To which the major did not reply or respond even by a glance.
Then Helianos felt a stubbornness about it, and protested, determined to convince this self-absorbed sufferer that it really was so, he did pity him.
“May I tell you, Major Kalter,” he went on, “I lost my son, two years ago on Mount Olympos. I can understand your unhappiness. My elder son; he was worth more than little Alex and little Leda. But I admit that it was not a great loss, compared with what you have lost.”
It occurred to him with some bitter irony that he could scarcely say more than that! But in spite of bitterness his pity suddenly became quite real to him. It was as if he had tried not to feel it, not to mean it, but then did. Once more he was struck by the realization that Kalter was sincere, sincere at least in his suffering, sincere at last; therefore so was he.
Still, Kalter did not answer. Only his wet eyes seemed to dry up enough to focus on him; and they appeared to be ordinary humane grief-stricken eyes, like anyone else’s, Helianos thought, not fierce or unfriendly; and he hung his head, he shook his hanging head as if in an effort to listen; and he began hunting in his uniform for a handkerchief. Helianos felt that his sympathy had been accepted.
“Oh, Major Kalter,” he exclaimed, really meaning no harm, thinking out loud, “is it not intolerable? To think that two men, two men with too much power, fatal tragic men, should have brought all this tragedy upon us other men?”
Major Kalter’s head jerked up to attention. “Two men? What do you mean?” he demanded. “What two men?”
“I mean the Fuehrer and the Duce,” Helianos answered, without stopping to think.
That was his undoing. Major Kalter sprang to his feet and stumbled over to him, in a worse rage than ever before. Helianos too sprang to his feet and tried to get away but he was not quick enough.
“How dare you, you vile Greek,” the major shouted, “how dare you say a word against the Fuehrer!” And he struck the vile Greek in the face, first one side, then the other side; resounding slaps.
“You stupid subnormal brute, filthy Slav! Defy the Fuehrer, will you? Sneer at the Italians, will you?”
And this time the look of shock and mortification, the Greek mouth gaping open, the Greek eyes puckered out of sight, did not satisfy him. This time he followed him, drove him stumbling back step by step across the room, and knocked him hard against the wall, and kicked him, with imprecations—damned coward, treacherous animal, cheating bootlicking old sick thing, sickening old fool—and all the while Helianos kept trying to apologize and he continued shouting, damning him, and accusing him of things.
“We’ll pound it out of you, the nonsense! Damn you, damn you! You’ll not speak of the Fuehrer again, we’ll fix you,” he threatened, with untranslatable curse-words, at the top of his voice; his voice breaking on the top-notes, in the worst insults and worst threats.
Away in the kitchen, meanwhile, Mrs. Helianos had heard the first shout and come scurrying to her post in the clothes closet; and there beneath the clothes and amid the shoes, when the slaps and kicks began, she began to weep, reaching up and drawing the hem of one of her dresses and the cuff of a pair of Helianos' trousers over her face, to muffle the sound of her weeping. Thus she heard all the major’s insults, from which she gathered that Helianos had said something insulting about the German chief of state; the major alluded to it in every other shout.
“Whatever possessed Helianos, oh, whatever possessed him!” she cried, as softly as she could. “I warned him, what madness, whatever shall I do!” she lamented, stuffing the hem of a dress into her mouth to hush her cries, in order to hear more.
Then the major somewhat relaxed his angry effort, and the woman in the clothes closet heard her husband’s softer voice apologizing, in unutterable regret and confusion; her husband sobbing softly and hiccoughing, stumbling away and sinking into a chair and still apologizing, which was heartbreaking for her to hear, shameful to hear.
And from what Helianos said—still, by way of apology, offering his vain condolences—she gathered that the major’s wife and two sons were dead. It explained the German sadness and gentleness all month, which Helianos, poor accursed mortal, had so tormented himself to understand; it made the German violence of the moment more beastly. The major himself alluded to it in his diminishing shouts; his very natural sorrow for himself resuming at the end of his anger. . .
His shouts and his blows abated suddenly. His voice sounded normal, perhaps even quieter than usual, but still clear and with a little regular official martial rhythm, saying, “You poor rascally old Greek, I thought you were more intelligent than the others. I thought you knew better than this. You know what comes next, I presume. I now telephone the military police to come here and take you in custody.”
He paused a while, to let that sink in, then said, quieter still, “I am sorry for you, you fool, but it cannot be helped. It is what has to be done in such a case.”
Mrs. Helianos, in the clothes closet, hearing this, trembled so that it seemed impossible to get to her feet. She crawled out into the children’s room on her hands and knees, and there quickly gathered strength, and hastened down the corridor, in despair but in hope; hope of preventing Helianos' arrest somehow, by protesting, arguing, imploring.
But when she reached the sitting-room door it opened, and there stood the major with his pistol drawn, pointed not at her but sideways at Helianos; and he snapped at her, “You unfortunate woman, your husband is under arrest. Go away!”
He slammed the door and locked it. There she stood a moment twisting the doorknob, pressing against the door, and through it she heard him repeat, still in the calm but percussive voice, the marching little rhythm, “Sorry, it must be, you’re a fool, it’s my duty. . .”
Then she hastened back to the clothes closet, knelt again and heard him quietly and concisely telephoning, and could not endure it. She stood up, and got her head entangled in the coats and skirts, which came down with a clatter of a couple of coat-hangers; and as she came through the children’s room she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror in that accidental, incongruous garb, like a madwoman, veiled with a petticoat, cloaked with trousers. She felt faint, and as fast as possible crept to her bed in the kitchen, shedding the old clothes behind her, and in her impatience, afraid of fainting away before she got there, tearing the bodice of her dress down off one shoulder as well.
She did not faint away; but her heart was so sick that she could only lie still, helpless, a long time—sweating and salivating, wringing her hands, biting her fingertips, listening to her blood ceasing, and starting again with a little thunder, and ceasing again—until after the soldiers had come and gone with Helianos, until Alex and Leda returned from wherever they had been all this time.
They came up the stairway from the street just as Helianos went down, between two soldiers—young, impassive, even good-natured fellows, for whom this was all in the day’s work—followed half a flight up by Major Kalter, formal and portentous. The children saw their father before he saw them; instantly sensed what the escort of Germans meant; and turned and fled back down to the street.
Thus the last Helianos saw of them was their springing, skipping, fleeing away two steps at a time, as if they were afraid of him. He called after them, “Wait, your mother is ill! Alex, Leda, your mother has had a heart attack. Go and get the doctor for your mother!”
11.
THOUGH ALEX HAD NOT DARED TO TURN AND ACKNOWLEDGE his father’s last instruction, he had heard it. To be quick about it, to run all the way to the doctor’s and back, his problem was what to do with Leda in the meantime, where to leave Leda. The street-corner would not do, the vacant lot where they played would not do. She shrank from passers-by, and when by herself, was apt to be panic-stricken if she had any sort of open space around her or distance stretching away before her. She preferred enclosures and hiding-places and shadows.
Then Alex remembered a quiet shadowy place, adjacent to their playground, where th
ey sometimes took refuge in the middle of the day when it was hot; and where they went for their loneliest games on certain of Leda’s bad days when she did not care to play with other children, or other children did not care to play with her. It was in a portion of the masonry of a fallen building; an empty door-frame in a tumble-down wall with half a stairway up inside it and a little caved-in cellar underneath, which made a kind of nook. It was a place Leda liked.
He led her there by the hand and seated her in it, blinking and mystified; and he explained what he had to do and how soon he would come back to her. But twice she climbed out, and came running down the street after him, whimpering his name. Twice he re-seated her, and as it were hypnotizing her with the fiery eyes she loved, stamping his foot, and chattering at her like a worried little monkey or a vexed bird, tried to persuade her. Then he gave her a great stick to hold, to defend herself with, as he told her; and that seemed to reconcile her to being left. Her appearance in the odd niche of broken plaster and stone pleased him: her confused head crowned with her shaggy black locks, and the way she bore the stick formally before her like a scepter. Although his heart was heavy with his father’s peril and his mother’s illness, he gave a little laugh at her to show his admiration, and that pleased her.
Then he ran, and fortunately found the family physician’s daughter in his office; and she knew where he had gone, and promised to go after him and send him to the Helianos apartment before long.
Leda was waiting in the ruin when Alex returned to her, but not happy. Before he got over the fence and around the broken wall where he could see her, he heard her murmuring his name, “Alex, Alex, Alex.” She was standing up in the niche, facing into it with her forehead and her hands pressed against the plaster, the way sleepwalkers do when they have strayed into a corner or behind a door.
Then they returned to the apartment, and because their mother seemed extremely ill, Alex refrained from talking and Leda from weeping.
The doctor followed shortly, and although he did not have the requisite medicines, his visit did Mrs. Helianos good, and she fell asleep and slept the night through, in exhaustion. That night the major did not return until midnight, and he arose early next morning and slipped out without their seeing him, without any breakfast.
Mrs. Helianos was obliged to stay in bed several days, with the children waiting on her; Kalter taking his meals somewhere in town. He came to the kitchen to see her on the second day. His temper had passed as if it had never been, as if he had forgotten it. In a grave, correct manner he expressed his good will toward her and his concern for her recovery.
What little he had to say about Helianos seemed to her encouraging; at any rate it was not ill-tempered, or calamitously prophetic, or overtly vengeful. “You know, Mrs. Helianos, do you not? that your husband spoke to me in the most defiant manner, about the German chief of state and about our allies, in insulting terms. As you are a far from stupid woman, you understand that this could not go unpunished. Now a rigorous investigation of him, and all his friends and family, will be necessary.
“But for yourself, Mrs. Helianos, do not be alarmed. You will not be blamed for his folly. Be patient,” he added, “and if he is reasonable, perhaps it will all be over before long.”
Mrs. Helianos' eyes were bright with hatred, her dry lips whetting one another, her body restless with hatred shaking the old kitchen-cot. The major took no notice of any of this. Actually it was somewhat superficial emotion; it did not cause her to have a serious heart attack. The shock of her husband’s arrest had brought its own remedy for the time being, a kind of reduction of body and soul: not enough energy for real hatred or grief or fear; only poor wandering thoughts, a stupid optimism, and a loneliness so absolute that it did not even evoke lost Helianos in her mind very clearly. It seemed a good thing to stay in bed and have a rest.
She was optimistic but not really stupid. With that little intuition of motive, slightly cynical, which is in women more than men, she sensed that the alternative of having to eat in restaurants or looking for another place to live, another family to live with, worried the German; and therefore at this point, with her illness, he genuinely regretted the arrest of Helianos. She thought how to take advantage of this, and made a plan, a little womanly plan: she would get well as quickly as possible, and work hard to make him more comfortable than ever; then fall ill again, or threaten to fall ill. This might stimulate him to have Helianos released as promptly as possible, for his own sake.
He sent a German doctor to see her on the third day. Because he came unexpectedly and in uniform, frightening her, he found her heart in its disturbed condition, and to please Major Kalter took her case seriously. He was a sad gruff little man; but he had a valiseful of medicines, and he impressed her with his air of science, and she liked him. It was the first time in her life she had ever really liked a German; now that it was too late, now that, in her poor natural womanly opinion, for good reason, they were all hateful! . . . Among other remedies he gave her certain pills to counteract undernourishment, and admonished her not to waste them on her children, but smiled kindly when he saw by her expression that she meant to disobey him in this particular; which in fact she did.
Then she got up and resumed her life and housework and motherhood more or less as usual. The hard work, without Helianos' help, with all the tasks neglected during her illness, and her little plan of influencing the major by good housekeeping, and especially the care of the children—more troublesome than ever—these things were Mrs. Helianos' salvation for the time being; keeping her from thinking, grieving, or even hoping. Leda was having a little new sort of weeping fit daily or every other day, sinking to the floor with her arms crossed over her face, and every breath a tiny moan almost inaudible. Alex had reverted to all his former wildness, Germanophobia and melodramatic fancies. He apparently took the darkest possible view of his father’s situation, and he would talk to his sorrowful sister about it, sometimes with an excitement verging upon enjoyment, exaltation; for which at last his mother felt obliged to scold him severely.
A day passed, two days, and a part of the time Mrs. Helianos too felt a kind of exaltation, stoicism, and indeed a saving sense of humor. One morning, almost midday, alone in the apartment, she stood at her kitchen-window, looking out in the direction of the Acropolis. She could not remember when she had last looked; perhaps not once in the entire year of the major’s lodging with them. So long as she tried to do her housework as he expected and Helianos recommended, she had had no leisure for any such thing. Her plan of influencing Kalter was failing, she thought; he was too tired and sad to notice, grieving for his dead wife and sons. She fancied that he was lonelier than ever now, without Helianos to keep him company; perhaps that would influence him.
In any case, now, a fig for housework! she said to herself. Powerful evil lodger and dear foolish husband had no more mastery over her. Now for a few minutes, until the children came home for their midday crust of bread, she would relax and loiter and look out over the rooftops of Athens all she liked.
In spite of her narrow mind and emotional intensity, Mrs. Helianos was not the simple, Balkan type of Greek woman; not at all. She sometimes reminded herself of this distinction, proudly. She had European culture enough to know in what esteem ancient Greece, ancient Athens, was held everywhere; how everyone in the world was indebted to it for something, and acknowledged the indebtedness. Up there, over modern Athens, there it stood: the chief national treasure that foreign sightseers by the thousand (including Germans) came to see—Parthenon on Acropolis; a building that no amount of warfare had been able to obliterate so far, in the cloudless blue, on the timeless rock that even the might of the Germans could not alter; remnant of past upon portion of eternity. Looking at it inspired in her a certain grandiloquence and blissful stubbornness.
Then as she stood and looked, she assumed an attitude which in physical sensation corresponded to her thought, her spirit. It was an attitude prompted perhaps by unconscious memory
of ancient sculpture that she had seen all her life (although without caring for it especially), or perhaps merely exemplifying a racial habit of body from which that style of sculpture derived in the first place—a classical attitude: her fatigued thickened torso drawn up straight from her heels and from her pelvis; her head settled back on her fat but still straight neck, her soiled, spoiled hands lifted to her loose bosom, through which went just then a little of the bad thrill of her palpitations, anginal pain like the stitches of an infinitely strong and invisible seamstress.
“One of the Fates,” she said to herself aloud, “the frightful trio;” but she did not mind the thought. The time of not minding her personal destiny had come.
The minutes passed, she was still looking up at it: the citadel in ruins and the empty temples, the one like a vast box with a broken lid and the other smaller, less broken behind it; bright stone, although it was not pure white; the desiccated flat-topped hill which served as their platform or pedestal, with its steep slope darkling even at this time of day in the sunshine; and all around and far beyond, other hilltops and other slopes—because they were her homeland, she could conjure them up, even those out of sight—the large embracing forms of Greece as a whole with the sunshine sliding over them, rousing the extreme summer in them, and casting pale purple reflections.
In the old days it had been Helianos' pleasure to go up there on Saturday or Sunday afternoons in winter when the wind was not too piercing, or after the evening meal in summer, to stroll about and clamber up and down, in general admiration. He had always taken her and the children along, because he liked to express himself and felt the need of an audience. She had never exactly shared his enthusiasm for the stony, vertiginous site or for the bare broken old edifices themselves. It had vexed her to see a monument so glorious in men’s minds left in such dilapidation—how futile and unreal men’s minds were, and how they talked and talked!—but she had listened to everything Helianos had to say, patiently, more or less agreeingly, as a wife should do.
Apartment in Athens Page 12