‘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.
The wind was up. It came crying off the sea to blast the hillside, the bushes and the little stones. The waters of the bay crashed on the rocks, bursting in slow white blooms. A fury as of lost and destroyed small things was moving in the sea. We sat on the dunes behind the beach. Erik’s shoulders were bowed, his hands over his face. I spoke to him for a long time. I did not know what I was talking about, but my voice, as though it did not really belong to me, seemed to be insinuating things for which there were no words, delivering an inexpressible message to ears that could but barely hear, as in a withered garden of darkness, in autumn, a nightingale will sing to you of mysteries long since buried. I cannot understand these things, I am not god, I did not invent human beings, why is it expected that I should understand everything? Stop. Stop, and go on, it is the only way.
He spoke not a word. I went away and left him there to mourn the dead by whatever means he knew.
The land was alive, was emanating orders and advice. I had my finger on the nerve of the world. Down through the winding hills I sauntered, holding my arms captive at my sides for fear that if I lifted them they would turn to wings and take me soaring breathless into the limits of the sky. I think I was grinning. The wind cavorted about me, whispering, shouting, promising miracles. I could feel each hair of my head as though they were charged wires, could feel each eye seeing its separate view, each toe doing its little business of balancing. I jangled in every sinew, poised for flight, singing and capering, teeth bared, my heart tingling with the magic touch of murder. Do I make sense? How can I? But I was alive, exulting in my terror, and waiting eagerly for a message from the beasts.
As I approached the villa, there was strange music in the wind. I stopped to listen, but it had ceased. Through the broken gateway I went, cut across the garden to the well, winked at the eyes down there, and spat on them. Then, hitching up my trousers, I went resolutely to the door. It stood open. That was to be expected. I found myself in the dimness of a hall, and paused a moment to give my sight time to adjust itself. I needed all my faculties about me, for that message had come through at last, and with devastating simplicity it said: fuck. Primitive tapestries hung on the walls on either side of me. Hunters pranced with uplifted spears, and priests were carrying sacrifices to an altar. I saluted the holy men and went on my way. The first door, to my left, was locked. A touch to its handle brought that music again, a small discordant phrase, slipping into silence. I tried another door, with success.
The room was long and narrow, with grey walls and a low white ceiling. A window at one end looked out across the hills to the misty sea, and the light that came through was gold touched with the faintest chill of blue. Two elderly armchairs sat crouched by the open fireplace, silently brooding over the situation of an unfinished chess game laid out between them on a table. A tall clock ticked away with a calm indifference to the terrors of time. A single red rose, strangest of all rarities here, drooped in languid elegance from a narrow vase atop the writing desk. On the gleaming parquet floor the designs of a rug turned slowly through their circular abstractions. I stepped inside and softly closed the door. By the window a grand piano stood, teeth bared and lid uplifted. The boy Yacinth sat on the low stool, one leg folded under him, his candid gaze turned toward me. A furry aureole of soft silver light trembled around his tousled head. I said,