“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Rydal asked. “I suppose these were the store-rooms.”
“Servants’ quarters,” said Chester in a corrective way, and Rydal smiled, thinking of his father.
“Hello, Rydal,” Colette called. “What do you think of all this?”
Rydal walked directly to her, happy at the sound of her voice, happy to be near her. “Terrific! I can see what they mean by a labyrinth. I can’t imagine a systematic tour of this place, can you? Every room goes into three others.”
“Let’s go down the grand stairway! Chester says the big inside one’s the grand stairway.” She took his hand, suddenly as excited as he.
They came upon another mural, this one of several women elegantly dressed but with exposed breasts, chattering and laughing as if they sat in the box of a theatre.
“Look at those bozooms! I suppose this one’s famous. Is it?” she asked, giggling. “It ought to be.”
“I suppose. Come on. This is the grand stairway. Look. See those grooves for the rain-water? My father used to tell me about these. The grooves rise up to slow down the water at the curves so it won’t slosh over on the steps. Hydraulic engineering—even if it’s primitive.”
“Colette?” Chester’s voice called. It sounded remote.
“I’m down here!” Colette answered. “On the grand stairway.”
But a moment later they had left the grand stairway and entered a room labelled THE QUEEN’S BATH CHAMBER. They both went on tiptoe suddenly.
“Gosh, if that’s the tub, it’s awfully small,” said Colette, looking at a stone receptacle that sat in a slight depression in the floor.
“Maybe the people were littler in those days.”
Colette giggled at this idea. “I think we’re the only people in the whole place. Isn’t that marvelous?”
Suddenly, they were kissing. Their bodies strained together for a long moment, then Colette broke away, caught his hand, and pulled him through another doorway.
“Look at that chair!” she said.
It was a straight chair with a high back.
“That’s the throne,” Rydal said. “That’s the throne of King Minos.”
“Really?” she asked, breathless. Carefully, she sat in it, and lifted her face, smiling. “It’s even comfortable.”
Tall shields leaned against the wall. And more of the spears.
“Colette!” Chester was in the next room. He came quickly in through the doorway, his face angry, his guidebook closed in his hand. “For Christ’s sake, it’s damned easy to get lost in here.”
“Why don’t you?” Rydal said, in a burst of insolence.
Chester’s face reddened.
“Come on, Chester,” Colette said soothingly. “At least there’re no closed doors. We’re not going to get locked in anywhere.”
“I think I’ve seen about enough,” Chester said. “If you’re ready to go—”
“No, I’m not. I don’t think I’ve seen half of it yet. I keep finding new rooms.”
Rydal wanted to stay close to her, but tactfully, prudently, he drifted on, stared for a moment at a vessel labelled LUSTRAL BATH that was only a little smaller than the queen’s bathtub. Then suddenly he wanted out, and he walked quickly through a doorway on his left, in the general direction of the grand stairway and the outside stairs, he thought. Two wrong turns, two wrong rooms, and then he made it, out on a terrace at ground level. The rain was in his face again. He walked slowly, getting his bearings. Straight ahead was the direction from which he had approached the palace, the direction he or Chester and Colette would have to leave in. Rydal kept watching in that direction, so they could not leave without his knowing it. Then he remembered his suitcase, circled the palace to the door he had come in through, got his suitcase, and waited outside for them.
“Chester?” Colette’s voice sounded very faint. “Chester, where are you?”
“Where are you?” asked Chester.
Rydal smiled. Was Chester playing a game with her?
“Chester? Tell me. What room? You sound higher. Are you up? I’m down.”
No answer from Chester.
Silence for a few seconds.
“The exit’s this way!” Rydal called. “Can you hear me, Colette?”
“Yes, but—Yell again. I’ll follow the direction.”
Rydal set his suitcase down and trotted around the corner of the palace. He thought there was a more direct route out, at the side terrace, or maybe it was the back terrace, but he knew where the terrace was, at least. He went below an overhang, stopped in a doorway and called:
“Colette! This way! Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Okay!” merrily. “Thanks!”
Rydal looked at the other two doorways in the room, watching for her, then repeated, “This—way,” smiling, and turned and walked out on the terrace again. He trotted to the corner, looked for Chester, and didn’t see him. He went back to the center of the terrace.
Colette was just coming through the doorway where he had stood, running towards him, smiling.
Then a slight sound, a shadow, a sixth sense—something, made him glance up, and with a reflex quick as the blink of an eye, he ducked and flung himself out of its way.
There was a crack and a boom like thunder, a deep rattle of stone on stone.
Rydal, sprawled on the terrace floor, got to his feet, shaking. “Dio, mio,” he whispered, “dio mio, dio mio,” over and over.
Colette lay bleeding, her head crushed. She lay face down. On either side of her, two gargantuan fragments of a stone urn rocked like ugly cradles with jagged edges. Rydal looked up. Chester gripped the low parapet of the terrace two stories above him.
“Dirty bastard!” Rydal said in a voice so shaky, it was not even loud.
Chester made a yelping sound, like a sob, like the cry of a dog.
Rydal darted for the steps to his left, tripped and went on, up, then suddenly was weak in the knees. He caught the steps in front of him with his hands. He was going to be sick, going to faint. He didn’t know. He looked up. Chester was standing at the top of the steps. Then Chester started slowly down.
Rydal pushed himself up a little.
Chester came on, ready to kick his face, Rydal knew.
Rydal lunged for his legs, put both arms around them, and Chester lost his balance. Chester fell first, Rydal still clinging to him and on top of him, the six or eight feet to the terrace. Rydal was not hurt by the fall, and Chester seemed only groggy, sitting up, holding his head. Rydal breathed hard, trying to recover his strength, to shake off the faintness. He looked at Colette.
“She’s dead,” he said to Chester. Then, three yards away from Chester, he let his legs bend and knelt down. He put his hands over his eyes and yielded to the queasiness in his stomach, or his mind. He wanted to throw up and couldn’t, or didn’t.
Chester was standing near him now. “It’s your fault she’s dead,” he said. “Your fault!” Chester went, in a strange, plodding gait, towards her, and got down on hands and knees.
Rydal frowned as he saw Chester stretch out a hand to touch her shoulder. He watched, wary, as if Chester could do anything to hurt her now. Rydal had seen her head. He stood up.
Chester turned on one knee to Rydal and said, “You won’t get away with this, you bum. You bum!” Chester pulled his overcoat sleeves down, perhaps mechanically, but it looked like the gesture of a well-dressed gentleman adjusting his cuffs before taking his leave.
Rydal felt stronger. He walked towards Chester.
Chester stood up and walked away, to the end of the terrace, and turned left. Rydal went after him.
“You’re just going to leave her?” Rydal yelled.
Chester had covered several yards, walking towards the entrance to the grounds.
“Hey!” Rydal called.
Chester went on, a dark, plunging figure in the rain.
Rydal started after him, nearly fell over his suitcase, and automatically picked it up. But after running a few steps with it, he set it down and ran back to the terrace.
“Colette! Colette!” he shouted at her, touching her shoulder, staring at her left hand with its wedding ring and engagement ring, the hand that looked quite undamaged and alive. The rain was thinning and widening the blood in a great red aureole around her head. Rydal licked away the raindrops from his lips. Then he stood up and ran with determination, back to his suitcase, and then in the direction Chester had taken.
Chester was not in view.
“Was there a taxi here?” Rydal asked the sleepy man in the admission booth.
“What?” The man sat in the depths of the booth. Its sides hid his vision like blinders.
“Did anyone go away in a taxi—just now?”
“No. Nobody went away. That I saw. How many up there?” He pointed towards the palace. “We close in twenty minutes.”
Rydal hurried on without answering. Dimly, he realized that when they found Colette, the ticket-seller would have only his face in his memory to tell the police about. But that seemed quite unimportant. Rydal trotted down to where the road curved. It was still light enough to see anyone on the road, if there were anyone. The road was empty. Rydal looked behind him again. There was a “tourist pavilion”—one of the government-sponsored combinations of restaurant and inn—across the road from the gates of the palace grounds, but Rydal did not think Chester would have dared go there. The low building’s lights glowed yellow through the fine rain. No, Chester was hiding in some ditch nearby, behind some bushes. Or maybe he’d had the good luck to pick up the bus. Or even a taxi. Rydal smiled tensely. There would be time.
12
Chester was hiding, or rather he had collapsed, beside a clump of bushes only thirty yards from the Knossos gate and across the road from it. He was alternately shaking from shock, then going absolutely limp, as though he had no muscles in his body. The rain was a low hum in his ears. His clothes were soaked. He was in a half-seated, half-lying position, propped up on one arm, his palm flat on the rough, wet ground. It was a long while, it was starting to grow dark, before he could think, and then his first thought was simply that it was growing dark. From then on, he progressed.
Rydal must have gone by. Rydal must be waiting for him at that hotel in Irakilon, where he had left his suitcases. And Colette still lay in the rain on the terrace. The thought tore through him like a swift catastrophe, and again he was panting, shaking. It was Rydal’s fault. Anger filled the void of pain. Rydal would pay. Chester cautiously got up. He was beginning to be able to plan. He walked along the road towards Iraklion. His hands felt empty, and then he realized he’d left the Guide Bleu at the palace, back on the upper terrace of the palace. He smiled, and then he wept a little. Then he pulled out his comb and ran it through his thin wet hair a couple of times. He would have to get on a bus. No chance of a taxi on this country road.
He had walked slowly for about thirty-five minutes before a bus going in the direction of Iraklion came into view. There had been at least three buses going in the other direction. Chester flagged it, and it stopped for him. He got on, looking frantically over its lighted interior for Rydal. Only solemn Greek faces stared back at him, some dark with unshaven beards, none Rydal.
Chester looked again for Rydal in the square where the bus unloaded. Rydal was no doubt at the Hotel Corona. Chester remembered its name now. He hadn’t been able to think of it a few minutes ago. He made his way somewhat slowly, in an effort to appear casual, towards a café whose lights he saw from the square. He had the feeling people stared at him. He wished he had his hat, but it had fallen off at Knossos.
The next twenty minutes would have been a nightmare to Chester under ordinary circumstances, but Chester bore them with an inexhaustible patience. First, he had to look up hotels in the telephone directory under xenodochaion, a word he knew. Then his problem was to call the Hotel Corona and ask them to send the luggage he had left under the name Chamberlain to the Hotel Hephaestou, whose name Chester had just discovered in the directory. Though he got someone at the Corona who spoke English, he either could not make himself clear, or the man was unwilling to lose a customer.
“I’ll pay you for tonight, if you like,” said Chester. “Understand? Just write me a bill, and I’ll send the money with the bellboy you send with the luggage to the Hotel Hephaestou.”
Chester had to repeat this, in different ways, many times. At last, the man said:
“You will be sorry, sir,” ominously.
“Why?” Chester asked, perfectly calmly.
Calmly still, he gave it up after a minute or two, sat down at a table in the restaurant and called for a Scotch. They had no Scotch. Chester ordered a double ouzo. For once, he felt as seedy and shapeless as the other customers in the place. That was good. He was not conspicuous, except that he was American.
He tackled the telephone again. This time the restaurant proprietor, a friendly, smiling fellow, came to the telephone to help him. Chester explained what he wanted. The man knew a little English, but he did not know “baggage” or “suitcase”. One of the patrons conveyed this to the proprietor, and he got on the telephone again and called the Hotel Corona. There was a small argument of some kind, while Chester made positive gestures and said, “Do it. Yes,” in the background to the Greek on the telephone, and then, Chester thought, it was accomplished.
“Thank you,” Chester said, “thank you very much.” He left a good tip, and was about to leave the place, when he realized he did not know where the Hotel Hephaestou was. He turned around, then changed his mind: best to ask somebody else. He’d stayed long enough here.
Chester asked so many people who did not know, that he began to think the Hotel Hephaestou did not exist, that that was why the Hotel Corona had been so stubborn. Then a news-vendor knew it, and told him at least the direction.
It was up a dark, narrow street. It had only a dim light over it. But there was its name, Xenodochaion Hephaestou on a sign at one side of the door. Chester attempted to inquire if his luggage had arrived. In the tiny lobby, he could not imagine where they could have hidden it, if it had arrived.
“No,” said the man, shaking his head.
Chester was still not quite sure. It had been perhaps twenty minutes since the Greek had spoken to the Hotel Corona for him. He asked tiredly for a room with bath. The man apparently knew the phrase. He nodded, and said:
“You passport, pliz.”
Chester walked restlessly towards the door, reaching in his inside pocket for his passport that was with Colette’s. He did not want the man to see that he had two. He turned back with his own, and presented it. He must get rid of her passport, he thought. It was not hers, anyway. And when they identified her—Could they identify her? Was there enough left of her face? If they could, she would be Mrs. Chester MacFarland. Had she a photograph of herself, or of him in her billfold, he wondered. Why hadn’t he thought of that before, days ago? Oh, Christ, where is my luggage with my Scotch in it, with my money? Chester looked towards the empty doorway of the hotel. Then he crossed the little lobby to a chair and dropped into it.
The man said something to him, one word, smiling.
“I’m waiting for my luggage,” Chester said, not caring what the man had said.
A taxi drew up. Chester sat up in his chair, too tired to stand up.
Rydal got out. Chester felt a jolt in his chest, a throb as if a hand had caught his heart and made it stop for an instant. He stood up slowly. Rydal seemed to be alone. There was no bellboy. But all his luggage was being lifted out of the taxi. Rydal glanced in, saw him, and looked away. Rydal was paying the taxi-driver. The man behind the desk came out to help with the lu
ggage. Chester stood where he was. Rydal looked at him as he walked in, carrying his own suitcase and the antelope duffel. Rydal nodded. His expression was stiff and strange. His wet black hair hung down over his forehead.
The hotel man was saying something to Rydal that Chester could not understand. Rydal answered him briefly, nodding towards Chester, and he gave Chester a faint smile.
“Evening,” Rydal said to him. Then he spoke in Greek to the hotel man, who smiled, nodded, and took Rydal’s passport. While the man was writing in the register, Rydal walked towards Chester.
“Are you taking the boat tomorrow or the plane?” Rydal asked.
“I was going to take the boat,” Chester said quickly.
“And now?”
Chester did not answer. It was as if his mind had stopped working.
Rydal turned and went back slowly to the desk. He said something, several sentences, very quietly, to the hotel man, who listened and nodded solemnly. Chester watched them through narrowed eyes. Rydal was no doubt telling the man that he wanted to be notified if his friend left the hotel, checked out of the hotel. Rydal perhaps was telling the man he was upset by some bad news, something like that.
Chester—Rydal declining to go first into the small elevator—went up with the desk man and a couple of his suitcases to the third floor, which was the top floor, of the hotel.
“Where is my friend?” Chester asked the man, pointing downward. “What room is he in?”
“Room?” The man showed him a key tag on one of the keys in his hand. It had a 10 on it.
Chester’s room was 10 he noticed, as they walked towards it. “The other key. For him,” Chester said, reaching for the other key in the man’s hand.
The Two Faces of January Page 15