Enemy and Brother (21 page)

“And yet you thought I was there by my own intrigue?”

“I came to think that, yes. If you say it was not so, I believe you.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It was not so.”

Again he ignored my sarcasm. “What Markos believed of you—that is what I wish I could say. Demetrios had told him what I thought. Markos did not always trust the people in Athens—the politicals, as he called them, who wanted him to fight as though he had the striking force of the Red Army. And I have a feeling, but it is only a feeling, that he identified them with Demetrios… I suppose it was because he thought him an educated man. But let me go back to things as they happened.

“Markos gave me an assignment I was to share with no one: I was to keep watch on you throughout the night. You were not to leave the cottage, not even to pass water unless I was with you. And I was to bring you to him at dawn. I asked him if I was also to watch Webb. ‘If that was my wish I would have said so. Obey my orders.’ I did.

“It was a cold night, I can tell you. Bitter cold, and we had come from the south. There were wolves howling and the snow was white on the mountain peaks. It was about half-past one o’clock when Webb left your cottage. He went immediately round to the back of it. He was not wearing his trenchcoat so I did not think much of it at first. But he did not return. I looked into the cottage to make sure you were there. Then I went in back. I did not see him. I did not hear him. For just a second in the darkness I thought I saw a light—which is how I knew where to go afterwards with you.

“I was determined to follow my orders to the letter. But how can I tell you now what went on in my mind the next few minutes? It does not matter, but I don’t need to tell you how relieved I was when you came out and demanded that we find Alexander Webb, and then when we found him with a woman! It was to me such a funny solution I wanted to laugh aloud. Maybe I did. But not you, my friend. You did not find it funny.”

“No, I did not find it funny,” I said quietly. And I thought how all these years I had hated the gleaming mirth in the eyes that night of Paul Stephanou.

“You kept saying all the way back to your billet, ‘The son of a bitch, the son of a bitch.’”

To return at a moment while I sat with the blind man before the vast, clear span of the Ionian Sea to the darkness of that night and its agony of lonely fear had the charged contrast of an electric shock. “The son of a bitch,” I repeated, and I knew I had said it that night.

I have told that I was more shocked than enraged. I so believed myself. But it was sheer fury that I first experienced. Where Stephanou had exploded his relief in mirth, mine was in instant anger. It was an anger I could understand now to have been compounded of my own isolation, my desperate fear of being separated from Webb, and the anti-climax of finding him with a woman. Then came the savage, righteous wrath, the Puritan’s judgment on adultery, the romantic’s iconization—if I may coin the word—of the wife betrayed.

My behavior had probably been quite as Paul Stephanou had described it in court.

“You will tell me now, my friend, if what I remember is not so,” Paul went on. “I tried to persuade you to be quiet. I do not mean you were shouting. But in that stillness every sound wakened another. A dog barked, I think. I know a donkey brayed and it was like an air-raid siren in the night. There was a change in the camp guard and the man going off duty asked me what had happened. I told him. And he said, ‘That woman should not be allowed to come.’

“I asked you if I might come in and get warm, and with charming hospitality you told me to go to hell. I think I said something like, ‘In that case let us enjoy it together,’ but you were not disposed at that moment to enjoy my humor. No more could I appreciate your piety. I went into the cottage with you anyway. You may remember, I warmed my hands at the lamp globe. Then I cleaned the globe with an old newspaper. You will remember the smudges of lamp-black on the gun. And you will also remember there was no trace of lamp-black on the trigger.”

I remembered. My defense had tried to develop a counterattack by charging that Stephanou had actually killed Webb. It was shown that the traces of lamp-black were to be found on the barrel and the handle of the revolver, but none was on the trigger. My credibility was further weakened by the collapse of the charge.

Paul went on: “But let us go back to you and me when, I am quite sure, we both expected the return of Alexander Webb within the hour. You denied in court talking about Margaret Webb. But you did talk about her, and in a way that angered me. I do not hold you to account now, my friend. You are right: this is not the time between us for recriminations. But the distinction I got from you, if I may call it that, was the contrast between a virtuous Anglo-Saxon lady and a Greek peasant whore.

“Do I exaggerate, Professor? Tell me now if you are an honest man.”

I sat in silence, stunned. For how many years had I examined my own conscience in this matter? The best I could say to him was, “It is not far from the truth as I now know it, Paul.”

“We must make do with that,” he said, “if we are to go on together. That night I thought, it would be easy for me to kill this man. He is the true enemy. I went out and left you. It was to me—you will forgive me—cleaner outdoors. But it was also fiercely cold so I went in again with you. You were sleeping like a baby, curled up underneath your coat and Webb’s coat. I took Webb’s coat without disturbing you, and I examined it. Socks, a pair of shorts, his shaving things, a bar of soap. His toothbrush was gone, his passport and his billfold, his notebook, some of the things I knew he kept in the inside pocket of the trenchcoat. He was not coming back. He had not intended to come back when he went to the woman.

“My instructions in Athens had been explicit: I was to bring you and Webb north for an interview with Markos and afterwards I was to see you returned safely to the Athens government. As a member of the political wing of the movement, I owed my first obedience to that command. Webb knew these instructions to me. So did Markos. What could I do? It was three hours before dawn, three very long hours. And I was exhausted. I had not slept that night at all.

“The woman was trusted by the General. If Webb had left the camp it was probably with his knowledge. My vigil was meant to keep you from following… such thoughts went over and over in my mind, and there was no answer. The lamp ran out of fuel. I sat in the dark.

“As you know I woke you when the light of day was commencing. We went to the General’s quarters. You would not have understood me, but I told him that Webb had gone to the woman and had not returned; It did not seem to disturb him. He said, ‘I am glad he availed himself of our hospitality.’ He was in a good mood. I asked him what I should tell you. He said I could tell you Webb was safe. He said that I was to take you to the mess and have breakfast. He would send for me.

“I had a few minutes then in a fool’s paradise. I ate my biscuit and cheese in confidence that for me everything would be fine. Markos trusted me. It even crossed my mind that the reason the interview was not conducted in English was so that you could be excluded, not me. After all, my function was only to be that of translator.

“You will remember Captain Demetrios came for me himself. When we went in, Markos was warming his hands at a fire he was feeding with papers. They were about to break camp. It was Demetrios who gave me orders to take you to the crossroads.

“‘And Webb, Comrade Captain?’ I asked.

“‘He is a man capable of taking care of himself and no longer your responsibility.’ Markos came from the fire then. Demetrios said, ‘At the crossroads you will leave Emory with a bullet in his head.’

“I could not believe. I looked at Markos. He nodded it was to be done. ‘Respectfully, Comrade General and Comrade Captain, my orders from my political superior were to return both men safely to Monarchist lines.’

“Markos said, ‘In the field, Comrade, I am your commander.’

“Demetrios laid the revolver on the table. When I reached for it he said, ‘My God, don’t you ever wash your hands?’ I was given two hours of measured time in which to accomplish my mission and return. Markos went back to burning his papers. I never saw him or Demetrios again. I did not permit you to go back to the cottage. You wanted to take Webb’s coat to him. It would have been funny if it had not been so tragic, the orders I had been given.

“So we went down in the blue light before the sun was up. I thought of you: if only he would attack me I would have to shoot him, but you followed me like a lamb the butcher. And I thought, Webb knows that I must do this thing: if the General is satisfied, Webb knows. And I cursed him better than you had the night before. Then I thought about the woman Maria again. How briefly we had seen them, man upon woman, and her thighs naked. Oh, yes, I had seen that much. But how better to deceive the intruder? Maria a camp woman. Who would not have gone back to his bed and thought no more of it than to envy Webb his pleasure? When the camp was still again, Maria would have guided him—she knew well all the trails—to where he was to go. And Markos had known. I had believed that from the moment I looked and saw that Webb was gone.

“But now we know what neither of us knew then, that by the time we went down in the morning Webb was already dead, his body rolled down the parapet near the crossroads. Did Markos know it? That I do not believe to this day.

“The sun was up and there was no one to be seen from any direction at the crossroads. It had taken us an hour and ten minutes. It would take me longer to return, uphill all the way. They did not expect me back in time.

“You begged me not to leave you—little knowing how I had been instructed to leave you. I said it was not safe for me to stay. I told you what I believed, that the woman had brought Webb down, and that he had purposely left his coat to deceive you. I think you believed me.”

“I had no choice,” I said, “and I knew that I had to go on alone. I asked you if you had a gun and I offered you twenty dollars for it.”

Stephanou nodded. Running his hand along the ground beside him, he found a bit of root and pulled it out, and then began to work the loosened soil between his fingers. “I thought about my orders: Webb was out of my hands, but it was still in my power to return you safely. The sun was warm on our backs, you may remember, as we rested near the shrine. I looked down on the plains. People had worked there recently, the peasant tillers of the earth, my good and beloved people. I thought of Kaléa and Vasso whom I loved then as I am no longer able to love her, and I knew that I was through as an
Andarte.
I felt only a kind of contemptuous sorrow for you at that moment, that you felt you needed a gun. It was easy for me to give it to you, and I took the twenty dollars though I did not know what I was going to do with it.

“Where I was going I did not know except someplace to hide and sleep the day. I thought I would go to the woman, Maria. I had known the mountain cottage where she lived and her whole family until the Germans came. After that she lived alone.”

“Did you find her?” I said. He seemed reluctant to go on.

“I found her, but hers is a story it is going to be harder for me to tell.”

T
HE SUN HAD PASSED
to where there was virtually no shade on either side of the wall. I could feel the sweat rolling down my back and Stephanou’s blue shirt was soaked beneath the armpits. We both needed to move in any case. My own tension hung like an iron yoke at the base of my neck. I suggested that we go back to the car and find a place to stay for the night. He threw off my hand when I put it beneath his arm to help him: he had acquired a fine independence. But he stumbled, getting up, and caught the toe of his shoe beneath a root so that he pitched forward. I leaped to catch him but his weight was more than I could hold, off-balance.

With shocking suddenness both of us went crashing down the embankment. The sandy soil and small stones scuttled beneath me while I clutched at roots, the scrub pines, anything, trying to stay myself. I gradually slowed my momentum, but Paul, with no more self-control than a sack of potatoes, tumbled and hurtled on. I braked myself, reaching the rocky ledge. He had disappeared. I scrambled to the edge and looked down—into the out-running sea some twenty or thirty feet below. A whorled pattern shaped like a moving target from the point at which he had struck the water. I pulled off my shoes while I watched. The moment I saw his head come up, I dived, shouting out to him.

The water was petrifyingly cold. I touched the scaly rocks at the bottom with my hands before twisting and spiraling up. He was still afloat when I broke the surface. “Tread water!” I shouted. “Just stay afloat!”

He was trying without success to roll over on his back. I thought of the heavy, crepe-soled shoes he wore.

I reached him and caught his collar, trying the while to get my land bearings. The face of the cliff rose sheer and perpendicular. So strong was the current it gave me no choice of direction. “Roll on your back!” I cried. It crossed my mind the strength of will it must have taken him not to clutch at me when I had reached him.

“Keep me up till I kick off my shoes!”

The pull while he worked at them, one foot against the other, felt like an undertow. I needed desperately to get into motion, to work the numbness out of my body.

“Now.” He rolled over on his back.

From then on the sea and I towed him downward toward the bay. How far I don’t know. The cliff fell away into marshes, but I dared not go inland to tangle in the reeds before I was sure of safe depth. I saw a boat in the distance, its masthead like those I had seen in the quay, a fisherman going out to sea. He was beyond hailing distance, but I reasoned he was likely to have come from a dock, possibly deep in the marshes ahead. The current tended from near that point on to carry us out, not in. I had to swim against it, and I didn’t know how long my strength would last. Paul, sensing the change, tread water. It helped. At my first brush with the marsh grass I ducked my head under water. I could see the bottom. A few yards farther and I could touch it. Then I saw the pier, a thin bridge of timber with an old boat tied alongside. Not a living being was in sight.