I have one last thought to put down here and no time to examine it first. If I am going to my death, and that is what I am writing against, it is probably under an inner compulsion to do so. Sometimes men die when and because they want to. I have said I hoped you would not read this. I am not even sure of that.
Sleep well. I started out with you thinking you were doing a dirty job. Now there is a far dirtier one to be done. As the boys say up there in the sky, Over!
[Alexander Webb]
I sat in silence, the notebook in my hand.
From deep within the cloister came the sound of the scraping of plates, then the murmur of prayer. The nuns lived by oil or candlelight. There were no light or communication wires. The sky when I looked up into it was the lucid mixture of pearl and gold that deepens in luster as the sun nears its setting.
Maria, sitting at Paul’s feet, still held fast to his hand.
“Are you happy here, Maria?” I asked her.
Paul passed along her response. No and yes.
He asked her, “Would you like to go home?”
Yes!
I wondered why, but I said, “In a few days, Maria, perhaps the priest from Kalpaki will come for you.”
Paul said, “Professor, I wish to accuse him tonight. I will put on the costume again, and when all the other singers have gone in, I will arrive late and be admitted.”
I thought of Elsa and the hotel room arrangement. By the time we returned to Ioannina everyone would be at the festival. With Elsa’s help later it might work. And I had my own moment of confrontation before me. This had to be the night. There might not be another.
“Of what will you accuse him, Paul?”
“Of the greatest crime, a Greek’s betrayal of a friend of Greece. And, Professor! I want to take Maria with us to bear witness.”
I thought of all the reasons not to take her, the delay, the danger—suppose we should break down on the road near Kalpaki, suppose the military should be on the lookout for me—I thought of them all, but I said, “Tell her, and if she wishes to go, we shall go together.”
27
AT ELEVEN, AS ELSA had promised in a note left for me with the key to her room, she returned to the hotel from the festival before going on to the reception. I don’t know what she had expected, knocking and opening the room door, but the three of us waited: Maria, scrubbed and combed but dark as a gypsy, her black eyes glowing with wonder, excitement and a childlike love for Paul. She wore a bodice of virgin white, gold-embroidered by the nuns, and the long full skirt of interwoven black and red. Paul sat in the mountain costume from which I had brushed most of the dirt. As I solemnly introduced them, explaining that the woman had no tongue and Paul no sight, Paul rose smiling and said, “But I have speech and your own language, Madame Elsa, and I thank you for your kindness, which is presumptuous of me, but I thank you all the same.”
Elsa bit her lip, seeing them, took both their hands briefly in hers and turned to me.
“You are beautiful tonight,” I said. She wore a long dress of gold lamé.
“So are you,” she said, distinctly embarrassed. I wore my dinner clothes, white jacket.
“Were all our friends at the festival?” I asked.
“All,” she said, and directly to the point: “Colonel Frontis is out of uniform. Helmi pointed him out to me. He’s wearing a dinner jacket, and he walks always near the Princess, as though about to anticipate her slightest need.”
I gave Elsa a package. I had wrapped Webb’s journal in white paper. “I’m going to ask you to keep this for me, Elsa, until I ask for it. If by any chance things go wrong, read it afterwards. It’s Alexander Webb’s journal.”
She was carrying a beaded purse, one that dangled pouchlike from a golden chain. Folded, the package fit, protruding a little at the top. It would do.
“You will be late arriving, Elsa,” I said, “later even than me. Can you drive a Vauxhall?”
“It was made in England. So was I,” she said.
“Thank God for that. It will seem odd, your driving up dressed like that, but when your passengers get out with you, it will be distraction enough.”
I had driven past and around the Chaconis residence, returning to Ioannina. It was one of the few great houses left from Byron’s time. The party would be in the garden which was hung with lanterns, the reception of guests first on the balcony to which there were two outside stairways in the Epirot style.
“We shall go in a few minutes now,” I went on. “We’ll find a place for you to wait in the car with Maria and Paul. I must go in directly and choose my time to reintroduce myself to the former Mrs. Webb.
“The entertainers are due at midnight. You will see them entering the gate, but you will wait and listen. When the singing commences, drive up to the gate. Someone will take the car, I’m sure. Otherwise just leave it. Maria will lead Paul in and find him a place near the singers….” Maria was holding Paul’s hand.
“Yes,” Paul said. “It is understood.”
“And I will come to you, Elsa, as quickly as I can.”
“And God be with us all,” Elsa said.
The limousines were still arriving when we neared the Chaconis house. A policeman waved us on. I hadn’t counted on that, foolishly, nor on the security men we could spot stationed around the block
“They’re parking cars in the schoolyard,” Elsa said. “It’s only eleven-thirty. We had better drive in with the rest and choose our own place. If Maria and Paul can wait, I’ll go in with you and come back to them when the entertainers arrive.”
Paul agreed. Waiting in the front seat, Elsa might have attracted attention.
No one paid us the slightest heed. I parked the Vauxhall near the street between two cars so that there was no room on either side for another. We sat in silence, listening, when I cut the motor. The murmur of voices, talk and laughter, carried across the street, even the tinkle of glassware. Singing would be clearly audible.
Paul said, “Perhaps, Madame Elsa, you will not need to come for us at all.”
“I shall come just to make sure you are admitted. I have command if I need to use it.”
“Paul,” I said, my last council, “be brief.”
“Brief—and eloquent. But who will understand me? I shall be speaking the language of the people.”
“You will be understood,” I said. “It is the language also of poets and you are not the only poet in modern Greece. I can say this because we are as brothers, but it is also the truth.”
I clapped my hand on his, and then, touching my fingers to my lips, I reached back and touched them to Maria’s. As Vasso’s mother had done that long ago day of my arrival in Kaléa, Maria caught my hand and kissed it.
The garden was crowded with people, clustered in little groups in that post-theater animation where everyone wants to talk at once. Jewelry sparkled, as did the lips of the women. People coming down the steps from the balcony were met by the waiters with trays of champagne. Helmi and Elena were on the stairs before us, among those waiting to be received. There was the fragrance of sage in the air, and smoke from the open spit where, at the far end of the garden, white-capped cooks were broiling racks of lamb chops.
I could not make conversation. Elsa understood. She kept looking at her watch, her eyes always going from it to the gate.
“Everything will be a little behind schedule,” I said. But I too kept thinking of the companions in the car, Paul’s asking questions of Maria and the only answers, the silent pressure, yes or no. “Was Cassandra good?” I asked by a kind of desperate effort.
“Remarkably. But then everyone was. And there never was an anti-war play like The Trojan Women.”
“A curious choice,” I murmured.
“There was a controversy, I understand. A part of the committee wanted Andromache. One wonders why.”
“There’s a reference in it to the kings of Epirus.”
“Oh.”
Step by agonizing step, we drew nearer to o
ur host and his distinguished guests. I could feel the sweat on my back and little beads of perspiration glistened on Elsa’s upper lip. She fumbled in her purse, groping round the folded package for her handkerchief.
Then, on the next step, standing to the side, I was able to see the Princess, and beyond her as she turned to meet the approaching guest, Margaret came within full compass of my gaze. Her head was high on that beautifully arched neck, and crowned by the golden hair. Had time stood still for her that she had lost none of her beauty, none of that unassailable serenity of mien? She seemed to look no different from the night I had danced with her in Athens.
I felt myself grinding my teeth. I still could not believe her evil.
Elsa moved before me, the line quickening. She presented both herself and me to Deputy Chaconis and Madame Chaconis, who shook our hands and presented us to the Princess. That gracious lady asked me if I were the Byronic scholar she had been told would be present tonight.
“I am a student of Byron, yes, Your Highness.” And all the while I felt Margaret’s eyes upon me.
“Perhaps you will visit us and tell us of your work.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” I bowed with painful awkwardness and turned as Elsa said, surely a test of her own metal, “Countess Braschi, may I present Professor John Eakins?”
“Professor John Eakins,” Margaret repeated, her eyes and mine meeting and holding as she gave me her hand. There was no question but that she had recognized me instantly, and if she was in any way disconcerted it showed only in the briefest moistening of her lips. “May I present my husband, Signor Braschi?”
Braschi, small, dark and elegant, gave me a firm handshake. It somehow steadied me, the brief thought flitting through my mind that he too had been beguiled.
Margaret said, “Is this your first visit to Greece, Professor?”
“In my pursuit of Byron, yes.”
“And will you be here long?”
“Alas, only until tomorrow.”
“Then we must talk—perhaps when the line is finished. Byron was one of my earliest enchantments.”
The official receiving line ended with the Braschis, but a few feet on, as Elsa and I proceeded toward the stairs, two men were talking, their backs to us. As we approached they turned and bowed, both clicking their heels.
“Colonel Alexis Frontis,” the shorter of them said in self-introduction, his hand extended. His face had the fineness and the coldness of a newly minted coin despite the smile he shot at us. I shook his hand and murmured my name and Elsa’s. Frontis introduced us to the commanding general of the Northern Greek forces. Nothing in Frontis’ eyes gave any sign of recognition. The line had been long and we were late. If he had not recognized me, the next few minutes of my life were in Margaret’s keeping.
At the bottom of the steps Elsa and I accepted champagne, touched glasses and smiled at the trembling of one another’s hands. I moved with her through the guests to where we could see both the garden entrance and the balcony. Musicians were arriving, but not yet the singers. When the last of the guests had passed beyond the steps, I too returned to the balcony. The Princess had gone indoors. Others were talking in small groups. Colonel Frontis was with the Braschi group. Margaret saw me at once, I thought. I lit a cigarette and stood near the railing where I could see her while seeming to look down on the festive garden. She and another woman withdrew together, probably on Margaret’s suggestion that they attend their makeup.
At the door Margaret stood aside for the woman to precede her, and then, half-turning to close the door, nodded to me. After a moment I followed. Her companion had gone on. We found a drawing room unoccupied and off it a small balcony which protruded over the side street.
Margaret’s first words were, “It must have taken great courage to return to Ioannina.”
“Byron came here. I’m simply following his trail.”
“Is that all, truly?”
“One can’t help remembering,” I said.
“I can and have,” she said. “I have tried to live a useful life in Greece.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“And you also, I should gather—a scholar and professor. Have you married?”
“No. One wants to have his own identity to marry.”
“And you’ve come back to find it?”
“I am content now not to marry.”
“As was I,” she said, “not to remarry for a long time.”
I watched an ancient bus turn into the street. It came toward us.
“I supposed you to be in America,” she said. “I might even have written you—except that I did not know to whom to write.” She tested the balcony rail, then leaned on it, her back to the street.
The bus passed below us. I recognized the costumes of the singers from Kalpaki.
“What would you have written?”
“That I was sorry for what had happened to you…. I shouldn’t have written it. I only say so now having sometimes thought I might.”
“You knew I hadn’t killed your husband?”
Her face was in the shadow until she lifted it to look at me. “I never believed you had.”
“Your sworn testimony was not precisely clear on that point,” I said dryly.
She looked at me and put her hand on my arm to turn me to where she could see my face in the light. “Have you waited all these years, Jabez Emory, to say that to me?” It carried a sort of melancholic reproach.
“I have waited all these years to ask you what you believed to be the truth in your husband’s death.”
“You have made the proper distinctions… ‘what I believed.’” She drew a deep breath. In spite of myself my eyes dropped to her bosom. She wore a sapphire set round by diamond chips and pearls. It lay nested just where the swell of her breasts commenced. As soon as she spoke I looked at her eyes. They had something of the color of the sapphire, the light from the drawing room shining in them.
“I am going to assume that when you have heard what I say now you will wish no more than I to have the matter publicly reopened. It was a burden neither of us deserved, you the least….” Again the deep breath. “I am quite sure Alexander Webb was a Communist agent. I had known him to be a sympathizer when we were married. In those days it did not appall me. It was alien but not beyond my understanding. I must be honest and say that shortly before I met him—in Iran—I had been indiscreet enough to associate with certain Germans. I won’t go into this now. It is relevant only in that while I didn’t think precisely in those terms, there was something of the quest for exoneration in my marriage to him.”
Did ever a man hear anything more plausible, even to the use of circumstance?
She went on: “One of the questions that was always asked during the endless speculation following his death was why he had chosen so difficult a route to reach the north of Greece when, they said, he might simply have flown from Athens to Yugoslavia and re-entered Greece across the Yugoslav or Albanian border. He could not. The American authorities would not have permitted it. He was already under surveillance. It was hoped that he would lead them to his Communist contacts in Athens. I did not know this at the time. I only knew that he was under surveillance. In leaving as he did, he escaped them. Going north, he did not intend to return to Athens, or to me, or to the United States. He was on his way behind the Iron Curtain.”
“But he turned back,” I said.
“Did he? I don’t know that, Jabez. Perhaps you do. I only know that his body was found on the road to Ioannina.”
I ran my hand across my eyes, trying to remember, to reorient myself once more. “The letter he mailed to you from Patras, Margaret: in it he said, ‘I am taking young Jabez Emory with me. What do you think of that, my dear?’ What did that mean to you?”
“We had questioned, he and I, the possibility of your being an American agent,” she said.
An echo chamber could have given back the words of Webb’s journal no more accurately.
“And did you s
how that letter to the American authorities?”
“My dear Jabez, it came to me only after they had intercepted it.”
“Then one question, Margaret: why were you silent during the trial?”
“I did not testify against you. I simply told the truth of what I believed to be the rather touching friendship between you and me.”
“But concerning Webb,” I said.
“You seem to forget what I thought once was amply clear to you: I loved Alexander Webb. He believed in what he was doing. And this I said to the American inquisitors who questioned me many times and then chose, for reasons of their own, to remain as silent as myself.”
I realized how convincing she would have sounded to those inquisitors. She went on: “It was only after the trial when I approached the King through friends to ask clemency for you that I was given to understand that clemency had already been arranged. Then I knew the meaning of your so-called escape.”
“Who killed him, Margaret?”
“Do you know? Does anyone know?”
“Yes.”
She waited, her brows arched a little.
“He will be accused tonight,” I said.
“Not tonight surely, Jabez.” Then: “Do I know him?”
I said nothing.
“To spare the Princess—to spare all of us this harsh thing, surely tomorrow is time enough? After all these years, Jabez?”
“No,” I said quietly, avoiding her eyes.
“You must realize I could call out now and accuse you as the convicted killer of Alexander Webb.”
“It would not matter.”
“And you know I would not do it. But tell me who he is at least.”
As if far, far away—or on a turned-down radio—I could hear the singing of the chorus from Kalpaki.
Enemy and Brother Page 25