by Mary Stewart
Something like a fleck of darkness went by my cheek. A bat. It was deep twilight now, the swift-falling Aegean dusk. I turned to see lights pricking out in the houses behind me. I could just see the street lamps, faint and far between, along the sea-front. They looked a long way away. Where I stood the shadow of a huge olive brooded like a cloud. I turned to go back to the village.
Instead of returning the way I had come, I took what I judged to be the direction of the car, and, plunging down from the ridge into the depths of the olive-wood, I set off quickly through the twisted and shadowy trunks.
I had gone perhaps a hundred yards before the trees began to thin. Some way off to my left I saw the lights of the first house, an outpost of the village, and was hurrying towards it through the soft dust when a sudden flash of light quite near me, and to my right, brought me up short, startled. It was the flash of an electric torch, deep in the trees. Perhaps my adventures of the day had worked on my imagination rather too well, or perhaps it was the ancient mystery that I had been attempting to call up, but the fact remains that I felt suddenly frightened, and stood very still, with the trunk of an enormous olive between me and the torchlight.
Then I realised what it was. There was a house set by itself deep in the grove, the usual two-windowed box of a place with its woodpile and its lean-to shed and its scrawny chickens gone to roost in the vine. The flash I had seen showed me a man bending over a motor vehicle of some sort which was parked close to the side of the house. It looked like a jeep. As I watched he jerked the bonnet open, shone the light into the engine, and leaned over it. I saw his face highlighted by the queerly refracted light, a very Greek face, dark, with hair crisping down the wide cheekbones in the manner of the heroes, and a roundish head covered with close curls like a statue’s.
Then somebody in the cottage must have kindled the lamp, for a soft oblong of light slanted out of one of the windows, showing the dusty clutter outside – a woodman’s block with the axe still sunk in it and gleaming as the light caught it, a couple of old petrol cans, and a chipped enamel bowl for the hens’ food. My causeless fear vanished and I turned quickly to go.
The man by the jeep must have seen the movement of my skirt in the darkness, because he looked up. I caught a glimpse of his face before the torch went out. He was smiling. I turned and hurried away. As I went, I thought the torch-beam flicked out to touch me momentarily, but the Greek made no move to follow.
Simon was sitting in the car, smoking. He got out when he saw me and came round to open my door. He answered my look with a shake of the head.
‘No go. I’ve asked all the questions I could and it’s a dead end.’ He got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. ‘I really think we’ll have to call it a day – go back to Delphi and have dinner and leave it to sort itself out in its own good time.’
‘But will it?’
He turned the car and started back towards Delphi. ‘I think so.’
Bearing in mind what I had been thinking before about the ‘mystery’, I didn’t argue, I said simply: ‘Then we’ll leave it. As you wish.’
I saw him glance at me sideways, but he made no comment. The lights of the village were behind us, and we gathered speed up the narrow road between the olives. He dropped something into my lap, a leafy twig that smelt delicious when my fingers touched it.
‘What is it?’
‘Basil. The herb of kings.’
I brushed it to and fro across my lips. The smell was sweet and minty, pungent above the smell of dust. ‘The pot of basil? Was it under this stuff that poor Isabella buried Lorenzo’s head?’
‘That’s it.’
There was a pause. We passed a crossroads where our lights showed a sign, AMPHISSA 9. We turned right for Chrissa.
‘Did you go to look for the Pilgrim’s Way back there in Itea?’ asked Simon.
‘Yes. I got a wonderful view just before the light went. The Shining Ones were terrific.’
‘You found the ridge, then?’
I must have sounded surprised. ‘You know it? You’ve been here before?’
‘I was down here yesterday.’
‘In Itea?’
‘Yes.’ The road was climbing now. After a short silence he said, with no perceptible change of expression. ‘You know, I really don’t know any more about it than you do.’
The basil leaves were cool and still against my mouth. At length I said: ‘I’m sorry. Did I make it so obvious? But what was I to think?’
‘Probably just what you did think. The thing’s slightly crazy anyway, and I doubt if it’ll prove to matter at all.’ I saw him smile. ‘Thank you for not pretending you didn’t know what I meant.’
‘But I did. I’d been thinking about very little else myself.’
‘I know that. But nine women out of ten would have said “What d’you mean?” and there we’d have been, submerged in a lovely welter of personalities and explanations.’
‘There wasn’t any need of either.’
Simon said: ‘“O rare for Antony”.’
I said involuntarily: ‘What d’you mean?’
He laughed then. ‘Skip it. Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
‘Why, thank you, Mr Lester—’
‘Simon.’
‘Simon, then, but perhaps I should – I mean—’
‘That’s wonderful then. At your hotel?’
‘Look, I didn’t say—’
‘You owe it to me,’ said Simon coolly.
‘I owe it to you? I do not! How d’you work that out?’
‘As reparation for suspecting me of – whatever you did suspect me of.’ We were climbing through the twisting streets of Chrissa, and as we passed a lighted shop he glanced at his wrist. ‘It’s nearly seven now. Could you bear to dine in half an hour’s time – say at half past seven?’
I gave up. ‘Whenever it suits you. But isn’t that fearfully early for Greece? Are you so very hungry?’
‘Reasonably. But it’s not that. I – well, I’ve things to do and I want to get them done tonight.’
‘I see. Well, it won’t be too early for me. I only had a snack for lunch, and I was too frightened to enjoy that. So thank you. I’d like that. At the Apollon, you said? You’re not staying there yourself?’
‘No. When I got here the place was full up, so I got permission to sleep in the big studio up the hill. You won’t have seen it yet. It’s a big ugly square building a couple of hundred feet up behind the village.’
‘A studio. An artist’s studio, do you mean?’
‘Yes. I don’t know what it was used for originally, but now it has a caretaker, and is let out to visiting artists and bona fide students who can’t afford to pay for a hotel. I suppose I’m up there under slightly false pretences, but I wanted to be in Delphi for some days and I couldn’t find a room. Now that I’m settled into the studio I find it’ll do me admirably. There’s only one other tenant at present, an English boy, who’s a genuine artist … and good, too, though he won’t let you say so.’
‘But surely you’ve a perfectly good claim on the studio, too?’ I said. ‘After all, you count as a student. And as a classicist you’ve a bona fide claim on any concession. It’s not a question of “false pretences” at all.’
He sent me a sideways look that I couldn’t read in the darkness. He said rather shortly: ‘I’m not here to pursue my classical studies.’
‘Oh.’ It sounded lame, and I hoped it hadn’t sounded like a question. But the syllable hung there between us like a dominant awaiting resolution.
Simon said suddenly, into the darkness straight ahead: ‘My brother Michael was here during the war.’
Chrissa was below us now. Far down to our left as we climbed along the face of the bluff the lights of Itea were strung along like beads under the thin moon.
He said, in that expressionless way: ‘He was in the Peloponnese for some time, as BLO – that’s British Liaison Officer – between our chaps and the andartes, the Greek guerrilla
s under Zervas. Later he moved over into the Pindus region with ELAS, the main resistance group. He was in this part of the country in 1944. He stayed with some people in Arachova; a shepherd called Stephanos and his son Nikolaos. Nikolaos is dead, but Stephanos still lives in Arachova. I went over to try to see him today, but he’s away in Levadia, and not expected back till this evening – so the woman of his house told me.’
‘The woman of his house?’
He laughed. ‘His wife. You’ll find everyone has to belong, hereabouts. Every man belongs to a place, and I’m afraid that every woman belongs to a man.’
‘I believe you,’ I said, without rancour. ‘I suppose it gives meaning to her life, poor thing?’
‘But of course … Anyway I’m going down to Arachova again tonight to see Stephanos.’
‘I see. Then this is a – a sort of pilgrimage for you? A genuine pilgrimage to Delphi?’
‘You could call it that. I’ve come to appease his shade.’
I caught my breath. ‘Oh. How stupid of me. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.’
‘That he died. Yes.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes, in 1944. Somewhere on Parnassus.’
We had wheeled up on to the last stretch of the road before Delphi. To our left blazed the lighted windows of the luxurious Tourist Pavilion. Far down on the right the thin moon was already dying out in a welter of stars. The sea was faintly luminous beneath them, like a black satin ribbon.
Something made me say suddenly, into the dark: ‘Simon.’
‘Yes?’
‘Why did you say “appease”?’
A little silence. Then he spoke quite lightly. ‘I’ll tell you about that, if I may. But not just at this moment. Here’s Delphi, I’ll leave you and the car at your hotel, and I’ll meet you on the terrace here in half an hour. Right?’
‘Right.’ The car drew up where it had stood before. He came round and opened my door for me. I got out, and when I would have turned to repeat some words of thanks for his help in my afternoon’s quest he shook his head, laughed, raised a hand in farewell and vanished up the steep lane beside the hotel.
With a feeling that things were moving altogether too fast for me, I turned and went indoors.
5
But enough of tales – I have wept for these
things once already.
EURIPIDES: Helen.
(tr. Philip Vellacott.)
ANY fears I might have had that Simon’s melancholy pilgrimage would be allowed to cloud my first visit to Delphi were dispelled when I came down at length to dinner, and walked out to the hotel terrace to find a table.
Seven-thirty was certainly an outrageously early hour for dining in Greece, and only one other of the tables under the plane trees was occupied, and that, too, by English people. Simon Lester wasn’t there yet, so I sat down under one of the trees from whose dark boughs hung lights, which swung gently in the warm evening air. I saw Simon then below the terrace railing, making one of an extremely gay and noisy group of Greeks which surrounded a fair boy in the garb of a hiker, and a very small donkey almost hidden under its awkwardly loaded panniers.
The fair young man looked very much as if he had just completed some arduous trek in the wilds. His face, hands, and clothes were filthy; he had a generous stubble on his chin, and his eyes – I could see it even from where I sat – were bloodshot with fatigue. The donkey was in rather better case, and stood smugly beside him, under its load of what appeared to be the paraphernalia of an artist – boxes, roughly wrapped canvases, and a small collapsible easel, as well as a sleeping bag and the rather unappetising end of a large black loaf.
Half the youth of Delphi seemed to have rallied to the stranger’s welcome, like the wasps to my honey-cake. There was a great deal of loud laughter, atrocious English, and backslapping – the last an attention which the stranger could well have done without. He was reeling with tiredness, but a white grin split the dirty bearded face as he responded to the welcome. Simon was laughing, too, pulling the donkey’s ears and exchanging what appeared to be the most uproarious of jokes with the young Greeks. Frequent cries of ‘Avanti! Avanti!’ puzzled me, till I realised that they coincided with the jolly slaps under which the donkey, too, was reeling. At each slap a cloud of dust rose from ‘Avanti’s’ fur.
Eventually Simon looked up and saw me. He said something to the fair boy, exchanged some laughing password with the Greeks, and came swiftly up to the terrace.
‘I’m sorry, have you been waiting long?’
‘No. I’ve just come down. What’s going on down there? A modern Stevenson?’
‘Just that. He’s a Dutch painter who’s been making his way through the mountains with a donkey, and sleeping rough. He’s done pretty well. He’s just here from Jannina now, and that’s a long way through rough country.’
‘He certainly got a welcome,’ I said, laughing. ‘It looked as if all Delphi had turned out.’
‘Even the tourist traffic hasn’t quite spoiled the Greek philoxenia – the ‘welcome’ that literally means “love of a stranger”,’ said Simon, ‘though goodness knows Delphi ought to be getting a bit blasé by now. At least he’ll get the traditional night’s lodging free.’
‘Up at the studio?’
‘Yes. This is the end of his trek. Tomorrow, he says, he’ll sell Modestine – the donkey Avanti – and get the bus for Athens.’
I said: ‘I thought when I saw the easel and what-not that he must be your English painter friend from the studio.’
‘Nigel? No. I doubt if a venture like that would ever occur to Nigel. He hasn’t the self-confidence.’
‘You said he was a good painter, though?’
‘I think he’s good,’ said Simon, picking up the menu and absently handing it to me. It was in Greek, so I handed it back again. ‘But he’s convinced himself – or else some fool has told him – that his own particular style is no good any more. I admit it’s not the fashion, but the boy can draw like an angel when he likes, and I should have thought that was a gift rare enough to command attention even among some of today’s more strident talents.’ He handed me the menu. ‘He doesn’t use colour much – what will you have to start with? – but the drawing’s very sure and delicate, and exciting at the same time.’
I gave the menu back to him. He scrutinised the scrawled columns. ‘Hm. Yes. Well, some fool’s told Nigel that his style’s vieux jeu, or something. “Emasculate” was one of the words, I believe. It’s got him on the raw, so he’s hard at work trying to form a style that he thinks will “take”, but I’m terribly afraid it won’t work. Oh, he’s clever, and it’s arresting enough, and it may catch on and find him a market of a sort – but it’s not his own, and that never works fully. Another pity is that he’s been here in Delphi a bit too long and got tied up with a girl who wasn’t very good for him. She’s gone, but the melancholy remains.’ He smiled. ‘As you see, it’s with me, rather. I’m all the company Nigel’s had up at the studio for the last three days, and I’ve been playing confidant.’
‘Or housemaster?’
He laughed. ‘If you like. He’s very young in many ways, and habit dies hard. One takes it for granted one is there to help, though I’m not just sure how much anyone can do for an artist at the best of times. And at the worst they go into a kind of wilderness of the spirit where the best-intentioned listener can’t even follow them.’
‘As bad as that?’
‘I think so. I told you he was good. I believe the agony is in proportion to the talent … Look, what are you going to eat? Why don’t you choose something?’ He handed me the menu.
I gave it patiently back. ‘I shall die of hunger in a minute,’ I told him. ‘Have you looked at this dashed menu? The only things I recognise are patates, tomates, and melon, and I refuse to be a vegetarian in a land which produces those heavenly little chunks of lamb on sticks with mushrooms between.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Simon penitently. ‘Here they are, see? Souvlaka.
Well, so be it.’ He ordered the meal, then finally cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘What shall we drink? How’s the palate coming on?’
‘If that means can I swallow retsina yet,’ I said, ‘the answer is yes, though what it has to do with a palate I cannot see.’ Retsina is a mild wine strongly flavoured with resin. It can be pleasant; it can also be rough enough to fur the tongue with a sort of antiseptic gooseflesh. It comes in beautiful little copper tankards, and smells like turpentine. To acquire – or to pretend to acquire – a taste for retsina is the right thing to do when in Greece. As a tourist, I’m as much of a snob as anyone. ‘Retsina, certainly,’ I said. ‘What else, with souvlaka?’
I thought I saw the faintest shade of irony in Simon’s eye. ‘Well, if you’d rather have wine—’
I said firmly: ‘They say that once you’ve got used to retsina it’s the finest drink in the world and you won’t ever take anything else. Burgundies and clarets and – well, other drinks lose their flavour. Don’t interrupt the process. The palate is faint yet pursuing, and I expect I’ll like it soon. Unless, of course, you’d like a nice sweet Samian wine?’
‘Heaven forbid,’ said Simon basely, and, to the waiter, ‘retsina, please.’
When it came it was good – as retsina goes – and the dinner along with it was excellent. I’m not a person whom the sight of olive oil repels, and I love Greek cooking. We had onion soup with grated cheese on top; then the souvlaka, which comes spiced with lemon and herbs, and flanked with chips and green beans in oil and a big dish of tomato salad. Then cheese, and halvas, which is a sort of loaf made of grated nuts and honey, and is delicious. And finally the wonderful grapes of Greece, bloomed over like misted agates and cooled with water from the spring above the temple of Apollo.
Simon talked entertainingly through the meal without once mentioning Michael Lester or his purpose in visiting Delphi, and I myself forgot completely the cloud that was still hanging over my day, and only recollected it when a lorry, chugging up past the terrace, slowed down to pass the car which stood parked at the edge of the narrow road.
