by Tobias Hill
They went on past. A girl came down towards them, smaller than the boys, hauling a plank twice her height, her face fierce with determination. Natsuko took his hand.
Mystras was closed. They rested on a bench by the locked gate to the lower town, then walked down to the restaurant where, ten days before, he had not said that he loved her. The building was deserted but steps led up to the terraced garden. They spread themselves out on the grass and ate until their stomachs ached, then lay under the advancing shade of a strawberry tree.
–It’s a sundial.
–A tree-dial. What time does it say?
–I don’t know. I can’t read tree-dials.
Around the lawn the spring flowers had wilted in the greenhouse weather. A gunshot sounded, up in the hills, echoing between peaks and ruins.
–It says it’s too late.
–It’s wrong, then.
–I’ve done bad things.
–Everyone does bad things.
–Not like this.
–Eb said he’ll be alright.
–We were never going to hurt him.
We can leave, he meant to add. We can do it together. I can’t do it alone. But when he rolled over he found she was asleep again, curled up on herself like a hibernating animal. Her face was pale: only her lips and the yellowish shadows under her eyes gave it any colour. Her mouth had fallen open, an upturned U in the crook of her arm, like that of a tragedy mask. He got up and cleared away their remains and then sat looking down at her. He wondered what was buried in that head and heart.
A hour before sunset they began the long walk home. Natsuko stopped again before they reached the outskirts, by a shuttered house.
–Where are we?
–Guess.
He looked around. It was a desolate stretch of road, neither quite countryside nor town. Two auto-wrecks sat up on bricks. An old tractor leaned drunkenly under a row of mulberry trees. He had seen those before, he remembered, the first time he had been to Mystras.
–I give up.
–Max lives here.
He looked up at the house. He had never been to visit Max, had never been invited nor wanted such an invitation, had known nothing about his place except that it was somewhere beyond the edge of town.
–Why does he live out here?
–He is shy. Not that one. Down there.
He followed her gesture. A track led past the shuttered house to another, smaller and unkempt. A light was on in one window. The first colourings of sunset showed through the struts of an unfinished second floor. Smoke rose beyond it, a thick grey train against the southern sky.
–He’s in. See?
–It smells like he’s got his own Judas.
–They don’t burn him tonight. I said.
He had upset her, bringing up the Judas. Too late to wish it back. He searched for something else to say, new talk to bury the old.
–Missy told me once that Max was just a nickname.
–His name is Lasha. It means Light.
–Why Max?
–It comes from his family name. It is more private for him.
Private? he almost asked, but he didn’t really care, wanted only to be gone. –Come on, let’s go home.
She started towards the track. He called her name after her, making a complaint of it, but she was already out of sight and all he could do then was follow.
Max was beyond the houses. The field in which he stood was littered with broken breeze blocks and petrified sacks of cement. His back was to them as they came round the corner. He was bent over a bonfire a dozen yards from the house. In one hand he held a stick, in the other a bottle. He was poking the fire with the stick. The bottle hung aslant, his fingers loose around the neck.
As they got closer their faint dusk-shadows loomed across the house and Max turned his head, staring them down before he raised the stick in greeting.
It was a warm evening, but the three of them still drew in around the fire. There was no talk at first. The pop and hiss of the flames seemed to dispel the need to speak, and the dim shifting of the light made the others indistinct to Ben, their expressions softening, as if the heat were melting them.
–What are you burning? he asked finally, and Max shrugged.
–Things I am finished with. It is good you came by. You are just in time.
–For what?
–To help.
–With that?
–With drinking. My friend Natsuko and my very special good friend, Ben. Three friends, one bottle. That is the best way. Come, drink with me.
He held out the bottle to Natsuko. He laughed–a cheerful, rolling-drunk belly-laugh–when she took a sip and held it trembling at arm’s length, her face contorted. Ben took it out of her hands.
–So. My friends, Max said, then stopped. To Ben it seemed that he had been about to ask why they were there, but instead he poked distractedly at the fire again. The flames were dying down. It was mostly newspapers, he saw. Reams of them. Arcs of red edged slowly through them.
–We looked for Eleschen today.
–You didn’t find her.
–You know where she was?
–Church. There is no rest for the wicked, Jason would say. She is coming here tonight.
–Where will you go? Natsuko asked, and when Max looked at her through the smoke there was a keenness to them both that was suddenly incomprehensible to Ben, an affinity in which he could not share.
–Why? What happens tonight?
–The funeral of Christ. Very sad, very beautiful. Come with us, Ben. You will see something.
–No thanks.
–You don’t believe in Christ? Or you are tired of your friends?
He could think of nothing to say to that. He had been to church with them in Pylos, after all. Max nodded benignly, as if he had already answered. He turned back to Natsuko.
–Ben is tired of his friends. Eleschen is coming soon. Stay. We can go together.
He watched her hesitate. The smoke of the fire stung his eyes and he raised the bottle, narrowed them and drank, feeling the spirit burn. When he looked again Natsuko was shaking her head. Her face was full of apology. It was for Max, not for him. And Max was looking back at her, at both of them, in dumb surprise.
–So it’s like that. Is that how it is?
Neither of them answered. A scintilla of charred paper floated up between them and winked out. Max laughed.
–I’m glad for you. You know why? Because then Jason is wrong. If everything else turns to shit Jason will still be wrong, if you have each other.
He sighed and scuffed his boot at the fire, still seeming not angry but wry and weary, as if all his anger had already been spent. He reached out an open palm towards Ben.
–Give me that.
He took the bottle. He drank the spirit like water. It ran across his face as he stopped and he wiped himself, his chin and shirt, laughing again in the thickening dusk. He tipped the bottle to them when he was done. Somehow he still sounded sober.
–To my good friends, Natsuko and Ben. I never liked you. You make me glad.
Ash blew up around them, a vortex with Max at its eye. Natsuko had moved closer to Ben. There was something in the other man’s face, a fatal humour, which he found hard to look at himself. He gazed into the fire instead. Among the newspapers he could make out a smaller shape, he realised. The outline of a slender book. A booklet or a pamphlet, its cover white against black char. The flames were sinking low around it.
–We should go.
–So go, then. Go. Run away together.
–Your fire is dying, Natsuko said, but Max shook his head, nudging the papers again. He was no longer smiling.
–No, I don’t think so. This will live all night.
Natsuko was on the phone. She was listening, her face pinched, her body hunched over the table. He could hear Eberhard’s voice, very faint and calm, and although he couldn’t make out the words he thought he understood everything.
They were si
tting at a café under the town square’s colonnades. On the table were four newspapers, two in front of each of them, the pages blotched with spillages and weighed down with coffee cups, coffee saucers, the water jug, their sunglasses.
There was no news for them, and no more time for it to reach them. It was Saturday. The streets were crowded with traffic, city workers making it home by the skin of their teeth for their family Easters. The square itself was quiet, the few pedestrians hurrying, as if the town were under siege and its open places dangerous. There was a euphoria to it all, still stifled, bated, but too great to be held in check for much longer. It was ten hours to midnight. Everything waited, except them.
–No, Natsuko said into the phone.
Then–I don’t know. I don’t know.
And then–Nothing!
And then nothing.
That afternoon they walked. Natsuko wouldn’t talk to him, had withdrawn into herself, and nothing he said seemed to help, so that they went on side by side but separated by their wretched thoughts, haphazardly wandering, one belatedly following the other. Going nowhere, losing themselves in the backstreets as best they could: as if they could have lost themselves.
In one street an old woman with grey whiskers gave them two eggs and told them to eat them tomorrow. In another the gutters were full of a bright flotsam of dead flowers. By the hospital children were letting off firecrackers, two old men frowning at them tolerantly from the doorway where they sat washing potatoes.
As it was getting dark they came out of an alleyway and found that they had been turned round. They were back in the town square. Natsuko’s feet were sore and they sat by the fountain. She handed him the eggs and took off her shoes.
When he said her name she shook her head, as if he had asked a question. She sat with one foot cradled in her lap, looking away from him. The lights were coming on. A church in one of the streets was outlined with strings of blue neon.
–Leave with me, he said, but she shook her head again and began putting on her shoes.
–Will you keep mine for me?
–What?
–My egg.
He looked down at them. They were dyed unevenly. Rust-red and terracotta, ochre and cinnabar.
–You’re going to leave without me.
–It would be better.
–Better how?
–Better for you.
–That’s not true. I want to be with you.
–I want to be alone. Only tonight.
–Did I do something wrong?
–Everyone does. You said so. Will you take me home?
He walked with her to the cathedral square, waited while she unlocked the door, walked home with the feel of her kiss still fresh on his mouth. The streets were getting crowded by the time he reached the hotel. He fell asleep to the sound of fireworks and churchbells.
In the morning he couldn’t find her.
He went to the apartment first. When there was no answer there he tried her mobile from a payphone on the square, then walked down to Eberhard’s.
Eleschen opened the door. She was in a dressing gown with his hotel insignia. He wondered when she had stolen it. She looked bewildered to see him. Her hair was wild. The morning sunlight caught it, turning it nebulous.
–Ben?
–I woke you–
–No, no. Don’t be silly, I’ve been up all night. What do you want?
–Can I come in?
–Sure, why not?
He followed up the stairs. –Is Natsuko here?
–Did you expect her? Jason is. Eb was but he left just now. We’ve been trying to find something to eat. You know nothing’s open again? Only the bakeries, and they’re not even selling bread, they just rent the ovens out for lamb…
A radio was playing in the kitchen, pop music filtering through, the jollity of it out of place in Eberhard’s sitting room. The windows had all been thrown open and the curtains billowed in.
–Jason! Ben’s here.
–What’s he got for us?
–Nothing.
–Tell him to fuck off then.
The room felt oddly hollowed out. It was a moment before he realised it was because the shelves were bare: Eberhard’s books were gone. The other furniture, too, had been cleared of incidental possessions, everything but the writing desk swept clean. The old luggage from the kitchen hallway stood queued against one wall.
–You’re leaving, then, he said, and Eleschen smiled, breezy, shrugging off any embarrassment.
–It’s a shame. I’m going to miss Sparta. This was the perfect place for us.
–Where will you go?
–Somewhere sunwashed, I hope. I could really handle some sun-washing.
Can I come?
He only thought it: he didn’t say it. It was a question she could have answered already, an offer she might already have made, if she had meant to make it. And it was only the weakness in him, the mouseish, hungry, bony boy, that made him want to ask at all. He wouldn’t have gone with them if he could.
One of us, Eleschen had called him, the night the dig had ended: but he was not, had never been, would never be that. Eberhard had been wrong about him. There was some lack in him, or them. He had been sure of it that evening, in this room, in the dimness, when they had spoken of beginning again, of finding another Kiron.
That night, watching Natsuko sleep, he had known that he wouldn’t go with them. It was only that he hadn’t known, until now, that they knew it, too. That they had given up on him. That he had disappointed them.
He wondered if they still trusted him.
He lifted a curtain back. Down in the cathedral square five girls and a boy were chasing one another in endless circles, concentric, eccentric. Behind him he heard Eleschen sigh and sink down into a chair.
–We missed you last night.
–I didn’t know where you went.
–We were all here.
–I was tired anyway.
–We could have been tired together. We’re still friends, aren’t we, Ben?
He turned round. She was sitting in the old armchair with her head leant back and turned slightly towards the kitchen. Her dressing gown had fallen open. Her thighs and throat and the gown itself, the folds and scrolls of it, were all flawless white.
–You look like marble, he said, softly, and her head rolled towards him, though her eyes were elsewhere.
–What?
–Nothing. Sorry. Of course we’re friends.
–That’s good.
–I can’t find Natsuko.
–Poor thing. Come here, I’ll make it better.
Something diaphanous enfolded his head. He stepped away from the curtains, fending them off with one hand. His knee glanced against an obstruction–the side of the writing desk–and glasses rattled and chimed, an empty bottle teetering before he reached out and caught it. Between the glasses was a bowl full of broken pottery. Eleschen was laughing.
–Oh Ben! Defeated by curtains. What are we going to do with you?
The pottery was old, the whorled red clay stained grey and black. Therapne potsherds, he thought, and a part of him was outraged that a sign had been scratched on each, a cross on some, a nought on others. Beside the bowl stood the green-glazed jug.
–What are these for?
–A game.
He picked up the jug. Something dry shifted in its depths. He looked up at Eleschen and found her eyes on him.
–It’s a vote. What were you voting on?
–I told you, it was just a game.
–Hello, soldier! Where’s breakfast, then?
He turned in time to parry the arm meant for his shoulders. Jason had come in from the kitchen, a cigarette in his mouth, sunglasses in his hair. He raised both hands, a tumbler in one.
–Fuck me, it’s the Spiky Ben! Excellent, excellent news. I always liked you better this way. You should drink more. Hangovers suit you. Try this, go on, I don’t know what it is but it does the job. There’s nothing else left in
the house. You can have some in that if you really want.
He let Jason take the jug. He shook it, muttered indistinctly, then upturned it over the bowl. Shards of pottery clattered across the desk and fell, taking a wineglass with them.
He got down on his knees and began picking up the nearest pieces. –Butterfingers, Eleschen was saying, but Jason was laughing.
–What are you doing down there, you prat? Leave it, it doesn’t matter now.
He stood up, emptying fragments into the bowl. Among the glass he had retrieved were three potsherds. Each was marked with a cross. His hands were shaking. Jason was pouring from his tumbler into the jug, holding it out. He grinned when Ben took it.
–There! That’s better. What are we going to drink to?
He pointed the jug at the bowl. –What’s this?
Jason looked owlishly at Eleschen, then back at him.
–Were you deciding where to go?
–No need for that. We’ll go where Max and Eb tell us. Bit Athenian, potsherds, anyway. Old School democracy. We tried to do it the Spartan way, but we just ended up shouting at each other.
–What was it, then? he asked again, but Jason shook his head. His eyes were still smiling as he tipped his glass. –It doesn’t matter any more. Let’s drink to something else. To Mrs Mercer. How’s that? Her health. Such as it is.
–What?
–You know. Eb told us all about it, when Stanton said you were coming.
–What are you talking about?
Jason leered. –Oh come on. No need to be shy with us. No point being coy now. We’re your friends, Ben, we know what you’re like, remember? We’ve seen you hunt–
–There’s nothing wrong with my wife–
–Not for your want of trying.
The room had gone quiet. He could hear Eleschen breathing. The radio in the kitchen, the tuning lost, gone to static. Laughter in the square.
–She told her bloke, of course, and he told Eb. What’s his name? Professor something. You know him, anyway.
–I never hurt her.
–Very Greek, I thought. Rape in the Classical sense. Not that I’m criticising. What you do in the marital bed, that’s your business. Anyway, I didn’t mind. I thought you sounded promising. Nasty. Hungry. Spiky. That’s what we wanted out of you, the Nasty Hungry Spiky Ben–
