by Desmond Cory
OK. These guys are weirdos. Perhaps they did. But the characters in Seymour’s thing weren’t characters at all, really, or didn’t seem to be. They were real people. Seymour himself. And Derya herself. But there again, they weren’t. Or Seymour wasn’t. Half the time he was anything but real. He was Zeus or was imagining that he was. When he should have been Amphitryon, surely? Since he was the husband … But then according to Hillyer, Zeus was Amphitryon. The two were the same. Except one was effectively impotent and the other very much the opposite. One was a stoned-out writer with a mental block preventing him from writing and so the other was … What? The opposite. Shakespeare, maybe. Hemingway. Lawrence. Anyone you liked. Or admired. Overcoming was the word that Hillyer had used. That had to be how you overcame a writer’s block. You became William Shakespeare for a bit. However briefly.
Dobie looked down at the photostatted sheets on the table and shook his head, as though in an effort to clear it. Ridiculous. It wouldn’t work. Obviously not. It hadn’t worked. No mathematician had ever solved a problem by imagining himself to be Henri Poincaré or Dirac. Life just wasn’t like that. You couldn’t go about things that way.
Yes, but suppose you had a different kind of block. You wanted to murder your wife but you couldn’t. You didn’t have the guts. Or whatever. That would be impotence of a kind, wouldn’t it? And then suppose you stuffed yourself full of crack and persuaded yourself you were someone else, someone of infinite strength and will-power, someone godlike and completely ruthless … and supposing you wore the mask of Zeus …
Whatever that meant …
‘… Oh, my God,’ Hillyer said, his rubicund features screwing themselves up into what looked like a parody of alarm and acute distress. ‘You don’t want to talk about that lot. Just don’t ever even mention them round here. And above all not to Cem Arkin. It’s an unsavoury topic, if you know what I mean.’
Dobie didn’t, and so stared at him. ‘I don’t.’
‘These things haven’t been forgotten, you know. Not in these parts. Surely you can understand that.’
‘I’m afraid I … It’s the title I’m talking about. The Mask of Zeus. It’s what Seymour called this story.’
‘What story?’
‘The last one he wrote. The one he wrote the night when … it happened.’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it.’
‘Well, I found it in his desk drawer, you see. And I’ve read it a couple of times and I just don’t know what to make of it. It seems to be a sort of account—’
‘He called it The Mask of Zeus?’
‘Yes.’
‘How extraordinary. What’s the story about?’
‘It’s hard to say.’ It was, but Dobie also thought it best to be cautious. ‘It’s very … imaginative. But Zeus comes into it, certainly, and that’s why I asked you if—’
‘You said, the mask of Zeus.’
‘Yes. I don’t understand that bit at all. But I thought it was maybe symbolical or something like that.’
‘It’s also,’ Hillyer said, ‘the name of a Greek terrorist group who operated round here in ’74. It’s what they called themselves, anyway. And there was nothing symbolical about them, I can assure you. A gang of murderers, basically. That’s what they were.’
‘Like EOKA?’
‘Oh, there were quite a few of them on the rampage at the time. Arkritas, the EYP … Some worked with EOKA and some didn’t. They worked in different areas is all I know. And the Mask of Zeus, they were the local scourge. They killed an awful lot of people in Famagusta – I’m not sure of the figures and I doubt if anyone is. Cem could tell you all about it but I certainly wouldn’t ask him if I were you because his mother was one of them. Was murdered by them, I mean. At least, that’s what’s always been assumed.’
‘But did Seymour know about this?’
‘Of course. He must have done. Nobody likes to talk about it much but it’s still common knowledge.’
‘Well, the story’s got nothing to do with all that. I mean, it isn’t even mentioned. All those things … Well, 1974 … That all happened years before Seymour ever got to Cyprus. No, there can’t be any connection. How could there be?’
‘Since I haven’t read it, I can’t say. And,’ Hillyer said, ‘I must say I’m mightily surprised to learn that at long last he managed to get something down on paper. The last few months he was getting quite desperate, nothing seemed to be working out for him. And I know that for a fact because he told me so himself. And because Derya … A long story, is it?’
‘No, not very long. But very … what’s the word? … disjointed. I think it’s what authors call a draft but I’d be interested to have an expert opinion on that. I understand that nowadays a lot of writers jump about like that on purpose instead of … you know … saying what they have to say properly.’
‘I’d like to read it, certainly,’ Hillyer said. ‘He did have a certain talent. No question of that. Those two novels he wrote before he came here—’
‘So what went wrong?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You said he couldn’t—’
‘Oh, what went wrong? Yes, well, he was having problems.’
‘He told you he couldn’t get anything down on paper but did he say why?’
‘He said he thought it was wrong to make fictional capital out of political situations because all such situations are ephemeral and he wanted to give expression to some kind of permanent ethical truth.’
‘Eh?’
‘I thought myself he was trying to rationalise his way out of the dilemma. I still do.’
‘But I don’t quite understand—’
‘Like the Cold War, for example. Now it’s over, all the spy writers who used that situation are dead ducks, don’t you think? Except for a few like Le Carré and Deighton who dug a bit deeper and made points about human duplicity and nastiness that will always be true, irrespective of the situation that provoked them. Or let’s say that the truth about them will always be worth examining. So that kind of story doesn’t depend on the situation, you see, it illuminates it, and that’s what poor Seymour wanted to do but he couldn’t see how. Maybe he was just too young. Didn’t have enough experience.’
‘But did he have to write about a political situation?’
‘Cyprus is a political situation. My personal belief is that, as a writer, he shouldn’t have come here. He couldn’t come to terms with it, somehow. He felt he was being strangled here. Asphyxiated mentally.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Oh! Well … You don’t want to make any connections of that kind. I was speaking metaphorically, of course.’
Dobie didn’t feel as though he were being asphyxiated. Pouring himself out another cup of re-heated coffee, he felt rather as though he were sinking up to his oxters in an ooze of metaphysical mud. And that, when you thought about it, was a very odd thing. A detail, certainly, but that was the trouble with all those literary people. Sweeping their grandiloquent theories around their head, they never paid any attention to points of detail. Their souls were above things like, well …
Mud.
Bearing in mind that it had been the middle of the summer. Of course all that fiddle-faddle went way back to pre-Christian times, pagan rites and fertility rituals and goodness knows what, the sun and the shadow … Dobie frowned, sipping at his coffee. This terrible memory of his was a real curse; already he had almost forgotten what Seymour had said. Something about political troubles, yes, and something about the cause of them going much deeper, going right back to primitive beliefs and mythology and so forth. A lot of codswallop it had seemed at the time, but thinking again about what Hillyer had said, well, maybe in the end Seymour had seen a way to break the deadlock, to relate a political situation to a permanent truth, though what the truth was that he’d tried to elaborate wasn’t at all clear. All that was clear, or that seemed to be clear, was that at least for a few hours he’d managed to break through the block, and spil
led words down on page after page, the proof of this lying still in the desk drawer where Dobie had left it. The Mask of Zeus. Maybe, yes, maybe Hillyer should read it. It’d be interesting to know what an expert thought of it. Because, Dobie thought, I can’t make very much of it. Or of its author, either.
In one way, though, it had to be arguably a valuable document. Because unless Dobie had misunderstood it completely – which was very possible – towards the end of its composition its author had broken off in order to commit a murder and then had returned in order to complete it … if it was complete. That was what Seymour’s so-called confession also seemed to imply. And if so, that surely made it something pretty well unique in literature. But where was the political situation that Hillyer had gone on and on about? There wasn’t anything about politics at all, unless indeed the title … But perhaps Seymour, like Dobie himself, hadn’t known about that terrorist group – it certainly seemed a weird name for a gang of Enosists to have hit upon – and had headed his story thus through sheer coincidence.
Hillyer shook his head vigorously, as though once again mildly annoyed at Dobie’s obtuseness. ‘But of course he knew about them. He’s pretty well informed about Cyprus politics – a great deal better than I am, anyway. He married a Cypriot girl, for heaven’s sake. He even wrote a book about Cyprus last year. He let me read a few chapters of it. He didn’t think much of it himself but it was well researched, I can vouch for that.’
‘I think I remember something about a guidebook.’
‘That’s it. He sent it off to his publisher … oh, some time last winter. It should be due out before very long.’
‘Then he can’t have had this block for as long as I thought.’
‘Oh, it was purely creative, it was fiction he felt he couldn’t write. The Cyprus thing – he thought of that as being journalism. Hackwork. To earn some money.’
‘A lot of money?’
‘Oh, no. I wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘But surely it’s all writing, isn’t it?’
Hillyer shook his head again, this time more kindly. ‘Perhaps you’d do best to stick to mathematics, Dobie. You have your way of thinking and I have mine and we have to suppose that these creative chaps have theirs. I think you’re going to find it pretty difficult to get on to Seymour’s wavelength, if that’s what you’re trying to do.’
‘Derya,’ Dobie said, ‘was a mathematician. And a promising one at that.’
‘Yes, she was, and that was probably part of the problem. Though in their case it was rather the other way round.’
‘What way round?’
‘I always felt he was doing his best to get on to her wavelength and failing to do it. Mainly because he didn’t believe she was capable of getting on to his wavelength. And she knew that, of course. And resented it. As well she might.’
Dobie thought with a sudden sense of shock, That’s pretty much what I feel about Kate. And pretty much what I suspect she thinks about me. He paused with the coffee-cup halfway to his mouth.
And further reflected: Of course we don’t really quarrel. Not really quarrel. But unquestionably we’re … let’s say we’re both aware of the seeds of future dispute being planted in our minds. And maybe getting over-anxious about it. Twiddling each other’s tuning knobs too quickly and getting irritated by the constant crackle of static. It was hard to see, though, what you could do about it. How to get through the block, if that’s what it was. He sipped at the coffee.
It had got cold again.
All this ratiocination. It was bad for you. He should, he thought, be doing something practical.
He got to his feet.
The Seymours’ car, an unassuming Renault 12 similar to Hillyer’s, was still in the garage, collecting dust. The police or someone had removed the ignition key but the car doors had been left unlocked, permitting Dobie to carry out his own inspection. The light bulb in the garage was weak and inadequate but he found a surprisingly powerful torch in the glove compartment of the car and with it was able to find what he had half expected to find on the surfaces of the brake and clutch pedals. Or to detect traces of it, anyway. Unfortunately, having successfully detected it, he couldn’t see that it signified anything in particular. Detect? Who’s kidding who, Dobie? Or whom, as Kate would say?
Kate was a detective, of a kind. A police pathologist, anyway. I’m not a detective, Dobie thought. So why am I making like one? A maths master in exile, that’s what I am. Just plain inadequate, like that overhead light bulb.
Seymour, it seemed, had felt the same way. Words were no good either. Something happened to the vowel sounds and what you wrote down didn’t make sense. Signified and signifier got all mixed up. It was a dog’s laugh.
Unconsoled, Dobie went to his bedroom to change his yellow and mauve silk pyjamas for a slightly less resplendent sports shirt and black cotton trousers, a little crumpled from their sojourn in his suitcase. It was hot outside, but not too hot for a pleasant Saturday morning stroll.
Tuzla Gardens. The senior staff compound. The houses had gardens all right, Dobie’s included, but after four rainless months of high summer there wasn’t much left in them and the earth in the flower-beds was dry and parched. A few tall eucalyptus trees, however, gave convenient shade as Dobie passed Cem Arkin’s house and Ozzie Ozturk’s, emerging then into the glare of the sun as he walked past Berry Berry’s residence, the last in the line. He could hear music coming from a radio somewhere but nobody seemed to be about.
He looked briefly up towards the sky and, perceiving no lowering rainclouds in the vicinity, made his way down the path to the beach.
It was a narce beach, of course. Soft white gently yielding sand, waves lapping peaceably against the shoreline. Grey-green rocks rose above the surface of the sea some twenty yards out, forming a natural lagoon, a fine and private place for bathing and allied activities. Derya might well have come here, Dobie thought, to indulge her penchant for naturism. Then again, she might not. According to Zeynep, the army base down the road had offered alternative attractions. Five or six miles down the road and further up the coast. You could see the army buildings from the beach, a gaggle of low flat-roofed huts similar to the one where Seymour was now incarcerated and behind them a huddle of derelict buildings. The village … What was it called? Nobody lived there now, anyway. The Turkish army had taken the place over. Nobody lived there because of some wartime disaster or other. It was hard to imagine wartime disasters affecting a place like this. It was hard to conceive of bombs bursting here, shells exploding, machine-guns firing. You couldn’t easily imagine anyone being murdered here, either.
‘Well, I always said that one day she’d come home late once too orphen and that’s just wot happened. A terrible crarm of course but in a way she arst for it.’
‘She orphan, I mean often stayed out late, then?’
‘Ooooooblimey yes. Well after midnart lark as not. My old man’d be forever staying up for her to get back before closing the gates; yeh, she’d always be the last to get in Friardays, we all knew that.’
‘Was it a Friday when …?’
‘Course we all knew where she woz as well. Down the army base with the officer boys. Sure it was a Friarday. Nobody else went out at all and so nobody else came back. ’Cept for ’imself and that was free hours earlier.’
‘Seymour?’
‘Mr Seymour. Yus. Nobody else was ’ere that nart who wozzen suppose to be ’ere and Ali could tell the cops that for a certain fack.’
‘They were asking him questions about it, were they?’
‘’Im and me. They ’ad to, see? It’s their job.’
Dobie strolled on down to the water’s edge and stood for a while gazing at its blue and barely ruffled surface. The tide, such as it was, was receding, leaving the sand where he now stood smooth and dark with moisture. After a minute or two he turned and went back above the highwater mark; stopped to raise his feet cautiously and (naturally) each in turn, peering downwards at the soles of hi
s shoes. Traces of dampness; a few grains of sticky sand; that was all. That was all that anyone would have expected.
He climbed the narrow path back to the compound. To each side of the path and around the six houses the maquis grew, fenced back by strands of wire, thick and seemingly impenetrable. Thorn bushes, scrub, acacia, mimosa and a few taller holm oaks pushing their tops above the tangle. Just possibly some young and active person could force a passage through that mass of undergrowth and gain entrance to the gardens that way: an army officer, for example. But he’d have to be pretty thick-headed as well as rhinoceros-skinned. Whyever should he? And in the dark, too? Moonlight, yes, apparently; but moonlight could never have penetrated those thickets, those dark dingles. Dobie shook his head and plodded on.
As he reached his front door he heard the telephone ringing.
And this time it was.
‘Kate? … Gosh, I’m glad to hear your voice.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Nothing. I’m just glad, that’s all.’
‘Come on, Dobie. What’s up?’
‘Well, when I said nothing, I didn’t mean nothing, not exactly.’
‘I thought as much. All right. So just what kind of a mess have you got yourself into now?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ Dobie said.
7
When Dobie had concluded his somewhat convoluted account of recent events on the isle of Aphrodite and shortly afterwards had rung off, Kate gazed for a while out of the window, seeing there the smooth pearly sands of a tropical beach, a stretch of invitingly sparkling sea, and in the foreground a white table-top upon which a frosty daiquiri had been no less invitingly placed. Elsewhere, there were palm trees laden with coconuts, gaily coloured beach umbrellas and the like. This vision eventually cleared to reveal beyond the raindrop-misted window-pane the customary appurtenances of a wild Welsh September day: the grey blank frontages of neighbouring houses battened down against the approach of winter, leaf-stripped branches swaying anxiously in a howling gale, the occasional slate whizzing past as the wind lifted it off her roof. Sometimes when you hear about all these goings-on in foreign parts, Kate thought, you feel it’s good to be British. Sometimes. But not very often.