Kostas nodded so seriously that I knew he’d already forgotten his question.
“Tell me about Aspros,” I said. “I’ve never heard of it, but if you look at the map there it is, right by Páros, right by Náxos.”
“You have never heard of it, but once the island was very rich. There was silver, there, and gold. But the mine flooded, and Aspros had to find other ways to get money. Now it is not such a rich island, but the cheese is the best in Greece, and perhaps it’s better to have good cheese than silver.”
“Why?”
“Because everyone enjoys cheese, but only the rich enjoy silver.” Kostas winked at me. He took a forkful of cheese off the salad and ate it with gusto.
“Didn’t the Asprians have a treasury in Delphi?”
“Yes,” said Kostas. “You know a lot about history.”
“About art.”
Kostas shrugged, as if to say it was the only kind that mattered. “So you know it was Apollo who flooded their mines.”
“No.”
“It’s like this: every year the people of Aspros would give Apollo a solid silver egg as a tribute. Then one year, they got tired of this and gave him one that was only silver-plated. Apollo was angry and destroyed the mines. So you learn a lesson from this.”
“Don’t make Apollo angry?”
“No. Asprians will try to pass off something fake, even to a god. You don’t stand a chance.”
“Then why not send me to Náxos, where they’re excavating? Why not send me to Páros or to Santoríni?”
“Why send you there? Aspros is all yours, no one watching, no one competing, and all the same history. The Minoans were there, the Macedonians, even the Egyptians, and later—like all the islands—the Venetians.”
“And now me.”
“There he is,” said Kostas abruptly, and stood up, pushing his chair back. Nikos was conferring with the maître d’, and Kostas gazed in awe at the miracle of his beautiful son. I had never seen such adoration of anyone for anyone and wondered at how Kostas managed to control all this emotion, put it away as Nikos approached the table.
Nikos looked down at his father. He picked up a napkin and wiped the corner of Kostas’s mouth. “You ate everything.”
“You are late.”
Nikos shrugged. “Is there more food coming?”
“Of course, but what you have done to get such a big appetite, I do not want to know.”
Nikos sat down beside his father. “How was your day, Rupert?”
“I went to Pandróssou Street and was not robbed. Nor did I buy anything, so I was not fleeced.”
“What is this fleeced? Like the Golden Fleece?”
“It means cheated,” said Kostas.
“I ran into Steve Kelly in a café at the foot of the Acropolis and might have gone and seen the Acropolis, but I had a couple of drinks instead.”
“Good choice.”
“And your father here is dispatching me to Aspros.”
“When?” said Nikos. “On the Monday ferry?”
Kostas nodded.
“I will go with you!” said Nikos.
Nikos turned to Kostas, and they conferred quickly in Greek.
“Tomorrow I will take you to my tailor, if you like. We will have some shirts made,” said Nikos. “And pants.”
Kostas rolled his eyes.
“What?” asked Nikos. He looked at his father. “This is not the old days in Turkey where you had your good pants and your bad pants.”
While Nikos ate—he insisted on fish, which Kostas refused to order anywhere he could not see the ocean—I found myself drinking more. The wine went down like water, fresh and light, not like the syrupy chardonnays and phlegmatic cabernets to which I was accustomed. Kostas left after coffee, but Nikos, who had a couple of stories to share about Sue and Helen, ordered some whiskey.
“They are gone,” he said. “I took them to Piraeus today and put them on the ferry for Rhodes.”
“And does that make you sad?”
Nikos poured a drink for himself, and then one for me. “Why be sad when you can be happy?”
“Or drunk?”
Nikos laughed. “How was dinner with my father?”
“Good,” I said. “He loves you.”
“Of course,” said Nikos. “Doesn’t every father love his son? Doesn’t your father love you?”
I remembered that Nikos and I did not know each other very well. Finally, I said, “You forget about being a son when you become a father.”
“You have a son?”
“He died,” I said.
Nikos nodded and there was emotion in his eyes. He watched me.
“A yachting accident. I wasn’t there. Now there’s an advantage to being poor. How many poor children die in yachting accidents?”
“He could not swim?” asked Nikos cautiously.
“He was two years old.” I finished my glass. “I’ve had dogs live longer than that. All my dogs lived longer than that.”
We were quiet for a long time. I was walking that gulf of blackness, whose perimeter I constantly traveled.
I said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“I do,” said Nikos.
“You do?” I asked, not bothering to disguise the contempt in my voice.
“Yes. It is summer and you are in Greece. It is guilt.”
We looked at each other for a moment. I could hear my heart’s passive beating in my ears, the slow involuntarily, hauling of oxygen.
“Take me home, Nikos.”
“Back to the hotel?”
“Yes. I want to be alone.”
We were silent in the car. The streets of Athens were garishly lit and alive. I was thinking about nothing. Every now and then the small child face would show itself to me and then disappear, leaving clothes, toys, sandals, the boat. I remembered his laugh, but then I didn’t trust myself to admit if I’d forgotten its specific music. It could have been any laugh. And then we were at the hotel and Nikos was opening the car door for me and I realized that I had been carrying myself like a very drunk person because I was too deadened to feign sobriety. I pulled myself together on the curb.
I said, “Good night, Nikos. Thank you.”
Nikos looked at me directly and honestly. He said, “I don’t know how you live with that. How do you live with that?”
And I said, “I’m not really sure.”
Nikos put his hands on my shoulders and shook me affectionately. I nodded, a fractured person, as he took his car into the widening abyss of night.
5
p
Thursday seemed very bright, since I had missed morning and rolled out of bed shortly after noon. I was slightly offended that Nikos hadn’t bothered to come by to introduce me to my latest hangover, but I quickly realized this was respect; the last thing I’d said to him was that I wanted to be alone, and if he was as expert in matters of the human heart as he seemed to be, he would think it considerate to hold off until a time when I could present myself with proper dignity.
I showered and dressed but decided to forgo shaving for the moment. I wasn’t up to calling for Yorgos and the clay pitcher. My beard had come in thick and insane-looking and my eyes, bloodshot, were a peculiar antifreeze green. I looked depraved—I was probably still drunk—and I knew I should move quickly to food before the real enervation struck. In this state I stepped from my door and for the first time wished that I were back in New York, where I could get my eggs and toast and hash browns at the diner with no struggle, where the coffee would come liquid and steaming and endless. Now I wasn’t sure if breakfast was available anywhere. Did the Greeks even eat breakfast? I could get a gyro, maybe. Who knew?
“Brigg!”
I heard the accusation and saw Steve Kelly standing at the end of the corridor in his undershirt and baggy pants, his feet bare, the red hair curling on the tops of his toes.
“You look like hell!”
“I’m aware of that.”
“I di
dn’t think it was possible. I should call up Alexandra.”
“Alexandra? From the café?”
“She was quite taken with you, but right about now, she might actually think favorably of me.”
I smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to escort me to a plate of eggs and some coffee?”
Steve Kelly consulted his watch. “If we leave right now.”
“Why? Where are you going?”
“North.”
We stopped by Steve’s office, since he had to pick up something before his trip. I stood outside the elevator beside a glass partition, smoking, watching the quick conversation between Steve and his editor, a blond Englishman with a patrician leanness to his face and an oddly wide yet thin set of hips. The editor’s pants looked like they’d been stretched over a coat hanger. The elevator doors opened, casting a reflective light on the glass, and I saw for one moment my Hyde-like appearance—a hunching post-drunkenness—then the elevator doors shut again and the reflection was gone and in its place the very civilized and questioning face of the editor. He and Steve were both talking and looking at me.
There was a moment where I imagined the editor saying Right! and Steve responding Okay! Then Steve was sent off, a new batch of papers in his beaten-up leather satchel, new information percolating in his brain. He pushed through the door. He had an unlit cigarette in his lips and it wiggled up and down while he spoke, as he shuffled through his satchel in search of a lighter. We waited for the elevator.
“He’s all right,” he said, about his editor. “A bit uptight, but miraculous with language. I’ve seen him get information posing as a Turk. From the Turks.”
“Is he one of those Oxford types?”
“He did go to Oxford.”
“Probably started out in classical languages.”
“Actually, yes.”
“And why is he out here, everyone wonders, rather than back home with Genevieve, who has waited all these years for him, ever since university …”
“Now I’m out of information.”
The elevator arrived and we got in.
“But he’ll never go back, not as long as Dimitri—”
Steve smiled broadly. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
“Am I?”
“His name is Iannis. And he’s on the payroll as an informant.” Steve shook his head at me, impressed. “That’s uncanny. How did you do that?”
“A life spent looking at fakes.”
“You think my editor’s a fake?”
“That depends,” I said, “on whether you’re Iannis or Genevieve.”
From the office, the restaurant was only two blocks away. Steve ordered for me in Greek and got me my eggs; he was eating a deep-fried piece of cheese. We were the only people there.
“So what’s north?” I asked.
“North? Oh, yes. I’m researching a story.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, you know. …”
“You’re going up to the Albanian border.”
“There are many things in that direction.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I said. “There’s Poland. And Finland.” I salted my eggs.
Steve looked pointedly at me. “There’s a band of Communist rebels, around twenty men, and they’re causing trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“That’s what my editor wants me to find out.”
“Sounds like a story,” I said.
Steve watched me chew my food. “What are your plans for the next few days?”
“Aspros on Monday and, until then, drinking a lot of water and napping.”
“Well, Brigg, I’m passing through Delphi. You could ride up with me, and catch the bus back.”
This, of course, was a great opportunity. What educated traveler makes a trip to Greece without longing to visit the navel of the earth? But I was not in very good shape. Even after the eggs, I felt hollow. My brain seemed to have swollen painfully within my skull, although—ironically—I had no capacity for mental process. All this made taking a long drive seem ill-advised. But was there really a choice? I didn’t want to be cursing myself, come afternoon, waiting alone like a desperate woman for Nikos to call. If everything went well, Steve and I would get to Delphi in four and a half hours.
We left the restaurant and found the car, which was parked in front of an elegant apartment building.
“Whose car is this?” I asked.
“It’s Custard’s car.”
“Custard? Who is Custard?”
“My editor. He lives here.” Steve pointed with his cigarette at the building.
“What’s his first name?” I laughed. “Let’s take Custard’s car to Delphi!” I said. “No really. What’s his first name?”
“Timon.”
“Timon Custard?”
Steve did not seem to find this as funny as I did, although he probably had at one point. Or maybe he had been alone when he learned it, which always dilutes the humor.
We drove to Kostas’s neighborhood next. I couldn’t remember when I’d agreed to go to the tailor with Nikos. It might have been that day or the day after, not that Nikos would hold me to it, but running off without letting the Nikolaideses know where I was going would have been inconsiderate. When we drew near—I used the Acropolis to orient myself—Steve yelled up to an old woman who was hanging wash on a third-floor balcony, and she, with a few lazy gestures and some thick-tongued toothless speech, directed us the final steps. Nikos and Kostas were both out, so I left a note with the housekeeper explaining that I planned to return on Friday.
I fell asleep shortly after we left the city limits. Steve was reciting Greek sentences over and over, the subjunctive, or something like it, substituting nouns in and out, moving the stresses around. As I nodded off, I entertained a small hope that I was being taught Greek in my sleep, but who knew what Steve was asking. I guessed, “Who is supplying the weapons? Are you with elas? How old are you? Have you traveled far to fight this, to fight for the Communists?”
When I woke up, I was alone in the car and Steve was across the road conferring with a Greek man, lean, with intense eyes. He had an enormous diagonal scar that cut his face in two pieces, right through his mouth. He gestured with his hands at the horizon, up the street where a lone goat chewed, and then at the trees that were shivering their leaves. A truck came up the road, groaning through the gears, kicking up dust. There was some honking, some congenial cursing. The truck was carrying young soldiers who stood, uncovered, in the back. In the brief time I saw them, smoking, smiling, they looked like a fairly happy crew.
I thought the polite thing to do would be to leave the car and go and smile at Steve’s friend, keep smiling, and then pretend to be profoundly interested in something: the trees, perhaps, or the goat. I imagined Steve making something up about how I was interested in goats, how rare they were on the streets of Manhattan. Was this his fascinating goat? But the old nausea was back, and before I could decide what to do I found myself purging out the door of the car and onto the dirt. Steve and the intense face-slashed man laughed with undisguised amusement.
Feeling slightly better, I got out of the car and wandered over.
The man smiled an off-kilter smile, and I saw his long yellow teeth. He said, “Drinking is good!”
And I said, “If you’d said that last night, I would have been inclined to agree with you.”
Steve translated for me, the man looked at me, and I smiled quickly—expressively, as if it were a word and not a smile—and the man laughed out loud. The goat, frightened by his laughter, let out a series of sharp desperate bleats and took off over the rise in the road.
“Do you know where you are?” Steve asked.
I looked up the street, where the goat had disappeared, and down the street, where the truck was a diminishing spot of gray dust. “No. And I find that question odd.”
“Thebes,” said Steve, “is that way.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “
And Delphi”—he made a gun out of his hand and pointed with his forefinger—“is that way.”
“Ah,” I said, “and where’s Livadiá?”
“To the south,” said Steve.
“Is this the place where Oedipus was to have slain his father?”
In response to the question, the Greek yelled, “Oedipus! Laios!” and expressively dug into the dirt with the heel of his boot. He then made a slashing motion across his throat. The Greek then said something else and smiled intensely at me, nodding and nodding.
I looked to Steve. “He’s offering us a drink, isn’t he?”
“Yes, he is,” said Steve.
“I really don’t need one.”
“Hair of the dog.”
“That’s for headaches.” But I really was grateful for the offer, because I was not ready to get back in the car and I could probably get juice or at least some water. The man placed his hand firmly on my shoulder, and I responded quickly, “Evkaristó. Evkaristó polí.”
“Very good,” said Steve.
“And how do you apologize?”
“Signómi,” said Steve.
“Let’s hope I don’t have to use it.”
The man’s name was actually Adonis, and if his face had not been so terribly scarred it would have been fitting. He took us to his house and we sat on a terrace in the late-afternoon sun. I was drinking very weak ouzo and snacking on some pistachios. I couldn’t converse at all, but every now and then I would spout the name of some character from Greek tragedy, just to let Adonis know I was there and had respect for him.
“Antigone,” I said.
He nodded solemnly.
“Electra,” I said.
And he threw his arms open wide and his face filled with emotion.
There was a fuchsia blooming on the wall of the house, and bees levitated and descended in the blooms. Adonis’s wife was talking to a very old woman—their voices carried out from the kitchen—and the talk of the young woman, followed by the talk of the old one, seemed almost like the strophe and the antistrophe of a chorus.
Adonis and Steve did not mind my silence. They were involved in an intense discussion, but about what? “Well done” was said, possibly twenty times. I wondered what it meant in Greek, but then I decided it was someone’s name. Well done: Weldon. Common enough. I wondered what this Weldon was up to. And I heard the word kerma, which I knew referred to me. It’s amazing how sensitive one becomes to gesture when speech is foreign. The two men kept glancing at me, smiling in a reassuring way, which had the opposite effect.
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