“He didn’t know.” Anya kissed the boy. “ Where’s Nina? What have you been playing?”
Michael explained to them both in a breathless voice.
Lascou said: “Fair play, Michael, like sincerity, is a matter of proportion. Anya and I were talking of it when you came in.”
Michael stared at them with round black eyes, eyes very different in colour and shape from his father’s.
“And you were quarrelling?”
George laughed. “ No.”
“Ah,” said Michael.
“Well, what do you expect us to do, pursue Nina and beat her? Where is she, by the way?”
“Gone to find Mama. But I happen to know Mama’s out.”
Helen Lascou occupied a suite of rooms on the other side of the seventh floor; the children lived with her but unlike the adults trafficked freely between the two flats. Michael was pacified and went off chewing a piece of Turkish delight.
George said: “I find it difficult not to spoil him.”
“Should you try?”
“Well, in some ways it’s a disadvantage to be a millionaire’s son.”
“My heart bleeds for him.”
“Oh, yes, you can use your tongue, but there are disadvantages. Everyone treats Michael with consideration and respect—already. He’ll grow up accustomed to it.”
“So he should, a son of yours.”
“Oh, no doubt. And that’s good as far as it goes. But he’ll never know what it is to be cold and hungry and in rags, to be disregarded, to be left to struggle, to know himself to be nothing, rubbish that could die off and no one would care.” He paused. “It’s unpleasant at the time, of course, but it develops the will to struggle as nothing else can. It becomes a load upon the ego, an obligation that must be discharged.…”
“An obligation to whom?”
He shrugged. “ To oneself, I suppose. One goes through phases.” He moved the ring on his finger as if it chafed him. “At first one wants to belong, one’s greatest need is to be accepted as part of a larger part, a necessary unit within a community or an army or a party, a cog serving a greater end than oneself. Then, as one develops and succeeds, one’s desire is for the opposite, for non-attachment again, for a withdrawal, away from and above the mass of people. It’s a passing through, as it were—from the stage of being disregarded by the crowd to a stage when the crowd is disregarded.”
She nodded but did not speak.
“Oh!” He swept the thought away with a hand. “It’s not important. Except that no one who has not felt poverty, extreme poverty, can ever understand the inexpressible luxury of luxury. No one who has not grown up in a wind-swept, arid, treeless, soil-less village in the hills, sunbaked in summer, snow-smothered in winter—no one who has not had to apportion his last fifty drachmae between goat’s cheese and maize bread and the corner of a draughty shed to lie in …”
She said: “You show so little, it might never have happened to you.”
“I don’t show it but I have it here.” He touched his body. “It’s what I was saying, it’s the thing Michael will lack. I wouldn’t be without it now. It’s the dynamo powering everything—it’s the source of self-control, caution, courage, perseverance, obstinacy—any creative efforts I may make; it’s the source of all the things I do to supply an inescapable need!”
She said quietly: “And will you ever satisfy it?”
“No.… But in a few weeks I may be nearer that end. Another drink?”
“No, Helen may be coming in.”
“Little fear of that.”
“I still must go. To tell the truth, George, the only time I’m ever embarrassed is when Nina or Michael come when I’m here”
“No need to be. They both like you.”
“Perhaps soon they’ll grow up.”
“Nonsense. You’re full of strange fancies today. It must be this naive company you’ve been keeping.”
They walked slowly towards the door. She said: “Has it occurred to you, though, that Helen has played fair with me over the children? It would have been easy to have turned them against me.”
“I’ve never denied to you that she’s an estimable woman.”
“So many women contrive to be estimable without being kind.”
“Darling, when is he phoning you again?”
“Who? Gene Vanbrugh?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow morning.” “What will you say?” “I shall say nothing. I shall be out.” “Don’t do that. Invite him here.”
Chapter Eleven
When he rang her she said: “I’m sorry. The roads to Delphi are not good and it is 170 kilometres. Too far for one day—if you are to see your poet and also all that is there—and certainly I cannot spare two.”
He said: “ You were very kind yesterday.”
“That’s another of those illusions you suffer from.”
“I thought you said you would like to meet Michaelis.”
“On the whole I’ve decided it is better just to know him through his poems.”
“Then when could I call and see you today?”
“I shall be out all day.”
“With George Lascou?”
“Does it matter?”
“How could it?”
She passed the tip of her tongue over her lips. “ My friend, if you would be advised by me, I think you would be a happier man if you confined you interests to your publishing.”
“I’ve always found happiness rather an abstract thing to worry about.”
She picked up her cigarette-case and opened it and took out a cigarette, but then she put it down without lighting it and snapped the case shut. On the back of the case were some words George
had had engraved when he gave it to her. ’ Εκ
τоυˆ ὁρaˆυ γίγυετaı τὸ
ἐρaˆυ.
“Hullo,” he said.
“Hullo.”
“I thought for a moment you had hung up.”
“No.”
“I would like to see you again.”
“Perhaps sometime we can arrange it.”
“There are some things I’d like to say to you.”
“Well, I am listening.”
“Don’t be impossible, please.”
Her Italian maid, Edda, came into the room with some red roses in a bowl and put them on the piano. She was going to say something but Anya nodded and dismissed her.
Gene said: “I shall be here probably for another week, and …”
“And there are some things you would like to say to me.”
“As you remark.”
She said: “You still want to meet George Lascou?”
There was a brief pause. “Yes, I do.”
“Then come there tonight. He is giving a small dinner party—eight or ten. I can arrange it.”
“You can arrange it.…”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No.…”
“Then you will come?”
“Thank you. I’ll come.”
“At nine. Heracles House, the seventh floor.”
“What will George Lascou say?”
“He’ll do what I ask.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“Then will you do what I ask?”
“What do you ask?”
“Stop sending me red roses.”
“It’s just a simple whim I have.”
“If you wish to be a fool I cannot be responsible for that.”
“Why should you be?”
“No. I should not be.”
“Or why should you care?”
“I don’t.”
“Neither do I,” he agreed.
When she had put back the receiver she got up from her chair and walked across to the window. Sunshine fell diagonally through it and warmed her arm and side. She turned away, frowning, and moved to the bookshelf, putting back two books she had taken out, went to the chair, picked us the daily newspaper. Edda was in the bathroom running h
er bath water. She lit a cigarette and stood for a few moments motionless with the cigarette case in her hand. George’s inscription made a roughness under her thumb. “From seeing comes loving.”
Chapter Twelve
The Tower of the Winds, an octagonal building put up in the first century B.C. by Cyrrhestes, was losing its sharp outlines in the quick Athenian twilight when Gene came to it, walking like a mean-natured cat expecting trouble. He was about to make a cautious circuit of the place when a woman broke away from one of the ruined Doric pillars and came to him. A vivid scarf over her hair was like a badge of identity.
“Ah,” he said, taking off his hat. “ You’re alone?”
“Yes. This morning I left the message.”
“All this week I’ve been hoping you’d send word.”
She said: “ I saw you at the police inquiry. Also Philip tells me you have been trying twice to make his acquaintance.”
“He wouldn’t play.”
“He thinks you are a reporter.”
“I doubt if he ever did believe that.”
Maria looked at him. “You suspect him of not being fair with me?”
“What have you came to tell me?”
“Something it may be very necessary to tell you if that is true.”
“Will you come back to my lodgings?”
“No. It is safe here. I—I don’t know how it is to begin.” Her thick lips, made for laughter, were pouting and strained. “You know that Juan was trying to—make money?”
“Yes.”
“I am not quite so ignorant of it as I pretended. You know. If a man and a woman are in love, as we were, they do not have complete secrets. But it is true that I do not know much. He said it is better that I did not know much. I do not know what Juan had to sell. But I know of the—arrangements. He was crazy to paint; he didn’t wish for the life of a cabaret artist; he loved Spain and wished to settle in comfort in a small fishing village in Andalusia and spend the rest of his life there. You know. That was why he did this thing. I told him often in the last weeks, go carefully; it is better to work for one’s living in honour than to go to prison for a dishonourable thing. But he would not listen. He would say, this is my one chance; if I miss this one chance I shall be dancing until I am old.”
“So you came to Greece?”
Maria Tolosa untied the knot of her scarf and pulled it off. Then she shook out her hair, scowling at the sculptured reliefs below the cornice of the tower, which were becoming harder to distinguish against the whitening evening sky. “He had made arrangements. These papers he had deposited in the Banca d’Espagna in Madrid. In the bank he has a cousin. Juan was to ask from this person in Greece that a large sum of money shall be paid into his account in Madrid. As soon as that was paid in, his cousin had agreed to send these documents to him here.”
“Your husband was expecting the other side to trust him?”
“I don’t know. It is that he may have had some surety which he could give them. You know. I told him; I warned him; I said, you are playing a risk.”
“Was Philip Tolosa in this?”
“He knows the attempt to get this money is to be made. He does not know who is the man or what it is that Juan has to sell.”
“Has something else happened now?”
“Yes.”
Her bracelets jangled as she sat down on a piece of fallen masonry, and after a minute he squatted beside her. The noise and glitter of the city was not far away but seemed as remote as the sea on a frosty day.
“On Wednesday I have talked this over with Philip. We have agreed that now no question of money comes in. We are no longer wanting to sell the papers, we wish to use them. You know. That way we can get some revenge. We are agreed on that. And the only way to use them is while we are here.”
“So what have you done?”
“I have sent for the papers.”
“To be posted here?”
“Yes.”
Gene bit his lip. She was watching him closely. “ Was this your idea or your brother-in-law’s?”
“Philip’s.”
“And why have you come to me now?”
“Because, now I have done it, I am not happy about it.”
“You think Philip wants the papers to sell himself?”
“I am not sure if my suspicion of him is my own or whether you have planted it. But there is something very wrong with him. He is—going to pieces while I watch. Always he has been the high-strung kind; but now … While he was persuading me to do this I thought he was upset because he was burning for revenge. Now I do not know what to think. He lies on his bed smoking all day. He has fits of trembling, trying to keep still. You know. He will not even touch his harp. At night I hear him walking about.”
“And so?”
“It may be grief for his brother that is destroying him, but if so it is not the sort of grief that is mine. What use will he be when the letter comes, if such is his condition? I am worried and don’t know how to turn. That is why I have come to you.”
“You think I’m worth trusting now?”
“You have sad eyes, M. Vanbrugh—as if they have seen many things they would like to forget. But I think you are a man of honour.”
Darkness had come like a curtain drawn. Bats were circling over the tower.
“When do you expect the papers?”
“Not until early next week. I cannot cable for them, for it is certain our cousin will not send them without a signature in writing which he can recognise. But in my letter I ask him to cable back. I have that cable tonight.” She clasped and unclasped her fat strong hands; they seemed to need something to take hold of. “The cable says he receives my letter yesterday afternoon, that is Friday. The cable says sending today.”
“Saturday.… They might be here Monday. No, that’s barely possible. Tuesday at the earliest.”
“That is what I thought.”
“Philip knows of the cable?”
“Yes.”
“But the letter will come addressed to you—if it is not tampered with.”
“Yes.”
“Can you be sure of getting it first?”
“The letters are usually put just inside the front door of the house where we live. I can do my best to be about in the hall when the postman comes.”
“Do that.”
“And then?”
“Can you bring them straight to me?”
She hesitated. In a two-storeyed house nearby someone had switched on a light in an un-shuttered upper room, and Gene’s face showed clearly. This time it had no expression.
“And you?”
“If they are what I suppose they may be, then I can help you to make use of them in the most effective way.”
“What do you suppose they may be?”
“There’s no point in guessing when we shall be sure so soon.”
The light went out and they were left in a greater darkness.
‘What was the name of the man my husband mentioned in Paris?”
“Avra.”
“Why are you interested in him?”
“I think when you get these papers it may explain that to.”
“I have to trust you,” she said. “ If you let me down …”
“I’ll not let you down.”
Chapter Thirteen
It was just on nine when he got to Heracles House. He knew he was taking a risk in going, but a ‘ must’ within himself made the risk necessary.
There was no one about when he stepped into the self-operating lift and pressed the button for the seventh floor; lights winked and the lift sighed and took him up with a carefully graded acceleration; after a very few seconds it sighed again and let him out. The lobby upstairs was empty and he pressed the bell at the door at the end and a manservant showed him into a small ante-room where half a dozen people were talking.
Some he already knew; Maurice Taksim, the Turk; General Telechos; Gallanova, the Yugo-Slav ballerina; others he knew by sight, like Jon M
anos. George Lascou came towards him, grey waistcoated, gold glinting like a welcoming smile from the bridge of the pince-nez. For a short moment their hands touched and eyes met; conventional gestures of welcome and the empty words—good-of-you-to-come, kind-of-you-to-have-me. Almost at once Anya appeared through another door, in a dress that glittered as she walked across the room.
It was a small dinner-party, candle-lit at table, in a handsome high-windowed dining-room; two menservants, black-clad and silent, hovered like benevolent ghosts. On Gene’s right was Mme Telechos; on his left was Gallanova, a fine-boned Slav with an imperious chin, in a Molyneux gown of slashed crimson. Beyond her was a stout moustached little man called Major Kolono whom Gene felt he had seen somewhere before and who stared fixedly at him. Mme Lascou was not present. Anya sat on George’s right, some distance from Gene. They had only spoken a few words in private, when Gene had said: “I’ve hired a car for tomorrow.”
“What to do?”
“To take you to Delphi, if you will come.”
“Thank you, no.”
… They fed on caviare, coq au vin, fresh woodland strawberries flown in from Corfu; and the conversation was as cultured as the meal. There were three or four very good talkers present; but Gene, speaking Greek now, rose to the mood and held his own. Perhaps only Anya, withdrawn tonight and communing more with herself than other people, perceived the paradox, saw the off-hand wit stemming from the eastern seaboard of the New World, expressing itself in the tongue of Aristophanes.
And George watched them both. George watched everyone with his soft fluid movements and sharp astigmatic eyes. No one could ignore that he was master of the evening: he led the talk, fed it, conducted it down safe and popular avenues, the perfect chairman you’d say, perhaps that was how be had come to lead his party, and then perhaps not, the velvet glove was not empty.
The number was small for splinter groups; when Maurice Taksim asked Gallanova about her early years as a ballerina, everyone listened to her story of the Yugo-Slav ballet after the war. She spoke of her own poverty and early struggles, and Mme Telechos said: “Ah, d’you remember the inflation here? When I sent my son to school he went with his pockets crammed with bank-notes to pay his tram fare. Do you remember when a newspaper cost ten thousand million drachmae?”
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