“What do you remember of him, Professor?— I shall call you Professor always. It is best in any case.”
“I remember him leading the way into the schoolhouse where there was a fire to get warm by, that he helped Webb off with his coat and told you to do the same for me. At least I think that was what he said.”
Stephanou smiled a little. “You remember that also—as though I were a schoolboy—or a cadet who had forgot my manners. What else, Professor?”
“Nothing. After you left us in the schoolhouse I did not see him again. His name did not come up at the trial even, but I said that a moment ago.”
“I will tell you now I brought it up in my pre-trial questioning. I told them he was the only man present when Webb saw Markos. But that was much later.
“You will remember that after a little talk we left you and Webb to warm yourselves, and I was taken to be questioned in privacy. Markos was furious with those he called our politicians and with me, for bringing Webb. Captain Demetrios was a more sophisticated man. He took my side. Why not talk to Webb? He was an internationally known man who had done an excellent story on Tito of Yugoslavia with which even Comrade Tito could not find fault, who was a man of greater vanity than Markos.
“It was, I think, at this point Markos began to see some value in it. He wanted to know then about you. I did not dare tell him my own suspicions, not then. All I could do was to repeat what Webb had said: he wanted someone along who could not be accused of a Communist bias. I told him also that we had trailed you night and day for a week in Athens to see what contacts you made there, and Webb’s wife seemed to be your only friend.
“Markos wanted to know what nationality she was. I said English, and that did not help. Again it was Captain Demetrios who allayed the Commander’s suspicions. I should tell you, he did not allay mine. I did not like Margaret Webb any more than I liked you, and of her I still have not put away my suspicions. But we shall come to that.
“I do not remember in what order these things came up. Markos wanted to know how you and Webb were to be returned to Athens. Not to Athens, I explained. When the time came I would take you down to the Ioannina crossroads and leave you. The government patrol would meet you. It would coincide with when we were breaking camp, and even if they pursued us—which they would not do without reinforcements—we should by then be far away.
“I reminded him that this had been my last trip south. It was no longer safe for me. Besides, I was scheduled to work on the Free Greek radio—then operating in Macedonia.
“It took longer than telling you takes now, but he gave orders that Webb and you were to be billeted, and dismissed me. I thought it likely he would see Webb, and I waited to be called in as translator. That call never came. Instead he called for Demetrios. I was going over my intelligence with the captain when Markos sent for him, and by then I had confided to Demetrios my suspicions of you. He did not say whether he thought I was right or not, but commended me on my vigilance. He wanted to know how much I knew about Mrs. Webb. I told him of the times I had seen you together, what I had picked up of your conversations together. He asked me if I thought you were her lover. I said—forgive me, my friend, but you want the truth—I said I thought it was likely only if she was the seducer. He laughed and said she would not be the first Englishwoman who had found it necessary to take the initiative.”
Stephanou paused. “I am trying to remember all these things now. There was a time I made myself forget them for fear the constant thinking of them would drive me mad. I remember going outdoors and walking past the Commander’s billet. I was impatient not to have been called to translate. I saw Markos and Demetrios and Webb eating a meal which the woman, Maria, served them, and I knew then that I would not be called.”
“The same woman as afterwards?” I said.
“The same woman, a good woman.”
“Who was not produced at the trial.”
He said nothing for a moment, his mouth tightly closed. I lit a cigarette. “Do you know where any of these people are now?”
He laughed dryly. “We both know where Margaret Webb is, don’t we?”
“Is that why you want to go to Ioannina, in the hope of seeing her?”
“No. I have thought about that. And it occurred to me that Professor John Eakins might be able to arrange it. He is a friend of Dr. Palandios and other important people. But I doubt that the former Mrs. Webb would consent willingly to see me. And I am not certain what I would say to her although there is one thing I would like to know, Professor. If the allegations I made at the trial about you and her were so remote from the truth, why was she not more emphatic in her denial of them?”
“I too would like to ask her that question,” I said.
“Will you?”
“I doubt she would be any more anxious to see Jabez Emory than to see Paul Stephanou,” I said.
“You have a passport?”
“Of course. But it is made out to John Eakins. It was routinely issued by the State Department. I have achieved a modest esteem as a scholar, remote from all politics. No one questioned my right to travel. But if I made a wrong move now I think the wheels could grind exceedingly fast.”
“It is so. You have a great deal more to lose than I, my friend.”
“All the same,” I said, “I propose to chance it. I would like very much to have Margaret Webb tell me her understanding of the affair.”
“She will tell you what she wants to tell you, what she wants you to believe,” he said with harshness.
I thought about that for a moment. “Is that what you are doing, Paul, telling me what you want me to believe?”
“When you told me who you were, Professor, I thought: I am his prisoner. Now I am thinking you are much more mine. I have paid my debt to society. You are still under indebtedness to the people of Greece, according to the strict letter of the law. Would it not be ironic if in the end, like Shylock, they were forced to extract their pound of flesh?”
“Your Shakespeare has stood you in good stead,” I said dryly.
“As Byron you,” he snapped. “I am telling you what I know. If it is not true that is because I do not know the truth.”
“All right, Paul. Recriminations are of little use to either of us, but I would remind you that I am the one who was innocent in this bloody affair.”
“If you equate innocence with ignorance, yes.”
“I concede,” I said, though I bitterly resented his righteousness.
I waited while I supposed him to be plying the strands of memory for where to begin again, and I remembered that he had not directly answered a question I had asked. I asked it again in another way: “Do you know where any of the men who were in the camp that night are today?”
“How many were there in all? Eighteen or twenty at that outpost, I should say, Markos’ own, all committed to him till death or victory. He was afterwards removed from the command. I have heard he is in the Soviet Union and I know in my heart he would rather be in Greece. Those men I would suppose to have gone over the border also for life if they did not subsequently die in the fighting. As for Captain Demetrios, I do not know. Perhaps he was the first to go. Or perhaps he remained to become adviser to Markos’ replacement. In the light of history… ach, what do I know in the light of history?”
“Is it possible that he is still in Greece?”
“It would be exceedingly interesting—especially considering that I was blinded before I should be released from prison.”
For the first time since my return to Greece I experienced the chill of fear. If Paul was blind, I was not, though for the life of me at that moment I could not remember what Demetrios had looked like.
Paul wiped the perspiration from his forehead, groped for the wall and leaned back against it. “Since I do not believe either of us to be a fountain of certainty, Professor, let us try to take things as they came upon us then. Let us go back to the interview. I do not know how long they were together….”
�
��Three hours or so,” I said. “Remember, I too was frustrated. I had expected to go with Webb.”
“That is so,” Stephanou said. “How were you going to write the story if you were not present when Markos told it? Did Webb give you an explanation?”
“None. I took for granted I was to go along until you or whoever it was came for him. He said, ‘I am going alone.’ That was all.”
“Do you remember what time it was then?”
“It was almost dark. I lit the lamp after he was gone.”
“Perhaps we must remember that,” Stephanou said. “It was already very dark when Markos sent for the captain. When Webb returned, what did he say?”
“He asked me if I had been brought food. Then he said to go back to sleep. He took off his trenchcoat, threw it down on the floor and sat by the lamp for a few minutes, thinking, I suppose. Then he got up and got his notebook from the coat pocket. He examined the coat for a moment, the collar, I think; I remember him rubbing it as though there was a dirty spot. Then he sat down and began to write. I have always thought since that he was writing against time. His concentration was absolute.”
“And he told you nothing of what he was writing?”
“Nothing.”
“One would give a great deal to know for a certainty why he did not confide—and what became of that notebook. His passport, everything else was on his body when it was found. Is that not so?”
“So it was claimed. I identified his person. I did not see his effects.”
“In other words, the notebook could have been taken by the government. It could have been in their hands and those of their American advisers. It could have been the basis for everything that happened afterwards.”
“I thought everything that happened afterwards was based on your testimony,” I said.
“I hope that it is not so,” Stephanou said, ignoring my direct thrust. “I want to tell you now, as exactly as I can remember it, what happened to me. When Demetrios was sent for, I ate a meal with my comrades, the same meal as was brought to you. Their morale was very low. Some of their wives were in camp in Yugoslavia. A Greek wants his family in Greece. Some had left their family behind, and already they had fears of never seeing them again.
“There were rumors that Markos was at odds with the political committee. And of course they all wanted to know what intelligence I had brought. I think what they really wanted to know was if I thought they could ever go home again. I knew that I could not unless we won. Or unless I made myself useful to the King’s government. That was the first time anything like that crossed my mind. It frightened me that I should even think of it, but it was in my mind when the General sent for me toward midnight, and not having sent for me before.
“He was alone—except for the woman. She was eating the food that was left from their meal, and putting some of it in her pockets to take with her. He sent her away when I came. I had never seen him look so old, so tired. He told me to sit down.
“‘You brought me a friend, my young comrade Paul,’ he said to me. ‘And true friends in our profession are very rare.’ He was a simple man. He spoke in simple words. And it would not have been in irony. You must understand this, Professor. He believed deeply in the revolution. He made me go over for him what had happened in Athens, who had made the decision that Webb should be brought north. I could not tell him with whom Webb had first made contact. I cannot tell to this day. I could only tell of my part in the decision which was little more than to say I thought I could get him safely through… and that from then on I became the only contact with Alexander Webb.
“Markos asked me, ‘What would have happened if the Monarchists had intercepted you? How many lives would you have jeopardized?’ I told him again of the agreement among us: the story would always be that Markos had invited Webb and sent me to Athens to be the intermediary and guide.
“Markos said—and it was meant in mockery—‘I suppose that can be called another political decision.’”
“When was it decided, Paul, that I should be a party to the trip?”
“By us? When Webb insisted upon it. At my second meeting with him, he pointed out that if we were intercepted and it was told that Markos had invited him, it would look bad for him—as though the Communists thought they had him in their pockets. I remember particularly because he had to explain the idiom. He agreed to the story only on condition that we take a third party with us, a man of his choice.”
“And yet you thought I was there by my own intrigue?”
“I came to think that, yes. If you say it was not so, I believe you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It was not so.”
Again he ignored my sarcasm. “What Markos believed of you—that is what I wish I could say. Demetrios had told him what I thought. Markos did not always trust the people in Athens—the politicals, as he called them, who wanted him to fight as though he had the striking force of the Red Army. And I have a feeling, but it is only a feeling, that he identified them with Demetrios… I suppose it was because he thought him an educated man. But let me go back to things as they happened.
“Markos gave me an assignment I was to share with no one: I was to keep watch on you throughout the night. You were not to leave the cottage, not even to pass water unless I was with you. And I was to bring you to him at dawn. I asked him if I was also to watch Webb. ‘If that was my wish I would have said so. Obey my orders.’ I did.
“It was a cold night, I can tell you. Bitter cold, and we had come from the south. There were wolves howling and the snow was white on the mountain peaks. It was about half-past one o’clock when Webb left your cottage. He went immediately round to the back of it. He was not wearing his trenchcoat so I did not think much of it at first. But he did not return. I looked into the cottage to make sure you were there. Then I went in back. I did not see him. I did not hear him. For just a second in the darkness I thought I saw a light—which is how I knew where to go afterwards with you.
“I was determined to follow my orders to the letter. But how can I tell you now what went on in my mind the next few minutes? It does not matter, but I don’t need to tell you how relieved I was when you came out and demanded that we find Alexander Webb, and then when we found him with a woman! It was to me such a funny solution I wanted to laugh aloud. Maybe I did. But not you, my friend. You did not find it funny.”
“No, I did not find it funny,” I said quietly. And I thought how all these years I had hated the gleaming mirth in the eyes that night of Paul Stephanou.
“You kept saying all the way back to your billet, ‘The son of a bitch, the son of a bitch.’”
To return at a moment while I sat with the blind man before the vast, clear span of the Ionian Sea to the darkness of that night and its agony of lonely fear had the charged contrast of an electric shock. “The son of a bitch,” I repeated, and I knew I had said it that night.
I have told that I was more shocked than enraged. I so believed myself. But it was sheer fury that I first experienced. Where Stephanou had exploded his relief in mirth, mine was in instant anger. It was an anger I could understand now to have been compounded of my own isolation, my desperate fear of being separated from Webb, and the anti-climax of finding him with a woman. Then came the savage, righteous wrath, the Puritan’s judgment on adultery, the romantic’s iconization—if I may coin the word—of the wife betrayed.
My behavior had probably been quite as Paul Stephanou had described it in court.
“You will tell me now, my friend, if what I remember is not so,” Paul went on. “I tried to persuade you to be quiet. I do not mean you were shouting. But in that stillness every sound wakened another. A dog barked, I think. I know a donkey brayed and it was like an air-raid siren in the night. There was a change in the camp guard and the man going off duty asked me what had happened. I told him. And he said, ‘That woman should not be allowed to come.’
“I asked you if I might come in and get warm, and with charming hospitality you to
ld me to go to hell. I think I said something like, ‘In that case let us enjoy it together,’ but you were not disposed at that moment to enjoy my humor. No more could I appreciate your piety. I went into the cottage with you anyway. You may remember, I warmed my hands at the lamp globe. Then I cleaned the globe with an old newspaper. You will remember the smudges of lamp-black on the gun. And you will also remember there was no trace of lamp-black on the trigger.”
I remembered. My defense had tried to develop a counterattack by charging that Stephanou had actually killed Webb. It was shown that the traces of lamp-black were to be found on the barrel and the handle of the revolver, but none was on the trigger. My credibility was further weakened by the collapse of the charge.
Paul went on: “But let us go back to you and me when, I am quite sure, we both expected the return of Alexander Webb within the hour. You denied in court talking about Margaret Webb. But you did talk about her, and in a way that angered me. I do not hold you to account now, my friend. You are right: this is not the time between us for recriminations. But the distinction I got from you, if I may call it that, was the contrast between a virtuous Anglo-Saxon lady and a Greek peasant whore.
“Do I exaggerate, Professor? Tell me now if you are an honest man.”
I sat in silence, stunned. For how many years had I examined my own conscience in this matter? The best I could say to him was, “It is not far from the truth as I now know it, Paul.”
“We must make do with that,” he said, “if we are to go on together. That night I thought, it would be easy for me to kill this man. He is the true enemy. I went out and left you. It was to me—you will forgive me—cleaner outdoors. But it was also fiercely cold so I went in again with you. You were sleeping like a baby, curled up underneath your coat and Webb’s coat. I took Webb’s coat without disturbing you, and I examined it. Socks, a pair of shorts, his shaving things, a bar of soap. His toothbrush was gone, his passport and his billfold, his notebook, some of the things I knew he kept in the inside pocket of the trenchcoat. He was not coming back. He had not intended to come back when he went to the woman.
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