Mr Dranas smiled. ‘Everyone is special case,’ he said. ‘I want to see the questions. But I don’t pay. You must show me the questions for nothing. Then I not breathe a word.’
‘That is ridiculous,’ Kennedy said.
‘If you do not give, I go to the bosses.’
‘You can tell them nothing.’
‘I tell them to be careful. They make a check-up.’
‘My God,’ Kennedy said, ‘it’s blackmail!’ He wiped his face. ‘And you a lawyer too,’ he said. ‘A professional man. You wouldn’t find a British law graduate behaving like this.’
He had to agree, however. And later it occurred to him that this underhand behaviour of Dranas might be a blessing in disguise. He might have gone on and on, getting greedier, until the whole thing got out of hand. It was essential that the conspiracy should be kept to reasonable proportions. He already had five, not counting Dranas, and they were paying him an average of a hundred pounds each, it was enough.
He bade a cold farewell to Mr Dranas, and descending to the street again sought out a kiosk with a telephone and put a call through to Sophy, asking her to come out for a coffee. She could not come, however, she was too busy. She was on her own there this morning, she explained. Mr Jennings and Mr Robinson had both gone out to the airport to meet a person called Slingsby-Merd, a musician. An ambassador had been phoning all morning and getting ruder all the time.
‘Ambassador?’ Kennedy said.
‘Yes, the Swedish ambassador. He asks for Mr Jennings. He makes enquiries about English conversation lessons. Someone is trying to get through now.’
‘You’d better ring off then,’ Kennedy said.
He at once telephoned the Swedish embassy and asked to speak to the ambassador, but he was not there. He was staying at the Grande Bretagne, while waiting for some changes to be made in the official residence. Kennedy telephoned the hotel, and after some moments heard a voice that contrived to be both soft and irascible. ‘Allo,’ the voice said.
‘Am I speaking to the Swedish ambassador?’ Kennedy said.
‘You are, yes.’
‘You are interested in English conversation I believe, sir.’
‘That is so, yes.’
‘When can I come to see you about it?’
‘Come now. At once,’ the voice said. Then there was a click and silence.
The interview was of the briefest. Kennedy rode up in the lift to the ambassador’s suite, and after he had been waiting only a few minutes the ambassador himself appeared, in a black quilted smoking jacket. He was of an imposing height and bald except in the vicinity of the ears, and he had a slight but menacing cast in the left eye. His preliminary courtesies were not protracted. ‘You will give me two hours a week to begin with,’ he said in his soft overbearing voice. ‘Conversation. In the mornings, between eight and nine.’
‘That is too early,’ Kennedy said, rendered immediately uncooperative by the other’s authoritarian manner.
‘I have a letter from Mr Jennings, your superior, in which he says I will be accommodated in the matter of times. I will read the English newspapers. I will repeat what I read. You will correct me.’
‘You have it all worked out,’ Kennedy said. ‘Haven’t you?’
‘I will send a car for you. The charge for the lessons is fifty drachmas.’
‘Just a minute, old boy,’ Kennedy said. ‘You’ve got it wrong. A hundred drachmas is what I charge.’
‘That is not correct,’ said the ambassador. ‘I agreed with Mr Jennings for fifty.’
‘A hundred is what I charge,’ Kennedy said. He was continuing to discuss the matter purely out of perversity. Obviously there was no prospect of his giving the lessons at any price. Besides, he had bigger fish to fry now.
‘We are Europeans, not Orientals,’ the ambassador said.
‘Quite so,’ Kennedy said. ‘But we are at present in Athens, which is not Europe. Local conditions must prevail.’
‘I will give fifty drachmas. This was the price agreed.’
‘Not by me,’ Kennedy said. ‘I wasn’t there, old boy. Why should I teach you for fifty when I can teach Greeks for a hundred? Because you are an ambassador?’
The ambassador had gone paler. ‘You are insolent,’ he said. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Kennedy. Double “n” “e” — “d” — “y”. You don’t need conversation lessons, you need lessons in manners. You didn’t even ask me to sit down. Would you like me to write the name out for you?’
‘No,’ said the ambassador, speaking now between his teeth. ‘No, I can remember it.’
‘Well, good for you,’ Kennedy said, giving him a look of frank antagonism. Then he turned and walked out of the room.
In the afternoon he met Veta, as they had arranged, opposite the Byzantine museum. They had decided first to visit the monastery at Kaisariani which Kennedy had heard about from Thorne. They took a bus through the long suburb. There was half a mile to walk from the terminus to the monastery, along a white dusty road lined with eucalyptus, following the course of a river bed on their left, through the foothills of Hymettos, sage green and ochreous red, with pale distraught gleams of rock. The monastery was in a hollow formed by these hills, a shallow, fertile declivity watered by underground springs, planted with plane and poplar and mulberry. They walked between massive cypresses into the precincts of the monastery itself, past beds of enormous dahlias clotted with bees. The sound of bees was all the sound here, that and the soft gush of spring water from the mouth of the marble ram at the entrance to the church and cloisters. Veta cupped her hand below the blind ram’s gushing mouth, and exclaimed at the coldness of the water. She drank some, wetting her chin and the neck of her dress. She smiled up at Kennedy, the water shining on her face, darkening the cotton of her dress. ‘You take some,’ she said. He shook his head, smiling, watching the huge black bees rifling the dahlias. She raised herself and came to stand beside him and he put an arm round her and pressed her against him. The monastery slept in its hill calm, all around them they felt the silence and closeness of the hills. From the slopes above them the sun cut great swathes of scent, majoram, myrtle, aromatic shrubs of all sorts. White doves fluttered across the courtyard where they were standing. Beyond the wall of the courtyard rose the cupola of the Byzantine church, the red of its stone mellowed to rose. Kennedy raised his head and inhaled deeply the essences of the afternoon. He felt the girl’s flank against him and the response to this in his own loins. He thought of the money he would be getting hold of soon, and all the afternoons he could have with it.
‘It’s nice here,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’
Later they walked together hand in hand among the artefacts of pagan, Byzantine and Frank, their palms moistening slowly in the contact with each other. No monks lived here any longer. There was no one about at all except for one incredibly decrepit attendant with a face the colour and texture of a long-neglected potato, who came creeping up on them from behind to ask if they wanted coffee. His voice was surprisingly vigorous. Very old, he said, widening his little pale eyes in their amazingly complex bed of wrinkles. Poli paleio. From the very earliest there had been human settlements here, because of the water.
‘I wonder who keeps up the gardens,’ Kennedy said in English as the attendant slithered slowly away. ‘Cuts the lawns and so on. That old boy’s obviously past it.’
‘Plaît-il?’
‘It doesn’t matter. We can look in the church before we have our coffee.’
They passed into the dark nave and the chill of sanctity fell on their sun-warmed bodies. Now for the first time Kennedy became really aware of the past. The odour of the Middle Ages recalled for him history, in a way the sunlit world could not, though immeasurably older. He did not like the wall paintings at all: scenes of sins and sacrifices and martyrdoms; attenuated, fungoid bodies in grave cerements, a dankness to all this flesh as though it had lived far from the light. Bystanders who might have been apostles looke
d on with dark, almond eyes of sorrow. Over all, in the cupola above their heads, brooded the enormous, suffering, epicene face of Christ Pantocrator. Kennedy stood in silence, aware of his heart beating, fighting his feeling of awe.
‘J’ai froid,’ Veta said softly. Looking down he saw goose-pimples on her arms, on her living flesh. Suddenly, rather roughly, he kissed her on the side of the neck.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.
The ancient attendant brought them coffee as they sat on the low wall between the church and the Frankish colonnade. His cap was tilted forward over his narrow clay-coloured face and he had a large drop at the end of his nose. They sat for a while, watching little blue butterflies on the grass, recovering their sense of the day’s potential. Then they walked up beyond the monastery a little way, into the hills. Near the source of water were poplar and cypress and almond trees but as they climbed higher the mountain reassumed it barrenness. They stopped and looked over the foothills at the way they had come, the cobalt sea, and the faint outlines of the near islands. The sight of the sea reminded them of their intention of bathing that afternoon, and they began to make their way down again. As they passed above the monastery, Kennedy touched Veta’s arm and said, ‘Look at that, will you?’
The attendant was sitting on a kitchen chair outside a low whitewashed stone hovel which was where he presumably lived. He was full in the sunlight. His head was lowered on his breast and his official attendant’s cap tilted forward. His legs were spread wide apart. From time to time he appeared to snatch at something between his legs.
‘What is he doing?’ Veta asked.
They drew nearer, without disturbing the old man’s concentration. Then they saw that he was catching flies, with a skill that could only be called consummate. Either there was some refuse near that attracted them, or this was a vicinity favoured for some other reason, but there was a cloud of flies round him, mostly round his legs and crutch. He was watching them carefully in their flight, not swatting them, but in his stealthy and nimble old claw, scooping them up, trapping them. They saw that every time he caught a fly he crushed it slowly to death between thumb and forefinger, watching it the whole time. Periodically during this process he uttered a hoarse, woeful sound, a kind of groan, due no doubt to his ailments. He rarely missed, and Kennedy thought he must have had a lot of practice. The whole posture of his body in fact, the legs splayed, the more malodorous parts of his person exposed to the sun, really constituted a human fly-trap. He probably does this every afternoon, Kennedy thought. When there are no customers for coffee. It was, after all, a pastime of a sort. What struck him as disagreeable was the seeming complicity of the flies themselves …
‘Odd sort of game,’ Kennedy said, in English. ‘Costs nothing in fares though. No outlay on equipment either, and you don’t need anyone else to play it.’
Veta looked disgusted. Her mouth which had been open while she watched the performance, closed firmly. ‘So dirty, that old man,’ she said, after a moment. ‘His house will be dirty too, inside, I think.’ The set of her square shoulders expressed repugnance.
Kennedy laughed. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we must hurry; let’s get down to the coast.’
They did not in fact get to the coast until after the sun had gone down. This was because they had chosen Porto Rafti as the place to go and it was much further than either of them thought, and also because they stopped at the village itself before going down to the beach, to have a meal at a taverna. While they were in there, there was a brief but very heavy shower. Kennedy drank a good deal of retsina with the meal and he bought a small bottle of cognac to take with them. When they emerged the road was wet, rain had cooled the air. Kennedy was not drunk, but elated, as they walked down the rough track that led to the beach. The light was fading rapidly now, and a ruddy moon hung just over the water. The sea glimmered to the darkening horizon, completely motionless, like a great platter. They left their bathing things on the shingle of the upper beach and walked together along the edge of the water. There was no sound from the sea or land. From the low hills behind them came the sweet summer scent of dust and pine. The hills themselves for these few minutes had a strange, charred distinctness of outline. When they returned to where they had left their things, the last of the day was gone. The moon had risen and whitened, laying a broad track of light across the sea.
‘Shall we bathe now?’ Kennedy said. Or shall we have some of this cognac?’
‘Let us bathe first,’ she said.
The silence and immensity of the night caused them to speak in low tones as though they were constrained by the possible presence of others, or within precincts demanding reverent observances. They changed in silence, standing a little apart from each other. Kennedy felt the cool air on his body with a sense of liberation. Near him Veta stood waiting. Her swimming suit was black of the old-fashioned voluminous sort, reaching halfway down her thighs. The moonlight shone on her thick hair and white, steady shoulders. She stood fronting him, gravely, waiting. In the moment before he moved towards her Kennedy felt something resigned, almost sacrificial in her posture. He pressed her body against his and kissed her face repeatedly, and her throat and the upper part of her breasts. Her body remained quiet and passive, neither responding nor recoiling. After some moments they walked together hand in hand to the sea and waded in. The land sloped very gradually and they walked steadily forward in silence for some time, the water — still warm from the day’s sun — rising slowly over their legs and thighs. The moonlit sea, stirred by their progress, bubbled round them and they each trailed a bright phosphorescent wake.
When the water was deep enough, they parted and swam. Kennedy floated on his back gazing up at the moon, feeling the water sustaining and caressing him. The hills beyond the beach were dark and formless now, lumped together by the night, but overhead the sky seemed paler. There was a scattering of stars. Veta was some yards away, also floating, her face lifted to the sky. He could see distinctly the luminous beading of the sea round her dark form, she was for that moment like an impurer particle in a solution of silver. He swam towards her and found that the water was still shallow enough for them both to stand.
‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ he said, reaching out towards her. ‘The sea is still quite warm.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It is very good.’ She regarded him steadily, head and shoulders only out of the water, her large eyes shining. What could she be thinking of? he wondered suddenly. What was behind that beautiful, heifer-like gaze? He had never, it occurred to him, discerned anything like affection for him in her regard. Only once had she kissed him of her own accord, when he had first promised her the money. Perhaps she had thoughts of startling profundity but was defeated by language. …
‘Bry-an,’ she said suddenly.
‘Yes,’
‘When will you give me the money?’
‘In about six days’ time, all things being equal,’ he said.
Her face broke slowly into a smile. She leaned forward and began to fumble under the water.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. Veta laughed and straightened herself and he saw that she was now holding her bathing suit in her hand.
‘This is nicer,’ she said.
Quickly Kennedy divested himself of his own shorts, and gave them to Veta to hold. Their naked bodies came together under the water. He took the full globes of her breasts in his hands. They were buoyant, lifting in the water as though with a life of their own. She raised her head laughing, and he kissed her wet lips. Standing there in the bright waste of water, holding her against him, his hands on the outside of her thighs, he found that she was almost weightless. The kindly, conniving sea balanced her for him, set her down on to him, moved her gently to his wish. He looked into her face, on a level now with his own. Her eyes were closed, her mouth twisted into a slight grimace. Suddenly the element of brutality inherent in Kennedy’s nature came to the fore; he determined to screw some expression out of her at last. He kept u
p the movement deliberately and in order to delay his own responses began to compose an imaginary letter to the Geographical Magazine. Dear sir, I recently had carnal knowledge of a young woman in some five feet of water of high saline contents, in short the ocean … Gently, rhythmically, abetted by the sea, he continued to move her speared and suspended body up a little, down a little. All the time he looked intently at her face. After a while she began to move her head from side to side as though in the grip of a troubled dream, and to breathe more noisily. We found this a comfortable and convenient position. The degree of penetration could be easily controlled … The movements of Veta’s head had become more pronounced. She moaned lightly, then again, and again, each time on a higher note. Moreover I, the male partner, found it quite unnecessary to adopt that crouching posture which makes the vertical position so unsatisfactory on terra firma … Veta suddenly flung back her head, her face worked for some moments, then she uttered a long, harsh inexpressibly pained cry. Kennedy began to hurry desperately to bring his letter to a conclusion, feeling his own spasms upon him, not much longer to be deferred … Furthermore the young woman uttered at the climactic moment a cry resembling that of a sea-gull, does this constitute proof of man’s amphibious origins, yours sin … A series of deep and shuddering groans burst from him.
Later the brandy was very welcome to both of them.
In the early afternoon, having given Slingsby-Merd lunch and taken him to his hotel, Jennings returned to his office. He had barely seated himself at his desk when the phone rang. It was the Swedish ambassador. The ambassador was very angry and made no attempt to conceal this from Jennings. For some moments, in fact, Jennings was not able to understand the source of this anger, so vigorous was its expression. ‘I have been out all morning, your excellency,’ he said, assuming his Zen-master look. ’On official business. For that reason you were not able …’ As he listened, however, his expression changed. Insulting behaviour, lack of respect, complaints through diplomatic channels. ‘Your responsibility, sir, your responsibility for the comportment of your employees …’ Jennings grew frightened. ‘But what?’ he said. ‘Who? Excellency, I cannot understand … But I sent no one to see you. No one. Nevertheless it is true, no one was sent. I was intending to send someone, yes, a question of finding exactly the right instructor, your request was a matter we were regarding as of utmost importance … Kennedy? Did you say Kennedy? Yes, thank you, excellency, no need to spell it … K.E.N.N.E.D.Y … Yes, thank you, I’ve got it. … He is not associated in any way with us, no, no, no official status whatsoever. He misled you, in that case, grossly. Insolent, yes, demanded one hundred drachmas an hour, yes. Excellency, please allow me to deal personally with this matter. And accept my deepest apologies for what has happened … Yes, yes, most definitely, I assure you. … What? The incident will none the less go down on your report, but won’t you reconsider …’
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