The Two Faces of January

by Patricia Highsmith

  Rydal said, with annoyance, “Can’t you talk to me in English? What’re you asking me?”

  “Quand—” He began again, “Vous avez visité Knossou, sans doute.”

  Rydal smiled. “Vous—avez—visité—Knossos. Yeah. Saturday. Or maybe Sunday. Yeah, Sunday. Why?—Pourquoi?”

  “Why? Is he stupid?” the officer said, nudging his companion.

  They were hipped on the stupid bit.

  “Di—manche?” Then, in Greek, “Any witnesses for that? Anyone with you?”

  Rydal continued to lean against the rail. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

  “Who are you travelling with?” the officer asked in French.

  Rydal frowned, and asked him to repeat it.

  “Je . . . moi . . . seul,” he said, frowning now. “Nobody.” Rydal spread his hands, palms down.

  His passport was handed back to him, and the officer shrugged, and moved sideways towards the young man beside Rydal.

  “Partir,” said the other officer to Rydal, with a faint gesture in the direction of a salute.

  “Thanks,” Rydal said, put the passport into his pocket, and went down the gangplank with his suitcase.

  Chester was not in sight. Rydal looked for him in every direction. Then he got into a taxi and told the driver to go to Athens. Chester was not going to stop anywhere near the King’s Palace again, Rydal was quite sure. He’d go to a hotel around Omonia Square, most likely, like the Acropole Palace or the El Greco, both first-class hotels, because Chester liked his comforts. Chester would also probably try to talk to Niko the first thing, but not before he dropped all that luggage off somewhere. Rydal couldn’t imagine Chester getting out in front of the American Express and having a crucial talk with Niko on the pavement with the taxi waiting at the curb with the luggage in it.

  “Where do you want to go?” asked the driver as they were entering the city.

  “To . . . to the American Express,” Rydal said. He wanted to talk to Niko immediately.

  Constitution Square with its face of white, expectant buildings gazing on the jumbled area of short trees, of criss-crossing cement walks, gave Rydal a wrench at the heart, and he thought of Colette. The Square had the atmosphere of an empty room, a room that waited for someone, not knowing that the person would never come. It had become suddenly a sad place. He sat up and watched for Niko as they rolled along Othonos Street towards Niko’s sidewalk. Then Rydal caught sight of his sponges.

  “Hundred drachs, okay?” Rydal asked. He could have got the ride for eighty, but he was in no mood for bargaining. He gave the driver a hundred note, and got out with his suitcase.

  Niko saw him when he was three yards away, and his face lit with a surprised smile. “Mister Keener! I just saw your friend! Sa-ay—we got to talk!” in a whisper.

  “What did he want?” Rydal nervously touched and inspected one of the larger sponges hanging at the height of Niko’s elbow.

  “He wants to see me today at one o’clock. I should meet him on Stadiou and Omirou on the corner. Say, what kind of trouble is he in?”

  “He killed his wife in Knossos,” Rydal said.

  Niko looked utterly surprised, but he said, in English, “Yeah. Yeah. Seen the paper yesterday. So that was the woman! His wife!”

  “Yes.”

  “You just come from Piraeus? The boat, too?”

  “Yes. Listen, Niko, do you know what he’s going to say to you when you see him at one o’clock?”

  “What?”

  “He’ll ask you to find a man who will kill me.” Rydal said it in the simplest Greek.

  “Kill you? What in hell!” said Niko, as if this were the most outrageous proposition he had ever heard.

  “Oh, he’ll ask you to find him a tough guy. He may not tell you what it’s for, he knows you’re a friend of mine, but that’s what it’ll be for. Now Niko, what I really need from you is a place to stay in. To hide in, understand? Your place or at one of your friend’s, if you know somebody you can trust. Naturally, I’ll pay my expenses to whoever—”

  “My place. Sure, you stay at my place,” Niko said hospitably. “Just walk in. I don’t even have to speak to Anna first. Anna likes you.”

  Rydal nodded. “You see, Chester was trying to kill me when he killed his wife. She walked under that big vase by mistake. You see, Niko? You read the papers, didn’t you?”

  “Sure, and I heard it on the radio. Why does he want to kill you? You helped him.” Niko peered harder at Rydal. “You ask him for too much money?”

  “I haven’t asked him for any money,” Rydal said patiently, though he was nervous enough to have thrown a curse into his answer. “Oh, his wife took a fancy to me and I liked her, too, and that didn’t help.” Rydal calmly waited, sadly waited, while this important fragment of the story percolated through Niko’s brain. “Mr. Chamberlain, alias MacFarland, is a crook, you know, Niko. Crooks don’t trust anybody else. He’s afraid because I know too much. Do you see?” It was most important that Niko see, that Niko understand, because, though Niko would do anything for money, and Rydal couldn’t begin to compete with Chester in the money department, Niko was still something of a friend of his. Niko wouldn’t help to get him killed, Rydal thought. Niko had to know the story, know the real whys of his own behavior, and then—let him make as much money as he could off Chester, Rydal didn’t care. “He tried to kill me last night on the boat,” Rydal added.

  “He did? How?”

  “Slugged me and tried to throw me overboard.” Rydal saw that Niko didn’t quite believe that. No matter. Niko probably thought it was a contributory anecdote, backing up the main theme of his story, which he did believe. “You see, it’s just a matter of hours. Certainly by today, they’ll identify—” Rydal shut up as a small man with a cigar in his mouth approached Niko.

  “A sponge, sir?” Niko said in Greek. “Thirty, fifty and eighty drachs.”

  “Nyah,” mused the man, not looking at Niko, only fingering various sponges that hung from Niko as if they lay on a counter in front of him. “Had a sponge for only a month and it fell to pieces.”

  “What?” Niko giggled. “Not one of my genuine sponges. Must have been a phony sponge. Maybe sold by a Piraeus man.” He laughed, and his lead-framed front tooth showed.

  “Which ones are thirty?”

  Rydal lingered on, standing some six feet away. The man had not even glanced at him. The transaction was completed, and the man walked away with his sponge, the unlighted cigar stub still in his mouth. Rydal came back. “Okay, I’ll go to Anna’s now,” he said. “But I wanted you to know why, Niko. The police are already looking for a fellow of my age with dark hair. They’ll get my name, because I was with Chamberlain at a couple of hotels, you see? In Iraklion and Chania. Registered at the same time with him and his wife. So I won’t be able to stay at any hotel where I have to show my passport.”

  “You want a new passport?” Niko asked, leaning closer to him.

  Rydal had to laugh. “Are you coming home for lunch today?”

  “Naw. I bring a sandwish today,” he said, switching to English again. One hand emerged, holding a lump of paper tied with dirty white string.

  “Come home for lunch,” Rydal said. “I want to talk to you.”

  “I got that appointment at one.”

  “I want you to keep the appointment. Come home for lunch at twelve. Okay?”

  Niko pretended to hesitate, then said, “Okay.”

  Rydal bought a newspaper at a little store between Constitution Square and Niko’s place. The paper said the police were inquiring at hotels in Iraklion to see if a young American woman with red-blond hair had been registered, with a husband or alone, the day of or the day before the murder, which was Monday. Since today was Wednesday, the news was Tuesday’s or Tuesday night’s news. The
body had been found only yesterday morning. They would next inquire of the airlines and of the shipping line, Rydal supposed, thinking that the woman might have gone to visit Knossos the day she arrived in Crete, and without registering in a hotel. Then—but then would be no doubt today—they would make inquiries in other towns on Crete, and soon find that a woman answering this description had been registered at the Hotel Nikë in Chania with her husband William Chamberlain, and that they had been accompanied by a young American with dark hair by the name of Rydal Keener, who seemed to be a friend, no doubt the young man whom the ticket-seller at Knossos remembered seeing with them.

  Rydal smiled as he walked on. Chester must have seen to it that Colette had removed every identifying paper from her pocketbook. Or maybe Colette, with her practicality, had done it herself. Rydal wondered if Chester would be clever enough to know that it was only a matter of hours before the police would come knocking on his hotel room door, if he registered in a hotel as William Chamberlain? Chester should know that, without any news or any newspaper, if he had any brains at all. Athens had a morning newspaper in English, the Daily Post. He supposed Chester had bought it.

  Niko’s street was a one-way, that the authorities, after digging it up for sewer installation, had never got around to paving. There was invariably a peddler with a pushcart full of cheap shoes on his corner. There was a portable vegetable and fruit shop made of stacked crates two doors away from Niko’s semi-basement apartment. Niko’s number, 51, was barely legible in worn-out paint beside the door. Rydal knocked loudly and waited. Behind the door was a long cement corridor that led to Niko’s and Anna’s real door. Rydal had to knock twice before he heard Anna’s quick, scurrying footsteps in the corridor.

  “Who is it?”

  “Greetings, Anna! Rydal,” he said.

  “Ah-h!” The bolt slid. Anna beamed at him, bright-eyed, apple-cheeked. She was broad and low-slung, her center of gravity down near the earth. Her golden-grey hair was done in a braid around her head, reminding Rydal of classic Greek statues, but her face beneath had been molded by no genius. Her nose was pink and shapeless, she was nearly chinless, but her eyes were lively and kind. Anna was simple, though not stupid.

  She led him down the dank cement corridor into the wood-heated room that served as their living-room and kitchen combined. Behind a hanging cloth curtain was a room no bigger than an alcove which was her and Niko’s bedroom. Rydal remembered suddenly that Niko had said they had never had any children, because something was wrong with Anna, and she never could have any. Niko used this as an excuse to see other women sometimes—claiming that if any became pregnant, he would be happy to support and care for the child. It was not a pleasant memory to Rydal, because he felt it was a lie. Rydal accepted a cup of tea and a shot of Niko’s inferior brandy that was always on the kitchen shelf over the stove. The room smelled of onion and chicken. A big black pot was simmering on the stove.

  After two or three minutes of pleasantries, Anna’s face grew suddenly solemn, and she said in almost a whisper, “Did you see anything of the trouble in Crete? Holy God, an American woman killed in the Palace of Knossou!”

  “Did I see anything of it? Yes,” Rydal said. He told her all about it, making it as brief and clear as he could, pausing after every sentence for her to gasp, whisper an exclamation, cross herself or send her hands flying out from her breast and back again. When he came to the incident of being questioned by the police in Piraeus just a little more than an hour ago, she rushed to him and clutched his shoulders in her small, strong hands, as if to reassure herself, or him, that he was still among the living.

  “I think I escaped by about three hours,” Rydal said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think within a couple of hours, they’ll have my name. They could have had it this morning, if they’d been a bit faster. I was lucky, that’s all.”

  “Who would tell them your name? Chamberlain?”

  It was still a little difficult for her to grasp. “No, as I said, he’s afraid to turn me in—I think. He’s been too afraid up to now. No, the police could get it from the hotels where I registered with Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain.”

  She nodded. Basically, she understood, he thought. She certainly understood that Mr. Chamberlain hated him because his wife had liked him. That was simple and really sufficed as as a motive for Chester. She knew about the Greek agent George Papanopolos’s death, of course, but that had been days ago, and he was only an unknown policeman, after all. What she remembered best about that, Rydal supposed, was that it had netted Niko one thousand dollars American. Rydal glanced around the room for signs of prosperity, and saw that the rug was new—a ghastly imitation Oriental with very bright colors that looked as if it had been made, or rather printed, only yesterday, and he saw a new, much larger radio, which was in fact playing softly in the middle of the table on which Niko and Anna ate.

  “What a beautiful radio!” Rydal said. It was a sizeable square box of beige wood with lacquered brass knobs, and the sound came from a round aperture backed by dark-red tapestry-like material.

  Without a word, Anna turned it up to ear-splitting volume, folded her arms, and waited for Rydal’s compliments.

  “It’s great! Magnificent! Turn it down!”

  Anna turned it down. “We can get England! England! That is England.” She pointed to the radio, which was again playing softly.

  “Oh, really?” Rydal said respectfully. He thought of B.B.C. programs coming over, Anna hovering over English plays and poetry recitals, and understanding only a word here and there. Anna was an Anglophile, worshipped everything English, though she had never been to England, and her efforts to learn the language had gained her a vocabulary of only ten or twelve words, as far as Rydal could tell. He wished he had remembered to pick up a couple of packages of Player’s for her. He would get them when he next went out. Anna didn’t really smoke but she liked English cigarettes because they were English, and she liked to smoke one after a meal.

  She was pouring him more brandy. Rydal looked at his watch. It was 11:37. He cleared his throat and said, “Anna, as I said to Niko, I think I’d better stay with you people for a couple of days. At least tonight, I’m sure. I don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring.”

  “Stay with us? Why, of course. You know, Rydal, you’re always welcome here. Always. Look at the couch!” She pointed to the sagging three-quarter-sized couch next to the kitchen section.

  Rydal had never stayed with them overnight, though they had often invited him “to come and stay a week” with them, mainly because they thought he paid too much at the Hotel Melchior Condylis.

  “Are you going to call up Geneviève?” Anna asked with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

  Geneviève. Rydal’s heart seemed to turn over, tiredly. Geneviève was the twenty-year-old daughter of an archaeologist in the French School of Archaeology in the city, and she herself had a Ph.D. in anthropology. Once Rydal had brought her in to meet Anna and Niko, once after a dinner when he and Geneviève had been feeling rather gay. Anna liked to imagine a hot romance between them, a romance that would lead to marriage. Geneviève was very fond of him, but Rydal did not know if she was in love with him or not, probably not. She was the prettiest girl he had met in Athens. He had kissed Geneviève several times, and once they had necked for about fifteen minutes on a sofa in her house while her parents were out. Rydal had thought of asking her to marry him, to go back to the States with him (or maybe he could have found a position in Paris as a lawyer for an American concern there), but he hadn’t been absolutely sure, something had said to him that Geneviève wasn’t it, that he should wait. And now, after Colette, he was quite sure Geneviève wasn’t it. Geneviève had paled to nothing, yet not completely nothing, because now she was an episode, an unfinished episode that he felt vaguely ashamed of and responsible for. He couldn’t quit Athens, for instance, wit
hout saying a thing to Geneviève, without saying a good­bye. He wondered how much he had promised her, how much he had led her to believe? It was strangely all vague to him now.

  “Well?” Anna waited. “Or did you meet someone else?”

  Anna seemed already to have forgotten about Colette. He’d made the story weak, perhaps, or he had implied that Colette had been fonder of him than he of her. Rydal felt suddenly very much alone. He stood up. “I’ll talk to Geneviève, I suppose.” He drank off the brandy. “You see, tonight, Anna, my name may be in the newspapers. I’m suspected of murder—murder of Mrs. Chamberlain.”

  Anna looked appropriately solemn.

  Rydal had the bored, hopeless feeling that comes of trying to explain to a child something that is too complex for it.

  Anna saw his discomfort. She took the brandy bottle and hospitably poured him some more, poured his little glass full. “I know. But it will blow over. You’ll see.”

  “The point is, I am guilty of . . .” He sought for the right phrase in Greek. “I’m guilty of helping a man who I knew had killed someone. In that hotel. The Greek agent. Aiding and abetting a felon, we’d call it in English,” he said, translating the words literally into Greek. “I should never have helped him. I don’t know why I did it. Now Chester will say that I killed his wife, and I have no proof that I didn’t. It’ll just be his word against mine.”

  “Chester?”

  “That’s his first name. Chester.”

  15

  Chester had taken a room at the Hotel El Greco at Athinas and Lycourgou Streets, just off Omonia Square. This was a dusty, proletarian sort of square compared to Constitution, and Chester had the feeling of being at the wrong end of town. But at least it was a good distance away from the King’s Palace Hotel. The taxi-driver had driven a long way up Stadiou Street, it seemed to Chester, to get to Omonia. Here at the El Greco, in a room that looked brand-new, like a model bedroom in the furniture section of Macy’s, Chester had looked for the second time at the Daily Post he had bought when he stopped to talk to Niko—Colette had not been identified as yet—and he had gone through her three suitcases to see if there was anything in them he should keep with him. He took her Kleenex box and her toothpaste. His hands were shaking, and he had looked through her suitcases quickly, afraid he would do something odd, if he slowed up, such as scream, fall on the suitcases and tear his hair, or even start cramming some of her things, like his favorite scarf or her perfume, into his own suitcase. He locked the two suitcases of Colette that locked with the keys that hung from their handles. The third he supposed he would have to fasten some way, but let the American Express worry about that. He was going to send them to Jesse Doty in New York to hold for him. Chester could not think what else to do with them.