‘I was in Zurich once,’ he said. ‘For my nerves, you know? They put me into a little room with rubber walls, a rubber floor. There were six of us. We were given rubber knives, hatchets, everything was rubber. One of us was a fetish — how do you call it?’
‘Fetishist.’
‘He was happy. We were supposed to rid ourselves of our in — ah, what is the word?’
‘Inhibitions.’
‘Something like that, yes. At the end of the first day we begged for steel weapons. We wanted murder, my friend, we wanted murder.’
I had been laughing soundlessly, with my fist pressed to my mouth, at his excitement and growing incoherence. But soon I stopped, hearing mysterious black echoes reverberating in the distance. Erik put on his spectacles again, and sighed.
‘What will you do now, Ben White?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You are afraid.’
‘Ha.’
He nodded slowly, but I had the notion that he was agreeing with some secret thought of his own. For a moment I felt an enormous, inexplicable pity for him. Or perhaps it was myself that I pitied. He finished the wine in his glass, and slowly refilled it. A wave of pure weariness that was tangible came off him.
‘Sometimes you lose the meaning of things, and everything is just … funny.’
He breathed the last word on a sighing fall of breath. He was mocking us both, but there was a grain of real despair in his voice. Not knowing what I meant, I said to comfort him,
‘There’s magic to combat any force.’
‘Do you really believe in the power of magic?’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly he grinned, and asked,
‘But then people are murdered in the street before you, and where is the magic to combat that, eh my friend?’
My gaze shifted to the street, the dark, and my fingers sought each other in my lap, found and clasped. A little wind came in at the door, carrying with it odours out of the deadened pits of that murderous day. Something flew past in the street; dark bird or bat. I waited, hardly breathing, for the shuffle of claws, and the squeaking of bloodied mouths, the soughing of dark wings high in the air. A small child entered, and stopped before our table. Erik quickly drew in his breath. The child offered me a scrap of paper. I shifted under that impassive stare, and took the paper. Strange hieroglyphs were printed there, a message without meaning.
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
The child said nothing, but held a tiny hand toward me. I filled the little palm with coins. I looked at Erik. His eyes were closed. The child turned and went slowly out into the street. I crushed the paper and dropped it to the floor, where it writhed a moment, turned over, and was still. My eyes were on the coins which lay, burning dimly, on the table. How had they come there? Erik stood up, and took up his knapsack.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘The last boat will leave soon.’
The village was quiet, with somewhere a girl’s voice softly singing. We walked through the glimmering white-paved laneways without speaking. Odours wafted about us, of bread and baked fish, spices and resin. On the hills the faint shadows of the windmills were motionless against the great web of star-blossoms burning in the dark. It was at times like this that I loved the island best, times when I felt it offering me something of incalculable value, a place to live, where I might be happy. A cat came from an open doorway to watch us as we passed.
The last boat lay by the harbour wall, preparing to depart. Nightsounds crossed the quay, a clink of metal, the languid fall of a little wave, the whisper and soft hushing of sand stirring under water. A word of command punctuated the darkness with an abrupt, blunt little explosion. Out on the bar the green and red beacons winked at each other across the channel at the harbour mouth, eternally enticing.
‘Kalispera, kalispera.’
The captain of the boat, a bandy little islander with a huge white moustache, greeted us with an elaborate salute. He smiled at me, and put a steadying hand under my elbow as I climbed aboard. Dim figures stood in silence about the deck, and from the air of guilt and daring which they exuded, I took them to be island people off for a mild debauch that black Friday. Down in the dark water the lights of the waterfront burned again, mysterious and sad. In silence the boat slipped away from the pier, small waves licking the hull. All eyes were turned toward the village. I had an intimation of another, final departure in the future, and suddenly cursed myself for putting in jeopardy all this heartrending beauty to which I was heir. Then the engine came alive, a great bubble of white foam boiled up astern, a girl giggled, and we were off under the wild sky of stars.
‘I hope it will not be rough,’ Erik’s voice said with some apprehension at my ear.
‘Rough? How could it be rough? It’s like a mirror, look.’
His long gawky form leaned out over the bulwark.
‘It’s very dark tonight,’ he murmured.
We sat down on the deck with our backs against a huge coil of rope. I lit a cigarette, and in the brief yellow flare of the match saw the flash of Erik’s eyes as he turned them toward me.
‘I think it’s time for us to talk,’ I said.
He made a noncommittal sound. Someone walked past us, and for a second the flame of my cigarette was reproduced in duplicate on a pair of lenses.
‘I want to know what this little thing, this little document is,’ I said.
There was a long silence. Erik’s answer, when it came, had the mechanical sound of something oft-repeated.
‘It is a document containing certain signatures, which, if we make it public at the right time, would help our cause very much. Or it might be used to put those certain people in our power. Do you see?’
I considered this for a while, and then laughed loud and long.
‘Erik, you sound the perfect villain. Vich if vee make —’
‘But I am not the villain. I am the hero.’
There was the faintest touch of sadness in his voice. I smoked my cigarette and watched the dark bulk of the island sliding past. Someone began to sing, and someone ordered the singer to be quiet. There was an air of apprehension aboard, though what there was to fear I could not say, unless it was the wrath of god.
Delos received us into its little harbour. The other boats, deserted now, were moored in a line along the pier. The other passengers shuffled off into the darkness, while Erik and I stood on the sacred earth and looked about us. The brave stone lions stood outlined against the stars, and below them and around them the levelled town brooded in utter silence on its former glory, the ancient gods, the priests and princes who had been its first sons. I saw the dark handsome men, the women with their heavy tresses, the beggars and athletes, the children crowned with careless leaves, saw them all in the town miraculously rebuilt, moving through the streets with a dignity and elegance never achieved before or since, at ease in the knowledge that the god of all beauty was their protector; and standing there in that darkness, I felt one second of the deepest grief I had ever known, mourning the lost dead world. Then the bandy-legged captain passed us by, and called to us, and Erik said,
‘Everything is not lost.’
I do not know what he was thinking about, but perhaps he was also mourning the barren island, and he was right, for all was not completely lost, and never could be lost. We left the harbour and the ruins, and climbed the hill. Secret winds went with us, and the voice of the sea was at our ears like lost music. I watched Erik’s dark form blunder over the stones ahead of me, and I realized that I loved him. I had known him for little more than a day, and in that time he had given me no cause for love, none for hatred, and yet … and yet.