Cretan Teat

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘What has that got to do with it?’

  ‘It has very much to do. Your step-son has been kidnapped because of it.’

  ‘Oh my God, this is like being in a lunatic asylum!’ exclaimed Kathi. Langstreet came and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Never mind the foolish story, my love,’ he said. Directing his gaze at Fraghiadakis, he added, ‘Now that your recitation is over, now you have got it off your chest, let us consider what the plan of action is. Yiorgos, you believe you know where these hostage-takers hide out?’

  The Iron Jelloid captain was glad to speak:

  ‘During the night, we questioned our captive, Vlachos, extensively. At about two-thirty this morning, he admitted that the villains are very probably hiding out in a small village called Frasas. Not an important village for vegetables or philosophy. The village has been deserted, since all inhabitants left for a bigger town, forced by poverty so rife here. Maybe they go to seek for vegetables, maybe philosophy, maybe even work. I suggest we leave here promptly, because we shall have an hour, or maybe two, of rough driving ahead of us, before we reach the place.’

  ‘Do you know this place, Frasas?’

  ‘I know it well. There is a mountain to the south, under which the village shelters. We can survey it from there, and then move in.’

  ‘Good. Kathi, will you please stay here, to be safe?’

  ‘I want to come with you, Archie. Would I be safe here, or would some madmen – plentiful in these parts, it seems – break in and capture me? Please don’t leave me again. Please, Archie!’

  He stroked her face and apologised for getting her into a mess. Of course she could come with them.

  ‘We will not let you get shot, madam,’ said Nikolis Fraghiadakis, condescendingly. ‘It bears no part in our plans.’

  Archie and his wife were in the back of the last vehicle in a line of three. Yiorgos Maderakis, the Iron Jelloid, sat in the front with the driver, wrapped, not only in his thoughts but a large, black, leather raincoat. Although the sun shone as brightly as ever, they were bouncing along at a considerable altitude. The scenery about was as bare as Bodmin Moor. Nothing flourished.

  For all his anxieties for his son and, in a measure, for his wife and himself, Langstreet’s spirits were high. He clutched the shotgun with which he had been issued. He felt in these barren spaces some correspondence with his innermost feelings. It seemed to him that, just as the greatest narrative works leave the impression that nothing worth considering has been overlooked, so a cycle of his life was in the act of being completed: not only was he now traversing a land with allies who had once been his despised father’s enemies, but, in a contrary fashion, he was justifying his German origins by entering a danger zone to rescue his son.

  So he said to Kathi, with a gesture to the wilderness outside the car, ‘You don’t wonder these poor people are so poor…’

  ‘Or so hard,’ she said.

  The Iron Jelloid turned his mighty head to say, ‘Crete is a favoured land for holidaymakers. But for us who live here, whose bare lives are filled with hot Cretan air, we have a position between Europe and Africa, which presents a difficulty. Things are taken from us by geography.’

  ‘What –’ began Langstreet, but Kathi nudged him into silence.

  She needed silence, being filled with contradictory impulses. She was excited by what might possibly happen; she was appalled to be trapped in this crisis. Also, she felt some anxiety regarding her husband, whose normal, rather meticulous and painstaking way through life had given place to what she saw as a carefree cowboy attitude to their adventure. She knew this just by the way he clutched the gun in his lap.

  And she wondered if there were old temptations, something inherited, over which he had triumphed but which still retained their potency.

  Maderakis was muttering as if hypnotised. ‘Ascent is being made to the grand scale. You find no signposts, tavernas, or no toilets towards these heights. We must be soon at Frasas. Later rise the White Mountains of fable, so bleak they are legends, where the world becomes only stone. You certainly don’t laugh at them…’

  The line of three vehicles was now climbing in low gear. The police became more alert. They approached a junction. What might be considered the main road led downwards to a valley. It was labelled with a pointed sign: FRASAS. The convoy took the right fork, whereupon the surface deteriorated.

  Grinding slowly along, they reached an eminence, where Nikolis Fraghiadakis, in the lead vehicle, signalled for them to stop. He jumped out of the car, looking vigorous, warning them to be silent. The men all climbed out, clutching their weapons. Kathi followed, registering the scene with interest.

  She stood watching by the lead car. The men, all but Maderakis, got down on their hands and knees to crawl to a point where the hill fell away. Not so far below them, a number of huts and other buildings clustered. A church was prominent, standing at the end of a short street. Two vehicles were parked by the church, diminished by distance.

  Both Fraghiadakis and Maderakis brought binoculars into play, studying the layout of Frasas, looking for movement.

  ‘Nothing moving down there,’ said Fraghiadakis, quietly. ‘Looks like they’re holed up in the church.’

  ‘Or the house next to the church,’ corrected Tsouderakis, coming up to them. He had not enjoyed being outranked by the other. ‘Keep your voices down – sound carries up here. Yiannis is our best sniper. He will stay here, and will cover our movements. We will drive down and take them by surprise.’

  ‘They will hear our engines.’

  ‘We drive to the road junction, then walk.’

  He turned briskly and summoned Yiannis. Yiannis came up smartly, carrying his carbine. Tsouderakis positioned him at the peak of the hill, where he could have command of the whole village. ‘Any problems, shoot!’ was Tsouderakis’ order.

  At the road junction, leaving the vehicles, they set off briskly on foot, with Archie and Kathi bringing up the rear. Total silence prevailed round about. The sun shone high in a cloudless bowl of blue.

  It had seemed at first to the two foreigners that Frasas represented an oasis of habitation in a waste of nothingness. As they neared the cluster of buildings, this impression faded before reality. The buildings and their outhouses had long been deserted. Dogs, cats, hens, rats, had taken over from humans. The hens that survived had rediscovered the art of flight.

  The vacant homes were skeletal. Their tiles had, in many cases, been blown away in gales. Their doors had been ripped off by itinerants looking for firewood. Their walls had fallen in. The trees planted in the street – there was but one street – had overgrown their welcome, while some had overcome the buildings before which they stood. By the ceaseless activity of worms and things underground, such paving as there was had become uneven. It was safer to walk in the middle of the street.

  When the contingent reached the first house, they huddled to discuss their plan of attack. Those who had looked merely cheerful on the walk from the vehicles now looked grim, and held their carbines close to their chests. Tsouderakis glanced up at the hill to check on Yiannis’ position.

  ‘We don’t want shooting if it can be helped,’ said Tsouderakis. ‘These fellows are not killers, nor are we. They’re amateurs. It is not a war. They’ll give up at the sight of a gun.’

  Captain Maderakis divided the bunch into two. One bunch to move forward behind the houses on one side of the street, one on the other. Kathi to stay behind, safe where she was. She made no protest. Archie nodded his thanks. As the others dispersed, she simply stood in the shadow of the first house, peeping round the corner at the empty street, where a hen wandered, pecking the dust.

  Langstreet went with Tsouderakis and one of the police. They reached the vicinity of the church without trouble, to cluster behind the house next to the church. From the far side of the road, Maderakis signalled that he and his men were in place.

  Maderakis fired a shot in the air, and shouted in Greek for the c
riminals to show themselves.

  When the echoes of the shot died away, silence fell.

  Maderakis fired a second shot.

  A man came running from the side door of the house. Tsouderakis stepped forward smartly, gun levelled, shouting to him to halt. The man stopped at once and raised his hands above his head. The police officer came forward and put handcuffs on him. Langstreet guarded him, pinning him against a wall with the mule of his rifle. He was a poor specimen, thin and dirty, wearing torn jeans and a bandanna round his head to keep his long, greasy hair in place.

  In a minute, another man was rounded up, a tough and intelligent-looking man, angry and shouting threats in Greek. He also was handcuffed, and tied with a length of rope to the first prisoner. Neither prisoner was threatened with any violence once they were secured. Tsouderakis spoke to them in quite a friendly way.

  He then entered the house in which the gang members had been sheltering.

  The other police stood with their guns ready, aimed at the windows and door. A third member of the gang emerged, hands raised above his head. He was aged and downcast. Maderakis took charge of him, handcuffing him to the other two prisoners. In response to the man’s pleas, he gave him a cigarette, a Carter.

  Shortly afterwards, Tsouderakis brought out a dazed-looking Clifford, having untied his legs and hands. He had found Langstreet’s son bound to a chair and otherwise unharmed. A cheer went up at his appearance. Langstreet burst forward and embraced his son. Tears ran down his cheeks.

  As they walked back down the deserted street with their prisoners, Tsouderakis said cheerfully to Langstreet, ‘You see, that is how we like it to be – no bloodshed. These are really not bad men, only desperate because of no work to be had. So you have a bad image.’

  Langstreet was weeping with relief as he hugged his son, and did not reply.

  ‘There were four in the gang. One is missing,’ said Maderakis, looking vaguely about him. He directed one of his men to inspect the church. Fraghiadakis, meanwhile, entered the house in which Clifford had been detained, emerging later in triumph, carrying the typewriter stolen long ago from the garage in Kyriotisa.

  Langstreet’s arm was about his son’s shoulder. For once the rather grim lines of his face had relaxed, as if the pain of being human had been remitted.

  ‘Justice is done, our honour is saved!’ exclaimed Fraghiadakis. ‘Let’s get out of here. It’s a good day’s work, boys!’

  Kathi, still waiting at the corner of a deserted house, felt steel at her throat. A low voice growled something in Greek. Presumably it told her not to move. She was unable to move in any case. She had become frozen with shock. She remained motionless as a hand, hard and rough, came over her shoulder and began to feel her for weapons. The knife remained at her throat as the hand travelled across her breasts, then lower, round her hips, between the crotch of her jeans. It paused there, came up, fumbled at her belt, then dug down into her panties. When the hand was withdrawn, she heard its owner sniffing at it.

  All this took little time. The hand had moved fast. She was spun around, to look up into a young, emaciated, beardless face. It gave a rictus of a smile, briefly revealing tarnished teeth. The youth had a scrubby shock of jet-black hair, evidently dyed, and tied into place by a yellow bandanna. The knife came away from Kathi’s throat, and was transferred to her back. The point pierced her clothes and dug into her flesh. When she gave a shriek of pain, the hand that had explored her came up and struck her in the face.

  The youth then prodded her into action, holding tightly to her upper arm. He moved backwards, in part facing her, in part watching for the police. They were sheltered from sight by the ragged line of buildings. To their other side was the hill. She saw what he intended. She was his hostage, guaranteeing his safety; he was heading for the vehicles parked at the road junction, intent on making a getaway in one of them.

  She dared not call out. It occurred to her that she might trip him, but feared to do so: she would have fallen with him. She hated this vile man, hatred now conquering fear because he had invaded her clothes. Thinking ahead, she tried to plan how she might slam the door of the truck on his legs as he climbed into the driving seat – if she was given the chance. Or maybe there was a loaded police revolver in the front locker…

  The youth moved fast, still part-dragging her, still keeping a wary eye on the line of buildings they were leaving behind.

  They were out in the open now. He turned and began to run towards the parked vehicles, pulling Kathi with him by the arm. It was at this point that his head burst apart. The sound of a shot followed. The black scalp and yellow bandanna flew as a unit, disintegrating as it went. He ran another pace, releasing his grasp on Kathi, then fell to his knees. He sprawled full length on the ground. She stood for a moment, splashed in his blood, hands up to her face. When her legs gave way, she collapsed, close to the ruined body.

  Yiannis the sniper came down from his eyrie on the hill, looking extremely pleased with himself. Nearing Kathi, he raised a finger. ‘One shot!’ he said. ‘Very good one shot.’

  Langstreet and his son were approaching with the police. When Langstreet saw his wife on the ground, he ran to her aid.

  This is presumably what Percy Shelley was on about when he said, ‘We want the imaginative faculty to imagine that which we know’. He also called the imagination ‘the great instrument of moral good’.

  Much of the enjoyment of fiction derives from our unconscious reading of it. The events at Frasas will be interpreted according to temperament – our temperaments having been in part moulded by experience. On the surface, the events just related are moderately shocking. Yet, to stress the positive side of the matter, they depict a father’s love for his son and, in the final sentence, his love for his wife. They show the police behaving sensibly and mercifully to enforce the law.

  On the negative side, we have the horrific business of a young man’s dying. We also see the effect it may have on Kathi’s life (a neglect to which she drew attention earlier in the story). One root cause of these events is the poverty of this part of Crete, of which we shall hear more later (if I ever finish this novel before being arrested on trumped-up sex charges).

  The trick we perform is to strike a balance between positives and negatives. Thus our judgements become developed. We may be aware of none of this while we read; but we are operating on Shelley’s principle, and imagining, putting into imaginative form, that which we know: that death is bad, love is good.

  Our unconscious minds work fast in picking up all such elements while, at the same time, our rational minds continue reading the surface of the story. So we can have it both ways. This episode shows the police in a more favourable light than hitherto. We ‘naturally’ identify with law and order. But surely we also identify to some extent with the criminals. These lawless elements, living in the wild, half-starved, have a background of misery and depravation, brought about in part by war. Does not some fragment of our overfed selves admire them? An admiration prompted here by the puny triumph of the police in recovering a worn typewriter, stolen long since? ‘There ain’t,’ as I remember a woman once said, in an otherwise forgotten B-movie, ‘no justice’.

  But what, you may well ask, what about the writer’s mind?

  I can’t claim control over my unconscious mind. It moves in a mysterious way, its wonders to perform (i.e. in earning me my livelihood as a writer). Yet I see here my sympathy for women; a sympathy so often set aside by other men where men’s interests are concerned. And of course there’s the desolation of Frasas, the ruinous village, to be considered. My novels (New Investments is an example) are rarely set amid sumptuous surroundings, where the prosperous live and move. Mine is the literature of the underdog, hence my sympathy for the underbitch: woman. My deserted village is a symbol of the desertions that afflicted my early life.

  In a way, my later life has been just as bad. But more fun.

  A writer’s life has its consolations, for all that reviewers and c
ritics can do or say. You can give your unconscious a good gallop now and then.

  Back in Geneva, Archie Langstreet immediately took his wife and son to church, to offer thanks to God for their safe deliverance. Afterwards, as they stood in the shadow of the church, awaiting their car, Langstreet remarked to his wife that she had seemed, as he put it, unenthusiastic.

  ‘If we give thanks to God for deliverance from a nasty mess,’ said Kathi, smiling at him, ‘have we not the right to blame him for getting us into the mess?’

  ‘Kathi, that is not the way of Faith.’

  Their car arrived, their chauffeur apologising for lateness, owing to the dense traffic. Once they were in their seats, the vehicle wound its way through the great roaring city and up to the Vielle Ville, where their apartment was situated, looking over a leafy part of the city. Caryatids guarded their doorway.

  As the manservant presented Langstreet with his post, the phone rang. Langstreet was tossing junk mail away when his secretary announced that the local TV station hoped to interview him and his son on the day’s Newsnight.

  ‘I’ll speak to them, Dad,’ Cliff said. ‘Do you want to do it?’

  ‘No. It may sound as if I am criticising the Cretans. You go, Cliff. It was your adventure.’

  Langstreet nodded to Kathi, as if he had gained her assent, and hurried after his secretary into his study. Kathi stood where she was, uncertainly, and then walked slowly into the living room. She walked among the expensive Second Empire furniture, collected assiduously in French sale rooms; it, and the statuary enclosed in glass cabinets, were not greatly to her taste. Nor, she suspected, to Archie’s, since his religious conversion.

  She went to the windows in their deep embrasures and stared out at a row of plane trees, still in the quiet afternoon. She steadied herself with her fingers on the sill. She was trembling.

  She had trembled ever since the incident at Frasas. Although she had meekly accompanied her husband to church, the service had not helped her.

  At length, with a gesture of impatience, she turned away and went into the main bedroom, where she began slowly to unpack her suitcase. Her actions were somewhat lackadaisical. After that, she rang for the maid and asked for coffee. When coffee arrived on a silver tray, she did not at first attempt to pour the liquid; instead, she went to her husband’s study, to look in at him.