Decision at Delphi

by Helen Macinnes

  And Strang? A most regrettable oversight. But who would have taken Strang seriously? Americans, by the very nature of the soft fat they collected around their brains along with all their comforts, their total ignorance of historical meanings, their delusion that anarchists were either comic little men plotting nothings in a dark cellar or misunderstood cranks—how could Americans be taken seriously in a world of real politics? One of their presidents had been killed by an anarchist. How many had troubled to find out more about the anarchist’s friends, about the group whose meetings he had attended regularly in America? Had no one bothered to notice that, from the same group, other men had gone back to their native Europe, with assassination as their purpose? Had no one wondered who had planned and financed it all? Or perhaps Americans assumed that penniless men, sixty years ago, could easily afford to go travelling through Europe. The English were just as incredible. There had even been a battle with anarchists right in the heart of London itself: the siege of Sydney Street. But people had been deliciously eager to explain it all away as a fantastic story concocted for political advantage. The arsenal in the house on Sydney Street, the men who had met there constantly, the hours of violence when they were trapped, only seemed to rouse little more than a sneer at Churchill and his vote-getting mind.

  Yes, the Americans and the British were alike in some things. They were surface people, skimming over past history, picking out the interpretations that pleased them, never digging deep for the truths that could warn them When they found something unpleasant, they would forget it within six months. They even prided themselves on not remembering; forget and forgive were so much easier. They evaded serious ideas, unless they approved of them. The British put their faith in compromise, the Americans in doling out largesse; by wheedling and bribing, they thought they could avoid ever having to answer the only real question in life: Who, whom? But they had never been conquered, never been occupied, never had their men carted away as slave labourers, never witnessed mass rape, never watched their children being turned into their enemies. That was their great weakness: they had merely existed while others had survived. How fortunate for the cause of world revolution, with all its varied forces remembering the bitter taste of their survivals, that the two most powerful nations in the Western clique should have had no experience in Realpolitik. It would not be difficult to bury them, not when they helped so obligingly to dig their own graves.

  And did one of those incompetents think he could drift into my life, Christophorou thought, and wreck it? For the name of Alexander Christophorou, his convenient way of life in Athens, were now both dead. So was the name of Odysseus. Even Metsos, with its close relationship to Demetrius Drakon, was dying. But the discovery of names and identities was not a disaster; it was troublesome, annoying, time-consuming to have to build up new ones, a totally unnecessary waste of energy and planning. There was a small score to be settled with Mr. Kenneth Clark Strang.

  Xenia came back into the room. It was ten minutes before noon. He has recovered his good temper, she thought, relieved. What she had to tell him would need a very calm Metsos to hear it.

  “Yes?” he asked. He had the radio turned on, its volume as low as possible.

  “I have something to report,” she said, and glanced at the radio, which made her raise her voice more than she thought was discreet.

  He looked at his watch. “Be quick then.” He turned down the radio to a whisper.

  “Anastas has just come in to buy tomatoes.”

  “Yes, yes.” What idiots women were!

  “He had a message from Sparta. His man there reports rifle shots and two or three explosions, up on the mountainside. Just before dawn.”

  “My God, the fools! Who told them to use rifles or grenades?” They would have the police searching all that stretch of mountains. In those last few months, Sideros had hidden an arsenal of weapons around that farmhouse near Thalos.

  “Anastas says his man went up toward the farmhouse, early this morning. But he dared not go near it. There were soldiers there.”

  So they had found the farmhouse. And there went another of Sideros’s ideas. Nothing Sideros had planned had gone right.

  “There were soldiers in Thalos, too. Our man spoke to a girl working in the fields near the road. She said men had raided the Kladas house and tried to kill Myrrha Kladas and her brother.”

  He rose, looking at her sharply. Now he understood why rifles and grenades had been used. But clumsy, clumsy. Sideros and his men had always been too quick to rely on open violence.

  “They were not killed. But two of our men were shot; and one was blown to pieces when he fell from the roof with a live grenade in his hand.”

  “What about the shepherd called Levadi?”

  “He was taken away.”

  “And the American?” His voice became bitterly sarcastic. “He walks free, I suppose. Their bullets were too valuable to put one in his back?”

  Xenia bit her lip nervously. “He is free.”

  Christophorou gripped the back of the chair. “Get back to your shop!”

  She hesitated instinctively as she stood over the fallen breakfast tray, then retreated quickly as she saw the look in his eyes.

  He turned the radio up to a volume he could hear. Two minutes to go. The small annoyances could be put aside, meanwhile. The big things were to come.

  24

  Strang woke, with the afternoon sun streaming through the small window of the small low-ceilinged room to fall directly over his face. Or perhaps the footsteps at the door had pulled him out of sleep. Or perhaps he had slept his fill. He sat up slowly, rubbing his head, stretching his back, and smiled at Myrrha Kladas.

  “How’s your head?” he asked. Her bandage was neater now.

  “A cut—that is all. I was at the top of the staircase when the explosion happened. And then I fell. Bruises.” She rubbed her left arm and side.

  So that was all, he thought, admiring her equanimity; two inches lower and that splinter would have blinded her. “And how is everything else?”

  “It looks better. We have cleaned away the dust and broken pieces. We shall soon rebuild the room. And my neighbours will help me finish the ploughing.”

  “So you’ve got neighbours now?” He got up, bending his head to avoid grazing the rough beams. There was no other furniture in the room beyond the three straw mattresses on a low wooden platform.

  She nodded happily.

  “Took them a long time to discover they were neighbours, didn’t it?”

  “But they had to wait and see,” she told him earnestly. A flicker of pain crossed her face. “I could have been another Levadi.”

  So, thought Strang, as he followed her down the steep wooden stairs of this house which had given him shelter, into a room, barely furnished, empty of people now, Steve had accomplished much more for his sister than he had ever dreamed of in Naples. He need not worry about Myrrha: she had her friends here, after all.

  “The others are still in the fields,” she told him. “I came back to waken you because you said you wanted to telephone. You have a bus to catch.”

  “That’s right.” He laughed, standing at the door in the warm sunlight, feeling the strength of those ten miraculous hours of solid sleep. But instead of looking after Myrrha, it seemed as if she were looking after him. “Where is Petros?”

  “He went into Sparta. There will be much talk in the coffee-houses.” Her smile said, you wouldn’t want to cheat him of that, would you? “The bus to Sparta passes over the bridge about five o’clock,” she warned Strang.

  “I’ll telephone and get back as quickly as possible.”

  “There is no need to hurry. All is well here.”

  “I must telephone,” he explained awkwardly. “I have to let someone know—”

  “Of course.” She looked surprised that he should even try to excuse himself. “Petros told me about your girl.”

  “I’ll bring her to see you, one day soon,” he promised. “Where
can I wash?”

  “There is water here.” She gestured to a bucket filled to the brim.

  “I’ll just wash wherever all the men wash,” he told her. Here, every drop of water had to be carried. So she took him outside and pointed to a clump of trees on the hillside. “And I’ll get something to eat in Sparta,” he added.

  “Oh, no!”

  “Yes,” he said. Here, every slice of bread had to be counted. “I must not miss that bus, or else I shall have to walk all the way to Sparta. Now, you get back to your friends.”

  She drew the long scarf over her head and twisted it across her mouth. She clumped away in her heavy boots, the long black skirt flapping just above her bare ankles. She turned to give him a wave, a smile from the brilliant dark eyes.

  He went back and found his coat, neatly folded across a chair, took out his razor and toothbrush, a handkerchief for a towel, and set out for the men’s room.

  He waited forty minutes for the high, narrow bus, which was less than might have been expected from the pyramid of suitcases, parcels, and baskets, covered by tarpaulin strapped over its top. For every few miles, someone seemed to get out, or come in, and the tarpaulin had to be unstrapped, the bundles carefully inspected and selected and replaced and recovered and restrapped in place.

  It had not been lonely, waiting on the road. There had been an old woman, sitting on a donkey, with both feet dangling against its right flank, while her hands spindled wool at lightning speed. And a boy with a donkey practically hidden under a beehive of long thin twigs. And a man ploughing the steep field near the bridge with a wooden plough and rope harness on his donkey. And a woman driving her donkey uphill, with cans of drinking water from a spring. And all had spoken to him. There seemed to be a polite formula, a duet of question and answer, after the opening agreement about the weather.

  “Fine day,” Strang would say.

  “Fine day. Where do you come from?”

  “America.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “New York.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.” (This drew a look of sympathy mixed with disappointment. Now there were no children to discuss.)

  “You have sisters and brothers?”

  “Two sisters.”

  “Are they married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where do they live?”

  And so it went on, right down the line as far as his age, what did he work at, what money did they pay in America? And it ended with a look, far off into space, while the questioner considered all these mysteries. Then, with a parting agreement on the view, the heels were drummed on the donkey’s flanks or the plough harness roped around shoulders, and Strang was left with the snow-topped mountains.

  It wasn’t lonely in the bus, either. Questions and answers, questions and answers. The Platonic dialogue was the accepted form of conversation.

  Sparta was set down in the middle of the broad valley, so suddenly that one minute the bus was in the country and next minute in the town. It wouldn’t be difficult to find his way around here, Strang decided. It didn’t seem a large town; the dusty streets were straight and wide-edged with low white houses. The central blocks had shops and cafés and the usual newspaper kiosks. There were some trees, many peasant women with scarved heads, men in dark suits of heavy wool, and schoolboys in black-visored student caps which reminded Strang of old Heidelberg.

  The bus rattled to its final stop, the passengers eased their arms free from a shoulder there or a head here, and got out. Strang followed, glad of the cool fresh air and the end of his temporary paralysis. One good thing about being so tightly packed into a bus: when it plunged downhill or around a curve, everyone tilted together. No one could possibly jolt around separately.

  “Hallo!” said Petros, thumping him on the back. “Looking for a telephone?”

  It took a little time, but it was worth it. Cecilia’s voice came through, fresh and clear. “Darling—” they both began, and then stopped and laughed. “Are you all right?” they asked in unison, and again laughed. And after that, they proceeded normally.

  “Everything is fine,” Cecilia assured him. “I slept and slept. And you?”

  “Everything is fine. Except that I shan’t see you tonight; not until tomorrow.”

  “I know,” she said. “Bob Pringle has just been around to see Steve. They’ve put him in the hospital. His feet were a mess, Bob says. Poor Steve! I’ll go and see him tomorrow.”

  “Be careful now!”

  “Of course! But we can stop worrying. Have you seen the newspapers?”

  “I don’t think they’ll hear that news out here until tomorrow.”

  “Then just a moment—I’ll read you three little items. Bob Pringle sent this paper around just half an hour ago.” There was a pause, a rustle, background voices. “Bob had three translations made for me. I still don’t understand them, though. But perhaps they are really for you. Ready?”

  “Go ahead.” Her excitement was contagious. He gave a reassuring nod to Petros, who was lounging near him, keeping a stern eye on a group of curious children and a fringe of interested adults. Everything from bus rides to telephone calls seemed to have a communal aspect in Sparta.

  She read him the three pieces of translation. The first was quite extensive. It said that the opening of the stretch of new highway now under construction between Yugoslavia and Greece had been postponed only one hour before the ceremony was to take place. Fortunately, the crowds had been dispersed before two explosions had sent a rockslide of serious dimensions on to the platform where Marshal Tito would have presided. The Marshal, himself, was in Belgrade, where a slight indisposition had prevented him from making the dedicatory speech. The explosions were, of course, accidental. But it was reported, without confirmation, that many arrests had been made in various districts of Yugoslavia, including Belgrade itself.

  The second said, more tersely, that the English authorities in Nicosia, Cyprus, had cancelled today’s Independence Celebration, without any explanation, and had blocked off all streets leading to the cathedral. Protests from the Cypriot majority were now being made.

  And the third report, from Istanbul, was very brief. The Turkish government had detained the yacht Medea in Smyrna harbour.

  Cecilia asked, “Is that really good news?”

  “The best,” he told her.

  “Bob Pringle says the Athens radio has been announcing these facts all day since noon. So they must be important. But it’s funny—if I were back in New York, I’d probably never even give these small paragraphs a second glance. Would you?”

  “Probably would never have noticed them at all,” he agreed. Or, if I had, I might have drawn the wrong conclusions: more Yugoslavs arrested, the liberal element were being silenced again; the English were being stupid, once more, in Cyprus; the Turks were just naturally suspicious.

  Cecilia said, “We’re celebrating tonight. Champagne and the Beaumonts for dinner. I wish—” She checked herself. Why mention the impossible?

  “I wish, too,” he said.

  She laughed. “Will you always read my thoughts?”

  “What worries me is that you’ll learn to read mine.”

  “Darling, I love you, I love you—”

  He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “And I adore you.”

  “That was so tender I could scarcely hear it.”

  He grinned. “Tender? You should see the audience I’ve collected around me.”

  “What?”

  “Yes. Cramps my style a little. Can you imagine what I’d like to say to you?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Good. We can have a demonstration tomorrow. Ask Bob to see that a car really does get out here at dawn, will you? Well, by ten o’clock, at least. Darling, my love—”

  “All my love,” she said.

  He put down the receiver.

  “All is well?” Petros asked.

  “All is well.” He looked at the small gro
up of schoolboys gathered near him. “Or isn’t it?”

  “Oh, they’re learning English at school nowadays. Wanted to hear how it sounds when the words are all strung together.” He took Strang’s arm. “Now what?” he asked.

  “First, I’d like some breakfast.”

  Petros’s face became a polite mask.

  “And next, we’ll go shopping for a donkey. Or perhaps a goat. Which will Myrrha need most?”

  The frozen mask managed to keep its shape for a few seconds more, and then Petros’s amusement won. “Well,” he said at last, “you will be remembered for a long time in Sparta.” The man who telephoned all the way to Athens to tell a woman that he loved her, who ate breakfast at seven o’clock in the evening, and then went shopping for a donkey. “Yes, they know everything about you. That was quite a bus ride you had. You live in New York, you are twenty-five years old, you are not married, you have fifteen children.” The laughter rippled over his face again. He added, with just a hint of reprimand, “They believed you.”

  “I must have got my Greek mixed up,” Strang suggested with a grin.

  “Po, po, po, po!” Petros said.

  The restaurants were easy to find. They all seemed to be long, narrow stretches of basement rooms reached by a few steps, up which billowed clouds of deep-blue smoke and a heavy smell of oil. Strang looked at the series of belching clouds along the street. “A café will do,” he said. “Bread, coffee, and a hunk of cheese.”

  That suited Petros better for some reason. Twice, he had glanced over his shoulder, most casually. “Yes, yes. We shall go and tell John where to find us when he stops work.” He led Strang up a street whose every basement seemed to be occupied by shoemakers’ shops: deep-down, dark, windowless caverns, reached by a precipitous flight of steps from the narrow sidewalk, where men sat and stitched and hammered. At the bottom of the eleventh flight of steps, they found John working with three other men under a single naked light bulb. He looked up from his last, gave a restrained smile with a mouth full of nails, raised his hammer in a friendly salute to Strang, and listened to a quick brief burst of words from Petros. “That is settled,” Petros told Strang, turning him around to climb up into the street again. “We’ll see him later.”