Greek Fire

by Winston Graham

  She didn’t seem put out by his stare. “What is physical?” she said. “Where does it become only emotional? And what is emotional? Where does it become only aesthetic? I don’t think you can separate them.”

  “Well,” he said, “ let’s say the difference with marble pillars is that there’s no wish for personal possession.”

  A sea breeze was stirring her hair and she put up a hand to it. “Personal possession is always unwise. What you grasp you destroy. Taste your pleasures and let them go.”

  He said: “ I’m glad you agree with tasting them.”

  “I’m glad you are glad.”

  After a few moments he said: “Where are your excavations?”

  “Down there, down nearer the sea. Last year a great statue was found here, of a warrior. They think it is of the seventh century B.C. and they think there is more yet to be found. There was of course a temple here long before this one was built.”

  “Can we go down?”

  “The siesta will not be over.”

  The promontory of Cape Colonna slopes down on its western side into a sandy bay, and they walked to it through pine trees where the ground was littered with the shells of hard-boiled eggs left behind by week-end picnickers. Near the sea just where rock and soil and sand met, there was the usual paraphernalia of archaeology: trenches, rubble, and beside it a disused ‘ tourist pavilion’ in the shade of which a dozen Greek labourers crouched and slept.

  “Here we began, you see, and here the statue was found. The head with its great helmet was broken from the body and the body was naked. But they fitted together. It couldn’t have been broken naturally or they would not have been so far apart.”

  He said: “You must be rich to have financed these diggings.”

  “I didn’t finance them—I told you. I have rich friends. It is the way we live in Greece.”

  An elderly man came forward, hastily fastening his tie, and was introduced to Gene. He and the girl talked for some time on the progress of the operations. They stayed about half an hour. When they were alone again Gene said: “ Have you any of the things that have been found here?”

  “The big things, like the statue, are in the National Museum, but I have a few of the smaller articles in my flat.”

  “I’d like to see them sometime.”

  They stopped, looking out to sea. The rocks showed copper and purple and green through the glass-clear water. A lip of white, inches wide, nibbled at the edge. Gene lingered on when she would have moved.

  She said: “Is it true that you really have some affection for Greece?”

  “Yes …”

  “I mean true affection, not just empty sentiment.”

  “Yes … But I don’t think I like your politicians.”

  “Do you like your own?”

  “Maybe they’re not the most admirable people in any country.”

  “Well, they are no worse here.”

  “This morning I was hearing about that man you pointed out to me last night. Lascou, was it? Someone I met this morning said that Lascou was the most dangerous man in Greece today.”

  She opened her green lizard hand-bag. “ Have you a light, please? I haven’t smoked this afternoon.”

  “A match. We’d have to get in the shelter of the trees …”

  They walked across to the pines. He flicked a match alight and held it to her cigarette. When he got close to her—a few inches from her face, he thought, yes, there really is danger. Her skin at close quarters had a faint luminosity. Nonsense, of course; so one’s senses played one false. A rag and a bone and a hank of hair. A rag and a bone.… It was her own estimate.

  She said contemptuously: “When an election is due one man will say anything about another in the hope that it will win him a vote.”

  “And this is untrue?”

  “You have told me nothing; how can I say what is true or untrue?”

  “My friend, who is I think an intelligent man, said that there are plenty of hypocrites in the world who try to deceive others. George Lascou, he says, is that much more dangerous type, a hypocrite with visions of greatness who begins by deceiving himself.”

  She looked down at her cigarette. “ Your friend no doubt is of an opposing party. Did he not also tell you I was George Lascou’s mistress? You surely must know that too.”

  Four or five ragged boys had been staring at the car, hanging on the handles, feeling the polished wings; at the sound of footsteps they scattered and ran off down the cindery track.

  Gene said: “ I knew he was a man of infinite taste.”

  She opened the door of the car. “It is time we started back.”

  “Whenever you say.”

  She got in and flicked the steering wheel once or twice with her green velvet gloves while he shut the door and walked round and slid into the seat beside her. She started the engine and drove off the way they had come. Behind them the sun was getting lower and the delicate tapering pillars of the temple seemed to support the sky.

  He said in Greek: “ I owe you an apology.”

  “That must have needed a lot of hard reasoning on your part, Mr. Vanbrugh.”

  “I wonder if you could bring yourself to call me Gene?”

  “I thought that it was a girl’s name.”

  “Not the way I spell it.”

  They drove on.

  She said: “Perhaps sometime you would be interested to meet this hypocrite, this shady politician.”

  “I’d be delighted.”

  “Write down your address. I can arrange it.”

  “Could I call you? I’m changing rooms and haven’t yet decided where to stay.”

  “Well, where will you be tonight?”

  “Out on my ear, I expect, if I don’t get back. I promised to vacate my room by five, and have forgotten to pack my case.”

  She didn’t press any more, and silence fell again. He thought; a rag and a bone, a rag and a bone; stick to that; hold on to it for dear life. Plenty of women before but only two like this and both brought shipwreck. How often does the sailor put to sea? Not now; for Pete’s sake certainly not now, knowing who she is and already something of what she’s like, and who her friends. You don’t have to be an optimist, you have to be a lunatic to set sail when all the storm cones are hoisted.

  She said: “What have Greek politics to do with you?”

  “If I explained that it would take a time.”

  “I could listen.”

  “You can’t avoid it, can you? Sharing a car with a bore is one of the worst things. There’s no escape except the end of the journey.”

  “Well, you could try not to be boring.”

  After a minute he said: “ It isn’t all that easy to explain. You asked me if I was fond of Greece. But it isn’t really a question of liking or disliking the country; it’s a question of having it in my blood. I told you last night, but I don’t know if you understood.”

  “No, I don’t think I did.”

  “When people are born in a place they normally accept it as part of their inheritance; they take it for granted; they’re all of a piece. I’m sure you are—in that respect anyway. You’re Greek, and Greece comes first and the rest nowhere.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m American. Many Americans are ‘all of a piece’. But some are not. America’s a young country—its roots go often into other people’s soil. Mine do … Make no mistake, America’s my native country and I wouldn’t change it for any other on earth. Just the smell of it the minute you get in takes and holds you like a new experience, however often you return. I enjoy going there. My family and my friends are there.” He paused. “Do you mind if I stop talking Greek?”

  “No. I don’t mind.”

  “But when I’m in the States, however hard I try, I feel myself there as a visitor. I’m a soldier on leave, a commuter, a dog on a chain. And the stake the chain’s attached to is right here in Athens. Maybe I’m some sort of a throw-back, who knows, it can’t always work the other
way. For every hundred Europeans who go to America, maybe three or four—of them or their children or their children’s children—travel the other way. I never thought I’d be one.”

  “And are you?”

  “I’m trying to explain. You asked me why I care about Greece and what is happening here. I’m trying to explain because I want you to know.”

  He glanced at her. She was listening with a vigorous intelligence that went much deeper than good looks. It might be hostile but it was not sham.

  “But don’t think I have any glamorised view of your country, Anya. In spite of its history and in spite of all the glitter of Athens that makes it look like a carbon copy of Manhattan, I know the other side all too well. I know it’s badly governed, poverty-stricken, unenterprising; part East, part West with a dash of the Balkans shaken in to make it more difficult.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “But that may be one one reason why I can’t get it out of my system. I want to do things about it, just as I would for a lame child that’s always falling in the mud. I’m never as content as when I’m here, never as much at home, never as conscious of a root. I tell myself it’s nonsense, this preoccupation, a sort of blinkered self-hypnotism; I’ve got to stop it. At most I’m only one-quarter rooted here. My life’s to do with the new world, not with the old. But it doesn’t wash. I’m still the dog on the chain.”

  There was silence for a time. He said: “Maybe even that isn’t quite the truth. One’s got to be honest sometimes in one’s life, and if I’m honest now I have to say I don’t really want to change. I only tell myself I should. Deep down in my guts—or whatever intestinal part knows best—I welcome the chain.”

  She stubbed her cigarette in an ash-tray and frowned at the road ahead. “ You have thought a lot about this?”

  “Yes. I’ve thought a lot about it.”

  “And this explains why you are interested in the private lives of politicians?”

  “It explains why I bother to come here at all.”

  They were getting nearer home. She said; “Are you married?”

  “Not now.”

  “In America it is always ‘ yes, just’ or ‘not now’.”

  “And you?” he said quietly.

  “No. I’ve told you.”

  “I didn’t know it necessarily followed.”

  “In my case it does.”

  “Tell me more about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  After waiting a few seconds Gene said: “Talking of my business, I shall be going to see Michael Michaelis on Sunday. Would you be interested to come?”

  “Where—to Delphi?”

  “Yes. I shall not be more than an hour with Michael is and there’ll be nothing private to discuss. I’d like to see the place afterwards in the company of a kindred spirit.”

  “What makes you think I’m a kindred spirit?”

  “I think you could be.”

  She said: “You must have plucked that impression out of the air.”

  “I’m assuming only that the experience of visiting one of the great Greek monuments for the first time would be enlarged if it was shared with somebody who feels the way you do about it.”

  She took her attention off the road for rather longer than was safe to look at him with her great dark eyes.

  “I shall be engaged on Sunday,” she said.

  “A pity. I can’t change the day now.”

  Chapter Ten

  After dropping Gene she did not drive to her flat but went straight on to Constitution Square and left the car to be picked up by the chauffeur. Then she walked across to George Lascou’s flat, which was in the penthouse or seventh floor of Heracles House, a large block put up since the war by a Greek syndicate of which Lascou was the chairman.

  As it happened his secretary saw Anya come into the building, so she was met at the door and brought at once into the huge salon, which was decorated and furnished in French style with fleur-de-lis wallpaper and handsome statuary set in rounded alcoves indirectly lit from below.

  She found George saying good-bye to General Telechos. George looked moody and pale as if virtue had gone out of him, his black brilliantined hair veeing up at the temples rather untidily, though still showing the lines of the comb. Telechos breathed raki and garlic over her as he explained rather unnecessarily that he had called on business to do with the National Museum.

  When Otho had shown the soldier out George took her face between his fingers like a goblet to be admired before it was drunk from. Then he kissed her with all the appreciation of a connoisseur.

  “So?”

  “Darling, I need a drink.”

  “Of course.” He released her quietly and went to a side table. “A martini?”

  She nodded and walked to the window, pulling off her gloves and looked out on the crowds below.

  She said: “Receiving compliments from General Telechos is like being caressed by a steam shovel. Does he think I am quite ignorant of all the negotiations that are going on between you?”

  “Telechos thinks women have no part in these things.”

  “Does it go well?”

  “It goes well. But he has all the cunning of the slightly stupid man, and all the obstinacy.”

  “Is that why your hair is ruffled?”

  “Is it?” He smoothed it down. “It dislikes opposition. And Vanbrugh?”

  “I didn’t discover his address.”

  George carefully measured out the gin, touching the lip of the bottle with a napkin so that it would not drip.

  She said: “ He asked to be put down at the corner of Hirodou Atticou. I don’t know if he thought he was likely to be followed.”

  “Does he know of your connection with me?”

  “I told him because I saw he knew.” She took her glass and sipped. “Um. Good.… He said he would like to meet you.”

  “That might be worth while.” Lascou guided her towards a chair, but at the last moment she slipped away from him and went across to an almost life-size statue of Hermes, looked at it, her eyebrows contracted.

  He said: “Are you seeing him again?”

  “Who? Vanbrugh? I hope not. He is dull, if probably harmless.”

  “He may be the first, but his record doesn’t suggest the second.”

  “His record?”

  “Oh, I mean his history in a general sense. He’s been in and out of trouble a good deal.”

  “Well, tell me.”

  “It’s not important.” George felt in his pocket and took out a typewritten card with a small photograph clipped to the corner. “This comes partly from Major Kolono’s own police files and partly from a contact he has at the American Embassy. But it’s incomplete yet.”

  Anya took the card and after staring at the photograph began to read aloud. “ ‘Gene Vanbrugh. About thirty-five. Comes of old New York family but educated in Europe. At University of Athens when the Germans invaded Greece—fought against them. Probably was in British Intelligence for some years. In any event was in Athens, underground, until liberation.’ Mm—mm.” She went on reading to herself; after a moment she spoke again. “ ‘Concerned in both civil wars against ELAS. In ’47 badly wounded and invalided home. In States gave evidence to Senate Committee on Foreign Aid.’ ”

  She paused to sip her drink and to turn the card over. “ ‘Married in Washington but marriage broke up.’ Yes, he told me that today.… Oh, this is what you were talking about. ‘In Greece in ’ 51 …’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “ ‘involved in death of Spyros Eliopolis, ship’s chandler, of Piraeus. This hushed up.’ Why was it hushed up? It doesn’t say. Kolono ought to know.”

  “It didn’t come under Kolono’s department. Anyway, outside influences were at work. Vanbrugh has friends.”

  She turned back to the card and read in silence. Then: “ ‘In trouble in U. S. in ’53 … cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to give information on Communists to the House Committee on un
-American Activities.’ I don’t know what that means. I thought he was anti-Communist.”

  George put his arm round her shoulders. “I think it simply means, my sweet, that he is a man who prides himself on taking the unpopular line and because of that is always rather an embarrassment to his friends as well as to his enemies. If his own embassy knew he was here, which they probably don’t unless Kolono has told them, they wouldn’t be sorry to see him go.”

  She handed him back the card. “Tell me, why were you so angry when you knew Jon Manos had taken me to the Little Jockey last Monday?”

  “I wasn’t angry.… Did Vanbrugh mention it?”

  “He mentioned the inquiry on the Spanish dancer’s death. He had been to it this morning. The wife thought the accident wasn’t an accident.”

  “Does that concern us?”

  “You are the one who knows.”

  “Or Gene Vanbrugh.”

  “I didn’t say so.”

  “How are the diggings?”

  “We’re between strata.” She stared at the statue. “I don’t think this Hermes is very good, George. His legs are too short for the length of his body. I distrust men with short thigh bones.…”

  “I’m sorry you’ve had a boring afternoon.”

  She said: “Do you want me to see him again?”

  He fitted his pince-nez. “ Have you made any arrangement at all?”

  “No. I said he might phone me.”

  “I hope he hasn’t made an impresssion on you.”

  She had finished her drink and held the stem of the glass in both hands. He put his fingers on the nape of her neck under her hair and quietly stroked it. She said: “Of course he has made an impression on me. So does a headache. So does a pinching shoe. Otherwise one would be as dead as Hermes here. Why is sincerity always so tedious?”

  He smiled. “It isn’t. But it’s a plant that needs careful treatment. You have to bring it out regularly and air it alongside other men’s so that it doesn’t become bigoted and ingrown.”

  There was the sound of running feet and a small boy of eight burst in.

  “Papa, Nina has not been playing fair with me! She says if I—oh, Anya, Papa didn’t tell me you were coming—Papa, Nina says——”