He went into the cafe and ordered ouzo. The language he spoke was Greek, but with a Cretan accent, very different from Cypriot. The barman who served him showed a flicker of surprise.
"I thought you Greeks were supposed to wear uniform," he said.
"I'm not in the army," said Craig, and looked round the bar. Its only occupants were three men playing xeri under a portrait of Archbishop Makarios. The barman watched him nervously.
"Things are quiet in Cyprus now," he said. "Most people like them like that."
"I like it," said Craig. "I haven't come for trouble. Just visiting friends."
He put an English pound note on the counter, and the barman gave him his change in Cypriot mils.
"Which is the taxi driver?" Craig asked.
The barman called out "Stephanou," and a fat man put down his cards and gathered up his winnings, then walked out to the cab, the inevitable Mercedes.
Craig finished his ouzo.
"There are lots of UNO patrols now," the barman said. "The civil war is over."
"I won't start it again," said Craig. "I promise."
He went out to the cab, and in his mind he cursed himself, thoroughly and obscenely. It had been a mistake to speak Greek; a bad one. English was a far more natural tongue for Cyprus than the Cretan dialect that was the only Greek he knew. But Greek to him was the language of friendship: when first he'd been a fighting man, most of his comrades were Greeks. He'd lived with them and learned their skills. In the islands still there were men and women who regarded Craig as their brother. So out of his loneliness he'd spoken Greek, and like a damned fool forgotten that Cypriots regarded Greeks from Greece sometimes as heroes, more often as a dangerous nuisance, who took to the mountains and slaughtered in the name of Enosis.
And at one time Cypriots also had gone into the mountains, killed British troops and been killed by them. That had been a bad time for Craig. But the British had gone now, and UNO troops had replaced them: Irish, Canadians, unlikely Swedes, and highly improbable Finns on the island of Venus, drinking brandy at five shillings a bottle and persuading Cypriot Greeks and Cypriot Turks to stop killing each other. Enosis—union with Greece— was somehow forgotten; the island was prosperous, not least because UNO paid its bills so promptly. The Greek and Turkish troops billeted on the island to protect their own nationals were already resented as a threat of war, a threat to prosperity. And Greek civilians were resented even more. They hinted that the days of terror might still come back.
Craig told the driver to head toward the port, which was the Turkish quarter.
"Greeks can't go there," the driver said.
"I'm not a Greek," said Craig. "I'm an American. My father came from Heraklion."
"Oh, an American." The driver was delighted, and all at once relaxed. "Why do you want to go to the port? Whisky—girls? We got plenty in our own bars."
"I want to look at it," said Craig. The driver shrugged, a comprehensive movement involving his whole torso, completely Hellene, that said more clearly than words that Americans made their own rules as they went along. Craig watched as they drove through the new town, Varosha, past the smart bars, tavemas, souvenir shops, then into the older town of cheap bars and night clubs, to the oldest Famagusta of all.
"This'U do," he said, and remembering he was an American, gave the driver too much money. When he got out the driver roared off at once—to his favorite cafe, Craig hoped, to tell a worried barman to stop worrying.
He looked at the dark bastion in front of him. The Venetians had built that, more than four hundred years before: a staggering achievement in military architecture, massive yet shapely towers and walls built to keep the Turks out of Cyprus. For Cyprus was rich, and Venice had needed the money: but the Turks had got in even so, and flayed the Venetian commander alive. Craig thought that Omar would have been proud of his ancestors. Their descendants, huddled and restricted inside the walls, he would have had no time for. Every single one of them was poor.
Craig turned his back on history, and walked toward the bars and night clubs. The place he wanted was small and intimate, and famous for its bouzouki music. Angelos, the man who owned it, had been a waiter in London when the Second World War began, and had joined the navy. In 1945 he and Craig had been part of a Special Boat Service Group that had landed on the island of Cos. It was Craig's eighteenth birthday, and he had saved Ange-los's life.
Craig walked in and spoke English to the waiter who led him to a table. It was early, but already the place was filling up, the air conditioning inadequate to counteract the heat of too many bodies. The waiter led him to a table near the back of the room, and Craig was quite happy about it. He refused the local champagne, and ordered a bottle of Arsinoe, a dry, delicate wine, and a plateful of the delicious Cyprus sausages called seftalies, and the chipped potatoes that are different from the chipped potatoes anywhere else in the world. The waiter brought the wine at once, and Craig sipped and smiled, and asked to speak to Angelos.
As he waited, the show began, and Craig found that the days of originality were not yet over. A girl came on and started to strip to bouzouki music, while Canadians, Swedes, Irishmen, and Finns looked on and cheered. He watched, intrigued. Two cultures met and ignored each other completely. The girl was preparing for love, or at any rate, sex—in a brisk, mid-Atlantic sort of way: the bouzouki was telling of death and sacrifice in a mountain battle a hundred and fifty years ago. But nobody else seemed to find it displeasing, except the bouzouki player. He became aware of a man moving toward him, a tubby
man, sleek with success, in a black sharkskin suit and a Hardy Amies tie; a man who carried a plateful of seftalies and chipped potatoes because he chose to, to oblige a friend. He put the food down in front of Craig.
"Hallo, John," he said, and sat at the table, snapped his fingers. A waiter seemed to grow out of the ground like a speeded-up flower.
"Bring another glass," said Craig.
"And another bottle," Angelos added, and Craig remembered that Cypriots always drink as if all the alcohol in the world is due to disappear next day.
"You recognized me, then?" he asked.
"Of course," said Angelos, and poured wine, motioning to Craig to eat his food. "You haven't changed, John. Not like me. See how fat I'm getting."
"Prosperity," said Craig.
"I have money, yes. If you need any-"
"No," said Craig. "I've got money too."
"What, then?" Angelos asked.
"Does it have to be anything?"
Angelos emptied his glass, poured more wine, and smiled at Craig.
"Yes, John. With you it has to be something."
"You're right," said Craig. "But do me a favor first. Tell me how you knew."
"That day in Cos," Angelos said. "In a way, it was the most important day of my life—the day I should have died—and didn't. You were the reason I didn't die. I have thought about it many times. On bad nights I still dream about it. Mostly I dream about the fat German— the one you got with the knife."