Greek Fire (15 page)

She stared at him, but she said nothing at all.

“They beat me up—d'you remember I said I'd fallen in the street.… It was Juan's life or ours; they put it to me, one life or three.… When he was dead they came again—get the papers, they said, or it will be the end next for you.… Well, I've got the papers. Now they're going to have them!”

She moved carefully an inch or two forward and spat in his face.

Brushing the insult away as an irrelevance, he wiped his hand across his cheek. “What chance have you got? You couldn't even get out of the house. I tell you you're fighting the world.”

She said: “You are an Andalusian. I am from Castile. When a man from Castile does what you have done there is only one thing left. He
destroys
himself.”

“Maria——”

She thrust at him with both hands, thrust him aside and took the handle of the door, got it half open. He clutched her arm, tried to snatch the letter, and she swung round with her clenched fist and all the weight of her body behind it. It took him off balance and he fell down. She pulled the door and was out.

Half down the stairs she stopped to gulp for breath and listened, but he wasn't yet following. She slid into the office, which as usual was empty, but the door beyond was open and she heard the clatter of plate and fork. Mme Nicolou was just finishing lunching alone, in a pink artificial-silk kimono and scarlet mules. She had dyed blonde hair, heavy and straight and drawn back in streaks so that the white tips of her ears showed through it. The two sides of her face didn't quite match; one side was wide-awake and confident, the other eye drooped as if it had just seen a sly joke.

“The laundry's been back an hour, dear. I specially asked them to be quick; it's two sisters who work for me; and they haven't charged extra for the bloodstains on the shirt; help yourself to it if you want it; over there; my, how I hate cooking for myself; one stinks of the food before one can put a knive to it.” She picked up a piece of dark-coloured bread in her long pointed finger-nails and began to rub it round and round on her plate mopping up the grease.

Maria shut the door behind her and stood breathing thickly. “Can you read these letters for me, Mme Nicolou? They belonged to my husband and I can't read this Greek. You know.”

Mme Nicolou twisted the crumbling bread into a ball and pushed it into her mouth. The grease smeared her lip-stick and ran down her chin. She wiped it off on the arm of her kimono, which was already black just there. “Men are always writing. Why I don't know. Why were they ever taught to write? It only leads to trouble, and don't we have enough trouble without that. I knew a man who——”

“Mme Nicolou, it is urgent.”

The other woman stared. With her tongue she carefully explored her teeth. “That was what the man said. It's urgent, he said.” Her drooping lid closed, showing more of the blue eye-shadow. “But you can't fool me. Urgency, I said, is for Germans and the other vandals, not for Greeks who know how to live.… Well, where are my glasses? Let me see.”

She fumbled a pair of black evening spectacles out of her pocket and put them on. Maria thrust the first letter into the woman's long, thin hand. She stared at it.

“These are old letters? Was your husband in Greece in 1947?” she asked after a minute, fixing Maria with her wide-awake eye.

“Can you read it?”

“Of course. But it is not the official, it is the literary script.
Demotiki
, they call it. Mm-mm, people pretend to prefer one or the other. As if it mattered!”

As she was speaking Maria saw someone crossing the street towards the house. A stout man in a black alpaca coat who walked with a slightly anthropoid roll. He had a beard growing like a bonnet string under his chin. She heard his footsteps come into the hall but they did not go up the stairs.

“Not to
yourself
,” said Maria sharply. “
Aloud
for me to hear!”

Mme Nicolou had been mouthing what she read. “But, dear, this doesn't sound like a love letter. Mm-mm.… Was your husband called Anton or George? I can't recollect.”

“
Read.
”

“It says,” began Mme Nicolou. “Mm-mm, it says, ‘ Dear Anton, the usual stuff is here. A purser from the Italian ship brought it. Five thousand. Via Paris. I can add to this one for one, but not in gold. With prices soaring that's too precious to me and I regret I can make what I consider better use of it. Well, it all comes to the same thing in the end. Don't tell your masters.' ” Mme Nicolou raised her head. “Was that someone ringing the bell?”

“No. Go on.”

“Where was I? ‘Your masters. Mm-mm.… They expect a man to have not thought of self-advancement. Do you too? I believe no creed is above criticism or dogma too sacred to be submitted occasionally to the lights of common sense. I have too high a regard for your intellect to suppose you think otherwise. Regards.' And it is signed, ‘George.' Does that mean anything to you? Was he your lover? It doesn't sound so to me.”

“Is there a key to this door?”

Mme Nicolou put her hand inside her kimono and scratched with great concentration and satisfaction. She scratched like a bitch after a flea. “ No, dear. My husband lost both keys before he died.

He was careless. But then nothing mattered to him but sex. It was his religion, his meat and drink. So I had a bolt fitted.”

“A bolt?
Where?
”

“At the top there. Men have always followed me. At one tune my dressing room was never less than two deep. Never less. In Sofia. I remember once in Sofia——But why have you bolted it now? I sleep lightly in the afternoon.”

Maria stood with her back to the door. Her heart was beating. She knew now the extent of Philip's cowardice and betrayal. “There's—a man outside. He has been trying to make up to me and I don't want anything to do with him. Go on.”

“Go on? What with? Oh, the letters. You look upset. Has this man been annoying you?”

“No. Go on.”

“And your husband only dead a week. They have no decency, men. You may not believe it, Mme Tolosa, but I was brought up very strictly. My mother warned me when I was thirteen——”

“
This
is the second letter.
Read
it.”

There was a gentle knock on the door.

“Shouldn't we open it?”

“No.”

“Well.… This begins like the last. ‘Dear Anton, Mm-mm.… I hope you got everything as promised. Your rebuke might have come straight out of the party ink-pot. Oh, I know and agree with most of your arguments, but I claim the right to an independent voice now and again. Anyway, I'm sure you won't wish to dispense with my valuable assistance. D'you realise it amounted to eighteen thousand pounds sterling last year? Incidentally have a care how you receive Mlle d'A. She may be all we wish her to be, but she's also a famous actress and expects to be treated as such. Let Manos meet her. He has the approach that women like. All that she brought is now delivered into your hands——' ”

There was another, louder knock on the door.

“ ‘—into your hands.' Mme Tolosa, do you think this man will soon go away? Perhaps I could speak to him? I shall have to go upstairs in a few minutes. It's a trouble I suffer from.”

“I want you,” said Maria, “ to call the police.”
Mme Nicolou put down the letter as if it was hot. Her face

seemed to try to break up. “ The
police?
What are you talking

about? They were here last week! I couldn't stand another visit

like last week: it reminded me of when the Germans were here. I

can't
stand
it! Tramp, tramp, I can't stand the sound of the
boots
.”
She put her hands up to her face and began to cry.
Maria gripped her shoulder. “ Tell me, where is the telephone?

You have one in here?”
“No … There—there is only the one in the hall.”
“Is there another way out?”
“There's a back door. But I don't want to be left a-alone. This

man might rob me.”
“He wants only me. Don't open the door to him until I'm gone.”
She grabbed up the two letters and put them back in the wallet.

Then she slid through into the little scullery with its bubbling stove

and copper pans. Coffee was steaming in a pot on the side.
She opened the door to the street. A tall young man stood there.

He had a long narrow nose, smiling eyes, and a pert girlish mouth. He said: “Hullo, sweetheart,” and smiled and put up a hand to

her face and pushed her violently back into the scullery. He followed

her as she fell and shut the door behind him.

Gene was there ten minutes before her, and as soon as he saw her he knew what her phone call had meant. She came stumbling into the cellar, half blind after the brilliant light outside, lurched against the stove, making the tin chimney sway and rattle, came up against a chair and clutched the back with both hands.

“I've lost it!” she said in a sobbing voice. “They took it from me! Philip had sold us to save his own skin! Now there's nothing left!”

He tried to make her sit down, and poured her a brandy, but she swept the glass off the table and it tinkled to pieces on the flag floor. Tears began to run down her face, over the bruises on her cheek and the cuts on her mouth and chin. But even now, though she had recently fought two men and been knocked down and kicked by them, they were not tears of weakness but of anger. She cried like a man, harshly and coughingly.

He heard the story through, while men brought in and arranged the furniture overhead ready for the evening auction. When she had finished he said:

“The letters were all signed?”

“I've told you. I saw only two. They were both written to Anton and signed George. I know no more than you about the last eight.”

“There was also this identity card?”

“It is not an ordinary identity card but I think a Communist Party membership card. I am not sure; I turned at once to the letters.”

“You saw the name on the card?”

“Yes, it was George Lascou.”

Something was scratching among the waste paper in the cellar. The movements upstairs had stopped.

Gene said: “ I hope nobody knows that you know that.”

“I don't care what happens to me now. I have been cheated, robbed in every way. There is nothing more to lose!”

“Were you followed here?”

“I don't know.”

He went across the cellar and slid a grating aside.

“Yes. Zachari is outside.”

“Zachari?”

“The young man with the nose. You've torn his suit. No wonder he kicked you.”

“So I have led them to you.”

“It doesn't matter. There are six ways out of this cellar.”

He came back and lit a cigarette. “Maria, do you know who Lascou is?”

“Yes. I have not played quite fair with you. I think I have almost known that all along.”

“How?”

“Juan mentioned Lascou's name twice in front of me. But it was then only a name. When he died I suspected but could not be sure. Then you put me off by saying Avra. But gradually this week-end I had come to the conclusion. Lascou was in the news. I have not wasted this week-end.”

“What have you done?”

“That does not matter. What is there to do now?”

He frowned down at his cigarette. He was not a man who took defeat easily, but to go on now would be the act of a fool. For her sake as well as for his own, the right way was to cut losses and go.

But would
she
go? Even if he told her to, would she go? He looked at her and knew she would not; and a worm of satisfaction moved in him that he could find an excuse for not letting up.

He blew away a spiral of smoke. “The letters won't be destroyed yet. Lascou has been out of town all day. He's addressing a public meeting in Piraeus at six, so he's not likely to be home before eight. As these things you had are dangerous to him, he must want to see them and destroy them with his own hands. Otherwise he would never have any peace of mind.”

She threw back her mane of hair: “Well?”

“He's likely to have them delivered to his flat, which is on the top floor of——”

“Yes, I know where it is. Well?”

“I think I could take a chance on getting them there.”

“He has a secretary and others about him.”

“The advantage is they'd not be expecting me.”

“You would have a bullet in your back.”

“Not in his flat, I think. For the next month at least he must be above scandal. If I failed I should be arrested. But that may happen anyhow.”

She stared at him sombrely. “ If you got these papers, now that you know what they are, what would you do with them?”

“Hand them to the Army Intelligence.”

“Would he be shot?”

“I don't know. But it would finish him in the way that matters.”

Her eyes hadn't moved from him. “It is very unlikely you could do this.”

“But worth a try.”

“Did you know that Lascou's wife lives in a separate flat on the opposite side of the top floor?”

“How do you?”

“I have not wasted my week. Between the flats there are communicating doors. It would be easier if you called on Mme Lascou first.”

“It might be.” He had been watching her. “Maria, don't take a hand in this yourself.”

She said: “I went up on Sunday, carrying laundry. I got right to the door of her flat without being stopped and could have gone in. I did not go in. But I think you could get in that way.”

Gene did not take Maria's advice. While a woman looking like a laundress might get into Mme Lascou's part of the building during the day, a man at night would need a better excuse. And his quarrel was with Lascou.