Greek Fire

by Winston Graham

  They climbed into the temple.

  She said: “All right. Most of us are children fumbling with the keys of a piano and producing only discords—talking with Michaelis is suddenly finding a harmony. But what of it? As soon as Michaelis is gone the child fumbles again. Bang, bang go the discords. So what of it? What good will it do to burst into tears because we cannot play?”

  He put a hand on one of the great ruined pillars and looked down over the torrent of rocks and ruins and trees.

  He said: “Whatever else, the old men had a superb sense of fitness for the places they chose to live their epics. Nowhere could be better than Mycenae for Agamemnon to ride out of with his chariots of war to the sack of Troy. Here it’s as if they have climbed half-way to heaven to build their holy place.”

  She came to stand beside him, but she didn’t speak.

  He added: “I wasn’t brought up credulous but I could believe one or two things here. Maybe it’s the influence of that man, maybe of the place.”

  Her great dark eyes slid over him coolly, assessingly, and then went past him to stare again at the scene. “ These gods didn’t ask much. ‘Know Thyself.’ ‘Do Nothing in Excess.’ You saw the inscriptions.”

  “I saw them.”

  “That’s about all.”

  “It’s too much for today,” he said. “Most people would prefer: ‘Know Excess’ and ‘ Do Nothing for Thyself.’ ”

  She burst out suddenly laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It just seems to me very witty.”

  He hadn’t seen her laugh like this before. After a while they went on up to the theatre, and then higher still to the flower-grown stadium where the Pythic Games had been held. They sat on one of the moss-grown stone benches and smoked a reflective cigarette and stared out again over the gulf.

  He said: “ D’you know what I’d like to do now?”

  “No?”

  “Climb Parnassus.”

  Her lips parted as if to smile, and then she didn’t.

  “When do we start?”

  “Any time you say.”

  “Why not now?”

  “Better to stop at one of the hotels and go off first thing in the morning.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You’re not serious?”

  “Why not?”

  “How do you suggest we should go—by air?”

  “No, the normal way.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Well, it can’t be more than five or six thousand feet from here and I don’t suppose there’s snow below the top thousand.”

  “I’ve always wanted to climb a mountain in suede shoes.”

  “That’s a difficulty, I admit. But maybe we could hire some.”

  “In Delphi? But of course. One of the big departmental stores.”

  “Well, it was an idea.”

  “You stay on and go up tomorrow.”

  They sat for a while in silence. The air was like wine, sun glinted on the grass and on all bright things: her wrist-watch, the clasp in her hair.

  He said: “ I suppose it is too much to ask of you. When one lives all one’s life in a city, in a constant round of cocktail-parties and fashion shows … Aside from anything else, it’s a question of not having the stamina.”

  She said quietly: “I will climb as far as you when I please; but only when I please. Let us go back to Delphi.”

  They picked their way over the boulder-strewn path and began to descend. As they got down a guide was moving with two other people across the theatre; Anya went across to him. He knew her and greeted her effusively and they talked for a couple of minutes while Gene walked slowly round the amphitheatre. When she came back to Gene it was with a flicker in her eyes.

  “A friend?” he said.

  “A friend. He has a brother called Menelaus. Menelaus is a good climber. If you are staying tomorrow he would know the practical difficulties.”

  “And what are they?”

  “He advised against it, said the snow was treacherous at this time of year. But for your future information the best place to start from is Arakhova. From there it takes about seven hours. But he said never to go alone because of the dogs.”

  “The dogs?”

  “The sheep-dogs. They are very fierce.”

  They went on down. Gene said: “Menelaus would be a good guide?”

  “The best.”

  “I’ll engage him next time I come.”

  “You’ll not stay?”

  “No, I may have business in Athens tomorrow too.”

  “To do with your publishing firm?”

  “To do with something that might be published.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Not quite.”

  They skirted the temple ruins and began to come in sight of the road.

  Gene said: “ Can it be done in one day?”

  “Not really at this time of the year.” She stopped and peered down at a piece of inscribed stone. “The best way is to spend a night in a hut about fifteen hundred feet from the summit. Then you start out the next morning before daybreak and watch the dawn from the summit.”

  “My God,” he said.

  “So it will be something to look forward to if you are here in the summer.”

  He stopped, and after a couple of paces she stopped and turned and looked up at him from a lower step. “Anya,”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no.”

  “There must be women in this village. Some may have suitable boots.”

  “Women here don’t climb. They toil in the fields all day.”

  “Are you afraid of trying it?”

  “I’ve told you. I could climb just as far as you—and as fast——”

  “It would be a new experience.”

  Her eyes were fronded as they looked into the sun. “ I don’t care to be away from Athens two nights.”

  “Nor do I. But you don’t need to be. It could be done tonight. The new moon’s up. We could be back in Athens by noon tomorrow.”

  “If we have not fallen into a crevasse or been eaten by dogs or caught pneumonia sitting in the hut or altogether worn our feet away in other men’s shoes. Yes, that way we should be in Athens tomorrow. But I prefer to be in Athens tonight.”

  He said: “ What were those lines Michaelis quoted? ‘Her nod governs the shining heights of Heaven … The lamentable silences of the world below.’ Why Athens tonight? An appointment for a manicure?”

  She thought about that for a minute. “I am waiting to see how offensive you can really be.”

  “I’m sorry.… You know the old saying. All’s fair in war.”

  Her expression was hidden from him now; he didn’t know if he was gaining ground or losing it.

  He said: “I’ll make a bargain with you. If you come up the mountain I’ll tell you why I came to Greece and why George Lascou considers me his enemy—that’s if you don’t know already. I’ll tell you why the Spaniard came to be killed. And also perhaps what he came hereto do.”

  “First it was sarcasm and now it is bribery. And all so very unsubtle: that’s the most depressing thing. Have you no threats?”

  He said: “I only want you to come. I think it is important, for us both. It seems to me that it’s more than the summit of a mountain.”

  She said: “Ah, symbolism, I hadn’t thought of that. I’m always a little allergic to symbolism. It is like false money at the best of times.”

  “Come, Anya,” he said. “ You must come.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They took the car back as far as Arakhova. With them went Menelaus, a man in early middle age, gaunt and bearded and one-eyed, the blind eye slanting across his nose in a treacherous squint. It gave him a look of sneering brutality. With them also went blankets, ropes, two thermoses of coffee and some sandwiches that one of the small hotels had made up. Anya had borrowed the climbing boots of Menelaus’s thirteen-year-old brother. In these and her yellow jumper and
a pair of shabby ski-ing trousers she said she was ludicrous; in fact they had that provocative effect which ungainly clothing can sometimes have on a beautiful woman.

  They left Arakhova at half past four, and there was nothing in the climb while daylight lasted. The sun was still very hot and they made their way without haste up the wooded slopes. After about two hours the going became harder because it was largely over loose stones. Menelaus had needed some pressing to undertake the climb, it being, he said, a bad time of year both because of the treacherous snow and because of the risk of sudden storms. Parnassus, he said, was noted for them; the old mountain was temperamental; like God; you never knew who or where he was going to strike next. He talked almost without a break on the way up, and with the going hard and steep the other two were content to let him.

  Once they heard dogs baying in the distance and he said: “Be not afraid: they know me; but they are as fierce as wolves.”

  As they climbed level with the other mountains snow began to appear—earlier than Gene had calculated, at first only in patches where the sun did not reach, then in long ridges like zebra stripes. They sat on a high mound of stones to watch the sun wink his red eye over the side of the world. The ravine beside them looked like a great hairy armpit which, as the sun sank, perceptibly darkened and seemed to quicken as if the arm had stirred. The breeze had dropped, and all about them was a great silence. But far away in the distance, far below them, a shepherd was playing his pipe to his sheep. The thin sweet notes came up to them out of the darkening void like the last sounds of a drowning world.

  She said in English: “ I am waiting.”

  “What for?”

  “For you to tell me why you came to Greece.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  “Can Menelaus speak English?”

  “No.”

  Gene said: “ I’ve first got to ask you one question. Only one, I promise. What’s your feeling about Communists?”

  “I like them like poverty, like disease, like pain, like dirt under the nails.”

  In the brief over-coloured after-glow the eccentric planes of his face moved in fleeting symmetries of determination and disillusion.

  “I think I started life without political prejudices. I came back to Greece during the war with only one idea, which was getting the Germans out. ELAS has made me feel the way I do. Even now I’m dead against witch-hunts—all the paraphernalia of persecuting people because they have liberal ideas and carried a red flag at a meeting. In western countries Communists haven’t a hope. Here it’s different. Twice they’ve nearly made it: first in 1944 when the British stopped them, second in 1947 when the Greeks themselves, with American aid, stopped them. But it’s never been a knock-out. Remember the spy ring of a few years ago?”

  “Which?”

  “The Vavoudis thing.”

  “Oh, yes. Secret radios and the rest. Very boring.”

  “Not for Vavoudis. He committed suicide. But there were others who stood trial. Twenty-nine.”

  “I remember.”

  “Secret radios, as you say; tentacles everywhere covering labour troubles, military espionage, penetration of the political parties, spreading unrest at crucial times, smuggling in of gold to pay and bribe. I got involved in it some months before it broke.”

  “You did? How?”

  “Military counter espionage had been trying to uncover the ring for eighteen months or more; but they couldn’t. Quite by chance, I happened on a sensitive spot. There was a sharp reaction and I ran into trouble and a man was killed. There was a police inquiry, and from that—what came out not in court but in private—a new scent started. From there on it led to the uncovering of the Vavoudis spy ring.”

  “And what happened to you?”

  Menelaus was fidgeting. “ Let us go, please. We have less than twenty minutes of the day left.”

  They made the two stone huts about ten-thirty. The quarter moon, following the sun down, had been very bright except for the last fifteen minutes when they had walked into a cloud. Menelaus lit a fire of sticks in one of the huts and filled the lamp with paraffin, and they had their coffee and sandwiches on the bare woooden table in the centre of the hut. Menelaus ate keftedes with maize bread and drank a whole bottle of retsina.

  Gene said: “ How are your boots?”

  “Wonderful. Only they were not made for my feet.” She sat sideways on a bench in her stockinged feet, her knees drawn up and her hands around them.

  “Are you blistered?”

  “So far there is very little blood.”

  “Let me see.”

  “No, I’m unhurt.”

  He said in Greek: “ It’s going to be cold here tonight. I think we should make up the fire.”

  “Don’t worry, I will see to that,” said Menelaus. “There is some chopped wood in the next hut. We have always kept chopped wood and paraffin here, even during the war.”

  “You were here during the war?”

  “Around and about. Twice I made journeys to Athens, but I don’t like Athens. It’s unhealthy. All those people crowded together and toilets indoors. I prefer the open fields, like the animals. One becomes half animal up here.” He touched his thick goatskin cape and squinted hideously. “ So one cares little for heat or cold.”

  Gene said: “It was ELAS country?”

  Menelaus nodded. “ It was. But Greek country before and after.”

  “That’s what we should all have remembered.”

  “Oh, some were in ELAS but many wished to work alone. That first winter in ’41, I was a boy of twenty and I had romantic notions. There were six English soldiers hiding up here, in this hut, and we fed them. One was from Adelaide, two from Christhouse, New Zealand, and three from Manchester. That is England? We sent them off to Cairo. And later we got a message back. I have the message … No, it’s in my drawer at home.”

  “How did you get them out?” Anya asked.

  “We took them by night down to a cave near Kirphi. Then the next night there was a rowing-boat made ready for them on the sea-shore near Itea. All that winter we did that, because stray ones kept coming in. Twice instead I guided men to Athens; but that was in ’43; and the second time the Germans caught me and beat me and something went wrong with my eye. But I had the laugh of them in the end because I helped to blow up a bridge across a road when they were retreating and many of them were on it. That was very comical. I will get you some wood.”

  He heaved himself up, and a great shadow flung itself round the hut as he went to the door and out.

  Anya swung her legs down and put her hands in her pockets.

  “There are nine children in the family, all living off the same farm and what they can pick up from casual earnings. Yet you would insult this man tomorrow if you gave him more than his agreed fee.”

  Gene said: “ This is the Greece that I care about—that I sometimes care about so much that it hurts—not the shoddy-smart, phoney glitter of fashionable Athens.”

  “My world.”

  “By choice?”

  “By choice.”

  “It isn’t the only one there is.”

  She shrugged and there was silence. He studied her two profiles, the lamp-lit one and the shadow on the wall behind it. It was like the other self, the ka as the Egyptians called it. Which was the one he was addressing himself to, and what were the risks he was running?

  Rather sulkily she said: “You were telling me on the way up about the spy ring and how you were expelled from Greece.”

  “Not expelled, invited to leave. Trouble was my own embassy thought the same and I couldn’t rely on their backing. So I left just as the Vavoudis thing was coming to the boil. I think I could still have been useful, but somebody had pulled strings. The next time I visited Greece all sorts of road blocks were put in my way, as I’ve told you, almost as soon as I landed. I even had difficulty in getting to talk with the chief army intelligence officer who’d handled the case. When I asked him w
hy, he shrugged and said the Vavoudis arrests had only taken the froth off the barrel: the fermenting was still going on deeper down.”

  “And why are you here now?”

  “Just before an election is a likely time for the froth to begin to rise again. And this time one might see deeper into the barrel.”

  “And what has all this to do with the Little Jockey or the accident to the Spaniard or your feud with George Lascou?”

  He gave her a long considering stare. Up to now he had been taking a reasonable risk; at this point the risk became unreasonable.

  “Ever hear of Anton Avra?”

  “No.”

  “He was half Roumanian, half Macedonian, trained in Russia. He was Vavoudis’s chief, the organising brain. But he saw the red light and got out of the country just in time. Nobody knew what had happened to him, but it was generally thought he’d gone back behind the Iron Curtain. Then a few months ago it was announced that he’d died in Spain.”

  “In Spain …”

  “I suppose he was sent there to improve the organisation of the party. He was brilliant at that sort of thing, especially in places where the party was underground. D’you remember the details of Vavoudis’s suicide?”

  “Wasn’t he surrounded?”

  “Yes, in a house in Lycurgus Street. They’d built a big cellar under the washhouse that you could only get into by a sliding concrete door hidden under the sink. Although the military knew there was a transmitter in the house when they surrounded it, it took them a day and a half to find it, and Vavoudis was down there all the time. In addition to the transmitter were all the party papers and records, which he couldn’t burn before he was discovered because the smoke would betray him. When he was discovered he set fire to them but there wasn’t enough draught in the cellar for the stuff to bum quickly. So most of it was saved. Only a few of the most important books and letters were gone. It was generally assumed that Avra had taken them with him when he left.”

  “So?”

  She was sitting now with her back against the wall, her hands round one knee which was drawn up, her lips resting on it; the other leg was stretched out and showed through the thick material the rounded movement of her thigh as her grey-stockinged foot gently tapped the end of the table.