Forgery

by Sabina Murray

  “Yes. Uncle William told me that.”

  “You can’t live in the past,” said Nikos. Nikos rested his hand on my shoulder and steered me back down the street. “You like old things. You are an archaeologist.”

  “Not exactly,” I said. “My background is in art history.”

  Nikos seemed surprised. “A professor?”

  “No. I worked at an auction house, and now I suppose I am an art dealer, an art supplier, but I haven’t dealt anything yet. Or supplied it,” I said.

  “Soon enough,” said Nikos. “My father is a businessman. He will not be able to talk about other things for long. We will go have lunch. He will say things about the Turks, the Communists, but always he is counting the money in his head.”

  I was momentarily dizzy.

  “Are you all right, Rupert?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes. But this is incredible. Here I am on a street in Athens with”—I gestured dramatically over my shoulder—“the Acropolis at my back.”

  Nikos smiled. “I have the Acropolis at my back every day. Every Greek has the Acropolis at his back. What I want to know”—he raised his eyebrows—“is what is at the front.”

  “You are a philosopher,” I said.

  Nikos laughed. “I have been called many things, but never that.” We began to walk. “My father already has tomorrow planned.”

  “And what is on the agenda?”

  “First, we have to register you with the police. That will take forever. Do you have photos?”

  “Passport pictures?”

  Nikos nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “I have at least four.”

  “That’s good for registering with the police, but you should get more taken before you leave Athens. You might need them in the islands.”

  A table was set on the rooftop terrace. There was no view of the Acropolis from here because the terrace faced the wrong way, backed up against another taller building. Kostas sat, impatient and hungry. Two beers sweated on the table, but Kostas was drinking coffee. There was a bowl of stew, an eggplant dish, and a salad. I wasn’t hungry, but the stew was very good. The beer was going straight to my head.

  “They say the spring is the best time to visit Athens,” said Kostas. “We are not so overrun with travelers then, and the air is good.”

  “It is also hot in New York now,” I said. “Many people have houses on the beach and spend their weekends there. The city is emptied of women and children.” I didn’t actually believe this. I wasn’t even sure why I was saying it, but I had to say something. “Uncle William,” I said, fixing Kostas with what I hoped was a sincerely engaged look, “tells me that you are something of an amateur musician.”

  Nikos laughed. “He sings, but many Greeks sing.”

  “Your uncle is something of an amateur Greek,” said Kostas.

  “Yes, I suppose he is.”

  “I met him because he kept coming into my store but never buying anything. He kept looking at the vases and sighing.”

  “Sighing?”

  Kostas laughed. “I asked him what he was looking for. And he told me how much he wished he were in Greece. He wanted to know if there was a place where he could get some good Greek food. I said there was. He had dinner at my apartment that night.”

  “Why haven’t you been back to New York?” I asked.

  “My brother lives there now, as you know. Every year I say I will visit. This year I am still saying it.”

  “I want to go to New York,” said Nikos.

  “There are many things to see,” I responded in a moronic way. I applied myself to the food.

  “You like the rabbit,” said Kostas.

  “It’s very good. What do you call this?”

  “Stifado.”

  “Is that rabbit?”

  “No,” said Kostas disparagingly. “It means with onions.”

  “Where does the rabbit come from?”

  “Same as in America. Out of a hole in the ground.”

  I wasn’t sure if Kostas was teasing me or if I was just affected by the heat. Finally Kostas pushed away his plate and yelled something into the house. A woman dressed in Western clothes came out.

  “My wife,” said Kostas. “Elena. This is Rupert.”

  I stood up from my seat and shook her hand politely. The woman was smiling through some haze of disagreement. She seemed suspicious of my presence and unsure of why she was attending.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “Pleasure is mine,” I replied.

  “Please,” she said, gesturing for me to sit. The woman seemed capable of charm but unwilling to use it. “How do you find Athens?” she asked, expecting the worst.

  “I find it very pleasant,” I replied, my mind suddenly swimming with images of burnt out trucks, rabbits peering from holes, the Acropolis.

  She smiled politely and went to sit in a chair, not at the table but at the edge of the terrace by the railing. Nikos raised his eyebrows at me pointedly. He got up and went to sit beside her. I could hear Nikos’s consoling Greek, cajoling, entreating.

  “She was a great beauty,” said Kostas, “but her temper makes it less appealing. And she speaks no English.”

  “But she does,” I protested.

  “You heard it all!”

  The woman looked over, insulted, wounded. “Káteleveno,” she said.

  “She says she understands,” said Kostas, and then, without explanation, his expression softened. He said something to her and she nodded, stood, and came back to the table.

  She smiled then, beauty and charm restored. “Kostas and I are always angry and looking for the reason. We are back-to-front people. I see you soon.”

  I stood again and she left, letting the door slam loudly behind her. Nikos smiled broadly.

  “I thought your mother didn’t speak English,” I said.

  “She doesn’t,” said Nikos. “She asked me how to say that about the back-to-front people.”

  “Is that a saying in Greek?” I asked.

  “No,” said Kostas. “No. No. Enough of this speaking like crazy people. Rupert is here for the art and I will talk to him about this now.”

  “No Turks?” asked Nikos, smiling. “No Cyprus?”

  “He talks like an idiot,” said Kostas, “but he is actually very smart. With a good head for business, my son. I wanted him to study in America, but his mother could not bear the idea of his leaving. Why do we listen to her?”

  A sparrow landed on the table and cocked its head a few times, as if in sympathy, and then took off.

  “Tomorrow, first the police. You will tell them you are a tourist. I have letters for you to give to them, one from me, one from my cousin in the Ministry of Education. There will be no problems.”

  “There are always problems,” said Nikos.

  “Nothing we can’t fix,” said Kostas. “I must warn you not to talk with anyone of why you are here. You are a tourist snapping pictures. Your uncle has told me that he would like the classical pieces, and this is not easy. I have other things to give that are dug up here and there, coins, jewelry, icons. All beautiful. The hills of Epirus are full of the stuff, and in the Peloponnese, but he says he wants the classical. Big. Marble. For that you will have to leave Athens. But one week here first. There are people for you to meet.”

  “There are things to see,” said Nikos.

  Kostas shrugged. “There is the bank, where you should set up an account.” He thumbed at the edge of the table. “Why am I like this? All the small things, but we are here to fulfill your uncle’s dream.”

  “Very kind of you to help him,” I said.

  Kostas’s eyebrows shot up intelligently, looking for irony in what I’d said.

  “Americans live in pieces,” he said. “The business piece, the friendship piece. Why not put them together? Is there shame in that? I know what Americans say about the Greeks. Do not trust them. They are always looking for a way to profit
. And I am profiting, but who else can help your uncle find these things? We met over business, and after we became friends.”

  “That’s absolutely true,” I said. “Besides, my uncle doesn’t like people doing favors for him. The fact that you’re somehow benefiting from this situation is, I’m sure, a source of comfort.”

  “He’s a proud man!” said Kostas, and laughed out loud.

  “We are all in agreement,” I said.

  Nikos smiled at the harmony, at his father. “Let Rupert shower and shave,” he said.

  “Endáxi,” said Kostas. “Do you speak any Greek?”

  “Some words sound familiar. I speak decent German and my Italian’s better than that.” I thought for a moment. “I have read Plato and some Socrates.”

  “Plato,” said Nikos, “will not help you here.”

  The Mercedes had mysteriously disappeared from the front of the house, but Nikos readied a Vespa, which sputtered and then purred.

  Kostas stood on the doorstep, rocking on his heels. “Tomorrow I will see you,” he said. “One more thing. My wife asked why you are not married. I did not tell her that you are divorced. It would upset her. She asked me if you were a homosexual.” Kostas paused. “It is one reason to get divorced.”

  “I am not a homosexual,” I replied. The thought amused me.

  Nikos yelled something from the Vespa.

  “My son thinks I have no manners. And he’s right. But how can I keep talking to you if I am thinking this?” And Kostas laughed.

  I straddled the Vespa and balanced my suitcase on my knees. This was precarious but I felt precarious, somehow off balance—ignorant and unknown—so there was some comfort in this danger. Soon Nikos and I were rumbling through the tunnel of air toward the Acropolis, through the streets deadened by the afternoon heat. After a twenty-minute ride, which seemed possibly shorter on foot, we pulled up in front of a modern building on Nikis Street. All the buildings in Athens seemed either ancient or modern, nothing in between, and this building was agressively ugly, all plate glass and unadorned concrete. Nikos had booked the apartment for a week. If I needed to stay longer, he could easily extend the lease.

  “Elevator,” said Nikos. “Stairs.”

  The hotel was dark but seemed clean. A concierge with a bobbing head materialized at Nikos’s elbow and rapidly explained something. He had a key in his hand. Nikos nodded, suddenly profoundly bored. He fixed me with a sympathetic look.

  “Stairs,” he said.

  The concierge took my suitcase, although he was half my size and, I thought, less capable of carrying it. I had some drachma, but I hadn’t yet figured out what it was worth. I hoped Nikos would take care of the tip. When the concierge unlocked the door, it was Nikos who first stepped inside. I followed him in.

  “This looks fine,” I said. “I appreciate the offer to stay in your house. I hope I haven’t offended your father.”

  “Him? He offends everyone.”

  “People like that are often very sensitive.”

  Nikos nodded and picked up the telephone receiver. I heard a scratchy dial tone. “You need your freedom. You are a young man. How is it that you are divorced?”

  I never had a good answer. My marriage was so irrelevant to my life now that the divorce actually seemed unreal. “Something,” I said vaguely, “in American culture. All our marriages fall apart.”

  “You are too young to be divorced.”

  “I am thirty.”

  “How long were you married?”

  “Four years.”

  “I am twenty-six.” Nikos went to the window and peered out. He gestured for me to join him. On the sidewalk was a pair of young blond women, arms linked, in sandals and short skirts. He looked at me then, as if he’d asked me a question, but I wasn’t sure how to respond.

  The concierge, waiting patiently at the door, said something to Nikos, and Nikos responded with some feigned anger, not really convincing to anyone.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “He’s bringing more towels. There are never enough towels.”

  Nikos went into the bathroom and held up the two small towels as proof. “Now it is five. Take a nap and I will get you for dinner at ten.”

  The concierge appeared at the door with a small stack of towels and placed them on the bed. He was a very proud man, proud of his towels, his shiny suit, his too-large shoes bent up at the toes.

  “I am Yorgos,” he stated. “You need anything, we help you. If you need to clean your suit, my brother does the dry cleaning here. Very good. No holes, and the suit is not getting small.”

  I nodded but was losing my ability to speak. Nikos said something to Yorgos and looked at me. “He will call you to wake up at nine.”

  “Thank you very much, Nikos.”

  We shook hands and Nikos thumped me affectionately on the shoulder. “You need to have a good time.”

  When Nikos was gone, I had a moment to appreciate what had happened over the last couple of hours. I had walked off a plane. I had made the acquaintance of Kostas Nikolaides and his son, Nikos. I had seen the Acropolis and enjoyed a Greek meal. I had listened to the groundwork laid out before my visit. I had left my past behind; now, parted from my history, I was not sure what was left.

  The time for afternoon naps was over and the street was filling with noise. I took off my jacket and shirt, kicked off my shoes, and appraised my new home. The furniture was spare and modern, a sign of the new affluence brought by tourists like me. The bed was relatively new and, although the mattress was on the thin side, seemed adequate. I unpacked a few things from my suitcase, placing my two new books about coins and the latest catalog of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts on the desk. I took out my extra suit, which was new, and hung it up in the closet.

  And now what? I said to myself. As if in response, a door slammed in the hallway. A woman laughed loudly and the door opened, then slammed again.

  Intriguing as the laughter was, it was easy to convince myself that it did not concern me. I sat down on the bed, bounced a couple of times on the squeaky springs, and was just about to stretch out for a nap when there was a knock at the door. I got up, ready but unwilling to believe that someone actually wanted me. The knock was repeated. I waited a moment and turned the knob. The door swung inward. There was a man in bare feet and suit pants, T-shirt, with his back to me. He had flaming red hair. He turned quickly.

  “There you are,” he said. He was American. “Do you have a cigarette?”

  “Yes, I do,” I replied.

  The man extended his hand. “I’m Steve Kelly,” he said. “Do you have anything to drink?”

  “No,” I said. And then, by way of explanation, “I just got here.”

  “Well, I’ll fix that.”

  Steve Kelly padded down the hallway to his room and returned with a bottle of whiskey. I didn’t think I needed a drink, but realized it wasn’t my decision. Kelly came back and I stepped aside to let him in.

  “Just like my room, only everything’s on the other side. It’s almost a mirror image.” Kelly went into the bathroom and brought back the single glass. He poured a couple of shots into it and offered it to me. “Cheers!” We both drank, he from the bottle.

  “I’m Rupert Brigg,” I said.

  “Rupert!” said Steve. “There’s a name. What do you do with a name like that?”

  “I’m a tourist,” I said.

  “A tourist?” Kelly said. “I’m a journalist.”

  “Is there much to write about?”

  “A lot,” said Kelly, smiling. He went over to the window and helped himself to one of my cigarettes. “Not that much makes it into print.” He gave me a knowing nod.

  There was an awkward moment while we studied each other.

  “How long are you here?” asked Kelly.

  “Athens? One week, and then I’m going to see the islands.”

  “Which islands?”

  “First Aspros.”

  “Aspros? It’s in the Cyclade
s, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not much tourism there.”

  “I hear the hiking is good.”

  Kelly looked down at my empty shoes, leather-soled wingtips, which were side by side next to the bed. “Okay,” he said. He sat down on the bed, but I remained standing. “Can I offer you one of your cigarettes?”

  “I’d appreciate it.” I took a cigarette and sat in a chair at the small table. “What do you recommend in Athens?”

  “There’s the National Archaeological Museum, and you can get all your souvenirs in the Pláka, which is just over there.” Kelly gestured out the window. “And there are some interesting clubs, places where you can hear music. Do you have plans for tonight?”

  “I actually do,” I said. “A friend of mine is meeting me for dinner.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “Another tourist?”

  “No, he’s Greek.” I smiled my best charming smile.

  “And how does a tourist know a Greek?”

  “My uncle traveled in Greece back in the early forties. He has friends, and I am meeting them all, and they have friends on Aspros, who have agreed to let me stay with them.” I felt like I was giving him my life’s story. I stopped talking.

  Steve noticed but didn’t seem bothered. It probably happened to him all the time. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m a journalist. Always looking for the story.”

  I said, “I’m sure you’ll be disappointed.”

  “Somehow,” said Kelly, getting up, “I doubt that.” He tapped a couple of my cigarettes out of the pack and put them in the pocket of his T-shirt. “You need to sleep.” He went to the door, tipping another shot into my glass on the way. “Don’t let Yorgos talk you into letting his brother clean your suit, not unless you’re planning to lose weight.”

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  “I’ll check in tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe we can have a drink.”

  “I’d like that,” I replied.

  I watched Kelly retreat down the hall and closed the door. The air in the room was still. I turned on the fan, which shuddered at the start and then began a clattering chug, like a steam engine in a Western. I peered out the window. On the street below a man pushed a cart loaded with oranges. A woman stopped him, and I listened to their bargaining back and forth. Somewhere, a church bell was ringing. A cloud of sparrows landed on the balcony across the way, and a cat sprang out, scattering them into the sky. I drank some more of the whiskey.