The Firewalkers

by Francis King

  Even Cecil seemed to be delighted with the place. He took two or three photographs of the shore, receding smooth and hard as though it were made of concrete, and then handed his camera to Götz: ‘ You’re supposed to be good at this sort of thing, aren’t you? Take me some pretty pictures.’ I knew that Götz’s photographs would be far better than any that Cecil took; and I guessed, perhaps uncharitably, that Cecil would later pass them off as his own. Cecil ordered some ‘ ouzo’ and a plate of ‘ mezedes’—the tit-bits of cheese, fish or meat that are served with that drink—and then sank down into a deck-chair and crossed his plump thighs. ‘ It’s rather agreeable here.’ Theo and I sat down on either side of him. Then, with his usual restlessness, he jerked himself upright to ask: ‘What’s become of the driver?’

  ‘He’s inside the café.’

  ‘Oh.… And what on earth is the German doing?’

  The only two other customers were a pair of girls who lay side by side on deck-chairs, glistening like seals with the oil that they had spread on their dark brown bodies. Each was plumper and more hirsute than English taste would approve, but undeniably attractive. Their feet and dangling hands were curiously small, their breasts generous above their wide hips; their coarse black hair had been cropped close, their lips, finger-nails and toe-nails had all been painted the same pillar-box red. Each wore a cotton pad over her eyes as protection from the sun. Götz was creeping towards them over the sand, moving from a squatting position which made him look like some vast bird of prey; the Leica was raised to his eye.

  Suddenly he clicked; then he went behind them and photographed them again, from above. Cecil shot up in his chair: ‘Ho!’ he yelled, furious. ‘What are you doing? Don’t waste the film! Bring the camera here!’

  The shout woke the two girls, and brought Götz shambling in embarrassment towards us.

  ‘Just concentrate on the views,’ Cecil said crossly. ‘I don’t want the human interest.’

  Götz looked like a sulky boy, extending his lower lip and kicking with one toe at the sand as he said: ‘They’ll be wonderful photographs—you wait and see.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt,’ Cecil said drily. ‘Now sit down and drink some ouzo.’

  ‘Why has he brought us five glasses?’ I queried naively. ‘We’re only four, aren’t we?’

  ‘I thought we’d ask our driver to eat with us. It seemed the friendly thing to do. I must say I like the absence of class distinctions in Greece.’ I had never yet known Cecil to travel anything but first class whether abroad or in England. ‘Theo, do go in and tell him that there’s a glass of ouzo waiting.’

  Götz rose: ‘Shall I go in for you?’

  ‘No, no, let Theo go.’ Cecil smiled at me as the old man walked off, patient and stiff. ‘Really that piece of bijouterie that Madame la Maréchale is sporting today! I entirely agree with our driver—he showed the most excellent taste.’

  Theo now returned, shaking his head on its long, sinewy neck: ‘He won’t come.’

  ‘What do you mean he won’t come’’?’

  ‘He says he prefers to eat by himself.’

  ‘But didn’t you tell him that we wanted him to——’

  ‘Yes, of course I told him. But he says he won’t come.’

  Cecil stared blankly at the horizon, while the corners of his small, bitter mouth twisted in exasperation and then sagged downwards. He turned on Theo: ‘This is your fault.’

  ‘My fault?’

  ‘If you hadn’t been so rude to him—so needlessly rude to him——’

  ‘He was rude to me.’

  ‘He was only joking. If you wear an absurd ring like that, you must expect people to joke.’

  ‘He was impertinent,’ Theo said. ‘I am sure our friends here will agree with me—he was thoroughly impertinent.’ Götz and I both looked uncomfortable at being drawn into the quarrel.

  ‘You’re so touchy!’ Cecil exclaimed. ‘So anxious to preserve your dignity! And so tactless!’

  I admired the way in which Theo controlled himself, and instead of retorting to these charges continued to place one tit-bit after another into his mouth with trembling hand. I knew already that while he was so far from his base he would not wish to risk any irrevocable break with Cecil; probably he did not even have enough money in his pocket to pay for a train ticket back. What I did not then know was that he had an affection for Cecil and a profound understanding of all his whims and vagaries which made him remember, as I always forgot, that the best way to deal with such outbursts of spleen was merely to ignore them.

  Theo turned to Götz: ‘Have you ever been to Tirnavos?’

  ‘On Clean Monday, you mean?’ Clean Monday is the last day before Lent in the Orthodox Calendar.

  Theo was delighted: ‘How do you know about Clean Monday at Tirnavos?’ he asked.

  Götz shrugged his shoulders, and gave the amiable grin that alone made it possible for one to look for long at his face. ‘I have never been there. But I hear that it is fantastic.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ Theo echoed that characteristic word with satisfaction. ‘You know, of course, that all the women are shut up for the night? The authorities are making an effort to stamp out the practices, but I fancy it will be many a long year before they succeed.’

  ‘What is this? What are you talking about?’ Cecil had ceased to stare moodily at the horizon and now swung round. ‘Where is Tirnavos? What goes on there? What day, did you say?’

  As Cecil’s interest was won, so Götz’s was lost: the two girls had risen from their chairs, and having tweaked their bathing-costumes into position, each now began to pull a rubber cap on her short wiry hair with an orientally languorous grace. Standing side by side, with their chubby, dimpled knees and arms, their generously sculptured navels and handsome, sloe-black eyes under arched brows, they might have been two Matisse odalisques: and Götz was watching them with a trance-like reverence that might even have flattered that master. He had a raised fork in one hand, with a sardine on the end of it, and the oil slipped off in glistening drops to join the other stains that covered his blue jeans.

  ‘… the women have their turn at Eleusis,’ Theo was saying. ‘I had the story from an old peasant woman who had once been my mother’s maid. Of course she had been sworn to secrecy, but somehow I always get these things out. They all go to the house of the midwife—but, of course, you know the story of Alcibiades and how he dressed up …’ Theo’s voice became louder and louder, and more and more animated as he strove, in vain, to recapture Götz’s interest. ‘ We must go to Tirnavos together, Herr Joachim,’ he concluded at last.

  ‘What? Yes, yes … Let us do that.’ Götz glanced round guiltily at us, and then resumed his contemplation of the two girls. Suddenly he said: ‘I think I shall bathe.’

  ‘Bathe! … But here is the fish,’ Cecil protested.

  ‘I shall only be a moment.’

  ‘Have you got a towel?’ Theo asked.

  ‘No, I don’t need a towel. I never use one.’

  ‘And what about a costume?’

  ‘I can wear my pants.’

  Theo said genially: ‘All right, all right. But be quick! Otherwise your fish will get cold.’ He added, as Götz shambled off towards the bathing-cabins: ‘The water certainly looks inviting.’

  ‘You mean, those girls look inviting,’ Cecil said sourly. ‘Our friend seems to be an absolute satyr.’ Like many people whose own sexual foibles call for toleration, Cecil was never tolerant towards the sexual foibles of others. Even to those who shared his own specialised tastes he was always saying contemptuously: ‘But you’re so indiscriminate—your range is as wide as an Aga cooker’s’; or ‘Of course, you’re an absolute baby-snatcher’, or ‘But how could you—with a monster like that?’ He added now: ‘He doesn’t seem to have a thought in his head except women.’

  Götz had reappeared, his vast paws tucked under his naked arm-pits, as he picked his way, with bandaged feet, over the pebbles, tin-cans and shells that littered the san
d. Naked except for a pair of pants which might either be a faded khaki or a grubby white, he looked even taller and skinnier and more albino than in his clothes. Even the hair that sprouted from his nipples and in a line down his breast-bone was of a pinkish tinge; his skin was the colour of lard. ‘Ugh!’ he said, shuddering. ‘It’s cold.’

  ‘In you go,’ Cecil said; and as Götz scampered off, he added: ‘He suffers terribly from what Lord Palmerston used to call ‘‘ esprit de corps’’.’

  The girls were already bobbing up and down in the water, like a couple of celluloid dolls, emitting attenuated shrieks whenever the water rose above their waists. Götz began to swim round and round them, with powerful ungainly strokes which sent the spray glittering high into the air. He shouted something, either at them or at us, went far out and then swam back. Raising one paw, he all at once sent a vast billow cascading over their heads. They both screamed, and then gulped and coughed and spat and rubbed their smarting eyes as Götz went off into peal on peal of laughter. However, once they had recovered, they took no more notice but, with an ineffectual, wriggling breast-stroke, began to move away. Götz pursued, striding through the water, his long, lard-coloured arms held high above his head. Again he splashed, but this time he guffawed even before the water had swept over the girls; he continued to guffaw as once more they choked and put their hands to their eyes. Then one of them turned, and when she spoke, it was not in Greek, as both he and we had expected, but in English with a peculiarly piercing Brooklyn accent:

  ‘Would you get to hell out of here, mister? Or do you want me to kick your front teeth in?’

  Götz floundered away towards us: his face was red and even his neck and bare shoulders were going a mottled pink. With long strides he began to emerge from the water, when suddenly the two girls went off into a shrill whinnying of laughter. Götz’s pants had all at once slipped down to his ankles.

  ‘That was a typical transatlantic reaction,’ Theo said as Götz went into the bathing-hut to put on his clothes, ‘ that ill-bred and vulgar laughter. What, after all, is there comic about the human form? Do we laugh at the Venus di Milo? Once a country loses its sense of the dignity and beauty of the naked human animal, then it is indeed entering on a period of decadence. I imagine that those two sluts would have gone off into the same hysterical giggling when Ulysses appeared naked from the waves before Nausicaa or when Venus rose, as Botticelli painted her, from the foam about Cythera.’

  After this incident Götz was as sulky towards us as if we ourselves had been responsible for his discomfiture. He sat, while we ate, staring moodily either at the table or in the direction of the two girls who were now once more outstretched on their deck-chairs, and though Theo would pass on to his plate all the best pieces of fish from his own—a real sacrifice, for Theo loved food and of all food, fish most of all—yet the German would do no more than take an occasional nibble. The salt had dried on his eyebrows and ears to make a kind of scab-like crust and the close-cropped hair of his head had so stuck together that it bristled from his scalp like the thorns on a gooseberry. Theo tried to woo him from his sullenness, not only with food, but with conversation: to no avail.

  After we had finished the meal, Cecil got up. ‘Well, I think I shall go for a stroll,’ he announced. I knew from experience that if he wished to be accompanied, he would have said so.

  ‘And I think I shall join you.’ But as Theo struggled to his feet, Cecil pushed him back:

  ‘No, I’d prefer to be alone.’

  He wandered off; and I saw that he was making for a solitary fisherman so distant as to be almost invisible. There was no doubt that he had sharp eyes. Götz had undone one of the bandages on his feet and was pricking irritably at a blister, as Theo said: ‘ Well, I must be off on one of my little expeditions in search of raw material.’ I wondered if his ‘raw material’ would be the same as Cecil’s, but he added: ‘I have so many orders for jewellery, and it’s hard to find the right kind of shells.… Who’s going to help me?’

  Silence.

  ‘Lazy boys!’

  He shambled off into the bright spring sunshine; then, suddenly, he sat down on the sand and took off his shoes and socks, which he left behind him on a mound, and walked on, bare-footed. He had also taken off his small green beret and from time to time he would stoop, pick up a shell and, if he did not reject it after a close-sighted examination, would place it in this improvised receptacle. Götz and I watched him; I was almost half asleep. ‘ What is he doing?’ Götz said at last. I told him. ‘Ah!’ Then he rose. ‘I shall help.’

  His khaki shirt fluttering loose about him, Götz strode out over the smooth sand. ‘Hi!’ he shouted. ‘Hi!’ The two men faced each other, Theo’s hand raised to his forehead against the glare of the sun as he looked up at the German. Then they both set to work. Götz would patiently bring each shell he discovered to Theo for appraisal, and sometimes many minutes would pass as they discussed the colour of one or the shape of another. Sometimes Theo would raise a shell to Götz’s ear or throat, or would put it to his finger, testing it in these contexts. They looked happy there together; happier certainly than Cecil who was wandering round his fisherman in ever-narrowing circles, like a distracted goat on a tether.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN I said goodbye to Theo and Cecil the next day, Theo urged me, as he shook my hand warmly: ‘When you’re next in Athens, you will of course come to stay with me, won’t you? I can’t offer you luxury, you know—I am a poor man, as Cecil has probably told you—but I can offer you quiet and freedom. Freedom, above all … So please do come.’

  I thanked him, touched by the warmth and spontaneity of this invitation to someone whom he had only known two days, but never guessing that within the next week I should find myself in a position to accept his hospitality. I was to have an operation: but I must confess that I thought neither of Theo nor of staying in his house as I made my preparations. At times of apprehension and physical distress I find luxury the most satisfactory of all anodynes and I planned either to stay at the Grande Bretagne while I was waiting to go into hospital or, if he could have me, at the home of my friend Dino Haralambos. Fortunately Dino’s spare room was unoccupied and after the rudely uncomfortable life of my flat in Salonica, it was some consolation for the ordeal ahead to enjoy the pleasures of being valeted, taking baths at all hours of the day and drinking Dino’s gin and whisky.

  One evening, after some disagreeable hours in the X-ray department of the Evangelismus Hospital, Dino took me to Zonar’s for a drink, and as we sat perched on two stools before the bar, Theo appeared. He did an evening round, as I later discovered, of all the bars and pastry-shops in Athens; but he never bought anything, and if he saw friends, he would usually refuse, out of pride, to accept anything from them. Instead, late at night, he would go to a milk shop where he would eat a plate of yoghurt before he retired.

  He now peered short-sightedly round Zonar’s door for several seconds before he saw I was there; then he hurried over, sweeping off his wide-brimmed grey felt hat, pinned up at one side like an Australian soldier’s: ‘Frank! What are you doing here? When did you arrive? How nice to see you, dear boy! … Good evening, Mr Haralambos.’ He turned coldly to Dino, and Dino returned an equally cold: ‘ Good evening, Colonel Grecos.’ I discovered later that the two men disliked each other. Theo used to say about Dino, who had finished his education at Balliol: ‘Greeks must have the courage to be Greeks and not inferior imitations of Americans or Englishmen’; and Dino about Theo: ‘Yes, I know Frank. I’m sure that he’s the kindest man in the world. But Athens is not London—everyone knows everything about everyone else—and in my job I just can’t afford to have my name linked with his.’ (Dino worked in the Greek Foreign Service.)

  Now I felt guilty and wondered how I should excuse myself to Theo for not having been to stay with him: I had already heard stories about his touchiness, and he would be hurt and contemptuous when he learned that I had preferred what he would consider to be
the false Anglo-American comfort of Dino’s household to the authentic Greek discomfort of his own. But it was he who was apologising: ‘I expect it was you who telephoned this afternoon, wasn’t it? Cecil said the ’phone rang, but he was—er—busy at that moment and could not go to answer it. The terrible thing is that unless you’d like to sleep on the sofa, I don’t know where to put you. You see, I have Cecil in one spare room and in the other I have our German friend: he had nowhere to go in Athens and no money on him. What could I do? Of course, if I’d known that you’d be here …’

  At this moment a filthy and palsied old man who had been moving among the tables peddling cigarettes and postcards tweaked Theo’s sleeve. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ Theo said. He and the old man began to whisper in a corner, Theo lowering his head as the old man stood on tiptoe to put his toothless mouth up to his auditor’s ear. ‘ You see what I mean,’ Dino said. ‘He’s thoroughly disreputable.’ He stared at his own handsome well-bred face in the tarnished mirror opposite him: in his stiff collar, blue-and-white striped shirt and Savile Row suit, he might have been any promising English diplomat. ‘ I wish I could afford to be disreputable now and then,’ he sighed.

  Theo showed an inexhaustible interest in all the details of my illness for he was, I discovered, one of those people whose hypochondria is directed, not inwards to themselves but outwards to their friends and their families. If I had to make a laboratory test or see a specialist, he would insist on coming with me; and when I recovered consciousness, his was the first face I recognised. I opened my eyes and through the dreamily dispersing mist was aware of a number of silent white-clad forms motionless at the foot of my bed. I remember thinking, without any alarm, but in a contentment induced by the anaesthetic: ‘ There are at least a dozen doctors there. I must be really seriously ill.’ Then I realised, with a shock, that these doctors were wearing pyjamas. They were not doctors, but patients from other wards, who had drifted in, unbidden, to watch me ‘coming round’.