‘Just what do you know about England, old boy?’ Kennedy said. ‘I don’t suppose you have spent a year there in the last ten. The English are in England, getting on with it. In England you would be some sort of schoolmaster. Your suits would get shiny and you wouldn’t have a chauffeur and you wouldn’t give cocktail parties. I was selling encyclopaedias in England, from door to door. We are both here because we want to be more comfortable, that’s the long and short of it. So don’t give me all this stuff about the white man’s burden, it’s a lot of cock and you know it.’ He was conscious, as he regarded Jennings’ pale and shocked impassivity, of a certain warmth of anger. Hypocrisy directed towards an honestly acquisitive end, like money or goods or getting to bed with someone, he did not mind at all, in fact its fusion with sincerity in the world pleased him, confirmed his inarticulate but deep-rooted belief that the world was moral nonsense anyway. But this sort of pretentiousness, these glib references to service and responsibility, he had always hated and despised; it was the rhetoric of authority cornered, powerless for the moment to punish or coerce. He felt an impulse to seize Jennings by his lapels and shake him violently back and forth.
Something of this desire may have showed in his eyes, for Jennings said somewhat huskily, ‘If that is your attitude, Mr Kennedy, I will not detain you any longer. I assure you you will hear more of this matter. You have not heard the last of it by any means.’
Kennedy replaced his hat at a jaunty angle. ‘You can get stuffed,’ he said.
In the passage he met Mr Robinson, the assistant director, who was just coming out of his office.
‘Hello there,’ Kennedy said. ‘How goes it?’
Instead of replying Mr Robinson narrowed his eyes and began to nod his head up and down slowly at Kennedy. He kept this up for some time.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Kennedy said, rather pugnaciously.
‘Gilligan, eh?’ said Mr Robinson at last, with preternatural shrewdness, not ceasing to nod.
‘My name is Kennedy,’ Kennedy said.
‘He doesn’t exist,’ Mr Robinson said. ‘There is no such person.’ He regarded Kennedy now with a sort of triumphant sagacity, yet at the same time warily, as though he had applied a possibly dangerous stimulus to some unpredictable animal.
Kennedy stared at him a moment in surprise, then shrugged slightly. ‘I should take things easy, if I were you,’ he said, as he proceeded down the passage. ‘That old sod’s been giving you too much to do.’
Left alone in the office, Jennings pondered for some time in complete silence and immobility, his white fingers interlocked over his stomach. Then he found a number in his desk directory and made a phone call. Speaking in fluent Greek he asked for a certain lieutenant of police. In reply to rapid questions, he gave his name, which was known there, and various details about the man Kennedy. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Completely without official backing. Entered the country on a tourist visa, presumably. No, no permit to work. In the interests of the economy … Felt it my duty …’
Kennedy meanwhile found a seat in the shade in the little square below Jennings’ office, and spent some time meditating on his situation and prospects. They were on the whole, he thought, very good. He had not much ready cash left—Veta was costing him quite a lot — but it was only four days now to the exams, and then he would start collecting. He had to provide the questions for six people, five of whom were paying him an average of nine thousand drachmas each. The sixth, the dishonourable criminologist Dranas, would have to be given the questions for nothing, since he could not risk a tightening of security precautions before the exam. That made forty-five thousand drachmas, about five hundred and sixty pounds. Fifty gold pounds to Veta — about one hundred and fifty sterling — and he would still have over four hundred pounds left for himself. It was a pretty good return, he felt, for no capital outlay, very little work, and no risk either, to speak of. Those to whom he sold the papers were not likely to tell anyone, whether they succeeded in the examination or not. In any case he would not be in Athens when the results came out. He had decided to take his money to Beirut and spend the next few months there.
He tilted the straw hat far back on his head and mopped his face with his handkerchief. He would find himself an Arab bit. He would buy himself a summer suit of stone-coloured terylene and crocodile-skin shoes and cuff-links, and several shirts. … He would get all his shaves in barbers’ shops. … On the cool terraces of hotels he would drink gin-and-tonic. … It was really a foolproof plan. Willey, it was true, had not agreed yet, but Kennedy felt sure that he would. And even if he didn’t, questions that would look genuine could quite easily be devised. In that case he would have to make himself scarce before they saw the genuine examination papers. They could not denounce him because they had themselves connived at a fraud. Of course they might demand to see a copy of the original before paying, but he would think of some way of getting round that when the time came. … Kennedy yawned pleasurably and got up. He gave a final benevolent gaze round the square, and directed his steps homeward.
When he got back to his room he found Simpson there, in his baseball cap, painting on the table. He was using water-colours on a sheet of cartridge paper pinned to the table with drawing pins.
‘What are you doing?’ Kennedy asked, approaching the table.
‘Greek island,’ Simpson, said without looking up. ‘Met an American who wants water-colours of Greek islands, originals.’
‘Why are you doing it in my room?’
‘There’s no table in mine.’
Looking over his shoulder Kennedy saw multicoloured striations denoting hills, sea, sky, a few fishing boats drawn up on the shore. The clouds, he noted, were neat plump clouds precisely delimited, not Greek clouds at all. Simpson had simply painted blue sky around them.
‘I said I’d do several islands and he could take his pick,’ Simpson said. He put a long squiggle of green on the sea. ‘I’ve done Hydra,’ he said, ‘and I’ve done Poros. What other Greek islands are there, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Crete,’ Kennedy said. ‘There’s Crete, and Rhodes.’
‘I’ll call this one Crete, then,’ Simpson said. He took a Biro out of his pocket and wrote ‘Crete’ in one corner of the painting, adding his name and the date.
‘Rhodes, the next one,’ Simpson said, beginning to take out the drawing pins.
At this moment the doorbell rang. When he opened the door Kennedy saw before him a slender, elegant man in a chocolate-brown suit, who said quietly in excellent English, ‘Have I the pleasure of speaking to Mr Kennedy?’
‘You have indeed,’ Kennedy said, beaming at this person.
‘I am from the police,’ the man said. ‘From the Aliens Department. My name is Canelopoulos. I should like to speak with you for some minutes.’
‘Certainly,’ Kennedy said, his smile vanishing rapidly. ‘Will you come in?’
‘No thank you.’ The elegant man, who had a shiny chestnut-coloured gaze, appeared to meditate a moment. Then he said, ‘I have a report on good authority that you are working in Greece, for remunerations, without a permis de travail. Is it true?’
Kennedy thought quickly. If he denied it, and they knew, he might let himself in for more trouble. Perhaps he had been watched, seen entering and leaving certain houses. ‘I have done a little private teaching,’ he said. ‘I did not know a permit was required for this.’
‘For any work undertaken for payment in Greece by a foreigner a permit is necessary.’
‘I see. I am sorry. It will not happen again.’
‘No, no,’ the man said quickly. ‘I’m afraid that is not sufficient. By taking payment you have contravened the regulations. You have not fulfilled the terms on which you were permitted entry as a tourist. You have become, in short, Mr Kennedy, persona non grata. We require you, therefore, to leave Greece within forty-eight hours. Failure to comply might lead to your arrest.’
Kennedy gaped at him for a moment. ‘Forty-eight hours,’ H
e said. ‘But that is … Can you not give me a few days longer than that?’
‘Impossible, I’m afraid,’ the policeman said, withdrawing without haste. ‘It is statutory. Good day, Mr Kennedy and kalo taxidi.’
‘Goodbye now,’ Kennedy said, and blankly watched the policeman’s narrow head receding down the stairs. The perspiration elicited by this precise ultimatum cooled on him slowly. He knew who must have informed on him. It could be no one but Jennings. But what was he to do now? Unthinkable to quit Greece now, within a few days of the dividends. Could he perhaps nip up to Yugoslavia, get his passport stamped, nip back again as a tourist? Would that be acceptable, would it be legal? He had not now, in any case, enough money for such a trip, unless he hitchhiked, but that was too chancy. Sophy perhaps could lend him the fare, or Willey. … If he stayed, would he have time to devise an examination paper, collect his money, all within forty-eight hours? They would sense something fishy in such a change of plan, they would not believe he could have obtained the paper so far in advance. He must get a few days’ grace, but how? He was still, he realised, wearing his straw hat, completely dressed therefore for the street. A drink would be a great help. He closed the door softly behind him, leaving Simpson still furiously painting and muttering to himself the names of islands.
He was making for Voukourestiou Street, and a bar he knew. His mind was full of his trouble, so that he did not recognise the person coming towards him until the person had almost passed. Then he saw it was the slightly built and rather intense young Greek he had first met on the boat. What was his name again? The fellow would have passed him without a second glance. Perhaps it was the hat that made him difficult to recognise?
‘Well, hallo there,’ said Kennedy, obtruding himself into the other’s path. ‘How goes it?’
The Greek started violently at Kennedy’s greeting and stood for some moments speechless. Kennedy thought he looked distinctly ill. His eyes glittered feverishly, there were dark pouches below them as of sleeplessness or dissipation. Been beating it up, Kennedy thought. Too much shagging perhaps. Or hitting the old ouzo.
‘You said Athens was a village,’ he remarked. ‘And that we should be sure to meet.’ For some reason he had remembered this dictum, even though he had forgotten the other’s name. ‘What was your name again?’ he said.
‘Mitsos,’ the other said, looking beyond Kennedy as though seeking a way of escape.
‘I don’t mean your surname,’ Kennedy said. Of course I remembered that. No, I meant your first name.’
‘Stavros.’
‘Stavros, of course. Would you care to join me for a drink?’
‘No, not now, thank you.’ Mitsos continued to look over Kennedy’s shoulder. The other’s large body blocked his way. He felt completely exhausted, unable for the moment to mobilise himself to get past this perpetually inopportune person, with his broad and hateful smile, who it seemed had been accosting him all his life. The knife he had bought some half-hour ago, still in its wrapping of white tissue paper, was under his jacket, clamped against his side by his left arm, the handle under his armpit. He had had considerable difficulty in the choice of weapon, not having understood previously how specialised an activity killing a human being is, requiring tools not normally to hand. The only thing at all possible that he could find in his cousin’s house was a light, narrow-headed hammer of the sort that is used for putting in tacks. It would have needed repeated blows with that, and he knew himself to be without the strength or the resolution to peck the man to death so, the skull softening, blood in the hair roots, the brain still labouring in its liquids beneath. No, a knife was the thing, a knife got at the vitals without brutality.
All this he had pondered over carefully, thoroughly and with a half-irritable sense of unreality, as though this nicety as to means, by its prolongation, kept him from the only meaningful thing: the extinction of the life in George. He had almost bought a scout knife, vaguely associated in his mind with practical, outdoors efficiency, but rejected this at the last moment because of a superstitious dread of the hilt — the hilt might arrest the point just short of the man’s life. Finally he had bought, second-hand from a small shop in the Plaka, a butcher’s knife with a long perfectly straight blade, a flat wooden handle and no hilt at all. It was this he held now rigidly pressed against his body.
‘Not even a quick one?’ Kennedy said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Haven’t you got time even for a quick one?’
‘No, I’m afraid not. Thank you very much.’
‘Don’t mention it, old boy,’ Kennedy said. ‘By the way, I have to go to Yugoslavia quite unexpectedly — a business trip, actually, and I’m a bit short of the ready just for the moment. Of course, there are plenty of people I can call on — you’ve seen some of my testimonials I believe — but they are in England you see, and it all takes time. What I was wondering was whether you could lend me a few pounds …’
‘I’m sorry,’ Mitsos said. Gathering himself together he side-stepped and got round Kennedy on the outside of the pavement.
‘To tide me over,’ Kennedy said, but Mitsos was by this time several yards away and going fast. Kennedy gazed after him resentfully. It was not the behaviour of a gentleman, as he understood it, to bolt at the request of a loan. This fellow seemed prone to unceremonious departures. He remembered the last time, when Mitsos had just got up from the table without a word and disappeared. Before on the boat, he had refused to lend a fellow traveller a pound or two, refused to refer to the Bishop of Jarrow, refused even to part with his telephone number. … Next time they met, Kennedy promised himself, he would point out to Mitsos the error of his ways. He had known, however, all along, that he couldn’t risk the Yugoslavia business, couldn’t risk being refused re-entry just when the examinations were about to start. Then his chance would be gone for ever. Meanwhile, however, time was passing. What on earth was he going to do? Suddenly, while he still stood there, the solution came to him with a beautiful fullness and radiance. Eleni Polimenou. If she could swing it for Willey, maybe she could swing it for him. A package deal. She was the only one who could help him now. He must see her immediately. There was no time for a drink.
It had been Mitsos’ intention, on returning to the house at Kiffisia, to go straight up to his room and hide the knife somewhere. But at the head of the stairs he came face to face with his cousin Alexei, who, dressed in a bathrobe of white towelling, had been just about to descend.
‘Come and have a drink,’ Alexei said. ‘Why do I see so little of you? You have everything you need here?’
‘Oh yes,’ Mitsos said. ‘Everything.’ He was conscious of the same exhaustion, the same lack of volition, that he had experienced with Kennedy. It was as though he could only keep up his momentum in the absence of human contacts. He attempted very slowly to edge past Alexei and get along the passage to his own room, but Alexei put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Come and have a drink,’ he said again. ‘We have not talked together for a long time.’
Mitsos suffered himself to be guided downstairs again, into the salon, where he sat in an armchair, the knife still held uncomfortably against his side, while Alexei busied himself pouring drinks.
‘Paidi mou,’ Alexei said, smiling across at him. How ill Stavros looked. ‘Ti nea?’ ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Very little,’ Mitsos said, achieving a smile.
‘Ah so you say,’ Alexei nodded knowingly. ‘So you say. You are one of the quiet ones. In my opinion no girl is worth suffering for.’
Mitsos regarded him in silence.
‘Listen,’ Alexei said, ‘why don’t you and I have a night out, one of these nights? En garçon, eh? How would you like that?’
‘Very much,’ Mitsos said politely.
‘We could go down to Piraeus, have a good time.’ Alexei closed his left eye. ‘I know my way around down there. Not a word to Kikki, though.’
‘Of course not.’ But what could I say
to Kikki? he thought. Why should I speak to Kikki? He sat rigid in the armchair.
‘Women do not understand these things,’ Alexei said. ‘Man is a hunter, that is an opinion I have come to, he is not by nature monogamous. …’
Mitsos ceased to make the effort to understand what Alexei was saying. He smiled faintly, glanced once more at Alexei’s face, then helplessly lowered his gaze to where, in the other’s body, below the white towelling, the heart might approximately be.
By impressing on him the urgency of the matter, Kennedy got Willey reluctantly — since the afternoons, sandwiched between two sessions of teaching, were precious to him — to agree to a meeting in the English library. Here they stood together before the shelves marked ‘Fine Arts’ and conversed in low tones. The shelves were eight or nine feet high and so it was not possible to see people not in the same lane, but occasional snatches of conversation came to them.
‘Have you thought about what I said?’ Kennedy enquired very softly.
‘I have, yes,’ Willey answered in equally muted tones. It had been from his point of view a mistake, he immediately felt, to meet here. Discussing in this furtive manner Kennedy’s proposal restricted him from the start to a conspiratorial rôle. Of course he was going to agree, he knew that: Jennings’ abrupt dismissal of his hopes had helped Kennedy more than he would ever know — had it not been for that, he would almost certainly have gone on hoping until the time for action had passed. Yes, he was going to agree, but regretted that there was no scope, when the conversation was conducted at a volume little louder than a whisper, for indicating his reservations in the matter, his distaste. Had Kennedy, he wondered, thought of this when arranging the meeting? Probably not. As usual the other’s round blue eyes, with their reckless fixity of gaze, gave him no clue.
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