Levkas Man

by Innes, Hammond;

  He turned on me then. ‘What sort of a world are you living in?’ He caught hold of my arm and swung me round. ‘Regardez! There is Albánia.’ He flung out his arm in a broad gesture. ‘That one is Mao-Communist. And there is Yugoslavia.’ He pointed to the north. ‘Tito-Communist. A third frontier is with the Bulgars—Russian puppets.’ He almost spat. ‘We are ringed with Communist enemies. Their armies are on our north-eastern frontier, their fleet among our islands, and beyond the Aegean we are face-en-face with Turkey. The smell of war is in the air and you wonder we are sensitive?’

  And when I reminded him again that this was just an anthropological dig, he said, ‘That is good cover for a man who wishes to travel the villages of my country.’

  It was no good arguing with him, and we walked on, climbing the final slope to the cave. A young corporal in olive-green uniform came to meet us and Kotiadis talked with him for a moment. Then we had reached the dig, where Cartwright waited for us, stripped to the waist and wearing a pair of over-long khaki shorts. Behind him, Hans Winters was standing in the trench they had dug. He reminded me of Sonia, the same features, but rounder and heavier. He, too, was stripped to the waist, and his long fair hair, bleached almost white by the sun, hung over his eyes, limp with sweat.

  They already knew Kotiadis. It was I who was the stranger, and their eyes fastened on me, waiting to know who I was—and Kotiadis let them wait, watching them both, a cigarette in his mouth, his sleepy-lidded eyes half closed.

  My gaze had fastened on Cartwright. He was about my own age, tall and thin, his ribs showing through the tight-stretched skin of his torso, his stomach flat and hard with muscle. But the shoulders were sloped, the head small. He had a little sandy moustache and high colouring; and the round steel spectacles he wore gave him a studious, rather than an athletic appearance. His left arm was in a sling.

  He blinked when I told him who I was. ‘I didn’t expect you’d …’ He hesitated. ‘He never m-mentioned you.’ He was on the defensive, his nervousness showing in a slight stutter. His eyes shifted to Kotiadis, owl-like behind the thick lenses. ‘Any news of Dr Van der Voort?’

  ‘Óhi.’ Kotiadis shook his head.

  He was glad. I sensed it immediately; it probably gave him a glow of importance to have the dig to himself. ‘I suppose you’re in charge here now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked beyond him, along the line of the trench into the shadowed interior of the cave. It wasn’t really a cave at all, more of a scooped-out hollow in the hillside, as though a great piece of it had been prised out and let fall into the valley below. And it was large. Even where we stood the overhang protruded above our heads. The height of it must have been a good 50 feet, and the cave itself about 80 feet wide and 40 feet deep. Stones had been piled on the far side, and at the back, where they had erected a little blue Terylene shelter on an aluminium frame, the curve of the rock wall was black, and so smooth it might have been glazed. ‘How old is this cave?’ I asked him. He hadn’t expected that, and I was thinking of the letter from Gilmore lying on the desk in the house in Amsterdam: ‘Does it go back thirty-five thousand years?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘But it’s important?’ It had to be important, otherwise there was no sense in the old man’s behaviour.

  ‘It’s a cave-shelter,’ he said. ‘But how long it’s been a cave-shelter …’ He gave a shrug. ‘That we’ll only know when we’ve dug down through the layers.’

  ‘But you must have some idea what you’re going to find. You’re not digging here just for the fun of it.’

  ‘It’s worth a try. That’s all one can say at the moment.’

  ‘But what did my father think?’

  ‘Dr Van der Voort?’

  ‘Yes, what did he say about it?’

  He hesitated. ‘You’ve got to remember we’d been walking steadily, mostly in bitter cold, all the way down through Macedonia and a bit of Montenegro—about two hundred miles of territory we’d covered—and apart from a few artefacts, all quite recent, we’d found nothing.’ And he added, ‘Everything’s relative on an expedition like this. In the end, you’ve got to justify it somehow. Our finances limit us to three months’ work.’

  ‘In other words, it’s a shot in the dark?’

  ‘If you like.’

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that the old man would have gone out in winter with such desperate urgency to work on something he didn’t believe in. ‘You hadn’t much confidence in him, had you?’

  ‘I didn’t disagree with him, if that’s what you mean?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean at all,’ I answered. ‘It’s just that I want to know how this fits in to the pattern of his discoveries.’

  ‘The pattern?’ He seemed puzzled.

  ‘You must have realized that he was working to some sort of an overall pattern—a framework if you like. You know very well he was out here last year, that he covered the whole area from here to the coast and out to the islands. Didn’t he tell you? Didn’t anybody tell you what he was aiming at?’

  His manner, his whole attitude to the dig, annoyed me. I had expected enthusiasm, a sense of excitement, something that would enable me to understand what it was my father was searching for. Instead, he was making it all seem dull and ordinary, like those students you read about digging around in the foundations of old hill forts in Britain. ‘You haven’t been in charge of a dig before, have you?’

  ‘Not in charge. But I’ve been on digs before.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Suffolk—Clactonian Man. In Germany and France. Why?’ He was frowning. ‘Why are you so interested in this cave? You’re not an anthropologist.’

  ‘No. I’m a ship’s officer.’ I stared at him, trying to see into his mind, trying to understand. ‘You came out here with a man who’s regarded as a brilliant palæontologist and you don’t seem to know what his theory is, what he’s working towards. Didn’t Holroyd brief you?’

  ‘Of course. And I knew Dr Van der Voort’s reputation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s common knowledge. Planting that skull in a dig in Africa. Trying to fool people, and then working for Moscow and twisting his theories to suit the Russians. He may be brilliant. I know some people think so. But it’s a damn tricky sort of brilliance.’

  ‘What was he trying to prove here in Greece? Or don’t you know?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The Cro-Magnon-Mousterian gap. That’s something anthropologists have been puzzling over for years. He had a theory about that. But his main interest was to prove that homo sapiens sapiens—modern man—came up from Africa across a mythical land-bridge. It was a complete reversal of all that he had written previously.’

  ‘You don’t agree with him then?’

  He hesitated. ‘Well, if you want to know, I think a man should be consistent; he Shouldn’t switch his ideas to suit his convenience the way Dr Van der Voort did.’

  ‘And you didn’t believe in it?’ I insisted.

  The question seemed to worry him. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘No, I didn’t.’ He said it reluctantly, as though I had forced the admission out of him.

  ‘Then what’s the point of this expedition?’

  ‘To check. There’s always a chance, you know.’

  ‘An outside chance, as far as you’re concerned?’

  ‘Well, yes, if you like. It’s a theory, nothing more. And a pretty wild one. If you knew anything about anthropology you’d realize that.’

  I turned to Hans Winters. ‘Is that what you think?’

  He stared at me, not saying anything, a stubborn, mulish look on his face.

  ‘What puzzles me,’ I said, turning back to Cartwright, ‘is why Holroyd got him a grant, why he sent you out to spy on him, if there’s no basis for his theory.’

  ‘I w-wasn’t spying. I was here to help.’ Two angry spots of colour showed in his cheeks.
/>   ‘If you’d done that, he wouldn’t have disappeared.’

  He stared at me, his face flushed. ‘You don’t seem to understand what sort of a man Dr Van der Voort is.’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘He’s mad.’ He said it almost viciously.

  ‘He’s difficult, I agree. But I’ve no reason to believe that he’s mad.’

  ‘Then why did he attack me? Suddenly like that, and for no reason.’

  ‘That’s what I came to find out.’

  ‘He was like a maniac.’

  ‘I think you’d better explain.’ I was keeping a tight rein on my temper. ‘Suppose you tell me exactly what happened?’

  He hesitated, staring at me owlishly as though I’d dug a pit for him. ‘There’s nothing to tell you,’ he said. ‘Nothing you don’t know, I imagine. He called me out of my tent. He’d been for his usual walk and I came out and saw him standing there in the moonlight. And then he went for me. No warning—nothing. He just seemed to go berserk. And he had that stick with him, the one he always carries.’ He moved his left arm slightly. ‘It broke my wrist.’

  ‘You wrote to Holroyd that there was an argument.’

  ‘Did I?’ He seemed surprised. ‘I don’t remember.’ And he added, ‘In fact, I don’t remember much about it. I was pretty badly knocked up.’

  ‘What time was it?’

  ‘I’ve told all this to Mr Kotiadis.’

  I moved a few steps nearer, staring him in the face, getting a sense of pleasure almost as I saw him shrink back. ‘Well, you’re telling it to me now,’ I said. ‘Go on. What time did it happen?’

  ‘Sh shortly after eleven o’clock.’

  ‘And there was no argument, no altercation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you mean to say he attacked you without a word?’

  ‘I tell you, I don’t remember.’

  I couldn’t decide whether that was the truth, or whether there was more to it. In the end I left it at that. If there had been a reason for the attack, then he wasn’t admitting it—not yet. And with Kotiadis standing there, I felt this wasn’t the moment to question him about his telephone call to Athens. I turned to Hans Winters. ‘Where were you when this happened?’

  ‘In my tent.’

  ‘And you didn’t hear anything?’

  ‘The first I knew about it was when Alec woke me with blood on his face and in pain from his broken wrist.’ And he added, ‘I sleep very heavily.’ His manner was surly, and though his English was good, the accent was more pronounced than his sister’s.

  ‘And what did you do then?’

  ‘I went out to look for Dr Van der Voort.’

  ‘And by then he’d gone?’

  ‘Ja. He’d gone. The Land-Rover, too.’

  A small wind had sprung up and it was suddenly quite cool. Cartwright was already putting on his shirt, moving away from me. Somewhere on the hillside above us bells were tinkling. ‘Goats?’ I asked.

  Hans Winters nodded. ‘Ja. Goats.’

  The breeze was from the north, carrying the sound with it, but the wide mouth of the cave, with its beetling overhang, blocked all sight of the hillside above. I moved further into the cave, staring about me. The floor was packed hard, dry powdery earth flattened by long ages of occupation, and embedded in it were great slabs of rock fallen from the arch of the overhang. They had cut their trench a little left of centre, from the back right out to the beginning of the drop down into the valley. It was about 3 feet wide and 4 feet deep at the outer edge. The parapet of it came up to Hans Winter’s chest. ‘So this is what you call a cave-shelter?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Does that mean occupied by men?’

  ‘We think so.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  He smiled. ‘We don’t yet. In recent years it’s been a winter shelter for sheep and goats. The first thing we had to do was to remove the stock fence.’ He indicated the stones piled at the side. ‘That was a dry-stone wall—right across the whole mouth of it, three or four feet high.’

  I glanced back at Cartwright, but he was now talking to Kotiadis. Down in the valley sheep were moving along the grass at the river’s edge. It was like being on a natural balcony, the valley spread out below and a glimpse of purpled mountains across the tops of the hills opposite. ‘Very different sort of country to Holland.’ I wanted to get him talking.

  ‘Ja.’ And for the first time I caught a gleam of warmth in his eyes. ‘Is good. I like these hills, the valley. It’s very beautiful. But I miss the sea.’

  ‘The sea’s not all that far away,’ I said, smiling. He couldn’t be more than nineteen and he was homesick. ‘Did my father talk about the islands at all?’

  ‘Ja, ja. Often. He thought our species of man came up through the islands—the Ionian Islands. Across from Africa and through Sicily.’ He glanced quickly towards Cartwright, and seeing that he was out of earshot, he added, ‘Alec doesn’t see it that way. He’s a flat earth man.’ He grinned. It was a grin that lightened the heaviness of his Dutch face, so that for a moment I glimpsed the elfin look his sister had. ‘He’s very practical, likes everything straightforward and simple. Dr Van der Voort was a man of ideas, of vision.’

  ‘Did you like him?’

  He stared at me, the warmth fading, the surliness returning. ‘I thought him very interesting, very intelligent. That’s why I came on this expedition. I like his ideas.’

  ‘But you don’t like him personally.’

  ‘No.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time for lunch,’ he said and he put his hands on the edge of the trench and heaved himself out. It was the easy, fluid movement of a man whose muscles are in perfect tune. ‘You coming?’ The others were moving off down the slope. He picked up his sweater and started to follow them, tying the sleeves round his neck.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Was it my father who insisted that this cave-shelter was occupied by early man?’

  He nodded, pausing. ‘He said it might not prove anything beyond doubt, but for him it was confirmation.’

  ‘Why?’

  ̰The situation.’ He was standing in silhouette against the sunlight, a thick-set powerful figure, staring down into the valley. ‘The river right at their door,’ he said. ‘And it faces south with a good view. That’s important—to watch for game and to avoid being surprised by human enemies. And the sun—those early hunters went practically naked. They needed the sun. And they needed water, for themselves and to attract the animals that provided them with food, weapons, tools, fat for their lamps, skins to lie on.’

  I had moved to his side, and standing there on that high platform of beaten earth, looking down upon that flock of sheep moving slowly beside the river, I could almost imagine myself, with a skin over my shoulders and a flint axe in my hand, preparing to go down and cut the next meal out.

  ‘It’s a text book situation, you know.’ He turned, smiling at me. ‘I’m still a student. I’d never seen a cave-shelter before. But as soon as I saw this place … it’s a natural.’

  ‘You think it’s important then?’

  He hesitated, his gaze switching to the two figures of Cartwright and Kotiadis moving slowly down the slope towards the river and the olives. ‘I tell you, I’m only a student. But ja—ja, I do. So little work has been done in the Balkans—almost nothing in Greece. And Dr Van der Voort … maybe his theory is wild, as Alec says, but he had a most extraordinary eye for country. All down through Macedonia, in the mountains of Montenegro, and then after we crossed the border into Greece—I watched him, trying to learn, to understand. He seemed to know—instinctively. About the country, I mean. Sometimes he drove the Land-Rover. More often he was walking himself, a queer slouching walk, his head bent, his eyes on the ground or on the lie of the land. It was almost …’ He hesitated. ‘I don’t know … as though he saw it all with the eyes of prehistoric man. He had that sort of rapport with the subject. Identification—ja, that’s the word. He was involved, identified, and so complete
ly dedicated, so entirely absorbed …’ He grinned as though to cover his unwilling admiration. ‘Maybe it’s just because I’d never worked with a real expert before.’

  ‘Cartwright said you didn’t find anything very much.’

  ‘Oh yes, we found traces here and there—quite a few things, chert flakes mainly. But nothing Dr Van der Voort thought worth while. Not until we came here. And it wasn’t only the situation that excited him. Come and look at this.’ He took me to the back of the cave, to the blackened curve of the rock. ‘Alec is not convinced. He thinks it may be water seepage. But Dr Van der Voort insisted that the discoloration was carbon deposit from the smoke of open hearths.’ He put his hand on the rock face. ‘Feel that. Feel how smooth it is. That’s calcium. A thick layer of it overlying the fire marks and acting as a protective coating. It’s caused by water seeping down from the limestone overhead, and if we knew when it had happened, how fast it had built up, we’d know how old the fire marks are. Dr Van der Voort thought ten thousand years at least.’

  ‘Did he give any reason?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, he didn’t say. But you can see here where he chipped a bit out with the small geological hammer he always had with him.’ The calcium coating was almost an inch thick, opaque like cathedral glass. ‘What he was hoping for, of course, was a hearth burial. They used to leave their dead beside their hearths and move on. At least, that’s what the books say. And then wind-blown earth gradually covered the body—a natural burial. But there’s a lot of work to do before we get anywhere near that level.’

  We were standing on the lip of the trench and at the back here it was less than two feet deep with rock showing at the bottom.