Enemy and Brother (12 page)

“I’ll take you,” I said, “but you are welcome to stay.”

“It is time to go. I am raw in many places besides where I was scrubbed tonight.”

“I understand,” I said and gave him my hand. “There is nothing between us and the door.”

Outside we stood a moment while he got his bearings. “There are a million stars,” I said, “but no moon.”

All was quiet next door, the shutters drawn, but slivers of light appeared through the slats. I told Stephanou this, speaking softly, close to his ear.

“Go and look in,” he said, and gave my arm a little push.

I demurred.

“A blind man is allowed to spy. Go and tell me.”

Reluctantly I went, looked briefly at the old couple before the fire and returned. “Modenis is wrapped in a blanket in a chair in front of the fire. The old woman is on her knees, feeding him cherries with a silver spoon.”

Stephanou put his arm across my shoulder and leaned on me as he doubled in on himself. I could feel the spasms—of laughter? tears? I did not know until he said, “Oh, little children, love one another!”

And this was the man who had spurned the priest.

He took my arm, his hold upon it ever lighter as he gained the confidence of his step and cane. The women had cleaned Modenis’ cottage and gone, leaving the door open, the one light shining within. It was a room crudely furnished, two chairs and a table with benches, some pots hanging in a row over the small fireplace, a chest and a cupboard. In the room beyond I could see two narrow wooden beds, with white sheets now gleaming in the darkness.

“Shall I light the fire? The women have set logs in the grate.”

“No. I am afraid of fire. Leave me now. I have much to think of and you have your work. It was probably a good thing that happened tonight. Do you agree?”

“If you make it so,” I said.

He did not thank me and I was glad. At the door I asked: “Will you come and see me again—tomorrow?”

“If you will let me see you, yes.”

I said, “Come.”

It was almost nine o’clock. I went into the village without returning to the house. If you will let me see you…. Did it seem to him that I was deliberately concealing myself from him? Or was it simply a form of courtesy, his saying that? It was not in my nature to
let
people see me or even to let me see myself. Had he sensed that in so brief a time? Surely not if for no other reason than that among so many strangenesses, so much he could not have expected, much less prepared for, his self-concern must have been all-encompassing.

He would ask questions. So be it. I would also ask questions. But slowly, slowly. To learn the facts of my indictment and conviction no longer seemed the greatest imperative. There was a little nagging wish growing in me not to know: I liked Paul Stephanou.

How devious we are! I know now that my real concern, under all its complicated layers of rationale, was that he not discover in me then the same contemptible creature he had thrown to the minions of the Greek judicial ritual.

Reaching Vasso’s deep in my own thoughts, I did not notice at first the failure of the old man’s usual camaraderie with me. Spyro muttered a greeting of sorts, the others nothing as I went past them into the restaurant.

Kanakis and several other men were at a table to the side, a game of dominoes suspended for talk. I sat apart from them. Nor did they call me to join them as had happened before. I did not think much of it: it might have been a meeting on village business. The Greek pipes were skirling from the radio in the kitchen, an interminable lament. Vasso was in the kitchen. Michael brought my knife, fork and glass, and a pitcher of wine.

“How are you, Michael?” I murmured.

“I am well, Professor-sir,” he said with distant formality.

Vasso came finally, bringing me bread.

“So he is alive, Mr. Eakins,” she said with bitter sarcasm. “He can curse the priest and tell us all to go to hell.”

“Only the priest,” I said. “I have talked with him, Vasso. He is not blasphemous, if that’s what they told you.”

“With you, a stranger, he will talk,” she said.

“He is proud among his own,” I said helplessly.

“Does he wish all of us to be blind?”

“He wishes to see, he wishes to serve, not to be served. He is not a man who can live in gratitude, take charity for the sake of charity. They did much for him tonight. He said it himself. It was cruel, but it had to be done and he knows it, Vasso. He will be different now. They will see.”

“Tell
them
,” she said, with a jerk of her head toward the men.

“I cannot tell if I am not asked,” I said. “I am telling
you
.”

“Did he speak of me?”

“He would not. I am a stranger. But he knew it was your house into which I took him and he was glad.”

“Because it was you and not I who was in it,” she said.

“What poison have they told you? Sit down.” I pulled out the chair beside me.

“I cannot. They will think… I don’t know what they will think.”

“Since when has that been of such importance to you?”

“Since he came home… and would not have me.”

“Vasso,” I said, “believe me. He did not come home until tonight.”

Slowly, almost carefully, she sat down. The men across the room turned their heads and looked at us. They sat in silence for a moment. Then one of them called out, “Vasso! More wine.”

“Michael will bring it to you,” she said over her shoulder. To me she said, “Tell me.”

“I shall tell you everything that happened as I understand it.” And so I pleaded the blind man’s cause as though it were my own, her dark eyes luminous as they probed mine for the truth of what I told. They welled up with tears when I repeated what he had said to the boy on learning he was called Panyotis: it is a better name than Stephanou. I could not bear to look at her. I wanted her again.

Then she reminded me of what I had already surmised, saying, “I can see him when I look at you, I can see him so long ago, so beautiful….”

“And when you look at him, Vasso?”

“It is a face I do not know, a stone face.”

“Not when he smiles.”

“Does he smile?”

“Once he did.”

“What did you say that made him smile?”

It was too complicated to explain, and I found myself not wanting to in any case: it had been a moment of something’s quickening between Paul and me, the gleeful way he had cried, “So that’s why you’re in Kaléa!” as though he had discovered for himself a motive I might not have been able to convey. “I have forgotten,” I said.

“It does not matter. It would not be the same if I said it.”

“When you go to him, Vasso…”

She stopped me, shaking her head. “I will not go to him again, not until he asks me.” She clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back, her eyes searching the ceiling—her blouse taut across her breasts. “There has been a great fire in me for him all these years,” she said after a moment. “I could not put it out even when I tried—you know?”

“I know,” I said with sadness.

“I am sorry,” she said and put her hand briefly over mine. “A great fire. Now it is just a little flame, but it is still alive.”

“I understand,” I murmured.

“He should not have spoken that way to Father Lappas,” Vasso said, getting up. “I heard my cousin, Stavros—he is at the table there—call him a gypsy. Only the gypsies curse the priest. They are afraid he will take away their magic. It is not a good thing for the people to call him a gypsy.”

“It will be different now—I promise you.”

“Will you tell them, please?” She indicated the men. “It is better now than afterwards.”

I got up and went with her to the table and repeated what I had told her of the change in Stephanou.

Kanakis said, “Until the priest can work miracles, he should not expect miracles.”

And the others seemed to come round to the same point of view.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS
Sunday. I suppose this tells more of me than I could set down here in twenty pages of introspection: I went to church. I was the only man outside the sanctuary over the age of sixteen and under sixty-five. I tried for the impossible, to make myself inconspicuous. The coin I slipped into the candle box hit bottom with a resounding clatter. The shawled woman taking a candle at that moment insisted on giving it to me, lighted, and having it, not knowing what to do with it, I watched the others for a moment and then took it to the nearest shrine where, I realized too late, not a candle had been ensconced: it was the newly hung icon of St. Panteleimon. I fled to the shelter of a nearby pillar. The smaller children instantly flocked round and gazed up at me. I winked and grinned at them. When this exhibition lost its fascination they sat down in the middle of the floor and played with one another’s toes. The women bobbed and prayed in one breath and in the next gossiped with their neighbors while the priest performed the Mass behind the grille. Old Spyro, who might have followed me to the church, scattered the children and came to stand beside me.

“In America I went to church every Sunday,” he said. “My wife was very American, may she be with God.”

“I’ve not been to church in a long time,” I said, as though ashamed at being caught there.

“It can’t do any harm,” he said and went himself to light a candle to the Virgin.

When the priest came out from the sanctuary with his basket of bits of bread and handed it to the people crowding round him, I made my way outside, but I noticed as I passed that two more candles had been lighted to St. Panteleimon.

I paused at Modenis’ gate on my way home. The cottage door was open and I chanced a welcome. Modenis and Paul were sitting at the table when I called out to ask if I might come in.

“Come you in,” the old man said. He swept the crumbs from their morning bread to the floor.

Paul lifted his face. It was clean-shaven and the more pallid for it. “Professor?”

“You should go out in the sun and get some color in your face.”

“Is it true you play the mandolin?” Paul asked. And that was to be the pattern of our meetings thereafter: no greeting, just the launching into something held in mind as though one of us had momentarily left the room.

“A little,” I said. “I have a guitar in the States. I didn’t bring it with me.”

“And you sing?”

“Only when I’m drunk. Or more precisely, when my audience is drunk.”

Modenis had a piece of paper and pencil. He was making what seemed to be a list,

“When will you go north?” Paul said.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“But very soon?”

“Why?”

I should not have asked so directly. I could tell he retreated from what he originally had in mind. A little shrug and then he said, “I was wondering if there was time for you to teach me how to play the mandolin.”

“The blind troubadour,” I said.

“Is that ridiculous?”

“No, but I was thinking I could not teach you in your own idiom. I’m not even sure I could teach you in mine.”

“Then it is simple: I must teach myself, but first we must have the mandolin, Uncle.”

“That has already occurred to me,” the old man said.

“I shall be going into Athens one day soon. I’ll try to find one to be bought cheaply if you like.”

“Where will you look?” Stephanou said with an eagerness that reminded me of a child’s wanting to be told a story.

“First, along Ifestou Street,” I said, wanting to give him the image, a share in the quest. “It is a street where one can buy almost anything.”

“You know Athens!” he cried.

“As a tourist who likes to walk,” I said.

“Oh, Uncle, there is a street for every man,” he said, leaning his elbows on the table. If he had not been blind he might still have looked the way he did, closing tight his eyes to conjure memory. “Or was as I still see it. The Germans took everything, they said. But they were wrong. As soon as the Nazis moved out, the traders came back and people brought them things. Everything! Icons, pots, candelabra, old medicine bottles, pottery. A one-legged man could buy a shoe, a bride a mattress. Now there was a sight! I used to walk in Ifestou—because others walked there. And one day we were watching a young girl—no more than seventeen, I think—counting out the dowry money for the mattress….”

One day we were watching
…. I remembered the scene instantly. Margaret Webb and I had stopped, struck by the beauty of the child and the intensity of the transaction. “
Because others walked there
,” he had said. Stephanou had been following her and me those days in Athens before Webb and I went north.

“She did not have enough money for the mattress and when the merchant would not let her have it, she started to weep and to coax him. Louder and louder until she was wailing. Another shopkeeper came, then another, and they scolded the merchant for his hard-heartedness. Suddenly it was a little war, and in the middle of it the girl tilted the mattress against the wall and arched back so that her rags clung to her body like flowing silk, and she lifted the mattress onto her head. She stood a moment, proud and straight. Everybody made room for her. A woman—an Englishwoman—said, ‘One of the caryatids’—you know, the temple maids on the Acropolis? And that was it: three thousand years of Greekness walked down that crooked street with a mattress on her head.”

He had quoted Margaret Webb. I thought both men must hear my heartbeat in the silence when he finished. I should have known from the beginning that for him to have satisfied the jury in his portrayal of me as the frustrated lover he had needed more than random knowledge of the principals.

He construed the silence to his present need. “So! If poets make pictures, I am qualified to practice, eh?”

“Eminently,” I said.

Modenis sighed. “Why do you need a mandolin?”

“I shall find one,” I said, “and if there is anything else I can do for you, please tell me.”

“Why do you go to Athens?” Paul demanded.

“Actually I’m going to Sunium,” I said, “where Byron went and carved his name upon a rock.” I could not tell him I was going in order to escape briefly the intensity of involvement I felt in Kaléa—to try for perspective.