Cretan Teat

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Who owns the lane?’ Langstreet asked.

  ‘I do. It is in my family for generations. And the land around, including the olive groves.’

  ‘Ah ha,’ said the young architect. ‘Then there is not a problem. We build a good coach park on the hill, by the main road, and no one has to walk down the lane at all.’

  ‘How do they get to the chapel?’ Langstreet asked.

  The architect had not thought of that. ‘By a monorail?’

  The two older men looked at each other. They started to laugh.

  In the silence that followed, fingers drummed on tabletops.

  Finally, Langstreet said, ‘At least we could resolve one of the difficulties by building a coach station on the hill, by the main road. There can be toilet facilities – ’

  ‘A souvenir shop?’ suggested the architect.

  ‘Possibly, yes. What do you think, Paskateris?’

  ‘There is an insuperable objection. I own the land – that’s true – but a clause in the family deeds makes it impossible for me ever to build on the land. It has to be preserved intact, I regret.’

  ‘I need to make some phone calls,’ Langstreet said. ‘Let’s meet again tomorrow.’

  Constantinou asked if he might be with them again. He had some good ideas.

  When Langstreet walked to the mayor’s offices next morning, he observed some of the changes to Kyriotisa. Two coaches had arrived from Hania. They were parked in the main square. Their drivers smoked contentedly in the sun. The tourists decanted from the coaches were not having the best of times. No taxis or cars were to be rented; such as there were had already left.

  The tourists standing about unhappily were faced with a two-mile walk to the Agia Anna chapel. Or they could stay in Kyriotisa to savour its limited delights.

  Carpenters working on two shops along the main drag were busy changing their facades. One of them already sported a sign: OPNING SOON: THE PARTHENON COFEE PARLOR. Tourists stood in the road nearby, as if waiting for the Parthenon to open.

  Paskateris and Constantinou were already talking together over coffee when Langstreet entered the offices. Constantinou cordially offered Langstreet a Carter.

  When the preliminaries were over, the mayor said, ‘I can sell you the land at a reasonable price. Then you can build on it. The restriction is circumvented because you are a foreigner.’

  ‘We can have something grand here. A new cinema would be best. I will draw up plans,’ Constantinou announced.

  Langstreet became very serious. He explained that he was now retired, after a busy public life. If he bought the land – even if he bought it very cheaply – he would be buying responsibility for which he was unprepared. He regretted that he was not prepared to get involved to such an extent.

  The discussion continued for an hour, before the mayor had to leave on other business. He apologised for the interruption, but would be back later. Meanwhile, in a courteous manner, he thanked Langstreet again for returning to his, the mayor’s, impoverished town, and for his noble concern in this matter of merely local importance.

  He said that Constantinou would keep Langstreet company until he returned early in the afternoon. But Langstreet preferred his own company, considering the architect a silly man, and his idea of building a cinema a ridiculous proposition. He whiled away his time walking about the streets of Kyriotisa until they were all familiar to him and he knew personally at least half-a-dozen skulking hounds.

  The sun was already lost behind the mountains when Mayor Paskateris returned, full of apologies for the delay.

  ‘We can settle this matter between us,’ he said. ‘Preferably over a meal,’ he added, ‘for which the department will be honoured to pay.’

  They went to a small restaurant where, after voluble consultation with the owner in his kitchen, they decided upon a kghidtha, a dish of goat’s meat, served with tomato sauce and a salad. Paskateris ordered a bottle of retsina, with a glass of which he toasted Langstreet.

  ‘Thanks to you,’ he said, ‘there is a chance that this poor town may get more securely on every map.’

  They were some way through the meal when Takis Constantinou entered the restaurant. His expression was dark and sulky. He said in sarcastic tone, ‘I did not receive your note that we were to meet again.’

  ‘The mayor was late,’ said Langstreet, with a hint of apology.

  Paskateris was more effective. Waving Constantinou into a chair at the table, he said bluntly, ‘I cannot persuade Mr Langstreet to enter into our future plans.’

  ‘I can’t become involved,’ said Langstreet, still apologetic, ‘as I have explained. Except to wish you well. I have business in England.’

  Constantinou beckoned the manager to bring him a glass. When it came, with a nod at the mayor, he poured himself some retsina from the bottle.

  A silence was broken by the architect. ‘If it’s a question of money – ’

  ‘It is not a question of money,’ Langstreet said firmly. ‘I would like to do what I can for Kyriotisa, which has so many sad memories, but I cannot undertake the responsibility…’

  ‘If it was a question of money, what I was going to say was, if we built a cinema here you would probably get your investment back in under two years.’ Constantinou leant forward to make this announcement, looking very shrewd at the same time, while pointing a finger ahead to indicate the direction of his idea. ‘An open-air cinema.’

  ‘No cinema,’ said Langstreet. ‘I must be firm. It is a holy ikon people come to see. They come in reverence. They want no distractions from cinemas. A small replica shrine, maybe, standing perhaps at the entrance to the coach station.’

  After a tense silence, the mayor said, ‘You cannot make any such reservations, Mr Langstreet, unless you are a partner in the use of the ground. You must appreciate that.’

  Langstreet nodded. He went over to the window and gazed into the gathering dusk.

  Last night, he had had an hour’s phone discussion with his financial advisors in London. They had recommended him not to make any investment in this poor part of the world.

  Yet he felt a commitment. He was a wealthy man. He could change the way these people lived! Turning, he told the mayor that he must speak to his wife in Geneva. He dialled from a stifling restaurant kiosk. A message awaited him on the answerphone. Kathi had left for London.

  He phoned their apartment in Harrington Gardens, Kensington.

  When Kathi answered, he began to discuss with her the possibility of purchasing the land outside Kyriotisa, going into some detail about what could be done with it to make access to the Agia Anna shrine easier. She listened in silence for a while.

  When, finally, Langstreet’s exposition ceased, Kathi said:

  ‘I have only two questions to ask. The first is this: why should you involve yourself further in the affairs of that dreadful part of the world, where we had so much trouble, where I nearly got shot? It has nothing to do with the case against Nentelstam. That’s all over. You’re retired. Why have anything more to do with Kyriotisa?’

  He stumbled over his reply.

  ‘I must do this, Kathi. There’s a moral imperative. Kyriotisa was once prosperous. The war ruined it. Now a growing tourist trade gives it an opportunity to revive. I must help that process. I feel I owe it to them.’

  ‘You owe them nothing. The decline of Kyriotisa’s prosperity began long before the war. It’s the family connection with the wartime invasion that worries you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no, not really. I mean, we saw how desperate – ’

  ‘Archie, dear, you’re trying to deceive yourself. You’re still trying to prove there are good Germans. Even though you are not a German. You have a British passport. You do not have to ruin yourself to prove anything.’

  She heard him groan. ‘I’m still German at heart, Kathi. Are you not still a Romanian Jew at heart? Isn’t that in part why I love you?’

  Silence over the phone. She said in a cold voice, ‘We are not di
scussing love at present.’

  She believed she detected a slight quiver in his voice when he said that he did love her.

  ‘We should not be speaking of these matters over the phone. They cut to the heart.’

  She paused to control her voice. ‘We should be sitting together so that we can hold each other’s hands and look into each other’s eyes for the truth. Can’t you understand I have no guilt about being a Hungarian Jew? Whereas you still feel guilt about being – having been – having had a father who… Oh, shit… Give it up, Archie. Come back to Kensington and let’s be reasonable and forget all about Crete.’

  ‘I can’t, my dearest. I must stay with what we have begun. After all, this was your idea – ’

  She rang off.

  He sat by the phone, resting his brow in his hand. His forehead dripped sweat in the enclosed booth. He imagined his wife, sturdy in her dark dress. He saw her physical presence, which embodied her clever, logical mind, her independence, and her loyalty. His mind ran back and forth like a bear in a narrow cage.

  After five minutes, he rang Kathi again.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You told me you had two questions to ask me. What was the second question?’

  She was silent. Then she said, ‘I am about to go out to a concert, Archie, and am already late.’ Her detached tone reached him in his silent hotel room. ‘I did not wish to ask this second question of you. That I had it in mind proves I had already guessed what your answer to my first question would be. My question is quite practical. What is the point of laying out money to construct this coach station and so on when people – flocks of people, it may be – will still have to walk down that lane we walked, two kilometres in the heat, only to find at the end of it a pokey little chapel which will not hold more than half a dozen people at a time?’

  ‘Well, I suppose they’ll have to form a queue. Pilgrims are used to waiting.’

  ‘And suppose it rains?’

  ‘We could supply umbrellas.’

  ‘And the ground turns to mud? Clogs? And the lane to a river? Boats?’

  ‘We could provide shelters.’

  ‘Nonsense, Archie! How long are people going to put up with that, with standing in an olive grove, waiting to get into that rotten little cattle shed? The trade will die as soon as it begins.

  ‘For God’s sake, if you must go into this, then think financially. Your investment – our money – will be lost. You’ll just have ruined the countryside. Do think about these things. Come back to London and think about these things. Now I must dash away! I’m halfway to the door!’

  Langstreet left the booth, mopping his face. He returned to the meal table, where his dish, for which he had little appetite, was growing cold.

  He addressed the mayor and the architect. ‘I am prepared to invest in such tourist amenities as will contribute to Kyriotisa’s finances. That is to say, if you will meet my conditions.’

  The mayor mumbled something encouraging and accepted one of Constantinou’s cigarettes.

  ‘What is needed is an overall plan, not just piecemeal thinking. There is a way in which we can facilitate conditions for tourists – for pilgrims – which will be profitable for us investors and the neighbourhood.’

  When Archie had outlined his plan, Mayor Paskateris rose to his feet.

  ‘It is a brilliant plan. I see everything in my eye’s mind. We shall follow it to the letter.’

  He held out his hand.

  While these great affairs were coming to fruition, affairs on which the prosperity of a region and perhaps the faith of the religious depended, I was still having to live out my life in the un-narrated hinterlands of my novel.

  My love affair with Ingrid caused me some guilt, as well as some apprehension; for if Sven found out about us, he would probably have attacked Ingrid. What else do you expect? I moved to a room in a small hotel in Kastrup. Ingrid visited me there, and we talked about poetry and the fate of the world.

  Ingrid told me the reason for her hatred of her husband. She had a friend, Loretta Bouillard, a French woman who had worked in the French film industry. Loretta had come to her one day with some pictures she had downloaded from her computer. The pictures had been circulating on the Web. They showed three girls cavorting naked on a beach.

  In some pictures, the girls were performing cartwheels, thus exposing their delicate genitalia. In other pictures they were rather lewdly showing off these underdeveloped parts of their pubescent and pre-pubescent bodies to the camera.

  Ingrid recognised the girls as her daughters, Lisa, Dorothea, and Sigbrit. Sven had made money from their daughters’ nudity. She burned with shame.

  She could work out when the photographs had been taken. Through the contact with Loretta, Ingrid occasionally acted as an extra in a film. The job provided her with pocket money, supplementing her salary at the university. One such film had been shot in the spring. Ingrid had gone up to Jutland to play her modest part. She had left the girls in Sven’s care.

  On her return home, she had found Lisa silent and downcast. The trip to Paleohora had been an attempt to cheer up her elder daughter. The girls had sworn that their father had not molested them in any way. There had been only that one day on the beach, when he had forced them to do what Dorothea called ‘naughty poses’. Lisa, the oldest girl, had been deeply shamed when forced to exhibit herself.

  At the time, Ingrid, in a fury, had broken into Sven’s desk and found a collection of child pornography. She had thrown the photographs and magazines all round the room and had a furious row with Sven. However, since he swore he had not molested the girls, but merely, in his words, ‘photographed them at their prettiest’, Ingrid had continued to live with him: for financial security, she claimed. Yet she admitted that the knowledge they held between them had made them more sexually active.

  I too became transfixed by these passions. Nor could I remain with the daughters without seeing them in my mind’s eye on the beach, legs spread, inviting they knew not what with their bright, fixed expressions. Lisa was Lucia’s age when Lucia and I had met. Far less sophisticated.

  Under her cheerful demeanour, Ingrid was a troubled person. She had some friends who met for group sex sessions once a week. They had drinks and vegetarian snacks before removing their clothes. Ingrid wished us to join them.

  ‘Ingrid, I can’t. I’m old. I have but one shot in my locker per day, if that. Your friends will not want an old man with grey hair in their midst.’

  ‘Come and watch the rest of us going at it. Sometimes we have daisy chains. That would inspire you.’

  ‘Maybe, but no thanks.’

  ‘Oh, you are such a prude.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I am an old prude…’

  However, I did go with her to see her act as an extra in another film being shot at Helsingor, where Hamlet’s castle stood. Ingrid was needed only for a crowd scene; it was a day’s work, no more. The movie was entitled, Gertrude’s Golden Days. The company filming it was American.

  I stood with a roped-off section of spectators to watch the proceedings. After an hour of waiting, the cameras began to turn and the star of the movie appeared on the castle battlements.

  I recognised her. It was Sylvia Beltrau, as she now was, the transformed Lucia: painted, made blonde, jewel-bedecked and padded, eyes loaded with kohl and mouth with lipstick, with all her genuine character and characteristics blotted out, until only an avenging, commercialised shell remained.

  It was time to return to England.

  The months cantered through their loops like demented cantaloupes. I maintained a low profile. I rented a couple of rooms in Ossington Street, consorting fairly often with my literary agent and friend, Will Welling-Jones, the chap who had a big wife, mentioned earlier. We would meet at my club, the Groucho, for a glass of wine, and then stroll up the street to the Red Fort for a buffet lunch with some friends. The food was good and delicately flavoured. One served oneself from huge copper drums.

  A frequent
topic of conversation was my novel, New Investments. It had not sold very well in hardcover, but Will’s media agent worked in liaison with a media agent in Hollywood, who had sold a nine month option on the novel to an outfit working closely with Columbus Films. A beggarly sum was involved, good for a few lunches at the Red Fort, but better things were promised if Columbus Films bought the proposal. We lived in hope.

  No denying that it was a pretty miserable period as far as I was concerned. Sylvia Beltrau’s lawsuit still threatened, although its force had diminished considerably since her movie, Something to Behold, had failed rather noticeably at that box which, as effectively as another box, the coffin, seals our fate: the box office. The one slice of luck I had was in finding a bootleg video in Cecil Court, entitled Carole Lombard Strips Off. She certainly does, to good effect, if in black and white.

  Meanwhile, I was doing some reviewing for a small literary magazine, the editor of which I had met at university. The work did not pay, but one could sell the books afterwards. Most people regard reviewing as an excuse to make a few clever remarks at the author’s expense – like the chap who said, regarding one of my early novels, The Banners of Barabas, ‘Not only does he write spuriously of the past, but he awakens in the reader a spurious desire for a spurious past’.

  You see, I still remember it word for word. But the fact is, after reading that criticism, I never again attempted another historical novel. How can we get right the details and detailed feelings of the world before our own and our parents’ lifetimes? It’s almost as bad as setting a novel a hundred years in the future. From the time I read those unkind words in print, I have always stuck to stories set in the present day (fortunately no one knows what actually goes on in the present); so perhaps cruelty has its benefits.

  The funny thing is, that historical novel is still in print in paperback, thirty years after first publication. Two years ago, it was a set book for GCSE.

  Some evenings, I simply sat in my room, watching soaps on the box. Viv Baker was still working in her West End clothes shop. The part was no longer being played by Doreen Stephens, alias Diana Coventry. Dear old Doreen. I still missed her. What do you expect?