Where had he seen him before? In Damascus, in Beirut, in Istanbul—his three cities, where thousands of such boys darkened the sidewalks. It was striking how boys of that age all possessed the same gaze. They were like messengers from another world. It was surely another sign that had been sent to him. Thanks be to God, then. But another thought came to him. The boy was the soul of the old Codrington which had appeared in its childhood form. It was her father as a boy, staring at his killer.
The sea calmed, the ship stopped pitching. There is a time for many words, and there is a time for sleep. So he slept for eleven hours with no dreams and the Adriatic gave him solace. How many had sailed across it before him. How many had drowned in it over the centuries. All he heard in his sleep were the bursars clanging their way down the metal corridors, inconsiderate to the last man, and the water pipes laid along his wall. But neither was enough to rouse him out of that sweetness. It was strange, he thought later when he was awake in the dining room having his coffee, because of all the creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than humankind.
—
In the hour before he arrived at Brindisi he pored over the road map, on which Jimmie long ago had penciled their yearly route back and forth from Rome. At first he had thought to just drive north as fast as he could and get to the French frontier. But as he perused the Michelin map he began to change his mind. If uproar had ensued in Hydra then the borders would be perilous to cross. Far better to lie low in Italy itself for a while. Then it occurred to him that he had at his disposal the house which Jimmie and Phaine maintained north of Rome, as Naomi had explained to him when she first suggested her plan. It would be the last place that anyone would think to look for him. For a week, two weeks, or a few days, it would shelter him and make him invisible. He would make his way there slowly, and monitor events from afar as best he could. A new plan every day. Often the best strategy is to play the part and not stick out, to fill the shoes that you happen to be wearing.
—
He drove into Brindisi two hours before lunch. He found an Internet cafe on a despondent street and sat there with a coffee, looking through the news sites for Greece. There was no sign of a drama on Hydra. Perhaps it was too early for such news to have appeared on the wires. He went out into the front of the same cafe and drank two cappuccinos with three spoons of sugar apiece. It was an old Crusader city, down at the heel and filled with an atmosphere of pessimistic expectancy. The men looked like Arabs, the women sly and more Greek, to his eye. The cafes hard and spare, with too much red plastic and too much football paraphernalia. He was dressed too well for it, which was all to the good.
He walked down a few streets afterward and bought a cell phone in a shop that appeared to be run by Indians; they sold him a SIM card that they said he could start up by himself even without an Italian address. He also bought some razors and shaving cream, some bread and cheese, and a pair of fashion sunglasses on sale. He then drove out of the city toward San Vito dei Normanni under a high sun, along a road as straight as an engineer’s drawing.
When he got to the crook in the road as it swung around the citadel-like town of Ostuni, he stopped and got out into the sun, sitting behind a low stone wall on the hard shoulder. The land had a very slight gradient, divided by the same low walls, and whitewashed trulli stood against the latter’s horizontal repetitiveness. It looked fertilely satanic. He sat there a long time watching lizards scatter across the walls and thinking with remorse about the couple he had killed. He still didn’t know why it had come to that; panic and pent-up terror and maybe even a little grain of mysterious hatred. It had been unintended, but then who knew what was intended and what was not? His own mind had acted in spite of itself. He was sorry, but there was no use in it. One had to plunge forward, eyes closed if necessary.
He decided he would call the friend of his father’s who had given him work when he was living in the neighborhood of Fatih in Istanbul, a businessman who had helped him arrange his flight out of Turkey. He had done some translation work for him in the area of medical supplies. Now Faoud had another favor to ask him. There were underground networks in Rome and Naples that he could use, people who might be able to alter the passport he had now. He opened the phone and called a number in Istanbul. As far as he could tell, the line was active. He tried it three or four times, but no one answered. It now occurred to him that the businessman might well be avoiding his calls. That was the way the Istanbouli were: they were interested in you when you were there, but if you moved abroad you ceased to exist. And yet the man had been reasonably kind to him at the time; had taken him in as if he’d been a stray dog. And he was still a stray dog.
Having no luck with the call, he hung up and drove on.
At dusk, having seen many signs for eateries by the road, he decided to eat in a better sort of restaurant and stopped in a field to change into some of Jimmie’s clothes. He placed a pocket square in the jacket he had selected and then continued until he saw a sign for a handsome-looking place called Masseria Marzalossa. It was a large agriturismo estate with a hotel and a restaurant, and it seemed as good a place as any to stop. He took a room for the night, paid up front in cash, and ate in the hotel dining room. The elderly couples there hardly noticed him.
On his bed later he went through the credit cards and the clothes and wondered where he could sell the jewelry. It would surely be easier, less inconspicuous, in a big city. Rome or Naples, places he didn’t know. He also went through the notebook and the papers that he had found in the glove compartment of the car. There was a map of the region where their house lay with the roads around it clearly marked. There was only the question of whether the vengeful ghost of the white man would be living there.
In the morning he went to the public computer in the lobby and looked again through the news from Greece. There was nothing about Hydra. The murder of wealthy visitors would surely be headline news, but the wires mentioned no such thing. Then he understood what had happened. God had moved Naomi to act in his defense and, naturally, to cover her own culpability.
As for Codrington and his wife, no one could say—maybe they had had an argument and she had gone to Paris to do some shopping. The mysteries and vanities of the rich were inexplicable, and in any case, no one asked them any awkward questions about their movements. They were free to do as they wanted.
THIRTEEN
“The Arab was very calm when he came,” Carissa said, with no disequilibrium in her voice as she rolled off the incredible words. Her eyes were unfazed, soldiers ready for combat and the impertinent doubts of others. As she spoke she could sense that her confidence alone defended her but that it was more than enough. “I went to bed as you told me. When I was there, I stayed there. I fell asleep.”
“I don’t understand why Jimmie woke up.” Naomi’s voice cracked and tears burst into her eyes without falling. “How could he?”
The maid remained calm.
“He must have heard a noise.”
“Impossible.”
Naomi sat on the carpet and put her head in her hands. The tears rushed out at last, but they were finite. It was just a question of time. She began talking anyway.
“Now we have to sit down and think and not do anything stupid.”
“Yes,” the maid said.
Sam had sat down as well, and her hand was on her mouth to stop the regurgitation that threatened.
“What time did you come up here?” Naomi went on.
“At seven.”
“You didn’t call me?”
“I called you, but you didn’t answer.”
“Yes, that’s true. I was negligent, I’m sorry. It must have been terrible for you.”
“I’ve been here alone—”
“Thank God you didn’t call anyone else. We have to think.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Carissa said.
“Sam?”
“I’m OK.”
“We have to stay calm,” Naom
i insisted.
“I’m calm.”
“Carissa, you’re the only one—”
“Yes. No one called this morning.”
“You definitely didn’t call anyone else?”
“No, miss.”
They were speaking in Greek and Sam couldn’t understand. But she guessed from gestures and intonations that the two other women were not planning to call the police. She protested, but Naomi wouldn’t hear of it. She explained to Sam that Jimmie had surely woken up when he heard a noise and came downstairs in his usual belligerent temper. Seeing a man of non-European hue in his house at three in the morning, he must have flown into one of his rages. Faoud would have panicked. The maid said, “It was the poker from the fire. Look.” She had laid it on the table, uncleaned.
“Why didn’t he just run out?” Sam said. “He didn’t have to do this.”
Naomi shook her head. “Jimmie would have threatened him. You didn’t know him. He must have lost his temper and gone for him.”
“We don’t know that, Naomi.”
“I know it. That’s obviously what happened.”
“Let the police decide.”
Sam said this because she needed to know exactly what had happened. It would be the difference between being guilty or innocent.
“No,” Carissa said in Greek to Naomi. “We can’t do that. The police will think that we were accomplices. They’ll assume it immediately, and they’ll find out that I opened the door for him and that you asked me to do it. I’ll tell them if they ask me.”
Naomi turned to Sam and repeated this to her.
“Then what?” the girl burst out. “We’re just going to fucking leave them like this? Are you serious?”
“I’m going to talk to Carissa in Greek. She knows how the police work here. I think we should do what she says.”
“She’s the maid,” Sam spat at her. “We’re going to do what your maid tells us to? Are you insane?”
“It’s the least insane option.”
Naomi went back to Greek, speaking as softly and calmly as she could though her whole body was trembling.
“Say we don’t call the police,” she said. “I don’t see what we can do.”
“I’ve been thinking all morning. I’ve been thinking it through. I know it sounds like the worst idea—but what if we bury them in the garden?”
The sweat was coursing down Carissa’s face. She waved away the disgusting flies. Suddenly she got up and rushed into the kitchen, returning with an aerosol fly killer. She sprayed the room for a full minute until they were coughing and then sat back down in the same chair while the flies gradually subsided to their deaths. She went on. The garden was tiny, but it was enough. It was even fitting in its way. How many times had the master talked idly about being buried in his own garden? There was nothing wrong with it. In any case, they couldn’t go back to their prior lives, they had to deal with what the present moment had inflicted upon them. Bury them, she said. Just dig the hole and do it. There was nothing to it, and there was nothing else to do. Once it was done they would have time to think again, and—to state the obvious—anything was better than going to prison. She would show them how to do it.
“What a fool Faoud was,” Naomi whispered. “He lost his cool and panicked. We put him in a terrible situation.”
“Maybe not.” The maid’s voice was measured and rational. “He didn’t leave the money behind, did he? He made a choice. You should have realized he would.”
Naomi’s tears broke their dam. The realization was beginning to deepen and the first few minutes of shock had given way to emotion. She had never intended to erase her father from the earth and therefore she had not anticipated the sudden grief that came with the annihilation of a lifetime’s presence. Everything reversed and upended in moments, destroyed in a whirl of dust and madness. Yet there was no time for either gravity or histrionics; they had to act. She couldn’t look at him at first but then she went over and took his head in her hands and rocked it back and forth. She began to lose her breath. “Why did you wake up?” she said to him through gritted teeth. “Why didn’t you sleep after the tea? You had to wake up!”
And then it dawned on her that Phaine must have come downstairs, disturbed by the noise, and that Faoud—surprised and panicking—must have killed her there as well. It might have happened in the space of a few insane seconds, unpremeditated and purely accidental.
“I measured the garden,” the maid went on, as if this were not happening. Time was short and they had to make a decision. “We can dig it ourselves and bury them there. There are spades in the garden shed and plastic sheets. We can lay them next to the olive tree under the wall. Nobody will find them.”
“What is she saying?” Sam said close to Naomi’s ear.
“She says we have to bury them in the garden.”
Sam stood up and swayed a little.
“Not me. I’m not doing that.”
Naomi stood with her and faced her angrily. Her superior will suddenly imposed itself.
“You have to help. I need you, there’s no backing out. You’re with us.”
“I can do whatever I want. I can leave right now.”
“No, you can’t.”
“If you’re not with us,” the maid said laconically in Greek, “I’m not going to cover for you when the police come. If they ask me, and they will, I’ll say you were involved.”
Naomi translated: it was mutually assured destruction then. Sam was about to fly into a rage. Her face reddened and she took a step backward, but it was Naomi who gripped her wrist and tried to pull her out of her coming impulsiveness.
“Think a little,” she said gently. “Think it through. There’s no way out for you. You’re already in it with us. It’s better just to go through with it.”
The girl calmed and the first signs of resignation floated into her face.
“It won’t last long,” Naomi said, “and then we’ll be back to normal.”
“Normal?”
“Something like normal. I promise.”
“I can’t see what you can promise now. You really fucked this one up—why should I believe you of all people?”
“Because you have no choice,” Naomi said. “Now pull yourself together.”
It was two in the afternoon. In the garden the shade from the old wall reached as far as the center where the olive tree stood. It was tired grass which a gardener mowed twice a month and with the rainless days it had lost its color. The soil was dry and loose underneath it. They found it easy to scoop up with the brand-new spades as they created a large pit.
By four, having excavated the grave, they sat in the shade and tried to recover; they were relieved that no one had called their phones and no one had rung the outer doorbell.
Sam thought about how her future might look now. It had suddenly disintegrated before her. Everything that is solid, she thought, melts into air.
Then she looked down at her arms and saw clusters of ants clinging to the backs of her hands. She uttered a cry of disgust and shook them off. But they swarmed around her feet. She stamped them out, shuddering with a touch of theatricality.
“What is it?” Naomi asked her.
“They’re everywhere. Can’t you see them?”
But Naomi saw nothing.
Sam said, “They’re on my arms.”
She threw her hands into the air again to shake off the little vermin.
“Calm down,” Naomi said.
She gripped Sam’s hands and stopped her flustering. To distract them Carissa made them some mint tea. They went inside and drank it, then laid the two bodies flat and wrapped them in plastic sheeting. They carried Jimmie out first and arranged him gently at the bottom of the cavity. Phaine they positioned alongside him, and then they sat by the edge of the grave and wondered what to do next. “Should I say something?” Naomi said in Greek to Carissa.
“You can say it to yourself, love.”
“I can’t think of anything,” Naom
i went on. “I can’t think of anything to think, let alone say.”
“Then don’t say anything.”
The quicker the better, the Greek girl was thinking.
Naomi flinched, stood up, and picked up the spade.
“This wasn’t my intention,” she said, still in Greek, and to Carissa. “You know that.”
“It wasn’t my intention either,” Carissa retorted.
And yet what did intentions matter? No one took them seriously anyway. Naomi threw the first spadeful of soil onto the bodies and then she began the long task mechanically, indifferent to their efforts.
It took them an hour to refill the grave. By the time they had finished, the garden was flooded with sunlight. They patted down the soil and then awkwardly replaced the torn grass, since they had kept the clumps intact and laid them carefully to one side. When they had finished the garden looked almost as it had before, but not quite. They beat down the grass with the backs of their spades and, at the end, they sat together under the olive tree.
In the late afternoon this part of the port enjoyed the silence of the small mountains. Filled with crows, the sky became an echo chamber for their calls, and at the horizon the haze of the sea had turned violet. Carissa went into the kitchen and brought out a pitcher of cold lemonade, and they drank it from the jug, spilling it everywhere. The bobbing ice cubes rubbing their front teeth revived them and soon a form of peace returned. The maid got up and said, with her simple pragmatism, “We have to clean the house. And we have to clean it well.”
They worked into the evening, washing down the floors and then the walls. Everything in the bedroom and the salon was put back in its place, the poker assiduously cleaned, the minute displacements caused by a violent moment rectified. There were things missing, but no one who was not family would ever notice them unless they were specifically looking for them. The passports were gone, the personal effects. The simple version of the story they were going to tell was that Jimmie and Phaine had left for a trip. Perhaps they had even decided to drive back to London—no one knew.
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