Nikki put the passport carefully on the desk next to the suitcase and ended the call. Somewhat reluctantly. She felt so small and lonely that she was almost ready to confess herself even to the cleaning woman.
36
Down, meanwhile, the sun moved towards its nadir, and its foreordained daily extinction in the ocean. On the foundation sailed towards its apogee, and its scheduled annual apotheosis in the Fred Toppler Lecture. Sun and foundation both were as complexly self-absorbed as a liner steaming towards New York, or the world itself on its great journey towards whatever fate awaits it. Neither sun nor world, nor foundation either, were troubled by any small internal discrepancies.
The agency waiters who had arrived on the morning ferry from Athens were clipping on their bow ties. The string quartet who would be playing inaudibly during the champagne reception in the Temple of Athena were setting up their music stands and squabbling about the mess the second violin had made of their booking the previous night at a funeral in Kalamaki. In guest villas among the greenery all over the headland wives were standing in front of mirrors, looking with dissatisfaction at themselves over the dresses they were holding up, and asking husbands for the reassurances they had uttered so many times before over the years; and husbands were reclining on beds, still sunk in their early evening torpor, gazing at the ceiling and murmuring sight unseen the well-rehearsed words yet again.
Around the board room table in Democritus the bishop of the Hesperides Archipelago and other worthy trustees of the foundation were busy receiving apologies, adopting minutes, approving accounts, reappointing auditors, suppressing yawns, expressing thanks, offering congratulations, standing down, standing again, and looking forward to any other business, or rather the absence of it. Behind the closed doors of the conference suite in Aristippus Mr. Papadopoulou was hosting a private meeting of his own with Oleg Skorbatov and various other business associates from Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, and southern Italy, though exactly what their discussions had to do with European civilization no one knew, since Mr. Papadopoulou’s people had swept the entire premises for bugs, and Mr. Skorbatov’s people, not trusting the Greeks, had swept them all again; and because now all the security people from the various parties involved were standing outside the doors watching one another.
Down on the waterfront Giorgios, the security guard, wandered slowly along the dock, yawning and scratching himself. There was little for him to do, since so many of Mr. Papadopoulou’s guests had brought their own security people—and since in any case the whole foundation seemed to be entirely secure without the help of any of them. A large wooden crate had appeared on the dockside, he noticed. “Marine diesel spares,” said the stencil on the side, in Greek and English. Curious. A useful addition to the facilities of the waterfront, though, because it was a good five feet high, and there was enough room behind it for Giorgios to sit on the edge of the wharf and lean against it, out of sight of any possible security cameras.
He took off his shoes and socks, and lowered his feet into the water. All around him the waiting crews of the visitors’ yachts and cruisers were going about their traditional maritime business, hosing down decks and coiling ropes, throwing kitchen waste overboard and rattling crates of empty wine bottles. It was pleasantly relaxing to watch other people working.
Marine diesel spares … Still attached to the small crane that had presumably swung them ashore. From which of the boats, though? From Why Worry, of Dubrovnik? Lady Luck, of Istanbul? Ciaou Ciaou, of Brindisi? Their chrome fittings flashed in the sun. Their spotless white paintwork gleamed. None of them looked like the kind of vessel that might be shipping crates of marine diesel spares around the Mediterranean.
Giorgios smiled. He had a pretty good idea what was in that comfortably placed crate, and it wasn’t marine diesel spares. It was cash. Used banknotes from all over the eastern Mediterranean. Everyone knew that the function of the Fred Toppler Foundation for Mr. Papadopoulou was to launder the proceeds from some of his other enterprises. Giorgios had no idea what money laundering involved, but he liked the feeling that something useful was going on here, some clean and wholesome operation that made the world a better place.
He leaned back against the solid comfort of all that money and lit a cigarette. He had scarcely taken his first long, consoling drag, though, when the world fell to pieces around him. He was sprawling on his back, his support gone. The currency had collapsed! It was flying in the sky above his head. He struggled to sit up. The crate was swinging away out over the water, and the crane it was swinging from was being operated by Reg Bolt, the director of security. Giorgios threw his cigarette into the water and scrambled to his bare wet feet.
Reg Bolt, though, was gazing at him as if it was not Giorgios but he himself who had been caught napping. He was offering some kind of explanation, but since it was in English Giorgios had no idea what he was saying, only that it referred to the crate, which was now heading away from the dockside on the deck of a trim white launch. The marine diesel spares were not imports, they were exports, and the launch was heading for the biggest of all the yachts out there—Rusalka of Sevastopol.
After Reg Bolt had gone, and Giorgios was left to drag his socks up over his wet feet, he couldn’t help wondering what it was that the Fred Toppler Foundation could be exporting to Sevastopol, in the personal transport of one of Russia’s great oligarchs. Perhaps it was the finished products of the laundry operation. What was laundered money like? Perhaps it wasn’t just figures written in a bank account, or zeroes on the screen of a computer, as Giorgios had vaguely supposed. Perhaps it was banknotes going back out again, hundredweights of them, crates of them, freshly pressed and starched, wrapped in soft tissue paper, to be laid out by Mr. Skorbatov’s valet for his personal use.
* * *
Nikki hurriedly blindly from one final check, one last-minute problem, to the next. Eric Felt appeared out of nowhere, bulging accusingly at her, and holding up a small gray object. “A toe,” he said. “I found it near the new swimming pool. One of your people has obviously bashed into something. I shall have to report this to Christian. He’s going to be very upset.”
“Superglue,” said Nikki. But what she was thinking about was how Dr. Wilfred had told her he had once been older than he was now.
“Salt-free onion-free,” said Yannis, when she went into the kitchens, showing her a single portion of mushrooms à la grecque in its own skillet. “And it’s also kosher veggie, because hey, what the hell?”
“Brilliant,” she said. “Not that it matters anymore.”
“Not matter?” said Yannis. “If he’s allergic? If he’s gonna swell up and get red spots and choke to death?”
“Not anymore, he isn’t,” she said. “Unfortunately.” But all she could see were the wet footprints outside her window.
And no sign of him anywhere. Not that she knew what she was going to say to him when she found him. Or what she was going to do about it.
She was angry, though. Angry with him for making her ridiculous. Angry with herself for letting him. He had looked around—and picked her out to be his victim. He had destroyed her professional credibility and all her hopes for the future.
What kind of lecture was he going to give, anyway? Had he somehow got hold of the real Dr. Wilfred’s text? Or was he going to invent some lecture of his own? A mockery of a lecture? A hoax lecture, in the spirit of the masquerade he had been—was still—performing? Or would it be no lecture at all? Perhaps, when the moment came for him to stand up, he would remain sitting. Or stand up and say nothing. Or prove to have slipped away into the darkness a moment earlier.
But where was he?
And where was the real Dr. Wilfred?
And which of them was going to be standing up to give the Fred Toppler Lecture in two hours’ time?
And if neither of them was, then?
The first thing she had to do, obviously, was to tell Mrs. Toppler what had happened. And to do it before she read out the eulogious int
roduction that Nikki had written for her to someone who wasn’t Dr. Norman Wilfred at all. Or even to someone who was, supposing he should suddenly turn up, if Mrs. Toppler thought he wasn’t. Or to no one at all.
But how could she tell her, when it would finish her career? Not that she wanted to become director of the Fred Toppler Foundation just at the moment. Or to remain there in any capacity.
Or to be anywhere else on this earth.
* * *
Behind the screens around the new swimming pool the contractors were still working, apparently oblivious of any aspect of European civilization but the financial penalties for failure to complete on schedule. They were contributing to the intellectual life of the community, however, because Chris Binns, the foundation’s writer in residence, gazing out of the window of his room in Epictetus watching the dump trucks emerging from behind the screens, had at last had the idea for a poem.
He had been struggling to find a subject for some time. He obviously had to write something while he was here. If you went to be writer in residence somewhere you had to come back with more than just a suntan and a jar of the local honey. You were supposed to have written a poem, or preferably a whole sequence of poems. Something that alluded to the local landscape, certainly. But not, obviously, just saying how blue the sky was, and how nice the bougainvillea looked. It had to be something that crept up on the place obliquely. Obscurely. Ironically. Something that referenced bits of the place’s history and mythology that no one else knew about. That needed footnotes, and that would provide material for the thesis that a PhD candidate somewhere would one day be writing about you. He could see the thesis more clearly than he could see the poem. “This haunting and elusive work was written during a summer that Binns spent on the island of Skios, and interweaves the crisis of creative barrenness and existential purposelessness from which he was at that time suffering with the vibrant local resonances of…”
Of what, though? This was the problem. Of blue seas and purple bougainvillea? Of all the vibrant local resonances that had already been interwoven with his predecessors’ spiritual crises each year since this place had been open?
Now, however, he seemed to have cracked it. The poem was going to revolve around the figure of Athena. His idea was that the contractors digging out the new swimming pool had hit upon the site of the temple that was supposed to have been dedicated to her, and in some kind of half-hinted, largely incomprehensible way disturbed the goddess’s spirit. Since, as he had discovered from his researches on the Internet, she was the goddess not only of wisdom but of civilization, which was what the foundation was dedicated to, he could see considerable ironic possibilities opening up here. Wearing her helmet and chiton (whatever a chiton was—he could look it up later), carrying her shield, and accompanied by her traditional attendance of serpents, she would emerge from behind the screens and join in the life of the foundation. She might go to a class on Greek mythology. Take off her chiton and sunbathe. Come to one of Chris’s creative writing classes and read him some little epic or tragedy she had written.
This was the idea, but the actual words to express it he hadn’t yet found. It was difficult to concentrate in this place when for so much of the time there was nothing going on. And then suddenly, just as you were getting used to that, there was. A bird flying past the window. Another dump truck emerging from behind the screens around the construction site. The sun sinking ostentatiously towards the horizon. Right now, for example, here on the path below him Nikki was hurrying by, in her crisp white shirt, clipboard in hand, on her way from one mysterious importance to another. The sight of her reminded him of something. What it reminded him of most strongly and distractingly, of course, was herself. Or of Athena, perhaps, in her crisp white chiton, shield in hand. But also of something else. Something she had said.
A lecture? Someone giving a lecture? Someone asking a question?
* * *
In the Temple of Athena the two waiters by the buffet finished filling the hundred flutes with champagne. The string quartet picked up their bows. The headwaiter ushered Mrs. Toppler and Mr. Papadopoulou to their positions facing the entrance. Mrs. Toppler looked in her bag one last time to check that she had the texts of her introduction and her speech of thanks.
She closed her bag and nodded at the headwaiter. The headwaiter nodded at two of the underwaiters, who picked up heavy trays of charged glasses and took up their positions on either side of the entrance. First violin nodded at his colleagues.
Stream upon stream of tiny rising bubbles. Bar upon bar of serene singing notes. The endless pause before something happens.
Nikki, waiting in the shadows, settled a calm but concerned look on her face, and seized her chance. She stepped bravely forward.
“Mrs. Toppler,” she said. “Listen…”
But just at that moment the first guests walked into the temple. “Dickerson! Davina!” said Mrs. Toppler. “I might have known you’d be the first!”
37
One by one and two by two the tall flutes of champagne vanished from the waiters’ trays. One by one and two by two they wandered among the ruins in the gathering dusk, trying to find other glasses of champagne to talk to, keeping themselves pleasantly occupied by refracting in their pale sparkling depths the torches already flaring around the masonry, the riding lights on the yachts along the waterfront below, and the silently laboring right arms of the string quartet.
“So romantic!” said Rosamund Chailey to Darling Erlunder.
“You feel any moment you might see Agamemnon’s fleet sail over the horizon!” said Russell Pond to Mrs. Comax.
“Or Athena come round with the canapés!” said Mrs. Comax.
“And here’s Nikki, our very own goddess, instead!” said Chuck Friendly.
“Nikki, this is all so divine! But where is our Apollo? Our heavenly Dr. Wilfred?”
“I’m just looking for him myself,” said Nikki.
“We all have so many questions we want to ask him!” said Morton Rinkleman.
“So have I,” said Nikki. She moved on.
“Poor Nikki,” said Mrs. Comax. “She looks just desperate!”
“Such a load she’s carrying on those lovely young shoulders of hers!” said Mrs. Friendly.
* * *
A flute of champagne and a plate of canapés sailed head high through the guests still getting out of taxis and limousines in front of the lodge. “Oh, Nikki!” said Elli. “That’s so sweet of you! I think everyone has forgot me, sitting here in my box like a doll in a shop and nobody wants her.”
“You haven’t seen Dr. Wilfred, have you, Elli?” said Nikki. “Our lecturer? He hasn’t phoned, by any chance?”
“Oh my God!” said Elli. “He’s not here?”
“I can’t find him.”
“But it’s nearly time!”
“I know.”
“He’s got lost again! This great brain, and he can’t find his way from the guest room to breakfast! He phones me. ‘All I can see is goats,’ he says.”
“Anyway, if he phones now, or if you see him…”
“I call you at once, Nikki. Oh my God!”
Yes, oh my God, thought Elli, as Nikki hurried away again. She loses the great man just before his lecture—she never gets to be director! And what happens to me? I never get to be Mrs. Fred Toppler’s PA, and I’m stuck here in this glass box forever!
* * *
“Sixty-three euros,” said Stavros. “I take a credit card. Not a problem.”
There were no overworked glass doors here, only a striped barrier pole and uniformed security staff. No obesity, no sunburn, only slim and distinguished-looking people presenting gilt-edged invitation cards with raised italic print. Dr. Wilfred had finally arrived at his destination.
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“I’m your lecturer,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Your guest of honor.”
“No invitation?” said the security man. “No admission.”
* *
*
“Sixty-nine euros,” said Spiros. “I accept Visa and MasterCard. No problem.”
“Wait here,” said Oliver. “I’m coming back. I’m just fetching my passport.”
“Invitation,” said the security man.
“You’re Giorgios, right?” said Oliver. “You saw me before. Nikki’s guest, remember?”
“No guest come in,” said Giorgios, “only he have invitation.”
* * *
The first security man looked dubiously through Dr. Wilfred’s passport, and then through the text of his lecture.
“I haven’t got an invitation to the lecture,” said Dr. Wilfred, “because I am the lecturer. It’s me who is giving the lecture for which the invitations have been issued. This is the lecture I am giving.”
He was surprising himself once again by the patience and politeness he was managing to display. The security man turned back to the beginning of the lecture and began slowly to turn all the pages over again.
“I know it says I am in Kuala Lumpur,” said Dr. Wilfred. “Or Western Australia. But they are deleted. I am here, in Skios. I shall put that in before I start.”
He couldn’t help noticing that there was someone else who was also being refused admission by one of the other security people. Also no invitation, and in his case no passport or lecture to offer in lieu.
“Come,” said the security man. Still holding Dr. Wilfred’s passport and lecture he led the way towards some kind of lodge or gatehouse. Dr. Wilfred kept very close to him, never taking his eyes off the lecture.
* * *
“I’m so sorry, Dr. Wilfred!” a familiar voice called out to Oliver from the darkness. “We’re going to miss your lecture!”
Mr. and Mrs. Chuck Friendly, the second-richest couple in the state of Rhode Island, were emerging from the pedestrian gate beside the barrier, on their way out with a couple of companions.
Skios: A Novel Page 16