Apartment in Athens

by Glenway Wescott

  It closed with one of those French words which Germans like to use, Adieu, and only the family name, Kalter.

  She went to the kitchen-sink for a drink of water: the water of unwholesome Athens with its deathly odor and disgusting taste! and as she sipped it, at last she was able to think. She decided that the clever thing to do was to notify, not the municipal police or the army of occupation or any general authority, but the dead major’s friend in person, the other major whose name she had forgotten; whose name, praise God, was inscribed at the top of the farewell letter.

  So then she returned to the sitting room and did just that. It was not easy: she had almost no voice, for one thing, and she had trouble with the name,—she pronounced it wrong, and spelled it out to two different quartermaster’s underlings, von Roesch, and learned to pronounce it from them—but the trouble and delay and impatience distracted her from the corpse sitting so close across the room, steadied her nerves; the lesser nervousness steadied her against the greater. She kept crying the name of Major Kalter and the word tod! tod! and the name of Major von Roesch, who answered at last; and then kept dialoguing back and forth with him in confusion until suddenly he understood, lowered his voice to a grave husky note, promised to come at once, and instructed her to lock her door and not to let anyone else in upon any pretext until he got there.

  While waiting for him she sat in the kitchen, and fell into a revery, so that she did not notice the passing of the time it took him to get there. Shocked and tired, her mind fled away from everything immediate and important: the corpse in the other room, the trouble of removing it and tidying up after it, the unknown dog-loving major on his way. It was like a sleep, a sleep in which all the unimportant small realities around her were the dream, this and that in the kitchen: the stove, rusted in one place, an old rag of a shirt of Helianos' which served for a wash-cloth, her pair of shoes that she wore to market, a table-spoonful of rancid oil in a cup, a bedbug (she absent-mindedly destroyed it), a bucket.

  Then she found herself thinking about herself: how she resembled Alex and Leda and Helianos, all three: the likeness to Leda in momentary flights away from reality at times like this, sleeps of soul; and the likeness to Alex in other ways, in excitement and verbosity, and in lively interest in trouble to come, and in increase of energy and good sense when at times like this it did come. . .

  And as for Helianos, certainly in the early days of their marriage she had not been in the least like him —a liberal family and a reactionary family, a healthy male and an ailing wife, a scholar and an ignoramus, a humorous long-suffering intellectual and a plaintive bourgeoise—but in the last year how she had drawn close to him, been influenced by him!

  So that as it seemed to her she was a different character, with a re-educated mind; and when it came to enduring fatigue and discomfort and in recuperative power, a rejuvenated body; and a new heart. From pessimism to optimism (of a sort); from hypochondria to a certain energy in spite of poor health; from womanishness and narrow-mindedness and bourgeoisie to a certain spirit, and relative knowledge of the world—what an improvement! And without any self-discipline, without even a conscious desire to improve; driven to it by the force of circumstances, for the most part evil circumstances. . .

  She gave one more disdainful thought to the dead Kalter, and to the famous change in him, from the day of his return from Germany to this day of his death: it was nothing, nothing, compared with the change in herself! For he had no real intelligence—a preachment upon propaganda and make-believe world-government was not intelligent, a sophisticated suicide-letter was not intelligent!—and unintelligent or unintelligible change was of no account, she thought.

  Oh, she reminded herself, doubtless she herself would never be intelligent enough to suit Helianos. But, she fancied, she would not be able to be really unintelligent again, not even if she tried; so much having happened to her. Thus she saw herself, lifted up above who she was and what she was, in the increase of drama in her life—the wealthy merchants' spoiled child, the clever young publisher’s bride, the benefactor of her country to the extent of one hero fallen on Mount Olympos, the long-suffering mother of abnormal little Alex and subnormal little Leda besides, and now the imprisoned anti-Nazi’s wife, the corpse’s landlady, what next!—and it was as proud as a mystic vision.

  Though with no false pride; evil circumstances keep one from false pride. . .For in a sense she owed it all to the Germans. She had risen to the occasion indeed, but the occasion was German. It was their intervention in her common circumscribed, stagnant, passive existence that had aroused her. But she did not, she would not, thank them for it. It was a good thing; and to admit that a good thing has derived from an evil thing is to bend the knee to evil to some extent. In her uneasiness and exalted sentiment—a lone Greek woman in a kitchen with a German corpse in another room, waiting for the police—she did not even thank God for it; she thanked her Helianos.

  All of which passed in her mind in the little time; in less time (as she herself thought) than it would take to tell it.

  14.

  THEN THERE THEY WERE, THE POLICE, THE GERMANS, ringing the doorbell and knocking on the door. They startled her, and for a moment her intelligence, her proud new-found intelligence, failed her; she suffered one more moment of panic.

  What if they suspected her of having shot the major, or of knowing who had? They wouldn’t, they couldn’t, for there was his farewell letter! She ran to the sitting room and picked it up off the floor, and returned to the kitchen with it pressed to her bosom, as if it were her only safeguard, affidavit or license or identification-paper; then trembled to think that perhaps now her fingerprints were on it—as a woman of leisure in the old days she had read certain detective stories, Fantomas and Edgar Wallace—and ran back to the sitting room and slipped it back over the corpse’s shoulder to the desk where she had found it in the first place. Then she opened the front door and let the impatient Germans in.

  There were two of them, one in front of the other. The one in front said, “I am Major von Roesch. Where is Major Kalter? Are you alone in the apartment? Who has been here besides yourself? Why did you take so long to let us in? I thought you had run away. Speak up, for God’s sake!”

  Major von Roesch did not shout; his voice was quick and low and husky. Mrs. Helianos had expected him to resemble his friend the deceased; and there never were two men less alike. He was somewhat fat and a little old, he was dark-haired and sallow-skinned, with eyes of bright hazel and ugly drooping lips. It was a kind face except for the lips, a clever face.

  The other one accompanying him was a lieutenant —after their discourtesy of not noticing when Captain Kalter became Major Kalter, the Helianos family had learned to look at insignia—a youngster with a blank, modest, introspective face like a young priest.

  Without waiting for an answer to their question, they came straight in, as if it might be only natural for them to step indifferently on Mrs. Helianos or over her. She backed away from them down the corridor to the sitting-room door, and pointed through it, and slipped in herself and shrank into the corner by the bookcase.

  Major von Roesch entered the room with an easy step—a healthy stout man in a hurry, light on his feet—and stood in the center of the floor an instant with that perfect stillness which in a brave man is the equivalent of trembling; staring at his dead friend’s back with one hand out before him, like a great bird-dog pointing.

  Then he stepped to one side of the desk, bending a little to see exactly what had happened: the gun pointing to the mouth, the hairy wet hole in the top of the head, the bloody desk. Then he sniffed hard, and with lively motions went over to the window and unlatched it and opened it wide.

  The younger officer followed, step for step, almost gesture for gesture, like a large and solid shadow; but alert, as if any moment might be the moment for him to stand at attention or to salute, which was his nature. In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that he was so much younger and only a lieutena
nt, Mrs. Helianos noted that the major treated him with a certain deference.

  The lieutenant belonged to a section of the secret military police which, among other things, looked out for occupying German officers in their individual relations with Greeks; so officially he was in charge of this investigation. Whereas Major von Roesch, as a staff-officer of the quartermaster’s corps, and the friend of the deceased, had a limited competence and informal authority. However he appeared to be a clever willful man, and he meant to have his way.

  Having seen the condition of the body, they began asking questions again, the major especially with a strain in his voice, “Who did this? What happened? Speak up, for heaven’s sake.”

  For some reason just then Mrs. Helianos forgot her German; answered in French, in a faint voice, “C'était lui, lui-mhteme, he did it himself,” pointing to the dead man.

  Then she gave a little gasp because she did not see the farewell letter on the desk where she had put it over the dead shoulder; and looking around nervously, she found it on the floor where the draught from the open window had carried it, and pointed to it; and as the two officers seemed not to see, she sprang across in front of them, and stooped for it, and handed it to Major von Roesch. “C’est pour vous, it is addressed to you. I read it,” she added with a slight apologetic note, “to find out what had happened.”

  The old major looked at it a moment, then looked up over it at her soberly, appraisingly. “It is my friend’s handwriting, yes. Fortunately for you, Mrs. Helianos!”

  His knowing her name amazed her. It was her reward for having gone hungry evening after evening when Alex or Helianos took the leftovers in little packages down the street to the old Macedonian couple’s apartment for his dog.

  “Furthermore, it refers to conversations between Major Kalter and myself,” he added, “conversations at which no one else was present. Please note that fact, Lieutenant Frieher, it is a point in evidence.”

  He cleared his throat and accelerated his voice. “Now, my good woman, will you please show us into another room? It is perhaps an infirmity—you know, Lieutenant, in the quartermaster’s corps, we do not have this kind of experience every day—I am not comfortable about dead bodies, unnecessary dead bodies.”

  Mrs. Helianos who was not comfortable either, led them not to Kalter’s adjoining bedroom but away down the corridor to the children’s room.

  “Also I have something to say about my dead friend that I prefer not to say in his presence,” Major von Roesch explained as they went along.

  He sat down on the children’s bed and re-read the farewell letter in a rapid whisper and mumble; stood up suddenly, and stood in intense reflection, with squinted eyes like gold and a bad twist of his thin lips downward; then turned to the younger officer and read a paragraph aloud.

  It was the paragraph that Mrs. Helianos had skipped over because it made no sense to her; the paragraph of what Kalter wanted done after his death: —“Arrange things as you wish, my friend, as honorably as you can. Speak to the political bureau of the secret service about it: Lieutenant-Colonel Sertz. Perhaps he will have some method of explaining the circumstances of my death, to serve their purpose in some way, in the checking of the Greek resistance. Thus even in death I may still serve a little useful purpose, for the fatherland.”

  Major von Roesch cleared his throat again after this reading, and asked, “Lieutenant Frieher“—the lieutenant stiffened attentively—“do you understand what this part of my friend’s letter means; what he wished us to do?”

  “Yes, I think so, Major von Roesch, yes, I understand.”

  Mrs. Helianos did not understand but, as the manner of both officers was portentous, she stood trying to, leaning forward a little, holding her breath in order not to miss one of the major’s words.

  “Very well then, Lieutenant,” he said sharply, “please give me your careful attention. It is not what I wish, not at all! My view of the matter is this: in the moment of his death, writing this letter, my poor friend did not have his normal understanding, do you hear? I should like Lieutenant-Colonel Sertz to do nothing about it, nothing.”

  He paused, narrowing his yellow eyes again, then said, “I do not care for certain of Lieutenant-Colonel Sertz’s methods. I think he has got them all out of those English books that used to be sold at railroad-stations, by the Jew Oppenheim and the Jew Wallace.”

  Mrs. Helianos blushed, because of the coincidence of having been reminded of those books herself only a few minutes ago. She began to be extremely nervous.

  “Furthermore, in this damned land of Greece the methods I refer to have not worked well,” he added.

  Mrs. Helianos observed that the lieutenant was blushing too, staring straight ahead with almost no expression; only a look of not taking sides in this difference of his superior officers, whatever it might amount to.

  Major von Roesch scrutinized him; he gave Mrs. Helianos a keen sideways glance as well; he sighed. “The true cause of my friend’s death, I am sorry to tell you, Lieutenant, was his own cowardice. Wait, don’t misunderstand me, not military cowardice! It was a purely personal misfortune. His mind became deranged as a result of the loss of his two sons in service, and the loss of his wife, burned to death in an air-raid. The three deaths in one week; a coincidence!

  “See for yourself. Lieutenant. He puts it very well in his letter.”

  He handed the letter to the younger man, who looked at it, then looked back and forth from it to this old outspoken quartermaster as if unable to believe his own eyes and ears.

  “You see, do you not, Lieutenant? Major Kalter was an excellent officer, promoted only a few weeks ago with a good citation for his ability and hard work here. We shall miss him in the quartermaster corps. Actually he worked too hard; that was part of his trouble.

  “He was a sensitive man. He tried to bear his misfortune like a man but it was impossible for him. In all his way of life, I may say, there was no preparation for misfortune. Which is a great spirit in a nation, they tell me; but sometimes, for the individual, impossible. . .

  “For example, except for his wife whom he had the misfortune to lose, there were no women in his life—unless we count his poor landlady here, Mrs. Helianos!”

  Whereupon he smiled at Mrs. Helianos mockingly but not unkindly. He took out a large handkerchief and whisked his forehead and his nose with it; for it was a hot afternoon. “Ah-whh,” he sighed, “I may tell you that I feel a certain scorn of my dead friend at this moment. Only we ought to respect him simply because he is dead, do you not think?”

  Now the lieutenant was no longer trying to keep an inexpressive face. He looked bored, shocked, and perhaps angry. No doubt Major von Roesch noticed this; he quickly resumed his sharp scrutiny and authoritative tone.

  “Joking aside, Lieutenant—I say, when a man is dead that is the end of it, let him go! For me, to turn this case of my friend’s death over to Lieutenant-Colonel Sertz to be misrepresented and manipulated for purposes of political warfare would be as unpleasant as to give his corpse to a hospital to be practiced upon by students.”

  “I understand, sir,” the lieutenant mumbled, with a blank bewildered look.

  Mrs. Helianos could not abide her bewilderment any longer. She took a step closer to the two officers, pleading in German, her worst German, “Please, for pity’s sake, please! What does it mean? Is there something you do not understand about the death of Major Kalter? Has it anything to do with me?”

  She took Major von Roesch’s wrist, meaning to cling to it until he gave her an answer; but as this reminded her of Leda’s way with the dead major, she let it go.

  “You must be more patient, Mrs. Helianos,” he said. “Please do not grasp my hand, because it makes me nervous. You do not speak German very well, do you? and I gather that you understand it even less well. What a pity! You have missed a wonderful opportunity, with my friend in your home for more than a year.”

  His yellow eyes wandered back to the lieutenant again. “I m
ay tell you, Lieutenant, that the late Major Kalter was one of the best talkers I have ever known. It was a waste of talent, our keeping him in the quartermaster corps. By temperament he was not exactly an army-man anyway; he should have had an important post in the ministry of propaganda.”

  Surely, Mrs. Helianos thought, this was the most discursive old fellow on earth! He was playing with her as a cat plays with a mouse. She made another appeal to him for information: “Tell me, I implore you to tell me, what is happening, does it concern me?”

  He ignored it. “Lieutenant Frieher,” he inquired, “do you know French?”

  The lieutenant blushed, “Only a few words, sir. I was in France, but only six weeks.”

  “Then I must ask you to excuse my speaking French for a moment. I wish to make all this very clear to Mrs. Helianos. If she understands the bad trouble she is in, I think that we can count on her for cooperation in the future.”

  He turned briskly to her. “I will tell you exactly what is happening, Mrs. Helianos,” he said in French. “It concerns you most certainly.”

  Then he told her, quickly, cutting his correct French phrases off short, with a certain flourish in his low husky old voice. “My friend’s intention, as expressed in the paragraph of his letter to me which I read aloud, was to have you and your family held responsible for his death.”

  Mrs. Helianos' blood ran cold, her heart pumped no more, she saw her blood in a shadow over her eyes; and she reached out and caught hold of the foot of the children’s bed, to steady her.

  “Unless Lieutenant Frieher and I testify that it is not so,” he went on, “it will go on record not as a suicide but as a political assassination; and you will be made to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, and I dare say, a certain number of your relatives and friends along with you.”