by Tobias Hill
He lay back down. He was shivering, though not with cold, and the engine was lulling him to sleep. When he opened his eyes again the sky was wheeling over him. They had reached the village, at last, were turning up the street. He lay still until the tractor stopped.
They had pulled up by the taverna where the six of them had celebrated, the morning after the hunt. The doors were locked and shuttered. His driver sat waiting, not looking back at him.
He got down and turned back. The tractor was still running, the sound of it loud in the street’s enclosure. The man leaned down in his bucket seat and came up with a bottle of water.
–A hot day to walk, he said over the engine’s noise, and Ben reached up and took the water. It spilled down his shirt as he drank. He wiped his face as he offered it back. The man shook his head.
–Thanks. I didn’t mean to be walking.
–I see.
–I need help, he said, but his voice was soft and the man was no longer looking at him, was gazing up the street like a horse scenting home. The tractor shuddered and inched forward.
–Thanks, Ben said again, but he couldn’t raise his voice over the engine’s roar, and the man didn’t look back.
His legs had stiffened; his knees felt spongy and tender. It took an age to make the walk down to the bridge. There was a telephone just beyond it, on the highway, where the lights were gone. There was money in his pockets but it fell through his fingers as he pulled it out, the notes blowing away towards the gypsy ruins. He put his bottle down and picked the coins out of the dust.
He stood up, fed the slot, dialled. Natsuko answered on the first ring.
–It’s me.
–What’s wrong?
–Where were you? I looked. I couldn’t find you anywhere–
–I’m here now. Ben, what is it?
–Kiron’s dead.
–You saw?
She whispered something in her own language and began to cry. He leaned into the hot shade of the hood and closed his eyes and waited for her.
–Ben, oh, I am so sorry. What are we going to do?
–Leave with me.
–Now?
–I need you.
–Where are you?
–By the bridge. On the phone.
A pause. Voices whispering on the line. The ghosts of dead conversations.
–Natsuko?
–I’m coming. It will take a little time. There are some things I must bring–
–Hurry.
He hung up and sat down. The road was very still. The bottle was next to him on the pavement. He had finished it, was starting to drop off again, when the hatchback pulled up in front of him. He raised his head as she came round, and of course she began to cry again, keening frantically as she kissed his eyes and cheeks, very gently, butterfly kisses, as she helped him into the car.
They were driving north. He watched Sparta in the mirror as the road began to climb. The streets were diminishing. The buildings were white as salt.
–What did they do to you?
–It doesn’t matter.
–They hurt you. No one said–
–I deserved it. We all do.
Her eyes looked at him sideways, feral and dark. He put his hands over his face. –I don’t mean that. I don’t mean you. Listen to me–
–Shh.
He felt her reaching for him, tentatively, one hand still guiding them. Her hand was on his neck, in his hair, like Jason’s, and he shuddered at the touch.
–It’s alright now.
–Is it?
–Yes. Because, look. We are going now. We are going away together.
She took his hands in hers, holding on to them, drawing them both down. They were almost at the mountains. The road was still empty, eerie as an English motorway on Christmas Day. A single car crept up behind them and he watched it until it passed, white and anonymous. Natsuko’s back seat was full of luggage, a suitcase and a sky-blue sports bag, a HellaSpar carrier stuffed to bursting with T-shirts, toothbrush, hairbrush, jeans.
He looked at Natsuko. She was no longer crying but her face was still fierce. Her eyes were edgy, dancing across the road ahead. She was so quiet she might have been holding her breath. When he whispered her name she flinched.
–What?
–Where are we going?
–Where do you want to go?
–I don’t know, I haven’t thought. Just…somewhere else than here.
–Athens.
–Alright.
–Then we can fly away together.
–Alright.
Their talk was rapid and so quiet that it felt to him as if they were a single mind which thought aloud.
–It’s so far, though.
–Not today.
–No, it won’t take so long today. No one’s going anywhere, are they?
–Everyone is where they want to be.
–Except us, he said, and she nodded.
–But at least we are still going.
The plain falling behind them. The mountains closing like great gates. The flickerbook shadows of trees. Goat bells. The smell of thyme. Snowtops floating in the clouds.
The highway like a ghost road. Tripolis shimmering in the sun. A cavalcade of children riding children throwing fireworks. Air pockets of music through which they passed like ghosts themselves.
The smell of meat in every town waking him from deep drifts of sleep. Afternoon light on Natsuko’s face. Sunlight stippling her cheeks through the plane trees in village squares. The shadows of her eyelashes.
–You look like a dream come true.
–Are you awake?
–I think so.
–Then I can’t be a dream.
Corinth, the canal opening under them like a hangman’s trapdoor. Lamb roasting under awnings by a chapel in the olive groves. Judas burned to black lumps and clots on a black gibbet by the road.
–Eb took him outside. Why did he? He could have killed him in the cave.
–It would have made him hard to move.
–Why would they need to?
–I don’t know.
–At least we can tell someone, in Athens. We can tell them everything.
–No.
–Why not?
–They are still our friends.
–They were never my friends. They’ll think that we will. They’ll want to stop us. What if they’re following us?
–It’s alright. They won’t follow us.
Attica, the Greek heartland wasted with factories. The mountains and the sea. The blue battlefields of Salamis. And then Athens ahead of them, the Parthenon turning the colour of blood, the sunset behind them.
They drove through the streets in silence. The car stank of their fear and flight.
The city was unnaturally quiet, depopulated by Easter. Only as they came up to Constitution Square did they start to see people, the hotel cafés and the avenues under the trees still jammed with tourists and the young, the four-square facade of the National Parliament above them, the plaza loud and bright with jarring illuminations and music.
They stopped by the Hotel Grande Bretagne. Its windows rose in ranks, uplit and palatial. There were crowds outside, dining under green awnings, waiters moving between the tables.
–Why are we stopping?
She pushed her hair out of her face. Even after the hours of driving her expression seemed unchanged, her features still marked with that same nervous intensity.
–Ben…
–What?
–I didn’t tell you.
–Tell me what?
–I didn’t want you to be angry. Please don’t be. There is a thing I have to do.
–Thing?
–For them. Something for them.
–No.
–It’s an easy thing.
–I said no!
For a while she said nothing more. His panic and anger rose into the quiet until he felt they might choke him. She had leaned back from the wheel, her head turned–white skin; b
lack, black hair–looking out at the crowds in unseeing distraction.
–We’re done with them. Natsuko. Love. We’ve finished with them. It’s just us now.
She shook her head, still not meeting his eyes, and all at once he understood.
–They know we’re here. They knew where we were going. That’s how you knew they wouldn’t follow us. Is that it?
–Yes.
–Did they tell you to bring me here?
–Ben…
–Are you with me, or them?
–You!
–Look at me.
Her face was wretched. –I couldn’t help it. They were there when you called.
–Where?
–Eberhard’s.
–Why didn’t you tell me? Was he there? Eberhard? He’ll never let us go. You don’t know what he’s like, you didn’t see him, at the cave…oh God, God. Why didn’t you say?
He was shouting, pleading with her. He didn’t know for what. For the past to be undone. Her eyes looked huge in the car-dark.
–I promised them.
–Promised what?
–It is just one more thing. Only one thing. We must say nothing to anyone, and we must leave something here. A message for the authorities. Then they will let us go! Ben?
His head had begun to ache, the pain returning beat by beat. The car was stifling. He rolled down the window and leant out into the night air.
–Let me do it. Then we can go away, Ben. We can go away together!
Two men went past, young and sleekly groomed, their cocky smiles fading as they looked at him and away. His face was clammy. The metropolitan evening felt much warmer than that of Sparta. He could still smell himself and something else, much better. Oranges, that was it. Orange trees, breathing in the dark.
–Please?
–They’ll never let us go.
–They said they would.
–And you believed them?
–We’ll go somewhere new, then. Somewhere they don’t know.
–Where?
–Anywhere, she said, closer to him. –Anywhere. We can start again.
–You promise this is the end of it?
–I promise.
–And then we go away, he said, and when she echoed him, Tell me what to do.
He heard the smile in her sigh and turned back as her arms came around him.
–Thank you so much!
–You don’t have to…I don’t want to talk about it. Just tell me what it is.
She nodded once and let him go, unclipping her seatbelt, her motions urgent, her voice still soft. –You have your cellphone?
–I don’t have anything.
–Then I will give you mine and I will find a callbox. I will go first. To see it is safe. When I call, you bring the message. The authorities will find it quickly, here. Then we can go. You look so worried.
–Because I am!
–Don’t worry. Trust me.
She opened the door and swung herself out. He looked back as she did so. On the rear seat her bags sat huddled: the only light was that which came in from the lamp posts in the square. The HellaSpar carrier had fallen down, spilling into the footwell.
–Where is it? The message?
–I’ll tell you when I call.
–Natsuko, wait, let me go first, he said, and she leaned down, smiling, reaching in to stroke his face.
–I will do better. You look too much like a bad man.
He put his hand up to catch her own. –I forgot about that.
–Silly. Don’t forget me.
She kissed him and walked away. She moved smoothly through the crowd and the trees, heading deeper into the square. Just as he thought he had lost sight of her she came to a stop and looked back. His eyes had blurred where she had touched them. It made her face seem white with misery. She raised a hand and was gone.
He needed more air. He opened his door, took the car keys and got out. Natsuko’s phone was in his hand, its mouldings already slippery.
He waited for her. There was the sound of fountains, a smooth background tranquillity under the discordancies of the music in the square. Under the trees the sleek young men had found a gathering of friends, or those they wished to be their friends for the evening. They were dancing by the light of a lamppost with four heads. In the twilight they became Bacchic grotesques.
He stood with his back against the car. Beside the road a line of black men were selling handbags laid out on white sheets. There was no expression on the vendors’ faces. A police car cruised by, slow as a kerb-crawler. A man and woman in matching shirts were trying to talk together into a single public phone, the hood surrounded by small children perched wearily on suitcases. One of them was drowsing off, her hand curling into her hair.
Like Ness, he thought. Like my daughter; but the thought felt untrue, or undeserved. He could no longer picture his child’s face. It was as if he had given up that world–the best as well as worst of it–for the place in which he found himself.
He checked the phone. No messages. He had begun to worry that he’d missed the call. He could see the time, but it meant nothing to him. He didn’t know how long Natsuko had been gone, only that it had begun to feel too long.
She was what he had left, he realised. He had hoped for more, for the love of the others, but at least he still had her. That was something. Perhaps that would be enough. They could not go home–he would not lead Eberhard home–but they could start again, as she said. He could live with that. He could still be happy, if she would be happy with him…
Where was she? He looked at the time again. It jarred that she was still gone. He realised that his hands were shaking. Voices nagged at him, his own and hers and those of the others, all of them commingling in his memory, as if they issued from one mouth.
You’re going to leave without me.
It would be better.
Better how?
Better for you. We need to get the message through.
Did I do something wrong?
Everyone does. You said so. What do you want?
To be one of you.
Then you will. You’re ours, Ben. Now you are. Now you’re one of us.
A sickness or a morphia began to spread through his limbs. It was an effort to turn and look down into the car. He could see nothing in there but the dim mass of the bags.
He got back into the car. A truck went past, full of laughter. He was being foolish now, imagining nightmares. She was not going to leave him. They were going to go away together; she had said so. She had said so. And a message was just a message.
To calm himself he pictured her. A list of Natsuko, the things he loved, like that he had once made of Emine. The way her front teeth were slightly crooked. The pock-mark on one temple, quite close to her ear: he had only noticed it because her skin was otherwise so perfect. Her morning swims. The gasp of breath that had echoed up to him, sometimes, as she turned between metronomic lengths. Her endless, effortless strength.
A woman called out by the hotel, and he looked round, but it was only a tourist, a Japanese woman gesturing to a stranger with a camera.
The police car was going past again when the phone went off in his hand.
–Hello?
–It’s me.
Her voice was a whisper, its velvet brushed rough with excitement. He could hear the shushing of a fountain at her end of the line. Music, close by. A concatenation of wings. He looked up. Birds were wheeling above the trees.
–Are you alright?
–Yes. You can bring it now.
–Which is it?
–The blue one.
–The sports bag?
–Yes.
–Where are you?
–The middle of the square. There is a fountain near me. There is a man playing a guitar. He will find the bag. We will leave it behind him.
–What if he doesn’t tell anyone?
–He will. It will frighten him. Ben?
–What?
–Don’t l
ook inside.
–Why?
–Promise me.
–Alright.
–I love you.
–I love you too, he said, but by then the line was already dead.
He leaned back in his seat. The back of his head throbbed, as if someone waited there in the dark. A figure sat staring at him.
Don’t look inside.
Promise me.
He turned wearily and lifted the sports bag towards him. It was heavy and ungainly, dragging and snagging as he got it between the seats.
For a long time he only sat there, the bag resting on his lap, his hands resting on the bag. Five minutes passed, six, before he began to unzip it.
Inside there was nothing that looked like a message. There was no room for anything except a single Tupperware tub. It was oversized, one of the largest of those they had used in the laboratory. There was something inside it; he couldn’t make out what. An indistinct round mass.
He thought of the laboratory. Natsuko’s face as she faced him, frightened but brave. Righteous, like a cat discovered with a kill. And smiling, her eyes diminishing to crescents. And watching him, guileless.
Natsuko is fearless, she puts even Max to shame. I suspect she would be more ferocious than any of us, if push ever came to shove.
He peeled open the tub.
Something in dark wrappings. Bloodied sheets of newspaper. Out of the blue he thought of Foyt, the bastard, the thief in the night. But Foyt was no thief, and the thing in the wrappings had nothing to do with him. It was only that it reminded him of the cockerel, the special dish Emine had once made for him.
He is a dirty vain old cockerel.
Oh, he had not liked the look of those claws; but then the meat had been so good that he had been rendered speechless.
He groaned. He was going mad, wasn’t he? The thing in his lap was nothing like the cockerel. His mind was trying to escape, to think of anything but this thing, which was so much bloodier than the cockerel, and heavier, heavy as a kantharos. There was less flesh to this, more bone.
A shudder ran through him. He shut his eyes. There was a delicacy to his sanity he remembered from another time, a frailty like that of water tension. He could hardly bring himself to look again, to be sure of the thing that lay in his hands.
