by Glen Duncan
You get there, you’ve entered a different time zone. Local population’s less than 2,000. The harbour’s a long crescent inlaid with a single row of jewellery shops and restaurants, with a museum fort at one end and a sprawling cocktail bar at the other. Boats wobble and nod in their moorings. Sunlight bounces off the water and marbles their hulls. The sky is a high, stretched skin of pure ultramarine. Occasionally, stratos clouds. Very rarely, hilarious thunderstorms. In summer the heat and the silence form a tangible conspiracy in the air around you; you can close your eyes and lean on them, drift into blankness or dream. Nothing is required of you. One nightclub in the hills serves touring youngsters and desperate local teens (trapped in paradise, dying to get out), but in the harbour it’s gentle bars with elastic hours and capricious prices where you can talk without ever having to raise your voice. They go in for complex cocktails served like desserts in glasses the size of soup bowls. There’s an open air cinema – a roofless yard with a rattling projector and roll-down screen, where, under the wings of Cygnus and the skirts of the Pleiades, you can watch Hollywood’s spectacles six years after the rest of the world’s stopped talking about them. Intermission’s an indecorous halt at the film’s guessed mid-point (mid-scene, mid-sentence, mid-syllable); then coffee as thick as mercury in plastic thimble cups, a leg-stretch, a Marlboro. All the kids here run around unsupervised into the small hours. Unfortunately, nothing happens to them.
Unsuccessful and inevitably priapic painters (Panamas, nicotine fingertips, boozy breath and artfully uncared-for hair) emigrate here to become big fish in Hydra’s tiny pond. Their skin goes brown, their pleasures simplify, they let themselves go – scribbles of white chest hair over Tiresian dugs, sun-oiled pot-bellies like dark tureens, scrawny knees, languid affairs, the occasional pilgrimage to Athens for worldlier revels. They let the old life of irritated ambition slide away, discover it was an unnecessary encumbrance. Tourists buy their work because they have no idea who they are. It keeps them in silk shirts, cigarettes, whisky.
Hydrofoils come bouncing in as if from outer space every couple of hours, deposit and retrieve their posse of visitors. Or the slower, heftier ferry rolls up with its gradually opening maw and endless disgorgement of gabbling passengers: this is the sort of place tourists stop at for an hour or two, Brummies with attention span deficits – ‘Ent much in the woiya shops, iz there, Rodge?’ – or proprietal New Yorkers with laconic tips on how to reorganize the menus, the donkeys, the language, the island. Tabacs are run, alcoholically, by moustached dads and their chirpy, white-frocked daughters; the dads spend the day smoking, reading the papers, drinking, lifting their grogged heads now and then to bawl or bellow at their girls, who pay not the slightest attention to them, knowing it’s all bluff and bluster, knowing, in fact, that they’ve got these old soaks at their mercy. The dads are no less resigned. Moments of magisterial bullying in front of the customers (whom they suspect aren’t fooled in any case) but what they really want is to stay just as they are, hammocked in afternoon booze, rocked now and then by the brush of a passing daughter’s hip.
And this is what, exactly? A commission from Let’s Go?
Oh boy, I wish it was. I wish it was as simple as that. Listen to this.
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven twenty-three. Calm down.’
‘Yes, I must, mustn’t I. God. Fucking God. How’s your headache?’
‘Coming along nicely.’
‘Are you sure you told them you were bringing me?’
Violet was sitting next to me at the hotel bar on a high stool with her little legs crossed. Short black cocktail dress, black stockings, black high heels, one of which she let hang on her toes. (She’s still not sure whether letting a shoe hang like that is stylish or slutty. She’s still experimenting.) She was so resentful. Resentment hummed around her like a force field, creating – it must be admitted – a terrible sex appeal when it surrounded the milky and generously freckled shoulders, the avocado-sized breasts, the flinty blue eyes and pre-Raph hair. Again, you see, like my darling unmolested Tracy, not at all gorgeous, but irresistibly human, dappled with physical imperfections (the Pricker would have had a field day with Vi’s beige moles and carnelian nodules) and riddled with psychic ones. I couldn’t – I could not – quite shake the image of her in tears on the Tube, nor disentangle it from the one of her endless narcissism before the mirror on the back of her bathroom door. No wonder my head ached.
Which rationalization notwithstanding, I still suspected something darker afoot, some twitch on the perceptual periphery, some edge, some conspiracy, some chill . . .
‘Oh Jesus Christ. Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ. Declan that’s . . . Declan?’
Trent, Harriet, and A.N. Other. Someone you might describe as an exceptionally famous and good-looking movie star. Someone you might describe like that. Me, I’m a bit harder to impress.
‘Did you know? Fucking hell Declan did you know?’
I hadn’t, as it turned out, known he was in town. Violet, bless her, could only contain her understandable excitement by translating it into force and expressing it in a grip on my thigh which, had the next thing not happened, might have seen me publicly unmanned.
As the hairs on the back of my neck rose, and a faint echo of perhaps my host’s voice said this is the way this is the way this is the . . . someone tapped me gently on the shoulder and a voice on the edge of my recognition said: ‘A minute of your time, Mr Gunn?’
I turned. Odd, that turn. An agonizingly slow swivel; seemed to smudge and drag the images – tables, chairs, glasses, faces. Then it was done and I was facing him: a slender, olive-skinned gentleman with a long face, plum-coloured eyes and a sensual mouth, wearing a cream linen suit, blood-red tie, and invested with a presence I hadn’t felt since . . . since . . .
Gunn’s voice surprised me with its smallness and fracture when it crept out into the world. ‘Raphael,’ I said. I felt something funny going on inside, some cramped orchid awkwardly opening. Mild panic, I suppose.
He cleared his throat, smiled over my shoulder at the still apnoeal Violet, then looked back at me and said, ‘Do you think we might have a word in private, old friend?’
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘No, my dear, I’m not kidding.’
‘Stop it with the “my dear” rubbish for a start. The assumption then, these days, is that I’m suffering from some sort of galloping credulity, is it?’
‘Will you at least consider what I’m saying?’
‘It’s a joke. You know what this is? It’s funny, that’s what this is. Hill fucking hairious. And from you of all people. Honestly.’
Poor old Violet. I suppose she exhaled eventually. Catching sight of the Very Famous Movie Star didn’t help, Trent’s shout of ‘Declan!’ across the bar followed by a mimed tipple that gave every indication they were about to join us. Not that I stuck around to find out. I glanced back at Violet from the exit. She’d uncrossed her legs and now sat with her palms gripping her own kneecaps. The shoe that had been hanging – stylishly, sluttishly, howeverishly – had fallen off. The bar steward kept his head down, ostensibly lost in the languid polishing of a champagne flute, but I could see he’d noted my sudden departure and was wondering where that left him re. the shoeless minx with the taut tits and spectacular hair.
Then Piccadilly’s humid night and cavalcade of coughing traffic, Green Park’s gently breathing trees and a high, ravaged and star-pooled canopy of quick-moving cloud. ‘I’ve got something to tell you and something to show you,’ he’d said. ‘But I can do neither here. Will you come with me?’
‘Come with you where for heaven’s sake?’
‘The airport.’
I’d never seen him like this. I’d never seen him like this, dressed in flesh and blood – but that’s not what I mean. What I mean is I’d never seen him assertive. In the old days he’d been . . . Well I mean he was a follower. He wouldn’t elaborate. Only insisted I could trust him. That I could t
rust his love. That he was alone and unarmed. That it would be a short flight. That there was nothing I needed to bring. He had Gunn’s passport in his inside pocket. ‘You’ve put on weight since that was taken,’ he’d said, catching sight of its photo at check-in. If it hadn’t been for a ruthlessly piqued curiosity I’d have ditched him in Duty Free and headed back to the Ritz. But there you are. Me and curiosity.
So the night flight to Athens, the meandering cab-ride down to Piraeus, the last hydrofoil, the island, the sleeping streets, the eucalyptus trees and clutter of hills, the villa. Raphael, blessed archangel of the Throne and ruler with Zachariel of the Second Heaven, is now Theo Mandros – restaurateur, philanthropist, widower, Greek.
‘Jesus Jesus Jesus,’ I said, between cackles.
‘Lucifer please. Some consideration. That’s still painful to me.’
‘You know, obviously, that you’re wasting your time.’
His villa looks east over the Aegean. We sat with tall ouzos and our feet bare against the freshly swept stone of the veranda. Dawn was an hour away. I lit a Silk Cut and wolfed down a chestful of smoke. You do need a cigarette when a transmogrified archangel you haven’t seen for several billion years has just told you that your number’s about to be called.
‘Oh please.’
‘It’s true.’
‘Well, it’s about time.’
‘Lucifer, you don’t understand.’
‘By the book, that’s what I understand. God wins and I go to Hell forever. Big deal. In case anyone’s not been paying attention: I’ve been there. You know? I live there. I can hack it.’
The first sliver of sun was making a moody furnace of distant cloud. The sea waited like a wedding night bride. Raphael moved his feet gently against the floor. The ice in his glass tinkled.
‘It’s not the Hell you know.’
‘Oh right. A different Hell. How many are there?’
‘Lucifer listen to me. Haven’t you been wondering what’s wrong with you?’
‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, my darling. Nothing apart from Everything, obviously. I assume you don’t mean “wrong” in that sense? In the sense of “as opposed to Right” with a capital R?’
‘Have you not, of late –’
‘Oh don’t start with that, will you?’
‘If you knew how hard I had to fight to be allowed to tell you this –’
‘I wouldn’t take such a devil-may-care tone?’
‘You would do me at least the fraternal courtesy of listening to what I have to say. Your existence in eternity depends on it.’
‘Okay, I’m listening,’ I said. I was listening, I suppose – and yet a good deal of my still traumatized consciousness was away with the fairies, as you say. The wrinkled Med’s gentle sway; the bittersweet scent of the olive groves; the stone and cool dust beneath my bare feet; the icy aniseed; the incessant rasping of cicadas; the stirring of a dawn breeze . . .
‘It’s never been you,’ Raphael said – and just for the splittest second, the entire earth and everyone in it seemed to stop breathing. I looked down into my drink. The ice had almost melted. A sparrow appeared out of nowhere and alighted on the balcony. It put its head on one side, examined me, briefly, then whizzed away.
‘I assume you’re going to explain?’ I said.
‘It’s never been you,’ he repeated. ‘Everything you’ve thought you’ve been responsible for . . . Well. You haven’t.’
I thought, How weird to be plunged into darkness every night, to have to wait again for sunrise. Not a wholly unpleasing rhythm to it, though. I chuckled to myself.
‘I can see you’re not taking this seriously.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Really. Sorry. Let me get a hold of . . . It’s my mind, you see. Ever since that ill-advised trip up to Manchester . . .’ I composed myself. It was, however, hellishly difficult to keep stoppered the bubbles of laughter that would insist on tickling my insides.
‘Lucifer. Do you understand me? The evil in the world – your purpose, the thing that’s kept you going has been the thought that you could at the very least get in amongst the Mortals and lead them astray. This has been your identity, has it not? Your essence? Your raison d’être?’
‘I like to think of it as a necessary hobby.’
‘However you’ve thought of it, my dear, you’ve been wrong. The evil that men do – and I know there’s no preparing you for this – is nothing to do with you. Am I getting through to you? Is it becoming clear?’
‘Oh as a bell. What is this? We’re all existentialists now?’
‘I know you’re afraid. Don’t be. Don’t – please don’t – think the laughter in any way disguises the fear. You and I know it doesn’t. The Mortals are free, Lucifer. What they’ve done they’ve done from within themselves. You think you’ve spoken volumes to them. You imagine the transcript of your temptations would fill libraries the size of galaxies – and so they would. But not one word of them has reached the Mortals. Your words, my dearest Lucifer, have fallen on deaf ears.’
‘In which case you’ve got to take your hat off to what they’ve achieved, really.’
‘Please, old friend, believe me. I know this causes you pain. But your time is running out. I begged Heaven to release me so that I could help you.’
‘Help me what?’
‘Make the right decision.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Take the offer of forgiveness.’
I lit another cigarette, chuckling. ‘Raphael, Raphael, my dear, silly Raphael. And have you forfeited your wings to run such a fruitless errand?’
‘Somebody had to warn you.’
‘Well, I’ll consider myself warned.’
‘Nelchael will find no scribe’s soul in Limbo, Lucifer.’
Now that, I’ll admit, did bring me up sharp a bit. But I’m good for nought if not dissemblance. I inhaled, deeply, and blew a couple of muscular smoke-rings. The first light was above the horizon, now. Somewhere nearby someone was leading a horse over the cobbles. I heard a man cough, hawk up phlegm, spit, clear his throat, walk on.
‘I see you’re surprised,’ Raphael said.
‘You do do you? Well you may also have noticed that I’m –’ tipping the last of the ouzo down my tingling gullet – ‘in need of a refreshed glass. Rather good, this ridiculous drink. Those Greeks, eh? Bumming, syllogisms, cracking good yarns . . . Be a good fellow now and pour me another. You have, after all, just given me some distressing news.’
Can’t say how I felt, really. (The writer’s condition, for ever and ever, amen . . .) Certainly there was some deflation. Not the it’s-been-nothing-to-do-with-you nonsense – but . . . Well. You hope, you know? I mean you sort of know you’re dreaming, but still, you hope . . .
‘And what did you think you were going to do with Gunn’s soul if he found it?’ he asked, having returned from the cool interior accompanied by the tinkling of freshly iced drinks.
I did laugh, then, with the honest generosity of the unmasked rascal. ‘Oh I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Get it into Hell, somehow. Back-door it into Heaven. You think you can’t grease the odd palm up there? You live in a dream world, Raffs. In any case it would have left a body vacant. I’m sure even you can see the appeal. The luxury second home and so on? It’s not bad down here, is it? Eh? I mean you’ve a shadow or two around your eyes, Mr Theo Calamari Mandros, if you don’t mind my saying so. Doesn’t look like you’ve spent your sojourn illuminating manuscripts and saving spires.’
He exhaled, heavily. ‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said.’
‘I have.’
‘You seriously thought you could do any of that without Him knowing?’
‘Not really, no. But look at it from my point of view. I mean you’ve got to try these things, you know? There is such a thing as morale building, when all’s said and done. You know, the boys Downstairs would have loved it. I was thinking timeshare, you see?’
‘I doubt, my dear, you intended
to share your treasure with anyone.’
‘Oh you old cynic.’
‘Lucifer please. Will you listen to me?’
‘I am listening. I just wish you’d say something sensible.’
‘Do you know what Judgement Day means?’
I yawned and rubbed my eyes. Pressed my thumb and forefinger either side of the top of my nose in the manner of those anticipating a headache. ‘Would you mind awfully if I took a brief nap?’ I said.
He put his face in his long-fingered hands. ‘What a waste,’ he said, as if to an invisible third party.
‘Look Raffles I know this is all horribly important and all the rest of it but if I don’t get just a little sleep now I’ll be absolutely useless tomorrow. I had thought we might go paragliding.’
For a few charged moments he just looked at me. The sun was well and truly up, now, and I did unequivocally want to get out of it. His face was filled with sadness and longing. It made me feel quite unwell.
He did that man-visibly-containing-his-emotion jaw-twitch thing, then said, ‘I’ll show you to your room.’
It was dark when I woke. Dreams of fire, flashbacks to the first, empty conflagrations of Hell. I’d mumbled myself awake in a sweat. I was lying in the recovery position and had drooled on the pillow. There was an open volume on the bed beside me with a hand-written note of dreadful handwriting:
Dear L,
Thought I’d let you sleep. I have to go to Spetses to see one of my managers. Be back this evening around nine. Help yourself to whatever you need. My clothes should fit you. I know you were upset last night, but I want you to know how good it is to see you again after so long. Please don’t do anything rash, there is still much to be said.