She did not move. “I am beginning to think that I do not like you at all.”
“I’m sorry. I was looking forward to your company on the journey.”
“But you have Mr. Kuvetli,” she said viciously.
“Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately, he’s not as attractive as you are.”
She laughed sarcastically. “Oh, you have seen that I am attractive? That is very good. I am so pleased. I am honoured.”
“I seem to have offended you,” he said. “I apologise.”
She waved one hand airily. “Do not trouble. I think that it is perhaps because you are stupid. You wish to walk. Very well, we will walk.”
“Splendid.”
They had taken three steps when she stopped again and faced him. “Why do you have to take this little Turk to Athens?” she demanded. “Tell him that you cannot go. If you were polite you would do that.”
“And take you? Is that the idea?”
“If you asked me, I would go with you. I am bored with this ship and I like to speak English.”
“I’m afraid that Mr. Kuvetli might not think it so polite.”
“If you liked me it would not matter to you about Mr. Kuvetli.” She shrugged. “But I understand. It does
not matter. I think that you are very unkind, but it does not matter. I am bored.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you are sorry. That is all right. But I am still bored. Let us walk.” And then, as they began to walk: “José thinks that you are indiscreet.”
“Does he? Why?”
“That old German you talked to. How do you know that he is not a spy?”
He laughed outright. “A spy! What an extraordinary idea!”
She glanced at him coldly. “And why is it extraordinary?”
“If you had talked to him you would know quite well that he couldn’t possibly be anything of the sort.”
“Perhaps not. José is always very suspicious of people. He always believes that they are lying about themselves.”
“Frankly, I should be inclined to accept José’s disapproval of a person as a recommendation.”
“Oh, he does not disapprove. He is just interested. He likes to find things out about people. He thinks that we are all animals. He is never shocked by anything people do.”
“He sounds very stupid.”
“You do not understand José. He does not think of good things and evil things as they do in the convent, but only of things. He says that a thing that is good for one person may be evil for another, so that it is stupid to talk of good and evil.”
“But people sometimes do good things simply because those things
are
good.”
“Only because they feel nice when they do them—that is what José says.”
“What about the people who stop themselves from doing evil because it
is
evil?”
“José says that if a person
really
needs to do something he will not trouble about what others may think of him. If he is really hungry, he will steal. If he is in real danger, he will kill. If he is really afraid, he will be cruel. He says that it was people who were safe and well fed who invented good and evil so that they would not have to worry about the people who were hungry and unsafe. What a man does depends on what he needs. It is simple. You are not a murderer. You say that murder is evil. José would say that you are as much a murderer as Landru or Weidmann and that it is just that fortune has not made it necessary for you to murder anyone. Someone once told him that there was a German proverb which said that a man is an ape in velvet. He always likes to repeat it.”
“And do you agree with José? I don’t mean about my being a potential murderer. I mean about why people are what they are.”
“I do not agree or disagree. I do not care. For me, some people are nice, some people are sometimes nice and others are not at all nice.” She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “You are sometimes nice.”
“What do you think about yourself?”
She smiled. “Me? Oh, I am sometimes nice, too. When people are nice to me, I am a little angel.” She added: “José thinks that he is as clever as God.”
“Yes, I can see that he would.”
“You do not like him. I am not surprised. It is only
the old women who like José.”
“Do
you
like him?”
“He is my partner. With us it is business.”
“Yes, you told me that before. But do you
like
him?”
“He makes me laugh sometimes. He says amusing things about people. You remember Serge? José said that Serge would steal straw from his mother’s kennel. It made me laugh very much.”
“It must have done. Would you like a drink now?”
She looked at a small silver watch on her wrist and said that she would.
They went down. One of the ship’s officers was leaning by the bar with a beer in his hand, talking to the steward. As Graham ordered the drinks, the officer turned his attention to Josette. He obviously counted on being successful with women: his dark eyes did not leave hers while he was talking to her. Graham, listening to the Italian with bored incomprehension, was ignored. He was content to be ignored. He got on with his drink. It was not until the gong sounded for lunch and Haller came in that he remembered that he had done nothing about changing his place at table.
The German nodded in a friendly way as Graham sat down beside him. “I did not expect to have your company to-day.”
“I completely forgot to speak to the steward. If you …”
“No, please. I take it as a compliment.”
“How is your wife?”
“Better, though she is not yet prepared to face a meal. But she took a walk this morning. I showed her the sea.
This is the way Xerxes’ great ships sailed to their defeat at Salamis. For those Persians that grey mass on the horizon was the country of Themistocles and the Attic Greeks of Marathon. You will think that it is my German sentimentality but I must say that the fact that for me that grey mass is the country of Venizelos and Metaxas is as regrettable as it could be. I was at the German Institute in Athens for several years when I was young.”
“Shall you go ashore this afternoon?”
“I do not think so. Athens can only remind me of what I know already—that I am old. Do you know the city?”
“A little. I know Salamis better.”
“That is now their big naval base, isn’t it?”
Graham said yes rather too carelessly. Haller glanced sideways and smiled slightly. “I beg your pardon. I see that I am on the point of being indiscreet.”
“I shall go ashore to get some books and cigarettes. Can I get anything for you?”
“It is very kind of you, but there is nothing. Are you going alone?”
“Mr. Kuvetli, the Turkish gentleman at the next table, has asked me to show him round. He has never been to Athens.”
Haller raised his eyebrows. “Kuvetli? So that is his name. I talked with him this morning. He speaks German quite well and knows Berlin a little.”
“He speaks English, too, and very good French. He seems to have travelled a lot.”
Haller grunted. “I should have thought that a Turk who had travelled a lot would have been to Athens.”
“He sells tobacco. Greece grows its own tobacco.”
“Yes, of course. I had not thought of that. I am apt to forget that most people who travel do so not to see but to sell. I talked with him for twenty minutes. He has a way of talking without saying anything. His conversation consists of agreements or indisputable statements.”
“I suppose it’s something to do with his being a salesman. ‘The world is my customer and the customer is always right.’ ”
“He interests me. In my opinion he is too simple to be true. The smile is a little too stupid, the conversation a little too evasive. He tells you some things about himself within the first minutes of your meeting him and then tells you no more. That is curious. A man who begins by telling you about himself usually goes on doing so. Besides, who ever heard of a simple Turkish business man? No, he makes me think of a man who has set out to create a definite impression of himself in people’s minds. He is a man who wishes to be underrated.”
“But why? He’s not selling us tobacco.”
“Perhaps, as you suggest, he regards the world as his customer. But you will have an opportunity of probing a little this afternoon.” He smiled. “You see, I assume, quite unwarrantably, that you are interested. I must ask your pardon. I am a bad traveller who has had to do a great deal of travelling. To pass the time I have learned to play a game. I compare my own first impressions of my fellow travellers with what I can find out about them.”
“If you are right you score a point? If you are wrong you lose one?”
“Precisely. Actually I enjoy losing more than winning. It is an old man’s game, you see.”
“And what is your impression of Señor Gallindo?”
Haller frowned. “I am afraid that I am only too right about that gentleman. He is not really very interesting.”
“He has a theory that all men are potential murderers and is fond of quoting a German proverb to the effect that a man is an ape in velvet.”
“It does not surprise me,” was the acid reply. “Every man must justify himself somehow.”
“Aren’t you a little severe?”
“Perhaps. I regret to say that I find Señor Gallindo a very ill-mannered person.”
Graham’s reply was interrupted by the entrance of the man himself, looking as if he had just got out of bed. He was followed by the Italian mother and son. The conversation became desultory and over-polite.
The
Sestri Levante
was tied up alongside the new wharf on the north side of the harbour of the Piræus soon after two o’clock. As, with Mr. Kuvetli, Graham stood on the deck waiting for the passenger gangway to be hoisted into position, he saw that Josette and José had left the saloon and were standing behind him. José nodded to them suspiciously as if he were afraid that they were thinking of borrowing money from him. The girl smiled. It was the tolerant smile that sees a friend disregarding good advice.
Mr. Kuvetli spoke up eagerly. “Are you going ashore, Monsieur-dame?”
“Why should we?” demanded José. “It is a waste of time to go.”
But Mr. Kuvetli was not sensitive. “Ah! Then you know Athens, you and your wife?”
“Too well. It is a dirty town.”
“I have not seen it. I was thinking that if you and Madame were going, we might all go together.” He beamed round expectantly.
José set his teeth and rolled his eyes as if he were being tortured. “I have already said that we are
not
going.”
“But it is very kind of you to suggest it,” Josette put in graciously.
The Mathis came out of the saloon. “Ah!” he greeted them. “The adventurers! Do not forget that we leave at five. We shall not wait for you.”
The gangway thudded into position and Mr. Kuvetli clambered down it nervously. Graham followed. He was beginning to wish that he had decided to stay on board. At the foot of the gangway he turned and looked up—the inevitable movement of a passenger leaving a ship. Mathis waved his hand.
“He is very amiable, Monsieur Mathis,” said Mr. Kuvetli.
“Very.”
Beyond the Customs shed there was a fly-blown old Fiat landaulet with a notice on it in French, Italian, English and Greek, saying that an hour’s tour of the sights and antiquities of Athens for four persons cost five hundred drachmes.
Graham stopped. He thought of the electric trains and trams he would have to clamber on to, of the hill up to the Acropolis, of the walking he would have to do, of the exhausting boredom of sightseeing on foot. Any way of avoiding the worst of it was, he decided, worth thirty shillingsworth of drachmes.
“I think,” he said, “that we will take this car.”
Mr. Kuvetli looked worried. “There is no other way? It is very expensive.”
“That’s all right. I’ll pay.”
“But it is you who do favour to me. I must pay.”
“Oh, I should have taken a car in any case. Five hundred drachmes is not really expensive.”
Mr. Kuvetli’s eyes opened very wide. “Five hundred? But that is for four persons. We are two.”
Graham laughed. “I doubt if the driver will look at it that way. I don’t suppose it costs him any less to take two instead of four.”
Mr. Kuvetli looked apologetic. “I have little Greek. You will permit me to ask him?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
The driver, a predatory looking man wearing a suit several sizes too small for him and highly polished tan shoes without socks, had leapt out at their approach and was holding the door open. Now he began to shout.
“Allez! Allez! Allez!”
he exhorted them;
“très bon marché. Cinque-cento, solamente.”
Mr. Kuvetli strode forward, a stout, grubby little Daniel going out to do battle with a lean Goliath in stained blue serge. He began to speak.
He spoke Greek fluently; there was no doubt of it. Graham saw the surprised look on the driver’s face replaced by one of fury as a torrent of words poured from Mr. Kuvetli’s lips. He was disparaging the car. He began to point. He pointed to every defect in the thing from a patch of rust on the luggage grid to a small tear in the upholstery, from a crack in the windshield to a worn patch on the running board. He paused for breath and
the angry driver seized the opportunity of replying. He shouted and thumped the door panels with his fist to emphasise his remarks and made long streamlining gestures. Mr. Kuvetli smiled sceptically and returned to the attack. The driver spat on the ground and counterattacked. Mr. Kuvetli replied with a short, sharp burst of fire. The driver flung up his hands, disgusted but defeated.
Mr. Kuvetli turned to Graham. “Price,” he reported simply, “is now three hundred drachmes. It is too much, I think, but it will take time to reduce more. But if you think …”
“It seems a very fair price,” said Graham hurriedly.
Mr. Kuvetli shrugged. “Perhaps. It could be reduced more, but …” He turned and nodded to the driver, who suddenly grinned broadly. They got into the cab.
“Did you say,” said Graham, as they drove off, “that you had never been in Greece before?”
Mr. Kuvetli’s smile was bland. “I know little Greek,” he said. “I was born in Izmir.”
The tour began. The Greek drove fast and with dash, twitching the wheel playfully in the direction of slow moving pedestrians, so that they had to run for their lives, and flinging a running commentary over his right shoulder as he went. They stopped for a moment on the road by the Theseion and again on the Acropolis where they got out and walked round. Here, Mr. Kuvetli’s curiosity seemed inexhaustible. He insisted on a century by century history of the Parthenon and prowled round the museum as if he would have liked to spend the rest of
the day there; but at last they got back into the car and were whisked round to the theatre of Dionysos, the arch of Hadrian, the Olympieion, and the Royal Palace. It was, by now, four o’clock and Mr. Kuvetli had been asking questions and saying “very nice” and
“formidable”
for well over the allotted hour. At Graham’s suggestion they stopped in the Syntagma, changed some money and paid off the driver, adding that if he liked to wait in the square he could earn another fifty drachmes by driving them back to the wharf later. The driver agreed. Graham bought his cigarettes and books and sent his telegram. There was a band playing on the terrace of one of the cafés when they got back to the square and at Mr. Kuvetli’s suggestion they sat down at a table to drink coffee before returning to the port.