by Tobias Hill
He swung the jug. It caught Jason across the crown and broke open with a hollow resonance. The handle was still in one piece, attached to a bellied curvature, and he brought it up, like a shield or a weapon, though Jason was already on his knees, his hands over his face, laughing merrily.
–Oh, now, that wasn’t nice, was it? That wasn’t nice at all. That hurt!
He knelt down in front of him. Are you alright? he began to say, but even as he did so he caught sight of Eleschen.
She was still sitting in the armchair. She was watching them patiently, as if they were children who needed to be watched: tolerantly, amused as the old men the day before, the potato men, watching early firecrackers.
–That really hurt, Jason whispered, and then he was on him, rolling Ben back on his heels. He was on top of him, still talking, though Ben couldn’t make out anything except the motion of his teeth. One hand was in his hair, the other was coming down. It came at him again and again, quickly at first and then more slowly, each blow heavy and sure, workmanlike, like a shovel being dug into his neck and eyes, his face.
The sound of goat bells woke him. He was still lying on the floor in Eberhard’s sitting room. He turned his head towards the sound. Under a stack of wicker chairs he could see Eleschen’s hands and legs. The dressing gown swished against her calves. Her hands were holding a broom. The green shards of the water jug clinked across the floorboards as she swept them up against the wall by the packing cases. Like bells.
He let his head roll back. The ceiling of the sitting room had been painted an uneven pink. Terracotta. Cinnabar. His eyes were wet with tears. Their warm salt filled his sockets. He could feel them running back across his brow, into his hair. He reached up to wipe them away and when his hand came down again he saw that it was covered in blood.
He woke again. Something was nudging his ribs, insistently, like an animal, and he thought of the jackals and the hare and flinched away from it.
–He’ll live, Jason said. His voice sounded funny and Ben tried to look up at him and found that he was blind.
The music was playing again. He could feel the breeze from the windows, could smell cooking on the air, meat roasting, Paschal lamb. His mouth filled with saliva. He began to choke and rolled over on his side, opening his mouth, letting it spill over his lips.
He could see Jason’s bare feet. His eyes were sealed to slits with his own congealing blood. He brought a hand up to his face and tried to wipe it away. Twin pains lanced back into his skull, as if his hand were full of glass, and he groaned and lurched back and up.
They had dragged him into the middle of the room. Jason was sitting on the sofa, a dishcloth around his head, a second held to his cheek. He was crouched forward, trying to light a fresh cigarette. The stub was already stained pink. Finally he got it lit and, sitting back, saw Ben.
–Well, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Your eyes look sore anyway. Don’t know if that’s quite the same thing, though. Here.
He threw the dishcloth in his hand. It slapped across Ben’s neck, unfurling wetly. He picked at it until it fell away.
–Eleschen’s making tea. Want some?
He shook his head. The sofa creaked. He drew back as Jason’s shadow fell over him.
–That wasn’t nice. What you did. Look what you did to me. I look like Lawrence of fucking Arabia. I should kill you, you know.
–Where’s Eberhard?
–Out.
He tried to sit up. The writing desk was behind him and he slid himself back against it. There was something else he had to ask, something he had to know, but it took all his effort to lean back. The words eluded him, eelish, flickering into the dark.
–What is it? You think Eb’s going to help you? You better think again. You’ve never been on the wrong side of him. If Eb had been here he would have taken you apart. He would have lamped you out. He’d rip your fucking head off, mate. Tell you what, though, I’ll tell you something, I’m glad you took a swing at me. I am, if I’m honest with you. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, ever since you turned up like Johnny No-Mates on our doorstep–
The words came back to him. –Where is he?
–Ain’t here, I told you.
–He’s gone to the cave.
His eyes drifted shut. When he opened them again Jason was still gazing down at him, head propped on one hand. His smile was curious.
–He’s gone there, hasn’t he?
–What if he has?
–That was the vote.
–What if it was?
–He won’t do it.
–He asked for it. Max was all geared up, but Eb said no. He was well up for it.
–Jason, you can’t do this.
–We have to.
–You’re not a bad man–
–We have to see it through. It’s not like we want to. It’s not what we had in mind. I liked him, as it happens. No one else did, but I thought he was alright, considering. We used to have a chat. It’s all gone to shit, though, now. Max says we have to start thinking about next time. They need to know it’s not a game with us. We need to get the message through, loud and clear. What do you think you’re doing?
He was getting to his feet. One of his eyes was closing up and when he tried to lean against the desk he missed and almost fell. By the time he was straight Eleschen was there, setting down a tray with three tulip-glasses of tea.
–Guess what? I was just clearing out when I found this sugar in the freezer. Isn’t that the weirdest? He doesn’t live on dust, after all. Do you take sugar, Ben?
She was looking up at him as if nothing had happened. His voice as he answered seemed heard, not spoken, as if he were listening to an invisible, immaculately courteous stranger.
–No thanks. I don’t think I’m staying. I might go home now.
–You could sleep here. The sheets aren’t packed yet. The bed’s made up.
He turned away. Behind him he could hear Jason laughing around his cigarette.
–Shh, Eleschen was murmuring. –You should stop him.
An exhalation. He smelled smoke. –He won’t find any help today. Anyway, there’s not much left to stop, Jason said. And by the time he gets there there won’t be much left to find.
He started towards the door.
He got as far as the hotel before he needed to sit down. The slicked-back boy was sullenly watering the road trees, but as he caught sight of Ben he dropped the hose and backed inside.
There were no taxis working. He saw one coming down the boulevard and got himself up off his bench to wave at it, but as it came closer he saw it was full of children and infants, old men and old women, all on one another’s laps and knees, an entire dynasty on their way from one feast to another, and the driver scowled at him and picked up speed towards the square.
He was sitting down again when Crossword came out. She had a sponge and a bowl, but when she saw him she put them on the bench beside him and stood with her arms akimbo.
–I need help.
–I can’t understand you. What are you saying?
He licked his lips and tried again. –I need to go to Therapne.
–To where? You need to go to hospital, is what you need.
–No, not now. Will you drive me?
–It’s Easter. Bad enough I have to work at all.
He pulled out money, tearing a note. –Sorry. I’ve got some more inside. If it’s not enough you can put it on my card–
–What happened to you?
He looked up at her. The light was high behind her, shining through her hennaed hair, lighting it up like Eleschen’s. –Please help me.
She unfolded her arms. –Spiridon, she said, raising her voice without turning, and Ben saw the boy, loitering on the steps. Crossword was fishing in her purse, holding out keys, and the boy took them and sprinted away.
The car, when it came, was gigantic, plush and black, with turquoise upholstery. Crossword had Spiridon fetch two towels from the hotel laundry and lay th
em out inside. –Don’t bleed, she said, even so, as Ben got in, and then, Tell me again, where it is you have to go so much?
–Therapne.
–The Menelaion?
–Yes, he said, but they were already going, his head pressed back against the towels by the acceleration. They were still warm. They smelled sweet as fresh bread. He thought of Metamorphosis.
–You work there, Crossword said after a while, With the American girl?
–Yes.
–Nice girl.
–Yes, she is.
–You left something, maybe?
He nodded, though of course she wasn’t looking at him. –I did leave something up there.
He only realised he had slept as he came awake again. They were already climbing, the car rocking as Crossword turned up onto the Therapne road. He could see her almond eyes narrowed in the mirror.
–Some Easter this is.
–I’m sorry, he said, but his voice was a croak and he wondered if she understood.
–Oh, you’re awake, are you?
–I’ll pay for the car.
–Keep your money. Who are you running from?
–I’m not running.
–Of course you are. After this we’re going to the hospital. And next thing to the police.
She peered round at him. Her face was sympathetic but intractable, like a publican asked for drinks after last orders.
–Fighting like that. At Easter. Who did this to you?
–My friends.
–Some friends. Well, here we are. What did you leave?
A silver car was parked under the cypresses.
–It’s not here.
–You’re joking, right?
–I’m sorry. I had to come.
–You had to come. God help us. What about me? Look at this, there’s nothing here. Just ruins. Useless. Now we go.
He opened the door as they began to move. Crossword hissed as she craned back at him. –If you get out I won’t wait.
–You don’t need to. Thank you. You don’t know what you’ve done. I don’t even know your name.
He got out. The window descended beside him. Crossword glared out at him. –My name is Glykeria.
–Thank you so much, Glykeria.
–You’re crazy. Get in the car. We’re going to the hospital–
He began to walk. All the way round the North Hill he could hear her calling after him. Then there was the sound of the car, and finally the silence of the hills, which was not silence at all but a sea of white noise, the endless chirr of the cicadas everywhere around him.
He fell once as he crossed the scree. It became easier after he reached the trees. The pain was only in his head and it was dampened as he picked up pace. By the time he reached the field of asphodel he was going at a clumsy jog-trot. Then he was out, the rocks ahead, and the sun caught him in the face.
He began to climb. His mind kept circling back to Jason and Eleschen. He tried not to think about them. Twice he thought he saw a figure, a dark blot on the slopes a mile or a half-mile above, but each time, when he looked again, there was nothing there.
He came to the sheer face of rock. At the top he stopped to get his breath. When he checked his watch it was not yet one: he had not been at Eberhard’s for long. When he began again there was a throbbing in his skull, and once a splitting pain, as if he had been sunstruck.
He could see the caves ahead. He was a hundred yards from the outcrop when he realised he would have to rest. There was a terebinth just ahead and he walked the last dozen steps and sat down suddenly under its low branches. He could see the cave itself, their cave, the fig tree a dusty green in the daylight, the mouth a black crack angling out of it; a negative lightning.
He could hardly breathe. The tree trunk was hot against his wet back. It smelled of turpentine. He lowered his head and felt his heart slowing from overdrive. He shut his eyes against the pain and when he opened them again he was lying on his side, curled up, the way that Natsuko had lain in the garden beside him, and he cried out, knowing that he had fallen asleep again.
He stumbled to his feet. As he reached the outcrop the fig tree began to move, as if a gust of wind had caught it. A figure was crawling out from under it. He shouted Eberhard’s name, but even as he did so he could see that it didn’t look like Eberhard.
It was an old man. He was tall, stooping as he stood. His face was somehow both strange and familiar, long and foul with white, white skin. He looked like a creature that had never seen the sun. Reeled over one shoulder he carried a thick coil of rope. He wore a full satchel and, sheathed at his belt, a hunting knife. He was smiling down at Ben, and as Eberhard’s name echoed back from the mountainside above them he nodded, raised a hand in greeting, then held it to its lips.
The fig tree was still moving. Its lowest branches shuddered. He heard Kiron’s voice, still carrying the cave’s echo, muffled by the undergrowth, grumbling, raised in a doubtful question. Then the old man was squatting down, reaching up, peeling off its rubber face, lifting something from the ground, and when the figure stood again it was Eberhard after all, and he had a shotgun in his hands.
He turned and levelled it and aimed.
After the gunshot, the chorus returning. The stir and clash of the cicadas, shy at first, still listening, but louder on the heels of silence. And the sun somehow louder, too, or fiercer, its pounding a paean of light so great that it deafened him. The hot thunder of his own blood filled the smooth bore of his skull until his thinking quailed and burned.
The mountainside full of echoes. Eberhard breaking the gun. Leaning the breech over one arm, as if its side-by-sides weighed nothing. Peering into the undergrowth, and cocking his head as if he, too, were listening.
And smiling as he came away from the thing splayed five ways in the dark. And coming with him through the brush, following him, lingering, the smell of thyme and gunpowder.
–There, he said, his voice easy, and glanced back once towards the cave.
–What have you done? Oh, oh, Christ, what have you done?
–I’ve done what needed to be done. And now you’re ours, Ben. Now you are. Now you’re one of us.
XVI
The Careful Application of Terror
He turned and began to walk away. He had gone a dozen paces when Eberhard called his name, disappointed and pacific, and he broke into a shambolic run.
He expected to die then. All the way to the end of the standable ground he could hear Eberhard laughing. He laughed like a man watching a good comedy alone in a darkened room: not extravagantly, but in impulsive fits and starts, each bout of pleasure lapsing back into another avid silence. Each time the silence came he waited for the sound and feel of the gun.
As the start of the descent came into sight he was blundering through the scrub, his legs beginning to cartwheel with the down-pull of the slope, and all that he could do to stop himself going over the edge was to fall before he reached it.
He toppled over sideways and rolled to a halt in a bed of sagebrush. Something echoed off the mountains, then, a dry retort, and he shut his eyes until the next one came, and he understood that Eberhard was clapping.
He looked back for the first time only as he began the climb down. He expected to see Eberhard still standing there, but instead Sauer was crouching, no longer watching Ben at all, but working at something on the ground. His shoulders and arms moving like those of a man washing his hands.
He went down steadily, at first, thinking of nothing but the rocks, losing himself in his attention. Then he remembered Eberhard, and the urge to look back again grew in him until he missed a hold and nearly fell. As he reached the trees he saw, at the edge of his vision but with compelling clarity, an old man with a long white head crawling down silently towards him, and he glanced back wildly; but it was only a bird of prey, a great black thing with a white neck, turning gyres through the air between him and the caves above.
By the time he came out by the dig his breathing was monstr
ous. The silver car was still there. The doors were locked. He found a dead branch under the cypresses and crawled into the car’s shadow. The trunk end of the branch was sharp and he stabbed at a wheel with its point, but he didn’t have the strength for it. He broke the windshield instead, smashing it in hopeless anger, leaving the branch sunk in the glass, looking around one more time as he started down the track.
He reached the river road and began the trudge northwards. He could still smell the mountains on his clothes. Terebinth and thyme. He only imagined the gunpowder.
The road ahead was so empty that at first, when he heard the engine, he thought that he was dreaming it. Almost too late he realised that it was coming from behind him, the sound echoing off the riverside eucalyptus, and he turned fearfully.
A tractor was coming up the road. He put out a hand. A squat man in a flat cap and shirtsleeves sat atop the tractor: a flatbed trailer was hitched to the back. He passed Ben very slowly, nodding without looking at him, dignified as a horseman, going inexorably on.
He dropped his hand and began to walk again. The verge was overgrown. His feet moved through the sere spring flowers. The tractor sounded far away when he heard its engine change, but when he raised his head it was pulling over only twenty feet ahead.
The man looked down as he reached him. Nothing in his face acknowledged the ruin of Ben’s own.
–Good Easter to you.
–You too, he said, but his voice whistled and sang, as if his ribcage were full of birds.
–I go only as far as Afisou.
He climbed into the trailer in silence. The man gestured for him to hold on, then turned away as he lay back. The steel of the flatbed floor was baking. He heard the gears shifting position, the rising roar of the engine.
The sky was moving ever so slowly above him. He could see the back of the man’s head. His hair was white as wool under the cap. As they passed the roadside shrine he took one hand off the wheel, took off the cap, crossed himself, and put the cap on again.
A vehicle was coming up on them. He closed his eyes as it overtook them. By the time he found it in himself to raise himself up, the car was already far ahead, so distant that he could not be sure if it was silver; though he thought it was, was almost sure. Sauer racing on towards Sparta.