. A conventional epithet, like Gentle Reader or The Fair Sex.
Yet men were often very happy. They persisted in being happy because it is their nature, not their lot, which commands them. And this capacity to rejoice was strengthened by the fact that they saw their own nature reflected in the landscape round them. The sun was a person. The moon and the dawn and the winds and the sea were people. Every spring had its naiad, every tree its dryad.
Dryads! Naiads! Does he take them literally? Poetic imagery! Nobody believed … peasants, of course … folklore … imagery is based on folklore, but peasants are not responsible for literature.
I believe this is why our ancestors, who never supposed themselves destined for felicity, have left so many memorials, in this part of the world, to human happiness and to the spectacle of men rejoicing. In the earliest sculpture they are smiling. It is this forgotten smile, sometimes called ‘mysterious’, which I have sometimes seen on Keritha. We have preserved it because, in the eyes of the world, for many centuries, there has been nothing of note to be sought on our island.
Does he mean the archaic smile? Another convention.
Elsewhere the opposite view prevails. Men believe that they ought to be happy and that their own destiny should be within their power to determine. Chance is still a nuisance, but can be countered by efficiency, organization and scientific discovery. Human misery springs from human nature which is evil and perverse. It must be subdued, ignored or altered.
For nature man has no respect. He is sole lord of the universe and does what he pleases with mindless, senseless matter. He wreaks his will upon it down to the very atoms which he splits. He fears no gods. He fears nobody save himself, of whom he is more terrified than anybody had been, in the past, of any god. However frightening he might be, there was always a chance that a god might be propitiated. How can man propitiate himself? He dares not represent himself as smiling. He prefers to contemplate his own image in some violently distorted form. As a purely natural object he feels himself to be too horrible.
My friends on Keritha cannot for ever be protected from taking this view of themselves. Your world will overtake them. Yet I hope that they may be allowed to smile for a few years longer.
Leave them alone. I charge you – leave them alone! Discourage any form of inquiry concerning their lives and ways. No effective research can be made into our landscape and our smile. Both would vanish before any findings could be published. A.C.
Mad as a hatter! thought Dr Challoner, tearing up the letter. He needn’t have worried. I’m not likely to encourage inquiries into a peasant’s grin.
Most of the letter was negligible nonsense but the facts about Eugenia were disquieting. She had already puzzled him a little. Her assiduous attentions suggested that she regarded herself as a sort of legacy, along with the house and furniture. He hardly felt able to face her again until he had got over the shock.
Some dignified manner of dealing with the problem must be devised. He debated this as he went downstairs again, and out into the moonlight along the track which led to the waterfall. She must, of course, stay. He was bound to observe Alfred’s wishes, but he shrank from appearing to take any cognizance of her former position in his house. Mrs Benson might be called in to act as go-between; she probably knew the truth, since she had lived for so long with the Challoners. He need not acknowledge that he knew it; he could merely say that Eugenia might stay on as caretaker if she wished to do so.
The tramp of many feet behind him proclaimed that the gramophone recital was over. The people were going home. He dodged behind a tree close to the waterfall. Whooping, laughing, chattering, they trooped past, carrying amongst them the gramophone and the records. When they had all gone over the bridge he returned to the house.
To his relief Eugenia had disappeared. She had, in fact, gone to prepare the Ovaltine which had always been Freddie’s nightcap, and which was now brought in state to the new Lord of Keritha. Kate and Selwyn were stacking the discarded records.
‘Completely wasted on those people,’ announced Dr Challoner. ‘They’re throwing them away already.’
‘Oh no!’ said Kate. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’
‘I saw them do it. They threw one over the bridge.’
There was an odd silence. Kate looked flustered. Selwyn grinned. Eugenia brought in the Ovaltine which she presented to her lord with a proprietary air. The mere sight of her covered him with confusion.
‘That bridge,’ he said, ‘looks new. How long has it been there?’
Kate said that it had been put there in place of the old rough track which led down to some kind of ford and up again. She asked Eugenia exactly when. Eugenia replied at some length.
‘What’s all that?’ asked Dr Challoner.
‘My Greek,’ said Kate reluctantly, ‘is pretty patchy.’
‘The first day they used the new bridge,’ said Selwyn, ‘a man fell off it and broke his neck. No wonder! Very rude to go making a bridge without asking leave.’
Dr Challoner gulped down his Ovaltine and took flight, in vain. Eugenia attended him upstairs and stood beside his bed until, by signs, he induced her to go away.
‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ scolded Kate, when left alone with Selwyn. ‘You might put ideas into his head.’
‘Nobody could. If they’d sacrificed a virgin on the bridge he’d merely think it was foreigners being funny. Is sugar the usual tip? I gather She only gets a goat when somebody breaks his neck.’
‘Yes. A pinch of sugar or a sweet. I can’t think why they thought she’d like a gramophone record.’
Selwyn began to laugh.
‘Know what we gave her? Bicarbonate of soda. She took it all right, though. But why was Freddie so anxious to keep it all dark?’
‘I’m not sure. He used to quote some old poem that said: Once the dead used to leave a living city behind them. Now the living hold a funeral for their city. I think he meant by a city the mysterious power which turns a lot of people into a single creature … a city … or … or …’
‘A procession?’ suggested Selwyn thoughtfully.
‘Yes, yes! A procession. He thought there was a lot of it here and very little anywhere else. They certainly can turn themselves into a procession. When we buried Edith … oh it was as if the island itself was mourning, not only the people. I said so to Freddie. And he said: Yes. Keritha weeps for its dead. As long as it knows how t
o do that, the living will never have to weep for Keritha.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought they go in for weeping much here.’
‘Oh, they do for the dead. You never saw people cry so much. They’re very sorry for them. They think the next world is a terribly dreary place. They have a lot of songs, folk songs really … so sad! Freddie translated some of their songs for me into English verse. There’s one … it always wrings my heart when the women sing it. Freddie’s version was:
Uncounted gifts did God bestow
On men, yet two He has denied:
A bridge to span the ocean wide,
A ladder to the world below.
We cannot seek them out, nor guess
What exile young and old must share,
Nor ask how little children fare,
Lost in the shadows – motherless.
Selwyn gave her a blank look, turned his back, and went on stacking records. She remembered that he was, and always had been, a lout. Freddie’s little translation might not be up to much, but anybody save a lout would have made some comment.
2
On the following day Kate and Dr Challoner went over to Zagros to collect the mail for Keritha, delivered by the bi-weekly post boat. They took with them the records for the schoolmaster, and Kate had a long shopping list. The larger island had a sort of general store where it was possible to buy soap, darning needles and other essential commodities.
‘Is there a chemist?’ asked Dr Challoner as they ran in to the Zagros jetty.
‘No. Did you want something from a chemist?’
‘Harrumph! It doesn’t matter.’
There was a well-stocked cupboard, said Kate, in the bathroom formerly belonging to Edith. It was supplied, from time to time, with extensive orders from Athens, and it was now his. She did not specifically mention aperients or pile ointment, but thought it probable that one or the other was in question.
They landed. Yorgos took the records up to the school house. Kate departed with her shopping bag. Dr Challoner strolled round the village which seemed to be a mouldy little place although a distinct improvement upon Keritha.
An antagonism to Keritha had been growing on him ever since his arrival and the ridiculous figure which he had been forced to cut at the grave. The place overwhelmed him with uneasiness, as though some invisible creature were continually thumbing its nose at him. Alfred’s letter, in spite of its nonsense, strengthened the impression of some unidentified foe. ‘Every tree its dryad, every spring its naiad.’ Those words, in particular, nagged at him, as though dryads and naiads, safely immunized as poetic imagery, imprisoned between the covers of books, had been snatched from durance by a lot of foreign oafs who were not even, according to Alfred, dead. This insane rubbish was a menace. Alfred was in his grave, the letter was torn up, but the Thing on Keritha continued to thumb its nose and would do so until he had succeeded in proving, to himself and to the world, that Nothing was there.
Zagros, dry, dusty, and treeless, was infinitely preferable. He surveyed it with an eye which was almost benign until the post boat came hooting in. Amidst the usual babel of shouts, greetings, and exhortations, a cargo and a few passengers were brought ashore. The mail bags were carried away. The people scattered to their homes, all save two, one of whom Challoner recognized. It was Tipton of Richardson, with whom he published; most of his work was handled by Tipton and they had always got on pretty well. A chat would have been quite pleasant had Tipton been alone; he had a woman with him, which might entail introductions, pleasant faces and tedious civilities. The two stood arguing on the jetty with a ferocity which stamped them as man and wife. At length the woman went off by herself towards the village and Tipton made for the taverna. Dr Challoner approached. He turned. They agreed that Zagros was an odd place in which to meet.
‘We’ve come over from Thasos for the day,’ explained Tipton, as they sat down outside the taverna. ‘We’re going back on the post boat. My wife thinks she can buy those boring peasant embroideries here, bags and things. They cost the earth in Athens and they’re all supposed to be made in places like this. She thought she might get them cheaper from the women who actually do them. But why are you here? It seems a dreary place.’
He looked startled at hearing that Dr Challoner had come from Keritha. As soon as they had ordered their drinks he said:
‘You’re actually staying on Mystery Island? You were allowed to land?’
‘Of course. Why not?’
‘I’d heard there was some old ruffian living there who never lets anybody land. He sent Spaulding off last summer, with a flea in his ear.’
‘Spaulding? Really?’
This was good news. A flea in Spaulding’s ear was well placed since that frivolous mountebank was reputed to be in the running for a Chair which should, by rights, be the reward of pure scholarship. Spaulding was no scholar, although accepted as such by the ignorant herd. He was a jack of all trades – classicist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and aesthete by turns, dabbling here, dabbling there, and stealing the thunder of his betters.
‘What did he want on Keritha?’
‘To investigate the rumours, I suppose. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you? No? It all sounds pretty cock-eyed to me – mutterings about a survival of some sort. You’ve never come across them?’
‘No,’ said Challoner, and then remembered Alfred’s letter.
He had an impression that some such claim had been made for a landscape and a smile. The smile was, of course, pure rubbish, but the landscape could not be completely ignored.
‘Trees,’ he conceded. ‘There are more trees than you often see in these parts. It’s much greener than Zagros, for instance. I suppose that some natural features might have survived on Keritha which were more common on all the islands before the Turks came.’
‘Spaulding, it seems, met some joker – a waiter in Soho I think – who claims to have been born on Keritha, and spun some lovely yarns. He said they still keep down the population by exposing redundant babies on a sacred stone, and leaving them to the crows. And they bury the dead with five lepta under the tongue as Charon’s fee. They call it pieratikion.’
‘Oh!’
This word startled Dr Challoner.
‘If this Soho oracle meant to pull our learned friend’s leg, he succeeded. Off goes Spaulding. He talks like a native, as you know. The story is that he ran into this old party, who has quite a house there. Some kind of local squire. Poor Spaulding thinks he’s found a friend. He’s given a very good meal. Very good wine. Plenty of cultured conversation. So out he comes with his mission. A stone? Oh yes, certainly there’s a stone but he’ll get to it best by boat, as it’s on the far side of the island. A fast motor launch is put at his disposal. In he gets. Next thing he knows he’s back at Thasos.’
Tipton paused to guffaw and Dr Challoner contributed a few dry chuckles.
‘But is it all a myth? Is there no old party of that sort on Keritha?’
Dr Challoner explained that the old party must have been his uncle, outlined his present errand, and declared positively that there was nothing whatever upon Keritha. He was obliged, however, to admit that his knowledge of modern Greek went no farther than a single word of apology.
‘But there’s a man who went with me who talks it very well. He’s a bit of an ass, but he helped me to get a boat. He’s always jabbering with the natives. If he’d heard anything of that sort he’d have mentioned it, I imagine. Used to be a pupil of mine; a man called Potter.’
‘Not Selwyn Potter?’
‘Yes. You know him?’
‘He used to be in Richardson. We called him Lucky Potter. As you say, a bit of an ass. And then became a super-success. Married an incredibly beautiful wife and fell into a pipe dream of a job in a Swedish glass-house. My wife used to be in Richardson too, and she was always hearing about Lucky Potter from an old woman there, who was rather fond of him for some reason. I never quite believed in the gorgeous wife till I met the
m both, by chance, at the Opera in Paris one night. She really was gorgeous. And he looked intolerably prosperous and pleased with himself. Dress clothes that fitted, and on chummy terms with all sorts of important people. Beaming at everyone, as if going up the ladder had been no trouble at all; he might have been an important person himself. She’d made a wonderful job of him. What she could have seen in him …’
Tipton broke off to observe, without much enthusiasm, the reappearance of his own wife, who was now wandering about the waterfront in search of him. Picking up a newspaper which had been left on their table, he held it in front of his face and continued:
‘However, now that she’s dead, we can’t call him Lucky Potter any more, poor chap.’
‘I knew nothing of all this,’ said Dr Challoner. ‘Dead, is she?’
‘Very sudden, so I heard. Must be a couple of years ago. Upon which he completely cracked up. Went all to pieces and lost his job. What’s he doing now, do you know?’
‘Teaching, so he says.’
‘One might have guessed that.’
Mrs Tipton was a determined woman. She made for the taverna in order to discover what manner of man was hiding behind that newspaper. Dr Challoner was obliged to get up, but he did not have to make pleasant faces for long, since she merely wanted an audience for her grievance against Zagros. No peasant embroideries were going at bargain prices, although she had seen a woman actually at work beside her cottage door. The sum asked was rather higher than that demanded in Athens.
‘Yet I’m sure the shops there don’t pay her what I offered. They must make a profit. If only I could talk Greek I’d have told her what a fool she is.’
‘Pity Potter isn’t along. He could have told her for you. Know what, Ruth? Selwyn Potter is on Keritha, just over there.’
‘Really? Old Mrs Gray would be interested. She’s always saying she’s quite lost touch with him. Oh, I do feel mad about that embroidery.’
‘I told you it was a wild-goose chase. A day completely wasted.’
The Forgotten Smile Page 14