Enemy and Brother (26 page)

“I am lost,” he said, his voice cracking on the words. “I have been fighting the fear, the feeling. But it is like walking back and forth in the prison cell. I am waiting to smash into the wall!”

I did not attempt in any way to comfort him. “We shall go on as long as I can see or until we must lie down in the dark and wait for dawn. There has to be someone living near for the candle to have been lighted.”

“But I do not know how far we have come.”

“How far was Maria’s house from the main road?”

“It was not far to a sighted man, a kilometer or so.”

I looked back. There was a light here and there in the distance where the hills rose to the east of the road we had come north on. I saw what in silhouette looked to be a tree stump a few feet from us. Paul dug his cane into the ground and anchored himself to wait while I climbed up on the stump and scanned the landscape around us. There were several lights now, and one perhaps half the distance we had come and somewhat off the path. We retraced our steps. This time I watched carefully, leaving Paul every few yards to climb to the nearest rise.

As we moved in, finding by
my
careful watch a donkey path, a goat or sheep bleated, then another and another, and I saw the cottage: there could be but one room. I told Paul and we went on. A hunched man came to the open doorway, his shepherd’s cloak around his shoulders.

To Paul I said, “There is a man with a hump on his back.” I called out, “
Kali´spéra
!”

The man turned back into the house and then brought his oil lamp out and held it to our faces. He was an old man, not unfriendly, but squinting to see who would have made their way to his far cottage. Seeing Paul, he grinned at me toothlessly, and pointed to his own eyes. I nodded. He murmured all the while: most of the words I could not make out except that he was old and lived alone and had nothing save a few sheep.

Paul was holding out his hand and at last the old one took it. “Who attends the shrine of St. George, old neighbor?” Paul asked.

“That would be the women of the Kontos family.”

“And the Zervos family?” Paul said.

“They are all dead. The Germans.” He spat. “And then the Communists.” He spat again. He looked at me with what I shall now call an expression of cunning mournfulness. “Come. It is a poor refuge, but I am not a barbarian, only a shepherd with ancient family pride.”

Paul stopped on the threshold. He put both hands to the door frame, I thought measuring the width of it, then with the rubber tip of his cane he sought and found the one window. He again touched the sides of the doorway with both hands. He stepped inside. I followed him, and the old man after me. Paul had made sure of the direction he faced. There was but a low couch, a cabinet and one small table in the room. He tapped his way across the bare floor to the wall and there, piece by piece, he touched the articles hanging above and alongside the small, protruding fireplace, the icon with its ornate silver frame and hinged doors, the copper pots, now black as the soot in the grate below. If this were Maria’s cottage, and I now supposed it was, he had spent a night of horror with her here: his memory would be seared with every detail of the room in which he would have sought desperately for distraction. The old man watched him, open-mouthed.

Paul turned. “Was Maria the last of the family?”

“I am a cousin,” the old man said and rubbed his hands together. “Please, my guests, honor me by sitting in my house and taking a small refreshment.” He gestured me to the low couch which was covered with a red and black rug.

“My brother?” Paul beckoned me to come for him.

I led him to the couch where he sat, cross-legged. Our host dusted two small silver dishes with his sleeve and spooned a few cherries into each from a crock he took from the cabinet.

We sat in silence and ate the conserve, the sugar in which had crystallized.

Paul said then, “We are looking for Maria. She once did me a small kindness—before her affliction.”

“Ah, then you know about…” He rolled his eyes toward me and touched the tip of his tongue with his finger.

“I know,” Paul said. “Where is she?”

“Gone, gone,” the old one said, and drew his cloak about him as though to shield himself from such a fate.

From that moment Paul became imperious. “Is she dead? It will pay you to tell us the truth.”

“Why should I tell otherwise? I would have kept her—she would have kept me….”

“She is alive!” Paul cried.

“No, my blind one, she is not alive. She was given to the care of the Sisters in the north hills, a convent on the way to Konitsa. She could weave such beautiful things, you know?” He bent down to pat the rug on which we sat.

So sharp were all Paul’s senses save his sight, he sensed the old one’s nearness and caught his arm. “Tell everything.”

“I tell only what I know.” But borne down by Paul, he seated himself at our feet. “There are only old ones in the convent. Our young girls today, even if they do not have husbands, they make of the home a convent.” He tried, poor man, to make a little joke: “Sometimes even if they
do
have husbands.”

“When did she die?”

“I have a letter—a year ago, two…. Time has no meaning, only winter and summer, to an old shepherd. They sent me the robe on which you are sitting.”

“Nothing else?”

“I swear it to be so,” the old one said.

“Professor, give him money—three hundred drachmas. Do you have a spade, old man? A trowel?”

“I have a spade.”

Paul spoke to me in English: “We must dig, my brother. Remember what I told you of Maria when I could not get her to leave the house to seek a doctor? Like a wounded animal, she wanted to dig beneath the house. It has occurred to me—she may have buried the journal.”

I gave the shepherd the money. Paul instructed him to bring the spade and the lamp. He did not question, but first put the money into a jar in the cupboard. I heard the tinkle of coins and thought it would be a lowly sum to which we had added.

Outdoors, while the old man held the lamp, I began to loosen and lift away the stones. Paul explained to the old one that Maria had kept something for him, something of no value except to himself. The old one stopped my digging and led the way into the house again. From the bottom shelf of his cupboard he drew out a tarnished box.

I told Paul what he was doing. “Give us the box, old uncle. Let us look at your treasure for ourselves.”

“It is a valuable box,” the old one whined. “Many times I have thought to sell it, but it is such a long way to go.”

“My brother will pay you if it is worth buying.”

I took the box from him and opened it. There was a yellowed wedding certificate, a letter postmarked Konitsa, and a soiled, folded piece of notebook paper.

“God in heaven,” I said.

“You have the journal?” Paul asked.

“No.” The paper broke apart as I opened it, but I knew what it was even before I saw my own handwriting. “It’s the promise I wrote out for Webb before we left Athens.”

“Where did you get it, uncle?” Paul demanded.

“It was in the hole under the house. After Maria went to the Sisters, I wanted to fill up the hole, but first I looked to see underneath.”

“What else was there?”

“Nothing. I swear by the Virgin.”

On the paper I could see the rusty mark left by a paper clip. “It would have dropped out of the notebook, Paul. She might not even have known, but now we can be certain that Maria was once in possession of Webb’s journal.”

I picked up the letter which was also in the silver box. It was postmarked “Konitsa.”

“That is my letter!” the old one cried.

“Read it anyway,” Paul said to me.

I took it out of the envelope. The script was fine, delicately fine, but while I could understand most of the characters, some of the words had no meaning for me. “I can’t read it, Paul. It’s not Greek as I know it.”

“Oh, Christ! It is in Vlak. Is it, uncle?”

“Yes.”

“Read it to us, uncle. I will understand.”

The old one shook his head. “I cannot read.”

Paul put his hand to his eyes. “God’s curse on Demetrios!”

The old one cringed and drew away. “I am nothing and you abuse me. I know nothing and you beat me. God will punish you.”

“God has already punished me.”

“And me,” the old one said, rocking beneath his hump, “for being born I am punished a lifetime.”

“He is old and frightened and deformed,” I said. “Be kind to him, Paul.”

“To kill him would be a kindness.” But to the old one he said more gently, “You know what is in the letter, uncle. Tell us.”

“The priest from Kalpaki who took Maria to the Sisters brought it to me—with the blanket. It was from the Sisters. They said she had gone mad and thrown herself into the river. It was better, she was now at peace with God.”

“Peace!” Paul said contemptuously.

“The priest told me I could stay here and if I gave six lambs to the church every spring, he would be responsible for me to the tax collector.”

“Let us have the letter, uncle. A thousand drachmas and you may also keep the box.”

“A thousand drachmas,” the old one repeated, his withered lips quivering. “They will say I stole it.”

Paul gave me his wallet. “I have older money than you, Professor. Count it out for him in the smallest denominations.”

Between Paul’s funds and mine I was able to give him ten fifty-drachma notes, a hundred in coins and four one-hundred-drachma notes. Fingering the money, the old one agreed.

“Do you have the letter?” Paul asked me.

“Yes.” I also kept my note to Alexander Webb, preserving it carefully in my passport case.

“Tell no one we were here,” Paul said, “and we shall tell no one.”

“Do you think, my blind friend, the sheep will be interested? But do you know, now I am going to have a dog.
I
am going to have a dog of my own.”

“Do that, uncle. A good dog.”

“A very good dog, and I will name him after the priest in Kalpaki.” The old one wheezed with laughter.

“I once had friends in Kalpaki,” Paul said. “But the priest was not my friend either.”

I
T WAS TEN-THIRTY BY
the time Paul and I got back to the car. We had not spoken. There is this about a solemn stillness: one senses listeners everywhere, the night itself has ears. So much for poetic nuance. The practicality was that his walking and my guidance of it took all our concentration. It always did. To speak of anything else we had to stop, and neither of us then wanted to.

Whatever prompted the precaution, having put him in the car, and going round, I stepped up on the back bumper and looked over the crest beyond the shrine to the road up which we had come from Ioannina. A twinkle of light shone from a cottage here and there, but not a car was on the road south. There was one coming from the north, however, at what looked even from a distance to be high speed. I called to Paul that I would be back in a moment and ran to a place of vantage where I could yet remain beyond the scope of the car’s headlights. I lay down behind a shield of grass, parting it only so that I could see. The car’s sudden slowdown as it approached the shrine stiffened me, but it was only caution on the part of the driver approaching the top of the hill. A long, black limousine, a Cadillac I was fairly sure, passed and sped on. I had seen only one like it in Ioannina, which was not to say there were not more, especially with the festival, but it seemed unlikely that one should come from the north and at this hour of the night.

I returned to the car and told Paul.

“I could smell him!” he cried. “As sure as hell reeks of brimstone!”

“Then perhaps you can also catch the scent of where he came from,” I said with sarcasm.

“I will think about it.”

I maneuvered the Vauxhall out onto the road.

“Go north,” Paul said. Then: “For me it is possible to hate as it is not possible for you. We are most unlikely men to be brothers.”

“The word was yours,” I said.

“Unlikely, but so, nonetheless.”

“Where are we going, Paul?”

“To Kalpaki and beyond, unless there are impediments.”

We drove on, the road like a black marker in the moonlight. I slowed down very shortly as we approached a sign, and read aloud: “Kalpaki, one kilometer.”

“There is a road to the left?”

“Yes.”

“And no soldiers, no traffic?”

“None.”

“Drive that way.”

A few kilometers on I saw something that raised a lump in my throat: shining plainly in the moonlight and of such dimension as to cover the entire hillside was the placement of many rocks to form the numerals 1940.

“Paul…” I told him what I saw.

“It is so. Here we turned the Fascists back, and for a little while there was glory in modern Greece. Now we must watch for a cave on the left. There will undoubtedly be a memorial marker. If there is a guard, tell me and I will pretend to be asleep and you will stop and ask the road to the village as though we had missed the sign back there.” He shoved his white cane under the front seat. “If there are questions, let us say we are to join a party of fishermen in the morning. It is believable.”

It might have been believable, but I was grateful not to have to tell the story. I found the cave entrance by the widening of the road at that point. I pulled off into the dusty siding and stopped. There was no one anywhere to be seen. An iron gate closed the mouth of the cave.

“It was the army headquarters during the war,” Paul said. “We do not have a flashlight, do we?”

“The moonlight is very bright.”

“One would like to know what the ground could tell you. A limousine such as you describe would leave distinctive tracks, would you not say? And if they went inside, I think there would be fresh markings from their feet.”

“I’ll look in any case,” I said, opening the car door.

“Put my hand on the button to the car lights. I shall listen for a car and signal. The story will be the same. You are looking for a sign, having lost your way.”

I got out, cursing myself for failing to have a flashlight. We had not driven at night and I kept forgetting to buy one. I went slowly, acclimating myself to the moonlight and staying on the road surface. Almost immediately Paul signalled with the lights. I went back to the car.