And there you have it, said Mahmud with a smile, emptying the bottle of mulberry raki and going down under the bed to look for another.
Nubar listened to all this with sympathy and agreed to do whatever he could. Accordingly, the next morning, he donned his white duster and racing goggles and set off through the mountains in his Hispano-Suiza in search of an Albanian hideout for Mahmud.
He found it that very day but not in the mountains. After driving for several hours through one drab village after another, Nubar decided he needed some grilled crabs for lunch to buoy his spirits. He asked for the nearest fishing village and was given directions to a place called Gronk.
The olive groves gave way to orange trees as he dropped down out of the hills and sped along a flat sandy stretch of coast, a beautiful deserted beach that must have been five miles long. And then all at once he came around a headland and stopped the car in amazement.
Exquisite little Gronk. Why had he never heard of it before?
A Venetian wall around the village, a crumbling Venetian fort on the promontory. Minarets from the Turkish era rising beyond the small placid harbor, which was ringed by the stately stone arches of what had once been the high narrow houses of Venetian merchants, their walled courtyards set behind them for protection from the winter seas. Tiny alleys wound around and around back there away from the harbor, the overhanging upper stories nearly obscuring the sky.
A brilliant autumn day, the blue water sparkling, the brightly painted fishing boats rocking gently by the quay where a few old fishermen mended nets or rinsed sea urchins and pounded small octopuses on the rocks. There was only one café-restaurant on the harbor, a large simple place with its tables set out by the water, a huge stove at the back and arches inside that showed it had been a boat-builder's shop under the Venetians. In the stillness of the little harbor Nubar ate and drank, warmed by a sun casting soft russet colors over the worn stones of the old Venetian houses.
After lunch he talked with the couple who ran the café. They said the only people who ever visited Gronk were the peasants from the surrounding farmlands bringing in their produce. Other than that men fished and grew oranges, women cared for children and chickens and it was a forgotten corner of the Mediterranean with Venetian and Turkish memories. Half of the houses on the harbor were empty and could be bought for next to nothing if anyone wanted to buy one, which no one ever did.
Nubar was excited and returned at once to Mahmud to describe the beauties of little Gronk. Mahmud liked what he heard but he also had practical questions.
Of course, Nubar assured him, the café would serve him a single baked chicken wing twice a day. And it was well supplied with beer and mulberry raki and wine, and the large stove inside would be warm and cheery during the winter months of rain, the tables by the water lovely the rest of the year. Here Mahmud could happily spend his waking hours following his usual routine. Nubar had already talked to the café owner and he had agreed, in exchange for the steady patronage of a foreign resident, to carry Mahmud back to his house every night and put him to bed.
Mahmud became enthusiastic. They returned to Gronk together and Mahmud bought one of the Venetian villas on the harbor and set about having it repaired. At the pleasant café beside the water that was now his headquarters, Mahmud was also enthusiastic about the idea of an Albanian Sacred Band, when Nubar explained it to him.
But I have a few suggestions, said Mahmud, flashing a swift toothy grin and pouring more wine as their first afternoon in the Café Crabs swirled drunkenly on toward evening.
For one, Mahmud thought the uniforms of the Supreme Field Marshal Generalissimo and his deputy, Nubar's and his own, would be more impressive if the skull hanging from the neck were discarded in favor of a large ivory mask that would fit over the entire head, making their heads look like skeletons'
skulls.
Yes, Nubar? A grinning death's-head in cold carved ivory?
Nubar nodded eagerly.
And for another, said Mahmud, refilling his glass, shouldn't we change the name of our elite corps to the Albanian-Afghan Sacred Band, thereby suggesting an international brotherhood reaching far beyond the confines of Gronk? Indeed, one that goes so far as to embrace the outer limits of the empire created by Alexander the Great?
Nubar nodded dizzily.
As for the secret crimes Nubar wanted committed as final acts of initiation, Mahmud agreed that full-scale Spartan atrocities were simply no longer feasible.
No, Nubar, times do change and we can't kill any children, he said, brushing away an imaginary bat that was nibbling at his ear. But what a noble vision you've had, resurrecting ancient Greece like this in all its glory and even improving upon it. The truth is you must be a mad genius. I've always suspected it and now I know it.
Nubar laughed.
I'm not mad, he said.
Mahmud downed another glass and brushed at his ear.
Do you see anything hovering above my shoulder?
No.
Odd. I could swear something's taking little bites at my ear, and yesterday it was the back of my head.
Anyway, you're going to order the masks and uniforms right away?
Of course, immediately.
Excellent, Nubar, uniforms are crucial. I've never known why exactly, but they are. I've never felt really comfortable except when I'm wearing a uniform or someone else's clothes. Do you know what I mean?
Nubar nodded, Mahmud smiled, and thus as the world sank into the ruinous despair of the Great Depression which would give rise to so many historical extremes, an elite organization devoted to honor and physical cleanliness, homosexuality and fanatical brotherhood, was born in the autumn of 1929 over a daily regimen of beer and mulberry raki, single baked chicken wings and unwatered wine, and the rites and rituals of the Albanian-Afghan Sacred Band, to be known affectionately to its two founders as the AA, came into being beside the beautiful little harbor of Gronk.
Over the next three years during long lazy Mediterranean afternoons, from clear evenings listening to the cicadas down through the soft shadows of night to the brilliant still sunlight of morning, a vast succession of peasant boys passed through Mahmud's stately sixteenth-century Venetian villa on the harbor, being initiated into the wonders of the AA.
In order for darkness to be perpetual in the villa, shutters had been nailed closed over all the windows.
Candlelight played on the pale violet drapes and on the soft low couches where the boys lay while Nubar and Mahmud reclined in their elaborate AA regalia, raising themselves languidly to sip mulberry raki and discourse on ancient Greece.
In practice the boys dressed up only once a year, on Easter at sundown, when the villa's locked closets were thrown open and uniforms and chains and leather fists and truncheons were distributed to everyone, the solemn oaths in the cellar then followed by a feast of lambs roasted over pits in the privacy of the walled courtyard, and thereafter by a long fiery night of drunken dancing in the villa, the anonymous black figures spinning from floor to floor and room to room in an unbroken chain.
But it was the summer scenes on the beaches outside of Gronk, the daring watermelon parties held by moonlight, that were perhaps the most delicious of all to the two founders of the AA. The parties began with a brief lecture by Nubar on some aspect of Greek philosophy while Mahmud hacked up the first watermelon and passed out the slices. But almost at once the two of them dropped out of sight among the boys and rich slippery sounds spilled over the sands as sticky fingers squeezed off seeds, sweet juicy pulp everywhere as more rinds were ripped open amidst the rhythmic munching of mouths and the rhythmic roll of the sea, eager eyes exploring the insatiable sources of blackness and the lapping waves stirring ever more quietly with the late hour, ever more softly, finally washing a summer night into oblivion.