The Hidden

by Tobias Hill

  The world is not dangerous because of those that do evil, but because of those who stand aside and let them do so.

  –Do you like what you see?

  She had come up behind him, quietly smiling and quiet in her house slippers, her arms folded tight around herself as if she felt a draught. Her hands were mittened in oven gloves shaped like the mouths of animals: one crocodile, one frayed bear. Her cheeks were pink with the heat of the kitchen.

  –I always loved that one myself. Some days it’s my favourite. Einstein was so wise, don’t you think? You want to look around some more? I can give you the tour. I mean it’s nothing much. It’s just here and the bedroom.

  She was standing by his shoulder, close enough that when she looked at him he could smell drink on her breath.

  –Maybe later, he said, and she smiled, swift and bitter.

  –Sure, I understand.

  –Missy, he said, not letting himself think through where her name might take them next, but then a bell rang and she turned away, her voice rising.

  –It’s chow time, folks! Sit down, I’ll serve. I guess you want everything?

  They ate without much talk, at first, the quiet punctuated by the brittle clink of cutlery, the high points of the TV show next door, Missy’s subdued offers of more carrots, more beans, and his own acceptances and refusals. Almost immediately he knocked over his glass and Missy ran for kitchen paper, dabbing the spilled wine with a soothing There, there, as if he had cut himself. The table was so crowded with stuff it made all movement hazardous, a weird full regalia of archaic implements, coasters and napkin rings and trivets, a cruet of oil and vinegar, place mats and serving mats showing four chipped Scenes of the Great Lakes at Sunset.

  She began speaking again abruptly, and brightly, as if the dejected silence had never fallen between them.

  –Did you ever notice the thing with Giorgios?

  –The what?

  –How the others treat him. I mean they really don’t like him. I mean they’re not overflowing with love for any of us, except you, but with Giorgios it’s different. Didn’t you ever notice that?

  –I don’t know, he said, and for a minute went on working at his second collop of moussaka. –Jason said something, once.

  –Oh, he did?

  –About the war. It didn’t really make much sense. Giorgios can’t be that old.

  He looked up in time to catch her face. –That was what I was worried about. That kind of makes it my fault. God! I don’t see why they care, it’s really none of their business.

  –What isn’t?

  –Okay. When we started here it was just four of us. Max, Themeus, Elias, me. We’re short-handed though, so Max calls some friends and I look for locals with experience. Stella–she’s at the Department of Antiquities–she comes up with the Maxis brothers. Only at first it’s just Chrystos. Then we get the files out and there’s Giorgios. Experience to die for. I ask if he’s retired, and Stella says no, he’s hanging around, but there’s bad blood there. How if we hire him it’ll be tough if we want anyone else.

  –Because of the war?

  –Not that war. I guess Jason meant the Cold War. That was close to the bone here. Greece would have gone Communist, you know, in ’forty-four, except America and the Brits would never let it happen here. So Greece got thirty years of awful puppet governments. Giorgios was an army man, but only in the seventies, when the Colonels were running things. He was just a young buck, but he was stationed in Athens, and the story that goes round and won’t go away is that he was in the tank that broke down the Polytechnic gates on November seventeen.

  She stopped, awaiting some sign of recognition from him, scan-dalised when he shook his head.

  –Oh come on, Ben! Where have you been all your life? November seventeen, ’seventy-three? There was a big student protest against the Colonels, and being the army they…sent the army in. I mean like snipers and tanks. A lot of students were killed. It’s still a big deal here. No one forgets anything here, and this wasn’t just anything. This was like the Greek Tiananmen Square. There was even a terrorist group named after it. November 17. Communist-anarchist-nationalists, can you imagine that? So Greek. They hated anyone who poked their oars in here, NATO, the UN, Turkey, and the Americans, of course, and the Brits too, you know, because the Colonels had all of us behind them. They killed a lot of people too. I mean the terrorists. They only caught them just last year. They were a really strange bunch, wow. Quiet. I remember they kept talking to the press in Latin. And one of them was a beekeeper, and there was a painter, too, he did religious icons…so anyway, Giorgios. Since then, people round here, a lot of them don’t like him. He brings back bad memories. But I kind of feel sorry for him, you know? That was all thirty years ago. He was just a kid following orders. So I hire him, and Max asks me about them, the Maxis brothers. And I tell him.

  She stopped again, turning her glass, not playfully but unhappily, frowning into the dregs.

  –What did he say?

  –Squat. Not a word. He was real angry though. You know how he gets. He’s pretty scary sometimes. He’s real political too, did you know that? He asked me to send them away. And when I didn’t…well, he didn’t leave or anything, and then we were super-busy with all the others rolling up. So I thought it all went back to normal. We never got on that well, it wasn’t like anything changed there. I thought it all blew over, but I guess he told the others. Made some big deal out of it. And then Jason told you. But I don’t see why they care! What does it matter to them? Anyhow, maybe I shouldn’t say it, but sometimes the past should just stay buried, don’t you think?

  The last of the moussaka had gone cold. They cleared away the remains, then sat on a tiny balcony that opened from Missy’s box of a bedroom, nursing coffees and Greek brandies in novelty shot glasses.

  The sky was moonless, overcast, its darkness almost inseparable from that of the mountains below.

  –You know, people are so superstitious here. When I moved into this place the landlady came round to give me this thing of salt. Like a little thing of it. I thought it was roach poison, but it was just salt. I was supposed to throw it around. To scare off the Evil Eye.

  –And did you?

  –Nope!

  He heard her laugh, low and warm, off in the darkness to his right.

  –Trouble is, you only get to be a cynic until the bad voodoo kicks in. After that, not believing feels like a false economy.

  –What was the bad voodoo, then?

  –I don’t know yet.

  He looked at her. His eyes were adjusting to the dark. She was leant on the railing, chin cradled on arms, a distant traffic signal just changing to green behind her. As he watched she turned her head towards him. Her neck was bare, broad and sleek, muscled and beautiful. He could feel her eyes on him.

  –Do you?

  –Is that what you asked me here for? he said, and she laughed again, the sound cutting out in a sob.

  –No. I asked you to get you into bed. At least I managed the bedroom. Don’t worry, Ben, I know you’re spoken for. I’m not utterly blind.

  –I’m sorry.

  –Don’t ever say that. Do you, though?

  He shook his head, not turning away. He saw more than heard her sigh. Her voice was a whisper when she spoke again.

  –Something’s happening.

  –What is?

  –I don’t know. Something bad. Bad voodoo. It’s my dig. My dig. I don’t want to be innocent. I don’t want to be the one to stand aside. Do you see?

  –Yeah.

  –Would you tell me, if you knew? Ben? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?

  Her eyes were those of a mournful drunk. They shone in the green signal light. He leaned in and kissed her face. Her forehead, her wet cheeks.

  –Of course I would. Of course I would.

  The hotel wasn’t far, a half-dozen blocks north-west. He walked on north instead, up towards the edge of town.

  A truck had broken down outside the
HellaSpar, the hazard lights beating, three men crouching by the exhaust, conferring in grave voices like doctors around a bed. He walked clear of them and on.

  The lie was still fresh on his lips. He could almost taste it. It was distinct, discrete from the food Missy had made him or the wine she had given him. It lay in his mouth, the lie, the acrid after-sense of it. It was vital and poisonous as salt.

  The last streetlights gave out. Beyond them the gypsy ruins lay in gloom, only here and there an oil-drum lit up, and the highway lights in the far distance, high up on their poles like UFOs. As he passed one doorway he caught the sound of singing, a woman’s voice, but this time no one called out to him.

  He heard the river before he reached it. On the bridge he stopped. The nearest highway light was down, leaving the crossing in darkness.

  He leaned out, looking east. At first he could see little more than the road to Afisou, the village a dull nebula. Then the foothills came clear to him, and finally, higher still, a faultline across the sky: heavens and mountains, black on black. And somewhere in all that was the cave, still denied to him.

  He rested his head on his arms, the way Missy had done. His own warmth was comforting. Below him the river was still high with spring snow-melt and rain. Where the water churned the foam was bright as if with phosphorescence.

  His hands were playing tricks on him again: he was holding his wedding ring. The gold was warm but cooling. He tried to recall the last time he had worn it. Not for a while now, not since before the hunt. Why did he still carry it? Only because he didn’t know what else on earth to do with it.

  He put it on. Held out his hand, like a newly-wed. He circled his ring-finger and thumb. There was a shadow-animal Ness had loved which began like that: what had it been? A donkey, or a goat.

  He loosened the ring, running it from thumbnail to fingertip. He felt it hang at the meeting point. He let it swing, his hands together over the water.

  He found himself thinking, not of Emine or Ness, nor even of Natsuko, but of Missy. Her eyes in the dark with the green behind them.

  Necessary, too, the lie. Necessary, as salt was.

  He let the ring go. He lost sight of it before it hit the water. Any splash it might have made was swallowed up in the larger noise of turbulence below. The rush and roar of it. The many tiers of sound. The grinding of a stone somewhere, shifting in the river’s bed.

  Missy called in sick. The message was sent to Chrystos with a texted list of instructions so exhaustive that, of the foreigners, only Ben listened through to the end. The others wandered off where they liked, Eleschen and Jason idling, Eberhard stalking away with Max to the Skull Room, leaving Chrystos grim as his brother and Themeus giggling fretfully, watching them all with wide white eyes.

  He worked at the Findhut at first, as Missy had asked, but by noon there was nothing left to do and he ended up at the new pit with Natsuko and Jason. Eleschen had christened it the Pigsty, and the name had stuck, just as Laco’s had, even as it grew obvious that it wasn’t that, Jason finding one by one the familiar evidence of another junkyard-midden: the smashed bole of an amphora, two burnished shards of tableware, a goat’s narrow shoulder blade scarred with laniary grooves. The magnetometry had raised Missy’s hopes of something more, the outlying area a deep stain of old-blood brown fading to blue, but they had found no iron or stone to justify her optimism. It was good to work there even so, the going being easy, the topsoil a tender piney loam so close to the woods, the trees themselves not so near that they had to fight their way through heavy roots.

  Natsuko sat crosslegged on the grass beside them, sieving earth into a bucket between her thighs. Jason dug with his shirt knotted around his waist. It was a hot day, and dry: they all wore handkerchiefs bandit-style against the dust. There had been no rain in a week. The local newspapers were full of warnings of forest fires and global warming.

  Neither he nor Natsuko said anything much as they worked. Jason did all the talking for them. That last week his monologues and diatribes had taken on a new nervous force, his background noise stifling all efforts at conversation.

  –I did this cave in Morocco once. Seven Spanish women and me. No money to write home about but I owed myself some fun. I’d just come off a job with these American ethnologists. That’s when you live in context. This project’s up in the highlands in Papua New Guinea. Neolithic context, but the pay’s good so it’s alright with me. The first two months we get no protein. We’re supposed to hunt wild pigs with Neolithic weaponry. First day we go out hunting and we find the pigs, no problem, but they all come charging at us. Tusks, screaming, everything. They don’t look like what you’d expect. They look like something off Doctor Who. After that two of the lads get some kind of pig-phobia, so then there’s six of us to hunt. We go out every day, but now all we see is eyes. All they do is watch us. Soon we’re all getting the willies, and we’re hungry too, but no one knows how to hunt and the pigs are like ninja pigs, Vietcong pigs, those evil manky little bastards…so then it’s been a month and we all look terrible, like shrunken heads, and there’s this bloke called Boff with a big thing about McDonald’s, it’s all he talks about, all the Happy Meals he’s going to eat the day he gets out of there–we call him McBoff and he likes it. He does us Neolithic cave paintings. Mega Macs, Chicken Biscuits, Shamrock Shakes. One morning we come down and he’s built a shrine to McNuggets. He’s praying at the shrine. We’re going nugget-mad up there. We hear about these missionaries who sell tinned fish out of their church but the boss won’t let us go, he says we have to stay in context. Anyway, that’s where we are when this nice old lady comes up from the village with her three boys and two big crates of corned beef. They tell us we’re very funny but now we have to stop because we’re upsetting the pigs. That night we eat six cans each. That was the best meal I ever had. Corned beef, I’m telling you. Corned beef…

  –Ben.

  There was a moment when he didn’t recognise the voice: hesitancy made it unfamiliar. He looked up into the light, wiping dust out of his eyes, and saw Eberhard’s silhouette.

  –What is it? he said, but he already knew before Eberhard nodded, the Pigsty abruptly as suffocating as a locked room. The others had stopped work, Jason leaning on his spade, breathing hard, head cocked, one eye on him. Natsuko smiled down at him, her eyes shining.

  –When? he asked, and Eberhard squatted down by the pit, staring a question into his face, and finally nodded again and said, Tonight.

  It was just the two of them. They went to Eberhard’s first. It was still light outside. Later was safer, Eberhard said, and besides, they should eat.

  They dined in circumspect silence. He felt no appetite, at first, but there was food for once, cold quail from a meat grill on the square, so delicate and delectable they ate even the bones.

  Eberhard dealt with his brace with efficient brevity, then crumpled his napkin, tossed it down and watched Ben gnawing his remains, not standing until he was finished.

  –All set?

  –How do we get there?

  –Nothing fancy. Car and foot. There are a few things I should pack, actually, do you mind? I won’t be long. You could make coffee, if you like.

  He rooted in the kitchen, finding a packet of Papagalo and an ancient verdigrised briki, and boiled up the dusty grounds. The froth spilled over as he poured, scalding his fingers, and he swore at himself as he ran cold water. He was no longer excited, but ill at ease, with a nagging sense of already being late for an appointment.

  He could hear the shower going, and he took the coffee next door, left Eberhard’s on the writing desk, then carried his own cup with him along the shelves, foraging for distractions, finding nothing fulfilling, discovering himself back at the desk before he knew it, his circumnavigation complete.

  It was a new arrival, the desk, its worn green leather inlay already buried under layers of paper. He leafed through them with his scalded hand. A month’s supply of newspapers. A sheaf of notes in Eberhard’s decisive, ind
ecipherable script. A diary of game seasons from the Hellenic Hunters’ Federation. A yellowed, white-bound pamphlet.

  He picked up the pamphlet. It was familiar, though the cover was blank and, because of that, it took him a moment to recognise it as the one that Eberhard had been reading, the night they had met again in Metamorphosis.

  He put his cup down on the newspapers, next to Eberhard’s, opened the pamphlet and turned past the flyleaf. On the title page were three abbreviated lines of Italian: he translated as he read.

  The Birds

  Ten Ways to Sing of Freedom

  Milan, June 1973

  He spread the pamphlet wider. The pages flickered open. His Italian was not good. He read only where his eyes fell.

  The Sixth Way is to relinquish the platform. Sing as loud as you will, the message reaches only so far. The time will come when the song is not enough. There are ears the message must reach and will not reach from the platform.

  Then the platform must be relinquished. Then is the time, not for song, but for action–

  Do not be ashamed to feel afraid. Instead make a weapon of your fear. Fear secretes acid. Let it burn.

  Nor should you shy away from terror. Do not disregard it. The careful application of terror is also a form of communication.

  –Keep that, if you like.

  He dropped the pamphlet and looked up wildly. Somehow without his noticing the light had almost gone. A faucet dripped in an adjoining room. Eberhard stood behind him, drying his hair with a towel. His hair was darker on his chest, bestial and luxuriant. His eyes slid from Ben to the pamphlet and on to the cups.

  –That smells good. Which is mine? This one?

  He found himself nodding. Eberhard picked up the cup.

  –You learned how to make this in Athens, did you? At least something good came out of that. That seems a long time ago. I hardly knew you then.