Decision at Delphi (58 page)

“He is still there,” Cecilia said, and hoped that would keep Xenia at the door.

“Sh!”

“Oh, don’t be silly! The dog knows we are here.” The growl started again.

“You fool!” Xenia said, in anger and alarm.

A man came into sight, now, walking with a strange loping gait around the hut.

Cecilia said loudly, “Dogs have to get accustomed to people.” The man stopped, just behind the dog. He was. short and broad-shouldered, bundled bulkily in a ragged sheepskin vest. His wild head of hair turned slowly from side to side, his eyes searching the trees. His heavy boots were almost standing on the notebook, but he had not looked down. “If he hears our voices,” Cecilia said clearly, “he may calm down.” The man stared at the hut. He held a large stone ready in his raised right hand, the other gripped a long, thick stick. Then he relaxed. He still glowered at the hut, but his throwing arm fell slowly to his side. He rested his weight on the long stick, as the expected enemy was not found. He even looked down at the notebook. Quickly, he picked it up, studied it for a moment with a frown.

“How else,” said Cecilia, “can he know that I have only the friendliest feelings towards him?” She raised her voice. “Hallo, out there! Hallo, boy!”

“You fool!” cried Xenia and rushed over to silence her. The man moved away, quickly, in his strange silent lope. The dog waited for a last long moment, and bounded after him.

“Fool!” repeated Xenia again, and struck hard with the butt of the revolver. Cecilia saw the upraised arm, and tried to dodge the blow. She succeeded, mostly. The blow glanced on to her shoulder; but she let herself fall, and she did not try to rise. This, she thought, as she clenched her hands to keep from crying out with the pain, this is where I now start some passive resistance. I’ll lie here until I damned well please to get up. I’ll walk no more. I’ll just lie here and wait. She kept her eyes closed and lay quite still. What misery this is, what complete misery, she thought. Why didn’t the shepherd come into the hut? Why don’t I know the phrase for “Help me!” in Greek? But at least the book was no longer lying but there. And the shepherd? Perhaps he had already lost his curiosity and had cast the notebook aside as he climbed back through the wood. Or he might light his fire with it. Sheltering in his hut, up on some high meadow, he might sometime remember the strange voices he had heard. Yes, she thought bitterly, and talk to his sheep about them.

She wondered if all the other things she had scattered around would be picked up by people as slow-thinking and cautious as the shepherd. If so, they would all be useless. Useless. She had had a nice little game to keep her mind occupied; that was all. Oh, Ken! she thought. Ken...

The moment of despair was gone. No, she thought now; even if it is useless, it isn’t a game. It is a battle, a small battle. And by scattering the keys and the notebook and the compact and the lipstick in the cigarette package, I won five small victories. Important to no one, perhaps, except to myself. But isn’t that still something? Isn’t that—in this misery—isn’t that everything?

* * *

She was too cold, too hungry, to fall asleep. She watched the bars of shadow across the floor broaden and swallow up the stripes of moonlight. The night sky was dimming. Once it is daylight, she thought, I can see where this hut is, where the trees begin, where the precipice lies. There is no use in escaping blindly. People die just as easily on a cliff face as by a bullet from a gun. The dog will have work to do, once the dawn comes, guarding the sheep from straying over the ravines on this hillside. The shepherd must have two dogs, of course: he would never leave the sheep penned within their stone walls for the night, up on the higher meadow, without some guard. Let’s hope there’s enough work to keep two dogs busy, high up on the mountainside, a good two miles or so from here; and I’ll keep that distance between them and me. If I could just get into the shelter, of those trees, and circle back toward the road. Yes, it’s the road I must reach... It’s a first-class road; good roads aren’t built to lie idle; there must be some cars, or mail buses, or trucks or carts with supplies.

And now the hut was plunged into deep black-grey shadow. The dark hour of dawn had come. If the woman were asleep, or almost asleep, Cecilia thought, perhaps I could slip out into the trees. She tried to stretch her numb legs. But even as she tensed her muscles, the woman moved from the bed of twigs over to the door. Cecilia heard it being unbarred. She tried to rise, but before she could pull herself up from the earth floor, the woman had stepped outside and closed the door. So Xenia had not liked being locked up in a small dark hut where she could no longer see her prisoner. That was a quick retreat, Cecilia thought. I suppose I should be flattered.

The door would be barred from the outside. But she rose, and moved stiffly over to test it. Barred it was. She tried to see
through the wicker wall. Xenia was standing a few feet away from the door. She was looking up toward the wood. It was too dark to see the expression on her face. But she was angry. She was saying something under her breath. Her clenched fist struck her thigh twice.

So, something had gone wrong. This is not according to plan, Cecilia thought. It can’t be: we are far too near the road; daylight is coming. But how stupid I am, not to realise that things can go wrong for them just as much as they go wrong for us! Someone had once said that the whole art of winning was by outlasting the enemy, even by one minute.

She began rubbing her numbed arms and legs. Walking was impossible inside this small dark room, so she bent and stretched her body, and rubbed, and stretched, until it felt less like a slab of marble. As her eyes became more accustomed to the half-darkness, she lifted her handbag from the floor and began searching inside it. She took a cigarette, but before she struck the match, she hesitated. She looked at the wicker walls, the thatched ceiling, the bed of dried thin branches. She put the cigarette and match folder into her pocket; it was much wiser not to remind Xenia that she possessed any matches. She could hear the woman stamping her feet, blowing on her hands to keep warm, outside. She might come back into the shelter, such as it was, of the hut, once the light was strong enough to let her watch her prisoner in safety. What was more, they wouldn’t be staying here, once dawn came; the road was too close.

Cecilia began to tear out the sheets of the Cavafy poems, quietly, carefully, crumpling them slightly. She pulled some of the branches away from each other, trying to make a deep nest. She pushed the crumpled paper, lightly, between the twigs
she had torn apart, working as quickly as she could. It was a difficult job. She was not quite finished when she heard the far-off sound of a light engine. It was coming nearer, nearer. It stopped. She laid a branch lightly over the top of the fire nest, hoped it would disguise the paper, thrust, the few remaining sheets into her bag, and crossed over to the wall from which she could see the road. Anastas was walking obliquely across the meadow, pushing a motorcycle.

Xenia ran to meet him. They stood talking, in low intense voices, almost at the spot where the shepherd had quietened his dog. Xenia was scolding and complaining. Anastas was worried, angry. He gestured at the hut, at the road, at the lightening sky, as if he were saying, “Well, we have to move. And don’t blame me!” Then he silenced Xenia by taking a flat round loaf from the inside of his coat and thrusting it into her hand. He left, still angry, walking over to some bushes at the edge of the wood. He searched. He must have found a hiding place for the motorcycle, for he walked back to fetch it. He wheeled it over to the chosen spot and pushed it out of sight. He walked around the clump of bushes, studying it from every angle. He was satisfied. He turned back to the waiting Xenia. And now it was he who was scolding, pointing up to the mountains, making a sign for her to hurry.

Cecilia didn’t wait any longer. She crossed to the bed of twigs, struck two matches and dropped them down among the papers. She struck two more, dropped them, picked up her bag and ran to the door as she heard Xenia pulling its outside bar loose. As the door opened, she stepped outside, almost on to one of Xenia’s feet. “I must wash,” she said, and started past Xenia toward the stream. Xenia caught her wrist. “I must wash,” Cecilia insisted, and pulled the woman toward the path.

“Not here!” Xenia told her angrily. “Later, later!” But she didn’t enter the hut. She walked beside Cecilia, still holding her wrist with one hand, the loaf of bread with the other. The man was waiting for them by a large plane tree at the edge of the wood, his revolver ready. He gestured up toward the mountainside, impatiently.

Cecilia glanced back at the meadow. The road was empty. There wasn’t a house or a farm in sight, anywhere, on these bare sloping hills. The little thatched hut leaned against its grey wall, innocent and peaceful in the still light of dawn.

Xenia jerked her arm, and she began climbing the little path that led up through the wood. The man followed them. There was no talk, now. I’ll walk, Cecilia decided, until we are far enough away from the hut so that the trees blot it completely from sight. And then I won’t walk. I won’t walk one yard. She wondered if the paper had caught at all, or had the matches only flared and died away? Even as she worried, she felt sorry for the little hut. There it had been, lying at the edge of a peaceful meadow, offering refuge, wishing no harm on anyone; and for its kindness, it was sent up in flames. Someone had built it carefully and well. Some shepherd would remember the shelter it had given him when he had been driven off the hills by bad weather.

The path through the woods veered to the left as it climbed steeply up the hill. And at last, the trees thinned out and Cecilia could see a great hillside of rough fields, with scattered boulders and a few small trees and bushes. It seemed endless, cold and bleak under the half-light of early morning. This is where I stop walking, she thought. There is no place to hide on that hillside: I must keep near the trees.

“You wash here!” Xenia told her, and pointed to a shallow pool, where the small stream, tumbling down from the heights, rested, too, before it went cascading through the wood. Boulders sheltered the pool from the hillside. And the path, once it crossed the flat stepping-stones of the pool, divided into two narrow tracks, each finding its own way on to the hill. They looked equally uninviting: the lower one disappeared behind the boulders; the upper one branched steeply, more directly up the hillside. I’ll stay close to the wood, Cecilia decided. But where did the sun rise? Where are we now?

They were guarding her carefully. While Xenia hacked the black bread into thick slices, the man watched Cecilia, his revolver held ready. He talked. He was angry. Perhaps, thought Cecilia, he is disappointed. Something is still wrong. But what is wrong for them is right for me. Listening to the voices she could not understand, she sat on a boulder, looked down over the treetops towards the valley, waited for the moment when the sun would rise high enough to be seen.

Xenia took over the watch, choosing a seat opposite Cecilia to face the hillside, keeping a cautious distance of about ten feet between them. The man folded up the map he had been studying, made some last bitter comments, took another slice of bread, and crossed the shallow pool by its flat stepping-stones. Cecilia could hear his feet clattering and slipping on one of the paths up the hillside behind her. He had left them, she decided, not out of tact but of necessity. Perhaps he had to explore the two paths and decide which was the better one. Perhaps, she thought in a surge of wishful hoping, he felt almost as lost as she did.

She washed, ate her slice of bread, and waited. Xenia moved when she moved, always keeping the same distance from her. Cecilia could neither draw farther away nor come nearer than those ten or twelve feet. When Cecilia came back to her boulder, Xenia took the same seat again to face the hillside. They waited in silence. It was a long, long wait.

At last, Cecilia saw the sun coming out over the woods. So that is definitely the east, she thought. And now I know that the hillside stretches to the north and the west. And down there, south, is the meadow and the road we travelled last night. Southeast, to be accurate. That is where Athens lies. But where can we be now?

She studied the woman, who was chewing at her second slice of bread, her revolver still carefully ready. How much hope lay there? Cecilia wondered, and found very little. Xenia was a thoroughly discouraging type.

She was probably not much older than Cecilia, almost the same height, but broader, heavier. She could have been handsome, something pleasant to look at, for her features were not ugly, her eyes were large, her hair thick and intensely black. But her mouth never softened, her dark eyes concentrated on her job. No wit, no humour in those eyes, no sympathy, no gentleness. They only held a strange mixture of aggressive intensity and impersonal coldness. She was the educated, dehumanised female, the dedicated machine. How do I get any information out of her? Cecilia wondered. “What has happened to your friend?” she tried. The woman ignored her.

Cecilia reached for her handbag, the woman’s eyes following her movements. “I have no gun,” Cecilia said.

“We know that.” The voice was as cold and contemptuous as the eyes. She watched Cecilia comb her hair. “Now put on your powder and lipstick,” she said derisively. “Make yourself pretty for them.”

Cecilia finished combing her hair. “Them?” she asked.

The woman ate her slice of bread.

Cecilia said, “Have you been doing much kidnapping recently?”

Xenia stopped eating and looked at her.

“Or did you have enough practice with the children?” Cecilia kept her voice gentle. “What a magnificent experience that must have been for you! How many thousands of them, actually? I heard that it was almost fifty thousand who were kidnapped and taken out of Greece. Did you take some of them by this route? Did they cry much? Did they weep? You must have had a busy time, wiping away their tears, telling them they should be glad they had been stolen from their reactionary parents. Who wants a father or mother, anyway?”