by Alison Fell
‘Do you have links with any particular religious group,’ he asked. ‘Neokorai, for instance?’ When Ridotti translated his question Kyriaki looked askance at him, as if to say: You’ve been doing your homework. Which, indeed, he had, with a little help from his friends, the obliging Nina in particular.
A quick sweep of the Internet had netted a plethora of New Age groups: polytheists, monastic pluralists, Hellenic revivalists, invokers of Demeter or Apollo. He’d originally read the name as Neokouroi – under the influence, no doubt, of Ivo Kruja’s outpourings. Neokorai apparently meant The Temple-Keepers. They had 25 members, and boasted a spiritual retreat for truth-seekers and an esoteric library of over 2000 volumes. The joining fee, he noted with interest, was given as ‘all assets’.
Margit was regarding him with the weary tolerance of a teacher faced with the class dunce. ‘We are not pagans, Sergeant. Although we do believe in building alternatives to a spiritually bankrupt society.’
She produced the Japanese fan from her bag and opened it with a loose-fisted gesture that would have done credit to a Court lady of the Heian era, flickering it at the stale air until tendrils of pale hair levitated above her forehead. He saw a bridge spanning a phantasmagorical gorge, over which a procession of kimono-clad ladies wended towards a spindly snow-capped mountain. Their black eyes were elongated, down-drooping, their mouths bee-stings in enigmatic oval faces. Despite himself, the deft lines and delicate colours – so incongruous in the sordid room – lulled him into a landscape of longing, and for a moment all thought of present procedures wavered and lost substance in his head. Perturbed by the lapse, he said on impulse, ‘And would you describe yourselves as feminists?’
Detecting a flicker of interest in her eyes, he watched her closely. If he fanned the spark, gently at first, would it produce a flame, would the ice-maiden melt in the fires of her own fanaticism?
‘Only in that we would say men have become egotised. They have lost their proper relationship to the feminine.’
‘But they can regain this?’ Although the fixed gaze of faith made him shiver, he forced himself not to look away.
‘I believe so. It’s a question of cultivating the correct state of mind.’
What state would that be, he wondered. Resting his chin on his hand, he adopted an expression of humble interest. ‘You mean to say, through fasting, meditation, things like that?’
With an admonitory shake of the head Margrit snapped the fan shut and placed it on the table. ‘Surely you don’t expect me to discuss our practices under duress, Sergeant? Of course, you’re very welcome to come to one of our open days – you might find it of great benefit.’ Her lips were twisted into something of a smile. Yiannis was in no doubt that he’d been rumbled.
Beside him Kyriaki rustled through the paperwork, pretending to examine bank statements, licences, and residence permits, as if hoping the display might unseat Margrit from her high horse. Clearing her smoker’s throat, she barked in Greek, ‘Can you account for your movements on the night of Saturday 3rd July?’ Without taking her eyes off Margrit, she folded her arms while Ridotti translated.
‘Last Saturday?’ said Margrit, musing. ‘I took yoga class in the early evening. Then cooking, I suppose. And I gave the twins an English lesson.’ She ticked off each item on her long fingers, bending them back at an angle which suggested double joints, rather than yoga.
Kyriaki eyed her beadily. ‘You’re certified to teach yoga in this country?’
‘We do not charge for our services, Sergeant. If the students wish to make a donation it’s up to them.’ Margrit rearranged her legs under the table, grimacing a little, as if the prosthesis was causing her discomfort. The play for sympathy, if such it was, was lost on Kyriaki.
‘You have their details? Cellphone numbers?’
Margrit shrugged. ‘Of course.’
When Kyriaki’s phone rang she switched off the tape recorder and flicked it open. Yiannis took advantage of the pause to check his own for messages, succumbing to the temptation he’d been resisting all day, with the zeal of a seminarist refraining from self-abuse. There was one message from the Co ops room and one from Katomeli station, but nothing, as he’d feared, from Ingrid.
‘Right!’ Kyriaki snapped her phone shut and glanced triumphantly at Yiannis. She said in English, ‘Crime scene boys turned up something.’
Yiannis raised his eyebrows, wondering if it was a set-up. Whether it was fact or fiction, the news had no apparent effect on Margrit, whose expression was not one of alarm, but annoyance.
‘Are you charging me with anything, Sergeant? If not, I would like to get back to my children.’
Ignoring her, Kyriaki turned the tape recorder back on, checked her watch, and informed the machine that the interview was terminated. She pressed the buzzer under the table and the female constable came in.
‘The officer will take you upstairs for DNA testing. Then you can see your children.’
For once Margrit was shocked into silence. When the constable made a move to help her up she rebuffed her angrily. She stood up and brushed down the skirt of her dress, as if sullied by the encounter and, head held high, limped towards the door.
As soon as Margrit had gone Kyriaki’s face creased into a smile. ‘Organic compost bag. Looks like someone buried it in the olive grove but the landslip turned it up.’
Yiannis stared at her. Old Stavlakis was a man of the donkey-dung era; he’d have laughed himself silly at the very idea of organic compost.
‘Where was this?’
‘Higher up the path, near the Katomeli road. They’re running tests now, but he said they’ve got some kind of dog-hairs.’
‘Have they, indeed?’ He had an image of Wiltraud on the porch, bending to stroke the St. Bernard. ‘The jeep,’ he said suddenly, ‘They haven’t checked it out, have they?’
Kyriaki gazed back at him. ‘Shit. I’ll get straight on to them.’
Yiannis felt like rubbing his hands. If Margrit knew when to feint, when to block, and when to concede, Wiltraud, he sensed, was more vulnerable, less of a tactician. He decided he was really looking forward to interviewing Wiltraud.
While Kyriaki went to snatch a bite in the canteen Yiannis headed outside for a cigarette. At the main entrance the first press men were staking out their positions on the pavement, smoking and eyeing each other with that hunch-shouldered, hunterly look. Just then Margrit emerged from the door, a child clutching each hand. Mrs. Leandrou followed in her wake like a faithful handmaiden, lugging the basket of toys.
Madonna and twins, he thought, as the posse closed in, bellowing for quotes, aiming their cameras at the shining prosthesis. As the little group, shepherded by Leandrou, reached the waiting squad car, a NET van screeched to a halt at the kerb and Martha Hourdaki bundled out, insofar as one can do so in a skin-tight skirt and five-inch heels. The frilled jabot on her blouse failed to conceal the magisterial bosom on her, and he had the impression that she didn’t really shoulder her way through the throng, rather that the photographers parted before her bust in the way the Red Sea had before Moses. She had a tape recorder on a strap over her shoulder and a cameraman in tow. As she thrust the mike under Margrit’s nose her cameraman backed away, lining up his shot.
When Yiannis heard the word ‘harassment’ he ground his cigarette out under his heel and turned away. He didn’t need to wait around to hear the rest. He could watch the whole show on the evening news, like every other punter on the island.
50
On the way back from Phaistos they say little. Glenys texts busily on her mobile, then leans back against the headrest and lapses into a doze. Outside the window the panorama changes from mountain scrub to green valleys in which lemon groves lie tranced under the long evening shadows.
When Ken puts Ella Fitzgerald on the CD player the lazy purity of the voice gives the lie to the spoilers of the world, who go boldly where there’s money to be made, who reduce things to the lowest common denominator. Ingrid’s mouth
quivers childishly and her eyes sting with the onrush of tears. She knows she’s outnumbered; her political party would have a membership of one. Conscious that Ken can see her in the driving mirror, she shuts her eyes and lolls her head back in a pretence of sleep.
The main street of Panomeli is quiet in the dusk, moths inhabiting the first tentative aureoles of the street lamps. Only the Minimarket shows any signs of life. Ken stops the car outside and, keeping the engine running, gives Glenys’s shoulder a squeeze. Glenys opens her eyes and looks at him blankly. ‘Wakey wakey! I reckon you girls need an early night.’
Relieved, Ingrid agrees. An early night isn’t actually on her agenda, but nor is dinner à trois with the Giffords.
On the terrace outside the Minimarket Demosthenes’ two young children are down on their knees, prodding a small animal. It’s a young hedgehog, tottering on skinny legs – too young to have learned the defensive reflex of coiling itself into a spiny ball.
‘Hedgehog,’ she says, because she doesn’t know the Greek.
The little boy points at it, looking up at her. He says a word that sounds like okantksochiros.
‘He lose his Mamma,’ the girl announces sadly.
Inside, Demosthenes is cashing up. Apologising, Ingrid grabs a small bottle of ouzo from the shelf and, on second thoughts, asks for a 10 euro phone card. Demosthenes smiles wearily at her as he extracts it from the pile.
Upstairs she showers and puts on a cotton wrap. Sofia the maid has been in: the marble floor, washed clean of sandy residue, is smooth and cool underfoot. In the kitchen the crockery has been cleared from the drying rack, which stands upright on the gleaming draining-board; she has even refilled the ice tray in the fridge.
It’s cooler now, although thunder rumbles distantly in the north, and a brilliant fork of lightning stabs suddenly at the dark meniscus of the sea. No sound comes from the Shapcott’s studio next door, but she can hear murmurings from the balcony above. If Kylie is back from hospital, shouldn’t she be visited? The thought crosses her mind but, like the guilt, is swiftly suppressed. Traumatised Kylie might be, and deserving of sympathy, but the odds are she’d still be capable of biting the hand that feeds.
Tipping ice-cubes into a glass, she drenches them with ouzo; finds olives and half a packet of pistachios in the cupboard, and takes them through to the bedroom. The beds she and Yiannis pushed together are single and separate again, spread with sheets that still bear the rectangular creases of the iron. She switches on the bedside light, retrieves her laptop from the wardrobe, and plugs it in.
51
Kober sailed for New York on September 10th, just as John Franklin Daniel, on the other side of the Atlantic, embarked for Turkey. She arrived in Brooklyn on September 18th, having encountered a hurricane en route. As she wrote to Myres,
‘We were at its edge about 18 hours, apparently because we might have to go in to succour some ships in distress.’
It appears that, in the meantime, Myres had decided to revoke his previous sanction, for at the beginning of October Kober wrote to Sundwall that she now had permission to release her drawings of the Knossos inscriptions, arranged according to her classification, to all the scholars interested.
‘This made me very happy, but required a great deal of work, since I had not made the drawings for such a use, but simply to be used in connection with Scripta Minoa when it appeared.’
She was mailing to him, under separate cover, a set of reproductions, with some corrections.
‘I know only too well how inadequate you will consider them. No matter how carefully I draw the signs, the process of hectographing blurs them, and makes them hard to read. Also, hand-drawing results in errors and checking these will take a long time. All the same, I feel that in your case, the sooner you get these drawings, with all their faults, the better.’
In fact Sundwall is being given a preview. Kober lists the other scholars who will receive copies later, once she has compiled a comprehensive list of corrections:
‘When I have sent the inscriptions to Ktistopoulos, Hrozny, Pugliese Carratelli, Perruzi, Grumach, Daniel, Bennett and Blegen, we can all exchange ideas.’
Ventris’s name is conspicuously absent from the list, and in none of her letters that autumn is there any reference to their disastrous meeting in Oxford. On that subject, apparently, Kober’s lips were sealed.
Scripta Minoa II dealt only with Linear B scripts, but Myres also wanted to publish Evans’ Linear A corpus, in the form of a proposed article for the American Journal of Archaeology, and despatched to Brooklyn the batches of Linear A material which Kober had not had time to copy. Charged with this extra responsibility, on top of a backlog of college work – 130 exam papers to correct from all five classes – as well as at least one visit to Philadelphia to organise the Minoan Research Centre, she wrote peevishly to Sundwall,
‘First I have to type [Myres’] handwritten manuscripts with the typewriter and then I have to read everything through very carefully because he makes so many mistakes. The truth is that he is not really capable of reading Minoan scripts. Perhaps his eyesight has deteriorated and he does not want to admit it.’
What Kober did not confide to Sundwall was that she had become ill in September, either on the boat or soon after her arrival in Brooklyn. Her family had become worried about her, and blamed her malaise on the fact that ‘she didn’t eat properly in England.’
In a letter written on November 9th she finally confessed to Myres,
‘My health is, unfortunately, not what it should be. I was again [sic: does this imply that she had had previous treatment for the same complaint?] in the hospital for almost six weeks and just returned home a week ago. I managed to acquire something very unusual, and it took the doctors more than a month to find out what it was – and then they were stumped about a cure. I think I am on the road to recovery – I hope so. I am not bed-ridden, but am at present house-bound, because 10 weeks in hospitals in the last 12 have weakened my legs so that I cannot manage stairs. But enough about that.’
Kober’s account of the timing is curious here: if she arrived in New York on September 18th, she had not been back in the U.S. for more than 7 or 8 weeks – unless we are to assume that she was also in hospital in England, which seems unlikely. It was not in Kober’s nature to make special pleas for sympathy, and it is hard to believe that a woman like her would have resorted to exaggeration. It is notable that she made no complaint about the extra work Myres’ Linear A article would involve; rather, she stalled.
‘Daniel may give up the editorship [of the A.J.A] since he wants to go excavating and can’t be editor at the same time. There’s nothing I can do until he gets back.’
Daniel was not expected back till February. In the week before Christmas, however, news came that he had died suddenly, near Antalaya in southern Turkey.
On Boxing Day Kober wrote to Myres,
‘I heard last Tuesday that Daniel had died in Turkey, at the age of 38, of a heart attack. The news came as a terrible shock, as you can imagine. Daniel was a friend of whom I was fond as well as the person on whom practically all of my Minoan plans for the immediate future depended. I don’t know what’s going to happen about the Minoan Research Center or about your ms.’
To Sundwall she reiterated her worries about the Centre, adding sadly,
‘In ihm habe ich einen Freund, nicht nur einen Kollegen verloren.’ (In him I have lost not only a colleague, but also a friend.)
On the same day Kober wrote to Dr. Froelich Rainey, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum, anxiously seeking assurances and proposing a meeting in January.
‘It occurs to me that the Minoan Research Center depends very much on the Curator of the Mediterranean section, and it is possible that the new curator may not think of it as Daniel did.’
Even if it was Kober’s habit to suppress her personal feelings and focus her energies on her scholarly work, such hard-headedness seems inappropriate, not to say callous. The follow
ing day she set off for St. Louis, 1800 miles away, where the annual Christmas meetings of the Archaeological Institute and the Philological Association were to take place. For Alice Kober, evidently, it was a case of the show must go on.
Depression, not surprisingly, took over. Although her letters in the following weeks are overwhelmingly technical – she and Bennett were preparing to exchange sign-lists, and Bennett had worked out a system of counting for the Pylos words that she intended to adopt – a mood of almost cosmic gloom pervades them.
‘You are a busy man,’ she wrote to Sundwall in March, ‘with lectures, and articles, and Linear B – at least it will take your mind off the Iron Curtain. We all need to keep busy these days, so that we will not think too much!’ And again, a few days later: ‘I am afraid our civilisation is doomed. Whatever happens, the freedom of the individual will be lost, and for generations we will live in war or under the threat of war. The prospect is too gloomy to think of.’
Sundwall may have suspected that what ailed Kober was something rather more deep-rooted than the Cold War angst she gave voice to, for he appears to have prompted her about Daniel’s death. On March 19th she wrote a brief reply.
‘I did not write more about Daniel because I myself had no information. He died in Turkey, while he was exploring for a site to excavate for the University Museum. He was with Rodney Young, who is now his successor at the Museum. Young came back for a few weeks in January, and told me all I know. Daniel seems to have died of a heart attack – although I suspect the doctors there did not examine him too carefully. They had just finished inspecting a site, and were in an automobile, going to another place, when Daniel, who had apparently been in the best of health, complained of feeling ill. In half an hour, he was unconscious, and in two or three hours more, was dead. He was taken to Cyprus, and buried at Episcopi. It is very sad. I still can’t believe it.’
