The Greeks Have a Word for It

by Barry Unsworth

  ‘To absent friends,’ said Mr Logothetis, with the suspicion of a wink.

  ‘Happy landings,’ Kennedy said, taking a swallow of his vast drink. The other’s harping on friendship verged on the offensive, but he was too pleased with the smoothness of the transaction to care much about this now. It was time for his speech. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘it would be most unwise of your daughter to take any written material into the examination with her. They are most particular about this, and they would disqualify her at once if it were discovered. She must memorise the answers beforehand.’

  ‘My dear Mr Kennedy, of course.’

  ‘It wouldn’t affect me, particularly, you know,’ Kennedy said laughingly. ‘I’ve been paid. But it might mean you had wasted your money.’

  ‘Ha, ha, yes, quite so.’

  ‘Also, the less said about this the better, as I’m sure you realise. Discretion is the better part of valour, Mr Logothetis. Warn your daughter against any sort of gloating before or after the examination. Some envious little friend of hers would be sure to report it.’

  ‘We shall maintain a silence of the grave.’

  ‘It only remains for me,’ Kennedy said, passing easily to the general sentiments part of the business, ‘to wish your daughter every success, in the examination, and in life as a whole.’ It occurred to him suddenly that he was falling behind his schedule. He must have been here twenty minutes at least. He finished his whisky in a series of quick gulps. ‘Goodbye, then,’ he said. ‘And all the very best.’

  Going down in the lift, he felt dizzy. He regarded his exultant face in the wall mirror. I drank that whisky too fast, he thought. He took the money out of the envelope, folded it neatly and put it in his hip pocket.

  A person called Courcoulakos, who lived in Sina Street, was the next client on his list, a tall spare man with a brigand moustache, who owned an asbestos factory and whose twenty-year-old son, an elegant and vivacious youth, had the distinction of having already failed the examination four times. This man’s English was rudimentary and he took much longer to satisfy himself that the copies were genuine. When he was so satisfied, however, he became very expansive, gave Kennedy his money in another large white envelope, patted him on the back.

  Kennedy rose to his feet. He was still worried about his schedule. ‘I must be pressing on,’ he said. ‘By the way, it would be most unwise …’

  ‘No go yet,’ Mr Courcoulakos said. He disappeared for a few moments then returned with a large tumbler of amber-coloured fluid. ‘Sigeia,’ he said. He did not seem to be drinking anything himself.

  ‘Cheers!’ Kennedy said. It was rum, he decided, slightly diluted with something or other. ‘And tell him,’ he said rather later, ‘not to take anything with him into the examination room, they’ll have him out of it quicker than that, you can say what you like about the British, but they’ve got their standards. They’ve got their standards. I wouldn’t like to see you wasting your money. There’s some I wouldn’t mind seeing wasting their money, but I don’t count you among that number, no. …’

  ‘Efcharisto,’ said Mr Courcoulakos, who seemed to be getting the gist. ‘Sigeia!’ he said again.

  ‘And the same to you,’ Kennedy said. He squinted at his glass. There was still quite a lot left in it. How long had he been here now? Half an hour? His sense of time was getting blurred.

  ‘Reconsidered my position and yours,’ Jennings said. ‘Your valuable work through the years …’ The late afternoon sun slanted through the window, glittered on Jennings’ glasses, mellowed the marble sneer of the dignitary. Golden motes swirled slowly. ‘Allow me to congratulate you,’ Jennings enunciated, averting his head. ‘Let us hope for a fruitful collaboration in the years ahead …’ And so it had been borne in upon Willey that he was being offered a permanent post, permanent, pensionable, carrying annual increments. He had emerged at last, stony-faced, jubilant but frightened too, because his deprivations had constituted a way of life, after all, and now everything was changed, Olivia awaited him, and the rock garden. …

  Mitsos waited until Kikki and Alexei had gone to bed, then went quietly down and took Alexei’s Home Doctor book from the shelf. There was a diagram of the male anatomy on it, in colour, showing the skeletonic structure and the organs beneath. The heart had tentacles of veins, like an octopus. Below the rib cage the knife would have to enter, an upward thrust. He practised upward thrusts some time before the mirror, trying to fight the tendency to close his eyes at the last moment. At about half past four he replaced the book, wrapped the knife loosely in a table napkin, put it inside his jacket with the point tucked into the top of his trousers, and left the house quietly.

  ‘No, no, not in that way,’ Mr Andronakis said. ‘Aspro kato,’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ Kennedy said. This was his fourth visit, he had no idea what time it was, and didn’t care any longer. His hat was on the back of his head, and the top button of his shirt had come off. His hip pocket bulged with money.

  ‘Aspro kato means white bottom,’ Mr Andronakis said.

  ‘In that case I’m all for it,’ said Kennedy, whose behaviour was steadily deteriorating. ‘But what has it got to do with ouzo, that is the point at issue, that is the point I am trying to get over to you. This is ouzo, isn’t it? Ouzo.’

  ‘Malista.’

  ‘Well then,’ Kennedy said. ‘Well then.’ Behind them on the balcony the eccentric canary broke suddenly into fervent song.

  ‘Sing, sing for Mr Kennedy,’ said Andronakis. ‘No, you not understand. When we are drinking ouzo and I say aspro kato, you must drink all at one time, not putting glass two, three times or more to your face.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kennedy. ‘Aspro kato then.’ He drank the remaining ouzo in his glass.

  ‘No, no,’ Mr Andronakis said. ‘We must do it again. The glasses must be full up.’

  ‘Jesus, Kennedy said. ‘Listen,’ he said slowly and carefully, ‘don’t take any papers into the examination or you will be disqualified.’

  ‘What means “disqualified”?’

  Kennedy passed his tongue over his lips. ‘You will be out on your arse,’ he said. ‘You will be given the old boot. Keep it all up here, Mr Andronakis.’ He tapped his right temple with a forefinger, then paused for a moment, looking solemnly at Andronakis, trying to remember the things that remained to be said. ‘Don’t tell a bloody soul,’ he said, ‘and it only remains for me to wish …’

  ‘Understood perfect,’ Mr Andronakis said. ‘The future is forward. Aspro kato.’

  ‘Aspro kato.’

  From this point onwards the afternoon became disorderly, fragmented; his joy was constant, however, his sense of the growing bulge of drachmas at his hip. In the street, clutching his newspaper and the few remaining question papers that were folded inside it, he swayed a little, and sang ‘Speed Bonny Boat’ quietly to himself. Attempting to find a short cut to Pattission Street where his fifth client lived, he lost himself among narrow cobbled streets. At one point he fell full length, his hat rolled off and his papers were scattered. He was helped to his feet and dusted down by a greengrocer and his papers were gathered up again by several competitive children, getting somewhat crumpled in the process. Thereafter he travelled by taxi. Dranas, whom he had left to last, received the most soiled and damaged copies, but did not seem to mind. He offered to make coffee, but this Kennedy refused with hauteur.

  By six o’clock it was finished; the papers were all distributed; he had forty-five thousand drachmas in thousand-drachma notes in his pocket. He took a taxi back to Kitty’s, knowing through his drunkenness that the events of the afternoon had changed him, magnified him, enlarged his sense of his own potential, like a first experience of love. After such a coup he could never be the same again. Dazzling prospects opened up before him. There was a career in it. Millions of people wanted to learn English. All over the globe they were striving to obtain certificates and diplomas, everywhere over the face of the globe there would be Cultu
ral Centres, running examinations, following more or less the same system. He could make a packet wherever he went, from Bombay to Brisbane … No, not Brisbane, they spoke a sort of English there, but certainly far-flung, he told himself sagely. Certainly far-flung. Now that he knew the ropes he would be able to plan more elaborately, extend the scale of his operations. Widen his net. You are made, old boy, he told himself. Absolutely made. All tax-free too.

  He did not want to be alone just now in the first flush of his success, so he went directly to Thorne’s room where he found, in addition to Thorne, Simpson and an enormous smiling blonde girl. Simpson was holding a bottle of cognac, two-thirds empty. When he saw Kennedy he raised the bottle high in the air. His face was damp, and he was continuously stiffening and relaxing his upper lip, which kept his nostrils in perpetual motion. ‘Compensation!’ he shouted. ‘I got my compensation for the easel. Six thousand drachmas, paid on the nail.’

  ‘There really was an easel then,’ Kennedy said. ‘How about a drop out of that bottle?’ He was somewhat put out. Simpson had not exactly stolen his thunder, since he could not make his own success public; but he did not care that they should be co-beneficiaries of the gods this evening.

  Simpson said, ‘I want you to meet Miss Bodilsen. Miss Inge Bodilsen.’ The girl smiled at him in silence. Her eyes were ox-like, enormous. ‘From Scandinavia,’ Simpson said, smiling meaningfully at Kennedy.

  ‘How do you do?’ Kennedy said. He was having some difficulty in focussing. The correct thing to say came to him suddenly. ‘Mr Simpson has talked a lot about you,’ he said.

  ‘Too bloody true,’ Simpson said.

  ‘Have you got any more glasses, Roland?’ Kennedy said to Thorne. ‘Why don’t you get one for yourself? It’s quite an occasion, Simpson getting his money.’

  ‘You look as though you’d had a few already,’ Thorne said. ‘Your suit is all dusty, too. All right,’ he added surprisingly, ‘I will have a drink.’ He got the glasses and Simpson filled them up, which left the bottle nearly empty.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Simpson said, ‘I have two more bottles.’

  ‘Are you staying in Greece for long?’ Kennedy said to Miss Bodilsen, with a glazed courtliness of manner.

  Miss Bodilsen smiled once more. She had very strong white teeth. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘All here very good peoples.’

  ‘Have another drink, Roland,’ Kennedy said, giving her up abruptly. ‘I’m bloody well going to.’

  ‘Yes,’ Thorne said. ‘I will have another.’ His face was quite flushed. He approached Kennedy and said in low tones, ‘Do you think she’s suitable? He’s going to Denmark with her, now that he’s got his money. I knew he’d go, of course, I mean I knew he’d go away. He doesn’t seem to me to respect her at all. Surely there must be respect.’

  ‘Good God, I don’t know,’ Kennedy said. ‘Do you think she respects him? Look at him now.’ Simpson had begun to execute a sort of rubbery Charleston. ‘Simpson will end up in the gutter anyway,’ Kennedy said. ‘He might as well get as much as he can now.’

  Thorne looked affronted. ‘That’s my tie you’re wearing, by the way,’ he said coldly.

  Kennedy broke into loud laughter. ‘So it is,’ he said. He raised his hand to his neck with a wide clumsy gesture and pulled the tie loose. He had a sudden dazed realisation, the first time his new wealth had taken concrete form in his mind, of the rows of resplendent ties he could afford to buy now. ‘Here you are,’ he said, and looped the tie round Thorne’s neck.

  ‘I say, steady on!’ Thorne said. ‘You don’t care, do you?’

  At this moment the bell rang and when Thorne opened the door there was Willey. He hovered at the threshold a few moments blinking somewhat affrightedly at the cavorting Simpson who had now begun to sing ‘Beautiful, Beautiful Copenhagen’, using the empty brandy bottle in an obscene phallic way behind Miss Bodilsen’s back. ‘You weren’t in your room,’ he said to Kennedy, ‘and I heard these voices. … Can I have a word with you?’

  ‘Come in, come in,’ shouted Kennedy. ‘My comrade-in-arms,’ he said to Miss Bodilsen, who smiled and said: ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Everything went off all right then?’ Willey muttered to Kennedy.

  ‘Like a bloody dream. Any developments your end?’

  ‘Yes,’ Willey said. ‘I signed the contract this afternoon.’ He looked into the other’s sweating face, fixed now in a broad ecstatic smile, and thought how strange it was that there should be anything like complicity between himself and this person.

  ‘Congratulations, old boy,’ Kennedy said. ‘You let me get at the papers before any definite offer was made to you. I’ll never forget that.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Once he had agreed it had ceased to matter whether he got anything in return. Useless to tell Kennedy that, of course.

  ‘My friend Willey,’ Kennedy said loudly to everyone in the room, ‘has just had a bit of good luck, I mean a bit of good news. He has made an upward step in his career. I think we should congratulate him in the traditional way.’ He stood for a moment looking bemusedly round the room, shirt-front gaping widely open, fair hair falling into his eyes. Then in a slow and raucous voice he began to sing ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. Simpson, abandoning his by-play with the bottle, joined in almost immediately and after a few moments Thorne too, in a surprisingly tuneful tenor. The three men sang loudly but with serious expressions, looking steadily at Willey; and the elemental affirmation of the chorus gave them all for the moment a sort of sincerity, which Willey found unexpectedly moving.

  He was attempting to sustain his smile of acknowledgment, and they were entering on the chorus for the third time, when a sharp knock was heard on the door, and a moment later the door was opened and Kitty’s fleshy but nobly curving nose appeared, and her Byzantine eyes, filled now with accusatory fire. What was the reason, she wanted to know of Mr Thorne, for all this tapage? She had always thought of the English as a people sérieux. Now other guests were complaining. And in Mr Thorne’s room too, he who had always comported himself so well in the past. … Kitty’s abundant form quivered, beneath the pink flannel, with the agitation of her feelings.

  ‘We were just having a little drink,’ Kennedy said. He adjusted his shirt hastily and did his best to reduce his smile to sober dimensions. He liked Kitty. Her perpetual quest for propriety appealed for some reason to his imagination. He had an idea she might have whored it a bit in the past. ‘We were celebrating the good fortune of our friend here,’ he said. ‘He has obtained a bonne situation in Athens. He is a professeur.’

  ‘Ah,’ Kitty said, mollified immediately by this presence of a professional man in her house. A certain calm descended on her flesh. ‘Soyez le bienvenu,’ she said. ‘I was myself at the French School in Constantinople. Chez les soeurs, you understand.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Kennedy said, ‘we were just on the point of inviting you to join us in a drink. Sans façon, you know.’

  ‘It is not with me a habitude,’ Kitty said, ‘but on this special occasion …’ She smiled richly at Willey.

  ‘When I was young,’ she said, halfway through her second glass, ‘I had a voice très forte. When I sang I could clearly be heard at great distances. Even now …’ She raised her head and sang mi — mi — mi in a somewhat clotted but still powerful contralto. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Ça pénètre, n’est ce pas?’

  ‘It does indeed,’ said Willey, in whom the cognac was effecting a perceptible thaw of reserve. ‘An extremely powerful voice,’ he said, to no one in particular.

  Thereafter they passed on to other things, but as she was coming to the end of her third glass Kitty reverted to the topic. ‘This gift,’ she said, ‘was of use to me during the war. I was returning to Greece on a passenger ship when we were attacked near Rhodos by Italian planes. I saw the first plane diving towards us, monsieur. I knew he was about to release his bombs. I lifted my head and sang up to the aeroplane in the sky.’ Kitty raised he
r head and flung wide her arms in a gesture of supplication. Sounds of astounding volume broke from her open mouth: ‘Perche, perche, signore? Siamo Italiani, Italiani!’ In the hush that followed she looked from face to face, her bosom heaving slightly. ‘They heard and believed, those pilots,’ she said. ‘The planes departed. The lives of all were saved.’

  ‘That is amazing, truly amazing,’ Willey said.

  Kennedy frowned at Simpson, who had begun obscenely wielding the bottle again, unnoticed as yet by Kitty. ‘There’s one thing I would like to know,’ he said. ‘And that is, why was the man who had my room given the boot? Why was he given notice, I mean? What did he do?’

  Kitty paused a long time before replying to this. She finished the rest of the brandy in her glass. ‘It is a painful topic,’ she said at last. Then she seemed to come to a decision. She drew closer to Kennedy and said in a rapid whisper, ‘Le scélérat, il a pissé au dessus du balcon.’

  ‘Good God!’ Kennedy said. ‘In full view?’

  ‘Ah, no, moniseur, there is the baseness of it. He stood within his room and from there he directed his sale urine. Over the top. And an acquaintance of mine, an elderly lady who makes lampshades, who was passing at the time, had her head wetted by it.’ The recollection of this horror had given Kitty the trembles again. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I gave him notice sur le champ.’

  ‘I should think so,’ Kennedy said, with a soothing intention, but Kitty had distressed herself, and after a few moments took leave of them.

  Willey followed soon after. Olivia is expecting me,’ he said.

  ‘The best of British luck!’ Kennedy called after him, ‘to you and yours.’

  Outside it was very dark. Willey decided to walk back, to clear his head. The brandy and the noise had given him an illusion of solidarity with those people, but this rapidly faded as he walked. He thought again of the chorus they had sung for him. Quite ridiculous, of course, but at the time … Very primitive thing, altogether, singing. He remembered student songs full of ingenious anatomical reference, and other, jollier songs of remote camping holidays. All sexual, of course — young men reminding one another of their intention to undo the whole female population. Only the young could sing in just that way, before they had understood how few women they were ever going to have, when reciprocity could still be taken for granted, and the permanence of their own desires. … Young girls too did not know their limits, that was what made them so touching, so poignant. There was a time in a young girl’s life when she felt herself to have a complete licence. Merely by moving her limbs they assaulted the senses, knowingly, innocently … inviting what was still unimaginable. … Once, one Easter, when he had already been teaching some years, he had gone on a solitary walking tour through the Quantock Hills. He had come into the outskirts of Taunton in the early evening, a golden evening, the first really warm weather of the year. His memory had not retained the sense of any buildings, only a long straight avenue planted on either side with some sort of miniature trees with slender, pointed leaves, rowan trees perhaps. A light breeze stirred the narrow leaves continuously and at intervals along the avenue, like something precious and ephemeral brought out by the sudden warmth, groups of young girls, talking and laughing. No buildings, no traffic, no other sound. Only the long avenue, dead straight, the trembling leaves, the clusters of girls like flowers on the pavement, in light cotton dresses, summer dresses, for the first time in the year probably, and not yet accustomed to this thin covering, after the coddling wools of winter. … And just as the leaves on the trees were in constant agitation, the girls themselves were never still, they were chattering and laughing, they were looking at themselves, raising arms or legs to be inspected, sometimes revolving their bodies quickly, causing their skirts to swirl briefly and subside, occasionally clutching themselves in a sort of embrace as though in self-protection against the mild air, the sunshine, the promise of the spring. Helplessly, helplessly, in every movement and gesture they invited some violation. …