Seven Tears for Apollo

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  Market stalls and small shops ran around the sides of the square and she started past them. The scene was far quieter than it was in the early morning when shoppers were out in force. Dorcas wandered idly until she found the fruit she was looking for. When she’d paid her drachmas, she returned to Mandraki, carrying her purchases in a string bag.

  Now she moved in the direction of the walled town, wondering if she might run into Johnny returning from his picture-taking expedition. If he had the car, he might have gone in through the same twin-towered gate they had taken on their first visit to that part of town. She crossed to the sidewalk along the harbor, her skirt whipping in the wind. On the outer rim the three windmills turned in unison and a gentle swell of waves washed within the enclosure. She walked along, watching the anchored fishing boats and a boy on the stony beach sorting octopus in a tentacled heap.

  Opposite the towers she turned toward the street again. As she reached the curb a car passed close to her, making the turn into the old city. Dorcas stared after it in surprise. The car was Fernanda’s, and Vanda Petrus was behind the wheel. Beside her, with just the top of her small head visible, sat Beth.

  There was no time to prepare herself. No time to resist the surge of alarm that flashed through her. Something in her had known that the quiet days of waiting would come to a sudden end. She had been lulled until her guard was down and those who had waited were ready to strike. Vanda, whether she was with them or not, was playing into their hands—with Beth as a hostage. The conviction was terrifying in its force. It brooked no calm reasoning or contradiction.

  Dorcas darted across the street and began to run toward the entrance in the great walls. Already the car had gone through and out of sight. Although Vanda had given no sign, Dorcas had a feeling that the woman had seen her at the instant of turning the car.

  Beneath the stone arches of the gate she paused to catch her breath, pressing back against the wall so she would not be knocked down by a car coming out of the walled city. There was a policeman inside, waving traffic through the narrow way and into the proper turn.

  It had taken her no more than five minutes from the moment when she had seen Vanda and Beth to reach this point. As she went inside, she saw that this had been time enough for Vanda to park the car near the museum and get out. Neither she nor Beth was in sight.

  There was a choice of several street openings off the little square and Dorcas stood looking about, her alarm heightening. How was she to find them if they escaped her in this maze? She hurried to an opening where she could look up one of the streets and was barely in time to see Beth whisked around a corner a block or so away. Again Dorcas began to run, ducking past a bicycle, slipping on rough cobblestones. When she turned the corner where she had glimpsed Beth, the child was nowhere in sight, and Dorcas chose a narrow archway and hurried through it.

  The street was empty. It ran only a block and then branched off into crooked alleyways. She was sure now that Vanda had seen her and taken flight. If she called out, the sound would only warn her further. It would be better to come upon her without warning—that was the only way. Fear was tight in her throat. Always she had known Vanda was not to be trusted. She should never have listened to Fernanda, or to Johnny’s soothing words.

  The alleys about her were a maze of narrow stone passageways and closely leaning stone buildings. The stone seemed to absorb all sound and it was very quiet. The streets turned and twisted without reason and she knew quickly enough that she had taken the wrong way. She must return to the car and start over.

  Breathless now, she went back along the last street she had followed and found that it ran uphill instead of down. She wasn’t lost. You couldn’t get lost in a place like this, for all that high stone walls and ancient houses cut off the horizon and offered no recognizable landmark. She had only to start downhill and take every turn down thereafter to find herself on the water front. But the old city was too big for someone on foot and she might come out at some distant entrance far from where Vanda had left the car.

  Nothing looked familiar now. Each street had its own darksome character. She passed an open-fronted taverna where men sat talking and laughing. They stared at her with friendly interest, but she could not ask them what she wanted to know and she hurried on.

  Suddenly the maze opened upon a Turkish fountain with stone steps all around. Not a fountain for decorative purposes, but a source of water for everyday use. In three directions from the central point of the fountain streets opened and she knew she was hopelessly confused so far as finding her way quickly was concerned.

  Wearily she sat upon a stone step and pushed wisps of damp hair back from her forehead. Bougainvillaea hung over a nearby wall, blanketing it with unexpected purple, and there was the cheerful sound of birds singing in a garden beyond. A woman watched her from an open doorway. After a moment she went inside and brought out a folding wooden chair, offering it with smiling courtesy. Dorcas sat upon it to please her and tried to make motions that would indicate tall, thin Vanda and small Beth. In a few moments other women joined the first, curious and interested, but concerned, too, because here was someone who appeared to be in trouble. No one spoke a word of English.

  She had given up all attempts at explanation by the time the two police officers in dark-green uniforms walked into the square. They came at once to speak to the crowd around her and ask questions in Greek. Again Dorcas went through her motions, but though the two listened earnestly, there was no getting through the barrier of a strange tongue. They invited her to go with them—at least that gesture was plain, offering a way out of the maze.

  The two set her courteously between them and it was thus that she went down the hill and around this turn and that until they came upon Johnny Orion taking pictures. Never had she been so glad to see anyone.

  The police officers, now that she had found a friend, took polite leave of her, pleased, no doubt, to have her problems so easily solved.

  “What’s this all about?” Johnny demanded. “I thought for a minute that you’d been arrested.”

  She tried to explain logically and clearly, but her tongue would not slow to coherence until he took her by the shoulders and gave her a brief shake.

  “Stop it!” he ordered. “Just give me words—not whole pages in one breath.”

  She slowed the urgent flow and managed to explain what had happened. Stated thus, baldly and quietly to Johnny, it no longer seemed an impressive story. It was filled with impulse and alarm without due motivation. Her actions had been based on hunch and emotion and they betrayed the fact that she had taken off in a completely futile pursuit. At least that was the way it must seem to Johnny.

  He made no comment, but suggested that they return to the place where Vanda had left the car. Slinging his camera equipment over one shoulder, he drew Dorcas’s hand through the crook of his arm, holding her steady as they walked along. She was relieved and a little angry at the same time. Angry with herself as well as with Johnny, because she had not made him understand that there was due cause for her fright.

  Johnny said nothing until they reached the open space near the museum. The spot was empty. Fernanda’s car was gone.

  “Vanda knew I saw her,” Dorcas said. “She knew I was trying to follow. She must have slipped back here when I took the wrong turning and now she’s got away.”

  “First of all,” Johnny said, “let’s get out from behind these walls.”

  He took her through the towered gateway and across Mandraki to the low stone wall above the harbor. There he made her sit quietly, with the bright sunlight of Rhodes upon her and the walls glowing with their touch of warm gold in reflection of sea and sun.

  “You can’t go on like this, you know,” he told her soberly. “If you see threats in the movement of every shadow, if you let your imagination constantly run away with you, you’ll wind up in a hospital again.”

  “Do you think it’s only my imagination?” she demanded.

  He looked away, and s
he knew the answer. The helplessness of defeat enveloped her. There was nothing more she could say to Johnny Orion.

  “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she said.

  “We’ll take a cab,” he agreed. “And when we get there, try to soft pedal what’s happened until you find out the reason behind Vanda’s trip. She and Beth are probably at the hotel by now. If you burst in with a wild-eyed look and recriminations, only to have it turn out that the trip was legitimate, it will look all the worse for you. Fernanda’s worried about you now. What do you say we play it down?”

  She did not argue with him, nor did she promise anything. In silence she walked with him to the taxi stand and rode beside him back to the hotel. All that really mattered was to find Beth, to know that she was safe.

  The cab pulled up in front of the Olympus and she saw that Fernanda’s car was at the curb ahead of them. Fernanda sat at a table on the terrace and Beth was there, playing with the yellow cat, while Vanda watched her.

  “Take it easy,” Johnny reminded as she thrust open the door of the car and got out without waiting. She scarcely heard him. All her attention was on Beth in a flooding of relief that washed away fear. She ran up the steps to the terrace.

  “Where did you take her?” she demanded of Vanda. “Where did you go with her in the car?”

  The woman stared at her blankly and Fernanda put a quick hand on Dorcas’s arm. “Darling, what’s the matter? You’re clammy with perspiration.”

  Dorcas drew away from her touch. “What was Vanda doing out with the car? Why did she drive Beth to the old city?”

  “Good gracious, why shouldn’t she?” Fernanda asked mildly. “I sent her there on an errand. What are you so upset about? What’s happened?”

  The conviction that had driven her for the last hour was still strong. Dorcas dropped to her knees beside Beth. “Where did you go with Vanda? Where did she take you?”

  The little girl answered with cheerful excitement. “We went to see a cat, Mommy. A bigger cat than this one. Its name is Cleo and it let me pet it.”

  Dorcas stood up, aware that the others were watching her—Fernanda, Johnny, Vanda. Vanda’s expression was carefully blank, Fernanda looked concerned, and Johnny was pitying again. She turned her back on them and went into the hotel. She ran up the two flights to her room, locked the door, and flung herself on her bed. Her head was throbbing and she felt a little sick. Were they right—all of them? Was she close to another breakdown, where the most normal happenings took on an aura of evil?

  After a time she got up and went into the bathroom to put cold cloths on her forehead. As she reached for the cold-water faucet she looked into the mirror. Her fingers tightened on the knob and she did not turn it. From the square of glass two white circles stared back at her blankly—like the exaggerated eyes of an owl.

  She leaned on the basin and fought the dizziness that swept through her. When she could move without swaying, she put out a finger to touch the markings. Someone had used her own cake of white soap—blunted, she saw, at one corner—to draw the circles on the glass. But why? Were these markings being used to frighten her into giving up the letter? There seemed a more ominous purpose behind them than that.

  After a moment she turned from the mirror and went to sit on the edge of the bed, her face in her hands. Now that the first shock had died, she was growing angry. If she went to summon Fernanda and Johnny, brought them to look at those marks, they would have to believe that something very wrong was going on. Or would they? Might they not think she had drawn the circles herself with her own cake of soap—perhaps in order to justify earlier erratic behavior? If that were the case, they would soothe and calm her, and they would show how sorry for her they felt. She would be helpless in the face of such disbelief and she would have further hurt her own cause. No, she would leave the marks where they were and she would show them to no one until she could decide calmly, quietly, sensibly, what to do.

  At the moment she felt neither calm nor quiet, but thoroughly angry. Anger now was a healthy emotion, one to overcome fear. The markings were meant to frighten her, this she knew. But as long as she refused to remain frightened, she was stronger than those who wished to threaten and torment.

  The telephone rang suddenly beside her. There was no one she wanted to talk to just now and she let it ring. The sound persisted, and there was something compelling about the ringing. She picked up the receiver and managed to keep anger in leash as she said, “Hello.”

  The voice was Johnny’s, and, her hands began to perspire in relief, although she was not sure what she had expected from the telephone.

  “I’ve just found that Fernanda is going to be on her own tonight,” Johnny said. “Will you have dinner with me, Dorcas? We can have the car and I’ve found a small place I think you’ll like.”

  She wanted to accept, but if she went with him, it would mean leaving Beth alone with Vanda. Vanda, who had perhaps drawn circles in soap upon her mirror?

  He sensed her hesitation. “You were wrong this afternoon, you know. Fernanda’s errand was a perfectly natural one. I looked into it. You can’t sit guard over Beth every moment. And I don’t believe there’s any real need for that.”

  Perhaps he was right. Even if Vanda was behind the markings, she would not harm Beth. And the time had come to talk to Johnny alone.

  “Thank you,” she said before her new resolution could falter. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”

  She put down the telephone and lay back on the bed. He was being kind and pitying—and mistaken. She would go to dinner with him tonight and she would show him the letter and tell him all that had happened—back home and here. Somehow she would get through his disbelief.

  If only she knew what the owl stood for, what the symbols meant and why they followed her. At least her anger held, and she knew she must find a way to fight.

  That night she dressed for dinner with special care. She wore a sleeveless sheath of lime-green linen, simply cut. A strand of gold beads made a contrast of color at her throat, and she wore gold earrings of a design that suggested Greece. Her head was bare, and she caught up a lacy gold scarf for her shoulders.

  Just before she left the room she did what she had not done for a long time. She smiled at herself in the dressing-table mirror—the delicate smile of a maiden of old Greece. And she went out of the room without another glance at the soaped circles, leaving them there upon the mirror in the bathroom.

  8

  The small restaurant was out upon the sea road. They found a place to leave the car and walked up steps to a gravel-strewn courtyard roofed over with matting. Tables stood about on the gravel, empty at this early hour, and the winds of Greece whipped at tablecloths that had been clamped into place at each corner.

  “Let’s go inside,” Johnny said.

  There were no more than eight tables in the narrow inner room, all bright with checked cloths. A curved wooden counter with glass sides exhibited cheeses and fruit, and beyond was an open kitchen where it was possible to see one’s dinner being cooked. Lights glowed softly golden against walls of split bamboo and candles flickered in plump glasses on each table. Upon a shelf that ran along one wall were displayed plates in the designs of ancient Rhodes, with leaping dolphins and small vessels, their plump sails filled with wind.

  A waiter in a white jacket let them make their choice of a table by the wall and Dorcas slipped into her chair and looked around with pleasure. This was not the usual bare and echoing Greek dining room, nor was it one of the overdone modern places.

  One other couple sat two tables away—a middle-aged German pair who ate with concentration and wasted no time on conversation. The waiter’s English was nonexistent, but a translated menu was produced and they ordered the casserole spécialité of the house.

  For the first time in days Dorcas began to relax completely. The letter lay in its place in the bag beside her chair but she did not want to think about it now. Johnny was watching her and there was approval in his ey
es.

  “Green and gold become you,” he said.

  It had been a long time since a man had looked at her as Johnny was looking. It was pleasant to feel that the dead years were slipping away and she might be stirring into life again.

  He told her of his efforts to legalize Fernanda’s acquisition of the stone catapult ball. The matter was going through channels now. The third official he had talked to had already met Miss Fern Farrar, and Johnny’s story had not surprised him. He had ended by deciding that the incident was amusing and had promised to see what might be done. Fernanda, of course, must be kept ignorant of the matter until her story was safely down on paper, unspoiled by tame reality.

  The spécialité arrived, hot with sizzling cheese on top, and proved to be a mixture of veal and eggplant. Johnny had ordered a bowl of tangy black olives—Greek olives that made the ripe olives at home seem tasteless by comparison. There was a slab of the local white cheese, delicious with dark bread. And he’d ordered retsina as well—the resined wine of Greece.

  “I won’t make you try ouzo tonight,” he said. “That takes a bit of getting used to.”

  The wine tasted the way pine resin smelled, Dorcas thought, and reserved judgment. She ate with greater enjoyment than at any time since she had come to Greece. She refused to think for the moment about the eyes of an owl.

  Halfway through the meal Johnny drew something from his pocket and handed it to her. “I found some picture cards for you and Fernanda.”

  She took the postcard. She saw that it was a photograph of the marble head the museum had been so mysterious about. The photographer had been skillful with his use of light and shadow so that the modeling of the boy’s face was brought out in all its wistful perfection. The lips seemed to quiver with life and the poised tear was surely about to roll down one cheek. There was a feeling of lightness about the picture that Dorcas sensed at once. She had not felt the same about the head which had been so reluctantly brought out for their inspection.