Willey, as though looking down a long tunnel at some framed image at the other end, saw again the trees, the sunshine the laughing groups. He had passed by awkward, ungainly in his heavy walking shoes, of no account to them, containing his impure admiration; and the avenue had closed behind him like a track in water or sand, impossible to find again, except in memory. … Quite suddenly, as he walked steadily on through the darkness, Willey felt his eyes filling with tears.
‘Did you hear that?’ Kennedy said to Simpson. ‘He pissed right over the balcony railing. Standing inside the room. It must be a good four feet. And then he’d have to clear the railing too. I wish I’d known him.’
‘I think it’s disgusting,’ Thorne said.
‘That’s as may be,’ Kennedy said. The look of ecstasy had returned to his face. ‘I’m going out now,’ he added. ‘I have to see a man about a dog.’ He recovered the straw hat which had fallen to the floor and been somewhat trampled during Simpson’s dance.
He met Veta, as he had arranged, at the corner of Lysistratus Street. On the way there he found himself inclined to stagger, as much from fatigue as drunkenness: it had been an exciting day and he had eaten little. He had planned to take Veta into the Plaka. They would have supper at a taverna, during which, at an appropriate moment, and with a few well-chosen words he would hand over the drachmas.
‘Ça va?’ Veta said. She was chewing again.
‘Ça bloody va all right,’ Kennedy said.
They walked down Lysistratus Street, Kennedy steadying himself by putting an arm over Veta’s shoulder.
‘I am going to give you that money tonight,’ he said. ‘You will see that Kennedy is a man of his word.’ He took a pace away from her and attempted to tap himself on the chest, but staggered badly. Veta took his arm and held him steady. She was very strong. She looked for a moment, intently, at where his breast pocket would be, below the hairy tweed.
‘How do you like my hat, by the way?’ Kennedy said.
‘Please, Bry-an,’ she said, ‘give me the money now.’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘First things first. Let’s do the thing properly.’ He was determined to have his little ceremony. ‘I’m going to buy a couple of suits,’ he said. ‘First thing in the morning.’
‘It is with you, the money?’
‘Oh yes.’
She looked sideways at him for a long moment, as though trying again to gauge something about him, the degree of his drunkenness or his veracity. Then her substantial shoulders moved in a slight shrug. ‘Very well,’ she said. She continued to support him into the narrower and darker streets of the Plaka.
Mitsos waited at the corner of the square. The knife was inside his jacket, pressed against his side. It was half past nine. He had been standing there for two hours. He had watched George watering his flowers, watched him settle down with his newspaper, seen the kiosk shuttered and locked. Several people had passed through the square, most of them entering the taverna, but it was very dark where he was standing and he did not think he had been noticed. Certainly no one could have seen his face. He had about twenty minutes left if he was going to kill George this evening — the other was very regular in his domestic habits in spite of his variable days, and always went indoors a few minutes before ten, usually remaining there, but occasionally re-emerging and making his way to a brighter and more populous square, where he sat in a certain café playing tric-trac for a couple of hours. Mitsos had no thoughts except an awareness of the evening — the coolness, the dark, his own body motionless there, waiting; not lonely, no longer lonely, because his intention allied him with all the things that waited for night with purpose …
George had abandoned his belt tonight and was wearing narrow red braces. Even at this distance it could be seen how grateful his corpulence was for the coolness. Ten minutes or so. Suddenly Mitsos knew that he was going to do it tonight. He reviewed in these moments the long illness his life had been since he had first seen George in the Cathedral Square. The sight of that face had stricken him. Diseased thus, as though seeking medicaments, he had followed this man about the city, for how long now? Past monuments, through streets and squares that repeated themselves, were always the same squares and monuments and streets, one scene endlessly reiterated against which George, the carrier, stood or walked and he, plague-spotted, watched and followed. Tonight would begin his convalescence, restore the city’s multiplicity. He slipped his hand inside his jacket, rested it on the handle of the knife. He felt no doubt, as though the responsibility for the decision was not his, but someone’s much wiser. At the last moment it occurred to him to wonder briefly whether George was really the same man, but of course that didn’t matter now. … He took a few steps forward, passed under the light at the corner of the square, entered the alley.
And as he did so a voice from somewhere in the darkness behind him, quite close, an English voice, a voice he knew, shouted, ‘Hey there, old boy, a word in your ear.’ He saw George look up from his paper, raise his spectacles over his eyes to peer down the alley. He wheeled, passed once more under the light, which there was no avoiding and walked quickly away into the darkness at the side of the square.
‘No you don’t!’ Kennedy shouted. Oh no you don’t!’
If it had not been for the altercation over the rose Kennedy and Veta would have passed some minutes earlier and then Mitsos, still standing in the dark, would not have been seen. They had been walking quite at random through the streets, looking for a promising restaurant. Gradually, imperceptibly, they had found themselves in a less-frequented district, where the streets were darker and narrower, passers-by rare. A gypsy girl had stopped them, holding out a white rose. Ten drachmas she wanted for it. A rose is a thing beyond price, she had contrived to suggest merely by the gesture of offering it, and besides to lovers money shouldn’t matter. Her face worked while she cajoled them, with supplicatory yet insolent grimaces, the facial equivalent of a whine. Kennedy would have paid at once, what was ten drachmas to him now? But Veta had been outraged by the price, ten drachmas for a single rose. In the end she got it for seven, and pinned it to the front of her dress. Then they had reached this square, seen the taverna with caged birds on the wall. ‘Looks a bit scruffy,’ Kennedy had said. ‘But I’m too hungry to care.’
And at this precise moment he had seen the Greek chap pass under the lamp at the entrance to the alley, start off down the alley, then turn and scuttle away into the dark. ‘No you don’t,’ he said again. He plunged into the darkness. He could see Mitsos’ face and his white shirt-front. By going directly across to the wall he was able to intercept Mitsos, get in his way. Even then the other would have rushed past him, but Kennedy seized his arm, forced him to stop. ‘You’re always trying to dodge me,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Aren’t you? Did you think I was going to ask you for money again?’
‘Take your hand from my arm,’ Mitsos said.
‘A man with my assets,’ Kennedy said, keeping a tight hold on the other. ‘What were you up to in the alley?’
‘I was simply passing by,’ Mitsos said, beginning to tremble.
‘Balls,’ Kennedy said thickly. ‘That’s a lot of balls.’
‘Let me go,’ Mitsos said, ‘you interfering fool.’ He thought of George, folding up his paper now, preparing to go indoors. Rage rose within him. He saw in the darkness the broad outline of the other’s face surmounted by the hat; smelled the liquor on his breath. ‘You’re drunk,’ he said.
This simple truth enraged Kennedy. ‘Who are you calling names?’ he said. ‘Here, let’s have a look at your face under the light.’ He began tugging at Mitsos, pulling him towards the lamp at the entrance to the alley. Mitsos felt himself drawn helplessly several paces forward. Kennedy was holding the upper part of his left arm, in a painful grip that threatened at any moment to unclamp it from his body. Behind him Veta was saying something over and over in a frightened voice, but Kennedy took no notice. He was intent. Some innate brutality had been roused in him by
the other’s slightness, his lack of muscular power. Through the mists of drunkenness he groped for further pretexts.
‘You said Athens was a village,’ he said. ‘If Athens is a bloody village, why haven’t I come across Mrs Pouris, tell me that?’ He pulled Mitsos closer towards the lamp. ‘Tell me that,’ he repeated. They were almost under the light now. Mitsos felt his arm being forced away from his side, the knife slipping down. He thrust his right hand under his jacket and grasped the handle. ‘Come on, let’s have a look at you,’ Kennedy said, still tugging. ‘And don’t tell me you don’t know who Mrs Pouris is, we were on the same …’ His last sensations were over too quickly for him to register them fully. He saw Mitsos’ right hand emerge, saw the gleam of metal as the blade was lowered quickly, grabbed at the other’s wrist and missed, felt a sudden violent blow under his ribs. There was the intimation of a terrible, an irreparable, hurt done to him, but no pain. He clutched Mitsos a moment longer, then the night darkened and he fell down at the other’s feet. He seemed to settle himself for a moment on the pavement with a slow writhing movement, as though seeking some ease for his limbs. This ceased, and he did not move again.
Mitsos stood for perhaps ten seconds looking down at the man who had taken George’s place. The girl was strangely silent, but of course that was right, before such an appalling mistake no sound could possibly be uttered, there was no response in the human register. He looked at her indifferently for a moment, then back to Kennedy’s body. Someone would be coming, he should go away as quickly as possible. He should take the knife and go. But he could not believe there was any urgency in this now. He felt immune. The complete accuracy of that blind blow implied an intention beyond his own. He stooped over Kennedy with the idea of taking out the knife, but one of the other’s hands was curled loosely round the handle. Something helpless and childlike in the curl of those large blunt fingers which would never grasp again suddenly horrified Mitsos. This was clay now, however marvellously moulded. He straightened himself quickly and turned and walked away into the darkness, walking faster and faster, but without purpose, for, of course, he had nowhere to go now, nothing to do.
Veta watched him walk away. In spite of her shock and terror, a certain process of reasoning was going on in her mind. Watching that writhe on the pavement, and the stillness after it, she had known that Kennedy was dead, and the knowledge had kept her silent. Soon someone would come and find Bry-an lying there. They would get the police, and she would say what had happened, and perhaps they would catch the man. In that case, all Bry-an’s things would be taken and sent to England to his nearest relative. She would get nothing. But there was this promise he had made to her, which no one would ever believe. He had promised her fifty gold pounds. Nothing else much in their brief acquaintance mattered. Her virginity any doctor could restore for a hundred drachmas, sew up the hymen, so that her husband could shed a little blood, be satisfied. But fifty gold pounds would take years to get. And she would soon be twenty-one. …
Kennedy lay on his back, legs splayed out in an attitude of dreadful ease. His eyes were not open but not completely closed either, the lamplight elicited a gleam from below the lids. One hand rested loosely round the protruding handle of the blade, the other was outstretched, palm upwards. Several feet away the straw hat had come to rest, upturned on the pavement, as though inviting contributions while its owner slept.
Veta came to the only possible conclusion. Her eyes were dry now. She leaned over him very carefully, slipped her hand inside the jacket and took out the wallet. She felt its bulkiness in her palm. She had intended to count it out, the sum due to her, but now that she was actually holding the wallet a panic filled her to get away. They would say she was stealing. She lowered herself still further and kissed Kennedy on his forehead. Then she rose and began to walk rapidly back the way they had come, holding in both trembling hands Kennedy’s glowing testimonials, while slowly blood from his wound welled up round the plug of the knife-handle, ran over the curve of his belly and flank and stained the outer edges of the thick bundle of notes in his hip pocket.
PRAISE FOR BARRY UNSWORTH’S WORK
The Rage of the Vulture: “Superb storytelling. The richness of [Unsworth’s] language and imagery shimmers on every page.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A novel of revelation … haunting.”
—The New Yorker
Stone Virgin: “A brilliant, ironic, sublime version of the Pygmalion legend.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“No brief synopsis could suggest the sinuous intricacy of Stone Virgin or the adroitness with which Barry Unsworth manipulates the weighty mysteries of love, death, creation, faith, evil and the lure of history. … Consistently astonishing.”
—Boston Globe
Booker Prize-winning Sacred Hunger: “Utterly magnificent. … By its last page, you will be close to weeping.”
—Washington Post
“Quite possibly the best novel I’ve read in the last decade. … It is a completely satisfying literary experience and a great story, wonderfully told.”
—David Halberstam
Booker Prize-nominated Morality Play: “A learned, witty, satisfying entertainment. … Nicholas Barber seems too good a narrator to let go after just one short book.”
—New York Times
“Works brilliantly on three levels. It’s an accurate, carefully imagined historical novel, set in 14th-century England; a dark and suspenseful murder mystery; and a provocative meditation on the birth of a new art form.”
—Adam Begley, Chicago Tribune
BOOKS BY BARRY UNSWORTH
The Partnership
The Greeks Have a Word for It
The Hide
Mooncranker’s Gift
The Big Day
Pascali’s Island
The Rage of the Vulture
Stone Virgin
Sugar and Rum
Sacred Hunger
Morality Play
After Hannibal
Losing Nelson
Copyright © Barry Unsworth 1967
First published as a Norton paperback 2002
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN: 978-0-393-32148-7
ISBN: 978-1-324-00381-6 (ebook)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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The Greeks Have a Word for It Page 21