Forgery

by Sabina Murray

  The man laughed. “I’m old. It might take awhile.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said. “I want to see the site, but it’s a bit hot right now.”

  “Good,” said the man. “Join me for a light lunch, and then afterward I will escort you.”

  “That’s very kind,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” the man said. “But there is this”—he lifted his cane for me—“and I don’t think I’ll make it up without a little help.”

  My host, who introduced himself as Henri Michaud or, as I called him, Monsieur Michaud, had been a part of the original excavations. He was there for fifteen years, starting in the early 1890s, and at this point—short car trip to the village of Aráhova—he must have been close to ninety years old. His uncle had been a senior member of the French Archaeological Society, and Monsieur Michaud had accompanied him to Greece. Michaud’s mother was eager to separate him from his sweetheart at the time, to whom he was overly attached, and who was also the maid.

  “I started out carrying buckets of dirt. I learned the Greek of the time and studied the Greek of the past at night. I left for two years to take my exams and earned a degree.”

  Monsieur Michaud stepped out of the car. He said something to the young man who was driving and tossed him a coin. There was some good-natured banter back and forth. The restaurant was cheerful, in stark contrast to the view, which offered an uninterrupted dive into a ravine. I ordered grilled lamb.

  Michaud had a salad. “Nothing cooked anymore,” he said. And then leaned in, whispering, “It’s the raw food that’s kept me alive.” He ordered some white wine and we drank it.

  “Where are you staying?” he asked.

  “At the Apollon.”

  “So you are in Delphi?”

  “Yes.”

  “We built that town,” said Michaud. “There was once a village over the site, called Kastri. We moved it to where you are staying. Delphi.”

  “And everyone just moved?”

  “We paid them. There was one woman, however, who did not want to go. She lived in a shack, you know, nothing, but it was hers and she liked it. We tried reason but she didn’t lack for anything and was happy where she was. Then one day she gets up and says she’s moving. Of course we want to know why, and she says she had a dream that there was a young boy drowning in a sea of green beneath her and he was begging her to set him free. This, of course, terrified her. When she was gone, we were free to excavate in that area, and that is where we found the charioteer.”

  There was a moment of silence. It was a good story, hard to follow up.

  Michaud said, “I have spent my life unburying things, but soon I will be buried, covered up.” He was amusing himself. “This is my last trip to Delphi.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  Michaud looked at me as if I were a fool. “At my age, death is one thing you can be sure of.”

  Michaud insisted on treating me to lunch. He called for the young man, who appeared instantly, and soon we were driving back to the oracle. The heat was still powerful and, after the museum, the site did not hold my attention. Ruins were, after all, ruins, bleached by centuries, exuding a dignified despair.

  Michaud glanced around him as if every rock were an old friend. There was something in the heat and the deafening drone of the cicadas that lent the ruins a sinister edge, made it seem more of the god Pan and his jovial mayhem than Apollo and his moderation. I could see how a place like this could drive people mad, or at least make them drink more than was sensible.

  “Can I give you a hand?” I asked Michaud.

  “Up to that rock there, which is by the temple of Apollo,” he said. He tucked his hand firmly in the crook of my elbow, nodded, and we began moving slowly upward. The marble under foot was polished to a reflecting sheen, and I was afraid I might slip and take both of us down, there was a steepness to the place that made it possible for one to fall for an uninterrupted mile.

  “I was looking forward to a little tour,” I said. I looked over at my companion; he seemed pale. There was shiny film of perspiration on his forehead, but his hand was cold.

  “The rocks speak for themselves. As for me, I have said too much already.”

  “Too much?” I protested.

  “You have only been around me for the last hour. You have missed the ninety years during which I have spoken endlessly.” He gestured at a bench that was mercifully shaded by a stone wall and a narrow cypress. “Go up,” Michaud said. “You don’t want to miss the theater.”

  I helped Michaud to the bench. I looked down at the road and thought I saw Custard’s car, parked at a short distance, barely visible. I wondered if Steve had returned, but a moment later, when I looked again, the car was gone. Michaud sat and I continued higher, zigzagging up the Sacred Way, past the Temple of Apollo, up to the theater. From there I could see the entire site. Groups of tourists stood in the oppressive heat, staring at the blazing rocks. I looked down to Michaud; he appeared to be sitting quietly. Then I saw him fall to one side, as if the urge to nap had suddenly overwhelmed him. A woman rushed over, and then her husband. People began to cluster around and I knew something had happened. I thought I’d run down to join them, but felt strangely incapable. I kept thinking of the face of the charioteer peering through the earth, an image that had become intertwined with the burial of my son, as if he were waiting in the rich Connecticut earth, calling for me to set him free. I sat on a marble step, comfortably shaded, watching as if it were a performance. A few minutes passed. Our young driver ran up to Michaud, but by now a small crowd had gathered. I imagined that he grabbed Michaud’s hand. Maybe half an hour later, two men appeared with a stretcher and laid Monsieur Michaud on it; when they carried him down, a sheet was pulled over his head.

  I woke from my stupor at this stage and got to my feet. I thought I would run after them, tell them something, but I didn’t know Michaud. He was not my friend. He was a fellow lover of art, a man who had treated me to lunch.

  I made my way back to the hotel a half hour later and was relieved to learn that there was a late bus I could catch back to Athens. I would have time to bathe and have a drink, and then it would all be over, nothing but a darkly pretty dream.

  6

  p

  Nikos stared at me across the bolt of cloth. “Rupert, what is wrong with this?”

  “It’s a bit shiny, isn’t it?”

  “No,” said Nikos. “No it’s not.” He said something to the tailor, who smiled and set it aside. “I’m having some pants made out of it.”

  “I prefer linen.”

  “More linen? It’s like a tablecloth, all that linen.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll have pants out of that stuff too.”

  Nikos smiled.

  “But tell him to cut them wide. I like a nice long rise, none of the nut-hugging stuff you go in for. And I don’t like pointing my toes like a ballerina to get my pants on.”

  Nikos translated as accurately as he could to the tailor, who started laughing. He yelled at his assistant, who quickly appeared with a tray of ice-filled glasses and a bottle of Metaxas.

  “When is all this stuff going to be ready?” I asked.

  “Day after tomorrow. I’m paying extra for it, and I’m one of his best clients. He’s the only tailor around here with so many Italian fabrics. And he’s a relative somehow. My mother’s cousin’s cousin’s uncle-in-law or something.” Nikos shrugged. He swigged the Metaxas, and the tailor immediately refilled his glass. The tailor said something to Nikos, but he was looking at me.

  “Do you need any ties?”

  “I was hoping I wouldn’t need any. Not on the island, surely.”

  “That is true. You don’t need ties on Aspros.”

  Nikos stood, said some final salutations, which I followed up with a kali spera and we were out on the street.

  “You haven’t said much about Delphi,” he said.

  “I told you about Steve Kelly and the bacch
antes. How much more could happen in twenty-four hours?”

  Nikos shrugged in acceptance, but he knew he had not heard everything. “Your uncle called while you were gone. He wanted to know how you are doing. He is a very good uncle.”

  I studied Nikos, but there was nothing ironic in his presentation. “He is an exceptional uncle,” I said.

  “He wanted to know if you’d made any progress.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “I said that Greece was good for you.”

  “I don’t think my well-being was the subject of his inquiry.”

  “There you are wrong,” said Nikos. “I think it’s what really interested him.”

  At this point, it was probably about two-thirty—lunchtime—so we headed to the Pláka for some food. There was a restaurant Nikos favored for its eggplant salad, which, with some wine, sounded good to me. I picked up a newspaper on the way.

  Nikos had just finished ordering when he noticed a business acquaintance of his father’s at the next table.

  “The man is a bore, but it would be rude for me not to sit with him for awhile.”

  I held up my paper. “I’m quite capable of occupying myself,” I said.

  On the front page was a headline: CAR BOMB ON ALBANIAN BORDER KILLS SEVEN.

  And the byline? Steve Kelly.

  There were several things wrong with this. First of all, the day that the bombing was supposed to have occurred, in the wee dawn hours, was probably around the same time that Steve was waking up in the ruins of Delphi, himself a ruin of Delphi, on his way to report this story. How could he have known it was going to happen? Maybe this strange act of serendipity had happened in his favor. Or perhaps Mr. Custard was psychic. Nikos returned to the table and I held up the paper for him to see.

  “Your friend reporting on the Communists again,” he said, unimpressed.

  “Again?” I looked at the paper. “Is there anything suspicious about this?”

  Nikos tapped a cigarette on the table and then lit it. “Yes, there is. The Albanians don’t have cars to blow up. Now, if it was a goat bomb—”

  “A goat bomb?”

  “SEVEN KILLED IN GOAT BOMB. It would resonate with Greeks, but, as I’m sure Steve Kelly has told you, his articles are picked up and printed everywhere. I doubt that Americans would respond to that. …”

  “You don’t think there was a bombing, do you?”

  “I’m not sure. Why was Steve Kelly headed there? Maybe he was tipped off. You said he spoke to someone on the way up, someone with information.”

  “Why would he make it up?”

  Nikos looked at me incredulously. “How can there be peace-keeping if there is peace already? It is your government that does this. They own the Greeks. They own our economy. Without America, we would be Albania. Every now and then, we are reminded of this.”

  The food arrived and Nikos dropped a piece of bread on my plate. He spooned a small mound of the salad next to it. “You look depressed, Rupert.”

  “No, maybe a little naïve.” I shook my head. “I don’t think Steve’s CIA.”

  “He doesn’t have to be,” said Nikos. “The paper he works for is all propaganda.”

  “Then why does anyone buy it?”

  “They know things before they happen.” He winked at me. “It’s like tomorrow’s news today.”

  I had trouble sleeping that night. I didn’t care what Steve was up to, but his keeping me in the dark seemed ungenerous. Had he found his band of rebels? At some point, I fell asleep. I was having a dream that involved a goat, some dynamite, and a pair of tight shiny pants when I was awakened by the ringing of the phone.

  It was a woman.

  “Guten abend,” she said, and, still in German, “I hope I haven’t woken you up.”

  This of course surprised me.

  “No, no,” I said. I always lied when people woke me up. I wondered who was on the other end of the line.

  “This is Elena Nikolaides. Kostas has asked that I call because there is a man here with a number of small pieces,” she continued in German. “Some things he thinks are valuable, but there is a plate he needs you to look at. He has sent Nikos over on the motorbike to pick you up.”

  I waited for Nikos on the sidewalk and enjoyed a cigarette. The light was on in Steve Kelly’s room. He must have returned while I’d been asleep. The clack of his typewriter sounding on the street was quietly reassuring. America was awake and in control everywhere.

  Nikos pulled up on the motorbike. He closed his eyes hard and then opened them. He had a sort of smile on his face that spoke more of resignation than pleasure. “Get on, Rupert,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “There is a—what do you call it—gravedigger?”

  His English was worse in the middle of his sleep hours.

  “I think that’s probably a grave robber.”

  “Yes,” said Nikos, unimpressed. “Small things. I don’t know why my father has to wake you up, but when someone wakes him up, he takes us all with him. My mother. Me. You. Who knows who else he feels he has to share this with?” Nikos gestured with a grimace that made his discomfort clear.

  “Did you see the objects?”

  “I know nothing about old things,” he said.

  The grave robber was with Kostas in the study. He was standing in too-short pants, and no socks, his leather shoes caked with mud. He looked balefully at Kostas, who was eyeing a coin while referencing a large and, to all appearances, unhelpful book.

  “Rupert, look at his coin,” he said.

  He handed it to me. “Well,” I said, “it’s electrum and Greek, but from the region that is now Turkey.”

  “Genuine?”

  I took a closer look. “I think so. Second century a.d. Where did he find it?”

  “He says near Epidaurus.”

  “You don’t believe him?”

  “Look at him,” said Kostas. Kostas said something to the man, and he quickly knelt down and began unfolding a worn wool blanket. There were a few things hidden in its folds. The glory of the find was a small plate in two pieces, figures in black outline on a white ground. I hesitated to pick it up first—to look excited—because I knew there was some bargaining ahead. Instead, I picked up a simple steel comb. There was still a hair in it, long and gray. I showed it to Kostas.

  “Maybe fifty years old,” I said.

  There was a clay lamp, simple, of the kind often found in graves, for use with olive oil. I looked at it but had absolutely no way of dating it. “Fourth century a.d.,” I announced.

  Then I picked up the pieces of the plate. I held them together. The image was that of a maid and her mistress. The maid carried a water jug and the mistress, hand pointed downward in some generalized imperative gesture, held the maid’s gaze. The two looked at each other across the empty field of the white grounding, across the fissure that halved the plate, with a steely intensity. It was this gaze that held the plate whole. I felt a value here, although I wasn’t sure if it was just in the beauty of the piece—there was something modern in the simplicity of the lines and the overall effect—or in its hailing from antiquity. I set the pieces down and picked up another coin, another Turkish piece.

  “Does he speak English?” I inquired.

  “I doubt it,” said Kostas. Nikos yawned.

  “Can I speak with you in the living room?” I said to Kostas.

  Nikos perked up a little. He had been leaning against the back of a chair, but now he looked at me closely. “I could use a cigarette outside, in the air,” he said.

  Kostas followed me onto the front step. “Well?” he asked.

  “All those things have a place and a value, except for the comb,” I said.

  “Good,” said Kostas.

  “How much is he asking?”

  “Not a whole lot. Maybe five hundred dollars. I’ll talk him down.”

  I lit a cigarette and pondered this. “It’s not much.”

  “
What is bothering you, Rupert?”

  “Kostas, all those things could be from Epidaurus. The coin is Turkish, but coins are made for easy transportation. And the comb makes me think he did dig all this stuff up. But the plate?”

  “It looks like a good piece.”

  “Well, that’s just it. Very nice, but what is it doing with this other stuff? And is there more? It seems likely, if he pulled it out of the ground, that he was digging in a previously undisturbed location. Where’s the other stuff?”

  “He may be hired by someone excavating the site, and this is all he has managed to hide.”

  “All right.” I nodded to myself. “It’s just the kind of thing I was looking for. My uncle will love it.”

  “Is it real?”

  “It’s beautiful, and for five hundred dollars, who cares?”

  Kostas looked at me with a tolerant yet uncomprehending gaze. “So I buy it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, you buy it.”

  “Now what is wrong?”

  “That plate. Remember the dealer I spoke with on Pandróssou Street? He knew of some equally impressive pieces that I think were excavated from the same area.”

  “You think they come from the same place?”

  “Or close by, but the other pieces were of a different, more primitive style. This plate is probably Athenian. It looks like something done by the Achilles painter.”

  “Why?” asked Kostas.

  “Well, the depiction of the maid and mistress for one. And the way the women are shown in profile, but their bodies are natural and twist into space in a three-dimensional way. And the white grounding with black.”

  “Maybe it is the Achilles painter,” said Kostas.

  “If it were the Achilles painter, it would be worth an awful lot. But some things are off.”

  “Like what?” asked Nikos.

  “I think he would have painted this on a lekythos.” The Achilles painter preferred jugs.

  “Maybe it was someone who was his student,” said Nikos. “Anything is possible. I don’t understand what the problem is.”

  “All pulled out of the same area at the same time, but differing in style.” I thought for a moment. “Am I questioning good fortune?”