Decision at Delphi (53 page)

“Fine day,” Strang would say.

“Fine day. Where do you come from?”

“America.”

“Where do you live?”

“New York.”

“Are you married?”

“No.” (This drew a look of sympathy mixed with disappointment. Now there were no children to discuss.)

“You have sisters and brothers?”

“Two sisters.”

“Are they married?”

“Yes.”

“Where do they live?”

And so it went on, right down the line as far as his age, what did he work at, what money did they pay in America? And it ended with a look, far off into space, while the questioner considered all these mysteries. Then, with a parting agreement on the view, the heels were drummed on the donkey’s flanks or the plough harness roped around shoulders, and Strang was left with the snow-topped mountains.

It wasn’t lonely in the bus, either. Questions and answers, questions and answers. The Platonic dialogue was the accepted form of conversation.

Sparta was set down in the middle of the broad valley, so suddenly that one minute the bus was in the country and next minute in the town. It wouldn’t be difficult to find his way around here, Strang decided. It didn’t seem a large town; the dusty streets were straight and wide-edged with low white houses. The central blocks had shops and cafés and the usual newspaper kiosks. There were some trees, many peasant women with scarved heads, men in dark suits of heavy wool, and schoolboys in black-visored student caps which reminded Strang of old Heidelberg.

The bus rattled to its final stop, the passengers eased their arms free from a shoulder there or a head here, and got out. Strang followed, glad of the cool fresh air and the end of his temporary paralysis. One good thing about being so tightly packed into a bus: when it plunged downhill or around a curve, everyone tilted together. No one could possibly jolt around separately.

“Hallo!” said Petros, thumping him on the back. “Looking for a telephone?”

It took a little time, but it was worth it. Cecilia’s voice came through, fresh and clear. “Darling—” they both began, and then stopped and laughed. “Are you all right?” they asked in unison, and again laughed. And after that, they proceeded normally.

“Everything is fine,” Cecilia assured him. “I slept and slept. And you?”

“Everything is fine. Except that I shan’t see you tonight; not until tomorrow.”

“I know,” she said. “Bob Pringle has just been around to see Steve. They’ve put him in the hospital. His feet were a mess, Bob says. Poor Steve! I’ll go and see him tomorrow.”

“Be careful now!”

“Of course! But we can stop worrying. Have you seen the newspapers?”

“I don’t think they’ll hear that news out here until tomorrow.”

“Then just a moment—I’ll read you three little items. Bob Pringle sent this paper around just half an hour ago.” There was a pause, a rustle, background voices. “Bob had three translations made for me. I still don’t understand them, though. But perhaps they are really for you. Ready?”

“Go ahead.” Her excitement was contagious. He gave a reassuring nod to Petros, who was lounging near him, keeping a stern eye on a group of curious children and a fringe of interested adults. Everything from bus rides to telephone calls seemed to have a communal aspect in Sparta.

She read him the three pieces of translation. The first was quite extensive. It said that the opening of the stretch of new highway now under construction between Yugoslavia and Greece had been postponed only one hour before the ceremony was to take place. Fortunately, the crowds had been dispersed before two explosions had sent a rockslide of serious dimensions on to the platform where Marshal Tito would have presided. The Marshal, himself, was in Belgrade, where a slight indisposition had prevented him from making the dedicatory speech. The explosions were, of course, accidental. But it was reported, without confirmation, that many arrests had been made in various districts of Yugoslavia, including Belgrade itself.

The second said, more tersely, that the English authorities in Nicosia, Cyprus, had cancelled today’s Independence Celebration, without any explanation, and had blocked off all streets leading to the cathedral. Protests from the Cypriot majority were now being made.

And the third report, from Istanbul, was very brief. The Turkish government had detained the yacht
Medea
in Smyrna harbour.

Cecilia asked, “Is that really good news?”

“The best,” he told her.

“Bob Pringle says the Athens radio has been announcing these facts all day since noon. So they must be important. But it’s funny—if I were back in New York, I’d probably never even give these small paragraphs a second glance. Would you?”

“Probably would never have noticed them at all,” he agreed. Or, if I had, I might have drawn the wrong conclusions: more Yugoslavs arrested, the liberal element were being silenced again; the English were being stupid, once more, in Cyprus; the Turks were just naturally suspicious.

Cecilia said, “We’re celebrating tonight. Champagne and the Beaumonts for dinner. I wish—” She checked herself. Why mention the impossible?

“I wish, too,” he said.

She laughed. “Will you always read my thoughts?”

“What worries me is that you’ll learn to read mine.”

“Darling, I love you, I love you—”

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “And I adore you.”

“That was so tender I could scarcely hear it.”

He grinned. “Tender? You should see the audience I’ve collected around me.”

“What?”

“Yes. Cramps my style a little. Can you imagine what I’d like to say to you?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good. We can have a demonstration tomorrow. Ask Bob to see that a car really does get out here at dawn, will you? Well, by ten o’clock, at least. Darling, my love—”

“All my love,” she said.

He put down the receiver.

“All is well?” Petros asked.

“All is well.” He looked at the small group of schoolboys gathered near him. “Or isn’t it?”

“Oh, they’re learning English at school nowadays. Wanted to hear how it sounds when the words are all strung together.” He took Strang’s arm. “Now what?” he asked.

“First, I’d like some breakfast.”

Petros’s face became a polite mask.

“And next, we’ll go shopping for a donkey. Or perhaps a goat. Which will Myrrha need most?”

The frozen mask managed to keep its shape for a few seconds more, and then Petros’s amusement won. “Well,” he said at last, “you will be remembered for a long time in Sparta.” The man who telephoned all the way to Athens to tell a woman that he loved her, who ate breakfast at seven o’clock in the evening, and then went shopping for a donkey. “Yes, they know everything about you. That was quite a bus ride you had. You live in New York, you are twenty-five years old, you are not married, you have fifteen children.” The laughter rippled over his face again. He added, with just a hint of reprimand, “They believed you.”

“I must have got my Greek mixed up,” Strang suggested with a grin.

“Po,
po, po, po!”
Petros said.

The restaurants were easy to find. They all seemed to be long, narrow stretches of basement rooms reached by a few steps, up which billowed clouds of deep-blue smoke and a heavy smell of oil. Strang looked at the series of belching clouds along the street. “A café will do,” he said. “Bread, coffee, and a hunk of cheese.”

That suited Petros better for some reason. Twice, he had glanced over his shoulder, most casually. “Yes, yes. We shall go and tell John where to find us when he stops work.” He led Strang up a street whose every basement seemed to be occupied by shoemakers’ shops: deep-down, dark, windowless caverns, reached by a precipitous flight of steps from the narrow sidewalk, where men sat and stitched and hammered. At the bottom of the eleventh flight of steps, they found John working with three other men under a single naked light bulb. He looked up from his last, gave a restrained smile with a mouth full of nails, raised his hammer in a friendly salute to Strang, and listened to a quick brief burst of words from Petros. “That is settled,” Petros told Strang, turning him around to climb up into the street again. “We’ll see him later.”

Then they were up on the sidewalk, in the pleasant light of a spring evening. But they called at two other shoemakers’ shops before they reached the café that Petros had selected. There were only men sitting there; some indoors, some outside at the tables on the broad sidewalk, some reading newspapers, some talking in close groups, some just sitting with eyes half closed watching the people walking past.

“Sunset,” Petros explained. “People stop work, and wash, and brush their hair, and start walking up and down, up and down this street, from there to here, from here to there. It’s the custom. When it is dark, off they go and have their supper.”

Strang watched the groups of bareheaded girls in short skirts and high heels, the separate groups of tall young men strolling past. They were a handsome crowd, lean and fit, straight-backed, heads held high, eyes direct and proud. But, thought Strang, Petros is not looking around him merely to admire the pretty girls. And why did he meet me at the bus? He kept silent until the coffee was brought, and Petros had cajoled the waiter into finding some dark bread and
fetta
for a starving American. Then Strang asked, “Petros, what’s worrying you?”

“At last!” Petros said, suddenly afflicted by poor hearing. John, his leather apron abandoned, his face and hands washed, his grimy work shirt changed for a clean one, his jacket neat, his hair combed with water, made his way quietly through the tables to shake their hands.

“Ouzo for everyone and more coffee for me,” Strang said, as he concentrated on the excellent peasant bread and goat-milk cheese. “You know how many to order for, Petros.” Petros looked at him, and solemnly ordered ouzo for five.

When his three other friends had arrived and shaken everyone’s hand, Petros began a little speech. Strang understood about half of the quickly triggered phrases—when Petros was talking to other Greeks, his words came out with the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun. It was something about a man, an agent for an Athens business house, who had come to live in Sparta only four years ago, who had tried to make friends and had only made people wonder. He had a fine office with a telephone,
and very little work. But he wore good clothes, he ate well, his hands were white and soft from pulling money out of the air. He had a big heart and so he talked of “the people” with deep emotion in his voice; but he overworked the woman who cleaned his house, and he spoke contemptuously of “peasants.” Were peasants not people?

Petros, with his circle of friends nodding their thoughtful agreement, looked over at a table where a man sat by himself. “Why should a businessman travel up to Thalos this morning? Why did he ask questions?”

Perhaps Petros saw the gleam of amusement in Strang’s eye, for he looked pointedly at the American. He said, “The questions he asked were not polite. He did not ask the girl questions about herself, so he had no interest in her or her family. No, indeed. He only talked about the shooting last night in Thalos. Very cunning questions he asked. About Levadi. About strangers in the village. And when the man left, the girl thought about this. And she came running back to the village and told us. That is why I came into Sparta. That is why I met you at the bus, my friend, and stood near you when you telephoned; and that is why my friends are sitting here. Because the man saw you as you got off the bus; and he questioned an old woman who had been travelling with you; and he has been following you ever since. Me? I am just another peasant.”

Petros’s smile deepened as Strang remained speechless. Petros said, “He sits over there, by himself, waiting to see where you go next. Do you stay in Sparta or do you go back to Thalos? He is wondering what should be done.” Petros’s lips tightened. “And here
we
sit, my friends, wondering what should be done.”

“Has he many friends here?” Strang asked.

“He had three, last night,” Petros said, and the others laughed. “The soldiers found their hiding-place, up on the hill, not far from Thalos. The farmer, there, has much to explain. A very clever farmer; he could grow guns and ammunition among his olive trees.”

Strang was still worrying.

“At this moment, my friend,” Petros told him cheerfully, “that man has more troubles than you have.”

That was certainly true. Strang signalled to the waiter. “Ouzo for everyone.” He made an attempt to look as relaxed as the others, but he could wish that someone like Elias were around to deal with this odd situation. There seemed no solution.

“Let us get rid of him, first,” Petros said, jerking a thumb toward the lonely man. “Then we can enjoy our drink.”

Strang looked at Petros. “Careful, careful—” he said.

“Now, now,” Petros said equally gently, but firmly, “it will not take much to deal with him. He sees you have friends. That surprises him. If you had been alone, he would have felt much braver.” Petros rose. He walked slowly. He was sombre and serious. The others watched with half-lowered eyelids and a strange, still smile. Petros stopped in front of the man, and spoke. There was just one sentence. Then Petros turned away and came back to his own table. He sat down, with a wave of his hand, a shouted greeting to some friends across the sidewalk. He was in an expansive mood. And the man who sat alone rose and left.

“Eh?” Petros asked Strang. There was laughter, rippling from one table to another.

“And how did you do it?” Strang asked, watching the man disappearing into the street’s quickly fading light. The sunset was already over, the western rays blotted out by the high peak
of Mount Taygetos. Night came quickly to Sparta, and a cold, sharp wind.

Petros looked guileless. He rubbed the scar on his forehead. “I asked him if he had forgotten Mistra.” And as Strang looked at him blankly, he said, “The old ruins on the hill up there.” He pointed to the foothills below the black ridge of western mountains. “A big town it was once, hundreds of years ago—”

“Four hundred years ago,” John said.

“—and it covered all the hillside. Very rich. Churches, palaces, houses as big as hotels. Then the Turks brought their Albanian troops, and—nothing! All destroyed!”