The Oracle (32 page)

‘But what was the cause of death?’

‘Cardiac arrest.’

‘That doesn’t mean much, does it?’

‘Exactly. Practically nothing.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Who knows. Some kind of a shock. There’s not much you can say in a case like this. Maybe the man who brought him, that Malidis, could have told us what had happened, but I never saw him again. Perhaps Captain Karamanlis interrogated him. I have no idea.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘Not at all. If you discover something, let me know.’

Mireille got into her rented Peugeot and thought of driving out to the cemetery, but it was nearly six o’clock. It was surely closed by now, but perhaps if she found the custodian, she could give him a tip and have him open it.

‘For one thousand drachmas, I’ll even dig him up for you, miss,’ said the custodian, who had been about to go home when Mireille slipped him the bill.

‘But you have to come with me,’ said the girl. ‘It’s getting dark and I’m a little afraid of walking around here by myself.’

He smiled and followed her in: ‘There’s no need to be afraid of the dead, miss. It’s the living who are sons of bitches, if you’ll pardon the expression. Like my brother-in-law – I gave him some money to open a shop five years ago, and I’ve never seen a penny of it . . .’ The custodian turned to the right and pointed to a tomb. ‘There he is,’ he said. ‘Mr Periklis Harvatis. I know all my boys, each and every one.’

Mireille looked at the small oval photograph which showed an old man with thin, snow-white hair. A gaunt but very dignified face. The inscription had only his first and last name, date of birth and date of death, but there was a fresh bunch of flowers, and the area was well taken care of. ‘Do you put the flowers here?’ asked Mireille. The custodian raised his head and closed his eyes. Negative. Mireille smiled to herself, thinking what an odd way all the inhabitants of the south-east Mediterranean – from Sicily to Lebanon – had of saying no. He led her to the exit and pointed to a flower shop: not the one on the right, the second on the left. The lady from the flower shop came by every so often.

‘How often?’ wondered Mireille. He shrugged; too much to ask. Mireille thanked him again, shaking his hand warmly, then crossed the street and walked into the flower shop.

T
HE WAITER MADE
himself a sandwich with feta cheese, olives and tomatoes and poured himself a glass of wine. His usual snack before going home. He sat down, finally, after serving so many people, and relaxed, paging through the newspaper. The wind was coming from the south and the weather was still warm, but you could feel that it was about to change. The sports pages were the most crumpled, but still legible, and there was nothing he liked better than checking the results of the horse races to see if he had won. He’d lost.

He closed up the paper, calculating how much money he’d thrown away over his lifetime betting on the horses every Sunday and always losing, when suddenly he noticed a black Mercedes moving slowly up the street and stopping in front of number 17. He waited to see who would get out. The engine was turned off, as were the headlights, but no one left the car. Strange.

A few minutes later, when he was walking towards home on the other side of the street, he glanced into the car: it was empty. Instinctively he looked towards the shutter and saw a stream of light filtering out from under the bottom. He pressed his ear against the shutter, but could hear very little: receding footsteps, barely perceptible, as if someone was walking down a long hall. He remembered the one thousand-drachma bill he’d been given that morning and walked over to the nearest phone booth. Mireille was in her hotel room.

‘Miss? The lights are on at seventeen Dionysìou Street.’ Mireille had been sleeping for a couple of hours and she had trouble understanding what was going on. ‘Miss, did you hear me? It’s me, the waiter from Bar Milos. You gave me one thousand drachmas, remember?’

‘Oh yes, of course. Thanks, my friend.’

‘There’s more. There’s a black Mercedes parked in front, but no one has got out.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Mireille.

‘Yes, sir,’ answered the waiter, forgetting he was talking to a woman.

‘Okay, thank you.’

‘Goodnight,’ said the waiter and started walking back home, like he did every night.

Mireille looked at her watch and was about to sink back into a deep sleep, tired after the trip and all the various events of that very long day, but then it hit her that this was possibly a one-off opportunity that she couldn’t afford to miss. She got up, and even put on a little make-up, in spite of the time and the situation. She dressed quickly, went down and started up her car, and headed towards Dionysìou Street on the nearly deserted roads of Athens.

She passed slowly in front of number 17. The light was on, all right, but the shutter was still locked. How had they got in? And that black Mercedes? It was still parked out in front, and it was empty. The main door to the building was closed as well. Mireille could not seem to piece together the puzzle, no matter how hard she tried. This was supposedly the press which had printed Professor Harvatis’s article, and someone was in there at one-thirty in the morning. She turned around at the end of the road, beyond the bar, and parked so she could see the Mercedes clearly. And the car’s owner, when he decided to come out.

The street was poorly lit and Mireille was a little afraid. She curled up so her head didn’t show above the seat, while keeping her eyes trained on that thin stream of light filtering from under the shutter, as well as on the black car parked alongside the pavement. She kept the radio on low for a while to keep her company, but all she could tune into were those damned Greek folk songs, so she switched it off. She tried smoking to stay awake, but every so often her head would drop and she’d fall asleep for a few minutes, then shake herself awake to force her tired eyes back to that yellow light, that black mass. It all seemed ridiculous. Just a few hours ago she was in her own nice, comfortable room, and now she was freezing to death and couldn’t keep her eyes open in this damned rented car, guarding a locked shutter.

Just before six in the morning, sleep overcame her and she nodded off, her head resting on the seat for a few minutes. She was awakened by the soft sound of an engine starting up. She started, realized where she was and looked towards the shutter: the light was off. The Mercedes’s parking lights were just coming on and the car was pulling off, slow and silent, headed towards Stadiou Street. Mireille started up her own car and, without turning on her lights, followed the Mercedes at a distance. It was easier on Stadiou Street: there was already a little traffic, so her car blended in with the others.

At a red light she managed to pull up alongside the car on the left and stole a glance at the man behind the wheel: about fifty, tanned face with black hair and a beard streaked with some white. He was wearing a light-coloured crew-necked sweater and a blue blazer. His hands on the steering wheel were large and strong and aristocratic. The hands of a nobleman. When the light turned green, Mireille slipped back into position behind him.

The sky was beginning to lighten, but large dark clouds were skimming rapidly from west to east. The Mercedes turned off towards Faliron, and then Cape Sounion. Mireille checked a map and realized that this was the only road going inland, ending up at the temple of Poseidon; she decided to drop back so she wouldn’t look suspicious. It took nearly an hour to get to Sounion, and the sun was just coming up over the horizon, piercing through the dense clouds forming over the sea. One of the long rays of light suddenly struck the Doric temple at the top of the promontory and it shone as white as a lily, vivid and glorious against the waves of the sea and the clouds in the sky. The wind which always swept the cliff bent the broom bushes, creating waves shorter and more ruffled than the slow, solemn roll of the sea.

The Mercedes had stopped alongside a fleshy euphorbia bush and the man, who was now wearing a raincoat, stood motionless atop a boulder in front of the temple, which had turned as grey as the threatening sky. Mireille stopped before the last curve, just past the Poseidon hotel, turned off the engine and sat watching him, unseen. The man stood there for at least ten minutes, and his small, dark, erect figure seemed unevenly matched against the colossal white columns which supported the sanctuary architrave. He then turned and went towards the cliff that towered over the sea. A gust of cold wind puffed up his raincoat, and from this distance he looked like a bird about to take flight over the dark expanse of the Aegean. Far off, white foam seethed all around the island of Patroclos, as black and shiny as the back of a whale.

When the Mercedes took off again, distancing itself from the sea and heading north inland towards Attica, Mireille continued to follow at a distance for another hour. She hadn’t had a moment for breakfast and was tired and hungry. All this strange wandering seemed pointless and futile. She had almost decided to stop following him when she saw the Mercedes leave the main road and head up a trail which rose towards a solitary house at the edge of a forest of oak saplings. She got out of the car and walked up on foot, concealed behind a ridge.

She saw him knock on the door, which was opened by an old man who then shut it behind him. There didn’t seem to be any dogs around, and Mireille sneaked up to the window that looked out on to the forest: she could hide behind the bushes if need be. The room was a couple of metres wide, illuminated by two windows: an artist’s studio.

In one corner, a bucket of fresh clay was covered with a sheet of plastic. A tripod on the other side of the room held a relief panel, still damp, representing a fishing scene: lean-armed men throwing a net from a boat, the sun shining above, while tunas and dolphins splashed inside and outside the net. The man who had got out of the Mercedes had taken off his raincoat and was sitting on a stool on the far side of the room; she could see his profile. The old man sat with his back to her and she saw only the back of his head: a tumble of white locks falling over the collar of a cotton smock. Listening hard, Mireille could make out what they were saying.

‘I’m happy to see you, Commander. Have you come to finish the work?’ asked the old man.

‘I have, maestro. I’m happy to see you as well. How are you feeling?’

‘The way you feel when you’ve reached the end.’

‘Why say that?’

‘I’ve lived too much. How long could I possibly have left?’

‘Does that distress you?’

‘I’m losing my sight. Night is coming.’

‘Has there ever been a night not followed by the dawn?’

‘It’s a thought that does not console me. I can’t bear to lose the vision of nature . . . for ever.’

A gust of wind rustled up the forest and Mireille could no longer hear the men. She could only see the eyes of the stranger, such a deep blue, gleaming like the only thing alive in the grey atmosphere of the room. He spoke, then listened. He remained seated on the stool, his hands joined around his knee. The artist approached him now and then, touching his face with his long bony fingers as if to capture his features and infuse them into the clay. He was creating his likeness.

Mireille kept turning around, fearful that someone might turn up, but the area was quite deserted and the wind was now whistling through the forest. She could no longer hear their words, but lingered close to the window until the old sculptor had finished. She saw him take off his smock and go to wash his hands. As he moved away from the window, she could see what he had been working on: a bas relief portraying only the face of the man who was posing. Only his face, with his eyes closed in sleep . . . or in death?

The face had lost the hard tension and domineering intensity of the man’s gaze, and looked mysteriously tranquil. The grave, solemn majesty of a king at rest.

The sculptor accompanied him to the door and Mireille, concealed behind the corner of the house, could hear what they were saying.

‘My work is finished. The clay will be fired in the kiln before evening.’

‘All that’s missing is the gold.’

‘Bring it soon. This could be my last work. I want it to be perfect . . . but I also want you to tell me why you have had me make it.’

‘You have depicted my face, you have touched my soul with your fingers. What can I tell you that you don’t already know in the bottom of your heart? As far as the gold is concerned, there’s something I must tell you. It won’t be just a bar of metal. You’ll have to destroy . . . no, refashion an object that perhaps you yourself crafted very very long ago. You, or someone like you. Thus I’ll be able to close the circle and put an end to something that no man, no matter how patient, would have been able to bear. Will you do it for me?’

The old man nodded: ‘For you, Commander.’

‘I knew you would not refuse me. Farewell, maestro.’

The old man stood on the threshold, watching him as he got into the car and drove off down the little dusty road, towards the provincial highway. Mireille took her camera, and before the artist returned to his modest studio, took several pictures of the clay mask through the slightly misted glass of the window. It reminded her of something she’d already seen.

M
IREILLE WOKE UP
at two that afternoon and tried to contact Michel at the hotel in Ephira that he’d left the number for, but the receptionist said that although he had a reservation, he hadn’t arrived yet. She went downstairs and got something to eat at the bar, then asked the hotel manager to call the Antiquities and Fine Arts Service to see if a certain Aristotelis Malidis still worked at the National Archaeological Museum.