The news report came from Athens, Rydal heard at the conclusion. It had gone from Crete to Athens and bounced nearly all the way back again. Rydal carried his cigarette to a standing ashtray, put it out, and went back to his state-room. The long metal key was in his pocket. Chester, he supposed, was drinking Scotch in his own state-room. Rydal took out his black-and-white covered notebook, and wrote:
January 16, 19—
11:10 a.m.
No entry for the 15th, Monday. This is the Tuesday after the Monday. Monday will not be forgotten, and I know I could not do it justice. Now I am on a boat with C. between Iraklion and Piraeus, and have just heard the news report, which mentions no names. I am on a boat full of hogs and idiots, attached to one hog-idiot as if he were a particular magnet for me, as if he had some important relationship to me (like a father’s), and as if we have some important destiny to fulfil together. I know the destiny, it’s all quite clear, simple, sordid, nothing mysterious about it, and there’ll be no surprises. I detest him. I think I am fascinated by that. I have no desire to kill him, have never wanted to kill anyone. But I will say I would like to see him fall. Just fall, in every sense of the word. He has certainly begun already.
On the contrary, it’s my own life that I have to protect. Chester has every reason to get me out of the way, not only because of what I know about him, but because he thinks I have had his wife, and he hates me for that. And she’s gone, and all that. That’s why I am ready to weep for the nonsense and the idiocy of all this, she’s gone. And Chester hates himself for that. Like all stupid people who hate themselves, he’ll strike out against anybody else.
Rydal waited until very late to enter the dining-room for lunch. But there was Chester in a corner, a bottle of yellow wine beside his plate, eating away. Rydal turned in the doorway, and went back to his state-room. Chester had not seen him. Around 4 Rydal ordered a small but elegant lunch, as elegant as the ship afforded, which was—Rydal consulted with the steward—a mushroom omelet, salad of endives, Brie cheese. There were meat dishes, but Rydal did not want meat. With this he had a cold white Montrachet, the most expensive white wine on the list.
Then he added to his notebook-journal (the front part was for poems, the back part for his irregularly kept diary):
What bores me is the mundaneness of all this—wrong word, I mean prosaicness (prosaism?), its dreariness and drabness and its predictability. I am expecting something to hit me like a flash, a bright light in my face. I want a moment of truth—that may also kill me. I want illumination. I am sure it comes in a flash of comprehension, and that it’s not something one sits down and works out on paper or in one’s thoughts. Colette was beginning to give me it. Beginning, yes, but with her it would have been a flash finally also. It was beginning when she made me break out in a smile, or laugh as I haven’t laughed since I was a kid. She would have lifted me to a certain plane that would have lasted for days and then—wham! The truth. It might have happened if we had ever made love. Yes, the flash, the flash. She would have given it to me and I let her die! If I’d only rushed forward instead of sideways or back or whatever I did, I could have caught her by the shoulders, pushed her back—with me. And then, my God! Would she have stayed with Chester then?
No. She would have said, with the simple logic that any child is capable of “Chester, you were trying to kill him. You’re evil and I hate you.” And maybe, “I love Rydal.” All simple, all so simple. Now idiots smirk in the sleazy first-class lounge, listening to the news of her death. I am bound to say, to be honest, that I would take great pleasure in avenging her. My Pallas Athenae, Vestal intacta. Back to Latin, more than Greek a language for warriors. The wine is in my blood. I’ll sleep a while.
At ten to 6, Rydal was in the lounge again with a glass of metaxa in his hand, awaiting the news. A man came up to him and asked in Italian-accented English if he would like to make a fourth at bridge. Rydal glanced, and saw that a bridge table had mushroomed at one side of the room.
“Thank you, I . . . not feel so well.” Rydal lifted his glass of reddish-brown aperitif to imply that he was taking it for medicinal purposes.
“You are Italian!” said the man in Italian, smiling.
“Si, Signor,” Rydal nodded. At least his suit was Italian. His shoes happened to be French.
“I thought you were American.”
“In these clothes?” Rydal smiled. “No, thank you, I am honored by your invitation, but I think I’ll go to bed after a simple dinner.”
The news was coming on.
“Seasickness?”
“No, a bug I picked up in Crete,” Rydal continued in Italian.
“Hope you feel better tomorrow!” said the man, going off.
Rydal waved in reply to him.
Now the news of Knossos was the third item. The ticket-seller had been queried, and, as Rydal had supposed, he had described him and not Chester. Dark hair, dark eyes, about twenty-five. A man’s grey felt hat of American manufacture and also a guidebook of Greece had been found on the palace grounds, but there was no name or initial on them. Rydal had to force himself to stay where he was, leaning with crossed legs against a windowsill of the lounge, gazing dreamily at his metaxa. He must not speak a word of Greek to anyone on the ship, not even to a steward. He had spoken a mixture of English and Italian to the steward today in regard to his lunch. The ticket-seller had stated that the young man spoke fluent Greek with an “English” accent, which could mean either American or English, Rydal supposed. When the news report was over, Rydal stared sideways out the window on to the darkening sea for a minute or two. There was more noise in the lounge than there had been this morning. He did not hear any of the passengers discussing the Knossos news. Then Rydal strolled to the doorway and went to his state-room. He would do without dinner tonight.
It was quite likely, he thought, that the police would be on hand in Piraeus to look over the ship’s passengers for a young man of about twenty-five, et cetera, who spoke Greek. Rydal felt sudden panic. Chester might see him being questioned, on deck, by the gangway, before any of the passengers were allowed off. Chester might decide it was the perfect moment to come forth and say Rydal Keener killed his wife, that it was not true that Rydal Keener didn’t speak Greek, because he did, that he had been going to turn Rydal Keener over to the police as soon as he could free himself long enough to get to a telephone. Chester could say that Rydal Keener had threatened to kill him if he reported to the police what had happened at Knossos. Rydal’s panic did not last more than a few seconds. It just wouldn’t happen like that. Chester had too much to lose himself.
In an effort to arrive at a sense of mental orderliness, however brief and flashing it might be, he read poetry that evening. He had two slim books with him, one from America and one from London. The one from America was The End by Robert Mitchell, and Rydal opened it to the poem called “Innocence”, which was his favorite, next to the longest first poem, which concerned a young man’s consciousness of being alone—or merely existing—in a large city. The one called “Innocence” said, in part:
I have never sung. Never sung a song.
I have been happy and opened my mouth and only
shouts would follow.
Great bellows.
I was trying to make the world see me.
. . . But I did not sing when I was young although I have
always been all song
My lips have burst with the songs I have never sung
and never even known—
all disconnected and bursting to be said.
The final verse was a sad one, maturity had set in, there were no more songs to be sung, said the poet, and Rydal did not read the last stanza. The poem to him spoke of the incompleteness of his love during the time of Agnes. This had crossed his mind on the first reading of the poem more than a year ago, and until now he had avoided
the poem, though he liked it. Now he read it with savor, looking at the spelling even of every word. Rydal remembered an early poem of his own, written at fifteen, not in the notebooks he now had with him:
What was purple last week
Has become red.
The sky is wider.
The brook out the window
(something something)
With the waterfall—
Does its water change,
Or is it the same water
Arrested, forever tumbling its pretty length downward?
I wish the landscape out the window,
The barren, beautiful trees,
The swifts that flew by
When you and I stood watching,
Would arrest themselves forever.
Your hand, your eye have captured—
I want no spring.
I want for nothing.
In later years, Rydal had read so many poems that spoke of waterfalls being arrested, that the image had become a cliché to him. The most imaginative element of his poem, probably, was that he had written it in spring, when the trees were not barren, and he had set the poem in winter. It evoked Agnes to him more strongly than better poems he had written since, to her or about her.
Around 10 he put on his overcoat, swathed the lower part of his face in his muffler—it was now windy and rainy—and went out on deck. It was not possible to walk around the deck, but only for a stretch on either side amidships. Rydal walked steadily and tensely, up and down the port side. A man with a pipe stood hunched at the rail, looking out at the sea. Rydal crossed the ship through a corridor and went out on the starboard deck. It was empty. Spray bounced from the broad rail and hit his face. The stars were hidden, the sky black. The ship drove straight against the wind, and Rydal stood leaning against it, the tails of his overcoat flapping. He was glad the voyage would be over tomorrow morning at 9, glad it wouldn’t last for another two or three days. The ship cast a small glow of light in a circle around it, and beyond the glow was darkness, and no star or light showed where the sky or sea might end or begin. He stepped inside the corridor to light a cigarette, and went out again to the rail. The door opened again, and was whammed shut by the wind. Rydal glanced over his shoulder.
Chester had come out. He was wearing a cap. He seemed to hesitate, balanced on the balls of his feet, and Rydal could not tell if he were drunk or swayed by the wind against his back. He came towards Rydal.
“Evening,” Chester said, his voice deep and steady.
Rydal straightened a little, on guard. “Just as well we’re not seen talking together.”
“What?” Chester leaned closer.
Rydal repeated it more loudly, and glanced above him to see if anyone were in sight, able to listen, on the deck above. He saw nothing but an empty white rail, the glassy face of the pilot-house above the bridge.
Chester said nothing, but came a few inches closer and leaned on the rail.
Rydal wanted only to get away from him, but not so quickly that it would seem a retreat, that he were running. An unexpected roll of the ship lifted them both a little, on to their toes. Another like that, Rydal thought, and he could fairly lift Chester like a doll and toss him over. Chester could probably more easily toss him over.
“Good night,” Rydal said, turning away.
Chester’s blow caught him in the pit of the stomach, an unbelievably fast blow, and even through the overcoat, it hurt. Chester gave him another, right on the hand that covered his stomach. This one hurt the fingers of his right hand. A blow to the jaw knocked him down. Rydal lay partly in the trough below the rail, motionless, clutching his stomach and trying desperately to start breathing again. Then he grabbed Chester’s ankle with two hands and pulled. Chester kicked him with his other foot and caught him in the neck. The pain made him almost pass out. He went limp, and for a few seconds could not move. He felt Chester lifting him by the front of his coat, by an arm between his legs. He was half-way up the rail, and then he began to struggle, and Chester dropped him.
There was a long moment of stillness. Rydal lay with his cheek against the deck, drawing his hands up slowly in a position to push himself up.
He heard Chester’s footsteps walking away. He heard the slam of the door. Then someone’s whistling, a tune. On hands and knees, Rydal crawled forward, into shadow. The whistling stopped. A hand touched his back.
“Hey! What’s the matter? You’re sick?” The words were Greek.
Rydal could barely see a seaman’s rough shoes, uncreased blue trousers. He struggled upright. “Thank you. I lost something. On the deck here,” Rydal said in English.
“What do you say? You are all right?”
Rydal took a deep breath and smiled, though they stood now in the patch of darkness just aft of the deck’s roof, out of the flow of lights from the covered part of the deck. He managed to throw off the sailor’s hand on his arm, to give the sailor a slap in return. “I’m okay. Just looking for something on the deck.”
The sailor nodded, not understanding a word. “Take care. Rough sea. Good night, sir,” he said, and turned away and climbed a white ladder to the bridge.
Rydal clung to the rail for a few minutes, until his breathing became normal. His stomach still hurt. His jaw stung. Rydal smiled bitterly. For a middle-aged man, Chester fought very well. Of course it had been a surprise attack. It wouldn’t happen again. He passed his hands over his face, then looked at his hands for blood. There seemed to be no blood. Then he went in to his state-room.
14
The Greek police officer, scarcely looking at Rydal’s face, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said in English, “Would you step aside, please?”
There was another police officer on the other side of the gangplank, watching the trickle of debarking passengers. About thirty of the first and second class had already debarked. The third and steerage classes were getting off from a lower deck.
Rydal had without remonstrance stepped to one side of the officer and slightly behind him. The officer, like his colleague, was still closely watching the slowly moving line of passengers. Rydal was alone. Then he saw, beside the other officer, a sturdy young man with tightly waving light-brown hair, a frown between his eyes as he tried to find someone down on the dock. Then his hand shot up, he grinned, and a voice yelled something from below.
“Non so!” shouted the young man with brown hair. “Non so!” Then, also in Italian, as he broke out in a laugh, “Maybe they think I’m a dope smuggler! Do I look like a dope smuggler?—Wait for me! Wait there!”
Chester appeared in the saloon doorway, stepped onto the deck, taller than the people in front of him. He was wearing his cap. Then he saw Rydal standing behind the tall, slender police officer. Rydal saw in his face that he understood. There was a slight smile, one of nervous satisfaction, on Chester’s lips. Chester loitered, letting several people get in front of him. He carried the duffel in which he kept his Scotch. Now was the time, Rydal thought, for Chester to tell the policeman his story, confirm their suspicion that Rydal was the young man the ticket-seller at Knossos had seen on Monday afternoon. And Chester seemed to be turning this over in his mind, but his wary eyes avoided those of the tall police officer, and Chester drifted on with the other passengers, down the gang plank. Chester was afraid to stick his nose in too far. Rydal kept his eye on him, down on the dock. He was waiting for his porter with his luggage. Eager taxi-drivers were pouncing on people’s luggage, dragging it towards their taxis before it was completely assembled, and distraught tourists shouted at them in half a dozen languages to keep their hands off.
A young man with dark, curly hair joined Rydal, glanced at him with wide, alarmed eyes, then stood by Rydal at the rail.
The police questioned the young man with light-brown hair first. He spoke Italian and a little French, but no Gree
k. One officer tried him out in Greek: “Are you stupid? Can’t learn Greek?” with an apologetic chuckle. The young man’s face was blank, and he looked helplessly at the other officer, who asked him in Greek if he had visited Knossos. This brought no response, and the question was put in primitive French.
“Si. Domenica. Dimanche, je visite,” said the young man, looking at them with a square, open face.
“Combien de temps est-ce que vous êtes dans Crète?” asked one of the officers.
He said he had spent three days in Iraklion, staying at the Hotel Astir with his aunt and uncle, who were down on the pier. He was asked for his passport. Both policemen looked at it, and then the young man was asked in French where he was going from here.
“Nous allons à la Turquie demain,” said the young man.
“Bien.” The officer closed the dark-green passport and handed it back to the young man, who rushed happily down the gangplank.
They turned to Rydal.
“You are American?” one asked him.
Rydal nodded. “Yes.” He pulled his passport case from his overcoat pocket, a brown cowhide case, opened it, and handed them his passport.
The officers compared the picture with him. In answer to their question, he said he had been in Iraklion four days.
“You have been in Greece more than two months. You speak Greek?” asked one of the officers in Greek.
Rydal was attentive, but gave no sign of understanding. “What are you asking me?”
“If you’ve learned any Greek,” said the other officer, still in Greek.
“Eef you know some Grick,” obliged the young man on Rydal’s right, with a smile.
“If you please,” the officer said sternly in Greek to the young man.
“Just a few words,” Rydal said. “Kalispera. Efarhista,” with an apologetic shrug.
“When did you visit Knossos?” This question was also in Greek.
The Two Faces of January Page 17