From here on it was along the level crown of Nanolithos; the road turned and twisted under frowning limestone cliffs. He walked it with an emphatic certainty, imitating in his own mind the thousand and one journeys he had made along it in the past. Yes, here was the tiny pink shrine to St. Nicholas with its battered ikon and broken lamp; and near it on the tor the rubble left from the ruined Venetian tower.
He skirted them both and passed steadily on until the massive front of dark rock divided itself into a ravine, with a solitary pathway running down the centre. He had reached the entrance to their operation-headquarters, and for a moment he stopped to watch the shadows playing on the surfaces of rock. He felt stirring within him, deeper than his disease of mind, something like alarm—as if somewhere among those balconies of rock a watcher was sitting and observing him with invisible eyes. Wherever he turned his gaze, however, his eyes met nothing. A bush waved in the wind for a second and frightened him with its resemblance to the camouflage of a sharpshooter. He slung the pack on to one shoulder and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. In the khaki pack he carried his lunch and the old bent entrenching-tool which, for some reason or other, he had been carrying about for so many years. He remembered now Hogarth’s explanation of the reason, and smiled. Had he really been reserving it for this moment, this time and place, on a mountain-range in Crete?
He walked steadily down the causeway and through the archway. It was with a kind of numb incomprehension that he saw once more the exact site upon which Böcklin had been killed; somehow he had expected to find it disappeared, transformed, perhaps removed altogether by a landslide. Yet here it was completely unchanged: the familiar orange seams of rock, the knot they had used as a target for their pistols, even the waterlogged shreds of the old ammunition box upon which Böcklin had been sitting when he died. The sweat had started out upon his head; he could feel its coldness in the breath of the wind that played around the ravine. He stood staring stupidly at the rock, which at this point was full of caves and foxholes. In them the wind whistled shrilly. Familiar debris still lay about, broken matchboxes, bandages, a torn sock, some exhausted revolver bullets. He stopped and picked up an empty case, turning it over and over in his cold fingers. Then once more he had the feeling that perhaps he was being watched, and looked up at the frowning sills of rock above, but all was still as death. The wind moaned in the central cavern which was set like a sinus under the cliff. The marks of their fires still dirtied the walls. Outside there was nothing. High in the cloudless blue an eagle sat its chariot of Greek air; the grass rustled quietly around his boots. This was the exact spot, in the shadow of the cliff, where Böcklin’s grave had been; the winter rains had washed out any depression in the ground.
It was almost absently that Baird began to dig; but before he did so he sat down close to the grave and ate ravenously. Somehow his agitation had translated itself into a devouring physical hunger. The bread and cheese tasted delicious in that cold air. He had filled an empty beer bottle at the rock-spring. Now as he ate and drank he asked himself what he was going to do with Böcklin’s body when he had exhumed it. The monastery was half an hour off; he would have to notify the Abbot and the sacristan of his desire to bury him in consecrated ground. And if they objected?
Putting these vexatious afterthoughts aside he took up his entrenching-tool and began the work. Somewhere out of sight a bird was singing softly, complainingly, in that cold air. He dug with circumspection, gently as an archaeologist afraid of damaging a trophy. The earth was not hard, for it lay in the dense shadow of the cliff where the dews could reach it. He paused for a moment to roll up his sleeves before resuming the work. How would Böcklin look now?
It was only after an hour’s work that it suddenly became clear to him that Böcklin was not there. The idea was borne in slowly upon a long train of evidence, and for some time he refused to countenance it. But by the time the sun had passed its zenith he had dug himself a hole large enough to prove the point conclusively. At first he felt his back and shoulders convulsed by a kind of shiver—as if the chill air of the mountain had suddenly affected him. He went on working, however, long after the probability had become a certainty. It seemed somehow imperative to find the body; and yet there was not a single trace of it to be found. He walked up and down the edges of the burrow he had dug, smoking and thinking furiously. Was it possible that a War Graves unit had removed the body to a military cemetery? It was most unlikely, for they would have their work cut out on chartered battlefields—like those near Canea and Retimo. Besides, who could have reported Böcklin’s death? Or had the body decayed? He kicked around in the pit for a while, sifting the rich clayey compost through his fingers, searching for traces that would give him some clue: tunic-buttons, rags, medals. There was absolutely no trace of his victim, and he suddenly sat down on a rock with a gesture of acceptance and began to laugh. Agitation and relief mingled with a confused amazement. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps Hogarth, in order to complete the pattern of symbolism, had deliberately removed Böcklin. “That’s it,” he said to himself, still laughing, “that old bastard Hogarth has done it.” He had a long drink of water and sat for a while soberly on a rock, smoking, his eyes fixed upon the grave. Then they wandered to the mouldy remnants of the ammunition box. Somewhere, in the depths of his mind, he felt that a corner had been turned; and yet after a while he was so overcome by his thoughts and the oppressive silence that had descended upon the place that he got up abruptly and moved off, tossing his spade into the hole he had dug with it.
He soon found himself sitting in a grove of ilex and arbutus on the opposite hill-side, enjoying a sensation of relief and deliverance—as if he had conquered a grave hazard. Through the waving fronds he caught sight of the sea from time to time. Its broad candid blue tamed his anxiety. He drank in the keen air with a heightened delight.
The shadows were already lengthening when he rose and followed a rocky bridle-path downhill. He had decided to walk across to St. George and see whether the old Abbot was indeed still there; in Canea they seemed to think he was. Perhaps he could throw some light on the question of Böcklin. And over and above all these things there was the question of finding out what the good Abbot was doing with the smuggled ammunition that Whitehall were so anxious about. It would be the best policy of all to call direct on the Abbot John before his arrival had been announced; Baird’s experience of Greeks had taught him that boldness was the only method to obtain his ends.
In a little while he came across a man in blue trousers goading a small laden hill-donkey along with sharp objurgations. He was able to ask the question that lay uppermost in his mind after the usual exchange of civilities. “Up at the monastery—is the Abbot John still there?” The peasant had a broad but starting forehead with a widow’s peak of hair. He spat with unction. “They are always there,” he said. “Thieves, blackmailers, priests.” Baird smiled. “Greece”, said the man, “carries the priest in her skin like a dog fleas.”
“Greece could do with more patriots as fine as her priests,” said Baird shortly, thinking of the marvellous actions of the old Abbot, his joyousness and insouciance; craziness and humour, childishness and resolution; that kaleidoscope of emotions which is forever turning in the Greek’s brain, defying logic. The man looked at him with a grudging pleasure. He had simply wanted a grumble—the natural conversational form of Greeks. “Well,” he said, “the Abbot John is a swindler.”
This Baird did not doubt for a second. He turned the subject towards a more congenial exchange of information. The man had two children. He was a fisherman (which was synonymous with pirate in Baird’s vocabulary). He was from the village of Nesboli—two hours away. Baird could not resist telling him that he had been there when the Germans had burnt down the village. “The Abbot John saved your kinsfolk then,” he said. “What has he done to make you speak like this of him?”
It was clear from the conversation that followed that the man was in the habit of unloading caiq
ues at the coast and bringing up loads on his donkeys to the monastery. Baird did not ask him what the caiques were filled with. Instead he professed indifference and at the next corner of the road they parted.
He was almost down to the sea-line again as he skirted the cliff-path above St. George. Below him, perched on the irregular hill-side he could see the red belfry and the white wall of the monastery glowing in the light of the afternoon sun. It had been built at a point where a shallow stream made an issue through the rock to reach the sea. Thus, in all that wild landscape it seemed to be an oasis of greenery, for the fresh water had thrown up cherry and walnut trees to cluster about it. Seen from above, the little building seemed to float upon this dense green sheet of foliage. A narrow shaded path led to the great oak door over cobbles; Baird fingered the familiar burns in the wood, remembering the occasion when Germans had conducted reprisals here on captive guerillas. Then he caught the massive knocker in both hands and knocked twice.
There was no answer. The door yielded slightly to his shoulder and opened, admitting him; he was standing once more in the little white courtyard paved with coloured sea-pebbles. The sunlight was white and lucid on the rock. Flowers were growing in pots along the sea-wall and he noticed that in some of them grew sweet basil, the Abbot’s favourite plant. He stood quite still and looked about him. Somewhere from the back of the building came a noise as of a pot being scoured with sand. The door of the little chapel was open. Inside the gloom was intense as that of a cave. Baird stepped inside, crossed himself, and waited for his eyes to begin printing the remembered picture. Gradually they emerged like a developing photo—the savage ikons with their tinsel haloes, the swinging lamps, the garish ironwork and plate. Presently, too, St. Demetrius swam out of the gloom—his eyes great boring points of blackness. Baird saw a bottle of olive oil on the ledge and, taking it according to custom, he tipped a little into each lamp to replenish it.
Now he crossed the dazzling courtyard and looked over the sea-wall. Withes of brown fishing-net lay spread upon a rock to dry. A small coracle of wood and straw was drawn up under the stairs leading down to the water. Several brown gourd-like lobster-pots lay beside it. Not a breath stirred the sea as it stretched clear from that white wall to the coasts of Africa. He watched it quietly swelling and subsiding, replete in its trance of royal blue. Once it gulped and swelled a few inches to carry back with it the limpet-shells left behind by some rock-fisherman.
Baird skirted the main building, struck by a sudden idea. The sea-wall ended in a small white balcony and a pergola of grapevine. Here lay the Abbot fast asleep in an old deck-chair, his noble beard lying upon his chest, his brown wrinkled hands with their short nails lying folded in his lap. His stovepipe hat stood beside him on the ground, and his feet were stretched out, one on either side of it, clad in heavy hob-nailed boots. Baird came up quietly and sat down upon the white seawall, facing him, looking eagerly at that venerable and innocent old face. Here he sat, waiting for the Abbot to wake, and feeling himself sinking insensibly into a doze, little by little; sinking through the floors of thought and action to that level in which one becomes suddenly one with the passive, accepting sea and air. It was as if all the contradictions and questions which had been filling his mind had suddenly been spilled into this broad and gracious quietness. He felt his eyes closing and his head falling upon his breast.
Once or twice the Abbot stirred in his sleep and seemed to be on the point of waking, but each time he settled himself deeper into the honey-gold quietness of the afternoon, into his own contented slumber. At last, when Baird was almost asleep himself, the old man spoke, without opening his eyes. “Well, my dear Baird,” he said; and now he looked up. “We all knew you would come back. It was simply a question of when.”
He rose groaning from his chair and they embraced tenderly. Then he sat down again and closed his eyes for a moment, before taking a packet of cheap cigarettes from the folds of his stained gown and lighting up. He yawned prodigiously and said: “I was aware that someone was sitting silently before me. I thought perhaps I was being covered by a revolver. You see? We haven’t shaken off our old habits yet. I just had a peep through my lashes to see what was what. Have you noticed that it is quite impossible for one to murder a sleeping man?”
“I knew you’d seen me,” said Baird.
“And so, my dear fellow,” said the Abbot, his face wrinkled shrewdly into a smile, “you have come back at last to revisit the scene of so many adventures.” He got up and put his arms round Baird, giving him a great bear-hug. Then he brushed the ash out of his beard and stretched again, yawning. “I cannot think of anything better,” he said.
“And what’s going on in the great world?” he asked, with that typical Greek passion for news from abroad.
“It is all exactly as you prophesied.”
“The nations are quarrelling?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. About possessions?”
“Pipe-lines, spheres of influence, trade.…”
“Did you expect anything different?”
Baird saw once more the shrewd hawk-like cut of the Abbot’s features, the curly rings of his beard around his wry mouth, and remembered those endless conversations with which they whiled away their inaction and solitude on the White Mountains. “I did,” he admitted at last. “I thought everything would be different once the basic revolution in property had been accomplished. I was wrong.”
“False premises, false conclusions,” said the Abbot John, and passed his hand slowly through his great beard, brushing away the cigarette ash which had a habit of clinging to it. “But console yourself. You are not the only person who is wrong. Wait until I introduce you to Brother Mark. Brother Mark is one of us—probably the most diligent. He believes that it is we who are building the new world—the new heaven and earth; here in this monastery. He believes that the invisible propaganda of our lives here is somewhere registered to our credit—to the credit of all humanity. Now surely that is just as bad as any business man? It proves that Brother Mark has not learned his own business yet. Virtue, and the practice of it, is its own end.”
“That is why”, said Baird, “you spend the intervals in business? You must be a rich man by now, both spiritually and financially.”
The Abbot looked slightly discountenanced. He coughed and examined the sky for a moment. “It is true”, he said in a faraway voice, glancing at Baird out of the corner of his eye, “that I am engaged in rather a profitable business at the moment.”
“It’s causing alarm in London.”
“What?” said the Abbot. “Do they speak of it in London? Is it so widely known?”
Baird could see that in his mind’s eye he was seeing a picture of London—a town slightly bigger than Megara—in which the citizens spent the day sitting on chairs outside their front doors and gossiping; an occasional shepherd passed with his goat, and sold the milk direct from the udder to the customer, milking it into any receptacle that was handy and receiving his payment at once; occasionally a lord in a top-hat passed in a car. “So they speak of me in London?” repeated the Abbot, registering something mid-way between pride and alarm. “What do they say?”
“That guns are necessary for revolutions.”
The Abbot giggled and hid his face in his sleeve. “Are you hungry?” he said, and, without waiting for an answer, clapped his hands twice and shouted: “Calypso.”
A small girl came round the corner of the house with quick lithe steps. “Bring whatever we have to eat. Your godfather is here,” said the old man. She embraced Baird rather selfconsciously and brought them food; some bread, black olives, onions and wine.
“Will you stay long?” asked the Abbot John, obviously working out in his mind the estimated time of arrival for a shipment of smuggled goods.
“I am at Cefalû,” he said, “staying with Axelos. Perhaps I shall stay some time. I am so glad to be back.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say something of Böcklin, to mention his vis
it to the mountain hideout, but the Abbot had embarked on a new line of thought. “All the world”, he said, “is coming to Cefalû. It seems there is something wonderful about the statues and things we found in the caves. Now here is something I don’t understand.” He paused.
“What?” said Baird.
“Old Axelos,” said the Abbot, “is he right in the head? He wishes me to pretend that I helped him carve some of the things in there. What do you make of that? He has given me a hundred pounds to swear it, and not to tell anyone that we discovered the statues together.” He stamped his foot. “There,” he said. “I’ve done it again. It was supposed to be a secret. First I accept his money and then I tell someone about it.” He struck his forehead twice with the knuckles of a huge gnarled fist. “The cursed garrulity of us monks—it is sinful. May the Creator punish us all.” He made Baird promise that he would not repeat the story. The Abbot relaxed and said: “But, after all, why should I not tell you everything—you are one of my oldest friends? Why should I not tell you also that that peasant woman Katina—he is married to her? I married them myself. Then why does he keep her as a servant in the house and never give her her dues as a wife? No, there’s something wrong with him.”
They walked together up and down the still courtyard. Baird admired the new lamp in the chapel, the pots of basil, and the vegetable patch. The three other monks who shared the old man’s monastic solitude were asleep. “I am very happy,” said the old man. “So very happy. I have never spent my time to better advantage. I see no one. I think of nothing. I pray a little and sleep a lot. As for the guns you mentioned, I will tell you about it so that you can reassure the citizens of London. There is no thought of revolution here. It is business only. I buy them cheap from the Jews in Palestine and sell them at a profit to the Jews of Tripoli. We are happily placed for communications here and recently some of the bravest seamen have come back to their villages. It is not a great profit, but it is a profit—and, of course, it is always a pleasure to make a profit from the Jews. Are you satisfied?”
The Dark Labyrinth Page 17
