Nightspawn (9 page)

‘I want an approximation of the truth,’ I snarled.

He shrugged, which action, with his shape, was impressive.

‘Ask Erik,’ he said. ‘He will tell you all you want to know … perhaps.’

‘Erik is too busy just now.’

‘Mr White, why do you dislike me?’

‘I think we had this conversation before.’

‘But you gave no answer then either.’

‘No, I suppose I didn’t.’

A web of frost laced the air between us. Then I laughed, and shook my head, and heard my voice repeat an echo.

‘Useless,’ I said. ‘Useless.’

Andreas leaned forward in the chair, considered the folded flower of his fists, and, suddenly brisk, he said,

‘The reason I came here, Mr White, was to apologize to you.’

‘Apologize for what?’

‘I called you a coward. I’m sorry. Also I wish to say goodbye. I leave tonight for Athens. Erik will be travelling with me. At least, that was his plan.’

I sniggered.

‘He won’t be leaving just yet, not if I know anything.’

‘Mr White, what do you know about such things?’

He left the chair and shuffled about the room, looking at this and that. By the table he halted and glanced at the jumble of papers lying there.

‘This is your book, yes?’ he asked. ‘What is it called?’

‘It’s called
I
Was
Just
The
Gipsy
In
My
Mother’s
Soul.’

He nodded. What a sense of humour the man had. He bent closer to the table in an effort to decipher my scrawl. I looked at his hump and had a vision of him wooing a widow over the brand-new boards of a coffin.

‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ I mused. ‘The rash of lechers with yachts there is about these days.’

He lurched away from the table, knocked against a chair, and
went to the window where he stood with his back, that back, turned resolutely toward me. Twist that knife.

‘Of course, a colonel in the —’

‘Stop,’ he said.

I stopped, and wrenched at one of my fingers until it hurt. A turkey cackled somewhere, and was joined in song by a chorus of its mates. A girl laughed down in the street. From the
kitchens
below, a sniff of rancid fat slithered in through the window. Andreas said,

‘I first met him two years ago. He was to give a lecture at the university, on the role of journalism in politics. He arrived very drunk, and one hour late. We took him to the lecture room. He clung to the desk and looked at the students gathered before him, blinking one eye, just one, and grinning. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I have lost my spectacles.”’ Here Andreas did a fair impersonation of Erik’s peculiar voice. ‘“Some oily Greek stole them, I think. Without them my notes are useless. So I shall tell you a story. I once met Jean-Paul Sartre. M. Sartre, I said, I think I have heard of you. And he said to me …” We never discovered what it was that Sartre said to him, for the desk which he clutched so tightly overturned, and Erik fell down at our feet, shouting and swearing. We picked him up and carried him from the hall. In the corridor he ran away from us, and raced out of the building, scattering the leaves of his notebook behind him. I went to search for him, all over the city. I knew the places where he would be. They were my places also, you see. In every one there was news of him. Here, he pretended to be dumb, there, he sat at the bar without his shirt, singing Nazi war-songs and toasting the Greek army. Oh yes, Mr White, you do not know all the sides of him. I could not find him. I returned home. There were my books, my possessions. Something was missing. I searched for hours, not knowing what it was that I was searching for. There was a storm that night, it seemed to shake the ground. I stood by the window and watched the rain fall on the city. I heard my name called above the roofs. It was very strange. In the morning Erik came to apologize, but still I had not found that thing which was missing. I never found it.’

He turned to me.

‘There is no end to my story, you see, Mr White. Just as there was none to Erik’s. Now tell me if you know anything.’

I had a friend once who was afflicted with a hare-lip. To draw attention away from that wound, he wore a black patch over a perfectly sound eye. So Andreas had manufactured for himself a diffidence and calm of character, a whole fastidious and mysterious personality which would hide the cruel twist of his back. Now a cord had snapped, the mask had slipped. Some sense of human pain was communicated to me, but all I could do was turn away from him in pity and disgust. He left. I closed my ears to his clumsy step on the stairs.

I am tired of these, all these people, tired of them, what are they to me, this is my story, god damn it, mine.

The cripple had been gone not five minutes when there was a furtive tapping on my door. No, I moaned, no, holding my head in my hands. Again the knock.

‘All right all right, it’s open.’

Erik came sidling in, and cast a look back through a crack of the door before closing it. Then he turned to me, rubbing his jaw. Our eyes met and parted. He sat down by the table, his long legs coiled together, and drummed his fingers on the wood.

‘Have you seen —’

‘He just left,’ I said.

‘Oh.’

Another lapse into the awful silence. Erik tried again.

‘You must understand that Andreas —’

‘I understand Andreas, I understand.’

He frowned, and began to whistle softly. I flung myself from the bed and paced the length of the floor, once, twice, halfway, halt.

‘I’m thinking of starting a salon here,’ I said. ‘Or a lonely hearts club.’

‘A what?’

‘Never mind.’

I lit a cigarette. Erik was reading my manuscript, his nose almost touching the paper. Things repeat themselves. I went and slapped my hand down on the page. He continued to gaze at my splayed fingers before him as though they were
transparent
.

‘Erik.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Tell me something. Tell me the truth. Are we planning a revolution?’

For the first time since I had known him, I saw Erik emerge completely from that preoccupation which sat like a barrier of frosted glass between him and the world. His head jerked up, and he stared at me in amazement. Then his long bony face softened, and he laughed. It was also the first real laugh I had heard from him, one which contained real surprise and pleasure. A day for new and bright experiences, this. He went on laughing for a while, then he jumped up, caught me by the hand and dragged me to the door.

‘Come. I shall show you the revolution, come.’

I hung back, trying to pull my arm away from his fierce grip.

‘Look, I just want a yes or no answer.’

‘Come with me. You shall have an answer.’

He was grinning, almost gay. This I did not trust at all.

‘I don’t want to go out now. It’s too hot.’

‘Come.’

‘No. I’m not going.’

We went. Erik led me through the village, and out along the road toward the beach. Now and then he glanced at me and laughed, shaking his head. When the beach was in view we left the road (a stab of grief for another lost day on that hillcrest) and took to a donkey track which ran away diagonally across the hills. The way was difficult, with thorns and stones cutting our feet. The blazing sun knocked splinters into our eyes. In the heat I began to have illusions, of strange voices high in the air, of a dark figure following behind us, but when I stopped to listen, there was only the silence and cicadas, and when I looked, there was only the empty road. The path descended into a gully, the dry bed of an ancient stream. We came upon a little
oasis of bushes, the tiny leaves of which gave to the air a familiar but unidentifiable sweetness. Erik halted, and I sank down into the dust, bathed in sweat.

‘You ask a question,’ I moaned. ‘You ask a simple little question, and look what you get.’

Erik paid no attention to me. A large flat rock was set into the bank of the gulley. He put his hands to it, bracing his feet, and rolled it away. He beckoned to me. I crawled across on hands and knees and looked into the hole. No redeemer rested there, no winding-sheet and flower, but there was a brace of hand grenades, a huge awkward pistol, and a wooden crate bearing on its flank the hieroglyphs of an eastern tongue.

‘Dynamite,’ said Erik.

I nodded, saying nothing. Erik went on,

‘That is our revolution. In Athens we have perhaps this much again. The army would have no hope against us, when we are so well armed. And then, we have more than a dozen rebels with us. One of them, Apostolos, will take over this entire island. He is teaching himself to use this dynamite by blowing up rocks.’

‘All right,’ I cried. ‘I’m not entirely stupid.’

‘No,’ he murmured, but left a faint doubt in the air.

We sat down together in the shade of the bushes. Erik mopped his brow. His good humour had departed, and that vague moroseness, his most faithful mood, had laid hands on him again. The air was sweet where we sat. I lay down on my back and looked through the leaves at the fragile blue sky. Erik asked,

‘What did they tell you in Athens, what did Rabin tell you?’

‘Nothing. To meet you here.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘No.’

‘And how much do you know of our plans?’

‘Very little, I was trying to get An—’

‘I see.’

He ruminated, biting a thumbnail. I could almost hear the calculations clicking in his brain.

‘There is no need for you to know very much,’ he said at last.

The decision had gone against me. I laughed softly.

‘Why do you laugh?’

‘You still don’t trust me,’ I said.

He shrugged, and turned away from me. A bird screamed somewhere, out over the sea. Erik said,

‘I will tell you this. If you have power over a few important people, then the rest is of no importance.’

‘You astound me with revelations.’

‘What else do you need to know?’

I sat upright, and tried to brush the dust from my damp shirt. My eyelids were swollen with heat.

‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you publish what you know? You’re famous, you have a voice in the world. Why don’t you publish, why don’t you do that, Erik? That’s what I want to know.’

He set his mouth stubbornly.

‘I have reasons.’

‘I see. Well I’m getting out. I said it before, I know, but this time I mean it. You don’t trust me, I don’t trust you, Andreas doesn’t trust me, I don’t trust either of you, you don’t trust … let me put it this way: nobody trusts anybody, right? It’s a farce. And I’m afraid; I admit it. I’m not cut out for this kind of nonsense. So before I get really involved, I’m going. Don’t look for me in Athens, because I won’t be found. All right?’

He was watching me from the corner of his eye.

‘But you are involved,’ he said quietly.

‘Not that much, not so much that I can’t get out. There’s no blood on my hands.’

I turned to glare at him, and saw a curious little tableau. He sat bolt upright, with his hands pressed to the dust on either side of him. His eyes were wide, staring into the hole opposite us in the bank. A small gun, which is, I believe, known as a burp gun, resting in a grimy hand, protruded from the bush with the barrel laid against the back of his skull. A voice said,

‘Careful now, friends.’

The gun slowly retreated, and then the sailor, Fang, climbed carefully down the bank and stood before us with a lovely grin. He looked from one of us to the other, casually tossing the gun
in his hand. But there was nothing very casual about his eyes. Imagine little chips of black glass embedded in something blue. Need I say that I was terrified?

‘What do you want?’ Erik asked.

Fang’s grin widened, and he sat down on the rock, pushing the cap to the back of his head.

‘Hot,’ he said. ‘Very hot.’

Immobility was becoming unbearable, but when I stirred my foot, the little blueblack snout of the pistol stared straight at my navel. Fang sucked his teeth. He said to Erik,

‘The Colonel sent me to follow you. I think he was worried that you might get into trouble. It’s beautiful, how he worries about you. A pity you don’t show a little loyalty in return.’

He took a quick glance at the arsenal in the bank, then shook his head at us, and clicked his tongue.

‘Very bad,’ he murmured. ‘Well now, here’s the position, friends. You see me following you, waited for me in hiding, then jumped out with guns blazing. Luckily, I managed to shoot the German in the stomach with the first shot, and the other one was very little trouble. The Colonel will be very upset, but what, I ask, could I do? It was me or them, as they say. So. Now tell me, friends, what do you think of my story. Does it ring of truth, eh?’

He looked from one of us to the other, inquiringly,
humorously
.

‘Erik,’ I said. ‘Erik, this is a joke, isn’t it?’

Fang waved the gun at me.

‘Keep your mouth shut, hawkeye.’

Erik began to laugh. I nearly swallowed my teeth at the sound.

‘Erik,’ I squeaked, terrified lest that gun should go off. ‘Erik, for god’s sake.’

Fang was staring at the German uncertainly. Of all the things he had expected, laughter was not one of them. Erik said,

‘Fang, you are a fool, and you see too many films. Now go away.’

Our bold seaman did not like that, not at all did he like it. He lifted the gun, two yellow teeth biting his lower lip. But Erik,
like all of us, had also been a student of the cinema. A handful of dust,
whoosh
in the eyes,
bop
said the gun, and then Erik was on his feet and kicking Fang in the stomach.
Poh,
and the sailor’s breath and breakfast flew out of his mouth. Erik wrenched the gun away and fired one little bullet straight down into the top of Fang’s head, who breathed blood through his nose and rolled over slowly, very slowly, on to his side. The hills shook with noise as Erik sent five more bullets into the poor prone creature.
Tok,
said each blunt lump of lead as it landed. Silence, reverberations, wind, a bird, silence. Erik’s arm shook, and he dropped the gun, closed his eyes and gave a little squeal of grief and disgust. Fang’s jaws stopped snapping, and his fingers uncurled, and he surrendered quietly into dust and peace. I crawled across and touched the broken heap of flesh. Erik stumbled up out of the gully, and I followed him, pausing long enough to wipe my hands in the green leaves of the bushes. With mild surprise, I saw that the sun was still shining.