Seven Tears for Apollo

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “Makes you wonder,” Johnny said, “if the sculptors who were always making lions as a symbol of courage ever saw one in real life.”

  Here in the shadows stone had turned once more lifeless and gray and the golden apricot of the outdoor walls was gone. The stone exuded chill, and a cold wind blew through the arches.

  The three mounted wide, railless steps and found their way along a gallery lined with pottery jars—the amphorae of Greece that had once held wine or other liquids, wide-mouthed storage jars, oil jugs, and ointment jars. Fernanda breezed past these with hardly a second glance, but Johnny lingered and Dorcas saw him stop absorbed before a large jar with a red-figure painting of the ships of Odysseus. As Dorcas had sensed in Athens, Johnny’s interest in Greece was far more real than that of Fernanda, who saw mainly the end result of the book she meant to write.

  The museum’s most valued treasures were kept in small rooms upstairs off one of the main corridors. Here shelves along the walls held small heads and fragments of figurines. In the farthest of the honeycomb rooms they came upon the slender, virginal figure of the Venus of Rhodes. The marble body had been worn by sea waves for centuries before she had been recovered from the water, and her contours had blurred and softened, the very curls of her head smoothed in their undulations. Her features were barely discernible, and over her heart she bore a rusty stain.

  Dorcas found herself moved to tenderness before the slight and lovely form. She knew how her father would have stood enthralled before the figure. Fernanda’s interest, however, was not to be held by one piece for more than a few moments. She turned to the better-preserved statue of the kneeling Aphrodite drying her hair.

  The little nymph was exquisite as she lifted long ringlets of hair in each plump hand, spreading them to the sun. The gentle curves of breast and thigh, the dimpled knees, seemed untouched by the years that had flowed over them. The face was secretive—a young girl’s face wearing a half-smile, the lids lowered, hiding her thoughts.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Fernanda said, cheerfully shattering the spell. “What else must we see while we’re here? I hardly ever do a museum twice.”

  Dorcas had been looking about, but she had not found the marble head with the single tear rolling down one cheek. Johnny glanced at her and smiled, and she knew he remembered.

  “We haven’t seen the weeping boy yet,” he reminded Fernanda.

  The boy, however, was not to be easily found. The guard they questioned spoke only Greek and their pantomime drew a blank. To thwart Fernanda was to increase her determination. What should be seen must be seen.

  “It’s surely around somewhere,” she said. “Let’s find someone who can speak English.”

  A woman accompanied by several children heard her. “I speak English a little,” she offered. “If I can help—”

  Fernanda described the head, and the woman knew it at once. “Ah, yes. It has been in this room. One moment—I will ask the guard.”

  A conversation in Greek went on for several minutes. There was arm waving on the part of the guard and a good deal of head shaking as well. At last the woman turned back to them.

  “He is very sorry, but the head is not on exhibit just now. It is removed to the director’s office for some reason I do not understand.”

  Fernanda’s own head with its bluish hair and bright blue scarf came up like a steed that sniffs the fray.

  “Then let’s find the director,” she said. “I always believe in going to the top. And when someone says ‘no’ to me, I insist on following through. Quite often it means a story.”

  The woman looked somewhat bewildered, but she spoke again to the guard, and they were waved out of the room and toward a distant door. Fernanda had the effect of making one feel part of a large force ready to scale the bastions of authority. Her persistence might seem a little absurd at times, but it made things interesting. Dorcas found that her own curiosity had been whetted. Now she wanted doubly to see the sculpture of the weeping boy.

  4

  In the small office an official was found who spoke English. Fernanda explained her mission to Rhodes and was treated with smiling courtesy. But when she explained that she might not be able to return to the museum later, and wished to see the famous marble head now, there was evidence of reluctance.

  “It has been retired from view for the time being,” the official explained. “We regret greatly, but it is not on exhibit at the present time.”

  “Why not?” Fernanda was blunt.

  The official gestured vaguely. “We are most sorry, but what you ask is not possible.”

  Fernanda tapped a tooth with her pencil and Johnny began to whistle softly, as though to call her back to an acceptance of authority.

  “May I use your telephone?” she asked the official. “I would like to speak to the governor”

  “The—ah—governor?” the man echoed blankly.

  “Yes, of course. The governor of the Dodecanese Islands. Rhodes is the capital, is it not? I have an introduction to the governor and I presume he is in residence now. I’m sure he will use his influence—”

  “Madame, the governor is a busy man.” The official sounded less cordial now.

  “I believe the governor will be interested in assisting me,” Fernanda said somewhat grandly. “Do you have this marble piece on the premises?”

  The official threw up his hands. “But of course. Perhaps if it is of so great importance that you see it, an exception may be permitted.”

  He moved toward a closed cabinet in a corner of the room and Fernanda followed on his heels, perhaps a bit disappointed at so easy a victory.

  Johnny stopped whistling and winked at Dorcas. “She’ll find a better adversary yet—give her time.”

  The official took out a ring of keys and unlocked the corner cabinet. From its shadowy depths he took something heavy and solid into both hands and brought it to the blotting pad in the center of his desk, setting it down gently.

  “There you are, madame,” he said. “This is one of the great treasures of Rhodes. It is believed to be part of a figure made by the great Phidias himself.”

  Dorcas stepped closer to the desk. There was only the head and a broken indication of neck. The boy was young—perhaps seven or eight, and the head was life-size. From the cool, creamy white of the marble he looked up at them, his head turned slightly on the tracing of a neck that afforded a supporting base. Tenderly, sadly, he regarded them, so that the single tear poised on one cheek seemed to tremble as if about to fall. One could almost sense a quiver in the softly turned chin.

  Their somewhat unwilling host made a little speech. “Our story tells that this boy is son of the nymph, Rhoda, beloved of Apollo. Perhaps he weeps for his father who rides the sky in his fiery chariot.”

  Dorcas found herself studying the marble head intently. It was perfection itself, and yet there seemed some spell in the marble that disturbed her, reached out to her—though she did not know why.

  Fernanda announced that she was satisfied, and the man put the head away. He bowed politely at their thanks and saw them to the door. Dorcas suspected that he was glad to see them go without a summons to the governor.

  “I’m sure I don’t know what that was all about,” Fernanda said, her voice echoing cheerfully through stone corridors. “Anyway, let’s get on to the Street of the Knights. That’s what I want to see next.”

  Dorcas would have liked to stay longer in this ancient building. There were rooms they had not seen. And she had caught a tantalizing glimpse of a vast hall with arched columns down its center—perhaps where the Knights Hospitalers had kept their patients. However, she could return another time and bring Beth along. Beth was accustomed to museums and liked wandering in them. Again the hint of worry about Beth was insistent at the back of her mind, and again she thrust it away. She must refuse to give in to vague anxieties.

  When they reached the entrance gate on their way out, Fernanda stopped to look at postcards and booklets for sale.
She collected such material by the ton for future reference—especially in museums, where cameras were not allowed. Quickly she sorted through the display and then spoke to the man behind the desk. She wanted a picture of that marble head of a boy crying. The man spoke little English.

  “All is here,” he said, indicating his stock. “There is nothing more.”

  Dorcas, too, ran through the cards, but found no photograph of the boy with the tear on his cheek. The omission seemed odd, since other famous pieces were represented by a number of views.

  “I’d like to have a picture of the head, too,” Dorcas said, thinking of her fondness for the photograph she had known as a child.

  “There are sure to be pictures of it around town—I’ll find some for you and Fernanda,” Johnny promised.

  Fernanda, however, had moved on to experiences still ahead, and there was a quickening of eagerness as she put the museum behind her. They left gray walls and went into the bright sunshine of the square.

  “Now for the original Street of the Knights,” she said. “Something ought to happen there—something I can use.”

  The street was a short distance from the museum. When they reached its foot Fernanda stopped to take a picture of the narrow, climbing passage that ran between tight stone buildings. Uphill it went beneath an overpass and through an arched gateway at the top. The houses of the knights were built flat against the street, with no spaces between. Again each window bore the marking of a cross. Set into stone over a number of doorways were coats of arms, signifying, among other things, the tongue that each knight had spoken.

  As the three climbed the narrow sidewalk in single file, Dorcas had an occasional glimpse through an open doorway of courtyards beyond, where flowers bloomed and interior stone steps mounted beneath more Gothic archways to rooms above.

  Before one of these vistas Fernanda paused in delight. “Run along, you two. I want to see this. Maybe I’ll turn up something interesting if I go in by myself. I’ll meet you in a little while in front of the Grand Master’s Palace at the top of the street.”

  “We’ll wait for you,” said Johnny. “Take care. And don’t go phoning the governor.”

  Dorcas went ahead up the sidewalk. Alone with Johnny, and without Beth’s presence to furnish a focus, there seemed little to say. She was conscious once more of the change that had come over him when he’d learned that she was Gino Nikkaris’s widow.

  Part way up he led her across the cobblestones to an alleyway so narrow that it made the Knights’ Street seem wide by comparison. Here there were more crowding gray stone houses with little sunlight reaching through. Walls hemmed them in and there were unexpected turns, arches, and overpasses on every hand.

  “I spent some time in here when I came to Rhodes to make arrangements for Fernanda,” Johnny said. “It’s a rabbit warren, with crooked streets going every which way, but enormously interesting and alive.”

  They walked on, pausing beneath a statue of the Virgin in a canopied stone niche high above the street. Johnny spoke knowledgeably of its age and origin, and Dorcas found herself wondering about him again, about his interest in such things.

  At the top of the Knights’ Street they emerged upon an open courtyard where a huge plane tree grew in a center enclosure. At one side rose the formidable entrance towers of the Palace. Beyond were the ramparts and further towers they had seen from below.

  “Are you tired?” Johnny asked. “Let’s sit down for a while on the steps over there.”

  She was not tired at all, but she sat beside him on a wide flight of stone. The thought of Beth was with her again. The tug of anxiety had grown stronger. It would not be quieted by the reproaches of a more reasonable part of her mind.

  “How long do you suppose we’ll be away from the hotel?” she asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “Who knows? I suppose we’ll do the Palace when Fernanda joins us, and that may take a while. She’s getting oriented today.”

  Dorcas glanced at her watch and Johnny saw the gesture.

  “You’re not worrying about Beth, are you?” he sounded faintly impatient. “She’s perfectly all right, you know.”

  She did not want him to guess how much she was worrying. The pulse of anxiety had begun a steady beating, almost like the ticking of an alarm clock that marked each passing moment. She had an unhappy feeling that when the alarm went off, she would rush headlong back to the hotel and that no calm reassurances from anyone would keep her from reasonless flight. The knowledge in itself was alarming. She must not prove Fernanda right about her emotional state.

  She answered him stiffly. “I don’t know anything about this woman Fernanda has brought in to take care of Beth. I don’t want to be away too long. I have a queer feeling that she doesn’t like me. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  Johnny moved restlessly on the steps beside her, as though he wished he were doing something else. “You’re going to have a hard time if you worry about Beth all the way through this trip. Kids are fairly tough and I doubt that this woman will let her get into trouble. It isn’t important whether or not she likes you, so long as she likes Beth. Isn’t that true?”

  Dorcas had again that sense of inner toughness about Johnny. He would be sympathetic if he saw cause for anxiety, but impatient otherwise. She suspected that he would not be polite about it if he thought her foolish, and she tried to take his attention, and her own, from this unrealistic anxiety.

  “Yesterday you mentioned that you knew my husband,” she said.

  He nodded, and she was aware of the way he stiffened.

  She persisted. “How did you happen to meet him?”

  “The first time Fernanda came to Greece I helped out with her trip.” His voice was expressionless and he answered reluctantly. “We drove through the Peloponnese that time. Nikkaris joined us in Athens and went along.”

  “You didn’t like him, did you?”

  “What do you expect me to say?” he demanded.

  “I’d like to know what you thought of him.”

  He did not reply at once, but watched a girl who came out of a nearby doorway and ran across the courtyard to greet a young soldier waiting there. The two walked away hand in hand, and one knew there was affection between them.

  “I didn’t like him,” Johnny admitted when the two were gone.

  “Tell me why you didn’t.”

  He looked at her as though he resented the question and did not answer.

  “I want to know,” she said. “What did Gino do on that trip that made you dislike him?”

  “I disliked him from scratch.” Johnny was curt. “We rubbed each other the wrong way the first time we met.”

  “But there was more to it than that?”

  “The man is dead.” Johnny’s impatience was rising. “Supposedly you’re his grieving widow. But since you insist, I’ll tell you. He was using Fernanda for a bit of petty, and perhaps not so petty, smuggling. She thought he could do no wrong and she swallowed the story he fed her without question. I found out what he was up to and told him to lay off or I’d tell her the truth. The way he reacted made me think I might wake up with a knife in my ribs. He didn’t take it very well. If you want to know, I thought him a dangerous man. But he surprised me by paying attention to my warning. And a few days later he bowed out of the trip. I guess he thought it was no use, once I was on to him.”

  “Gino was like that,” Dorcas said. “He used people whenever he could get away with it.”

  Again Johnny glanced at her, but he made no comment. Undoubtedly he thought her a disloyal wife for not springing to Gino’s defense. She could not help that. The time for the truth had not yet come. Because she could not talk to him about Gino, she began, instead, to speak of her father and of his long interest in Greece. She wanted very much to break past the critical resistance Johnny was showing toward her today.

  “My father was here only once as a young man,” she told him. “He came before he had a family to care for, and he always wanted to retur
n. He had planned a trip when he retired, but he didn’t live that long. He wanted to come to Rhodes especially. He said it was a neglected island in many ways.”

  Johnny was listening now, and something of his impatience with her had faded. “I’ve felt that. Perhaps because Rhodes is off the beaten path, not so many people come here as might. The travel accounts usually settle for the other islands—for Crete and Delos and the rest. Novel writers do the same. But Rhodes waits with all it has to offer, and those of us who come are glad we did. I was more than happy when Fernanda said she wanted me for this trip.”

  Dorcas nodded. “In a way, I feel I’m making a sort of pilgrimage here for my father, and for a good friend of his who worked at the museum. I keep trying to see everything through their eyes and imagine what they would be thinking. In order to—to bring them here with me.”

  “You can overdo that,” Johnny said dryly.

  She gave him a quick look. For a moment she had thought there was sympathy between them again, but she had been wrong. Johnny Orion had a habit of turning unexpected corners that led away from her, putting himself in opposition when she least expected it.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  He picked up a pebble from the step beside him and tossed it idly in one hand. “What are you getting out of this trip? If you spend all your time in a—well, frankly, in a sentimental haze, what is Greece going to do for you? And for Beth?”

  It was her turn to be angry. She did not like having the deep love she felt for her father and for Markos called “sentimental.” Johnny had not understood at all, and it was clear that they were poles apart.

  She did not try to talk to him further, but gave herself fully to the thought of Beth. It was not unreasonable to be concerned about her daughter, she thought rebelliously. Again—this was something Johnny did not understand. This morning Fernanda had left her both resentful and a little frightened by taking Beth deliberately out of her hands. There had been something of a warning in Fernanda’s action—as though it was the beginning of a removal of Beth from her care. But of course Fernanda couldn’t do that. It wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, Dorcas began to wonder more urgently than before about what might be happening at the hotel with Beth in the hands of a stranger. Abruptly her concern was upon her again, closing out everything else so that she might listen to the ticking of the alarm.