The Firewalkers

by Francis King

  I was afraid that the lofty self-importance with which Theo now behaved towards both her, her servants and myself might cause her annoyance, but obviously it amused her.

  ‘Yes, I think this room should do,’ Theo announced, examining the banquet-hall. ‘ What a pity about that fireplace—it looks so terribly nouveau-riche, doesn’t it? … But, at any rate, we can have those curtains removed. Perhaps we could have those brocade ones from the dining-room put in their place? The windows seem to be the same size.’ He glanced down: ‘Of course the floor will need a polish.’ Turning to the man-servant, he repeated: ‘I said that the floor will need a polish.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘And the tables on which we shall put the exhibits.’

  ‘Naturally, sir.’

  Sophie winked at me and smiled; and the manservant, who had been riled by these directions, saw her do so and at once himself began to twitch slightly at the lips as he caught the infection of his mistress’s amusement,

  ‘Anything else, Colonel?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘May I just once again run an eye over the list of the guests?’

  ‘Certainly.’ She gave me a violent nudge. ‘What do you feel about Mr Markezinis—ought I to ask him?’

  Theo pondered judiciously; but it was obvious that the thought of this guest filled him with excitement. ‘H’m—yes,’ he said. ‘I don’t approve of his politics at all. But since this is a gathering of all the Athens intellectuals, well, certainly, I suppose he should be asked. You’d better send the invitation by hand,’ he added. ‘Posts in Athens are so slow.’

  When we reached home, he was so gleeful that he caught Götz in his arms and began to waltz round the room with him. ‘And Markezinis is coming—think of that! Think of that, Götz!’

  But Götz was in no mood to share his excitement. As soon as he could extricate himself, he slumped on to the couch where he began to gnaw at his fingers: recently he had taken to chewing, not only his nails, but also his knuckles.

  ‘What’s the matter, Götz?’ I asked.

  ‘This is a fine sort of birthday. She said she’d ring up this evening and she didn’t. She said she’d be in the Zappeion at four, and she wasn’t. I waited there till six.’

  ‘Poor old thing,’ Theo said vaguely. But he was too absorbed in his own happiness to take much notice of Götz’s misery. ‘If only you’d met that girl that George the pastry-cook——’

  ‘Shut up, Theo! Shut up!’

  ‘All right, my dear, all right. There’s no need to fly off the handle.’

  Cecil appeared in the doorway to his room, rubbing some cream into his hands and easing back his cuticles as he did so. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with my hands,’ he said. ‘Feel how rough they are.’ He brushed the back of one up my cheek. ‘I suppose it’s these winds.’ He glanced down to where Götz sat slumped, still moodily biting his fingers. ‘You don’t look awfully gay, ducky. What’s up?’

  Götz said nothing.

  ‘I’ve got something here for the birthday-boy.’ Cecil drew out of his dressing-gown pocket a packet wrapped in tissue paper, and pressed it into the paw on which Götz was at that moment not engaged. ‘With Auntie’s fondest love,’ he said, kissing Götz on the top of his head.

  Götz looked pleased, embarrassed and humiliated, all at the same time, when he unwrapped a new silver cigarette-case. ‘Thank you,’ he muttered clumsily. ‘Thank you, Cecil … But really …’ He weighed it in one hand. ‘ It’s so heavy.’

  ‘Don’t let anyone steal it off you. I’ve had at least a dozen stolen in my life.’

  I suggested that we should go out and celebrate Götz’s birthday at one of the Peiraeus tavernas; it was a long time since we had made such an expedition, all of us together.

  ‘Good idea!’ Theo said, jumping to his feet. ‘George the pastry-cook says that there’s one near the Turkish harbour where one can smoke hashish in the back room. Or we could go to that other place with the Lesbian singer—you know, the one with the voice of tungsten steel. You’ll come, won’t you, Cecil?’

  ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid. I’m receiving.’

  ‘But surely that can be put off.’

  ‘Wet or fine, rain or shine, goose-girl makes it a principle never to put anyone off. I haven’t many principles, but that’s one of them.’

  ‘Well, join us later.’

  ‘If I’m not utterly whacked.’

  We started the evening with tremendous hilarity. Theo had begun to complain of a headache and Götz was still brooding morosely when we climbed into a taxi: but by the time we reached Peiraeus they were both singing a popular Greek song at the tops of their voices. It was Saturday night and the taverna was full. Friends we had made on other occasions when we had come here, began to shout at us: ‘Johnny, come here! … Hey, Fritz! … Yassas, boys! … Hey, boys! … Hey!’

  ‘Do they mean to include me in that ‘‘boys’‘ of theirs?’ Theo asked, delighted. He sank into a chair which was held out to him by a small, grubby sailor whose two front teeth were missing, and putting his legs up on to another chair, sighed as he said: ‘ Well, it’s good to be back. I feel as if I’d just been released from prison. You know, Frank, it must be nearly a month since we last did this.’ He clicked his fingers above his head, and then banged on a glass with a fork which he took, without permission, from the sailor’s plate of fried spleen and lung. The waiter came over, and Theo ordered wine for us, for this table, for that table, even for the orchestra.

  ‘You’re being very extravagant.’

  ‘We must celebrate. Besides, after Monday week, orders will be rolling in. I shall be rich, Frank—you wait and see. Next summer I shall go to England. I shall have an exhibition there—perhaps at your Tate Gallery. Your Tate Gallery is one of the best, isn’t it?’ He swallowed a glass of retsina at a single gulp. Then he began to giggle: ‘But I shall not go to the Frinton Festival—definitely not.’

  Some sailors and dock-workers to whom Theo had sent one of the cans of wine now raised their glasses and drank to our healths. Theo bowed with tremendous decorum, murmuring to me: ‘Amusing boys—the salt of the earth.’ One of them called out:

  ‘When will you dance, Theo?’

  ‘When I am drunk.’

  Götz said: ‘If my Kiki were here!’

  ‘T’t, t’t!’ Theo reproved him. ‘Now forget about her! Enjoy yourself and stop that silly brooding!’ He raised his glass: ‘To our birthday-boy.’

  Götz grinned and, shaking himself like a dog, seemed to shake off the melancholy cloud which had, for that moment, once more enveloped him.

  Theo, clicking his fingers in time to the music, said: ‘This boy can dance. Isn’t he adorable, Frank?’

  It was not the adjective which I myself would have chosen to describe a blue-chinned dock-worker of over six foot, even though he did wear a rose over one ear, but I agreed that he could dance. ‘Such control, such rhythm!’ Theo exclaimed ecstatically. ‘Marvellous.’ He picked up the sailor’s fork again and harpooning a rubbery square of lung held it up to my mouth. I shook my head and he gave it to Götz.

  ‘It tastes like a bit of tennis ball,’ Götz said, swallowing hard. ‘Horrible.’

  ‘Just prejudice,’ Theo said. ‘Just Nordic prejudice.’

  At last he decided to dance; and as he stalked out into the small space in front of the orchestra, everyone began to whistle and clap and shout ‘ Bravo’ until, by solemnly raising both hands, he managed to obtain silence. There was a titter as he took off his coat and plucked his beret from his head to hand them to the waiter, and another titter when he took a glass from the brawny fist of the dock-worker whom he had described as ‘adorable’ and sipped some retsina from it. But no one tittered as soon as he began to dance: for those men knew that, in spite of his age, he could dance better than any of them. Through the coiling cigarette smoke their eyes watched him, intent and admiring.

  ‘How young he looks when he dances!’ Götz whispered to me. ‘It
’s incredible.’

  During these last weeks of unremitting work Theo had seemed to age; his walk had become slower and staffer, his right arm would tremble, and the rigidity with which he held himself upright seemed quite as much a mark of old age as if he had stooped. Yet, now, he was dancing with all the fluidity and grace and vigour of the six-foot dock-worker who had been on the floor before him. ‘Vonderful!’ Götz exclaimed. ‘Fantastic!’

  Theo was whirling round and round both arms extended as if they were the magnificent wings of an eagle when, suddenly, he faltered and swayed. His eyes, no longer half closed in that trance which dancing seemed invariably to induce in him, now gave the appearance of searching the room, with growing panic, for something they could nowhere find. Götz pushed back his chair, making an unpleasant grating noise on the stone floor: he, alone, realised at that moment that something was amiss.

  Theo swayed again and the two raised arms were extended as though to grapple with some invisible object. Then he fell: not violently, but folding up, first the legs, then the torso, and finally the neck and head. There were some titters from those who thought he had merely tripped; others looked at each other, first questioning and then in alarm. Götz rushed over and I rushed after him. But Theo was already struggling to get up.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked in a strangely dreamy voice. ‘Where am I? I can’t remember …’ We helped him back to his chair, at the same time trying to keep away the crowds that were gathering round. Theo sat down, crossed his arms over the table, and rested his head on his arms. He shook his head from side to side, and stamped with his right foot repeatedly on the floor, as though it had pins and needles.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ someone asked. ‘Is he ill?’ came from another.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ Götz said. ‘He’s feeling faint, that’s all. Please go back to your places.’

  Slowly they drifted back, glancing over their shoulders at us and muttering to each other.

  Theo raised his head: ‘I can’t see properly,’ he said. ‘What happened? What was I doing?’

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ Götz assured him. ‘I’ll go out and find a taxi. You stay here with him, Frank. We’d better get him home.’

  ‘But I don’t want to go home,’ Theo said obstinately. ‘I’m quite all right now. It was just for a moment—I felt so odd. It must have been the heat.’ He caught Götz’s sleeve as the German rose: ‘Don’t let’s go yet!’

  ‘I think we’d better, Theo. You ought to get to bed.’

  ‘But I’m all right—really I am!’

  However in the end we persuaded him to do as we wanted.

  By the time we had helped him into the taxi, he had completely recovered. ‘Silly of me to do a thing like that,’ he said. ‘I suppose I must have frightened you both. Apart from spoiling poor Götz’s birthday party. I’m sorry, my dear.’ He squeezed Götz’s hand. ‘We must go out again another evening. Do please forgive me. Next time I won’t dance. I’m afraid the truth is that I’m too old for dancing now.’

  He refused to allow us to assist him up the stairs of his house and, though the key trembled in his hand so that he had difficulty in getting it into the lock, he insisted on opening the door himself.

  As we stepped into the hall and I groped for the light switch, Cecil’s voice called: ‘Who’s that? What is it?’ He was in his bedroom.

  ‘It’s only us,’ I shouted, surprised by his nervousness.

  ‘Oh, thank God! … Come here, Frank.’

  I went into the bedroom, and found Cecil curled up into a ball at the foot of the bed with the blankets and sheets pulled haphazard round him to cover everything but part of his bald head, his eyes and his nose. ‘ What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  Cecil began to sob in a curiously long, gulping spasm; it was horrible.

  ‘Cecil, what is it?’

  He raised his pear-shaped face a little from the cocoon of bedclothes and I saw that a red patch stretched across one of his cheeks from nostril to ear. He hiccoughed: ‘I can’t tell you what I’ve been through. I can’t tell you. Even the thought of it makes me feel ghastly. Please don’t ask me! I can’t tell you!’

  Götz and Theo had now joined us, looking in amazement at Cecil.

  Eventually Theo said: ‘Well, never mind. Now you’ve learned your lesson. No great harm has been done. Götz can dress that bruise of yours.… Have you—er—lost anything?’

  ‘Oh, only sixty drachmae.… It’s not—not that!’

  ‘Well, then what are you crying about? Come—be a man!’ I felt that Theo’s efforts at consolation, however well-intentioned, were nevertheless clumsy. ‘ Come along. You can’t lie there—it’s too early for bed. Come and have a drink with us.’

  ‘But, Theo … It’s … it’s … your exhibition!’ Cecil at last got out.

  ‘What!’ Theo exclaimed.

  Theo flung open the study door: ‘ My God!’ we heard him exclaim. He went in.

  Götz and I followed. The whole carpet, usually a faded maroon, was now white with powdered glass, plaster of Paris and a confetti-like litter of paper. My eye caught an extraordinary assortment of objects: one of Sophie’s tennis-ball breasts, a screwed-up sheet of Embassy paper, a hat-pin that had belonged to the Baroness Schütz, a French sailor’s cap, the pom-pom from an evzone’s shoe, a jagged piece of glass that had been part of Nadia’s bottle of bath-salts … I had seen nothing like this since the air-raids in London.

  Theo was on his knees in the midst of the rubble. He picked up these objects, one after another; sometimes he would hold two pieces together; sometimes he would slip one into his pocket or put it back on the shelves. Then, slowly, the realisation came to him that the damage was beyond repair. Either he must begin again or he must forget his whole art.

  Slowly he rose to his feet: he was trembling and white, and yet, at that moment, he had a dignity far greater than any he had possessed before.

  ‘So that’s that,’ he said.

  He gave a small, slightly crooked smile at Götz and myself as he limped towards his bedroom.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘How nice of you, Frank my dear, to leave Dino’s bunfight early to bring me your Christmas wishes.’ Three months ago I would have suspected a sarcasm in the words, for once again Dino had omitted to send either Theo or Götz an invitation to a party; but since ‘the calamity’ (as Theo himself would refer to it) there had been a remarkable softening and weakening in the old man’s nature. I had expected him to be wholly crushed, and then bitterly resentful: but he had accepted this final defeat with a serenity and resignation that did him the greatest credit. Even Cecil had never been reproached, and apart from now always speaking of him as ‘that sissy’, Theo had, to my knowledge, said no word against him.

  ‘Götz and I were singing some of the old carols together.’ Theo was at the piano. ‘They give one a feeling of pleasant melancholy, don’t they? Every Christmas Eve, when we were children, we used to gather round the piano and sing them with my mother. Oh, how long ago it seems!’ He sighed: ‘How long, long ago!’ Then he shook himself: ‘ But I mustn’t be sentimental—I know you don’t like it. Have some whisky; don’t be afraid, it’s real Scotch whisky. Cecil sent it from Italy by a sailor friend. Wasn’t that kind of him? Help yourself!’

  I poured myself a glass and, raising it, said: ‘Happy Christmas!’

  ‘Happy Christmas to you, dear boy!’ Theo hoisted himself slowly from the piano stool, straightened his beret and tightened the knot of his dressing-gown, before he held out a Christmas card: ‘Pretty, isn’t it? From Daphne Bath.… This is from Maurice Bowra.’ He held out another. ‘This is from William Faulkner. As you know, I don’t read novels—not even yours—but they tell me that he’s good. We climbed Olympus together.’ Proudly he showed me one after another of the cards, taking them from the mantelpiece, with the conclusion: ‘Yes, I have a lot of good friends. I’ve never wanted for friends.’

  ‘Have you seen the Christmas tree that the
Swedes have sent?’ Götz asked. ‘Theo and I thought of going out to look at it.’

  ‘I thought of going out to look at it,’ Theo corrected with a twinkle. ‘ Götz thought of going out to meet Kiki. Didn’t you, Götz?’

  Götz looked down at the carpet, grinned and blushed.

  ‘She’s supposed to be spending Christmas Eve with her cousin, and her cousin seems to be a modern and sensible woman. Kiki thinks she can get away after midnight,’ Theo explained.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Götz said. He was obviously nervous and impatient to be off.

  Although it was only a few minutes before midnight the streets were deserted. As we walked, we would hear from the houses that we passed the sounds of dance music, laughter and shouting. Theo had linked an arm in either of ours; he strode out between us, vigorous and exultant. ‘So many Christmases,’ he reminisced. ‘And I think the happiest I ever spent was with your British boys in hospital in Salonica. That was in nineteen-sixteen. I was recovering from typhoid, and you wouldn’t expect a Christmas to be happy under such circumstances, would you? I shall never forget the fun we had. There was a sister—Sister Agnes, I think—and a doctor who came from a place called West—or was it East?—Kirby …’ Happily he ran on: they had played a practical joke on one of the other patients—a greedy sergeant-major—by pretending to forget to serve him; and when they had at last served him, the doctor had snatched the plate away, saying that the food would be bad for him.… Theo chuckled to himself. ‘ What a sense of humour! What a priceless sense of humour! Only the English can play jokes like that!’

  A few people, singly or in couples, were wandering round the vast, guttering Christmas tree: they looked bemused and child-like, the coloured lights reflected in their pale, upturned faces. Theo wandered with them, exclaiming: ‘Ah, beautiful, beautiful!’