“To your book, Professor,” Modenis said, but the words were meant for Paul. It was his deep hope to reach the blind man through the youth he had been.
I said, “Thank you, Modenis. I drink to the health of all of us, and to greater understanding among men.”
Stephanou thought about it. “Health,” he said, and emptied the glass at one tilt.
9
MODENIS, FORTIFIED BY BRANDY and badgered by the old woman, went to the bath she had prepared for him. We could hear great splashes of water presently, and the old lady’s scolding, Modenis’ howls, part mockery, part righteous indignation, his voice spiraling up into falsetto. They had been children together, the pair of them, in this same village.
Stephanou sat silent, listening. I was determined to endure such silence, waiting for him to come to me. His thoughts, it turned out, had run curiously parallel to my own, for he said finally, “Shakespeare’s ages of man—how many were there?”
“Seven—from the infant, mewling and puking, to second childishness.”
“Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste…” he went on, then stopped.
I finished it: “Sans everything.”
“What age are you, Professor?”
“I must think for a moment,” I said. The lines were familiar but I had to run through from the beginning.
“How old?”
I ignored the direct question. “In fair round belly with good capon lined… full of wise saws and modern instances.” I deliberately pushed the image of myself beyond my years.
“I do not think I understand the idiom,” he said.
“Wise saws and modern instances—bromides and newspaper headlines.”
“Bromides?” he repeated.
“That is an odd one,” I said. “Actually, it’s a chemical compound for putting you to sleep. As I used it, it’s slang, with much the same meaning.” I got up. “Let’s see what the dictionary says.”
When I reached past him to the shelf over the desk, he put out his hand and slapped at my waist. “A fair round belly?”
“It comes and goes,” I said. “I try to keep my weight down.” I laughed nervously. I sounded as though I were passing up dessert at a club luncheon.
“My uncle said you were a young man.”
I took down the dictionary. “He told me the same of you.”
Stephanou snorted, temporarily checked.
I found and read aloud the definition of “bromide,” but neither of us any longer cared.
“How did you come to Kaléa, Professor… Eakins? Spell the name for me, please.”
I spelled it, and by his asking two questions at once I had a little moment to prepare.
“And give me the English pronunciation, please.”
I did.
“It is not a Greek name. My uncle said you were Greek.”
“The men of the village thought so. I did not contradict them.” I did not dare to lie to him in small things. For him to catch me in a lie was to put him on his guard. Not that he was trying to catch me, I told myself; his questions were normal for a Greek. “And as for my coming to Kaléa, I wanted to stay for a while somewhere on the way to Delphi. I shall go on in a little while—following Byron’s trail through Greece.”
“Where?” he asked.
“Delphi, Missolonghi, Prevesa…” I watched his face. “Ioannina.” His mouth opened slightly. He seemed to be waiting, taut. “I would go on to Tepalene in Albania, but my passport will not permit it.”
He moistened his lips. “Not to Zitsa, the monastery where he stayed?”
“Do you know it?” I asked.
“I have been there,” he said, controlling his voice by keeping it low. I could see a pulse beat in his neck.
And something happened to you there, I thought, having naught to do with Byron. Zitsa is a few miles northwest of Ioannina. I did not suppose the AS camp was very far from there though it had been my impression at the time that we were several miles east and further north.
“Tell me about it,” I said evenly. “Byron thought the view from there one of the loveliest in Greece.”
His tension eased off. “It’s wild,” he said, “and lonely, and some distance above the village. It has not been in use for many years—only the old buildings linked to one another, and the smell of centuries. Or that was what it was like almost twenty years ago. Have things changed in Greece in twenty years? You tell me.”
I froze at the words, wondering if they were a literal challenge. My mouth was dry, but I managed: “I shouldn’t think so to hear the old men talking.”
But he said, “I have been in captivity.”
“I know.”
“What do you know?”
“That you have been in prison, that you were a student, a teacher, Modenis thinks a poet, that you were in the Resistance during the war and afterwards an insurgent.”
He smiled, not altogether cynically, and his face became younger: I could almost see in him the handsome boy he had been. It was strange, but I wanted terribly for him to open his eyes.
“It makes a nice fanfare when you put it together like that,” he said.
“You have been well educated,” I said. The use of the word fanfare seemed extraordinary. “You have not wasted the years in prison.”
“I have asked myself since I am home which would I have preferred: to remain in prison with my sight, or to have paid with my eyes for freedom.”
“Was that the alternative?”
He shrugged.
“Did you write while you were confined?”
“I wrote, yes. But what I wrote was taken from me. I wrote too much.”
“About people?”
“It was very funny in a way—when I wrote about Pericles they thought I meant Metaxas, our dictator, you know?”
“Wasn’t it flattering to Metaxas?”
“No. It was critical of Pericles, the war which Athens might have avoided. Oh, I wrote many things—poetry, satire. You would not think I am a humorist, eh? I would lie in the dark and make up the words. My mind was alive with images. I would get up and light the candle. Always I put it out as soon as I wrote something for fear it would burn out too soon. And you know how I got matches? I wrote dirty verses for the guards. And once I wrote a love poem for one of them. He was a pig, but I gave him wings.” He stretched his arms, his neck, turning his head one way then another. I remembered the restlessness of the youth Webb and I traveled north with, one of the things I had blocked out of my mind since, cherishing only recollections that fed my own discontent, my hatred of him… if indeed that was what it was. I remembered him when he discovered that Webb had known the Spanish poet, Lorca, in New York and had seen him in Spain shortly before his death. Stephanou had put his hand on Webb’s and said incredulously, “You shook hands with him?” and I remembered his epithet: “By the maidenhood of Mary, tell me!” And Christ! I had not even known that night who Lorca was.
He was rubbing the stubble of grey beard that had grown since his return to Kaléa.
“Would you allow me to shave you, Stephanou? I should be pleased to do it.”
“You would have to begin with a sickle,” he said, “and that is something I can manage if I wish to. I shall let it grow. It will distract people from my eyes.”
“Do you feel them looking at you?”
“I feel them not looking at me. That’s true, isn’t it? People don’t like to look at a blind man’s face.”
“I suppose it’s so of some people,” I said.
“The boy did not once raise his face to mine.”
“Children are wary of what they don’t know.”
“What do I look like, Professor? Shall I call you Professor?”
“If you like—or Eakins—John—whatever.”
“If you were writing home…” Again he interrupted himself: “Do you have a wife, children?”
“None who acknowledge me,” I said.
He laughed. “And I am acknowledged by someone else’s bastard.
Mind, I’m all for bastardy. At best there is one genius in a proper family, at worst a dozen morons. It’s simply that I’m put off in this at having played the Holy Ghost.”
“He’s an interesting little fellow,” I said. “Great solemn eyes that squint sometimes because he reads so much.”
“Does he?” He was pleased to hear it.
“I asked him one day what the book he was reading was about. People, he said, as though I were very stupid to have asked.”
“The proper study of man, eh?”
“You can study a lifetime and know very little. The grandmother Panyotis knows far more about people than I do, and I doubt she has ever read a book.”
This time the smile came in a flash, the strong white teeth gleaming. “So that is why you are in Kaléa!”
“Perhaps it is,” I said. “Quite possibly it is.”
“You were going to tell me, Professor, what I look like to you.”
“Let me say first, it’s quite different now from what it would have been if I’d described you before you came here tonight.”
“I have stayed too long,” he cried, I suspected to try my hospitality.
“You have only arrived,” I said.
“I’m at the mercy of the lame one who I doubt not at this moment is warming his bones in the widow’s bed.”
“She is as old as history,” I said.
“So is bed-warming,” he snapped, and I laughed.
“You are a blind man who sees with his ears, his nose, his hands… and, I should think, with his heart…. A grey beard, hair that is white—but hair, may I remind you—strong white teeth so that when he smiles he looks to be even younger—than what? Forty-five years?”
“Forty-four,” he said.
“A high, pallid forehead, good bone structure, a nose that some day is going to resemble Modenis’ but isn’t too bad just yet… and when you look at him you wish to God—as I did a few minutes ago—that he could open his eyes.”
His chin dropped down on his chest. I had not meant to be that overt, that emotional, I suppose. I was not given to such explicits as I had spurted out since being in Kaléa, since that first moment with the old woman when she caught my hand to her lips. But I had said again something I felt deeply.
“Thank you, my friend,” Stephanou said. He slid his hand along the desk and found his cane. “I would impose on you for a further kindness. Go with me to my uncle’s door. Then I can manage and we shall leave the old one to his pleasure.”
“I’ll take you,” I said, “but you are welcome to stay.”
“It is time to go. I am raw in many places besides where I was scrubbed tonight.”
“I understand,” I said and gave him my hand. “There is nothing between us and the door.”
Outside we stood a moment while he got his bearings. “There are a million stars,” I said, “but no moon.”
All was quiet next door, the shutters drawn, but slivers of light appeared through the slats. I told Stephanou this, speaking softly, close to his ear.
“Go and look in,” he said, and gave my arm a little push.
I demurred.
“A blind man is allowed to spy. Go and tell me.”
Reluctantly I went, looked briefly at the old couple before the fire and returned. “Modenis is wrapped in a blanket in a chair in front of the fire. The old woman is on her knees, feeding him cherries with a silver spoon.”
Stephanou put his arm across my shoulder and leaned on me as he doubled in on himself. I could feel the spasms—of laughter? tears? I did not know until he said, “Oh, little children, love one another!”
And this was the man who had spurned the priest.
He took my arm, his hold upon it ever lighter as he gained the confidence of his step and cane. The women had cleaned Modenis’ cottage and gone, leaving the door open, the one light shining within. It was a room crudely furnished, two chairs and a table with benches, some pots hanging in a row over the small fireplace, a chest and a cupboard. In the room beyond I could see two narrow wooden beds, with white sheets now gleaming in the darkness.
“Shall I light the fire? The women have set logs in the grate.”
“No. I am afraid of fire. Leave me now. I have much to think of and you have your work. It was probably a good thing that happened tonight. Do you agree?”
“If you make it so,” I said.
He did not thank me and I was glad. At the door I asked: “Will you come and see me again—tomorrow?”
“If you will let me see you, yes.”
I said, “Come.”
It was almost nine o’clock. I went into the village without returning to the house. If you will let me see you…. Did it seem to him that I was deliberately concealing myself from him? Or was it simply a form of courtesy, his saying that? It was not in my nature to let people see me or even to let me see myself. Had he sensed that in so brief a time? Surely not if for no other reason than that among so many strangenesses, so much he could not have expected, much less prepared for, his self-concern must have been all-encompassing.
He would ask questions. So be it. I would also ask questions. But slowly, slowly. To learn the facts of my indictment and conviction no longer seemed the greatest imperative. There was a little nagging wish growing in me not to know: I liked Paul Stephanou.
How devious we are! I know now that my real concern, under all its complicated layers of rationale, was that he not discover in me then the same contemptible creature he had thrown to the minions of the Greek judicial ritual.
Reaching Vasso’s deep in my own thoughts, I did not notice at first the failure of the old man’s usual camaraderie with me. Spyro muttered a greeting of sorts, the others nothing as I went past them into the restaurant.
Kanakis and several other men were at a table to the side, a game of dominoes suspended for talk. I sat apart from them. Nor did they call me to join them as had happened before. I did not think much of it: it might have been a meeting on village business. The Greek pipes were skirling from the radio in the kitchen, an interminable lament. Vasso was in the kitchen. Michael brought my knife, fork and glass, and a pitcher of wine.
“How are you, Michael?” I murmured.
“I am well, Professor-sir,” he said with distant formality.
Vasso came finally, bringing me bread.
“So he is alive, Mr. Eakins,” she said with bitter sarcasm. “He can curse the priest and tell us all to go to hell.”
“Only the priest,” I said. “I have talked with him, Vasso. He is not blasphemous, if that’s what they told you.”
“With you, a stranger, he will talk,” she said.
“He is proud among his own,” I said helplessly.
“Does he wish all of us to be blind?”
“He wishes to see, he wishes to serve, not to be served. He is not a man who can live in gratitude, take charity for the sake of charity. They did much for him tonight. He said it himself. It was cruel, but it had to be done and he knows it, Vasso. He will be different now. They will see.”
“Tell them,” she said, with a jerk of her head toward the men.
“I cannot tell if I am not asked,” I said. “I am telling you.”
“Did he speak of me?”
“He would not. I am a stranger. But he knew it was your house into which I took him and he was glad.”
“Because it was you and not I who was in it,” she said.
“What poison have they told you? Sit down.” I pulled out the chair beside me.
“I cannot. They will think… I don’t know what they will think.”
“Since when has that been of such importance to you?”
“Since he came home… and would not have me.”
“Vasso,” I said, “believe me. He did not come home until tonight.”
Slowly, almost carefully, she sat down. The men across the room turned their heads and looked at us. They sat in silence for a moment. Then one of them called out, “Vasso! More wine.”
“Michael will bring it to you,” she said over her shoulder. To me she said, “Tell me.”
“I shall tell you everything that happened as I understand it.” And so I pleaded the blind man’s cause as though it were my own, her dark eyes luminous as they probed mine for the truth of what I told. They welled up with tears when I repeated what he had said to the boy on learning he was called Panyotis: it is a better name than Stephanou. I could not bear to look at her. I wanted her again.
Then she reminded me of what I had already surmised, saying, “I can see him when I look at you, I can see him so long ago, so beautiful….”
“And when you look at him, Vasso?”
“It is a face I do not know, a stone face.”
“Not when he smiles.”
“Does he smile?”
“Once he did.”
“What did you say that made him smile?”
It was too complicated to explain, and I found myself not wanting to in any case: it had been a moment of something’s quickening between Paul and me, the gleeful way he had cried, “So that’s why you’re in Kaléa!” as though he had discovered for himself a motive I might not have been able to convey. “I have forgotten,” I said.
“It does not matter. It would not be the same if I said it.”
“When you go to him, Vasso…”
She stopped me, shaking her head. “I will not go to him again, not until he asks me.” She clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back, her eyes searching the ceiling—her blouse taut across her breasts. “There has been a great fire in me for him all these years,” she said after a moment. “I could not put it out even when I tried—you know?”
“I know,” I said with sadness.
“I am sorry,” she said and put her hand briefly over mine. “A great fire. Now it is just a little flame, but it is still alive.”
“I understand,” I murmured.
“He should not have spoken that way to Father Lappas,” Vasso said, getting up. “I heard my cousin, Stavros—he is at the table there—call him a gypsy. Only the gypsies curse the priest. They are afraid he will take away their magic. It is not a good thing for the people to call him a gypsy.”
Enemy and Brother Page 9