The Firewalkers

by Francis King

  Sophie lowered herself into the chair and I was about to sit at her feet when she hissed at me: ‘ Find me a drink!’ I pretended not to hear, but she repeated: ‘Mr Cauldwell, get me a drink.’

  Theo swung round on the stool to watch me irritably as I creaked across the room, poured out a drink and then creaked back. He drew in a heavy breath, closed his eyes, and at last said: ‘ Well—shall we begin?’

  Somebody cleared a throat; otherwise there was silence.

  ‘Marcia alia burlesca. Constitution Square.… Drums … flutes … violas and violoncellos …’ For a while the audience was amused by the extraordinary spectacle of the old man in his beret, pounding at the keys, while he shouted his directions. People exchanged glances, and one of the Australian girls began to shake with giggles. The other caught the infection from her, until they were both shuddering soundlessly with handkerchiefs to their mouths. Götz was leaning against the window, his eyes closed; I noticed that he was wearing the Italian tie I had given him when I was in hospital; it was the only time I had seen him in a tie, and the knot was hanging just above the second button of his shirt. He looked rapt, as he had appeared before the ikon that day, seemingly so long ago, when I had first seen him at Langada. Mr McClushen was waving one hand, in which he held a cigarette, in time to the music; the four young men brought by Sophie were seated cross-legged on cushions, their faces now crimson as they stared at the rug before them. Nadia appeared to be sorting the contents of her bag in her lap.

  ‘Adagio. A night at the Argentina … Castanets …’ Theo clicked the fingers of his left hand together as he thundered with the right. ‘Piccolos …’ He whistled and then had to stop, because he wanted to sneeze. ‘Tambourine …’

  The door squeaked open and Katina’s face appeared. She began to tip-toe towards Theo and, stooping down, whispered in his ear. He shook his head violently: ‘Cymbals—boom—crash—boom!— cymbals—bam!—bam!—bam! … Muted violins …’ He began to hum falsetto, swinging from side to side with an exaggeratedly sinuous movement of the shoulders.

  Katina gave up; she came over to me. But I could hear nothing she said. ‘Later,’ I whispered. ‘Later.’

  Still she insisted on blowing into my ear; she was even plucking at my sleeve now, as she stooped above me. In exasperation I got up and followed her out.

  ‘Yassou!’ I was greeted in the back of the hall by an enormous Greek in uniform.

  ‘Yassou,’ I returned.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’

  I peered. ‘Yes, I think so,’ I said vaguely. We met so many people in uniform in our tours of the tavernas.

  ‘Langada,’ he said. ‘I rescued you. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Harry—’ I had never heard Cecil called this before—‘told me that if I ever got leave, I was to be certain to come and see him. I’m taking the boat to Crete tonight. I’ve only two hours—I dashed here from the station. Is he here?’

  ‘Ye—es.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘In there?’ He pointed a massive thumb at the door from behind which Theo could be heard announcing: ‘Andante—the Lovers in the Zappeion …’

  I nodded.

  ‘What is it—music?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Shall I go in?’

  ‘No. I don’t think you’d better. Come back later.’

  ‘But I only have two hours.’

  ‘Then it doesn’t look as if you’ll be able to see him.’

  ‘I must see him. He told me that as soon as I was in Athens, I was to call. If you don’t believe me, he wrote the address for me here——’ He began to undo the flap of one of his breast pockets.

  ‘I do believe you.’ It was not in the least difficult to believe. ‘But at the moment, he’s busy.’

  ‘What’s he doing? Listening to that music?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, surely, he can do that some other time.’

  ‘No, you see …’ I broke off; it was useless to try to explain.

  ‘Look, I’ll sit down here.’ He lowered his enormous bulk on to a small Venetian chair, painted cream and gold, where he sat legs wide apart and hands dangling between legs. ‘And you go in and say to him that Costa’s here. That’s all you need say. Costa from Crete. He’ll understand.’

  ‘But just at this moment I—I can’t possibly——’

  ‘Now you go and do that.’

  I returned to the room, but I went back to my place without saying a word to Cecil. Sophie hissed: ‘I bet you’ve been having a drink on the sly … How long is this going to go on for?’ By now everyone had a vaguely dazed, soporific look, except for the two Australians who were still choking and gulping tirelessly into their handkerchiefs while the tears streamed down their cheeks. Mabel Aaronson looked slightly different from the others; she, too, had the appearance of someone who had just been hit on the head, but from the oddly stiff way in which she held herself in her chair I suspected that in her case it was the unaccustomed alcohol, as well as the boredom, that was responsible for the change. She caught my eye, as I appraised her, and revealed her long, butter-coloured teeth in a bemused grin.

  Suddenly the door opened again. ‘Harry!’ a deep voice hissed. ‘Come here!’

  Cecil looked up, startled; his head had been slowly nodding forward on to his chest, his eyes had been closed.

  ‘Harry!’

  Cecil got up and went out, while everyone exchanged glances. From outside one could hear the sounds of enthusiastic greetings in the demotic; Theo struck his octaves as if he were wishing to hurt them.

  Ennui flooded back: Cecil was being unusually quiet, I thought. When Theo shouted ‘Drums … drums … drums’, I half expected, as on that other occasion, that there would come thuds from the other room. Inexorably, the sixth movement followed the fifth, and the seventh the sixth. Sophie Landerlöst began to creak on the broken springs of her chair. ‘I’m parched!’ she hissed. One of her young men had crossed his arms over his knees in a surreptitious attempt to glance at his watch; I, myself, had already glanced at mine and knew that an hour and a half had passed.

  ‘Oh, Lord, how long, how long?’ Sophie intoned softly, in time to the music. ‘Stop him, stop him, for God’s sake stop him!’

  ‘How can I?’

  ‘Well, I shall.’

  I did not take this remark seriously and was amazed when, after a few bars of the movement which Theo called ‘The Tavern Dancers’, Sophie jumped to her feet. ‘The rebetiko!’ she exclaimed. She began to gyrate, clicking her fingers, in the small space between the audience and the piano. I had heard of her skill at these intricate dances; now it was being proved to me. Although she was so vast and her whole frame was supported on a pair of the flimsiest and highest high-heels I have ever seen outside Shepherd Market, yet there was an extraordinary grace and precision about the whole performance.

  At first Theo played on, oblivious of what was happening; he was extremely hot and he called out his directions between gulps for air; his irregular face was red and swollen and glistening with sweat.

  ‘Come on, somebody! Come and join me!’ I drew back as Sophie put out an arm to me: unlike the unfortunate man to whom she next appealed, I did not work in her husband’s embassy. ‘Come along, Annestedt! If you don’t know the steps, it’s time that you learned them.’

  The pink young man lumbered to his feet.

  ‘And you!’ Sophie cried, pointing at McClushen, who giggled and held both hands up to his face in a gesture of warding her off. ‘And you!’ she said to Dino.

  Theo glanced over his shoulder, at last aware that the silence of his audience had been broken. But with a dogged persistence he continued to hammer out his music, right foot firmly pressing the loud pedal to the ground.

  ‘Oh, but don’t change the time!’ Sophie shouted at him, as he was moving into yet another of his sixty-nine themes. ‘We’re dancing a syrto, not a slaviko. Colonel Greco
s, please! Some more of the syrto!’

  ‘Yes, some more of the syrto!’ echoed the people who were now stamping and stumbling about the floor.

  There was a moment when Theo hesitated: and I wondered whether he would tell them to sit down, to shut up or to get out. But he had never been able to resist any opportunity to make others happy, even at his own expense; he had never been able to resist anything in the way of a ‘party’; and he had never been able to resist the Greek dances which he alone, of the company then present, could perform better than Sophie Landerlöst. He paused, his bony hands held motionless for a second above the keys; conflicting emotions—pleasure and anger and disappointment and a kind of rueful self-mockery—passed in turn over his long, battered face. Then his hands descended; with a tremendous crash of octaves he had returned to the syrto.

  Sophie Landerlöst let out an extraordinary bellow such as I had only heard before coming from the mouths of drunken dock-workers on Sunday nights in Peiraeus tavernas. Mabel Aaronson was cowering in her chair, watching the whole scene—she would, I was sure, describe it afterwards as ‘an orgy’—with a fascinated horror.

  ‘Come on, Mr Cauldwell! Don’t be so lazy! … And you there—you great hulking blond beast—’ she flung out an arm at Götz who was hesitating between his loyalty to Theo and Theo’s music and his obvious desire to gambol with so many, to him, attractive women—‘ don’t look at us as if you were a bull on the other side of the hedge! Come on!’

  One dance followed on another. Dust rose from the floor and plaster fell from the ceiling. The drink had by now run out and two of Sophie’s pink young men were sent off to buy some more. Theo had given up his place at the piano to Dino, who played far better, and was now persuaded to do a hassapiko—a dance which he performed better than any other—with Sophie as his partner. There were cheers as they finished.

  Sophie announced that she must go to the ‘lou’, and returned a few minutes later, dragging Costa by one hand. ‘See what I found there!’ she announced. ‘Isn’t he wonderful? Look at his thighs! He says he comes from Crete and he’s going to do one of the Cretan dances for us. Aren’t you?’ Costa, who was both embarrassed and delighted at being pulled into this strange gathering, put a vast hand to his face and giggled behind it.

  Cecil appeared at the door which led into his bedroom: ‘Costa! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Come along, Mr Provender! We’re having such fun. It’s far too early for bed.’

  Mabel Aaronson rose unsteadily to her feet.

  ‘Goodnight, Colonel Grecos.’ I felt sorry for her; she wanted to express scorn and disapproval, she wanted to leave on some cutting phrase. But all she could do was sway and wobble. She was still terribly drunk. ‘Goodnight,’ she repeated.

  ‘I’ll get a taxi for you,’ I said.

  When we reached the bottom of the outside staircase she looked back and saw the painted military policeman gleaming through the darkness. She started: ‘And who is that?’ she demanded thickly. ‘What an extraordinary crowd of guests.’

  ‘Well,’ Theo sighed as the laughter and shouts of Sophie and her young men faded down the street, ‘I think I can say that that was one of the most successful parties I have ever given. And there’s still quite a lot of the drink left which those two boys fetched.’ Götz was on his hands and knees picking up broken glasses: Cecil lay on the floor, supported by cushions, while he puffed at a cigar which McClushen had given him. ‘Yes,’ Theo sighed again, ‘a most successful party. And I think, Cecil, that one can say that the greatest success of all was your friend from Langada. How magnificent he looked!’

  ‘I hope he hasn’t missed the boat.’

  Suddenly Theo noticed that the pages of his score lay scattered around the piano stool and his face expressed first surprise; then, as recollection awoke, concern; and finally disappointment and anger. He began to mutter to himself as he picked up and sorted the sheets and at last exclaimed aloud: ‘ Fiasco! Again fiasco!’

  ‘What did you say, my dear?’ Cecil asked dreamily from his cloud of cigar smoke.

  ‘I might as well throw all this down the lavatory.’ But I noticed that he tenderly put the pages in a drawer, which he first had to unlock, and then locked again. ‘And all because of that horrible, horrible prostitute! How dare she! What manners!‘

  ‘But it was a good party,’ Cecil murmured. ‘Wasn’t it, Götz?’

  ‘Yes, it was a good party,’ Götz said with a heavy melancholy; he could never tell anything but the truth. ‘A very good party. But poor Theo—what will become of the Concerto? Lady Aaronson was very angry, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, damn Lady Aaronson!’

  ‘That remark—if I may say so, Cecil—is typical of you. You don’t care a jot that—that I’ve suffered this terrible set-back; that I’ve wasted so much money on this party; that—that the Concerto will obviously never be performed at Frinton.’ Theo’s lower lip trembled in a mingling of rage and grief.

  Cecil blew a cloud of smoke into the air, his eyes half closed.

  Theo turned on me: ‘Why on earth you wanted to invite that woman I just can’t think! You’ve travelled about a lot, you’re no longer a child; and yet in some things you show a complete absence of any knowledge of the world. You must have guessed what would happen, didn’t you? You must have known the sort of woman that she was! And why did you keep pouring drink down her throat?’

  ‘I poured drink down her throat?’ I asked in amazement.

  ‘Well, wasn’t it you who made all that noise getting her a drink just when I was starting? Really, you’re too irresponsible! You’re as much to blame as anyone for this utter, utter failure!’

  ‘Now, look here, Theo, it was you yourself who said that you wanted Sophie Landerlöst——’

  ‘That’s right! Now put it all on me! And I suppose it was I who went out and told that wretched Cretan gendarme to come and call Cecil? … I’m not angry with you, but I really think the time has come for you to acquire a little savoir faire. Dino agrees with me.’ When Theo wished to quarrel, he could usually name some absent friend in support of his accusations. ‘Only yesterday he was saying that though, of course, in many ways you were a delightful guest, it was such a pity that you had never really learned——’

  ‘Please leave Dino out of this!’

  ‘Now don’t fly off the handle. If I say these things, it’s only for your own good. You’ve seen for yourself, this evening, the kind of havoc that can be caused by lack of consideration and an elementary tact. I’ve often wanted to talk to you about this; frankly, it’s worried me a lot. It’s not that I bear you any grudge—I know that you didn’t mean any harm—but you must admit it’s galling for me to lose a golden opportunity through the—the—well, I must call it stupidity—of a friend.’

  ‘Really, Theo, don’t be so ridiculous. You yourself need never have played those dances, need you? Why pick on me to——?’

  ‘Yap-yap-yap-yap!’ Cecil said dreamily. Again his cigar smoke curled upwards to the ceiling. ‘ Oh, pack it up, girls! Pack it up!’

  The next day I was drinking at the bar of Zonar’s when a large, bony hand came to rest on my shoulder. ‘ Well, my dear? How do you feel today?’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ I replied stonily, without looking round.

  ‘It’s good to let off steam every now and then. You tend to bottle everything up—like most English people. It’s bad that, bad.’ Theo perched himself on the stool next to mine. ‘Please don’t think I was in the least bit offended by all those things you said to me. When one loses one’s temper, one always says things which one doesn’t really mean. It takes a lot to offend me. So don’t worry about it. I know you were feeling strung-up—and had also probably drunk a little too much, eh? Anyway it’s all forgiven and forgotten. I never bear grudges.… But—’ he grinned in the friendliest possible way—‘as a punishment I shall make you buy me a drink. A gin-fizz please. A large gin-fizz and perhaps the smallest of small foie gras sandwiches.�
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  Chapter Seven

  THE days that followed the performance of the Concerto were taken up with Cecil’s return to Italy, my preparations for a summer holiday in England, and Theo’s preparations for the tour he planned to make in Turkey.

  Cecil, who had already spent far longer in Greece than he had intended (‘Ever since I read the fourth book of the Greek Anthology at Eton, I felt it was the place for me,’ he had said on one occasion) was the first of us to go. He left behind him a present of fifty pounds for Theo and a legacy of callers—sailors, navvies and evzones—who would appear at all hours at Theo’s front door to ask if the English ‘lordos’ were at home. Sometimes the visitor would even be holding in one massive fist a crumpled piece of paper on which Cecil had written his name and address.

  My own preparations before starting for England consisted chiefly in trying to collect the small sums of money that were owing to me for lessons: but since most of my students were themselves planning to visit what they called ‘ Europe’, this task was not easy. Theo’s preparations were on a far more elaborate scale. These days his room was piled with guide books and brochures and photographs while, with the help of maps which he was incompetent at folding and usually left lying open on the floor, he would work at his innumerable itineraries. Should any visitor ever be foolish enough to mention that he had ever known anyone who had any connection with Turkey, Theo would insist that he should sit down at once and pen a letter of introduction.