Levkas Man

by Innes, Hammond;

  ‘The ancients?’

  ‘Yes, the ancients.’ It was a strange, archaic word to use. ‘Was there something special about a stone lamp?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She said it briskly. ‘They had to see and it was the only lamp they knew—a hollowed stone with animal fat and the wick floating in it. Isn’t that what the Eskimos use?’

  ‘Probably.’

  She left me shortly afterwards and I rowed off to the boat. I needed a drink, a good stiff drink.

  I was on my second Scotch when the Barretts came off in Zavelas’s boat. They were very subdued. Even Florrie. They’d made up their minds. They wanted to clear for Pylos in the morning, and once through the channel, head direct for Pantelleria.

  ‘Without going to Pylos to hand in our transit-log?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bert said. And his wife nodded. ‘It’s dangerous here.’ They were thinking of the cargo we carried. I was thinking of Holroyd and my father.

  ‘Zavelas is suspicious. I think he knows something.’

  So they had felt it, too. ‘Okay,’ I said. All day, whilst we had been cooped up on board waiting for the weather to moderate, we had talked of little else, chewing it over with the intensity of people who have no means of getting away from each other. And now that they had finally made up their minds, I knew there was no shifting them. Like most easy-going men, Bert could be very obstinate once he had been forced to a decision.

  ‘We can always plead stress of weather, an engine breakdown, something like that,’ he said. ‘The regulations allow for that, provided I post the transit-log back to the port of entry and give the reason for not clearing foreign.’

  I nodded. We’d be in the clear then to come back if I could wring enough money out of Borg. ‘So long as we stop in the Channel—I’d like to have a word with my father before we leave.’

  ‘Of course. But I’m not making a dive.’ And Florrie added, ‘Zavelas warned us about that. If Bert dives, then they’d have to examine the boat to make certain he hadn’t lifted some archæological treasures off the bottom.’ I knew that, but I had thought that in a little place like this … ‘A pity,’ I said and left it at that. It was no use arguing with them.

  We had supper then, and afterwards I took the dinghy and rowed ashore to say goodbye to Sonia. I still had some drachmas and I wanted to leave the money with her. It would be just enough to keep him going for a month or two the way he was living and I wasn’t certain he’d take it from me.

  It was very hot ashore, a preternatural stillness hanging over the little port. Zavelas was no longer at the kaféneion, but the proprietor sent his daughter with me to show me the house. She was about fourteen, a bright, dark-eyed girl shyly conscious of the fact that she was just emerging from the puppy-fat stage. Her short, white frock, immaculately laundered, gleamed in the dark. It was a breathless, suffocating night, no stars and the air hanging heavy. By the time we reached the house my shirt was sticking to my back. ‘Spiti Zavelas,’ she said, and with a quick smile and a swirl of her skirt she was gone, still looking as fresh as when we started.

  Zavelas opened the door to me himself. ‘Come in, fella.’ And he showed me in to a ground-floor room that was like a stage version of a Victorian parlour. ‘So you’re leaving in the morning, and now you want to see the Dutch girl, eh?’ He was smiling, not quite a leer, but as near as dammit. ‘Well, you’re welcome.’ He left me and I heard him calling to Sonia up the stairs.

  There were lace antimacassars on the chairs, bric-à-brac everywhere, and the walls crowded with photographs—group pictures mainly of cops and sailors and loggers. An English Parliament clock showed the time as nine forty-seven. I was still wondering where that had come from when the door opened behind me and I turned to find Sonia standing there. No puppy-fat on her and her face looking hot and strained. ‘Mr Zavelas has told me. You’re leaving in the morning.’

  ‘Yes.’ I began to explain the reason, but she cut me short:

  ‘You could have stayed if you’d wanted to. You don’t have to go with them.’ I could almost hear her saying, You’re running out on him again.

  ‘I came to give you this,’ I said quickly, getting out my wallet and explaining to her why it was better for her to have it. She took the dirty notes, counting them carefully. ‘Eight hundred and seventy-five drachs,’ she said.

  It was a little over £12, not very much. ‘I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got left.’

  ‘Never mind. It will help. And he’s vegetarian—except for eggs and cheese. He eats a lot of eggs.’ And she added, ‘It’s extraordinary the energy vegetarians have. Yet they’re much gentler than meat-eaters.’ She was just talking for the sake of talking, and she wanted to think of him as a kindly man. ‘Are you a vegetarian?’ I asked. She hadn’t appeared to be when she was cooking for Cartwright and her brother at Despotiko, but I didn’t really have any idea what she liked to eat.

  ‘I think I might be—with a little encouragement. In Amsterdam I was. But it’s so difficult, with other people.’

  We might have gone on talking like that, keeping to neutral topics and avoiding personal contact, but at that moment the walls seemed to move, the ground swaying under my feet. It was the heat and the drink. That was my first thought, that all the liquor I had consumed that day had caught up with me. I could feel my body swaying, the room swimming before my eyes. And then, with a conscious effort, I seemed to have control of myself. The room was still again and I said, ‘Vegetables are cheap in the islands here. At least he won’t starve.’ My voice sounded over-careful, the words thick and blurred. I must be drunk. Even in this cool, Victorian room, the air was stifling. I could feel the sweat on my forehead, my whole body clammy with the heat. ‘I’ll go now,’ I said, remembering that time in Amsterdam when I’d flung her against the wall. ‘I just came to give you those notes.’ But she didn’t seem to hear. She was standing very tense, her eyes wide and there were beads of sweat on her forehead and on her short upper lip. ‘What was that?’ she breathed.

  And then it came again, the room swimming, the ground moving under my feet. A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, a puff of white dust on the lovingly polished case of the Parliament clock, and the clock itself shifting slightly before my eyes so that I thought it was going to fall. But then everything was still again and the clock remained there on the wall, oddly askew, and Sonia was close against me, my arm round her. We had come together instinctively, an involuntary movement, the two of us seeking comfort in each other. I could feel the warmth of her body. She was pressed close to me and my hand, touching her, feeling the warmth of her flesh beneath the thin fabric of her dress, discovered she was wearing nothing underneath it. She was as stark as if she were in her nightdress. ‘That was an earthquake?’ I murmured.

  She shook her head. ‘An earth tremor, I think they’d call it. We had one the other day. But not as bad.’ She was still clinging to me and I put my hand under her chin and tilted her head back.

  ‘Scared?’

  She smiled. ‘Not really. Surprised, that’s all. It came as a shock.’

  I kissed her then and for a moment we stood there, locked in each other’s arms, unconscious of the risk we ran staying indoors, the world reduced to the two of us, the pounding of our blood louder than any movement of the earth. And then feet sounded heavy on the stairs and Zavelas called down to us: ‘Van der Voort—Sonia! You get outside. Ghrighora! Quickly!’

  He was there before us, with his wife and everybody else who lived in the street, standing in the middle of the road, very still and quiet, waiting anxiously. The air was oppressive, hot and humid. But nothing happened. ‘Finished now I think,’ Zavelas said finally. ‘A tremor. Nothing serious.’ And he laughed, a little uncertainly. ‘Not like San Francisco, eh? Guess if we were down at Fisherman’s Wharf they’d all be reckoning it was the end of the world. That’s a real big fault they’re sitting on there. In Meganisi it’s not so dangerous.’

  His wife went back into the house, a big, broad,
motherly soul already intent upon making certain that none of the things she treasured had been harmed. Through the open window we saw her in the room we had left, already working with brush and dustpan to sweep up the fall of plaster. ‘It’s the heat,’ Zavelas said. ‘When it’s like this there is always a little danger. But usually later in the year.’ He looked at me and his manner changed, a cop again, responsible to authority for the security of the island which was his home. ‘It is reported to Levkas that you leave for Pylos. I guess they’d like the Doctor to go with you. We will know for sure in the morning, but I would advise you to arrange it.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d agree to that,’ I said.

  He stared at me, the blue eyes hard. ‘I’m warning you. That’s all.’ And then he shrugged. ‘None of my business, you understand.’ His voice was kindly, almost paternal, and he patted me on the shoulder with his big hairy paw. ‘But I think it’s better he goes with you. Okay?’

  ‘They can’t force him,’ Sonia said in a small, tight voice.

  ‘They can do anything they damn well like. You know that, Sonia.’ And Zavelas added, ‘I think maybe Kotiadis come here in the morning.’ And with that he left us and went back into the house.

  Sonia walked with me down to the quay and we didn’t talk. Something had happened to us, and we knew it, so that we were both of us absorbed in trying to sort ourselves out. ‘I’ll see him in the morning,’ I said as I got into the dinghy. ‘We’ll stop in the channel on the way out.’

  ‘If Pappadimas is here, I’ll come out there,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’ll be on the quay to wave you off.’ And she added quickly, ‘I think Zavelas is right. I think he should go with you.’

  The thought was in my mind, too—but not because of the authorities. ‘I’ll have a talk with him.’

  She nodded, looking very solemn. ‘He’s interested in Pantelleria. That might help.’

  ‘He’s also obsessed by that damn cave of his.’ I hadn’t much hope that he’d agree. ‘Goodnight.’ And I pushed away from the quay without touching her, feeling she was a million miles away, the old man between us again.

  ‘Goodnight, Paul.’

  She turned, not looking back, and I started to row out to the boat.

  We were up at six-thirty the following morning, for in a boat the size of Coromandel there is always a lot to be done in preparation for a long sea passage and we had the kedge to recover. By eight Bert was away in the dinghy to see the Customs official, leaving me to get the sails ready for hoisting whilst Florrie cleared the breakfast things and stowed everything below. It was a perfect day for the start of a voyage, clear and bright with the wind back in the north-west—very light, but since this was the prevailing wind direction along the coast we could expect it to increase during the day. By eight-thirty everything was ready, only the main anchor to bring in, and we were waiting for Bert.

  It was almost nine before he put off from the quay, and as he sculled the dinghy alongside I could see by his face that something was wrong. ‘You’ve been a long time,’ Florrie said as he tossed the painter to me.

  He nodded, sitting there in the dinghy, looking up at me. ‘I had to wait while they phoned through to Levkas for instructions.’ He reached up, gripping the bulwarks, and hauled himself on board. ‘They’re being difficult,’ he said. ‘It’s that bloody man Kotiadis. He’s at police headquarters in Levkas. We can sail, but on one condition—that we take Dr Van der Voort with us.’ He was staring at me. ‘You’d better fix it, otherwise God knows what will happen.’ He was angry. Angry because he was scared. ‘I’ve a good mind to throw those packages overboard, right here in the harbour, and by Christ I’ll do it if you don’t get us out of here.’

  ‘I can’t very well shanghai him,’ I said. ‘What happens if he says No?’

  ‘Then they’ll impound the boat, maybe arrest the three of us. That’s what your copper friend implied.’ He turned on his wife then. ‘You thought that escapade off the Turkish coast just a bit of fun. It was easy. I grant you that. A piece of cake. But they’ve got all our movements taped, every port we’ve been in and the dates. And they’ve a pretty good idea what we were up to in the Samos Straits that night.’

  ‘How do you know?’ she asked, on the defensive.

  ‘Zavelas. I had about a quarter of an hour, with him hinting at all sorts of things—even the possibility that we might have an agent stowed away on board. Maybe it’s just an excuse. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, anyway. They know enough to justify any action they care to take, and they want to get shot of Van der Voort.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘He’s doing no harm, working quietly away …’

  ‘It’s the international situation. Kotiadis is still convinced that he’s some sort of an agent.’ And he added, ‘I don’t care how you do it, but get him on board and let’s get out of here. I’m not having my boat impounded, for you or anyone else—it’s all Florrie and I have got. If you don’t get him on board, then I’ll come ashore and do it myself.’ He was near to tears, he was so upset, the words pouring out of him.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want, we’ll fetch the anchor now and go round and pick him up.’ My hands were trembling at the thought, but there was nothing else for it. I could see it from the Greek point of view, the Middle East flaring and themselves on the edge of the volcano. They had a right to get rid of anybody they didn’t trust. ‘You’ve got clearance for Italy, have you? Or do they still want us to go to Pylos for clearance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The Customs official is coming round with us in Zavelas’s boat. He’s keeping the transit-log until they’ve seen Dr Van der Voort on board, and Kotiadis is coming from Levkas in a coastal patrol boat. I think we’re going to be escorted outside territorial waters.’

  I pulled the dinghy astern and made the painter fast to a cleat aft. Then we got the the anchor up and jilled around, the engine just ticking over. We didn’t talk. There was nothing else to be said. Zavelas came down to the quay and got into his boat. The Customs official joined him and they put off, arrowing a wake into the inlet, the outboard noisy in the quiet of the port. Sonia stood close by a bollard, a small, still figure. She didn’t wave and we got under way, the three of us subdued and silent.

  Half an hour later we were in the Meganisi Channel, the water glass-calm and no breeze at all under the sheltering heights of Levkas. The depth at the southern end was 65 fathoms, too deep to anchor, and Bert steered close in to the rocks on the Levkas side, holding her there whilst I hauled the dinghy alongside and jumped into it. Florrie passed me the oars, and as I pulled away she called to me—‘Paul. There’s a boat in there. I can just see the outboard.’

  I leaned on the oars, letting the dinghy drift whilst I turned to look. High above me I could see the overhang, the great scooped-out hollow in the near-vertical hillside pale in the sunlight. I couldn’t see the boat, only the shape of the rocks that marked the gut where Sonia and I had landed. I had a sudden premonition, a feeling I had arrived too late, and I bent to the oars, pulling hard for the shore. It was barely twenty yards, and in a moment I had opened up the gut and there was Vassilios in his dirty singlet dozing in his boat. ‘Where’s Professor Holroyd?’ I called to him.

  He turned and stared at me uncomprehendingly, moving aft to catch the dinghy’s bows. ‘Professor Holroyd—poó ine?’ He pointed above us towards the overhang, now hidden by the rocks, and I scrambled past him, the boats rocking violently as I leapt for the shore. Christ Almighty! The bloody fool! I’d warned him. The track zig-zagged up through the rocks and I clambered up it, moving fast, praying to God that I wasn’t too late. The low beat of Coromandel’s engine drummed against the cliff, and to the north I could hear the waspish sound of Zavelas’s outboard coming down the channel. It was hot and the blood pounded in my head as I clawed my way up.

  And then a voice said, ‘You’re too late.’

  I stopped then, looking up to see Holroyd standing poised on a rock above
me, wearing a pair of red bathing trunks and a white shirt.

  ‘How do you mean?’ The words came in a gasp and I stood there, panting, wondering what the hell he’d been up to. ‘What’s happened? What have you done?’

  ‘Done?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing I could do. He’s gone.’

  I didn’t get it for a moment. But he wasn’t hurt. He hadn’t been in a fight. That was all that mattered and a feeling of relief flooded through me. I climbed the last few feet and joined him where he stood on the slope below the platform. ‘You stay here,’ I said. ‘I want to talk to him alone.’

  ‘Well, go ahead. Maybe you know where he is.’ And he stood aside to let me pass.

  I had started up the slope, but then I paused. Something in his voice, his choice of words … I stared at him, but I couldn’t see the expression of his eyes. He was wearing dark glasses, his head bare, and from where I stood now he was a slightly ridiculous figure, the shirt hiding his bathing trunks so that he looked as though he were wearing a mini skirt. ‘He’ll be in the cave,’ I said.

  But he shook his head. ‘I’ve tried there.’

  ‘Beyond the rubble? It goes in about ten yards.’

  ‘I’ve been right to the end,’ he said.

  ‘And he’s not in his tent?’

  ‘No. And I searched everywhere.’

  ‘Then probably he’s at Vatahori.’

  ‘Vassilios says not. He saw Pappadimas this morning.’ He thrust his head forward. ‘If you ask me, he’s abandoned his dig and cleared out.’ And he added angrily, ‘But I’m not falling for it this time.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said. ‘He’s just avoiding you. That’s all.’ It seemed the most sensible thing for him to do.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, but I could see he wasn’t convinced. ‘You go and have a look for yourself. I’ll go on down to the boat and wait for you there.’

  I left him then and climbed the slope to the platform below the overhang. I hadn’t been there in daylight before and I stood for a moment staggered by the view. The island of Arkudi was almost due south, a massive pile seared brown by the sun, with the flat plain of the sea all round it, its surface rippled by the breeze. And beyond Arkudi, Ithaca and Cepnalonia, merged into one great mountainous mass half-hidden in a haze of heat. To the west, beyond the long scorpion tail of Meganisi, more islands and the mainland mountains rearing misty heights. I could hear the old man’s voice talking as though in a dream of the hunting lands of early man, and again I felt the strange atmosphere of the place. Even in daylight, in the full blaze of the sun, it had an eeriness, a sense of evil. Or was that just my imagination?